Created by Augusto de Fraga. Edited by Marcos Castiel (Ep's 1, 2, 5 & 7) and Pedro Ribeiro (Ep's 3, 4 & 6).
-You can read the full case study here.
+You can read the full case study.
Created by Augusto de Fraga. Edited by Marcos Castiel (Ep's 1, 2, 5 & 7) and Pedro Ribeiro (Ep's 3, 4 & 6).
-You can read the full case study here.
+You can read the full case study.
Here's what's on offer:
Colourlab Ai Studio Annual License: Get a whopping 50% off on their Colourlab Ai Studio Annual License. This brings the cost of Colourlab Ai, Look Designer Plugin, and Grainlab Plugin down to just $249. That's less than the cost of a single plugin! Considering the combined value of all three applications is over $1000, this is a massive saving. Use the code springstudio50 to take advantage of this offer.
Look Designer Perpetual Licenses: Colourlab Ai is offering a 30% discount on their Look Designer Perpetual Licenses. This means you can own Look Designer forever for just $349. Look Designer 3.0 for Davinci and Premiere runs on both Mac and PC and is the perfect companion for creating X01 files, Look Design, Look Testing, EL Zones, and Full Color Management. Use the code springlook30 to avail this offer.
Buy Colourlab Ai Studio here.
-Buy Look Designer Perpetual here.
+ + ]]>This is very exciting for Final Cut Pro users - as Alteon is very committed to the Final Cut Pro ecosystem! You can learn more here.
+This is very exciting for Final Cut Pro users - as Alteon is very committed to the Final Cut Pro ecosystem!
+Learn more about Alteon.
]]>The only change according the the release notes is:
+The only change according the release notes is:
You can learn more here.
+Learn more at Transfer Toolbox.
]]>It's a 6 x 45min mystery series cut in Final Cut Pro, based on a novel by Melanie Raabe.
The journalist Norah (Deleila Piasko / Transatlantic) moves from Berlin to Vienna to start a new life and job at a young & arty magazine. As soon as she arrives, a homeless woman foretells her that she will kill a man named Arthur Grimm six weeks later. Norah tries to ignore the incident - until strange things happen.
Trailer:
-You can watch the trailer here.
+You can watch the trailer for Der Schatten.
Commentary Head of Editing:
Florian Duffe writes:
@@ -265,7 +266,7 @@ I will follow up with a decent case study on this site in a few days. Stay tuned<![CDATA[2nd June 2023]]> Ulti.media has released a new Transcriber Promo on YouTube. Chris at LateNite has been beta testing, and it's awesome. https://fcp.cafe/#2nd-june-2023-
You can learn more here.
+Learn more about Transcriber at Ulti.media.
]]>2nd June 2023 @@ -326,7 +327,7 @@ I will follow up with a decent case study on this site in a few days. Stay tunedIt's a month old, but for those that might have missed it, there's an awesome YouTube video that showcases the Audio Design Desk v2.0 Beta. https://fcp.cafe/#5th-june-2023Audio Design Desk is to audio software what Pro Tools was to the tape machine. It’s an entirely new breed of Digital Audio Workstation that artists can play like an instrument, revolutionizing the process of adding music and sound effects to picture and cutting down what can typically be a full day project to just a few minutes. It comes bundled with 75,000 sounds embedded with patent-pending Sonic Intelligence™, using AI-assisted content creation tools to enable filmmakers, sound designers, composers, and creators to produce cinema-quality compositions at the speed of thought, giving them a level of creative control that is unmatched by any other software.
-
You can learn more about Audio Design Desk here.
+Learn more about Audio Design Desk.
]]>5th June 2023 @@ -335,8 +336,8 @@ I will follow up with a decent case study on this site in a few days. Stay tuned<![CDATA[6th June 2023]]> BRAW Toolbox v1.1.3 is out now with a re-designed Relink BRAW Clips within an LIBRARY / EVENT / PROJECT Toolbox! - https://fcp.cafe/#6th-june-2023You can learn more about the toolbox here.
-You can buy BRAW Toolbox and learn more here.
+Learn more about Relink BRAW Clips.
+You can buy BRAW Toolbox.
]]>6th June 2023 @@ -355,16 +356,16 @@ I will follow up with a decent case study on this site in a few days. Stay tuned
-
You can learn more about the new MacPro here.
+Learn more about the new MacPro.
There's the new M2 Ultra.
-
You can learn more here.
+Learn more about the M2 Ultra.
There's the new 15-inch MacBook Air:
-
You can learn more here.
+Learn more about the new 15-inch MacBook Air.
There's the new macOS Sonoma:
-
You can learn more here.
+Learn more about macOS Sonoma.
There's the new Vision Pro.
It's USD$3499 and "available early next year in the U.S".
@@ -377,8 +378,8 @@ I will follow up with a decent case study on this site in a few days. Stay tuned
DaVinci Resolve will run on Vision Pro out-of-the-box. No word yet on Final Cut Pro support.
-
You can learn more about Vision Pro here.
