News

News

TED Goes FCPX with the help of FCPWORKS

October 10, 2014 Tags: , , ,
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In what may be one of those Cold Mountain moments for Final Cut Pro X, TED reveals it has made the complete move to FCPX for all of its editorial work. Our own Sam Mestman was privileged to be a big part of TED’s transition plan as he worked directly with Michael Glass, TED’s Director of Film + Video. For the full story, please head over to Studio Daily. Some nice excerpts:

TED made the official transition to FCPX on September 1. “There really was a long runway before officially switching,” says Glass, “but we made that the date at which we would never open FCP7 again in order to edit a talk from scratch,” he says. “If we need to go back into a previous edit, instead of trying to translate from one to the other, we’ll edit in the old software.” Assisted by Sam Mestman from FCPWORKS, the TED editorial team spent six months training in the new version, starting with tutorial on Lynda.com and Ripple Training and moving to one-on-one tutoring with Mestman, especially at the beginning and again during the week “marathon” leading up to the official transition.

“This whole process really started almost two years ago,” says Glass. “We knew Final Cut Pro X was there, but we also looked at Premiere, Avid, even Smoke at one point. We narrowed it down to Premiere and FCPX, and once we had the lay of the land from the press and what we could read about it, we took two-to-three-day intro courses offsite to both softwares. That gave us a good handle on where the problems would be, whatever we took on, and also what the advantages would be.

People were starting to come around to the idea of FCPX before Sam showed up for a week here, rotating through two-hour sessions one-on-one with each of the editors and assistant editors. I think having someone be able to walk you through the nuts and bolts of how it all worked, as well as give the context of how to think about this new-ish approach to editing made the editors finally feel safe and excited about taking on the new technology.

"I think having someone be able to walk you through the nuts and bolts of how it all worked, as well as give the context of how to think about this new-ish approach to editing made the editors finally feel safe and excited about taking on the new technology."

But to make that leap you still need someone to encourage you along the way that you’ll land safely. That’s when everyone came around. They went from saying, half-heartedly, ‘OK, I can use this,’ to ‘Wow, this will actually improve my workflow, and even makes editing kind of fun again.’ That was better than even I expected.

The meme has been stated over the years that Final Cut Pro X isn’t a professional tool… And yet a company as intelligent, world-renown and respected as TED is now using it as their primary editorial platform. It appears that the game has changed…

Intelligent Assistance Producer’s Best Friend

October 9, 2014 Tags: , ,
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Producer’s Best Friend from Intelligent Assistance, an awesome program for archiving and sharing information via spreadsheet about your edits (think music cue sheets, notes, revisions, etc.), just introduced a really interesting new feature called Layouts.

Basically, it allows you to choose custom layouts that feature user specified amounts of information on just about any criteria from an XML a user can specify into a spreadsheet.

In English, this means that you can specify the information you’re sending out to someone into a custom layout so they’re only seeing the things you want them to see.

So whether you’re delivering for music, VFX, GFX, etc., if you know how to tag things in FCPX, automated custom reports for people is pretty simple and straightforward now.

Simplified reports. Editing continues to become easier.

Should You Get a Mac Pro?

October 8, 2014 Tags: , ,
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Hey guys,

Did a Mac Pro webinar for Moviola last week on The new Mac Pro, and there were some interesting questions that came out of it, I thought.

The biggest ones were people asking whether they should get a Mac Pro or the new powerful machine from (insert random PC vendor).

The answer to that question depends on what’s important to you.

If you value pure horsepower, crazy amounts of speed, and the ability to do things with hardware the like of which no one thought were possible… you probably should get the high end PC.

If you need to get work done… you should buy the Mac Pro.

It’s the fundamental difference in perspective that I feel is prevalent in the industry.

So many places tout the number of features they have in the hardware/software. They never quite mention when those things are half baked, more trouble than their worth, or the fact that the whole system runs on a poorly designed operating system, etc.

For me… the question is… does the thing work? Can I get from point A to point B in a clean, pain free way?

I don’t care if my PCI 3.0 bus is faster than the the Thunderbolt 2 bus if the apps/hardware I’m running everything on are always infected by malware and need constant upkeep/maintenance/drivers to do what I need to do.

