Check out my blog post for Cinex Studio's covering the E3 2013 Expo!
www.cinexstudios.com
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Friday, November 30, 2012
XyzyX Music Video
I got the privilege to edit a new music video for a local Los Angeles band called, XyzyX for one of their newer songs called "2012".
Check it out here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9EBR_6ptSw
Check it out here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9EBR_6ptSw
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
PluralEyes
I know I continually say I am going to post here more often and then I drop off the grid for months at a time... but at least it is because I am busy in the editing room and not because I'm too lazy... right?
Well, I am going to TRY to get on here a little more and get the ball rolling on my inner post production dialogue again!
This post goes out to all you assistant editors out there (and editors if you find yourself working without your ever trusty assistant). There exists this program... it's a simple tool but incredibly powerful.
I work on some shows like, Ocean Mysteries with Jeff Corwin and Sea Rescue, shows that have multiple cameras shooting at once and sound recorded separately. Obviously this means there will have to be some time spent syncing all the sound and cameras angles so that once it hits the cutting room floor all the media is there for the editors to dive right into without having to sort through the same take over and over to find the best moments.
If you've done this before, you know how time consuming it can be. YES, the slate, take calls, and clap board will help you get this done in an efficient manner, but what if you have a show, such as Ocean Mysteries, where everything is shot on the fly... no slate, no call, no clap board... something happens and the cameras just start rolling. There are usually 2 cameras (though sometimes we have an occasional 3rd camera or GoPro) and if the sound can't be run through the camera directly, it is recorded separately. Now put yourself in the mind set of trying to sync all that media when it comes in... you have to watch through every clip and watch body movement and listen to anything audio that you can match to another clip. Then you have to sync it manually with no exact point to sync up to (i.e. the clap board) It's a HUGE set back and waste of time when you spend hours trying to sync half a days worth of media... it slows down the post schedule, it slows down the editors, and eventually begins to effect all the other aspects that threaten to hurt your deadline for delivery!
It was after doing this for an entire season that I realized there HAD to be an easier way... then one day I came into work to discover one of the other assistant editors on another show had a similar thought to mine and researched to find a way to overcome this obstacle. This is when we discovered this gem: PluralEyes.
It's a program that works through your editing system, almost like a plugin. You create a sequence, bring in all the media you want to sync, separating the different angles and audio onto different tracks, adjust your settings in Plural Eyes to match your needs, and hit "SYNC"...that's it. It does the rest... it will analyze all the audio in your timeline and automatically move everything into position.
This has saved me HOURS upon HOURS of work... it will work pretty fast too. The more media you have to sync, the longer it takes obviously, but you can still work in your program as it syncs... which allows you to get other work down simultaneously!
My only warnings for this are as followed:
1. It DOES NOT always work... be prepared to get frustrated at times when the program tends to certain things confused. This doesn't happen often, but it DOES happen... so don't let it turn you off to the program... in those times it doesn't work, just go back to your roots and do it by hand... but 90% of the time it will work like a beauty!
2. If the camera has no audio at all, it won't work... again, this program analyzes the audio not the video... we're not working with A.I. technology.
3. If your camera has audio but you can't hear anything anyone is saying, it's probably not going to sync up... but you are welcome to give it a shot.
4. Almost every time there are a few rogue clips that it can't sync... it will put these at the end of the timeline. It's not big deal, since it usually sync about 95% of the footage in the timeline, the other 5% you can do by hand.. it still has saved you a lot of time.
I'm sure there are plenty of other programs that can do this too, but this is the one I have found and use all the time. It's a life saver and allows me to get much more done in a given period of time than I would've been able to get done before.
Check it out for yourself... they have a free trial, which I suggest you use and mess around with. It's the full program for the trial.. which I believe is 30 days. After that you will find the program is absolutely worth the cost!
http://www.singularsoftware.com/pluraleyes.html
That's it for now. Hope to write more soon.
Well, I am going to TRY to get on here a little more and get the ball rolling on my inner post production dialogue again!
This post goes out to all you assistant editors out there (and editors if you find yourself working without your ever trusty assistant). There exists this program... it's a simple tool but incredibly powerful.
I work on some shows like, Ocean Mysteries with Jeff Corwin and Sea Rescue, shows that have multiple cameras shooting at once and sound recorded separately. Obviously this means there will have to be some time spent syncing all the sound and cameras angles so that once it hits the cutting room floor all the media is there for the editors to dive right into without having to sort through the same take over and over to find the best moments.
