(nofilmschool)
Apple’s Final Cut Pro X has slowly been getting up to speed after a somewhat underwhelming release last year. Each update has brought features users were expecting in the first version, but it’s still a good sign that they’re coming. With the recent 10.0.6 update, Apple has made a few key additions and changes that may just make you reconsider the editing application for future projects, including native RED support. Two of the major additions, dual viewer windows (Event and Timeline), and override connections, will certainly be helpful to those who like working in a more traditional manner. Click through for videos showing off both of these features.

ProVideo Coalition described some of the issues with this new capability:

The problem with the Event Viewer comes when you’ve got your Event Library set to a filmstrip view. Since there’s no dedicated “mini timeline” under the Event Viewer you can lose track of both which clip you’re viewing in the Event Viewer as well as where in that clip your playhead is parked. While you can see the clip name at the top of the Event Viewer the cryptic camera name often means nothing. The Event Viewer will probably be most useful with clips in list view. What would have been really cool is if you could place the list view timeline/thumbnail under the Event Viewer. That would have freed up some screen for the list view and made the reference point for the current clip be right in the Event Viewer, not in both the Event Viewer and the Event Library. It would have left focus on one part of the interface instead of two when dealing with a single clip.

It seems like the Event Viewer does not quite replicate the functionality that existed in Final Cut Pro 7, because clips from your timeline cannot be loaded into the Event Viewer, which is beneficial if you’re doing something like color grading. Apple has also added a way to keep connected clips in the same spot even as you move other clips around them. Here is the video showing off that functionality:

This looks like it will satisfy many people who don’t like the way the magnetic timeline works, but the biggest feature I’m actually happy about is multichannel audio editing. The workarounds for this previously were a little annoying, but now this should work basically how it worked in previous versions of Final Cut. Another big feature is the ability to export only a portion of a clip from the timeline. The absence of these abilities may not have been huge for some editors, but for others, they are essential, and it actually meant that working within FCPX made them slower overall.

Now I know this isn’t the case for everyone, but one of the things that has bothered many professionals is that they have had no choice until the last few updates about how they could edit. It was either Apple’s way, or the highway. Final Cut Pro X, with these recent updates, is finally gaining essential features that will help convince editors that Apple is serious about supporting this program, and not just creating an iMovie Pro. We don’t know what’s happening with their professional hardware solutions, but it seems the editing platform is on the right track.

To read more about the major changes in this release, head on over to ProVideo Coalition for the rundown. You can also head on over and download the new release using the link below.

What do you guys think about the additions? If you aren’t a Final Cut Pro X user, might these changes make you consider trying it again — or for the first time if you’ve never had the opportunity? If you’ve been using Final Cut 7, does this finally make you think about switching?

(from nofilmschool)
People have done as much as possible to argue against the test that was performed with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera by Marco Solorio and OneRiver Media. That test compared the 5D Mark III and the BMCC, and even though the superior resolution and dynamic range of one of those cameras should have been obvious, many still prefer the Mark III and complained that a better picture profile or some post sharpness would make the differences less noticeable. Well, Marco is back with a new test, and (in my personal opinion) it’s hard to argue against these results, as he’s pulled out all of the stops to really test the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and show why 8-bit will always be 8-bit, and what it means when you’ve got the capability for 12-bit images.

Here is the description below the video:

Going a step closer with the Cinema Camera, Marco Solorio of OneRiver Media focuses on how 12-bit RAW compares in relation to 8-bit alternatives, including many camera solutions costing much more. The difference between “perceived dynamic range” and “available dynamic range” is explored in detail. Also covered is day-for-night, detail versus sharpness, and much more.

You could download the original 1080p file as Marco mentions, but I actually watched the compressed online version first, and the differences were still obvious.



As far as dynamic range is concerned, there is only so much you can do with 8-bit to protect the highlights. This was made clear to me in the Zacuto Revenge of the Great Camera Shootout 2012 test. I was able to see that test on the big screen, and when the DSLRs came up, it was clear that there was only so far they could be pushed before they started falling apart. The parts of the image that were massively underexposed to protect the highlights began to look grey and lifeless when they were brought back up. That’s what happens with 8-bit. There is only so much information contained within the image, and you can’t recreate something that doesn’t exist in the first place.