If I need ninety different apps/passwords/licenses to replicate the functionality I get across my devices that the App Store/IOS/iCloud/OSX provide… I’m just not interested.

Sure, your tricked out Linux PC with 7 graphics cards (yes, that actually exists) can run Resolve like nothing you’ve ever seen… but what’s the workflow from pre production to post to get you into the finishing room where that matters (good luck with that prores workflow you wanted to use)… and how much time is a machine like that really saving you?

Also… what happens if there’s a problem with one of those GFX cards/Linux/random other things? Who do you call? And what’s easier to diagnose… that or an issue with the Mac Pro?

Plus… the Mac Pro fits on your desk and there’s no PCI cards necessary.

The truth is that it’s no longer a question of… can my App/Computer/Connection/Bus/technical thing do a given task? The question really should be, can my random piece of technical stuff complete the task in a pain free way and allow me to work within my larger ecosystem/not detract from the other aspects of the work I do?

Specs matter a little bit. Workflow matters much more these days as we are asked to do many more different kinds of tasks on our machines.

And really… how fast do you need to go anyway? Most raids can’t even max out the Tbolt 2 spec in the first place… so whether that PCI bus is faster or not doesn’t matter unless you have the associated hardware (and software) that is designed to take advantage of your amazing tech specs.

What practical use case that the average editor runs into (including VFX and Color) can the Mac Pro not accomplish?

If you can’t answer that question… well, then you should probably buy the Mac Pro. You’ll have fewer problems with it.

In terms of the real question you should be asking yourself when you buy something… the question should really be:

Will the piece of gear i’m buying suit my overall lifestyle?

p.s – Yes… we sell the Mac Pro at FCPWORKS (as well as just about any other post gear you’ll ever need)… and if you do run into problems with your gear/workflow… if you buy your gear through us, you’ll have someone to ask if you actually have a problem with something.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Mestman

Sam Mestman, FCPWORKS.

This blog post contains the personal musings of FCPWORKS’ Workflow Architect, Sam Mestman. Sam’s also a regular writer for fcp.co and MovieMaker Magazine, teaches post workflow at RED’s REDucation classes, and is the founder and CEO of We Make Movies, a film collective in Los Angeles and Toronto which is dedicated to making the movie industry not suck. If you’ve got any FCP X questions or need some help putting together a system, drop him an email at workflow@fcpworks.com and you can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.

Check out FCPX Grill

October 7, 2014 Tags: , ,
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Hey guys,

Just in case you’re not listening to it, if you’re really into FCPX workflow, there’s a podcast you need to start checking out called FCPX Grill.

Hosted by San Francisco editor Chris Fenwick, it is maybe the best way there is to stay on top of how editors are integrating FCPX into their workflows.

You can check it out on iTunes, or go here:

http://digitalcinemacafe.com/category/fcg/

A recent podcast you need to check out is from Mike Matzdorff (@fcpxfeatures), who goes in depth about the workflow on the mythical studio feature we worked together on that there were so many conspiracy theories about. Between that and the LACPUG event I mentioned yesterday… well, the thing was real, guys. Anyway, here’s a link to the podcast… Mike drills a little deeper into some of the specifics on the grill than he does at LACPUG:

http://digitalcinemacafe.com/2014/09/21/fcg083-fcp-features-feat-michael-matzdorff/

Additionally… you should check out the recent episodes from Michael Glass and Scott Simmons. I worked with Michael to help get TED up to speed in X and it was a blast. In my opinion, FCPX Grill is the best podcast there is for FCPX users (and maybe post in general), and Chris Fenwick is a good guy and great host.

And if you want to hear more from one of our team, check out the episode with Noah Kadner. Some interesting talk from behind the iron curtain at Apple….

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Mestman

Sam Mestman, FCPWORKS.

This blog post contains the personal musings of FCPWORKS’ Workflow Architect, Sam Mestman. Sam’s also a regular writer for fcp.co and MovieMaker Magazine, teaches post workflow at RED’s REDucation classes, and is the founder and CEO of We Make Movies, a film collective in Los Angeles and Toronto which is dedicated to making the movie industry not suck. If you’ve got any FCP X questions or need some help putting together a system, drop him an email at workflow@fcpworks.com and you can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.

