Final Cut Studio, Avid, Adobe, and Video Streaming

Understanding Handles in Final Cut Pro

2009-11-20T17:44:28Z

I know it seems pretty obvious, but someone asked me the other day, "What do you mean by handles?" Handles in Final Cut Pro are basically the extra frames of unused video or audio that are on either side of the In & Out points in an edit. Think of it like a rolling pin, where you have those 2 handles on either side of the actual part you use. More of a shooting technique than an editing technique, but in alot of cases you are performing both jobs; and if you're not, you want to make sure your camera person is doing this too. Recording an amount of tape before the action starts and after the action ends is essential for creating those "handles". A good rule of thumb is at least 5 seconds on either side. You really need these especially when you're using cross dissolve transitions, or a fade in or out before or after your clip. If you start recording right when the action starts, you won't have enough footage to "fade in from black".

Understanding Handles is important before getting too deep into trimming clips. In order to extend a clip in the Timeline to a longer duration, you need to have that extra media available. An easy way to check if you have enough media to trim is to double click on a clip that is in the Timeline. You can see the available header and tail areas that you can use for trimming purposes by loading the clip into the Viewer. This means you can extend the clip beyond its edited length within the sequence. Once you have determined that a clip has enough material to trim, you can extend the clip by the duration of the available handles.

Note that the sprockets here means it is a clip from the Timeline. Keep reading for another tip...

]]> Creating Handles within the Footage During Capture

There are 2 ways to create handles in your footage. You can loosely mark the footage around the action you want to edit, creating handles as you mark. Or you can mark the action more precisely and add the handles afterward. To create a 3-second clip handle, click in the Clip In Point Timecode field, enter -3. (minus 3 period) and press return. When you enter this change, a new In point appears that is 3 seconds earlier than the previous mark, giving you a 3 second pad, or handle before the action begins.

Final Cut Assistant for Final Cut Pro

2009-11-19T15:30:01Z

Final Cut Assistant is a freeware program available from Apple to help you make the most out of your Final Cut Pro system. All the little annoying things you have to mess with in Final Cut Pro are all put together in a nice little package for you. Functions included are listed here.

New Empty Project lets you avoid Untitled project files and unnamed sequences in your projects. Use it everytime you start a project to name it.

Reset Final Cut Pro is like trashing your preferences. Reset gets your user preferences back to their original state.

Restore from Backup allows you to choose from any of the available earlier versions of your User Settings.

The "Backup" that you are restoring is created when you "Save User Settings..." The Backup contains Window, Keyboard, Column, & Button Bar Layouts, as well as Favorites and User Preferences. This is much easier than saving each of these settings individually. The Backup is a .zip file located @ User/Backup/com.apple.FinalCutPro. The file name can be changed to a user's name for example. On a system where multiple editors use the the same OS user, this is a great way to maintain multiple User Settings. Personally I intend on coping the zip file to my iDisc so I always have access to my User settings.

Back Up Now backs up your User Settings

Deactivate Final Cut Studio allows you to deactivate it in order to move it onto another computer. It removes licensing information without actually uninstalling Final Cut Studio.

Configure OS X for Final Cut Pro: This is huge; sets your screen saver to never, and sets the hard disks to sleep never

The rest of the functions within the menu are pretty self-explanatory. Even though all of these functions are available thru the Finder, it's nice to have them all wrapped up in a bow for you.

Once downloaded, Final Cut Assistant has it's own little icon in the Menu Bar for activation.

Final Cut Assistant is quite effective and will no doubt become part of your everyday editing process.

Troubleshooter: DVDSP Layered Menus break mouse navigation

2009-11-18T15:44:01Z

Layered menus in DVD Studio Pro can allow you to create menus with far more sophisticated-looking buttons than the native DVD standard allows. Unfortunately, this extra functionality comes at a cost. The layered menus that you create in DVD Studio rely on some behind-the-scenes tricks to work -- and this can make them play back in unexpected ways when viewed on computer DVD players.

Symptoms
When you play back a DVD with layered menus on a computer-based DVD player (but not in DVD Studio's Simulator), and you try to navigate the menu using your mouse, you have to click a button once to "select" it, and then click it again to activate it.

