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Articles By Ben Balser
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Ben Balser | This month I'll describe the round-trip procedures for moving active project files among the various applications in Final Cut Studio 3.
Ben Balser | This month I'll describe the round-trip procedures for moving active project files among the various applications in Final Cut Studio 3.
Ben Balser | This month we'll look at the four brand new speed controls in Final Cut Pro 7. Using these four resources together cam help you achieve complex speed changes and ramp them up quickly and easily.
Posted 08 Dec 2009
/ December 2009 Issue
By
Ben Balser
Ben Balser | This month we'll look at the four brand new speed controls in Final Cut Pro 7. Using these four resources together cam help you achieve complex speed changes and ramp them up quickly and easily.
Ben Balser | This month, I'll show you how to use Final Cut Pro's Replace Edit tool as well as demonstrate some cool tricks you can do with Replace Edit when you combine it with other handy tools that will help you change out and clean up your edits quickly.
Ben Balser | In this review, I'll compare Lock & Load, CoreMelt's new intelligent stabilization plug-in, to FCP's Smooth Cam and give you a good overview of what you can expect from it.
Ben Balser | This month, I'll show you how to use Final Cut Pro's Replace Edit tool as well as demonstrate some cool tricks you can do with Replace Edit when you combine it with other handy tools that will help you change out and clean up your edits quickly.
Posted 12 Nov 2009
/ November 2009 Issue
By
Ben Balser
Ben Balser | In this review, I'll compare Lock & Load, CoreMelt's new intelligent stabilization plug-in, to FCP's Smooth Cam and give you a good overview of what you can expect from it.
Ben Balser | Final Cut Studio 2009, the long-anticipated new release of Apple's eminent postproduction suite, delivers no major overhaul of anything, just a few little touches applied to most of the applications that can save you a ton of time during your postproduction process. Although none of the new features, taken by themselves, represent anything mind-blowing, together they make for a faster, easier workflow that will save you a lot of time.
Ben Balser | Final Cut Studio 2009, the long-anticipated new release of Apple's eminent postproduction suite, delivers no major overhaul of anything, just a few little touches applied to most of the applications that can save you a ton of time during your postproduction process. Although none of the new features, taken by themselves, represent anything mind-blowing, together they make for a faster, easier workflow that will save you a lot of time.
Posted 06 Oct 2009
/ October 2009 Issue
By
Ben Balser
Ben Balser | This month we'll look at professional, efficient editing workflow. I'll show a proven workflow in Final Cut Pro that will cut your editing time, make your editing easier, and help you get more refined edits, giving you a better product to deliver to your clients.
Posted 01 Sep 2009
/ September 2009 Issue
By
Ben Balser
Ben Balser | CoreMelt is definitely moving beyond the confines of the FxFactory model, and its new V2 generation of FCP plug-ins is amazing. I'm using them all now—not just the color correction tools but transitions, generators, etc.—and I'm really impressed. These guys are really on target and seem to be sticking to useful, practical plug-ins rather than just developing a bunch of fancy-looking stuff that has no real-world applicability.
Ben Balser | EditMule has three utility apps that work with FCP to make our lives as editors much easier, picking up the slack in three areas where FCP is lacking: assigning Scratch Disk settings on a per-project basis; collapsing Sequences to remove unnecessary tracks; and removing a specific filter, or filters, from a specific Sequence.
Posted 05 Jun 2009
/ June 2009 Issue
By
Ben Balser
Ben Balser | Here we explore Final Cut Pro's track controls, teaching readers how to quickly and easily manage tracks and content, cutting down on the time they spend placing content, and increasing the time they have to be creative.
Ben Balser | DVDxDV's Veescope line, which started with the Veescope Live software-based field monitor, now consists of four tools: Veescope Live, Veescope Hub, Veescope Key, and Veescope Signals. I have found all four of these software products to be worth the price, reliable, and high quality.
