• 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.

• 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.
• 
  

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.

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.

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.