In this After Effects tutorial I’ll show you how to make a fluttering 3D leaf effect using Zaxwerks 3D Warps plug-in. I’ll show you several tips to speed up your workflow and quicken rendering and previews with the 3D Warps plug-in. I use particles and other built-in AE effects to create a realistic scene from a still image. And I also take a look at refining motion paths with After Effects graph editor to create smooth organic motion. All this, and more in this action packed tutorial!

What’s this? Production gear reviews on a post-production blog? Yup, that’s right. We’re not all just codecs and compression here at SuiteTake; we do actually put on our shoes and socks and get to shoot too. In fact, there’s nothing better to appreciate parking your rear in a comfy edit chair all day long then luggin’ production gear around on an old fashioned shoot now and then.

So yes, we do shoot here too and have come across a few nifty little production gadgets that have proved very helpful in the field: The Lite Panels Micro Pro and Chimera’s Color Correction Screens for their softboxes.

Lite Panels Micro Pro Review

First the Lite Panel Micro Pro. We had a shoot come up where we were going to need to shoot close ups of a persons foot walking across a floor in a day-for-night situation. Looking at our standard Arri lighting kit there was nothing in there that would really do the trick for casting the small pool of light we would need to illuminate the foot as it walked across the floor. All of our instruments were just too big for the task, the smallest of our lights being a 300. We looked and found the Lite Panels Micro Pro and thought it would be the perfect fit.

The Lite Panel Micro Pro in its box

First, the construction. The Lite Panel Micro Pro right out of the box feels cheep, and at around $450 from B&H, it isn’t exactly cheep. The body is all plastic, but the not the good solid and refined plastic that you’d find in a Toyota or on an iPod, the cheep brittle plastic more akin to a carnival toy. It has 96 LEDs in a grid, is powered by 6 AAs or DC in (power source sold separately, but certainly something you could get at Radio Shack), has a power control dimming knob on top and standard screw-in shoe mount on the bottom. In the box is the Micro Pro, a flimsy shoe mount with ball head a CTO filter, warming filter, and diffusion filter.

The Lite Panel Micro Pro

While the Lite Panel Micro Pro feels and looks cheep in performance it is not, it has held up well to our production demands so far (which are rather light by comparison to more rigorous demands). I suspect that a drop or good whack to a c-stand could crack the casing, however, it should be noted that an LED won’t be damaged by an impact in the same way a tungsten bulb would. The shoe mount is the real weak link in the kit. It is flimsy and poorly made. When  you tighten down the stop on the ball head it causes the positioning of the panel to change significantly due to the pressure applied to the ball and socket making it futile to position the panel and then lock it down. What I have ended up doing is to tighten down the ball head to a mid-range of tightness and then just force adjust the panel to where I want it.

The included shoe mount plain sucks

The Lite Panel Micro Pro is balanced for daylight out of the box and the filters it comes with do a fine job of correcting to incandescent. They fit onto the front of the panel via slots on either side of the casing and hold in place well. There are also slots on the back of the panel to hold the filters when not in use, although our particular unit’s rear slots are too narrowly spaced to accommodate the filters so they are bowed when placed there. Not a big deal because they do stay put but it is annoying enough to me that I usually don’t keep them there. Battery life is excellent and the Lite Panel Micro Pro simply does not heat up one bit.

The rear of the Micro Pro

We were attracted to the Lite Panel because we thought it would be able to cast an even pool of light without the usual hot spots associated with traditional on-camera lights. In performance the Lite Panel Micro Pro was capable of both. The best thing about it is the adjustable power knob on the top of the unit. There are no stops, marks, or clicks in the knob, it’s just a smooth pot all around with a solid click to turn completely off. I like this because you can dial the intensity of the light to a virtually unlimited range. And that is really how this light needs to be used.

The power knob

The Lite Panel Micro Pro is not a key light. It should not be used as a main source of light in just about any situation. If you buy this light to act as a main source of light for quick head shots or interviews you’ll likely be disappointed. Rather it excels at being that little extra, that little kicker you need to add a little splash to the details of your scene. In our case we need a little punch down on the floor and it did an excellent job at that. I’ve found that I always use the panel at about 50-65% of its max power and have never used it at full power. When potted up to full power it just becomes a big raunchy hot spot like any other on-camera light. The key to using the Lite Panel Micro Pro is to pot it to 50-65% just to add a little bit of punch or kick to your scene, and we love it for that. We have found a use for it in just about every setup we’ve done.

The standard screw mount on the ball head adapter

It should be noted that while the shoe mount adapter is a piece of garbage it does have a standard tripod screw threading on the bottom of it so it can be directly attached to a photo ball head tripod or other light stand with a screw mount and used as an off-camera light. We do this all the time. Like I’ve said, the Lite Panel Micro Pro is a great little kicker, it’s NOT a key light. It’s small size allow it to be placed in tight spots where traditional fresnels won’t fit, and lack of heat make it safe in those small spaces as well. Yes, we are disappointed in the chincy construction but we absolutely love our Lite Panel Micro Pro.

A 3-way comparison of the Lite Panel's illumination

Chimera Color Correction Screen Review

Another cool little toy we have in our kit is a color correction screen for our Chimera soft box. Chimera makes several different flavors of color correction screens for their popular softboxes. They make 1/8, 1/4. 1/2, 3/4, and full versions of CTB and CTO for all sizes of their softboxes.

We had a shoot where we were going to need to shoot indoors with significant amounts of daylight coming through windows. Geling the windows with CTO wasn’t an option with the time and budget we had, neither was renting an HMI kit. I got to thinking that there had to be something out there to color correct Chimeras. In the past we had C-47′d CTB to the inside of our Chimera in a pinch and ended up getting marginal results and melted gels. I went looking and quickly found Chimera’s offerings. We got a 1/2 blue CTB color correction screen for our softbox.

The Chimera Color Correction Screen

The construction is excellent Chimera quality. To my surprise though, the screen is little more than a regular white front Chimera diffuser cloth with a regular CTB gel sewn to the back with velcro all around to attach it. The CTB is an actual gel! Because of this I do take a little extra care of it not to crinkle it too much and remove it when packing it away for the day. I roll it up and keep it in it’s original product box.

The light quality from it is great. It’s exactly what you’d expect from precisely positioning a CTB gel at the front of your softbox. Also as expected it does cut down the amount of light output according to the thickness of gel you are using. To compensate we sometimes remove the inner baffle from the softbox. We always remove the standard white diffuser from the front of our Chimera before attaching the color correction screen but I suppose if you wanted that extra diffusion and didn’t need the extra light output you could leave it on, there is room on the softbox’s velcro strip to accommodate both.

