It was standing room only at the January meeting of the lafcpug. Every inch of the room was taken up by the FCP faithful. There were people standing in the back, laying down in the front, and sitting on each others laps. Those that were there that night proved to be a gracious bunch and though they had every right to complain, instead chose to stand it out, and soak in three and one half hours of FCP tips, tricks, and mind numbing visual overload. My thanks to you all. You deserve applause.

First up on the agenda was 2pops Ralph Fairweather and FCP Guru Andrew Balis who fielded questions from the audience on troubles they were having with FCP. This was the first month of our newly inaugurated "Stump the Gurus" where we award a raffle ticket to anyone who can "Stump the Gurus."
Questions ranged from troubles with "Capture Now," (clear your firewire buffers by turning off firewire extensions in your extension manager and restarting your Mac TWICE). "Edit to Tape" problems, (mixdown your audio or just don't use it) Nesting a rendered sequence into another sequence requires you to render again, how come? (mixdown your audio prior to nesting might work, increase your real time audio prefs, and just copying and pasting rendered material will always cause you to render again in FCP) Is my 5400 HD appropriate for FCP? (Maybe, but a 7200 is much more robust and will cause less problems) Fragmentation in HD, what do I do? (Copy media to another drive and reinitialize fragmented drive or use DiskWarrior Plus Optimizer, not Nortons.) Boris Graffiti takes forever to render, should I allocate more Ram? (No, use the stand alone graffiti and render and bring into FCP. Seems, much faster) What's the optimal settings for fast rendering? (Use QT4.1.2 DV Codec in OS9.1 It is almost twice as fast. The new G4+ processor in the 667 and 733 Macs will also increase render time significantly. The faster the processor, the faster the render. And of course, draft mode)
Ralph and Randy did not get stumped this month so we carry over "Stump the Gurus" until next meeting where we will award 2 raffle tickets to the person who can "Stump the Gurus."

Steve Martin from DV Creators was up next with his now famous 5 minute tip/trick of the month. This month? "Match Frame. How to do it, what the heck does it do, and will it change your life for the better?"
So, say you got this long boring interview and you want to replace part of the interview clip with another video clip at an exact action point, says Steve. Well, do this; Put your playhead on the timeline at the spot you wish to cut to in your boring interview. Deselect the audio track and click on the match frame e button. It loads the clip into the viewer with the playhead matching the playhead position in the timeline. Now do a replace edit targeting the video track and be amazed. You can also use markers to mark on the timeline the exact position you wish to do the "match frame."
There is more on the match frame in the FCP tutorial.

Charles McConathy and Cawan Starks from Promax were up next and they brought us the brand new G4 533 Mac from Apple. Physically the computer is the same, although it now has 4 PCI slots and a bit bigger processor. It also holds an internal CD-RW drive. It comes loaded with OS 9.1. It features a new 133MHz system bus instead of the 'old' 100. Priced at $2199.00, Charles says you would be better off with the DP Mac for a little more money or wait for a long time and spend your money on the 667 or 733 Mac with the new G4+ processor.He further says that the 466 MAC should not be considered as it only offers the extra PCI slot and not much more processing power.
Further note, the DV Codec in QuickTime 4.1.2 that comes with OS 9.1 is the same as in QT 5 public preview 2 and tests at Promax have found significant speed increase in rendering with Final Cut Pro as well as excellent quality with little or no noticeable artifacting.
The firewire support and DV enablers have been much improved so those of you having communication problems, you would be wise to upgrade to 9.1. They also add that you should NOT install the firewire drivers that come with your firewire drives.
The New 667 and 733 Macs were talked about at some length. They use a G4+ processor with Velocity engine, 256MB L2 and 1 MB L3 cache, and also come equipped with the new "Super Drive." (DVD-R/CD-RW) AND, (if that ain't enough) iDVD software for burning those DVD movies.
A question was asked about the long awaited RT Max Real Time card from Promax. Charles says when Apple releases FCP 2.0, they will shortly afterwards release RT LITE, which is a Real Time preview ONLY edition of the card, and soon after that release the full RT MAX card with both RT preview and playout. In other words, you will be able to 'upgrade" as the cards become available.
Seems like a good deal. Thanks Charles and Cawan.
For more info on the new macs, go to Apple.com and click on the G4 Power Mac family.

