Foxvideo Productions

Lion and the Launchpad

2012-02-18T17:29:00.006Z

I do sometimes wonder if Apple software designers ever meet and talk to actual users, the reason behind my question? - The Launchpad in Lion. Designed to look like the iPhone or iPad main window, this allows you to launch applications from icons, OK I don't use it all the time but it's a nice feature to leave on your screen or switch to if you want to find an application quickly, the problem? - Apple won't allow you to rearrange or delete non App store icons.

I'm not a power user or Apple expert but I do like to be able to keep a 'tidy' computer, somehow many unused icons had found their way to my Launchpad and I wanted to rearrange and delete some of them without deleting the actual Apps, would Apple let me - No!

I remember when the iPhone first came out, it was impossible to rearrange the displayed App icons despite thousands of requests on the official Apple forums, a hack was found and a later iOS update allowed icons to be moved around via the iTunes interface, I'd have thought for this reason alone Apple would have included the same feature in Lion.

A search around the web showed there were again thousands of people all asking the same question - how to delete icons in Launchpad, I found 2 Apps to do it and settled on Launchpad Manager from attilamiklosi.net there's 2 versions, a free version with limited features or the Pro version ($4.99), I went straight for the Pro version and now I have a tidy Launchpad with unused icons removed and now all arranged alphabetically...Sorted!

What a week....

2012-02-16T11:13:00.008Z

If I don't post something soon I'm going to get an email from a mate (Hi Gwynne) asking why not and what I've been up to, so here goes..

I should've suspected this week was going to be a week to remember on Sunday when I got an email from a good friend saying his RAID wasn't showing up on his Mac Desktop and it had all his video data files for numerous Final Cut projects....

He arrived Monday morning, I'd already prepped an old G4 with Disk Warrior and we connected his RAID, it showed on the Desktop but warned there were disk errors, I quickly added another drive and we copied all the important files to it, after we checked the files were OK I ran Disk Warrior on his RAID, it got to 95% then crashed....not good....a re-boot and run DW again and this time it seemed to do it's stuff and said it'd all been re-built. we checked the RAID on his Mac Book Pro and all the data seemed intact so he went away a happy bunny....

Wednesday I got a laptop in that I'd previously removed the very nasty "Windows Recovery" virus from, I'd got it up and running again and suggested she backed up her data to a USB stick and did a complete Windows re-install, the owner found the original Windows disk a few weeks later but still hadn't backed her stuff up, she arrived on the doorstep to ask if I could backup the data and re-install Windows. After installing Windows with SP2, I did a windows update and it installed 110 updates! I also installed Microsoft Security Essentials and gave the laptop back to her.....another happy bunny...

I'd ordered a non Apple replacement battery for my Powerbook from eBay, when it arrived it didn't work, it charged for 5 minutes then showed green, I started the laptop with the mains still in - fine, removed the mains and the laptop died, I contacted the seller who advised return, nearly a week later the replacement arrived - same fault, I've contacted the seller asking for a full refund and 2 lots of return postage....not a happy bunny....

(UPDATE:) Seller responded asking for return, blaming a faulty batch of batteries and offering a full refund including 2 lots of postage - now a happy bunny....)

Really getting on with Rapidweaver now, starting to find my way around and even modifying some of the CSS code! One advantage to installing Parallels recently means I can quickly check the Rapidweaver website in Windows XP directly from the Mac Desktop using both Internet Explorer and Firefox - a great time saver...one happy bunny....

Stuff People Say to Photographers

2012-02-12T11:41:00.001Z

I can relate to most of these - enjoy!

Websites....

2012-02-10T11:22:00.005Z

Trying to get to grips with Rapidweaver..... Seemed a good idea at the time when I said I could revamp a site for someone!
Update:
2 days in and I'm getting to like this program. web design and authoring has certainly come along way since I first tried Netscape Navigator 15 years ago. I have found that to increase the ease of use and functionality of Rapidweaver it helps to download and buy the Stacks and Blocks plugins, these make page design a breeze, however I'm still struggling slightly with a price table - looks like Blocks and image text is the way to go with that little problem. More to follow......

Loving Parallels!

2012-02-05T15:52:00.013Z

My main reason for keeping a Windows PC has been the work I've been doing with ScreenMonkey, I've been producing video clips in Final Cut on the Mac, moving them to a Windows PC, then building and testing ScreenMonkey productions for a client - no more though!

I've just installed Parallels 7 on the Mac, it was being offered as part of a bundle download for $49 (£32), normally Parallels on it's own is £64.99 so it looked too a good deal to miss. After installing it offered me an option to load a Windows install from an external drive using Parallels Transporter on the PC - I tried it several times but it didn't work for me so it was down to a clean Windows XP install on the Mac which worked first time. After installing XP and updating, I installed Windows Security Essentials and Firefox, first impressions are WOW, I can't believe I'm doing all this on a Mac, it's like I was using my Windows machine only faster!

I can run XP at full screen res, 1920x1200 or in a window and I can drag / drop between Windows XP and Mac desktops, the big test would be to see if ScreenMonkey would run OK, so on the Mac I started Parallels, then using Internet Explorer in Windows XP, I downloaded and installed the latest .net and the K-Lite codec pack needed for ScreenMonkey then installed ScreenMonkey and started it up......

Everything seems to work fine, the only negative point is to test anything properly in ScreenMonkey, 2 screens are needed, my GeForce 120 only has 1 DVI out plus a Mini Displayport and I don't have a Mini Displayport to VGA adaptor, but a search on Ebay found me one for £8.99, it should arrive in a day or two so we'll see if it works OK, but for the meantime it looks like I can lose a PC out of my edit suite.....

Blemishes?

2012-02-02T14:41:00.000Z

This made me smile:

AVID for iPad!

2012-02-02T11:49:00.001Z

AVID just released an app for the iPad for $4.99 / £2.99
That should put the cat amongst the pigeons!

FCPX updated to 10.0.3

2012-02-02T08:39:00.003Z

An update to FCPX to 10.0.3 has just been released, new features include Multicam editing, a better keyer and a beta broadcast out option via Thunderbolt or some PCIe cards, all features that were "missing" in the original release version 7 months ago and deemed vital for professional users. Further 3rd party options are now appearing including 7toX for XML input to FCPX from Final Cut 7 projects. Interesting stuff but does it do anything I can't do at the moment? - No. Even with the new feature additions many thousands of FCS users have already migrated away to either AVID or Premiere, I won't be joining them yet, my (now legacy) FCS is still working fine and, I'm totally surprised by the amout of viewers to my blog post about installing Livetype from FCP6 with a new install of Lion and FCP7, which shows FCP 7 is still alive and kicking, I also do find it very interesting reading the comments section for FCPX on it's App Store page, many of the favourable comments start "I'm not a pro editor" or something similar, there seems to be very few positive comments from professional editors who've used FCP7 and migrated to FCPX.

You've gotta love Ebay!

2012-01-31T16:05:00.002Z

I was just browsing the Bay of E last night as you do, spotted this and thought it was worth a punt as it was within collection distance - placed a bid - and WON!

4 working U-matic player/recorders, 3 control panels, leads, 100 un-used tapes in unopened boxes and a DP800 body thrown in, all for £10.73. Anybody need some U-matics dubbed?

So long Snow Leopard....

2012-01-26T15:08:00.002Z

Today, I said goodbye to an old friend, Snow Leopard. For the past 4 months I've been running 3 different boot disks on my MacPro, a rock solid 10.6.8 Snow Leopard install with Final Cut Studio 3, a 10.7.2 Lion install with Final Cut Studio 3 and a standard 10.7.2 Lion install, used for internet access and general use. The 10.7.2 Lion install with Final Cut has been solid in use with no problems so I thought it was about time to finally ditch Snow Leopard which was sharing a partition with the general use 10.7 Lion install. A bit of careful use of Carbon Copy Cloner and I saved my general working Lion install to an external drive as a .dmg, re-partitioned the 400 Gb to 1 partition, booted to another Lion install and used Carbon Copy Cloner to install the disk image back. I now have 2 boot drives, one for Final Cut and another for general use and, with a good offer doing the rounds on Parallels Desktop 7, I might just install Windows XP as well (and I've kept the old Snow Leopard dmg on an external just in case.....!)

How to waste a morning.....

2012-01-20T13:19:00.003Z

Apple introduced iBooks yesterday, it's a way of producing and publishing feature rich content for the modern world. A friend and client of mine produced a booklet some years ago that has had a print run of over 1,000,000 and is also available in PDF format from his website, I thought it would be a good way to learn and try out iBooks by reproducing his PDF as an iBook….

I had the original files used to produce the booklet and thought it'd be easy to just copy and paste text and pictures into iBooks….wrong! The original file had no extension and nothing I had would open it, it wasn't an Ai or pub file and I couldn't even find any info or reference to the original program used in the header of the raw file which did open in TextEdit. A search around the web for a program to edit the pdf led me to File Juicer (what a great program!) It read the original pdf and saved all the text and pictures to a useable format I could work with in iBooks, well worth the £15 to buy it.

OK, now I needed a printout of the pdf for reference, easy - connect my Epson P50 to the Mac and print….wrong!

I downloaded the driver for the P50, installed it, did a nozzle check as the printer hadn't been used for a few weeks then opened the pdf in Preview and sent it to the printer, I waited and waited - Error!

