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A Facebook Conversation on Tapeless Media

Growing out of a topic originally posted on our Facebook page, this article serves as a summary of our subscribers’ biggest challenges with the industry’s reliance on tapeless video.

Locking A QuickTime Movie

A subscriber, William Aleman, writes in with a valuable tip on the feature that successfully locks QuickTime movies from being downloaded or saved by the visitors on the Internet.

FCP 7: Audio Master Gain and Audio Transitions

Two excellent questions by an editor/subscriber, L. Blake Baldwin, involving why the Master Gain defaults to .51, and also when to use a +3dB audio transition instead of a dB audio transition. We examine and answer both.

FCP 7: Aspect Ratio Conversion from 4:3 to 16:9 

In this article we give a quick examination of how to upsize an original 4:3 sequence into a 16:9 timeline.

Keyboard Shortcut: Targeting Tracks

In this article we discuss the limitations of using the keyboard to target audio track numbering above 9, and the keyboard shortcut for the lower track numbers is demonstrated.

Keyboard Shortcut: Transition Tricks

A clever trick for working around Final Cut’s resetting of transitions is supplied by subscriber, Richard Day, using a temporarily set up dummy edit.

FCP 7: Making Short Audio Edits

An editor’s interest in “cleaning up” some audio clips is a joy to answer, and very useful info to have.

Improving Export Image Quality

Experiencing a problem exporting a sequence as a mov and finding that the quality of the QuickTime is soft, a subscriber is referred by Larry to a previous article and walked through an easy QuickTime7 solution.

FCP 7: Choosing Codecs: Animation vs. ProRes

Larry weighs in on the issue of selecting between the Animation codec and ProRes 4444, following a subscriber’s question regarding importing files into Final Cut.

A Question on Timecode

The reason that drop frame timecode was invented was because non-drop did not properly indicate running time. And as one subscriber has discovered, there is a difference in running time between DF and NDF material.

Creating A Stereoscopic 3D Effect In Motion

In addressing a subscriber’s question we look at what makes 3D work, what’s required to best create the desired effect in Motion and what makes them difficult.

Technical Definition: Stuff 

A quick, comprehensive definition of one of the most commonly misunderstood terms in our industry.

Hardware Review: iStoragePro Tower 8 RAID

Here’s a product review of the iStoragePro; a RAID with a rocket attached to it.

Thoughts on A New Way to Do Green-Screen Graphics

While at the Director’s Guild of America’s “Digital Day,” I was impressed by a fabulous presentation given by Scott Billups called, “Zero Post.” In this article we’ll take a look at this process and the great opportunity it offers us.

Running Compressor From The Command Line

A subscriber and previous contributor returns with another great tip about operating the Compressor from the command line and advises to limit the number of your batches to a few hundred compressions.

Conforming Video

Formats like HDV and XDCAM are compressed using MPEG-2 which is very hard to edit accurately. So, Final Cut Pro converts it invisibly in a process called “conforming”.

Thoughts on 3D Video

Here are a series of thoughts I jotted down during the presentations at DGA Digital Day, specifically during a long session devoted to 3D video.

Tech Note: Computer Monitor Flashes Black

In this note we look at a hard-learned lesson regarding the perils of adding extension cables to Mini-DisplayPort cables.

Working with Mixed Media

In answering a subscriber’s questions regarding working with three different formats we examine issues like selecting the best codec to use, converting frame rates, and more.

Faster SmoothCam Smoothing

In this article we examine how SmoothCam is processor-dependent, faster computers working this program more quickly, and recommend a couple of options to speed up the process without upgrading your system.