The menu behaves normally:

in DVD players, and
in most software, when you use the arrow keys rather than the mouse to navigate it.

After the jump, the explanation ...

]]> Solution
This is normal behavior for a DVDSP layered menu, and there's no straightforward way to get around it.

Explanation
The "layered menu" in DVD studio is a DVDSP-specific metaphor. Unlike "tracks" or regular "menus," the "layered menu" does not correspond to any native part of the DVD standard.

Behind the scenes of your layered menu, DVDSP actually builds a network of DVD-type menus, one for each graphical state of the button layers on your layered menu. These menus are connected by invisble buttons set to auto-activate when each invisible button is selected. On a normal DVD player, this means that, as soon as you hit an arrow key to select a different button, you automatically jump to the menu where that button's "selected" layer is visible. Incidentally, this is also why you encounter a delay as you move between buttons on a layered menu.

The big catch comes when you try to play back the DVD on a computer. Most computer DVD players don't allow the mouse to auto-activate buttons -- which makes sense: you'd go crazy if every button you hovered your mouse over automatically "clicked" itself. Unfortunately, this breaks the layered menu's normal tricks. On a software DVD player, if you're using the mouse, you have to click once on the button to make it "selected" -- which is what the "auto-activate" functionality would do for you on a hardware DVD player -- then click again to actually get to where the button's supposed to take you.

Software for De-interlacing Video

2009-11-17T16:01:01Z

The term 'interlaced video' may cause chills to the seasoned video editor. There are a variety of ways to 'deinterlace' video, but depending how you go about the process may lead to inferior results.

Today, you'll mostly likely encounter an 'interlacing' problem when viewing 'standard defination' mini-dv video on the web, or viewing a QuickTime file playing SD media on a computer screen.

I stumbled upon a free program called 'Deinterlacer' by JES Schotsman. So, I ran through a quick test using it's default parameters. Here are the results. Wow!, I'm sold.

This is a typical example of what an interlaced frame looks like from an interlaced SD or HD video source. Notice how the image looks blurry from displaying both fields of video on a single frame.

Notice the difference, after the video has been deinterlaced. You'll also notice that 'JES Deinterlacer' also runs a color correction algorithm to automatically for color contrast.

]]> The JES deinterlacing software is extremely easy to use. Just point to a source file under the input tab, and set the destination under the output tab.

I tested the 'JES Deinterlacer' running the latest version of Snow Leopard '10.6.2' at the time of this article. The only drawback is this program is only written for Macintosh operating system. Amazingly, a Mac OS 9 version also exists.

Duplicate Function in DVD Studio Pro

2009-11-16T16:59:55Z

Did you know you can duplicate any element within the Graphical View in DVD Studio Pro? For example, within a menu you can duplicate a button, text object, or a drop zone and quickly make duplicates of it that just need to have their content changed to become independent.

Read on to use the duplicate function...
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This is a great function when you've spent a good amount of time creating a button. Don't waste time drawing another button and another and then trying to make it match the first one you've made; Just remember Cmd+D to duplicate your first button, and then reposition it by dragging it to it's new position. Another good tip in this situation is that you have those yellow snapping guides to help you align your buttons.

If you create a Menu or Template that you will use frequently in either the project you're in or in projects in the future, you can save it as a template within DVD Studio Pro.

Wave Transition Plug-in for Final Cut Pro

2009-11-15T14:01:01Z

Today's feature is a free plug-in for Final Cut Pro that uses a wave to progressively distort a transition between clips.

Read on to find out more about this cool transition...

]]> Alex4d. The transition can give you that "flashback" kind of feel. Once downloaded, you will find the transition under the Effects Tab in your Browser window, under Video Transitions > Dissolve > Alex4D Wave.

You can also open up the transition in your transition editor, and play with the different controls to tweak it to make it your own.