The bit-depth simply refers to the different combinations of ones and zeros that is possible (with color images having three channels of bit-depth). The more bits and values possible, the better the final quality will be.

• 8-bit   – 256 different values
• 10-bit — 1024 different values
• 12-bit — 4096 different values
• 14-bit – 16,384 different values
• 16-bit – 65,536 different values

Some of you might already be saying that the CinemaDNG RAW files from the Blackmagic Cinema Camera take up a ton of space. That is absolutely true, and short of converting to a compressed RAW format like Cineform, it’s something to consider. If you notice, though, there is still a large difference between 8-bit and 10-bit in terms of the values possible, and if you shoot ProRes or DNxHD, you’ll be getting a 10-bit file. That is why even in compressed mode, you will still be able to technically pull more detail and color information out of the BMCC as opposed to all DSLRs which only output 8-bit 4:2:2 at their very best.

Internal processing bit-depth is another factor to consider. It’s why even though DSLRs are crippled in many ways, especially by the 8-bit color space, that they can still make beautiful images. The detail you are working with is usually starting from a 14-bit source, which is what most of the high-end DSLRs are capable of. After going through this processing, the final image has to be compressed once more to the final output, which for video, is 8-bit. So technically if you could pull RAW video data from these DSLRs, you could be working with a far better file, even if they are pixel-binning or line-skipping. It’s one of the reasons people seem to like EPIC/SCARLET footage over RED One MX footage at the same resolution even though they have the same sensor, the RED One is a 12-bit camera internally, while the SCARLET and EPIC cameras are both 16-bit internally.

Now, what about resolution? Adding sharpness does exactly what it’s supposed to do: make the edges more defined. I’ve never been a fan of sharpening, it might make an image pop a little more, but it’s not the same as actually having a lot of resolution. You can’t make a 720p image look like a 1080p image by sharpening, even on the web. That’s why I wanted to watch just the online version first, because it’s clear to me that detail and dynamic range do make their way through to compressed video, regardless of what many people might tell you. You will have to make sure that you are getting the least compressed file online as possible, but I consistently see better looking online footage from RED, the Arri Alexa, and the Sony F65 that is clearly superior to DSLR footage.

Of course, cost is a major factor. You might not be able to afford one of these high-end digital cinema cameras (even as a rental), and that’s what makes the Blackmagic Cinema Camera so special. For all its quirks, nothing can touch this quality at $3,000. Is this saying that everyone should go out and buy the BMCC? Absolutely not, and for many people, it’s going to be the wrong camera for what they’re doing, even if it does have higher resolution and dynamic range. For one thing, it can’t see in the dark like many DSLRs. It’s also going to need a battery of some kind, which is a far simpler addition on a DSLR.

Your DSLR can still give you a wonderful image. There is no doubting that, and if you’ve got one, don’t necessarily get rid of it just because a new camera is coming along that should technically outperform it. Many have stated that they like the footage coming from DSLRs better (I’m not one of those people). I thought this was an important topic to correct some of the misinformation floating around. You should not be ashamed of using a DSLR, even professionally, because in the end, if the client is happy and you’re making money, who cares? But there is very real evidence that you can do a lot more with the footage coming from the BMCC, and it’s going to show through even in a compressed online video.

Now, as for what your monitor can actually display, that’s another story completely, but we’ll have to save that for a future post. Let’s start a real discussion about this, because it’s important not just from a technical standpoint, but from an artistic one. If you’re limited technically by your camera, there is only so much you can do to compensate, no matter what anyone tells you, and in certain instances, it can make a huge difference.

What do you guys think? For those who wanted to see the Mark III with some sharpening, what do you think about that footage now compared to the BMCC?

RED EPIC and SCARLET Get Simultaneous HDMI/HD-SDI in Stable Firmware Release
Joe Marine10.18.12 @ 5:48PM Tags : firmware, red, redepic, redscarlet


If you were one of the lucky few who got in on the recent RED SCARLET deal (or you already owned one), RED has just announced a new stable firmware update that allows the HDMI and the HD-SDI to output a signal simultaneously on both the EPIC and the SCARLET. This had previously been impossible without the use of a splitter of some kind, but it’s clear that the EPICand SCARLET are powerful enough to not only record internally, but also send out two debayered signals at the same time. Check out the rest of the major additions in this update below.