FCPX Feature Film Workflow

October 6, 2014 Tags: , ,
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So… that whole FCPX Feature Film Workflow studio thing that my name got dragged through the mud on… not a lie. It happened, we worked on it, and it’s great to see Mike Matzdorff filling the world in on how it was done in this recent LACPUG presentation:

http://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/news/1512-mike-matzdorff-on-the-organisation-behind-editing-a-major-hollywood-feature-on-fcpx

We’re still not going to give you the name of the movie out of respect for our client (when they’re ready to officially talk about it, they will), but the truth is that a lot of really smart people worked on this, and it’s nice seeing some of them starting to talk about it.

If it wasn’t already obvious, FCPX can and will continue to be used at the highest levels… anything else you hear is basically just FUD.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Mestman

Sam Mestman, FCPWORKS.

This blog post contains the personal musings of FCPWORKS’ Workflow Architect, Sam Mestman. Sam’s also a regular writer for fcp.co and MovieMaker Magazine, teaches post workflow at RED’s REDucation classes, and is the founder and CEO of We Make Movies, a film collective in Los Angeles and Toronto which is dedicated to making the movie industry not suck. If you’ve got any FCP X questions or need some help putting together a system, drop him an email at workflow@fcpworks.com and you can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.

Vizrt Changes the Broadcaster Game

October 2, 2014 Tags: , , , , ,
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Hey guys,

Sam here…

Some of the most interesting FCP X related stories to emerge out of IBC this year came from the broadcast world. Great news included EVS showing ProRes recording and edit-while-ingest connected to FCP X and of course we all know that the BBC have decided to use FCP X for news-gathering. To me, that shows some real momentum in the broadcast world for a fast, easy to use video editor and now some of the more well known developers have started taking interest in how deep their integration can go with FCP X.

Between the lack of transcoding with FCPX, options like Tools on Air, Softron and SIENNA– which can do amazing things for ingest and playout on off-the-shelf Macs, any modern broadcaster should take a close look at what’s happening.

Norwegian graphics powerhouse Vizrt have taken it just that extra bit further. First of all they released a very low cost MXF plugin for FCP X, but they also previewed an amazing piece of integration of their graphics system running inside FCP X. Just that by itself is amazing; Viz One is not a toy, it’s an ultra high end graphics system for broadcasters that’s been in use for years. Viz One is a really big step forward for FCP X as a serious broadcaster’s tool:

NAB 2014 – Viz One & Final Cut Pro X from Vizrt on Vimeo.

It basically works by presenting templates from their graphics system inside FCP X (complete with previews) and you can position the graphics layers anywhere you want on your timeline and preview what it will look like. That’s all well and good, you say, you can in fact do the same thing with regular Motion templates which essentially turns FCP X into a live production system.

However, the real magic happens on export. Instead of burning in the graphics onto your finished package, the system inserts timecode-based metadata into Vizrt’s database. So, when the time comes to play back the clip to air, the system knows exactly when to trigger the graphics based on your edit decisions from FCP X. This means that exports are much faster (no need to render those graphics) and also modifications can be made up to the very very last moment before going to air! Spot a typo? No need to go back to the edit bay to fix that, just do it from the news system even after the edit is finished!

This truly is a complete game changer for news and sports. Take a look at the demo, if you’re in news or sports broadcasting this will really get your attention: http://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/news/1506-viz-one-integration-with-final-cut-pro-x-will-support-meta-graphics

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Mestman

Sam Mestman, FCPWORKS.

This blog post contains the personal musings of FCPWORKS’ Workflow Architect, Sam Mestman. Sam’s also a regular writer for fcp.co and MovieMaker Magazine, teaches post workflow at RED’s REDucation classes, and is the founder and CEO of We Make Movies, a film collective in Los Angeles and Toronto which is dedicated to making the movie industry not suck. If you’ve got any FCP X questions or need some help putting together a system, drop him an email at workflow@fcpworks.com and you can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.

