NOW AVAILABLE THROUGH DVcreatorsUniversity!

DVcreators.net has been known as the world leader in Final Cut Pro training since the day Final Cut Pro 1.0 was released.

We were the training company Apple chose to help launch Final Cut Pro with training on disc, in workshops in over 60 cities and all major trade shows. We have taught alongside Randy Ubillos, the creator of Final Cut Pro (and talked him into adding some cool features to the application!). We’ve helped hundreds of thousands of FCP editors further their Final Cut Pro knowledge. Most of the people currently writing books and teaching Final Cut Pro are our former students!

Final Cut Pro Foundations is the quintessential Final Cut Pro editing course, guiding users through every step of the essential editing process from organizing projects through capture, basic editing and fine-tuning to exporting the final project for delivery in the highest possible quality. Complete with student project files, Final Cut Pro Foundations is the only chunkalized Final Cut Pro training in the world!

During the course, you’ll edit together “Mr. Right”, a short comedic tale of revenge and intrigue that steps users through editing a real world project incorporating many editing techniques and challenges that may arise in any project.

Check out the following demo movies from Final Cut Pro Foundations:

Final Cut Pro Foundations excerpt 1

Final Cut Pro Foundations excerpt 2

Final Cut Pro Foundations excerpt 3

Final Cut Pro Foundations excerpt 4

(the links above are simply Quicktime movie excerpts, and are NOT presented in our Chunkalized™ learning environment. They are provided just to give you a glimpse of the product quality and content, but won’t give you a feel for the actual learning experience. But they are neat, eh?)

What will I learn in this course?

Final Cut Pro Foundations is focused on the goal of helping you perfect the fundamental set of tools, techniques and operations that make up 90% of the editing process of any project, from a corporate training video to an Academy-award-winning film.You’ll learn the easiest way to perform essential editing operations as well as a constant stream of precious and valuable secrets, tips, tricks, timesavers and techniques that will greatly improve the quality of your future projects and your editing experience.When you finish this course, you will know:
• the best way to set up your editing system
• how to organize your project for a fast and efficient workflow
• the most important keyboard shortcuts and timesaving tips• the fastest way to capture your video• using matched action edits to create a seamless edit
• how to fine-tune the timing and flow of your edit with the ripple tool
• the right way to use Final Cut’s title tool
• setting up real time extreme to avoid redlining and rendering while editing• how to avoid out of sync video and audio
• finding audio peaks and an awesome secret for getting location sound without distortion• how to export Quicktime movies with pristine quality for DVD or the web- the quality difference will knock your socks off!
• what to do after your project’s finished to free up space on your drives yet still be ready to re-edit if needed

How is the course presented?

We believe that in order to master any software, you must do, not just watch. Final Cut Pro Foundations is taught in our unique, innovative chunkalized™ learning environment, where you will actually build the tutorial project yourself in Final Cut Pro, with the help of your virtual instructor. Each technique and process is presented as a series of clear, easy-to-understand steps.

Why is this course far superior to the plethora of other training books and discs?

Instead of covering tools and concepts in an artificial order dictated by the software, the knowledge in Final Cut Pro Foundations is presented in the context of completing a real world project. So, when working on your own projects, you’ll immediately be able to put what you’ve learned to work.

What if the course goes too fast or too slow?

In our chunkalized™ learning environment, you must verify that you comprehend and have completed each step in the process before your virtual instructor moves on. You learn at your own pace. Quickly move through sections you understand, have your virtual instructor repeat steps or sections, take “lab time” and experiment whenever you wish because you are the only student in this class. You have total control. If the course goes too slowly, you can play several chunks before switching into Final Cut Pro.

What if I have a question?

No one should learn alone. We have included an ”Ask a Question” button that posts your question on our forums for thousands of other Final Cut Pro users to answer. You are always welcome to join us to ask questions, offer advice, and share tips with other students and your instructor.

Should I buy Final Cut Pro Foundations if I’ve been editing in Final Cut Pro for years?

The course is mostly designed for new users, with material that will be familiar to anyone who has editing with Final Cut Pro for a while. However, any editor who has not yet attained the mastery of Final Cut Pro they desire will find going through the whole course from the beginning solidifies and improves their understanding of Final Cut Pro and the editing process in general.

We do guarantee that in the constant stream of cool tips, shortcuts and secrets, you’ll learn at least a few new tricks that will help you in every project you edit.

And, there are some sections, for example, on exporting, or media mangement, that could be worth the price of this course all by themselves even for very experienced editors. For example, if you only learned how to make your exported files look 1000% better than they do now, is that worth $59?