These are some of the significant additions in this release — version 3.3.14:

• Added Pro IO Support (Video, Audio, Timecode, Sync, Genlock, GPIO and PWR)
• Added Pro IO Power Control
• Added Pro IO and Camera Audio Output Mix Control
• Added Audio Playback
• Added HD-SDI and HDMI Audio
• Added Pro IO HD-SDI audio on PREVIEW and PLAYBACK
• Added Overlay Menu on left/right side of touch screen (Soft Keys)
• Added Frame Guide Menus
• Added Lookaround support
• Added higher frame rates 312,325,330,336,350,360,375,384,390
• Added simultaneous HDMI and HD-SDI outputs
• Added Nikon Mount support
• Added Monochrome Epic support
• Added 512GB and 48GB SSD Support

Many of these had already existed in a Beta release, but this is the first stable update to contain these additions. The EPIC and SCARLET are not run and gun cameras by any means, but if you’re in a solo shooting situation, it’s likely you’ve got audio going into the camera, so having the ability to hear that audio on playback is important. We’re still waiting on those lower-priced REDMAGs which are 48GB, but support has been added in the this firmware ahead of release.

I know some of you were trying to avoid buying the 5″ RED Touch LCD, but then it was mentioned that the Touch LCD was required after performing a firmware upgrade. Searching through the REDUser forum, I came across the answer, and it seems RED has made it possible to use a third party monitor even after a firmware upgrade:

The only issue with using a 3rd party monitor as a primary monitor is switching the menus to it after a firmware update. At first we had to ask for a force HDMI preset for each new firmware but now red has created a download package with everything you could need. It’s found in the support section of red.com in the downloads portion and it’s called DSMC resources. Inside will be a series of folders one should be preset files, inside of that will be a selection between firmwares select your, then select the preset you want 720 or 1080, hdsdi or hdmi. Now all you have to do is place the file in a folder named force_preset in the root of your ssd, boot the camera it will run the force preset and then the screen should turn on.

You can find the firmware upgrade from RED using the link below.

Link: RED Firmware Upgrade — Downloads

Top 10 Reasons Why First-Time Freelancers Fail


There’s quite a fetish for failure-as-fodder these days. Search “failure” on popular business sites like Forbes, Entrepreneur, or Inc, and you’ll get loads of articles on how it can be a great teacher.

I have to admit: I used to party on this bandwagon. Rally people to feel free to fail, as if it encourages higher-levels of creativity. Self-destruct certain projects just to see what happens.

Then the Harvard Business Review released their Failure issue. And I saw the cult of failure for what it was: a misguided attempt to ease anxiety.

This got me thinking. Do I have to fail at being a first-time freelancer to learn to be a successful freelancer? The answer is an unequivocal NO.

Listen, failure can be a great teacher—especially if you learn from someone else’s failure.

So, if you are a first-time freelancer and would like to become a seasoned one without having failed—then read on to learn the top ten mistakes first-time freelancers make and how to avoid them. Achieving success doesn’t require you to fall flat on your face first.

1. Too Much Competition Creative people are confident. Cocky. Inside the creative board room at the agency they bristle with enthusiasm for their craft. But no matter how clever you think you are, you are going to have to work very hard to convince people to work with you when you are on the outside by yourself.

Just look around you.

The field is full of very talented people. Like it or not—they are your competition. And the sad truth is not every determined and talented freelancer can become a rock star. There are other people you have to compete with. You have to work harder than they do to get attention, land jobs and reap referrals. Otherwise the competition will eat you alive.

2. Obscurity Dogs You Speaking of working hard to get attention…think of the most successful people you know. Doesn’t matter what field they are in: real estate, bartending or graphic design. The degree of their success is often proportional to the degree in which they are famous within their niche.

The degree of their success is often proportional to the degree in which they are famous within their niche.

People know their name. They refer their work. They know how to pick up guest posts and speaking gigs easily. This is the reward of popularity.

Without popularity and attention you won’t get leads. Without leads your business will die. See, your problem isn’t so much lack of money. It’s lack of attention. It’s that you are mired in obscurity.