At first I suspected the pdf might be print disabled, I tried another document - that wouldn't print, so off to Google - seems the supplied printer driver from Epson won't work with Lion and suggested I did an Apple software update to get the correct driver from Apple - Software update did find a new P50 driver and installed it - now I can print!

So, after 4 hours, with an idea that started at 9am this morning, I'm still (slowly) printing the pdf and with any luck I'll be able to start with iBooks later today.

Outlook calender won`t start - Fixed!

2012-01-18T11:51:00.002Z

With Sue working irregular shifts, we rely on several calender options, it starts with Outlook calender, that`s synced with Google calenders, Sue also syncs with her Blackberry, I access her calender via Google on my iPad and we have a whiteboard in the kitchen - if it`s not on the board - it`s not happening!

While trying to sync her new Blackberry, Sue crashed Outlook calender, the rest of Outlook worked fine but Calender wouldn`t start. After about 3 hours of trying various `repair tools` we realised the .pst was fine and it was the program itself at fault, as it had been a Microsoft download we didn`t have the disc to re-install and it looked as if we might have to buy it again just to fix the calender program. I decided to have one last Google around and found a site offering a possible solution - Start > Run and type `outlook /cleanreminders` - it seemed a simple answer......

It worked, I restarted Outlook, switched to Calender and up it all popped working fine with nothing lost, normal routine has now been restored in the household!

Can't compute.....

2012-01-16T11:11:00.003Z

When we used to film Gorsley Festival each year much of the kit in my studio/edit suite was taken out to cover the event and it was a good time to clean the studio and reorganise it, for the past 3 years we've not covered the festival so the edit suite really hasn't been re-organised - this weekend I thought it was about time to do so, we're all back, working and slightly re-organised. What I don't understand is I seem to be using about 2/3rds less mains cables and about half the amount of video/audio cables that I took out!

5DLeaks - 50 Light leak effects- $19.99

2012-01-10T07:49:00.004Z

Light leaks are the big 'in' thing at the moment, a post about FCP7 Alpha transitions with a link to some light leak transitions is one the most read posts on my blog according to Google traffic.

I spotted a bargain on fcp.co yesterday, 50 ProRes light leaks for $19.99 (£12.93 UKP) from 5DLeaks, this is a 3Gb download and looks to be great value. These effects are placed on a layer above your video clip and then you choose a composite mode to get the effect you like the look of. There's a sample video (below) and instruction video on the 5DLeaks site. I'm looking forward to trying them out on a suitable video.

5D Leaks Example - Light Leaks Demonstration from Composition on Vimeo.

So much for winter here in the UK!

2011-12-29T09:18:00.000Z

CCleaner for Mac

2011-12-27T20:13:00.032Z

I'm often asked to look at PC's that have become slow and clogged up with junk, one of the programs I use the most to sort them is CCleaner, it clears out all the temp files, gets rid of cookies and generally tidies up the files on the machine, it also finds any registry entries that can be deleted and is a great program to give the PC a 'tune up' and speed boost - It's now available for the Mac from Piriform - be aware it's still in Beta so it's only recommended for advanced users, so use with caution.

2011-12-22T11:45:00.002Z

Photoshop......move over!

2011-12-14T11:17:00.002Z

Don't get me wrong, I love Photoshop, I'm not an advanced user but can manage most of what I want to do given time, however Snapheal for the Mac makes touchups and removing objects a breeze at a price that's unbelievable - £6.62 UK or $9.99 US and, at the moment if you buy through MacUpdate you get another App for free - Color Splash Studio.

Check out the Snapheal video on Youtube:

My new toy to play with

2011-12-04T13:44:00.001Z

Final Cut Pro glitch (technical term!)

2011-12-03T17:28:00.002Z

I've been using Final Cut Pro since v2.0.1, in that time I've only ever had 1 problem I couldn't solve (finally solved when Apple updated Soundtrack Pro), I've now got another problem and no usable solutions from any of the Final Cut forums - I'll post the details here just in case there's a Final Cut reader who might just know the answer.

I've got a weird render glitch problem I can't sort - Not consistent, appears anywhere I've used a Master template (any Master template) either direct in FCS3 or from an imported clip made in Motion 4 or 5. Gives a red checkerboad type effect for 1 frame - see example. Happens with standard DV stuff or ProRes, can be any clip not just the one shown, If I re-render, the effect appears somewhere else in the clip, clip plays fine normally, tried all usual fixes (trash prefs etc). Using 10.7.2 (also happened in 10.6), FCS3 on a Quad 2.66 with 6Gb RAM and a Nvidia GT120 512Mb - Any ideas?

I've managed to get a 99% acceptable result using the DV50 codec but would really like to trace the problem.

Just to update this, I've re-seated the gfx card, the Blackmagic card and the RAM, all to no effect, still getting a random glitch anywhere a Master template has been used.

Another "in car recorder" app

2011-11-21T17:42:00.003Z

A few months back I blogged about an 'in car recording' app - Drivemate Rec, a useful app to record video and speed / location when driving. There's been a few of these apps appearing recently and I've now had the chance to try aDrive Video.

I'd downloaded it in September when it was a free app, it's now at v2.5 and still only costs £0.69p. Quite simply, it worked well, easy to setup and none of the long 'saving/exporting' problems I had with Drivemate Rec, I just downloaded the video files to my Mac laptop using Image Capture and played the files in QT7. The setup prefs are all self explanatory, a choice of display options including 'full', which shows display of time, date, speed, compass, altitude, long & lat and recorded time, or the more minimal display with just speed, time/date, long/lat, map and recorded time. There's a quality slider for video recording (I used full on a iPhone 3GS and had no problem recording 2 hours of footage) and an option to 'autosave' the video every 90 seconds, this duration should be adjustable but I couldn't make it work, in practice when saving every 90 seconds you lose about 5 seconds of recording. The speed display appeared to be about 4 or 5 mph slow compared to my actual speed and the displayed map is much smaller than the Drivemate map display but IMO it's not that important. The iPhone lens is not really wide enough to capture the full width of my windscreen so the video only really shows anything directly in front of you, as an occasional use app it's worth the £0.69p but if I was a regular distance driver, I'd now go for a dedicated 'fit and forget' option, these are now appearing for around £100 on eBay.

The Missing Peace video

2011-11-14T12:15:00.000Z

Less 'holes' that when I started - still a way to go....!

Did I really say "I can do that"?

2011-11-11T11:44:00.011Z

Just started a new editing project, 21 minutes of script, the first 3 minutes is a piece to camera and the rest I've got to find!

It's a project a good friend of mine, Mike Hencher from TheMissingPeace.org has wanted to do for years but, for one reason or another it's never got made. Basically it's a non denominational Christian message that Mike scripted many years ago and I said I could edit - so far I've laid around 70 seconds of clips, I've just got to find another 17 minutes of illustrative video and graphics, a bit like a jigsaw I suppose, I've put the corner pieces in and now just got to fill in the rest!

Mike's supplied a guide track voice over and I intend to shoot Mike green screen to allow for any sections that I just can't find visuals for, I can then just cut from the original voice over to Mike in shot with a background over the GS. Mike's also supplied some great footage from a trip to the Ganges a few years ago, I've dubbed it from U-Matic to DVCAM and then into Final Cut 7 as ProRes - I'm amazed how well it's stood up, obviously it's 4:3 but a Smart Anamorphic filter in FCP should get it looking OK at 16:9. Now just have to trawl the free video and image sites for some clips and graphics, when (and if!) I get it finished I'll post a preview, it's going to be a long winter.......!

Free video clips, photos and music

2011-11-05T11:51:00.009Z

We all love free stuff, over the past few years I've built up a good selection of video clips, both SD and HD, HQ stills and music / sound effects for use in video projects, all for free. Most of the sites offering 'stock' stuff to buy, will give away a clip every week (or month) if you sign up to their email newsletter, I use a separate email account for these and then get emails forwarded to my normal email account. You do need to fully read any terms and conditions attached to using their free stuff, just to make sure you're not breaking any copyright or use conditions, but most allow unrestricted use even for commercial projects although the footage or images can't be sold separately as a collection. I keep a 'stock drive' of clips, images and music that I can browse when I'm looking for something to use, usually for 'inverse budget' jobs like promos or infomercials for charity or voluntary organisations with little or no money to spend on a production.

A couple of new companies offering music and clips are Freestockmusic and Worship-backgrounds they have a selection of free stuff for use with no restrictions on use to download just for signing up, you don't need to give any information other than an email address, they will email you to confirm your email address and give you a password, you can then start downloading, although at the moment there's only a limited amount of clips and music, but hey, it's free!

Many of the more well know stock agencies like Revostock, aLunaBlue, Canstock and many others offer free downloads, it only takes a few months before you have a good collection of stuff you can use, it just takes a few hours surfing around and signing up for them.

Another good source of clips, effects and music is Footagefirm, they offer individual DVD's for just the cost of postage - $8.41(US) or £5.21(UK) with a huge range of stuff that'll take you a good while to browse!

Just to mention also, if you're one of those few people (!) that uses FCPX, head over to Fcp.co for a huge selection of free plugins and templates for FCPX.

