OK, I hate to try to sound like one of "the kids", and frankly, I avoid a lot of the popular memes when it comes to cultural vernacular and therefore, I NEVER use the word "FAIL" as a noun.
BUT...
This packaging for a Motorola Bluetooth device is a TOTAL failure! (How nice, I avoided the noun.)
So, its one thing to have all this stuff, plastic insert, cardboard liner, zip lock bags with accessories but the box itself IS METAL!!!! Its some sort of hard clunky, 'it would hurt if your little brother threw it at you' METAL... and very hard to open by the way.
And then they try to get cleaver. I guess they are trying to play off the success, although it was 12 years go, of the Motorola Flip phones they have the audacity to label it... "FLIPPING BRILLIANT", I'd say more like "FLIPPING REDICULOUS"!!
And of course, lets not forget what this is all about, a little tiny Bluetooth headset. I don't even know if it sounds any good. I wouldn't buy it. By the way, the only way I even know about all this is a friend of mine bought one and we were both utterly shocked at the sheer amount of packaging involved in this tiny little tool.
When I first started cutting in Final Cut Pro X I used it in the default settings which would automatically make Prores files in the background and swap out my H264 files without me even realizing it. In the summer of 2012 I did a 2 week job travelign across country in a tour bus cutting 2-3 deliverables a day from 5 cameras all shooting H264. I knew I would not have time to transcode anything so, realizing that there was a menu option to turn of transcoding, I wondered if I even needed it. After all, why have an option to turn it OFF if you absolutely need it.
As it turned out my 2010 Macbook Pro handled the media perfectly and I had no problems for those 2 weeks. Since then I have not transcoded any Canon H264 media. The tutorials below are from when I used to cut in FCP7. They are still very popular and are viewed all the time. But I wanted you to know that today I’m doing all my work in FCPX and find it to be the most efficient and fastest system available. If you’d like to hear more about FCPX and hear from others that are using it in their business, please listen in on my podcast FCPX Grill. You can find it on iTunes.
If you are looking to add more codecs when using MPEG Streamclip, or if you don’t have the same choices that my machine does in the demo… check out this tutorial here.
Coming Soon: A detailed explanation on how to store large amounts of data VERY inexpensively.
The 5DMK2 takes great images in video mode but the H264 file format sucks for editing. This shows how I go about converting those files for use in Final Cut Pro.
Some people have asked me about the DVCPro HD codec. If you don’t have Final Cut Pro installed you may not have access to this codec. It’s not to hard to come by. I choose to work in 720P just out of convenience. 1080 files are just overkill most of the time. (I know I’m gonna catch crap for saying that.) But seriously, i recently put some content on 50 foot wide screens and the producer of the show, who’s reputation is impeccable, actually said that 1080 was not necessary.
Update: I keep getting emails about the codecs or “components”, as they are called. Here is a great discussion that till get you going in the right direction.
The bottom line is if you don’t have Final Cut Pro installed you won’t have all the same codecs that my machine shows in the demo. If you find somene that will share with you you could copy all the .component files you want, like ProRes and DVCPro HD, to your machine and they will appear in YOUR pull down menu.
These guys recently posted a great roundtable discussion about the "future of digital video" and with in minutes of the beginning of the seminar the topic of Canon HDSLR's came up. There is a great run down of how/when/if HDSLR's are appropriate. The panel includes Christina Fox, a visitor of this site and Larry Frame the instructor dude.
Anyway, there was no embed code but if you think you want to buy a HDSLR you should watch this seminar online.
Jeff Dykhouse called me with some questions about a video he was making for his kids Christmas Musical. He needed to learn about the Travel Matte Alpha feature in Final Cut Pro, although he didn't know what it was called. This is a great collection of tricks in FCP, Photoshop and even has a little color correction trick thrown in there too.
I made this tutorial for my nephews who were shooting a piece in a prison for French television and they were having a problem dealing with the mercury vapor lights.
Friday, February 26, 2010 at 2:49PM 
