» Posts Tagged ‘editing’
Novacut is a work-in-progress HTML5-based collaborative editor that is currently fundraising on Kickstarter. It will run as a desktop application, but will also be made available in an online incarnation, and the entire project is open-source. It’s different from established NLEs like Avid, Premiere Pro, and Final Cut Pro in that it’s being designed from the ground up to allow editors to collaborate in real time over the internet. Here’s Arin Crumley (Four Eyed Monsters) and Christie Strong on the NLE: More »
By default, Final Cut Pro X shows all mounted events and projects, at all times. Those of us used to working in a more project-focused NLE — the kind that isolates one client’s files from another’s — may want a bit more control over FCP X‘s management. This is where the new $4.99 app Event Manager X comes in. Here’s the list of features: More »
Robbie Carman, co-author of the just-published An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro, presents a tutorial perfect for those editors switching from Final Cut Pro to Premiere Pro. While I like a lot of things about Final Cut Pro X (more on that soon), the inability to open old project files is indefensible. The easiest transition path is actually to switch to Premiere Pro (50% off if you own FCP), choose FCP‘s keyboard shortcuts within Premiere, and open your FCP 7 project files in Adobe’s NLE thanks to XML interchange. Here’s how to do it: More »
Just a couple of years ago the statement, “step up to the toolset the pros use, Adobe Premiere” would be taken as a joke by any professional editor. Yet there it is on Adobe’s site, thanks to numerous updates over the years. And with the release of Final Cut Pro X, suddenly the easiest NLE to transition to from Final Cut Pro 7 is not FCPX but rather Premiere Pro. Recognizing this with what one can only assume are ear-to-ear grins, the folks at Adobe are offering 50% off Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium or Premiere Pro if you own Apple Final Cut Pro (or Avid Media Composer). Here are the details (and an instructional video for doing so): More »
More screenshots of Final Cut Pro X (set to be released this month) have been discovered via twitter, this time by @MortGoldman2. Apparently taken from FCP X training videos that the user claims are “publicly available” (though not found easily or released legally), the new screenshots demonstrate the color correction interface of FCP X, which looks a lot like the Motion screenshots we saw last week. The screens show off a new primary and secondary color correction interface, as well as a full suite of video scopes. From these screens, it would appear that Color (but not Motion) has been folded right into FCP X: More »
Some have pointed out that many of Final Cut Pro X‘s much-lauded new features are not really that “new.” This backlash seems to happen with every Apple product, perhaps out of response to the rapturous reception with which Apple fanboys greet the superlative-laced presentations. In the case of FCP X, the criticism is that FCP X’s list of new features (seen on video) have been around for a while in other editing applications (notably Premiere and Vegas). But a list of features does not an editing program make. It’s not what features you include in a piece of software, it’s how you design them. Read on for some thoughts on intuitive design and a few full resolution screenshots of the new Final Cut Pro X. More »
Apple hasn’t posted any official acknowledgement of last night’s demonstrations of Final Cut Pro X on their website, and so everyone on the internet is speculating based on lists of features rather than seeing the presentation. Until Apple gets official with any such announcement, then, the next best thing to an official video is an unofficial (kind of shaky) video of the presentation. In my liveblog of the event I noted, “editors are crazy,” and you’ll see that to be the case based on the overenthusiastic reactions here: More »
Thanks to your suggestions, I just finished packing the new and diminutive Canon XA10 camcorder (on loan from B&H) to take to NAB. I don’t know how many interviews I’ll be posting from Las Vegas or how quickly I’ll get them online, but I’ll be approaching the show with a relaxed demeanor given there are plenty of other great video/DSLR sites that will be covering the show top-to-bottom and I’m perfectly happy to share their coverage. If you’re going to be at NAB, please come up and say hi — I’d love to actually meet folks face to face (I look like this). On to the real news: every year Editors Lounge holds a pre-NAB roundtable wherein post-production pros discuss the latest trends in hardware and software. Here’s the very informative session in full: More »
Every year at NAB the FCPUG (Final Cut Pro User Group) puts on their own event dubbed the “SuperMeet.” Since Apple pulled out of NAB two years ago, no one knew how the expected announcement of a new Final Cut Pro at this year’s NAB would take place. With all other scheduled events at this year’s SuperMeet suddenly being cancelled at the request of Apple, who apparently wants exclusive stage time, it looks like the new FCP will be unveiled publicly on April 12 at Bally’s Event Center. The event opens at 4:30pm with presentations beginning at 7. Tickets are currently sold out; guess I should’ve bought a ticket when I had a chance. More details: More »