I've been kicked off Google+

2011-10-22T08:20:00.002+01:00

I've had a Google account for more years than I can remember, I think it setup was around 2000/2001, a while back I received a direct invite to Google+ from Google, to my username Fox Video Productions and I took up the invite which was accepted. An email last night from Google told me my username 'does not comply with the Google+ Names Policy' and to rectify it within 4 days or my account would be deleted - Simple, I deleted the Google+ account.

For a fledgling service struggling to get a higher profile and user acceptance, it seems a bit silly to give a direct invite to my username and profile, accept it, and then tell me it's not acceptable 3 months later! Google did mention they would be setting up a Google+ service for business at a later date, I do wonder if they left out the part that said it could/would/might be a subscription (paid for) service?

Livetype, Lion and FCS3

2011-10-21T10:37:00.008+01:00

If you've read my recent blogs you'll have seen I've just upgraded to Lion (10.7.2), basically it was a clean System install then an install of FCS3 using my FCS2 serial. One of the 'missing' features of FCS3 was Livetype, Apple decided we didn't need it anymore as it could all be done using Motion, great if you don't happen to have some older projects using Livetype that need editing!

FCP6 users upgrading to FCS3 kept their copy of Livetype so I thought I could just pop a FCS2 disk in and get it to install Livetype only - wrong, I got a message saying my system did not support PowerPC installs....

A dig around on the FCS2 disk using 'Show Package Contents" allowed me to 'see' the FCP2 installer plus another folder called 'Packages', in this folder was the Livetype installer, using "Show Package Contents" again showed me a folder called "Packages", opening this I could see another folder called "Contents" and in this folder a file called "Archive.pax.gz" - double clicking this gave me a folder called 'Archive' containing another 2 folders - "Applications' and 'Library'.

Still with me....? Opening the 'Applications' folder and there was the Livetype Application, dragging this to the Applications folder on my 10.7.2 install and hey presto, it worked!

Now I just had to find all the templates etc from my backup 10.6 / FCS2 install on another drive that I made before installing Lion, and drag the templates to a Library/Application Support/Livetype folder that I created, and I was back in business with a working copy of Livetype with templates on a 10.7.2 install and a clean install of FCS3, Simples.....!

UPDATE - Feb 2012
This blog entry is getting a huge amount of hits, there must be a lot of Livetype users unhappy that Apple left Livetype out of FCP7 with a new install under Lion!

One other method I've been told of for installing Livetype from FCS 2 (FCP6) disks would be to use Pacifist ($20), this can read and open .pkg package files and allows you to extract individual files and folders out of them, I've not tried this method but can't see why it wouldn't work.

No library folder in 10.7.2!

2011-10-16T11:44:00.004+01:00

Thought I was going mad, I was trying to move some FCP User presets from a 10.6 install to a new 10.7.2 OS install and couldn't find the User/Library folder..... it turns out Apple, in their wisdom, decided users shouldn't or didn't need to access it, so they hid it!

Got it back with Terminal, just typed: chflags nohidden ~/Library

Sorted!

iOS5, iCloud and Lion

2011-10-14T08:14:00.001+01:00

Despite many reports of users having problems installing iOS5 on their i devices, I had no problems at all installing on an older 3GS - it did take a while, probably about an hour, but everything seemed to go OK. All my Apps are still there and everything seems to be working OK except for the F1 app from Vodaphone, the 'Races" page is squished - a technical term ;-)

To make use of the new features available in iOS5 including iCloud, I decided to update to Lion 10.7.2 on a partition on my Mac Pro and use that to sync my iPhone in future rather then my (slowly dying) old G4 Powerbook. I installed 10.6 to a clean partition, updated, then bought Lion from the App Store, it took a while to install but all went OK, I updated iTunes and authorised the MacPro, then synced the iPhone, it was good to see 'Find my Phone" now working with the 3GS and Lion, something I'd not been able to take advantage of before.

The plan now is to gradually load Final Cut Pro and all my other video editing stuff to Lion and test, clone my very stable 10.6 system to an external drive in case I need an emergency restore and then use Carbon Copy Cloner to transfer the Lion partition to my SSD main boot drive.

Gorsley Festival DVD preview

2011-10-12T06:25:00.001+01:00

My website hits from Germany.....

2011-10-10T10:10:00.004+01:00

I'd be very grateful if someone from Germany would let me know why my site (foxvideo.co.uk) is so popular at the moment - I guess they are all looking for something else as I've not had a sudden rush of freelance editing work at the moment ;-)

and the hits keep coming....

2011-09-22T16:37:00.000+01:00

Still getting hits from Germany, all unique IP addresses, hopefully someone will make it to the blog page on my site and let me know what they are so interested in!

What's been on German TV?

2011-09-22T11:14:00.002+01:00

35 individual hits to my website from Germany since 19.00 last night, all searching for Fox Video, I think they must have been looking for Fox.com or 20th Century Fox - and I'm guessing there must have been something on German TV they needed more info about!

Gorsley Flower Festival DVD 2011

2011-09-20T18:53:00.003+01:00

I've got the go ahead for this now, a very minor audio edit asked for and that was all. Sleeve designed and a simple DVD face and we're good to go! Email dave@foxvideo.co.uk for price / delivery or available from the Good News Centre Bookshop in Newent

Fake USB and flash memory

2011-09-16T16:10:00.015+01:00

My wife recently had a 1Gb USB thumb drive given to her but, whenever it was inserted into the computer and before she could access it, it automatically went to a website ad page for the company that gave it away, she asked me if I could 'sort' it.

I tried all the usual stuff, unlock read only, delete, re-format, re-partition etc nothing would work, a search on Google threw up that it was a CDFS partition and I found a forum with advice and tools to remove it successfully. During my search I came across this site: http://www.fake-memory.com/index.html - A mine of useful info and tools to spot if you have a fake USB stick or memory card, well worth a read!

Cats and edit suites don't mix!

2011-09-09T20:52:00.004+01:00

So I spend all morning tweaking the Gorsley Festival DVD, a bit of colour correction, an edit roll to match the music, an audio tweak here and there, I export the files and import in Compressor, then into DVD Studio Pro. I author a menu, link everything up, test it in the simulator and all is well so I burn the DVD.

Pop the DVD into a player and I seem to be missing some audio on the left channel, back into FCP and yep, the audio from the left channel is missing...... Spend an hour looking for any problems, try sending the audio to the centre, still no left channel audio - give up and take the dog for a walk.....

Back from a walk and try again, still can't find any fault as such - just to be sure I check the speaker connections.....at some stage during the day one of the cats had obviously walked behind my speaker setup and knocked the left channel audio feed out....!

Gorsley Festival DVD

2011-09-09T09:05:00.006+01:00

Just about edited, a few tweaks and then it's ready for viewing and approval by the Festival committee. A few minor 'gotchas' during editing, it helps if you set the correct capture preset for PAL and not NTSC, that reminds me.... must get my glasses checked.

By far the most useful tool in FCP was the free Shadow/Highlight plugin from www.lyric.com - it's got me out of a few situations where shooting conditions changed quickly, the default shadow setting is 50% but I found knocking it down to 35 or 30% improved some of my pictures dramatically.

When editing a programme like this you always look back and think 'why didn't I get that cutaway?', the trick is to then find something that looks as if you actually meant it to be there!

I managed to colour correct the footage I had supplied to me from the meetings in FCP without going to Color, not ideal but looks OK, I also had to add some of my audio from the meetings as the sound guy was sometimes a bit too quick on his faders.

Just got to send to Compressor now and author the DVD, it's going to be 5 basic chapters with some markers for 'Stories' to enable quick navigation.

DVD NOW AVAILABLE - Email dave@foxvideo.co.uk for price / delivery or available from the Good News Centre Bookshop in Newent

Gorsley Festival 2011

2011-08-30T09:36:00.012+01:00

5 days filming at Gorsley Flower Festival now over! After an absence of 3 years, we were asked to cover the Festival for the official DVD, it was great to be back and I was overwhelmed by the amount of people who went out of their way to say how much they appreciated having us back to produce the DVD.

It was a bit of a change from the way we've covered it before, this time we were only shooting for the DVD and not doing the links to screen during the meetings. We used 2 cameras, the DSR-500WSP and the Sony FX1 HDV, I've mentioned before my preference for a 2/3rds tape based camera with a good lens over the newer HDV card based 'black boxes' and viewing the tapes back I still feel that way. The main use for the DSR-500 was vox pops with the Festival goers and interviews with the organisers. I was grateful to have Mike Hencher for the interview with the main speaker, Charles Price and I was also privileged to be working on the other interview and vox pop stuff with a good friend and BBC guy Phil Simpson, he certainly helped to get the best from the people we interviewed, thanks Phil.

I broke the rules by mainly using ATW as the lighting conditions were going from dark full cloud cover to bright sunshine in a matter of seconds and the ATW on the DSR-500 coped well with the ever changing lighting conditions. We used the FX1 shooting in HDV for all GV and general grab stuff, the Festival is run by a huge army of volunteers and we feel it's important to show on the DVD all the 'behind the scenes' stuff by those people, who all play their part in making it a successful Festival. The FX1 coped exceptionally well on 'Auto' with just the occasional push of the 'backlight' button and the camera size was not as intrusive as shooting with the much bigger DSR500.

