Final Cut Pro X, it was good while it lasted.

This is the last in our series of MediaStorm producers responding to the new FCP X. If you missed them, you can check out Eric Maierson's thoughts here, and Tim McLaughlin's here. FCP X, it was good while it lasted. After working in FCP X for a week, I left on a Friday buoyed by the speed and efficiency at which the program runs. I had blazed through a weeks worth of work in just three days. But on Monday morning, my work was gone. I spent an hour on the phone with Apple. They asked me to run some tests. Several times I opened the project, made some changes, and closed it. Each time I reopened the file, it behaved differently. Think Memento. Sometimes the program “remembered” the changes correctly. Other times it reverted to a previously saved version. Other times it combined two previously saved versions to create a third!…

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FCP X – Initial Reactions

This is the second in our series of MediaStorm producers responding to the new FCP X. If you missed the first response, from Eric Maierson, you can check that out here. Well it's amazing how much difference a day makes.  Yesterday I had prepared a blog post about my qualified, yet upbeat first impression of FCP X.  Of that blog post, here's what I'll include; "I've been working in FCP X since it launched, and I've tried to approach it for what it is. A new piece of software that will have significant limitations, like all version 1 software.  In doing this, I've come to see the potential of the program. It's a young buck, but as it matures, I think we're going to be surprised at how robust it is.  Using metadata to organize and find assets is amazing. It's fast and efficient. I've been able to organize content quicker than…

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Final Cut Pro X First Impressions or “FCP, I Hope You Feel Better Soon”

With the major changes in Apple's new version of Final Cut Pro X, we've had a lot of people asking if MediaStorm is making the switch, and what we think of the program. This essay is the first in a series of MediaStorm producers responding to FCP X. Apple giveth and Apple taketh away. And with the release of Final Cut Pro X, Apple did a lot of both. Among the missing (at least for the moment): the ability to import FCP 7 projects. the ability to export only a portion of your project multicam support the auto-save vault And on and on.  To be fair, Apple recently promised to reintroduce absent functionality in future versions. It’s still painful to work with an incomplete toolset, particularly given that the toolset was doing pretty darn well just last week. Yes, FCP X is a 1.0 release but Apple is not new to this…

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MediaStorm Guide to Crossfades

In my last post, 10 More Ways to Improve Your Multimedia Right Now, I wrote: Delete all dissolves between images...The eye sees cuts. When we look from one object to another, we see a blink. We don’t see one object then dissolve to another. A reader responded with a comparison: "Our eyes don’t see shallow depth-of-field [either], but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use shallow DOF when appropriate." I agree. So before I discuss when it's appropriate to dissolve between pictures, let's quickly revisit why doing so usually doesn't work. The problem is that crossfades create an unexpected middle image. In most cases, this intermediate picture, a combination of two hopefully strong ones, is both messy and confusing. There's no particular meaning to be gleaned from this superimposition. Now, repeat this between every image over the course of a three- to five-minute project, and it's not hard to see how exhausting it…

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MediaStorm’s Guide to Using Subtitles

Sometimes the most difficult challenge regarding subtitles is deciding whether to use them or not. Subtitles present obvious aesthetic challenges—from inevitably covering the most important part of an image to turning a visual experience into a written one. If at all possible, avoid them; the obvious exception being when someone speaks a language other than that of the intended audience. Then subtitles are essential. So how do you know if you need English subtitles for someone speaking English? It’s often difficult for a producer to make this call. After listening to the same clips again and again, we learn a speaker’s cadence and nuances and they become clearer to us. Probably the best method to make this determination is to play your project for a group of people who haven’t seen it yet and see if they can understand the narration without subtitles. With fresh ears, they’ll quickly let you know if…

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