Blog Archives

The bigger a project gets, the more critical it is to get it organized. In this article, two readers suggest ways you can use to get your projects under control.

As we move more and more into a tapeless workflow, I realized that new editors may not know how to record a project back to video-tape; a process called “lay-back”. So, this brief article tells you what you need know, as well as how to structure your sequence for tape.

OS X 10.5 (Leopard) has a new help system that is very cool and available in just about every application. In this article, Ben Balser describes what you need to know to take advantage of it.

Sometimes, you need to change the color of part of an image (like a car or sculpture), but not all of it. Or you want everything black and white, except one thing. This article shows you how.

Final Cut allows you to connect an unrelated audio clip with a video clip, using either Link or Merge. This article describes how and how to select the right one.

When you press the backslash key, Final Cut loops around the current position of the Playhead. This article explains how to change the amount of time plays during this loop.

I got burned by this when I was prepping my most recent webinar for posting. My audio slowly slipped out of sync. I hate when that happens. What I discovered is that the Soundtrack Pro sample rate preference setting overrides the sample rate of the Final Cut Pro project, resulting in a slow sync drift that will drive you nuts. This article explains what you need to know to fix it.

SmoothCam is magical – but the analysis it requires is glacially slow. In this article, discover two tips you can use to speed things up.

This technique is very useful when you need to find the video that goes with the audio, or the audio that goes with the video.

Here are three quick ways to determine the duration of a clip or a gap.

Sometimes, in spite of all your best efforts, you need to use Media Manager to delete media you no longer need. This article walks you through every step to help you avoid disaster.

Gary Freedline sent me a long screed decrying missing features in Final Cut Pro. However, in reading it, I realized that many of them are already there if you know where to look. This article points the way.

The way a monitor wall works is that you send it a full-screen feed for each camera or image you want it to display. It will then composite them into a single display. This gives you the highest image quality and the ability to zoom one of the images full-screen.

Frame offset was invented to allow you to compensate for the delays between your computer and an external device, like a deck. Here is how it works and why you should care.

QuickTime does not always properly display 16:9 video. This means that iDVD may not accurately compress your video in the correct image aspect ratio. This article explains what you need to do to fix this problem.

There are two categories of edits inside Final Cut Pro — Insert and Overwrite. This article describes what they are, when to use them and faster ways to get them done.

OS X 10.5 (Leopard) has a new help system that is very cool and available in just about every application. In this article, Ben Balser describes what you need to know to take advantage of it.

Keyboard shortcuts make work a lot easier. Here are eleven that I recently discovered that I never knew existed; along with a suggestion on how to get keyboard shortcuts that use Function Keys to work on your computer.

Here’s the problem. You have high-definition (HD) 16:9 footage that you need to create a standard-definition (SD) 4:3 full-screen image. This means that you are going to lose some visual information on the sides of your image. What’s the best way to do this? This article explains what you need to know.

I discovered this technique a few months ago and was stunned at how easy it is to change the speed of a clip without have the duration change destroy the organization of the rest of my sequence. This is VERY cool!

Adding DVD chapter markers to a QuickTime movie is reasonably easy. But how do you do this for H.264 compressed video. This article describes what you need to know.

Chapter markers are frequently used in DVD production. However, you can also put them in QuickTime movies to simplify navigation. However, compressing using H.264 makes this process a bit more difficult. But not impossible, as this article explains how to do it.

Chroma-keying, also called blue-screen or green-screen, is the process of making the background transparent so you can insert the foreground into a different shot. It sounds easy, but in practice, its tricky. This is because the chroma-keyer in Final Cut is, to be kind, sub-optimal. In this article, I’ll show you a better way to key — using Motion. Better yet, you don’t need to really know Motion to get great results.

Normally, you can delete one marker or all markers. This article shows you how to delete any arbitrary range of clip markers.

The most common use of color correction is to correct for cameras that didn’t white balance properly. This article gives you a seven-step process to help make your images look great.

Have you ever created a still image, only to see the color or gray scale shift when you imported it into Final Cut Pro? This article explains what’s going on and how you fix it.

Subclips allow you to break up a longer media file into much more manageable chunks, without needing to recapture. However, creating subclips can be tedious — unless you know this secret technique.

