Final Cut Studio

Using Compressor for VMX downloads

Matt Goudey VCAM — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 08:54:41 -0500

For any of you who are not on the VMX setup yet, you can still download programs using the Pando application (freeware) and convert them to whatever format you like using Apple Compressor, a program that comes with the Final Cut Studio suite. If you want to know how, post a reply to this and I will upload a video tutorial.

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Final Cut Tip o' the Day 6/4 - Long render times...?

Matt Goudey VCAM — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 08:24:34 -0500

When adding text to your video, keep in mind that bitmap (pixel-based) images take less time to render than vector (mathematically-based) graphics.
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So what does this mean for you? If you create your graphics in FCP using the text tool, don't render the sequence with that text element in the timeline. Instead, make a Freeze Frame (shift-n) of the text and place that in the timeline.
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This works best for lower thirds and static text. If you need a scroll, using a photoshop text file with an alpha (transparent) channel is best, and then keyframe the center in the motion tab.
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another note: changing the center in the motion tab requires less rendering than moving the location of the clip using the wireframe.
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There are a lot of things you can do to speed up render time by using different file types. Also, if you graphic images in your timeline, use some type of graphic converter, be it Photoshop or Preview (on the Mac) or whatever, to scale your photos to 720x534 before you place them in the timeline. Scaling pics in FCP takes a lot of power and render time as well as hard drive space.

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Final Cut Tip o' the Day 6/3 – Photoshop & FCP

Matt Goudey VCAM — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 09:49:15 -0500

Did you know that when you import a Photoshop project into FCP, Final Cut recognizes the layers? It will import the PS document as an individual sequence in FCP. Then you can animate the individual layers if necessary. If you want to make changes to the PS document, righ click on the document in the browser and choose "open in editor". (You may have to set the preferences to select PS as the editor for still images.)

Here is the key. FCP will not import Photoshop effects. So, if you want a drop shadow, you'll have to do that in FCP.

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DVD Studio Pro Tip o' the Day 5/30 - Quick DVD

Matt Goudey VCAM — Fri, 30 May 2008 09:47:39 -0500

It's fairly easy to create a DVD from your original file from Final Cut. Here are a few options, along with a movie if you want a slightly more custom DVD.
When done with your Final Cut video, choose File/Export/Export Quicktime Movie and deselect Make Movie Self Contained(Very important step). Then, open DVD Studio Pro, and drag your Quicktime Movie into the Assets pane at the bottom of your GUI (Graphic User Interface...) and it will either start to compress immediately or it will compress when you burn the DVD. Those settings are in the preferences, but are not important right now.
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Next, click in the Graphical area (has the blue menu and the green track nodes) and click the Blue menu, then delete it. Then, right click on the Green track node and select First Play from the contextual menu.
That's it. This DVD will burn, with no play button, but you will be able to press play on the DVD remote and it will start your movie. When it is done, it will go back to the gray screen and you will need to press play again to start it.
If you want it to loop, you can connect the track's End Jump to itself and it will loop until you stop it.
For a slightly more complex version, try this:
click here for movie
Hope this helps.

Final Cut Studio

Final Cut Tip o' the Day 5/28 - Quick transitions

Matt Goudey VCAM — Wed, 28 May 2008 09:01:13 -0500

This is a combined post from yesterday and today.
Adding transitions to text and overlay clips can be a tedious task, especially if you are adding the same transition to many clips. There are a few ways to do this.
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There are a few keystrokes we need to know before watching the movie.
The first is the "v" key. It will select the nearest edit point on the track that is auto selected. (Auto select buttons are the first column of buttons to the left of the timeline tracks.)
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Also, we need to know how to navigate from one edit point to the next without dragging the playhead. If you use the up and down arrow keys you can jump to the previous or next edit point, respectively. (This is not dependent on autoselect.)
And last, we need to know that the cmd-T combination applies the default transition to a selected clip.
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click here for movie
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This may be a little tough to get at first, but keep with it. You'll be amazed at how much time you will save when you get this down.
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Enjoy!

Final Cut Studio

Final Cut Tip o' the Day 5/27 - Navigating with Markers

Matt Goudey VCAM — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:43:59 -0500

I tried to make a different tutorial on Saturday about adding quick transitions to text, but it wouldn't go through, so maybe I'll do it again tomorrow. BUt for today:

Did you know that if you place a marker in the timeline ruler (meaning when you place a marker, make sure no clips are selected, and the marker will appear where the playhead is in the timeline) you can right click in the timeline ruler (where the numbers are) and go directly to any marker with a single click.

This is very useful if you are comparing parts of a timeline that are separated by a long space and you want to be able to jump back and forth without scrubbing. Or, if you want to go back to a certain spot after you have done some other editing.