The front and back of the screen

We’ve used our screen in many mixed light situations (that’s primarily why we went with a 1/2 blue instead of a full blue) and it makes for a healthy white balance. It has proven to be indispensable when shooting in rooms with lots of windows. With a tool like this you can actually leave the blinds open and use that available light for a change!

The SuiteTake

The Lite Panel Micro Pro is an awesome little kicker light that has proved it worth many times over in a wide variety of shooting situations. It’s construction is sub-par and shoe mount is utter garbage but gives a great even splash of light quickly and easily right where you need it. The Lite Panel Micro Pro is very useful both on a off the camera. At almost $450 it’s priced a little on the high side, but you’ll be amazed at how often you’re able to use it in the field or the studio.

Chimera Color Correction Screens are great “poor-man’s” HMIs. At about $40 bucks a pop for the mid range sizes they are within just about anyone’s budget. With one of these slick screens say goodbye to the days of pulling all the shades and hello to using available light indoors again.

And yes, we do get off our butts now and then and do a little shooting here at SutieTake!

As promised here is part 2 of creating custom buttons and a chapter index automatically with DVD Studio Pro. You can find Part 1 here.

In this video tutorial we pick up right where we left off in the last tutorial and show you how to take the custom button we made and incorporate it into a custom menu. Then, with a little bit of setup, we take that custom menu, save it as a template and then use that template to automatically create a series of chapter index menus with one simple drag and drop.

A recap from part 1…

“One of the most tedious things to author in DVDSP is creating chapter index menus with links to all the various chapters within a project. If you’ve ever had a multi-hour long video with dozens of chapters, creating chapter index menus can take hours and be extremely frustrating, especially if you make a mistake or there are changes after the fact. This 2 part video tutorial will show you how to easily create custom buttons and menus, complete with video drop zones, save them as templates, and then automatically create a chapter index menu series with one simple drag and drop.”

The SuiteTake
Creating, linking, and authoring extensive DVD titles with lengthy and complicated chapter index’s can be tedious and time consuming. Using DVD Studio Pro’s built-in functionality you can easily create, save, and author extensive DVD chapter index menus with one simple drag and drop process.

Have you ever had a huge DVD project come across your desk that you just knew was going to be a nightmare to author? One of the most tedious things to author in DVDSP is creating chapter index menus with links to all the various chapters within a project. If you’ve ever had a multi-hour long video with dozens of chapters, creating chapter index menus can take hours and be extremely frustrating, especially if you make a mistake or there are changes after the fact.

Well, fear no more, there is actually a function built right into DVD Studio Pro that will create a chapter index for you automatically! All you need to do is either use one of DVDSP’s pre-made templates or easily create a template of your own then drag and drop; all the menus, buttons, text, and links are automatically created and set.

In this 2 part tutorial I’ll first show you how to make custom buttons, complete with video/image drop zones, that can be saved and inserted into any other menu. Part 2, coming later, will demonstrate how to incorporate those custom buttons into a custom menu, save it as a template, then create an entire 24-chapter index with one drag and drop.

The SuiteTake,
Creating, linking, and authoring extensive DVD titles with lengthy and complicated chapter index’s can be tedious and time consuming. Using DVD Studio Pro’s built-in functionality you can easily create, save, and author extensive DVD chapter index menus with one simple drag and drop process.

Ahh the joys of being a freelance editor. You get to make your own schedule, take time off whenever you want, sleep in on weekdays, pick and choose only the best, most highest-paying jobs, live the jet-set lifestyle hopping from post-house to post-house all across the country…

ZZZZZZCHHHHSSSSSWOOOOSSSSHHH (sound of vinyl record scratching)!

Wait, that’s not what it’s like at all. Probably back when you were in film school some eccentric tweed-jacket-with-the-patches-on-the-elbows professor filled your head with romantic notions like that. Then what happened, you got into the real world and found that most of the time you had to scrounge for any job you could get, from cutting your uncle’s boss’s LARPER themed wedding to that gastric surgery post-operative care demonstration video.

It seems like it was just yesterday

But that’s not the point, the point is that either you’re doing what you love or you’re considering cutting the cable and going out on your own or just graduating and still have that un-blemished innocent vision of the wealth of opportunity that awaits you out there. In any case, as a freelance editor, you need to focus on three main objectives: being a good editor, being mobile, and getting hired again. To do this you need to have a slick and portable system in place that enables you to jump from place to place, dive right in a get to work without wasting a lot of time getting situated. After all, your client is paying you to edit, not set preferences and adjust your chair.

Here are a few things you can do to make your setup time at a new place quick and easy and add value to your service.

Save your keyboard, button bars, window layouts and other preferences

The first thing you’ll want to do when you get to a new place, other than a quick height adjustment of the chair, is to load up your preferences. Save your preferred window layouts, keyboard layouts, button bars, column layouts and any other user preferences that are important to you on a USB stick or other portable device (one of my current favorites is a 8 gig USB stick that fits on a keychain, for under $30). All you need to do is then simply load up all of your preferences and go. There is no need to even copy your preferences to their respective places on the host’s computer. Once you load your window layout, for example, directly from your USB stick you eject it and keep working. FCP doesn’t need the preference file to remain mounted while you edit, just set it and forget it. The same goes for you button bars and keyboard.

If you do load your preferences to the host computer or change any of its preferences it’s always good practice to return the computer to the state it was in when you got there. Especially if you’re filling in for someone on vacation you don’t want them to come back to a totally re-arranged system.

Effects and Plug-Ins

Transporting window layouts and button bars is easy and a no-brainer. But what if you have a dozen or more effects saved in your effects favorites bin at home? If you do you probably use them all the time and it could be a big frustration if you didn’t have those effects readily available as favorites during gigs. But you can’t just save your effects favorites bin like you can keyboard layouts, or can you? The simple workaround is to create a new Final Cut Pro project, select all of your effects favorites from the favorites bin, copy them, and paste them into the new FCP project. Just save this project as “Effects Favorites” and bring it with you on your USB stick. While editing just have the project open or copy those effects to FCP’s favorites bin.

This is also a good practice to keep in general for when the need to reinstall or upgrade FCP arises. Having this Effects Favorites project handy will allow you to re-load all your favorites right along with windows and keyboards after an upgrade or reinstall.

Third party plug-ins are definitely a separate issue than stock FCP effects. Before transporting third party plug-ins you’ll need to sort out licensing issues and your client’s preferences on you adding plug-ins to their systems.

Turn this...