The main events in the marquee were all being linked to screen by another company, I'd offered to put in one of my record machines to take their feed so I could use some snippets on the DVD, they mentioned they did a tape backup that I could have after the meetings so they didn't use my machine, I used the DSR-500 to record from the front and get audience reaction and faces to drop in as cutaways on the main tape, something we've not really been able to do before, the 20x zoom got me some good close ups and on the occasions the camera needed 6db gain I still got a very good picture. Unfortunately the other company had problems with dirty video heads on their record machine, induction loop interference from one camera on the recorded picture, an open 75 ohm terminal on the record side giving a totally washed out feed to the record machine for the whole of one service, poor overall colour balance, some 'iffy' vision mixing and then someone 'forgetting' to hit the record button, so I'm a little limited on what we'll be able to do with their stuff!

I've now got a stack of DVCAM and HDV tapes to get into the system, I still prefer the 'play in' method of 'log and capture' with time code over log and transfer, it gives me the opportunity to view the footage and listen to the audio as it goes in and to get some ideas on the clips I'm going to use and how I'm going to edit it, 14 hours of material to ingest for a 2 hour finished DVD, more on how the edit is going later......

DVD NOW AVAILABLE - Email dave@foxvideo.co.uk for price / delivery or available from the Good News Centre Bookshop in Newent

Do people actually 'read' a website?

2011-08-24T07:01:00.004+01:00

I was out most of yesterday afternoon and evening, when I got back and checked my emails there were several from people I've never heard of, all with either movie or picture attachments and not much else except one which mentioned something about pictures falling off the wall, I deleted them all without looking at the attachments and thought nothing more of it

It was only when I saw the news later in the evening about the earthquake on the US East coast I suddenly put 2 + 2 together and realised the emails were all photos and movies from the quake. I can only suspect people just typed FOX into their browser looking for Fox News in the US, if they had actually READ my site they'd have seen it was a 'co.uk' web and email address, and that I was an editing facility based in the UK.

OK, I've been a bit quiet recently....

2011-08-18T20:20:00.003+01:00

Yeah, I know not many posts recently, I've not got a lot on at the moment although that's about to change over the next 2 weeks, more on that later.

Interesting marketing email again tonight from Redgiant software, they sell colour correction and grading software plugins for most major editing packages. They were offering MOJO 1.2, normally $99 for only $49 and at that price I thought it was too good to miss, bought it via Paypal and I still only paid the $49 (£29.68) and no VAT. Installation was simple but I had to check the help pages for info on loading the presets. Another handy tool now installed, check out the RedGiant tutorial for more info.

Marketing emails

2011-07-31T08:37:00.004+01:00

You know those emails you get all the time, the ones you think "I don't remember signing up for that", well I got one yesterday. A quick glance and I trashed it, but thinking about it afterwards I thought "hang on, that does seem a good deal", I got it back from the Trash and read it again.

It was from a reputable company (SmithMicro) offering Toast 11 Pro, with the additional HD/Blu-ray plugin, Photoshop Elements 9, BIAS SoundSoap audio cleaning, FotoMagico 3 RE for slideshows from photographs and Smartsound Sonicfire 5 all for £61.34 plus VAT (£70.54). A quick check on Amazon.co.uk and the price for a boxed version was £91.70, Photoshop Elements 9 for the Mac on it's own was £53.33.

A credit card number later and I was downloading 2.5Gb, it all took some installing with a minor problem for the SoundSoap registration, an email from Bias acknowledged there was a problem and directed me to a new download which sorted it and I now have all the programs installed and working. I'd never bothered to upgrade Photoshop on the Mac since v7 (!) but I could've used it on the odd occasion for FCP, now I have PSE 9 to do the basic stuff. On the PC I have PS2 and I'm a great fan of Actions, I've now found there are hundreds of free Actions for PSE 9 and I've already downloaded and installed some of them.

Toast 11 looks to be a revamp from the ground up and with the HD/Blu-ray plugin I'm now ready to produce HD DVD's, Fotomagico 3RE is for stills to slideshow with Ken Burn's type effects, this a program I've seen but never bothered to buy and this version seems to fit between the 'Home' version (not really of any use as it doesn't save to Quicktime) and the 'Pro' version which includes many extra features, mainly audio stuff, that I'll never use as it can all be done afterwards in FCP. SoundSoap is a quick and easy sound cleaning program, it'll remove noise, hum and clicks without the bother of going to SoundTrack, SonicFire 5 is a music creation program and comes with a few tracks included, more tracks can be bought individually online and is a great program for adding music to edits, so out of the hundreds of junk emails I get every month, this one was certainly a good find!

DriveMate Rec

2011-07-18T12:26:00.010+01:00

I mentioned a while back about a car driving App, Car Console that recorded video, speed and location and could be useful in the event of an accident, it cost £1.19 compared to a stand alone product costing nearly £300, Car Console performed reasonably well but with some limitations and needed to be developed further to really be of any use.

A spate of similar Apps have now appeared and I downloaded DriveMate Rec (£3.99), there's also a cheaper version DriveMate Mini (£2.39) that only records up to 10 secs before and after a collision. The full version has the 10 seconds before and after feature but also includes a full video / sound recording feature and includes speed, G-Force and location info, also included with the full App is a Time Trial function allowing you compare regular journeys or differences between journeys from the same point via different routes.

DriveMate 'does what it says on the tin', I tried it on a short trip into town, the location and speed features seemed to be accurate, however a minor point to mention is driving uphill - if the iPhone is mounted correctly to get a 'drivers eye' view, when driving uphill the camera exposes for the sky giving you a very dark image, not ideal but not directly a fault of the App.

When I got back home I wanted to save the video to my camera roll on the iPhone, this took 22 minutes at low quality and wanted 55 minutes to save my 10 minute trip to the camera roll at high quality - again, not ideal although playing the video back from the App is instant. There is an upload to YouTube option but I've not tried it and it would probably make a large dent in your data allowance unless you were on WiFi. Overall I realise I'm not going to get the features and performance of the £300 stand alone product, but for £3.99 this App could be a useful buy, this is only v1.0.3 and hopefully updates will improve the App.

As a side note, I think Apps like this can change driving habits, if you're aware your driving is being recorded and then something was to happen, you'd have all the evidence as to what actually occurred for both your insurance company and / or the Police, complete with video, sound and speed so I did find I was being just that little more cautious and courteous!

FCPX's intended market

2011-07-15T06:14:00.002+01:00

Now we can see Apple's intended market for FCPX with a new page on the Apple website.

FCP7 EOL'd - "Can't compute"

2011-07-11T17:11:00.003+01:00

I spent a long while wondering if I should upgrade from FCP v6 to v7 only weeks before the launch of FCPX, I'm now glad I did go for it as I'm beginning to understand much of the frustration appearing from FCP users.

I'm surprised how many posts against FCPX are from users who had not upgraded from FCP v6 to v7 and who were waiting for the next supposed FCP upgrade. Those users have now lost any ability to upgrade their copy of v6 to v7, or any of the other upgrades in the package - specifically Color (which originally sold for $25k alone before Apple bought it), DVDSP and Soundtrack. FCPX does include elements from Color and Soundtrack but without many of the features editors rely on, and support or upgrade of DVDSP has totally disappeared, you now need to use iDVD to produce a DVD! The decision by Apple to EOL FCS3 (FCP7) as a package but to carry on supplying Volume Licences to existing users astounds me. The loss of trust from long time users in the Apple community is the worst I've seen since becoming an Apple user in 1994.

Browsers and Banks

2011-07-11T09:10:00.000+01:00

I get to see quite a few computer setups in peoples homes, one thing that always amazes me is their browser setup. I hate having Ad's forced on me, if I'm viewing a page it's because I want the info on that page and not the Ad's - unless I choose to see them. If I recommend people to change their browser and install ad blocking plug ins it's as if I've asked them to change banks - they just don't like doing it.

I virtually never see an Ad, even on Ad heavy pages I manage to block 99% of them, one forum site I use has a columns of ad's down each side of the page - I never see a single one, the page actually loads faster for me as it doesn't have to render the ads. A simple browser switch to Firefox, Safari or Chrome and the download of a few plugins is all it takes. Adblock Plus takes care of most of the ad's and Beef Taco blocks Targeting Ad cookies.

OK, Ad's help to pay for some sites and without the Ad's the site wouldn't be able to exist but I object to those webmasters who use a page as a 'cash cow' and insist on plastering pages with ad's making you load more pages than necessary just to read the information.

Keeping it organised

2011-07-08T07:29:00.003+01:00

One of the problems these days where everything is digital and kept on hard drives, is finding stuff when you want it. Stock footage sites for video and stills usually give away a free clip every week or month if you sign up to their newsletters, over the past few years I've collected several hundred of these clips and stills and now keep a 'stock' drive, I've also produced clips that are 'generic' and can be used in any production, either as backgrounds for graphics or cut-aways and the problem comes trying to find them when you need one!

iPhoto on the Mac can index your photo's and video's but it's not very intuitive for the way I want it to work, there are several other programs that can index video clips but not with stills together. After a post on a forum I was put onto CatDV Standard (£59+VAT), I remember this program from a good few years back and had always associated it with a 'log and capture' type catalogue program, today's version (9.0 beta) was an eye opener and looked to do all I wanted and more.

