Adobe Programs Explained

Ever wondered what each tool in Creative Suite does? Here's a great summary.

How to build a Thunderbolt Hackintosh

A guide to building a faster Mac Pro with Thunderbolt for half the price.

Smoke ConnectFX: Damage and Deform Nodes

Great overview of two useful nodes in Smoke 2013.

DNG 1.4 Specification Notes

This is an overview of changes in the new DNG specification. DNG is an open alternative to proprietary raw still image formats such as Canon CR2 and Adobe offers a free DNG converter.

Performance Enhancing Visual Effects Techniques

List of various VFX techniques to enhance an actor's performance or improve story clarity. I seem to do #7 a lot, often having to add establishing shots or remove entire characters from the movie.

What could the new Mac Pro look like?

I'm not convinced Apple will go for a modular Mac Pro design (and the jury's still out on whether the Mac Pro will ever be updated) but it's an interesting and well-designed proposal regardless.

How to color correct a horror film

I love this idea: Patrick Inhofer introduces his first Grade-Along project.

CS6 Gripes / CS6.5 wish list

Well thought-out list of Premiere feature requests from an FCP switcher.

An Exciting Post About File Management

Interesting discussion about project management (be sure to read the comments). Post Haste seems to be commonly used.

Pretending to be pro: Pro Amp

Dennis Couzin analyzes the Proc Amp filter in FCP 7 against the output a real Proc Amp should produce.

Autodesk Smoke 2013 Pre-Release 4

Smoke PR4 is out with several new features, including many UI changes.

Telestream releases Flip4Mac 3.0

Improved support for OS X 10.8 and AV Foundation, and also ships with a new standalone video player.

The Return of the Save As Command

This is good but you still need to hold down the Option key to access it. It's an example of Apple's constant efforts to simplify everything actually making things more complicated.

EQ Settings Guide

Very useful list of frequencies you can equalize to remove or enhance certain elements of the sound.

What are secondary storylines in FCPX and how do you use them?

Macbreak Studio provides a great overview of this useful Final Cut Pro X feature.

Making the switch: Mac to PC

David Bourne on his reasons for switching to a PC.

DaVinci Resolve: Which GPU provides the best acceleration on the Mac Pro?

Radeon GPUs seem to perform poorly with Davinci Resolve when compared with NVIDIA cards.

Demystifying the After Effects CS6 Performance Cache

Overview of the new caching system in CS6 that aims to improve performance.

Little fix to make using Premiere CS6 a little bit better

A set of smaller cursor icons for Premiere Pro CS6 to fix the problem where cursors appear large when zoomed in. Note that you'll probably need to re-add them whenever you install a new Premiere Pro update.

Kicking the Tires on Avid Media Composer 6.5
Scott Simmons tests and summarizes the main new features of Media Composer 6.5.

Adobe Get Nearer to a Bigger Slice of the Apple
Adobe seems to have capitalized very well on Apple's missteps. They say they have seen 40-45% annual growth on the Mac and 20% across all platforms.

Sorenson Announces Squeeze Premium
Squeeze Premium is a Windows-based encoding solution designed for a server environment but without some of the advanced features of the Server edition.

Dynamic Link: After Effects & Premiere Pro
Premium Beat has a great tutorial with the basics on Dynamic Linking between AE and Premiere. See also our Dynamic Link troubleshooting article.

Our various gamma filters
Detailed description of the differences between the gamma filters in FCP 7 and Compressor.

H.264: How would you like that wrapped?

Interesting discussion about MP4 vs MOV containers. We recommend MOV for the reasons mentioned in the article and also the fact that it supports timecode tracks.

Why We're Switching from Macs

Freddie Wong details why his company is switching from Mac to PC. He makes some good points and it's the same reason why we're developing for both Mac and Windows now.

Adobe Premiere Pro Plug-In for ARRI RAW

Adobe has released a beta Premiere Pro plugin for ARRI RAW files.

File Naming for Video Editors, Designers and Photographers

Premium Beat provides lots of useful tips for file naming. Our free Post Haste tool is useful at enforcing naming conventions.

EPIC-M Monochrome

RED has introduced a $42k black and white camera. It will be interesting to see how well it sells.

Round Trip between Avid Media Composer and Davinci Resolve

Video tutorial showing how to roundtrip between Media Composer and Resolve. The comments are worth reading too.

Avid AMA Best Practices
This has been a hugely popular post so check it out if you haven't seen it yet.

Anatomy of an iMac Suite
Walter Biscardi details how he built a Premiere Pro iMac editing suite with Small Tree shared storage.

When to use and when not to use Fixed Resolution in Motion 5
Interesting discussion about Motion 5's Fixed Resolution option for imported objects.

Twenty Premiere Pro CS6 Power Tips for FCP Editors
More useful Premiere Pro information from Clay Asbury.

SpeedGrade 6.0.3 Update
Adobe has released a SpeedGrade update with Retina support and various bug fixes.

