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Scott Simmons was born in rural West Tennessee and didn't really realize that movies and tv had to be made by actual people until he went to college. After getting degrees in both Television Production and Graphic Design he was in one of the early graduating classes at the Watkins Film School in Nashville, Tennessee. During that time at Watkins he discovered editing. While most of his classmates in film school wanted to be directors, Scott saw real career opportunities in post production and took a job as an assistant editor after completing fi...
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Click and drag save an Avid effect for later use
By Scott Simmons | February 23, 2009
Quicktip #23 (February 23, 2009) Saving a Custom Avid EffectIf you have an applied effect that you have perfected in Avid and you want to save that to use on other clips, first open the Effect Editor and then grab the effect icon in the effect editor:Click and drag the icon into a bin to save it:You can custom name the effect and then apply it like you would any effect from the Effects Palette.
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By Scott Simmons | February 22, 2009
Quicktip #22 (February 22, 2009) slate buttons to increment numbersClicking the little slate buttons in Final Cut Pro's Log and Capture tool will increment the clip information in their respective rows. Keep the check boxes checked and FCP will automatically increment the last number or letter for each new clip.
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Send your clips to the correct bin
By Scott Simmons | February 21, 2009
Quicktip #21 (February 21, 2009) Set the FCP Logging BinThe logging bin is the bin where logged or captured clips will be stored. That bin can be identified by the slate icon next to it. You can set a logging bin by right+clicking on a bin and choosing Set Logging Bin:
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I took my HV20 and the GT35pro out to a RED camera test recently
By Scott Simmons | February 20, 2009
The GT35pro meets the RED camera from Scott Simmons on Vimeo.
A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to take part in a RED camera test with my friends at Compass Cinema. We went out to local camera rental house CameraTrux and where they had set-up their RED with an assortment of lenses as said "test away!" Since I'm a post guy I take every opportunity I can to play with cameras and things outside of the edit suite so I took my HV20 and the GT35pro adapter along for the ride. When it wasn't too annoying I tried to shoot some footage along side the RED to compare and contrast with the footage from the GT35pro. I shot footage of the still life as well as the chain link fence outdoors. It's funny when you think about a 4K camera with some really great lenses being intercut with an under $1,000 consumer HDV camera and vibrating lens adapter and how it shouldn't seem possible but they actually go together pretty well with the video compressed down for web viewing. The RED footage is a transcode through Clipfinder to 1080 ProRes and the back-to-back shots have been color corrected with Colorista to make them match better ... except for the fence outside. I couldn't seem to get those tones to match closer. I need to keep reading Steve's great book The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction While they look pretty good here on Vimeo I did a test where I took a similarly dark shot of the still life and the red-berry bush outside and did some grading on the RED raw R3Ds in REDAlert vs. the Canon HDV files in Final Cut Pro ... It's quite the difference in latitude and what you can do with the image. As was to be expected.
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Preview can do a lot more than just open PDFs
By Scott Simmons | February 20, 2009
Quicktip #20 (February 20, 2009) Using Preview to annotate imagesAs much as I love ImageWell for quick annotations of images without the overhead of a Photoshop launch, you can do a lot of the same stuff in Apple's Preview application. Just right click on the top of a window and choose Customize Toolbar (or choose View > Customize Toolbar) and drag the Annotate bubble into the toolbar and you will now have rectangles, circle, arrows and text tools to annotate an image:If you notice there are a lot of other tools in there as well like crop and rotate. .
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It's only a few days before the ceremony but the shorts are there
By Scott Simmons | February 19, 2009
For all of us out there that love (and make) short films it's especially pleasing when the presenter announces the winners of the short film categories on Oscar night. I always wonder what the winner is thinking and feeling as they make that long walk from the back of the room up to the stage to accept their Oscar. In the early 90s they tried to do away with the shorts categories (at least on the telecast from what I remember) and there was such an uproar by a number of prominent filmmakers that they kept the categories intact. A couple of years ago they tried to give all of the shorts awards away at one time and that was an awkward train wreck. It has been suggested more than once that the shorts need to go. Sure the Oscar telecast is bloated and long but for a filmmaker the act of even having the shorts categories represents something to strive for. The knowledge that you have just as much of a chance as anyone at a real Oscar nomination is a great incentive to do you best work on your short film. The odds are still great but dedicated filmmakers work against the odds all the time. Since shorts are such a staple of the Internet the Academy should embrace the short film format more than ever. Even CNN has a story about the shorts filmmakers!iTunes has recently posted all 5 Oscar nominated short films for sale via Shorts International. The direct iTunes links can be found at this link on Ticklebooth. The animated ones are all linked here. I haven't been able to find and view the Documentary Short Subject nominees so if you have a link to them please post it in the comments. The Oscars are this Sunday so get your viewing done before then!