...Into this

Hard drive of tricks

One of the best things you can do as a freelancer is to not only be an outstanding editor but to bring something more to the table. Get a few hundred gig portable firewire drive and load it up with any kind of stock, music, image, graphic, bell and whistle you can think of. From HD clips of kids eating ice cream to heavy metal stock music to animated lower thirds, it can be a job saver to be able to pull out elements like this when in a pinch for some creative. It’s up to you whether you charge extra for things like this and it’s completely your responsibility to have proper licensing of all the material. Either way it will greatly impress your client when someone suggests opening the sequence with a etherial fly-through of puffy clouds and you just grab a clip of it off your hard drive and drop it in in a matter of 2 seconds.

Your Hard-Drive-of-Tricks

Everything but the kitchen sink

I’ve seen a lot of freelancers who carry their own keyboards and mouse/trackballs with them. If you prefer to edit with a specific colored keyboard or fancy-schmancy trackball then by all means bring it along and plug ‘er in. Believe me, your client doesn’t care whether you’re using a trackball, mighty mouse, or pencil and paper as long as you’re getting the job done.

If the venue or job calls for critical audio mixing and monitoring consider investing in a pair of high-quality headphones that you can travel with. Find a set that not only provides top-notch audio but fits your head comfortably. Who knows, you may walk into an office that only has cheepy computer speakers plugged into the built-in audio out. You could shrug and later blame the poor audio mix on the cheepy speakers or whip out your headphones and give them a real mix.

Some people, for extended jobs, even choose to bring their own chairs with them. If you tend to do long-term gigs then dropping a grand on a really good chair may be definitely worth it. Say you get a gig editing for 10 days where your edit station will be set up in the basement of the hotel that the conference is going on. You walk in and see a couple of folding chairs set up for you. It wouldn’t be long before you get to wishing you had a nice comfy desk chair to park yourself in for 14 hours at a time.

There's nothin' like gettin' paid to watch a render bar

It’s the little things

Being a good freelancer not only depends on the quality of work you do but also the kind of person you are to work with. Being easy and fun to work with largely depends on your own attitude and having some simple creature comforts at your desk can go a long way in that department.

You may want to read your clients a little bit before breaking things like this out but small trinkets or pictures of your family are not inappropriate. Especially if it’s a travel job, having a small photo of your kids next to your monitor can be nice, or planting a few wacky Pez-dispensers (full of Pez, of course) next to your coffee cup displays your personality in a subtle and fun way. The idea is that with a few small items like this you can make any place that you’re in that much more like home.

I keep a Rubik’s cube on my desk (a leftover prop from a shoot) and can’t tell you how often a client picks it up to fiddle with it while we’re working or discussing something.

Just leave some room for your Mac

The SuiteTake:

Clients pay you to edit, not click around for an hour in the morning setting up preferences. Get there early, whip out your USB stick, hard drive of tricks, headphones, chair, magic 8-ball or whatever and set up fast. Having all your preferences available to you will allow you to just be able to sit down and edit, not reset keyboards or try to remember what the defaults are.

Bringing additional materials like stock footage and animations can provide real value to your services and set you miles ahead of the other schmucks on their list.

Lastly don’t be afraid to pack a few personal items and other simple comforts, especially on extended travel gigs. You’re human after all and few comforts from home can make you feel a lot better during the long hours and express your personality in a subtle and fun way.

While writing this post I asked around to some of the producers in the office about things freelancers had brought that impressed them. All of them were able to remember editors from years ago who brought something personal and unique to the gigs, whether it was a tool or trinket. Do you want to make a lasting impression like that or be forgotten among all the rest?

In the end all of these practices add up to one thing: getting hired again.

Zaxwerks ProAnimator plug-in for After Effects is a great tool for creating 3D object animations right inside After Effects. We use it all the time for text and logo animations, animated background elements, and  various other elements.

Recently a project came across my desk that called for an intricate and precise animation of an airplane flying across a globe. The graphic was supposed to be your typical red line that traces itself across a globe hopping from country to country. A job for ProAnimator? Yes. Was there a catch? Yes.

The problem I faced even before I started was that as far as I knew there was no way to preview custom layer maps in the ProAnimator interface. I was going to have to create the globe and then animate its rotation precisely to the points that the “airplane” was supposed to travel to at the precise times. By default ProAnimator displays a generic place-holder image on your objects when you apply layer maps to them, you can’t preview the actual layer map within ProAnimator. This would obviously make for a lot of tedious trial and error when trying to precisely rotate the globe to specific countries.

There had to be a better way. A few emails back and fourth with my new best friend at Zaxwerks support and I had the answer. There is a way to preview layer maps in the ProAnimator interface! The tutorial below has all the details.

The SuiteTake:
We love ProAnimator here at SuiteTake and highly recommend it. As you delve deeper and deeper into the application you discover more and more things that it can do. The convenience it offers as a plug-in to After Effects is a big productivity boost as well. What I thought to be a rather big limitation of the software is no longer an issue after learning this little trick. By being able to preview layer maps in the ProAnimator interface I feel that it can tackle an even wider variety of 3D projects than I ever thought possible.

And now, introducing the SuiteTake App Store! Well, ok not really. It just seams as though everybody is getting rich selling apps these days so why not jump up on that band-wagon? The proliferation of the iPhone App Store, and the many others imitators from Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, and on and on, it’s important to take a step back every now and then and remember that they still do make cool apps for regular computers too. And it may be hard to believe but some of them actually aren’t flashlights.

The following is a brief list of 5 cool apps that we just love to have on all our Macs. All 5 are what I would call utility and workflow type apps, they’re not things like After Effects or Firefox, apps that are essentially the core function of your Mac. These are little ditties that just make life, and work, that much easier.

Everyone goes through a learning curve when it come to technology and computers. You begin as a novice and learn more and more over time until you become very streamlined and efficient with the tasks you do everyday, whether it’s crunching spreadsheets or compositing layers. Even though the latest and greatest versions of OSX and Windows have come a long way to improving upon the efficient user experience they still leave a lot of things up to third parties to fill in the gaps. For most of us there will come a time in our learning curve where we have become so advanced and efficient that our software actually gets in our way, we can think and process what we want to do much faster than we can type and click. These few apps go a long way in solving these types of problems.

iStat Menus

This nifty app lives at the top of your menu bar

This nifty little app is a great for those of us who need to see whats happening under the hood of our Macs. It’s a complete system monitoring app that displays information as tiny icons at the top of your menu bar. It monitors in real time your CPU and Memory, Date and time, drives, network, and temps fans and power. Everything is customizable and user configurable via a pane in your system preferences. You can select which items you want to see, change their appearance, and even their order from left to right.