Smoke 2013 Pre-Release 3
Autodesk has released a new pre-release of Smoke with a big overhaul to the conform workflow.

5 After Effects Tips and Tricks for Video Editors
Excellent tips for navigating in After Effects.

Exporting Low Res QT from Avid…Fast
Great tip from Shane Ross for quickly exporting low-res QTs in near-realtime with timecode burn-in. Also check out the comments for additional tips.

In Search of the NLE or How I Love the Search Tool
Strypes reveals the reasons he misses FCP 7's search tool.

5 Reasons to Use Resolve
Clay Asbury gives his main reasons for using DaVinci Resolve instead of grading within your NLE.

WaveTap snags audio on your Mac with a keyboard shortcut
WavTap is a free open source application for recording audio with a keyboard shortcut.

Sony Sound Forge Pro coming soon to the Mac
Sony's great Windows audio software is now coming to the Mac.

Dongles vs software activation
Arguments for and against using dongles in Avid Media Composer.

Closing Multiple Gaps in a Premiere Pro Timeline
Lots of steps but a nifty trick if you've got many gaps to close.

Why it Pays to Submit to Hackers
Behavioral economists analyze why most people don't backup or choose strong passwords.

Camera shutter speed synchronized with helicopter blade frequency [video]
This is apparently what happens when you shoot a helicopter with a fast enough shutter speed.

Here are some of the interesting post production articles we found over the last week.

New MPEG standard cuts video bandwidth requirements in half

MPEG has released a draft of its new H.265 encoding video standard. The new standard requires half the bandwidth of the existing H.264 standard so you have the choice of halving bandwidth for the same visual quality or increasing visual quality while keeping bandwidth the same. This is especially useful for 3D TV.

The Smoke Learning Channel now on iTunes

Autodesk has released a new podcast on iTunes for learning more about Smoke 2013.

Anatomy of a Grade - Node by Node Breakdown

Interesting breakdown of a bleach bypass look in DaVinci Resolve 9.

Is there a way to do 'precision dragging' a la FCP?

Interesting discussion about the lack of 'precision dragging' in Adobe Premiere and various workarounds.

Arri Alexa - Legal vs Extended

Very detailed description of how the Arri Alexa handles color and how to work with it in post.

ProRes Faceoff

Interesting comparison between ProRes LT and HQ. I've found LT looks great by itself but when you place it side-by-side with a higher quality flavor of ProRes (4444 in my case) the difference is definitely noticeable to the human eye.

Working with multicam in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6

Scott Simmons gives a detailed tutorial on working with multicam in Adobe Premiere.

This is the Job

Director Joe Carnahan reveals his Daredevil concept trailer.

50i-to-50p (or 60i-to-60p) double deinterlacing
Interesting workflow for deinterlacing in FCP 7. Instead of FCP's default method of choosing the 1st, 3rd, 5th, etc fields, it allows you to force the 2nd, 4th, 6th.

Tools Spotlight Interview: Digital Rebellion
I gave an interview with Splice Vine about Digital Rebellion and our new cross-platform strategy.

Adobe promotional pricing about to end
The $29.99/month introductory offer for Adobe Creative Cloud expires at the end of this month.

Making Lion and Mountain Lion more like Snow Leopard
This article details many of the options in OS X 10.7 and 10.8 for restoring 10.6 functionality.

Put colorful Finder icons back in Mountain Lion
Here's how to get rid of the grayscale icons in Lion and Mountain Lion.

Random tweets from Edit Fest LA 2012
Scott Simmons summarizes some of the more interesting aspects of Edit Fest LA.

What's the best way to count clips in my bin?
Lots of different ways of counting clips in an Avid bin.

Here are some interesting articles we discovered over the past week.

Final Cut Pro X and Mountain Lion – now that’s interesting!
Philip Hodgetts tests out Mountain Lion's new dictation feature with FCPX.

Avid Mountain Lion test thread
Avid have provided an official thread for people to discuss issues with OS X 10.8.

Make your sound editor love you
Best practices for recording sound.

Six, (er) Seven New Features in Resolve 9
Alexis van Hurkman summarizes his favorite new features of Resolve 9.

Animate Chapman
Adobe is holding a competition to animate old Monty Python sketches for a new film about Graham Chapman.

Switching to Premiere Pro: Days 2-5: A Few Problems in Premiere
More on Michael Murie's switch to Premiere.

Free legal documents for freelancers
Docracy is a resource for boilerplate legal documents.

Installing QuickTime Player 7
How to install QuickTime Player 7 on Mountain Lion.

Mountain Lion bugs: Chopped battery life and nonsensical 'Save As' behavior
I really don't understand why providing a proper Save As function is so difficult for Apple.

Stability - At Last
Andy Jenkins details how he managed to get Premiere Pro CS 6 running smoothly.

Hacked iCloud password leads to nightmare
A horror story about what can happen if someone gains access to your iCloud account. It later turned out that the hacker had convinced Apple Support to allow him to reset the password.