Notes On Video

Jared Flesher is currently shooting his second documentary, Sourlands , using the Panasonic GH2. He sent us the following report on his experience with the camera. I started shooting my next documentary, “ Sourlands ,” with a Panasonic GH2 a few months ago. Now that I have some serious time in with the camera, I thought I might pass along some thoughts on the experience so far: As everyone knows, DSLRs come with limitations built right into them, a few of which I’ll touch on below. But keep in mind that this camera, with the 14-42mm kit lens, costs $1,000. For a grand, I think the images coming out of this camera absolutely rock. Do I wish the camera fairy would come and drop off a Panasonic AG-AF100 ? Sure, and I would start using the AF100 immediately. But as the camera fairy is not coming, and the AF100 costs five times as much as the GH2 , I’m feeling pretty good about the camera I have. There’s at least one big advantage the GH2 has over the AF100 and probably any other pr...

Bug list The Digital Rebellion is maintaining a bug list, and has 8 so far, including: Projects not saving Clips going offline Undo disabled Crashing when importing iMovie DigitalRebellion : Final Cut Pro X Bug List Gamma Issues? An interesting post from Chris Marquardt notes that the gamma that Final Cut Pro X uses in the Viewer is different from the gamma used in QuickTime X . He notes that he thought Final Cut Pro X was supposed to handle color issues through ColorSync  and solve problems like that: It took me a while to figure out that the viewer in FCP X needs a color profile with a gamma of 1.8 in order to show things the way they are. ChrisMarquardt : Final Cut Pro X - wrong gamma in viewer? [ UPDATE 9/28 : Chris has updated his post with more details.] I was able to reconnect a missing clip by selecting it in event, then running import, selecting the file. It reconnected. Paul Antico More Answers To Questions Scott Simmons takes a look at some of th...

Looking at the Color features Patrick Inhofer looks at the color features in Final Cut Pro X , and how they compare to the existing features in Color . His initial take is that it's simple to learn and more powerful than the color correction in Final Cut Pro 7 , but it's not more powerful than the color correction in the Color app, and it's using a completely different paradigm to that used in Color and other professional grading apps. Re-stated: Apple killed the color wheel paradigm in FCPx – and these Young Guns may never understand how the color wheel works or why pulling out those Red overtones are introducing Greens (which it does in the Color Board – and as it should… color science being – science). And when they step out into almost every other NLE or Color Grading app in existence – they’ll be starting from scratch since there’s no common reference point between the Color Board and anything else on the market (before you flame me on this comment, I address thi...

CreativeLive Edit Contest: Win Vincent Laforet's Redrock Kit CreativeLive is running a competition; edit together a scene from footage shot during a recent Vincent Laforet workshop and you could win a Redrock Micro rig valued at $3,000. You have to join Vimeo to be able to download the footage, and upload your entry. Also, the contest is only open to US and Canada residents, although " EVERYONE is welcome to edit their own version of the short film. " The contest deadline is August 12, 2011. CreativeLive : Complete the Edit - Win Vincent Laforet's Redrock Kit Sony NEX-FDS100 Loupe Modification Not particularly happy with the Sony loupe, one NEX-FS100  owner did some re-engineering to make it shorter and more like a Zacuto Z-Finder . mmfilm : LCD Viewfinder Modification A nice visual piece shot with the NEX-FS100 by TMDFilms : Vimeo : Soleil's Spring Update to Sony NEX lens roadmap For all those Sony NEX-FS100 owners out there, SonyAlphaRumors ...

People Are Getting Refunds Multiple people report getting refunds for Final Cut Pro X . It's unclear what happens to the software once your money is refunded; can the App Store shut down apps? Apple probably isn't that concerned; they figure that those people will lose it once they move to a new machine or replace the OS as they can't reinstall without the App Store. EOSHD : Apple refunding pros for Final Cut Pro X Editor Pow Wow Chris Fenwick is planning a get-together this Saturday in Oakland California of editor friends to discuss FCPX. He's also looking into streaming it for those that want to follow along at home. This Saturday at Noon I’m doing something completely different. I’m going to have a few editors gather together at the facility I work at in Oakland California, and we are gonna huddle arround a big 46 monitor, (I think FCPX will run at 1920x1080) and we are going to have a full fledged geek session going over the new Final Cut Pro X. July 25, 2...

One thing I don’t like about Apple’s iTunes , iPhoto and iMovie is the way they like to take your media and put it where they want to store it. This would be okay if there were easy ways to get around this, but that’s not always the case. There’s advantages to this monolithic media management; I must admit that my ‘stuff” tends to end up filed all over the place, so maybe having iTunes keep all the music together in one place is a good thing. But when editing video I like to have options about where I put it; particularly when dealing with gigabytes of the stuff. I just don't have a single drive big enough to keep everything in one place. So I’m not too sure I'm going to like working with the way Final Cut Pro X manages media, particularly Events . Final Cut Pro X likes to put things in Events. Think of them sort of like bins. Install the app and start it up and it will put the first event in your startup drive.  Events on two separate drives If you add media to that...

