The Editblog

You got less than a week to get tickets for the next FCP User Group SuperMeet. This one is February 5 in San Francisco. It will be at the Robertson Auditorium with doors opening at 3:30 pm for the “Digital Showcase” and the show beginning at 7:00. Just looking at the event’s website it looks like there’s a great list of raffle prizes … as always. This one includes a Canon 5D Mark II, AJA Ki Pro, Adobe CS4 (!), Avid Media Composer 4 (!!) and several BlackMagic cards among a lot of other great goodies. Prizes aren’t the only thing on the schedule and this agenda looks to be a strong one:

* Smoke on Mac OSX – Alexandre Domingue
* “Destroy Me” – Jordan Livingston (music vid)
* AJA KiPro – Jon Thorn
* Best Workflow for Canon File-Based Cameras – Joe Bogacz
* Motion 4 Does 3D – Mark Spencer
* The Idea behind IDEO’s Living Climate Change – Matt Silverman
* The New Speed Tools in FCP 7 – Kevin Monahan
* Hand Held Hollywood – Taz Goldstein
* And MORE

Both the Smoke demo and the Canon workflow should be of interest to many. I would say to click here and sign up for some free workshops but most are sold out. As of this writing 2 aren’t so click here anyway and try to get them or to see what you might be missing. Grab your tickets before they are all gone.

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.

Apple has just released the first maintenance update to the new Final Cut Studio Three version 2009 (or whatever it’s called). Check your software update if you are between projects. Or you can sign in here and download.

I’m desperate for an update to Compressor that address crashing. I’m having a lot of crashes (both with Compressor batches and Droplets) when I try and load large batches. It seems if I get above 15 – 20 clips I get a crash or a beach ball. On more than one machine. I’ve tried restarts and Compressor Repair. Upon a look at the Force Quit dialog box both Compressor and/or Droplet will not be responding.

I posed this very question to Twitter and got mixed answers. Here was a luck user with 50 and 100 clips. And then 40 – 50. There were also smaller numbers like 35 or a dozen or so. How many clips can you get into a Compressor batch at a time?

First Impressions of the Tangent WaveVideo : the EDITBLOG on PVC by Scott Simmons.

Today I posted a piece over at the Editblog on PVC of my first impression using the Tangent Wave on a few small grading sessions over the last couple of weeks. I really like using a control surface with Color.

The good folks over at Tangent Devices recently sent us one of their control surfaces for testing with Color; the Tangent Wave. After hooking it up and checking it out for an hour or so this afternoon I can say, without a doubt in my mind, that color grading (and using Apple Color in particular) without a control surface dedicated to color grading is like doing most any task with one hand tied behind your back. And that’s mainly from just using the trackballs and dials and not really digging deeper into all the keys and functionality. Stay tuned to the Editblog on PVC for more thoughts, impressions and a full review of the Tangent Wave.

OK Final Cut Pro users, if ever that was a SuperMeet you want to attend it’s got to be the Amsterdam version. Sure Las Vegas is great and it’s an NAB tradition to go to the Vegas version of the SuperMeet but haven’t we all been looking for a reason to go to Amsterdam? Damn, I wish I was going. To coincide with IBC this year’s Amsterdam SuperMeet takes place on Sunday, August 13 at the Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky. Tickets are very affordable and as always there will be free food, a cash bar and the world famous raffle. The raffle looks good and includes an AJA IO HD and … a Blackmagic Ultrascope! The agenda set thus far includes:

• How to do a Grade in Just 10 minutes with Color 1.5 – Simon Walker.
• Share the love: CS4 Production Premium; Author a Blu-Ray Disc -
• Blackmagic Design Presents “More Right Tools For the Job.”
• Show and Tell – To be Announced Soon
• JVC GY-HM 100/700 ProHD – Rick Young and Semir Nouri
• What You NEED to Know About FCP 7 – Michael Wohl
• Q&A/Feedback Interactive Discussion on the NEW Final Cut Studio.

While I  have to wonder what the Show and Tell will consist of I’m most intrigued by the last item on the agenda, the “Interactive Discussion on the NEW FCS.” Here’s the quote from the press release: “The organizers of the SuperMeet also intend to turn the show over to the audience for an interactive discussion with Final Cut Studio experts who will answer any and all questions on the new Final Cut Studio as well as listen to user feedback and feature requests for future versions of Final Cut Studio. This portion of the meeting will be videotaped and later put on the internet for the world to see.” That looks like it could be a fun segment for the audience. I well realize that type of forum could end up running all night long but a an expert panel and audience Q&A could generate some really great discussion. I hope it won’t turn into audience members trying to get free tech support but rather an intelligent discusion on Final Cut Studio’s +’s, -’s, and its future. I’d love to sit on a panel like that if nothing more than to be the FCP nay-sayer of the bunch and make sure is doesn’t turn into an FCP love-in! Don’t get me wrong, I love FCP but like any application it does have it’s problems. Hopefully Apple will have representatives taking notes. There’s just over a week to do so get your tickets while you still can.