Course Outline

Introduction • Foundations • Editing Workflow • Video Formats • Digital Non-Linear Editing Process • System Set-up • Folder Organization • Interface Orientation • Browser • Viewer • Timeline • Canvas • Preferences • Easy Setup • Audio/Video Settings • System Settings • Capture from Tape • Log & Capture • Audio Capture • Interface and Tape Control • Capturing on the Fly • Rough Cut • Viewing and Trimming • Building Your Edit • Matched Action Edit • Insert Edit • Ripple Tool • Post-Production Visuals • Title • Superimpose Edit • Title Safe • Real-Time Extreme • Transitions • Audio • Track Forward Tool • Exporting • Printing to Video • Post Post-Production • Media Manager

Final Cut Pro Foundations course

For new users to intermediate editors

Requirements: recent model computer with Mac OS X, 1024 X 768 or larger monitor

Availability: Download NOW!

Price: $59.95

Click here to ask a question about this course or Final Cut Pro.

Here’s an awesome tutorial on building a 3D cityscape in Motion from Andy Neil.

This is a common question and there are several answers:

First, the Final Cut Pro Canvas usually shows titles and graphics more pixelated and lower quality than the actual quality. Render a title and play it on a real monitor – or render and export a 10 frame test to disk and view to see the true picture.

Read these articles on monitoring: http://www.dvcreators.net/tag/monitoring/ for more info.

If you are rendering to the DV codec, you will see an instant drop in quality. But don’t worry, as long as you export to a lossless codec your final project will look great.

This article shows how to export in high quality.

If you are delivering on SD DVD, you have a challenge. NTSC and PAL are not perfect formats- and SD is low resolution and fuzzy. If you’re a graphic artist used to creating crisp, clean pixel perfect graphics in Illustrator or Flash on your expensive LCD display, you’re in for a big surprise. Keep your fonts and graphics big and bold, and put a drop shadow or slight glow on your titles. Keep checking on an external NTSC or PAL monitor if your project is slated for SD delivery. Watch TV and see what graphic styles look good on your TV set- and model those.

Here’s a list of nevers:

1. Never trust the Canvas Window to show quality
2. When using Motion or Livetype, never render to a lossless codec like DV before importing into FCP – import the project or render to a lossless codec
3. Never export from FCP using H.264 or any other lossy codec – always use a lossless codec (PJPEG at 90% – 100% is an exception)

For more info, check out:

Final Cut Pro Foundations

Final Cut Express Foundations

In 1998, I remember hearing about a new editing program called “Key Grip”, written by Randy Ubillos, the creator of Adobe Premiere. It looked like a nice blend of Avid/Premiere-style non-linear editing and After Effects-style keyframing, two programs I had picked up in their 1.0 versions and used for tons of projects.

At NAB 1998, I was ushered to an underground room at NAB, where Randy was demoing the program on Mac and Windows, since renamed “Final Cut”. I met Randy and some of the development team.

In February of 1999, my phone rang. It was Andrew Baum, genius product manager for Final Cut Pro, who told me Apple had bought the program and dev team, and was going to release the app at NAB later that year. He told me it was important that there be third party training available the day it was released, and he thought our software training CDs were the best he’d ever seen.

Even though at that time, there were very few people creating video, it was clear to us video was the future. Our business vision was a line of training discs for shooting and postproduction, along with workshops across the country. We had chosen Premiere 5.0 as the editing program to get behind, and we talked to Adobe about including a tutorial disc of ours in the Premiere box, but they ended up going with Total Training instead.

Andy sent me the Final Cut Pro beta, and I was very impressed with the editing paradigm, so we switched gears and prepared to put our vision behind Final Cut Pro instead.

After working day and night on the tutorial disc, called “Final Cut Pro PowerStart”, it was finally replicated and delivered to our hotel room just hours before the Final Cut Pro release.

NAB was a historic event. I was demoing Final Cut Pro 1.0 in the ProMax booth, the only Final Cut Pro demos at NAB besides Apple. Since we started demos right when the show opened at 9, I guess I am the first person ever to demo FCP 1.0 in public. We were jammed and selling Final Cut Pro PowerStarts like crazy. After every demo of Final Cut Pro in the Apple booth, Andrew would announce “And here’s Final Cut Pro PowerStart, a training CD for Final Cut Pro and it’s the greatest training CD ever made!” and people would flood the Promax booth waving cash and credit cards.

