final (cut) Berlin User Group

NAB proved to be a bonanza in Apple product releases.

We have a plethora of kick ass programs now available on the mac, in addition to the recent arrival of Smoke, Nuke & Co

Both Avid & Adobe showing there teeth with some serious updates to there programs.

Media Composer 5

http://www.avid.com/US/products/media-composer-software?intcmp=AV-HP-S2

Media Composer Cutting Edge LIVE from the NAB 2010 Show Floor from Avid on Vimeo.

Directly access and edit RED files through AMA, without transcoding (images are scaled to HD frame size)
Work natively with QuickTime video formats, including Apple ProRes and H.264
Edit video and audio by dragging and dropping elements in the timeline
Keep high-end finishing projects in-house and gain great color precision with HD-RGB support (including dual-link I/O support with Nitris DX systems)
Monitor video externally with support for the Matrox MXO2 Mini
Mix and match frame sizes and aspect ratios — in addition  formats, frame rates, and resolutions — in the same timeline
Take a break during long renders and have your system email you when the job’s done
Import AVCHD files directly from cameras and other devices
Capture to and edit XDCAM HD and DVC PRO HD formats from baseband without additional hardware
Access low-res XDCAM proxies for offline work, with full-quality audio
Import text-based ancillary data and embed it in the video signal with the new “Data Track” and SMPTE 436M support using Nitris DX- and Mojo DX-based systems
View stereo audio tracks as single channels in the timeline for easier handling
Create high-quality sounds and mixes with support for RTAS audio processing plug-ins
Natively access and edit 4:2:2 MPEG-2 media from the new Canon cameras using AMA

Also interesting in conjunction with Avid, Matrox!

The Matrox MXO2 Mini is the first 3rd party hardware monitoring support for Avid Media Composer.

http://www.matrox.com/video/en/press/releases/mxo2_mini_avid_nab2010/

Matrox® Video Products Group today announced a cost-effective HD monitoring solution for the newly launched Avid® Media Composer® V5 and NewsCutter® V9 editing systems.

An experiment in web browser editing.

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/NABrealtime/story/avids_web_based_editing_demo/

Adobe CS 5

The master colection looks pretty good for video folk.

http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/mastercollection/

Adobe & Avid are really throwing down the gauntlet and if that was not enough Black Magic are also bringing out a serious alternative to color! Lets hope that Apple steps up to the challenge.

A handy way of searching sound files for sound bites. eg. specific worked in a sound archive.

http://www.getphonetic.com/

Product Features

Quickly locate your media & import directly into your FCP projects or timeline
Search directly from your Mac’s Menu Bar
Automatically discover important media with watch folders
Save your frequently used searches and have ‘get’ tell you when you’ve got results, saving you even more time
Use multiple language packs for multi-lingual media

Phonetically Index & Search all your media

Huge advancement in Accuracy & Processing time compared with typical speech to text technology

This little one could radically change editors work flow!

Black Magic have also sent waves through the industry with the film restoration tools, audio monitors and high end color correction on a mac.

DaVinci Resolve on the Mac for $995. CRAZY! from PrepShootPost on Vimeo.

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/davinci/resolve/

Grade raw RED files in realtime!

DaVinci Resolve allows full unlimited grading of raw RED files in real time so you’re not limited by time consuming rendering before grading. DaVinci Resolve reads and browses files direct from your disk array, SAN or files captured from the video input. Choose from a huge range of file formats such as native DPX, CIN, QuickTime, DNxHD and native RED R3D in 4K with full de-bayer all in real time. You can even work with TIFF, JPEG, TGA and BMP and up to 16 channels of audio!

In the sound department. Although USB 3 could be a problem for mac owners!

