Blog Archives

I’m not telling you anything new to say times are tough. The problem is, we still need to pay the rent. Last week, on the Digital Production BuZZ, I spoke with Steve Cone, author of “Powerlines: Words that Sell Brands, …

John Putch told me about this. Ptarmigan Designs, Inc., a Japanese iPhone developer, has released a file size and codec calculator for the iPhone. Its called “Codec Calc” and is available through the AppsStore, you can learn more about it …

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 …

This afternoon, Apple released updates to the following software: Final Cut Pro 6.0.5 Compressor 3.0.5 Color 1.0.3 Shake 4.1.1 Here is a link to the release notes: http://www.apple.com/support/releasenotes/en/Final_Cut_Studio_2.0_rn/ My suggestion is to wait a week or two before upgrading to …

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 …

Philip Hodgetts sent me the following link. Just when your head is spinning with all the different HD formats, trying to wrestle quality from the chaos of production, or stewing about whether your videos look good enough on the web, …

This last week at the request of New Bay Media, my podcast – Digital Production BuZZ – traveled to DV Expo 2008 in Los Angeles to cover the event in detail. We did four hours of on-the-floor interviews with every …

Jan Crittenden-Livingston is the business line manager for Panasonic’s professional cameras. Recently, I had the opportunity to interview her at DV Expo 2008 about Panasonic’s move to tapeless media (the P2 card) and the impact that had on the company. …

When Apple discontinued supporting FireWire on their low-end MacBooks recently, I was disappointed, but not surprised. Apple has been threatening to do this for a while. I just think this is enormously short-sighted. The need to connect external peripherals does …

According to a recent report in Broadcasting & Cable, ABC is converting the distribution of its network programming from an MPEG-2-based system to a more bandwidth efficient MPEG-4 advanced compression. The transition will take about three months to complete. This …

I’ve been traveling around the country for the last two months, talking about the impact of tapeless and high-definition video on video editors. Generally, I begin each session by talking about how “the world is moving to high-definition video” — …

Over on KenStone.net, Andrew Balis has written an interesting article on how Final Cut Pro handles displaying image quality. You can read it here. I’ve been getting a lot of questions recently asking why images look different in the Canvas …

Recently, I wrote about a potential problem with losing data on hard drives which are powered off and sitting on a shelf. (You can read the entire article here.) The basic problem is that when a hard disk is powered …

The Digital Production BuZZ is one of the oldest, if not THE oldest, podcasts still going. Next week, Oct. 16, we celebrate our 200th show! This is pretty darn amazing! The show started in December of 2005 as the DV …

One of the nice things about getting back in the office after being on the road for a while is catching up on all the reading I didn’t have time to do while traveling. For instance, there is a fascinating …

I like Editshare. As a company they make some intriguing products. And, for Final Cut editors looking to share media and projects, its worth a close look. However, in a recent email blast from StudioBytes, they included a quote from …

Jody Eldred sent me the following links a few days ago, with these comments: Look what a guy just shot with the Canon EOS 5D digital SLR still camera. It shoots full-res, 1920×1080 1080P/30 high definition video. 21 megapixels. 12 …

UPDATED – Oct. 3 I was recently at a Final Cut Pro user group meeting where the screen you see here was discussed.  (You can find this for yourself by opening Final Cut Pro and going to Sequence > Settings …

Quite often I’m asked by readers if I have a MySpace page where they can visit us. So after discussing it with my team, we decided to expand our Internet presence and join the world of social networking! Kristi, our …

As part of my weekly podcast – Digital Production BuZZ – I get to interview some truly interesting people. Sometimes, when I prerecord these interviews, I get more material than I can use for the show. This was the case …

At IBC (International Broadcasting Convention) in Amsterdam earlier this month, Paul Saccone from Apple Inc. presented a technology preview of upcoming features for Final Cut Studio. Since I could not attend IBC and Apple rarely talks about future products, I …

Several months ago, Adobe gave us special access to the unreleased software in Production Premium CS4. Now that Adobe has released it, we can share what we’ve learned with you. I have retooled our workshop: “Integrating Adobe Products in a …

The folks at NVidia invited the guys from MythBusters (Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage) to explain the differences between a CPU and a GPU. NVidia also gave them an unlimited budget. If you’ve been wondering what the difference is.. and …

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 …

Jesse sent me a note asking: I am writing to see if anyone would be able to direct me to a tutorial online about creating opening sequences (like 20/20 style news openings) in Final Cut Pro or Motion (or another …

Today, SmartSound released Sonicfire Pro 5 – a free upgrade to their already extremely useful music software. I’ve been using SmartSound products since about 1997 and have always enjoyed the flexibility they gave me in creating interesting and compelling music …

We began our PowerUP with Final Cut Studio seminars this last week — in fact, I’m writing this from the Denver International Airport as I’m traveling to Dallas and Washington DC this week to continue our tour. In spite of …

Apple today released QuickTime 7.5.5. In typical Apple fashion, all they said about this release was: “QuickTime 7.5.5 includes changes that increase reliability, improve application compatibility and enhance security. “This release is recommended for all QuickTime 7 users.” My recommendation …

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.) …

The current issue of MacWorld (Oct. 2008 – www.macworld.com) has a lengthy article on computer security. While I agree with it, in general, one recommendation will cause problems for video editors. First, the section on virus protection recommends that if …

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/   …

The worlds of digital video production and post-production are exploding, fragmenting, morphing, and recombining at a furious rate.  It is impossible to keep up with everything – even if you devote yourself to it full-time.  That’s where my blog can …