Don Smith
Forum Replies Created
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I’m a 30-year veteran of shooting and editing for the major networks in the U.S. I worked as a freelancer that mostly worked full-time. If you watched the Branch Davidian compound burn on any CBS station you were watching my camera. I’ve edited hundreds of pieces for NBC’s Nightly News and Today Show, CBS Evening News and Morning News and ABC’s World News Tonight. I worked at the Dallas bureaus of the nets.
I could write a book about my network news travels but all I have after years of thinking about it is a title. Not a kiss-and-tell book but a network news adventures book.
Going back to the original post of wondering if X can be used to cut news I’m here to tell you yes, yes yes.
Some well-intentioned posters here talk about prep and organization and how it can help and while that’s true, it’s not so practical when crashing a piece for national broadcast. If I missed a Nightly News deadline, for example, it would be the last time I edited for that show.
The fastest way to build a news piece is to first build the primary storyline, and I mean that in a generic sense. Build the primary sound first; narration, soundbite, narration, standup, soundbite, narration close, for example.
Start covering the narration with picture. Long pictures at first if you’re looking at a looming deadline. Then insert some sound pops between narration and soundbite or wherever appropriate. Try to catch levels and color as you go.
The idea here is that if all goes to hell in a hand basket, then you have complete and covered sound to put on the air.
From there its a matter of pretty-ing it up using what time you may have left.
But, back to the answer on whether X is good for crashing a news piece. Absolutely! X, once you ‘get it’, is an extension of your thoughts and doesn’t get in the way. I thought I was fast on 7 but I FLY on X!
Starting three and a half years ago the freelance money from the networks shrank considerably. Now I do a lot of corporate editing and I do it in a department where there are about six others. I was the first to move to X. Before X and now after X I’m considerably faster than anyone else. I point to all the years of making drop-dead deadlines and believe me, some days were nail biters. I mean, have you ever been asked to take the word “the” out of an edited piece six minutes before its the national lead story on NBC Nightly News? When you were still using tape-to-tape? It’ll shorten your life span!
Don Smith
NewsVideo.com
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Try looking at an old Motion tutorial I did some time back. I look at a built-in template and do a post-mortem on it. From examining that template I learn how to do a spiraling paint stroke and pull it into z-space. The part you’re interested in starts about 2:15.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB-nu6rzH9k&list=UUu7fOLiNSzsZv1ngVUSrq7Q&index=5
Don Smith
NewsVideo.com
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Jeremy, if you and I had faced each other for a noon showdown in the middle of the street I think I would be dead in the dirt. I thought double-clicking the audio part of the clip to make a J or L cut was fast, but I like the Shift { or } and it might be faster. Put another notch on your mouse. 🙂
In my defense, most of the time I only want to J or L the audio on one clip and usually not both at the same edit. Still, I like that Shift { or } and I see the Shift – Backslash works as well.
NewsVideo.com
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I learned something new reading this thread. Love the keyboard shortcuts that I didn’t know existed.
However, I normally just double-click the audio part of the clip and that expands the clip (fast. don’t have to take hands off the mouse) and simply drag on the end of the audio which will now move independently of the video. Fast L or J cut. Then just double-click the audio to make it join the video again.
Don Smith
NewsVideo.com
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It sounds like you’re animating the mask and not animating the mouth, which should be cut out from the face and be a separate layer. Animating the mask would only make it move over the face.
Forget the mask.
Cut the mouth from the face into a separate layer. On the face, have black where the missing mouth is.
Animate the mouth (lower lip to chin, actually).
Don Smith
NewsVideo.com
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Postings above have said it but let me attempt to guide you in…
With Final Cut Pro X open, go to menu Final Cut Pro > Commands > Customize.
When the window pops up, enter ‘connections’ in the upper right search box.
‘Override Connections’ will appear in the lower-left quadrant as the only listing. Highlight the listing.
Press the tilde key.
Close out the box and that’s it.
Tip: To make the Override Connections ‘stick’ so you can use your fingers for other things, hold down the Grave (tilde) key, then press and hold the Option key, then release the tilde key, then release the Option key. The symbol for Override Connections will ‘stick’.
Don Smith
NewsVideo.com
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Instead I took out the Nvidia card. Now my FCPX is rock solid again. I don’t use Adobe so much that I need Open GL acceleration anyway. I’m a happy camper again.
NewsVideo.com
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I saw that Perian had been installed again after I had taken it out so I deleted it again. I had updated my Nvidia GTX285 graphics card driver (I also have an ATI 5770 card in my ’09 Mac Pro 3,1). I also installed the latest CUDA driver for the Nvidia card. And, a couple of other things along the way that I can’t remember. The installs remembered were the first things I checked but I can’t undo the Nvidia driver install or the CUDA install it seems. Configuration note; I drive one 30″ monitor with the ATI card (slot 1) and the other 30″ monitor (both Apple) with the Nvidia card. FCPX has been running well in that configuration for some time.
NewsVideo.com
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Here’s my test…
NewsVideo.com
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Just use a plain old rectangle mask, very feathered (it’ll go more than 100) and animate the mask across the image. I just tested it.
NewsVideo.com