After installing, I pointed it to my stock drive and it catalogued nearly 600Gb in minutes, it used sub folders when it found them and produced thumbnails for every clip, including audio if it was present. I can now scroll through looking at the thumbnails for the clip or background I want and then copy, export or locate the original in seconds.

I've also collected several hundred audio clips, music tracks and sound effects from various sources or copyright free CD's, I've produced a separate catalogue of these that makes previewing audio much faster than putting CD's in or even using iTunes.

I've only scratched the surface with CatDV, it has many advanced search features I'll never use but as a tool it's a great program for finding stuff, that can be as simple or advanced as you want.

Goodbye FCP

2011-07-05T18:11:00.001+01:00

I'm X'd out!

2011-07-01T08:10:00.003+01:00

I've read so much info on FCPX in the last few days I'm X'd out now, Final decision - Not for me in the immediate future. I did watch 2.5 hours of tutorials from Izzy Video and I did find them interesting. FCPX does have some good new features but with my current workflow, and the opening of older projects for project updates, which I do on a regular basis, FCPX is definitely not viable for me at this time. I'll keep a watch on the forums and the virals (there are some people out there with too much time on their hands!) and I'll wait to see what Apple do, it's not as if I've lost everything, I still have a fast MacPro with FCS3 and can carry on working just as I have done, but it doesn't take away the fact I feel a bit like a kid a Christmas who's just opened his present to find it's pair of woolly socks and not the latest game console that I was expecting!

Still no 'official' statement from Apple over the FCPX debarcle

2011-06-29T07:42:00.004+01:00

Can Al Gore help?
I did like the post on Creative Cow FCPX forum from Cow member John Davidson. He was working on a job with Al Gore (an Apple Board member), he mentioned the outcry from professional editors over FCPX to him, and asked if he could get some sort of response from Apple! Al's response was "I'll make sure to let them know". Full story HERE

UPDATE:
Apple issues an "FAQ"

FCPX - 'Miss'

2011-06-27T14:54:00.005+01:00

Since it's release, I've read hundreds of forum posts, watched a 60 minute intro tutorial video, read hundreds of comments on the Mac App Store and watched a growing number of spoof videos all about FCPX, I'd guess it's around 30% for and 70% against at the moment.

The 60 min tutorial video on MacProVideo.com was interesting, there's no doubt this program has some very clever and timesaving features but, from my limited knowledge of watching how it works, it seems to me that Apple want to change the way over 2,000,000 Final Cut Pro users currently edit and have done since the introduction of NLE timeline editing.

There's an FCPX tutorial doing the rounds from a 10 year old - in my opinion that's exactly the target market - the younger editor, shooting with a single card based camera who "want's it now" and doesn't have time to learn how to edit or fix clips properly and who just needs to shoot, assemble, have the program automatically fix errors like camera shake, white balance and audio hum, then finally use the built in interface to let them upload it to straight to YouTube - and then call themselves a 'pro' just because they used an edit program with the word 'Pro' in the title (it doesn't quite have the same kudos to it, telling your mates you edited with iMovie).

Apple are notorious for not responding or listening to their user base, and to be honest, with the amount of spare cash they have knocking around at the moment, they don't need to, but to just wipe out 2,000,000 users by dropping FCP7 without any comment seems business suicide to me, it would have made more sense to continue with FCP7 and run it alongside FCPX at least for a few months until FCPX was actually ready for the pro market.

Luckily, I have a fairly late MacPro with FCP 7 (FCS3) that works well, I've cloned the drive (twice!) and created a disk image on another drive, I'll update to Lion in July and see how FCP7 runs with that, if I don't think there's problem I'll stay with Lion, but always with the option to return to Snow Leopard if I need to from a cloned drive. It looks as if there'll be no more FCP7 updates but I'll have a working FCP7 system that can edit, colour correct, grade, sound sweeten and burn to DVD with the option of mastering to tape until I find FCPX is either ready for the professional market or I find something else that is.

Another good response to FCPX by Richard Harrington on Creative Cow

2011-06-27T07:19:00.000+01:00

One of the best summaries I've read so far.

HERE

Larry Jordan replies to FCPX launch

2011-06-27T05:58:00.004+01:00

HERE

Conan O'Brien clip again

2011-06-26T09:14:00.002+01:00

Found it again ;-)

Conan clip pulled.....

2011-06-25T11:37:00.000+01:00

Seems the Conan O'Brien clip has been pulled from YouTube due to a "copyright claim" - I wonder if a 3rd party had anything to do with it? I'd have thought Conaco would have appreciated the free publicity......?

Conan O'Brien Lampoons Final Cut Pro X

2011-06-24T06:26:00.003+01:00

Update - 25/06/10
(Apologies if you're looking for this clip, Seems it's has been pulled from YouTube due to a "copyright claim" - I wonder if a 3rd party had anything to do with it? I'd have thought Conaco would have appreciated the free publicity......?)

Now available HERE

FCPX on it's own partition recommended

2011-06-23T11:37:00.000+01:00

Apple now recommending FCPX is installed on it's own partition if you have FCP 7 installed.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4722

FCP7 now in demand!

2011-06-23T07:12:00.000+01:00

There's a post on one of the FCP user forums from a guy who recently bought the full FCP7 package for £800 or so, he's now complaining that he could have got FCPX for less than a third of that.....

He's already had offers for the FCP7 package and been told he might even be able to get more than he paid for it now that it's been pulled from the Apple Store......Say's a lot to Apple about the reaction to FCPX!

FCPX - Hit or miss?

2011-06-21T21:02:00.005+01:00

It's only been out a matter of hours and the user forums at Apple and Creative Cow are buzzing, mostly negative so far. I understand it's a totally new concept for an edit program but it's too far removed from FCP 7 for me to think of buying and using at the moment, even alongside FCP7. I upgraded my G5 and 6.0.6 as I knew X was coming, I was hoping it would address issues like 64 bit, utilise all processors, access all the RAM, and perhaps iron out some of the bugs that have been there almost from Day 1 - It hasn't.

I'm glad I recently bought the FCP 7 upgrade, apparently unsold copies are being recalled from stores, Yes, I'll buy X at some stage but probably not until v2 is out. I understand programs have to develop and no new release is ever perfect but I'm surprised Apple have released this in it's current form. It's not as if they've not had time to develop it, they've had 64 bit around for years, they've listened to what pro editors want from an edit program with comments on the Apple FCP user forums, again for years, FCP expert editors have voiced their comments on what they'd like in Final Cut Pro and yet we still get iMovie Pro - sorry, I mean FCPX.

I do multicam editing, I also export full audio sequences to Soundtrack, neither of which FCPX can do, I use XML from a guy with an older FCP system when I online for him on my system, again not possible with FCPX. If FCP 7 is to be discontinued, I need to be able to open / import older projects at some stage when the Apple OS or hardware no longer allows my version of 7 to run properly, I do find it strange that FCPX can import iMovie projects but NOT FCP 7 projects?

OK, the negativity will settle down and Apple will get FCPX right but it's going to take time, so I'll put my credit card away for the moment, watch the user forums and just carry on working in my own little way with FCP 7 and wait for version 2 point something of FCPX.

FCPX not looking good.....

2011-06-21T15:13:00.000+01:00

Revolutionary but.....

NO MULTICAM SUPPORT
NO TAPE LAYBACK
NO XML, OMF SUPPORT
NO v7 IMPORT
NO LOG / CAPTURE
SINGLE WINDOW

As stated by one early adopter - iMoviePro for Youtubers......

You can run v7 + FCPX together, so I guess I'm staying with 7 till around FCPX 2.5...

FCPX - now in App Store

2011-06-21T13:54:00.001+01:00

After all the hype, all the tweets, all the blog & forum posts - It's now out!

http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/

It looks........fun

FCPX - I suspected this......

2011-06-16T19:49:00.002+01:00

QUOTE:

FCPX 1.0 "It will not be ready for professional use" says Larry Jordan

A new FCPX info piece on fcp.co, 4 videos from the Los Angeles Final Cut Pro User Group, check out the first 2 minutes of Video 3.

UPDATE - 17/06/10

Larry has now changed his opinion (see the addition to the fcp.co article). Could it have been after pressure from Apple PR with the release date now imminent?

FCPX next week?

2011-06-14T19:25:00.002+01:00

AppleInsider now posting FCPX expected in the Mac App Store next week - LINK

FCPX 'leaking".........

2011-06-13T06:56:00.000+01:00

More FCPX screenshots 'leaking' out, many sites have been asked to take the screenshots down and several new screengrabs are now appearing on Twitter. Start looking HERE then follow links, including the Twitter links to screengrabs.

I don't think I want to incur the wrath of Apple or any company with access to the new product who might currently be producing training videos of FCPX to coincide with it's release, so I'm not including any of the grabs here. This 'leaking' has always occurred with Apple stuff and generates a huge amount of free pre-publicity for a new Apple product, regardless of where the leaks originate from.......

Pocket Light Meter for the iPhone

2011-06-09T07:59:00.001+01:00

Interesting little App for the iPhone, Pocket Light Meter. It's fairly accurate and also has a Cine (Video) option (1/48th). Free but Ad supported or £0.59p to get rid of the Ad's.