Go to TeamCoco: Conan's Editors Absolutely Love Apple's New Final Cut Pro X

Installation Advice Apple recommends that you install Final Cut Pro X on a separate partition to Final Cut Studio (2009) but they also give advice if you want to install them on the same drive: Apple : Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5, Compressor 4: Installation best practices Final Word on Final Cut Pro 7 Projects? Chris Messineo emailed Randy Ubillos about Final Cut Pro X , and got back a reply about the state of project imports: FCP7 projects do not have enough information in them to properly translate to FCPX (in FCP7 all of the clip connections live in the editor's head, not in the timeline). We never expected anyone to switch editing software in the middle of a project, so project migration was not a priority. Final Cut Pro X 1.0 is the beginning of a road, not the end. DVXUser : Email Exchange with Randy Ubillos, FCP X Designer A First Look at FCPX In this podcast, Kevin P McAuliffe takes a look at the new Final Cut Pro X and covers some of the basics to get up ...

I've tried to put together here a wrap-up of the reactions to Final Cut Pro X . In the future, I'm going to concentrate on how-to's and specific bug reports. Hands On Andrew Reid at EOSHD has posted the first part of a hands-on review, going through things he likes and doesn't like. He also includes an important note about Plug-ins: It seems the reason Apple did not make any noise about plugin support (or even tell developers) is because it’s almost business as usual. Looking at the package contents on my drive, Final Cut Pro X’s system files contain the established FXPlug libraries, updated for FCPX’s new 64bit environment. This means that for most existing FCP7 plugins, a simple recompile and a bit of tweaking might be all that is necessary to get them working with FCPX. EOSHD : Final Cut Pro X – Hands On Review – Part 1 Another Perspective Dylan Reeve reviews Final Cut Pro X , the highs and lows, and concludes: The outcome of all these things is that it ...

It's been an interesting few days, but I'm going to try and get back to other news and goings-on in the video world - while still have some Final Cut Pro X reporting here and there. Thinking Of Switching? Grass Valley has announced some upgrades to Edius 6: urbanfox.tv: Grass Valley updates Edius 6 NLE Follow Focus Review Mitch at Planet 5D reviews the DSLR Solutions Follow Focus . This follow focus is unusual in that it is a steal ring with two knob/handles that you attach to the lens. I think it costs about $60. With a separate velcro strip you can mark focus points, and it comes on and off easily, but it's a really different way of working compared to traditional follow-focus units (though it doesn't require rails for attaching it either, so that's a plus.) Planet5d : podcast #43 DSLR Solutions Follow Focus Reviewed and demoed RJ Follow Focus Darren Levine has posted a video review of the $156 RJ Follow Focus ." It is absolutely fantas...

[ UPDATE 2:50PM It appears that David's review is now out of beta. They've posted a new version that includes several changes, in particular noting features that are missing, the applications that are gone, etc. He hasn't noted the bugs he encountered, or the cool new features that are coming, but you can't have everything. The update: Apple’s Final Cut Is Dead. Long Live Final Cut . Note : I have corrected the spelling of levelly in my piece. UPDATE: 4:00 PM And now he's posted a fairly exhaustive piece on missing (and not missing) features: Professional Video Editors Weigh In on Final Cut Pro X UPDATE 9:00 AM 6/24 : Richard Harrington has posted his own extensive response to David's post, which is well worth reading:  My Response to David Pogue’s  “Professional Video Editors Weigh In on Final Cut Pro X” ] As the story has unfolded, I've been trying to remain as neutral as possible on  Final Cut Pro X  . Sure, I've been excited to find out w...

This graphic from Sony's website shows the size of the sensor used in the Sony PMW-F3 and NEX-FS100 vs35mm Motion Picture Film and the Micro Four Thirds sensor. Even more important to some photographers is the pursuit of "bokeh," the defocused backgrounds made possible by shallow depth of field. Of course, that's 35mm motion picture film in the chart. If you're comparing it to the sensor in the Canon 5D Mark II , then that looks like this: What shouldn't be forgotten is that the size of the pixels in the sensor(s) are different too, but that's a topic for a different day: That's why Sony developed a new image sensor for the PMW-F3 with pixels that are four times the size of typical DSLR sensor pixels Sony : Full Super 35mm image size