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/ultrastudiopro/

UltraStudio Pro Key Features
10 bit 3 Gb/s SDI for capture and playback, supports both SD and HD.
10 bit HDMI 1.3 for capture and playback, supports both SD and HD.
10 bit analog component capture and playback, supports both SD and HD.
S-Video capture and playback, down converted when working in HD.
Composite capture and playback, down converted when working in HD.
Dedicated SD-SDI output for down converted SD output when in HD, or SD key channel out.
Hardware up, down cross converter selectable Letterbox, Anamorphic 16:9, center-cut SD and more.
Built in internal SD keying, or select to output both fill and key via SD/HD-SDI and SD-SDI outputs.
8 channels of SDI audio capture and playback in HD and SD.
2 channels of AES/EBU audio capture and playback with sample rate converter on input.
4 channels of XLR professional analog audio capture and playback.
Genlock/Tri-Sync reference input for locking to large systems.
RS-422 remote control for broadcast decks.
Includes 2 meter or 7 foot breakout cable.
Includes developer SDK for custom development.
USB 3.0 computer connection at 4.8 Gb/s speeds for maximum real time effects.
Includes Media Express software for real time capture and playback of media.
Real time effects in Adobe Premiere™ Pro, supports After Effects, Fusion, Photoshop and more.
Availability and Price
UltraStudio Pro will be available in late April for US$895 from Blackmagic Design resellers worldwide.

The big news is that DaVinci, now owned by Black Magic are bringing out a Mac Software version of Resolve from DaVinci for a $995!

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/davinci/revival/

This should work with for devices from tangent.

The Wave panel was shown running with Resolve on the Blackmagic booth at NAB

http://www.tangentdevices.co.uk/products_wave.asp

Also The Wave is now supported by CineForm’s First Light application that is included with Neo4K and Neo3D on both Windows and Mac.

http://www.tangentdevices.co.uk/news.asp#cineform

A link for an innovative little digital super 16mm camera!

http://www.ikonoskop.com/dii/

Flanders Scientific Monitors for sheer bang for buck.

Flanders Scientific, Inc. 17″ Multi-Format LCD Monitor (Grade 1) with SD/HD-SDI, Component, Composite, & DVI-I Inputs. Includes Basic Desktop Stand & Basic Rack Mount Ears.

http://www.flandersscientific.com/

(Header Photo : Las Vegas Skyline : courtsey of Bert K)

The big news is the new Adobe Creative Suite 5 is to be released on April the 12th.

Register for the launch here

http://cs5launch.adobe.com/

What hard kind of hardware do you need

http://www.adobe.com/products/

The hype is about sheer power and harnessing, GPU & CPUs power in a 64 bit environment!  you need a NVIDA Mercury graphics card.

And the truth about the Mercury Myth is here

http://provideocoalition.com/

They also have a Beta version of screen writing software called Story.

https://story.adobe.com/#o

The idea being to link in with their  speech recognition software!

And the truth about the Mercury Myth is here

http://provideocoalition.com

Speaking of speed the truth about Final Cut 6 versus Final Cut 7

http://barefeats.com/fcp7.html

Plenty of new SLRs from Cannon with cool codecs. For example.

http://prolost.com/blog/2010/2/8/

And an interesting new Cannon video camera in the works

http://thetechnofile.com/2010/02/20/

A very cool Blog not related directly to editing but great all the same

The name of this particular post says it all. Some Users Want Terrible User Interfaces

http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2010/03/25/

Also a nice link for an interesting new interface idea for an iPad world!

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/

Color Correction. How doing the same stuff in different programs produces very different results!

http://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2010/03/13/

And last but by no means least. Here is a really nice Motion work around from Motion Guru Patrick Sheffield the author of a new book How to Cheat in Motion. Get to adjust more stuff in your Motion Master Templates!

http://provideocoalition.com/

New ways of interacting with programs

A little bit like in minority report

http://singularityhub.com/2010/02/17/minority-report-interface-is-real-hitting-mainstream-soon-video/

New Apperture

http://www.apple.com/aperture/

200 new features here

http://www.apple.com/aperture/features/

Tale of Caution here from veteran Mike Curtis from HD for Indies and the ProVideo Coalition

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/mcurtis/story/on_iphoto_to_aperture_3_migration_and_new_hard_drives/

New plugins for FCP from Sheffield Software

http://www.sheffieldsoftworks.com/

Reconnection Dance

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/ssimmons/story/final_cut_pros_achilles_heel_or_how_i_hate_the_reconnection_dance/

http://www.buttonpusher.tv/2008/10/27/avoiding-fcp-reconnecting-an-option-i-use/

An affordable color correction interface?

