Blog Archives

Easily a third of all the emails I get every day deal, in one form or another, with video formats, image quality, and output. Whether you edit with Final Cut, Premiere, Avid, or any other video format the issues are …

I get emails almost every day from readers suggesting tips and tricks for Final Cut Pro X. Most are questions about how to do things, which form the basis of the articles I write for my newsletter every week. However, …

[ This article generated a lot of technical comments. Be sure to view the comments in this blog to learn more. ] Updated: June 15, to reflect a variety of technical comments from readers. On Monday, Apple gladdened the hearts …

Three emails got me thinking today. The first was from Jack Reilly, of Future Media Concepts who is organizing Post-Production World at NAB. He’s asked me to host a Hot Panels session Wednesday at NAB on The Future of Editing. …

Storage is critical to all media editing and I’ve written a lot about it. So much so, that it is hard to find where to start and which articles are important to read. To help, I’ve collected the important ones here …

Multicam editing allows you to see and edit multiple images at the same time. This last weekend, I completed work on providing both video training and written articles covering multicam editing in Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro. So, …

I bought a new 27″ iMac when they went on sale Friday, specifically for video editing. And, because I’ve had a lot of requests recently, I wanted to tell you what I bought and why. WHAT SIZE IMAC? I bought: …

What are RAIDs, SSDs, or The Cloud? And how do you use them to get the best performance from your editing system? This article explains what you need to know.

Earl Nottingham got this idea started when he wrote: I’m sure you’re familiar with the CALM act which sets new standards for how loud television broadcasts can be (especially commercials). My question: What is the video creator’s responsibility (if any) …

At this week’s Los Angeles Final Cut Pro User Group meeting, Apple presented the latest features in Final Cut Pro X at the meeting. (It was a nice demo, but no new features were announced.) However, I did pick up …

This is a First Look at Autodesk Smoke 2013 – Pre-Release Trial 1. It explains the software, why you should care about it, and how to get started with the free trial.

The fever of excitement surrounding the launch of a new Apple product is the envy of every other consumer company in the world. Rumors, gossip, and eager anticipation create a potent mix for marketing.

There’s a segment of videographers that can easily migrate to the power of Final Cut Pro X: iMovie users. Let me show you how this works.

[Updated Sept. 21 with a few extra details and the link to the free trial.] [Updated with a link for the QuickTime update.] [Updated with more information on Roles, and clarification on Davinci and AutoDesk.] [Updated with clarification on XSAN.] …

Watching the 3D Glee Concert Movie set up a wide range of thoughts on how to shoot and edit musical performances.

[Image courtesy Apple Inc. Click for enlarged view.] Apple this evening provided a “sneak peek” at the next version of Final Cut Pro – now called “Final Cut Pro X” at the NAB SuperMeet in Las Vegas, Nevada. The new …

It shouldn’t be this difficult. NOTE: This blog grew out of my webinar last week on how to archive Final Cut Pro projects. If you are interested in archiving, click here to learn more. The process of creating films and …

The good folks at Accusys sent me an 8-drive RAID to test recently. (You can read my review of their ExaSAN A08S-PS unit in the next issue of my newsletter; coming out later this month.) However, what I want to …

Putch, over at Putch Films, sent me this link on Apple’s website on how the film: Eat Pray Love was edited on Final Cut Pro. www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/in-action/eatpraylove/?sr=hotnews.rss I liked their description of their use of ProRes Proxy and the workflow they …

“When I first got started in this editing business,” he said creaking back and forth in his rocking chair, “editing video took a minimum of two quarter-million dollar videotape recorders – plus a control room – a lot of patience …

Scott Simmons just wrote about this on the Studio Daily blog, but this could be a great service and I wanted to let you know about it. It’s called Movie Repair. Scott writes: It looks to operate like this: if …

Michael Rubin sent me the following: I don’t know if you know me – i’ve written frequently about editing over the decades… anyway, I recently posted a link to my book DROIDMAKER, (which chronicles, among other things, the birth of …

I released my July Final Cut Studio newsletter this morning. You should get a notice in your email in a few hours. (Click here to subscribe — its FREE.) However, as this blog reaches a different audience, I wanted to …

