Blog Archives

A quick video tutorial on how to animate stills with depth and movement using Final Cut Pro X,

In this short video tutorial, learn how to size still images to look great in Final Cut Pro X.

Still images, especially when you move on them, create weird shimmer, or moiré, patterns. This article describes what they are and how to fix them.

Creating smooth moves on stills is at the heart of many documentaries. Final Cut makes creating moves easy. But smoothness is sometimes much harder to achieve. Take a look at what these editors have to say about the best way to get your images to move.

Unlike video, which has a fixed duration, still images are assigned a duration when they are imported into Final Cut.

Computers use square pixels to represent images, while video uses rectangular pixels. And this difference drives all of us nuts. This article describes pixel aspect ratio and helps you get your images looking great.

Working with still images in video is hard, because images created on the computer are not compatible with video. A new software – PhotoMotion – seeks to solve a lot of the challenges in working with still images. This is a detailed review of how the product works.

Judging by my email, handling still images is by far the most confusing part of editing video — especially because the computer creates images using square pixels and video uses rectangular pixels, in a variety of shapes. This article explains everything you need to know to create great looking still images for your next video project.

With FCP 5’s support for HDV, you need to change the size of images you import. Here are new scan numbers you should use.

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.

Probably no subject generates more email than questions about the best way to prepare still for both HD and SD. In this article, David Scott provides this step-by-step approach to making your stills look great. (Note: For a video tutorial on this subject, CLICK HERE)

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.

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.