Fri 30 Jul 2010 FCP Daily We don’t often suggest online video tutorials…there’s some great commerical ones out there…but often the free ones online are ho-hum at best. However, we really dig this FREE tutorial that was recently sent to us. Jeff over at SuiteTake.com outlines his top 10 things about Final Cut Pro that he wish he knew 10 years ago…and there’s some good ones in there. read more...

Wed 28 Jul 2010 digitalfilms Red Giant Software’s engineers have been busy this year expanding the Magic Bullet franchise. Products have included versions for Photoshop and the iPhone, as well as variations of the ever-popular Looks. This line of innovative color correction tools got its start with Colorista, a custom 3-way color correction plug-in for Apple Final Cut Pro, Motion [...] read more...

Wed 28 Jul 2010 pro • active • ly I would sit here typing my own opinion on the new Mac Pro lineup but why bother when I can simply plagiarize, err quote, Nat Jencks’ FCP-L post: I agree that it’s a bit of a dissapointment, but the thing is, that to integrate high quality usb3, esata, SAS, Bluray, HDMI, would bump the price significantly. [...] read more...

Wed 28 Jul 2010 FCP Daily We’re a bit surprised we didn’t see an iPhone app like this released earlier. It just seems like a natural fit…combining iPhone functionality with FCP. Playhead – controls the FCP timeline with your iPhone Released this week, Playhead is currently being offered in the App Store for $2.99 A description from the developer: Playhead offers an easy way for you to navigate your Final Cut Pro or Final Cut Express timeline from your iPhone. Playhead takes some of the pain out of organizing lots of footage by allowing you to do it from a comfortable position rather than sitting over the keyboard. read more...

Wed 28 Jul 2010 FCP Daily As many of you may know it is not currently possible to setup clustered rendering (render farm) for Final Cut Pro. A render farm is a cluster of computers setup so that their combined processing power can be used to render one project/sequence. However, clustered rendering IS possible using Apple’s Compressor software for encoding (bundled with Final Cut Studio). If you’ve got a few mac computers laying around (works especially well with Mac Minis) hook those bad boys together and kick your compressor encoding into overdrive. read more...

Tue 27 Jul 2010 ProVideo Coalition So Apple has rolled out their latest round of iMacs. I recently finally updated my trusty black MacBook to Snow Leopard, and disappointed myself when I’d forgotten that I can’t run the latest Final Cut Pro on it at ALL. So revisiting these iMacs, how are they for running the Final Cut Studio suite? And beyond can they, should you consider it as an editing platform? Apple rolled out new iMacs today - short version - OK for video editors? read more...

Tue 27 Jul 2010 Creative COW Blogs Ok, So this alexa thingy is really gaining ground, and I have been bombarded by questions about Log vs Lin and how the signals actually look on screen and on a scope, so I did test shoot with my wife working away on her glass jewelry. So lets look at arri's LogC vs Rec709 of the same content. T his image is showing the visual differences between the logC version on the Right and the Rec709 Linear example on the Left. read more...

Mon 26 Jul 2010 You down with FCP? This was one of the most talked-about features of fcp 7, but for some reason I didn’t start using it until recently. If you have a timeline with a gap in video and you would like to time scale (or speed change) a clip as it sits you have few options. What I had resorted to doing was cutting the clip, pasting it at the end of the timeline, speed remapping it, and then pasting it back into place. That is slow and irritating. If you try to remap it in place then frequently linked audio will force you to ripple the sequence. read more...

Mon 26 Jul 2010 FCP Daily You may have a project that requires many of the same type of graphics (ie title cards, lower thirds, etc). You could create them in Final Cut Pro, layering text and graphic elements, but if you’re got the know-how Motion is typically a much better way to go. I’ve seen many editors create a new Motion file for each of the graphics they need in their project. For large projects that can mean a ton of title card and lower third files. Well, if you’re using Final Cut Studio 2 there’s a much better alternative than creating all of these unique files. read more...

Thu 22 Jul 2010 ProVideo Coalition Colorista. It’s one of those indispensable tools for those doing serious Final Cut Pro work. If you’re color correcting and finishing in your FCP box then the built-in 3-Way Color Corrector becomes merely adequate in comparison to the image quality you can crank out of Colorista. And Colorista has always worked in your other host applications as well (Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Avid Media Composer) so that rounds out its usefulness. But one thing that has always been missing from Colorista is secondaries, something you’d often find yourself wishing for. read more...