If you missed Thursday’s Useful Applications for Digital Filmmakers webinar it’s now available for download as an On Demand webinar. For $25 you get the full 90 minute, screen captured webinar, a podcast about the topic, an extra 15 minute (or so) video presentation with several tools we didn’t discuss during the webinar. There’s also a PDF included with links to all the Mac, iPhone and iPad apps we discussed during the webinar as well as a few we didn’t get to as we ran out of time.

Here’s the actual webinar description:

This webinar will be a fast, fun walk-through and discussion of handy, useful Macintosh applications that would be at home in any digital filmmaker’s toolbox. The software discussed will run the gamut from free to paid, a few dollars up to a few hundred. While all stages of filmmaking will be discussed with useful tools for pre-production, production and post-production, a strong emphasis will be placed on post production.

This was really a fun webinar to present as it wasn’t the usual task or workflow oriented program but rather a fun, fast walkthrough of a lot of tools that I know I couldn’t live without. I hope it might help in spending some money!

If you saw the cool application Get at NAB 2010 then you might want to check out my review of Get over at the Editblog on PVC. It’s a $499 application that allows you to search your media for words and phrases. Quite a cool tool.

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.

If you’re a user of CoreMelt plug-ins and you haven’t updated to the new V2 line of products that was introduced at NAB 09 then now might be the time. CoreMelt is having a Summer Upgrade Special with 40% off upgrades to V2 products. It’s for 10 days only, July 21 – July 31. This coincides with an update to version 2.2 that adds a number of new effects and transitions. The version 2 of the CoreMelt is a stand-alone plug-in for Final Cut Pro, Motion and After Effects that is no longer part of the FxFactory-engine based architecture. They new release is fast, has a lot of great effects and adds CoreMelt’s own tweaked interface to the Filter tab of FCP:

Tune in to Studio Monthly for an upcoming review of CoreMelt V2.

About a month or so ago we recorded a new That Post Show which was a 30 day follow-up to an earlier show about Avid’s Media Composer 3.5 announcements. A number of us on the show had been using the new MC version for a while and we had a great discussion that included two people from Avid there to chime in on the discussion and answer questions. The show is now online. Listen at that link or subscribe via iTunes (iTunes link).

It was a crazy, busy month of February at the Editblog on PVC where we attempted one QuickTip a day (as well as all the other tasks of editing) for the entire month. They all went up (usually before noonish), some for Avid, some for Final Cut Pro with a few others thrown in the mix as well. Here are links to them all:

Quicktip Day 01: Use that CAPS LOCK! – FCP

Quicktip Day 02: Map your 9-split exactly to the keypad – FCP

Quicktip Day 03: Project folders in the Finder sidebar – Mac OS

Quicktip Day 04: Tear off the Avid tool palette

Quicktip Day 05: FCP Keyboard changes are viewable in the menus

Quicktip Day 06: Edit FCP Column Heading

Quicktip Day 07:  Custom Avid bin column headings

Quicktip Day 08: Play Base Layer Only – FCP

Quicktip Day 09: Save FCP Column Layouts

Quicktip Day 10: Save Avid Column Layouts

Quicktip Day 11: turn on settings in User Preferences – FCP

Quicktip Day 12: Expos̩ to the function keys РMac OS

Quicktip Day 13: Check Your FCP AV Devices

Quicktip Valentine’s Day 14: Insert a ? or a ? – Mac OS

Quicktip Day 15: Option click to select a file name …. or not? – Mac OS

Quicktip Day 16: Expand all FCP tracks via mouse

Quicktip Day 17: Add Avid filler at start

Quicktip Day 18: Determine total Avid bin duration

Quicktip Day 19: Try the option and shift modifier keys under the Finder menus – Mac OS

