Nicholas Zimmerman
Forum Replies Created
-
It’s not a scam. It’s just not an easy test. At this point I’ve accumulated five ProApps certifications (X level 1&2, FCP 10.1, Logic Pro X, and Motion 5), and they all took incredible amounts of work to pass.
I’ve never taken the 3-day courses for FCPX, but instead utilized Lynda.com (FCPX Essential Training, FCPX Narrative Editing, FCPX Documentary Editing, FCPX Color Correction) and all of Ripple Training’s existing courses for the Level 1 exam. I used the application daily for a full year ahead of the exam, and studied flash cards for a solid 5 hours the night before. I was terrified of the exam, having worked in the field for a few years, and having heard horror stories of MC and FCP7 certs. It ended up being pretty painless, and I came in a week later to take the Level 2 exam without issue.
For the Motion 5 exam I flew back to DigiTrain in Dallas, TX(even though I’d moved to LA) and took the three day course. It was a fantastic learning experience, but I went in with a solid background in Motion 5, having completed all of Ripple Training’s courses. Getting to bounce ideas off of the instructor helped me gain a lot of skills with Behaviors and Parameter Behaviors I wouldn’t have gained from static video training.
For Logic Pro X I stayed in Los Angeles and took the 3 day course at Logic Pro Help. David Nahmani (the author of the certification training book) taught the course, and it was brutal. I don’t come from an music background, but I had used ProTools for mixing quite a few years. The first day of the course David told us, if you don’t study, you will not pass this exam, and he was right. Out of the twelve people in our class, only two passed. I studied for about five hours a night during that course, and ended up passing by 1% point. I went in there in the exact boat you did for the FCPX exam. I was totally green, and the exam was extremely difficult, but it was doable.
Taking the three day course in no way guarantees that you’ll pass the exam, but it is possible if you really, really, really try. Realistically, you’re going to need either some luck (pretty sure that 1% on Logic was from a lucky guess), or some experience. Either way, you’ll need a pretty decent amount of determination.
I know with some of the AATCs they’ll let you come back whenever to take the exam. You don’t have to take it on the third day of class. While that wouldn’t have worked for you because of travel, it is an option if you have a local AATC. Like any difficult exam, you’ll need to put in some time outside of class. If I hadn’t studied so much for Logic, I probably wouldn’t have come close to passing. Like somewhere between 40-50% is my guess.
In the end, I don’t think any of the Apple ProApps exams are scams. They’re all doable, you just have either go in with experience, or put some serious study time into it after class each night.
________________________________________
NickZimmerman.net
Certified in FCPX, Logic Pro X, & Motion 5
________________________________________ -
I mentioned this to Luke from the ProApps team last year at Black Magic’s event in Burbank. Still kind of sad they haven’t done it yet.
________________________________________
NickZimmerman.net
Certified in FCPX, Logic Pro X, & Motion 5
________________________________________ -
Also straight email works now in Yosemite thanks to MailDrop. It allows up to 5GB attachments via Mail.app.
________________________________________
NickZimmerman.net
Certified in FCPX, Logic Pro X, & Motion 5
________________________________________ -
The videos aren’t pixelated, just the playback, and that leads me to think it’s an issue with your playback settings. Click the light switch next to your zoom setting in the upper right corner of the viewer and set “Quality” to “Better Quality”. If you’re trying to play back unrendered effects, or are pushing your machine too hard it will automatically drop the resolution to give you real time playback. If you set it to better quality and still have issues it’s likely a problem with the power of the workstation you’re using.
________________________________________
NickZimmerman.net
Certified in FCPX, Logic Pro X, & Motion 5
________________________________________ -
Check your login in the App Store. When you’re logged in you should be able to select the “Purchased” or “Update” tab and run it for free.
________________________________________
NickZimmerman.net
Certified in FCPX, Logic Pro X, & Motion 5
________________________________________ -
Select your Transform Tool from the lower left corner of your viewer, then select the title to view it’s motion path. You should be able to see where your issue is from here.
________________________________________
NickZimmerman.net
Certified in FCPX, Logic Pro X, & Motion 5
________________________________________ -
Only in 1080p from what I saw, the 4k is a more vanilla h.264. Apparently the All-I 1080p is pretty high quality though, the reviews I read raved about it.
https://www.eoshd.com/content/11934/panasonic-gh4-preview
________________________________________
NickZimmerman.net
Certified in FCPX, Logic Pro X, & Motion 5
________________________________________ -
A beautiful part of the FCPX workflow is that you can generate ProRes files within the application while editing the h.264 until the transcode is finished. ProRes will beat h.264 for editing no matter what NLE is used due to h.264’s aforementioned long GOP structure.
________________________________________
NickZimmerman.net
Certified in FCPX, Logic Pro X, & Motion 5
________________________________________ -
I’m not sure if CUDA gets updated by the OS updates or not. You’re 100% correct about the display drivers, but CUDA’s got it’s own set of drivers that seem to be out of date every time I check them in the System Preferences (just checked and even now they’ve got a new update up that I’m installing). The issue I was mentioning was after the latest Motion 5 update, we were working 2 up in Motion and the screens would stop updating, even when active. My buddy and I both had the same problem on our rMBPs (2012 & late 2013) and after we both updated CUDA everything worked fine. I’m not sure how much CUDA vanilla Motion actually uses, but we had a few third party plugins running too.
________________________________________
NickZimmerman.net
Certified in FCPX, Logic Pro X, & Motion 5
________________________________________ -
Most of the rMBP with discreet cards are Nvidia. I’ve got a Late 2013 15″ rMBP with a discreet Gefore 750M, so deleting Cuda wouldn’t be a great idea.
______________________________
FCP X Certified Pro, Level Two
______________________________