Ever since the release of our DV Enlightenment lighting course, people are always asking us, “How did you make those awesome light rays on your titles?”
In that case, we used an excellent plugin for After Effects called Shine. Shine worked for a bit in Final Cut Pro years back, but then Apple changed the plugin API, and Shine no longer worked in Final Cut. (It works now, however!)
I’ve always liked the super-dramatic light rays effect, but the light rays filters in Motion and Final Cut Pro take too long to render… and frankly, …
| Downloads 5410
Here’s a quick tip (under 40 seconds) for instantly adding a soft glow to titles in Final Cut Pro or Express - without going into LiveType or Motion.
For more info, check out:
Final Cut Pro Foundations
Final Cut Express Foundations
| Downloads 1203
Michael Wohl’s Motion PowerStart is a comprehensive training course for Motion containing three clear, fun, and practical hands-on tutorials plus a section on integrating Motion with other Apple programs. It was written by Michael Wohl, a member of the official Motion documentation team, along with Josh Mellicker of DVcreators.net.
Motion PowerStart excerpt 1
Motion PowerStart excerpt 2
…
When you’re EDITING, you can make good decisions just watching the Canvas Window on your laptop.
But for color grading, it’s critically important to watch your show on a monitor that’s displaying an accurate image. Monitoring is important because all your color grading work is going to be off if the monitor you’re watching while you work is not telling the truth.
Think of all the ways viewers might watch your project. If you’re delivering on DVD, your show might be watched on plasma or LCD TVs, projectors, or older CRT TVs - but they also might be watching the DVD on …
Tiffen Dfx suite represents a major technological breakthrough and introduces a new and exciting way of unleashing ones creative use of filters into the digital environment. Tiffen Dfx offers the user an extensive simulated optical experience expanding and complimenting Tiffen’s optical filter range, blurring the lines between traditional and digital workflow.
Tiffen Dfx software offers something for everyone, whether photo enthusiast, professional photographer, cinematographer or editor—anyone who wants
…
After Effects is the software from whence a new art form, motion graphics, was born.
Motion offers many advantages and disadvantages to AE. The two can work together, AE users can use Motion to generate layers for their AE compositions.
Owners of both, before starting many projects, will have to pause and consider which program to use.
So when would you use Motion?
- projects involving interaction between elements (attracting, repelling, orbiting easier in Motion)
- users needing something cool-looking quickly without having to create it from scratch (because of the large library of text behaviors and textures (particle emitter presets) - LiveType also good for this
- particle
…
Some of you may be wondering what we’ve been up to lately. Well, we have many top-secret projects cooking up in our lab, buried deep within the Hollywood hills (yes, we’ve taken over Dr. Evil’s lair after his retirement).
One thing is that we’ve collaborated with the great Stephen Schleicher on the world’s finest After Effects hands-on course. Final Cut Pro editors have delved into LiveType, then Motion, but many are finding they are still seeking an industrial-strength motion graphics and compositing environment. There are many great reasons After Effects continues to be the …
I spent a little time working with Color over the weekend and can’t say I’m as impressed as I thought I would be.
I feel as if a fabulously wealthy friend just bought me a brand new top-of-the-line bulldozer for my birthday. Gee, it’s super nice… but where am I going to put it? It’s too slow, too powerful, not the right vehicle for the daily LA commute.
Color certainly has a lot of cool features and awesome power, but many problems, primarily the workflow. It’s possible that Colorista/Automatic Duck or Color Finesse is better integrated with Final Cut Pro at this …
Have you ever found yourself changing the file names of a whole folder of clips, graphic or other files on your hard drive one by one? Here is a Warp Speed Workflow showing how to change hundred of files names in one click.
| Downloads 878
Click here to ask a question about Final Cut Pro workflows.
For more info, check out:
Final Cut Pro Foundations
Final Cut Express Foundations
A frequently asked question by new Final Cut users is about creating titles and not being able to see changes as they make them. This movie shows how to see changes while editing your title, all in real-time! Wa-Hoo!
Click here to ask a question about Final Cut Pro.
| Downloads 742
Here is a packet of freebie FX from the DVcreatorsFX labs… a snowy blizzard!
Just add a windy sound effect from Soundtrack Pro and you’ll want to huddle around the fire.
These animations are each a minute long and include an alpha channel so you can drag it right into Final Cut Pro (or Motion) over your video to add swirling snowflakes to any scene.
They utilize OpenGL and CoreVideo so they play in real time on most recent systems!
We’ve included versions for many video formats:
blizzard DV-NTSC
blizzard DV-NTSC 16:9
blizzard PAL
blizzard …
The Motu V4HD
Feature highlights
- HD/SD FireWire video interface for Mac and Windows — provides HD and SD capture and playback for any current-generation FireWire equipped computer
- Plug-and-play connectivity via FireWire 400 or 800 — connects to either a desktop tower or a portable laptop
- Supports Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro
- Captures and plays all standard HD and SD formats up to and including 1080p30 (720p, 1080i, 1080p and 1080PsF)
- Full-raster Apple ProRes workflow — supports full-raster capture and playback (1920×1080 and 1280×720) in Apple’s ProRes 422
…
To separate a subject from a background, you can either:
1. shoot in front of a greenscreen/bluescreen, then key out the background in postproduction
You can also key out a background that is much darker or brighter than your subject, but it usually takes a little more work, because often your subject will have pixels that are darker and/or lighter than the background, so there there will be holes in your subject that must be “patched” with a garbage matte. If your subject is not moving much, this is much easier than if you have to do a lot of keyframing on …
Free morphing software for OS X here.
50 Point Bezier Matte is a filter for Final Cut Pro (and Final Cut Express) that lets you create a garbage matte with up to 50 points. Unlike the 4 and 8 point garbage matte filters that come with Final Cut Pro, 50 Point Bezier Matte lets you create curves between the points instead of straight lines. This allows you to easily create a mask to extract almost any element you need.
http://homepage.mac.com/tomhenderson/beziermatte/
Latest Comments
RSS