HP Z400 workstation By John Virata The Hewlett-Packard HP Z400 is the company's entry level workstation. While it doesn't have the whiz bang design features of the HP Z800 reviewed in March, it still does not disappoint as the benchmark numbers will surprise you. ...Read More »

Speeding Premiere Pro CS4's H.264 Encoding with NVIDIA QuadroFX and Elemental Accelerator By John Virata High definition video editing and HD video encoding are two of the hardware intensive tasks that can be done with a computer. It takes a lot of power to complete these types of jobs, oftentimes rendering your computer limited in functionality while it encodes video. NVIDIA's Quadro line of graphics cards can help to speed up H.264/AVC encoding in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 with an assist from Elemental Technologies' Elemental Accelerator. ...Read More »

Sorenson Squeeze 6 By Kevin McAuliffe These days, it seems as though every company has an application for taking your edited files and processing them for the web, and many of those applications are included with the editing bundle you purchased. Adobe has Adobe's Media Encoder, Final Cut Studio has Compressor, and there are the standalone applications such as Episode, and even QuickTime can do it as well. ...Read More »

FIRST LOOK: JVC HM-100u By Heath McKnight The JVC HM-100u ProHD camera may be small in size, but it's packing three Full HD (1920 x 1080i/p) CCDs that capture great image quality, and it uses Sony's SxS/EX technology to deliver a tapeless workflow on affordable SDHC media cards. Plus, if you're a Final Cut Pro user, you can shoot directly to QuickTime for even faster importing and editing. ...Read More »

Coremelt Complete V2 By Kevin McAuliffe You can never have enough plug-ins. Trust me, as an editor/graphic designer you always have clients that want something "cool," but have really no idea what they are looking for, so you end up finding yourself going through the plug-ins on your system to try and put something together to really "wow" them, your plug-in collection needs to have three traits. ...Read More »

iZotope RX Noise Reduction Tips By Jeffrey P. Fisher As an audio-post-production professional, I'm often called upon to clean up the dialogue from the documentary, corporate, and narrative videos that come my way. The work requires a lot of patience and access to both basic and advanced audio tools. For me, the one must-have gizmo for audio cleanup is iZotope RX. This tutorial looks at ways this indispensable tool solves typical noisy problems that conspire to ruin your video soundtracks. ...Read More »

Trapcode's Particular 2 By Kevin McAuliffe As editors and motion graphic designers know, there are a lot (and I mean a lot) of plug-ins out there, and you often find the same type of plug-in across many different plug-in packages, and a very, very popular plug-in is the Particle Generator. Just about every plug-in package has one, and even After Effects itself ships with a few. ...Read More »

Third Party Plug-Ins/Apps For Final Cut Pro By Heath McKnight Time for another edition of my third party plug-ins and software apps for Final Cut Pro (FCP). This time around, I take a look at the powerful and easy-to-use (with a ton of codec options) iFunia Video Converter Pro, FxFactory 2.1 and idustrial revolution's Volumetrix 2 transitions, and FxFactory 2.1 and DVShade's EasyLooks 2.5 and LiveToon 1.0. ...Read More »

Pegasys, Inc.'s TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress with Leadtek SpursEngine Hardware accelerator By John Virata TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress is a video encoder application along the lines of Sorenson Squeeze, Apple's Compressor, and Adobe's Media Encoder. It has been around for quite a while, but doesn't seem to get the press that the other tools get, despite the output quality being very good. The application offers support for NVIDIA's CUDA technology as well as Leadtek's SpursEngine hardware accelerator. ...Read More »

Production Assistant for Sony Vegas Pro: From a Final Cut Pro User's Perspective By Heath McKnight Sony Creative Software introduced Production Assistant for Vegas Pro as a way to streamline post-production, and I have to say, it's a terrific plug-in, created along with VASST. As a Final Cut Pro editor, I take a different look at the software, and I also discuss Vegas Pro version 9. ...Read More »

Apple's Color 1.5 By Kevin McAuliffe As everyone knows, the inclusion of FinalTouch (renamed Color by Apple) into Final Cut Studio 2 was shocking. A few months before Apple announced it, I looked at purchasing FinalTouch as a separate, stand alone application for a post facility I was working for. ...Read More »

Apple's Soundtrack Pro 3 By Kevin McAuliffe Soundtrack Pro 2 was a great application. You could harness its power for not only Final Cut Pro timelines, but for any editing application that could export an OMF file. What Apple had essentially given us was a professional, production-ready application to take any audio project to the next level. But, I had one concern. Where would it go from there? ...Read More »

The Sony Vegas Pro Production Assistant By Jeffrey P. Fisher As editors we are always looking for ways to be more efficient so we can focus on what we do best: telling stories with sound and visuals. But let's face it, there are a lot of mundane and routine tasks when editing that swallow our time but don't call upon our collective creative inspiration. ...Read More »

Sony Vegas Pro 9 By Jeffrey P. Fisher When a software program matures into its ninth iteration, you expect big things from it. I've been on-board Sony Vegas when it was an audio-only, version one application. It's been really interesting to be a part of the software's growth. As my go-to app for many years, I was excited to give the newest version a test drive. This review looks at Sony Vegas Pro 9.0b 32-bit (VP9), the second (free!) update since its release at NAB earlier this year. ...Read More »

Final Cut Studio's Motion 4 By Kevin McAuliffe Star Wars Episode 1 and Apple's new Final Cut Studio have something in common, and that is the hype. Final Cut Studio has been hyped for more than a year, and every time someone blogged about its release coming up, nothing happened. Well, mid-way through July, Apple snuck Final Cut Studio (not called 3, just Final Cut Studio) onto its website, and needless to say, the tidal wave began. ...Read More »

Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) By Heath McKnight Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6), the new version of Apple's 8+ year old operating system, Mac OS X, is an impressive upgrade from Leopard (10.5), which came out in late 2007. While it doesn't sport many new features as in years past, it does feature many "under-the-hood" improvements that make it worth the upgrade. ...Read More »

Building a Better Mouse: Contour Design RollerMouse Free By Jeffrey P. Fisher Like me, you've probably been mousing around for some time. You may have even tried some mouse alternatives, such as tablets, trackballs, and their ilk. But, eventually you found yourself back with the mouse in hand. I know, it's not an easy habit to break. But now there is an alternative that is well worth considering: the Contour Design RollerMouse Free. ...Read More »

Apple Compressor 3.5 By Heath McKnight With the long-anticipated update to Final Cut Studio, Apple has introduced an upgrade to Compressor. Not a full new version, but still a significant update, nonetheless. However, you need to consider that while Compressor is a stand-alone application, it's now a major part of Final Cut Pro 7, and that is where its strengths lie. ...Read More »

First Look: Panasonic AG HMC150 AVCCAM camcorder By John Virata Back in 2005, my aunt asked me to videotape her wedding. Now I am not a professional videographer, but rather, over the years I've enjoyed shooting video with all types of cameras, be it via my digital camera, my Flip video camera, to a variety of miniDV cameras. So I agreed to tape her wedding. ...Read More »

Apple Final Cut Pro 7 By Heath McKnight A little more than two years after Final Cut Pro 6 introduced the ProRes codec, Background Processes, Smooth Cam, and many other functions, Apple debuts Final Cut Pro 7 (FCP), part of the third version of Final Cut Studio. There are more ProRes options, export settings that can be done in the background without Compressor 3.5 open, iChat Theater support (an excellent collaboration tool), and much more. FCP is 10 years old this year, and they've been listening to us, the editors! Let's just dive in and take a look at all the new stuff. ...Read More »