[Chris Walsh]

Complete uniformity is unlikely to ever occur. The broadcast world keeps changing, even when stations capital expense budgets and engineering beliefs don’t.

There is no incentive (budgetary or otherwise) to standardize. Much safer and easier to keep going with what has worked for them. So that means Beta SP for some “HD stations.” Even if their newcasts and network feeds are HD, doesn’t mean their ad traffic operations are.

It’s actually gotten better than it was five years ago, when networks required separate SD and HD deliveries for spots. The big three also have different standards and practices, so I’ve delivered spots with different disclaimer for each network. It was not unusual to have 25 different format deliveries for a single ISCI code. You also have to find out what their delivery requirements are today, since they may have changed from last week. Or more likely the ad sales rep is still sending out last year’s email delivery spec attachment. Find the operations contact for each delivery. Email, or better yet, get them on the phone. Sometimes the station’s traffic person can tell what they really accept, even if it’s not on the sheet.

As Bob was pointing out, it really is the nitty gritty work of post. Long after the client and creative directors are having sushi and cocktails, the traffic team will be wrangling the byzantine broadcast specs to deliver the masters for air.

Chris Walsh

http://www.musicfog.com
Silver Spring, MD
Final Cut & AVID MC5
Former Windows User and edit* lover

[Chris Walsh]

If you’ve been enjoying FCPX, then you’ll probably like Sony Vegas a lot. Use the Pro trial, but also check out their other “low-end” flavors — the platinum and studio versions of movie factory are pretty amazing.

Pros for Vegas for me were: 1) Use any codec, any file. If windows could play it, vegas would edit it. 2) Scalable playback for hardware, ran well on older laptops and new desktop. 3) Nice (but not intuitive titler). 4) Good built-effects, and nice plugin options as well. 5) Great audio handling and tools built in.
6) Great export options – no separate encoding app required.

Cons: Too mouse and timeline driven for me. Not crazy about the event envelope metaphor. Didn’t like dragging on active areas to build fades etc. Old version with “single-viewer” was too limited. Encouraged making edit decisions on the timeline…chop suey style. Drag a bunch of clips onto timeline and edit there, rather than making decisions in source window.

Avid was great on the PC as well, and maybe the new version of Premiere Pro. Premiere Elements was a buggy dog, I don’t know if it’s been re-tooled to use the new PP engine.

Chris Walsh

http://www.musicfog.com
Silver Spring, MD
Final Cut & AVID MC5
Former Windows User and edit* lover

[Chris Walsh]

Thanks for this, even though it’s an old post. Just spent 30 minutes looking through behaviours for where they stuck the wipes (since all other FCP fx are available).

Google pointed me to your post, which confirmed the unbelievable fact that there aren’t any preset wipes in Motion.

I can buy wipes as plugins apparently, but I think that money is better spent on Adobe crossgrade.

Chris Walsh

http://www.musicfog.com
Silver Spring, MD
Final Cut & AVID MC5
Former Windows User and edit* lover

[Chris Walsh]

Very interesting. Especially nice to see a public roadmap. They are freer to do this than most, since they don’t have the disclosure restrictions constraints of a publicly traded company, but still, I love open source and open communication.

Will have to take it for a spin.

Chris Walsh

http://www.musicfog.com
Silver Spring, MD
Final Cut & AVID MC5
Former Windows User and edit* lover

[Chris Walsh]

Yahoo!

Chris Walsh

http://www.musicfog.com
Silver Spring, MD
Final Cut & AVID MC5
Former Windows User and edit* lover

[Chris Walsh]

I’m not sure you’re being fair. This is a completely new tea, brewed for the future and where we are headed not where we have been.

It’s a work in progress, and I fully expect the next version of this tea to be every bit as tasty and popular as the old Earl Grey. For those who are not happy with tea, there’s always Lipton.

Chris Walsh

http://www.musicfog.com
Silver Spring, MD
Final Cut & AVID MC5
Former Windows User and edit* lover

[Chris Walsh]

I completely agree. Professional=Flexible, Consumer=Simplified/Inflexible. This is true in most product categories, beyond NLE’s and even software.

The main reason I haven’t jumped into FCPX is that it does not seem flexible enough for me…though it may be for other editors. For most of my projects, I don’t have the last word, my client does. The client doesn’t care whether it’s difficult or easy to make the change, they just want their changes as quickly as possible.

As a one-man band, I build my projects to make revisions and iterations easy, not necessarily for raw speed. My project last week went through 13 versions in three days, and the last two versions lifted an outake from an old project to create a new open and intro. I was able to open that old project side by side with the new one, step through my select timeline, and copy the three relevant clips into my new project. That’s not an optional, “nice to have” feature for me, it’s a necessity.

So I keep coming back to this forum (and the FCPX techniques forum) to look for news and reports of successful use of FCPX in the kind of short-turnaround, client-driven situations I work in. I hope that FCPX becomes as flexible and powerful as FCP 7 has been.

Chris Walsh

http://www.musicfog.com
Silver Spring, MD
Final Cut & AVID MC5
Former Windows User and edit* lover

[Chris Walsh]

I love this! Another tip I missed because I just didn’t read the manual.

Chris, I’m going to try tomorrow, after I finish my all-night edit. I’ll go directly to the Apple store in my edit attire, dirty raincoat and house slippers. Will let you all know how it goes, or more likely, my bail bondsman posting on my behalf.

Chris Walsh

http://www.musicfog.com
Silver Spring, MD
Final Cut & AVID MC5
Former Windows User and edit* lover

[Chris Walsh]

Try the free version of Colorista, not as powerful (mattes and more) as the full paid version, but you can’t beat the price.

https://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/magic-bullet-colorista-free/

Chris Walsh

http://www.musicfog.com
Silver Spring, MD
Final Cut & AVID MC5
Former Windows User and edit* lover

[Chris Walsh]

Good luck with the Color class…I’ve played with it, but never really dove in.

I deal with a lot of mismatched footage (some of it my own fault when I’m acting as DP), and found that the free version of Red Giant’s Colorista was helpful in some situations I couldn’t fix with the FC3 color correctors.

FC3 is pretty flexible for CC on the timeline — very easy to copy the corrections once I have them, and for shots that are unexposed as well as unbalanced, using composite modes/blend modes has been the best way to lift them 15 or 20 IRE without losing the shadows. Plus I can also adjust the opacity and/or color correction of the top layer to tweak it even more.

Plus it follows my first principle, which is to stay on the timeline whenever possible!

Chris Walsh

http://www.musicfog.com
Silver Spring, MD
Final Cut & AVID MC5
Former Windows User and edit* lover