Final Cut Studio, Avid, Adobe, and Video Streaming

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.

 

 

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.

 

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. 

As we've mentioned our excitement here at GeniusDV the last few days regarding the new Apple iMacs, I wanted to take a closer look at the new Magic Mouse that is included with every new iMac.  The things this new mouse can do is amazing.  Although I've not yet had the chance to try it out, I'm looking forward to the day when I can.  As with any other time you're switching over to a new mouse, it takes some time getting used to.  Just like when I started using the Mighty Mouse; I hated it at first, but after working with it over time, I'd have a hard time reverting back.

Magic Mouse uses the same multi-touch technology as you would have on your iPhone or MacBook Pro, using finger gestures.  There are no visible buttons, no scroll wheel, just a sleek and smooth design.  The multi-touch area covers the whole top surface of the mouse and the mouse itself is the button.  You can scroll in any direction, and swipe through photos just as you would on your iPhone.  It's so intuitive, it knows just what you want it to do, and it won't confuse a scroll with a swipe.  You can also change these features in the System Preferences pane, to specify one button clicking or 2, or to disable swiping or scrolling.

The new Apple Magic Mouse connects to your Mac wirelessly via Bluetooth; so before running out and purchasing one, be sure your Mac is Bluetooth enabled.  At least you won't have any of those tiny USB adapters to worry about losing like with other wireless mice.  Like I said before, all of the new iMacs come with the new Apple Magic Mouse, not to mention a wireless keyboard as well; but you can buy it separately, currently retailing just under $70.  Magic Mouse brings a whole new feel to the way you get around on your desktop!

Recently we talked about creating multiclips in Final Cut Pro.  Today, we'll take it one step further, and talk about how to actually edit that multiclip we created.

Assuming you already have your multiclip ready in the Browser, double-click on it to open it up in the Viewer.  The active angle is highlighted in a blue/green box.  Now click on the View pull-down menu and click on Show Multiclip Overlays.  This is so you can see each clips' angle number, name, and timecode. 



Now suppose you want those camera angles positioned differently in the Viewer; you can Command+drag any of those angles into another position.  So if you wanted your main camera angle to be in the number one position, just command+drag that main clip into the the first window; the clip that was in that position will simply move into the new arrangement.  If you have alot of camera angles to organize, just Cmd+drag each clip into whatever position makes the most sense for you.

Now, click on the Playhead Sync pop-up menu in the Viewer.  Select Video.  This will allow you to switch between just the video sources, and you can use just one of the the audio clips from whichever angle has the best sound.  If you were to choose Video + Audio, you may have uneven sound levels between clips or even audio "popping" between edits.  Now notice once you've changed your Playhead Sync to Video only, and click on the number 2 postion, the blue/green box separates.  The green represents the active source your audio is coming from, and the blue highlight box switches to the active video angle.

Continue reading to edit your multiclip...