Post Production - VIDEO GRANDPA

Why Should I Caption Online-Only Content?

Do we really have to caption online-only content? I want to caption everything, but how do I justify it to my organization when technically we may not have to?

Production

$99 to Make Your Podcast Sound A Lot Better

Most Black Friday deals nowadays aren’t great. But if you’ve got a podcast, and want it to sound better, there are a couple deals you really need to check out. And even if you miss these deals, these tools even at full price are worth it. Renaissance Vox

Tech

HDR Explained for Regular People

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. When an HDR source like a game or video is displayed on an HDR TV, there’s a much bigger difference between dark stuff and light stuff than there is on a regular TV.

Adobe

Adobe Premiere Pro 2015.3 Drops Video Card Support

Apparently Premiere Pro 2015.3 drops support for some video cards, which they now consider “legacy.” Some of the info is behind a LinkedIn members-only group, so I’m reposting it here. These are the cards that have apparently been dropped: GTX-200 series GTX-300 series GTX-400 series GTX-500 series GTX-600

Adobe

OS X Mavericks Production Software & Driver Compatibility

In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, OS X Mavericks (10.9) released yesterday, and it’s free. But should you upgrade? If you’re in production, check this list first to see if your software is compatible. Obviously this list is only current as of 10/23/

Apple

ProRes Output from Adobe Premiere Pro or Avid Media Composer - on Windows!

Just caught wind (via FreshDV) of a free little program with big features: namely, it can encode to ProRes on Windows. Sure, you could use ffmpeg standalone or with a frameserver, but that’s a lot of hoops to jump through. What we really need is something simple enough that

Amazon

Amazon's Elastic Transcoder: Clearing the Cloud Confusion

“Should we do it in the cloud?” I get this question a lot. And with good reason – cloud computing has turned massive computational tasks into simple clicks on an interface or calls to an API. So when you’re building out a data management infrastructure, you absolutely need to ask

Apple

A Mac/PC Compatible External Drive: Meet exFAT

It’s been an issue for years: you have an external drive, but it’s formatted for a Mac, and you need to read it on a PC. Or it’s reversed: a PC drive that you need to write to from a Mac. Sure, you could format it as

Adobe

In Brilliant Move, Adobe Makes CS2 Illegally Free

The internet was aflutter earlier this week over reports that Adobe had quietly made CS2 freely available for download. While not current software by any means, many users were excited about a chance to maybe learn Photoshop or other programs without a significant financial commitment. Well, as most things are,

Audio

Audio Plugins for Video Editors

Over this past Black Cyber Friday Through Monday, I was repeatedly tweeting about crazy deals being offered by Waves Audio. Those deals are still available now, but “ending soon.” Plus, they offer trials on almost every plugin, so you can try before you buy. I’m not employed by Waves;

Codecs

QuickTime is Not a Codec: The Basics of Media Files

If one more person answers “What codec is it?” with “Quicktime,” I’m going to lose my shit. QuickTime is not a codec. QuickTime has never been a codec. Seriously guys, it’s 2012. We have fifty new cameras released every month, all of which shoot to a myriad of

Back to Basics

Back to Basics: Read Your Contracts

This one is really simple: Read every single word of anything you sign. I don’t care what the situation is. I don’t care what it’s for. I don’t care if there’s someone impatiently waiting for you to sign it. Read. Every. Word. And FYI – the

Back to Basics

Back to Basics: Academic Discounts

OK, not really a Basic, but still an overly ignored option for college students – and it came up recently, so whatever. Because software companies want to get you young (similar to drug dealers), they offer crazy discounts on their software if you can prove you’re a student. Some of

Adobe

Muzzle Flashes and DV Rebels

Rich Young at ProVideo Coalition has compiled a massive list of resources for creating muzzle flashes in After Effects. While that’s pretty awesome on its own, I was pleased to see both Freddie Wong and Corridor Digital included in the list. For those who don’t know, these are

Post Production

Video Grandpa's Production Emporium

I get asked for product recommendations on a fairly regular basis. So I figured it might be useful to have all the gear I personally use in one place. Thus, I give you…VIDEO GRANDPA’S PRODUCTION EMPORIUM!!! Really, it’s just an Amazon store of links to products I

Avid

Automatic Duck Plugins for Free!

If you missed the news late last year (which I think a lot of people did), the folks at Automatic Duck have moved on to work with Adobe and others on technology integration. As a result, all Automatic Duck plugins are now free. These plugins are still incredibly useful, even

Post Production

Red Giant Acquires PluralEyes | ProVideo Coalition

Yesterday, Red Giant acquired Singular Software, makers of PluralEyes. Not really a ton of news beyond that – Red Giant has consistently been a great steward for software brought under its wing (they also own Trapcode), so this isn’t a huge deal. Read more over at PVC. PVC: Red Giant

Adobe

Is Adobe Creative Cloud Worth It?

Adobe’s generated a lot of buzz with their Creative Cloud, launched in April of this year. The idea is that you subscribe and pay a monthly fee for access to the entire Master Collection. Cancel the subscription, lose your access. The flipside is that you constantly have access to

Avid

Continuing 5 Years of Restructuring, Avid Selling Off Pinnacle and M-Audio

In a move that should be a surprise to no one, Avid announced July 2nd that they’re selling off the Pinnacle and M-Audio divisions to Corel and inMusic respectively. They’ll still keep the M-Audio I/O tech they appropriated for Pro Tools (like the MBox), but everything else

Post Production

PVC: How Blackmagic's Cinema Camera Could Unexpectedly Boost Business

Interesting take on the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, from PVC’s Allan Tépper – he points out how this open-standards file-based camera could actually bind you to Blackmagic-only products. ProVideo Coalition.com: TecnoTur by Allan Tépper

Post Production

Fix It in Post: The Age of Digital Delivery and Final Cut Pro X

There’s a saying we have in production: “we’ll fix it in Post.” These are some of the worst words to hear on set . They mean that something has gone wrong and will not be fixed. They mean that a mistake, or omission, or problem will be purposely transferred

Post Production

Final Cut Pro X: It's Here, and I Was (Mostly) Right

A couple months ago, I saw a preview of Final Cut Pro X at NAB, and wrote up my thoughts on it. At the time, I said this: And what of the Studio? Here’s what: DVD Studio Pro is dead, and so is Motion. Compressor is still standalone, but

Etc

IGN Video Goes Western

In the summer of 2010, some of the IGN Video team made a short film for a contest for Philips. Not a lot of people saw it, so here it is.

Etc

Best Gift Ever

For the video techops person who has everything – a Video Essentials calibration kit. On LaserDisc.