Thursday, April 16, 2009

Keyboard Manifesto

ProVideo Coalition.com: the EDITBLOG by Scott Simmons

The Keyboard Manifesto from the EDITBLOG by Scott Simmons is great advice for creating customized keyboard shortcuts in FCP. It's funny how I instinctively do this in Avid but not FCP. Weird.


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Cloud Control










I was reading the latest copy of Post when I saw an ad for a service that I have been predicting for a while: incremental online media back-up. It was for a site called Syncsy that allows you to fully automate the process of sending large files and folders. Big deal you say. Apple has been doing this with Time Machine and Amazon Web Services such as EC2 and S3 have been around for some time now. These services have been great but they haven’t have had wide adoption so far. The biggest reason for this (besides unreliability due to scalability and security issues) has been price. It is cost-prohibitive for producers to back-up hundreds of gigs, let alone several terabytes of video online. And with the increasing trend towards bigger and bigger frame sizes and resolutions of HD the cloud revolution has been an unattainable dream. Until now? Syncsy promises incremental back-ups of media over a P2P network for only 50 bucks a month. And they also say ‘Any Size, Any Content, to Anybody’. When they say size does that mean the size of your file, your account or both? What would stop people from trying to back-up the moon? I didn’t see the word ‘unlimited’ anywhere on the ad or website but I’m hopeful.

Digital Delivery








Hey does anybody remember back when you finished editing a project and you'd actually be done? No, seriously. I'm not even talking about the beginning of time when people used flint to make fires, used fires to communicate and used razor blades to cut film. Try the '90s - when I got started. That wasn't really that long ago. Um...was it? I would get final approval from my client (or myself) lay the project to an archive format, make a VHS dub and that was basically it. What happened? Now after I am done editing the video I have to create a litany of diverse files that have to be play in a plethora of formats, platforms, browsers and devices. If you’re like me then you are in constant need of current and useful advice when it comes to digital distribution. Last year I was lucky enough to be able to take Ben Waggoner's week-long Mastering Video Compression course through the Digital Media Academy that's held at Stanford. It was an intensive brain-expanding course that covered the basics of video compression as well as the advanced white board formula stuff. We spent at least a day on Carbon Coder which is one of Ben's favorite compressors. Carbon Coder is a beast and it definitely is for high volume multi-format shops that need the encoding process automated. We also went over Microsoft Expression Encoder, Apple Compressor, Sorenson Squeeze and others. I primarily use Squeeze and Compressor but I would like to try others. Although much of the advanced concepts went over my head, I was surprised afterwords at how much the class shored up my existing knowledge of video compression. When I got back to work the following week I immediately readjusted the settings in my various compression apps. I instantly got better results. It's surprising that there aren't many other courses in video compression out there, especially considering how important it is nowadays. I love the creative process and storytelling but distribution can be just as interesting. There is often more genuine emotion in sending a file to a client than there is inside the file itself. But I digress. Here are a few useful links that I will quickly expand on in the coming weeks:

COMPRESSION SOFTWARE

Microsoft Expression Encoder 2

Telestream Episode Encoder
Sorenson Squeeze
QuickTime Pro
Compressor 3
Flash Media Encoder


COMPRESSION CALCULATORS

Recipe for DVD
Bitrate & GOP Calculator


ONLINE VIDEO HOSTING

Vimeo compression settings
Youtube compression settings


FREE MULT-FORMAT MEDIA PLAYERS

VLC
Elgato


MISCELLANEOUS:

Top 10 Free Video Rippers, Encoders, and Converters
The Big List of Video and Audio Converters

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Apple NAB Rumors






There have been a lot of rumors swirling about big announcements at NAB this year. Digital Production Buzz has been alluding to a big Apple Blu-Ray announcement among other things. There is even talk of there finally being an upgrade to Final Cut Studio. I won’t be there in body but I will be there in spirit. In the meantime I will resist buying anything

Plugtopia







As I leave my downsized job as senior staff editor of a large corporation, there will be many regrets. Not just because of the projects, friends and memories but also because of the real victims of this bleak economy – the plug-ins. When I pack up my possessions and put them in a cardboard box, these valiant little helpers will not be coming with me. Whether they were for creativity or productivity, they helped make the time I spent in Avid and FCP that much easier. Wouldn’t it be great if editors could buy an extended license code of a plug-in that allowed them to use it on more than one computer? This would be extremely helpful to freelance editors. How many times had you wished your favorite Sapphire or Boris plug-in was installed on the computer at your new gig? The same thumb drive that you use to port your user settings over could be a dongle that activates the plug-ins in your online account. Sure, it wouldn’t take long for this system to get cracked and exploited but people have been torrenting software for quite sometime now. Sites like iStockphoto and Zymmetrical are selling extended licenses. Heck even iTunes will let you authorize up to 5 computers. The recording and film industry are starting to finally see some success with subscription models. Could this be a viable example for video editors? Maybe. Has this discussion been churning in a back room or are there already plug-ins that have this option? I would love to find out. All I know is that as I step out of my edit suites for the last time at the end of April I will have only one phrase in my mind – let my plug-ins go.

Hello Whirl!







Is this actually another editing blog? Really? Hopefully, Splice Vine will be bookmark worthy. Maybe it will even be RSS worthy. As you look above and to your right there should be at least a couple of topics that will interest you as a video editor. The categories I’m most excited about are the sexy new media stuff. I hope to start a lot of dialogue and get a lot of feedback on the art of using the iPhone as a video editing productivity tool. The other categories should be familiar if you read other editing blogs but there may be a thing or two here that you won’t find elsewhere. Let me know what you think.

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