Post Production

A broadcast commercial workflow that will make you go “Snausages!”

S’nerd (super nerd) that I am, I find this workflow to be really exciting. This method allows you to merge jam-synced second-source audio metadata (logged on-set by the sound recordist) with your video footage. If timecode is properly synchronized between sources, you can sync the sound to the picture AND merge the metadata in under 15 minutes. In this tutorial, I’m also making multiclips from the day’s shoot.

3rd party apps used in this vid, which I highly recommend for use with FCP X:

Intelligent Assistance Sync-N-Link X

X2Pro Audio Convert

Sound Devices Wave Agent (free)

One app I didn’t use in this workflow that I also recommend is Shot Notes X. It’s a really smart new utility that allows you to merge script notes with your shot footage. We tested using Shot Notes in conjunction with Sync N Link at NAB and, I’m happy to say, they all works brilliantly together.

NAB 2014 Post-Wrapup-Diary or “How to Attempt to Become a Greek Demogod”

What a crazy, insane, amazing week I had at NAB. I flew in last Saturday morning. Thanks to Alexis Van Hurkman’s recommendation, I stayed at Treasure Island. While there was no pirate theme in the room (bummer!), the rooms were comfortable and the rate was really affordable. It was perfectly located for my daily walk to the FCPWORKS private demo suite, where I spent the week showing off my work in FCP X.

Once settled, I walked over to the Wynn hotel’s buffet and stuffed my gullet along with Sam Mestman and his dad Steve (hi, Steve!). A few hours later, we were off and running, setting up this slick suite on the 26th floor of the Wynn.

FCPWORKS Suite view at the Wynn

Forty-eight hours, one Quantum SAN and nine Mac Pro/iMac edit stations later, Sam, Darren Roark and I were ready to start demoing.

On Sunday, Scott Simmons from Pro Video Coalition showed up to interview us. Can you tell I was a bit awe struck?

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Sometimes, the editor gets to speak…

Huell in Poppies

Here’s an interview I did with a local radio station last weekend at the premiere of a documentary about Huell Howser. Huell is a bit of a California icon for those not from The Golden State. I edited about 500 shows with him during the 8 years we worked together. Part of what got me the job was showing off real time color correction in FCP 4.5.

Well, 10 years later, I’ll be demoing real time color correction and lots more cool stuff in FCP X for FCPWORKS next week at NAB. Hope to see some of you there! Sign up for appointments here

Come visit FCPWORKS and me at NAB!

Wynn_FCPWORKS_Las_Vegas

NAB is going to be very exciting this year with all the 4K products surely to be announced. I’ll be demoing a smörgåsbord of FCP X workflows with FCPWORKS at the Wynn next week. The sign-up info can be found HERE. http://www.fcpworks.com/nab-final-cut-pro-x-demo-suite/

Along with fellow FCP X gurus Philip Hodgetts, Sam Mestman, and Darren Roarke, we’ll be demoing broadcast, doc, news, & feature film workflows in the suite. Look forward to seeing you there!

Color Correcting in FCP X Webinar

It’s been a busy couple of weeks over here at the Garbershop. I finished my video about Mt. Zion Cemetery, which I shot last year. I’ve been working again at Discovery Agency using FCP X. And I have also been cutting two jobs over at my office, a promotional video that I shot for a friend who is a patent attorney and VAM for Showtime.

On top of that, I’ve been scripting and rehearsing my next webinar for Moviola, which will focus on color correction in FCP X. It will be done in four parts. I will explain the color correction capabilities from an editor’s perspective, starting with the basics and working up to some more complicated shots. It’s all very practical, real world stuff. I use footage from actual jobs that I’ve cut over the past few months. No demo trickery here!

I highly recommend checking it out if you have the time. You’ll need to sign up in advance to watch it live on March 3rd. Or you can catch it after the fact, but they charge a small amount for it (which I do get a small percentage of, so please purchase or rent it if you can!).

You can register here:

http://moviola.com/webinars/color-correcting-in-final-cut-pro-x/Hero-Master-1

My mini-doc, “A Cemetery Remembered” is now online!

