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!

I’ve been very fortunate in business. Since I first started Edit Creations in my basement in 2003 I’ve been blessed with having multiple clients follow me into business based on our work history together and friendships. And over those years, word of mouth has filled in the rest of the time. Within the first 5 years business grew from me working in my basement to having a 2000 sqft office with multiple edit rooms, vo booth, graphics, travel gear and 4 employees. Things were going great. Then, the fall of 2008 hit.

At the end of 2008 work dried up and 2009 was the most difficult year since the business was started. During this time a few things happened that changed the way I looked at my company.

First, I didn’t lose any clients. I still had the same clients that I’ve been working with for years, in some cases close to 15 years. The problem was that those clients were no longer getting the jobs they used to. Projects were being scaled back, rescheduled or flat our cancelled. In one case a job that was normally 4 weeks of editing in 2 suites (a job that we received every December running into January) just went away and has not yet returned.

Second, for the first time in my career I was faced with having to find new clients. Two years ago I would have said you were crazy if you told me to go out and find new clients. I was already working 10+ hours a day and the thought of looking for more work seemed like self abuse.

Third, I realized that you can’t count on jobs that are promised to you, even if you have a long standing relationship with those clients. For example, in 2009 there were no less then 3 major jobs (one a broadcast TV series) that were promised to us. In one case actually scheduled for the last half of 2009. “Great!” I thought, the year is covered! The pressure is off! And then, one by one the projects just went away, in large part due to the economy. So I was left with open edit suites and very little work to fill them, but the same overhead as if it was business as usual.

As this all started to unfold, the reality that I needed to go out and sell the business hit me, and hit me hard. But what also hit me was that I didn’t know where to start. I’m an editor, I’m a tech guy, I’m a creative and a Mac addict but not a salesman. That’s not to say I couldn’t sell, it’s just that I have never had to and don’t really have the knowhow. Yet.

Late in 2009 I was invited to attend a local business leaders meeting at a new store in Naperville IL. I thought this would be a good opportunity to meet other business owners and possibly make new connections with people that were in need of editorial and creative services. Hell, any reason to go to the Apple Store is a good one in my book!

So I went to the event that was scheduled before normal business hours, and there were about 30-40 other business professionals there, snacking on donuts and drinking free coffee. I very quickly realized that I had a problem. I was, at least in this setting, a social misfit. Instead of walking up to people and striking up a conversation, I found myself avoiding all eye contact and just taking interest in the machines on display. I was nervous and genuinely uncomfortable. Was it really this hard to talk to people? It’s not like I don’t have years of practice working with clients, meeting new people at the office and giving tours of the facility (both Edit Creations and previously at a much larger facility). Driving back to the office that morning it hit me. How was I going to meet new people and convince new clients to do business with me, if I couldn’t talk to people?  This is a problem, and I had a knot in my stomach just thinking about it. I could no longer rely on business just walking in the door, I had to go get it. Yet, I didn’t have the most basic skills needed to do so.

Over the next several weeks I did some deep soul searching and came to the following conclusion. I needed to develop my social skills, and in a big way. My goal, I decided, was to get to the point that I could walk into a room of strangers (business people or otherwise) and not only feel comfortable, but be able to approach people and have a meaningful conversation. As if that wasn’t enough, I wanted to improve my public speaking/presentation skills.

If you’re already good at all of these things you’re probably wondering what the big deal is. But if you’re not, you know what a tall order this is. Just the though of taking this on scared me deeply. But at the same time I thought if not now, then when?

What really got me over the hump was thinking about the hours and hours of training I do every year to improve my editing and graphics skills. I will easily dedicate myself to doing whatever is necessary to learn a new software program or take my skill set to a new level. I’ll read manuals, 3rd party books, PDF files on my iPhone and do tutorials on Lynda.com until I fall asleep on my laptop. But over all of these years, what have I actually done to improve my personal skills? My interactions with the people around me have not been “upgraded” for years. When I started to look at it from this angle it became clear that this was something I had to do.

In my opinion the best way to find new clients is to first create new relationships, without pushing any type of business angle. Sure you want people to know what you do and what you could offer them, but that should be secondary to developing a genuine relationship and interest in the person. What’s key in what I just said is creating a genuine relationship, not a superficial one. Look at it like this. If you were a producer and needed a editor for your project, would you rather call up somebody out of the creative directory, run an ad to interview new people, or call the person you’ve already developed a trusting relationship with and that you enjoy being around? People like to work with people they like. If you’re going to spend several weeks working on a job, don’t you want to like the person you’re working with? Dare I say, even have fun on the job?

So, it starts with creating relationships, which is one thing I need help with. At least when it’s from a cold start. So I started doing research on-line and after a few weeks there was a clear winner. The Dale Carnegie course. The overall objectives of the course are as follows.

• Build greater self-confidence
• Strengthen people skills
• Enhance communication skills
• Develop leadership skills
• Reduce stress and improve our attitude

It’s everything I was looking for in a single course. The class meets once per week for 4 hours in the evening, and the class I’m in has about 20 people in it.

If you have not read the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” I highly recommend it. I’ve read it twice over the years and this course builds on those basics. Here is a list of the 9 principals they teach in reference to building better relationships.

• Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
• Give honest, sincere appreciation.
• Arouse in the other person an eager want.
• Become genuinely interested in other people.
• Smile.
• Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
• Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
• Talk in terms of the other person’s interest.
• Make the other person feel important, and do it sincerely.

While the thought of taking this class scared the hell out of me, that’s the idea of the course. They want to push you beyond your comfort zone and have you face your fears, but in a nurturing and positive environment.

While I have already started the class, I had to miss the first one due a petrie dish of disease at my house (aka 2 year old twins). So my first class (class 2) included me having to do a 2 minute speech. Nothing like jumping right in! While I was nervous all day before heading to the class, by the time the class was over I was feeling a lot more comfortable and could already see a difference after only 4 hours.

The idea behind the 8 week course is that they teach you certain skills and give you new tools every week, and then you have a week to implement what you’ve learned in your work environment. This allows you to really practice what you learn before moving onto other lessons. In fact, part of each class is reviewing how everybody did with their past week.

This week (class 3) includes having to do 2 speeches. One that’s 2 minutes, talking about how you used one of the 9 principals in the work place to change or influence a situation, and a 1 minute one explaining how to do something that’s related to your job that others in the class might be interested in. It’s an exercise in breaking things down in a very concise manner to quickly communicate your core message. So for my 1 minute speech, I’m going to teach the class how to create a 30 minute HD video in FCP using the Log and Transfer Window, standard transitions, 3rd party plugins, color correction with Color, audio mixing with Soundtrack, 3D graphics in Motion and how to repurpose the final edit for everything from BluRay DVD to YouTube. I’m just hoping I can fill the full 60 seconds.

The SuiteTake

My main idea behind doing this post was to get others thinking about their social skills, and to ask themselves if there was room for improvement. Some people are naturals at this kind of thing and could probably teach the class, but many of us are challenged in certain areas. A class like this can really give you an edge and create new opportunites for your business.

Over the upcoming weeks I’ll post an update or two and tell you how it’s going. At the very least I’ll do a post once the class is over to give you my full review.

OH WOW! BREAKING NEWS!! In case you you didn’t hear last night, there has been some exciting news in the world of post production in the wake of the Apple announcement of the iPad. Lovable video game company Nintendo has just announced they would like to join the editing world with the release of the Nintedit System!

Whether or not this ends up being any kind of major player in the editing world is still in question, but I was blown away at the potential capabilities of the system, yet completely shocked in general that they are even deciding to make this. I’ve loved Nintendo for years, dating all the way back to NES, and I think it’s crazy that they would try and make this jump into post-production. I guess they wanted to make the case that video editing should be fun and universal, and shouldn’t be left alone to the technical folk.

Shigeru Miyamoto, the brains behind Nintendo, made the announcement at the Kyoko Electronic Convention in Japan last night.

“Konichiwa! This all began when I had shot a video of my daughter’s birthday party, then I realized that I had too much footage, and it needed to be cut down to a reasonable length. I don’t own any personal editing software. Then I noticed most of my daughter’s friends playing with the Wii, and there were several girls sitting on the futon watching, with nothing to do. Well, what if these 8-year-old girls could not only edit this video for me, but have the same level of fun editing as the the other children playing the Wii?”

That sounds pretty insane to me that editing could be as much fun to an 8-year-old girl as playing the Wii, but he goes on to elaborate how this could potentially work.

“The only way to make editing fun for children and the elderly is to make it universally appealing. Normally you would have to go through school, or at least read the manual to an editing program to learn how to use it, but not with the Nintedit System! Through a series of new innovative gadgets and extremely fun mini games, literally anyone can edit.”

I was extremely curious as to what kind of gadgets and mini-games could possibly be involved with editing. And also how this whole thing works to begin with:

“To import the footage you shot on virtually any camera, you must go through a series of fun, beach-related mini-games to see how much of the footage you get to use. For instance, the better you do at playing Nintedit Import Volleyball, the more of the footage that you shot you get to use! It’s a very intuitive game though, so most people will get most, if not all, of their footage. It is a plastic, full sized volleyball that is tethered to your arm with a cable, it has 112 groundbreaking motion sensors built inside of it, so you can play it anywhere you have room to play it, but within 10 feet of your Nintedit system, of course. But chances are the first few times you play, you will fail, and only get to use a small fragment of your footage. That unused footage will be immediately deleted from the hard drive, and will encourage you to get better at the game for future edits. Nintediting is not only fun, it is a learning experience!”

A press release after the convention also stated that these other “importing games” will be available on launch day, with more to follow in the months after release (all sold separately):

Nintedit Import Surfing
Nintedit Import Dune Buggy
Nintedit Import Hacky Sack
Nintedit Import Flag Football
Super Import Brothers
Donkey Kong’s DVCAM Adventure
Metroid P2
The Legend of Zelda: The VHS of Time

But what of the gadgets, and how does editing actually work?

“Basically it works like this, depending on how many clips you have earned in any of the fun Import Series games, that is how many rounds you will go through in order to edit your video. For instance, if you have won 78 of your video clips, you will have to play a challenging, yet addictive, mini-game for each and every one of your 78 clips, in order to see how, and if, your clip makes it in the final sequence. On average, in testing, we found that Nintediters were getting a little over 100 clips in each of their Nintediting experiences, so in order to make sure it doesn’t get tedious, we have created for the Ninteditor a slew of 7 mini-games to challenge them. This will ensure that no person has to play the same one game over and over again. Instead they have seven to choose from!”

He went on to break down the seven mini-games:

Nintedit Bowling:

“We did a study, and found that literally every single person on the planet enjoys Wii Bowling, excluding a few rogue individuals who we declared insane and had committed to Nintendo work camps. Do to the fact that we are using graphics technology for our system that is only as good as the Nintendo 64, you cannot use Wiimotes, as a complete lack of backwards compatibility is in play. So we have invented a new device, which works much like the nicotine patches my mother-in-law uses. It is a disposable electronic patch, that you can place on any real bowling ball. It is full of tiny motion sensors, and you must also attach them to a set of real bowling pins. Then you can set up your own personal bowling alley in your living room! The amount of pins you knock over determines how many seconds the video clip will play in the Nintedit timeline. We have taken virtual bowling to a level more real then you can imagine! $7.99 for a pack of 3 bowling patches. Bowling ball and pins are not included with the Nintedit System.”

Scissor Harvest:

“In order to reduce the size of a video clip, you must use the wireless, external Nintendo Virtua Scissors, which are basically real scissors, with a motion sensor built in. On the screen, harvest vines will fly at you, and you are wearing 3D glasses by the way I forgot to mention, sold separately, and you will literally run around the room frantically cutting at the virtual harvest vines with the Virtua Scissors. Each vine you cut reduces your clip by one frame. In order to achieve the most realism, the scissor blades are actually real, but of course we have added removable plastic covers to ensure small children and the elderly don’t stab themselves accidentally (laughs).”

Text Shoot ‘Em Up

“Using the brand new Nintendo Sniper Rifle, in combination with the Nintedit Alphabet Display Device, the ADD we call it, you shoot motion sensor bullet rounds at the motion sensor ADD, trying to hit the letters you desire. But you only have a limited time to shoot what you need! The letters you hit appear in that order in your video. Can you say on-screen text anyone? (audience claps) The faster and more accurate you do it, the cooler the transition of the word will be onto the screen. If you are an advanced Nintedit marksman, you can set the ADD across the street, or on a moving swing set at the local playground for some extreme challenges, or if you are a beginner, you can just have your brother or sister hold it for you a few feet away. With motion sensors, anything is possible!”

