DC Metro Final Cut Pros

DCFCPUG members:

In the spirit of holiday giving, Peachpit would like to give us a unique opportunity to provide our members with high-quality FCP articles and video instruction from Richard Harrington and Robbie Carman’s critically acclaimed Peachpit book Video Made on a Mac: Production and Postproduction using Apple Final Cut Studio and Adobe Creative Suite absolutely FREE.

For six months, we will be posting high quality FREE training content from the recent Peachpit publication entitled: “Video Made on a Mac: Production and Postproduction using Apple Final Cut Studio and Adobe Creative Suite”. This book was written by two of our local FCP and Color experts: Richard Harrington and Robbie Carman!

Discounts available to our membership! Inquire, if interested! Awesome book as a Xmas present to your favorite FCP editor/colorist.

Stay tuned to this post, as more detailed information is provided and shared on DCFCPUG!

Complimentary FREE FrameAlign and BackFocus Test Pattern charts

Courtesy of DSClabs…

DCFCPUG members: We have established a relationship with Larry Jordan’s group to bring our members a great source of training on FCP and donor to our user group meetings!  Let’s show our support !

Sign up quickly as these limited seats go quickly! 

Take advantage of this once a year opportunity when Larry Jordan comes to Washington D.C for his Final Cut Pro PowerUP series. We’ve established a special discount for our DCFCPUG members to save you money on this great seminar. See below for details:

• Succeeding in the New World of Tapeless and HD Video (4 hours)
• Integrating Adobe Products into a Final Cut Workflow (4 hours)
• Discover the Hidden Power in Final Cut Studio (8 hours)

Here is the second Zoom In Online tutorial on roundtripping to Color. Once you’ve prepared the sequence in Final Cut Pro (see the first tutorial), this video will give you the basics on how to “Send” the sequence to Color, render your work, and send the graded clips back to FCP.

Thanks to Alexis Van Hurkman for his guidance, and to Nam Choi for the submission.

Integration is an Apple strength. Most Mac users understand the advantages of integration by virtue of the iLife Suite, which offers seemless export/import/transport of media between the various applications. Use pictures from iPhoto to create a slideshow in iMovie that is set to the beat of songs you mixed in GarageBand and that you exported to iTunes. Burn your masterpiece using iDVD or post it on your iWeb site. Integration.

Final Cut Pro users also have powerful integration capabilities in Final Cut Studio, via the “roundtripping” process. Roundtripping to and from Color involves: (1) cutting a sequence in Final Cut Pro; (2) preparing the sequence for export to Color; (3) sending to Color, where it is graded and rendered; and (4) exporting back to Final Cut Pro, where it will look better, brighter, darker, cooler, hotter, sparkling, desolate – whatever suits your needs.

The above video tutorial from our colleagues at Zoom In Online focuses on the 2nd step – preparing the sequence for export to Color.

Additional resources:

• Colorist Alexis Van Hurkman breaks down the color correction workflow here – be sure to click the “Prepping Your Sequence and Media” tab for details on this step.
• Apple’s Color user manual and Final Cut Pro user manual are both interspersed with guidance on how to properly round trip.

Editor’s notes:

• Worthy of emphasis - Always duplicate your sequence before doing any significant editing, such as roundtripping. It’s cheap and easy. Option-D does the trick.
• Added Tip – When you drag your clips down to the V1 track for consolidation, use the Shift key to ensure that you maintain the clip’s position in the timeline (i.e. to avoid tiny frame movements backwards or forwards).
• What I learned: I would have thought you should just strip out any Color Corrector 3-Way filters before sending to Color, both to avoid muddying up the sequence and because Color can do a more robust grading job than even the powerful CC 3-Way filter. According to the Zoom-In tutorial, if you leave the filter in place when you export, Color (roughly) translates the settings and makes them available on the clip during grading. Now I know.