Moviola Webinar for the Mac Pro

October 1, 2014 Tags: , ,
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Hey guys,

If you were curious about learning a little more about how to take advantage of the Thunderbolt busses in the new Mac Pro, I did a Moviola Webinar on September 30th, 2014 on the subject:

http://moviola.com/webinars/understanding-the-mac-pro-for-professionals/

In general, it’s all about how to take advantage of the ports on the MP to make sure you’re getting the most out of it, and getting the largest bang for your buck. This is a follow-up to the article I wrote for FCPWORKS a little while ago- http://www.fcpworks.com/thunderbolt-bus-mapping-new-mac-pro/

Here are some tips for mapping out your thunderbolt devices across the individual buses from that piece:

  • Do not attach more than 2 displays to a thunderbolt bus.  If you do, expect to see problems.
  • You can connect up to 6 Thunderbolt/mini displayport displays (2 on each bus) to the new Mac Pro.
  • You can connect up to 3 4k displays (1 each on buses #1 and #2) and a third through the HDMI port, which connects to the third Thunderbolt bus.
  • On my setup, I have my ports configured this way: my two desktop monitors are on bus #1.  My Promise R8 and some additional thunderbolt storage is on bus #2.  My Ultrastudio 4k for video I/O is on bus #3, and I’ll connect additional drives/peripherals when necessary to this bus.

We did a nice Q&A afterwards. Take a look, I think you’ll get a lot out of it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Mestman

Sam Mestman, FCPWORKS.

This blog post contains the personal musings of FCPWORKS’ Workflow Architect, Sam Mestman. Sam’s also a regular writer for fcp.co and MovieMaker Magazine, teaches post workflow at RED’s REDucation classes, and is the founder and CEO of We Make Movies, a film collective in Los Angeles and Toronto which is dedicated to making the movie industry not suck. If you’ve got any FCP X questions or need some help putting together a system, drop him an email at workflow@fcpworks.com and you can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.

4K Goes Mainstream with the GoPro Hero 4

September 29, 2014 Tags: , ,
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Hey guys,

Whether you’re shooting 4K already or not yet, the arguments against its coming arrival as the default new delivery spec are officially moot, with the release of the $499, 4K-capable GoPro Hero 4:

http://gopro.com/news/gopro-introduces-hero4-the-most-powerful-gopro-lineup-ever

When you’ve got a $500 camera doing 4K at 30p the argument against a delivery falls apart. Whether or not your your camera does that may be open for debate, but the idea that 4K and beyond is where everything is going isn’t.

It’s become so possible now to shoot and edit in 4K there’s no reason to not have clients ask you to finish at that resolution as well. The good news is that at least in the short term it will be a nice premium deliverable you could charge for (or be paid extra for by distributors) as there is currently a shortage of quality 4K content being delivered… and there’s all these TV’s being manufactured that need content.

I believe that the HD vs. 4K argument will look back at this GoPro announcement as pretty much the final nail in the coffin. 4K is not going anywhere… not at that price point. 4K will not be the next 3D. It’s now to HD as HD once was to SD. The format you have in your camera and the workflow you want to learn for post. We’ve been in these waters for a while now and are happy to help, drop us a line.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Mestman

Sam Mestman, FCPWORKS.

This blog post contains the personal musings of FCPWORKS’ Workflow Architect, Sam Mestman. Sam’s also a regular writer for fcp.co and MovieMaker Magazine, teaches post workflow at RED’s REDucation classes, and is the founder and CEO of We Make Movies, a film collective in Los Angeles and Toronto which is dedicated to making the movie industry not suck. If you’ve got any FCP X questions or need some help putting together a system, drop him an email at workflow@fcpworks.com and you can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.

