Final Cut Pro

Here's something interesting. An app that gives you native MXF in all QuickTime applications including FCP. Calibrated Software's unique solution successfully joins the separate video and audio P2 MXF files so that Final Cut Pro sees them all as ONE file - complete with TimeCode and Reel Name. PullDown can also be removed or added for select frame rates. And you're not just limited to Final Cut Pro, you can also natively import files in Compressor, Motion and Sound Track Pro.

Not only that but they have also unveiled a DVCPROHD decoder for Windows. This is something our friends across the aisle have been requesting for a long time. Calibrated{Q} DVCProHD Decode is a multi-threaded DVCProHD QuickTime Codec(Decode Only) that enables you to view QuickTime DVCProHD Movies in QuickTime Player and other 3rd party applications that support QuickTime. Check out both at Calibrated:

http://www.calibratedsoftware.com/welcome.html

I am a self-taught video editor in much need of new skills and approaches to producing creative and innovative approaches to wedding videos. I'm done with the slow-paced, cross-dissolves and melodramatic typical approach. bring on some sweet new tools or secrets! help!

Before I get to the crux of my post, I would like to explain a few terms that a few people might not know about. Here is the progression of a cut as I do it...when dealing with a documentary project that has a script:

RADIO EDIT - Laying out of narration and sound bytes. Just getting things in script order on the timeline.

ROUGH CUT - Filling in the cut with footage. This is also the time that I start to ad pacing to the cut. Adding slates (title cards) where footage is missing and needed.

FINE CUT - Fleshing out the cut with music and more footage. Deal more with pacing as music is added...give breath to scenes and add montages when needed. Start to get into creating the style of the show, creating transitional moments and unique pacing. Sound effects added at this stage. Perhaps adding lower thirds (ID tags for interview subjects).

FINE CUT 2 - Addressing the producer and network notes. More versions as the notes progress.

Rick Young of MacVideo interviewed me last September in Amsterdam, when I was working at NAB. He asked me about my thoughts on the Avid vs FCP debate.

Here is that interview.

Now you get to see what I sound like.

5/30/2008

SUGAR HILL, GA

Biscardi Creative Media is proud to announce the completion of "Jayne's Café" featuring Jayne Olderman, owner of Red Warrior Records. Looking for a unique way to present her songs to a wide audience, Jayne created the concept of an unplugged 'café.'

"Jayne and I have been working together for a long time and when she mentioned this project, I immediately jumped in and said we'd like to produce it at BCM," notes Walter Biscardi, Jr., Principal Biscardi Creative Media. "Our challenge was to be able to shoot it well in a very small studio space. There's very little room for lighting and the ceilings are only 9 feet tall and we had up to 6 people for each song and 2 camera operators, so it definitely made for some tight quarters."

DP Clay Walker setting up the lighting

Well, about time this came out. Too bad it had to be third party, but hey...at least we have it now.

Final Print 1.6

To quote:

"A standalone application which prints a list of clips in a bin or markers contained in a clip or sequence. This provides a very useful workflow enhancement when handing off a project to someone else for further work."

"- Displays a list of clips/sequences in a bin or a list of markers found within clips/sequences.
- Flexible customisation of columns including thumbnail.
- Customise print output with colour of header text and your own company or production logo.
- Print marker list to paper or PDF."

Downloading demo now...

Now here's something interesting, the folks over at Silverado Systems have partnered up with Vuze to create a different kind of contest. OpenCut is a completely open-source film competition designed to encourage people to take professionally shot material and edit it in their own way. As there is no "one way" to tell a story, so too can stories benefit from being re-edited and re-told from many different vantage points and perspectives.

They have a short film shot on the RED camera with dailies they'll copy over to your hard drive. Then you cut it altogether any way you want using Final Cut Pro. It's a good way to get your hands on RED footage if you haven't already and maybe even get credited as the editor on the final version as they submit it to festivals.

As you output your project to tape, or to DVD...whatever. Or before you encode it for the web or DVD...watch it all the way through. Even if you have seen it three dozen times, it would be very wise to watch your project before you do your final output, or an output that is going out to the network.

Why?

Well...one of the other editors here came to me with a big issue...one that I have never seen nor heard of before.

My producer from The Mexican American War and Andrew Jackson is teaching a 4 week workshop. Time permitting I might see if I can pitch in when it comes to the editing phase. Anyway, here is the press release for this event:

HISTORY/DISCOVERY Channel Producer to conduct summer HVX-200/Final Cut Pro workshop at LA's Citrus College

If you're having any problems with Sony XDCAM EX footage the latest version of the XDCAM transfer software might be a big help. It has some new error correction built in that can recover corrupted material.

The PDZ-KP1 XDCAM Transfer Software is an import plug in for Final Cut Pro. XDCAM Transfer Version 2.5 supports the current XDCAM HD and SD optical products, the new PDW-U1 optical XDCAM drive, and the PMW-EX1 XDCAM EX camcorder which records on SxS flash cards.

