You know that scene from The Jerk, where Navin R. Johnson leaps ecstatically into the air when the phone book arrives because it’s the first one to feature his name? “My name in print!” he beams, “Things are going to start happening to me now.” (Cut to M. Emmet Walsh’s crazed sniper randomly opening his […]
I wasn’t going to stay up for “the bells” because I was seriously sleep deprived, but curiosity got the better of me. I’d edited the Hogmanay show for STV, and part of our job was to time the countdown to 2015 so that it would be broadcast at precisely the correct moment. I couldn’t verify […]
Getting to the movies isn’t really realistic anymore now I’m a dad. I’ve let my Cineworld subscription lapse. That’s not to say there aren’t films I want to see right now: Interstellar, The Imitation Game, Gone Girl. Of those, Interstellar is the only ‘better see it in the theatre’ movie, but I was anxious to see Gone […]
No one likes unnecessary pain. It must’ve seemed like unnecessary pain to many editors, having to learn a new piece of software when the old one works just fine. And no, I’m not talking about Final Cut Pro X (yet), but Final Cut Pro 7. Years ago, I saw a lot of hostility towards it […]
Gotta say, I agree with this post regarding Final Cut Pro 7. I just finished a job with it and, sadly, it wasn’t up to the task. Admittedly, I’d over-estimated it, recommending against transcoding footage from a C300 (which poor old FCP7 insists is XDCAM HD422) when the client indicated that storage space was limited. I […]
My favourite way of logging with keywords is to have ‘No Ratings or Keywords’ selected as the criteria for display in the Event Browser. Then, add a keyword and the clip vanishes. So you always know which clips have yet to be sorted. Ah, but what if you want to add more than one keyword? […]
My favourite living musician and recording artist is Prince. I’ll allow that if you don’t like him, you probably really don’t like him. That’s because he’s really good. Not a middle of the road, demographic-studying slave to shifting units. He is a businessman of remarkable savvy and boldness—he does know how to shift units—but he […]
In my day, my young ’uns, faster frame rates than the usual 23.97, 24, 25 and 29.97 frame rates were only useful if you wanted smooth slow motion. With Peter Jackson boldly using 48 frames per second for The Hobbit, the idea that they could be used as a playback option has a good chance […]
Multicam may have been implemented in Final Cut Pro X, version 10.0.3, and improved in 10.0.4, but working on a show that’s destined to be broadcast to License payers, I found it’s led to a new problem that could mean the loss of an awful lot of work. Of course, back-ups were also introduced at […]
The only problem I’ve encountered with Final Cut Pro X during my first edit for broadcast TV involves anamorphic QuickTimes, but in solving it I found a new friend in my editing life.