I’m pleased to present my latest short-form documentary, “A Cemetery Remembered.” As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, this was a passion project of mine that I started last summer in 2013. I read an article in the L.A. Times which recounted the story of Mt. Zion Cemetery. It is located in East Los Angeles and had fallen into disrepair. Because of the story in the Times, a grassroots campaign was started by a local rabbi to restore it.

I pitched the story around to a couple of people, but realized that this was a project that I needed to pursue on my own. Well, sort of on my own. I enlisted the help of my amazing fiancé/producer (prodancé? fian-ducer?), Tina Nguyen, to help me out on the shoot and the edit.

We shot over the course of one day with the following equipment:

  • Panasonic GH2
  • Sanken COS-11D
  • Rode VideoMic Pro
  • Roland R-26 Field Recorder
  • LED 900 light
  • Kessler Pocket Jib Traveler
  • GoPro (footage was not used in the final piece)
  • Gripper 3025 suction cup car mount. Used with the GH2.
  • My home-made shoulder rig (AKA, The Spider)

I edited the piece in FCP X so that I could use it as a test bed for a larger documentary or other non-narrative piece. I’m happy to say that FCP passed the test.

X is great for this kind of project. And this project had it all: synced dailies from non-jam synced second source audio, multiclips, footage from different codecs, DSLR video, proxies, extreme color correction with lots of power windows and tracking, camera stabilization. I was even working off of a portable bus-powered $120 Buffalo Thunderbolt HD and moved between two systems.

I started the project late last year in 10.0.8 and then upgraded to 10.1 in December. The new Library-based system works extremely well. I finally feel that my hard drives, and consequently my own brain cells, are organized.

Backing up is simple and effective. I employed the use of Timeline Snapshots as daily backups of my sequences in addition to FCP’s built-in system of backing up (which, thankfully, I never had to use). The camera footage was backed up on a larger RAID.

Because of working on projects like this over the past year, I now feel 110% comfortable in the magnetic timeline. I can work as fast, if not faster, than 7. The key here is to create the dialogue audio bed first (the radio cut), then add music and b-roll. The radio cut generally drives the story and the music and b-roll support it.

Once everything is generally worked out in the timeline, the fine detail work begins. It’s then very easy to move sections and soundbites around without causing music which resides later in the timeline to go out of sync.

On this project, I would change the clip connection point of music generally to the second shot, since the first shot would have been an outgoing shot of the previous scene. When you get used to the magnetic timeline you start to think about relationships between clips. In doing so, you begin to think about story as opposed to what clip goes on what track.

Cemetery Remembered Timeline

X still has its issues and there are most certainly some major areas waiting for improvement. My two biggest request are as follows. I hope that Apple comes up with a way to organize audio clips based on roles. I’d also like to see a way to move the active clip indicator (that little white dot on top of clips) up and down so that you can edit with the keyboard more effectively in secondary storylines. There are also general responsiveness and playback issues that need to be fixed.

The good news is that, with the 10.1 update, I can clearly see Apple’s direction here and it’s all good. There is very little I cannot do with the app. Where there are problem areas in the software, I now have solid workarounds. We have clearly moved well beyond the days where I couldn’t work due to bugs. I’m now experiencing the opposite. I have so much control over the footage that I didn’t know where to stop!

All-in-all this was a great experience and I look forward to using the knowledge I gained on this short-form piece on longer projects.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Uncommon Library, who donated all the music tracks heard in this video. Their music can be licensed at uncommonlibrary.com. Please check them out and license some music from them!

More info on the restoration can be found at restoremtzion.com.

Snapshots in my mind.

On my current project, I’m exploring the new snapshots feature in FCP 10.1.1. It’s one of those features that, at first, seems like a small addition. But in practical usage, I’m finding that it’s a huge shift in how I think about versioning.

In FCP 7 and prior, I would duplicate timelines to create versions. When too many timelines were in my project, I would duplicate the project if it had grown too large. Then I’d trash old versions to decrease the file size and move forward.

In previous versions of FCP X, I would duplicate the timeline and append a v2, v3, v4, and so on at the end of each day or notes pass. On the next day I’d continue on with the duped and updated version. Dupes represented both archives AND new versions.

But with 10.1, things are a flipped around. Here’s a graphical explanation of the switch.

Versioning Method (past versions of FCP):

Versioning method

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