Dumbland

This 2011 article well pre-dates the current attention on the problem of rampant misogynistic abuse on Twitter, but applies to it well. In particular this paragraph highlights a problem I have with - sadly - just about all major news outlets.

Why are they so cynical about conversation on the web? Because a company like Google thinks it’s okay to sell video ads on YouTube above conversations that are filled with vile, anonymous comments. Because almost every great newspaper in America believes that it’s more important to get a few more page views on their website than to encourage meaningful discourse about current events within their community, even if many of those page views will be off-putting to the good people who are offended by the content of the comments. And because lots of publishers think that any conversation is good if it boosts traffic stats.

Got back a voiceover track today which came in a couple of seconds too long for the video. In FCP I would adjust the speed of the clip, and then apply a pitch filter to get it sounding correct. I’m sure there was a better way.

This is “a better way”, in Avid. It was still a bit quirky but it did the job.

Progressive only frame rates, and a frankly jaw-dropping color gamut.

Sure, it’ll all be watered down by the time it gets properly to market, and with the mediocre performance of Blu-Ray it seems likely the future of home distribution is streaming/download of high-resolution, low-bitrate video, but…

Look at the size of that triangle!

This is a really excellent overview of the relevant, practical differences between acquisition (e.g. AVCHD, XDCAM EX) and editing formats (e.g. ProRes, DNxHD).

You get handed a project for finishing. Seven minutes of nested sequences and within those, Dynamic Links to After Effects projects. A 30 minute export later, and there are frames scattered throughout with single-frame visual glitches. Horizontal bands of misshapen video.

You dive in to the After Effects project and find layers with the Keylight plugin attached. You check settings and lose hair for a few minutes as you can not find any glaring problem with the settings. You fire up a browser and search, and find a ridiculous - but of course, useful - workaround.

An alternative solution is to set a key frame with just a slight adjustment for any setting within Keylight that won’t visibly affect the frame in question, then switch it back after the frame passes. For me, I set the pre-screen blur to 0 px on both sides of the frame, and then to .1 for the problem frame.

Ah, computers.

Meathead’s 10-part series of Twin Peaks portraits are now complete, and available as a set for 50% off.

JR Hennessy:

For the foreseeable future, we’re trapped in a grim back-and-forth between the major parties as they try to prove who can be more callous and unforgiving towards the most vulnerable people in the world.

David Marr, former host of Media Watch, writing for the Guardian:

Bribing Papua New Guinea to take our refugees may seem an unimaginable course for a civilised country to take. But this is Australia. We do xenophobia well.

The always excellent Alex4d with some early information on working between FCPX and the new Logic.

Apple has (finally) released the new version of their DAW, Logic Pro X, at the low low price of US$200. The only proper post-sound work I’ve ever done was in Avid’s ProTools which still seems to be the industry standard. Sound scares me.

Update 13/7/2013 Changed to the full speech.

When moving away from FCP7, Premiere Pro is perhaps the most natural fit since it largely operates in the same way, as opposed to FCPX and Avid Media Composer which are quite different. Premium Beat gathers a few new features that make the transition more seamless.

The new Mac Pro is clearly intended to put the maximum horsepower literally on (or under) the desk of the working video editor, graphic designer, animator, scientist and others.

…

Apple is banking on increased reliance on the GPU to deliver visual performance. Out of the gate, there are two built-in GPUs. Clearly this will benefit core Apple creative software, like Final Cut Pro X, but also others, including DaVinci Resolve and many of the Adobe products.

I’m not certain I’m really in the market to be owning one of these personally, but technologically the biggest risk seems to be the GPU reliance. It will be interesting to see if it pays off.

A helpful little compilation of interviews.

FatPinkCast is basically tearing it up right now.