I find iStat most useful in two ways. First, by monitoring the network and CPUs I can see at a glance the status of any processes that are going on and whether or not they have stalled. All of a sudden I may notice that an app has crashed and is pegging the CPUs, I can then just force quit the app and go on without any more trouble. And secondly, this one of those small things that I just love about apps like this, is that the OSX menu bar does not include the date as a number, it can only display the day of the week. iStat Menu displays a little iCal looking calendar page right next to OSX’s day and time. I use this feature every single day and love it.

iStat Menus is free (with a suggested donation) from the fine folks at iSlayer.com

Default Folder X

DFX adds a translucent border to your open and save dialogues

Default Folder X is an app that now that I have it I don’t know how I ever worked without it. Directly from their website: “Default Folder X makes Mac OS X’s Open and Save dialogs work as quickly as you do.” One of the biggest time wasters in any workflow when you have to deal with a lot of files and folders is opening and saving and just navigating through endless strings of folders upon folders. When I want to open or save something I just want to hit a key and bam, move on. Default Folder X adds a translucent overlay to your open and save dialogue boxes that offers several time-saving shortcuts. These shortcuts point straight to recent, open, and favorite folders that you can customize and even delegate among different applications. It beefs up spotlight’s power by allowing you to add your own search keywords on the fly. One feature of Default Folder X that I was amazed wasn’t part of OSX is the addition of hierarchical pop-up menus. You can easily mouse through the menus straight to the folder you need without click after click.

I have found that the recent destination button and being able to select already open Finder windows as the most useful. There are loads of other features that I simply haven’t gotten around to customizing yet, probably because I’m so happy with the few that I use daily.

Default Folder X is well worth it at $34.95 from the people at St. Clair Software

LaunchBar

Take this Dock!

LaunchBar is perfect for those of use who are keyboard shortcut obsessed, which, as editors, most of us are. If you are keyboard shortcut obsessed then you strive to do as much as possible without ever touching a mouse. You know all the commands in FCP, AE, PS, OSX, and even their Windows equivalents whenever the need arises. You even know the illusive CNTRL+EJECT command to activate the Shutdown/Sleep/Restart box. LaunchBar is for you. The best way to use LaunchBar is to set it up to automatically launch at login. It is activated by a configurable shortcut, we use CNTRL+Space. When you enter the shortcut a little menu drops down from underneath your menu bar, you then begin typing what you want to do. Most commonly this is the name of an application you want to launch. For instance, when I want to launch FInal Cut Pro I press CNTRL+Space then F-I-N. As soon as you begin typing a contextual menu drops down with suggestions that match what you are typing, when Final Cut Pro appears just hit enter and the app launches. LaunchBar remembers what keystrokes you use to launch what apps and makes life even easier. When I want to launch Mail all I need to do is type CNTRL+Space, M, and Enter. Now I’m not knocking the Dock, it’s fast and convenient, but for a keyboard shortcut junkie LaunchBar is the way to go.

There are dozens of additional features packed into LaunchBar from Spotlight searching, recent documents, web searching, iTunes browsing, Address Book entries, and so on. I love it for simply launching apps and constantly find myself hitting CNTRL+Space on Macs that don’t have it.

LaunchBar is approximately $34, actually €24.00, from the folks across the pond at Objective Development (They also make Little Snitch which is another gem)

1Password

Try and steal my HampsterDance.com login now!

It seems as though you can’t check the weather these days without logging in with some username and password. Username and password overload is a real problem these days with having literally dozens of logins all across the internet from Amazon, to eBay, to your bank, even SuiteTake! Very commonly people, myself included, resort to using the same username and password again and again across multiple sites just to allow yourself a fighting chance at actually remembering one. it doesn’t take an internet security genius to figure out that this can be a huge security risk to your business and personal life.

1Password is a utility that creates, stores, and recalls strong passwords for you right in your web browser. Any time you go a site where a password is required shortcuts that install in your browser allow you to create a password, that can be customized from simple to incredibly complicated, enter it in the proper fields then stores it for subsequent use. When you return to the site later you just hit the 1Password button and it autofills your password information. It works with almost any common web browser like Safari, Firefox, and Opera.

There’s not much more that needs to be said, if a thief managed to get one of your un-secure passwords they could run amok all over the internet with it. Using 1Password easily thwarts would-be criminals.

1Password also saves credit card information to speed up checkout processes and has portability features that allow you to access your saved password information when you’re at a computer other than yours. A handy iPhone app is also available. It is $39.95 from Agile Web Solutions.

MPEG Streamclip

De-mux anything that needs de-muxing.

Ok, this one falls out of the same categories as the apps above but I had to include it because this app has been a savior countless times across editing forums.

Have you ever needed to de-mux a DVD VOB file? If you’re an editor of any kind, yes, yes you have been given a DVD Video and been asked to incorporate it into a project. Hum, what the heck is a VOB file? Certainly not a edit friendly format.

MPEG Streamclip is a video converter app that, among many other things, can de-mux DVD VOB files to user-friendly Quicktime and Windows formats. Just pop in a DVD, select your settings and walk away as it converts everything for you.

Yes, there are many apps out there that do the same things that MPEG Streamclip does but the catch is that MPEG Streamclip is free! Yes, it’s a free app that is in version 1.9.2 and has been around for years. And yes, it does work and is reliable enough for a professional environment.

MPEG Streamclip Free at Squared 5

The SuiteTake

If you’re not there yet, one day you’ll get to a point where your efficiency with you computer outpaces your ability to click and type fast enough. There are hundreds of useful apps like these out there that go a long way in helping improve upon that efficiency and overall user experience. these are just 5 of them, the list could go on and on and on. The best part is that the most expensive app listed here is less than 40 bucks. Drop a little cash and save yourself hours of frustration.

And please, offer your favorite gems bellow as comments. I’m sure there are loads of apps out there yet to be discovered, we’d love to hear about them.

Isn’t it annoying these days that there seems to be a new “how to” or “tutorial” blog about the video industry popping up every other day? Places like SuiteTake.com, those guys think they know everything and are the Steve Jobs’ gift to mankind…oh wait….

But seriously, these days there are a ton of free and very useful sites out there that offer a wealth of education about all things audio and video. And ok, I’ll admit that here at SuiteTake there are a few things we don’t know. (One writer, who shall remain unidentified for now, was railed by readers for not knowing what the “extend edit” button does, sheesh.) Whenever we have some down time here at SuiteTake worldwide headquarters I always cruise the tutorial sites looking for new ideas and techniques. But, it’s one thing to watch a tutorial and just think to yourself “wow, that was cool. I should try that sometime.” and another to actually advance you skill-set and knowledge through the tutorial. Here are a few things I do when watching or reading tutorials to get the most out of them.

