OT: Tutorials you'd like to read

As part of our big SuperMeet at NAB April 16 we are doing another edition of the SuperMeet Magazine. It consists of lots of FCS Tutorials and feature articles only. See last years magazine here. [www.lafcpug.org]

We've lined up several of the best gurus in the world to write for us, but we'd like to hear from you on what you'd like to read. In other words, if there was one tutorial that will help make your life easier, what would that be? We need ideas. FCS tutorials only.

Michael Horton
-------------------

Michael,

I would like to see a discussion of the various ways to economically setting up an accurate Color monitor.

Is an MXO and a 23" Apple display the most cost effective or does anyone else have better ideas?

Mike,

now that the HD DVD vs BluRay war appears over, a hard look at the BluRay format, both for delivery and archival purposes, would be of interest here. There are a few internal drives available (write speed 2x ??) and a few players (other than PSP), but I think that a lot of us are hopeful there's going to be some much better and more common usage of BluRay as a replacement for SD DVD. Clients are starting to ask when/how/how much etc. It would be very helpful to learn more.

Cheers,
Clay

A definitive discussion on aspect ratios.

Possibly one on moving into HD would be useful.

> Possibly one on moving into HD would be useful.


Agreed. I've been seeing lots of guys getting the field dominance setting wrong- stuff shot in progressive edited on an interlaced timeline. Motion altered clips getting messed up as a result... Not to mention the many codecs, and possibly more coming up.

An article on RED would be interesting...

Media management! Especially with a bias toward old school AVID people who find it a little bit soft. Something that maybe addresses why re-naming clips gets so messy, why FCP subclips are nearly useless if you want AVID style subclips, and what's the best way to manage media in a project. (Say, if you've got hour long interview source tapes, and you want to efficiently log interview clips and flag generic head turns and soundbites for later use in the editing process... Not that I'm speaking from experience on this at all.)

Also - codec and compression settings... When to use what and why!

Subclips and media management are in-depth but doable, but what codec and settings...that's an encyclopedia, not a tutorial.


www.derekmok.com

A definitive discussion on aspect ratios.
Possibly one on moving into HD would be useful.

i second that.

Also, native fcp color-correction tools and merging formats.
Image stabilizing and tracking the rite way.

by the way i would like to know more about app combinations. Such as what is the most common app combos for 3d artist, color correctors, graphics specialist and such.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

Focus on the one or two ways to really trim unused media in a sequence built from subclipped material.

- Loren
Today's FCP keytip:
Instantly find Next/Previous timeline Gaps with Shift/Option -G !

Final Cut Studio 2 KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

>
> Also - codec and compression settings... When to
> use what and why!


I agree on the media managing part- i'm still underusing it a lot as most of my projects are on DV, or short enough to capture at full res.

Agreed. Codec and compression settings is a full book. Tape formats alone takes up a full chapter in the peachpit series, explaining compression settings takes up a whole journal or more.

What i'm constantly seeing, are issues regarding stuttering/field tearing off HD projects. I just received an upper dominant prores 422 hq .mov file and noticed the stuttering on certain sections of the video. The native footage seems progressive, but on certain shots (especially the motion altered ones), there was horrible stuttering motion.


A quick look into the RED workflow would be interesting.

>Something that maybe addresses why re-naming clips gets so messy

And you explain how re-naming clips get messy? In FCP 6 that is. Because now you can re-name them and have the original clips switch to the new name. Or do you want someone to address the OLDER versions?

>why FCP subclips are nearly useless if you want AVID style subclips

Sorry, but if you want Avid style ANYTHING, use an Avid. There are many many useful things that FCP does, if you stop trying to force it into behaving like an Avid. I remember people griping that Avid wasn't like cutting film on a KEM or on a linear system, because it didn't do this or that. Well, they had to get OUT of that mentality. So tip one...get OUT of your Avid mentality.

Although I agree that subclipping isn't the best thing to do in FCP...which is why I don't do it.

I might tackle this a little, as it ties into my GETTING ORGANIZED IN FCP DVD rather well.


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>
> Sorry, but if you want Avid style ANYTHING, use an
> Avid. There are many many useful things that FCP
> does, if you stop trying to force it into behaving
> like an Avid. I remember people griping that Avid
> wasn't like cutting film on a KEM or on a linear
> system, because it didn't do this or that. Well,
> they had to get OUT of that mentality. So tip
> one...get OUT of your Avid mentality.

Well that's a bit harsh, especially since my original post was asking for ways to get out of my AVID mentality. What's your tip #2 - praise FCP at all times or go #$!@ yourself? This is, after all, a thread about tutorial requests, and asking for a tutorial to shift the AVID media-management mindset to the FCP mindset seems like something logical to have.

FCP is not some divinely inspired, stand alone creation that has absolutely nothing in common with its older and more established rival. There's a whole truck-load of functional similarities between the two programs, and switching from AVID to FCP isn't remotely like switching from flatbeds to the digital realm.

If I have a problem with my AVID media, I'm pretty good with the troubleshooting, because I've got a solid grasp on how AVID manages things. When FCP's media manager starts giving me troubles that checking and unchecking boxes won't solve, I don't know where to start troubleshooting.

Did you know that you apparently can't media manage & delete unused media for a clip that doesn't have a reel name? I didn't. Nor would I think of that in my trouble shooting. Can you explain the difference between a master clip, a sequence clip, a subclip, and an independent clip? I can't... at least, not to my technical satisfaction. For the AVID, I know that stuff cold, and these are things I would love to know about FCP... Hence that request for a media management tutorial.