We maybe I’m exaggerating about the Earth slightly tilting with the release of the new Final Cut Studio. It contains Final Cut Pro 7, Motion 4, Soundtrack Pro 3, Color 1.5, Compressor 3.5 and DVD Studio Pro something as it didn’t get updated and is so old that I think it has a long, gray beard.

The Los Angeles FCP User Group has a good collection of links about the release. Of course there’s Apple’s own Final Cut Studio resources where they also have new Logic Studio updates and a new Final Cut Server. There’s training videos and books available a day after the release as well. Don’t believe the hype though that this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I took a more critical look at the announced features on Studio Daily and Mike Jones probably summed it up better than anyone.

There was also a slew of Release Notes that came from Apple yesterday. My favorite has to be this one:

I’m so glad they cleared that up! By far the funniest blog post about the new FCS release was from Owen’s Photoblog titled How To Install Final Cut Studio 3. I like #3 in the process:

I’ll bite, I’ll be the sucker and try to do just that at some point over the weekend:

In honor of the brand new addition to my family I think this Vimeo is perfect (found via Tickelbooth):

Last Day Dream from torbjon on Vimeo.

The 2009 NAB SuperMeet is on April 21, just over a week away, so if you haven’t gotten your tickets yet then the time to buy it now. You don’t want to miss the show which includes presentations on both technology and the art of editing and filmmaking as well. Plus there’s the famous raffle that is up to $70,000 worth of prizes? JVC has announced “Something SuperSecret” for the raffle as well. Could it be one of their native QuickTime shooting cameras? No one knows for sure so you’ll just have to head to Vegas next week to find out. 

I spoke with Michael Horton, the LAFCPUG guru and Digital Production Buzz co-host himself recently and asked him a number of questions about the SuperMeet:

How long has the LAFCPUP been hosting the SuperMeet at NAB?

Lafcpug doesn’t host the SuperMeet. Myself and Daniel Berube of the Boston Final Cut Pro User Group are co-producers of this event and part of a larger
network of FCP UGs from around the world that is called the Final Cut Pro User Group Network. Lafcpug is just a part of the SuperMeet experience like all other UGs. In no way does it host the event.

Is the SuperMeet an actual extension of the NAB conference or is just held in conjunction with the conference?

It is held in conjunction and in no way affiliated at all with NAB. Same thing when we do this event along side Macworld and IBC. We choose to do it this way because many FCS users are already there and SuperMeets serve as a social gathering spot as well as a place to go and learn.

How has the SuperMeet grown over the years?

This is the 8th year we have been doing it at NAB, Macworld and just last year, IBC in Amsterdam. We have gone from a tiny room at the Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas attracting about 200 people, to giant ballrooms attracting more than 1000 people. Our first meet in San Francisco was at a Dentists office.

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By now you’ve heard that the 8th Annual Macworld FCPUG SuperMeet is this Wednesday, January 7 at 7PM  at the Robertson Auditorium, Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. I spoke with Michael Horton yesterday and there’s still tickets available (though they might not be for long since these things usually sell out) so get your tickets here. It looks like there’s a lot of great raffle prizes including a FireStore FS-5 100GB
Portable DTE Recorder, a Matrox MXO2 for Mac, a GlideCam4000 Pro and lots of software … plus “300 Eco friendly reusable ‘goodie’ bags stuffed with over $200 worth of stuff will handed out to first 300  paid ticket holders through the door.” I’m most intrigued by this: Craig Yanagi of JVC will announce the world’s first acquisition product developed especially for Final Cut post production. Come and be a part of this historic event. While that will be exciting to see what they have I kind of look at that as a small clue that maybe JVC knows something about the future of Final Cut Pro that us mere mortals do not. That there is a future and the Pro Apps aren’t for sale. I can’t imagine that JVC would develop a product only for FCP if there wasn’t a guaranteed future with the product. And since is says “Apple: The latest on Final Cut Studio” on the event website maybe we will get a taste of that future at the event! (Not bloody likely) Since this is the last MacWorld with Apple’s participation it may be the last MacWorld Supermeet! If you are going to the event and are part of the editing and post Twitter group then please tweet from the event to let us know what is going on.