The Editblog

Every now and then I’ll set the terribly crappy Comcast HD DVR to record MHD Palladia during the overnight hours so I can get a fix on some good hi-def music videos. Sure some of them won’t be hi-def but hey … who’s counting. Come to think of it, CMT HD has been broadcast now for month and months and as far as I can tell (and many others) they haven’t aired a frame of HD content either despite the fact that I know there have been country music videos finished and mastered in HD!! What a waste of bandwidth.

Anyhoo … one of the videos on my last Palladia viewing was director Chris Milk’s Audioslave video Doesn’t Remind Me. I was reminded what an incredibly awesome this music video really is. A great story, snappy editing, gorgeous images and not a frame of performance from the band. It’s a mini movie. Why can’t more videos be told this way? If you have any favorites of this type of video please post a comment. There’s part of the video embeded below from Milk’s Vimeo page but it only seems to load the first couple of minutes of the video (probably by request) so you can click over to see the full thing. You have to watch it to the end for full effect. On the “official” Universal Music Group channel on You Tube they’ve disabled embedding and the whole experience is so peppered with ads so I’m not even going to link to it.

Audioslave – “Doesn’t Remind Me” [HD] from Chris Milk on Vimeo.

I also learned that Milk directed the wonderful 42 second short film Last Day Dream.

Over at the Editblog on PVC I posted a review of the new Apple Magic Mouse and Final Cut Studio as well as a look at mocha for Final Cut.

There’s also my Tangent Wave review on PVC and another Wave review at the Biscardi Creative Blog.

HDHead has a post on MetaFuze Network Rendering.

We all want to know how to speed up Compressor, right?

It’s been a not too great secret that Gluetools is working on an FCP Log and Transfer plug-in for Canon media.

Digital Films is full of great info this month with some great tips for small camera and hybrid DSLR production and discussion on the AJA Ki Pro and the Blackmagic Design UltraScope.

So Apple introduced this new iFrame codec. Why it’s a bad idea. Why it’s a good idea. IMHO any new codec at this point in time is a bad idea.

Here’s a nice piece on writing for editing.

Ahhh vignettes and vignetting.

Mike Jones has listed a nice free digital library resource.

Studio Monthly reviews Sonicfire Pro 5.

Take the Survey: 50 States, 50 Filmmakers.

And there’s the Weisscam camera for super slo mo.

Here’s part 3 of an interview with Michael Wohl of the original Final Cut Pro development team.

Come on now, can the iPhone really be a “serious, zooming video camera?”

You can kill hours exploring this best movies of all time map.

Damn John Cusack is a good driver.

Get your designer 3D glasses before Avatar hits!

And finally, Final Cut Pro has made it to FailBlog.

Do you want to know how to download and install Lightroom presets?

Links from Twitter:

ross_shain: 50% off mocha for Final Cut all November!http://bit.ly/2MtUOs

markspen: How to Cheat in Motion new book by my friend Patrick – great tips http://bit.ly/1zmudV

digitalheaven: Take the survey and tell us what you’d like to see in Loader 2.0, the import app for FCP:http://bit.ly/3rpOEd

hyams: netflix push studios to cut inventory cost by half in exchange for one-month delay on new releases http://bit.ly/4n1qrK

stevensantos: Indie Film Shakeout: There Will Be Bloodhttp://bit.ly/4DK5V3

gorillaprod: NFB doc short that inspired Kubrick’s 2001. Film fan must see http://www.nfb.ca/film/Univ… old school sfx & V.O. sound like HAL

DylanReeve: Oooh, I blogged “The DVR Battle – TiVO vs MySky” http://bit.ly/tivoVSmysky

vignesraj: jitouch – Multitouch Extension for MacBook’s Trackpad. http://www.jitouch.com/

RodHarlan: For your next project: Here are 13 Tools for Building your own iPhone app! http://bit.ly/u4H2E

brucesharpe: ”Seismic Shift: Why DSLRs Are Changing the Game” Nice survey by Jem Schofield. http://bit.ly/FKMwX

ccrask: Rt 10 Ways you can use Twitter lists:http://ow.ly/15Zw6p

comebackshane: The lies we all tell… http://bit.ly/3oWumv

digitalreb: Excellent review of the Matrox CompressHD card:http://tr.im/EqL5

DylanReeve: Interesting, echoes a lot of my thoughts on film schools in NZ (I graduated from one) http://post.ly/Bw6n

sam_longoria: Are Filmmaking and Film School Going Down The Drain?  http://bit.ly/A7jsT

lafcpug: Tickets go on sale for the “The Avid/FCP 2-Step” lafcpug meet, Nov 5 at 12:00 noon http://bit.ly/jB6iI

tylerginter : 10 breathtaking viewing platforms around the world: http://j.mp/wQh25 (via @petapixel)

geoperdis: Interactive image from World Series game 1, made from 675 stitched photo. Can you spot Alec Baldwin behind home plate? http://j.mp/2aLIGu

taigmcnab: New on the website: Final thoughts on Final Cut Server http://tinyurl.com/y8whmb9

markspen: Every MacBreak Studio episode on Motion in one place: http://bit.ly/2Lq6Qx