Quicktip Day 20: Annotate pictures with Preview – Mac OS

Quicktip Day 21: Set the FCP Logging Bin

Quicktip Day 22: slate buttons to increment numbers – FCP

Quicktip Day 23: Saving a Custom Avid Effect

Quicktip Day 24: Apply Saved Avid Effect to Multiple Clips

Quicktip Day 25: Access Custom Avid Effect

Quicktip Day 26: Saving EDL Comments in Avid

Quicktip Day 27: Promote to Avid Advanced Keyframes

Quicktip Day 28: Turn off Video Scopes Playback – FCP

I received an interesting email this morning:

My name is Ewout de Wit and I study Marketing and Consumer Behavior at Wageningen University (Netherlands). To finalize my Master program I will conduct a research on “post-production software” and additional software (third-party).

In my research I mainly will focus on the online behaviour of content creators with respect to post-production software plug-ins and tools. I specifically study the search behaviour, the main factors that influence the buying decision making and price perception. Since last week I’m distributing the survey links at several forums related to post-production / editing.

I was wondering if you could mention my survey request in one of your blogs. Would be great to collect more responses through your web site. Of course I can provide you the results of the survey. Look forward to hear from you.

I took a few minutes myself and answered the survey myself. It’s an easy few minutes that asks questions about our behaviors when evaluating and buying post-production tools. There’s also specific questions asked about a number of vendors that many post-professionals know very well. Please take a few minutes to answer the survey (it’ll probably takes less than 10 or 15 minutes). If nothing else I think the results would be rather fascinating study of our software/plug-in buying habits and what influces them. Click on over and take the survey yourself.

Adobe’s CS4 Production Premium suite of applications was packed full of big new features. There’s mocha for After Effects, native RED .R3D editing in Premiere Pro and After Effects, XML import of Final Cut Pro projects, a unified interface among the applications, better dynamic linking and a lot more. And there is also the ability to automatically transcribe video and audio clips. For editors doing documentary work or a lot of talking heads then this could be a killer feature. Automated transcription almost seems to good to be true … and you know what they say about something that is too good to be true…

The transcribe feature is available in both Premiere Pro CS4 and Soundbooth CS4. In both Soundbooth and Premiere Pro the transcription function is part of the metadata browser. The CS4 applications are metadata kings with more tabs and titles than anyone will probably ever need. Since transcribed text is metadata they are saved with the file itself. Transcribe a clip in Soundbooth and that transcription will show up in Premiere Pro as well. In the metadata pane is a Speech Transcript window:

Control begins here. The little yellow triangle will alert you if your source media has changed and that you need to transcribe again to update the text. When you are ready, hit the Transcribe… button. The Speech Transcription Options lets you select languages and dialects, the quality of the operation and if you have more than one speaker. Hit OK and off it goes to transcribing:

The clip I tested with was an English speaker with a Canadian accent. The clip is 1:08  and Soundbooth took 2:00 to do the transcription High quality. If you’ve ever used any other automated transcription software you know their accuracy can be way off so I figured I would start with the best quality it can produce. How did it do? See for yourself:

Adobe CS4 speech transcription test clip from Scott Simmons on Vimeo.

This is the transcription from Soundbooth:

let’s see everybody’s dollar missing channels like it was Brandon Man you know what its hands on me having Harwood who I think is the ideology is at you know what to expect and seventy but you know what is a ready response so concerns in nicely it was so much understeer than you can imagine stars in the mid one year actually the thing about it there’s a little bit in technology have ended here to keep it from me in a moron you knew it definitely sounds like a Trans-Am car this is you know guards not like the M for a new moon but it was definitely true in August I shouldn’t of late sixties trends and cars I want to get too hard on that call him now will roll in on the straightaway

