bright dog media

Emmy time

Chris Hanson and I were honored with an Emmy this weekend for our work on the Outside Television program “Outside Film Festival”. Wow, so happy!

beautiful time lapse of the Australian sky

iMovie Pro X

well, it was about what I thought it was going to be. The new FCPX came out last week and I downloaded it as soon as I heard it was out. The first thing I tried to do was open a current project I’m working on in FCP7 and… nothing. I’m sure if you are an editor you know the deal with the new Final Cut being a souped up version iMovie aimed squarely at prosumer market. I gave it until the end of the week before determining that it wouldn’t let me fully do my job. I like a lot of the new features, the background rendering is fantastic, the UI is something that I could get used to, and I’m sure many of the missing function will be built back in. But not all of it. This is a typical apple operation, they tend to completely abandon technology that seems antiquated even if it causes a pain for their users. Look at floppy drives with the original iMac, the iMovie revamp in 2008, and the XServe last year just name a few. This video from Film Riot sums it all up nicely. http://youtu.be/-JBZXQV7hTI My suggestion is to get used to the new workings in Final Cut Pro X if you plan to stay in the Apple fold, because they will not go back. I will be watching Apple and if they add the important functions I’ll stick around but Adobe Priemere is looking very good right now and I wouldn’t mind getting back into the Avid saddle again.

Excited about the next Final Cut?

I’ve got to say that I am very curious to see Final Cut Pro X in action. In case you don’t know, Apple gave a sneak peak of the next version of FCP at NAB last night. It’s a complete rebuild of the old version with 64 bit addressing, multiple-core enabled, background this and auto-fix that. It all sounds really good but I need to play with it. Apparently everyone who touches it falls in love.

Hopefully the coders at Apple have given the same attention to Color and DVD Studio Pro, two more of my iApp Pro favorites.

It’s encouraging that the shiny new FCP has the very comfortable price tag of $299 and will be available as an App Store one-click purchase. Makes it almost too easy!

I hope the rumors are true that the next Final Cut Pro will be unveiled tomorrow during NAB. It feels like Apple has sat back and relaxed while FCP grew stale and everyone else caught up through innovation.

I know that my work flow has evolved, 99% of the media I get now is in a file format of some kind. The workflow of FCP does not reflect that shift and hopefully this update will change all of that.

Miss Representation explores women’s under-representation in positions of power and influence and challenges the limited and often disparaging portrayals of women in media. 

I think about my two little ladies coming up in this world.

Good to see that my favorite is also the editor’s choice. 

More mind blowing stuff from my friends at Sender Films. 

oh rainy daze…

It is absolutely pouring in southern Maine today, it’s already mud season so this isn’t helping! I’m thinking back to the sunny warm days in Belize. It was such a great location that I took my wife there for our anniversary the following spring.

iPad: a true laptop replacement?

Yesterday I became a believer.

I was one of those people who waited a year, fighting the urge to buy apple’s new toy, figuring it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Plus I rarely buy 1st generation Apple products because Apple tends to save what should be standard features for the second go round.

When iPad 2 release day came around, there was enough of an improvement to convince me to plunk down my money and give this new computing experience a shot. From day one it felt like I was using the future of computers, it was definitely fun, but was it a laptop replacement? I wasn’t sold.

This past Thursday afternoon, quittin’ time rolled around and my laptop was hard at work uploading a clip to the FTP server. I decided I would let it continue and leave it at the office for the night.

Friday morning presented the east coast with a springtime noreaster, dropping six inches of heavy, nasty snow. I made an attempt to drive into work, I swear I did! But the roads were a mess and it simply wasn’t worth it.

When I got back home I checked my email on the iPad and discovered that there were a couple fires that needed to be put out. I wound up spending the entire day banging out emails, working on spreadsheets, and researching on the web, all on my iPad.

So was it a true replacement for my trusty laptop? Not completely, but it did surprisingly well. iPad won’t replace a laptop or a tower when it comes to the heavy lifting of a professional video production. I’ve tried iMovie for iPad and it’s great for family videos or maybe roughing out a project but it sure isn’t Final Cut.

For the more mundane parts of my job, research, emails, scripting, and general organizing; this iPad certainly feels like the future of computing.