The Editblog

I just posted a piece over at the Editblog on PVC about one of my upcoming classes that I will be leading at this year’s NAB convention: Avid Media Composer for Final Cut Pro Editors. If you’re an FCP editor curious about the competition then this class is for you. It’s on Tuesday, 4/13/2010 from 10:00 AM - 01:00 PM. Get registered for the Post|Production World conference if you want to attend.

A package arrived yesterday that contained a shiny, new MC Color control surface from Euphonix. We have the unit under our roof for a month of testing. This surface has been eagerly anticipated by Apple Color-using community for quite a while. First glance right out of the box feels like a very solid unit. We’ll see how it performs both from a hardware and software POV as we test it out in the coming month. Stay tuned to the Editblog on PVC for first impressions and a full review.

I recently wrote a piece over at the Editblog on PVC about using the show duplicate frames function in Final Cut Pro. It’s particularly useful if you work with Canon 5D and 7D footage since FCP won’t track the dupe frames with that media as it’s missing a reel name. That’s discussed in the post as well.

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.

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.

I was able to spend a little edit time with Final Cut Pro on a fresh install of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard over the weekend. Read about over at the Editblog on PVC.

I was able to play with the new Final Cut Pro a bit over the weekend and here are some observations. The good, colorful and ugly.

I posted a while back that the Basics of Avid Media Composer for a Final Cut Pro Editor article was coming in the Pro Video Coalition Post | Pipeline newsletter. It has come and gone for those subscribers and is now posted in the Editblog on PVC for all the world to read. If you’ve only ever edited on Final Cut Pro and are curious about what some of the main differences in the two applications are then this is a good place to start. The Avid2FCP Changeover Challenge is another though going in the other direction (see, we’re fair and balanced at the Editblog!). And since Avid Media Composer is available as a free 14-day demo then you’ve got nothing to lose except some time. I hope you find the article useful.

If you have been an editor for hire for any real period of time then I bet you have been handed a stack of videotapes or a hard drive in a box (or maybe a grocery sack) with no labels, no notes and no identifying factors whatsoever as to the format, resolution or frame rate of the source footage. It can be a very frustrating experience. I recently posted an An open letter to DPs, camera ops, DITs – Please label tapes and disks over at the Editblog on PVC. Let’s hope it might help out at least one job somewhere in the world!