That following Saturday, May 1, 1999, I hosted the world’s first Final Cut Pro users group meeting at Promax Systems, in Irvine, CA to a standing-room-only crowd, continuing the first Saturday of each month after that. In the months and years to come, many other user groups sprang up around the world.

A few weeks afterward, we launched the world’s first Final Cut Pro focused website, finalcutpro411.net. (It has since morphed into finalcutstudioplanet.com.) Not too long afterwards, 2-Pop.com was launched by Lawrence Jordan, followed by dozens of others over the years.

Thousands of companies and editors purchased the Final Cut Pro PowerStart CD – many even before buying the app itself, using the tutorial as a demo of the software. Apple bought thousands to train their own staff on the program. This was to be the only FCP training product on the market for almost 9 months, until Lisa Brenneis’ book and Phil Hodgett’s “DV Companion” CD.

I also consulted with Apple on marketing materials and trained Apple development executives on presenting FCP. I worked with Apple to do coast-to-coast free Final Cut Pro seminar tours, along with two Final Cut Pro interactive CD projects. At the same time, DVcreators.net launched 3-day workshops, called “The DV Revolution” starring Final Cut Pro, in every major city in the U.S. These workshops were immensely popular and sold out quickly. Some weeks we had 3 or 4 instructors, including Michael Wohl, a member of the FCP development team, Eric Schultheis, and Guy Cochran, teaching in different cities across the country. Guy once taught in three countries in the space of a few weeks.

At NAB 2001, Apple once again entrusted DVcreators.net with a vitally important mission- running Apple’s first-ever hands-on training lab on the floor of the NAB show in 2001. It was such a resounding success there was a stampede each morning when the show opened as people rushed across the floor to get tickets for our training sessions.

Over the next several years, DVcreators.net and Apple worked together to present digital video training workshops in over 60 cities in 5 countries, and we released a series of training discs for various versions.

We are proud of the supporting role we played in the Final Cut Pro Revolution in the critically important first few years, supporting the software with coast-to-coast seminars and training, tutorial discs, user groups, web resources, and making sure that supporting Final Cut Pro was “the cool thing to do.” Many at Apple and active participants in the digital video scene acknowledge DVcreators.net’s early efforts as being an important driving factor in Final Cut Pro’s early adoption and subsequent growth in the marketplace. And Apple, in turn, provided a great launching pad for DVcreators.net to help hundreds of thousands of digital video creators learn and improve their skills.

Happy 10th birthday, Final Cut Pro & DVcreators.net!

And Bruce, the Wonder Yak!

I remember heading to dinner 6 or 7 years ago with Randy Ubillos, creator of Final Cut Pro, telling him my vision for a future FCP update- incorporating some pre-production elements like storyboarding, in which the user would link captured clips to a storyboard frame, then FCP would rough cut the project together automatically, with multiple takes being multiclips so they could be easily compared.

Now, it’s possible Apple is patenting some storyboarding processes to incorporate into FCP?

Check out the whole article here.

Click on the movie to launch.

For more info, check out:

Final Cut Pro Foundations

Final Cut Express Foundations

http://alex4d.wordpress.com/2008/10/13/final-cut-pro-my-free-closing-credits-plugin/

If you notice a loss of connectivity between Final Cut Pro or Final Cut Express and your camcorder or deck after upgrading your versions of Mac OS X and QuickTime, here’s what you can do to resolve the issue.

1. Remove QuickTime receipts:
   1. Go to /Library/Receipts/
   2. Locate the QuickTime receipts files.
   3. Select all QuickTime receipts that have version numbers as part of their names (but don’t select the other QuickTime receipts). Here’s an example of what they look like (you may have different receipts on your computer):
      
   4. Drag the selected receipts to the Trash.
2. Download and install the latest version of QuickTime for Mac OS X.

After following these steps and restarting your computer, your device should interact with Final Cut as expected.

If not, try one or more of the following:

• disconnecting, then connecting the Firewire cable while the capture window is open
• start the tape playing before opening the capture window
• power the camera on first, then launch FCP
• power the camera off, then on again
• another Firewire cable
• another camcorder
• another computer

Final Cut (and other editing apps) will accept many kinds and formats of audio for import into the Browser or Timeline.

However, just because they will, doesn’t mean you should!

If you import compressed audio, for example, in MP3 or AAC codecs, or audio in a different bit or sample rate than your Timeline (such as 44.1 KHz, 32 KHz or 12-bit), you will often hear clicks, pops, and audio dropouts while editing, which is distracting for your creative process, and in many cases your audio will require rendering before you can even hear it, which sounds like “beep-beep-beep-beep” and wastes a lot of your time.

