MacMediaCast.com

MMC 010: Screencasting Secrets

This video is a tutorial on Screencasting secrets - how to make a great screen capture or screencast presentations on your Mac. Direct Download (QuickTime) Full transcript below the fold - Screencasting is using screen captures (stills and movies) from your computer to create video content. We’re starting to see these pop up all over the web in [...]

HiLo Media Press Release

We just officially released our HiLo Media Press Release: Hilo Media: A New Kind of Production Company for a New Age of Web Marketing Two distinguished multimedia producers join forces to provide new solutions for the emerging world of viral marketing and product videos for the web. Asheville, NC (PRWEB) June 26, 2008 – Video producers Joseph Nilo [...]

MMC-Recommended Gear

I often get asked what sort of software and gear I own, use and recommend. I just added a page to this website showing my gear and some of the DV and HD cameras I have experience with and recommend: MMC Recommended Gear

Keeping Busy with HiLo Media

In my never ending quest to have zero free time, I’ve officially launched another company / collaboration - HiLo Media. After some collaborations with a fellow very familiar to Mac Pro Podcast subscribers . . . Chuck Heilig — we decided to launch a niche company that creates viral web videos out of company’s marketing materials. [...]

News: HD Camera Lens Selection Guide Goes Online

www.HDCameraLensGuide.com Enables Broadcast and Professional Videographers to Select the Correct HD Lens for Their Camera and Application (Great Neck, New York–February 19, 2008) As High Definition video (HD) becomes the standard for broadcast and professional videographers, as well as a wide range of filmmakers, manufacturers are introducing a growing array of HD cameras that [...]

Outputting Standard Definition in FCP from the Sony XDCam EX1

Great article from the always-great KenStone.net about creating proper SD footage from the new Sony XDCam EX1. A good read whether you own the camera or not, and are interested in HD / SD workflows. Whenever a new technology hits the market there are always teething problems. In the case of new video cameras there are [...]

Compressor: Troubleshooting basics

Apple has a page available to help troubleshoot the (problematic at best) Compressor that we’ve all grown to love/hate. The most exciting adventure is the last step — Remove and Reinstall Compressor, which has you searching the depths of your system for all of Compressor and Qmaster’s little droppings. I’ve done this more times than [...]

Blast From the Past: Mac Pro Podcast 17 from December 2005

I came across this file while looking at my Libsyn backend. Man, they hang on to everything! I can’t believe that we used to do a show this robust every week (for no pay!). I particularly like this episode because Dan gets on camera for a segment and the outtakes at the end are particularly amusing.Mac [...]

Final Cut Pro Quick Tip: Hue Direction Control

Another great Final Cut Pro Quick Tip from Genius DV: Ever wonder what the color circle with the arrow in when you get to a color selection decision in Final Cut Pro. It is called the Hue Direction Control. What it does is control the direction a change in color [...]

New Plugins for Broader DVCPRO HD and P2 Support Resources | Final Cut Help

We reported recently about P2 cards now shipping with HVX-200 Cameras, now (troublesome) P2 management just got seemingly easier. I found this blog post recently: This is just awesome, Calibrated Software has a bunch of new plug-ins on tap that make it possible to work with MXF and DVCPRO HD codecs. This will streamline P2 workflow [...]

Quick Tip: Audio Mixdown in Final Cut Pro

Here’s a quick tip on Audio Mixdown in Final Cut Pro that I found on the Final Cut Help blog. When outputting material to tape, an Audio Mixdown feature was a recommended precaution to ensure you didn’t drop frames. Choose Sequence > Render Only > Mixdown (or press Command + Option + R). You can also map [...]

Get Organized with Flow from Gridiron Software

I read about a great new and exciting (to me, at least) product from Gridiron Software called Flow. It has not yet been released, but it has won a “Best of Show” award at this past MacWorld 2008. Here is a great description of the product, but I recommend watching the overview video here: “Flow is [...]

Is Apple Shedding its Final Cut Pro Apps at NAB?

I found this great read over at Rougly Drafted Magazine, giving a great alternative viewpoint to the rumors that Apple might be selling its Pro Apps suite to a third party. A further interesting tidbit is the list below of the past release schedule at NAB’s gone by: NAB 2000 Final Cut Pro 1.2.5 with support [...]