5tu :Added some details to the anamorphic lens test.http://vimeo.com/7370134

bcfilmmaker : ”District 9″ VFX Sequence Supervisor writes about The Current Status of Visual Effectshttp://bit.ly/30I9HC

nicholaspatten :Free Peeling Paint Textures.http://bit.ly/1QG9Yo

jarrardcole :A must read for anyone who is or interacts with cashiers: The royal order of the coinhttp://tinyurl.com/yglgqc8

Off-topic:

Here a recent investigative piece that is a great study into why concert tickets are so expensive and why you can’t buy cheap seats seconds after they go on-sale.

Books of the month:

You can give Norman Hollyn‘s books a read while we all wait for his next one:

The title is Booking a DI Session but this rings true for offline and online edit sessions as well!

This came via a tweet from Filmbot.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have a Tangent Wave in my edit suite for the last month for testing and review. It’s a very pleasant unit to use and will totally change your opinion of Apple Color. Click over to the Editblog on PVC and give the review a look.

LAFCPUG Next Meeting: The Avid/FCP 2-Step

Oh man do I wish I’d be in LA on Wednesday, November 18 for the next Los Angeles Final Cut Pro user group meeting. It’s called “The Avid/FCP 2-Step.” It looks like it’s going to be an evening of frank and honest discussion about Avid in a Final Cut Pro world and vice versa.That’s right up my alley! From the LAFCPUP website:

The perception, (especially among FCP users) is that Final Cut Pro is slowly but surely taking over the post industry. While that maybe true in the “Indy” world, the reality is the Avid Media Composer is still firmly entrenched in Hollywood feature films and broadcast television. In order for you to compete in Hollywood it’s important to know BOTH tools. So lafcpug will devote the entire evening to the Avid/FCP 2-step.

What are the big differences between the Avid MC and FCP?
Is it hard to learn the Avid if I know just FCP?
Do I really need to learn the Avid?
And other FAQs

Join us as legendary film and sound editor Walter Murch returns to lafcpug to discuss “what is it like going from the Avid to FCP and back to the Avid.”
Also editor Steve Cohen will show us what is new in the Avid Media Composer 4.0.
Shane Ross will show off the new Mix & Match capability in MC4.0 which allows you to combine different formats, frame rates, and resolutions all in the same timeline.

Plus Stump The Gurus and World famous Raffle

Tickets go on sale Thursday, November 5 for $8.00. If you’re curious or unfamiliar with Avid then this might be 8 of the best bucks you’ve spent in a while.

There’s a lot of Macintosh applications out there to let you view and manage the contents of a hard disk in a visual type of way. There’s  Disk Inventory X (Editblog article) but it’s from the PowerPC days so it requires emulation with Snow Leopard which doesn’t install by default. There’s also the great Baseline (PVC article) which is quite full featured but costs $20.

Enter DaisyDisk. It also scans a disk and presents the disk in a very fun and very visual way. You can look via files and folders, see the size of files and folders via both a visual view and a list view. Best of all you can use QuickLook to preview the files. You can’t delete from within the app but the developers are working on that. Right click to reveal in Finder and then delete from there is the workaround. The app isn’t perfect as there’s not a lot of documentation and it includes something called “Super-User” mode that isn’t documented. I would have thought that it would unlock a lot more features for how you could manipulate files but it doesn’t seem to do anything.

Is it worth the $19.95? It is not, especially with Baseline being available for $20. But right now you can get DaisyDisk for free by checking out the upcoming MacHeist bundle. If you click around the MacHeist page enough and go to coordinates 151.7, 174.4 (I think that’s right) you’ll see the TWEET FOR A TREAT button appear. This is the key to getting a free license for DaisyDisk. If you click it you’ll be asked to sign in to Twitter. If you do you’ll tweet about the upcoming MacHeist bundle.

Now I’m not a fan of how companies are now giving away free stuff and entering users into contests only if they tweet about it on Twitter. It totally spams followers and the more people do it then the more companies will use this type of marketing and the more it will devalue Twitter as a useful user-to-user communications platform. More noise, less signal. In the case of MacHeist and DailyDisk I didn’t sign in and tweet about MacHeist but when I went back to the MacHeist page there was a download link to a free DaisyDisk license. Sign in to MacHeist and you’ll get a license code, without having to spam your Twitter followers about it. This isn’t exactly what they want but it is getting DaisyDisk into the hands of more users so this is a good thing, right? DaisyDisk is off to a good start so with some improvements it might be worth that $19.95.