WWDC

2011-06-07T16:24:00.001+01:00

So the WWDC Keynote has come and gone, we get Lion and iCloud. Not much in either for me directly as such, I don't think I'm going to be syncing a 15 minute client's promo across all my devices :-)

Probably very visionary of SJ to try and get rid of "the box", time will tell. An excellent price for Lion £20.99 in the UK and use it on all your Mac devices, no more family packs of licences. Should be an 'interesting' load on the Apple servers on launch day in July - it's a 4Gb download from the App Store only!

No further news of FCPX......

Just messing with Live Streaming

2011-05-31T17:07:00.007+01:00

Trying out Livestream and Ustream with Laura's kittens.

Watch live streaming video from foxvidpro at livestream.com

So far, I've got a 2.4Ghz wireless link from the cats feeding a Tricaster, which then feeds a Sony DSR11 via composite, this is then output from the DSR11 via Firewire to the Firewire input of a PC, Livestream sees this as a camera and then with their free Procaster software it's streamed live @300Kbps with an average of 20fps depending on the load on my router!

It's possible to feed the 2.4Ghz straight into the PC via analogue but, with a Tricaster in the path it opens up mixer options for feeding a live show with several cameras and graphics.

Seems like only yesterday, I was happy producing 240x180 Cinepak videos with Premiere 4.2 on an old 486........

The Grand Rapids LipDub (NEW WORLD RECORD)

2011-05-27T19:59:00.010+01:00

If you're a fan of Lip Dubs, this one should leave you speechles and wondering "how did they do that?"

Update.

From info now making it's way onto the web, filmed on the 22nd of May, this was shot in one take, they did 5 full takes in 4 hours in a closed off Downtown area of Grand Rapids. Rob Bliss, Grand Rapids event organizer, used Don McLean's “American Pie” and the video features local celebrities along with nearly 5000 local residents to showcase and promote the city. The video is estimated to have cost around $35,000. I can't find any shooting technical details yet but I'm sure they will emerge soon as the video is the highest trending video on YouTube at the moment!

FCP7 or FCPX?

2011-05-24T07:53:00.008+01:00

When I upgraded my Mac G5 to MacPro recently, the first thing I did was load FCP 6 and it zapped along nicely however, FCP 7 has the added advantages of Motion 4, Color 1.5 and Compressor 3.5 so I wondered, do I wait for FCP X in June or get the 7 upgrade? I went for the 7 upgrade, Why?

FCPX looks to be a totally new package possibly based on some features from iMovie, in fact some who've seen it are calling it iMoviePro. When Apple announced it recently they left many unanswered questions, saying only that it'd be $299 and downloadable from the App Store. Would there be an upgrade path?, what about previously included Apps - Motion, Color, Compressor, Soundtrack and most importantly DVDSP? Would any 3rd party plugins work? Add to that a totally new interface to learn and the probability of first release bugs and 'teething problems', as is always the case, so I think my £150 upgrade for FCP7 (a great price for a genuine sealed copy from eBay!) was the better option for the moment, besides which, 7 will do everything I need it to do for the stuff I'm working on, I'll let someone else bug fix FCPX and then maybe buy a copy after the first updates are released.

Now that I have a machine capable of running Motion 4 and Color 1.5 at a usable speed rather than the G5 which was a bit like stirring treacle when using Motion and Color, I thought I'd better brush up on some tutorials and went searching for some free ones, Yes, the Lynda.com and Rippletraining series are good but much of what they include I already know, I just needed some 'brushing up' or refresher tutorials. I found one at macprovideo.com, this was exactly what I was looking for and is a 'mini' course in Motion and Color, best of all it's free - check it out HERE.

I also came across another couple of FCP sites I'd not seen before and well worth an occasional look just to keep up to date - FCPDaily and fcp.co

Hash on Mac laptop? Yes!

2011-05-16T15:26:00.003+01:00

I'm not a big Twitter user, but recently wanted to use Twitter on my Mac laptop - could I find the hash key? - no way! Couldn't believe it wasn't there, just thought it was me going blind. A quick Google around and I found a post saying alt+3 would give me a #, Yes it works.....now back to Twitter!

Retro coming back?

2011-05-16T08:57:00.004+01:00

I had an interesting discussion with a professional drummer at the weekend, we were both killing time on a gig and chatting. He'd got a friend who'd just put in a new recording studio fitted out with analogue retro kit and now had more bookings for big name artists than he could handle. It seems recording artists are looking to analogue recording kit to kill that clean digital sound and bring some 'warmth' back into their recordings. I wonder if digital video will go the same way, maybe it's time to start buying up those BVW75's at £100 each on eBay......?

Hitler hears about FCPX

2011-05-11T08:09:00.002+01:00

Motion at last!

2011-05-10T18:48:00.000+01:00

Finally able to use Motion in the FCP Studio suite - it would work on the G5 but very sloooowly....... can now send a 15 second clip to Motion, re-time and back to FCP in minutes instead of hours!

Up & running.

2011-05-06T20:06:00.003+01:00

Well pleased with the new MacPro! This thing boots in seconds thanks to the SSD, I've loaded FCP Studio 2 and some old projects. A 25 minute movie encode to Mpeg2 / AC3 took just 6 minutes using 8 cores!

I've removed the 1024Mb GeForce card, it's had some poor reviews using FCP and was taking 2 PCI-E slots that I needed to install my eSATA card and Intensity Pro HDMI card - I've provisionally sold it already so that's £150 to offset the original cost of the machine.

Managed to load my FCP plugins and then used a Preference Manager backup to restore all my favourites / button bars / window positions etc, feels like I'm back home now - except it just runs much faster. Looking now to upgrade to FCP7 in a few days and I'll be interested to see what finally comes from Apple in June with FCP X.

Finally - a Mac Pro!

2011-05-03T08:31:00.002+01:00

Just off to Hungerford to collect a used Mac Pro Quad 2.66 I won on eBay last night for a good price. It's a 2009 model (4.1), has an SSD boot drive + 2 x 1Tb drives, 6Gb RAM, 512Mb graphics and a 1024Mb graphics card. Probably spend the next week 'personalising' it, will post details when I've got it.

'Operation Pumpkin'

2011-04-29T07:55:00.001+01:00

With all the Royal Wedding stories and hype today, this one from The Register is my favourite!

Web stats

2011-04-22T09:43:00.000+01:00

Interesting hit on my website today, I'm guessing they were looking for another Fox Video.

Favicon in iWeb

2011-04-19T08:23:00.011+01:00

All the best sites have a Favicon, that little icon that appears in the url bar and also becomes the icon if you bookmark a page. I've just produced a couple of sites in iWeb and wanted to add a favicon, a search on Google showed me several different ways of doing it - I used one of them and it worked. I later changed the whole site, forgetting to add the favicon instructions and the favicon still showed......

So....uploading a new site for a friend I left out all the favicon instructions and instead just uploaded a favicon as a .ico image to the root directory - it worked! I found no need for all the various instructions I'd read, I just dropped an .ico in the root directory and it worked fine, maybe it's a new feature in iWeb 3.0.3, I don't know, but it worked for me using Firefox and Safari as a browser, although the first time I opened a page in Safari it didn't show, I had to refresh the page and then it showed.

CoPilot support - forget it!

2011-04-15T12:13:00.002+01:00

Syncing my iPhone recently I got an advisory there was a CoPilot 8 update available. I downloaded the update and re-synced my iPhone only to get a message "The app "UK' was not installed on the iPhone "iPhone" because it's resources have been modified" - not good!

I followed the advice on the Apple site for that error to un-install from the phone and iTunes and re-download free of charge, which I then did - SAME ERROR!

I had a disk backup of iTunes, I found the CoPilot package on the disk and replaced it in iTunes, then re-synced the phone again - CoPilot now working fine leading me to think it's a problem with the update and not iTunes or the iPhone.

ALK (CoPilot suppliers) have a good help support page, it allowed me to enter all the problems which I carefully explained, that I'd followed all the advice on Apple's site and including the information that my phone was NOT JAILBROKEN - in a short space of time I got a reply stating I should delete the App and re-download it, or that sometimes this error could happen with 'jailbroken phones'!

I replied asking if they'd actually read my support request and what did they suggest I do to fix the problem. A reply back followed saying they were not responsible for any installation errors and to take it up with Apple and, if I wasn't happy with thier reply to contact them again - which I did!

Another reply saying it was still down to Apple to sort it not ALK. A typical 'pass the buck' attitude, I'm sure they must have come across this problem before and even if not, it would surely have been in their interests to try and help fix it even if just for customer satisfaction purposes. I would have mentioned their excellent customer support had they even attempted to try and help (despite them not reading my original request properly), Instead they leave me wondering if it's a case of take the money and run and pass the problem to Apple to sort - Time to look at TomTom I think.

I remember a marketing tip from some years ago - If someone is happy with your customer service, they'll tell a few people........ If someone is unhappy with your customer service, they'll tell everyone.

FCP X

2011-04-14T07:21:00.002+01:00

So Apple have done it again, created a massive media hype to get their product out there, had many thousands of Twitter messages, many thousands of Blog entries and hundreds of thousands of words written on Forums, all for Final Cut Pro X even before it's available, they then quantify it by adding that it was only a sneak preview and many things could, and will change before the actual launch in June.

I think the best blog with a very balanced view was Larry Jordan's - you can read it HERE, as for me, it's irrelevant at the moment, I'm still on a PowerPC G5 with FCP 6.0.6 although this should change in the very near future.