Our solution is to batch convert all audio to 48KHz, uncompressed, stereo or mono for editing before importing.

We use DV Kitchen for this, it comes with a preset already designed for this.

Click the screenshot to watch a first look at the new motion tracking behaviors in Motion 3.

Click here to ask a question about Motion.

Q: I have 10 zillion titles in my Final Cut Pro project. I just changed my mind and want to change them all to a different font.

What is the DVcreators.net Warp Speed Workflow™ way to do this?

For more info, check out:

Final Cut Pro Foundations

Final Cut Express Foundations

This exploration of lights in Motion 3 is now available for free download through DVcreatorsUniversity.

Click here to ask a question or make a comment about Motion.

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.

Final Cut Pro Foundations

Final Cut Express Foundations

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 a desktop or laptop computer. If you’re delivering via the internet, your viewers will almost all be watching computer screens. But, some might be watching on a television connected to an AppleTV or other set-top box. Then don’t forget video iPods, iPhones, cel phones and all other portable video playback devices.

How do I design an accurate monitoring system when viewers screens vary so much?
The simple answer is that all these viewer’s screens are designed to make high end content, like Hollywood movies and broadcast television shows, look as good as possible. And every colorist working on a professionally-produced show watches a monitor calibrated to the same industry standard. If you went to a dozen top colorist’s suites, borrowed their monitors, and stacked them up in a video wall, you’d see many different brands and sizes, but the video image would look identical.

So, if YOU color grade your show while watching a monitor calibrated to the industry standard, and it looks good to you, it really has the best chance of looking good to the vast majority of your audience.

What is the ideal monitoring environment?
Your monitoring environment is also important. Ideally, your walls are a neutral gray, lighting is neutral, on the dim side better than too bright, but not pitch black, with no glare on your monitor. That red wall might look cool to clients but your monitor will look turquoise in comparison so all your color grading will be off.

Here are some things to keep in mind when choosing how to monitor your work:

your monitor should have accurate brightness & contrast
Accurate brightness is important. Obviously, if your monitor is brighter than average, you’re going to color grade your show too dark. If your monitor is dark, your show will end up looking washed out.

Power Tip: Macs use a gamma of 1.8. This is a little brighter than the 2.2 gamma of Windows computers. If you want to see how your video might look on a Windows computer, under the Blue Apple menu, go to System Preferences > Displays, then click Calibrate. This’ll launch the Display Calibrator Assistant.

If you leave Expert Mode off for now, and click Continue, here you can switch back and forth between 1.8 and 2.2 gamma settings.

These two images approximate the two different gamma settings. Notice that highlights and blacks are the same. But midtones get darker, and very dark tones get crushed to black sooner at a 2.2 gamma. So, the midtones of your project will look a little darker on Windows computers, and a little brighter on Macs.

Power Tip: If your project will mostly be played on PCs, you’ll want to color grade shadow areas to appear a little light.

If we Go Back and turn Expert Mode on, then click Continue 6 times, we’ll get a continuous slider that can adjust gamma from 1.0 up to about 2.6. If your project will be watched on PCs and Macs, and looks good anywhere on the range from 1.8 to about 2.6 you’ve done an excellent job both shooting and lighting, and color grading!

your monitor should have accurate hue and saturation
Obvously, it’s important your monitor shows accurate hue and saturation, and is not shifting colors in any direction, or making colors look too vivid or too pastel.

For an example, if your monitor has a bluish tint you’ll be overcompensating and pulling the blues out of shots so that skies and oceans’ll have a drab, greyish look. We don’t want to do that!

your monitor should have white point set at 6500K
It has been agreed by many folks in lab coats that sunlight, at noon, on a perfect day, has a color temperature of around 6500 degrees Kelvin. So, 6500 Kelvin has been chosen as pure white in many standards- NTSC, PAL, High Definition television, DVDs, computer displays, web graphics, and digital cameras, just to name a few examples. So 6500, also called “D65″, is here to stay as the standard white reference point for displays.

If we go back to our Display Calibrator Assistant and click Continue, we’ll be on the “Select a target white point” page. You definitely want to work set to D65, but it’s a good idea to periodically check your work at color temperatures ranging from 5000, also called “D50″, sometimes used in photography or desktop publishing, all the way up to 9300, which is how pure white looked back in the day on old CRT TV sets.

How can I check my work at different white point settings?
Under the View menu, under Video Playback, choose “Digital Cinema Desktop Preview – Main” as the monitor destination.