Read between the frames

To begin, a few of my favorite tutorial sites are: VideoCoPilot.net, CreativeCOW.net, and AE Tuts+. They all have a wealth of video and written tutorials on how to make all kinds of way cool stuff written by a wide variety of contributors.

After watching a whole mess of AE tutorials I realized that I was still creating the same old stuff project after project despite having seen so many new techniques. I wasn’t effectively putting into action the concepts I was seeing in the tutorials. So I began to watch them with a more critical eye determined to expand my skill-set. One of the first things I noticed is that the author would routinely apply effects or filters over and over again to enhance the look and motion of the animations he was creating but only mention them as an aside. For instance, Andrew Kramer at VideoCoPilot almost always adds a contrast curve (using the curves effect) on an adjustment layer at the end of every tutorial to just give the image a little more punch. However, he barely mentions it and usually just slaps it on there without saying much about it. If, the whole time I was focusing my concentration on the main lesson of the tutorial, like how to setup his Sure Target preset, it was easy to not pay any attention to those more subtle details. Furthermore, it seems as though the author is usually so accustomed to adding these effects and finishing touches that they breeze by it too, taking it for granted.

I learned to read between the frames and pay the most attention to the small details that they were blowing off. It’s these many small details and enhancements that distinguish the real pro’s from the wanna-bees and by catching these little tricks that usually sneak by you’ll lean a lot more from each tutorial.

Always follow along, but experiment too

Many tutorials provide the project file and sample media so you can follow along at home and it’s obvious that that is usually a good idea. In the past I have been lazy and a just sat back and watched them like a re-run of Three’s Company, but recently have made it a habit to fire up AE and follow along with the tutorial as it goes. I quickly found that just watching the tutorial and actually hitting the keys myself is a whole different experience. And, just as quickly, I found that it’s even better to not only follow along but to experiment with my own ideas as well.

When I’m watching something throughout the whole video I am constantly thinking “how can I apply this to the kind of projects I work on every day?” Sure, blowing up a 3D model of Mars and morphing that into a glowing image of Miley Cirus that evaporates into a cloud of particles is cool but probably not appropriate for my video of the keynote speech at XYZ corporation’s annual conference. So during the tutorial I’ll often pause it and first re-create what the author has done but then go on and experiment with the parameters to get a look that would be practical for the type of work that I usually do. But it is always fun to just crank up the parameters to see how far you can take something too.

Use it in a sentence

Your 3rd grade teacher may have told you this way back in the day. Whenever you learn a new word simply making an effort to use it in a sentence the next day helps a great deal with making that word a permanent part of your vocabulary. The same is true with tutorial techniques. You’ve watched the tutorial through and experimented along the way, the next step is to actually use the new technique in a real world project as soon as possible. By taking what you have learned and actually applying it to a real project where you’re on the clock and achieving real results will lock those new tricks into your video vocabulary permanently. On several occasions I have watched a tutorial one day and used it in a project the next, making real money with it.

Also by using new techniques in real world situations you’ll be forced to become more flexible and creative with them. Chances are that your client will have some thoughts about what you have created and you’ll be obligated to address them. This will likely force you to delve into the technique deeper and with more control to achieve the exact look that was requested. You’ll probably have to employ a lot of creative problem solving to get what you want because you’ve never done it before and are unsure of what parameters to change to get there. This will lead you to a much deeper understanding of the technique and allow you to apply it in the future to a much wider variety of projects.

It’s about the techniques, not re-creating the project

The ultimate benefit of tutorials are the concepts you take away from them. Just re-creating what the author made does little good but for practicing keyboard shortcuts. Remember that “R and D” stands for Research and Development, not Rip-off and Duplicate. If you see something you like it’s best to take it with you and make it your own, not just remake the project and change the text to fit your client. It’s ok to be inspired by others work, but it’s always best and most rewarding to add as much of your own unique creativity to your projects. Besides, there’s always that chance that you’ll be called out by a fellow editor. And that’s just embarrassing.

The SuiteTake:

The things I find most beneficial from tutorials is that they often show me things that effects are capable of that I never knew existed. Once I know an effect is capable of something in general I can then use that to make all sorts of new and creative projects. Also, as you watch more and more the knowledge accumulates. You can take ideas from one and apply them to the next and on and on. By reading between the frames to pick up all the little tid-bits, experimenting on your own, applying new techniques to real-world projects and adding as much of your own unique creativity – you’ll be getting the most out of every tutorial you watch.

And hey, it’s also a great way to pass the time on a slow afternoon.

Ok ok, the title may be a little mis-leading but what’s the harm in trying to drive a little Google search traffic? The windows that I am referring to are the Final Cut Pro kind, not the Microsoft kind. I’ve always made a big case for workflow and editing efficiency here and no detail is too small when it comes to working smoothly. In fact, I’ve found that it’s often the little things that help the most when they are streamlined or annoy the most when they are clunky and rigid. If you never take the time to experiment and rearrange your FCP window layout and button bar arrangements you’re probably missing out on workflow efficiency gains. Here is my window layout and button bar arrangement and why I have things the way they are.

The first thing you’ll notice is that my window arrangement isn’t all that different from the default standard FCP window layout. All I have done is to move a few windows around, resize them, and add an area that contains some additional tools.

My Standard Window Layout

Let’s move from left to right. The most prominent window on my screen is the Browser window. Rarely is there a project that I edit where there are fewer than 100 clips and other items in my browser. One of my biggest time wasters is scrolling up and down back and fourth through windows. I like to be able to see as many of my browser items as possible all at once. By making my browser the full height of the screen I can maximize my viewable clips and minimize scrolling. Also since the item names are often short the browser doesn’t need to be long horizontally therefor leaving me plenty of room for everything else.

My Very Tall Browser Window

At this point I should specify that I use an Apple 23″ display. If you use a bigger or smaller size, or 2 displays, the best solution for you may be different. For instance, when I used 2 displays I always made one entire display the browser window. Also depending on the arrangement of you desk you may want to flip flop these windows and have the browser on the right if that suits your taste better.

Moving on, the balance I have struck between my timeline, viewer, and canvas windows has to do with my preference for external monitoring. I rely heavily on my external monitor to judge my edits, color, and composites. Because of this I feel that my viewer and canvas windows can be on the small side and give that extra space to my timeline. Just like with my browser I want to be able to see as much of my timeline as possible all at once and minimize scrolling and zooming.

My Rather Small-ish Viewer and Canvas

A Big-ish Timeline

The last bit of space is occupied by the tool bench that contains the frame viewer, scopes, and audio mixer. In the course of an edit I always follow a pattern to come to the final piece. I make several passes through the video to arrive at the final and rarely co-mingle tasks from different passes. For example, I make an A-roll pass then a B-roll pass, then an audio pass, a color correction pass and so on. Since I usually use the scopes and audio mixer in very segmented passes I don’t need them to both be available at the same time. I can switch to one and leave it there while I’m working with it then switch again when I’m done.