Final Cut Pro X

2011-04-13T06:03:00.001+01:00

So now we know. It looks .......'interesting', and the presentation by Apple left a lot of unanswered questions, tape input?, DVDSP?, Motion? and more.

For a description with pictures go HERE, there's probably many other sites out there but this is the first one I found with all the info at 05.45 this morning - soon after the event finished.

The price? - download only from the Apple Store - $299.

FCS rumours......more!

2011-04-11T17:31:00.000+01:00

Mmmm...starting to get a bit worried now, smart money is on.....an iMovie PRO version of FCP(S), Oh well, 36 hours to go then we'll know.......!

FCP rumour mill in meltdown!

2011-04-06T07:13:00.000+01:00

In typical Apple fashion, the Twittersphere and Blogosphere are in meltdown today at rumours of the new Final Cut Pro (FCS4 / iMovie Pro?) launch. Apple have apparently taken ALL the stage time at the Vegas Supermeet next week during NAB (12th April 2011) cancelling other sponsors like AJA, Avid and Canon. Some details here.

eBay madness rant!

2011-04-03T21:09:00.002+01:00

I'm an eBay user, I've bought and sold on eBay and I regularly browse for any bargains that might be out there, thankfully I've never had any problems and for me, the system works well......that was until the 31st March 2011.

Opening my eBay page I noticed the "keep me logged in' box was ticked, normally this is unchecked and I leave it that way, I thought it was probably a browser cookie setting until later that day I noticed an eBay news item saying they had changed to a default setting of 'keep me logged in' unless I UN-CHECK the box - madness!

For a site that gets it's fair share of fraudulent attempts at trying to access user accounts, I find it unbelievable this new policy has been implemented - if I'm logging in on a computer away from base I now need to make sure I UN-CHECK the box - I wonder how many people have not noticed the change of policy and how many users might now leave their accounts open for others to see if using a shared or public computer!

I don't know of any other websites that use this new policy, it's always 'tick the box to stay logged in', why eBay want to change this makes no sense to me at all!

TenFourFox browser

2011-03-29T18:43:00.002+01:00

I'm a big fan of Firefox, I started using it around version 1. something and I've used it as my main browser ever since on both PC and Mac, it's highly configurable and can be locked down for security with plugins. Firefox have just launched v4 with 7 million downloads on Day 1, my problem is while it's supported on older operating systems like Windows XP it's not being supporting on Mac G4 PowerPC's or G4 Powerbooks....OK, so I'm still using a G4 Motorola laptop for my browsing and email but it still works and I see no reason to change it.

Then I found TenFourFox, basically this is Firefox 4 code in a PowerPC usable package, and so far, in the few days I've been using it I've found it's stable, a big improvement on Firefox 3.6 and fast, so if you're a Luddite like me and still using a PowerPC or Powerbook check it out.

Kid's!

2011-03-28T15:11:00.000+01:00

Don't you just hate it when your offspring try and get smug with you, after my iPhone update glitch and blog the other day, I got this email from my son a few days later!

"I synced my Blackberry this morning and was advised the new OS6 update was available,I'd seen from the Blackberry forum some people had problems with the update but in all the updates I've previously done I'd never had a problem so thought I was OK this time round......

5 mins into the update I DIDN'T get the dreaded "Unable to continue, Restore your phone" message and the on screen OR "connect to Blackberry desktop manager" graphic. I DIDN'T need to try any restarts, OR a computer restart and eventually got the message to "Installed" on my phone. After around 20 mins it had managed to do a complete install after also pointing out that all of my data would be kept safe. After the install it showed I was now on OS6 and it then did a data and App backup, it also restored all my music and pictures, so after no hint of a worry I'm now running with all my data and now on BB OS6".

Mozilla Sync

2011-03-23T06:57:00.001Z

I seemed to be having a lot of problems and crashes in Firefox recently, tried sorting them but in the end decided to delete the program and download a fresh copy, I'd managed to save all my bookmarks and re-import them but I did lose all my saved passwords, a bit of pain trying to remember them all again but I thought it wouldn't be too much of a problem getting them resent to me from the individual sites.....

Then it dawned on me, I had been using Mozilla Sync, I downloaded and installed the plugin and synced Firefox - and there they all were - my new version of Firefox was back exactly as it had been on the old version and now no more lockups - so a great little plugin that saved me hours of work!

Certification?

2011-03-19T11:04:00.001Z

I left school halfway through my final year and with no qualifications, I failed the Civil Service exams twice, I never finished a photography course, in fact the only thing I've ever passed successfully and first time, was my driving test. I went on from school to be a successful local press photographer, a few years later I was taught wedding photography "on the job", later still I blagged my way into a commercial photography company as a photographer and made money at that for several years, following a break from photography I then ran photography holidays, teaching landscape photography and darkroom techniques, during this time I got into video and post production, apart from a 3 day course early on, I'm self taught and I've earned a good living from video and post production for the past 20 years, often advising others on editing techniques and Final Cut Pro troubleshooting, so in all my years I've never gained any qualification, I have however earned a living and enjoyed every moment.

Where am I going with this? a friend of mine recently informed me he had failed the Apple Final Cut Certification exam because he'd not learnt enough 'short cuts' to pass. I have to ask, does this mean he's not a good editor? My answer has to be no, I've seen some of his stuff and it's technically and creatively very good. Just because he (and probably me!) can't remember all the short cut keys in a program doesn't mean we can't edit, I have several showreel videos on my site and it's from those, I hope, people judge if I'm competent and capable to edit from.

The only winners in this "Certification" process are the software suppliers and their agents who run the courses - they both make money from the certification process, the software supplier for selling the program in the first place and the trainers for teaching us a bunch of shortcuts we may never use in the particular way we work.

What is annoying to me, is that a failure to pass the "Certification" only means you don't use a program in the way the software suppliers THINK you should, and does not mean that you're not a good video editor!

New website

2011-03-19T08:18:00.004Z

I've had a website since around 1997 and the Foxvideo domain since 2000, in that time I've had several Foxvideo websites, the first done in Netscape in 1997, and later in a variety of programs including Frontpage, Dreamweaver and several WYSIWYG freeware programs. Recently a good friend of mine and a recent Mac convert asked me about Apple's iWeb for designing his own site, having not used iWeb I told him I'd give it a go and let him know how I got on.

I'm no graphics wiz, I like templates! so I've got to say I'm quite impressed, I started with a built in template and worked out roughly how the program worked, I then went looking for new templates (not too many sites offering them!) and eventually found something I liked for £5, fairly plain but eye pleasing. The drag & drop worked flawlessly, editing text was a breeze and then dropping in a Quicktime movie worked fine. I used the HTML snippet widget to add HTML embed code for my showreel movies on Vimeo, again it all worked fine. I'll admit my site is not a wiz bang flashy (pun!) site but I think it gives all the basic information someone wants to see - a description of what I do, a few samples, contact information and it loads reasonably quickly. I do like the publish and update feature, any changes or amendments to the site can be done very simply and easily direct from your computer.

I do have a minor problem with the site and my version of Firefox, it occasionally crashes the showreel page, I think it's probably to do with the Firefox anti tracking plugins I use (Ghostery, BeefTaco etc) so I'm working on that one. Feel free to visit the site - if you get a problem I'd appreciate hearing from you.
www.foxvideo.co.uk

Memory Lane concert

2011-03-16T09:11:00.000Z

The official launch concert for Nia's new album "Memory Lane".

iOS 4.3 bricks my iPhone....!

2011-03-14T16:08:00.000Z

I synced my iPhone this morning and was advised the new 4.3 update was available, I'd seen from the Apple iPhone forum some people had problems with the update but in all the updates I've previously done I'd never had a problem so thought I was OK this time round......

5 mins into the update I got the dreaded "Unable to continue, Restore your phone" message and the on screen "connect to iTunes" graphic. I tried several restarts, a computer restart and eventually got the message to "Restore" my phone to factory defaults. After around 20 mins it had managed to do a clean install after also warning all my data would be lost. After the clean install it showed I was now on iOS 4.3 and it then did a data and App restore from a backup, it also restored all my music and pictures, so after a worrying few minutes I'm now back with all my data and now on iOS 4.3 - Phew!

iPhone App - Car Console

2011-03-04T07:34:00.006Z

A few weeks back the BBC ran a story about insurance fraud, drivers "staging" car accidents to claim for injury and loss of earnings. A friend of mine who travels the UK daily was worried about this and found an 'in car' camera recording device for £299, it records location, speed and video and could be played back in the event of an accident, I mentioned I've occasionally done this with the video on my iPhone and that with all the features of the iPhone, an App should be available to do the other features. Well, browsing an App mag I found one - for £1.19!

Car Console will record video and display your current speed and location. the app was originally released in '09 to mixed reviews mostly unfavourable, it's just been updated in 02/11 and I've downloaded it to give it a try. Watch this space.

UPDATE.

Ok it works. You need to remember to turn the map overlay feature on to record speed / location and this data is only available when you play back via the app on the iPhone. The video recording feature is OK but no different to just using the iPhone video camera, my stuff was a little dark but this is more down to positioning of the camera and not letting it "see" too much sky. I found a poor phone signal caused the app to stop, if the mobile signal dropped out recording stopped and the app needed re-starting - not ideal when driving! This app will also use your data allowance so unlimited data use is probably recommended. It might be better if the app used OpenStreetMap where the map data could be stored locally on the phone.....?