-You can watch the entire WWDC Keynote here.
+Learn more about Vision Pro.
+You can watch the entire WWDC Keynote.
]]>
NeoFinder 8.4.1 is another free update for all customers with a NeoFinder 8.x license.
NeoFinder 8.x is a paid upgrade for NeoFinder 6.x, NeoFinder 7.x, and CDFinder customers.
You can learn more here.
+Learn more about NeoFinder.
]]>
You can learn more here.
+Learn more at atomos.
]]>You can learn more here.
+Learn more about Premium VFX.
You can learn more here.
+Learn more about the Introducing Final Cut Pro for iPad course.
]]>You can learn more here
+Learn more about evrExpanse
]]>
You can learn more here.
+Learn more about Continuum FCP Units.
]]>A few new features, and a bunch of bug fixes, especially for those on macOS Ventura.
-You can learn more and download here.
+Learn more and download from CommandPost.
The author, Mike Seymour, is one of the smartest and best educators in the entire film industry, period.
-You can read more here.
+ ]]>You can read more here.
+
You can read more here.
+Here's the trailer:
It has added support for Fujifilm X-S20 Blackmagic RAW clips, and the Blackmagic RAW SDK has been updated from v3.1 to v3.2.
-You can download and learn more here.
+You can download and learn more from BRAW Toolbox.
You can learn more here.
+
You can read more here.
+You can read the case study of Der Schatten.
Here's the trailer:
You can learn more here.
+You can learn more at Dylan Bates's site.
]]>Transfer Toolbox allows you to convert Final Cut Pro (for Mac) Libraries into Final Cut Pro (for iPad) Projects.
You can now easily get from your Desktop to your iPad! Simply drag your existing Final Cut Pro library into the application's drop zone.
-You can learn more and download for free here.
+Learn more and download Transfer Toolbox for free.
The Transfer Toolbox icon was designed by Matthew Skiles.
It explains why he jumped from Final Cut Pro to DaVinci Resolve for editing, from a sound designers perspective.
-You can read here.
For context, for the stuff LateNite does Final Cut Pro is still king, for the simple fact that it’s the most fun and most creative tool to edit with.
DaVinci Resolve is INSANELY powerful, and Blackmagic is a much more friendly company to work with than Apple.
However, I personally feel like I'm an engineer when using Resolve, whereas in Final Cut Pro I feel like an artist.
@@ -760,8 +757,8 @@ Saturday June 17th @ 3:30pmOn the anniversary of the release of Apple’s Final Cut Pro X, Lumberjack System has released their Text Based Editing app as a one-off purchase in the Mac App Store.
The original and most complete Text Based Editing solution for Final Cut Pro has long been available as part of the Lumberjack System Membership. This version makes Builder NLE more easily found, and more accessible to Final Cut Pro users who want a complete Text Based Editing environment for Final Cut Pro.
Builder NLE in the Mac App Store is the same app that is available through the membership, but without access to the wider Lumberjack live logging tools. It continues to include unlimited free transcription in 16 languages, closed caption support on Stories, unlimited stories, a comprehensive Keyword Manager, and extremely powerful search and filter tools to get you to your stories faster.
-You can learn more about Lumberjack Builder here.
-You can download Builder NLE from the Mac App Store here
+Learn more about Lumberjack Builder.
+Download Builder NLE from the Mac App Store
You can learn more here.
+You can learn more from BRAW Toolbox.
]]>You can learn more here.
+You can learn more from BRAW Toolbox.
]]>-Happy to report that 2 major bugs are fixed in MacOS 14 Sonoma beta 2. XAVC bug is gone (with a few preliminary notes) and qnap qfinder pro is working (for those that edit from NAS)
You can learn more here.
]]>You can learn more here.
+
FIOJSON filesYou can learn more here.
+Learn more about Marker Toolbox.
]]>You can learn more here.
+Learn more about Marker Toolbox.
]]>You can read all about the workflow here.
+You can watch the series here:
You can learn more here.
+See the Color Finale store.
Without a doubt iZotope RX10 is the very best audio recovery tool on the market - it can do magical things.
-You can learn more here.
]]>.PNG files, which is useful for non-photographic app screenshots.
-You can learn more here.
+Learn more at Ulti.Media Converter.
]]>Get a 25% discount when you use the code: BADASSFAM25
-You can learn more here
+Learn more Arthur Moore's store
It has added support for Panasonic Lumix GH6 Blackmagic RAW clips.
-You can learn more here.
+You can learn more from BRAW Toolbox.
It has added support for the latest Loupedeck CT hardware. Thanks for reporting Marshall Fife!
-You can learn more here.
+Learn more from CommandPost.
You can download it as a PDF here.
-PetaPixel also has an article that explains it in more detail here.
+You can download it as a PDF.
+PetaPixel also has an article that explains it in more detail.
There's lots of feature improvements and bug fixes. You can find the full list of changes here.
-You can learn more here.
+There's lots of feature improvements and bug fixes. See the full list of changes.
+Learn more about PostSync.