Nintedit Hero

“You basically play Guitar Hero, and if you beat the song, you get to use it for the video clip you are playing for. Getting note streaks in a row enables the song to be played over multiple clips at once. We are still in the licensing process for the music, but we have a certified 6 songs to be guaranteed available at launch day:

“The Stroke” by Billy Squier
“Happy Birthday” by Patty and Mildred Hill
“Poker Face (DJ Dirty Dave Slow Jazz Remix #3)” by Lady Gaga
“A Very Slash Christmas” by Slash
“Bitches Ain’t Shit” by Dr. Dre
“The Laverne and Shirley Theme Song” by Cyndi Grecco

We are very excited to have such wonderful artists contributing to our Nintedit experience.”

Body Motion Challenge:

“We here at Nintendo have come to the realization that Americans are horribly, horribly fat people. If you want to speed up or slow down your clip, you must strap on the Nintedit Power Belt, which is loaded with motion sensors and electric shocks, and you must run for 1 mile in order to slow your clip down by 10%, 2 miles for 20% reduced speed, and so forth. Do you want slow-motion action scenes in your video? Then you better get outside and start losing 40 lbs!”

Cruisin’ Volume Racer USA:

“In order to change the volume levels of your dialog and music for each of your video clips, you take the Nintedit Super Kart Meter Measuring Device and wire it to the engine of your car. If you are a woman, you may need the help of a mechanic (women in audience start booing). I KID, I KID! (winks, men in audience laugh) We use one of our most powerful motion sensors we have for this mini-game. You type in the Kart Meter how long your clip is going to be, and it gives you a countdown to begin driving. Our groundbreaking motion sensors will detect when you are accelerating and when you are hitting the breaks. The faster you go, THE LOUDER THE VIDEO WILL BE! And vice versa. Experiment by hitting the brakes and speeding up at random on the highway to see the cool effects it will have on your audio! Race against your friends, see who can get the loudest clip! I can’t stress enough, though, if you are a small child, please do not play Cruisin’ Volume Racer USA without the help of a parent, or slightly older child.”

Nintedit Dating:

“We here in Japan have a plethora of video game dating simulators. They are good and all, some are pretty erotic, but we here at Nintendo wanted to give you, the Ninteditor, the most realistic dating experience ever known to a home console system. Basically, you put in a motion sensor chip into your brain, which can be implanted by a Nintendo-trained doctor through either ear canal, and then you go on an actual date with a woman or a man. At the time we are only offering heterosexual encounters, as our computers are having difficulty measuring motion sensors amongst same sex relationships… If you can’t get a date, Nintendo will provide you with a Nintendate for a small fee. No promises they will be attractive, though (laughs). The motion sensors measure how good you are doing on your date by your brain activity, and how much you are nervously shaking. It also has speech recognition to determine if you are saying the right thing. The better you do, the better the special effects graphics will be in your video! Let’s just say if you do REALLY good (winks, starts making subtle humping motions while quietly chuckling) your video will look like Avatar! And if you strike out, your video will look as pathetic as your Friday night. So when you see your friend with a terrible looking video, you’ll know his date with Megumi last weekend didn’t go so hot! (laughs) (audience laughs)”

Well I don’t know, I’m actually kind of sold on this. This seems like it might actually be a really cool and innovative way of editing. I’m excited, I’m definitely going to wait overnight at Target again to get this on launch day!

Oh, here is Miyamoto with his final thoughts:

“Video editing is no longer for the technical. It never was supposed to be. Do you know where the best, most creative ideas come from? They come from your 5-year-old sister. They come from your 95-year-old grandmother. THESE are the people that should be editing. Nintendo wants to take editing out of the hands of the people who have loyally devoted themselves to it for decades, and put it in the hands OF EVERYONE ELSE (audience cheers). Edit with your family. Edit with your friends. Edit with your dog. Edit passionately with your lover. Editing is a universal experience. Just look at this video that my 8-year-old daughter Nintedited about her summer at Nintendo Work Camp B, in a mere 17 hours of playing time.

And this power can now be in the hands of everybody, and anybody, and they can do it with ease. For only $699. Sayonara…” (audience starts rioting uncontrollably, 39 dead, 102 injured).

Today I join the extremely rare air of millions of internet folk. Today I do something that everyone from Roger Ebert to CindyCinema.com to your Aunt Rebecca does. Today I will list my favorite movies from 2009, to the excessively high amount of 25. Why 25? Because I go to the theater almost every weekend, I’ve seen about 60 movies from this year, so listing only 10 would inhibit my urge to talk about what movies I’ve seen. Plus everybody loves a list!

So let’s get right into it. I’ll be SPOILER-FREE. Here are picks for my favorite movies from the Year 1 A.D…K. (After Dark Knight)…

*** It should be noted that at the time of writing this post I have NOT yet seen Avatar, Crazy Heart, The Lovely Bones, A Simple Man, Sherlock Holmes, or The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. All of those may or may not have had potential to make this list…

25. Paranormal Activity

After first seeing the trailer several months before its release, this was on my radar as one of my most anticipated movies for the year. After seeing the movie itself, I was slightly underwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was good, but I was hoping that maybe, especially with the ending, that it would be 10x crazier. But in between countless (sometimes funny, sometimes pointless) dialog scenes, there are some actual genuinely creepy moments. My advice is that if you’ve never heard of this movie, rent it when it comes out on DVD this month, and watch it without knowing anything about it, and you’ll have an incredibly fun time. Whatever you do, DO NOT watch the trailer for this movie, they mind-blowingly ruin the final scene of the movie in it! I’m not joking!

24. Watchmen

I consider Watchmen to be one of my favorite books of all time, so I was definitely excited for the movie, as opposed to being skeptical from the beginning that there’s no way they could pull it off. In the end, this satisfied me. And for the most part (I think) it satisfied fans of the graphic novel. From what I read from reviews, the main problem was that people who didn’t know the source material wouldn’t know what the hell is going on. I can’t certify this claim, but I can understand that happening. Plus it’s very long. That being said, I finally plan on checking out the 3 and 1/2 hour Ultimate Cut over the holidays.

23. The Road

This might beat out Precious as the “feel-bad” movie of the year. While Precious had glimmers of hope scattered throughout, this movie is just one long depressing journey down a road to nowhere. And at no point did Precious ever have the threat of being cannibalized by rednecks. This film about a father and son trudging along a road in a post-apocalyptic wasteland did get draggy at times, but it stuck with me for a while after I left the theater. Let me just say that despite its flaws, the good parts are great, and the tense parts are intense.

22. Drag Me to Hell

Ah, this movie brings us all back to when Sam Raimi made awesome, hilarious, and fun horror movies. Not to take anything away from the Spiderman movies, but I’ll take a chainsaw on an arm over web slinging any day of the week. And his return to horror with Drag Me to Hell proved to be almost as fun as his old stuff (almost). The only things that may have potentially hurt this movie are the lack of Bruce Campbell, and the PG-13 rating. Regardless, it’s a horror movie that doesn’t try and be scary so much (except for a dozen or so “jump scares”) as it does to be funny, gross, and entertaining.

21. Bruno

You either like what Sasha Baron Cohen does, or you don’t. That is probably what determines who will like this movie as well. I happen to find him hilarious. Bruno isn’t as funny as Borat, and neither of them are as funny as Da Ali G Show. While I hate to be in awkward situations and confrontations myself, I love watching it happen to other people. Because that’s basically what this movie is, just an 80-minute awkward confrontation. And as how it was with Borat, the deleted/extended scenes on the Blu-ray are often as good or better than what actually made the movie.

20. Extract

Mike Judge is 3-for-3 with his live-action films in my opinion. Office Space is a classic, and Idiocracy is a vastly underseen comedic masterpiece. Now with Extract, he returns closer to Office Space, while at the same time staying original. It’s about a guy who owns an extract company that employs about a dozen very stupid people. Mike Judge might very well be the best writer of “stupid people dialog” out there nowadays. Plus I enjoyed seeing Jason Bateman and Kristen Wiig get high profile roles, even if it’s in a movie that (like Idiocracy) was not seen by enough people.

19. The House of the Devil

If you knew nothing about this movie, and I showed it to you and told you it was released in 1982, you would have no choice but to believe me. That’s how great of an homage to late 70s/ early 80s horror movies this is. And that’s exactly who this will appeal to, fans of that era of horror films. It’s pretty cool. Hell, they even shot it on 16mm!

18. District 9

This movie was a nice little surprise this year, no one really knew what to expect of it. It played out as both a great sci-fi movie and an intriguing social commentary. For what it cost to make, the special effects were phenomenal and the aliens blended in seamlessly into the South African slums. I’m sure Invictus will get all the awards buzz and this will receive none, but to be honest I’ve seen Invictus, and the best movie about South Africa this year was District 9. And it won people over without a likable main character!

17. I Love You, Man

Despite coining the regrettable term “bromance”, this movie was consistently funny, and continued the trend of R-rated comedies being significantly better than PG-13 ones. If you’ve ever looked at Paul Rudd’s imdb page, you’ll notice that he is in a large amount of crappy romantic comedies and other garbage that no one really sees, and then he’s also in a small handful of good movies. This happens to be one of the good ones.

16. Moon

With shades of Kubrickian (if that’s a word) isolation and style, Sam Rockwell lives alone in a mining farm on the moon, just doing his job until his contract runs out. He’s been up there by himself for several years, his only friend is a robot voiced by Kevin Spacey. What I thought was going to be a movie about the descent into madness turned into one of the surprisingly cooler plots of the year. Like 2007’s Sunshine though, this movie may lose a little of it’s magic your TV as opposed to the big theater screen.

15. Trick ‘r Treat

I’m telling you, this movie is this generation’s Creepshow, if that means anything to you. I (like many other people who saw it) will be blown away at the fact this never got theatrical release (while garbage like Saw VI gets wide release). This mishmash of well made short stories blended into a moderately intertwined whole is probably the greatest straight-to-DVD movie I’ve ever seen. (also, some might consider this a 2008 release, but it didn’t get put out to the public until well into 2009, so it makes the list!)

14. 500 Days of Summer

I’m not a big fan of romantic-type movies all that much, but occasionally every few years one comes along that is actually a meaningful, well-intentioned, well-made film. This movie about heartache and the recovery process relates to me on many levels. And it’s easily the most cleverly constructed and edited movie about relationships since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

13. The Hurt Locker

I liked this film a lot, I wanted to like it more, but it seemed like it should have been even better for some reason. It’s almost like Generation Kill: The Movie. I could have assumed a movie about a bomb squad in the Iraq war would be an extremely tense movie, but damn! This movie got me cold-sweating a little bit in the movie theater. This is the definition of an “edge of your seat thriller”.

12. Where the Wild Things Are

I normally go to the movies on Saturday afternoons, because I don’t like crowded movie theaters, but I knew if I did that for this movie there would be a bunch of annoying kids in the theater, as I see them wandering about in droves when I go in the afternoon (but I see non-children’s movies so I don’t care). So I went at night to see this hoping that maybe the amount of children would be greatly reduced, and it was, but ironically the theater was crowded and I ended up sitting three seats away from some annoying kid. And this kid, I swear to god, fell asleep during the last 20 minutes of the movie and started snoring…! The parent didn’t wake the kid up! How rude! That kid must have been dumb anyway, because he was missing a fantastic movie. But seriously, theater etiquette people!

11. The Hangover

It’s surprising that the most universally accepted comedy of the year was also really good, it normally doesn’t work out that way. And it’s nice to see Mike Tyson getting work again.

10. Observe and Report

I can’t stress how much I love this movie. It was probably 2009’s most “love it or hate it” film, but I was blown away by how much I ended up loving it. I read a review that called it a comedic version of Taxi Driver, and I couldn’t agree more. I’ve made pretty much all of my friends watch it since it’s come out on Blu-ray. It’s easily the darkest comedy of the year, probably Seth Rogan’s best role ever, and it saddens me that the most widely recognized movie about mall cops is still Paul Blart.

9. Adventureland

I can’t tell if this is actually a good movie, or I just love it for some odd reason. I personally don’t know anyone else who has seen it, so I can’t ask them. But I just clicked with this movie to an insane degree. Maybe I just related to it because it was similar to my life right after college. Regardless, it’s the best place to enjoy Kristen Stewart without having to endure Twilight.

8. UP

For some reason I never expect much out of these computer animated movies, then I watch them, and they blow me away 100% of the time (I just saw Kung Fu Panda the other day and the same thing happened as well…). In comparison to Where the Wild Things Are, this movie had adult themes but was more adaptable to children, while Wild Things apparently makes children fall asleep. My only regret here was that I didn’t see it in 3D when I had the chance.

