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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Friday, September 16, 2016,
Nowadays I shoot most of my sit-down interviews with two cameras. As a result I do a lot of multicam editing. A lot. And the good news is that multicam just got better in the latest version of Avid Media Composer 8.6.1
I still recall thinking it was serious voodoo the first time I synced up the footage from two cameras, dropped a group clip into the sequence and then proceeded to fly through a 20min interview like it was a live cut...hit play, then hit cam 1, cam 2, cam 1 on the keyboard. Done...
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 ...
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.
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!
Many thanks to Avid tech Jonathan Smith at Jasco Broadcast Syst...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Sunday, March 22, 2015,
Never stop learning.
I’ve always
held this belief and in the video production business I doubt you’ll survive
long if this isn’t your approach to the tools that you use every day. I also believe
that experimenting and testing is something you don’t do on a paying customer’s
bill, so my holiday movies have become R&D opportunities.
Cameras recording at 2K and 4K resolutions are becoming more common and so too have the ability of post tools to handle
higher-than-HD resolution media. ...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Monday, June 16, 2014,
I've been using Avid software for what must be more than ten years now and honestly, I can't imagine editing with anything else. I even named my company Match Frame Media after a timeline function that I use a lot! I've been hanging onto my version 6.0 licence for a while now and a heap of cool new features in Media Composer 7.0/8.0 finally made me hand over the cash for an upgrade.
First things first - version 8.0 is basically version 7.0 with a few minor tweaks and of course renumbered for ...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Tuesday, April 16, 2013,
I had the privilege of creating an "official" NWU
promo in 2011. So when the folks at NWU Institutional Advancement phoned me up
a while ago to ask for a new one I was overjoyed to have an opportunity to try
and see if I could come up with something completely new and original. The
NWU's CID had changed since 2011 and there was now a new payoff line and a
brand new set of design elements and visual style to play with. The clip was
originally created for and shown for the first time at ...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Friday, July 6, 2012,
Above: Background elements in this clip were given the DFT Film Stocks treatment to meet the latest NWU visual language requirements. View the full clip on YouTube
The NWU is one of my major clients and they recently changed their visual communication style to a modern contemporary "light and airy" look. Achieving what is basically a stylized "Instagram" look in future video projects through ordinary colour correction tools would take hours so it made sense to look at a serious colour grading...