You can learn more here.
+Scott Simmons has also written his thoughts on the acquisition over at ProVideo Coalition.
]]>Builder is designed to write stories from multiple transcripts using transcripts to edit text and video at the same time.
Builder is a hybrid of word processor and video editor combined! It's faster for transcript-based workflows than in Final Cut Pro.
Text and video are always linked so you can go from scanning text to observing nuance, instantly, anywhere in Builder.
-You can learn more here.
-You can buy on the Mac App Store here.
+Learn more about Builder NLE 2.
+You can buy Builder NLE 2 on the Mac App Store.
Quickly add dreamy lens flares to your #FCP projects — only $39!
😎 300+ drag & drop presets 😎 Mocha tracking 😎 Create your own flares 😎 Beat Reactor + more
-You can learn more here.
]]>You can read the case study here.
+You can learn more and purchase at FxFactory.
We've been testing it out, and it's very handy. It uses everyone's favourite whisper.cpp, and Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX) under the hood.
You can watch a demonstration here:
You can learn more here.
+Learn more about Kino.
]]>The beta program is entirely free for you to use and experiment with. As SoundGen matures, the developers will be integrating it directly into Audio Design Desk.
Their goal is to give their users access to an even broader collection of sounds on demand, right within the DAW.
The alpha version can only do a maximum of 30 seconds. Depending on the prompt, sometimes it can found great, other times it's very computer generated. It'll definitely improve dramatically over time!
-You can sign up here.
+You can sign up.
Here's also a very early sneak peak of Audio Design Desk 2.0:
Pull the right strings and bring your assets to life with organic movement!
Get it now at 30% OFF on the biggest storewide sale of the year!
-You can learn more here.
If you're currently using Final Cut Pro 10.6.6 or earlier we recommend sticking with that for the time being.
However, if you're using Final Cut Pro 10.6.7 we recommend updating.
Please make sure you make a backup of your Final Cut Pro application by creating a ZIP file of it, before updating. You should also manually backup any libraries before updating.
You can learn more about the issues in Final Cut Pro 10.6.7 here.
+You can learn more about the issues in Final Cut Pro 10.6.7.
]]>Most of their apps will be at super discount from the 1st to 15th of August.
-You can learn more here.
I've dramatically improved the user interface to make it much easier, faster and more powerful.
You can now just drag & drop clips from the Final Cut Pro Browser to the Effects Inspector, including BRAW Toolbox clips!
-You can learn more and buy on the Mac App Store here.
+Learn more and buy Gyroflow Toolbox on the Mac App Store.
It's been written by the amazing Iain Anderson - an author, editor, director, videographer, programmer, animator and educator based in Brisbane, Australia. An Apple Certified Trainer who regularly presents at conferences and user group meetings, Iain is a Lead Trainer for macProVideo.com, and creates educational video content for CoreMelt and many other organizations.
-You can buy on Amazon here.
+You can buy on Amazon.
Thanks to everyone who has purchased, downloaded and tested the latest Gyroflow Toolbox updates! The response has been awesome!
-You can learn more and buy on the Mac App Store here.
+Learn more and buy Gyroflow Toolbox on the Mac App Store.
You can read the over eight-thousand-word case study on the feature film SCHOCK here.
+You can read the over eight-thousand-word case study on the feature film SCHOCK.
-Whether you are a trained professional or just starting your creative career, Apple has the software and tools you need to power your creative work. This unique event is where Apple power users and Final Cut Pro Professionals come together to learn and discuss their craft. We are excited to be back in Cupertino! The FCP Creative Summit features 2 full days of sessions in multiple tracks and a unique day at Apple!
You can visit the official website here.
+You can visit the official Final Cut Pro Creative Summit website.
Thanks to everyone who has purchased, downloaded and tested the latest Gyroflow Toolbox updates! The response has been awesome!
-You can learn more and buy on the Mac App Store here.
+Learn more and buy Gyroflow Toolbox on the Mac App Store.
These are awesome Final Cut Pro plugins personally created by Steve and Mark.
-You can learn more here.
+Learn more about Ripple Training Final Cut Pro plugins.
You can follow along with the latest news here.
+You can follow along with the latest news on the FCP Creative Summit.
]]>This release includes some improvements for Monogram users, and adds "Animation Amount" actions for some handy MotionVFX titles. Enjoy!
You can learn more here.
+Learn more from CommandPost.
]]>This is just a quick small update with a few new features. Enjoy!
You can learn more here.
+Learn more from CommandPost.
]]>We use this API to allow CommandPost to programatically move the playhead via the CommandPost Workflow Extension:
+We use this API to allow CommandPost to programmatically move the playhead via the CommandPost Workflow Extension:
This Workflow Extension is super simple - it's just in Objective-C, and uses web-sockets to communicate back and forth between the Workflow Extension and CommandPost.
You can check out the source code on GitHub here.
@@ -3785,7 +3773,7 @@ hs.dialog.blockAlert("Tag Copier Complete!", "Tags were applied tI totally think that Transcriber and BeatMark Pro could easily be ported to a Workflow Extension and improved to make it simpler and easier for Final Cut Pro editors.