If you've done this before, you know how time consuming it can be. YES, the slate, take calls, and clap board will help you get this done in an efficient manner, but what if you have a show, such as Ocean Mysteries, where everything is shot on the fly... no slate, no call, no clap board... something happens and the cameras just start rolling. There are usually 2 cameras (though sometimes we have an occasional 3rd camera or GoPro) and if the sound can't be run through the camera directly, it is recorded separately. Now put yourself in the mind set of trying to sync all that media when it comes in... you have to watch through every clip and watch body movement and listen to anything audio that you can match to another clip. Then you have to sync it manually with no exact point to sync up to (i.e. the clap board) It's a HUGE set back and waste of time when you spend hours trying to sync half a days worth of media... it slows down the post schedule, it slows down the editors, and eventually begins to effect all the other aspects that threaten to hurt your deadline for delivery!
It was after doing this for an entire season that I realized there HAD to be an easier way... then one day I came into work to discover one of the other assistant editors on another show had a similar thought to mine and researched to find a way to overcome this obstacle. This is when we discovered this gem: PluralEyes.
It's a program that works through your editing system, almost like a plugin. You create a sequence, bring in all the media you want to sync, separating the different angles and audio onto different tracks, adjust your settings in Plural Eyes to match your needs, and hit "SYNC"...that's it. It does the rest... it will analyze all the audio in your timeline and automatically move everything into position.
This has saved me HOURS upon HOURS of work... it will work pretty fast too. The more media you have to sync, the longer it takes obviously, but you can still work in your program as it syncs... which allows you to get other work down simultaneously!
My only warnings for this are as followed:
1. It DOES NOT always work... be prepared to get frustrated at times when the program tends to certain things confused. This doesn't happen often, but it DOES happen... so don't let it turn you off to the program... in those times it doesn't work, just go back to your roots and do it by hand... but 90% of the time it will work like a beauty!
2. If the camera has no audio at all, it won't work... again, this program analyzes the audio not the video... we're not working with A.I. technology.
3. If your camera has audio but you can't hear anything anyone is saying, it's probably not going to sync up... but you are welcome to give it a shot.
4. Almost every time there are a few rogue clips that it can't sync... it will put these at the end of the timeline. It's not big deal, since it usually sync about 95% of the footage in the timeline, the other 5% you can do by hand.. it still has saved you a lot of time.
I'm sure there are plenty of other programs that can do this too, but this is the one I have found and use all the time. It's a life saver and allows me to get much more done in a given period of time than I would've been able to get done before.
Check it out for yourself... they have a free trial, which I suggest you use and mess around with. It's the full program for the trial.. which I believe is 30 days. After that you will find the program is absolutely worth the cost!
http://www.singularsoftware.com/pluraleyes.html
That's it for now. Hope to write more soon.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
ACE Eddie Awards Nominees!
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/cinema-editors-nominations-hugo-282290
I'll start you off with the link for the nominees, that way you can dive right into it!
With award season underway, I'm still scrambling to watch all the films being nominated! I find it much more difficult to get out to the theaters these days then I ever would of thought possible!
So there's my only real point behind this incredibly short post... go see movies as often as you can. Not only will it help you stay up to date on the most current films the industry is all hyped about, but it's great to watch with a filmmaker's eye to learn how they shot it, edited it, directed it, etc. etc.... It's interesting to see how different movies look today as compared to 10 years ago.
That's it. Like I said, short... but check out the list!
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
FCPX Title Safe
Quick little post for a helpful tool!
Someone recently sent me some nice information to have for use with Final Cut Pro X... for any of you who have decided to switch to this program, you've probably learned the horrible error of your ways as you realize the lack of control and abilities it seems to have... for those of you who have started with it and never used any of the previous versions of FCP, you probably don't know what you are missing.
With that said.... one fairly important tool that FCPX seems to be missing is the ability to view title safe (when you have media going out for television this is more important than one might ever be able to imagine).
Do not fret though, for some saint of the post production world has created a plug in allowing title safe to be viewed in FCPX.
http://www.fcp.co/forum/9-free-fcpx-plugins-and-templates/1750-tky-free-fcpx-dual-purpose-safe-titleaction-and-grid-overlay-adjustment-layer
There is the link. The source who sent it to me has said that it works well... love to hear feedback for anyone who says otherwise.