Check it out:

https://serviceplus.us.sony.biz/sony-software.aspx?model=pdzkp1

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Once we have the actual shot, we can then control the downloading of footage from the camera using Vision Research’s software. Thus far they’ve only released a version that runs on Windows. In order to preserve the Mac-loving image of Simplemente, we decided to run it on a MacBook Pro with Boot Camp. We can then select the ins and outs of any particular shot. Typically the exact moment you want to save is a tiny fraction of that 6 minute take and the rest is a lot of frames with no activity you can delete. The selected portions are then saved out to a hard drive using Vision Research’s proprietary Cine file format.

It hasn't been a good week for my hard drives.

On Wednesday my old G-Raid...the one I bought four years ago...finally gave up the ghost. It had begun clicking over the weekend when I was copying footage to and from it, which is not a good sign. It did this before, when I owned it for about a year. But, I took it to G-tech in Santa Monica and in two days, I had it back in my hands. The same thing happened back then...clicking when copying. 

Well, after a few days of the clicking...it decided not to show up on my desktop at all. Nor in the Disk Utility. And the warranty expired. So I cracked open the case, pulled out the two PATA drives and connected them both directly to the computer via a spare PATA firewire case I have lying about. One worked, the other did not. Dead drive. Fine, I relegated it as a Clone Drive for my G5 and tossed the bad drive in the trash.

Then comes Saturday. 

I wrote two articles for the Final Cut Pro User's Group Supermeet at NAB. They appeared in the SuperMag magazine. Here's part one of the second article looking at Simplemente's work with the Phantom HD camera:

Rune Hansen and Monica Reina at Simplemente in Mexico City recently acquired a Phantom HD Digital Cinema camera from Vision Research. We got to shoot a bunch of slow-motion footage and then worked with it in Final Cut Pro to create demo reels for theatrical projection. We needed to accomplish all of this in the space of about 48 hours.

The Phantom HD’s claim to fame is the ability to shoot uncompressed, high speed footage at up to 1,000 frames per second (fps) and up to 2K (2048x2048 pixels) resolution using a special CMOS imager. It accepts standard PL-mount 35mm cinema lenses and is also capable of capturing in standard and HD resolutions from 1 fps all the way up to 1,000.

I wrote two articles for the Final Cut Pro User's Group Supermeet at NAB. They appeared in the SuperMag magazine(which I named btw). Here's part two of the first article looking at an Apple network system that is being used at the Beijing Olympics this summer in China. For part one click here.

Simplemente chose to work with Gallery Software, a UK-based company that has been making QuickTime-compatible applications for over a decade. For the Beijing project, Simplemente selected Gallery’s SIENNA, a complete integration suite for connecting Final Cut Pro workstations to the traditional newsroom broadcast workflow. SIENNA was developed in response to the huge demand for Final Cut Pro integration from the world's leading news broadcasters. It brings compatibility to existing newsroom equipment for workflows based around native QuickTime and enables single media shared storage with Apple's Xsan.

I wrote two articles for the Final Cut Pro Supermeet at NAB this year. Here's part one of the first article looking at an Apple SAN network system that is being used at the Beijing Olympics this summer in China:

Last NAB, we visited Simplemente, a production/post-production house and Apple Authorized Training Center/Dealer based in Mexico City. They’ve been working hard alongside one of their biggest clients, Televisa, the world’s largest Latin American broadcaster. This year Simplemente embarked on its most ambitious project yet, a complete post-production solution for Televisa’s coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China.

...and it pains me to say it. But it is the truth and I have to call it like I see it.

The past three days I have been trying to restore an old project. It's a decently complex project with green screen, tons of cuts, P2 footage and tape footage. I have not been able to get FCP to reconnect to anything properly wihtout going through file by file. This process should have taken a day at most with the recaptures and p2 reimport, instead I am on day 3.

I usually have excellent luck with Media Manager and XMLs, but this project is truly testing my patience. Also, i am totally bummed out by it all.

All the plugins are old and I have new versions of the fxplugs now which don't translate, the P2 media is giving me fits (it comes in fine, but won't reconnect to the timeline) and the things that do relink are relinking to wrong items sometimes-but-not-all-of-the-time. ALso, there were some rendered materials that I have as self contained movies, and they are playing back improperly in FCP now. It's just a low down dirty mess.

We're experiencing a sudden Memory Error issue with Final Cut Pro that has led to bad renders. The issue has been happening on my Mac Pro for about three weeks now and it started happening on our PowerMac G5 Quad 2.5 yesterday. I also checked with a client in New York who is experiencing the same issue.

When working on a project and attempting a render, we sometimes get the following error.

Most often this error pops up if the system has been running a while, four hours or more, or I'm rendering out a full episode of 22 minutes or longer. Generally the error appears about 75% in to the render.

What then happens is the render actually keeps going, but the renders are all screwed up. Partial lower thirds, graphics in the middle of dissolves, graphics from somewhere else in the project.

Last week, on Thursday (March 13th for those who really want to know) we needed to output the rough cut of the first show and send it to the network. In actuality it was the SECOND show, but episode one was still being edited...but that's besides the point. So on Thursday I was pulled off my editing of a segment for show one (EP 101) and assigned to cut the tease for show two (102).