Make sure you name your markers. You do this by hitting the "m" key twice. Once to set the marker, and the second time to name it. When you right click in the timeline ruler, you will see the names of the markers at the bottom.

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Final Cut Tip o' the Day 5/23 - Basic Keyboard Shortcuts

Matt Goudey VCAM — Fri, 23 May 2008 12:05:28 -0500

There are so many keyboard shortcuts, it gets daunting, I know. But there are a few that are a must for speeding up your workflow and eliminating errors while editing.
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The first to know is the "a" key. This is the "Select Tool" which is your default arrow tool. You should be in the habit of pressing the "a" key after you finish using any other tool. The reason is that if you use, say, the blade tool, make a few cuts, and then try to immediately select the part to cut out, you will only be making another cut. You can't turn a tool off, you can only select another tool. Since the Select Tool is fairly non-destructive (the Hand Tool being the most non-destructive) you are safe from making errors that have to be undone.
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The second is the "cmd-z" keystroke. If you make an error with your tools (or anything else for that matter) you don't have to go to Edit/Undo, you can just press "cmd-z" (CMd is the abbreviatioin for the Command key, which is the one with the "Place of Interest" symbol on it. Looks like a cloverleaf...) Keep in mind that you have limited UNDOs, so don't go to far from an error.
p.s. If you want to experiment with any filters or text in a sequence, create another sequence, copy your timeline from sequence one into sequence two, and do the experiments there. If you like what you did, you can always copy and paste back into the original, but if you don't like it, you don't have to worry about the undo limits, you can just delete the new sequence...
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The third is the "n" key, which is used for toggling the snapping feature of FCP. Snapping is imperative when you are placing clips within the timeline, but a real pain in the butt when you are trying to navigate (scrub) through the timeline. Especially if you want to get close to an edit point to see those last few frames, right? So you have to either zoom way in, or keep clicking the snapping button on the right of the timeline. The "n" key will toggle this for you.
p.s. A new feature of FCP 6: if you start dragging in your timeline, and then press the "n" key, it will toggle snapping on or off (depending on its previous state) only for the duration of that operation. When you let go of the mouse, snapping will return to its previous state. This is very handy, as it reduces the amount of times you need to press "n" by half. And, you cannot use this feature without the keystroke "n", because you must keep your mouse in the timeline.
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These are the most commonly used functions. So keep your left hand (if you're a righty) on the keyboard and get used to hitting these keys. It may take a few hours of using FCP to get used to not using the mouse, but trust me, break the habit. Force yourself, even if it takes longer to edit a particular piece, force yourself to use the keystrokes instead of the mouse. Once it becomes natural, you will be surprised at how much time it will save you.
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Some other good strokes to remember:
"j" - plays a clip in reverse at variable speeds (keystroke is cumulative)
"L" - plays a clip forward at variable speeds (keystroke is cumulative)
"k" - stops a clip from playing (does not start playback)
(these three keys are a great "Home Row" for FCP. No more clicking play buttons in the
viewer/canvas.)
"b" - switches between the Razor Blade tool, and the Razor Blade All tool
(press "b" twice quickly while in the timeline window and you will get the double blade icon.
This will allow you to cut through the entire timeline, instead of just one clip.)
"shift-L" - toggles Linked Selection. This will allow you to choose just audio or just video in the
timeline without losing the A/V connection. Good for L-cuts.
"shift-z" - fit to window _ works in the timeline, viewer, and canvas - fits all info into forward window

Learn them as you need them. Don't try to memorize them all at once.

Enjoy!

Final Cut Studio

Final Cut Tip o' the Day 5/22 - Custom Window Buttons

Matt Goudey VCAM — Thu, 22 May 2008 08:49:57 -0500

Do you find yourself repeating operations frequently in your Timeline window, or the Viewer, and are sick of going to the menu bar everytime, or right clicking three menus deep? Did you know you can add custom button bars to every window in the Final Cut Pro GUI (Graphic User Interface).

www.vermontcam.org/Media/linkImages/customize_buttons.mov

click here for movie

Very easy and can save a TON of time on those long edits. It's also a good way to learn the keyboard shortcuts as long as you leave tool tips on in the User Preferences.

Enjoy!

Final Cut Studio

Final Cut Tip o' the Day 5/20 - Correcting color is easy

Matt Goudey VCAM — Tue, 20 May 2008 10:10:21 -0500

Don't be confused by the title of this post. Color correction is not an easy process and takes a lot of knowledge about what is happening on a pixel to pixel basis, as well as knowing how the eye perceives light. But, that being said, it is easy to correct some basic color problems in your video. The biggest problem with video projects, especially at our end of the broadcast spectrum, is improper white balance. The second biggest problem, as I see it, is incorrect use of the iris. Not enough people use the neutral density filters on the cameras that have them, and many cameras don't even have them. So people close down the iris to 9.6 or 11 or even 16, thinking they are taking care of the overblown whites, not realizing that they are also destroying the contrast and saturation of their video.