I can not attest to how well it works or to FCPX at all... I must admit I have yet to use it, so any of my harsh feelings towards the program are simply based off of my first impressions, reviews, and tutorials I've watched.
I vow to someday soon use this program and give it a run for it's money but running it through many vigorous tests... but until then, I remain skeptical and distant from this impostor of a program.
Someone recently sent me some nice information to have for use with Final Cut Pro X... for any of you who have decided to switch to this program, you've probably learned the horrible error of your ways as you realize the lack of control and abilities it seems to have... for those of you who have started with it and never used any of the previous versions of FCP, you probably don't know what you are missing.
With that said.... one fairly important tool that FCPX seems to be missing is the ability to view title safe (when you have media going out for television this is more important than one might ever be able to imagine).
Do not fret though, for some saint of the post production world has created a plug in allowing title safe to be viewed in FCPX.
http://www.fcp.co/forum/9-free-fcpx-plugins-and-templates/1750-tky-free-fcpx-dual-purpose-safe-titleaction-and-grid-overlay-adjustment-layer
There is the link. The source who sent it to me has said that it works well... love to hear feedback for anyone who says otherwise.
I can not attest to how well it works or to FCPX at all... I must admit I have yet to use it, so any of my harsh feelings towards the program are simply based off of my first impressions, reviews, and tutorials I've watched.
I vow to someday soon use this program and give it a run for it's money but running it through many vigorous tests... but until then, I remain skeptical and distant from this impostor of a program.
Nonetheless, this is still an important tool that anyone using the program should be able to have access to.
More editing magic coming soon.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Center Cut Protection
Here's another good term to learn for all you aspiring television/commercial editors. It's a pretty simple thing to remember, but a valuable term none the less. I had one of the stations ask me to make sure my file was Center Cut Protected before uploading it to their FTP site...and thank goodness for the internet and it's ease of defining terms for me, otherwise I'd have made a fool of myself!
Center Cut Protection is a term that applies to SD footage that was shot in HD. Even more specifically it applies to commercials/spots edited in HD but being output in SD. This is very common as SD televisions and channels still exist... so the commercials need to be down converted to SD in order to air on said places!
The term itself is referring to any graphics/text put into the commercial or spot... in HD, the title and action safe are different from the SD title and action safe.
(To those who don't know the safe boundaries, Action safe is a line in the screen that guarantees what is within the bounds will be 100% viewable on the screen... if you're outside, there is a higher risk of it being cut off when viewed. The determining factor that decides if it gets cut off or not solely rested with the viewer... it depends on what type of tv they are watching it on and how they have their tv configured.)
Anyway... here's an example. The blue thin lines are the safe boundaries. Action Safe is the outer line, Title Safe is the inner.
The reason for two different ones is simply put: If you have text/graphics on the screen, it's pretty much assumed that the information in them is important, so to be EXTRA safe the title safe is smaller... meaning absolutely NO chance of it being cut off... the action on scene will most likely be happening in the center anyways (unless you are Danny Cohen, and you're filming "The King's Speech") so there is more room for the action to happen.
What you CAN see in these safe boundaries are small little lines appearing closer in from the left and right. These are you're Center Cut Protection lines... since SD is a 4:3 aspect ration, and HD is a 16:9, the safe boundaries change.
Here is a 4:3 safe bound (with the HD footage in it)
You can see the black bars appearing to keep the HD in a 16:9 aspect, whilst being in a 4:3 frame. But some channels will want to rid themselves of this black bar (even though the footage was meant to be viewed in 16:9) and they'll adjust the picture to fit in a 4:3. (see below)
You can see they enlarged the picture... meaning you lose that extra space on the left and right and the black bars on the top and bottom. The blue lines in the 4:3 frame, line up with the small dashes in the 16:9 frame from the picture up above.
So to condense all this down... for HD outputs, you can follow the HD safe boundaries to your hearts content... but when making an SD version it's a good idea to keep everything in Center Cut Protection... the 4:3 boundaries. Even if you are working in the HD, just follow the small dashes as your guide, no need to create a WHOLE new 4:3 project... just follow the dashes from that HD one. The only pain is you have to make a 2nd commercial basically, since you need to readjust the text/graphics from your HD version to make it fit.
Center Cut Protection is not always the case... more than not they will request it be this way... other wise just leave it be!
So there it is... another new term to add to the list!
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