New Residence Hall

Here's a video I created for EWU's Residential Life. It promotes a new residence hall under construction on campus.

Canon 5D MKII CineStyle Test

Shot on a Canon 5D mkII using the Technicolor CineStyle picture style. I used the log and transfer function in Final Cut Pro 6 to import the footage to Apple ProRes 422 (HQ). After dropping the clips to the timeline I exported the timeline to Apple's Color.

In Color I changed the LUT (look up table) to the CineStyle S Curve I downloaded from Technicolor which dramatically added contrast and chroma. I then tweaked the primary grade for a more vibrant look.

Final Cut Pro 6 and Compressor Problems Resolved!

I recently received a new Mac Tower here at work. It replaced an older Mac G5 Power PC that was definitely showing its age. As with all computers you develop preferences on applications as you work. These preferences allow you to work more efficiently by recording your preferred method of getting things done. In my case they turned out to be a huge headache.

When I got my new Mac I loaded Final Cut Studio 2 and copied over all of the preferences for the applications. The first problem occurred when I tried to render a FCP sequence using Compressor. Due to the imported preference files, Compressor wouldn't recognize the new computer as a location to render to. That is very bad.

The way I finally got both FCP and Compressor to work harmoniously together was to de-install both applications entirely- every single preference and accompanying file. I used AppCleaner from Free Mac Soft to easily delete all the corrupt junk. I then reloaded FCP and Compressor and then did a software update to bring them up to the current version.

Apple Compressor Settings for compressing NTSC Video For YouTube

I have found that video compression is a subtle craft, a most demanding mix of art and science. Too much compression and your video looks like a glitchy, pixelated mess. Too little and playback halts and the video freezes. It's hard to tell which is worse. To me bad video is bad video.

Finding the right settings for a given piece of video is extremely difficult. There are many parameters that can effect video compression. This leads to endless tweaking of compression settings by video professionals. In all there is no holy grail of video compression, every medium requires tweaking to get it right. I have been looking for the ultimate video compression scheme for YouTube for a few years now. I finally found a reasonably good scheme from none other than YouTube itself.



Create a new Custom Setting and select QuickTime Movie.

Click on the Video: Settings button to bring up the following pop-up screen.

Select H.264 as the Compression Type.

Set the Frame Rate to 30 fps the Key Frames to Automatic and uncheck Frame Reordering.

Lastly under the Geometry set the Frame Size to 720x480 and your done.

Check out this video to get a look at how well these settings work. Tell me what you think. Add a comment below.

MBA Hockey Ad

Here is a 30 second television ad that I mixed the audio on. It was easily the most entailed mix I have ever done on a spot. Lots of hockey nat sounds were added to pump up the realism. I used FCP's Soundtrack through a pair of Behringer monitors.

The Trouble with (Apple's) Color

I am a big fan of Apple's Final Cut Pro video editing application. I have used FCP since its first version that I bought installed on a close-out G4 that I bought in 1998. Since then I have bought two other updated versions and a third for work. Since version 5 FCP has come bundled into a "Production Suite". The suite includes FCP, Compressor, Soundtrack, Live Type and Motion.

With FCP version 6 there came a new potentially ground-breaking application bundled with the suite- Color. It is a stand alone color corrector that is touted to rival expensive Black Magic's Da Vinci. This application could possibly revolutionize the way film and high-end video were produced and color corrected.

Problem is... it isn't all that good. Color's UI is still unfamiliar to me after 2 years. It bears no resemblance to other applications with the FCP suite. Navagating it is more like using Shake than FCP. The cool things that Apple has done with other apps within the suite have no relevance to Color.

One thing that really kills me is the lack of an eye dropper color picker to select a point of color for white balance. FCP has one in its Color Corrector filter... why did they not think it was important for Color? Another gripe is the lack of sliders anywhere. Motion, Soundtrack, FCP all make use of sliders. Color uses a scrollable positive numeral that is accurate to six positions after the decimal point. This is probably a hold over from the professional color-grading application that it originated from.

Overall I like the concept of a stand-alone application to tweek/finesse color other than the built in Color Corrector of FCP but Color falls short. I hope in the latest version it is rebuilt to be better than the original.

Theater Ad #3

Here is another theater spot I mixed using Apple's Soundtrack.

Moving Keyframes in Motion

I just happened upon a strange quirk of Apple Motion 3.0.2. Maybe it's existed all along in previous versions but I just found it. When you keyframe a behavior, in my case keyframe the speed of a Motion Path, and move the behavior on the timeline the keyframes don't move. They stay rigid to the time of their creation. This causes problems when you want to move a layer with a behavior to a different spot on the timeline because all that beautiful motion you just created has to be redone.

But, I found a work-around!!! Simply slide the behavior to the new time you want in the timeline. Place the play-head on the first frame of the moved behavior and then select the clip the the behavior is attached to. Simply press the letter "i" to set a new In-point. The clip should start at the same point as the behavior. Now go to the end frame of the behavior, be sure to left arrow key back on frame select the clip again and press the letter "o". This sets the Out-point of the clip to the same as the behavior.