Alas - The Toolbench

My button bars are based on a little simpler philosophy. I pretty much choose to add buttons that I use the function of often but simply never memorized the key commands to or that had awkward key commands like Shift-Option-Backslash. I’ve pretty much filled up my custom keyboard with all of the most common commands I use and there are really no more simple commands left to map these functions to, so I made buttons. Of course I placed the buttons in the appropriate windows that the function effects. I won’t go through ever one but I’ll name a few.

First, in the timeline I have Export and Export using Quicktime Conversion. I use these functions several times a day and since they’re usually used as a final step and not a editing function I felt that a button would be best. One simple click and my sequence is output. Others are the pan audio left right and center and toggle stereo pair. I use these often and finding them in the menus is usually tedious. I can quickly and easily click em while mixing audio on the fly. My browser has a Set Logging Bin button and a close project button, all come in handy from time to time.

My Various Timeline Related Buttons

A few Straggling Browser Buttons

I should also point out that I tend to use both the buttons, menus, and key commands for all of these functions. It usually depends on where my brain is at while I’m furiously editing and trying to meet a deadline. I may be chugging along and all of a sudden completely blank on the key command for I have mapped for Close Gap, well, never fear because the button is right there waiting to be clicked. I think it’s pretty safe to say that clicking buttons is faster than drilling down into the menu bar.

I’ve experimented with lots and lots of deferent window layouts and button bars over the years and am really glad that I finally came up with these. The window layout maximizes the viewable area of important items and minimizes areas that are less important. Depending on your screen size and desk arrangement you’ll probably want to make a few tweaks, but just trust that by using a default arrangement you are probably missing out on some valuable efficiency. My button bars make up for what could be considered a bit of laziness in not learning certain key commands but also serve as a valuable backup when I just can’t remember them either.

The SuiteTake Take:
There’s a lot of nifty little features all over FCP like these and they’re there for a reason, to make you a better editor. You should definitely take advantage of them.

If you’re an editor you work for somebody.

Even if you’re just a one man freelance shop – Johnny’s Productions – if you have work, you are working for somebody. You, or your sales staff, or your producer closed a deal and got you a gig, and that means you work for somebody. That person is your client.

Whether you just landed your first real job and are scrambling to actually learn how to use After Effects by tomorrow morning, or you’re “celebrating” your 20th year in the biz by reminiscing about the good old 1-inch days, the manner in which you interact with your client will determine whether or not they will be your last.

It’s no secret that being polite, listening, and working cooperatively are all necessary when working with clients but to keep the passion alive and the creativity flowing year after year you really need to develop relationships that work in harmony together and truly mutually benefit each other. We may hate to admit it but we do actually need our clients input and direction if we are to create a successful piece for them.

During my career as an editor I have found that there really are 2 primary ideas that need to be balanced when dealing with a client. No matter what your skill and experience level, and, more importantly, no matter their skill and experience level –  keen attention to these ideas can make all the difference between a great working relationship that brings you work for years to come or just another edit from H – E – Double Hockey Sticks.

The first idea:
Give the client what they want.

When I was just a young buck eager to take on the world one Avid at a time (FCP wasn’t around when I was in school) a lighting professor of mine taught me probably the most valuable lesson I have ever learned in my professional career. My professor, a 30+ year veteran lighting designer, while answering a rather bizarre question from one of the more eclectic students, amongst an otherwise long-winded answer, said:

“You need to give the director what he wants.”

This simple statement instantly rang a bell with me. Here was a man who knows everything there is to know about lighting design and, without reservation, declared that despite all his combined knowledge he just needs to give the director what he wants.

As editors we are typically amongst the last in a long string of people who take part in any given project. The client or producer has pre-produced, written, shot, and taken care of a million other things for months or even years before we ever see the first tape. Long before we ever come along a vision has already been established. Now don’t jump to conclusions, yes, clients do hire us to bring our own unique vision to their project but in the end it is their project and ultimately they call the shots. It is our job to provide as much creative input as possible but in the end we must give the client what they want. The “keeping your sanity” part comes into play when your vision and their vision don’t match up.

It’s 3 days into a edit and your client says: “Can we just find a place to add these 12 pictures my wife took with her cell phone yesterday?” Or, “Ok, that’s a pretty good final draft but can we squeeze in these 12 lines of dialogue but not make the video any longer?” Better yet, “How hard would it be to just make it cooler, like the episode of Jag I Tivo’d last night?” How do you react to that without jumping across the table at them?

The very first thing I do, no matter who the client is and what their experience level is, I start by listening to them fully and completely. After that I react to situations like this depending on the client.

To begin, if the client is the end user, not a intermediate producer or creative director, and is totally ignorant to the entire process, treat the situation in the following manner. Never start to shake your head before they are even done talking. Listen to the suggestion.  Take a moment to actually think about it and really consider what it would look like in the video. Just because the first, horrible, picture that jumps into your head seems like it will totally derail an otherwise great video doesn’t mean that you are properly envisioning what the client is seeing in their head.

Next, ask follow up questions to get a better sense of what they see. Do you see green or red star wipes? Are the pictures of your dog filling the screen or are they mixed into a background? Is this 200 word text build a roll or a crawl?

After actually considering their suggestion with an open mind,  give your take on it. “Well Mr. Client, adding the chicken dance sequence back into chapter 3 may work and add some flair to that section but it’s already 2 o’clock and we just don’t have the time to fit it in because we still need to work on lower thirds.” Or, “Ok, let’s take 15 minutes to see what adding all 23 product logos to the end slate will look like and if it works great, but if not we can ditch it and move on.”

There are several factors at play here with an un-experienced end client. One, they have no idea what it takes to actually do what you do. Two, they have no idea how every element of a video lives in tandem with everything surrounding it and how they effect each other when they are changed. And three, all they do know is that what they are seeing right now is not what they want.

The best reaction is to listen to what they are saying, consider it, and then provide a practical solution that works, even if it is just to indulge them and show that in reality their idea does suck. Digging in your heels and pushing back with an attitude is no way to creatively collaborate on a project.

Now, if the client is an experienced producer or other creative director I take a whole different approach.

“Can you just make everything move in 3D around the screen?” “Can you just squeeze 3 more shots into this paragraph?” “Can you just remove her from the background and replace it with this animation?”

The first thing I remind myself when presented with an outrageous list of changes is that this isn’t their first rodeo. They have produced many videos before and will go on to produce many more. What they are suggesting to you is probably coming from past experience. Maybe it’s a technique that they used with another editor, or maybe it’s something a colleague of theirs did in a piece. In any case the suggestion is coming from somewhere where it worked in the past.