Next up was our first Show and Tell and our first woman to do a Show and Tell, Producer/filmmaker, Lori H Schwartz. Lori gave us a glimpse into her world and showed a few short films currently up on her web site as well as what she is doing at Zentropy Partners.
Using a Sony TRV9, a G3, and a Sony Walkman MiniDV deck, to shoot and edit, Lori brought up some QuickTime movies of "ideas" she will possibly expand on at a future date. The first, entitled "Dear Frank," is about a young woman who, obviously fed up with her boyfriend Frank, makes a 'Dear John' video to say goodbye once and for all. Frank will understand when he sees it, believe me.
The next short was a brief clip from a documentary idea called "How we Talk" which gave us men a pretty good idea about how Women talk when we aren't around.
"Getting into the Pink" was a very brief clip from another documentary idea about what women do to get into a very popular nightclub called the Pink, and the treatment they give to the bouncer that might or might not let them in. You can see all these films on Lori's web site, The world of Schwartz.
Lori then showed us what she is doing at Zentropy Partners for one of their clients, Reebock. Utilizing FCP, Flash, a Canon GL-1, A G4 and a Sony DSR-40, and no out sourcing of any material, you can view this real cool video at Reeboks web site. Thanks Lori for a great job.

Next up was DV Creators.net founder, and author of the FCP PowerStart Guide CD, Josh Mellicker, with a How2 on getting that (sort of) film look using Final Cut..
Here's how, according to Josh:
Select a clip and holding the option key drag the clip up, hit the shift key for a overwrite edit so the clip is now layered directly on top of itself. Go to the bottom layer of the clips and put a gaussian blur filter on it. Play with the blur. Then apply a composite mode to the top layer so it interacts with the bottom clip. Play with the composite mode effects until you get what ever you desire. Cool.
Josh also showed us how to simulate shallow depth of field using the filters in FCP.
Duplicate the clips the same way as above. Select Composite Mode > Normal. Apply a mask shape filter to the top clip. Also apply a mask feather filter. Make the mask shape Oval. Put the shape around your subjects face, use the soft mask feather and adjust to your liking and what you get is a nice sharp face with an out of focus background. Simulated, but true. Real cool. And thanks Josh.

Mitchell Rose was up next to "show and tell" four episodes of his series, "Modern Daydreams." Mitchell describes it as "a suite of four Chaplinesque films exploring the theme of movement engendered by day to day life. They are post-modern comedies with silent film sensibilities revealing much of the movement about us to be metaphors for isolation." OK. I'd call them four groovy films about a bored young man and his quest for life's meaning through dance.
Mitchell has a remarkable talent for unique story telling and those that saw his award winning short, "Elevator World," will be pleased to know that these Modern Daydreams will be available on Hypnotic.com in the near future.
Shot on Mini-dv and edited on FCP, the first film, "Treadmill Softly" finds the young man in a gym fantasizing about a beautiful young woman who is there working out along side him. What transpires is a very clever intercut between man and machine, woman and man, woman and machine, and man and himself.
"Islands in the sky" is a beautifully choreographed and photographed "dance" involving several Cherry Pickers. It's only at the end do we understand the relationship.
"Unleashed" finds the bored young man at his office greeting the somewhat stoic workers he shares his days with. A quick encounter with playful dogs frolicking outside his window cues his daydream and the once stoic office workers erupt into a kind of 'dance of chaos' very similar to what you might see in a dog park were it for people, not dogs.' Very clever use of music here.
"Deere John" is shows us that indeed there is a relationship between man and machine and that relationship can often have tragic consequences or at the very least leave one unfulfilled. It is the story of the young man and his love affair with a John Deere Tractor. Hey, it brought a tear to my eye.
You can catch these movies soon at hypnotic.com. Don't miss them.