Mac Mediacast 009: Using the Media Manager in Final Cut Pro

Direct Download (QuickTime H.264 "iPod" setting): Click Here

Media Manager Overview

I realized recently that nobody ever talks about one of the most powerful tools in Final Cut Pro-- the Media Manager. Here's a quick overview on how to properly use the Media Manager:

Right Click on any sequence in your bin and choose "Media Manager". The tool will pop up and give you information about your sequence and options for what to do with it. From top to bottom:

Perian 1.1 Released

Perian is a swiss-army knife QuickTime plugin (hence their friendly little icon) that allows playback of many non-native codecs in QuickTime. The latest update touts the following fixes / additions: Major performance improvements TrueAudio, MP1, and DTS audio support Slice-based multithreaded decoding for MPEG-1/2/H.264 Apple H.264 now handles AVCHD/interlaced vide Compatibility fixes for QuickTime 7.4 and Leopard Objective-C GC compatibility Fixed a crash [...]

Quick Tip: A Better Mac Volume Adjustment

I found this great tip from David over at MacSparky.com: Hitting the built in volume buttons on your Mac is great for quickly raising or lowering your volume but what about when you want to lower or raise the volume just a little bit. Once again Apple has a solution that they don’t tell anyone about. Hit [...]

Breaking News: Re-Launched Mac Roundtable

I was going to blog about this, but Don McAllister beat me to it: Some breaking news!! One of my favourite Mac podcasts has been off line since October last year, and that’s the Mac Roundtable. Joseph, Adam, Steve and Tim did a great job in bring mac news and opinions to the community, but due to [...]

How to Make Reference Movies in Final Cut Pro

[From Reference Movies | Weekly Tip | Final Cut Help] Need to save some space? Reference movies allow you to work with your video clips or sequence files in other applications. Think of a reference movie as a pointer back to the original media, a lot like a link on a web page Learn More Reference movies are [...]

16GB P2 card now included with HVX200

[From Studio Daily Blog » 16GB P2 card now included with HVX200] Panasonic is now generously including a 16GB P2 card with every HVX200 purchase, a $900 value. Effective December 1, 2007, this offer requires no mail-ins or anything of the sort: all HVX200 cameras include the card in box, along with a copy of Barry [...]

Yes We Can.

We are not as divided as our politics would suggest.

Export Quality in Final Cut Pro

I found a great article over at Genius DV about sequence settings in Final Cut Pro and how that affects export quality: Have you ever noticed that when working in Final Cut Pro with DV media, graphics and titles often have a poor quality look? There are two major reasons for this. #1 DV media uses [...]

Some direct Quicktime installer links

From the Editblog: I’m sure by now everyone has heard of the drama surrounding the Quicktime 7.4 update and the havoc it causes with After Effects renders. If you have upgraded and need to downgrade then here are a few direct links to standalone Quicktime installers that I leave booked marked as it is sometimes hard [...]

Tutorial: QuickTime Timecode Display

This is a great tip from friend of the Mac Mediacast Brian Gary over at the most awesome-est website, KenStone.net: QuickTime is the engine that runs most (if not all) media related applications on the Mac, with Final Cut Studio being a prime example. You tend to hear often, “If QuickTime can open the file then [...]

Review: Boris Continuum Complete AVX 5

I am a huge fan of the Boris products and I don’t think I could live without my Continuum Complete 4 for Final Cut Pro. Here is a great review / overview of the new version of Boris’s suite of filters & effects. Yes, the review is centered around Avid and After Effects, but the [...]

Tutorial: Menu button versatility with DVD Studio Pro

From Genius DV: DVD Studio Pro allows the menu buton of your DVD player to have various control depending on what area of the DVD you are navigating from. A common mistake is to set Menu1 up as a short first play movie, but leave the overall disc control of the menu button to go to [...]

Drop Frame vs. Non-Drop Frame rate: An Explanation

From Genius DV: Drop Frame vs. Non-Drop Frame rate I have been asked many times to explain the difference between Drop Frame and Non-Drop Frame. I found a fairly detailed explanation the will hopefully help you understand the difference. US TVs display 29.97 frames a second. When NTSC was defined, they found out there were some problems [...]

Using the Motion library in Final Cut Pro

Great tip from GeniusDV: Much of the Library of production elements that are used in Motion, can be brought right into Final Cut Pro. My workflow often takes me into Motion to do a simple composite with something from the Motion Library, and then one day it hit me to just drag what I needed right [...]