Final Cut does not like, in fact, it HATES, putting compressed audio files (MP3, AC3, AAC) in the Timeline. They sound awful. Instead, you need to convert your compressed audio to AIF before importing them into Final Cut Pro. This technique describes how.

Working with video clips in different aspect ratios (i.e. 4:3 and 16:9) can cause headaches for anyone. In this article, Daniel Rain describes his system of working with a variety of different files in PAL.

The native format of HDV isn’t QuickTime, it’s .M2T. However, FCP can’t play M2T files – it needs to convert them. There are two ways you can do this — using Compressor or using MPEG StreamClip. This article shows you how.

This technique grew out of a classroom discussion looking at all the different ways to copy and paste filters. There’s more than one way — in fact, there are at least five. Here they are.

Freeze frames, also called “still frames,” are fun to work with and easy to create. However, in Final Cut 6.0.2, Apple changed how it exports freeze frames. Reading this article is critical to preventing problems with image scaling. This was fixed in version 6.0.3.

You may have heard that Final Cut sequences can be customized. But what you may not know is how significantly you can make changes — as long as you don’t want to play the results on a DVD or record them to video tape. In this article, I’ll show you how to change the size of your sequence to any size you want.

There are some really good preference file managers for Final Cut Pro. But, sometimes, you need to create something customized for yourself. In this case, Automator can give you a hand. Don Smith sent in this technique of using Automator to simplify the process of creating FCP preference backups.

With over 650 menu commands, Final Cut has a wealth of options to choose from for controlling the program. However, sometimes, life would be much easier if you could just create a few custom keyboard shortcuts to make your life easier. You can, and this article shows you how.

A sequence dragged into another sequence creates a nest – a single item contained in another. However, sometimes you need to deconstruct all the elements of that first sequence. Here’s a quick tip that explains how.

There’s a hidden diagnostic tool in Final Cut that allows you check to see if your RAID or hard disk is playing back your media files properly. This article describes how to access it.

Philip Roy writes in with a question about saving custom transitions, if only in part, which Larry answers and is later expounded on by Andy Mees.

It’s possible to drag files from the Finder into the Final Cut Browser. But do you want to? In this article, I explain the process and provide reasons both pro and con about doing so.

Barring a hardware problem, dropped frames are almost always caused by a hard disk that’s too slow. But what if the problem is with your render files? In this article we provide some ideas to try as well as references to more detailed articles that can walk you through almost any problem.

There are a variety of ways to export a project from Final Cut Pro for a DVD. This article showcases the best way to do it if you are using Final Cut Pro 6.x. (FCP 7 users may want to consider using Share or Send, which this article doesn’t cover.)

A reader asked me how I organize my files when I’m creating a DVD. Well, organization best starts at the beginning of a project, so in this brief article, I outline the folders I create and where I store my files.

By default, DVD Studio Pro creates tracks that support 4:3 video. However, this is easy to change, but hard to find. This short article describes what you need to do to create wide-screen DVDs.

Soundtrack Pro is far better at editing and mixing audio than Final Cut Pro is. While this can make your audio sound a lot better, you still run the risk of knocking your audio out of sync. This article explains more about how to prevent this problem.

One confusing issue new editors need to deal with is getting Final Cut Pro to recognize 16:9 (also called “widescreen,” or “anamorphic”) video. As well, if the editor is a new Mac user, they may also have problems with exported file sizes. This article addresses both these issues.

In the category of “you don’t know what you don’t know,” here’s an interesting piece of trivia. Ever wonder what that checkbox called “Little Endian” means when you are saving audio? This article tell you so you can now impress your friends.

PPMs are something we never hear about in North America. All our audio is measured in dB. However, in Europe, PPM is THE standard of audio measurement — and Final Cut does not support it natively. This article explains what you need to know, and how to measure audio in PPMs.

Here’s a simple technique you can use to export all the data in the Browser into a format you can read in Excel, Word, or Text Edit.

Here’s a seven-step process to export your Final Cut video sequences to Flash.

Keynote is a very fast way to create bullet slide and animated text for video. However, when it comes time to export your images, this article explains how to do it fast and with the best quality.