fcpworld

Awesome News! Imagineer Systems “mocha”, one of my most favorite tracking tools, will be available to Final Cut Pro Users. mocha (small “m”) uses planar tracking, which is way cool. It will be unveiled at the Superbooth at NAB.

Here’s the press release:

7th April 2009 - Imagineer Systems Extends Planar Tracking Technology to Final Cut Community; Unveils mocha for Final Cut at NAB 2009

mocha for Final Cut Adds Powerful Planar Tracking Capability for Editors, VFX Artists in the Final Cut User Community

GUILDFORD, UK (April 7, 2009) - Continuing its plan to develop and deliver new, innovative and accessible desktop VFX tools, Imagineer Systems today is announcing a major new development for the Final Cut community - mocha for Final Cut. Executives from Imagineer Systems will unveil this new tracking tool for Final Cut users at the FCPUG SuperBooth (#SL10129) at NAB 2009 in Las Vegas later this month.

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Our friends over at RE:Vision Effects have released a version of Twixtor for Final Cut Express users. This plug-in works only in Final Cut Express. If you’re a FCE user and want access to high quality speed effects, then Twixtor 4.5 is a must.

Here’s the press release:
Twixtor enables users to speed up, slow down image sequences with visually stunning results. In order to achieve its unparalleled image quality, Twixtor synthesizes unique new frames by warping and interpolating frames of the original sequence, employing RE:Vision Effects’ Academy Award winning technology that calculates motion for each individual pixel.
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Thinking about editing with footage acquired from the RED Camera? Then you’ll need to read up on the latest workflow provided by RED. In this document, you’ll find all the info you need to get the job done. This is a must read for all Final Cut Pro editors looking to advance their knowledge of this cutting edge technology. Read the article here. >>>

Recently, a new book was published that I was involved with. The book is entitled, Edit Well: Final Cut Studio Techniques from the Pros. I wrote all the Final Cut Pro Effects and Compositing sections. Most of the cover art on the book features my work, as well (see above). I can recommend it and hope you enjoy it.

You’ll find my articles in the middle “hunk” of the book. If you have my original book, this is an excellent supplement. Although most of the techniques are already described in Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro, you can consider the articles an updated view of my “out of the box” techniques.

The great thing is that the new book features techniques by some of my favorite colleagues: Clay Asbury (fellow teacher at BAVC), Noah Kadner (callboxlive.com), Matt Geller (Apple Training Series: Xsan 2 Administration and CHIFCPUG), Stephen Kanter (Certified Trainer-Moviola), Mike Krause, Tom Meegan, and the book’s editor, Larry Jordan.

The cover features a lot of my work, as well. Pretty nice surprise when I opened up the package for the first time. I thought, “hmmm, these images look familiar!”. Out of the 6 images, 5 of them are mine.

•Skier with film clutter
•Text and backdrop
•Image in flame
•Film guy with texture on white
•Plane and brick wall graffiti grunge)

No Motion or After Effects was used.

Click on the following link to purchase the book and support fcpworld:
Edit Well: Final Cut Studio Techniques from the Pros 

Kevin Monahan

We here at fcpworld want to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Here’s to fewer dropped frames, no cranky clients and a more prosperous 2009.

Tired of searching around for a Final Cut Studio shortcut? Well, go here and download this document. It has all of the keyboard shortcuts for Final Cut Pro, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, Color, DVD Studio Pro and Compressor.

Blow it up and wallpaper your studio with it. Call it a design element!

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I’ve always been a big fan of Noise Industries and their flagship software, “FX Factory” which has a ton of useful plug-ins for Final Cut Studio and Adobe After Effects CS4. FX Factory also supports 3rd party plug-ins from companies like Sugar FX and iDustrial Revolution .

The cool thing about Noise Industries (as well as their 3rd party plug-in developers) is that they offer up free plug-ins for Final Cut Studio from time to time. It’s worthwhile to get on their mailing list (or just visit their site) for this. Also, check out all the plug-ins, both free and those you have to pay for. By the way, their plug-ins have been finding their way to a lot of my latest work, so you can trust me when I say that they’ve got good stuff.

Recently, they posted a free plug-in which imitates a rostrum camera, used for panning and zooming on still images. This “Pan and Zoom” effect is extremely popular, however, it is not easy to pull off with Final Cut Pro keyframes. Go here for the download.

Many people do not use Motion Blur because they do not know in which instances to use it. One really great thing you can do with Motion Blur is smoothing out any slow motion effects that have signs of strobing. If you do not want to jump over to Motion to create an optical flow version of the slow motion effect, this technique can work nearly as well. The advice comes straight from the manual.

Although using frame blending is an excellent way to smooth out the apparent motion of a slow motion clip, extremely slow speeds such as those below 20 percent can still result in strobing. To further minimize this effect, you can use the Motion Blur attribute in the Motion tab.

Drag the Samples slider to the right until you achieve the amount of blur you need to cover the strobing of your clip (the higher the Samples setting, the longer rendering takes) and then adjust the % Blur setting until you strike a good compromise between the sharpness of the clip and the smoothness of the motion.

Note: Motion Blur is not a real-time effect and in fact can be quite render-intensive at its higher settings. For this reason, you may find it best to adjust the speed and duration of your clip with Motion Blur turned off, turning it on again only for the final render. To turn off Motion Blur without individually removing it from every clip, you can deselect the Motion Blur checkbox in the Render Control tab of the Sequence Settings window.

Zoom-in provides training for Final Cut Studio artists and offer free tutorials on their site. Pretty cool! The latest one shows you all about how to add fades to tracks quickly.

Apple Certified Instructor Jem Schofield is your host. See the tutorial here.

Tools and workflows for filmmaking and the iPhone are starting to converge. Since filmmaking is now a global enterprise, many pieces of the puzzle are scattered around in remote locations. Viewing dailies is one of those things that can be done over the web and on the iPhone. In this article from Panasonic you can see the whole workflow. An interesting read for sure, so check it out.