This is where good marketing comes in. Good marketing breaks through the clutter, competition, and confusion. Good marketing starts with building a reliable brand—and promoting that brand like mad.

3. Lack of Hustle When it comes to freelancing, execution is everything. Everybody likes ideas. But more importantly we like it when those ideas become a reality. Laziness, lack of organization and lack of prioritization do not mix well with freelancing. You can talk a great game as a freelancer, but you need to deliver on game day, which is every day.

Each work day you need to do the hard stuff first—then the fun work. Meet deadlines and then some. Keep your promises. Show your clients and the world that you can rock – that you have a motor. And as a rule of thumb you should always under promise and over deliver for your clients.

4. Poor Rate Model One of the most common questions I get asked from freelancers is how much should I charge? To be honest, I can’t really answer that question for you. I can only give you some advice.

Here’s three pieces:

• Experience: You get to charge less if you have minimal experience. You get to charge more if you have a lot of experience (which includes endorsements from big brands).
• Customer’s Budget: You get to charge less if you work with non-profits and small businesses. You get to charge more if you work with big brands and their deep pockets.
• Customer’s Expected Profit: You get to charge less if the client doesn’t expect to make much money off of your work. You get to charge more if they can expect to make a killing from what you do.

You will fail if you don’t price right. Price it too low and you could be making minimum wage before you know it. Price it too high and you may lose jobs.

Pricing is an art, you get better with it over time. And you get better at it the more you negotiate.

5. Can’t Negotiate Ah, conflict. The essence of a negotiation. And what most creatives dislike most. We wouldn’t have jumped into our creative fields if we liked people and dealing with them everyday—especially on contentious terms.

But sweaty palms or not, you need to negotiate. You need to seek a win-win relationship with a prospect through tactics like these:

• Building value first before mentioning price.
• Suck in your teeth.
• Shut your mouth.
• Always go high.
• Float a trial balloon.

Those kinds of things take guts. A little grit. But you can do it. If you don’t, then you’ll leave money on the table or get taken advantage of. And that’s a hard way to make a living.

6. Lack of Maturity From inside the cubicle freelancing is attractive. It’s seductive. It’s the party lifestyle of the working famous and unemployed rich. Who wouldn’t want to sleep as late as they want, take three hour lunches and work six months out of the year?

If that’s how you view freelancing, then you are immature, not emotionally (though I’m not eliminating that option), but certainly professionally immature. Being a freelancer demands a massive amount of maturity. It demands discipline, confidence, organization, and courage.

7. Failing to Count the Cost I quit my job without a plan B, without much of a savings, and without much of a clue as to what I was getting myself into. I wouldn’t recommend that approach. There are better ways to begin your freelance career.

Do you have six months of living expense? If not, keep your day job, pick up a few freelancing jobs and sock away that money before you quit. You’ll also need money for advertising costs, too.

And don’t forget about the emotional and relational toll that working for yourself can take on you and your family. My wife and I covered some of the roughest road in our fourteen years of being married during my first year of freelancing.

Count the cost before you cut the cubicle cord.

8. Too Many Distractions Part of the allure of freelancing is working to our own rhythms. We get to make our own schedule. We get to do with our time (as long as we are mature and are getting our work done) what we want.

We could tackle that book we’ve been dreaming of writing. Collect our best designs together for an art show. Learning how to surf.

However, these things could easily become distractions. We could easily find ourselves spending half a day on non-essential tasks. Or get tempted to put off for tomorrow what we should do today (that being work) so we can finish a fun project.

There are other things that can become distractions when you work for yourself:

• People – I work at home. My wife home schools our children. It was very easy for my son or daughter to pop into my office or the wife ask me a question. It was very distracting. We needed to set boundaries so I could focus.
• Blogs – When I worked for someone else I could only write for my blogs at certain times. The hour before work started. The hour over lunch. Maybe a couple hours before I went to bed. I had boundaries.
  
  Not so when you work for yourself. If I’m not careful I’ll spend WAY too much time on a blog post—because nobody is breathing down my neck and I feel like I have all the time in the world.
  
