Here are two blogs worth reading, as you are waiting for the phones to start ringing again after the holidays.

First, Norm Hollyn has an interesting discussion on the power of social networking to help all of us get and keep jobs. Hollywood has always said: “It isn’t WHAT you know, it is WHO you know.” So, Norm set out to show us how to know who to know.

You can read it here.

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Then, over at the LA Final Cut Pro User Group, Jon Chappell, from Digital Rebellion, has a great article on technical things an editor needs to know to avoid losing their job.

I’ve been teaching about these for years, but Jon has done a nice job of writing them all up in one place.

You can read Jon’s article here.

For those of you going to MacWorld, Mike Horton (Head Cutter of the LA Final Cut Pro User Group) just sent me the following.
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The agenda has now been set for the 8th Annual FCPUG “SuperMeet” to be held Wednesday, January 7, 2009 at the UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, CA. Doors open at 4:30pm and presentations begin at 7pm and continue until 10PM. This SuperMeet promises to be the single largest gathering of Final Cut Pro users and Gurus during Macworld Conference and Expo SF.

Scheduled to appear on stage, (subject to change) will be:

Apple
The latest on Final Cut Studio

JVC
Craig Yanagi of JVC will announce the world’s first acquisition product developed especially for Final Cut post production. Come and be a part of this historic event.

BlackMagic Design presents M. Dot Strange
Filmmaker M.Dot Strange will bring his magic to the SuperMeet.

Bruce Nazarian
Blu-Ray on the Cheap. How to build a compatible Blu-Ray Disk and burn it on DVD-R media without a Blu-Ray burner.

Christine Steele
FCP Tips and Tricks

Eric Escobar
“Plug-Ins Won’t Save You”
A plug-in package alone won’t create the “look” of your movie. A “look” is a combination of preproduction, design, performance, camera work and post wizardry. Eric will show us how to deconstruct a “look” from a TV show or movie, and reconstruct it on-the-cheap.

Yun Suh
Clips from the documentary film “City of Borders” (Show and Tell)

Rounding out the evening will be the always raucous “World Famous Raffle” with over $40,000.00 worth of prizes to be handed out to several lucky winners. 300 “SuperBag” Goodie Bags filled with over $200.00 worth of learning resources will be handed to the first 300 people through the door. Food (snacks) and drinks will be available throughout the evening.

Tickets are now on sale and it is expected this SuperMeet will sell out. At this writing over 50% of the tickets are gone. Historically every SuperMeet sells out.

For complete details on the SuperMeet including driving and transit directions and instructions, a current list of raffle prizes and a link to where to buy tickets, visit the Los Angeles Final Cut Pro (lafcpug) web site at: http://www.lafcpug.org/macworld09

Last night on the Digital Production BuZZ, we had a fascinating interview with James Salkind. Since this was Christmas evening, you may have been distracted and not able to listen. In which case, you missed a treat.

James was the post-production supervisor for the recent DVD release of the Smashing Pumpkins DVD titled: “If All Goes Wrong.”

James was given over 600 hours of material in multiple high-def video formats to edit a two hour documentary; from high-quality multi-camera concert footage to material shot on cell phones. And he used Final Cut Studio to put it all together.

While we frequently have interviews with editors on The BuZZ, we rarely have interviews that get this specific and detailed. And I wanted to share it with you here, because a lot of his thoughts may be helpful to you.

Click here to listen to his interview. (TRT: 17:21 11.1 MB)

Click here to see what’s on the entire show.

Click here to see what’s on the next show. (A look forward to 2009 is planned for New Year’s Day.)

I enjoyed doing this interview. Let me know if you found it interesting yourself.

By now, you’ve probably read that I am not a fan of upgrading as soon as new software is released. The reasons for this can be found in the Color 1.0.3 release of a couple weeks ago, which broke Color’s support for XDCAM video, or the OS X 10.5.6 release which had problems when trying to install via Software Update.

Still, not upgrading immediately is not the same as not upgrading.

I was talking with a client yesterday who was finishing a major project using Final Cut Pro 6.0.0 – which I find to be a very buggy version of the software.