Don't forget when it comes to downloading plug-ins that you're placing them in the correct destination folder and that you restart your application after you've downloaded the file. The correct path to follow is Mac HD > Library > Application Support > Final Cut Pro System Support > Plug-Ins

Turning On & Off Looping in Final Cut Pro

2009-11-14T14:01:01Z

What I mean by Looping in Final Cut Pro, is during playback; when you turn looped playback on in Final Cut Pro, clips and sequences loop back to the beginning whenever the playhead reaches the end of the media. The clip will play over and over again until you stop playback. Seems like a silly little thing, but how quickly we forget some of those wonderful keyboard shortcuts. To turn on looping you can go to the View menu to Loop Playback; but more efficiently use the shortcut Ctrl+L to turn looping on & off.

Be sure to check out our new schedule for Final Cut Pro classes in 2010. Classes fill up fast, so call today to reserve your spot!

Lift Delete or Ripple Delete in Final Cut Pro

2009-11-13T14:01:01Z

There is more than one way of deleting items in the Timeline in Final Cut Pro, for example, selecting the item individually or in groups, or even selecting a range with In & Out points. Knowing the right methods for the right situations can save you alot of time.

In Final Cut Pro, we have 2 types of delete functions. A Lift Delete, or a Ripple Delete. Basically a Lift Delete will leave you with a gap in the sequence; a Ripple Delete closes the gap from the deletion by moving all subsequent clips to the left. Performing a Lift Delete removes any selected items from the sequence and leaves a gap. This is useful when you have a series of clips that are all synchronized to music and you don't want to move them. But if you want to delete one or more clips from the middle of the sequence, the Lift Delete is the best option.

Continue reading to the next section for performing a Ripple Delete...

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So let's suppose you're editing a 30-second commercial and after you've built the Timeline, you realize there's a clip in the middle that's irrelevant; by performing a Lift Delete rather than a Ripple Delete here keeps your sequence length from becoming shorter. This way you're left with a hole where you can plug in another piece of footage similar in length.

The easiest way to perform both of these functions, in my opinion, is by using the Delete Keys. Once you've selected the clip you are deleting, press the large Delete key for a Lift Delete, which is located under the F13 key. If you want to Ripple Delete, press the smaller Delete Key located under the Help key.

The best way to learn all of these editing techniques and shortcuts, is by taking one of our classes. We offer an awesome 5-day Final Cut Pro class in our beautiful Orlando training facility. Check out our monthly training schedule, and call us today to schedule your class. Can't travel to sunny Orlando? No problem, our instructors can travel to you, whether it's one-on-one, or for a group of people. Our onsite training is tailored to fit your editing training needs. But we can't help if you don't call!

Using Keyframes in Avid Marquee Title Tool

2009-11-12T14:01:01Z

Manipulating Keyframes in Marquee can sometimes turn into a complex process. Here is a quick tutorial to help simplify the process. If you are new to Marquee, I recommend that you read my Basic Marquee animation tutorial and then come back to this article. I’ve found it’s best to use Marquee’s animation mode to create a basic path, and then manually manipulate individual keyframes later.

Just about everything in Marquee is keyframeable. This makes Marquee extremely powerful when it comes to manipulating lights, colors, shadows, 3D distortion, and movement. The trick to manipulating keyframes is to simplify the process by only displaying the keyframe graphs that you need to adjust. Here are the steps to displaying keyframes in Marquee.]]>
When you type a title in Marquee, it automatically becomes an object. Each object (or title) in Marquee has its own track within the timeline, and each track can be expanded to show a set of ‘curves’. Before you can add keyframes, you’ll need to make sure your object (or title) it selected by using the ‘edit cool’.

You can view keyframes inside a track when you are viewing the track’s curves. Click the ‘Show Curves Button’ to turn them on.

The ‘Show Curves Button’ is located in the bottom right corner of the timeline window.

Now, here’s where it gets tricky. You’ll also notice there is an expand button, and a collapse button.

Each glyph (or letter) within an object has its own track. This means you can key frame each individual letter within an object. Clicking the expand button will show an individual track for each glyph.

In the properties dialog box, check the curves that you want to display. The properties box should be off to the left of the timeline window.

Otherwise it will become confusing if there are too many curves displayed within the timeline window. In this example, I’ve turned on the rotation curves. Notice that only the rotation curves show up in the timeline window.

Each property may contain X, Y, and Z curves. You may want to turn on/off the curves you want to display.