  
• Debt – I don’t think I’ve ever met one freelancer who hasn’t had some sort of debt at some time in their yearly work cycle. Jobs fluctuate. You might be busy in the spring only to find yourself bored stiff in the winter.
  
  Bills pile up. And debt hangs over your head. We may start to take lame jobs because we are desperate. That is a downhill spiral, friend.
  
  
• Part-time Job – I’ve scrambled to nail down a part-time job when work was scarce. It’s an instinct. I think we’ve all done it. But if you get that job, then watch out: it could take away from your core freelance business. Working for someone else means you can’t make calls or answer emails on your boss’ time.

9. Letting Your Emotions Bulldoze You Freelancing isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s an emotional ride. I cried like a baby my first day on my own. I was sure six weeks from that day we’d miss our first mortgage payment. In three months we’d default. And another six and we’d be on the street.

You can get dropped by a client one day only to have that income replaced the following.

I wasn’t rational. And that’s an extreme case. The future looked very dark for me until I got a grip. But don’t expect that darkness to go away forever. It can come back.

It’s an occupational hazard. You can work so hard (because you took every job that came your way) that you find yourself dreading the computer screen. You can get dropped by a client one day only to have that income replaced the following.

The temptation is to self-medicate. Drink two beers in the afternoon to get you through, four to help you get to sleep, eight to help you enjoy the weekend. I like beer, but I like self-control better. And you can’t control your emotions when you are drunk.

10. Giving Up Too Soon Quick story. About halfway through our 32-day journey of the West Coast I was going to get the opportunity to spend some time with a great uncle. He was financially independent after building and selling his own manufacturing business.

I wanted to talk to him about working for myself. Pick his brain about success. I was looking for something exotic. But his advice was basic: work hard. Okay. And when I asked him when do I give up if working hard wasn’t cutting it he responded: when you can’t afford it.

Oh.

It was simple in his mind. You threw in the towel when you were losing money. You could run into setbacks. Struggle with difficult clients. Bang your head over accounting issues. Juggle dozens of projects. But you didn’t quit until you were losing a lot of money.

So, what other reasons are there that cause first-time freelancers to fail? How did you make it over the initial obstacles that face freelancers? What are you still struggling with?

Boost Your Freelance Brand 100 Percent with Your Expert Status

I’m a little addicted to those reality television shows where a group of people with a particular skillset compete to prove who is the best. I’m particularly enthralled by any challenge where a creative professional has to deal with a client — they’re the most likely to end horribly. That’s because most creatives err on the side of giving their clients everything they want. But that rarely results in the best possible wedding cake or dress or alien makeup.

The response from judges on such episodes might as well be on a loop, no matter what profession is being showcased: “You’re the expert! You have to tell the client what she needs!” That’s the advice that always comes from creative professionals at the top of their game — the people who have turned a skill into a brand name.

To build a lucrative freelancing career, it isn’t enough to have the best skills out there, despite what these reality television shows may indicate. But you do absolutely have to be an expert: you need to be the person that advises your client so that they get the result they want, not the project they asked for.

You Are an Expert It takes a lot to be willing to tell a client that he’s not going to get the results he wants from a particular project; after all, you only get paid when you complete projects.

One of the problems many newer freelancers face is a lack of confidence: you know everything you don’t know in your chosen profession and that’s incredibly intimidating. But even if you’ve only just started taking on clients, you know more than your clients — otherwise they wouldn’t hire you. It’s important to remember that you do have a level of expertise beyond your clients and you’re working to learn more all the time.

It takes a lot to be willing to tell a client that he’s not going to get the results he wants from a particular project; after all, you only get paid when you complete projects. But it’s just another element of having confidence in your own abilities.

Expertise is a spectrum. You’re not going to wake up one day and know that you’re suddenly an expert and that everyone will recognize you as such. It’s a situation where most people will take you at your word if you say you’re an expert. That can make it more intimidating, but as long as you do the work to back up your expert position — learning, trying new things, forming opinions and discussing them — you can build your confidence in your own expert status.

The Expert / Niche Connection Being an expert looks a lot like having a niche: you have to focus on something a lot more specific than ‘graphic design’ or ‘writing’. Your clients look for people who are experts in their industry, in the technologies they use and in helping them sell whatever they’re offering. By incorporating that information into your branding, as well as working to establish your expertise in a few other ways, you are effectively telling a select group of people that you are the perfect freelancer for them and that anyone else out there would be better off with someone else.