One of the hardest things to deal with is to be chugging along cutting like the wind and to have the client stop you in your tracks with a idea that goes in the complete opposite direction, something that’s not even close to what you were planning to do. After many years of grudgingly shuffling down their apparently insane train of thought I started to say this to myself:

“What they are suggesting may actually make the video better.”

Like I stated earlier, they have probably been working on this project for months before you ever saw it and they have a vision, and that vision is probably not a bad one. You need to just trust that what they are asking will actually work and give it a go. Most of the time I am humbly surprised that the change does work and does make the video better. The fact that I didn’t think of it doesn’t make it a bad idea. And in the end you just need to give the client what they want.

The second idea:
It’s your job to say no.

On the other end of the spectrum it is our job to say no to clients.

Why do clients hire us in the first place? Because they can’t edit the video themselves. They hire us because we know how to edit, because we bring a level of creativity and expertise to the table that they don’t have. They trust us to bring their vision to life and to incorporate our own unique vision into the video along the way.

It’s because of this that we need to push back and say no sometimes. “I think we should change the music during this section.” “I don’t like the color of the font you chose, change it to blue.” “What happened to the part about the rollerskating grandmother?”

Does saying no negate the first idea – give the client what they want? No.

What the client ultimately wants is the best possible video for their money and if it is absolutely clear that what they are asking for will harm the video or drive it over budget or past the deadline then they are not getting what they want. From our experience we are required to take a stand and say no.

Often times it is best to indulge the client first and show them why their idea is a bad one instead of just shrugging off the idea from the get-go. Remember that in their mind the idea works, however cloudy that image may be. You can put them at ease and convince them fully that the idea doesn’t work by un-muddling that image and mocking it  up on the screen for them. You have to give and take all the time during an edit and often take side trips and experiment to see whether ideas work or do not work.

I heard a great quote  some time ago: “Never say no to a client, just charge them more.”

For a long time I thought that quote was a good way to handle difficult demands by clients. But in hindsight I have found that throwing the budget or deadline back at the client to force them into submission is almost never the best way to handle things.

“Ok, Mr. Client, I can make those changes but what you just asked me to do will take 2 more days of work.”

Saying that almost always produces a scowl on the clients face. They hired you to get the job done for the budget you agreed to and by the deadline you set. Turning around and declaring that their ideas will blow the budget and deadline does not foster creative problem solving or encourage further communication. Instead, it builds a wall.

If in reality what they just asked you to do in the 11th hour will require 18 additional hours of work it is far better to suggest alternatives that don’t blow the budget or deadline (or at least don’t blow it as much).

In extreme situations like this, both sides are going to have to compromise. They are going to have to settle for something less then what they really want and you are going to have to put something together that is less then ideal as well. It may mean using Livetype over After Effects or stock images over custom.  Whatever the case, providing a compromise is always better then throwing the budget back in their face.

The SuiteTake Take:
If you take the time to listen and consider every idea your clients come to you with, and if necessary even test the idea out a little, you’ll quickly build a trusting relationship where your client values your input and response and respects you when you say no. Keep an open mind and remind yourself that your vision for the video is not the only one, and at times you’ll be surprised at how many ideas actually do make the video better. The trust between you and your client is a two way street. You need to first trust in their vision and experience, and in return they will trust in yours.

I’ve been an editor for a while now at several different shops. Through those days and places I have mostly been self taught until I ended up here with SuiteTake. At SuiteTake training and skill development is not just encouraged, it’s part of our daily responsibilities. Therefor, in the recent past my learning curve has increased dramatically.

The Top Ten things I wish I knew:

10. Shift and option dragging

9. Quick Ken Burns effect

8. QuickTime vs Quicktime Conversion.

7. The Black and code button.

6. Option 1,2,3 for transition alignment

5. Esc, tab, spacebar to navigate windows

4. Apply normalization to audio in FCP

3. Disable dropped frames warning.

2. Disable rendering with caps lock.

1. Map your keyboard.

The SuiteTake Take?

If you’re an experienced editor you probably know most of these already, however, if you’re just starting out like me so many years ago you’ll be putting yourself ahead of the game by learning these tricks now and not 10 years from now.

The following video tutorial demonstrates a list of 10 efficiencies and workflows with Final Cut Pro that I wish I had known from the start. If I had these often simple tricks in my pocket from day 1 I would have saved myself countless hours and heaps of frustration.

Ahhh the age old struggle between Final Cut Pro and After Effects. For what seems like centuries now us Final Cut Pro editors have been struggling with finding an efficient and, moreover, convenient workflow between FCP and After Effects. Sure, products like Livetype and Motion have come along and made life easier for some tasks but when it comes down to real motion graphics work and serious compositing nothing beats After Effects. Have you ever put Motion’s Primatte RT side by side with a key pulled from After Effects Keylight? To me there’s no comparison.

Coming from an editor’s chair, not a designer’s, it took me a while to really get up to speed with After Effects. In the past I was using AE infrequently for several reasons: 1. I didn’t know the interface and key commands well, 2. I didn’t know the software’s capabilities well, 3. I was intimidated by the rigid workflow between FCP and AE. All these factors equaled inefficent workflow and so I just usually opted not to use AE in favor of a faster and more flexible option like Livetype or Motion.

However, in the past year the work we have been doing has called more and more for serious graphics design and compositing, Livetype and Motion were simply not going to cut it. So I buckled down and really learned the After Effects interface, key commands and it’s capabilities. Through that hard work I quickly became much more efficent with AE and started creating some really cool stuff. But all this new-found efficency with AE itself still did nothing to help with a round-trip workflow to and from FCP. And if we can assume anything about Apple and Adobe there will probably never be an intergrated roundtrip solution between the two.

Now of course there are 3rd party solutions out there that help with this problem (at least half of the problem anyway). Automatic Duck is a great 3rd party solution that exports Final Cut Pro projects and timelines in a format that After Effects understands and converts to compositions. Bam, you’ve got half of the roundtrip issue solved right there, prepare a timline in FCP and export with Automatic Duck into AE and take care of your graphics and compositing. The problems? Output is still the same, you must render your comps out of AE and import them into FCP just like always. Then later if changes are needed you must go back to AE, make your changes, and re-render the revised comp and import back into FCP. The other problem, Automatic Duck is expensive. If you’re a home business or just struggling like everyone else in this economy buying the plug-in may not be an option.

I call this solution The Manual Duck. It doesn’t involve any special plug-ins or any other software, it’s just a few simple steps to add to the workflow that can make the trip to and from AE much easier, and more importantly, leave less room for errors requiring revisions in After Effects later.

