Join Apple Certified Trainer Richard Harrington as he explains how to harness Soundtrack Pro to clean up audio from your Final Cut Pro projects.



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Maybe you’re lucky and you have a huge 42TB Xsan set up for central storage in your facility—besides being technically really cool, we’re super jealous! Xsan and other Storage Area Networks (SANs) are a perfect way to share media files and project files.

One area that can quickly get people into trouble is opening a single project file at the same time on different machines. Perhaps no other Final Cut Pro-related Xsan issue causes more corruptions, headaches and lost work.

The fix is simple. DO NOT open the same project file on multiple machines at the same time. Of course there are times you will want to open the project file at the same time, so here are a couple of ways to get around the issue.

• Duplicate the project file and label it with a suffix like for _bob_72207 where Bob is the person getting the file and the numbers are the date.
• If you don’t like duplicating project files (to prevent clutter) make sure that you ask others on the SAN before opening. An easy way to do this is by using iChat and enabling Bonjour messaging. That way everyone can talk without having to leave their edit suite/office and it doesn’t require they have an AIM or .Mac account.

Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

The website ArsTechinca has posted an in depth review of Leopard (a full 17 pages, in fact). The review takes a very deep look at the new features and the core technology. Of interest to designers is the effect Leopard will have on Adobe and future developments for 64-bit computing.

If you are a Mac user, take the time and give it a read. You'll learn a lot about some of the less obvious changes.

I just had a great time at the New York Post|Production conference. For three days media pros gathered in New York movie house for the latest in digital media tools. I had the opportunity to teach a lot of new classes as well as show some of my favorite techniques. Here's the notes and a few demo files to play with.

01 Photoshop CS3 for Motion Graphics and Video | Book | DVD Available
02 Apple and Adobe – A Great Toolbox | Project X | Resizer Template
03 Beat the AE Render Queue
04 Media Management in Final Cut Pro | DVD Available
05 How to Sell Podcasting Services to Your Clients
06 Things You Might Not Know About After Effects CS3 | Puppet Tool Files | Vanishing Point Files
07 Multicam Editing Strategies in Final Cut Pro
08 Field Production Strategies for Video Podcasting
09 Creating a Graphical Identity for Your Video Podcasts (enhanced PDF)
10 Motion Control 3D | Demo Files | VPE Demo
11 Advanced Color Correction in Final Cut Pro | DVD Available

Join Apple Certified Trainer Abba Shapiro as he shows you to use Compressor to compress a single file to multiple distribution formats like CD and the web.



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Just dropping a bunch of cameras at a location will not give you great coverage. Successful directors know they must plan out their shots to map out coverage. Here are a few important things to make sure of:

• Map Out Coverage: What sort of angles do you need? A two-person interview looks great with three cameras but a concert event might need eight cameras to capture the experience.
• Use a Floor Plan: You’ll need to create a floor plan for your shoot that identifies talent and camera positions. Be sure to plan this out ahead of time and distribute to all of your crew.

• Plan for Lighting: Camera coverage will have a HUGE impact on your lighting strategies. Try to avoid lights getting too far behind cameras and operators; otherwise, you’ll get unwanted shadows on the set.
• Make Sure You Have Enough Power: Eight cameras plus a three-ton grip truck’s worth of lights can put a big drain on a circuit. Make sure you have identified where your power is coming from and that you have enough extension cords/stingers to get you the needed juice.

Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

Join Apple Certified Trainer Chris Phrommayon as he explains how to use asymmetrical trimming in Final Cut Pro to create overlaps in your edits.



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Sure your Timeline had lots of red segments, but why? Have you been neglecting your machine? Did your tower get jealous when you took the laptop home with you? It’s hard to really know why an effect needs to render and what is blocking real-time performance.

Or at least it used to be hard. Final Cut Pro 6 is a lot more willing to share. As long as you have Tooltips active (see your User Preferences) you can better tell what’s going on. Just roll your cursor over a red segment and hover. Render status bars now provide detailed Tooltips as to why a segment with red render status bars can’t play back in real-
time.

Now, if we could just use the same trick to figure out why our kids and spouses get mad sometimes.

Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

So, we've recently taken the P2 plunge at my company. These are the cards that are used in Panasonic’s HD cameras that allow you to record high-def video without needing tape. While the cards are great, it is a little hard to load the footage into the newer mac laptops. That's because the cards are shaped like the old PCMIA cards... and new modern laptops have switched to using the ExpressCard format.

Enter this useful device from Duel Systems.

”The DuelAdapter™ seamlessly converts input from PCMCIA cards designed for cellular broadband, wireless networking, video, audio and memory expansion to an ExpressCard compatible format. Data can be transferred at rates up to the full speed supported by the ExpressCard interface — five times faster than USB 2.0! The DuelAdapter is easy to set up — just install the driver, insert the adapter into your notebook’s ExpressCard slot and plug your PCMCIA card into the adapter.”

The product IS mac compatible... but I have yet to test it... We plan on ordering ours soon though.... so a detailed report to follow.

Join Apple Certified Trainer Abba Shapiro as he shows you how to break up your tracks into chapters and sub-chapters using DVD Studio Pro.



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If you’re using glows, drop shadows, or soft edges, you’ll likely have a soft edge in your alpha channel. To get the best key possible, you want a clean glow or shadow. But this is difficult if you don’t dig deeper into your import graphic settings.

By default, Adobe Photoshop creates a premultiplied alpha channel (an alpha channel that follows the edge exactly). This causes problems, however, because the background color will be visible around the edges of your graphic. If you do nothing, this will be a problem, because your glows will look “dirty,” and partially transparent drop shadows will come through too strong.

In Final Cut Pro, it’s important to identify what the graphic was on top of when the alpha channel was created. If you had a black background, choose Black. If you had a white background or the transparency grid, choose White.

Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

Join Apple Certified Trainer Richard Harrington as he goes deeper into color correction in Final Cut Pro, and shows you how to use secondary color correction to isolate and modify certain areas of your video.



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Your narration for your 30-second spot runs 32 seconds. No matter how you slice and dice it, you can’t cut out one frame. Don’t worry, Soundtrack Pro can help out.

1. Send the narration file to Soundtrack Pro.
2. Accurately select the region that needs to be retimed.
3. Choose Process > Time Stretch.
4. Change the Length of selection to measure in Seconds.
5. Enter a new duration for the audio and click OK.
6. Soundtrack Pro retimes the audio and attempts to keep the pitch identical to the original.
7. Close and save the project to return the audio to Final Cut Pro.
   

Note: This works great for picking up a little speed. But you can’t force fit a :30 script into a :15 spot. Have reasonable expectations.

Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

Have an iDisk? They are a useful part of a .mac account that allow you to store and backup files to an Internet hard drive. If you use an iDisk with clients, it can get a little tricky for clients to figure out how to access your iDisk using Apple's iDisk utility. An easier way is through a web browser. Just have your client type http://idisk.mac.com/your iDisk name and they'll be connected.