So, here are the software versions I’m using for my own editing. Keep in mind that your needs may be different. I’m doing most of my deadline-based editing on a MacBook Pro and most of my writing on a G-5.

Operating System

I’m still running OS X 10.4.11. For me, it is faster and more stable than 10.5. Also, if you are on a G-5, or G-4 laptop, 10.4 will be MUCH faster than 10.5.

If you have a newer system that came with OS X 10.5 pre-installed, be sure you are running at least 10.5.4 or later. While the jury is still out on 10.5.6, I don’t know of any serious problems with either 10.5.4 or 10.5.5.

QuickTime

QuickTime upgrades have been a series of disasters. Especially with QuickTime, avoid updating when new versions are released. Waiting at least 90 days after an upgrade is always good advice.

I stayed with QT 7.4.5 until about a week ago. At which time, I upgraded both QuickTime and Final Cut. I’m now at QuickTime 7.5.5.

Note: Keep in mind that at its heart, Final Cut Pro is a QuickTime editor. Never upgrade QuickTime without upgrading Final Cut Pro at the same time. They are joined at the hip. Updating QuickTime by itself is probably the fastest way I know to make sure FCP won’t work.

Final Cut Studio

I’m a fan of Final Cut Studio 2. While FCP hasn’t changed that much in operation, the new Soundtrack Pro 2, Compressor 3, and Motion 3 more than make up for it.

Since I was updating to QuickTime 7.5.5, I also updated to Final Cut 6.0.5 — this is the ProApps 2008-5 release. However, that release also broke Color. So I waited until Apple had a fix for Color before doing the upgrade.

Note: Versions of Final Cut Pro that I do NOT like include: 5.0.0, 5.0.1, 5.0.3, 5.1.0, 5.1.1, 5.1.2, 5.1.3, 6.0.0, 6.0.1, 6.0.2, and 6.0.3.

So, my system is:
OS 10.4.11
QT 7.5.5
FCP 6.0.5

Remember, no client has ever cared what version of Final Cut you are using. If your system is running smoothly, if all the video formats you want to edit are supported, or if you are in the middle of a project, there’s probably no benefit to upgrading.

As always, let me know what you think.

This is in the category of “Things You Might Be Interested In.”

Noise Industries, creator of FxFactory, is holding a contest. As they say: “Show off your work. Win cool prizes.”

Their website says: “FxFactory Awards 2008 contest entries will be judged according to their creative use of FxFactory® plug-ins and overall impact of the video material. Submissions will be accepted starting December 15, 2008. The deadline for submission is January 15, 2009. Winners will be announced January 21, 2009.”

Click here to learn more.

Janet Swift, in PR over at Telestream, sent me a note this morning reminding me that last week, after two years of work, Telestream released the Windows version of Episode.

Janet wrote: “Episode now supports cross-platform environments, PC and Mac. Also Episode desktop now includes watch folders for both Mac and PC users – in addition to all its other great attributes: virtually any format in & out, extensive filters and fine-tuning, plus it’s fast and easy to use.”

“Episode products provide a fast, flexible and future-proof solution for virtually any SD or HD compression need. Episode desktop products include extensive fine-tuning compression capabilities, batch encoding and many presets which enable users to quickly create extremely high-quality output files. Cross-platform support in Episode and Episode Pro 5.1 means that users and organizations no longer need to learn and support multiple encoding tools for different purposes. The addition of watch folders in version 5.1 saves time and effort by enabling users to simply drop finished projects into folders for automatic encoding.”

Episode is a high-quality, professional-grade compression product. If all you need is QuickTime movies, Apple’s Compressor may well meet your needs. But, if you need Window Media, Flash, or need to create multiple versions of the same media, Episode is definitely worth checking out.

Here’s the link: http://www.telestream.net/company/press/2008-12-11.htm

My third book has just been released by Peachpit Press entitled: Edit Well – Final Cut Studio Techniques from the Pros.

What we did is take the best from over two years of Edit Well newsletter articles and recompile them in a book. Every article in the book can make a significant difference in your understanding of how to make the most of Final Cut Studio.

Peachpit describes it this way: Edit Well: Final Cut Studio Techniques for the Pros is the book that in-the-trenches editors have been waiting for. It offers a holistic approach to using the tools in Final Cut Studio for those who are responsible for a variety of tasks just beyond straight editing.

