Blog Archives

As we move from the world of standard-definition to high-def video, understanding hard disk speeds and the data requirements of video formats can prevent a lot of problems. During my recent seminars, I spent a lot of time explaining hard drive speeds and video format requirements. This is a summary of what techniques I talked about.

New with Final Cut Pro 7 are two shortcuts: Zoom In/Out at Playhead on Timeline. However, they don’t do anything until you assign them to a keyboard shortcut. But, what if you want to assign them to your mouse? This article shows you what you need to know to do it.

Rendering is the bane of an editor’s life. Waiting for the computer to calculate an effect can seem interminable. What can be done to speed rendering and what causes it to slow down in the first place? This short article answers these questions.

One of the terrifying facts of hard disk life is that a hard disk, unplugged and sitting on a shelf, will slowly have its magnetic data “evaporate.” While the time period varies, industry experts tell us its between one to three years! This article explains what you MUST do to safeguard your data. Best of all, its FREE!

Drobo has been making a lot of noise in the market with its new storage hybrid – part RAID, part expandable hard drive. I’ve been using one for a couple of months now and in this review, I put it to work and discover that it can serve a very useful role in editing, but not in the place you would expect.

Data Robotics released a new storage unit: the Drobo Elite. In this detailed product review, we examine how it works, how well it works, how fast it works, and what its limitations are.

The Drobo line of storage products offers a lot for video and audio editors. Their newest product – the Drobo FS – doesn’t help editors, but it CAN help around the office, as this detailed review explains.

get is the new kid on the block — an almost magical piece of software that searches your audio files looking for words you type into a typical text entry window. If you know “you’ve got the file around here somewhere,” but haven’t a clue where it is, get is for you, as this product review explains.

When you are working with tapeless media during production, and recording to cards, the basic workflow is to copy the card to your hard disk then ERASE THE CARD! (Sorry, I come from a tape background and that word “erase” is just plain scary…) So, it makes sense that when copying the card to your hard disk you take every precaution to do so safely. Here’s a review of a product that can help: Imagine Products’ Shotput Pro.

Final Cut has always allowed keyboard customization. This article shows some new “almost-secret” techniques buried in OS X that allow you to create customized keyboard shortcuts in ANY application.

Snow Leopard, Apple’s latest operating system, is not for everyone. But it may be for you. This article describes what you need to know in deciding when to upgrade your system.

Apple has announced a new version of its operating system for next year – 10.6 (Snow Leopard). This article looks at what this may mean for Final Cut Pro users.

SSD (solid-state drives) are the latest fashion in hard drives. Impervious to vibration, with no mechanical movement, they are ideal for computers in rugged situations. But are they good for editing? This article provides answers to that question.

It’s enough to drive you nuts. Every time you start-up your computer, Final Cut Pro launches as well. It’s time to stop the start! And this article shows you a very easy way to do just that.

Stuttery audio generally is a problem with bad preference files. But, on a MacPro, it can be caused by putting your capture card in the wrong slot. This article describes the problem and what you need to do to fix it.

Audio that slowly drifts out of sync is often due to a mismatch between the sample rate at which you shot the video and the sample rate at which you captured the audio.

It would be great if we didn’t have to render. But, since we do, what can make it go faster? This article explains what you can do to help and what won’t make any difference.

You may not know it, but there’s a fiber optic audio connection built into every Mac. This article describes what it is, where it is, and how to use it.

It’s frustrating! You buy a hard disk only to discover you can’t move your data from one drive to the next. Here’s a personal case story, along with options on how to fix this problem.

Having problems with Apple Final Cut Pro 7? This article provides dozens and dozens of techniques you can use to optimize your Final Cut 5, 6, or 7 system; plus trouble-shooting tips to prevent problems.

An important trouble-shooting technique is to create a new user account to eliminate corrupted preference files. This short article explains why you should consider doing this, and what the potential problems are.

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.

QMaster allows you to combine multiple computers into a render farm to make video compression run faster. It also allows you to combine multiple processors on one computer to compress video faster. One of these choices works MUCH better than the other. This article explains what you need to know.

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.

RAIDs (Redundant Array of Independent Drives) are high-speed, big-storage products designed for video editing. However, they are often described using arcane terms like RAID 0, 1, 3, 5, and so on. This short article describes what those terms mean.

Addressing the problem of digital media “evaporating” when a hard drive is powered down and stored on a shelf, with additional advice from Bob Gobeille, who originally provided the terminal script to fix this problem.

Larry diagnoses a subscriber’s problems with burning DVDs and makes recommendations (altering compression bit-rates, etc.) towards finding a solution.

One of the Mac magazines published some seriously wrong information. Read this to keep from making a mistake.

Nothing drives us more nuts than having to wait for our systems to render transitions and effects. Reader Don Smith sent in this technique for reducing the time you spend waiting for Final Cut Pro to render.

Preference settings have changed in FCP 5. This article shows you how to optimize your setting to get the most from your editing system.

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.

This technique shows you how to get the most from your FireWire drives, from partitioning through formatting to daisy-chaining.

Three of the most powerful keyboard shortcuts in Final Cut Pro are blocked because OS X uses the same three keys differently. This article shows you how to remap the OS shortcuts to release the power in Final Cut.

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.

As we gear up for the 2010 NAB Show – where the Digital Production Buzz is the Official Podcast of the event – I thought you’d be interested in the gear we are using and how we are using it. Next month, I’ll report on what we did.

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.

It is a long-known, but little-discussed secret that hard disks slowly lose their magnetic signal. If you archive your projects on hard disks, you need to read this article before all your carefully stored files… are gone!

Hard drives are essential to video editing. Which makes it really, REALLY aggravating when they stop working. Here are two techniques you can use to trouble-shoot hard drive problems: having too many disks attached, and not being able to boot from the system disk.

By definition, all DVDs are only standard-def (SD). If you need high-def, you need to create Blu-ray Discs, which are not the same thing. But what if you want to take HD material and put it on a DVD? You need to convert it. And this article, describes how.

If you’d rather use Preview as your default Final Cut Help Viewer, this article tells you where to find your help files and how to change them.

Recently, Apple announced a new video format – iFrame – and Sanyo announced new cameras that support that format. This article looks at this announcement and speculates on what this means for the video professional. (Note: Currently, Final Cut Pro does not support iFrame files.)

File journaling is new in OS 10.3. This article explains what it is and what video editors need to know about it to optimize their systems.

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.

With the recent release of new MacBook Pro laptops, I was surprised to discover that Apple is removing ports from the computer, making it harder to attach the accessories, like hard drives, that we need to edit. Now, the MacBook Pro has the same ports as a MacBook — which makes NO sense to me, In this commentary, I discuss the situation and provide some ideas on how we can contact Apple to get them to add more ports on future models.

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.

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.

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.

Color uses an interface unlike any other Final Cut Studio application. When you use Color you must set your scratch disks to point to your second drive. However, the user manual doesn’t describe how to do this. This article shows you what you need to know.

When using Compressor on Final Cut Pro 7 and multiple users are using the same computer using different log-ins, if editor one submits a batch through Compressor, waits for the job to finish, then logs out, when the second editor logs in and submits a job to Compressor, they will get a “Share Failure” error.

UK-based editor, Ben King, contributed a series of thoughts on the best options to consider when you need to convert NTSC video to PAL, or PAL to NTSC. This short article is a quick discussion of your options, along with suggestions on where to go for more information.