August 2011
1 post
Going from Avid to Premiere: all the quirks that...
So I have this small project to do, basically as a favor to a friend. I decided to do it in Avid, since I have access to one for the time being and I need the practice badly. It’s really not much; my friend has about six hours of DV footage, shot a panel-type event. He wants it cut down to highlight reels. Easy.
Except he also wants a few artsy-fartsy things done to it. Lower thirds,...
July 2011
1 post
How to be a cool company, and also something...
Autodesk Smoke costs seventeen thousand dollars.
Let me say that again, because I suspect it might not have sunk in the first time: Autodesk Smoke costs seventeen thousand dollars.
And that’s just for the software. That’s not counting the beefy-ass Mac Pro with the superfast RAIDs and the Kona board and the broadcast monitor and all that. Once you figure in the hardware, a Smoke...
June 2011
8 posts
The FCP X FAQ, that petition, and what should have...
So as everyone knows, Apple put some “Answers to your Final Cut Pro X questions” on their site this morning. And, well, to be honest it’s kind of insulting.
I don’t want to do a point-by-point here. It’s unnecessary and tiresome. Instead, I want to focus on just one thing. This is taken verbatim from Apple’s page:
Does Final Cut Pro X support external...
A story as yet untold
I’m going to let you guys in on a little secret.
On Sunday, after spending a week on-and-off with Final Cut Pro X and pretty deep in a funk about it, I made a little thing. I did it because I was inspired in a small way, but I also did it because I had a copy of Adobe Premiere Pro CS 5.5 here, and I wanted to try it out.
The next day, yesterday, I wrote up some unstructured first...
Letter to Apple regarding ongoing support for...
Dear Valued Vendor:
The broadcast and film post-production industry has a long history of commitment to Apple’s commitment to Final Cut Pro. However, Apple’s commitment to Final Cut Pro is changing, and so our commitment to Apple’s commitment must change with it.
This letter announces our intention to transition our support for Apple’s support for Final Cut Pro to...
Impressions of Premiere
So last night I made a little thing which has apparently been watched by 11,000 people in the past ten hours. I know. I’m just as baffled as you are.
Anyway. There’s a little note on the Vimeo page that you may or may not have noticed, saying I put that together with Adobe Premiere 5.5. Which is true. It was a learning exercise. I’d never launched the program before, much less...
FCP 8: What could have been
I was going to do a “here’s what it’s like to fine-edit in FCP X” thing, but I’m not going to bother. Continuing on from what I started yesterday I spent about fifteen minutes just kinda listlessly dicking around before realizing why I had no motivation: There’s no point. I already know I can’t get anything out of FCP X other than a QuickTime — and frankly...
Assembly editing in FCP X
Art Guglielmo has already said quite a lot about editing with Final Cut Pro X, and said it so well that writing this feels entirely redundant. But I’m going to do it anyway, because why not. I have an opinion and an Internet connection and that makes me important.
Read Art’s thing first, though, as it’s surely better than the meager pittance that follows.
Yesterday I spent...
Project management in FCP X: No. Just no.
On paper, project and media management in FCP X seem pretty damn cool. In practice, they’re just terrible. Just terrible.
Let’s start with a purely imaginary, contrived scenario. Say you have an edit system that consists of a MacBook Pro and an attached FireWire drive for your media. (That’s what I’m actually using right now, is why I say that. But the principles apply to...
What went wrong with Final Cut Pro X
We don’t use ink to express our opinions any more, which is a shame. If we did, I could start this out by talking about the ocean of ink that’s been spilled on Final Cut Pro X over the past couple of days, and how hardly a drop of it has been positive, and how Apple deserves every last speck and spatter of it.
I spent my morning trying out Final Cut Pro X. And I just … I’m...