Episode 109
FCG109 - Experience or Baggage (feat. Michael Towe)
Dynamic Trimming redux. Sort of. Michael Towe is an old school editor with ties back to early avid and we talk briefly about the trimming of FCPX and Avid but we also go into may workflow preferences like Keywords vs. Favorites, the beauty of the magnetic timeline when it comes to revisions, Time Remapping and Auditions and how Michael used them in recent productions. There is a bit of “old man history” at the beginning of this episode but bear with it, You’ll get to the good stuff if you don’t care about the past.
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Featuring
- Chris Fenwick
- Michael Towe - m2digitalpost.com - @michael_towe
- Michael Towe - m2digitalpost.com - @michael_towe - facebook/michael.towe
Transcription
00:00.001: Hello, hello and welcome to another episode of Final Cut Grill.
00:00.001: Why don't we start in the beginning?
00:00.001: And so they bought this video machine thing, and nobody there really knew how to use it.
00:00.001: Good, Grief.
00:00.001: But it was, it was cl it was like I was totally tearing a page out of the Jeff Dykos playbook of think like the engineer.
00:00.001: I dropped the keyer on it.
00:00.001: So anyway, we have that in common, and we've both been doing this a long time.
00:00.001: I'm really having a hard time this year with pronunciation of guest names.
00:00.080: And we got two grips holding the green screen, and there's no light on this green screen other than what the sun is providing, which means this green screen is not very evenly lit.
00:00.080: You know, here's a bunch of green screen footage that we shot with the guy with the crappy camera in Vegas, right, to bring back from earlier.
00:00.160: Small Shop has decided that Final Cut 10 is the way to go, and we're going to hear all about the ways that it helps him and makes his life more efficient.
00:00.160: there might be some things that you're more interested in being a part of and being and coming over and checking out.
00:00.160: Get to I here's my hint.
00:00.160: Private suite at the Wynn Hotel, which is a couple miles away, or I don't know how far it was.
00:00.160: It's across the driveway.
00:00.160: Hello, hello.
00:00.160: foray into post-production?
00:00.160: I basically graduated high school in 1984, married my high school sweetheart, and started driving dump trucks for a living.
00:00.160: So every once in a while he would come.
00:00.160: Kill the department and outsource it.
00:00.160: And they can, everybody.
00:00.160: It's very relevant in the camera world because cameras well it's actually relevant in cameras and computers is can you make back your money in an appropriate duration of time
00:00.160: Cameras are so finicky, like, oh, that's that camera, I want this one now.
00:00.160: three years on that thing before it's just so obsolete it's not, it doesn't work anymore.
00:00.160: And you're going to either have to upgrade your system or you're going to have to subrent, but we're not willing to pay you that kind of money for that kind of thing anymore.
00:00.160: ugly ass hotel hallway, right?
00:00.160: I started to try and learn motion a little bit, and I still use motion for certain things.
00:00.160: Yeah, well I could write it out a little bit.
00:00.160: Feel where that edit needs to be, unless you can be watching it in real time.
00:00.160: Tweezer trimming, right?
00:00.160: An LA based avid editor who was defending avid, you know.
00:00.160: Comcast can do and what the TiVo can do, they would look identical.
00:00.160: where when you put a TiVo remote in your hand, it balances, and your thumb l rests right where it needs to be to do
00:00.160: Film, and I notice that they're like looking for certain things all the time.
00:00.160: And I see something else, I'm like, mm, that's not bad.
00:00.160: That you have to forget about.
00:00.160: Experience baggage, but there is a little bit like that, isn't it?
00:00.160: So I hit the three buttons and I'm like, these kind of feel control-alt-delete-ish.
00:00.160: I don't think that's that big of a deal when you look at what's how the market is changing.
00:00.160: You know, media composers and a bunch of producers that have to look at footage, and a bunch of editors that all have to be working on the same stuff.
00:00.160: ten or twenty people all hitting off the same media.
00:00.160: You know, because there's always a guy somewhere in a corporation that's done video as a hobby and he's going to start the company video department.
00:00.160: Right.
00:00.160: Yeah.
00:00.160: Prop and character.
00:00.160: just based on the type of stuff that I do.
00:00.160: Now the one thing I wish that they would add, and this just came into my world this year because we shot some stuff multicam on one of these films, and I discovered that you cannot audition a multicam within a multicam.
00:00.160: Michael, we gotta go.
00:00.160: 40-minute show every week or every month, whatever.
00:00.160: Or you'd just be able to copy and paste.
00:00.160: Apple has gone out of their way to give us a very powerful color correction tool.