7. Funny People

Judd Apatow will probably forever have a free pass from me to do whatever he wants for making Freaks and Geeks, but this is my favorite of his three movies. I don’t know why people are claiming it wasn’t actually funny, it was very funny, and it was also very serious as well, I think that’s the genius of it. All of the actors fit in perfectly with the roles they were given, and it’s disappointing that people didn’t like this movie more. I’d say give it another chance. I would also like to note that the special features on the Blu-ray collector’s edition are as amazing as they are plentiful. Hours of good extra stuff, especially the Raaaaaaaandy documentary.

6. Zombieland

Is it surprising that a zombie movie is likely the most fun movie of the year? It shouldn’t be, zombie movies rule! Woody Harrelson is in top comedic form, and I’ll need to see it again before I make a statement as bold as it’s better than Shaun of the Dead, but it’s pretty close. And I won’t ruin it, but there is a big surprise cameo that does not disappoint. I’m hoping for some sequels.

5. Fantastic Mr. Fox

Wes Anderson hasn’t let me down yet. I was pretty excited when I heard he was going to be making this movie, because I knew he would do great things with it. It’s probably his most accessible film to date, I could see just about anyone enjoying it, but at the same time it’s still vintage Anderson and fits right in with his auteur style. It’s still in theaters right now, so get the cuss out there and cussing see it!

4. Star Trek

This might be the perfect blend of nerdiness and coolness. This is a Star Trek movie! Should it be this cool??? This JJ Abrams character might actually know what he’s doing. I’m not a fan of the Star Trek series, and I was able to jump right in and understand what’s going on. This looked great in theaters, and the Blu-ray looks pretty spectacular as well.

3. Up in the Air

I didn’t really know what to expect when I went to the theater to see this other than it was super ultra mega critically acclaimed. What I ended up seeing was an incredibly simple movie, that was equal parts powerful. This is perhaps the most moving film of the year, and it does it without ever being hokey. In fact, the whole thing seems very realistic. This goes to show that you don’t always need a big spectacle of a story to make an amazing movie. I’m sure this will end up winning every award known to man come awards time.

2. Inglourious Basterds

This has everything you’d expect from a Tarantino movie; witty dialog, extreme violence, stolen ideas turned original somehow. I’m sorry, I’m something of a Tarantino fanboy, I can’t help it, I eat this stuff up! I even love his segment in Four Rooms! As he himself has recently stated, this may be his masterpiece. I may agree. Wait, Pulp Fiction is probably still better, but Basterds is quite amazing. I just watched it again this week on Blu-ray, it just reinforced my love of it. I really wanted to make this my #1, but I had to go with my gut…

1. Black Dynamite

No movie this year made me laugh as much as this did. I was laughing out loud in the theater from the first scene all the way to the absolutely insane ending. I saw the trailer for it earlier this year, and was excited to see it, hoping it would be kinda funny. It ended up being ridiculously funny. I drove 45 minutes away to see it during it’s one week theatrical run, and I almost feel special for being one of the undoubtedly few people who have seen it. All eight of us in the theater sort of bonded that day, we all walked out the theater looking at each other and chuckling with stupid smiles on our faces, eight strangers. Did we then go out for drinks afterwards and regale in hilarious banter? No, of course not, I don’t talk to strangers. But in all honesty, this is the definition of a cult classic (if you can call it that this soon, I’m doing it anyway), and when it comes out on Blu-ray in February I suggest you check it out, though, it may not be for all tastes. If you find the trailer funny, then you will probably agree that this is one of the greatest things you’ll ever see. Maybe I’m just crazy, who knows?

For your possible enjoyment, here’s two other quick mini-lists:

JUST MISSED THE CUT:

35. Orphan
34. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
33. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
32. Coraline
31. 2012
30. The Informant!
29. A Serious Man
28. Invictus
27. Precious
26. The Blind Side

The WORST films of 2009 (that I saw, I mean Old Dogs and Twilight New Moon are probably worse, but I didn’t bother subjecting myself to that torture):

10. The Final Destination
9. Whatever Works
8. My Bloody Valentine 3D
7. X-Men Origins Wolverine
6. Surrogates
5. The Men Who Stare at Goats
4. Friday the 13th
3. Year One
2. Ninja Assassin
1. Jennifer’s Body (not worth it even for Megan Fox or the lesbian kiss)

2009 was a good year overall for movies, and here’s hoping for a great 2010!

Happy holidays!

There are a plethora of resources everywhere to teach you how to be an editor. There’s training websites like Lynda.com and Creative Cow. You can buy assorted training books at some coffeehouse-bookstore hybrid, where some homely fellow is likely playing new age music on a grand piano for Ramen noodle money. You could even go as far as to attend a terrible, terrible place called film school… But I laugh at you for doing these things. Laugh right in your pathetic face! You know why? Because I’m an elitist. I am better than you.

I eat dinner with 12 different solid gold forks. I have have different solid gold forks for different areas of the $800 steaks I eat. I only drink the first sip of a glass of $6000 wine, because I’m only satisfied with the first sip of a full glass of expensive wine. Then I throw the rest of the glass away and request a new drink just so I can take the first sip again. It typically costs me $150,000 to get drunk. What?! You’d like the rest of the glass?! How dare you! I would never allow someone who learned editing at film school to have my unused wine. I would rather destroy an entire wine field than give it to you, which is something I normally do once a month anyway, just for the sport of it.

I’d apologize to you for such a berating of your character, but my servant is currently cleaning the wheels of my Lexus with a toothbrush, and I normally have him apologize to commoners. But the reason I yell at you is because I love you, we are fellow editors, we are required to love each other by United States law. And I don’t want another tedious lawsuit on my hands. I just wanted to let you know that everything you know about editing is wrong.

I’m about to retire, so I’ll let you in on my biggest industry secret, since I have nothing to lose. There is an unimaginable resource located in the nether regions of the internet FULL of brilliant ideas by brilliant people. I take these ideas, and compile them into the greatest workable resource known to post production. So sit back and enjoy infinite knowledge! All you have to do is type in www.youtube.com.

Continuity –

How do you recreate a classic train scene from A Hard Day’s Night with just two teenage girls? No, no, no, the correct answer isn’t “why bother attempting it?”, the correct answer is to slightly juggle locations in their seats and use plenty of name-tags for clarity. I’d like you to show me one person on this entire planet who doesn’t understand what’s going on in this scene. You won’t find anyone, I guarantee it.

Filters –

Brightening techniques and color correction are essential for fine tuning your final videos. Often times people will let their videos become too dark to see what’s actually happening clearly. But with plug-ins and filters, these ghost hunters truly show us how captivating an image can be portrayed on video in it’s highest possible clarity. I didn’t know there was an FCP plug-in for finding ghouls! I’ve got the chills!

And in this next thrilling video, we take a look at how proper color correction can accurately show how your backyard is actually on the bottom of the ocean. Living under the sea is fantastic. I have several underwater mansions, but this one is pretty good. He captured the feel very well.

Sound Effects –
Being a twelve time winner of the Academy Award for Achievement in Sound Effects Editing has its benefits. Let’s just say that not one, but TWO local restaurants have named ham sandwiches after me. Well, it was two, but one of them got shut down for unsanitary conditions. And the other one burnt down mysteriously two winters ago. But still, people often ask me two things about my brilliant sound effects work;

1. “I didn’t know they gave out awards for that, how long have they been doing that?”
After I hear this I usually ask the peon what they do for a living, then purchase the company they work for and fire that person.

2. “Where did you learn how to do that, oh mighty overlord?”
Well, that answer is simple. Cat videos. Obviously.

Mind Blowing Graphics -

Did you see that??? This show must cost $50 million to produce, they just blow through intense visual effects like they are nothing, simply because they know they can! They have what appears to be a virtual ladybug crawl across the screen! I’m not 100% sure if it was fake, I’ll have to do frame-by-frame, but that was borderline brain melting! I’d like to see the render bar on that intense composition…! Weta Digital better watch their back, because these girls are only 10 years old, imagine the future potential…! I’ll have to e-mail them on which program they used because I am SO getting that. Though, it was a little hard to listen to the content because my eyes were being dazzled beyond belief, but I’m sure Jenna and Kristi had a show full of rich social commentary and thoughts on how to improve the American economy.

Here’s an even better example of blowing your mind, using the Michael Bay theory. As we all know, Michael Bay is the greatest and richest filmmaker in the world. His winning formula = Explosions. Lots and lots of explosions. Though, no one is better at explosions than the one and only DR. EXPLOSION!! He has a PhD in explosions!! From Dynamite University!!

While we’re on the subject of Dr. Explosion, he also teaches us two other great post production tips that we should always abide by no matter what;

1. Always make the credits to your video nearly three times as long as the actual story. You can never give yourself enough credit.

2. If the credits song is too lengthy for the 5 lines of text you had planned, just play the song out over black so people can keep listening to it until its over. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used the first 30 seconds of “Stairway to Heaven” for a credits sequence, then just played the remaining seven and a half minutes out over black. It just works.

Pacing –
Pacing is very important when it comes to editing. Perhaps the most important. Observe how well this patriotic spy thriller flows from scene to scene, keeping us guessing what our duster-clad hero (or villain…?) will do next. I felt this got snubbed at the Golden Globes. Behold the intensity of Subversion Interface! It hack.exe’d right into my soul.

Stunning Action Scenes –
I saw the new Star Trek film, and to be honest, I was very underwhelmed. I’m not sure, it just seemed like the overall look of the film was, what’s the right word…? Ah yes, amateurish. I laughed out loud in my private theater at some of the action scenes in that film, but that was only because I saw this much more intense video the night before:

Greenscreen Technology -
Everyone knows that green screen technology was invented sometime around 1875 (prove me wrong; historical records of that era are shotty at best), but not until recently has the technology surpassed what the human mind is actually capable of comprehending. I often find myself wondering not only how these people are able to blend in so well to their environments, but also are they even using green screens at all?? That’s how good they look!

I don’t know how they do it, they captured the mood perfectly, I mean they are dancing so intensely that they are literally disintegrating! What a stunning visual effect! They should do a tutorial on how to do this human vaporizing.

This young, female soon-to-be George Lucas did a spectacular job keying around the green blob on the right side of the screen. I would think it would be hard to key around a green blob against a green screen, but she must have spent all night on it. I bet she has an advanced copy of the next version of Keylight. I probably would have ended up just keying the green blob out, but she apparently has the skills to key around it. I know when I am bested. Kudos.

Word of advice, if you’re going to use super powers on camera like this, you should probably hide your identity with a costume, I mean you don’t want any super-villains to know who… wait, what?! This is FAKE??

Why We Post -

People often forget about the most important part about a video. The message. There is no point in doing any editing tricks at all if the overall message of the video isn’t worthwhile. The main point of putting a video out there to the public is to show the world that your video is the best. Every video that goes out there should never have the intention of wasting anyone’s time. I mean we all shoot video of our daily lives, little “ha ha” moments that occur to us, but we save those videos in our personal homes in order to watch them amongst friends and family, remembering the good times, sharing fun memories.

SURELY, no one would ever post a video on YouTube, one of the most popular websites in history, if the message of the video wasn’t important. Surely, every video doesn’t need to be uploaded for the world to watch, only the important ones. The one’s with real stories to tell. Messages to convey.

You see, now everybody knows how awesome Trevor and Sedore are. Thanks Coady! I’m sure their antics will land them an ABC Family sitcom in no time, thanks for getting their big video out there for the world to see. This won’t waste anybody’s time, as it did nothing but enrich my life.

Ah yes, Devon, have you consulted the Guinness World Record people on your amazing jump yet? I felt riveted the entire time I was watching, the element of danger was enthralling. Thank you for uploading this, it didn’t waste my time at all, it actually gave me a shot of adrenaline to the heart!

Thank you so much for uploading this for everyone to see. Now I know what true love really is. I hope the story you were trying to convey in this video poem of love, that you wanted complete strangers to see on the internet, gets you all the credit in the world for being the opposite of a waste of time.

Oh.  Oh, sorry.  That one was actually a waste of time…

The Ultimate in YouTube Video!
I’m not sure why I didn’t just show you this from the beginning. Just follow the formulas of this next video and you too can become the next Winston Randall Montgomery IV. Though I probably would have thrown a fish eye effect in there, maybe some inverted sepia color effects too, but I guess that’s what separates a super rich successful editor like myself from the 15 year old girls.

The SuiteTake -

***Author’s Note: In an effort to not sound too mean-spirited regarding this entire post, I used to make movies 5x worse than any of these back in junior high/high school. Everybody starts somewhere, and usually it sucks. I actually commend YouTube on it’s spirit. And its “When Animals Attack” videos. Those are just hilarious. So to be fair, I’ll upload a video of mine on YouTube from 7 years ago, that is as “awesome” as anything in this post (and I made it in iMovie…!).

