Post Production

NAB 2013: A chat with Adobe about the next Premiere Pro

We don't know when it's shipping but we know what it's going to be like

By Scott Simmons | April 08, 2013

As part of covering NAB 2013 with the FreshDV crew, I sat down with Adobe’s Al Mooney to discuss the recently announced next version of Adobe Premiere Pro. This was a long one so it’s a two parter.

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A look at Red Giant’s new BulletProof

Data wrangling your digital media just got a lot easier

By Scott Simmons | April 08, 2013

NAB 2013 sees a brand new product release from Red Giant Software. We usually associate the name Red Giant with plug-ins for our NLEs and our After Effects but BulletProof is a workflow tool, designed primarily to get footage off of your camera’s media cards and into a post-production pipeline. In between the beginning and the end of BulletProof’s use you’re presented with a very organized and very structured way to offload, backup, log and transcode your media. BulletProof isn’t shipping this week but you can sign up for a public beta and try it out yourself (as well as help improve the product) once the beta period begins.

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Sorenson Squeeze 9 updates the old encoding standby

A subtle interface change and quite a few new features

By Scott Simmons | April 08, 2013

NAB 2013 has seen another update to the do-all encoding application Sorenson Squeeze. This release takes the app to version 9. Some of the signature new features include an enhanced interface, pre-roll and post-roll, optimized encoding for HTML5 and closed captioning support. It’s also worth noting that the Squeeze interface gets a bit of a refresh as well. Don’t expect a Final Cut Pro X level of radical redesign but rather a refresh that feels newer but keeps overall use of the application the same. Here’s a few of the features I noted as I was working with a beta version of Squeeze 9.

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Avid announces Avid Media Composer 7 at NAB 2013

It's the under the hood stuff that editors will be most excited about

By Scott Simmons | April 07, 2013

The Avid press event of NAB2013 was on Sunday night of NAB was an interesting one. There’s a ton of new products being introduced including lots of Interplay updates and additions, a big updated for ProTools (that felt like the biggest ever after watching the video) and … Media... Read More

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Learning More About the Next Version of After Effects

Two hours of videos; six hours of sessions

By Chris and Trish Meyer | April 04, 2013

Adobe has started to “reveal” information about its next generation of pro video tools, and yesterday we wrote an overview of some of the more significant new features being slated for a future version of After Effects. But if you’re hungry for more information, and sooner rather than later, then you may be interested in some more in-depth videos we’ve recorded, plus a pair of sessions Chris is presenting at next week’s NAB show.

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CS Next Sneak Peeks [updated]

NAB Reveal previews from Adobe and others

By Rich Young | April 03, 2013

Adobe has started to reveal the features of the next versions of their video post production software, which will be demoed at NAB 2013.

There's no shipping date or official name, or information about the rest of the Creative Suite, though ProDesignTools says "Adobe CS7? Next Release of Creative Suite to Be Revealed May 6th", the date the Adobe Max conference opens.

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After Effects Technology Preview

Adobe is giving us a peek at what is on tap for the next version of After Effects.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | April 03, 2013

On the heels of their Refine Edge sneak peek last week and just a few days before NAB, Adobe is releasing more information about some of the cool technology we may see in the next generation of their other pro video tools – including After Effects. Adobe has given some folks like us the opportunity to work with these features in advance, and we wanted to share our thoughts with you.

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An Early Look at the Next Version of Adobe Premiere Pro

A ton of new features and changes means Premiere Pro continues to get better

By Scott Simmons | April 03, 2013

With NAB 2013 just around the corner it should come as no surprise that Adobe has let their cat out of the bag by letting the world get a sneak peek at what’s coming in the next version quite a few of the Creative Suite applications that many video pros depend on. Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, Prelude and Speed Grade will all see updates. You’ll have to look around for some other posts about what’s new in the majority of those tools we I’m going to concentrate on the next Premiere Pro.

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Time Lapse Workflows and Final Cut Pro X

On this week's MacBreak Studio

By Mark Spencer | April 02, 2013

This week on MacBreak Studio, Steve Martin from Ripple Training explains his workflow for creating time lapse movies from a series of photographs using Final Cut Pro X and other applications.

Timelapse photography has become very popular recently - and with the advent of... Read More

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After Effects Brainstorm: Keyframe Variations

Part 3 of our exploration of the Brainstorm module in After Effects.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | March 29, 2013

In the third of our rescued movies on Brainstorm, I demonstrate a much less common use of Brainstorm: to randomize keyframes. Brainstorm can essentially randomize any property you can select in the Timeline or Effect Controls panels - including values that vary over time. In this movie, I create a swarming-style animation by duplicating a layer multiple times, and then using Brainstorm to randomize the intermediate Position, Rotation, and Scale values the layers go through.

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Buying stock footage with the Pond5 plugin for Premiere Pro CS6

Here's a few things to be aware of and a couple that I don't understand

By Scott Simmons | March 27, 2013

Back in 2012 the stock footage company Pond5 released a plugin for Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 that allowed from easy search and download of their stock footage right from within Premiere. We talked about this nice new feature back when the plugin came out. I used it several times when working on some stock footage based edits but hadn't had the opportunity to actually carry out the whole purchase and conform process from within PPro until a recent project. Keeping in mind this product is still in beta, here's a few cautions and gotchas that I ran across while working. May they save you some time in the future.