In terms of bringing FCPX AutoDuck to a Workflow Extension, that's definitely possible too, but as Alex explains, you'd basically need to recreate Final Cut Pro's entire audio pipeline to mimic what Final Cut Pro does in FCPX AutoDuck.
One potential workaround could be to create a Custom Share Destination, allowing you to export AIFFs of dialogue, music and effects separately, and then the Workflow Extension uses these mix downs for the processing, and then applies the audio adjustments to a Compound Clip of all the audio clips in that role.
-Because you can create a Custom Share Destination that can export roles as seperate audio files, the user would just need to export to a single Share Destination, then at the end of the export/render, you could programatically send these files to the Workflow Extension for processing. Once processing is complete, the user could drag a new project from the Workflow Extension to their Final Cut Pro Browser, which would have Compound Clips of the individual audio roles, and levels/effects applied to those compound clips.
+Because you can create a Custom Share Destination that can export roles as separate audio files, the user would just need to export to a single Share Destination, then at the end of the export/render, you could programmatically send these files to the Workflow Extension for processing. Once processing is complete, the user could drag a new project from the Workflow Extension to their Final Cut Pro Browser, which would have Compound Clips of the individual audio roles, and levels/effects applied to those compound clips.
It's slightly complex - because you need to communicate between the Custom Share Destination and the Workflow Extension, but certainly achievable.
But I totally agree with Alex in that CMTime is really hard and FCPXML can get insanely confusing.
@@ -4055,7 +4043,7 @@ These creators are always lending a hand in the Final Cut Pro facebook groups, sYou can download the latest version on the Mac App Store here.
@@ -4067,7 +4055,7 @@ These creators are always lending a hand in the Final Cut Pro facebook groups, sBeta 14 introduced Lua scripting - allowing you to programatically generate whatever text you want!
+Beta 14 introduced Lua scripting - allowing you to programmatically generate whatever text you want!
It's still very much a work-in-progress, with the aim to release on the Mac App Store by end of January.
You can learn more and join the TestFlight beta here.
In terms of Principle Photography, everything pretty much ran exactly the same as if we were shooting on film. We lit it exactly the same way, and Ben (our DOP) still had his light meter by his side. Because we needed to shoot so much very quickly (time wasn’t on our side), I decided against setting up a “video village” and even a directors monitor – preferring to be there in the action, behind Ben, peaking over his shoulder to watch the on-camera LCD. This worked really well.
Although the plan was always to shoot to card for safety reasons (we’ve all got disaster stories to tell about Firestore’s dying and hard drives being dropped!) – we decided to gamble and record straight to the RED-DRIVE (a special drive designed for the camera which can store 320GB in a RAID 0 configuration). Not only that – but we decided to leave the dumping to the end of the day. This was a HUGE risk, because if the drive died at the end of the day, we’d potentially loose a whole days worth of shooting. However, we didn’t have the crew available to have a dedicated “data technician”, nor did we have the hardware to dump the cards on a regular basis. This may seem really silly (I mean seriously – all you need is a Mac laptop and a card reader!), but we had neither of those things at the time, and it was just easier to use what we had available. Luckily – nothing went wrong, and the RED-DRIVE was faultless – it never dropped a single frame! However, to anyone else planning to shoot on RED – I strongly recommend you do the complete opposite to what we did! Record to CF card and dump as soon as the card is full.
Although in the end we didn’t end up using any of the sync audio – we recorded audio separately to a Sound Devices 744T, which was synced to a Smart Slate. Originally we had planned to sync the camera to the 744T as well, but for some reason we couldn’t get it to work on the first day of shooting, so we gave up. I believe the problem has since been fixed with one of the RED ONE Firmware Updates. We only had one microphone on set – a Sennheiser 416 on a boom. We basically just recorded sound to use as a guide track for when it came to adding sound effects later on.
-At the end of each shooting day we dumped the RED-DRIVE and the 744T to two seperate 1TB SATAII drives. For the duration of the shoot we managed to borrow a brand new MacPro Tower from Julian at Eidolon Creative and used this machine to do all the dumping as well as the transcoding. We put the two 1TB drives directly into the MacPro. We ended up with 508.34GB of camera footage, and a couple of GB of audio. We ended up purchasing two additional 500GB SATAII drives to make another backup of all of the R3D files – which we then stored at two separate locations away from our master edit suite, just in case. We called the drives Pinky (Master Edit), Bluey (Backup of Master Edit), Tumbles (R3D Master) and Splash (backup of R3D Master), because that’s what the names of the Sakooz creatures are called. Anyway… Now normally, on a “proper” production, you would have RAIDs and RAID 5 protection, etc. But unfortunately, we simply didn’t have the money for that, so we just had to make do with what we had. We had to manually copy and paste the files for backup purposes – we basically did this at the end of each day. We also kept a copy of the Final Cut Pro project on two USB thumbdrives just in case. Just for laughs, here’s a photo of some of the drives from our rather odd-ball collection. The top right one is Pinky. We ended up taking the covers off the enclosures as we found they got too hot when in use all day and night long.
