Creating DCP Packages

If you are going to submit films to festivals you may need to create a Digital Cinema Package. This video give you all you need to know. There's some useful links to free DCP software on this website.

GoPro Edit Software

GoPro Studio is a free piece of editing software that looks pretty interesting. There are templates that allow you to drag and drop your footage onto pre-edited sequences. This is great for people who have never edited, but in addition, the colour correction, speed options and file conversion capabilities make this look like a decent iMovie competitor.

Those boys at GoPro are a clever bunch. The hardware was quite limited for a number of years and it was fucking difficult to use, but the results were always amazing. Time-lapse, wide-angle, hard-as-nails, water-proof. What more could you ask for? Well, now you can monitor and control the Hero 3 on your phone as well as shoot 120fps. Well done GoPro. I'm a big fan. And this editing software is going to allow so many GoPro users to quickly get their footage edited and up on the net. And that's one of the problems isn't it? You shoot all this stuff and never have time to edit it. This software should alleviate that problem for many an amateur film maker. Word.

Dropbox and FCP7

Backing up and sharing projects is a constant concern for the professional editor. It's especially important for us freelancers who maintain our own suites.

My preferred solution when using FCP7 is to keep all my .FCP files in Dropbox.

Dropbox acts like a normal folder on your hard drive so you can open and save as normal, but it's also continuously backed up to the cloud as well as all your other computers.

This means you can edit on your studio Mac Pro, then go home to your loved ones safe in the knowledge that you have a copy of the edit on your laptop*.

If you client has all the media you can also log in to DropBox online and get the .fcp file anywhere in the world.

Plus .fcp files are only ever a few meg so you are pretty safe with a free DropBox account.

For me it is a great way of working for backup reasons alone.

So how does this all work with FCPX? What about all those stupid events and project folders? What's with the new library files in 10.1? Can you store them in DropBox? Or are there too many associated files hidden inside?

I have no fucking idea.

But I'm going to find out.

*Providing you have all the relevant media on you of course!

Wanted: FCPX Editor!

Well, well, well, this is a first.

This is the first advert I have ever seen for a FCPX Editor on ProductionBase. Actually it's the second I've ever seen, but the first was posted by myself so that doesn't count.

Is this the future? Are we going to see more and more FCPX jobs in the coming years? Have we finally got over the I-heard-it's-shit mentality? Was Jack The Ripper really the Loch Ness Monster? Only time will tell.

I hope so. I do like FCPX.

Installing FCPX 10.1

Wow, 10.1. This is a big update! They are bound to fucking charge us for it aren't they?

What? It's a free upgrade? Amazing!

Oh, you need Mavericks to run it?

OK, no worries, that's a free upgrade too. Aren't Apple awesome?!

What's that? My Mac Pro 1.1 won't run Mavericks? Oh.

Ok.

What about my Intel Core 2 Duo laptop? Fuck that. That won't even run FCPX 10.0.6.

Oh.

Oh Shit.

Maybe it is time to upgrade my computers.

Final Cut Pro is Dead….Long live…..something else

So it's finally happened.

I now make more money as an Avid editor than a FCP editor.

Weird.

I fought against Avid for so many years, banging on about how great FCP was and now I am a god damn turn coat.

It does feel strange. It does feel like I backed the wrong horse. This must have been what it was like for people with BetaMax players and Atari STs.

I knew this day would come at some point. I'm still using FCPX at home, but none of the post houses I work for are going anywhere near it. A few have adopted Premiere, but not many. Some are still running FCP, but most seem to be moving to Avid.

Now where did I put that Edit Droid?

Global effects disable

One of the things that's been biting me with my current project is the lack of a global 'turn effects off' toggle. With Neat Video or FilmConvert slammed on a clip (occasionally both) trimming operations are painful, which results in a lot of clicking to disable effects, edit, then re-enable effects.



Ignore the stuff about 'complex clips' – that's the pre-10.0.6 way of doing compound clips which, if you remember, led to so many problems that (a.) people like me avoid compound clips to this day out of some weird folk memory of how bad things were, and (b.) the new way, which suffers basically none of the problems, was introduced.

But that layering technique in compound clips? That's genius.

Hmm. It does mean a bucketload of clicking if you want to adjust effects, though.