Weekend Reads - 5-5-13

4 Things You May Not Know About the After Effects Render Queue

Useful tips for speeding up your AE rendering.

Six Questions Apple Needs to Answer in 2013

Six questions for the post-Jobs Apple (#7 should be the future of the Mac and whether Apple has a long-term strategy for courting video pros).

Steven Soderbergh’s State Of Cinema Talk

Steven Soderbergh on the state of cinema.

Danny Boyle Claims 'Pixarification' of Movies is Killing 'Adult Movies'

In a similar vein, Danny Boyle laments the departure of sophisticated writing from cinema to TV.

My biggest concern. Does anyone else feel the same way?

Interesting discussion on the pros and cons of buying vs renting Adobe Creative Suite.

Offline Bounce or How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love Native Processing

Detailed overview of the new offline bounce function in Pro Tools 11.

Linear Workflow in Cinema4D and After Effects

Brush up on linear processing now that After Effects CS Next integrates with Cinema 4D.

Autodesk Smoke 2013

Extremely detailed review of Smoke 2013.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Sunday May 5 2013 7:37 PM to Weekend Reads
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Weekend Reads - 4-19-13

Why Apple's secrecy is frustrating Mac Pro customers

This fits in with my own belief that uncertainty about future Mac hardware is a much bigger issue for video pros than FCPX and the demise of FCP 7.

Interesting job posting

Hints of future improvements to audio mixing in FCPX.

Service, Replacement Parts and Support for Active Storage Installations

Vicom Systems is offering service and support for Active Storage customers now that the company has gone out of business.

PREMIERE PRO NEXT - ( Unlike FCPX ...I like it )

Mike Nichols goes through his checklist of CS 6 problems to see what's been improved in CS Next.

Avid announces Avid Media Composer 7 at NAB 2013

Quick overview of the new features in Avid Media Composer 7.

Sorenson Squeeze 9 updates the old encoding standby

Summary of the new features in Squeeze 9.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Friday April 19 2013 9:23 PM to Weekend Reads
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Weekend Reads - 2-15-13

Why is the VFX business failing at its moment of greatest success?

Great points from Mark Christiansen on how VFX seems to be a more prominent part of the movie industry than ever, yet several of the major VFX houses are having financial problems.

Premiere Pro CS6 and Mbox 2 Recording

How to setup Premiere CS6 with an Mbox2 for recording audio.

Anyone Fooling Around with Sparse Disc Bundles?

Pros and cons of using Sparse Disk Bundles in Media Composer.

Is there a way to import old User settings in a new user?

Useful tip for importing specific settings from another Avid user profile.

Review: Blu-ray player software for Mac

Reviews of several Mac Blu-ray players. I'm using MacGo and it's working well for me.

Opinions on what NLE to teach on a new BA in Film & Screen Media Production

Long discussion thread about which NLEs to teach to students.

Dear Mr. Hernandez

Open letter to the new Avid CEO. I would also add a more open developer program to encourage plugin development and much better support for tapeless workflows.

New Content Creators Report Results Announced

The most curious part of this is how well FCP 7 fared 18 months after EOL.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Friday February 15 2013 1:35 PM to Weekend Reads
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Weekend Reads - 1-27-13

Start your project with post so we don't have to fix it later

I'm a big advocate of planning in advance and Post Haste is a great free tool to help with this.

4K in the Home

The uphill battle TV manufacturers will face to convince people 4K TV is worthwhile.

Shot on What

Useful database of technical details for popular movies.

Welcoming the New Year

Essential online security tips.

Editors choose Dell over Apple Mac Pro

One of the advantages of owning a PC is that you can mix and match components, so I would encourage people considering a Windows machine to build and design their own where possible to fully fit their needs, instead of buying off the shelf.

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion is still available for purchase from Apple

You can still purchase Lion from Apple but it's complicated.

Where to place sound absorbing panels in a studio

Tips for sound-proofing your studio.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Sunday January 27 2013 2:18 PM to Weekend Reads
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Weekend Reads - 1-19-13

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Masterclass in Why HFR fails, and a reaffirmation of what makes cinema magical

This is the most detailed analysis I've read on why high frame rate (HFR) doesn't work for The Hobbit.

Why do we blink more than we need to?

Scientific evidence for Walter Murch's theory about using blinking to mentally separate thoughts.

Trick I Found By Accident

Great trick to make high-speed audio understandable in Premiere Pro.

When to Scale to Frame Size in Premiere Pro CS6

Interesting comparison of Scale to Frame Size in FCP7 and Premiere Pro CS6 and when using it can sometimes degrade the image.

Tip: Multichannel Audio Sequences

Tip for taking the tedium out of mapping audio channels to tracks in FCP 7.

Font Folders

Proposal for better display and organization of fonts in Adobe applications.

Looking ahead to 2013 in post production

Amusing and slightly cynical take on some of the trends in post production.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Saturday January 19 2013 12:49 PM to Weekend Reads
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Weekend Reads - 12-9-12

Testing the "Pro" in ProRes

Comparison of ProRes files exported from different applications.

TitleExchange Formats (PDF)

Useful list of various title and caption formats.

Mac vs. PC - The Dilemma of a Small, One-Man-Band Production House

FCP 7's demise was a rude awakening for a lot of us not to bet everything on a single company.

MediaStorm Guide to Enhancing Adobe Premiere Pro’s Auto-save Functionality

These are good tips and Pro Versioner is a great compliment on top of that.

PostDontStopDay (Desktop-Backgrounds and whatnot)

Very nice desktop backgrounds for editors.