To correct these problems, before encoding for playback, you can use the Color Corrector 3-way in FCP. (Using COlor as an Application is awesome, and if you get a chance to learn about color correction at a professional level, Color is an amazing application, but for simple corrections we'll use the 3-way corrector.)

Don't concern yourself with the COlor Corrector in Final CUt Pro. If you have Final Cut Express, you don't have the 3-way corrector, and are limited as to your color correction abilities. Sorry...

The Color Corrector filter is only bundled with FCP because of old projects that you may have finished before the 3-way was created. But there is no advantage to using the Color Corrector. So use the 3-way if you got it.

click here for movie
Watch the movie.

The reason for this post was because I saw a local PSA on VPT last night and it was so washed out and bland that it stood out like a sore thumb from the other shows on the station. It would have been so easy to fix the image before playing it out. Literally, it would have added about two minutes for the correction and maybe ten minutes to the output time.

Keep in mind that this is a clip by clip process. You can't make an adjustment to a finished film; the shots change. So this may be something to teach your members to do before giving you a finished product.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you cannot judge the look of the color on your computer monitor. The contrast is higher on your monitor and the color saturation is also higher. So you need to be able to view this on either a color critical monitor, whether it be LCD or CRT, or you need at least a television hooked up to your FCP machine, via a media converter or a camera, to see the corrected image... correctly...

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Final Cut Tip o' the Day 5/17 - Droplets for Compressor

Matt Goudey VCAM — Sat, 17 May 2008 09:42:21 -0500

If you find yourself spending a lot of time in Compressor encoding your videos, you can use droplets to automatically compress and save your finished movie to a specified location. All you have to do is either use an existing Compressor setting, or you can make your own custom settings in the Settings tab. Once you have done that you can turn that setting into a mini application called a droplet. When you drag your finished full res movie onto the droplet, it automatically encodes and saves your movie , as a background process, without ever opening Compressor.

click here for movie
Watch the movie for a detailed tutorial. I talk really fast, so you may have to watch it more than once.

Enjoy!

Final Cut Studio

Soundtrack Pro Tip o' the Day 5/16

Matt Goudey VCAM — Fri, 16 May 2008 10:14:37 -0500

Do you know about the noise reduction capability in Soundtrack Pro? If you have a video with a hiss or strong wind overpowering the voices, bring the clip into a FCP timeline, right click on it in the timeline and choose 'Send to' then Soundtrack Pro Audio File project (not multitrack) and tell it to launch Soundtrack Pro automatically.

Once in soundtrack pro, use the waveform and listen to the clip to find a place where there is only background noise and no vocals. You may have to zoom into the timeline to see the dip in the waveform. Select the area that is only background, then go to 'Process' then 'Noise Reduction' then 'set noise print'. Back in your timeline, select all and go back to 'Process' then 'Noise Reduction' then 'reduce noise'. You will be given a control dialog box.

The noise threshold tells the computer what sound is soft enough to not be affected. So a higher level will affect more of a range than a lower level. (Note that if the background noise exists at the same frequency as the vocals this may not work very well.) The reduction amount tells the computer how much to lower the db level for those frequencies. (If you go too far with this you may wind up with some vocal modulation, so listen carefully to how much you reduce the background noise.) And the tonal slider will let you maintain the bass or treble, depending on how much you lose in the threshold.

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Motion Tip o' the Day 5/15

Matt Goudey VCAM — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:12:53 -0500

Some graphics programs have what are called "Null" layers. These layers are invisible (do not render) but can be attached (or parented) to other elements in the composition to add movement to a group of items at once, and in relation to each other. Motion does not have null objects. Instead it uses layers and groups (if you are using Motion 2 then you have elements and layers, respectively...) If you want to animate a layer, you keyframe the layer. If a group only contains one layer, you can animate that layer by selecting the group or the layer. (The nice thing about that is that you can have a different anchor for the layer and the group, effectively giving you multiple joints to animate at once. Keep in mind that animating a group will affect all groups and layers inside that group.)

If you place several elements or layers into a group, when you animate the group, you will animate all of the layers in that group to the same degree.click here for movie For instance, if you place five squares in your composition and place them in a circular pattern, all contained in one group, when you rotate the group, all of the squares will rotate together, maintaining the original circular shape and orientation.