"Cut the tease"....sorry, that always makes me giggle a little.

Anyway...this was the beginning of a series of "missteps" that caused a couple complications with the assembly of the show. For the record, we are editing DVCPRO HD footage mainly shot with the Varicam, at 720p 23.98 This footage was captured via the Kona card and not via firewire, as firewire capture throws the audio off sync by two frames...audio leading by two frames. Instead of adjusting the sync on each and every clip we drop in the timeline, we captured via HD SDI from the Kona 3 ensuring perfect sync. Because of this, the Easy Setup we chose was AJA KONA 3-720p 23.98 DVCPRO HD Varicam:

Call for Entries - 2nd Annual SFMUG Short Movie Festival

Deadline Physical- Postmarked by 4/16/08
Digital- Uploaded by 4/21/08

Any movie 5 minutes and under, any genre, any topic, but no commercials, industrials, or explicit adult content. Movies do NOT need to be made on Apple Macintosh computers or any specific software.

Guidelines http://www.santafemug.org/film_fest/2008_film_festival.html

Prizes:
Best of the Festival Award - Apple Final Cut Studio 2, Toon Boom Studio 4 & Toon Boom Storyboard 2

Gold Award - Apple Final Cut Express 4, & Aquafadas iDive

Silver Award - Aquafadas PulpMotion, Aquafadas BannerZest Pro, Aquafadas VideoPier & $50.00 Apple iTunes Gift Card

Audience Choice Award - Apple iPod Touch

The best of SFMUG SMF08 movies will be shown at a future Film Industry Night in Albuquerque, NM and subsequent screenings.
totaling over $2800

"Best of the Festival" is going to win a moviemaker’s dream software bundle!

A selection of the best movies submitted will also be screened at "New Mexico Film Industry Party" in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Here is the Kona KBox mounted on the back of my IKEA "rack." I had to add an extra piece of wood to the side, but the 2U rack brackets fit nicely.

Now...onto TIME MACHINE. In my MacPro I have 5 drives. The system drive is in Bay 1, I have three Seagate 500GB drives in the other 3 bays. One stands alone as a work drive, where I store show exports, imported footage and other odd and ends that I transfer to the server. The final two are RAIDED as RAID 0 and I use them to capture media too before I transfer it to the XSAN.

I have a fifth drive installed in this MacPro. The fifth drive resides in the normally empty second optical bay. It is connected to the computer via one of the two spare SATA connections on the logicboard (accessed by removing the fans) and a 3.5" to 5.25" adapter kit. I use this drive as my TIME MACHINE drive, since I am using Leopard. Already this has saved my behind.

The official title of the History Channel Series I am working on is STRANGE HISTORY. The stories will mainly deal with taboos, cultural and sexual, and strange cultural practices from around the world. There, now you know.

The first week there I was working on one of the rental systems. Because my computer hadn't come in yet and because they didn't play on renting my system for a few weeks yet. Now, this rental system was a bit lacking. Sure, it had the Octo Mac 3.0Ghz and a LARGE Mackie Mixer (that you would find on an Avid system) with 16 channels, 4 of which we use. Two for FCP, two for the deck...oh, 5...one for the microphone (temp VO). It had a Kona 3 card, was on one of those HUGE editing desks, was nestled in a rack, and had big HD LCDs. Not color correctable ones, but an early model Sony Luma series that was fine for producers to look at. The computer monitors? Lacking....WAY lacking. 17" square LCDs...brand I haven't heard of. SMALL, to say the least. I suffered on these for two weeks. The third week I was on my system. The rental didn't start on it until THIS week, but I wouldn't allow myself to suffer any more.

Here it is. It took me a while to get this post up because...well, I am beat. I spent last weekend finishing the desk...and taking the remaining wood and unused scraps to make THREE bird houses...well, help my daughters make them. Kids demanding their dad's time...how can I refuse? So that was Saturday.

But I am jumping ahead a little. The computer arrived on Thursday, Feb 28...a day ahead of schedule. I jumped for joy at work when my wife called. And when I got home from work...and after a quick meal...I put my full attention onto this machine. Installing three 500 GB Seagates into the spare drives, yanking out the fan to access one of the SATA ports on the logicboard and installing a small drive into the empty optical bay (this I am using as my Time Machine backup). I replaced the stock ATI 2600 card with the x1900 XT card. You heard about that mess last time. OK, bouncing ahead again.

this is in response to shane ross, who if you don't know, is a leader for FCP users here and several other major websites. he posted in my previous blog

I agree that FCP can work very very well but let me ask you the following questions:

Do your computer run on more than a gig of ram, a lot of the ones I work on at the computer labs I work at do not which is a problem.

Are your computers built and run to just do that kind of work, or do you have people doing flash, photo editing, scanning, script writing, fcp editing, dvd creation, etc on them?

I also wrote this a bit bitter about a lot of my day so it's pretty negative. And i'd be lieing if i said I didn't love it many times. but there are so many odd quirks and things that it's just hard to deal with some times.