Premiere Pro CS4 does transcription as well by launching Adobe Media Encoder and handling it in that separate application. This is nice as you can continue to work in PPro while it is transcribing as well as set up a batch. This is the transcription from Premiere Pro but on the medium quality setting. It is definitely faster, taking only about 30 seconds to transcribe the same piece of video:

see everybody’s dollar missing channels like it was Brandon Man you know what it’s had some nice having car with RU I thank the ideology is at and what that is expected and seventy but you know what is a ready response so concerns in nicely it was so much understeer there and then the engine starts to come in one year I actually think Jonah the technology happening here to keep it from me in a moron RU you it definitely sounds like a Trans-Am car this is you know guards not like the M3 new moon but it was definitely true in August I shouldn’t of late sixties trends and cars a lot to get too hard on that call him now will roll in on the straightaway

So that’s almost comical. Now I admit that this might not be the absolute most pristine footage to transcribe since according to the Adobe user manual “Accurate speech transcripts require good audio quality. Background noise significantly reduces accuracy. To remove such noise, use the tools and processes in Soundbooth.” This is commentary from a moving car so there is some car noise but overall it’s not too far off from what you might record on a documentary-style shoot or an interview where you didn’t have total control of the surroundings. And let’s be honest, I really wouldn’t expect any software to be able to transcribe a phrase like “bags of ya-ya juice” … but it did get “Trans-Am car” so go figure. I also tried the transcription on a controlled talking head interview and it did do better, probably 30 – 40% more accurate.

Thankfully you can go into the transcribe pane and correct the words that transcription missed. There are a number of options available when you right-click in the Speech Transcript window for inserting and merging words:

That could really take a long time for hours and hours of footage but then it might be a good task for an intern to take on! I think the best thing to say about this feature is that it now actually exists and can be built upon and improved in future versions. Obviously the clearer the speaking is, the better the speaker enunciates and the less background noise the better. Sometimes you just can’t control those things so it would be a decision among the post team if it is worth the time, money and man-hours to utilize this feature.

My first thought when I heard about this speech transcription was how great it would be to take a bunch of interviews into Soundbooth and do a transcription that I could then print out for an edit in Avid or Final Cut Pro. I was hoping that you would be able to transcribe video or audio and then be able to take that transcription to a text editor with timecode intact. While you can copy/paste the transcription into a text editor there is no associated timecode numbers that come along. Bad if you want to use these apps as a transcribing system only. But if you are staying in Premiere Pro for your edit you now have an amazing new way to navigate clips. Click a word in the speech transcript and the playhead immediately jumps to that word and you can play, mark IN and OUT points, whatever you normally do. Plus there is a search field at the top of the metadata window that allows you to search for a single word:

Searching could be vastly improved if you could search for a whole phrase instead of just a single word. I drool at the thought of how handy this could be with a very long clip that has been transcribed, corrected for the mistakes, and then printed with a paper edit built from the printout. Soundbooth actually has an Export > Speech Transcription option that exports an XML. The terribly bad Adobe CS4 help files say this is for exporting words as cue points but I wonder if some smart XML expert could do something more with the file.

Overall I would say speech transcription is off to a great start in Adobe CS4 and is one more compelling reason to add the Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Premium to your editing toolkit. With good quality audio and a few version upgrades this might be one feature an editor will wonder how they ever lived without.

Send us your best work made with FxFactory® plug-ins to win cool prizes and have it showcased on the Noise Industries website.

FxFactory Awards 2008 contest entries will be judged according to their creative use of FxFactory® plug-ins and overall impact of the video material. Submissions will be accepted starting December 15, 2008. The deadline for submission is January 15, 2009. Winners will be announced January 21, 2009.

The winner will get a Drobo. Since FxFactory now supports Adobe After Effects then this could be a great place to showcase some of the cool After Effects work being done with the plug-ins. Good luck to all those who enter!

I couldn’t let the day get by without giving the new native RED .R3D import and editing function a quick test. My first thought after playing around with this functionality is that this is by far the best implementation of native .R3D editing and it blows the Final Cut Pro support out of the water. I won’t go into a lot of detail on setting it all up as all the info is available other places and in a document that comes with the RED Adobe CS4 installer. There’s also some initial reactions from Noah at Twenty398 as well as the best way to learn about this new workflow: a 30 minute video on AdobeTV.