Why you find that so offensive baffles me.


>
> Although I agree that subclipping isn't the best
> thing to do in FCP...which is why I don't do it.

Well, that's the way you work. But I thought the glory of FCP is that it is more user-friendly and user-customizeable than AVID. I like subclips... check that, I love subclips. And I love how AVID manages media to make working with subclips just dreamy.

Maybe if you knew how to use subclips, you'd love them too. Subclipping might be the thing that I miss most about the AVID interface, and as yet, I haven't found an analagous workaround. I'd love to find a way to use them, as they are more elegant and easier for me to organize my material than a clip with 55 markers dropped in it. But if FCP won't flow that way, there's certainly some way of elegantly organzing your clips that a tutorial can provide.

Loren Miller Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Focus on the one or two ways to really trim unused
> media in a sequence built from subclipped
> material.


I'll second that!

Well jwilliam, I do have a tutorial DVD out on how to get organized in FCP. It goes into a bit of detail on how FCP organizes media...where it puts it, how it deals with imported stuff like music and pictures. It is mainly about how to organize yourself properly, but it shows how FCP organizes things so you can find them and get yourself better organized.

Sorry, didn't mean to be snippy. Too many "I wish FCP was more like an Avid" posts I suppose. I apologize.

>Can you explain the difference between a master clip, a sequence clip, a subclip, and an independent clip?

Yes I can. And I would do this tutorial, but that would bite into my DVD sales, as I explain a lot of this in that DVD...well, not the above question, but where the media is stored and now FCP accesses it.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

Sheesh...I don't know why folks just don't read the manual any more. It's not that bad and it's all in there:

? Master Clip (page 57): the original clip that refers to the full length media file
? Subclip (page 35): set I/O markers on an original clip - hit "Command/U" to form individual "Pointer" clips to the original master clip
? Independent Clip (Page 51): a subclip (or affiliate / reference clip) that is copied and refers to its' own media directly (not the master clip from which it came)
? Sequence Clip (page 123): clip items in a sequence.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

>>refers to it's own media<<

If that's a straight copy from the manual, they got 'it's' wrong. 'It's' (with an apostrophe) is short for 'it is'. 'Its' without an apostrophe means 'belonging to it'.

So, that's torn it. I'm off to Avid.

Only you would get the "it's" issue, Jude...

Contrary to normal rules of grammar, and built that way just to trip us up... "it's" is NOT possessive-- it's a contraction of "it is."

While "its" IS possessive.

Agh. That blinding pain again... ah. Ah. Better. Okay.

It has its own logic.

- Loren
Today's FCP keytip:
Instantly find Next/Previous timeline Gaps with Shift/Option -G !

Final Cut Studio 2 KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

> It has its own logic.
>


Hey! You could also contract that to read:

It's its own logic.

[ba-dum-dum]

It owns its logic...

2nd edit.

I'd like to see moving to shooting to hard drives / flash memory and working with it.

------------------------
Dean

"When I see you floating down the gutter I'll give you a bottle of wine."
Captain Beefheart, Trout Mask Replica.

> Contrary to normal rules of grammar, and built that way just to trip us up... "it's" is NOT
> possessive

Actually, Loren, it's not contrary to grammatical rules.

"It" is a pronoun. No pronoun uses apostrophe-s for possessives, because they have their own possessive forms, or "genitive case", in Latin and German. For example, you wouldn't say "his' and her's"; you'd say "his and hers". The apostrophe-s is from German: "Lorens Computer" (der Computer von Loren) or "Judes Hause" (das Haus von Jude). The use of apostrophe-s as a short form for third-person singular is also possibly related to German: "Wie geht's?" (How's it going?, short form for "Wie geht es?" Though in that case in German, the apostrophe-s actually replaces the subject, not the verb as in the English.

I've always been taught differently about "s's" back in the day. I'm pretty sure that doesn't exist. While many rules say that a singular noun ending in s is supposed to take "s's" ("James's car", I seem to remember that this doesn't exist in German...so theoretically speaking it might not have existed in English, either.


www.derekmok.com

...jeezus, Jude.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

lol I can't believe we are discussing this, but Derek, the rule about s's is not to use them. It should be Ross' car. Not Ross's. Three esses in a row is just wrong and probably punishable by law in some small counties.

Might as well add while I'm at it - you lose your keys, but set the dog loose in the park. That one is chronic on the Internerd.

> I can't believe we are discussing this, but Derek, the rule about s's is not to use them. It should
> be Ross' car. Not Ross's.

That's how I was taught. I think American English may have corrupted this one. "s's" shouldn't exist.

> you lose your keys, but set the dog loose in the park.

My soon-to-be-former landlady just sent me a letter saying, "We regret to loose you as a tenant". I suppose she means plying me with alcohol and loosening me up.


www.derekmok.com

I stand corrected...my goodness...it is "ITS'" and not "IT'S". My fault...never took typing. The post has been corrected.

Can I have my head back please?

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Joey that depends if someone hasn't loosed'd it.

------------------------
Dean

"When I see you floating down the gutter I'll give you a bottle of wine."
Captain Beefheart, Trout Mask Replica.

lol. I thought it was a copy-paste, so really I was having a go at the manual editor. And, puleese. Have you seen how often I missspel things? I'm a terrible hypocrite.