Editing – Page 4 – Latest News from MediaStorm

MediaStorm Guide to Selecting Clips in Premiere Pro Without a Mouse

Post author:Eric Maierson
Post published:November 18, 2014

This article is part of a series of posts with tips and tricks from our producers' experience working with Adobe Premiere Pro CC after years of working in Final Cut Pro. To read more about why we made the switch, check out this post. Last week, a friend asked if there was a way in Premiere Pro to select more than one track at a time using only the keyboard. The answer is yes. The keyboard shortcut D will select all clips under the playhead, so long as the respective tracks are highlighted. In the example below, you’ll see that Video 3 is not highlighted, so when I press D, clips on that track are not selected. If you’d like the ability to toggle your audio and video tracks on and off without using the mouse, you can create a custom keyboard shortcut key for each. Open the Keyboard Shortcut window (Option-Command-K)…

MediaStorm Guide to Premiere Pro Search Bins

Post author:Eric Maierson
Post published:October 16, 2014

This article is part of a series of posts with tips and tricks from our producers’ experience working with Adobe Premiere Pro CC after years of working in Final Cut Pro. To read more about why we made the switch, check out this post.

A great new feature in the most recent update to Premiere Pro (2014.1) is the ability to create search bins.

Search bins act like smart folders, allowing you to filter your assets for specific criterion. This is enormously helpful for locating similar items that are otherwise scattered across your project.

There are three ways to create a smart bin:

Click the search bin icon at the top of a Project Window

Right-Click in the Project window and select New Search Bin…

Select the menu File > Search Bin

You will then be presented with the Edit Search Bin window where you can enter your search criterion.
(more…)

Talkin’ Rough Cut Blues

Post author:Eric Maierson
Post published:October 7, 2014

Currently, I’m smack in the middle of a long and complex rough cut. And that fills me with unease. I struggle to embrace the uncertainty of it all, even though I’ve been here before, literally a hundred times. This is what I tell myself: A rough cut is a sketch. It’s an early attempt to conceive the future. As such, it's clunky, inelegant and mechanical. The weakness of a rough cut is perhaps most evident in scene transitions: how you connect one section to the next. If you’re like me, you feel a great urge to immediately fix these problems. One could spend hours trying to make them seamless. God knows, I want to. Intellectually, I know that there’s no need to finesse these details when soon I'll be rearranging whole sections. Or even deleting them altogether. It’s more important at this stage to just keep moving. Emotionally, it’s much harder to…

10 Thoughts on Filmmaking

Post author:Eric Maierson
Post published:September 24, 2014

IN PRACTICE 1. Think of music as a current. It should flow in the same emotional direction as the film itself. Imposing a mood leads to sentimentality. 2. It's natural to become enamored with specific scenes or edits. But sometimes things that work well on their own don't belong within the wider context of the film. Start with a scalpel, end with a hatchet. 3. Static, or lockoff shots, allow the viewer to observe. Shots that move allow the viewer to be part of the action. Consider the value of each. 4. Emotion is what movies do best. That’s why using text to fill story gaps always feel clunky. 5. Transcripts are vital. But they are the map, not the world. IN THEORY 6. The only way to achieve excellence is to care deeply about every part of production, including finishing. 7. Sometimes, the best way to solve a problem is to…

MediaStorm Guide to Using Adobe Lightroom with Premiere Pro

Post author:Eric Maierson
Post published:July 10, 2014

This article is part of a series of posts with tips and tricks from our producers’ experience working with Adobe Premiere Pro CC after years of working in Final Cut Pro. To read more about why we made the switch, check out this post.

Adiós Aperture

Apple recently announced its plans to retire both Aperture and iPhoto. The company will create one unified application, titled Photos, that will be part of OS X Yosemite.

While Yosemite will continue to support Aperture, as well as provide an upgrade path for Photos compatibility, development of Aperture will cease. (It’s worth noting that the last major upgrade to Aperture was version 3.5, released in October 2013.)

Aperture users are left with three basic options:

Continue to work in Aperture, in the same manner that some still use Final Cut Pro 7.
Adopt Photos in to their workflows when it becomes available.
Use an alternative application like Adobe’s Lightroom.

While some suggest that Photos will be a powerful replacement for iPhoto and Aperture, Macworld author David Sparks states, “The desktop Photos app likely won’t offer all the power that currently exists in Aperture; I’m certain its photo-alteration tools will take a hit.”

I hope that’s not the case. Nevertheless, MediaStorm is now considering adopting Lightroom in to our post-production workflow.

(more…)