+At the end of each shooting day we dumped the RED-DRIVE and the 744T to two separate 1TB SATAII drives. For the duration of the shoot we managed to borrow a brand new MacPro Tower from Julian at Eidolon Creative and used this machine to do all the dumping as well as the transcoding. We put the two 1TB drives directly into the MacPro. We ended up with 508.34GB of camera footage, and a couple of GB of audio. We ended up purchasing two additional 500GB SATAII drives to make another backup of all of the R3D files – which we then stored at two separate locations away from our master edit suite, just in case. We called the drives Pinky (Master Edit), Bluey (Backup of Master Edit), Tumbles (R3D Master) and Splash (backup of R3D Master), because that’s what the names of the Sakooz creatures are called. Anyway… Now normally, on a “proper” production, you would have RAIDs and RAID 5 protection, etc. But unfortunately, we simply didn’t have the money for that, so we just had to make do with what we had. We had to manually copy and paste the files for backup purposes – we basically did this at the end of each day. We also kept a copy of the Final Cut Pro project on two USB thumbdrives just in case. Just for laughs, here’s a photo of some of the drives from our rather odd-ball collection. The top right one is Pinky. We ended up taking the covers off the enclosures as we found they got too hot when in use all day and night long.
After principle photography was wrapped we set the MacPro to work trancoding the R3D files using REDrushes (a free application which can be downloaded from the RED site). We were transcoding the R3D files to Apple ProRes 422 HQ files at 1920×1080. We were using the full debayer quality, and REDSpace for both the Colour & Gamma spaces. This took a HUGE amount of time (almost two weeks of none stop processing), but at the end of the day we ended up with some terrific Quicktime files that we could throw into Final Cut Pro and start editing, plus we could also send these clips to the visual effects kids so that they could start playing. We did run into one slight problem after we THOUGHT that everything was done. On inspection of the transcoded files, we realised that all the Quicktimes for Day Two of shooting were EXACTLY the same as Day Four. I’m still not sure whether that was human error or REDrushes being annoying – but either way we had to re-transcode all of the day four footage. Unfortunately at this stage we had to give back the MacPro, so we had to do all of this on a stock standard first generation MacBook. It wasn’t quite as fast as the MacPro, but it got the job done. Eventually.
+After principle photography was wrapped we set the MacPro to work transcoding the R3D files using REDrushes (a free application which can be downloaded from the RED site). We were transcoding the R3D files to Apple ProRes 422 HQ files at 1920×1080. We were using the full debayer quality, and REDSpace for both the Colour & Gamma spaces. This took a HUGE amount of time (almost two weeks of none stop processing), but at the end of the day we ended up with some terrific QuickTime files that we could throw into Final Cut Pro and start editing, plus we could also send these clips to the visual effects kids so that they could start playing. We did run into one slight problem after we THOUGHT that everything was done. On inspection of the transcoded files, we realised that all the QuickTimes for Day Two of shooting were EXACTLY the same as Day Four. I’m still not sure whether that was human error or REDrushes being annoying – but either way we had to re-transcode all of the day four footage. Unfortunately at this stage we had to give back the MacPro, so we had to do all of this on a stock standard first generation MacBook. It wasn’t quite as fast as the MacPro, but it got the job done. Eventually.
Offlining using such high quality media may seem a little silly – I mean, really, we could have done a quarter res transcode to DV, and save a huge amount of time and disk space. Also, considering we were doing the offline on a bunch of eMac’s over Firewire 400 drives (that’s right… really old school eMac’s!), it would have also made the whole editing process a lot more fluid. However! By editing at such a great quality, it meant that whenever we did test screenings or had to show potential investors or sponsors, we could easily burn off a high-quality 1920×1080 Quicktime Movie that looks simply gorgeous even before grading. Here is a photo of our main editing machine.
+Offlining using such high quality media may seem a little silly – I mean, really, we could have done a quarter res transcode to DV, and save a huge amount of time and disk space. Also, considering we were doing the offline on a bunch of eMac’s over Firewire 400 drives (that’s right… really old school eMac’s!), it would have also made the whole editing process a lot more fluid. However! By editing at such a great quality, it meant that whenever we did test screenings or had to show potential investors or sponsors, we could easily burn off a high-quality 1920×1080 QuickTime Movie that looks simply gorgeous even before grading. Here is a photo of our main editing machine.
...and the other babies:
I’m not even sure how this is possible, but we were able to play one video track of 1920×1080 ProRes on the eMac over Firewire 400 in realtime without any issues. And so, we basically edited away for several weeks in Final Cut Pro 6. We ended up doing a very rough grade using the 3-way Colour Corrector just so that when we showed other people to get opinions, they were looking at something that looked half decent. We tried a huge amount of different things in terms of the edit – we used a lot of different music as guide tracks. We even copied the audio from other big Hollywood trailers (such as the Dark Knight) and cut our footage to their soundtrack just to see what we could come up with. It was a very painful, long, but fun and creative process that I certainly won’t forget any time soon!
