Final Cut Studio: September 2008 Archives
Since the dawn of time - filmic time, at least - we visual types have liked to fool around with visual effects. And since the dawn of NLE plugins to help us do that, they've been something of a black box. Sure, they've got a couple of knobs to adjust the effects' parameters - but at the end of the day, we're in the habit of shoving our footage into the plugins without any idea of what goes on behind the scenes.
Enter Final Cut Pro's FXBuilder.
Finally, we can look inside of most of the effects and transitions that ship with Final Cut - and tweak them, and even write our own, if we're feeling ambitious.
Enter Final Cut Pro's FXBuilder.
Finally, we can look inside of most of the effects and transitions that ship with Final Cut - and tweak them, and even write our own, if we're feeling ambitious.
Continue reading FXScript in Final Cut Pro.
Using AVCHD has become very popular, and there are a couple practices that make it more streamline in Final Cut Pro. First of all when ever possible transfer the contents of the AVCHD camera to a folder on your Mac. This will free up your camera to get back to work, or at least not be on. In the field this would be good battery budgeting, Transfering the contents of the camera hard drive to a folder will also increase the responsiveness in the Final Cut Pro Log and Transfer, since it will not be communicating thru the USB. Oddly enough I have not noticed a dramatic difference in the ingest time when the hard drive contents are accessed directly from a folder on the hard drive of my Mac.
The transferred contents of the cameras hard drive can also be a great way to archive the media. Since the media as it comes of the camera is compressed, it is very possible that the entire contents of the compressed media will be significantly less than what is captured. Especially when you are ingesting the contents without setting in and out points. For example if you were to ingest the entire contents of a camera that totaled six minutes, it would be four times larger after it was ingested.
The transferred contents of the cameras hard drive can also be a great way to archive the media. Since the media as it comes of the camera is compressed, it is very possible that the entire contents of the compressed media will be significantly less than what is captured. Especially when you are ingesting the contents without setting in and out points. For example if you were to ingest the entire contents of a camera that totaled six minutes, it would be four times larger after it was ingested.
If I've not sold you on these things - and I swear I'm not a shill - I imagine some of the examples later in the series will. So let me just get it out now: my advice on choosing a tablet if you decide you want one. I'm no professional tablet man, so take my advice for what it is - just one video guy talking to another.There are a handful of companies making tablet products, but the long-time industry leader is Wacom. Their hardware doesn't require much TLC, it's packed to the gills with productivity features, it plays nicely with a whole array of input devices, and it will outlive you. Well, maybe not you, but it will outlive, say, your pet ferret. Having played with friends' off-brand tablets, and felt how heavy pens can get with batteries in them, and been annoyed by their strange calibrations, I think I'd definitely stay brand-loyal if I were to buy another.
Continue reading Using a Pen and Tablet, Part 2: Picking a tablet.
Since I started at GeniusDV, I've noticed that I'm one of the only people here who swears by a graphics tablet. Although I acquired my tablet for the same reasons most people do - to work in Photoshop and Painter - I've found it useful in the video editing process as well.
Basically, a graphics tablet hooks up to your computer and does the same thing that your mouse does - except that you're holding a pen instead of squeezing on a mouse, and you're "drawing" on a rectangular pad that matches directly to the pen's position on your screen. So if you need to move back and forth between, say, your footage bins and your toolset on the other corner of the screen, there's no longer any need to drag the mouse over and over again - you just point directly at what you need.
Continue reading Using a Pen and Tablet, Part 1: The Sales Pitch.
Moving your files from a DVD to a hard drive will decrease the processing time and integrity when using Mpeg Streamclip. Mpeg Steamclip is a great free software from Squared5 that allows you to easily convert DVD's in their Mpeg2 form, to Quicktime movies to be used in Final Cut Pro. Mpeg Streamclip has many other uses, but the DVD to Quicktime conversion is why I use it.
Continue reading Mpeg Streamclip DVD workflow for Final Cut Pro.