That can sound like a bad thing — purposefully limiting your audience means that there are less people out there who might give you money. But it balances out, because clients are willing to pay for results. If you can show a proven track record of getting results that are relevant to your target market, you can charge higher rates and cut down on the time it takes you to convince a prospective client to come on board.

Invest time in deciding exactly who you want to work with and what types of projects you want to focus on. From there, it gets easier to figure out what knowledge will really help your clients.

• Are there specific technologies that aren’t necessarily a part of your work but that you should still be familiar with?
• Are there legal or regulatory constraints that you need to be able to meet in your work — and that a run of the mill freelancer might not know about?
• Are there any differences between the ways big companies and small businesses operate in the industry?
• Is there jargon for the industry that people in the know use?

An expert freelancer lives and breathes her industry. Without in-depth knowledge of what your clients need, you might as well be a jack of all trades. With it, though, you can determine when the best time to approach new clients may be, how to make sure that their projects run smoothly, even how to make use of new technologies for your clients before anyone else even thinks to do so.

You’ll also have a far easier time branding yourself when you’re only selling to one market. Just by knowing the jargon a niche uses, you can optimize your website for the terms that industry will search for, rather than just broadly sprinkling in the terms that go along with your broader skill set. You can write marketing materials that specifically address their needs and count on a better quality of word of mouth — your expertise may very well become a choice bit of industry gossip!

But you can also take your expertise beyond a well-targeted website.

An Expert on the Outside In order to land plenty of well-paying clients, you want your name or brand in front of them on a regular basis.

In order to land plenty of well-paying clients, you want your name or brand in front of them on a regular basis. That’s a bit easier for an expert than for a freelancer. After all, journalists want to include quotes from experts in their articles, conferences want to have experts speak and radio hosts even want to interview experts. Of course, some topics get more press than others, but every industry has its own conferences and its own trade publications. It’s just a matter of making yourself available as a resource.

One of the first steps has to be joining the general community talking about the industry. While you should still spend time on learning and discussing more about freelancing in general and your specialty in particular, you need to be spending as much time as you can in the forums discussing the industry you focus on. That can include:

• Curating news about the industry on social media
• Writing a blog or recording a podcast about the industry
• Commenting on forums and other sites about the industry
• Attending industry events from conferences to cocktail hours, even if you sometimes need to travel to do so
• Connecting with individuals in the industry both online and off

It can be a time-consuming process: you won’t be an industry insider overnight. But with some focused work, along with picking up projects in your area of expertise, you can build connections who consider you an expert surprisingly quickly.

From there, it’s a question of capitalizing on your connections. Just as you make yourself available to clients as a freelancer, you make yourself available as a resource. If you can establish yourself as someone who knows the ins and out of the industry, there are opportunities you can get access to.

You can write articles of your own for trade publications. You can submit talks to conferences. Heck, if you want to, you can write a book about the industry you work in. It’s worth remembering that not only do these efforts put your brand in front of more prospective clients — they can also earn you money in their own right. Most people aren’t going to get rich writing industry-oriented books, but you may very well be able to cover the time you spend actually putting together a book, which is a lot more than you can say for most marketing projects.

What Your Expertise Means To someone who hasn’t quite figured out attaching a file to an email, even adding to a website through a content management system can seem like black magic. To that person, a good web designer, who can tell him what he should bother with in terms of building and maintaining a website, is an expert.

It doesn’t take anything fancy to establish your expertise. Your clients expect you to provide expert advice when they come to you; if they knew how to do the things you find basic, they wouldn’t need a freelancer. Even at what you may think of as rudimentary levels in your field, you’re still ahead of where your clients may be.

But there is a level of responsibility that goes along with being an expert. Your clients will trust you to give them the most up-to-date advice that will really get them the best possible results. That’s the trade off for charging higher prices. To be an effective expert, you need to make a point of keeping up with the trends in your industry, learning new technologies and generally doing everything you can to stay ahead of the curve. It requires a level of work beyond what just landing projects as a freelancer may take. But it’s worth it.