If an author wants to use the cultures and history created by people of colour, then perhaps they should also include those people of colour instead of taking “inspiration” from their cultures and leaving them out of the equation? I don’t know if you realise this, but if someone says that their story is based on Medieval Moorish Spain, chooses to represent the region with art featuring camels that are only found in certain parts of Asia and Africa, and mosques, and Arabic fighting styles, and also orientalises all the people there…then it’s perfectly reasonable for people of colour to reach the conclusion that the people in this part of the story look like them.

Very quick background: HBO cast a white-passing Chilean as Oberyn Martell, a very popular character who belongs to the leading family of what many believed - with good reason - to be a land of people of colour. This prompted some back and forth during which GRRM explained that the Dornish were always supposed to be south european, so … white. Oh and along the way has been a lot of people screaming at POCs to sit down, shut up, and shut up while sitting down.

The crowd surfing scene at the end of Mhysa alone would be reason enough to stop watching the show. I’m not exactly enthused about finishing the book series at this point.

Note: title of this post swiped from this tumblr, which is covering this as well.

This is necromancy.

Another music video. I think it was the first I cut though my memory is shocking lately. I didn’t grade this one, that was Sam Matthews.

Now that I have video embeds working (sort of) right here, why not embed this. It’s a music video I edited and colour corrected for Marcus McKenzie, produced as part of the Clip It initiative of the MRC.

It was a bit of a process, being the first real piece of work I got to do in FCPX. At the time I lacked a graphics card supported by Resolve, so the grade was done in Apple Color. I also had no straightforward way of getting the video from FCPX into Color either, so I used the ever-reliable “export the whole thing and slice it up in Color” method.

Now I can barely even look at the video, knowing all the things I’d fix if I had another shot at it in Resolve.

Comic genius, chewed up and shat out by advertisers.

This parody isn’t too bad.

What it says on the tin.

Back on Final Cut Pro 7 I could use the very handy little app Post Haste to keep a uniform structure for all my projects. Avid does not rely on the filesystem in this manner however, and so far I’ve yet to find a similar solution.

In the meantime, this is a decent overview of how to organise a basic project in Media Composer.

Thought I’d noted this before. I was very happy when I learned of its existence.

Cmd + Option + C will copy the selected region and place it into the source monitor. You can then treat that sequence of clips like you would anything else in the source monitor. Great fun.

Similarly the Lift and Extract commands can be modified with Option.

Option + Z will lift the selected region and place it in the source monitor, while Option + X will extract and place in the source monitor.

Update 2013/07/11 Here’s me learning all kinds of basic keyboard shortcuts again. In Media Composer, C is your standard “Copy to Clipboard” shortcut, so Option + C is the modified shortcut you’re after here.

First, view A Field in England. It was just released to cinemas and VOD services in the UK simultaneously, and it’s on Bluray at Amazon.

Then watch through this Film4 master class about the making of the film from start to finish.

Coming as it is after the shit show that was Man of Steel, this is perfectly timed.

AMA means well, but I think it’s a bit of a ratfuck. I’ve also soured on H264 editing in Premiere Pro, for anything that takes longer than a day. Just transcode already.

Very useful tip for adding a timecode to a sequence, without the organisational hassle of nesting sequences.

Create a Transparent Video layer, throw it at the top of your sequence and extend it the length of your sequence (or longer). Lock it and just enable/disable as needed for preview outputs.

This Tumblr popped up on MeFi this morning but was soon deleted. It wasn’t received well. One user noted it was mean-spirited.

Yup.

A whole bunch of little tips, in a vein similar to what I’m doing here while I am learning. I’m sure I’m going to miss a few of these and discover them on my own.

Very often people get nervous in front of a camera and umm and ahh and so on and so forth. It’s why I refuse to appear on camera. One of the reasons anyway. Doing a clean radio edit often means ending up with really jumpy video which then needs to be covered by B-roll which may or may not have anything to do with what the subject is talking about. Joy.

FluidMorph is a great tool to smooth over these cuts. Like all great tools, don’t go overboard.