Then, choose View > “External Video” > “All Frames”.

Now, you’re looking at a single frame at the standard D65 white point. You can press space bar to start and stop playback if you want.

Now switch back to the Display Calibrator Assistant and change the white point. Switch back to Final Cut and you’ll see how your picture might look on a warmish monitor or older TV.

How do I tell how accurate my computer monitor is in terms of color and contrast?
If you click through the first few screens of the Display Calibrator Assistant, you can just make an initial judgment about whether your monitor seems to be already calibrated fairly well, by just tweaking the controls a little to see if you can make an instant improvement.

If you try a quick test and it’s obvious you can improve the accuracy of your monitor from the current setting, then, I would recommend going through the whole calibration procedure so that the characteristics of your monitor match generally accepted norms. You’ll probably want to go through this procedure a few times, save all your custom profiles, then do some subsequent tests to choose the best one, so this’ll take a while- but if you’re using your computer monitor to judge you video image, and want your stuff to look great, it’s worth it!

BIG SECRET:
If your project will be watched on computers, the only way to see exactly what the final picture will look like is to encode it to the final format, whether that’s FLV, H.264, or whatever. But that test will take a long time!

So, to see how your final video will look on several computer screens, set an in and out point on your timeline just a couple frames apart, then export a test movie with the settings you’ll use for your final project. This will be quick because it’s only a few frames. Then drag the movie to a browser or iTunes.

Then, check out the frame with different gammas and white points. Using this as a reference, you’ll be able to make better decisions when color grading your project. For example, if your movie looks too dark at the higher gamma settings, you’ll want to grade it brighter.

If you’re a little intimidated by the variance in color and contrast, don’t worry- once you’ve gone through the rest of this course and become a color expert you’ll be surprised at how well your color-graded picture holds up on a wide variety of gamma values and white points.

Last Resort Tip: Remember that you can apply an overall correction to your whole project upon export or while encoding. So if you find your whole project is playing with, say, too soft contrast, you can do a final contrast tweak in a nested sequence or in Compressor or another encoding tool. This is a last resort, but could come in handy if you have to meet a deadline.

your monitor should display accurate motion
There are several temporal, meaning time-related, aspects of the video picture. It’s important to know if you’re seeing the field and frame rate, and motion blur of your picture the way your viewer will see it. We’ll look over several monitoring options and see which ones show motion accurately.

What is “pixel-for-pixel monitoring?
A video image is made of rows of dots called pixels. DV footage is 720 pixels wide by 480 pixels high. HDV footage is 1440 pixels wide by 1080 pixels high. When you are monitoring pixel-for-pixel, it means you are seeing one pixel on your monitor for every pixel in your footage. The image is not being scaled up, down, or stretched to correct the aspect ratio.

Pixel-for-pixel monitoring is not all that important for color correction, but it is very important for compositing, keying, motion graphics and other visual effects, so if you’re buying a monitor, consider that if you shoot greenscreen or do a lot of motion graphics or CG work.

Lingo
HD = High Definition (Hi Def)
SD = Standard Definition (Standard Def)

How do I calibrate a professional monitor?
There are many step-by-step instructions on the web.

Now, let’s review some monitoring options.

Monitoring option #1: Canvas Window
The Canvas Window is your monitor of last resort. It displays a low quality, “proxy” image of your timeline, and changes appearance in unpredictable ways based on many factors, like how your timeline is set up and what kind of clip is currently playing, or what filters are applied.

In other words, the Canvas is NOT a reliable monitor to watch while color grading.

The only good thing about the Canvas, other than coming free with Final Cut, is that you’ll sometimes get higher real-time effects performance when Final Cut is not having to send a video stream through Firewire. In demanding situations, like when you’re layering a lot of filters, or doing compositing or multicam work, there might be a time when you want to disable external monitoring for a bit to get maximum performance at certain times, but remember, you can’t accurately grade a show watching the Canvas Window.

Pros:
convenient, free
maximum performance of real-time effects

Cons:
inaccurate brightness/contrast/color/saturation
changes appearance depending on content
not pixel accurate
interlaced footage plays at the frame rate, not field rate (plays 60i as 30 fps, 50i as 25 fps)

Monitoring option #2: Digital Cinema Desktop Preview – Main Monitor
If you have a single computer monitor, under the View menu, under Video Playback, you can choose “Digital Cinema Desktop Preview – Main” as the monitor destination.

Then, to enable output to this device, choose View > External Video > All Frames, or just use the shortcut, Command F12. You can turn off Desktop Preview with command F12, or just hitting the escape key.