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By Scott Simmons | February 19, 2009
Quicktip #19 (February 19, 2009) Use the option key for more Finder optionsWhen working in the Mac OS Finder you can press the OPTION and/or the SHIFT key on the keyboard for other tasks and options from the Finder menus:In the above example of the SHIFT key pressed under the File menu in the Finder you have the option of Add to Favorites (instead of Add to Sidebar) and Find by Name... (instead of simply Find...).If you press shift + the Apple menu you get the option to Force Quit Finder instead the usual Force Quit that brings up the Force Quit dialog box. You also get a number of different options when you use the Option modifier key as well. Explore the different menus to find them all!
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Avid offers up an opportunity to chat with an Oscar nominee
By Scott Simmons | February 18, 2009
It's no secret that Avid editing systems and Avid technology had a hand in a lot of this years Oscar nominated films. To celebrate, Avid is giving people the opportunity to chat with one of them! On Monday, February 23 at 1:00 PM PST, Chris Dickens, editor of Slumdog Millionaire, will conduct an online chat and take your questions. Since this will be one day after the big Oscar ceremony you can ask him how it feels to win! Or how if feels to lose depending on how it goes. I'm sure he'd say it's just an honor to be nominated. To participate in the chat you have to sign up first. I would love to take part in this chat (personally I hope Slumdog sweeps the awards) but since I'll be in an edit session I'll just have to catch the podcast afterwards.
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Determining the duration of a group of master clips
By Scott Simmons | February 18, 2009
Quicktip #18 (February 18, 2009) Determine total Avid bin duration!If you want to know the total duration of an number of clips in an Avid bin just select clips:And then press Command+i to load information about the selection into the Console:As you can see a lot if helpful information can be found with this method. Total duration of all the clips, number of items selected, number of items in the bin ... etc.
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Add black to the start of an Avid sequence with specific duration
By Scott Simmons | February 17, 2009
Quicktip #17 (February 17, 2009) Add Avid filler at startWant an easy way to add black to the start of an Avid sequence? Just go under the Clip menu and choose Add Filler at Start:It will then add filler at the top of your edit for the duration specified in the Timeline > Edit tab of the settings:
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In addition to photos, videos and illustrations you can now buy music and sound effects
By Scott Simmons | February 16, 2009
I'm sure there's not a person out there working in media today who hasn't at least heard of iStockphoto. The stock photo house has been a staple of affordability and convenience in the stock photo world for a long time. A couple of years ago they added video to the mix. For the last year or so they have been acquiring audio clips and that service recently launched. That's not just sound effects and foley type stuff but music! From the iStockaudio website:"Many sites claim to sell royalty-free audio, but iStock actually does. You can use our iStock tracks as many times as you like, wherever you like. So what's the big deal? Our tracks include public performance, synchronization and mechanical licenses. We provide you with everything you need". Since it is iStock the media is sold via credits. Basic is 2 credits, detailed 5, complex 15 and elaborate 25. All the usual search features are there for audio as well. When previewing audio clips you can play directly from a search results page or click into a particular result for more detail. Audio clips can be added to a lightbox like photos and video and you can download an mp3 comp of the clips as well. Of course all of the audio samples have the phrase "istock audio" repeated over and over and over throughout the clip. But that's to be expected. There's even a nice waveform preview of the clips as well:Over all the quality is decent. Of all the music I sampled many had a bit of the electronic / canned / Garageband sound to it but there were some gems that I really liked. When searching for a mood like "sadness" most returned results are shorter clips with the more complete songs, longer than one or two minutes, scattered in the search results. It would be great if there was an option to only return results over a certain length so if you were searching for a full song for you film you wouldn't have to wade through all of the stings and short clips. There hasn't been many downloads yet but give it time ... I'm sure people will come to rely on iStockaudio like we do for photos, illustrations, Flash and video. Someday we might even have iStockpizza!
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Taller FCP timeline tracks are a click and drag away
By Scott Simmons | February 16, 2009
Quicktip #16 (February 16, 2009) Expand all FCP tracks via mouseA quick way to change the track height of all video or audio tracks in a Final Cut Pro timeline all at once is to OPTION + drag on the tiny space between tracks in the patch panel when your cursor changes to the little up-down arrow. Then all of the audio or video tracks will reflect the new height.
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You may or may not have to use the option modifier after all!
By Scott Simmons | February 15, 2009
Quicktip #15 (February 15, 2009) Option+click (or maybe don't Option+click) on an existing file to use that nameThanks to Andy Mees and the power of Twitter I got a question about today's Quicktip #15. Andy said: "scott, is it just me? i get the filename behaviour you blogged without pressing a modifier ... just click, works system wide, no?" I had always thought you had to use Option so I tried it while saving a PDF on my laptop and much to my surprise I didn't have to hit Option to use the name of a file already on disk. But when I got up to my production machine to update this post I find I have to use the Option modifier. What gives? Anyone have any answers? Do you have to use the Option key or don't you?If you already have a file saved on your hard drive and you export and/or save a file you can option+click on a file already save on disk while in the save/export dialog box to select that file's name:This is particularly helpful if you are saving incremental versions of a file and don't want to type the name over and over. Just option+click the file and add a version number. It's also helpful if you export a QuickTime and then make a change and need to export again and not keep the first file. Option+click to select the same file name and then choose to replace the old file when promoted.