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DVD Studio Pro Tip o' the Day 5/14

Matt Goudey VCAM — Wed, 14 May 2008 09:42:30 -0500

As we all know, televisions use rectangular pixels and computers use square pixels to show images. To compensate for this, when we make DVD menu graphics in Photoshop or whatever program you use, the dimensions of the graphic have to be adjusted to 720x534 (for standard def). For Photoshop users, this only affects version 7 or earlier. The CS, CS2 and CS3 packages allow you to use a different pixel aspect ratio for previewing your file. Other graphics generators may not have such an option. So if you wonder why your graphics look off in DVDSP, and you are not using Photoshop from the Creative Suite series, try changing your image size to 720x534.

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Hello to all the AE users out there

Seth Mobley VCAM — Tue, 13 May 2008 15:44:00 -0500

First of all I want to thank Emily F. and Matt G. for creating the Adobe CS forum. I'm looking forward to geeking it up with anyone out there using Adobe Creative Suite and hope to drum up some good conversation by posting a very general first post...

If anyone is interested in learning more about Adobe CS3 I've located tons of online resources including, free video tutorials, creative online communities, design portals, and links to interesting conferences and events.

I'd also be very interested in seeing or just hearing about what folks are working on, particularly if you're using After Effects (Shake or Maya too for that matter). Here at VCAM, producers are just starting to tackle the AE learning curve and they're starting to design impressive multi-layered high-quality motion graphics for their shows. It's really a treat to watch them embrace a software that can appear quite daunting at first glance.

Any folks out there dabbling in motion graphics?

Looking forward to hearing from any and all...

Seth

VAN Members

Final Cut Tip of the day - 5/13

Matt Goudey VCAM — Tue, 13 May 2008 11:47:14 -0500

Inspired by the Final Cut Pro workshop at the ACM-NE conference, I am going to try to build a blog here entitled Tip of the Week (or day, or month, whatever I can find time to do. If anyone has any questions about anything they want to know, or a particular problem they are having, feel free to post it here. If I see anything on the forum I will try to incorporate it here as well.

I know not everyone can afford the Lynda.com membership, so if you see something on the list there that you might want to learn, let me know and I will post a video tutorial on our site.

So, here it goes:

May 13, 2008 Final Cut Studio tip of the day.

I overheard a conversation at the conference between two people talking about shooting with HDV cameras and outputting to MPEG-2 for their server playout, The problem they were having was when they tried to compress the finished movie to MPEG-2 they were getting a General Error message.

There are a few issues here to deal with. First, shooting in HDV requires a bit of a complicated workflow. HDV is already compressed to MPEG-2. It is a delivery format, not an editing format. If anyone here has already tried editing HDV, you will be familiar with the long conform times. This is because FCP has to reorder the IBBP GOP every time you make an edit (unless you are skilled enough to make all of your edits at "I" frames, which is a monumental waste of time to figure out...) So you will get the General Error message when you try to recompress it. So, before you edit your HDV material make sure you convert it first to an "I" frame only codec, like DVCPro HD. You could use APple ProRes, or Apple Intermediate Codec, but these do not support RT effects and you will still need to go through some lengthy renders. With DVCPro HD you will not.

Next, since we are all still broadcasting SD, you need to convert your DVCPro HD sequence to SD 4:3 letterboxed. Many people go directly from the timeline to compressor or QT conversion for this change. To force either app to make the entire change at once (meaning an SD and an MPEG-2 conversion) means that no part of the process is ideal. Do this in stages.

HDV workflow in a nutshell:
1. Capture as or convert HDV to DVCPro HD.
2. Edit and add effects at this level.
3. Export the finished sequence to DVCPro HD self contained movie. (Using COmpressor for this is better, but takes a bit longer.)
4. Convert that to SD using the Animation codec or Apple lossless. (Big files here!)
5. Convert the SD Animation codec video to MPEG-2 at no more than 6Mb/s.

This will give you an astonishing result. It takes a long time, but if quality is your care, which if you are shooting HD it is, or at least should be, then this will far surpass doing a direct compression from the original footage.

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FREE PLUGINS

Matt Goudey VCAM — Tue, 15 May 2007 18:41:06 -0500

Here is a list of some free plug-ins availabel for Final Cut Pro. There are so many more out there is you do a search. But these are some useful ones I have found.

http://www.fxscript.org/

http://www.mattias.nu/plugins/

http://www.kafwang.com/eureka/eurekamain.html

http://pistolerapost.com/pluginz/

http://homepage.mac.com/tomhenderson/beziermatte/

Addendum: 05.13.08
The list of plugins here is for Final Cut version 5 and 5.1. I am sure there are many new ones for Final Cut 6, but I have not looked very often.

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