This option scales the picture up or down to the size of the monitor, so you won’t get a pixel-accurate view of your footage.

In terms of brightness, contrast, color and saturation, Digital Cinema Desktop Preview, which I’ll call Cinema Preview, will in most cases be more accurate than the Canvas Window, so if you don’t have an external monitor, you can check your work this way. But Cinema Preview is a a computer signal, not a true broadcast signal, and doesn’t show motion accurately. Interlaced footage plays at the frame rate, not the field rate, so 60i footage will look like 30p, 50i will look like 25p. Also, individual frames could blur over several frames, and, some larger graphics won’t display properly. So it’s not a great monitor, but, in a pinch, IF you can calibrate your computer monitor to be pretty accurate, you COULD get by with Cinema Preview, especially for less important projects.

Of course, you won’t be able to see Final Cut Pro while using Cinema Preview, but you can still shuttle with J, K and L, start and stop with the spacebar, and set in and out points.

Notes
scales the picture to monitor
brightness/contrast/color/saturation dependent on display accuracy

Pros:
convenient, free

Cons:
not pixel accurate
interlaced footage plays at the frame rate, not field rate (plays 60i as 30 fps, 50i as 25 fps)
individual frames could blur over several frames
reduces performance of real-time effects
some graphics not displayed properly
cannot see Final Cut Pro interface

Monitoring option #3: Digital Cinema Desktop Preview – Second Monitor
If you have two computer monitors, you have some additional Cinema Preview options.

The one called “Digital Cinema Desktop Preview – Full Screen” is just like the main one- but on a second monitor- it scales the video up or down to fill the screen. This could be a good client monitor option.

If your monitor is bigger than your footage, the one named simply “Digital Cinema Desktop Preview” is better than Full Screen because it won’t scale the picture up. So you’ll see almost a pixel for pixel view- except this option WILL adjust for aspect ratio, so, for HDV for example, it’ll stretch 1440 pixels to span 1920 monitor pixels.

If your monitor is smaller than your footage, it’ll be scaled down. If you don’t have a real monitor, this option is the best overall choice for color grading.

The option called “Digital Cinema Desktop Preview – Raw” is the most accurate- it’ll always show a pixel-for-pixel image without scaling or correcting for aspect ratio. If your monitor is big enough so that this image will fit, this is a great solution to see how your special effects, keying, or compositing work is coming out, since you’re seeing a pixel-accurate view. It’s fine for color grading too, but might look weird due to a non-corrected aspect ratio.

Now, some LCD and plasma TVs have digital connections, like DVI or HDMI, but if you’re driving them from Cinema Preview they’re acting as a second computer monitor- and not as a TV, so they’re not necessarily any more accurate than a computer monitor.

Notes
brightness/contrast/color/saturation dependent on display accuracy

Pros:
convenient, free
“Digital Cinema Desktop Preview – Raw” option is pixel accurate

Cons:
interlaced footage plays at the frame rate, not field rate (plays 60i as 30 fps, 50i as 25 fps)
individual frames could blur over several frames
some graphics not displayed properly

Monitoring option #4: Standard Definition Professional CRT Monitor
This is the typical professional standard def monitoring system used since the beginning of the DV age, and an excellent setup for color grading, whether you’re shooting SD or HD.

In this setup, a Firewire cable is connected from your computer to a DV or HDV camcorder, then an S-video cable from the output of the camcorder to a professional Standard Definition monitor.

Instead of a camcorder, you could also use a DV or HDV deck, or a dedicated box, but there’s rarely a good reason to spend extra money on this component, since translating digital to analog puts almost no wear on your camcorder at all.

Once the device is powered on, and set to VTR mode if a camcorder, under the View menu, refresh A/V devices, then choose Video Playback > Apple Firewire NTSC 720 by 480.

When playing video, Final Cut Pro will send a standard definition digital video signal through the Firewire cable that the camcorder will convert to analog and drive the monitor live from the timeline. DV footage has always worked this way, and starting with version 6, Final Cut Pro has the ability to downconvert HDV on the fly and send a DV compatible signal through Firewire.

When paused, Final Cut will send a single frame through Firewire, showing both fields at once if editing an interlaced format. This’ll cause still frames with motion to jitter, which looks weird and has caused some concern with new editors, but this jitter won’t be visible to your viewers, only to you in your studio on a paused frame. We’ll talk a lot about interlacing in just a little bit.

