Showing Tag: "avid media composer" (Show all posts)

Turning "Meh" into "My Goodness!" with Magic Bullet Looks

Posted by Corne Scheepers on Saturday, November 4, 2017,

I first worked with Red Giant's Magic Bullet Looks a few years ago. It was the demo version and I loved what it did to spice up some rather mediocre 1080i camcorder video. But I pretty much just dumped presets over my footage without really knowing what I was doing. Fast forward to the present where I now have a better understanding of what goes on in Media Composer's waveform and vector scopes and grading as a whole, and the Magic Bullet Looks suite takes on a whole new meaning.

If you're se...

And this is why you should be shooting 4K now

Posted by Corne Scheepers on Saturday, November 4, 2017,

4K, or UHD is all the rage right now. So what is all the fuss about? Well, the resolution of UHD images is absolutely gorgeous! If you need convincing just walk into any electronics store and take a good look at the 4K ready monitors and the demo material Sony, Panasonic and many others are peddling now.

But other than beautifully crisp images there's a very good reason to start upgrading at least one or two of your HD cameras to UHD soon. Most of us edit 1080p HD projects and output that as w...

Launched: Avid Media Composer | First

Posted by Corne Scheepers on Tuesday, July 4, 2017,

I've had some weird requests the past six years. Most notably the young lady who awkwardly asked me: "my boss wants you to send us a link for free editing software". Yes, I kid you not (That same client screwed me and a few other folks over spectacularly a few years later, so I should probably have taken a hint then...) Anyway, if that same request came by today I would have smiled and pointed them at Avid. Yes, it's really free. For real, yours to own and use without limitations. Actually th...

Filming aerials. The legal way.

Posted by Corne Scheepers on Thursday, March 2, 2017,

South Africa has some pretty extreme legislation regarding the use of drones, resulting in a large amount of illegally filmed stuff being out there. So when I was asked to source a commercially licenced supplier for a big corporate video project recently it took some research before I managed to find my drone guys. Currently only eleven companies are commercially licenced in South Africa, and of those only a handful focus on filming for the television and film market. It has become a very spe...

Ready. Set. Go.

Posted by Corne Scheepers on Friday, January 27, 2017,

After a very lazy December holiday season, 2017 has suddenly started off with a bang. Even though I've been doing this for a few years now, every single shoot is new and unique and every single year is different in terms of the types of projects I get to do. And if like me you constantly need new intellectual stimulation to keep going, the variety this type of work offers is fantastic.

I'm currently running Media Composer 8.7.2 and I'll be trying out a few of the new features over the next f...

The annual doccie: a township production of Mozart's Figaro

Posted by Corne Scheepers on Saturday, October 1, 2016,

I try to do one big project a year, usually a documentary, and this one for 2016 happened quickly and very unexpectedly when Conroy Cupido phoned me while I was on another shoot. I was also tempted to blog this story earlier in the week, but I decided to wait a few days. Make no mistake I really enjoy blogging; I find the production process and tools I use absolutely fascinating and I love writing about things I have a passion for. But something about this project just wanted me to wait un...

Media Composer 8.5 - first look (for me)

Posted by Corne Scheepers on Thursday, June 30, 2016,

I've been cutting video on Avid software for much longer than ten years now. Probably closer to fourteen years...I started out on an Avid Xpress Meridien system that ran on a huge IBM Intellistation that weighed as much as the equipment desk it was anchored on!

Things have come a very long way since then. Light years, in fact. I can now do more on a laptop in my living room that I could on my old Intellistation with its Betacam SP decks.

Having renewed my annual Avid maintenance in May I only ...

October was multicam month

Posted by Corne Scheepers on Saturday, October 17, 2015,

With no less than four multicam projects, October definitely qualifies for the title "multicam month". The ability to sync up three or four camera feeds and assemble a basic cut in a live switching-type fashion has always been one of my favourite features in Media Composer. It is also a MASSIVE timesaver, allowing me to do in realtime what would have taken hours to do manually. In 8.4 multicam is still going strong, even on my rapidly aging HP Elitebook.

I'm also really thrilled with the quali...

UPDATE: 2K title import resolved

Posted by Corne Scheepers on Thursday, March 26, 2015,

OK, so if you read my previous post you'll recall I had issues in 2K projects with the alpha channel on imported .psd files being inverted when importing into Media Composer via AMA.

The solution turned out to be a simple AMA setting:

As is the case with direct import settings, simply set the Alpha Channel to Invert. Now try again and see your Photoshop graphic displayed in the 2K timeline as it was originally created to look!