Posted 09 Apr 2009
/ April 2009 Issue
By
Ben Balser
Ben Balser | From capture to mixing, this article will give you the basic tools for managing how you work with soundtracks efficiently and easily.
Posted 05 Mar 2009
/ March 2009 Issue
By
Ben Balser
Ben Balser | This month we'll look at exporting your Final Cut Pro Sequence into an H.264 file for the internet. We'll take you through three methods of doing this that are not difficult, starting with the easiest first.
Posted 01 Jan 2009
/ January 2009 Issue
By
Ben Balser
Ben Balser | Several new features make the FS-5 a significant step forward from the popular FS-4: Smaller size, lighter weight, higher-definition color screen display, navigation wheel, simplified menu system, metadata input, wireless connectivity, and metadata templates. First, I'll go over the physical improvements; then, I'll spend some time discussing the metadata functions and the reasons they're important in today's broadcast and video industry.
Posted 26 Dec 2008
/ January 2009 Issue
By
Ben Balser
Ben Balser | Is Final Cut Server for everyone? In a nutshell, no. A one- or two-person shop would do better to manually create a folder structure on a hard drive and use Adobe Bridge to manage its assets. But for mid-size and larger studios, broadcast stations, and environments where you have multiple people doing different jobs on multiple projects, FCSvr can be a huge timesaver and organizer. It's powerful, flexible, and really nice for a version one release.
Posted 01 Oct 2008
/ October 2008 Issue
By
Ben Balser
Ben Balser | In constant speed time remapping, we have only two keyframes: one at the In Point and one at the Out Point of the clip. Both are "corner" keyframes, which means they are angles with no Bezier adjustment abilities. The whole clip moves at one "constant" speed—no changes, simple as that. Also, with constant speed changes, the duration of our clip in the Timeline window will change accordingly. With variable speed remapping, we can have many keyframes throughout the clip, and each can be a corner or a "smooth" keyframe.
Posted 01 Oct 2008
/ October 2008 Issue
By
Ben Balser
Ben Balser | In Part 1 of our two-part tutorial on Time Remapping--speeding up or slowing down a clip or a section of a clip--we'll look at Constant Speed Remapping and its mechanics in FCP so that you more fully understand why your results look the way they do.
Posted 01 Sep 2008
/ September 2008 Issue
By
Ben Balser
Ben Balser | In this installment of Cut Lines, we look at a growing trend among Final Cut users: utilizing Keynote--the iWork application designed for slideshow-model presentations--as a quick-and-easy motion graphics tool for creating DVD backgrounds.
Posted 01 Jul 2008
/ July 2008 Issue
By
Ben Balser
Posted 01 Jul 2008
By
Alan Naumann
,
Ben Balser
,
Chris Randall
,
Ed Wardyga
,
Jan Ozer
,
Joe McManus
,
Kris Malandruccolo
,
Lance Gray
,
Laura Moses
,
Lee Rickwood
,
Marc Franklin
,
Mark Von Lanken
,
Michael Y. Wong
,
Stephen Nathans-Kelly
,
Steve Yankee
,
Tim Siglin
Ben Balser | For those that produce multicamera live-switched events, the MCSDI-1 can boost you to uncompressed signals from lower-priced cameras, increasing your final product's quality, and decreasing your overhead. A clear winner for those that do this kind of work!
Posted 01 Jun 2008
/ June 2008 Issue
By
Ben Balser
Ben Balser | Apple's Compressor application has always been a workhorse for video compression and transcoding. In this edition of Cut Lines, we'll take a brief walk through Compressor 3 to see just how easy it is to prepare your video projects for delivery to multiple platforms.
Ben Balser | The new Color application included with Final Cut Studio 2 can greatly speed up and enhance your wedding video work. Here are four examples of ways you can use it.
In this video tutorial, EventDV Moving Picture columnist Jan Ozer explains how you can stabilize your video effectively and efficiently with proDAD Mercalli using a host of well-chosen presets and more.