It’s basically what has been asked for in most NLEs for a long time, the ability to drag and drop an .R3D file on to the timeline and edit. It works. There are some hefty system requirements as you scale from quarter resolutions sizes up to 4K so you have to work at what’s appropriate to your system. I’ve been working on an 8-core 3GHz Mac Pro, 4 gigs of RAM with the .R3D files residing on a spare internal hard drive. I can get very smooth quarter-size 4K and half-size 2K playback in the timeline with the occasional stutter and frame drop as it play across a transition, title or color correction effect. If you do a lot of editing on different machines with different software and different media formats then you know you can feel how well media is working in your edit timeline as you scrub around, trim edits and such and on my 1024×512 timeline (a more than acceptable resolution for offline editing) it feels very good. There was one clip out of the 20 or so clips that I was working with that caused more dropped frames than the others but when that clip was eliminated it worked very well.

The heart of making this work is the Source Settings dialog box that is universal for Premiere Pro CS4 4.0.1 with the RED plug-in installed and can be accessed by a right click on an .R3D file in the project window and choosing Source Settings:

All your settings for how Premiere Pro handles the clips are set here. It first took me for a loop since I had mixed 4K and 2K files but once I watched the AdobeTV  video I understood that you set your desired setting for each different format, 4K, 3K and 2K in this dialog box and then and footage of the corresponding rez will change to match. In my case I wanted it all to hit the 1024×512 rez of the timeline so 4K is quarter, 2K is half and then all of my footage is at 1024×512:

If you then change all of the resolutions to their full native sizes in the Source Settings dialog box, save and reboot PPro then the footage is displayed at the native resolution:

If you look closely you see the .R3D files are native 2K and 4K but the edit sequence is still 1024×512 so all of the footage now appears scaled way bigger than the frame so you have to make a new sequence of the appropriate size and copy/paste the edit into that new sequence. This is detailed in the video on AdobeTV. I wish there was a column in the bin to see what the native resolution of each file was when you are scaled but I couldn’t find one. You can right click on a clip and choose Properties to see the file details:

It would just be nice to see some of this metadata in a bin column. And there are a helluva lot of metadata columns that can be displayed in a PPro bin so it might be in there but I couldn’t find it.

How much horsepower does it take to decode the .R3D files for realtime playback? Taking an idea from the AdobeTV video I opened up the Activity Monitor and watched the CPU usage and the timeline played back. For most clips the CPUs seemed to still have quite a bit of overhead:

The peaks came, surprisingly, when I had dropped a clip on Video 2. That pegged the meters out!

As for playing across a title, dissolve or effect, the CPU usage was somewhere between with an edge toward the high side. I think the moral of this story is that if you are going to edit the .R3D files in Premiere Pro CS4 4.0.1 or above then the faster the machine the better! You can open your PPro projects in After Effects so that adds a whole new level of possibilities.

But there is one thing that is missing. Part of the joy of working with raw RED .R3D files are all of the parameters that you can change for things like ISO, exposure, contrast and all the other settings that you have in most applications that can access .R3D files. The Apple update to Color added a new RED tab just for these settings:

I don’t see these parameters anywhere in PPro CS4 or After Effects CS4. A little research around reduser.net revealed this thread that says “at the moment you cannot control any decoding parameters other than the ones in the global preferences dialog (decode resolution, quality, etc.). Other settings like ISO and white balance will be made available soon. For now it uses whatever the default was that was set in camera.” Okay, I hope they get that in asap as that is such great control to have when working with native .R3Ds.

This Adobe CS4 workflow took a long time to reach the masses but it looks like they’ve saved the best for last. While there’s still a lot of reasons to offline in Avid or FCP and finish on a variety of other systems this CS4 workflow is now a great option for many … and this is just the first release. It seems like Adobe may be up for making this even better.