Blog Archives

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A look at what QuickTime is, what’s changed over time and references to learn more.

This illustrated tutorial shows how to discover the codecs of your media using the Finder, QuickTime Player 7, QuickTime Player, Apple Final Cut Pro X and Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2019.

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Codecs don’t last forever. This article details changes coming to apps and media in future versions of the macOS. This is important for anyone needed to access legacy media files.

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The usefulness of QuickTime Player has significantly improved over the years and, if you haven’t looked at it recently, the time has come to give it a second look. This is a detailed, illustrated tutorial on what you need to know.

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An explanation of the difference between I-frame and GOP video compression and why it matters to video editors.

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Why become a member of Larry Jordan’s Video Training Library? Because you can learn exactly what you need to know from our library more quickly and better than you can learn it on your own.

MovieCaptioner is low-cost, easy-to-use software for Mac and Windows which creates, revised and exports closed-captions to video. This product review explains how it works and what you need to know to add captions to your movies.

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When compressing video, what is Frame Reordering and when should you turn it on? This short article answers both these questions.

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A step-by-step tutorial on how to merge separate audio and video files using QuickTime Player 7 Pro.

Disable, remove and extract audio tracks from QuickTime movies using QuickTime Player 7 Pro.

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A step-by-step technique showing how to export and compress multi-channel audio from Final Cut Pro X.

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A step-by-step tutorial on converting time-lapse images into a movie using QuickTime Player 7.

Here’s a step-by-step tutorial on exporting source clip timecode using Final Cut Pro X.

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Here’s a short step-by-step tutorial that shows how to create chapter markers in Final Cut Pro X.

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Here’s a quick tutorial on how to display, or hide, closed captions in QuickTime X or QuickTime 7.

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Chapter markers were traditionally the domain of DVDs. However, both QuickTime movies and MPEG-4 movies for the web can also contain chapter markers, which makes navigating through a long movie a lot faster when you are trying to find a specific section to review. Here’s how to display them in QuickTime 7 and QuickTime X.

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A subscriber, William Aleman, writes in with a valuable tip on the feature that successfully locks QuickTime movies from being downloaded or saved by the visitors on the Internet.

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Experiencing a problem exporting a sequence as a mov and finding that the quality of the QuickTime is soft, a subscriber is referred by Larry to a previous article and walked through an easy QuickTime7 solution.

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QuickTime can make viewing 16:9 anamorphic video a bit difficult because it always displays video using square pixels. In this article, discover the secret to getting QuickTime to show your video correctly.

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Final Cut Pro is a QuickTime editor. But what if you want to create WMV files? Well, you are not out-of-luck, but you will need different software. This article describes what you need to know, along with how to resolve problems when creating WMV files.

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Creating stills that you can do moves on in Final Cut is tricky. My email In-box will attest to that. This article describes what you need to know to make sure your images are the right size and how to import them.

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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.

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I ran into an interesting problem over the weekend that I want to share with you because the solution is more complex than at first blush. Here’s the problem: I was asked to create a video for posting on line. The video had two components: me on camera talking, and screen shots, both of which were different sizes and formats. This article describes the process of creating a single, compressed file composed of multiple format video.

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When compressing an H.264 file, whether in QuickTime, Final Cut Pro, or Compressor, an option you may see is called “Frame Reordering.” This article explains, briefly, what it is and when you should use it.

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A reader questions why the Quicktime quality of his sequences are soft when he exports them as a mov.

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Last month, I wrote about how to use QuickTime 7 to add audio to video. Since then, I’ve gotten several comments from people that own OS X 10.6 that they don’t have QuickTime 7 on their system.

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What’s the best way to get the highest quality video images during export? DV, especially, looks particularly poor when you view it in QuickTime. This article explains what’s going on and what you need to know to make your exported video look as good as it possibly can.

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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.

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Gamma settings control the gray-scale midpoint. The reason this is significant is that Macs, video, and Windows all use slightly different settings. This means that video that looks good on one system, may look washed out or too dark on others. Snow Leopard, however, has changed the rules. In this article, I explain what gamma is, how to use it, and where to set it.

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HDV uses rectangular pixels to represent its image. Each pixel is short and fat, which means it only needs 1440 pixels to represent an entire line of HD video. However, the computer (and some other video formats) use square pixels to represent the image. So, when you export from HDV to a QuickTime movie, Final Cut converts the pixels from rectangles to squares.

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As you know, most versions of Final Cut Pro are tied to work best with certain versions of QuickTime. However, as time passes, it gets harder and harder to remember all the different permutations. Here’s a quick link to a website that has the answers.

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Sometimes you need more than QuickTime to meet the needs of a client. In this brief article, we present a variety of solutions you can use to create WMV files of your Final Cut Pro projects on a Mac.

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Creating a slow-motion clip is easy: Modify > Speed. But what if you want to create a fast-motion clip and your hard disk isn’t fast enough to keep up? This short article explains what you need to know.

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The best way to export from FCP is reexamined with new attention given to changes in distribution mediums. Also, Larry provides a detailed explanation of how he exports files from Final Cut.

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If you’ve ever had to convert a 16:9 sequence into a 4:3 letterbox video, this explains how to do it.

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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.

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Normally, when you export a QuickTime movie from Soundtrack Pro, the audio travels with the video. But, not always. This article shows you what you need to know to export audio and video successfully from this audio editing software.

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Dramatically slow motion is easy to create in Motion – if you know where to look. This article details all the steps you need to take to make your fastest shots move in balletic slow-motion.

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Here is a ten-step, tested technique to convert DVCProHD sequences into HDV. This would a good way to archive HD sequences if you don’t have a DVCProHD sequence to tape.

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If you’ve ever compared the quality of your DV movies in Final Cut to what they look like in QuickTime, you can very quickly become suicidal. Why does QuickTime make your images look so bad? This quick article explains.

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I’ve taught this technique in my classes for a long time, but recently discovered that I have not written about it. When you are compressing a QuickTime movie for a DVD, the default settings for video and audio compression may need to be tweaked.

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We can’t always use the latest video technology to capture our images. Sometimes, historical footage requires a film transfer. In this article are some tips you can use to make your film transfers look better.

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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.

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This technique generated a LOT of responses — how to export a series of still to create a slide show. This technique shows you a couple different ways to create this effect.

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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.)

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It’s late at night, you are wrapping up a project. Just when you think you can go home, you discover that your final export from Soundtrack Pro, doesn’t sync with your final export from Final Cut Pro. Grrr!! Now what? This article explains a very nifty technique that solves that problem in short order.

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Even an iSight camera can be pressed into service for capturing video when nothing better is available. This tutorial shows you how fast and easy this can be.

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Ever wonder about those black bars on the edges of DV? They are about 9 pixels wide and they are always there. How can you get rid of them? SHOULD you get rid of them? This article explains what you need to know and when you need to worry about it.

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This article shows the best way to get audio out of FCP so you can finish your mix in your favorite audio program.

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In this article Larry exhibits how to maintain better control over your clips with QuickTime.