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/ssimmons/story/first_impressions_of_the_euphonix_mc_color/

Speaking of Color and color correction

http://prolost.com/blog/2010/2/15/memory-colors.html/

Camera Stuff

http://www.hocusproducts.com/index.php

And last but by no means least, been there done that

The Whoosh

Workflows for Final Cut Studio & Final Cut Server.

http://documentation.apple.com/en/finalcutstudio/workflows/

Summarizes the overall post-production process

and explains how the various applications in Final Cut Studio fit into it

final BUG : Post News : Links

Here is another random list of software links

Expanding the capabilities of FCS

Better text crawl for Final Cut Pro

http://vimeo.com/alex4d

And Alex4d´s site

http://alex4d.wordpress.com/finalcut/

Lock & Load

Core Melts alternative to Apples Smoothcam

http://www.coremelt.com/products/lock-and-load

Final Cut Blue Ray Templates from FCP Guru Kevin Monahan.

http://www.fcpworld.com/

Color Correct Skin tones with Magic Bullet Mojo

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/categories/color-correction/mojo/

Get the look of sci-fi holograms with Red Giant Holomatrix

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/new-releases/holomatrix/

Or for the animated look, stylized looks with easy presets, and faster output in v2

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/new-releases/toonit/

3D text i FCP & Motion from Zaxwerks

http://zaxwerks.com/proanimator/index.shtml

Tools for FCP from the Foundry maker of Nuke!

Furnace & Keylight

Keylight is an extremely capable blue/green screen keyer,

Whilst Furnace provides high-end tools for editors and compositors

http://www.thefoundry.co.uk

Smoke from Autodesk is now available on the Mac

There is a demo version which should help to bring Smoke to more people.

http://usa.autodesk.com

The usual discussions are brewing in the forums e.g.

“You have to know how you want the project to look,

know techniques to achieve the desired look,

and then how to get your software to do it: in that order.

Don’t be scared Smoke artists.”

And last but by no means least a Motion Tip

Changing the Color of LiveFonts in Motion from Motion Guru Mark Spencer.

http://provideocoalition.com

General Stuff Related to FCP

Probably the best tech Blog out there for post geekery

http://provideocoalition.com/

Great solutions for FCP

http://www.digital-heaven.co.uk/

Great address for Motion templates also a great BLOG

http://www.motionvfx.com/

Dont forget the holy grail for Final Cut Studio Heads

http://www.lafcpug.org/

Specific Software : Video

Kicking off with stop motion software

http://www.boinx.com/istopmotion/overview/

Converting stuff one of the best freewares  out there

http://www.squared5.com/

Simple Alternative to photoshop

http://www.pixelmator.com/

And last but by no means least FCS

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/finalcutpro/

Specific Software : Web

for simple static site

http://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/

web tools

http://www.rapidweavercentral.net/software/software.php

interesting community software

http://elgg.org/

http://www.joomla.org/

Geeky web stuff

for more complex deployment and development

http://versionsapp.com/

might just need

http://developer.apple.com/technology/

and for good measure

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Specific Software : Plan

Mind mapping bliss with Omni graffle

http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnigraffle/

Omni Graffle link heaven

http://katewalser.com/omnigraffle/

Omni Plan

http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniplan/

Hardware

Hardware laptops now with Matt!

http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MC118LL/A?mco=MTM3NDcyODk

AJA turning heads with the Ki Pro

http://www.aja.com/products/acquire/

profesional drives save tears

http://www.promax.com/

http://www.g-technology.com/

http://www.sonnettech.com/index.html

Color Corection Controler price break through

http://www.euphonix.com/artist/products/mc_color/

Some thing completly different….;-)

Avid

http://the_basics_of_avid_media_composer_for_a_final_cut_pro_editor/

At the last meeting we had a brief look at Conduit for FCP. In particular the question was addressed why use a nodal effects editor plugin for FCP in the first place.