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.

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of the A-Series LTO drives started by Quantum, and now licensed and sold by Cache-A. This review covers the newly released Prime-Cache from Cache-A. There are two other higher end models that offer more internal hard drive space and the option of multiple LTO drives, but for most small to medium size post houses the Prime-Cache model will do just fine, and it’s the least expensive.

This review is more of an overview of some of the functions, and does not cover every feature, option or workflow, and only gives a general overview on setup. My goal is to give you a good taste of what it can do for you and your post house and leave you with an idea of the kind of value it can offer your company, both in security as well as a new revenue stream.

If you have not already done so, you may want to give my last post a quick review, as it gives a history of how we ended up here after having lots of issues with our shelved HD backup system. I know that many people use hard drives for long term archival, and it’s understandable why. It’s cheap and space is plentiful. However, learn from our mistakes and be aware of the pitfalls of going that route.

There’s also a post by Scott Roberts that covers the workflow of the A-Series drives in his own special style.

Location of Device and Setup

When picking a location for the drive, you might be tempted to place it inside your edit bay. It’s a good looking box, small and sits on the desktop nicely. For testing purposes this is what I did, just because I knew I would want more interactivity with the device while reviewing it. But while the device is virtually silent when powered on, once the tape in the drive starts to shuttle during operation it makes more noise then you, or more likely your clients, will want while editing. It’s not terrible, but considering this device is controlled over the network from anywhere in your office, it makes sense to put it somewhere else. For us that was the machine room where we keep the multiple raid drives that sound like an airplane taking off.

Setup could not be easier. It’s pretty close to a zero configuration unit. You plug the unit into a power source, add a Gigabit Ethernet connection and power it on.

By default the unit will start up in DHCP mode which should work with most networks. If you want to assign a static IP (like we eventually did) you can easily do so through the web interface to the device.

At this point a quick check of the manual will tell you how to log in using the default user name and password and a web browser. Safari and Firefox are supported, but Windows Internet Explore is not due to some incompatibilities. This is what the default screen looks like.

While the Quantum drive relied on the web interface for almost everything, that’s no longer the case. You can actually perform your archive duties without having to visit here at all. I will cover this later when I discuss workflow.

One of the great things about this device is that through the web interface, Cache-A can send your unit software updates as they’re released. This makes upgrades pretty painless. While this is pretty much expected for Macs and PC’s these days, dedicated appliances like this don’t usually make upgrades so painless. We went through several small upgrades during beta testing and it was seamless. They would tell us a new version was out, and we would use the web interface to initiate the download. It would automatically download the software, install it and then reboot the computer.

The Hardware
The hardware is a combination of LTO-4 tape drive, internal hard drive, FTP server and computer all wrapped in one. It’s basically a archive appliance built around a PC running Linux. If you’re a linux nerd it’s Fedora Core10, specifically 2.6.27.5-117.fc10. While it is possible to hook up a monitor and keyboard and use the device directly, as you would any other PC, the real strength in this device is that it’s designed to be used over a network with multiple clients at the same time. You don’t need to be anywhere near the box (Except for tape exchanges obviously. I’m told they’re working on a way to change tapes via mind control but that’s probably a 2.0 software feature).

The case itself is relatively small, measuring just 11″H x 10.25″D x 4.5″W,  and it’s designed to sit on a tabletop. It’s all in black except for the Cache-A logo and power button on the front. While it’s designed to run upright to save on desk space, you can also use it horizontally, as long as the drive is right side up (the door will flip up if it is). This works well if you would prefer a rack or shelf for the unit.

On the front is access to the LTO-4 drive, a dual USB port for connecting a memory stick or external storage device and a big power button that glows blue when the unit is on. There are also a few activity lights that monitor the tape drive and hard drive usage. The LTO-4 drive will only write to LTO-4 tapes, but it is backward compatible and will read LTO-3 tapes from the Quantum A-Series drives.

TECH NOTE: This backwards compatibility is not part of the current software release but it expected in a future release. Hopefully a near future release. So if you have one of the Quantum A-Series drives, don’t let go of it just yet or you will not be able to read any of your old tapes.

The back is where you really get the idea that this is a PC. You’ll find all of the standard inputs and outputs, and a network status light that verifies it’s connected.

The appliance is designed to run over Gigabit Ethernet (1000 Bt), and at least in my tests I couldn’t get it to show up on the network even at 100BT. This shouldn’t be an issue for most post houses since you probably already have a fast network. And truthfully, if you’re going to use this device you really need a Gigabit connection.

The Workflow
In the previous version of the A-Series drives that Quantum came out with, the web interface to the unit was where you did nearly everything. Cache-A has taken a different approach. The Prime Cache creates a volume (they call this the vtape) that can be mounted directly on the desktop of the Mac, Windows or Linux. In fact on the Mac desktop you can see both the Mac share as well as the Windows Share.

So here is a simple example of how you might archive your projects.

Organize your projects/files that you want to archive on your hard drive. In our case, we have a “Projects to Archive” folder that each editor uses once he/she determines that a project is ready to be taken off line. Each project is prepped for archival by making sure there is not only a master export of the final video, but we also media manage the final sequence into a folder called “media”. This way when we come back for revisions we at least have an editable sequence that’s easy to modify.

We then create a dated folder in the form of YEAR-MONTHDAY. For example, September 21st 2009 would be represented as 2009-0921. If there is more then one folder for that same day, we just append a letter at the end – 2009-0921a.

We then organize the jobs into the folder in a way that gets each folder as close to 800 gigs without going over (yes, just like the price is right).

With each folder at around 800 gigs or less, it’s time to move some bits. There are two options here. Before we move on let me explain more about the vtape that i mentioned earlier.

The main purpose of the vtape is to be an intermediate between you and the tape drive. As the name implies (Linear Tape Open) the tape records in a linear manner. That means that unlike using a hard drive that reads and writes randomly as needed, a LTO tape is recorded from the start to the end. You can’t go back and remove a file or folder and then reclaim that space.

So help comes via the vtape.

The vtape is the name of the internal drive on the Prime Cache. It allows you to copy files from your computer to the Prime Cache and organize them however you like, and then copy them to the tape in one shot. You can even have the vtape mounted on multiple computers and have them all copying files to the vtape at the same time. This is how the device allows for multiple users simultaneously.

In our example we have chosen to do this organization locally prior to copying the files over, just because we prefer doing it that way and that’s been our work flow since getting the first A-Series drive (which had no vtape).

So back to our example…

Over your local network, mount the shared drive. If you’re on a Mac it’s under your network browser, and on Windows it’s under your Network Neighborhood. (Forgive me for not having tested this with a Windows machine, but I would have had to buy a PC to do that. I wasn’t willing to go that far for the review.)

The device shows up with the name “Archive” followed by a number. The number is the last 2 digits of your serial number. So in my case, the drive comes up as “Archive04″. You will need to type in the default user name and password as outlined in the manual (you can change this) and then you will see the volume called “vtape”. Double click to mount this to mount the hard drive on your desktop.

Here you will see two things. A file called “Eject” and a folder that represents the tape you inserted. By default, it’s a serial number that matches the tape itself. But this is easily changed to something more useful. (The serial number as a default is actually VERY useful if you have a high end system with a automatic barcode reader. It allows the drive to find tapes for you based on the barcode/tape name).

In the finder, just click on the name of the tape (the folder) and name it to whatever you like, keeping in mind good naming conventions. You wouldn’t want to call it…

“My-Really_AwesomeProject!!!!&Other%stuff***that’sImPOR$$tant”.

If you keep your names to alpha/numeric you’ll be fine.

Changing this to a more intuitive name now will help later when we get to catalog it. Once you change the name, you will hear the tape drive shuttle the tape as it changes the name on the tape itself.

As a side note, the Eject file will allow you to eject the tape  but in a somewhat confusing way. What you do is drag the file (named Eject) to the trash (you do not need to empty the trash) and the following dialog appears.

As you scan see, the dialog is a bit confusing. But if you do hit the “Delete” button, it does not erase the tape or delete anything, but in fact just ejects the tape. If this freaks you out and threatens to raise your blood pressure, just use the manual eject button on the face of the device itself. I would imagine this is a fix at some point.

With the tape inserted and renamed (you could have also renamed it after you copied files to it) you are ready to copy files over. You can copy files to the vtape itself for further organization, or to combine them with files from another machine.  Or, you can drag them directly to the tape.

If you drag them to the vtape, they are copied to the internal drive of the Prime-Cache, but not to the tape. This becomes a staging area as I mentioned. When you’re ready you can drag your vtape files directly onto the tape icon and the files will transfer. Another benefit to using this method is that you can make multiple copies of the same tape. Once one tape is done, you put a new one in and drag the files over again. In doing this you can have one on-site and one off-site copy of your data.

In our example I decided to just drag my flies directly to the tape icon, thus I went directly to the tape and bypassed the vtape drive. Well, that’s not totally true. The device still uses the drive to cache files and make sure there is always a steady stream of data for the LTO as it’s recording. But this is more of a rotating cache that once it’s done will not occupy any space on the vtape.

In our example I copied 5 gigs of files directly to the tape, in about 5 minutes. Not too shabby for coping files over a network. And remember, this tape holds 160x more data!

Remember those old Avid drives that were about 50lbs a piece and held only 9 gigs of data and cost $5,000 each!? Now you can fit 800 gigs on a tape that’s roughly the size of a wallet (albeit a fat wallet).

On the vtape you will now see a text file called TransferLog. This file has a list of every file transferred as well as a final status. This is the most important part of the log, found at the end. It confirms that your transfer was successful. If it was not, it will give you details as to what files were the problem and in most cases what the problem seemed to be.

Your file transfer can be monitored more actively through the web interface to the Prime-Cache drive. The list at the bottom will scroll as files are copied.

Now that the tape is completed, the next step is to create a catalog of what’s on it. By doing so you will have the option of later searching for files that you may want to retrieve without having the tape loaded. Once you find what you want, you just insert the proper tape and copy it back to your computer. While the Prime Cache does keep a catalog file of it’s own so that you can do this same function internally, I prefer to keep that information under my own control and accessible even if the drive is off-line. There’s also the added benefit of getting a lot more then a file list in your catalog, as you’ll see next. Other metadata is key.

For this part we use a program called CDFinder. Don’t let the name throw you, it’s not for just CD’s, it’s for any mountable disk, volume or folder – attached locally or over the network. We started using this when we backed everything up to hard drives and it has always served us well. We keep the CDFinder catalog file network accessible, so no matter where the program is launched it’s reading and writing to the same file.

This is the easy part. With your vtape mounted and the tape that you just copied to visible, you can either drag and drop the tape to the CDFinder icon, or from within the program select the tape directly.

During the catalog process, you have options as to how deep to catalog, what file types to skip, the ability to create thumbnail previews of images and so on. By default we scan everything and create thumbnails of images.

This 5 gig backup only took 2-3 minutes to catalog, and that includes making all of the thumbnail images. If you turn off some of those options it goes even faster.

Here is what you end up with when you’re done.

The new catalog, by default, will assume the name of the tape. This is where having your own naming convention is important. You are able to change the name though if needed.

Here you can see some of the icons that were created. These are actually part of the catalog file, and not being read form the tape itself. In fact, when this screen shot was taken the tape was no longer in the drive. It’s one of the advantages of using CDFinder over the Prime Cache internal Catalog.

You also have the ability to sort your catalogs into different folders. As shown here we have a few different client folders, as well as folders for our current tape library and our older hard drive library.

Now with the catalog complete, you can put your tape on the shelf and start your own archive library. Make sure to properly name the tape to reflect the same name that it had in the finder.

Performance

So for me there are two big questions in regards to performance. By far the first one is can I rely on The Prime-Cache to safely protect my data. The second question is, how long does it take to fill an 800 gig tape.

For the first question I can tell you based on my own experience that it’s virtually fail-safe. Not only is the LTO standard very robust with a 30 year shelf life, but it has a great track record and really strong road-map for the future. I also appreciate the fact that the standard is “open”, and not owned by any single company.

As to the second question, in our experience it takes roughly a minute per gig during backup. The number of files and sizes do make a difference. A single file that’s 1 gig in size will transfer a lot faster then 100 smaller files that total 1 gig in size. To fill a tape it usually takes anywhere from 6-9 hours. Obviously the speed of your machine, hard drive system and network will also play into this. We’re pretty fast on all 3 of those so I’m guessing we’re close to best case scenario.