So, it's an OK app that I might use on occasions but will hope for updates to improve the interface and operation.

Acronis - Lifesaver!

2011-02-28T17:30:00.006Z

A few weeks back I picked up a S/h Newtek Tricaster, although it's quite old technology (2005/6) it is still a very usable 3 camera mixer, effects unit and hard disk recorder using Windows XP on a Shuttle PC. The unit supposedly had a later version of software on the hard drive and the guy I bought it from explained he'd not got round to installing it. As it's been a busy few weeks I'd not had time to set up the Tricaster and have a play but yesterday I did, I decided to do the update and killed the whole unit!

A major error message appeared and although Windows loaded, the Tricaster software refused to do so. The seller had done an Acronis disk image when he first bought the unit as it doesn't come with any re-install software, you have to send it back to the Newtek agent to get any problems fixed.

I thought my copy of Acronis 7 would load and read the image, all I got was an error saying the disk image was corrupt, so I downloaded the latest version of Acronis 11 as a trial copy and installed it, this saw the disk image and restored it, so I've now got the unit back to it's original condition and all working fine - Thank you Acronis!

For those that have not heard of the Tricaster, it's a full production studio in a box and a later version of the famous Toaster that was available for Amiga users in the 90's. It can take 3 camera inputs plus an external source (laptop), apply effects, graphics and greenscreen and then either output to the web direct, record to it's internal hard drive or send the output to a video projector. Not that long ago hardware to do a similar job would have cost many hundreds of thousands of pounds! More to follow on using the Tricaster coming soon.

First Screen Monkey presentation

2011-02-26T08:42:00.000Z

Just back from Nia's gig, Screen Monkey excelled itself! For a first outing with little or no rehearsal, Neil did an amazing job of setting it up having only played with it for a few days. A few minor tweaks before the launch concert on 12th March for Nia's new album "Memory Lane" but overall a stunning presentation package at a price you can't beat.

Presentation software - WOW!

2011-02-22T08:55:00.003Z

Having worked on getting all the visuals ready for the Nia UK tour of her new album "Memory Lane", I thought I'd go to the first "shakedown / rehearsal" to see how my stuff looked on a big screen. The tech crew, Nia's husband and her guitar player Sid, had setup a DVD player through a scaler and switcher along with a laptop for some Powerpoint stuff, to the VGA of the projector. The system worked well apart for the conversion of the DVD via "S" video to the scaler and the projector showing text on screen when the inputs from the switcher changed - I thought there must be a better way........

A few emails, forum posts and a phone call put me onto Screen Monkey, a free presentation software package for Windows. This will allow you to create a show or presentation from video clips, still images, Powerpoint presentations and audio tracks. A quick download and I had it up and running on a Dell Core Duo 1.66 with 1Gb of RAM. I prepared a few video clips using Apple Compressor and loaded them into Screen Monkey - and was totally blown away in the way they played out to my second large monitor and I thought, "this has possibilities!"

After ordering another 1Gb of RAM for the laptop, a long couple of days followed as I tried different video formats, adding Powerpoints, single images and audio tracks and then eventually re-creating the show I'd seen using Screen Monkey. I emailed Neil and suggested he came and had a look, which he did, and he was of the same opinion as me - this could save a whole flightcase of kit and help the presentations run even smoother, a decision was made to try it out with the flightcase kit as backup, for the next tour event.

So, a couple of days to go before the next event and I'm frantically preparing all the video clips and creating a backup program on another laptop, we'll have the main laptop, a spare laptop and as third standby, the hardware kit. This software really does have a massive capability and you can't beat the price, I just hope the M$oft OS doesn't let us down! (Now if it was only available for the Mac I'd have no worries on the day at all!)

Nia - Memory Lane

2011-02-19T11:53:00.002Z

Psalm 121 - produced for Nia's upcoming UK tour and new album launch "Memory Lane" on 12th March at Gorsley Chapel, Herefordshire.

Best intentions? - yeah right!

2011-02-18T08:21:00.012Z

For any new Final Cut project I always start with the best housekeeping intentions......, I create a folder on my external drive and name it with the job name, then set my scratch disks to point to this folder, I keep the project file in the same folder and I usually create other folders like Pix, graphics and Final outputs or DVD stuff and a backup project file on another drive. By the end of any large project I end up with stuff everywhere - on the desktop, scattered over several externals, in the wrong folders and usually a total mess that takes ages to tidy up!

No more! - I came across Post Haste this "lunchware" program will create a folder at your choice of location from some basic information like job number, client, date, editor and then add a series of folders inside the main folder like FCP, From Client, Audio, Photoshop etc. Created folders are fully customisable from the original template to suit your own workflow, for example I deleted the Cinema4D folder as I don't use it. It takes a few minutes to get to grips with it but there's a demo video on the site - so, no more will my projects look like a dog's breakfast......Yeah right!

Nia - new album - Memory Lane

2011-02-13T09:54:00.000Z

Just finished a 10 track DVD for the launch of Nia's new album 'Memory Lane', these video tracks are played out via projector when Nia is singing live on stage. Some new video stuff, some re-vamped from existing material. A good working job, a couple of minor 'technical' hitches, 2 video tracks were edited in FCP on a ProRes timeline at 16:9, exported as a reference file and then, when imported into Compressor, they were 4:3! - tried several times to sort it with no luck, final workaround was to open the Reference file in Quicktime, change the dimensions to 1024x576, save as self contained then import into Compressor - still not sure where problem was. I also completely 'lost' one timeline! - not sure how but was able to recover it from FCP's backups. My favourite track to work on I think was "Dad's song", Nia wanted to use all family video footage with her husband and two boys and it was great interpreting her words to footage in the edit. Hoping to post a couple of clips from the DVD but will have to wait until after the official launch on 12th March.

Simple? - love it!

2011-02-02T16:07:00.006Z

I love simple, I'm a big user of 'one click fixes", I'll use a Photoshop action whenever I can, a template rather than design from scratch and anything else I can to give a one click fix - don't get me wrong though, if something really needs work I'll put the effort in and spend hours if necessary, tweaking until I'm happy, but on many occasions a one click fix is all that's needed, that's where 'The Levelator' comes in:

Originally designed for 'sweetening' podcasts, I use it for audio dialogue in Final Cut Pro. I'd shot some setup vox pops over 3 days, although I used the same mic at the same settings and in the same room, there were some differences in the sound. After cutting, I exported the audio file as an .aiff then just dropped it on the Levelator icon, there's no settings to mess with, it just gets on and works it's magic and then auto saves the file back to it's original location with a slightly different filename. I imported this new file to my time-line, applied the FCP 'Normalisation' effect at -6db, deleted the original dialogue and all my vox pops from 3 different days were in perfect sync and sounding as sweet as a nut! It's available for Mac, PC and Linux but best of all is the price - Donationware! Check it out HERE

EDIT:
Just had an email saying the download is for Windows only - Not sure if this is a website or browser fault but if you click the Windows download link then cancel the download more options including OSX and Linux downloads show up!

Bug list update

2011-01-26T16:12:00.002Z

Just a reminder to anyone who read my blog entry for the Firefox plugin Ghostery - don't forget to occasionally "update bug lists" - click the Ghostery icon (bottom right of your Firefox page) then when the update has done, go to "Options > Blocking" and check any new trackers - then save. I'm currently blocking 449 trackers!

Call me a dinosaur.....

2011-01-18T07:14:00.002Z

I'm guilty of being a kit junkie and pixel peeper.....I've bought into HD, messed with codecs and down-conversion, and generally tried to stay with the game in up to date technology but last night I did a small shoot, just some simple setup vox pops, I used the recently aquired DSR 500WSP, a Sony ECM77 lav mic and a single bounced Redhead with a reflector.

I shot to tape and hard drive, it took under 10 minutes to drop the files from the hard drive into Final Cut and onto a timeline. Looking at the footage on a Sony PVM20M4 20" CRT (again recently acquired) I couldn't believe the quality - in all the time I'd been using HD, capturing to ProRes then editing down for an SD DVD I never seemed to get that quality of image I saw last night from a 2/3rds camera with a good lens, so yes call me a dinosaur......but I'm a happy dinosaur!

Alpha transitions in Final Cut Pro

2011-01-11T17:44:00.000Z

When Apple launched Final Cut v7 they introduced a new transition in the package called "Alpha Transition", they also included a link to the Apple site for users to download 9 new Alpha transition effects. This was fine if you're on FCP7 but they didn't work with FCP6!

In an idle moment surfing around waiting for a render to finish, I found THIS SITE offering a FREE plugin to make Alpha transitions work in Final Cut Express with a note saying it might work in FCP, I couldn't resist trying it so downloaded the plugin and the free Apple transitions package - it all worked fine on my version of FCP 6.0.6

The 9 free transitions from Apple seemed a bit limiting, I wondered if there were any more out there and came across a Facebook page for Alpha Transitions, on there a guy was offering 30 Lens Flare type Alpha transitions for £17 UKP with a $5 discount code for Facebook users - giving a new buy price of £16.31 UKP.

I downloaded and installed them, they work fine with the free plugin and now I've got a new range of transitions that (at the moment!) have not been done to death.