NAB Conference Raises White Flag

Visitors to the NAB 2009 website are greeted with an animation of a raised white flag…  typically seen as a sign of surrender. This is sending the wrong message.  The conference is going strong and continues to evolve.  I’ve attended and spoken at the conference for the last five years.  Despite some high profile drop-outs (like Avid and Apple) in 2008 the show still boasted more than 72,000 attendees.  I found it as relevant as ever and enjoyed informative presentations, looked at great products, networked like crazy, and managed to have some fun in there too.  I believe in NAB, last year I brought 5 employees with me.

Photoshop for Video – Creating Custom Backgrounds from Scratch

Photoshop for Video – Making Selections with Calculations

I Can’t Even Open My FCP Project File” (Or Other Flaky Activities)

1. Look in the Autosave Vault. Before panicking, simply try going back a few versions. Do a search for Autosave in the Finder. Look in the folders for a backup of your project file. Work your way backward through the recently saved copies.

2. Create a new user account. Create a new user account for testing purposes. This is a great way to see if the problem is a corrupt preferences file. Most Final Cut Pro preferences files are stored in the user’s settings. Open the System Preferences panel under the blue Apple. Click Accounts. Click on New User. Create one call test, and give it admin privileges. You can assign it a password or not. Only use this account for troubleshooting (you may want to keep it for the future).

Now, log out, and log in as the new user. Try opening Final Cut Pro. It should open with no active project files. If it opens, you’ve narrowed the problem down to bad user preferences (see next tip) or a bad project file.

Video Compression Workshop – Helpful Advice

Need to get your video delivered to your audience?  Then there’s probably going to be some compression involved.  Don’t let hardware or software get in your way. Let’s take a common sense approach to getting your video out there. 

Pick Your Power
There are tons of compression tools out there, but the pro apps offer important features like batch processing, multiple architecture support, and customizable presets.  The five most popular options are:

Apple Compressor (www.apple.com) Bundled free with Final Cut Pro or DVD Studio Pro.  However it can’t output some Window’s oriented formats and it is occasionally cranky (requiring restarts, trashing preferences, and even re-installs to get back on track).

Canopus ProCoder (www.canopus.com) a versatile PC-only solution for encoding video in a variety of formats.  It offers both a guided and an expert mode to setting up your jobs.

Autodesk Cleaner and Cleaner XL (www.discreet.com) The granddaddy of encoding utilities.  It’s suffered from changing ownership several times and hasn’t seen much development lately. 

Telestream Episode and Episode Pro (www.flip4mac.com) This product offers hooks into Apple Compressor and offers a variaety of additional formats that Mac users need.

Sorenson Squeeze (www.sorenson.com) An easy to use compression utility that also unlocks some specialty formats like Flash Video.  Version 4.1 (a free upgrade) build in support for Windows Media files on the Mac Platform by using Flip4Mac (not a free upgrade - $99/$179).

Page 1 of 1 pages