Ben Balser | In Part 3 of our motion graphics crash course, we'll transform our 3D animated titles into DVD menus, add transitions, and complete the project we started with LiveType in Part 1 and Motion in Part 2.
Ben Balser | If you do corporate work, serious sports shooting, indie filmmaking, and the like, Panasonic's HPX500 is an awesome camera to use. Great color depth, detail, improved depth-of-field, and ease/flexibility of control, along with the wide flexibility of recording formats, make it very worth its price.
Ben Balser | This month I'll present part 1 of a 3-part tutorial showing you how to create very dynamic titles with Final Cut Studio 2. In part 1, we'll start by using LiveType, along with photos from your wedding or event video, to create dynamic introduction clips.
Ben Balser | Here we take a detailed look at Veescope Live, HD Monitor, and ScopeBox, three of the most practical video production software products on the market for the Mac platform. These software production field monitors serve the same purpose in the Mac arena as Adobe OnLocation.
Ben Balser | Final Cut Pro 6 is the most solid and stable major upgrade for an application I've ever seen. Here we look at enhancements and improvements in the new version of Apple's pro NLE, including the open-format timeline, surround sound, automatic conforming and scaling, the smoothcam filter, ProRes 422, and more.
Ben Balser | The dv MultiRigPro is a usable, well manufactured, intelligently designed support system built with top-quality materials. It's easy to configure and adaptable to a range of configurations and shooting styles, and will keep you comfortable and flexible through a long day of shooting. If you do a lot of handheld work or run-and-gun shooting, this is a product worth a serious look.
Ben Balser | Just because your system has the horsepower to edit HDV and your NLE can capture and manipulate HDV source files doesn't mean it will all work smoothly right out of the gate. One of the first things you'll have to do to work with HDV footage is decide whether you'll use an intermediate codec, or edit it natively, which can br tricky, for reasons we'll explore in this article.
Ben Balser | Need to balance or sweeten the audio for a multiclip video, using audio drawn from multiple sources? If you're working in Final Cut Studio, Soundtrack Pro's Multitrack interface is the answer, and here's your roundtrip tour.
Ben Balser | Here's a quick-and-dirty outline for typical HDV and DVC PRO-HD (P2) workflows in Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro, from HD capture to SD output to DVD authoring.
Ben Balser | Here's how you use the Stories feature in DVD Studio Pro to give your DVDs much more functionality with only a little more work.
Ben Balser | Here's a flexible, easy workflow between Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro that includes some neat tricks to save you time.
Ben Balser | The VX2000 and PD170 may be the kings of wedding videography, But for industrial and commercial work, they don’t hold a candle to the Panasonic HVX200, a “digital film” camera at a price that independent producers can afford. Adding a compatible, high-capacity DDR like the FS-100 offers even more versatility.
Ben Balser | Multiclip editing of long shoots like wedding ceremonies can be a stick problem. FCP's Multiclip editing interface is a fantastic and very easy-to-use tool, and it can dramatically reduce your editing time.
Ben Balser | Cinekinetic's CineSaddle is a super heavy-duty beanbag made for video/film cameras. It's a storage and support system in one that's got pockets for everything, and enables videographers to get shots they can't get with any other support device.
Ben Balser | This month in our ongoing series of Final Cut Pro tutorials we'll look at an example of a timesaving workflow for capturing wedding and event footage, and how to use this to set up a very flexible and powerful editing environment. As always, these methods can help you save time during the postproduction phase of work on your project.
Ben Balser | In this month's installment of our ongoing series of Final Cut Pro tutorials, we look at the four basic edit trim tools in FCP that, once mastered, can cut your editing time by a good amount.
Ben Balser | CUT LINES, a new monthly series of Final Cut Pro tutorials, will help you use FCP more efficiently. Occasionally we'll look at other applications that enhance the Final Cut workflow, but mostly we'll focus on FCP itself.
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