FCProse Ep6 – fcp to speedgrade via premiere cs6

It has been a long while since I’ve had the opportunity to produce a FCProse video tutorial.  And Adobe Production Premium CS6 should be making a big splash at NAB this week.  Well, the universe has propelled me into a wonderful collaboration with Steve Crouch who has been working with SpeedGrade for a period of 8 years or so.  And I’m excited to present this quick tutorial highlighting a few workflows targeted for the independent filmmaker (click thru to Vimeo for the HD version).

I’ve been using IRIDAS SpeedGrade as a stereoscopic 3D conform tool for the past year and a half.  As a Red Scarlet user, Adobe SpeedGrade CS6 is a boon to my 4K finishing capabilities.  Seeing Adobe integrate SpeedGrade in its CS6 release shows me Adobe is committed to attracting filmmakers focused on high resolution acquisition and stereoscopic 3D.  IMHO, Adobe Production Premium CS6 picks up the ball where Apple dropped it – and kicks it through the uprights for a dramatic victory.

I should also mention that I have started Salviascope, a new production company providing 4K solutions for 2D and stereoscopic 3D productions.  I’d like to put a special thank you out there to Neil Thompsett who graciously allowed Steve and I to feature footage from his upcoming short film, working title The Bounty Hunter, in this tutorial.  And also a big thanks to my friend and colleague Charlie Lawson who is the actor featured in the footage.

I hope this introductory tutorial helps you get to know a little bit about Premiere and SpeedGrade CS6.  I’m looking forward to getting to know them both quite well.  I’ll be walking the show floor Tuesday and Wednesday, maybe I’ll see you there!

proactively • 4K finishing for realsies • peter

fcs3 highlights

By now you’ve probably heard the news that Final Cut Studio 3 has dropped.  Very cooly, Ripple Training has already produced 19 free video tutorials from Apple Certified Trainers to help you get to know the FCS 3 upgrade.  Two of my T3 trainers, Mark Spencer and Alexis Van Hurkman, helped produce these so definitely check them out!

If you simply want to know what’s new click here, otherwise here’s my very quick highlights with linkage:

As you can read below, ProRes gets a few more mouths to feed in its family and even has options for offline workflows (wow, is offlining coming back in style?).

For the full rundown get the ProRes white paper here.

I was just working on a prject yesterday where we were superimposing a screengrab of 4:3 safe on a 16:9 HD timeline.  As more and more projects utilize legacy SD footage in an HD show it’s great to know that this simple yet very important feature has been added.

This would have been awesome to use on the first season’s production of Sailing Channel Theater episodes and we’ll certainly use it in the future.  Our previous workflow was to turn Skype on the MacBook Pro and face it to the computer monitor so Dad and Jon could do remote viewing as I made final tweaks to the show.  Cool to see this is now integrated into FCP 7 andcan’t wait to try it out!

The number one Color update is fricking incredible and will literally shave hours if not full days off your color grade.

No more futzing with your speed effects, still moves (with handles for dissolves!), and multicam clips in order to get them ready to send to Color.  Thank you version 1.5!

Secondly and very importantly, Apple has announced a new line of affordable third party control surfaces specifically designed to work with Color.

Could I please stop mousing my way through Color and get some affordable surfaces to speed up my workflow?!  And thanks to Eddie Sullivan’s post on the FCP-L I was able to find a pic of the new Euphnix MC Color.

It looks like Motion is getting much more full 3D-ish.  Shadows, reflections, and depth of field… oh my!  Click on the pic to get all the info you want.

Even more excitingly is the major placement of a new product I had never heard of before.

What an awesome looking mouse!  Exactly the kind of intuitive device that makes navigating in 3D space treasure, not a toruture.  I guess Apple is doing it’s part to stimulate the economy by allowing third party manufacturers to cash in on their product launches.  I bet Logitech’s stock jumps a few points today.

Curiously, Blu-ray dvd creation is listed under Compressor’s new features.

Hey, as long as it’s in the box I could care less what product does it.  Maybe this is an attempt to phase out people’s asociation with DVD Studio Pro as a delivery app?  Who knows.

Anywho, hope you enjoyed these highlights.  I’m sure there will be much more to come here in the days to follow with additional info, opinion, and general blather.

proactively • upgraded • peter