-Whilst I was trying to lock down the picture, others were playing around with the visual effects. Initially, tests and trials were done by the various VFX artists using the ProRes Quicktime files. However, once we had locked down the trailer in terms of the edit, we used REDCINE to export out 4K TIFF sequences and 2K/1K DPX sequences for the visual effects people to work on. Ashley Smart (who did the effects for the Shed Explosion Sequence) was using 4K TIFF Sequences in After Effects on a laptop (which is quite incredible). James Otter used 1K DPX sequences in Nuke, and After Effects to achieve a lot of the effects shots, on a PC. And I used a good old MacBook, running After Effects and Shake to do the remaining shots. I ended up using After Effect’s own tracker for most of the tracking work, although I did use PFTrack for one of the shots. I also used Syntheyes on an old Dell Laptop for a small section of another shot. For Pinky eyes, I ended up brining in 4K DPX sequences into After Effects – which was fairly interesting on the poor old MacBook! But it worked, and the shots came out OK considering…
+Whilst I was trying to lock down the picture, others were playing around with the visual effects. Initially, tests and trials were done by the various VFX artists using the ProRes QuickTime files. However, once we had locked down the trailer in terms of the edit, we used REDCINE to export out 4K TIFF sequences and 2K/1K DPX sequences for the visual effects people to work on. Ashley Smart (who did the effects for the Shed Explosion Sequence) was using 4K TIFF Sequences in After Effects on a laptop (which is quite incredible). James Otter used 1K DPX sequences in Nuke, and After Effects to achieve a lot of the effects shots, on a PC. And I used a good old MacBook, running After Effects and Shake to do the remaining shots. I ended up using After Effect’s own tracker for most of the tracking work, although I did use PFTrack for one of the shots. I also used Syntheyes on an old Dell Laptop for a small section of another shot. For Pinky eyes, I ended up brining in 4K DPX sequences into After Effects – which was fairly interesting on the poor old MacBook! But it worked, and the shots came out OK considering…
We ended up with 16 visual effects in total (including graphics). Once a visual effect shot was completed it was exported as a 1920×1080 DPX sequence ready for grading. For your viewing pleasure, here are some photos of After Effects genius James Otter, working away! I have no idea what the cardboard cartons are for, or where he got them. Needless to say, these photos were taken at some ridiculous early hour of the morning, after James and I had been stuck at uni for AT LEAST forty hours STRAIGHT!
By printing off the EDL we now had a hard copy of the trailer’s edit – which is always a good thing! But more importantly, it allowed us to easily track and manage everything. Because we couldn’t afford to purchase software such as Crimson Workflow, and we didn’t have time to write up our own proprietary software, we ended up doing a lot of things manually. For instance, we ended up going down the EDL line by line, and exporting a 1920×1080 DPX sequence from REDCINE. We made minor adjustments in REDCINE to get the most clean image and exported away. We put each shot in a different folder based on the EDL number assigned to the shot. For example, the first shot in the trailer was called 001_000001.DPX. This kept things nice and simple. Once every shot was exported out of REDCINE as DPX sequence (which took a night), it was ready for grading!
Originally we had planned to do the grade at one of the major post houses in Melbourne, but due to a lack of time and money, we ended up getting a very talented film school graduate called Nick Reid to do the grade in Apple’s Color. Getting the DPX files into Color proved to be a bit more tricky than anticipated! We ended up purchasing yet another 1TB SATAII drive (called Gizmo) for the colour grade.
-What we ended up doing was wrapping all the DPX files as Quicktimes manually using AJA’s free DPXtoQTTranslator utility. Once all of the DPX’s were wrapped (including all the visual effects), we manually re-created the Final Cut Pro timeline based on the printed EDL using the newly wrapped Quicktime files. We then exported out a XML file from Final Cut Pro. This XML file was brought into Color and grading could commence. Nick took a couple of days to do the grade, and once completed, he handed back Gizmo, ready for the final stages!
-With the grade now completed, we exported out AJA 10-bit Uncompressed RGB Quicktimes. We then used the AJA QTtoDPXTranslator to unwrap the Quicktime Files back to DPX files. As the AJA tool simply “wraps” the files – it doesn’t transcode them or anything like that, this process is really fast, although you do have to do it manually. For me, that means I have to do everything 69 times which isn’t too bad. The only annoying thing is that you have to rename all the clips again, as Color names everything sequentially, and we wanted everything named as per the bible (i.e. the EDL).
-Now with a whole heap of beautifully graded DPX sequences, it was time to do the online. I ended up doing this at University on a nice and speedy MacPro in After Effects CS3. I imported all of the DPX sequences, and then manually put them all in the correct places based on the printed EDL. Once that was complete I simply rendered out a Quicktime File using the Animation Codec. Here is a photo taken at about four o’clock in the morning after I’d been at uni for about fourty hours STRAIGHT working on Sakooz. You can see the insanity in my eyes.
