Photoshop for Video featured on Planet Photoshop
Monday, April 21, 2008 Filed in: Adobe
“This week I recommend Photoshop for Video by Richard Harrington. This book covers the information you need to implement Photoshop into your video workflow. It covers using channels effectively, setting up automation, creating interesting effects, and much more. If you want to get a better handle on working with Photoshop in your video workflow then this is the book for you. Richard is an Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop and After Effects and is an instructor at major events like Photoshop World and NAB. His visual communications consultancy, RHED Pixel, creates motion graphics and produces video and multimedia projects. Richard also has a blog at RasterVector.com and another at PhotoshopForVideo.com.”
Be sure to check out the rest of the site for a ton of great tutorials and video tips.
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Get the Adobe Media Player Now!
Sunday, April 20, 2008 Filed in: Adobe
This is an
excerpt from an article to be released in full
later this week:
Adobe released
the Adobe Media Player
software on April
9, which allows a customizable, cross-platform
media player experience. Built using as an Adobe
Air application, the media player harnessed the
power of Flash to create a rich media
experience. To complete the experience, Adobe
adds support for both RSS feeds and H.264 video,
two of the open standards used by the podcasting
movement.
What does this all mean? I had a chance to sit down with Deeje Cooley, who serves as the evangelist for Adobe’s Dynamic Media Organization (and formerly as the product manager for the Adobe Media Player). Cooley was tasked with bringing the product to market and he shared insight into Adobe’s motivation for the product and goals for its role in the market. Unlike competing products, the Adobe Media Player has chosen to focus on being a video-only player.
“The growth of
video online, the dramatic growth of flash as the
video delivery mechanism of choice… there was a
ripe opportunity to take advantage of all these
events around the industry,” said Cooley. “We
started to build an RSS aggregator and quickly
recognized that video was going to be a significant
media online and so it became a video RSS
aggregator. And so that’s really the birth of the
Adobe Media Player.”
The Adobe Media Player is immediately available as a free download for Windows and Macintosh platforms from http://www.adobe.com/go/mp.
What does this all mean? I had a chance to sit down with Deeje Cooley, who serves as the evangelist for Adobe’s Dynamic Media Organization (and formerly as the product manager for the Adobe Media Player). Cooley was tasked with bringing the product to market and he shared insight into Adobe’s motivation for the product and goals for its role in the market. Unlike competing products, the Adobe Media Player has chosen to focus on being a video-only player.
The Adobe Media Player is immediately available as a free download for Windows and Macintosh platforms from http://www.adobe.com/go/mp.
Quiet Down! Reducing Noise in Your Clip
Tuesday, April 15, 2008 Filed in: Weekly Tip
- Select a clip
in your Final Cut Pro Timeline.
2 Right-click and choose Send To > Soundtrack Pro Audio Project File. The audio moves from your Timeline into Soundtrack Pro. - Zoom into a
part of your audio file that contains just the
background noise that you’d like to remove.
Select the audio in the Soundtrack Pro Timeline.
4 Choose Process > Noise Reduction > Set Noise Print. The noise print identifies the frequencies that you’d like to remove from the file. - Select the
audio in the Timeline that you’d like to repair
(this will usually be the entire Timeline).
6 Choose Process > Noise Reduction > Reduce Noise. The Reduce Noise dialog appears. - Click the
Preview button (play icon) to hear the noise
reduction previewed.
8 Drag the Noise Threshold slider left to lower the threshold, or drag it right to raise the threshold. - Drag the
Reduction slider to the right to increase the
amount of noise reduction.
10 Use the Tone Control slider left to preserve more of the bass or treble content. - To toggle a
before and after state, click the Bypass button.
12 When satisfied, click the Apply button.
Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.
Final Cut Help - Getting Started with Motion
Tuesday, April 15, 2008 Filed in: Podcast
CDs Get Converted
Tuesday, April 08, 2008 Filed in: Weekly Tip
We all know music CDs are recorded at a sampling rate of 44.1kHz. Final Cut Pro and digital video love to work at a sampling rate of 48kHz. Yes, we know Final Cut Pro can up-sample on the fly, but why waste CPU power that could be going to your real-time video playback?
Here’s all you need to do:
- Open iTunes.
2 Open Preferences under the Edit menu. - Click the Advanced icon in the toolbar then choose Importing.
- Under Import
Using, select AIFF Encoder.
5 Under Setting, select Custom. - Another dialog
box opens. Here, select a sample rate of 48.000
kHz. Click OK and then OK again.
7 Now click the General button. - Under iTunes
Music Folder Location, change it to target your
desktop. (This will make it real easy to find and
move your newly ripped tracks.)
9 Pop in your CD. If you’re connected to the Internet, iTunes will go to the CDDB and grab the album name and track names. (Yes, it seem as if most of our library music is listed in the CDDB.) This is great because most of the work is done. Create a playlist of all the tracks you want to rip. - Click Import,
and you’re done!
Once you’ve set up your preferences, just “rip and roll” every time you need to grab a music cut. Fast, easy, elegant…and of course…cool.
Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.
Final Cut Help - DVD Studio Pro: Creating a Title Screen
Tuesday, April 08, 2008 Filed in: Podcast
Aperture Book – Now with 2.1 Updates
Tuesday, April 08, 2008 Filed in: Apple
- Dodge & Burn Plug-in – This plug-in offers much more than just Dodge and Burn. You'll also find brush-based tools for Contrast, Saturation, Sharpen Fade, and Blur. The plug-in also opens the door to third-party development (including some cool tools from nik Software.
- Customize Default Adjustment Set – You can now specify which adjustments appear by default in the Adjustments Inspector/HUD.
- Updated Crop Tool – The crop tool has been simplified. The new UI makes it easier to preserve an image's original aspect ratio, match the aspect ratio of your display, or use one of the standard preset aspect ratios.
- Flip Images – You can now flip or flop images horizontally or vertically within Aperture.
- Save Books as JPEG or TIFF images – This means you can now submit books to several third party websites.
The book will be out very soon... you can order it here.
Apple TV Rocks
Saturday, April 05, 2008 Filed in: Apple
- The HD Rentals work great and look on par with Blu-ray
- Movies are affordable, priced between $2.99 and $4.99
- Downloads start to play in less than 5 minutes
- I can watch podcasts on the big screen (it's weird to watch yourself in HD)
- Accessing music, movies, and photos from any computer in the house is near instant
- The device is easy to hook up
- My three-year old can figure it out
- YouTube's expected switch to bigger image size will be great
Don't Use Auto White Balance
Here's what I like:
- Lightweight and single-card format.
- Light Gray, certified to recommended Luminance
- Includes Black and White Spots
- Focus and Sharpness targets
- Sturdy and Easy to Pack (it even floats)
- Affordable
A Little Louder Please…
Tuesday, April 01, 2008 Filed in: Weekly Tip
Need to tweak the mix a little? You can quickly change the volume of a highlighted track from the keyboard. Use the following keyboard combinations to perfect the mix:
- Gain –3db Control [
- Gain –1db Control –
- Gain +1db Control +
- Gain +3db
Control ]
Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.
Final Cut Help - Media Organization: Setting Up Final Cut Pro
Tuesday, April 01, 2008 Filed in: Podcast