Understanding RAW, LOG and Uncompressed

What’s the difference between RAW, LOG and Uncompressed?

HDVideoPro.com has a useful post explaining the differences between shooting RAW, LOG and uncompressed video. Andy Shipsides explains the essentials differences to all three of these camera elements, using the ARRI Alexa as a case study. It’s well worth a read.

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Colour Grading Round Up

Which Colour Grading Software Should I use?

Creative Cow Magazine has an lengthy round up of pretty much all the serious contenders for colour grading available in 2012, covering everything from Avid Symphony, Baselight’s plugin to Scratch, Smoke and Resolve. If you’re trying to decide which colour grading solution to go for why not check it out here.

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Todailes – Digital Dailies Ipad App

Todailies – Ipad App

LightIron Digital have released a $9.99 ipad app called Todailies which when coupled with a free laptop app called LightIron Server lets you wirelessly stream dailies to any connected ipad (several simultaneously) and allow different crew members to sort, label and organise the dailies and email that playlist of specific clips as an xml file, which can then be opened in any of the major NLE’s and reconnected to the full res footage.

Todailies Demonstration with Michael Cioni

At the last FCPUG meeting Michael Cioni gave a 40 minute demonstration of LightIron’s new Ipad app, demonstrating its simple to use, low cost and viable approach to digital production dailies. My only question is how to do you quickly create all those H.264s? I suppose something like the Turbo H.264 usb encoder is an affordable option…

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Edit Suite Design

Designing your own edit suite

Oliver Peters has a great blog post with some tips on designing your own edit suite covering everything from uninterruptable power supplies to acoustics and how to best lay out your equipment.

Business Tips for film editors

Premium Beat also has a blog post of 10 useful, and variably obvious, tips on how to increase your editing productivity and profits. My favourite, because its true, is the one about avoiding diminishing returns.

Editors (and often our clients) can get so focused on one aspect of a project that the outcome doesn’t equal the time and energy invested.  When you think about applying the law of diminishing returns to your creative work, you’ll soon realize what’s most important.  Dedicating hours to perfect a matte or key may only produce slightly better results than if you had spent a half hour working on it.  It’s possible your audience wouldn’t even notice the marginal difference.

 

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Creating production dailies with Scratch Lab

If you’re interested in using Scratch Lab for providing production dailies check out this 30 minute video tutorial from Michael Forrest of Assimilate.

The new metadata tools in Scratch Lab 6.1 are also demonstrated here…

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Useful resources for learning Avid

Switching to Avid?

Scott Simmons from the Pro Video Coalition gave a seminar at NAB 2012 where he taught the essentials for editors migrating to Avid Media Composer. He followed up that seminar by posting a list of useful links for more Avid learning…

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Editing in Stereoscopic 3D

Gordon Burkell has a fantastic article introducing some key concepts to be understood when editing in stereoscopic 3D over on masteringfilm.com.

Cutting in 3D

Burkell’s article covers the importance of shot choice, pacing and use of depth scripts when understanding the fundamental differences between 2D and 3D storytelling and provides a reimagined opening sequence to James Bond film Goldeneye as an example.

 He also links to a great primer on editing in 3D from Barry Clark. You can download the pdf file directly here: Free 3D Production and Post Primer

Understanding 2D to 3D Conversion

Fxguide.com have posted an incredibly long (hugely long) essay on the art of 2D to 3D stereo conversion. Check it out here: The Art of Stereo Conversion.

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Free lens flares

Gorilla Grain has morphed its way into flashbangfx.com and has a brand new range of 24 different camera lens flares to add to your footage. There are some free 720p Pro Res ‘Insta-flares’ available to download here.

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Premiere Pro CS6 vs Final Cut Pro

Premiere Pro CS6 first impressions…

David Lawrence has a lengthy blog post over on Creative Cow with his first impressions of the new Adobe Premiere Pro in CS 6. As a long time FCP user he compares and contrasts the two programs covering everything from the new interface, common tools, editing techniques to the most useful effects.

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Editing Moonrise Kingdom

Editing Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom

Andrew Weisblum has edited for Wes Anderson’s last two films (Fantastic Mr Fox and The Darjeeling Limited) as well as for Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler, Black Swan) and is back in the edit suite for Wes Anderson’s next film – Moonrise Kingdom.

Oliver Peter’s has a fantastic interview with Weisblum on working with Anderson and editing Moonrise Kingdom with Avid’s Media Composer.

Andrew Weisblum’s editing adventures on Moonrise Kingdom

Six clips from Moonrise Kingdom

Six short clips from the new film are available on youtube to the delight of fans everywhere. You can view all six here.

Behind the scenes featurette

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