+What we ended up doing was wrapping all the DPX files as QuickTimes manually using AJA’s free DPXtoQTTranslator utility. Once all of the DPX’s were wrapped (including all the visual effects), we manually re-created the Final Cut Pro timeline based on the printed EDL using the newly wrapped QuickTime files. We then exported out a XML file from Final Cut Pro. This XML file was brought into Color and grading could commence. Nick took a couple of days to do the grade, and once completed, he handed back Gizmo, ready for the final stages!
+With the grade now completed, we exported out AJA 10-bit Uncompressed RGB QuickTimes. We then used the AJA QTtoDPXTranslator to unwrap the QuickTime Files back to DPX files. As the AJA tool simply “wraps” the files – it doesn’t transcode them or anything like that, this process is really fast, although you do have to do it manually. For me, that means I have to do everything 69 times which isn’t too bad. The only annoying thing is that you have to rename all the clips again, as Color names everything sequentially, and we wanted everything named as per the bible (i.e. the EDL).
+Now with a whole heap of beautifully graded DPX sequences, it was time to do the online. I ended up doing this at University on a nice and speedy MacPro in After Effects CS3. I imported all of the DPX sequences, and then manually put them all in the correct places based on the printed EDL. Once that was complete I simply rendered out a QuickTime File using the Animation Codec. Here is a photo taken at about four o’clock in the morning after I’d been at uni for about forty hours STRAIGHT working on Sakooz. You can see the insanity in my eyes.
The only thing left to do was sound! Once Frank (our composer) finished, he simply gave us a 24-Bit 48KHz Broadcast Wave File, which we threw into Final Cut Pro. After a bit of tweaking – adjusting the sound effect levels to suit the new score, the sound was ready to rock and roll! Originally we had planned to do a quite complex 5.1 mix just for fun – but at the end of the day, no one was ever going to listen to it in surround sound anyway, so we decided to skip on that idea (for now at least). Once the sound was done, we exported an AIFF and then merged the Animation Codec video and AIFF together to create the Final Quicktime Master!
-From that Quicktime master we than could do any DVD, web, Blu-ray, etc. encodes using Compressor.
+The only thing left to do was sound! Once Frank (our composer) finished, he simply gave us a 24-Bit 48KHz Broadcast Wave File, which we threw into Final Cut Pro. After a bit of tweaking – adjusting the sound effect levels to suit the new score, the sound was ready to rock and roll! Originally we had planned to do a quite complex 5.1 mix just for fun – but at the end of the day, no one was ever going to listen to it in surround sound anyway, so we decided to skip on that idea (for now at least). Once the sound was done, we exported an AIFF and then merged the Animation Codec video and AIFF together to create the Final QuickTime Master!
+From that QuickTime master we than could do any DVD, web, Blu-ray, etc. encodes using Compressor.
And that is the workflow we decided to use for Sakooz! At the moment we are just archiving all the project files to DVD, and keeping all the media on the SATAII drives. At some stage we will eventually put everything to LTO drives as a final backup – but we don’t have the money at the moment.
This wasn’t exactly the quickest workflow in the world (we did a lot of things manually that could have been easily avoided by using software such as Crimson Workflow, plus we used extremely old Mac’s and PC’s in a lot of cases), but a lot of it came down to money vs time. In some cases money won out, but more often than not, we decided to save money and do things the manual way. To be perfectly honest, it actually felt really nice to have a printed out EDL on which to direct everything! It felt much the same as the good old days with film!
If you have any questions about the workflow or how we did anything, feel free to post a comment. At some stage in the future we also hope to post some more detailed information on the various visual effects that featured in the trailer, so stay tuned!
@@ -4372,7 +4360,7 @@ Founder, evrApp.cloud, an innovative software project dedicated to improving theYou can learn more here.
+Learn more from CommandPost.
]]>You can learn more here.
@@ -4421,7 +4409,7 @@ Founder, evrApp.cloud, an innovative software project dedicated to improving theYou can learn more here.
+Learn more from CommandPost.
]]>You can read more about this in great detail on the Hedge blog.
If you already own Final Cut Library Manager, the application will continue to work indefinitely, but it will no longer be updated or supported.
Final Cut Library Manager customers will have already received a discounted upgrade for Arctic in their email inbox. Please contact Hedge if you didn't get it.
-Arctic and Final Cut Library Manager are completely seperate applications - each with their own unique licensing and updating systems - which means you can still run them side-by-side, or run Final Cut Pro Library Manager on your old machine, and Arctic on your new machine, etc.
+Arctic and Final Cut Library Manager are completely separate applications - each with their own unique licensing and updating systems - which means you can still run them side-by-side, or run Final Cut Pro Library Manager on your old machine, and Arctic on your new machine, etc.
You can learn more, and download a free 10-day trial on the Hedge website.
]]>You can learn more here.
+Learn more from CommandPost.
