Weekly Video Series

[Kevin Monahan]

Anyone worth their salt is not posting tutorials to youtube or whatever because those folks are served better SELLING their knowledge. That is why it is a dry, dry wasteland out there. The only techniques on these free sites are from self-trained novices.

That being said, there are a few people out there doing decent stuff. You just have to dig. MacBreak has some cool stuff sometimes, and there’s some good stuff here at the Cow, but if you are serious about taking it to the next level, you’ll have to pay for your training. Look into Ripple Training, the Cow disks and local Apple Training Centers. Lynda.com has some free stuff with Larry Jordan, but the good stuff you’ll have to pay. I have more suggestions, but none of them are free.

Kevin Monahan
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro

[Tim Wilson]

Hello Martin,

The first place find what you’re looking for is The Cow of course. If there’s something in particular you want to know, ask.

We’ve already been offering world-class training by industry leaders. Take a look at Aharon Rabinowitz’s After Effects tutorials at the Cow to see what I mean.

Next week we’ll start doing the same with Final Cut Pro, with a series kicked off by Shane Ross, The Final Cut Pro Minute. Even though they’ll be short, they’ll be exactly the kinds of power tips you’d expect from a film and broadcast pro…who also happens to be among a small handful of the world’s best FCP teachers. You’ll dig ’em.

That’s just the beginning. We’re working on more too. If you have suggestions, please make them in the COWmmunications Feedback forum, and let’s see what we can do.

Not a commercial yet, because everything I’m talking about is free. 🙂

Of course, as Kevin points out, there are also great paid resources like the Cow Master Series of DVDs. I’m not going to turn this into a commercial either. I’m just going to ask you to follow the Store link toward the right end of the orange bar, take a look at the titles, the authors and the prices.

Anyway, thanks for a great question — made all the better by having the answer for you here. 🙂

Best,

Tim Wilson
Creative Cow

[Martin Sterling]

I’ve gotten the cow series which is really good but I am past that. I’m talking about the optimal workflow using a kona card Panasonic HD 1080i center cropped for 8 bit uncompressed broadcast versus Sony Varicam converted to Pro Res using Blackmagic on an Xsan. On the Fly or Recompress? Trouble shooting and all. Stuff like that. Or trouble shooting a d5 deck with fcp from novice to intermediate.

I find so many professional edit suites configured so differently I’d like to at least have an idea of what I’ll be walking into especially with no tech. I’ve been in situations freelancing when a production house will have there established clients, with editors they’ve worked with for years, and systems and workflows so precise, and I have to jump in the pilot seat and figure out how to work there system effortlessly while still providing the client with the quality they are used to, but I may be unfamiliar with, not realizing something I thought was an undoable limitation in an edit session was a quick fix if I use a certain workflow.

One of my biggest challenges is how do you prepare for high end large format projects on your basic home based system? I rarely get the chance to use a D5 deck until a master is required of me. There is little practice. And if hands on experience with that equipment is few and far between, how do you stay sharp?

LAFCPUG used to have there meetings on DVD which I found really helpful but they stopped selling it.

Anyway, I hope that clarifies.

G5 Dual 2.0 GHz processor, OSX.4.8

[Tim Wilson]

[Martin Sterling] “I find so many professional edit suites configured so differently I’d like to at least have an idea of what I’ll be walking into especially with no tech.”

It clarifies, but I hope you can see that that’s both broad enough and specific enough that you’ll be able to find that “out of the box” anywhere on the web on a weekly basis – especially because anybody who knows the answer to this is probably doing the work for so many hours that it’d be hard for them to find the time to talk about it on a weekly basis.

That said, I asked you to ask. 🙂 I’ll poke around and see what I can find.

In the meantime, this is exactly the kind of question that people ask and get answered in the Cow. If you can narrow it down a little, just enough to find an appropriate forum to ask, you’ll find a conversation get started that will give you all kinds of insights….

Thanks,
Tim

[Martin Sterling]

Honestly, I really don’t have an specific question. I’d like to know all the more complex matters before hand so I don’t have to scrammble last minute when I encounter it on the job or with a client. Acquiring Preventative expert level information so I don’t meet emergencies unprepared. Instead of waiting for a problem to show up to deal with it, how about we prevent the situation from ever becoming a problem. The dilemma is, you never know what is going to be a problem until it happens.

G5 Dual 2.0 GHz processor, OSX.4.8