Blog Archives

While human skin gray-scale and saturation values can vary by individual, skin color values are remarkably consistent. Here’s an illustrated tutorial on how to set skin color values to fix color problems and make on-camera talent look “normal.” This applies to all video editing software.

Yes, the new M1 MacBook Pro is very, very fast. But, the M1 did not win every race when tested against a 2013 MacBook Pro and a 2017 iMac. These twelve tests are a good comparison between performance benchmarks and real-world media processing of the improvements you can expect if you upgrade to these new systems.

When you need to get the best streaming video possible – for Mac or Windows, live or recorded – here is the gear you need, links to find it and instructions on how to get it all to work.

The sound these monitors produce is very clean, crisp and rich that fills the space. If you are looking for accurate, high-quality sound in a small space, give these Yamaha monitor speakers a good listen. Larry Jordan has a review.

“Ask Larry Anything,” is a free-form conversation about, well, anything you want to ask. In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan shows how to export captions from YouTube, then what you need to do to convert them for import into Adobe Premiere.

“Ask Larry Anything,” is a free-form conversation about, well, anything you want to ask. In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan demos the new Speech-to-Text transcript and caption workflow options in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Here’s how to connect camera source files to proxy media in Adobe Premiere Pro, when the proxies were created outside of Premiere and the master files arrived after you started editing with the proxy files.

Here’s another technique that I use all the time – creating highly-flexible custom Final Cut Pro title templates in Motion that I use and modify in all my FCP projects. This is fast, easy and saves TONS of time formatting and positioning titles.

These three custom shortcuts simplify and speed several repetitive aspects of my edit and I want to share them to save you time in your edits as well.

Here is a variety of online techniques to get you and your Adobe Premiere Pro system back up and running quickly.

Your Mac system is acting flakey. Here are a variety of tests and trouble-shooting techniques you can use to get your system and running. (This includes a special section on trouble-shooting for media editors.)

Apple updated Final Cut Pro, Motion and Compressor last week and both Final Cut and Compressor got a flurry of new features. In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan shows how to reduce the file size of an animated image sequence. We do this without losing any video quality, by using indexed color and Apple Compressor.

New with the 4.5.3 update to Compressor are compression settings which simplify cropping and compressing square and vertical media. These new settings simplify the conversion of, say, horizontal media to vertical making it easier to repurpose existing assets for new uses.

Fonts are the easiest way to telegraph an emotion – and they don’t require any design skills from us. In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan illustrates the importance of readability – and other factors – when choosing fonts for a video project.

The ProCo Power Mute CPMD mic switch is a ruggedly-built, easy to use and reasonably quiet mic mute, well-suited for live events or recording. Here’s Larry Jordan’s detailed product review.

DPI (Dots per Inch) is a measure of image resolution. It also confuses a lot of people. Here’s an illustrated guide to where DPI matters, where it does not, and why images look bad when you scale them larger.

Voice Changer, from Accusonus, is a plug-in for most popular NLEs that creates voice effects from robot to dragon. It is fast, easy to use and a fascinating sound design tool to bring the sounds in your imagination to life.

Changing the playback speed of a clip is all the rage in video today. In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan illustrates two visual effects using speed effects in Final Cut Pro that can bring a special sparkle to your next project; including instant replay.

Changing the playback speed of a clip is all the rage in video today. In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan shows how to create glossy slow motion by conforming a high-frame-rate clip to match the project speed in Adobe Premiere Pro.

New with the May, 2021, update to both Premiere Pro and Audition is the Loudness Meter. The Loudness Meter displays average audio levels on an instant-by-instant basis and complements the Loudness Radar. Here’s how to use it.

When you export a finished project from Apple Final Cut Pro, you can specify a variety of labels with the file. What are these, how do you change them, and what applications can read them? Learn more!

“Ask Larry Anything!” is a free-form conversation about technical questions of interest to video editors. In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan shows how to create a custom compression setting, using Apple Compressor, to create a 10-bit HEVC video file with surround sound.

“Ask Larry Anything!” is a free-form conversation about technical questions of interest to video editors. In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan shows how to embed labels, called “metadata,” into video files during compression using Apple Compressor that can be viewed later during playback. These files could be ProRes, MP4, MP3 or QuickTime.

Here’s how to create a logo or shape in Photoshop, fill it with moving video in Final Cut Pro, then place that over a moving background. This works with video or stills and with any text, logos or shapes you care to use. Plus, it is fun to create – once you know how.