]]> https://fcp.cafe/#22nd-june-2024FIXES: – Fix issue when files with non standard characters would cause Colourlab to crash -– Improved handling of unsupported files files fetching from Davinci or Premiere +– Improved handling of unsupported files fetching from Davinci or Premiere – Fixed issue when some Sony camera MP4 files where not playing – Fixed issue when some BMD camera originated H264 files would not play – Fixed Issue When selecting multiple shots (using ctrl/cmd) it would jump to the first selected shot @@ -7603,7 +7591,7 @@ Just like its desktop counterpart, Colourlab AI Pro allows you to share referenc
Spatial Videos can then be edited in Final Cut Pro for Mac, and shared and viewed in the new Vimeo app for VisionOS. This new professional workflow will be available this fall.
...so we knew that Spatial Video features were already on the cards, but we got some new surprises in the Mac mini video:
-
Specifically two new machine learning features:
For those that have been following along, Metaburner has proven to be one of the most challenging and complicated things I've ever built.
+The idea is simple - we just want to be able to "burn in" metadata from a Final Cut Pro project, simple, right?
+Whilst it didn't take me very long to throw together a proof-of-concept, getting it to work well proved to be incredibly complicated.
+Metaburner v1.0.0 (Build 1) hit Apple's TestFlight on 16th December 2023.
+Thanks to the feedback and support of some of the best minds in the Final Cut Pro community, we iterated fast and pushed out quite a few updates improving things.
+By 8th January 2024, Metaburner v1.0.0 (25) hit FxFactory, our first product to be sold outside the Mac App Store.
+All our initial paid apps, such as BRAW Toolbox, Gyroflow Toolbox, Marker Toolbox, Recall Toolbox and Fast Collections were all released on the Apple Mac Store.
+So, why FxFactory? FxFactory has a number of benefits for us:
+On 24th January 2024 we released Metaburner v1.0.7 (35) on FxFactory - but then there was radio silence... except if you're in the Final Cut Pro Discord group.
+After pushing out v1.0.7 we decided to go back to the drawing board on a lot of things.
Whilst Metaburner was working fine in a lot of cases - for example, if you just have standard clips on a timeline - it wasn't working in more complex cases, such as re-timed Multicam Clips containing Sync Clips.
+I enlisted the help of my long-time friend and collaborator David Peterson to do some paid full-time work on FCPXMLKit - our own Swift-based FCPXML engine that's doing a lot of the magic behind-the-scenes.
David also wrote Capacitor (which allows you to easily convert between FCPXML versions) as a test case for FCPXMLKit.
Things that we thought would be simple, turned out to be days and weeks of work.
+I knew that Metaburner was never going to make any money, and investing so much time and money into the project was kinda insane - but I also knew that this kind of tool was so important to editors working in long-form - it's just something that NEEDED to exist.
+FCPXML is insanely complex - and even though I work with it all the time, even I have trouble explaining it in some cases.
+After months of work, lots of maths (I'm terrible at maths), lots of experimentation, we FINALLY got FCPXMLKit to a point where it was working great in most cases.
+But we also hit some performance issues - Metaburner was working, but it was slow.
+Again, after months or work, emailing every Swift/FCPXML genius I know, and lots of swearing... EVENTUALLY I was able to get performance to a good state too.
+It's not the most zippy of applications - but at the same time, it actually performs pretty fast compared to Final Cut Pro's own exporting of FCPXML on large libraries!
+So whilst things have been fairly quiet publicly, we did 14 private beta builds of Metaburner v1.1.0 - and there was a lot of Discord discussion happening!
I'm am HUGELY thankful to everyone who's been testing and putting Metaburner through it's paces.
+HUGE THANK YOU to Matthieu Laclau, Sam Pluemacher, Knut Hake, Robin Moran, Florian Duffe, Tyler Nelson, Marcos Castiel, Geoffrey Orthwein, Josh Beal, Alex '4D' Gollner and Vigneswaran Rajkumar!
+Also, an absolutely MASSIVE THANK YOU to the incredible Steffan Andrews - who is probably on-par with Intelligent Assistance's Dr Gregory Clarke, as the worlds best FCPXML expert.
+We've using Steffan's TimecodeKit under the hood, and have also had some fantastic video calls with him regarding his DAWFileKit, which is absolutely amazing if you're a Swift Developer working with FCPXML.
+So whilst I originally hoped to have Metaburner done and dusted by January 2024, it's taken until November to finally get it to a point where I'm mostly happy.
+Sadly, I'll never make back the money I invested in Metaburner and FCPXMLKit - however hopefully this tool will make it heaps easier for editors to cut long-form projects in Final Cut Pro.
I learnt a HUGE amount for taking on this insane project, and we'll also be able to use FCPXMLKit for lots of other things in the future.
You can download a free trial of Metaburner on FxFactory.
+]]>It includes the following improvements:
+🆕 Important Changes:
+🐞 Bug Fixes:
+.mxf files having malformed timecode values..caf audio file metadata.You can download and learn more here.
+]]>v5.1.0 is out now!
+It has the following improvements:
+You can learn more here.
+]]>