The Prime Cache hardware/software is very solid as well. Even going back to when Quantum was making the device, the engineering team has always been very open to feedback and have worked hard to make changes that users have requested. This really shows in the maturity of this product. While it is a first release from Cache-A, they learned a lot from the early problems that Quantum had and avoided the same pitfalls. The code for the Cache-A device is rewritten from the ground up and only uses the Quantum code necessary to read the LTO-3 tapes. Cache-A has really taken this product from being some weekend hobby at Quantum to making it their flagship product, front and center.

Cost of Ownership
This is not a cheap device, but it’s also not a “dumb” LTO drive. With a standard LTO you have to not only buy the drive but also have a compute host and software to manage your backups. With the Cache-A line of archive appliances, you get all of this in a single box and more. There’s also something very nice about not having to call different companies if you have a problem, and then have them each point to the other. Cache-A makes the hardware and software, and supports it well.

One of the best reasons to choose this device is that it’s available to every computer on your network. With just a LTO drive, you may find yourself moving it from machine to machine as you need to do backups, and it because it’s such a pain you’re less likely to stay current maintaining your archive library.

So all things considered, the $7,999 price tag is not so bad for what you get. Especially if you factor in piece of mind.

Tape prices are really cheap. A 800 gig tape is going for $49.29 at Amazon.com. While that’s only slightly cheaper then a 1TB hard drive, what you’re really paying for is long-term peace of mind. You won’t get that from your dusty hard drives much past 5 years.

But even with the cost involved, the drive could be a money maker for you. How?

We have managed to turn this into a new stream of revenue. Since purchasing the drive nearly 2 years ago we’ve been charging for every project backed up. The result is over time the drive is slowly being paid for, and in about 6-12 more months it will be making us a profit. So it’s safe to say that buying this device has tuned out to be a good investment, that’s about to start paying dividends.

But it’s no longer just editing projects that need to get backed up. Now it’s P2 media, XDCam and RED footage as well. Once the project is over we also offer to create a library tape of all of the original footage. In some cases we will make more then one copy so that not only will our client have the footage, but their client as well.

Before buying any piece of gear for my business I always ask myself if it will be considered overhead, or money generating. The Cache-A Archive Appliance can definitely make you money. If it’s not, you might be leaving money on the table.

The Manual
The 75 page PDF manual is very detailed and easy to read. It does a good job of explaining how the device works, what a typical work flow might be, explaining what the vtape is in detail, use of the web interface and so on. I found that while it wasn’t exactly a page turner, I did enjoy reading it. But then again, I’m a bit of a manual geek. There’s just something about a new manual that makes me excited. I know, very sad. So I’ve been told.

One of the interesting features that I did not cover is the ability to hook up external devices (think USB hard drives or memory sticks) and also backup those devices through the web interface. I played around with it a bit, but did not use it enough to include in this review.

Changes Still Needed
As much as I like this device, it’s not perfect. But the small issues I have with it can be fixed over time with software upgrades. I have to admit it took me pouring through my review notes to even come up with these.

In the web interface there is a button called “Item”. Intuitively it’s hard to know what it’s for exactly. It’s actually a contextual menu based on whatever is selected to the right of it (Current Tape, VTAPE, or Catalog). But it doesn’t make immediate sense and I’m sure there’s a better way to do this, or at least a better name for it.

In that contextual menu, two of the options are Eject and Erase. But does Eject need to be right next to Erase? This just seems like a bad idea.

Erasing the vtape can take an unusually long time. You can erase it in the finder or through the web interface, but in both cases it just takes a long time (in one case it was several hours for just under 800 gigs of files). If you choose to perform this function in the web browser, there’s no way to tell if/when it’s done since there is no status. You just assume that it’s running in the background.

To be fair, I have not tested this since the last software upgrade so it’s possible that it’s better now. I know they were aware of it and working on it.

By default the system ships with a DHCP network setup, meaning you should be able to just plug it in and let it find an open space on the network. They recommend that you leave it in this mode, but we found it was better to just give it a hard IP address. There were a few times that it picked a IP address that was already in use, thus causing a network conflict. I can not say for sure that it was the fault of the Prime-Cache, only that we’ve never had this issue before. Using the web interface we easily give it a static number and all was fine after that. Generally speaking, anything that can be thought of as a “server” is something I like to have on a locked down IP anyway.

My biggest complaint is that the backwards support for LTO-3 (reading previous archive tapes) is not yet implemented in the software (thus untested). For anybody that already has a history with the device this makes upgrading pointless until this is corrected. We have nearly 100 tapes that will not work with the new drive, which means we can’t let go of our current drive until this feature is implemented. They hope to get it out before the end of this year, but there’s no guarantee. If you’re totally new to this device, then you won’t really care about this feature.

And as I already mentioned, the eject dialog is a bit confusing. Having the word “Delete” appear does grab your attention, but since the dialog presents a conflicting message it’s a bit unnerving, even if it is harmless. But again, an easy fix that I would expect to see in a future release.

The SuiteTake
At the risk of repeating myself yet again, you can not underestimate the importance of a solid reliable archive. If it’s important enough to save, it’s important enough to do it right. Especially if you’re thinking about billing your clients for this service. For all the years that we did HD backups we never charged clients for one main reason. I didn’t want the responsibility of dealing with files that were lost due to a drive failure. So we did it as a courtesy and guaranteed nothing.

New features are due to be added in October with their 1.1 software release. Some of the major features include Tape Spanning, Automatic VTAPE file removal option, Pro-Cache RAID 0/1, and Pro-Cache ExpressCard Support.

With the Cache-A series of Archive Appliances based on the LTO standard, you can reliably backup all of your files and know that they’re safe. Period. And with the new devices from Cache-A your data can be read back from a Standard LTO-4 drive as well, so you’re not locked into the A-Series drives for retrieval.

My life is a lot like West Side Story. Even if you take away my constant dancing and occasional problem solving knife fights, it’s still pretty much West Side Story. Well, actually, I’ve never assaulted a police officer or had any reason to mess with the Sharks, but I did briefly date a Puerto Rican woman in college. I’m getting off topic, hold on, my original thought about West Side Story was that I use a PC at home, and Macs at work. And it tears my life apart! I’m in a constant struggle to maintain some sort of peace between the people I know, because I’m always in a state of betraying the other. My friends are all 100% Windows users, I don’t have a single Mac using friend. But at work I see the power of the Mac, something they do not see. To my friends, whenever I talk about Macs I’m pretty sure they just envision the uber-simple 1993 Macintosh computers that we used to play Oregon Trail II on in elementary school and think that Apple products are for the “slower” folks. And at work when I mention my Windows machine, I’m pretty sure everyone just imagines some horrible flurry of files scattered everywhere in all dark corners of the hard drive, a virus-ridden plague of a device that can only be turned off each night with a blue screen of death. The truth is, I use both, and when I look at them, all I see is a couple of computers…

Now I know that there are drastic and bold arguments out there for each, probably in the programming world, I mean EVERYONE knows that Neo never would have entered the Matrix on an iMac, and I guarantee that Jeff Goldblum could never have launched a virus into the mothership of those alien bastards in Independence Day without his suped up Powerbook. The infinitely advanced aliens were expecting Windows 95, but instead they got the wrath of Mac OS 7! Bwahahaha!

A lot of the argument lies in the functionality and aesthetic differences between the two. But I don’t think they are all that different. I mean they are both computers, they both do the same things with the right software. These childish comparisons are the equivalent of making fun of your fifth grade classmate for having braces. They aren’t even all that different at the most shallow level. Prepare to shield your eyes, Mac users, AS BEHOLD, I GIVE YOU THE NIGHTMARE THAT IS WINDOWS VISTA!

See, that’s not so bad, looks like a desktop. Now let’s get into… oh crap, one second…

Back to the… Uhhg, one second…

OK, well if you look down at… Ah jeez…

You just gotta get through a few things, I’m used to it, it’s no big deal. Now on to… OH C’MON…

I haven’t updated my anti-virus software on my PC yet. That whole virus argument doesn’t mean much to me. I know this annoying security risk stuff is for preventing the INEVITABLE viruses that ALL PCs get, but I don’t really understand that fear of computer viruses on your personal computer. My McAfee virus protection software stopped being on my computer when its 3 month out-of-the-box free trial ended. Hmmm, I still don’t have a virus on my PC…!

My PC tends not to have viruses, without needing working anti-virus software, typically because I do not download Russian-made Photoshop imitation software from shady torrent sites. I also don’t open e-mails from people like “Da3uinis Mcshul0r” who are giving me the subject line “Clixk hre for ultim0te party; girrlz aR the teen0age” CHANCES ARE that is POSSIBLY a SPAM message. I mean, I have a friend from college named Da4uinis Mcshul0r, but NOT Da3uinis Mcshul0r… NICE TRY INTERNET, YOU ALMOST GOT ME!

But these two operating systems essentially have the same functions. They both have a central menu to access the main functions, Windows on the bottom, Mac on the top:

They both have control panels to tweak what you need to:

Macs have a dock at the bottom of the screen that gives you quick access to programs. Well, Windows has an area at the bottom of the screen designed for quick access to programs:

They can both use the keyboard to switch between programs:

Hey, they BOTH even have annoying security questions:

And I don’t like the argument that Macs are easier for beginners to use than Windows, or vice versa. If you sit my Grandpa in front of a computer, he won’t know what the hell is going on, regardless of the operating system. I built a PC in high school (for an electronics class semester credit nonetheless, why hello ladies!?) and when I went to college and had to do all my video work on Macs, it’s not as if I set myself on fire in protest. If you know things about computers, then you should be able to find your way around on the opposing operating system, and if you don’t know anything about computers, then you should equally hate ALL computers.

I don’t want to turn this into a Mac vs. PC bullet pointed comparison, there’s plenty of other places to see that. I want to take the journeyman’s approach, and go right to the source, find out what I can about the actual companies that make them. So I called Microsoft first and asked them if I could have a tour of their factory. The man on the phone was kind of grizzled sounding, which was odd, but he sent me a one way plane ticket to Harbor Canyon, Mississippi, so I could see where Windows was born.

To be honest, this isn’t what I expected. (A homely looking fellow wanders out from behind a rock)

Billy Joe Bob – “Hey, I’m Billy Joe Bob, you dat guy who call asking ’bout my Windas machines?”

Me – “Yes… Yes I am Mr. Bob.”

Billy Joe Bob – “Actually, it’s Mr. McMuddberry. Billy Joe Bob is mah first name. Billy Joe Bob McMuddberry.”

Me – (looks around for possible exit strategies) “I see…”

Billy Joe Bob – “Come ohn intah mah factoray” (points at silver coated log cabin)

Me – “That’s really shiny BJB, what’s your house covered with by the way?”

Billy Joe Bob – “Dat’s alluminum foil. Dat’s so da government can’t access da chip dey put in mah brain back in Nam. And dat ain’t mah houze, yankee, dat’s mah factoray where I build custum Windas computahs. Dat’s why I intercepted yer phone call, I heard you was writin’ an innernet article discussin’ why Windas is the superiah computah. I brought ya hea, so ya could help start up da revolution wit us! We need mo’ proud Windas born Americans in ah organizatun.”

Me – “Wow, I don’t know how to react to this, I’d be honored, but you seem absolutely insane. I’m actually writing about how PCs and Macs are sort of similar.”

Billy Joe Bob – “WHOA, WHOA, WHOA, NAH! What did ya just say to my listin’ holes? You talkin’ ’bout MACS??? In frunt of meee??? You ain’t no… MAC LOVER are ya?!?”

Me – “Well, I actually use both and I – “

(Billy Joe Bob pulls out enormous hunting knife)

Billy Joe Bob – “I can’t believe I let some NO GOOD, MAC LOVIN’, LEOPARD HUGGIN’, DOWN-AND-DIRTY APPLE EATIN’ SON OF A GUN IN MAH FACTORAY!!!! NAH YA GONNA DIE!!”

(I start running)

Me – “NOT COOL! NOT COOL!”

Billy Joe Bob – “Git ‘em boys!”

I’m now running through the woods of Mississippi, a gang of Windows enthusiasts with pitchforks and torches chasing me. I dodge between the trees, only thinking in my head “What the hell is going on with these people?” I enter a clearing, oh no, it’s on the edge of a cliff! I’m doomed!

Billy Joe Bob – “We got ya nah, ya Quicktime supportin’ scoundrel…!”

So this is how I meet my end, at the hands of rednecks…! Then a flash happens to my left, almost blinding me momentarily.

Teleporting Woman – “Take my hand, Scott!”

I look over at the hillbillies and realize that crazy teleporting future woman is the better option, so I grab her hand, she types in something into her watch we jump into some sort of Kubrick-esk black hole!

