28 Days of Quicktips

I just love quick tips! It’s so much fun to see a blog post, Tweet, comment or image that gives me a little piece of editing / software knowledge that I didn’t know before. I read the tip for a minute or so, try out the tip and then it’s stuck in my brain from that point forward. Well ... some of them I will forget if I don’t use them very much but for the most part they seem to stick pretty well. I’ve been using Avid Media Composer and Apple Final Cut Pro for about as long as I can remember but there are still learn new things about the software I see, read and stumble upon from time to time. For the last little while I’ve been making a list of some of my favorite Quicktip. I’m almost to 28 so I thought that February 2009 would be the perfect month in which to post one Quicktip a day! Some are my favorites, some are new discoveries, some are tips I probably learned elsewhere (so if you were an originator of a particular tip thanks!). I hope that one or more will be helpful. The madness begins tomorrow, February 1, 2009!

Is Apple Working on Storyboarding Software?

It was on the same day that I got an email about the new version 6 of Storyboard Quick that I saw an article on Information Week entitled Apple Applies For Storyboard Software Patent. This article points to a patent application that includes a more detailed abstract. From the WIPO website:

A storyboard presentation is generated by launching a scene design tool that includes actor and camera placement tools. Using the actor and camera placement tools, a first actor icon and a first camera icon are added on a scene layout, the first actor icon representing a first actor that will appear in a scene and the first camera icon representing a first camera that will film the scene. The user is enabled to control a location and orientation of the first actor icon using the actor placement tool and a location and orientation of the first camera icon relative to the first actor icon using the camera placement tool. Based on the location and orientation of the first actor icon and the first camera icon, a first projection of the scene featuring the first actor as seen from the first camera is generated.

The first thing I wondered after reading about this patent would be if this could be a stand alone piece of software or would it be integrated into Final Cut Pro?

The GT35Pro up in the great cold north

For Christmas 2008 my wife and I packed up the car and drove north to see her family. We ended up with Uncle John in Warkworth, Ontario, spending time on a gorgeous farm in the country. It was the perfect place to keep kicking the tires (see the first post about the GT35pro here and the first footage here) on my Canon HV20 with Greg Tay’s GT35pro adapter. Perfect in the sense that this type of shooting is one of the main reasons I like an affordable 35mm lens adapter for this little consumer camera. When I’m kicking around with the family, on a holiday at the beach or just shooting some random images in the neighborhood the option of getting fantastically shallow depth of field and the unique look of the image projected onto an adapter’s ground glass is very appealing. I don’t want lug thousands of dollars worth of high-end adapter, swing-away matte box, carbon-fiber rail system in their own dedicated pelican case around the country just for my own pleasure. It’s nice to have something that can fit in a travel bag or camera case and still yield results that are look good and are especially impressive to the family. You can easily get that out of most all of the lower cost 35mm lens adapters on the market.

The (current) greatest photograph in the world

I love photography. I can kill hours playing with Lightroom, just clicking away with my Canon or thumbing though a couple of my favorite photography websites. But I never realized how much time I could really kill until I finally got onto David Bergman’s website and began exploring his 1,474 megapixel image from Barack Obama’s inauguration. If you haven’t seen this thing then get ready to waste some time. Bergman used the Gigapan system to create this image. It’s a “revolutionary robotic camera mount that allows you to capture stunning gigapixel images with most point and shoot cameras.” Plus it’s only $379! And the inauguration was the perfect event in which to take such a photo (if you can call this thing a photo) on such a grand scale. David has a great explanation as to how he achieved the image so I won’t repeat it here. I will say that if you can’t get to the image from the above link then keep trying since the site has been down a bit due to the overwhelming traffic. You can also try the gigapan.org site and view the image as well as snapshots that other users have found and saved. I just looked at Oprah’s hand! Thanks to David for making such a fantastic image and sharing it for all of the world to see.

Please allow me to introduce myself

Please allow me to introduce myself ....

Hi, I’m Scott Simmons. you may remember me from such such blog posts as A Case Against Color, Compressor hatred. Resolved? or the infamous What’s wrong with the young FCP editor? It’s not all about bagging on FCP since I use it all the time and like to talk about the good things as well. As an early adopter of Final Cut Pro version 1.0 the only way I could have been using it longer would be to have been a beta tester! I also love and use Avid Media Composer. From my Avid Media Composer 3.0 review to If I Were Appointed Avid’s CEO, a little love and tough-love is often in order. And how can we leave out discussion on the RED camera and its unique challenges in post. Oh, there’s also one of my favorite topics, the ever raging Avid vs. Final Cut Pro debate. All of these articles come from my years of running The Editblog over on my own site as well as writing for Studio Daily. But it’s not all about writing.

I’m also a creative non-linear Avid/Final Cut Pro film/television/video editor. Plus there are all of the other hats than an editor must wear these days too: graphic designer, audio mixer, sound designer, compositor, colorist, client manager, QuickTime expert, Macintosh troubleshooter and technology understanderer just to name a few. I’ve been a professional editor for going on 9 years and have worked in and around post-production for over a decade (man ... writing that sentence makes me feel old!). In these years in the Nashville, Tennessee market I’ve worked on just about any and every type of program from music videos to commercials, narrative to documentary, corporate to broadcast. Editing is fun. Helping writers, producers and directors mold their raw footage into a finished product brings me great joy. Writing about these techniques and processes helps me understand and appreciate the art and craft of editing that much more. Along the way we might talk about filmmaking, music, movies and popular culture too. It’s great to bring the Editblog over to ProVideo Coalition right alongside some of my favorite writers and teachers that I have been reading for years.  You can also find me lurking around a number of Internet forums as editblog and on Vimeo, LinkedIn and Twitter.

  Hey ... I’m just happy to be here at all.

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