Colorista II By Kevin McAuliffe
When it comes to a program like After Effects, competing with Color Finesse 3 (that comes with AE CS5) can be tricky, but if there is one company out there determined to do it, it's Red Giant Software and their flagship color correction application Colorista.
...Read More »
Avid's Media Composer 5 Part 3 - Matrox's MXO2 mini By Kevin McAuliffe
When AVID stated that they supported the MXO2 mini to monitor external video, I was pretty surprised, as this is a big change of direction for AVID as they normally only support their own hardware for video monitoring. I wanted to give the MXO2 mini a fair shake, as for the $449 price tag I really wanted (and hoped) it to work for the user bases sake. Let's see how it fared.
...Read More »
The Non-Linear Road To NAB By Charlie Wade
For video editors, NAB is akin to a pilgrimage. Every year they flock to Vegas, push themselves through the crowds to the booths of the video editor purveyors, and watch, learn, debate and yearn. Here are 5 top notch solutions, plus one who should have been there but wasn't!
...Read More »
NAB 2010: What Cameras were HOT? By Charlie Wade
Missed NAB 2010 this year? Lots of people did but I know you still want to know what was hot. For you who live for camcorder technology, here are six of the hottest cameras (or camera announcements in some cases) at NAB 2010.
...Read More »
iFunia Video Converter Pro for Macintosh By John Virata
iFunia's Video Converter Pro is an application that converts your video into a wide variety of formats, including AVI, WMV, AVCHD, MKV, FLV, H.264/AVC, MP4, MOV, 3GP and DV. It is straightforward to use and the results are very good to excellent. The application works in three simple steps; Source Setup/Add, Destination Setup, and Start Conversion/Start.
...Read More »
Dell Precision M6500 mobile workstation By John Virata
The big horsepower CPUs and graphics chips form the core of a workstation class notebook computer. A large screen, built in color calibration profiles, RAID capabilities, and a bevy of connectivity options also contribute. The Dell Precision M6500 in here for review combines the latest in mobile workstation graphics, the 1GB NVIDIA Quadro FX 3800M, with a Quad Core Intel Core i7 x920 2GHz CPU with 8 processor cores, 4GB DDR3-1333MHz SDRAM (16GB maximum), 17" Wide Screen WUXGA RGB LED LCD Panel with integrated camera and mic, and a Hitachi 250GB hard disk drive.
...Read More »
AJA Ki Pro By Kevin McAuliffe
Every once in a while (sometimes a long while), a product comes along that makes you say "WOW!". I haven't had one of those moments in a long time, until I got my hands on the Ki Pro from AJA. I remember sending my AJA PR rep an email when it first came out, and there was, of course, a backlog of reviewers who wanted to get their hands on one, so I went into the queue, and forgot about it.
...Read More »
Lenovo D20 media workstation By John Virata
Lenovo's D20 is the company's top of the line ThinkStation workstation. This particular model shipped with dual Intel E5540 2.53GHz Xeon processors (four processor cores), 12GB RAM, and Windows 7 Professional. Graphics was powered by an NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 graphics card. This is your classic media workstation, configured to run the latest creative applications from Adobe Systems, Autodesk, Sony Creative Software, as well as CAD tools such as AutoCAD, Pro Engineer, and others.
...Read More »
3.06 GHz 17-inch MacBook Pro By Heath McKnight
I recently had a chance to review the latest, top-of-the-line unibody MacBook Pro from Apple; with a 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 8GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, and many other great features, this is the fastest Apple laptop I've ever used.
...Read More »
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 »
AV-HS450 16+ Input HD/SD Switcher w/ dual screen MultiViewer This 16+ input switcher is the best value in its class. Its exclusive dual screen MultiViewer lets you view up to 20 windows on just two displays. CLICK HERE!!!
Vegas Pro 8 + Free Vegas Seminar Series Master classes for cutting-edge video production A $100 value free with purchase CLICK HERE!!!
NO...Doesn't have a thing to do with "that" smartphone...or "that" store...or "that" tablet. It's the next generation. Kids and we mean little kids. That's what today's products are being designed for/targeted at. You happen to buy one...fine. Watch a little, little kid pick up a smartphone. He/she just uses it. They've come pre-wired and we're still trying to figure out how to IM. It's the IGen. They want it instantly. They want to use it instantly. They expect their photos, their video, their music, their stuff immediately when/where/how they want it.