Me – “Whoa, seriously, what is going on, who are you, and why did you save me?”

Tarmacia – “I am Tarmacia, and we’ve been watching you from afar. I traveled to Earth in order to prevent your death at the hands of Windows.”

Me – “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh… Did you say traveled TO Earth, implying that you aren’t actually FROM Earth…?

Tarmacia – “That is correct, Scott. In fact YOU are no longer on Earth. You are now aboard the Apple-9 Millennia, a floating space station in which all Apple products are developed.”

Me – “I gotta say, I’d be a little freaked out right now, but this is actually pretty awesome! But how did you know that I was going to be assaulted by those Windows people?”

Tarmacia – “We heard about your internet article on the Macintosh system, and were watching you closely.”

Me – “Why does everyone care so much about my internet article?”

Tarmacia – “Apple follows all news about Apple, regardless of importance. The fact of the matter is we value your stance, and would like to introduce you to Emperor Jobs.”

Me – “Well, I’d kinda rather just go back to Earth, I’m not really in a state of mind to-”

Tarmacia – “And I find you very attractive.”

Me – “OK, I’ll follow you.”

(as she leads me down a hallway, a man forcefully pulls me into an adjacent room)

Hermac – “Shhhhhhh. Don’t scream, I’m here to help you! I’m Hermac, I work in the iTravel development sector.”

Me – “What’s iTravel, I’ve never heard of that?”

Hermac – “It’s an Apple brand time-travel machine, it won’t be released to the public until 2052. Apple develops all of their products decades in advance, but deprives the awesome technology to the public until Emperor Jobs feels they deserve it. The iPod was actually created in 1963, but an early model got leaked by accident to one John F. Kennedy during a routine Earth mission, by a developer working here on the Apple-9 named Lee Harvey Oswald. But Emperor Jobs declared the public wasn’t ready for it yet, so we, well, we did what we had to do…”

Me – “I feel like you had to tell me something about my current situation, and you’re wasting a lot of time with this boring story.”

Hermac – “Right! You’re in grave danger, we have to get out of here!”

Me – “What?! No way! I’m about to meet Steve Jobs, and I’m pretty sure that that Tarmacia chick has the hots for me.”

Hermac – “The Great iCouncil of Elders know that you’ve been to the Windows development facility, they’ve been trying to penetrate it for years, but the Windows developers can smell a pure blood Mac user from a mile away!”

Me – “Whoa, really? That was the ACTUAL Windows development facility? That tin foil covered log cabin with Billy Joe Bob?”

Hermac – “Indeed it was, and now the Elders will use an iScrambler to reduce your brain to pure information to be dumped on an iBrain for visualization. They want your knowledge of the Windows factory. They don’t really care about your internet article.”

Me – “But I was planning on writing a clear, focused blog post this time! I wasn’t going to go off into any bizarre tangents full of nonsense, they should be interested in it for once! Wait, why should I trust you anyway? Aren’t you one of these people?”

Hermac – “Tomorrow is my 27th birthday, after that I will no longer be cool enough to develop products for Apple. They take everyone older than 27 to the iShrine, for which they supposedly go to iParadise for an eternity of iRelaxation, but I learned the true secret, do you want to hear it?”

Me – “Not really, maybe we should go…”

Hermac – “They convert us into iPhone Apps. They melt us down with an iMelt, and turn us into iPhone Apps! THE APP STORE IS MADE OF PEOPLE!”

Me – “Yeah, whatever, I believe you, blah-blah-blah, let’s just get out of here, alright?” (I start to run away with Hermac)

Tarmacia – “STOP THEM!!! Set iLasers to KILL!!!”

Hermac – “QUICK SCOTT, GET IN HERE! IT’S AN iTRANSPORTER, IT WILL TAKE US BACK TO EARTH!”

Me – “OK cool I guess, let’s do it!”

Me – “HERMMMAAAAAAC, NOOOOOOOOOOO!” (I fall backwards into iTransporter)

Me – “W-Where am I?”

Kimoto – “You are safe now, friend. The Windows society and the Mac civilization can harm you no more.”

Me – “Yeah, what was with those people? They were really freaking out back there…”

Kimoto – “Yes, your journeys have shown you the real truth. It is not one or the other that is better, both Windows and Macs are equally crazy in their genius. They both create great products, but their insanity towards one another will only lead to a path of utter destruction.”

Me – “Yeah, great message Bono… But what are you all about? Why do you know so much?”

Kimoto – “BECAUSE I WORSHIP THE MIGHTY GOD LINUX!!!”

Me – (gulp)

While posts have been a bit hit or miss lately due to our heavy work load, that doesn’t mean that we’re not getting some work done under the hood! I wanted to do a quick post to let you know some of the not so obvious changes we’ve made.

Videos
Because of the increasing demand on our server, videos are now hosted by Blip.tv. One of the new advantages is that you can now more easily play the video within the post, or watch it full screen. All video is also available in multiple formats so you can also download clips to your computer.

iTunes
We now have a SuiteTake.com podcast on iTunes. For now the feed includes videos that we post in their original h.264 format, but in the not so distant future it will also include the new SuiteTake.com podcast. More on that later this summer.

iPhone
Most of our videos are now formatted to play on the iPhone as well. There are a few that still need to be updated, but most of the older ones have already been converted.

Speaking of the iPhone, we also have a new iPhone interface that makes viewing the site simple, clean and easy on your phone.

A Comment about Comments
As we say in most of the posts, we welcome comments. And we mean it, good and bad. We don’t claim to be the experts on everything, we do make mistakes and we too are learning new things all the time. We expect to learn from your experiences as well, not just share our own. I can’t tell you the number of times that I learn something by reading a post that one of the other contributers wrote – and I work with these people all the time.

Recommended reading for the less mature commenters.

However, one thing we will not tolerate is rudeness, the use of bad language and just flat out being mean spirited. While overall the responses we receive are very professional, there are a few people who are obviously deficient in the area of human interaction (they know who they are, and we know who they are).

One requirement that we have for all posts is that they come from a valid email address. Using a phony address is akin to screaming an insult at somebody and then running away like a child. If you have something to say, own your words or keep them to yourself.

More to Come
We have some great things planned for the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned! Thanks for your continued support.

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.

Have you ever seen one of those movies where the kid from Montana, fresh off the farm, goes to Hollywood because he has dreams of becoming an actor, because he was the best actor in his 75 student high school’s rendition of West Side Story? Then he gets to Hollywood, with his suitcase and his cowboy hat, and he’s walking down the street wide eyed and astonished at all the bright lights and weird people that inhabit the area, and he doesn’t know what to do with himself or where to begin? Well, I feel like that farm boy, except instead of going to Hollywood I’m using Cinema 4D, and instead of seeing freaks everywhere, I’m looking at complex menu screens and lots of buttons that I have no idea what they do. I mean, look at this interface, it’s scary for someone with no background in 3D to open this program!

A decision was made by the high council of elders, at their shrine resting on the peak of the volcano, that I would be the chosen one to learn how to use a true 3D program. But I have no experience whatsoever in this area. This is my first job in this industry out of college, and to be honest, I didn’t even use something as basic as Photoshop a single time while I was in college! Let’s just say the most experience I had working on 3D was when I watched WALL-E a couple months ago. So I was nervous at the thought of learning this program, but at the same time excited at the possibility of what I could potentially do. I suppose the purpose of this post is to show you what it’s like to first delve into a 3D program if you have no idea what you’re doing, and possibly how it’s not as scary as one may think.

To help guide me along this journey, I enlisted the help of a tutorial on lynda.com by Larry Mitchell, titled “CINEMA 4D R10 Essential Training”. It’s actually not as complex an interface as you’d think by just looking at it. I’ll go into the details of that in a minute, but first I’d just like to note an occurrence that happened on my first day ever working in this program. Mr. Mitchell, in what seemed like he was possibly saying it in passing while talking about the content browser, mentioned something about accessing human models for use in in the program.

I shifted my eyes back and forth, as perhaps the computer was trying to tell me something, or someone was playing a joke on me, by giving me this glorious information now. Then Larry said “So, if you hit this Inverse Kinematics button, you can start to animate this human, but we are getting way ahead of ourselves here, back to the content browser.”

HOLD UP LARRY MITCHELL. You’re telling me that by just clicking this one button I can mess around with this human figure, make it do whatever I want? I’m sorry, but I am going to have to take a break from this tutorial, as I now feel obliged to mess around with this. So it wasn’t long before I figured out how to use the dimensional arrows and scaling tools to simulate the fake woman kicking the fake child.

And with a third human figure at my fingertips, how could I not add in the grown man doing a leg sweep…?

Through just futzing around in the content browser without any supervision, I figured out how to add texture to objects and even a sun!

Then as I seemingly finished amusing myself with this, I started playing the tutorial again, and not a minute later, Larry is saying “Oh, just press THIS button RIGHT HERE for quick easy animation keyframes.” …Really, Larry? Do you even want me to watch this tutorial? Next thing I know, I’m going through the content browser like a madman, building a house from basic shapes, adding grass, making brick textures, and animating a 90 frame woman to man slap for the ages (I’d have exported a real movie of it, but I don’t know how yet!)

I guess I wanted to show these displays of polygonal violence, because I came from no experience whatsoever in 3D, and I was able to do all of that while just messing around with stuff just 2 and 1/2 hours after I opened Cinema 4D for the first time! Not that any of this could be used for a real job around here or anything, but I learned a lot about how to move objects, and how to use the interface just from playing around. I got much more comfortable. (And if you’re wondering why I instantly resorted to violence, let’s just say I played a lot of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas my junior year of college, so I have a natural urge to harm people made of polygons)

After all that fun, I decided to resist the temptation of messing with the human figures anymore, and decided to continue with Larry Mitchell’s tutorials. Up next on the list was to create a spoon out of a cube. …OK? I like the idea, but even that seems strangely overwhelming to me, as morphing a cube into something of value is something that you would have to know what you’re doing in order to complete. But I guess it all starts with selecting a cube (and again, you can credit Larry Mitchell for this, I didn’t come up with it on my own).

OK, so now that we have a cube just sitting there, what’s next? That will be a spoon at some point…? Well, if you move those arrows on the cube with the scale tool, you can make it better, stronger, faster bigger, longer, flatter.

The four screen display was frightening at first glance, because I figured it would involve some insane complexity to use them. But they are actually pretty useful, as they obviously give you a top view or side view look at the 3D object, sort of simplifying it into 2D. And maneuvering between them is easy as pie, you just click the button in the top right corner of whichever screen you’d like to work in, and click it again to go back to the four screen display. Or you can just work in the four screen display if you’d like.

There is still a vast list of tools that I have no idea what they do yet, but I do know one thing, it takes a knife to make a spoon.

The knife seems like the most basic and useful tool, as its purpose is to segment polygonal shapes into, well, segments. And it works just like a real knife, just cut it across the shape while dragging the mouse.

And don’t make the same rookie mistake I did when working in a 2D viewing screen, and make sure you are cutting all the way through:

Cutting creates points in which you can select, and making new shapes becomes a very simple matter of selecting those points with the live select tool, and scaling them using the big colorful directional arrows with the scale tool.

So it was pretty simple to turn the cube into a lamp or a jousting stick or something, but a sweet little feature called HyperNURBS makes it unbelievably easy to turn a lamp into a Q-Tip. By clicking on the cube in your layer menu (which is comfortably similar to that of Illustrator or Photoshop) and then option clicking on the HyperNURBS icon on the top menu bar (which looks like a cube trapped in a cube prison) and all of the sudden you have instant curves, that work in a great way.

Then it’s just a matter of scaling and adding depth to the, i don’t know what it’s called, the “food” part of the spoon. And then I end up with a pretty good metal shovel.

Of course after some more fine tuning, cutting with the knife, scaling, and trying out some wood swatches (just for the fun of it all), I have a pretty good giant wooden 3D spoon.

If only I had a giant 3D metal pot so I could use my giant 3D wooden spoon to stir some 3D spaghetti meat sauce with polygonal sausage and peppers, I’d have a fantastic fake meal in the works! (don’t forget to HyperNURB the diced mushrooms!)

The SuiteTake Take?

I know making a spoon and animated violence with pre-made human models may be no big deal to someone who uses 3D programs a lot, but to someone with no idea what their doing in Cinema 4D, I just wanted to show how easy it is to start working in 3D, and it’s not as threatening as it may possibly appear to a novice. Just look at me, I made a wooden spoon out of a blocky cube 4 hours after my first opening of a 3D program!

In the future I’ll do a follow up post to let you know how my training has progressed. 