Specifically there is a plugin for FCP called Conduit which allows editors to work with nodes inside FCP.

FCP so great as it is, is primarily an editing program. As editing programs goes one of it´s strengths is that it´s actually has powerful relatively easy tools to use for apply effects! However as soon as one starts apply multiple effects to multiple clips things get clumsy very fast!

Nodes are nothing new. They can be found in high end effects programs like shake. One can think of them as being a graphical representation for different effects. Activate the node and tweak its effect in a parameter window.

Conduit has a Node Editor which is opened in much the same way that one opens the graphical view for the three way colour corrector.

To apply the conduit filter. Either select the clip in question and apply the filter using the standard menu in FCP, Filters, effects, dvGarage and Conduit or dragging the filter directly from the effects tab in the Browser to the clip. Needless to say one needs to download and install the plugin in order to be able to select it!

The filter has initially no effect. It just sits there on the clip. Like all filters it can be opened in the viewer per double click on the clip in the timeline. Back in the viewer the filters tab is selected and the conduit filter appears.

The first thing we notice is that we have wells for different images and different layers in our composite.

Again this is not completely alien. A similar idea to be found in standard transitions and filters in FCP, e.g. page peel.

These wells are used to feed additional information into the current composition, One can select a colour. Or make a composite from several images. Images can be dragged from the browser directly into a well or colours selected using a colour wheel or pipet. This is basically where the raw material for the composite are first collected and arranged for use in the Conduit Editor.

(More about this later in the Inputs section below)

Having arranged the elements for the composite it´s time to press the Show Conduit Editor button at the top of the Conduit filter in the viewer, filters Tab.

The Conduit Editor has 5 areas

1.) The Node Bank

Could be thought of as being the machine room of the plugin. It alphabetically displays the nodes available. Click on a Node in the Node Library to see a hint for what it does. The hint appears directly below the filters library.

2.) The top tool bar is used mainly to determine how one views Nodes in the Node library. It is possible to see all nodes together or one can sort nodes according to categories. The Undo button is also here. And last but by no means least there are options to save / open groups of nodes! Which basically means that you can build up a copy and paste library of composites which can be applied to a variety of clips. Past, present and future!

3.) Parameters selector

Having added a Node it usually needs to be altered or tweaked. First off one has to select the Node in question in the editor. Which is found directly to the right of the Node library. The corresponding parameters appear on the left hand side of the editor, directly below the Node library and Parameter hints. There are two further buttons which influence how the parameters are displayed. They are called Live and Hover.

(See Live and Hover options below in the Lower Tool Bar section.)

4.) The Composition pane.

If the Node Bank is the Machine Room this is basically the command room. This is where the elements are arranged and linked (wired), input Node(s) and effects are applied, filter Node(s) which trickle down to the Output Node.

This is also the point at which it gets rather difficult to explain what´s actually going on. In a nutshell it´s possible to effect different elements separately or simultaneously or both depending on how the nodes are wired.

In it´s most basic form there is always an input and output node as default in the composition view.

The Input Node(s) determines what clip is used as source material. This is where those wells come in handy.

(see additional information for Composition above)

By default the Input Node is driven by source clip but this can change in parameters tab.

Needless to say it´s possible to have several inputs be they clips, photos or mattes. i.e. pick and mix from our pre selection raw material.

(see the Introduction to Nodes section above)

The Output Node is used to get data out of the composition. This is the end result of our work in Conduit.

From a Conduit perspective when one leaves the Conduit Editor and looks at the corresponding clip in the timeline this is the Output.

Nodes are applied to a clip using a tree like structure.

Between the Input and Output Node one can apply an infinite number of Filter Nodes in an infinite variety of ways.

