DC Metro FCP UG

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Rodney – DCFCPUG Leader

Sorry to have these so close to each other but we were forced to not meet on 10 February due to SNOW.

Greeting to all:

I appreciate the sold out attendance to the February DCFCPUG meeting. For those that didn’t make it for whatever reason, you missed an awesome time with your peers and our national FCP expert – Larry Jordan.  For future meetings, be sure to sign up immediately when the event notices are sent out so you can make the high noon (12pm), day of the event cutoff for registration. While there is a WAITLIST capability, there is no guarantee that I will see it before showtime.

Sorry, if you were not able to come because you waited until the last minute to attempt to register….  The good news is there is a another meeting coming up SOON, so sign up, buy loads of raffle tickets to support the PUG and come on out and enjoy another chance to network and learn. So now, I am off my soapbox, we can move on to the highlights of the February meeting.  ;-)

For those that attended, leave us a comment or two on this site, so others can see you all do exists out there and so your voice can be heard and share with all our online users.

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February DCFCPUG Meeting Highlights:

Members arrived, signed in and enjoyed some pizza and drinks provided by our venue sponsor – Future Media Concepts (FMC). We thank them for their continued patronage of DCFCPUG. Members enjoyed networking time for the first half hour while I spent time prepping Mr. Larry Jordan on the agenda and activities for the evening.

He is the consummate gentleman, and was willing to add some demo time to the schedule as a bonus. We began the evening’s event with activities that DCFCPUG has involvement in projects that spanned from the latter part of 2009 through July 2010. See our posted agenda for details.

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Next up was Georgetown Post’s Isaiah Headen who gave us a presentation of  – The Truth in Upgrading — “Surviving Snow Leopard and Final Cut Studio upgrades”.

The crowd enjoyed his talk and as a bonus Larry Jordan gave his perspective on the “3 Truths” that Isaiah left us with during his talk. DCFCPUG Leader (Rodney Mitchell) got in on the act and  gave away two Snow Leopard books that helps our members get more educated on the new 64 bit MacOSX.

One of Larry’s major points was to know WHY you are upgrading. Just because Apple releases a new version doesn’t mean you have a NEED or pressing REQUIREMENT to upgrade.

Upgrade when its value- added to do so.  At the end of the edit day, if the upgrade isn’t going to make you money or help you make a deadline, resist the urge to upgrade, keep your sanity and maintain your working baseline.

See our previous post to find the past agenda and Isaiah’s brief.

Now on to more of our featured speaker: Larry Jordan!

Larry stated clearly to our members that he endorses the work we are doing at the DC Final Cut Pro Users Group (DCFCPUG) and its all starts here where people of like interests can get together, be informed, learn something new and perhaps get new opportunities to grow. It doesn’t hurt that you can win new useful tools for your edit work, either…
Thanks, Larry for the vote of confidence… it really means a lot to me and the hard work it takes to run a Pro Users Group.

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During the “Stump the Expert” Questions and Answers time, we asked a series of questions that had the members engaged in deep conversation with our featured speaker. It was a time for both the leadership to ask questions as well as our members in attendance. It was a very interactive session and I think we all enjoyed the information exchange.

Larry’s story is one that illustrates even when things don’t look as good as they could, just pick yourself up and keep moving forward. Networking with our peers can open new doors…

George K. of Magek Filmworks was illustrating one of Larry’s points during the discussions.

You know you have made an impact on people, when members quote you when discussing topics.

Larry wrapped up his talk with a demo and received a rousing applause for his support of DCFCPUG.

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Next : DC Final Cut Pro Winner’s Circle Raffle event:

This is where members buy lots of raffle tickets chances to win thousands of dollars worth of sponsor contributed software, hardware, plugins and free SWAG (stuff we all get…)

We had our first father and son team checking out the DCFCPUG. Greg and his son won the $500 Artbeats prize. I am sure he will put the HD footage to good use in his upcoming projects. Congrats guys!

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FMC class raffle

Our venue sponsor loves to get in on the action and has been generous to DCFCPUG in the form of donating a FMC class to the Winner’s Circle Raffle. This is worth thousands of dollars all by itself!

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DCFCPUG Winner’s Circle Raffle

We wrapped up the evening, raffling away thousands of dollars worth of fantastic sponsor donated prizes. The prizes ranged iPhone apps from new West Coast sponsors to After Effects plugins for 3D work. Lots of people were excited to win and I even gave out a few “random acts of kindness”… because I can…

Well, our time is up and its time to plan the next installments of DCFCPUG meetings!
We thank our sponsors, our featured guest and our DCFCPUG members for coming out and having a good time. I would also like to thanks my lovely wife, Roberta, for taking the pictures for the event.

And as Larry Jordan says:

What is the one thing creative people do badly? Get out and meet new people and share their knowledge…

All the best and edit the rest…
Rodney Mitchell
DC Final Cut Pro User Group Leader
Apple Ambassador for DCFCPUG

LiveType – Invisible by Default

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By default, LiveType makes its backgrounds invisible. Here’s how to change this.

By default, LiveType backgrounds are invisible. This means that when you build a text animation in LiveType, anything placed on the Timeline below the heavy gray line will not export or render in Final Cut — though it will be visible within LiveType.

This “visible but not visible” thing is enough to drive you nuts!

Here’s where you control it:

• Go to Edit > Project Properties
• Look down to find the Background section. When Render Background is NOT checked, everything below the heavy gray line will not export or display when the LiveType project is rendered in Final Cut Pro.
• When Render Background IS checked, everything below the heavy gray line will export and render in a Final Cut Pro project.

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Courtesy of Larry Jordan