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Inserting a ? into your honey's Valentine's Day video ... next year
By Scott Simmons | February 14, 2009
Quicktip #14 (February 14, 2009): Insert a ? or a ?Let's say you are editing a Valentine's Day video for your sweetheart and you want to insert a heart shape into a title or to use as a graphic element. If you have some ornamental fonts installed you could search it out that way or you could access any number of odd characters via the International Input Menu. First you must turn on the input menu via the System Preferences > International > Input Menu. Then check Show input in menu bar:Once that is turned on you will see a little flag in your menu bar. Under that menu choose Show Character Palette:Up pops a window with lots of different ornamental characters as well as tons of other stuff including stars, crosses, Greek symbols and braille patterns:This floating palette can then be used to insert a heart or any other character into pretty much any application ?. Just click into the application you want to insert the character in to, click over to the palette, select your character and click Insert ? "This works in a lot (but not all) Mac OSX applications. Now ... get to work on next year's Valentine's Day video since it's too late to make one for today.
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Don't get bit by the "Different Output" settings
By Scott Simmons | February 13, 2009
Quicktip #13 (February 13, 2009) Check Audio/Video SettingsThis may only happen to me but it's annoying enough that it's worth mentioning. If you do a lot of mastering to tape in a lot of different formats then you might have accidentally left a different format selected in the Audio/Video Settings > A/V Devices tab for Different Output for Edit to Tape/Print to Video:I've had this happen when I have quickly moved from one project format to the next for different outputs. I have made it a habit to always do a quick check of that tab before Edit to Tape begins. It would be nice (and would make total sense) if FCP had some kind of warning or message to let you know when these two settings are different when you go to perform an Edit to Tape. It seems like I remember FCP giving you a warning at some point in FCP's life but it doesn't do that now. Until then command+option+Q is the shortcut to bring up the A/V Settings.Bonus Edit to Tape tip: I often UNcheck the "Mirror on desktop" option when outputting to tape, especially on high-bandwidth HD material or media from a Firewire drive as it seems that there's less chance of FCP dropping frames during the output if it doesn't have to keep up with the playback on the computer screen.The output can still be monitored on your external client monitor. You do have a client monitor for editing, right?
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By Scott Simmons | February 12, 2009
Quicktip #12 (February 12, 2009) Expos© to the function keysI love Mac OS X's Expos© feature that can reveal the desktop (among other things) with one keystroke. I have it mapped to the middle button on the Mighty Mouse. Problem is that my function keys and shift+function keys and option+functions keys are always mapped to other things, especially in Final Cut Pro. So I mapped Expos© to Control + option + command + function keys ... that's a combination that I don't use in FCP.
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Change those sequence settings once and never again
By Scott Simmons | February 11, 2009
Quicktip #11 (February 11, 2009) turn on settings in User PreferencesI always want to see Though Edits, Duplicate Frames and Audio Controls in a Final Cut Pro timeline. By enabling these (and any other specific timeline settings you like) in the Final Cut Pro > User Preferences menu they will be enabled for every newly created sequence from that point forward.
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Select specific headings and save custom Avid column layouts
By Scott Simmons | February 10, 2009
Quicktip #10 (February 10, 2009) Save Avid Column LayoutsAvid can save custom bin column headings just as well as FCP. First you choose the headings you want to display by choosing Headings... under the bin "hamburger" menu in the lower left corner of the bin:Once you have selected the heading you want to display you then click the heading title bar at the bottom of the bin, next to the "hamburger" menu. This is where you choose your different custom heading configurations as well as save a new custom heading:
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By Scott Simmons | February 10, 2009
There's a brand new version of the audio podcast That Post Show up and online. If you haven't heard the podcast then this would be a good time to start listening. It's described as "an open conversation and roundtable discussion with experts in new media, film and moviemaking, about the process of film and creating media." I was on episode three and they are all the way up to episode 6 now with Plug Ins and Post Production. Guests for this episode are, of course, host John Flowers, Kenn Bell of the Dog Files, Mark Christiansen of our very own Pro Video Coalition Production Values channel, and friend of the Edit Shane Ross. You probably know Shane from his blog Little Frog in Hi-Def but you also know him from the thousands of Internet forums he frequents about editing and post-production. The show is also sponsored by Red Giant Software and as a part of their show sponsorship you can get 40% off Colorista and Warp from now until March 2. Check out That Post Show's website for the code. That's a great deal on a must have piece of software if you want to do any kind of color correction in Final Cut Pro. The Edit did a review a while back and it is highly recommended. So tune your podcasting application (here's an iTunes direct link) and give That Post Show a listen. You might learn something.
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DBA Createasphere