If you’re not already familiar with B&H I suspect you soon will be. For many it’s considered the Mecca of the imaging community. Countless travelers make the journey north every year, just to stand among the superior camera technology.
I once heard that at if you’re lucky, and if you’re standing in just the right spot, you’ll experience a feeling akin to euphoria. This, of course, comes directly before you realize you just dropped $1200 on a 70mm lens, at which point you begin to justify the purchase (and the journey) by calling it an investment, a smart business move, or simply blame it on mind-control.
I’m not an After Effects user, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love seeing what people can do with it. Video Copilot is one of my favorite After Effects centered sites for viewing the latest and greatest from some talented artists. They consistently deliver fantastic tutorials (that Motion people can benefit from too), and their lineup of plugins looks to be top-notch. If I were of the Adobe persuasion, I’d definitely give them a look-see.
Today Video Copilot is releasing their latest disc of plugin goodies, calling it Twitch. One of the best parts about these releases are the trailers that accompany them. My favorite is still Evolution, but this is probably a close second. You can check out their store for the full lineup.
The most publicized feature in Mac OS 10.5 Leopard can also be one of the most useful for your Final Cut Studio workfow. This, of course, is Time Machine.
My setup right now consists of two external hard drives. Both are 500GB FireWire 800 drives. One is for capture and all of the extra goodies that come with Final Cut Studio, and the other is for backup via Time Machine. Read More »
You probably already know this, but I also work on a podcast called SOLMI. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a (mostly) weekly comedy podcast made up of scripted episodes, a-la sketch comedy. Although I don’t really think we’ve every really called ourselves sketch comedy people.
We don’t know what we are.
We also haven’t had a new show out in a while, but that’s another story altogether. Anyway, I went ahead and took one of our recent episodes over to the Enzian, a film house that screens local filmmaker’s work at monthly film slams. From what I understand the barrier to entry into these slams is pretty low. That being said, we were probably lucky to sneak into the running with our (probably highly offensive) episode, Superhero.
Superhero was actually originally shot as part of Apple’s Insomnia Film Festival, a 24-hour film competition open to students. It’s also a response to NBC’s Heroes, which includes a character (Isaac) that requires the use of heroin to activate his super powers. An interesting premise to be sure, but we wondered what it might be like if other people had similar… limitations. And what those limitations might be. And what that might mean for those close to that person.
So there it is. Enjoy the show, and if you’re in the Orlando area this Sunday at 1pm, we’d appreciate the support.
If you’ve ever tried to do it yourself, keying DV footage can ruin your day. The out-of-the-box offerings in Final Cut Studio 2 don’t really cut it, and trying to make a keyer yourself is, to put it mildly, insane. After spending some fruitless nights with the keyers in Final Cut Pro, and Primatte in Motion, I started to look for another, third-party, keyer.
I remember hearing something about Ultra 2 from back in the day. I recall it being really expensive, but especially powerful. Particularly on DV footage. Great, I thought. I mean sure it’s expensive but they’ve probably got a trial available. I’ll just check it out and… oh, Adobe bought them and the product is Windows-only?