I had a job recently where I knew that I was probably going to need to do almost entirely in After Effects. It was an image piece that involved nothing but text builds and a few stock images. The producers instructions were simply to take the “boring” corporate message and make it just “look cool.” Ahhh, is there anything better then the old “Just make it look cool…” line? And what’s more, from listening to the music that was selected, it was going to be a music driven edit.

In my opinion After Effects is not a good audio editor from a workflow perspective and have to cut to music in After Effects can be a big hassle being that there’s no “real” real-time playback or scrubbing of audio. All this added up to a perfect candidate for The Manual Duck workflow.

It’s simple really, start in Final Cut Pro. I laid down the music track in an empty timeline and made the audio edit (the track did need to be cut down and mixed a bit). Once I was happy with the audio I started to block out what I wanted the shots to be using the built-in text tool. I had the script and knew what order the text build had to go in. With the text tool I was able to very quickly block out where the individual sentences would go. I went along through the song and timed out all the text builds adding no style or animation of any sort. The key to this step is the speed at which you can work, just copy-paste the text clips from one edit to the next and copy-paste the next sentence from the script into the text tool. Format just a bit so the lines can be read and that’s all you need to do. Of course, if your project is more complex you can get as complex as you’d like during this step, adding images, transitions, etc. The point is that you lay everything down and time everything out in Final Cut Pro where you have quick real-time editing available with no significant render or RAM preview time.

The project blocked out in a FCP timeline

From there export the timeline to a codec that After Effects will play well with. Import that QT into AE and drop it into your Comp. From here you can proceed in the manner you prefer best. You can scrub through the Comp and add markers at the edit points or do split-track edits. Either way you can quickly scrub the Comp and see where you made edits in FCP with no need for audio playback or scrubbing. Also you now have a base layer that acts as a virtual storyboard. As you build your effects and composite you can easily solo the base QT layer to see what you blocked out next.

The FCP QT imported into an AE Comp

As a side note I after I have made my markers or split tracks I turn off the visibility and lock this layer to ease RAM preview time and avoid offsetting the layer with a stray drag.

The final composite

Now there’s nothing automated about the process and it doesn’t add any sort of round-tripping between the two but I’ve found that it helps a great deal with being efficient once in After Effects and leaves far less room for errors and mis-timimg. If you can build your graphics and composite and get it right the first time that is far more valuable than the extra time it took to block the project in Final Cut Pro.

Here at SuiteTake we try to be neat. We try to be clean. You know, it impresses clients when they walk into a nice neat and clean suite instead of a smelly pit of filth. So we vacuum, we take out the garbage filled with empty coffee cups, Chinese food containers, and the occasional empty bottle of Baileys Irish Creme, we wipe down the counters, we scrub the caked up residue of hundreds of lotiony hands turning the various doorknobs. Sure, this makes for a pleasant working environment for us and our clients but what about the real work-horses of the office – the Macs?

A can of compressed air should clean this puppy right up

We have a few MacPro’s here at the office with the ATI Radeon X1900 XT graphics cards. Yes they work great and are blazing fast, but have you ever noticed that they have a tendency to be loud? If you’re a proud owner of a X1900 you are already fondly familiar with its wizzingly loud startup sound as the fan boosts to overdrive during the initial moments of startup.

Observe the X1900 in its natural environment

After running the X1900 for well over a year I began to notice that the X1900’s fan was getting louder and louder. At first its speed would increase slightly, to the point where you could just barely hear it, for only a few seconds then it would settle down to its normal, near silent, state and speed. I didn’t think much of it at the time, I had just upgraded to Leopard and was using its nifty new mosaic-like iPhoto montage screen saver and thought it was just a little GFX power boost that was needed when the screen saver kicked in. As time passed, however, the fan began to get louder and louder more and more often. Its speed would increase dramatically and remain there for longer periods, then, when it would settle down its overall speed was always increased.

This was getting really annoying especially because now I could always hear the fan whirring and wizzing, speeding up and slowing down all day long. I checked software, driver, and firmware updates. I emailed support at Apple and ATI to no avail. I searched and posted forums pleading for an answer or just to find at least one other person with the same problem. Eventually I found what I was looking for. About 27 Google searches in I stumbled across a forum where people were having the same issues and discussing the problem. Some suggested driver updates, others suggested a total re-install of the OS. But way down at the bottom the simplest and easiest solution was offered: clean the damn thing!

The problem is that the X1900’s heat sync is covered by a protective plastic shield with the fan at one end and an opening and air intake at the other. This shield creates a sort-of wind tunnel channeling air flow past the heat sync and out the back of the Mac. Since the heat sync’s slats are bunched so tightly together they collect a blanket of dust on them that in effect blocks off the air flow through the unit hence the increased and variable fan speed. The X1900’s fan has to speed up because it’s not able to pull enough air past it to maintain its optimal temperature.

You can't even see the heat sync below the dust

The solution, simple. Just pull out the card (may or may not be necessary depending on the tools you have) and remove the dust blanket. I pulled mine out so I could photograph it and used a pair of needle-nose pliers to remove the dust taking care not to damage the heat sync during the procedure.

Removing the X1900

Using pliers to remove the dust

Now you can see the heat sync below the dust

It was nice that the dust pulled off kind of like a sheet.

The leftover dust-bunnies

The procedure took only a minute once the card was removed and it left a sparkling and shiny new heat sync.

All shiny and new

Add in a little compressed air to spruce up the rest of the card and it was as good as new.

Reinstalled

I fired up the Mac right after I reinstalled everything and all the fan speed and noise problems were instantly gone and have not come back. The fan now happily spins at its near-silent state and is no longer a nusiance.

If you have a MacPro with the ATI Radeon X1900 and haven’t payed much attention to cleaning it chances are pretty good that your heat sync looks just like ours did. Even if you’re not experiencing any fan speed or noise issues yet, pop open your Mac and pull off the dust blanket. A bit of preventative maintenance never hurt anything.

Ahhh, silent editing...

Believe it or not the built-in tools in iTunes can be useful in a Final Cut Pro working environment. In this quick video tutorial I’ll show you some hidden features in iTunes that can help you maximize your efficiency and better your organization when importing music tracks into FCP projects.

With more and more media being shot and delievered these days with tapeless media formats such as Panasonic’s P2 and Sony’s SxS, efficency with Final Cut Pro’s Log and Transfer tool is more valuable than ever.

In this video tutorial I’ll show you how to log and transfer all of your tapeless media using only keyboard shortcuts. Once your clips are loaded into the Log and Transfer window you’ll be able to log the entire batch without touching the mouse once.