UPDATE 6/2/10:

GRAND PRIZE in our DC Winner’s Circle raffle is an iPod Touch!!

Raffle prizes up to $4,800 so far! Don’t wait, sign up today to attend!!

The Latest Digital Entertainment Creation Solutions for Film and Television

In order to make the most of our June DCFCPUG event, members should make time between now and 8 June to prepare questions for the featured presenters after learning more about the Autodesk Smoke capabilities and features.

IMPORTANT: Please INVITE your friends and colleagues to attend the meeting in JUNE!  There is considerable expense in bringing quality event to DC so let’s show our vendors/sponsors that it is worth the effort!

Don’t forget to check out the Essential Tutorials for Smoke...this will give you a up close and personal look at the User Interface. Read the articles from Issue 4, starting on page 257 of the SuperMagazine to hear a point of view from a FCP/Avid Editor on Smoke 2010 and the new version, 2011.

This post is written to provide some helpful links to aid in your learning and exploring of this high end finishing tool.

High-Quality Commercial Post Production Software

Autodesk® Smoke® 2011 software offers a timeline-based, all-in-one creative toolset for editorial finishing that spans color correction, keying, tracking, paint, cleanup, titling and 3D visual effects. Smoke 2011 won “Best of Show” at NAB this year (2010)!

Autodesk® Smoke® software is a leader in creative editorial finishing for high-quality commercial and broadcast projects. With an intuitive, timeline-based workflow, Smoke offers an all-in-one editorial finishing toolset for standard and stereoscopic 3D work.Smoke is available as a software-only application for the Apple® Mac OS® X operating system or as Autodesk® Smoke® Advanced, a turnkey solution on the Linux® operating system. For increased productivity, integrate Smoke into your workflow and share media and timelines with Autodesk® Flame® 2011 and Autodesk® Lustre® 2011 software. Learn More About Smoke on the Mac

• Creative toolset for NLE, color correction, paint, cleanup, titling, audio, 3D compositing, and finishing.
• 3D visual effects tools within Action, a 3D compositing environment that enables you to combine lights, 3D text, geometry, and a 3D camera system.
• Keying and color correction tools use Autodesk Modular Keyer, Master Keyer, and Colour Warper™ technologies.
• Adjacent workflow with EDL, AAF, and XML file support for conforming from Final Cut Pro® or Media Composer® creative cut applications.
• Timeline and visual effects tools for finishing standard and stereoscopic 3D projects.
• Native support for industry standard formats: Panasonic® P2 MXF files, Sony XDCam, Avid DNxHD® media, Apple® QuickTime® files (ProRes on the Mac® operating system), and RED® files.

For an overview of Autodesk Smoke, view the Essentials Tutorials.

• Brochure
• What’s New Brochure
• Top Reasons to Buy Autodesk Smoke
• Release 2011 Smoke – ON DEMAND videos from 2010 NAB show
• Video discussing the new features in Smoke 2011 on the Mac – “Grant Kay interview”

Smoke on the Mac brought to you by Oceana Digital Ltd NYC

We had a member refer a problem to us to see if we could help solve the problem.

Here is the issue:
Paulette,
There is a FCP usergroup that helped others for all kinds of FCP
issues. Give them a shout. I’ve copied Rodney the main group leader
just in case he is familiar with the issue or knows someone who could
help.
Here is their URL: http://www.dcfcpug.org/
Good Luck
Char

On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 2:57 AM, paulette moore wrote:
I’m having a strange Final Cut Pro problem. 3 tapes – all will play in the
deck monitor. When I try to digitize – none appear in the preview monitor
of Final Cut – yet I see time code in the preview monitor.

I tried changing out firewire, decks, computers. no luck. Other tapes (not
shot on same camera) DO play and CAN be digitized. Changed the deck settings
to hdv, then back to dv. Still no luck

When I try to digitize straight from the camera – FC does not recognize the
camera. This is not my system. It seems like a tape issue? Camera settings?
Any thoughts? the tapes were shot on a sony v1u.
Thanks for your feedback.

–
Paulette Moore
StoryDoula Blog: http://storydoula.wordpress.com/
www.paulettefilms.com
Skype: paulettefilms

Thanks to our members and invited guests for a record turnout last night!

For those that missed our meeting last night, you missed a treat!

Manny from AJA gave us a thorough overview of the AJA product line.  We had real product in the room for members and non-members to see, touch and feel.  After an awesome demo of the KiPro and its exoskeleton mounting gear, we watched a showreel of footage in which AJA products were featured.

KiPro components and other relevant AJA products were passed around the room which stimulated lots of good dialog between AJA and our audience.  We had a robust Question and Answer period for FCP and the intersection of AJA gear which could have gone on for hours….