If you’ve already created keyframes using Marquee’s animation mode, then you should see them in the timeline. You can also add additional keyframes by using one of them ‘add keyframe’ buttons.

You’ll notice there are different buttons for different types of keyframes which are for (position, rotation, scale, and color).

*You may occasionally run into an issue where you cannot see the entire curve. If a curve exceeds the maximum amount of vertical space available in your timeline window, you’ll need to resize the proportions of the timeline graph.

Notice how the keyframes aren't visible in the timeline below.

To fix this, activate any curve by clicking on it. Then hold down the shift + down arrow to decrease the amount of space required to display the entire graph.

You can now manually add and adjust the keyframes directly within the timeline window.

Using HandBrake For Converting DVDs

2009-11-11T16:01:01Z

HandBrake is a great software program, not to mention it's free, that you can use to convert your own DVDs for the purpose of putting them on a hard drive or iPod. It's available for Mac or Windows. You can download HandBrake here. Once you have it installed on your computer, it's pretty easy to start converting your DVDs.

Start by inserting your DVD into your computer. If the Apple DVD player automatically starts up, just close it. Now open HandBrake. Select your DVD and click Open.

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You can also reduce the quality of your audio to slim down your file size. Click on the Audio Tab on the HandBrake Main window and change your sample rate to 44.1 and reduce the bitrate to 128.

You can also cut down your screen size by clicking on Picture Settings. Since you're just using this for your iPod, there's no sense converting a movie with a screen size twice that. You can easily tweak the height and width of your picture to fit the size of your destination.

Once you have all of your settings in place, click on Start, and let her rip! Be patient though, sometimes the process can take a while.

Customizing Your Keyboard for Multiclip Editing Part 3

2009-11-10T19:30:52Z

Today we'll discuss part 3 of the Multiclip Editing Series by showing you some keyboard shortcuts and remapping your numerical keypad for another way to switch and cut your multiclips.

To make your multiclip editing more efficient you can assign commands and customize your keyboard shortcuts in the Keyboard Layout Tool, and you can find a list of keyboard buttons to use specifically for multiclips. Go to the Tools pull-down menu to Button List and type in Multiclip into the search field next to the magnifying glass; now you will see a list of available buttons you can use as shortcuts when editing multiclips.

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You can also load a pre-built button bar in Final Cut Pro that is specifically for multiclip editing if you want all of those buttons available to you in one step. Just go to Tools > Button Bars > Multiclip.

Some of the Button Bars that appear look like this:

You can also set keyboard shortcuts for the multiclip commands in Final Cut Pro. By default, most of the commands use the numeric keypad to switch and cut between multiclips. Final Cut Pro also provides a pre-built keyboard layout for multicamera editing, which is usually sufficient for most editors. To load the built-in keyboard layout for multiclip editing, go to Tools > Keyboard Layout > Multicamera Editing. Or to make certain options available without loading the entire multiclip version, you can go to Tools > Keyboard Layout > Customize and then where you see the Multiclip disclosure triangle, you can map the commands which you want to use. For example, if you want to use your numeric keypad to Switch Video Angles 1-9 and correspond with the numbers on your keypad, just drag the commands from the list onto each corresponding number key, and presto, they're mapped.

Be sure to check out Parts 1 & 2 of this Multiclip Editing Series:

Creating a Multiclip in Final Cut Pro 7

Multiclip Editing in Final Cut Pro

Build, Format, or Both in DVD Studio Pro?

2009-11-09T14:01:30Z

Do you ever wonder why you're given the option in DVD Studio Pro to Build, Format, or Build/Format? Most DVD authors will just automatically choose Build/Format for the ease of a single step. Once your project is finished and you're ready to burn, the options depend on the situation.

The Build Process is basically only creating the VIDEO_TS folder. You can choose the location where the VIDEO_TS folder is created. If you want to emulate or test your project on your computer by using the DVD Player, using the build process only will save you time without having to format it and find out you have mistakes to fix. Where the correct workflow is to first test your project in Simulator, then Build your project, then test the VIDEO_TS folder you built in your computer's DVD player, then format your project and test it in a tabletop DVD player and also make sure your disk plays on your computer, you could essentially do it all in one step.