Working with the Nodes is worthy of an Article in and of it´s self. But as already emphasized flexibility is the key word here.

5.) Lower Toolbar

Used to switch between different channels R/G/B or Alpha

Also contains two important buttons: Live and Hover

When the live button is checked one sees only to current level in tree structure (another advantage of nodes!)

When live is not checked one sees the Output no matter which Node is currently selected and being tweaked!

This function is over written by double clicking on a Node.

Hover means just that. If checked, parameters are automatically displayed when the mouse hovers over a particular Node!

So why bother? Why work with nodes in the first place?

With a built in Node Editor such as Conduit one doesn´t have too laboriously open one clip after another which make up a composite.

A simple example. I recently applied a traveling matt to a clip. All well and good until the director decided that she wanted a colour correction as well.

So I was faced with a choice. Either applying the same colour correction twice. Both to the clip itself and to the matt. Or I could nest the clip and the Matt and apply the colour correction to the nested clip.

I took the nested sequence option. Several last minute changes needed to be made to the clip and the Matt and I had to repeatedly open my nested sequence and re nest it. Apart from being cumbersome, nested sequences in FCP have been known to behave irrationally and are not an editors best friend.

Alternatively having not nested the clips a colour correction change for the clip would have to be applied separately to the traveling Matt. And thus tweaked separately. All in all, clumsy!

Conduit makes this all much more intuitive and easier to see what your doing. Apply a filter to several elements simultaneously and change the parameters simultaneously.

Simple building blocks can be combined to give infinite possibilities. This opens up a whole new way of working for the Non Linear Editor!

http://dvgarage.com/prod/prod.php?prod=conduit15

Demo version and plenty of tutorials available.

Further information can be found at the Blog below.

http://www.lacquer.fi/blog/

There is also a Conduit support forum.

http://forums.dvgarage.com/

Finally beware there are know issues with FCP 5.1.3!

I´m a self confessed marker fetishist.

Press M to set marker.
Press M a second time to label marker.
Press tab to enter comment.
Press tab 3 times and enter to close marker dialogue.

So what you going to do when you´ve got lots of angles of the same action. For example 9 angles!
You´re going to set markers for the first angle and then copy them into the other angles, right?
Wrong! You can´t copy markers in FCP.

Time for some reverse engineering!

It is possible to copy content from one clip into another.

So the logic broken down is set the markers for one clip, name and describe as required.

Then make a copy of this clip with all those lovely markers and then paste the content of another angle from the same scene into the copy of the clip with the markers!

So once again. The object of the exercise is to paste the content from the unmarked clip into the marked clip. Because we can´t copy markers in FCP. That simple!

Here it is step for step.

A.) UNMARKED CLIP

Select the unmarked clip.
Open in viewer with double click.
Overwrite into an empty timeline.
Press MEDIA START key, to jump to beginning.
Press COMAND A and then COMAND C to copy clip.
i.e. we´re simply copying all attributes of the clip.
including incidentally content!

B.) CLIP WITH MARKERS

Select the clip with those lovely markers.
Open in viewer with a double click.
Overwrite into timeline.
Press ALT and V to paste attributes.
select VIDEO and AUDIO CONTENT and click OK.
COMAND 9 and rename clip and drag back into Browser.

There will be a little arrow to the left of the clip in the browser indicating that it contains markers.
It´s then possible to navigate through the clip as usual.

shift and M to jump to next marker
Alt and M to jump to previous marker

Or whilst in the browser, you can even click on that arrow to the left of you´re now marked clip to reveal the individual markers as a list.

Having done this it´s possible to click on the marker and drag it into the viewer.
Thus opening the section of the clip from the dragged marker to the next marker!

Repeat the process for the different angles of the same scene.

I am fortunately working with clips with the same length which come with the Film School in a Box which I have now received! (see previous post)

work around inspired by a thread over at the LAFCPUG forum. Thanks guys.

http://www.lafcpug.org/phorum/read.php?1,160647,160899#msg-160899