DV for Teachers

Ken Stone comes to the rescue again, posting a brief but invaluable set of tips by Mark Spencer.

The bottom line? Video looks different on your computer monitor than it does on a television. They reproduce their images in very different ways – pixels vs. lines of resolution, etc. Some of the same issues apply with iMovie as well. This is a good introduction if you’re having issues like this, and can lead you to a better understanding of how digital video works.

I just watched this video tutorial about creating animated paint effects in Motion from Creative Cow, and the effect is really good. I like specific goal-oriented tutorials like this because they can show how to use parts of the interface without trying to show the whole thing. This is how I learn software, usually: work on a narrowly defined project as a starting point, and work upward and outward from there, playing with different settings and watching the effects, working toward a more conceptual understanding of the application. Check it out.

Ken Stone posts Steve Martin’s Final Cut Pro 6 – A First Look, which covers several new features from the point of view of “these new features make editing easier, and here’s how” rather than “I read the awesome Apple press release.” As always from Steve, useful explanations, detailed screenshots, and real-world examples, all written in a conversational style.

While I’ve heard it said that Final Cut Pro 6 does not have that much in terms of “new features” I would have to disagree with that assessment. I always base the value of an upgrade not so much on how many new “bells and whistles” have been added, but in the sheer weight of a given tool’s worth in terms of saving time and ultimately money. The mixed format timeline alone is worth the cost of the upgrade in this reviewer’s opinion. When looking at Final Cut Pro, it is now impossible to consider it apart from the suite of apps called Final Cut Studio. Apple has once again given us dollar for dollar, a most impressive set of tools unmatched by anything else in its price range.

Dave Nagel has a Motion tutorial with amusing potential: Creating Billowing Fabric in Apple Motion. Dave says:

Today we’re going to take a look at creating a billowing fabric effect in Apple’s Motion 2. Using a combination of filters, generators and even particles in Motion, it’s possible to create a pretty wide range of effects that add depth and movement to otherwise boring 2D objects. Case in point: a banner stretched across the crotch of the Arc de Triumph announcing that today is my birthday.

He’s got QuickTime movies to show the effect, too. Very nice.

Dave Nagel on MacBook Pro Benchmarks: Final Cut Studio 5.1

When I set off to benchmark the MacBook Pro, the question I wanted answered was how close the MacBook Pro could come to matching the performance of a common G5 tower. That it matched or exceeded the performance of the G5 in the vast majority of tests was quite surprising to me. Even though the MacBook is rated slightly higher in GHz than the G5, it does use a mobile chip, which you wouldn’t expect to match the chip in a desktop system.

Oh boy. These Mac-on-Intel laptops really fly on everything, he says, except the HD and H.264 encoding, and this is just the first release of the Final Cut suite for Intel. Oh boy.

Blogging this live will be tough… it’s hands-on. We’re doing a basic project – a bouncing ball, to which we apply “behaviors” which allow all kinds of action or movement without key-framing. Very impressive. I’ve seen demos of this before, but this is my first hands-on with it. Won’t be the last, etc. etc.

Mark Spencer: Speed Changes, Motion, and Final Cut Studio, at Ken Stone’s FCP site:

Well, there you have it – 5 differents ways to change the speed of a video clips using Final Cut Studio, with a focus on using Motion. By trading off quality, cost, and render times you should be able to determine the best path for your projects.

A thorough discussion with very clear screenshots explaining several methods for this – the usual very good tutorials from Ken and his contributors. Mark Spencer also has a site dedicated to motion, AppleMotion.net. Nice.

Dave Nagel of DMN posts a couple of Quick Tips for Motion: part one and part two.

You don’t want to keyframe every single curve because this can take a considerable amount of time and effort. So, instead, you’ll just use a Motion Path behavior to guide your object over the duration of your sequence.

More are likely to come.

A timely review (for me) of the new release of Motion; I have a couple of projects I’ve started shooting for but not editing yet. I have never tested Motion and I want to make these videos look better than anything I’ve done before. This should make a difference. The author includes 4 video screen captures, demonstrating some of Motion’s capabilities (and one limitation he wants to see included in a future upgrade), and I found them worthwhile. The demos assume a familiarity with the interface I don’t have, but I can’t criticize the author for this – he has to make his point, not act as a teacher for newbies.

They’ve also posted a tutorial on using a MIDI interface – a keyboard, or a mixer control surface – to control motions, behaviors, and attributes in Motion from Chris Meyer, one of the leading motion graphics practitioners and designers in the world.

You’ll need to login to read the articles and see the video clips; use bugmenot.com if you don’t have a user account at dv.com.——-

Macosxhints posts a valuable thread on protecting your computer. The discussion centers around Macs, but read it for a better understanding of the risks all computers face.

“I basically recommend that anyone who owns a comuter should get a UPS. No exceptions. Given the potential anywhere for weather or an even minor glitch with your local power provider to cause havoc on your AC line, it really makes sense to protect your investment in your computer. Even fluctuations in power that are too quick for you to even notice (i.e. the lights flicker briefly) can potentially cause directory problems, data corruption or even hardware damage.”