09 July 2012

It's Been A Long Time.


What can I say, we all get busy?

So much has happened since the last posting of ... wow, too many years ago.  I can't even begin to cover everything, so I will attempt to exercise the art of brevity. 

LightWorks is free.  Yes.  It's true.  LightWorks (my NLE of choice*) has officially come out of the beta phase and is being offered as both a free light edition and a $60/year Pro license.  I have been involved with the Beta for almost two years and in my opinion the folks over at EditShare have done a brilliant job at creating a very user-friendly, lightening-fast and modern NLE.  There will be many more blog posts about LWKS as I am in the process of writing a book for current Avid and FCP editors on switching to LightWorks, so keep an eye out!

FCP-X happened.  So much has been said that I honestly have nothing new to add to this arena.  I have edited one commercial on it.  I tested a recent version (10.0.4) of software for editing an upcoming documentary that I’ll be butting (a week’s worth of fiddling) and have come to some conclusions.  At the risk of being brow-beaten by my post-productions peers, I will say there is a lot to like about this software.  It’s different, VERY different. 
FCPX finally handles media well!  The copying & optimized/proxy transcoding is a dream.  It finally works the way it should have forever ago.  I’m still very confused about a number of points in the media-management end of this software, and the interface makes very little sense to me, but I see a future for this software in reality TV.
I know, I know, there’s a lot “missing.”  OMF support, export for grading, poor match-frame support, confusion trackless editing, not telling you when you lose sync, etc., etc..
            Think about it. When it comes to most TV production (at least here on the east cost) care about three things: 1) don’t lose anything 2) make it as easy as possible for the producer to pre-cut   3) finishing it faster, better, cheaper
            Reality TV is almost always already organized by date, not scenes, thus the Events concept works perfectly. Face-ID reduces the amount of time assistants / editors “waste” having to go looking for additional cut-away shots.  The current Shared storage solution solves the old FCP issues of sharing media and clips.  Making the interface more “pro-sumer” or “i-movie” like now takes down a barrier to producers.

AVID 6 – Used on a couple of jobs.  The application feels more akin to FCP7, less like the Avid I’m most familiar with (3.5.4!); otherwise, not so bad.  Didn’t experience any major issues aside from the mental leap to some of the newer features.

The Digital Bolex – Us film school graduating-filmphiles love the Bolex.  Now, some very smart and passionate folks have teamed up with the Bolex company to create a 2K RAW camera for under $4,000!  Still waiting to see some official footage release, but I am personally very excited.  Cameras come out in September. 

Black Magic Design – Also has a professional super-16mm RAW camera available in July.  The camera sounds great, but my reservation comes from the CMOS chip, form factor and touch screen monitor.  Cameras out in July 2012.


OKAY.  So maybe I failed at the targeted brevity.  I am very excited to get this blog back up and running!

Cheers,
    @pHaas 

COMING SOON
A reflection on my most recent editing project: a dance-infused country music video.  The project was shot on a Canon 7D, edited in Edit Share LightWorks with the conform/color and DVD production done in Adobe Creative Suite 5.5.  I’m going to focus on the aspects of moving an edit out of LWKS and why we decided to move into Adobe CS for finishing.

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