Monday, June 02, 2008

Using Video Chat On Set

Learn how to perform remote interviews or monitoring with video chat

Author and video podcaster Richard Harrington explains how to use your laptop’s video chat capabilities to create a live video feed from your location for remote viewing and interaction.

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Monday, June 02, 2008

Analyze Video Files on a Mac with Video Spec

Useful freeware program

Looking for a useful application to tell you more about your video files?  Mac users should check out the free (and still in pre-release) Video Spec software tool.  The tool is a little rough around the edges (it has one major bug which is the aspect ratio of DV and HDV is not reported accurately) but it is still truly useful.

• The latest version has been tested on Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard.
• It is compatible with PowerPC and Intel Mac (Universal Binary).
• This version is localized in english and french.



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Sunday, June 01, 2008

PSV#78 Making Selections: Alpha Channels

Photoshop for Video training podcast

Instructor Richard Harrington explains how to use the color detail in an image to quickly make a great alpha channel.

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Sunday, June 01, 2008

Get Photos from Aperture to Final Cut Pro

Free Plug-in Saves Time and Effort

Sometimes third-party plug-ins fill obvious holes… this is truly the case here.  Wouldn’t it make sense to be able to quickly send photos from Apple Aperture to Final Cut Pro? You’d think that sort of thing would be built right in (its not).  Fortunately the fine folks over at Connected Flow over an elegant (and free) solution.

“The Aperture to Final Cut Pro plugin lets you take your images stored in Apple’s professional photo management application and send them directly to a video sequence in Final Cut Pro. From within Aperture, you can select photos, set their order and duration and select transitions between frames.”

The Aperture to Final Cut Pro plugin is a free download and is provided on an as-is basis.  I find it works great.

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Sunday, June 01, 2008

Motion Templates in Final Cut Pro

How to make your own Motion templates to use in FCP

For the past few years Apple has been pushing Motion as a tool that should be in every editor’s toolbox. The problem has been, not every editor has had the time or patience to learn Motion. In Final Cut Pro 6, Apple recognized this and has integrated Motion templates directly inside of FCP.

To launch a Motion template in Final Cut Pro you have three options:
1 Choose the Effects tab in the Browser > Master Templates.
2 Choose the Generators pulldown in the Viewer > Master Templates.
3 Choose the Sequence menu > Add Master Template.

Choose the template that you want and load it into the Viewer. Once the template has been loaded in the Viewer, clicking on the controls tab will let you change various parameters of the template. There is only one catch:

Not every parameter of a template is editable in Final Cut Pro. Text entry, size, tracking and populating drop zones with footage are the only parameters you can adjust inside Final Cut Pro.

If you need to edit a template to, for example, change the text color, or swap out a background, you need to edit the template in Motion. Here’s how.
1 Edit the template from the Viewer into your sequence.
2 Right-click on the template and notice at the top of the contextual menu you have two options: Open in Editor and Open Copy in Editor. Since the template is a prebuilt one from Apple, you can’t save over it (it’s locked) so you need to choose Open Copy in Editor.
3 Make your changes in Motion and save the file. Your changes will update in FCP.

Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

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Monday, May 19, 2008

PSV#77 Making Selections: Channels - Photoshop for Video

Instructor Richard Harrington shows you how to make great selections using channels in Photoshop.

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Monday, May 19, 2008

Timecode Burn-in and Encode in One Step for Final Cut Studio

Create Window Burns in One Pass with Final Cut Studio 2

Timecode burn-in is used to assist in referencing back to parts of show. Typically this has been used on VHS tapes for producers so they can comment on shows, etc. These days it’s more common to use QuickTime files and DVDs for this type of work. Since you’re going to have to encode the video anyway (most likely using Compressor), why not add timecode burn-in at the same time?

Fortunately, a great new feature in Compressor 3 allows you to do this.
1 Inside Final Cut Pro select the sequence you want to export.
2 Choose File > Export > Using Compressor.
3 Inside Compressor select the setting you’d like to apply to the file. With the setting active, select the Inspector window and click the Filters tab.
4 Choose Timecode Generator.
5 Change the settings for the Timecode Generator as you see fit.
6 Apply the setting to the clip in the Batch window.
7 Submit the job.

Note: If you’re trying to choose the Timecode Generator for an Apple preset you’ll notice there are no filters in the Filters tab of the Inspector. To be able to add the Timecode Generator to one of the Apple presets, you’ll have to duplicate it first (then it becomes a custom preset).

Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

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Monday, May 19, 2008

Final Cut Pro to YouTube

Learn how to get the best YouTube videos from Final Cut Pro

What people tend to forget is that you are sending YouTube a master for them to compress; therefore, send the highest quality you can, that fits within their limitations. YouTube.com is well know for being the busiest video-sharing site, but unfortunately, YouTube uses the much older Sorenson Spark codec for their video encoding. This was the “improved” video format for Flash 7 but is based on the very old H.263 video conferencing codec. Even when new, this was an old, inefficient codec.

Many people send YouTube an already compressed video, and are disappointed when they see the quality that results on YouTube. That’s because most of the information was first thrown away by the encode before upload, so there was little quality left to be encoded to Flash 7.

The goal is to give YouTube a master that they can use for encoding:
• YouTube has two limitations: no more than 10 minutes per video and no larger than 100 MB per video.
• YouTube converts everything that is uploaded to Flash 7 video at 320X240 (although they’ve started to also do 640X480 in H.264).
• Remember the good old days of VHS distribution? You wouldn’t give the duplicator a VHS copy of the show to duplicate. No, you’d give them the highest quality master you could. Therefore, to get the best quality from YouTube, give them a high quality “master” that is close to 99 MB.

Here’s how to pull this off:
1 Use QuickTime Pro or Final Cut Pro to exports to .mp4 with H.264 video.
2 Export as MPEG-4 with H.264 and set the size to 320X240. There is no point providing more resolution than YouTube’s finished size. By going direct to that size means that you can devote bandwidth to making that master look great, instead of sending excess size that will be scaled down. The bonus is that you get to control de-interlacing and scaling.
3 From here on there are two choices: calculate the maximum data rate that will keep the file under 99 MB, or use some general purpose settings.

Thanks to Phil Hodgetts for this guest tip.

Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

Editing •
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