Since Apple showed a new version of Final Cut Pro behind closed doors, the internets have been flooded with all manner of speculation as to what is so groundbreaking about the latest update to FCP. Idle speculation alert — if you’re not a Final Cut-based editor or you simply don’t care about what could be, feel free to skip this post — we’ll get proper news soon enough. But because there are a lot of FCP editors out there — and because so many folks are throwing ideas at the wall — I thought I’d share a few of the ideas floating about. More »
It was announced in April that Lightworks, the high-end editing application favored by Oscar-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker, was going open source. They’ve now delivered on their promise, with a free open source beta now available. At the same time, The Foundry, best known for their high-end compositing application Nuke, have released a free public beta of their forthcoming RED post-production solution Storm. More »
Since switching to Premiere Pro, my editing workflow has been to lock picture in Premiere and then finish in After Effects. To date I’ve been using a workflow similar to the one I’d use when editing in Final Cut Pro, which was to import a final sequence into After Effects (either as an XML or by using Premiere Pro as an intermediary), and apply color correction, titling, and other effects in AE. While this approach gives a very high quality output, a problem rears its head if you want to make changes to the edit after “locking” picture. So what’s the best workflow between Premiere and After Effects? More »
Thanks to Adobe Premiere Pro CS5′s ability to edit DSLR and other h.264 footage without the need to transcode, editors have been switching in droves away from Final Cut Pro. In my How to Build a Hackintosh article, I include a section specifically for video editors switching from FCP to Premiere, including how to do so without having to learn any new keystrokes. But for anyone with lingering questions as to why an enterprising editor might switch, Adobe is presenting four free online workshops: More »
Mac vs. PC is a never-ending debate, but when it comes to video editing, what we need are hard and fast numbers. It would be impossible to generate a comparison of apples to apples (zing?) by using Final Cut Pro, since that NLE is only available on one platform. Instead, Adobe’s CS5 suite is the ideal candidate — and considering CS5 is 64-bit native on both OSes, it should be a fair fight. The best way to settle this would be to open the exact same CS5 project file on a Mac and a PC, play it back, render it out, and measure it in other ways — on various machines, at different price points — and compare the results. If only someone would create such a benchmarking tool and upload the results to a database… As it turns out, someone has done just this. More »
Caleb Pike has posted a video at DSLR Video Shooter for removing horizontal banding artifacts from DSLR footage using Final Cut Pro‘s “Limit Effect” tool. This technique should only come as a last resort, however, as the best offense is a good defense: shoot at 1/50 shutter speed in most European countries (or anywhere 50Hz electricity and/or PAL video is standard), and 1/60 in the US and other NTSC locales, and you should be fine. More »
This past week Google integrated video editing functionality into YouTube. While basic, the toolset brings much needed capabilities like trimming and clip combining to the world’s most popular video sharing site. It also allows users to swap out background music using AudioSwap. More »
As part of today’s free Adobe workshop on HDSLR feature film workflows (I’ll update that post with a link to the archived presentation), one of the commenters brought to my attention a promising DSLR post-production plugin called 5DtoRGB.1 I’ve called DSLR color-correction on a Mac a clustercuss, not just because of the 4:2:0 color space, but because of Quicktime gamma inconsistencies (often related to YUV to RGB conversion). Rarevision’s 5DtoRGB plugin, currently in beta, just might be the solution to these problems. More »
- Sorry, whoever it was who commented about 5DtoRGB — I lost the chat thread when my Flash plugin crashed for the dozenth time. [↩]
Most of us use both Adobe and Apple products — most commonly Adobe Photoshop and Apple Final Cut, I’m guessing. With the ongoing feud between the two companies reaching a joke T-shirt-spawning level, however, it’s nice to know that their respective NLE programs still talk to each other (thanks to standards-based XML files). Since CS4, Premiere Pro has been able to open and export Final Cut XML files (which is handy for getting FCP sequences into After Effects, an action that used to require a $500 plugin). CS5 tutorial after the jump: More »
And the exodus I spoke of begins. In Final Cut there is no (updated: good) way to edit DSLR footage without transcoding. In Premiere Pro CS5, now shipping, there is. I’m also hearing anecdotally that Adobe finally took the “Pro” moniker seriously and the latest version is significantly more stable than previous versions. Here’s Jason Levine with an 8-minute demo of DSLR editing in CS5. More »
This isn’t for anyone who works at a huge corporation or has a lot of money, but for the rest of us, I think the best guerilla solution for filmmaking in 2010 will be a PC. I’ve been a Mac guy for the past four years but I suspect things are about to change; here’s why. More »
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