DC Metro Final Cut Pros

Register for the PUG event next week.

We have a growing list of sponsors contributing to the famous DC Winner’s Circle raffle… Visit them at our Sponsors Corner … Its a win-win scenario for all!

Sponsor Lineup
• GenArts
• Artbeats
• Digieffects
• Telestream
• Noise Industries
• Red Giant
• Automatic Duck

More are in the pipeline…

You need to be present to win and being a winner at the DC FCP UG is a monthly occurrence!

Rod – DCFCPUG Leader

Compressor – Making Compressor Multiprocessor Aware

update

By default, Compressor doesn’t use all your processors when compressing. To speed it up, you need to configure Apple Qmaster in System Preferences.

Use System Preferences to create a Virtual Cluster and set the number of instances equal to 50% of your processors – if you have four processors, set the number of instances to 2.

Then, when you submit files you select Virtual Cluster, and not “This Computer.”

This screen shot shows where to configure the Virtual Cluster – however the numbers in your pull-down menu will vary depending upon how many processors you have in your system.

After that, it’s automatic.

Final Cut Pro – A Fast Way to Remove Filters

update

Select all the clips to which you want to remove the filter.

Select Edit > Remove attributes and check Filters. This removes ALL the filters from the selected clip(s). However, you can’t remove an individual filter when more than one filter is assigned to a clip, or clips.

BUT… if all clips have the same set of filters, you can remove one filter and keep the others this way:

• First remove the filter from one of the clips by deleting it.
• Then highlight the clip and choose COPY from the edit menu.
• Highlight all the clips in the timeline and then choose REMOVE ATTRIBUTES and check the Filters box.
• Then, choose PASTE ATTRIBUTES (or press Option V). Check the Filters box and you’re done.
• Again this only works if the Filters are the same throughout the timeline.

Motion – Sharing Motion Projects

update

Matt Davis reminded me of this.

When moving a Motion project between computers, you can’t simply move the Motion project as it won’t contain any movies, images, or sounds that you’ve added to the project.

So, to move a Motion project to another machine, choose File > Save As, enter your desired name and change the pop-up menu: Collect Media. Usually set to “Off”, in this case ensure it’s set to Copy to Folder.

Motion will tell you how much space the assets will take up, and place them in a subfolder labeled Media in the same location as your Motion project.

This may be quite a large folder!

However, with this folder on the client’s system, all you need to do is to email the Motion project to them so they can review further work on your version of the project. By using the same folder on both systems, the Motion’s links to the media will be maintained.

Don’t forget to also send any new or replacement media to the client with instructions to place it in their Media folder.

Motion will tell you how much space the assets will take up, and place them in a subfolder labeled ‘Media’ in the same location as your Motion project.

As a note, Motion sometimes has problems sending custom font information using this process.

APPLE USER GROUP  RESOURCE LINK

The DC Metro Final Cut Pro User Group (DCFCPUG) is in the midst of hard work and excitement these days with three DCFCPUG members on the crew of a feature film being shot in Northern Virginia through July of 2010. Leader Rodney Mitchell posts this commentary on the group’s web site:

“What an exhausting first week on the set of the feature film: “At the Top of the Pyramid”. Learning a lot about the business of making a feature film. So many departments, each with a specific function. The Video Village function is truly the nerve center for critical viewing of each composition, framing and lighting of what is going on the set.  Where scene to scene decisions are made.  Makes for interesting quality time with the executive staff…”

Congrats to the members of DCFCPUG and warm wishes for many films to come.

FYI: I forgot to post the link in the UPCOMING events section of the website….but now its fixed.

Sorry for the inconvenience!

Rod

Behind the Scenes on Lucasfilm’s Red Tails with the Canon DSLRs from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

For those that participated on the crew of the feature film – “At the Top of the Pyramid”, the pace and set sounds in the video will bring back memories… The cameras they  used were the Canon 5DmkII, the modified for PL mount lenses, Canon  7D from Hot Rod Cameras and the Canon 1DmkIV.

Excerpt from the article:

The major issue we had with the Canons was the monitoring issue. These cameras are still cameras first and foremost and that causes many issues, one of the biggest is they all use a mini HDMI as it primary video out, which also causes the camera LCD to shut off.  We experimented with using powered HDMI splitters to feed both the Marshall monitors for my focus puller and myself but also for video village. This was not very successful at all for our purposes. For a small crew using the excellent Jag35 splitter we used would have been fine but we had to go a different more pro route. So what we ended up doing was using a Blackmagic HDMI to HD-SDI convertor. This required different monitors as our Marshalls were HDMI only but it did mean it slipped into the video village feed so much easier than before.

This I have to say is essential in any serious production. Dump the HDMI and go HD-SDI, HDMI is a not a pro connection systems and suffers because of it. It just is not robust enough. The big issue we had with the 5DmkII (the 7D and 1DmkiV were unaffected) was that when you hit record then the image drops from 1080i to 480p making using the monitor for focus a major issue and also caused about a 7 second black image for the director in video village. Not great. The new firmware for the 5DmkII has not rectified this issue.

I have to agree with Phillip as we found on the set of “At the Top of the Pyramid”, HD-SDI was the way to go for the video village setup.

Video Village for the LucasFilm – RED TAILS project!

LucasFilm - Red Tails feature film: Video Village

Enjoy Phillip Bloom’s experiences on the set of RED TAILS.
Full story on Phillip’s site…