Michael
Forum Replies Created
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One tip which served me well was to put ND over the lens of my GoPro when shooting in bright sunlight. It tricks the GoPro into slowing down the shutter speed.
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I picked up a beat up Cartoni Delta with carbon sticks for $1300 and spent another $500 getting it serviced. Ebay is your friend.
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$500 bucks is nothing in post-production dollars. Every year I have to budget for software upgrades. It’s just the cost of doing business. Some years I skip certain applications because I haven’t been use them as frequently.
FCP 5.1 is a fine editing system. It will do what you need to do. If you think the shiny new hammer will make your script, vision, words, ideas, and concept any better, rethink what software actually does: It’s a tool, a means to an end.
If you need extreme color grading capabilities, consider purchasing a plug-in like Synthetic Aperture’s Color Finesse. It will do a lot of what Color covers. I own it. It’s my basic color correction tool I use on FCP projects. It will cost you $575 dollars. It doesn’t integrate as well as Color, and lacks some capability, but until this upgrade, it’s how I did critical correction in Final Cut. But the upgrade price for Apple is only $500 dollars, so you might as well get the upgrade.
Now will someone call Synthetic Aperature and tell them to give my my $575 dollars back? (g)
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“It has come from a barely capable editing tool on MacOs 9, to FCP 2-3-4-5 and now 6 in 8 years. I’d say Apple has been putting some real effort into this project.”
I remember my friends at Avid back in the ’90s, upset by Apple’s release of FCP, and insisting to me that Apple wasn’t serious about pro-applications. They told me Apple is just looking to get their toes wet, they’ll get bored and move on in a year or two. They insisted that Apple would never produce a competative product. Some of us were screaming to Avid that they needed to compete back then, or this flame would develop into an inferno (pun intended). Who’s laughing now?
Honestly.. I found FCP quite capable in version 1.0. I used it to cut together an animated open for a special I was working on. I put the whole thing together on a G3 Pismo, and it blew everyone away that I could just walk around with an editing system in my hands. Of course, that’s nothing new today! 😉
“I really wish Apple would at least change the Media manager interface to qwell some of the unrest about MM”
It’s not that their MM is horrible, it’s just not up to par with Avid’s product. What I keep pounding home is that Avid, though a fantastic tool for storytelling, has held the exact same feature set for about five years now. There’s been almost no innovation beyond hardware, and their hardware reliablity has gotten much worse with the DNA family. Apple, on the other hand, keeps moving the bar. I’d like to see the UI tweaked a bit, it’s getting a little long in the tooth, MM, as you said, could use an overhaul.
Like I said, I rely on Avid for my profession, I can’t work on other systems with the same speed. But Apple is where the excitement is right now. Avid Unity workflow? Hard to get excited about. Native Boris and Sapphire-like effects? 3D Motion particles? Sensational new color correction? Enhanced audio workflow? You should all be jumping.
Apple has impressed with the new release of FCPS 2.
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“You can save looks and or presets and apply them anywhere in the timeline. Is that what you mean?”
No, in Symphony, you can do one color correction for a reel and it will automatically apply the effect in the timeline to every shot off of that source tape. No dragging or dropping required. It’s a sweet feature.
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Check out “Color Correction for Digital Video: Using Desktop Tools to Perfect Your Image” by Steve Hullfish and Jaime Fowler.
It describes the process pretty well.
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My Lord. If I could get away with a power down once per month… Avid’s Adrenaline box needs to be power cycled twice per DAY. Stop whining. It’s a great box by a great company. And, when the thing developed a hiccup in the reference input.. AJA fixed it FREE. Try that anywhere else.
mjd
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I didn’t realize it had so many secondaries! Wow, that’s great.
I’m a fan of Color Finesse, I like the interface and have had great success with it in the past. Plus, it was, much like Color, an easy round trip in FCP as a plug in.
Where Avid got it right with Symphony’s color correction is the ability to set up color treatments by tape name. Provided the lighting didn’t change, you can do one correction for one shot, and apply it everywhere in the timeline that tape was used.
I’m excited (already ordered) about Studio 2. I hope Color blows me away. I never got to use Final Touch, but I’ve heard great things. Should be a fun few months getting to learn all of the new tools.
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On the web site it would appear that it’s the least upgraded product. There’s some new integration upgrades with Motion, and new templates. There looks to be a better interface as well.. but you’re right, nothing else new.
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I’m an Avid guy, with an FCP system at home. I’ll never be an FCP guy with an Avid at work, because I’ve been working too long on Avid products (Think version 4.0!) and I’m just way faster on their gear. But remember, editing is about storytelling, not tools. How I get to the end product really doesn’t matter.
I bought into FCP because it’s modular, and in a sense, future proof. My I/O box goes out-of-date? Replace it with a new one. I don’t have to trash the whole system, as I would in Avid world.
Get excited about color. It’s the best color correction software short of Symphony, as far as I can tell. Synthetic Aperature’s Color Finesse is the only other product with this much power.
Also, don’t think you’re going to have to open Color each time you need to correct a clip. You can save Color presets to your bin and apply them within FCP, if I read it right.
So get impressed. Avid hasn’t had a release with this much new stuff in it for at least five years. Their stability has gotten WORSE. Apple is making a more exciting product these days.
I want to see if the new Server software will be of use… time will tell.