Compiling the Problems Rob Imbs is collecting a list of "deal breakers" Keep 'em coming guys! "Fellow FCP editors, what are the "deal breakers" for you in #FCPX? I'm making a list." Daniel Freytag is doing something similar: Post YOUR personal PRO and CONTRA things about #fcpx here freytag-film.com/2011-06-fcpx-a… and I'll make a list.maybe some thing are already solved or What's Missing Walter Biscardi reports that: Found out today #fcpx will never be able to open an #fcp project. Too big a change in project structure. Which is interesting, as Philip Hodgetts has previously claimed (see MacNN report below) he was told they would be adding that support. As much as I hope Walter's wrong, I wouldn't bet money that Apple is going to add support for importing older projects. Walter has also written an article at CreativeCOW listing what he sees as wrong with this release:  Final Cut Pro X: What's Missing for Some P...

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly The Digital Rebellion has assembled a good collection of hits and misses in Final Cut Pro X , including: FCPX is FAST. I tried to break it with lots of stacked clips and effects but it played them all seamlessly. It took a long time for multiple marker colors to be added to Final Cut Pro. Now we're back to one marker color again. There are no chapter markers either. Compressor 4 is still 32-bit and doesn't look like it's received an overhaul, meaning that the problems many of us have suffered are likely to continue. I have already had several issues with Qmaster. While you're there, check out their Most Frequently Asked Questions too. DigitalRebellion :  Final Cut Pro X - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly DigitalRebellion :  Final Cut Pro X Frequently Asked Questions Why We Can't Use Final Cut Pro X Walter Biscardi and Richard Harrington explain why they won't be able to use Final Cut Pro X in their production facili...

On Thursday Pixel Corps is going to have a live stream on Final Cut Pro X with Freelance editor+motion graphics artist/FCP and Motion certified Master Trainer/Author Mark Spence , and Steve Martin of Ripple Training, hosted by Alex Lindsay . Follow Pixel Corps for info.

I was re-reading Larry Jordan 's post from yesterday about the release of Final Cut Pro X  [1]. Larry's someone to pay attention to, if only because he's had several weeks to actually play with the software, unlike the rest of us weighing in with our " I've had it for an hour and I hate it" opinions. But Larry also makes his living doing training for Final Cut Pro , and he obviously has a relationship with Apple[2] that he has to protect: witness his back tracking on the comment that Final Cut Pro X would not be ready for Professional Use, even though I can think of at least 162 people  [at 11:30am EDT] who would agree with him. And the article has a lot of honesty in there, particularly the THINGS I DON’T LIKE section. But what really stuck out on re-reading was this line, about 1/4 of the way down: FINAL CUT PRO 7 IS NOT DEAD To me, this is one of the highlights! Umm, talk about putting lipstick on a pig! That's a lot like selling electric cars ...

So how's Final Cut Pro X working out for you? I haven't had any time to spend with it yet; other than installing it last night. I hope to spend some time playing with it today. It certainly seems to have struck a chord, though what they chord is, I'm not sure. A huge amount of initial negative reaction, tempered with a bit of "but wait... (it could get better)" You have to wonder about the current Customer Ratings for Final Cut Pro X on the App Store: Final Cut Pro - Apple® That's pretty strongly divided, with a strong negative! vs the ratings for Motion 5 : Motion - Apple® of course, they didn't really change the interface or functionality of Motion that much... If you are having problems with missing features I recommend running the Adobe Premiere CS5.5 patch for Final Cut Pro X it works really well @EOSHD And if you HAVEN'T yet bought and installed it, Apple does have a " Best Practices " document: It is strongly recom...

I had to put together an unboxing video for Final Cut Pro X . A short video that does show the steps, and also how to redeem your iTunes Gift Cards if you have them...

It's hardly surprising that Final Cut Pro X is the top paid app on the App Store today. Motion is number two, but interestingly, Compressor isn't number three. Clearly there are people hanging back on spending the $50 for that one! App store: Final Cut Pro - Apple® $299 Motion - Apple® $49.99 Compressor - Apple® $49.99

Another First Look Steve Martin of Ripple Training has posted a fairly extensive "First Look" at Final Cut Pro X : While FCP X is very promising, it still lacks key features for professionals. (I'm cutting it some heavy slack because I'm taking into account this is essentially a version 1 product built on an entirely new foundation). But the fact remains that there is no professional audio editing capabilities. With many of the features of Soundtrack Pro now rolled into FCP X, I still long for a full featured waveform editor to perform bread-and-butter audio editing chores. This coupled with the fact that there is no built-in way to collaborate with sound editors using ProTools or other DAWs is problematic. KenStone : Final Cut Pro X - A first Look Another First Look from Gary Adcock Gary has done one for MacWorld , and another for the Creative COW : Apple is keenly aware that FCP X is not ready for professional editing out of the gate. I have been assured b...