Read More
In this clip, lynda.com host Mark Abdelnour takes a look at proxy bidding. He discusses the strategy and how it works. He also discusses the maximum bid, and when to use Proxy bidding.
Read More
The blood, gore, adrenalin challenges that were unveiled at E3 and enjoyed at ComicCon are fun to look at, easy to hold but are they really the games people want to plunk down their credit cards to own or rent time with? Seems as though the investors, the players who control the controllers have a different idea of a "good" game than the kids who develop them. While mobs of people play educational, informational, stimulating games our kid huddles in his room and mumbles "The Few, The Proud, The Gamers."
Read More
Colorista II
When it comes to a program like After Effects, competing with Color Finesse 3 (that comes with AE CS5) can be tricky, but if there is one company out there determined to do it, it's Red Giant Software and their flagship color correction application Colorista.
...Read More »
Avid's Media Composer 5 Part 3 - Matrox's MXO2 mini
When AVID stated that they supported the MXO2 mini to monitor external video, I was pretty surprised, as this is a big change of direction for AVID as they normally only support their own hardware for video monitoring. I wanted to give the MXO2 mini a fair shake, as for the $449 price tag I really wanted (and hoped) it to work for the user bases sake. Let's see how it fared.
...Read More »
The Non-Linear Road To NAB
For video editors, NAB is akin to a pilgrimage. Every year they flock to Vegas, push themselves through the crowds to the booths of the video editor purveyors, and watch, learn, debate and yearn. Here are 5 top notch solutions, plus one who should have been there but wasn't!
...Read More »
NAB 2010: What Cameras were HOT?
Missed NAB 2010 this year? Lots of people did but I know you still want to know what was hot. For you who live for camcorder technology, here are six of the hottest cameras (or camera announcements in some cases) at NAB 2010.
...Read More »
iFunia Video Converter Pro for Macintosh
iFunia's Video Converter Pro is an application that converts your video into a wide variety of formats, including AVI, WMV, AVCHD, MKV, FLV, H.264/AVC, MP4, MOV, 3GP and DV. It is straightforward to use and the results are very good to excellent. The application works in three simple steps; Source Setup/Add, Destination Setup, and Start Conversion/Start.
...Read More »
Dell Precision M6500 mobile workstation
The big horsepower CPUs and graphics chips form the core of a workstation class notebook computer. A large screen, built in color calibration profiles, RAID capabilities, and a bevy of connectivity options also contribute. The Dell Precision M6500 in here for review combines the latest in mobile workstation graphics, the 1GB NVIDIA Quadro FX 3800M, with a Quad Core Intel Core i7 x920 2GHz CPU with 8 processor cores, 4GB DDR3-1333MHz SDRAM (16GB maximum), 17" Wide Screen WUXGA RGB LED LCD Panel with integrated camera and mic, and a Hitachi 250GB hard disk drive.
...Read More »
AJA Ki Pro
Every once in a while (sometimes a long while), a product comes along that makes you say "WOW!". I haven't had one of those moments in a long time, until I got my hands on the Ki Pro from AJA. I remember sending my AJA PR rep an email when it first came out, and there was, of course, a backlog of reviewers who wanted to get their hands on one, so I went into the queue, and forgot about it.
...Read More »
Lenovo D20 media workstation
Lenovo's D20 is the company's top of the line ThinkStation workstation. This particular model shipped with dual Intel E5540 2.53GHz Xeon processors (four processor cores), 12GB RAM, and Windows 7 Professional. Graphics was powered by an NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 graphics card. This is your classic media workstation, configured to run the latest creative applications from Adobe Systems, Autodesk, Sony Creative Software, as well as CAD tools such as AutoCAD, Pro Engineer, and others.
...Read More »
3.06 GHz 17-inch MacBook Pro
I recently had a chance to review the latest, top-of-the-line unibody MacBook Pro from Apple; with a 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 8GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, and many other great features, this is the fastest Apple laptop I've ever used.
...Read More »
HP Z400 workstation
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 »
AV-HS450 16+ Input HD/SD Switcher w/ dual screen MultiViewer
Vegas Pro 8 + Free Vegas Seminar Series