A professional CRT monitor has a blue only switch that routes the blue signal to all three guns, which is an essential part of the calibration process. There are some low end pro monitors that don’t have a blue only switch, but if you have the right controls you can still calibrate the monitor while looking through a pure blue lighting gel or a blue photographic filter.

Another benefit is that you can use this monitor on set for a safety monitor. Even if you’re shooting HD, a professional HD camcorder will output a standard def signal to a monitor like this, and it’s surely more accurate than your viewfinder!

The downside is, since the monitor is not Hi Def, it’s not as good for HD computer graphics, compositing or keying because you’re watching a downsampled, standard definition picture.

However, a combination of an SD monitor for color grading, and Digital Cinema Desktop Preview – Raw, for pixel accuracy, is a great and affordable monitor combination and strategy.

Pros:
once calibrated, accurate brightness/contrast/color/saturation
great for color grading, overall visual look
accurate interlacing, frame/field rate, motion blur
monitor can double as field monitor when shooting

Cons:
not HD, not optimum for HD computer graphics, special effects or keying
cost (several hundred dollars)

Monitoring option #5: Standard Definition CRT, LCD or Plasma television
In place of a professional monitor, you CAN use a small TV. It won’t save you much money over a pro SD monitor if you’re buying one, but usually the reason for this is that you happen to have an extra TV laying around. This setup is like using a professional monitor except for two things:

The first is that you probably will not be able to properly calibrate the TV due to a lack of controls, or maybe it seems like you have the controls but you just can’t get the display fully calibrated. No TV I’ve ever heard of has a blue-gun only switch, so you’ll need to do the blue gel or filter trick for the first part of the calibration process.

Warning: many TVs auto-adjust to the input signal
But the worst part is that many TVs have circuitry that automatically adjust brightness and contrast, and sometimes even saturation, depending on the S-Video input signal. This means if you use a TV for your color grading monitor, it might be fighting your adjustments- meaning if you darken your image a little, the TV might try and compensate by brightening the image up, so you’re not getting accurate visual feedback of the adjustments you’re making. That’s why TVs are generally not as good as professional studio monitors for color grading.

But they’re still better than the Canvas window!

Pros:
probably more accurate than a computer screen in brightness/contrast/color/saturation
many models adequate for color grading, overall visual look
accurate interlacing, frame/field rate, motion blur
TV can double as field monitor when shooting

Cons:
TVs auto-adjust to the input signal
not HD, not optimum for HD computer graphics, special effects or keying
Less real time effects when monitoring externally

Monitoring option #6: High Definition Professional CRT or LCD Monitor
The best option for monitoring HD is a professional, calibrated high definition studio monitor that can display native 720p, 1080i and 1080p up to 60 fields per second. Although they’ll keep coming down in price, pro HD monitors are still, very expensive. To drive a professional HD monitor, you’ll need a third party solution like a PCI card and cable or breakout box system from a company like BlackMagic Designs, Aja, or others which output an HD signal through component or HD-SDI connections to drive the monitor.

A Hi Def, professional CRT won’t have pixel-for-pixel monitoring, but will still give you an excellent idea of how your computer graphics will look in any output medium. Plus, if you can afford one of these surely you can afford a large LCD monitor for monitoring graphics.

The main drawback is the cost- today, high definition professional monitors cost thousands on the low end and tens of thousands on the high end.

Pros:
once calibrated, accurate brightness/contrast/color/saturation
great for color correction, overall visual look
accurate interlacing, frame/field rate, motion blur
monitor can double as field monitor when shooting

Cons:
CRTs are not a perfect display for computer graphics, but very good
cost (several thousand dollars on up)

Monitoring option #7: High Definition LCD or Plasma TV
This is the new age, affordable way to monitor an HD broadcast signal- by getting an inexpensive card with HDMI or analog component outputs which feed an HD LCD TV. The lines between flat panel TVs and computer monitors are being blurred more every day a display comes out with computer inputs like DVI and VGA, but also video inputs like component, HMDI, S-video and composite.

A component/HDMI card and the monitor, today, can be purchased for well under a thousand dollars.

Some of these LCD monitors, even the ones with video inputs, don’t auto-adjust like TVs, so if they can be properly calibrated, they make a very good solution for monitoring HD.

And, after all, your viewers are more likely to be watching on LCD or similar technology in the future, so it makes sense to grade your show so it looks its best on LCD.

And, they can be used on the set for a pixel-accurate field monitor.

Tip: In general, I prefer LCDs over plasmas because many plasma screens can’t resolve very dark shades of grey, and simply crush shadow areas to black. If your monitor crushes shadows, you might not see detail in shadow areas, like the boom mic dipping into a shot, but your viewers might! So make sure your monitor has good shadow detail.