Back in 2003 when I converted my basement to full blown edit suite (a year long process), it was both a blessing and curse all at once. Gone was the commute and fighting with Chicagoland traffic. I could sleep in later and “get home” from work earlier. Sounds great! But the flip side of that, if you don’t have a serious commitment to putting up work/personal life barriers, you are always at your office and always working. And clients know that too. So what’s to stop you from working late into the evening or over the weekend? As I found out, not much.

First home edit suite, 2003

Basement edit suite, 2004

Luckily, the home edit suite was short lived. In less then a year my wife and I had outgrown it and had to get office space or we would lose some of the larger jobs. The separation of work from home life was back in balance. However, there have been times that I wished the suite was back at home. It’s one thing to stick around the office to edit, but it’s another to stick around watching a render bar or compression bar just so you can finish and upload a file. What if you could do this from home? And what if it was free to you assuming that you already have a high speed internet connection at your home and office? Well, I’m hear to tell you that the solution is not only out there, but it’s a lot easier to get setup then you might think.

I’m sure by now everybody knows about MobileMe and Back To My Mac on the Macintosh (just try to get Back To My Mac working reliably though) and services like GoToMyPC.com (now supporting the Mac platform). There is also a client/server based service called HamachiX for Mac, but I could never get that to work reliably and it would often get very frustrating. About a year ago I found a free service called LogMeIn.com, which supports both Mac and PC. They’re goal is to get you hooked on their free service, and then have you upgrade to one of their paid accounts. But for what i use it for the free version is perfect. I now have several computers registered with them and use it at least weekly, sometimes every day. It has become an important tool in my toolbox.

How It Works
The concept is very simple. You create an account at LogMeIn.com. Make sure you sign up for the free service to start, it’s not always obvious that it’s available. I actually had trouble finding it when I started writing this article. Once you have an account, you download the client software that you install on every computer that you want to control. The installation is very fast, and during the setup you enter some account information that they provide you when you setup your account.

Once you install the software, it takes you to the LogMeIn.com website and registers that computer as one of your computers. You’re able to keep everything in one master list of computers, or create groups of different computers as I’ve done here.

One of the great and flawless things that the LogMeIn.com service does is get around all of the routers hubs and firewalls of your network. Our network is by no means complicated, but it’s not just an open network either. We have a cable modem, Apple Airport Extreme router, and about 5 switches in multiple locations on the network. And not once have I had a problem navigating through all of that to the machine I wanted. Hell, I can’t even get iChat to work at the office half the time.

At home it’s a similar setup. Cable modem, Time Machine wireless router and a few switches. There have even been a few times that I was at Panera Bread and wanted to start downloading something on the server at the office, and did so with great success. That says a lot because if you’ve spent any time on the free wifi from Panera, you know how painfully slow and frustrating it can be.

If you want to get really crazy, there is an iPhone application from LogMeIn.com as well, allowing you to perform all of the same functions but using your iPhone. I have not tried this, but if you have please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Putting It To Use
Once you’ve setup one or more computers, it’s just a matter of logging into the LogMeIn.com home page and you’re taken to your list of registered computers. From the list you can tell which ones are on-line and available, and which ones are not. Just click on the computer, enter a name and password and you’re in. Your browser window transforms into the desktop of the connected computer, or you can make it full screen and get the full experience being in front of the remote computer. Nearly all keyboard shortcuts that you would use locally work as expected (I’ve found a few that do not and randomly quit the browser).

This is one of those situations where seeing it in action goes a lot further then me telling you. See my real-time demonstration of it at work by watching the video at the end of this post.

How This Can Help You In Your Business
I have found many uses for LogMeIn. The initial problem was getting used to the idea that I didn’t have to hang out at the office for everything that needed to get done. Here are a few examples.

Post Edit Output
By far the biggest use we’ve had for it is web approvals. For example, it’s the end of the day and you’re finally ready to show the client your masterpiece. The typical process for us is the export a self-contained QuickTime Movie to the project folder, take that into compressor and create a H.264 QT movie file optimized for the web, take the output from compressor and into our Dreamweaver Template, create a web approval page with all of the necessary details, sync that to the server and send the client the approval link. With the exception of the compressor step, it all goes very quick. But unfortunately, if we have a long video to post the compressor step can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2-3 hours (we’ve tested the Elgato Turbo.264 USB key, but the output is not as good and the files tend to be larger. It is fast though).

Using LogMeIn.com, this has changed. When the edit is over and the master is exported, we take into compressor and start the conversion. We prep the web page with everything except for the final video file, and leave. Then the editor, from home that evening checks in when the file is done being compressed (we’re sent email notifications from compressor as each file finishes – or fails), finishes the web page and sends the link via email on the edit computer. Total time spent about 5 minutes. The big differences is that all of the time you would have waited around, is now spent at home.

Check The Status
From checking the progress of an AE render, FCP export or making sure a large copy in the finder completed, getting peace of mind is fast and easy. How many times have you left something going in compressor just to find out that it crashed 5 minutes after you left and you had no idea. Now, even if you can’t fix it remotely, you know what you’re in for before you get there.

We’ve also used it to check on large DVD runs. Our duplicator usually runs flawlessly, but on runs of 500 or more it occasionally gets hung up and has to be reset. Again, in this case there’s not much we can do to fix the problem remotely, but just knowing that somebody has to go in early to fix so that we make the deadline it is a huge help.

Creating DVD’s
While this is not an ideal way to create a DVD by any means, in a pinch it can be very helpful. There have been a handful of occasions that I received a last minute panicked call that a client now wanted a DVD instead of a web approval. At the very least I could login and start the compression so that the DVD was a quick output in the morning. In most cases though I can get the entire process done right up to saving a disk image that the assistant can burn as soon as he gets in and then messenger it out.

Grab Files Remotely
While the edit computers themselves can not share files outside of the office, it’s no big deal to login to grab some files and upload them to a FTP server so that they can be downloaded elsewhere. When I was out of town on a remote job there was a situation where I needed a graphic element from a current job that I had forgot to bring with me. It was an animated background in QT format. No problem. I logged into the edit system, dragged the QT movie to a program called FileChute, and emailed myself the link from the edit system. Ten minutes later I had the file downloaded on my remote edit system and the client was blown away (these sorts of things can really make you look like a hero).

These are just some of the ways we’ve found it can help. I’m sure based on your own projects and work flow you’ll come up with new ones of your own. If you do, feel free to leave a comment on the blog and share it with others.

See For Yourself
Click on the link below to see a real-time demonstration of just how easy it is. To sign up for your own free account, just go to LogMeIn.com and you’ll be up and running in just minutes.

Several times a year I find myself on the road editing on-location with clients. These travel jobs are usually a convention, corporate conference or incentive trip. The locations can be as close as Chicago (20 miles away) or as far as Thailand and Hong Kong. I have a travel system that’s in cases and ready to go at a moments notice, and each year this part of our business at Edit Creations has grown.

One concern I always have when doing these jobs is having a system go down while being far away from the office. Part of my safety net is having a second laptop with me on every trip. I learned my lesson the hard way when a few years ago one of our editors was doing a job in California and the a AJA IO box stopped working. It was a Saturday so I couldn’t get in touch with tech support at AJA and no amount of google searching helped find a solution. By Monday the job was going to be all over, videos laid off or not. So in that case, after troubleshooting all night on the phone and realizing it was not going to be fixed, with only a 4 hour window I had to shower, head to the office and make a second system from one of our edit bays, stop and Home Depot and buy a hand truck and head to the airport. I made it in time to save the day, but it burned though all of the profits for the job.

While having 2 systems is great security, I always want to have the ability to troubleshoot, test or rebuild a machine with all of the needed software on site, should the need arise. In my worst case scenario that I play back in my head (rehearsing it like a fire drill) I imagine running to a local Apple Store, buying a new machine on the spot and reinstalling everything I need to get the job done.

Up until recently I’ve always brought with me a small selection of DVD’s. Everything from all of the original FCP and Adobe install disks, to Disk Warrior and a system restore disk. While this would obviously work, there is a better way. Why not buy a new, small portable FW drive (or even better, use one of those old drives that you have laying around) and created a multi-partition boot drive that contains everything? Then, not only do you have everything you need in one place, booting and running off of the FW drive will be much faster then working off your DVD drive.

The rest of this post will show you how to create your own emergency boot drive that is the perfect companion to your travel system.

Check List
Before you get started, here’s what you’re going to need.

• A hard drive. FireWire is my personal preference, but a bootable USB 2.0 drive will work as well. I don’t care what anybody says, FireWire is still faster then USB so I prefer to never buy a drive that is only USB.
• Hard drive space on your computer – lots of it if you’re going to be putting a lot of software on your new boot drive.
• Original CD’s/DVD’s that you want to make copies of.
• Apple Disk Utility (in the Utilities folder of your hard drive).

Pick Your Drive

The first step is to get yourself a drive. For me, I used a 500 gig G-Raid Mini that has not been getting a lot of use.

I had several other options as well, but all were too small for what I wanted to do here. Funny how 60 gigs is now considered “small”. However any one of these would make a great DiskWarrior/OSX Install disk.

If you are buying a new drive, I would recommend one of the Western Digital Passport drives. You can get a 500 Gig USB drive for less then $120, or a 400 gig version with both USB and FW800 for $115. If you’re not as concerned about the size of the drive or having an external HD, you can get an even better deal on a 1TB Quad Interface drive for about $150, also from Western Digital.

Select Your Software
Before you do anything with the drive itself, decide what you want to use it for. In my case, I decided to make partitions for the following.

• Disk Warrior Emergency Boot Disk
• OSX 10.5 Leopard Install Disk
• OSX 10.5 Server Install Disk
• OSX 10.4 Tiger Install Disk
• “Additional Software” partition for Adobe and FCP disk images

Make Disk Images

It’s time to make disk images of each disk. If you have not done this before, it’s a way to create an exact byte by byte copy of a disk (even a hard drive) to a single file on a your hard drive. Later you’ll use these files to create the hard drive versions.

Insert the disk into the disk drive and open Apple’s Disk Utility program. Towards the bottom of the list on the left you should see your DVD drive listed, and the CD that you have inserted. In my case the Leopard install disk is inserted in the machine. Click once to highlight the mounted disk as shown here.

Now click on the button along the top that says “New Image”. You will be asked for a place to save the new disk image. If you’re doing this for several DVD’s, you’re going to want to make sure you have plenty of space since each disk can be multiple gigs in size. Name the disk something meaningful and hit save. The default options of “compressed” and “none” will work fine.

Disk Utility will now create a single file that is an exact copy of your CD or DVD.

Repeat these steps for each disk you want to put on your boot drive. Even if it’s not going to be a bootable disk (for example, the Final Cut Pro suite of disks). Later you’ll see the benefit of doing so.

Get Organized
Once you’ve created a disk image for every optical disk you need, it’s a good idea to organize them into two main categories. Boot drives, and non-boot drives.

As seen here, I’ve not only put my bootable disks into their own folder, but in the additional software folder I’ve created sub-folders to keep programs grouped. Doing this is going to help you figure out how many partitions you need, and how large to make each partition.

Looking at the list I have, I can tell I need 5 partitions. There are 4 boot volumes, and the rest will go onto a 5th partition called “Additional Software”.

Before we move on we need to know how big each of the bootable volumes need to be. The best way to do that is to double click on each Disk Image so that it mounts on the desktop, and do a “get info” on the mounted volume. You may be tempted to just look at the size of the disk image, but since it’s compressed it will not give you an accurate final size.

I went through each of my drives and just made note of the final sizes. I don’t really care about the extra non-bootable images since they’re all going on whatever is left and there should be plenty of extra space. If you think you’re cutting it close you may want to get their sizes as well just to be sure everything will fit.

Splitting Up Your Disk
We now have everything we need to create the boot disk. Again, open Disk Utility and select the drive that you’re going to use. Make sure to select the drive itself, and not the current volume that’s right below it.

With the drive selected, click on the Partition tab. Currently there is just one partition for the entire drive. Let’s change that. Under “volume scheme” change it from “current” to “5-Partitions” (or however many you need for what you’re creating). We know we need 5 from the previous work we’ve already done.

Initially you’ll see 5 equal sized partition boxes. To optimize the use of space we’re going to create each partition to match the disk image so that we don’t waste space. To do this, starting from the top box click on each partition box and type in a name and size based on the sizes you recorded earlier. I usually make the partition size a little bit bigger then the size I recorded, just to be sure it all fits and there’s some working space. it’s really not necessary, but that’s what I do for my own neurotic reasons. I usually add half a gig to each recorded size.

Repeat this step for each of the new partitions, working your way down the list. When you’re done, name the final partition “Additional Software” and leave the size as is. It will automatically be whatever space is left.

