The debatable “nightmare” of offline editing is discussed, with Larry strongly recommending the creation of DVCPROHD 23.98 fps masters to keep the frame rate and image size constant and greatly simplify the final on-line edit.
Confused by all the different video outputs on your deck? This article explains what they mean, what they do, and when to use them.
A reader asks how to create a PAL DVD. In this article, I provide a reference for file conversion, then talk about the Compressor setting you can use to compress your files. (I also include a link to lots more training on DVD creation.)
Over the last four months I’ve had a long email chat about video formats and the best ways to convert between them. If you are moving files from NTSC to PAL or back, and trying to integrate HD material, this article covers what you need to know.
If there was one “magic format” we would all be shooting in it. Unfortunately, as many of us are discovering as we move to HD, the world is a highly incompatible place.
With the release of Final Cut Studio 2, Apple created a new high-end codec entitled ProRes. With the release of Final Cut Studio (3) they expanded it from two variations to five. What is ProRes and how do you decide which version to use for your projects? Answering that question is the purpose of this article.
Since its first release, Final Cut Pro has integrated effects with video editing. In this tutorial, I show you how to create a picture-in-picture effect, then make it move using keyframes in the Motion tab.
Creating keys on the computer is easy – and they look great. Where problems occur is when those specials effects are shot with interlaced video and displayed on an interlaced TV set or monitor. This article describes how to avoid suddenly discovering that all your effects look out of focus.
Sigh… There’s nothing quite like death by PowerPoint slides. Still, many times we need to incorporate them into our productions. Here’s what you need to know to help them look as good as they can. (Oh, and by the way, do EVERYTHING you can to reduce the text they contain!)
Print to Video is your best choice when outputting to tape. However, some people find really ingenious ways to avoid it. This article describes what it is, along with a discussion of self-contained vs. reference QuickTime movies.
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.
A reader questions why the Quicktime quality of his sequences are soft when he exports them as a mov.
Lots has been written about the benefits – or lack thereof – in shooting 24 fps video. Here’s a quick look at a complex subject.
Final Cut Pro is, most often, used for editing after the recording is complete. However, there are some situations where you need to record live and edit as soon as you can. This article talks about that and provides options to consider. There’s also some relevant reader feedback.
Nothing is more critical than making sure your reel numbers (or names) are correct before capturing video. This explains how to fix them when you forget.
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.
When you are working with multiple tracks of video, trimming clips on several tracks at once is essential. This article shows you how to trim multiple tracks quickly and accurately.
Steve Gagne sent in a question that sparked this tutorial. He was dissolving between chroma-key shots and in the middle of each dissolve, the foreground clip color-shifted to green. He thought this could be fixed using nests, but needed some help in figuring out how.
Confused about what size to create your images? This article explains what image size to use so they import correctly into Final Cut Pro HD.
In this article I discuss the criteria I use in judging which camera to buy, as well as factors that may not be that critical in making the decision.
In this article, various problems with playback are addressed and answered.
JPEGs are highly compressed, which means they often show blockiness or other image artifacts. However, they tend to have smaller file sizes. TIFFs are uncompressed with great image quality. However, their file sizes tend to be lots bigger. All things being equal, I recommend using TIFFs.
“Interlacing” is a term that confuses many people. This article explains what it is, how to work with it, and how to remove it in both video and stills.
By default, Final Cut only displays one field of video – this makes images much easier to view while editing. But, sometimes, you need to see both fields. This very, very short article explains exactly what you need to know.
The world of HD is awash in incompatible formats. Worse, it has eight different frame rates. And selecting the wrong frame rate in After Effects can make your video uneditable in Final Cut Pro. This article explains what you need to know.
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.
Garbage mattes are a fast way to exclude portions of a frame that you don’t want the viewer to see. This article shows an example of using garbage mattes to hide light stands in a music video.
This tutorial shows you how to create a glowing lantern effect in Final Cut Pro using the Light-rays Glow filter and some video generators. It isn’t fine art, but this will show you how to create some amazing effects, easily, on your own system.Easy, I thought… use Light Rays.
Gradients are a smooth ramp from one color, or shade of gray, to another. Gradients can be easily created in Final Cut Pro, but the button to do so is very hidden. In this article, I show you how to create a gradient, how to adjust it, and provide some ideas on what you can do with it.
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.
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!
This article is based on research done by William Aleman, who sent instructions and links on how to embed metadata into H.264 files. Some interesting reading!
Handles are critical for transitions and trimming. In this article, discover what handles are and why they are necessary.
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.
DVDs are always standard definition video. Which means that if you shot your project in HD, you need to down-convert it to SD before you can put it onto a DVD. This short article describes what you need to know.
Trying to get up to speed on HDV quickly. This article gives you a primer on the current status of HDV – what’s good, what’s bad, and what you need to know.
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.
Larry fields a question related to transferring HDV footage and traces the problem back to the process of compressing the video. A walk-through of changing the output settings in the Geometry tab provides a detailed guide to preventing this problem from reoccurring.
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.)
Here are some design tips to help your text and images look good in video.
One of the most complex steps in video editing is getting your computer-based images to look good in video. This article explains how video images are different from computer images and what you need to do to make them look great.
Adding subtitles is something DVD Studio Pro is very good at. But sometimes, importing a subtitle file doesn’t work. This explains why and how to fix it.
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.
Money was tight, so “they” decided to shoot the project using both SD and HD cameras. Now, your stuck editing them. HOW??? In this article, we explains a variety of ways you can intercut between SD and HD material, and how to avoid problems with poorly converted video.
Interlacing, deinterlacing, progressive — three very confusing terms to many people. This article explains what they are, when you use them, what to do when you see them, and why you should care — not, in many case, not care at all.
Keynote is a secret weapon in the arsenal of creating motion graphics. The problem is getting the files exported from Keynote into something we can edit. This article describes the process, along with several tips from readers.
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.
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.
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.
In researching my up-coming seminar series, I was studying LiveType and discovered two ideas which I want to share with you.