Neat Video for FCPX

September 26, 2014 Tags:
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For those of you looking for a great noise reduction plugin for FCPX, Neat Video is really the only thing worth looking at:

http://www.neatvideo.com

Once you get past their not exactly to 2014 standards website and figure out how to pay for, download, and install the plugin, you’ll likely be blown away by how amazing this plugin really is. A few things to keep in mind as you use it:

  • Render times are LONG… and get longer the larger the resolution of your footage is. Don’t put it on until you’re as close to done with your edit as possible.
  • If you’re applying from FCPX, apply the Filter onto your clip(s), then go into the inspector and hit “select to open” and that will open the plugin interface.
  • Once you’re there, look at this page: http://www.neatvideo.com/howtos.html and watch some tutorials for best practices.
    Also, for better performance, once you’re inside the plugin, make sure you go under Tools_Performance and then make sure you enable GPU rendering, and bump up the number of cores your machine uses to render. By default, these numbers are set low.
  • Avoid using on 4K stuff unless you’ve got A Lot of render time to spare. Quick tip is to bring your 4K stuff down into a 1080 sequence first. Also, if you’re dealing with RED RAW, it may make sense to export the segments requiring noise reduction first, then cut them back in over the RAW footage… then apply the plugin. Neat video works WAY better with ProRes.
  • The New Mac Pro is way better friends with Neat Video than the iMac and Macbook Pro are.
    If you already have Neat Video, make sure you have the latest version (3.6)… among other things like (like Resolve support), there were some significant render and GFX support changes to the latest version.
  • You may want to turn off background rendering while you’re applying Neat Video and playing with the settings… and then render everything out when you’re done all at once. FCPX can hang a lot with this plugin if you’re not careful, especially on slower machines.
  • Once you’ve done the noise profile from within the plugin interface, there will typically be a huge improvement that will likely be pretty much what you wanted… however, if you go and play with the temporal radius setting in the inspector in FCPX, the higher you go, the higher quality (and render times) you will likely see.
  • Neat video is really great at saving shots you didn’t think you’d be able to use. Before you throw out a shot because of how noisy it is… try putting neat video on it. It’s saved me a bunch of times.

Review disclaimer – Yes, we do sometimes get free products and licenses (but not always). No, this does not affect our reviews. We only advocate and sell the products that we use in our own workflows. If we bother to review something, it’s because we use it in our day to day and like it. We also very much admit that we haven’t seen everything… if you think there’s a product out there that we should be talking about, please let us know.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Mestman

Sam Mestman, FCPWORKS.

Sam Mestman

This blog post contains the personal musings of FCPWORKS’ Workflow Architect, Sam Mestman. Sam’s also a regular writer for fcp.co and MovieMaker Magazine, teaches post workflow at RED’s REDucation classes, and is the founder and CEO of We Make Movies, a film collective in Los Angeles and Toronto which is dedicated to making the movie industry not suck. If you’ve got any FCP X questions or need some help putting together a system, drop him an email at workflow@fcpworks.com and you can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.

FCP.CO’s IBC Thunderbolt Roundup

September 25, 2014 Tags:
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If you haven’t seen this article over on fcp.co, check this out:

http://www.fcp.co/hardware-and-software/pro/1504-the-big-ibc-2014-thunderbolt-roundup

The most interesting piece of gear there is the G-Speed Studio XL:

http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-speed-studio-xl

Up to 64 TB in an 8 bay thunderbolt 2 enclosure topping out at $7k for that 64 TB model. Ridiculous. Times have officially changed.

Daisy chain a few of these together and it’s just mind blowing how much storage that is for the price. Now, here’s the million dollar question that I know I’m going to start looking into… with the new data model in FCPX, hard links, and the consolidate media feature… with Yosemite coming, is Thunderbolt Bridging going to finally be safe and practical for a small workgroup?

If it is… well, things just got really interesting. More to come on all this. BTW, if anyone out there is reliably using Thunderbolt Bridging in your day to day editing workflow… can I talk to you ? Email me at sam@fcpworks.com. Would love to hear what your experience has been.

Bottom line is that I think Networked storage is headed for a major shift… just a question of how long it’s going to take. The size and speed of some of these Thunderbolt 2 boxes is pretty staggering.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Mestman

Sam Mestman, FCPWORKS.

This blog post contains the personal musings of FCPWORKS’ Workflow Architect, Sam Mestman. Sam’s also a regular writer for fcp.co and MovieMaker Magazine, teaches post workflow at RED’s REDucation classes, and is the founder and CEO of We Make Movies, a film collective in Los Angeles and Toronto which is dedicated to making the movie industry not suck. If you’ve got any FCP X questions or need some help putting together a system, drop him an email at workflow@fcpworks.com and you can follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @FCPWORKS.