The Format process takes a VIDEO_TS folder you already have created and writes it to a DVD recordable drive. The Build/Format option simply combines these two tasks of creating the VIDEO_TS folder and writing it to a disk, in one step. So why even bother with the two-step process, you ask? Well there are a couple of advantages with performing the Build process by itself first.

One advantage being the fact that you can preview your project by playing the VIDEO_TS folder on your Apple DVD Player, and avoid burning any mistakes onto a disk. Well why can't I just preview my project in Simulator? You can; however the Apple DVD Player will allow certain functions that Simulator will not, for example, fast-forwarding. You will get a more realistic point of view by playing your project on the DVD player than in Simulator. Another advantage to using the Build step separately is the ability to choose what VIDEO_TS folder you want to burn.

But for all practical purposes, most authors will use the Build/Format option for most projects. Check out our upcoming schedule for 1-day DVD Studio Pro training to learn all the necessary skills for authoring a fully functional DVD!

Creating a Backup Copy or Clone of Mac HD

2009-11-03T18:26:51Z

It's time to revisit the popular Carbon Copy Cloner program that allows you to create an exact copy of your source machine onto an external hard drive.

I recently tested this by backing up my Mac Book Pro running Snow Leopard. It took about 1 1/2 hours to back up 80 Gigs to my portable pocket drive running at 5400 RPM.

The latest version also allows you to create incremental backups that can be scheduled. You can even back everything up to a remote Mac on a Network. To create a backup of your entire sytstem, just hook up an external drive and set it as the target. That's it!

To test the copy, you can boot your Mac directly off the external drive by holding down the option key while you restart your Mac. This will allow you to choose your external drive as the new Boot Drive.

Okay, so how must does this software cost? Guess what, it's free! Yes, you read that correctly. Bombich Software makes this very clear by running an occasional banner within the software program. I recommend that you donate to Bomich Software for this amazing program.

If you plan on cloning several machines using Carbon Copy Cloner there's one catch. Keep in mind those machines will be EXACT copies of each other. This means, they will inherent all the same user names and passwords. They'll also have all the same programs with the same serial numbers. This means, you may have reset the serial numbers on certain software products that have license restrictions.

Reset System ID for Final Cut Studio

2009-11-02T19:30:13Z

Final Cut Studio only allows you to run one instance of the software on a particular network. If you have a production facility or classroom environment with multiple Final Cut Studio licenses, things can sometimes get confusing with multiple serial numbers. It's important that each machine maintains its own unique serial number.

To prevent this you must purchase a volume license from Apple, which will allow multiple instances of the same serial number on a network.

Without a volume license, you may run into an issue where more than one machine accidentally has the same serial number of another machine. This will require that you delete the Final Cut Studio System ID from one of the conflicting machines and re-enter a serial number that isn't being used.

To do this navigate to the Mac HD / Library / Application Support / ProApps folder.

You can delete the ProAppsSystemID. *In the previous version, this file is called 'Final Cut Studio System ID'. The next time you launch any Final Cut Studio application, the system will ask you to re-enter your system ID information.

Student Profile: Matt Stevens

2009-11-01T17:02:01Z

Matt Stevens completed our 9 day Final Cut Studio Bundle this past summer as part of his career enhancement as an Audio/Visual Editor for Southcentral Foundation in Alaska. When asked, Matt really liked his training here at GeniusDV, and feels like he learned alot. He thought the instructors were great and very helpful.

Matt's focus at Southcentral Foundation is making promotional videos to bring awareness to the people about their program, which is operating and managing health care and related services for 50,000 Alaska Native and American Indian people.

I asked Matt, "before you took the class, what were your biggest challenges when editing video?" His reply was simply, "I pretty much went in blind, so everything I learned was helpful and informative. I had no experience editing before and I am now fully capable in all editing processes."

You too can be one of the many students who come to GeniusDV for video editing training. It doesn't matter if you have no experience at all, or if you have years of experience; GeniusDV can help even professional editors learn shortcuts, and new ways to integrate efficient workflows. So give us a call today and check out our upcoming class schedule.