Final Cut Pro, Avid, and After Effects Training: Adobe Production Suite Archives

Adobe On Location

Tuesday Nov 22, 2011 | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Whether you are a Final Cut Pro user, Avid Media Composer user, or Premiere user, we'd like to introduce you to Adobe On Location. In our opinion, this is an incredible application that is sometimes overlooked in the professional video industry.

It ships with the Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium. Trust us on this one, this software is really a nice addition to any video production professional.

Do you own a HDV camera which records to MiniDV cassette tapes, and have wondered what to do about it? I have given my Canon XHA1S the evil eye for some time now, but have not decided to upgrade to another model. The technological advances come so fast that it is difficult to make a reasonable choice, and waiting a few months may be priceless.

Adobe On Location may be the tool that helps you improve your footage until you are certain of what to do after HDV.

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Using the Photoshop Vanishing Point function

Monday Oct 17, 2011 | Permalink | Leave a Comment(0) | TrackBacks (0)

Learn how to use the Photoshop vanishing function to map objects onto services to match the true perspective.

Continue reading for a full text transcript of this Photoshop CS5 tutorial.

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Premiere for FCP 7 Editors: Where's the Motion Tab?

Tuesday Aug 9, 2011 | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Image via Wikipedia

More and more of our students are exploring a move from Final Cut Studio to Adobe's Production Premium bundle of Creative Suite software–especially with Adobe's 50% discount for pros who switch. If you're an FCP 7 editor, you'll feel right at home in Adobe Premiere, and you can be confident that the features you love most from Final Cut Pro are available, although they're probably hiding somewhere new.

For example, Final Cut Pro 7 places basic clip attributes in the Motion tab of the Viewer. When you rotate, resize, crop or position a clip in the Canvas, you're really just taking a shortcut to set the clip's attributes that appear in the Viewer's Motion tab. In Premiere, it's harder to manipulate clips' geometry directly in the "Canvas."

Changing your clip's Wireframe in the Canvas actually changes attributes in the Viewer's Motion Tab

Continued after the jump...

Continue reading Premiere for FCP 7 Editors: Where's the Motion Tab?.

Mac OS X Lion Compatibility

Monday Jul 25, 2011 | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The new version of Apple's Mac OSX is full of exciting new features, including robust new layers of security. Unfortunately, the new features break many of the applications that we teach here at GeniusDV. As of today, avoid updating to OSX Lion if you rely on any of these software packages:

Adobe's CS3, CS4, and CS5 applications are mostly compatible with Lion, and Adobe promises to fix the remaining bugs with an update soon. After Effects seems to be fine, although third-party plugins may break. Photoshop's bugs are minor, and mainly involve automation and droplets. CS2 and earlier versions will not run at all, ever on Lion.
Avid Media Composer, Symphony, and ProTools are not compatible with Lion at this time.
The Boris FX plugins for Final Cut Studio and Avid are not compatible with Lion, and will block Apple Motion from launching.
Google SketchUp will run on Lion, but it exhibits several known bugs. The bugs appear mainly to be minor annoyances, but a few may freeze SketchUp.
Autodesk's AutoCAD is not compatible with Lion at this time.
Microsoft Office 2008 and 2010 exhibit several known bugs, many of them serious, when running on Lion at this time.

For these "serious" software packages, we recommend waiting for the manufacturer's go-ahead before upgrading your machine. For more esoteric (and less business-critical) apps, you might find RoaringApps' compatibility matrix helpful.