Pros:
if properly calibrated, accurate brightness/contrast/color/saturation
great for color correction, overall visual look
accurate interlacing, frame/field rate, motion blur
monitor can double as field monitor when shooting

Cons:
cost

You’re shooting with your new HDV or HD camcorder, and the footage looks amazing! But are you really seeing the full picture?

Not unless you’re looking at a high definition monitor. But professional HD monitors are still expensive.

So, here’s an idea:

You can buy a LCD TV/computer monitor (the lines are being blurred more every day) that can be used for three different purposes:

1. While shooting, you can run component (like from the Canon XL H1 or XH A1) out of your camera into component input on the LCD to monitor what you’re shooting in full, pixel-for-pixel 1920 X 1080 glory. If your camera has HDMI, like the HV20, you can use the HDMI input.

2. While editing, you can use the Blackmagic Intensity or Intensity Pro card to output component or HDMI to the LCD for a pixel-for-pixel accurate view of 1080i HD while color correcting or creating effects.

3. And, when editing or doing other things, you can use the DVI input for a nice 1920 X 1080 or 1920 X 1200 computer display for extra screen real estate.

We just bought the BenQ FP241W 24″ LCD Monitor with these inputs:

Composite Video
Component Video
VGA
DVI-D
HDMI

Here is a very informative review of this monitor (by an actual user, not a writer!):

This Samsung monitor seems to have all the inputs of the BenQ except HDMI.

The Dell 2407WFP 24″ LCD Display also has the inputs of the BenQ except HDMI.

Click here to discuss HD monitors.

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 point than Color. The complaints all over the net are growing. Many people were not very happy with Final Touch when it was $5000 – $25000.

The acquisition people at Apple are in an enviable position in the industry, with a bankroll most of the rest of the industry put together could not match. I don’t think they paid much, my speculation is that Silicon Color became a little strapped and/or just didn’t have the resources to finish developing a completely stable and solid solution and made Apple an offer they couldn’t refuse. The marketing power of being able to say “A $25000 app- now included for free!” was too compelling to pass up.

Yet if I was in charge at Apple I probably wouldn’t have bought Color. I would have tried to divert or hire resources to rewrite and fix the obvious problems with the FCP color corrector- work in smooth, floating point, 10- or 12-bit color space; multiple instances with no quality loss; no color contamination of pure blacks or whites, and keyframeable, motion tracking, feathered Power Windows (vignettes) to restrict correction to a certain area. Okay, curves would be nice too. The new filter would need direct access to raw frames and be able to process and preview in new spaces outside the existing FCP filter image pipeline, so some major internal surgery would have been required- which I’m sure Apple was highly reluctant to do- they are still working on FXplug for heaven’s sake! It’s way easier to export/import media. My new proposed filter would also tap directly (bypassing FXplug) into Core Image and Core Video (OpenGL) with monitor-calibrated, full frame rate real-time preview, but accurately. While we’re wishing, I would also like it to make me breakfast and clean my house

I think Apple realizes they rushed this one out the door for NAB, so it’s obvious we’ll see major changes in Color in the coming months. Bug fixes, improvements- It might even get the interface makeover within the year.

Probably the easiest round-trip for now would be one where the editor can specify certain FCP tracks as “color correction tracks” and others not (and put titles, graphics and animations on the “not” tracks). Then FCP renders all color correction tracks out to a file on disk (stripping out transitions) to bring into Color as a long continuous media strip, but using an XML file to know where the cuts are to separate clips for individual color grading.

In the long run, for me to “buy into” using Color in most of my work, Apple has to find a way to integrate it with other filters so you can see the results of your work in conjunction with other processing you might be doing to the clips- especially keying/compositing, but other filters as well- so you can instantly enable/disable or tweak color grading and the other filters for a clip just like you can now.

In an ideal world color grading could be applied like a filter, like it is now with the FCP 3-Way, on a clip-for-clip basis, where any individual clip can be easily and independently (and repeatedly) tweaked, but also capable of using stored “looks”, so that when a look is altered, those render files would be deleted and the new look settings would propagate to all the clips with that look applied.

All that being said for a :30 or :60 I would definitely duplicate my timeline and hop right into Color today (I’m just not doing broadcast spots anymore).

But for longform projects I still think other color grading apps, strangely, have a market with professional FCP users.

That’s my first impression, in a month or two, with the 1.1 or 1.2 release, I might be changing my tune substantially, stay tuned!

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