My recent thoughts about the relationship between Snow Leopard and the next version of Final Cut Studio generated a lot of comments — especially on other forums. For instance, here’s an example from KenStone.net: http://www.kenstone.net/discussions/read.php?3,13183,13183#msg-13183 Thanks for all your comments …

Having read about my concerns with the latest MacBook Pro versions, Steve sent me a link that we can all use to send feedback to Apple. Feel free to share your thoughts and concerns – more importantly, share this link …

In all my classes, I spend a lot of time talking about the importance of audio and ways that, as video editors, we can improve the quality of our sound. This morning, I read a blog posting that speaks to …

I don’t need to tell you that times are difficult right now. Which means that finding, closing, and keeping clients is a key priority. The problem is that, for many of us, the business side of the business is much …

One of the highlights of my job is traveling around the world, meeting with editors, and helping them learn how to become better at their craft. Thanks to the hard work of Ben Balser, founder of the South Louisiana Final …

Vendors are finally starting to take the archiving needs of small media professionals seriously. Tom Tomchak has been long-time reader of my newsletters and recently did a review of some new technology that will be premiered at NAB in a …

Eric Harnden, of Quintessential Studios, sent me the following: I know you’ve covered disk-based archiving vs. tape-based archiving before but I ran across this white-paper that I think is very interesting. http://edge.networkworld.com/whitepapers/nww/pdf/tape_and_disk_square_off.pdf This is a 12-page PDF document, published in …

I’ve been a fan of Tom Meegan’s work for a long time — especially when he wrote about it for Edit Well. He principally works at the high-end of broadcast television. Anyway, after my review of Telestream’s Pipeline in the …

Philip Hodgetts has created an amazing utility (I saw it demoed recently at the LA Final Cut Pro User Group) that speeds the entire process of sync’ing double-system sound. It’s called Sync-N-Link, and Philip describes it this way: Sync-N-Link for …

The folks at Peake Professional Systems sent me a notice about their new utility called: Final Cut Pro Assistant. One of the challenges of working with Final Cut is keeping track of all the different files it creates. Most of …

Here are two blogs worth reading, as you are waiting for the phones to start ringing again after the holidays. First, Norm Hollyn has an interesting discussion on the power of social networking to help all of us get and …

Last night on the Digital Production BuZZ, we had a fascinating interview with James Salkind. Since this was Christmas evening, you may have been distracted and not able to listen. In which case, you missed a treat. James was the …

One of the most popular requests during our recent PowerUP Seminar Tour was to make our seminar information available to folks that weren’t able to attend a seminar. So, we started doing just that with a series of PowerUP Tutorial …

Ron Diamond wrote me about a new Final Cut Pro Preference Manager that he’s developed that I wanted to bring to your attention. Ron writes: Take control of your Final Cut Pro preferences at last! EditGroove’s UserMatic(TM) solves FCP Preferences …

One of the requests I got a lot during my recent PowerUP seminar tour was to make my seminars available to people that were unable to attend. While not everything in my seminars could be presented easily in a video, …

For the last few days, I’ve been corresponding with Andrew Findlay about his problems with Compressor 3. While I use Compressor on a daily basis with no problems, Andrew has been having problems with Compressor unexpectedly quitting at the worst …

Two difficult editing concepts for many students to learn are “slip” and “slide.” Recently, August Miller sent me two pieces of animation along with this note: At our training center, we’ve noticed that, often times, students struggle to understand the …

IBC (the International Broadcasting Convention) in Amsterdam has been the source of a variety of exciting announcements that I want to bring to your attention. (Thanks to Ben King for doing the legwork and filing this report.) First, Adobe continued …

Looking back on the old days of shooting standard-definition video… Life was easy, we only had two video formats — NTSC and PAL. Everything worked. No one complained.  (OK, so maybe there’s a rose-colored-glasses effect involved here. Stay with me.) …

Wow! My article on the life-expectancy of magnetic signals on hard disks in this month’s newsletter has really touched a nerve! If you want to read it, we’ve turned it into an article, which you can read here: /articles/hard-disk-warning/   …