October Blogwad

"3D Objects from Photoshop in After Effects CS4"
Adobe CS4 is shipping. The thing that most interested me is you can have 3D objects in After Effects. There are a number of limitations on this. This little video shows you the basic of working with 3D objects and discusses the limitations in After Effects (the biggest for me is objects don't respond to lighting in After Effects.) More new features described here.

"Top 10 things you didn't know about the new MacBook"
New MacBook and MacBook Pro's were announced. Each model lost a Firewire 400 port. That leaves the MBP with one FW800 port, but the MacBook with no Firewire port and no way to add it. Some good things about the new laptops too (besides looking really slick.)

"Final Cut Pro: Free plugins to make all fonts available"
Why by version of 6, Apple still hasn't fixed this I don't know. But here's a text plug-in that is supposed to let you use all of your fonts in FCP.

"Final Cut Pro: My free Closing Credits plugin"
From the same guy who made the type plug-in above. The cool thing about this is that it lets you control the lines per second speed of your scroll. I basically almost always use one speed for credit rolls--120 lines pers second. (To know why read from Adam Wilt here). I do keyframe animation of Title 3D to do this, but it's a pain. This plug-in is an easier way to get the speed right, but you lose all the nice type editing features of Boris 3D.

"Build your own affordable SAN -- that works!"
Remember my crazy idea to use Jonathan's computer to build a SAN. This is where I got the idea. I'd still like to do it, but nobody wanted to give me $3K to play around with this, instead of letting editors use the computer.

"What to do if you lose your Pro App serial number"
Title says it all.

"Final Cut Pro Audio Filter Guide Part 1"
"Final Cut Pro Audio Filter Guide Part 2"
Bone up on FCP's audio filters with these helpful articles. Basically they describe what the various sliders do for the filters. However, if you're like me and not an audio person and you don't know what you are doing, then you will probably make your audio sound worse by playing around with filters. On the other hand, I learned the little I know about audio mainly by playing around with filters.

My current favorite filter is Soundtrack Pro's limiter. It works much better than the limiter in FCP. But it's a pain to export to Soundtrack Pro and reimport. It really makes sure that your peaks aren't out of control and cuts off all sounds at a consistent level without distorting it. I usually set it to -10 limit with a +10 boost.

"Another electronic slate for the iPhone"
"Finally a few timecode calculators for the iPhone"
Rejoice iPhone owners (and iPod Touch owners.) Video-centric apps for your iPhone.

"Anything Worth Backing Up…"
Good thoughts on backup strategies and technologies.

"All About Video Fields"
For extra credit, read this long, tech-y article on fields. Written from the perspective of a software engineer, but all the issues come up for video editors too.

iPod as Control Interface

This is a cool demonstration of beta software that uses the touchscreen of an iPhone or iPod touch to control ProTools. Who knows, maybe someday you'll be mixing your audio on your phone or audio player? More info over at FreshDV

Random Thoughts on New iPod Lineup

Go to Apple if you want the basics on the new iPod lineup and to oggle the goods. Here's some reactions that I've had to the new gear.

I'm glad that the new iPod Touch has WiFi. I'd like to see Apple do more with it. Granted, the Safari mobile browser is awesome and trumps any other lame WiFi application that any other portable media player has tried. I was hoping for live MP3 streams, i.e., internet radio over WiFi. Too much of a battery drain, maybe? I've heard a complaint about how quickly WiFi drains the iPhone battery.

Also I was hoping for podcast downloading over WiFi. For me, I try to download Democracy Now every morning before I go into work, but sometimes they're late or, or even more rare, I leave early. If I could download over WiFi then I could get the podcast at work and still listen to the news on the way home.

The only thing that can be downloaded on the iPod Touch over WiFi is music through the Store--which means that except for one song a week, you gotta pay. Instead of working on their partnership with Starbuck's, I wish Apple was opening up downloads of free podcasts.

iPod Touch has the same YouTube application that the iPhone has. I played around with YouTube on an iPhone at the Apple Store. I found Mosaic on it, but the interface was too tiny for me to figure out which date it was. Also WiFi doesn't seem as good a platform for spending downtime browsing the web or YouTube as high-speed cellular is--if you are in an area with WiFi then mostly likely you can get on a computer. I had my hopes for city-wide WiFi in San Francisco, but that's collapsed now after EarthLink pulled out. It sounds like the Starbuck's deal only allows you to browse the iTunes Store, not the web or YouTube.

I guess it's too much to ask to be able to be able to share songs with other iPod's and computers over WiFi--the record labels would freak out about that. "Hey buddy have you heard this song? No? Well then I'll just zap it to you over WiFi!" I hope someone comes up with a hack to do that. Even better, transfers from an iPod to your friend's computer--"Hey buddy, can I get all of the music in your iPod?" (Although with a sync cable and software, you can already do that without WiFi.) I'm guessing that the iPod Touch runs on OS X, like the iPhone. Seems like there's already a big group of folks hacking into the iPhone, and I hope to see some similar work done on the iPod Touch.

I also really want to see Flash on the iPhone, iPod Touch. Apple shows the New York Times homepage on their demo--oh, ignore the blank spot in the lower-left corner please. That's just where The NYT streams Flash videos. What's the holdup? Is Flash video too processer-intensive? Do Adobe and Apple have to reach some agreement?

Big price drops on the iPhone. Get a 4GB iPhone on clearance for $299, while supplies last. In the future, it's only the 8GB iPhone for $399.