'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey': How Is 48 Frames Per Second?

Not exactly a great review of 48 fps in The Hobbit. I'm still going to watch it in 48 fps though, just to see what it's like.

Final Cut Pro X: Use Compressor presets as Share Destinations

How to copy Compressor 3.5 presets to 4.0.

Creative Uses of Reverb

Great tips on how to use reverb creatively.

Top Feature Requests for After Effects in 2012

Lots of great requests here. I never use the Raytracer because it disables so many other features, so improving this would be good too.

OT: wondering about longterm archiving

Great discussion about archival formats.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Sunday December 9 2012 12:36 PM to Weekend Reads
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Weekend Reads - 12-2-12

Quick Avid Tip: Display your UNC File Path in the bin!

Trick for overcoming Avid's inability to display a UNC path in projects that are not 24p.

IRE and Voltage

Useful information about PAL voltage levels vs NTSC IRE.

Geometry Pane

What the different options in Compressor's Geometry pane do.

Radeon HD 7000 series support in 10.8.3 beta points to new Mac Pro

There are many speculative posts around the web on the demise or resurgence of the Mac Pro. This one falls into the resurgence category.

Black Magic Cinema Camera SSD to the Mac

First impressions of the Black Magic Cinema Camera and how to connect it to your Mac.

Adobe Premiere Pro Quick Tip – 2 Methods for Dealing with Audio

How to put stereo audio on two tracks like FCP 7 and how to fill left or right to create stereo audio from a single channel.

Exporting Multichannel Quicktimes in Premiere Pro

How to export multichannel QTs is not obvious and I got bitten the first time I needed to do it, so bookmark this for future reference.

5 Tools for Cleaning Up Audio in Adobe Audition

Great tips for cleaning up your audio.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Sunday December 2 2012 1:10 AM to Weekend Reads
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Weekend Reads - 11-25-12

Matrox announce a unified driver for Avid, Adobe and Final Cut Pro X on the MXO2 series
Matrox releases a unified PC driver and announces a January release for the Mac version.

RED EPIC Monochrome vs. RED EPIC: a Jaw-Dropping Black and White Comparison
Side-by-side comparison of the detail improvements in the EPIC-M monochrome camera vs the EPIC-X.

80% Normalization
Useful tip when normalizing audio.

#AvidTips – short-cut to opening settings tab from any window
You learn something new every day - how to quickly open settings for whichever window you currently have open.

Da Vinci
Da Vinci product video from 1987.

What Does a VFX Editor Do?
Great overview of a day in the life of a VFX Editor.

FCPX: Two Cautions
Larry Jordan highlights the important differences between seemingly-similar effects in FCPX.

DSLR Audio: Do YOU know where YOUR sync is?
Cautionary tale of DSLRs recording audio 1-2 frames out of sync.

Printing Mix Stems Internally
Great tutorial for producing mix stems in Pro Tools.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Sunday November 25 2012 10:29 PM to Weekend Reads
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Weekend Reads - 11-2-12

Post Production Workflows with Digital Rebellion

Clay Asbury on how he uses Digital Rebellion products to improve his workflow.

Final Cut Pro X 10.0.6 Update

Philip Hodgetts summarizes the new features in FCPX 10.0.6.

FCPX 10.0.6 - 42 new effects, transitions, generators and titles

Alex Gollner summarizes the new effects in FCPX 10.0.6.

Creative Commons Resources for Editors

Useful list of free images, video and audio clip sources for editors.

Planning and Building an NLE System

Harm Millaard discusses how to build a fast PC for Adobe Premiere use.

Quad-Core Mini vs Quad-Core Mac Pro

The Mac Mini is catching up to the Mac Pro in CPU performance but has a long way to go in GPU performance.

Why I Switched from Pro Tools to Adobe Audition

The nice thing about Audition is that it's intuitive if you've used other Adobe apps. I rarely use it but as someone who is primarily a video guy, I can easily figure out how to do something without having to pull out the user manual, unlike Pro Tools.

More on Fusion Drive: How it works, and how to roll your own

How to build your own Fusion SSD / HDD hybrid drive. It does seem to be useful for pro users, despite what some articles may say.

Video Editor ‘Lightworks’ Linux Release Limited to Select Few

The Lightworks for Linux alpha is here but is unfortunately limited to those who signed up last year.

DaVinci Resolve 9.0.3 Adds Timecode Syncing from Audio Tracks

Interesting new Resolve feature: the ability to read linear timecode from an audio channel so that cameras that do not record timecode can be used in professional productions.

Adobe CS6 Premier Pro + RED overview

Quick tutorial for working with RED footage in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Friday November 2 2012 2:20 PM to Weekend Reads
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Weekend Reads -10-19-12

Scarlet Deal of a Lifetime

RED is selling barely-used Scarlets at significantly reduced prices.

Get FCPX running faster by installing a PC NVIDIA Geforce GTX570 graphics card in a Mac Pro

How to benefit from the wider range of graphics cards available for the PC.

Resolve + BMCC 12-bit RAW color grading Tutorial

Detailed workflow for working with CinemaDNG footage from the Blackmagic Cinema Camera.

Adobe Upgrade Policy Changing Soon for CS4 and CS3 Customers

CS3 and 4 users can only upgrade to CS6 at a reduced price until the end of the year.

Free Aspect Ratio Overlays

A selection of mattes for various aspect ratios. I usually create my own in Photoshop so this is a useful timesaver.

Skyfall BTS

15 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage from the upcoming James Bond film.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Friday October 19 2012 9:51 PM to Weekend Reads
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