Good time to take a break so a hundred and fifty of us danced our way out onto the Rawstock parking lot and spent fifteen minutes saying hello.

Adrian Ramseier, DVD teacher and former Astarte team member, from Adicomm came up from Newport Beach to talk about the brand new iDVD and DVD Studio Pro software just announced from Apple. While we could not get a actual copy of the software, we did get the next best thing; A PowerPoint presentation from the man who knows everything about this software and could answer all of our questions.
There are significant differences between iDVD and DVD Studio Pro. iDVD is free and comes bundled with 667 and 733 Macs and DVD Studio Pro costs $995.00. iDVD maxes out at one hour of video as it does not support VBR (variable bit rate), You can put almost 2 1/2 hours using DVD Studio Pro as it DOES support VBR. We got a tour of the features of the authoring system and basically it's drag and drop and pretty darn easy. Rather than go into all the features here, just go to Apples web site and check it out. Also there is a very good Q and A over at DigitalPost Production.com that explains the differences.
Adrian also held up the new "superdrive" which is the really just the Pioneer 103 DVD-R drive. Yes, folks it's available as an external drive in April or May from Adicomm and other resellers for $990.00 and he also held up a nifty Firwire drive which according to Adrian is the fastest Firewire Drive available. Also avaialable fro adicomm.
When we can get our hands on this software and the drive that it runs on, we will bring it to you all, be assured. It's quite amazing, and thank the stars, we won't have to put our masterpieces on VHS any longer.
Thanks Adrian for a very "historical" presentation.

Alex Cima was up next with a show and tell of his first FCP project, a music video utilizing the 'Garage Band' "Hazed". Alex describes himself as a man from the world of music, yet really a frustrated filmmaker. The video was shot on a Canon Elura using available light and cut on FCP. Using frequent and very creative use of Studio Artist , Alex used the four hours of footage he shot of the band to teach himself Final Cut. Dang fine first effort. If anything, anyone who sees this video will want to go out and buy Studio Artist. It's that good a piece of software and it's ability to enhance any filmmakers projects are virtually limitless. Alex stayed away from using to much of SA which can be very hard to do considering it's capabilities.
Hopefully those who see this video will also want to buy the bands record too.

VP and one of lafcpug founding members, Dan Brockett showed us a corporate video that he and his company, Big little films produced for the bio tech firm, Amgen. A heavily composited video utilizing dozens of mask shapes, graphics, titles, and creative use of music and sound, this video was deigned to recruit MBAs to come to So Cal and work for Amgen for the rest of their lives. Damn, if it didn't work either, as 100 people in the audience promised to send their resumes first thing next week.
Interviews were shot with a TRV-900 and the hundreds of clips that made up the movie were gathered from an extensive library of footage accumulated over ten years of producing videos for this company. After Effects played a big part in the titles and compositing and FCP was used to assemble.
Corporate videos are supposed to be boring. This one shows you that's just not true anymore.

World famous raffle was up next and we want to thank Promax, Adobe, Carl White at Apple Computer, and Lowell Kay at Dr Rawstock for their generous donations.

Raffle Winners:

Promax T-shirt- Cynthia Webster and Scott Murvel

Dr Rawstock hat - Chris Coe

Apple mouse pads - Joe O'Connor, Chris Coe, Daniel Sofer

Apple T-shirt - Cynthia Webster

Digital Juice - Robert Buhrman

Photoshop 6 - Arthur Pritz

Special thanks to Dan Brockett for taping the show, Chris Coe for the still pics, and big thanks to Ned Soltz for taking the tickets, keeping the crowd calm, and preventing my death by any disgruntled attendee.

See ya at the next one

Michael Horton
"HeadCutter"