ATTN: Footage Shooters!

There is a free set of tutorials for Final Cut Express 4 available online done by Izzy Hyman.  There are 9 lessons with a total of 2.5 hours of tutorial.  A few of us in the office went through these tutorials and learned almost everything we needed to know for submitting quality edited clips.  It breaks down the editing process and color correction in a few short and easy to follow segments, and even teaches a lot of keyboard shortcuts to further simplify post-production.

You can find this tutorial and many others at: www.izzyvideo.com

The Final Cut Express tutorial is on the products page at http://www.izzyvideo.com/learn-final-cut-express/ and just follow the instructions on the page. The tutorial is available to download in it’s entirety in the zip file called Learn_FCE.zip.  Also download the sample videos  from the link at the Chapter 1 table of contents called ch01media.zip.  He uses these clips to create a fully rendered video and you learn by watching the tutorials in QuickTime, while copying what he does step by step in Final Cut Express!

This is a very powerful and useful tool for our mac users! Take a look and start editing… Good Luck!

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&tabact=DownloadDetailTabAct&fcategoryid=314&modelid=17662

Go to the product page, use the drop-down menu to select OS-X operating system, and it should be sitting right there.

Further down the page you will find a Quick Start Guide PDF document describing its operation.

Photo © Larry Ditto / DanitaDelimont.com

Although shooting video with DSLR cameras may be intimidating and confusing at first we feel that with the right guidance and information everyone can learn to embrace it and produce quality footage. As we have been moving into the footage market over the past few months we have come across many experts, useful tools, software and hardware that have proven to be very valuable. We are encouraging all of our still shooters to get into this new market and we now can show you how to do so with just a short learning curve and a modest investment in gear.

We are pleased to announce that DanitaDelimont.com will be presenting a FREE 5 week online footage course for our contracted photographers starting April 5th.  Each Monday classes will be streamed live online from the Creative Techs classroom at Art Wolfe’s studio in Seattle and will also be available later for downloading from the Creative Techs website.

The program is titled “Producing Great Stock Footage with Your DSLR”. Each week we will tackle different topics and will have various experts and product representatives leading the discussions. We will be updating you as the schedule is finalized, but be sure to mark Monday, April 5th at 11:00 AM Pacific time and the following four Mondays on your calendar.  There are also seats available in the studio audience so if you are in Seattle, please attend the live session!

We look forward to helping you get acquainted with shooting and processing footage.  Let us help you to add a great new revenue stream to your business with much less effort than you ever imagined!

Whereas Photoshop is the preferred software for high performance editing of stills, the software of choice for video is Final Cut Pro.  This is especially true for Canon 5D Mark all files.  The 5D uses the H264 codec created by Apple 4 years ago.  It uses a 4-2-2-compression which is more than adequate for HDTV.  When processing the file using software other than Final Cut is that the software will convert the H264 to its native codec and then translate it back into H264 when it’s done.  This could have undesirable effects on quality.  The end result could be better with more modern codecs but could also be worse.  When in doubt, stick with the original if you can.

(That said, since we are primarily a PC shop, we use Adobe After Effects with good results.  We are also looking into using i-Movie on a MacBook to do basic editing chores.)

To speed up your editing make a “proxy file” (a lower resolution and thus smaller file) to make your edits on.  When you have the EDL (your edit decision list) saved, substitute the full resolution file and run the processing.  Your edits will go faster this way.

The 5D uses Long GOP (Group of Pictures) coding, which takes a long time to process.  Do your batch conversions into proxy files overnight to save time during working hours.

DV Kitchen (http://dvcreators.net/dv-kitchen/) is an $80 program that will do this job.  Create .mov files for editing.  For example, you can export the original to Apple Pro Res HQ422 wrapped in the .mov extension.  We haven’t had time to try this yet but I was assured it works well.

Lightroom is a good program for managing the finished clips.  Capture 1 was mentioned as better than Light room for feathering clips.

A rule of thumb is that it takes about 4 times as long to edit footage as it does to shoot it.  This makes sense since you have to watch the clip first to see what to do with it.  You are already at 1X the time before you even begin making changes!  Next, make your time in and out decision, then color and other corrections.  Then there is also the keywording, which may require repeated viewing.