It’s easy to digitize SD video. But the quality isn’t great, the audio is often noisy and the results, for pros, are disappointing. Here’s a system to digitize older media and maximize audio and video quality.

Both the new M1 and existing T2 chips from Apple support hardware-assisted encoding and decoding of H.264 and HEVC media. Here’s how to enable it in Adobe Media Encoder.

In March, Adobe released the new 2021 versions of Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, Media Encoder, and the rest of their audio and video applications. In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan shows how to verify the quality of your audio media – and how to repair problems with DC Offset – using Adobe Audition.

With the release of the March, 2021, update to Premiere Pro, Adobe introduced a new caption workflow. You can create edit, stylize, and export captions and subtitles in all supported formats. Here’s an illustrated tutorial on how this new system works.

Audio is a huge part of any project. But, all too often, we ignore the audio to concentrate on the image – only to discover that the emotional heart is missing. In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan shows a variety of ways to set audio levels in Final Cut.

Most of us have heard of Apple’s transition from Intel CPUs to its own Apple silicon. But these new systems upend the established rules for how to configure a computer system for media editing. Here’s what you need to know about the new M1 SoC from Apple.

In this session, we step deeper into the 3D world of Apple Motion with a look at cameras and sets. In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan shows how to add a camera to a Motion project, then illustrates the difference between a framing camera and viewpoint camera in Motion.

When using Premiere, caption timecode for importing captions doesn’t matter. But it DOES matter when exporting. Here’s what you need to know.

In this illustrated, step-by-step tutorial, discover how to use Apple Motion to motion-track, blur or emphasize elements within a video frame.

Effects are the fun part of video editing because there are so many different options. In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan shows how to animate clips using keyframes in Premiere Pro. He’ll also show how to add speed changes to keyframes using Ease In and Ease Out.

Effects are the fun part of video editing because there are so many different options. In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan illustrates different ways to create green-screen keys (also called “chroma-keys”) using both good and, um, awful footage in Adobe Premiere Pro.

In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan shows how to use the new Comparison Viewer in Apple Final Cut Pro, along with a quick way to modify colors across multiple clips.

In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan shows how to create, import, modify and export closed captions in Apple Final Cut Pro.

Most of the time, you want audio to stay perfectly in sync with the video clip it is attached to. But, sometimes, to get the sync perfect, you need to shift the position of the audio. In this short video tutorial, Larry Jordan shows you how to move a synced audio clip less than a frame to improve sync using Apple Final Cut Pro.

Just as we use multiple cameras to provide different angles on the same scene in live production, we can use multiple cameras in Motion to simulate the same thing. Here’s an example, along with a finished movie.

Motion has a full range of lights and, more importantly, lighting presets that can add drama and visual interest to any scene – especially one that involves 3D objects. Here’s an illustrated tutorial on how to use them to increase the drama in your projects.

Effects are the fun part of video editing because there are so many different options. In this video tutorial, Larry Jordan shows why the order in which you place effects on a clip makes a difference in the results in Apple Final Cut Pro X.

Effects are the fun part of video editing because there are so many different options. In this video tutorial, Larry Jordan shows how to add and modify keyframes to animate an element in Apple Final Cut Pro X.

Effects are the fun part of video editing because there are so many different options. In this video tutorial, Larry Jordan shows how to create a clean chroma-key using both good and bad footage… and a carefully placed mask in Apple Final Cut Pro X.

Watch Folders are a fast, automated way to compress files. But, when you nest them, they can simplify even highly complex compression tasks. Here are two examples.

There’s a feature in Adobe Media Encoder that can speed your compression work: Parallel Encoding, especially when you are creating multiple versions of the same source file. Here’s how it works.

Video compression is essential to all media today, from social media to broadcast to streaming. In this short video, Larry Jordan shows how to stitch multiple clips into a single movie during compression in Adobe Media Encoder.

Video compression is essential to all media today, from social media to broadcast to streaming. In this short video, Larry Jordan shows how to crop and reframe video, along with creating a short segment to test compression settings in Adobe Media Encoder.

Video compression is essential to all media today, from social media to broadcast to streaming. In this short video, Larry Jordan shows how to add overlays, like watermarks or timecode, to video during compression in Adobe Media Encoder.

Video compression is essential to all media today, from social media to broadcast to streaming. In this short video, Larry Jordan shows how to create Watch Folders to automate media compression using Adobe Media Encoder.

Apple has expanded hardware acceleration on recent makes. Here’s what you need to know to vastly improve the speed of video compression.