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Adobe Refine Edge

UPDATED: Ever pulled your own hair out trying to key or rotoscope hair or other soft edge details? Help is on the way.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | March 26, 2013

Adobe recently posted a video called The History (and Future) of Rotoscoping in After Effects. It gives a quick overview of how masking has evolved over the years in AE, as well as Paint and Roto Brush. At the very end, it teases a new technology called Refine Edge that seems to magically create a detailed alpha channel around the hair of a dancing girl. Adobe has given me the chance to work a bit with Refine Edge, and invited me to share my initial thoughts with fellow users. (Just so we’re clear up front, I’m receiving no compensation from Adobe for this; these are my honest reactions and advice after using it.)

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Working with Keyframes in Motion

On this week's MacBreak Studio

By Mark Spencer | March 26, 2013

This week on MacBreak Studio, I get back to the basics in Motion by showing Steve Martin from Ripple Training how to create animation with keyframes.

Keyframes are the basic building blocks for creating custom animations and Motion has a variety of tools for working with them... Read More

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After Effects Brainstorm: Learning Effects

Part 2 of our exploration of this little-used creative-block-buster.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | March 25, 2013

In the second of our rescued movies on Brainstorm, I focus on using Brainstorm to help learn an effect you may be unfamiliar with. When presented with all the options in available in an open-ended effect such as Fractal Noise, it can be challenging to know just what all the effect is capable of without spending hours of concentrated, methodical study. Of course, that’s still the best way to truly master an effect, but deadlines don’t always allow us to take the rigorous, ideal approach. Therefore, in this movie I share an approach for using the Brainstorm module in After Effects to help explore what an unfamiliar effect may be capable of, including saving off promising variations for later exploration.

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First Cut Pro is a handy, dandy online review and approval system

And every editor needs an easy way for clients to review and comment on cuts

By Scott Simmons | March 22, 2013

The review, commenting and approval process is certainly an important one when it comes to getting a client to sign off on an edit and get the job out the door. How exactly you go about this task so that it is painless for both editor and client can be a very big question. If time and proximity permits having a client sit in on the session that is a great way to go. If you’re separated by distance you might choose something like First Cut Pro.

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After Effects Brainstorm: Effect Variations

Taking advantage of a little-used feature to overcome creative blocks.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | March 20, 2013

Continuing our rescue operation on orphaned training movies, this is the first of a trio of movies on the little-used and oft-maligned Brainstorm module in After Effects. Brainstorm provides a way to randomize selected parameters or effects with the goal of helping generate new ideas. It’s easy to think that such results would be just as useful as monkeys sitting at a bank of typewriters trying to create your next script, but when used judiciously, it can actually be quite useful. In this first movie, I demonstrate the most common case of using Brainstorm to quickly try out different settings for already-applied affects to see if it can come up with something useful more quickly than you could messing around with the effect’s parameters.

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Batch Renaming Clips in Final Cut Pro X

On this week's MacBreak Studio

By Mark Spencer | March 19, 2013

Depending on your source footage, Final Cut Pro X may assign clip names based on the metadata associated with the clips, such as the date and time each was shot. Folks used to logging clips before import may find this automatic renaming confusing, but it's actually very easy to... Read More

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After Effects Render Order Issues

Why the same treatments can look different on pixel or vector layers - and how to work around it.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | March 15, 2013

Last year, we updated our After Effects Apprentice video courses. As part of adding and reorganizing material, some movies got cut. But we hate to see anything go to waste, so we’re going to repost them here for free. 

After Effects follows a very specific order of calculations when it renders each layer of each frame in a composition. The trick is, that order changes depending on circumstances, such as whether their source layer is made out of pixels (such as photographs and video), vector outlines (such as text and shape layers), or is switched between the two (such as Illustrator artwork, which can be treated as pixels or as vectors). What may seem like “random” behavior is actually very repeatable and thought out; you just have to know it.

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Come Learn Final Cut Pro X and Motion at NAB

Over 50 Hours of FCP X & Motion Instruction

By Mark Spencer | March 15, 2013

So what's the deal with Final Cut Pro X now that it's been out for almost 2 years? Can you actually use it for "professional" editing? Is it really just "iMovie Pro"? Why do some people seem to love it and others seem to hate it?

Why not find out for... Read More

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Timeline: A History of Editing goes digital with lots of new material

This amazing book about the history of editing is even better on iPad

By Scott Simmons | March 14, 2013

Timeline: A History of Editing is an amazingly detailed book about just what the subtitle says, a history of editing. Written by John Buck, Timeline is something we’ve spoken about before but it recently got even better with the release of Timeline: Digital Edition One. This iPad specific book is updated for iBooks on the iPad with “photographs, video material, original brochures and animated patents, as well as audio clips and exclusive interviews that document the lives of editors and the craft of editing from the very beginning.”

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