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Attendance was in record numbers for a cold Tuesday night in DC and our venue sponsor outdid themselves from 2009 by providing refreshments and food (lots of awesome Pizza). Thanks Future Media Concepts (FMC)!

As a special SURPRISE bonus for the January meeting, FMC gave away a FREE FMC FCP course to a lucky attendee. We conducted our famous WINNER’S CIRCLE raffle in which nearly $2,000 worth of valuable sponsor items were raffled off.

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Congrats to our winners from last night. I’m sure you will put those tools to work in your next creative piece.  Start prepping your best works as we will begin to showcase our member’s works soon.

Since the meeting is all about members networking and learning, I deferred the DCFCPUG status to our next meeting in February (just a couple of weeks away – 10 Feb) and since you have the agenda posted, you can think about questions for the next meeting since our invited guest is the famous, yet humble LARRY JORDAN – FCP EXPERT extraordinaire!

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SEND ME YOUR “STUMP THE EXPERT” QUESTIONS NOW!  As a courtesy, I will provide those to Larry before the meeting so he can be best prepared to get you answer during our meeting timeframe.  For the full FCP immersion, take his very reasonably priced course during the day (see prior post on this subject). SIGN UP NOW as we have an additional discount for DCFCPUG members. Email me for details, if interested.

Yeah, next time, you should sign up EARLY and attend because you never know what might happen at a DCFCPUG meeting!

Again, I would like to thank our NEW and returning members for coming out last night, our venue and corporate sponsors for outstanding support and Manny for our “business meeting” at the Sushi house afterwards.  ;-)

I’ll have the meeting details up for the February meeting soon so check back often and don’t forget to tell your friends and colleagues to REGISTER FOR FREE MEMBERSHIP, AND sign up EARLY for EVENTS which helps us forecast resources (chairs, food, drinks, etc)

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P.S: New sponsors are signing up to support us (I’ll announce those new sponsors in a separate post shortly….)

Well, gotta go do real work now…

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All the best and edit the rest!

Rodney Mitchell
President, FCP Leader and Apple Ambassador
Washington DC Metro Final Cut Pro Users Group

http://www.dcfcpug.org

email: rodney<at>dcfcpug.org

Oceana Digital from NYC is interested in coming to visit the DCFCPUG.

Meeting with them on 19th January.

What would you want to see demonstrated at a future meeting ?

Leave a comment and give me your thoughts?

Rodney – DCFCPUG

The site is back in production mode. Thank you for your patience while I took the opportunity to do a little housekeeping for the 2010 season.

DCFCPUG Admin

As the holidays approaches, I’ve been busy working to refresh the look and feel of the DCFCPUG website, cleaning up some of the legacy artifacts from the previous developer, and strengthening the site security posture by performing maintenance upgrades, patches, and upgrading where possible supporting applications, etc.

The following function(s) will be a candidate for retirement at the end of 2009: bbPress – forums for DCFCPUG. The developers for this plugin need to upgrade the code to be more competitive with features users are looking for in this type of product. While they contemplate their future and development effort, we will experiment with another forum plugin on our new development internal site before any release on the production server.

After the primary site upgrades are complete and stable, I will research and install, if applicable, a supported and maintained “bbPress like” forum function and try to revive this feature. If no one really uses it, then the service will be removed, permanently. I was successful in getting it operational in the current release of WP (2.9) so keep using it and give me some feedback if this capability is working for you.

Starting 15 December – 18 December 2009, the DCFCPUG.ORG site will begin to undergo major upgrades and may require our users to re-register with the site upon completion of the upgrades. All of these changes are necessary to prepare the site for our 2010 program. UPDATE: The upgrades were a success and no re-registration is required. I am turning on the NEW LOOK of the website this morning

I hope you like the new and improved look!

There are a lot of changes coming in 2010… I’ll save the best for last….

Stay tuned for the exciting news coming in a few weeks……

Happy Holidays to all!

Rodney
DCFCPUG

December 1 – 3, 2009
Walter E Washington Convention Center

I want to thank all the members who responded to the request for support of the GVExpo Digital Production BuZZ. This is THE OFFICIAL PODCAST for the GVExpo. The selected DCFCPUG members will be supporting Larry Jordan and his team in his BOOTH at the Expo while getting paid to support! A Win-Win Scenario for all…


GV Expo is being held at the Walter E Washington Convention Center on December 1st to 3rd.


Good Luck and don’t forget to mention DC Final Cut Pro User Group during the event!!!

Larry Jordan is scheduled to be at our FEBRUARY 2010 User Group Meeting so start thinking of those hard to solve problems to ask the expert… See if you can stomp the Expert….

Rodney – DCFCPUG