Written by the preeminent experts and practicing professionals in their fields, contributors include over 15 authors such as Larry Jordan, Kevin Monahan, Mary Plummer, Mark Spencer, Tom Wolsky, and Alexis Van Hurkman. Each chapter features insight on a particular tool in the Studio, whether it be Final Cut Pro, Soundtrack Pro, Motion, or Color. In addition, video tutorials and audio interviews of top Final Cut Pro editors around the world are available for free on the companion website.

And, you can save 35% if you buy it directly from Peachpit Press and enter this discount code: EDITWELLBOOK. Here’s the link.

It is beautifully illustrated in full color with hundreds of screen shots. 336 pages.

One more thing from Government Video Expo, held Dec 3 – 5 in Washington, DC.

Spectra Logic makes equipment for archiving servers and media. More specifically, they make LTO tape drives, which are my current favorite for backing up tapeless media.

Hossein ZiaShakiri, vice president of business development and alliances for Spectra Logic, chatted with me on my podcast – Digital Production BuZZ – about the best way to back up media, the software necessary to do so, and what kind of equipment to consider. However, toward the end of the interview, our discussion shifted to the life-span of magnetic tape.

Again, this is a short quote, but I think you’ll find it interesting, since it comes from an individual with a lot of experience in making sure the data you put on the tape is able to be successfully played back.

Note: Once the clip loads into your browser, you may need to press the RETURN key to start playback.

Click here to listen to Hossein’s quote. (TRT: 0:30 — 600 KB)

Click here to view a list of all the shows we did a GV Expo. (TRT: 1 hour — streamed)

One of the benefits of attending a trade show is talking to engineers and other product specialists that are hard to meet in any other way.

Recently, I took my podcast – the Digital Production BuZZ – to GV Expo in Washington, DC, to originate our show from there. Because we had so many people to talk to, we decided to produce several hours of programming, rather than just our one-hour show. This meant that some fascinating interviews got moved to our less-listened-to shows.

One of those was with Kevin Towey, Regional Sales Manager for Microboards Technology. His company manufactures equipment for duplicating CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray Discs, even, to my surprise, USB drives. Anyway, during our conversation, we started talking about how to choose the best optical media for burning discs. I’ve been talking about this issue for a while, but Brian did such a nice job summarizing this, that I wanted to share it with you here.

If you need to make sure the discs you burn will play, you need to listen to this short interview.

Note: Once the clip loads into your browser, you may need to press the RETURN key to start playback.

Click here to play Brian Towey’s comments. (TRT: 1:29 768KB)

Click here to view a list of all the shows we did a GV Expo. (TRT: 1 hour — streamed)

On February 17, 2009, the FCC has mandated that all broadcasters in the US switch from analog to digital transmission. (As an aside, this does not mean they need to switch to HD, simply that their transmitters originate digital signals.)

This means that about a third of the viewers in the US will lose the ability to receive television – which is about the market share of over-the-air reception. (Another third is cable and the last third is satellite.) To solve this problem, viewers need to either buy a $40 converter box, or a digitally-enabled television set.

In early September, this year, the FCC supervised a roll-out of this digital switch in Wilmington, NC. For weeks, prior to the change over, stations blanketed the airways with announcements on what was going to happen. Then, at noon on that September day, FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin threw a big symbolic switch and all three over-the-air broadcasters switched from analog to digital. While the FCC described this test as successful, over the course of the afternoon over 500 people called the FCC to complain – obviously indicating that all the pre-event publicity did not reach everyone.

At the Government Video Technology Expo, Dec. 3 – 5 in Washington, DC. one of FCC commissioners spoke at the keynote to the conference. Mark Pescatore, editor of Government Video magazine and executive conference chair of GV Expo, attended the keynote. When he and I were talking afterward about this, he shared his thoughts which I wanted to share with you.

Note: Once the clip loads into your browser, you may need to press the RETURN key to start playback.

Click here to listen to Mark’s quote. TRT: 0:38 — 400 KB)

Click here to view a list of all the shows we did a GV Expo. (TRT: 1 hour — streamed)