Blog Archives

Hard disks are essential to video editing. But, as this short article explains, what you thought you knew about maintaining your hard disks may not be true. Take a look.

As I was investigating how Final Cut Pro handles multiclip editing, it struck me that, after a certain point, the speed of your storage doesn’t really matter. Which means that we need to pay attention to more than just the raw speed of our storage systems.

With the release of Final Cut Studio (3), Apple signaled that LiveType was not long for this world by no longer bundling it with the suite of software. However, FCP 7 still supports LiveType files. This is a shame, as I truly like working with LiveType. This article details what makes LiveType fun to use, and features in Motion that would help us make the transition.

Great looking chroma-keys start on set with how you light. However, once you’ve got the footage, what’s the best way to create a key. Here’s a quick sidebar that lists some other software you might want to try if you are not able to get the effect you want using the keyers that ship with Final Cut or Motion.

Just because the ProAps are no longer top-of-mind at Apple does not mean they are dead. Or dying. They just aren’t the darlings they used to be. And many of us are feeling the lack of love.

This is a comprehensive look at how computer and video graphics are different and what you need to know to create great looking video text and graphics. This article can make your life a LOT easier!

Here are a series of tips, gleaned from lots and lots of painful experience, that can help you find and land a great post-production job.

The recent conversion to all-digital broadcasting brought this reflection on the changes we’ve seen in television over the years. I guess this isn’t really technical, but it struck me as appropriate.

Here’s a short, interesting discussion of key things to keep in mind as you pursue free-lance work from corporate clients. This includes a list of questions to ask before starting any project.

There’s a lot of talk these days about previewing, accessing, storing, even archiving media in “the cloud;” a vast amorphous pool of storage on the Internet. But is this a good idea? And what are some ways we can take advantage of this? In this interview with Peter Chang, president of Oxygen Cloud, we discuss what the cloud is, how we can take advantage of it, and what some of the limitations are.

Here is a series of ten questions that new editors can ask their producers to make sure everyone is on the same page at the start of a project. This is also a useful bidding tool.

Editing is both a craft and business. Which means that, unless you are independently wealthy, you need to find a way to make money at it. This article describes how to calculate the rates you charge for editing, for the use of your equipment, and how to handle travel expenses. As well as provide a link to a tutorial I’ve created with more tips on how to grow your business.

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.

With the camera industry’s head-long rush into tapeless image acquisition, having a soild backup and archiving strategy is critical because video tape masters no longer exist. In this commentary, I discuss the sad state of today’s options and provide suggestions to keep you out of trouble.

Stereoscopic 3D video is not just for theatrical release. Cable and satellite channels, even YouTube, now display images in 3D. In this musing, I reflect that even if 3D isn’t the future, we can make money on it now – without spending a ton of money.

As 2010 draws to a close, three quick observations on technology for the coming year.

What is the future for distributing HD video? Is it Blu-ray or is it digital downloads? In this thoughtful opinion piece, Jason Chong, Kit Laughlin, and Lorin David Schultz share their thoughts on where the future is headed. Even though recent events have made Blu-ray Discs easier to create on a Mac, that doesn’t mean they’ve won the war. The battle rages and you get to choose.

There are two questions I get asked a lot: what’s the best camera, and what’s the best hardware. This article explains why answering the hardware question is so difficult. It isn’t that there’s no answer, its that the answer is TOTALLY dependent on what YOU need. Take a look here at why.

One of the easiest questions to ask, and one of the hardest to answer, is “What’s the Best Camera?” The problem is that tricky word “best.” In this short article, I provide some general guidance, along with a list of a dozen questions you need to answer before you can find the camera that’s best… for you!