Government Video Show and the Digital DC Creatives
The last talks of the year. Phew.
The first talk was about VR - I called Stitch and Bitch. Surprisingly they let the title go through. It was a combination of the lay of the VR landscape and seeing how the sausage gets made - stitching.
A favorite - Mastering Compression was next. I've included three presets, A client preset and two better all around h264 presets. One is optimized for 1080, the other 720.
Then, thanks to Robbie Carman, of Mixing Light I spoke about Log/Luts and more in production.
Over to the DDC User group - where I spoke about secondaries, with the key message being if you can visualize a mask, you can correct/work on that area.
Last - an All day color correction in Adobe Premiere Pro class.
Once you signup, I'll give you all of these talks along with the presets and my Search Bins project for Premiere. Take a look it does some cool things!
NAB 2013 Day 4 FCPX Titling and Adobe Media Managment
Two sessions (and a great panel on the Art of Editing.)
The first one was getting the most out of FCPX and Motion to improve and take control of Titling.
The second was a technique to minimize media headaches in the CS6 Pro video tools in Prelude, Premiere Pro, Photoshop, After Effects, Audition, Speedgrade and Media Encoder.
Here is the common media folder from the book (essentially a bunch of folders zipped up in a structure). This technique is from our book an Editor's Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro.
Find out if you've dropped frames (Premiere)
See the wrench on your Record monitor?
Go to it and check Dropped Frames indicator.
Now you can make smart decisions if Adobe Premiere Pro drops frames (is it serious? No, they'll all be there for output - but you may choose to render or degrade the playback resolution depending on if it drops frames/how many frames were dropped.
Adobe Sessions with tips like this will be at NAB/Post Production world
Replace...from bin (Premiere)
Great little Premiere feature - the Replace clip feature.
A favorite variation is "Replace from bin." Meaning the Director or Producer is in the room and asks you to swap one shot for another? Select the shot on the timeline; select what you want to replace it with from a bin, right click and choose "Replace with Clip > From Bin".
Adobe Sessions with tips like this will be at NAB/Post Production world
Click for full size. Totally mappable via keyboard too
Scaling large images down quickly (Premiere)
The only real problem about the way Premiere handles images? It brings in all of their beautiful megapixels - but the scale is at 100% - meaning large pictures are HUGE - with their edges far outside of the frame area....
....unless you select them and choose Clip > Video Options > Scale to Frame size.
Then all of them are scaled down (making it easier to animate!)
Adobe Sessions with tips like this will be at NAB/Post Production world
Did you know you can have audio track keyframes? (Premiere)
This is one of those 'totally cool' features that I'm always surprised that most people don't know about.
Adobe Premiere Pro has clip keyframes and it also has keyframes for the track.
Look! There are keyframes on the track now!
Two Quick thoughts
These are GREAT for swapping different music in/out (you just use replace - the keyframes are on the track, so music stays ducked!)
But if you make timing changes on your tracks (such as trimming/removing/adding frames) these keyframes won't slide to stay in place.)
Adobe Sessions with tips like this will be at NAB/Post Production world
Nobody needs the work area bar (Premiere)
Sorry, I don't know an editor who needs/wants the Work Area bar in Premiere pro. I get how it came to be there, but if you're an editor? It should go.
Bonus, the "Enter" key (to render/preview) now becomes Render In to Out.
Adobe Sessions with tips like this will be at NAB/Post Production world
Build your photo montage to music quickly (Premiere)
Everyone sooner or later is asked to build a photo montage. Here's how to build them quick in Adobe Premiere Pro.
Drop your music in, play back and press the M key for markers on the music during the beat. Then use the Automate to Sequence button at the bottom of the project panel.
Click to view. Switch from sequentially to "at unnumbered markers"
Advanced Adobe Premiere Pro tips
I love tips sessions - they're always about 'Can I find something really new and powerful that this group doesn't know.' And my goal always is to find at least five items for every person in the room.
Since Tips sessions are custom to the room - there are no notes; if you look at your notes and have questions email them or leave them in the comments.
The rule is cool/quick/smart about which items I pick. Sure, it might be nice to have insight to the how/why of setting up Adobe Premiere Pro sequences - but that's really a blog post. For example, it's about the idea that you can render faster if someone shows you how to create previews at half resolution.
The problem with tip sessions is tips one the one above (which I didn't show) is unique to the crowd. I usually come in with a dozen or so cool tips and let the crowd tell me where they're frustrated/lost with the software.
I didn't do the above tip during the session, so I wrote it out below.
If you create a sequence preview and switch it's editing mode to custom, you can halve the vertical and horizontal resolutions of your previews in Adobe Premiere Pro. This is only useful if you export Media at the default setting (use previews off.) If you turn this on, you'll screw up your exports. Keep "Use Previews" off if you want to use this technique.
Take your Preview size and set it to half - so 1920 becomes 960, 1080 becomes 540 - 960x540. If you're working in 720, that's 640x360.
Since we're calculating only 1/4 of the area - your previews will be 4x faster in Adobe Premiere Pro - and this tip works (at least) all the way back from version 5.
“This tip will quadruple the speed of your previews in Adobe Premiere Pro”
Adobe RoadShow hits NYC
On Tues, I was speaking at the Adobe CS6 Roadshow. This is a great event when it does come to your city; but in NYC, DC and LA, there are special training seminars. These are perfect for an editor who sees the Adobe Production Suite (Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, Speedgrade) in their near future.
I'll need to update these for the next city, but here were the presentations, as promised.
Broadcast centered editing.pdf - this is about adopting Premiere Pro and understanding some of it's feature set that apply to a broadcast environment.
Editing faster.pdf - a crash course in editorial in Premiere Pro.
Trimming.pdf - Trimming, the adjustment of clip length in the timeline - something that I feel makes and breaks and editorial system (and editor) demystified.