Canon HV30 Camcorder Review

The Canon HV20 is a favorite of many Mac Mediacast subscribers — the HV30 is a promising upgrade, with, most notably, a HDD-based system with no more mini-dv tape. Couple that with HDMI out and a pretty good picture for a cam in its price range, and you’ve got a top camcorder pic for filmmakers on [...]

Review: Sony PMW-EX1 1/2” 3-CMOS HD Camcorder

From ProVideo Coalition.com: Camera Log by Adam Wilt: The quirky first Handycam from Sony’s CineAlta group offers stunning performance. The US$6500 (street price) Sony PMW-EX1 is a six-pound, high definition Handycam with three 1/2” CMOS chips. It resolves a true 1920×1080 image; shoots both interlaced and progressive; records 1920×1080, 1440×1080 (HDV-compatible), and 1280×720 formats; and offers variable [...]

Links to update your BluRay or HD-DVD Player!

From Walter Biscardi’s Blog: Amazon has put together a nice links page to update your HD-DVD and BluRay players. If you don’t already know, many machines require firmware updates to be able to play the latest discs, particularly the recordable discs, such as BluRay BD-R discs. If your machine won’t play that latest HD disc, check to [...]

News: Magic Bullet Frames Now Shipping

I saw this press release and had to blog it — I am an avid user of Red Giant Software’s Magic Bullet Look Suite: Take Interlaced Video and Get the 24p Look of Film Right in Final Cut Pro, Motion or Premiere Pro (San Francisco, California–February 1, 2008) Red Giant Software, developer and publisher of professional digital [...]

Media Manager in Final Cut Pro

Just found a nice read at a nice blog I’d never seen before: MEDIA MANAGING TO SMALLER SIZES The media manager in Final Cut Pro is a powerful utility that doesn’t get as much mention as the other, sexier features that the suite has to offer. It allows one to recompress footage for offline editing or manage [...]

Macworld Montage Video

Direct Download Link (QuickTime)Flash Version Good pal & colleague Chuck Heilig shot some video while at Macworld this year. I was supposed to join him there so we could promote our new venture, HiLo Media, but, alas, I had to watch from the sidelines. Chuck is a great shooter; this video was shot on the much-heralded Canon HV-20. Enjoy the video! [...]

Compressor Woes

A regular subscriber to the podcast & emailer with great tips — Phoenix-Brian — wrote to me his experiences and findings with some recent problems with Compressor. Having experienced these issues firsthand (haven’t we all wanted to throw our Mac out the window in dealing with Compressor?) — I wanted to share his email, which [...]

Mac Mediacast 008

Welcome to Mac MediaCast episode 8. Direct Download Link (QuickTime / H.264 / AppleTV) In this episode: some quick Final Cut Pro tips. Full transcript below the fold – It’s been a long time since I’ve done a podcast because of a large project I’ve been working on — a cooking show for television. I figured I’m way [...]

Moby Releases Music for Independent Productions

From Mobygratis.com: hi, i’ll keep this brief. this portion of moby.com, ‘film music’, is for independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short. to use the site you log in(or on?) and are then given a password. you can then listen to the available music and download [...]

Sorenson Squeeze Basic Encoding: A Video Guide

Sorenson Squeeze Basic Encoding: A Video Guide I am an avid user of Sorenson Squeeze — I thought I’d share this intro tutorial video I found over at Web Video Universe. I use Squeeze for the encoding of all my Flash & Windows Media format videos.

Bottom 10 FCP Tips … revisited

The Editblog » Bottom 10 FCP Tips … revisited Over a year ago I followed up a post about my top 10 Final Cut Pro tips with a lost of the “bottom 10 tips.” Really it was all about stuff that just annoyed me about FCP. That was written way back around v. 5.1.1. Over a [...]

Apple Releases Final Cut Express 4: Is It Right for You?

Apple Releases Final Cut Express 4: Is It Right for You? Apple’s often overlooked mid-range video editor gets an update. With iMovie overhauled, Final Cut Express is now the best choice for Mac-using consumers. But does it have the power necessary for online video professionals, as well? With the release of Apple Final Cut Express 4, the [...]

Unique Editing Opportunity . . . for Canadians

from Studio Daily Blog I read on the Studio Daily Blog that director Bruce McDonald is posting on his website all the raw footage from his film “The Tracey Fragments” for anyone to cut together. You can even enter a contest (if you’re Canadian) . . . but the material is still available for anyone [...]