The Partition Table Scheme
I will come right out and tell you the first time I went through all of this trouble I ended up with a disk that would not boot. I was baffled. I knew I did everything right. It took some digging to realize what I had done wrong.

This part is very important. Before you create the partitions, click on the option button at the bottom of the screen and you’ll see this dialog.

The type of partition scheme you use effects what machines can boot from the drive. By default, it’s setup so that it can boot from non-intel machines only (G4, G5). My problem was I was using a MacBookPro which is Intel based.

Nearly all of my machines are now Intel based, so I don’t need to have a dual booting drive that does both. But if that’s what you need, there is a way to do it. I’m not gong to bother showing you since I didn’t do it myself, but I found a good step-by-step description on how to do it on Mac OSX Hints. Feel free to follow their instructions. If it were super easy I may have done it just to say I did it, but it’s more of a pain then it’s worth to me personally.

So in my case, I chose GUID partition table and clicked OK. This will create partitions that all boot on any Intel based Macintosh.

With everything ready, click on the “apply” button and you’ll receive the standard warning letting you know you’re about to destroy the disk as you know it.

Click Partition and let it do it’s thing. It shouldn’t take more then a few seconds to a minute. When it’s done you’ll have 5 new volumes created under the main hard drive on the left side of the screen. You will also have 5 new hard drives mounted on your desktop representing each of the new partitions.

Makin’ Copies
We’re almost done. You now need to take each disk image that you created, and restore it to the matching volume that you created for it. This is pretty straight forward.

Inside of disk utility, click on the first partition that you want to work on, and click the “restore” tab. From that window, you can select your disk image file, and then drag and drop the HD from the desktop that you want to copy that image to.

Click the “restore” button, click OK on the warning dialog and enter your user password and away it goes. This part can take awhile, especially if like me you’re restoring form a network server drive that’s also busy doing other things.

Repeat this for each of the boot volumes.

If by chance you get an error like this one…

…don’t freak out. At least not yet anyway. Chances are pretty good you have that disk image mounted on your desktop. Just unmount the disk image by and try again.

The Rest of the Software
The disk images that were not intended to be boot disks (all of the Adobe/FCP images) can just be copied using the finder to the volume called “Additional Software”.

Once all of the drives are restored from their perspective disk images and all of the extra software is copied over to the extra drive, it’s time to take it for a test drive.

Restart, Reboot, Relax
Plug in your drive and choose restart. As soon as your Mac chimes on, hold down the option key on your keyboard. (I should mention that this needs to be a wired keyboard for this to work). In a few seconds you’ll see a list of all of the bootable disks. Use the arrows on the keyboard to make a choice and hit return.

A Few Usage Notes
A few things I wanted to mention.

Installing OSX
When you use the OSX install DVD, normally you put the DVD in and click on the “Install” icon, and away it goes – rebooting the machine and starting up from the DVD. If you try to do this from the boot drive you just created, it will not work. It can tell that it’s not the original DVD and gives you an error. So the way to get around it is how I described above, restarting and holding down the option key to choose your drive. After that it all goes as normally.

Installing FCP
One of the great benefits of having a program like FCP Studio as disk images, is that the installation goes a LOT faster, and you can install everything unattended. No more switching of the DVD’s as it needs them. The trick is to just open up all of the images and have them mounted on the desktop. Once you start the install, it will appear that you have multiple DVD’s all mounted. So as it finishes with one, it just moves onto the next one.

Quick System Restores
Creating disk images can be a great way to keep a backup of your current edit system. Once a month we create a disk image of the boot drive of each edit system in the office. Why? This way if a system crashes or goes down due to a hard drive problem, we can use the image to create a new identical drive and be up and running with all of our software, plugins and system settings as we had them. This was put to the test once already when a system just didn’t boot one morning and we were on deadline. By noon we had a new drive installed and imaged from the backup and were up and running again. Try rebuilding an entire system from all of the original software disks in just 3 hours. Our usual rebuild from scratch time is about 8-10 hours, and usually several days of finding little things that we forgot and fixing system settings and preferences.

Adding or Changing Partition Size
Let’s say that you create 5 partitions as I did in this example, and later on want to add a 6th because a) you have enough space on the drive and b) you now decided you wanted to add Snow Leopard as an additional boot disk. Can you do this? Yes, and no. Mostly yes.

Apple’s Disk Utility does allow you to resize the partitions, but in doing so you will destroy everything on that partition. After going through all of this work, it’s clearly not the best option. However, there is a great and reasonably priced program called iPartition from Coriolis.

This nifty program makes it possible to non-destructively and intuitively adjust the size of each partition. You can create new partitions and a whole lot more. In my limited testing, iPartition performed as promised and made short work of what would have otherwise been impossible using Disk Utility. At the low price of $45, this was a no brainer purchase for me.

Duplicate Your Work
And finally, after doing all of this work, wouldn’t it be nice if you could make a disk image of your new boot drive? Well, you can! Just follow the same procedure and you can have a backup disk image on your system to either create another drive from, or to just have as a backup in case your new boot drive goes down or gets lost.

The SuiteTake?
With a little bit of work you can not only put some old unused drives to work, but be better prepared for a unplanned emergency. At the very least, you will have a more efficient way to install your standard production software and have a great troubleshooting disk. If you ask me, being prepared like this is underrated. It’s little things like this that allow me sleep just a little bit better at night.

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.

This is an ongoing study into the mind of an assistant editor, and the various small tasks he is assigned to.

There was this heavyset kid in my high school who constantly had stains all over his shirt.  It was disgusting; it was as if he never washed his shirt.  Food stains, drink stains, dirt stains, indescribable stains, whatever they were they were all horrifying.  One day someone started calling him The Venus CrapTrap.  Then everyone started calling him The Venus CrapTrap.  Then rumors and jokes started to form around him being able to statically attract filth to himself, as if he were able to walk into a room and all of the garbage in the room would fly across the room and stick to him.  I’m sure it didn’t make his life very easy, as everyone had this unfair perception of him based on his filthy shirts.  I happened to eat lunch with him a few times, and he was an all right guy.  He was just unimaginably lazy.  But he was really smart, interesting, and an all around likeable chap.  But he had the label of being a horrifying beast based on his external appearance.  Now you see where I’m going with this?  DVD labels are the same way, the content on the disc may be awesome, but if the label is trash, it will put people off from the whole thing.

By the way, Mike (The Venus CrapTrap) now works in a warehouse.  I know you’d like me to say he’s now better than all the people who used to put him down, but he is seriously one of the laziest people I’ve ever met.

I make a lot of simple DVD labels for clients around here, in a program called Discus.  There are a few do’s and don’ts, and I’d like to share a few tips to make sure no one is giving your label a bad label.  

Tip #1:  Keep It Simple

I would strongly insist that you try not to clutter up your label with mishmash and too much information, make it look simple and elegant.

DO:

DON’T:

Tip #2:  Keep It Appropriate

Despite the subject matter of the video, if you are going to include a picture on your label, make sure that the end result is a disc that you would hand to your grandmother.

DO:

DON’T:

Tip#3:  Keep It About the Client

I know you think that because you’re making the label it all the sudden becomes about you, but remember that it is about the client, not the assistant editor in the long run.

DO:

DON’T:

Tip#4:  Keep It Relevant

Some subjects may not be interesting enough to make an awesome DVD label.  That doesn’t mean that you should try and jazz it up with something that has nothing to do with anything.

DO:

DON’T: 

Tip#5:  Keep It Professional

I would highly suggest if you’re handing your million dollar client the disc for the video that he spent a month working on, you should make it on an actual label making software, like Discus.

DO:

DON’T:

Tip#6:  Keep It Real

You should only put information that a client has actually specified on your labels.  You don’t need to spice it up with your own hype.  That’s what the client’s marketing team is for.

DO:

DON’T:

Tip#7:  Keep It Consistent

I know there are a lot of crazy fonts that you’ve always wanted to use, but your client’s DVD label isn’t the place to experiment.

DO:

DON’T:

Tip#8:  Keep It Legible

You should probably use colors that work together.

DO:

DON’T:

Tip#9:  Keep It Unbiased

It doesn’t matter if you object to the video that the DVD is based on, you shouldn’t voice your opinion on the label.  Just do your job!

DO:

DON’T:

Tip#10:  Keep It In the Realm of the Business

I know your a creative, artistic person.  And I know you love painting avant-garde artwork in your spare time.  But your artsy fartsy style doesn’t belong anywhere on a corporate DVD.

DO:

DON’T:

Well I hope that helps you do the right thing when you make those crucial choices in your DVD labels!

The finale of the big Lions project this year was in Bangkok Thailand, where I spent a few days doing some on-site editing, as well as a little sight seeing.

While I still feel like starting this blog was a good idea, my timing could have been better. 

Shortly after starting the blog in February, I went into my busy season of editing. Two rooms going almost 12 hours a day, sometimes longer. Not only did we have more projects in general this year, but we had the added factor that almost all of the videos were in a new format to us (Watchout) which made everything take 2-3 times longer then if they had been standard videos (good for business, bad for a tight schedule).

On top of editing, I still had the business side of things to take care of as well. Needless to say, something had to give and one of those things was doing regular posting to the blog. 

Now that I’m past the busy season, I plan to start doing weekly posts every Friday, and over time 2-3 times a week. We’ll see how it goes this time around. 

When Compressor (part of FCP Studio) works, it works well. And when it doesn’t, it can be a really pain and waste of time trying to get things working again. For me it’s a true love/hate relationship.

Have you ever went to submit your batch compression only to find that you don’t have the option to submit it to anything?

When you try to click on the cluster as shown above, you don’t have the option to select the default “This Computer”, or anything else for that matter. If you just try to submit it anyway, you’ll get an error telling you to re-install Compressor. But don’t (at least not yet).

There is a simple Terminal command you can run that will, at least for the moment, fix the problem. Try the following.

Open your terminal program and enter the following command. You will need to enter the administrator or root password when prompted.

sudo SystemStarter start Qmaster

Then for good measure, run this command as well.

sudo qmasterprefs -reset

The first command restarts Qmaster, and the second deletes the pref file.

If you have compressor open, close it and reopen. With just a little bit of luck, when you try to submit again you’ll see everything back to normal.

In my experience, this fix is temporary. It may work or the rest of the day or even several days, but the problem eventually comes back. If you know of a more perminant fix that doesn’t involve reformatting the drive and reinstalling everything, let me know.

Since this tip appeared on the Digital Production Buzz podcast, there have been a few emails asking for more details, and a few people reporting that they can’t get it to work. To help iron out the details and hopefully solve some of the problems I have posted this quick screencast to demonstrate how it works. If you continue to have problems (or figure out a way to import the audio as well) please email me. Video after the jump.

My friend Mike told me this was possible, but I didn’t believe it until I tried it myself.

We all know that FCP Studio 2 has that fancy Multi-Format timeline, allowing you to mix and match various codecs, frame sizes and frame rates. But did you realize that you can drag and drop a video TS folder directly into the timeline and actually play the video?

You can also drag and drop it into the browser window, and although you will get an error saying that the files were not recognized, you’ll end up with a folder with all of the .vob files. From there you can load them into the viewer and edit with them. Even the DVD menu items are available.

Here are a few screen shots.  Video TS 1,  Video TS 2

The down side? There’s no audio. So yes, this has limited use, but there are still plenty of times that this could be useful. What I really love about this is that you don’t need to convert the DVD to any other format to start editing. If all you need to do is grab a few quick b-roll shots from a DVD the client just handed you, you can do that. Obviously, you should copy the Video_TS folder to your own hard drive first though.

Near as I can tell, this is not a documented feature in Final Cut Pro. If you have found a way to get the audio to work as well, send me an email.

Updated Tuesday; March 4, 2008, 7:02 PM

As luck would have it, I actually had an edit today where I was given a DVD with time-lapse footage on it that I needed to use (no audio needed). I just copied the video TS folder over and loaded up the VOB file I needed. It edited fine, rendered fine, and I was able to do speed changes on it without issue. So this is useful indeed!

Updated Saturday; March 15, 2008, 10:46 PM

To help demonstrate this, I have posted a screencast of the tip. You can view it here.

How to Work the Room:

You probably read the title and thought I was talking about working an edit room. But you would be wrong.

Part of being an editor, freelance editor, or small post house owner is selling yourself and your skills. Who will know how great you are or what you have to offer if you’re not getting the message out there?

Over at Found Read they have a series of articles on how to “work the room” when at a party or other social event. While some may view this as purely social, I believe it’s critical that you poses these skills on some level and continue to improve them over time.

They offer some very simple and practical tips that you can immediately put to use. The good news is that with enough practice, anybody can go from wall flower to life of the party.

How to work the Room