00:00.160: through the product that they have put in front of us.
00:00.160: Well, no, you have to have picture lock before you do any of that stuff.
00:00.160: Picture lock.
00:00.160: But just know my Facebook it Facebook is nothing more than a gigantic smartass co uh comment contest for me.
00:00.160: Figure out where those are, and we'll be tweeting what's coming up.
00:00.160: So that'll be like Sam Messman and Noah Kadner, if you know Noah, and the whole SCP Works crew.
00:00.160: Yeah, the company website is m2digitalpost.
00:00.240: So, um g uh you'll be able to find things that that fit your mood um when you know your composers better.
00:00.240: FCP Works People.
00:00.240: Oh, and another thing, uh so let's say you have a list of songs and you click on the name of the song, what you're going to get is it's going to open in the top half of the screen and there's going to be two tabs down below.
00:00.240: So that's it.
00:00.240: My podcast central room.
00:00.240: Well, thanks.
00:00.240: I just kind of want to share my love for it, which probably means I probably shouldn't be talking to you.
00:00.240: you'll all of a sudden it there's like instant credibility.
00:00.240: if you can believe it.
00:00.240: So we'd I would drive his dump truck to the dump with loads of concrete and one day I almost tipped it over because I I started to lift it.
00:00.240: And I bought an edit system and I bought a camera and I just started a small production company like I think a lot of people have done and started out doing
00:00.240: Weddings and doing a few little event things.
00:00.240: It was a system that was put out by Matrox called an Illuminator 16, right?
00:00.240: just go learn how to drive a dump truck because apparently that's the way in.
00:00.240: That that went into a PC and they sold this thing as having what they called AX roll.
00:00.240: Right.
00:00.240: In 19, I believe it was 89, and I said this on a show a couple weeks ago, in 1989.
00:00.240: all the video people are like, hey, why can't we do that?
00:00.240: NTSC composite video signals that were passing through specialized chips, but that card lived in the Amiga computer.
00:00.240: That got me completely out of driving dump trucks and into doing production full-time in-house in a corporate facility.
00:00.240: That's where I just learned a ton.
00:00.240: We should be doing this ourselves.
00:00.240: Exactly.
00:00.240: The camera guys are in a world where, you know, you would go out and buy a beta cam and that was good for six, seven, eight years.
00:00.240: He's in Vegas and a lot of our clients will go to Vegas for big shows, and we have to do a lot of like sit-down interviews for like three days in a breakout room type thing.
00:00.240: But a lot of these things we're doing in green screen, and that's like the worst thing ever.
00:00.240: He goes, Well, it's never been a problem in the past.
00:00.240: Yeah, because when it came time to buy another edit system after I had spent my $50,000 on an Avid and it was like, I'm not spending the company's money anymore, you know, the corporation's money, I've got to buy it now.
00:00.240: That was that kind of became the system to cut that weekly online show.
00:00.240: It was a timeline editing system.
00:00.240: It was like version two, I think, when I started using it.
00:00.240: to create templates that I can just reuse in X.
00:00.240: Yeah, and I think s you know, somewhere I have a document.
00:00.240: And everything worked great until I started going in and doing a little bit of color correction on the first clip.
00:00.240: You know, there was nothing you could complain about.
00:00.240: you know, like for example, the big thing recently has been the dynamic trimming.
00:00.240: Dynamic trimming, that is something that I seriously miss from Avid.
00:00.240: You know, and as of, you know, as of like NAB of last year, 2014, I basically came to the conclusion that
00:00.240: And Scott Simmons, who's been on the show a couple of times, he did a great video showing how great the trimming is and Avid.
00:00.240: 80% of what you're ever going to do with that remote.
00:00.240: is the organization step because I hate, hate, hate to be hunting for footage and the ability to apply to apply multiple
00:00.240: The most painful thing in the world for me, and it gets worse as I'm getting older, because I find that as you get older,
00:00.240: I go to find a piece of footage, and if I can't find it immediately, and now I'm hunting through bins, and when I finally find it, I come back to my timeline and I have no idea what the hell that great idea was.
00:00.240: I don't find myself hunting.
00:00.240: That short-term memory that you have isn't as good as it used to be.
00:00.240: Or, like, a guy finishes a shot and then he swishes off of it to go get another close-up.
00:00.240: You know, like little things like that.
00:00.240: It's without a doubt the fastest timeline or the fastest editing style I've ever worked with.
00:00.240: Revisions, revisions, revisions, right?
00:00.240: Or, if spent time in an older version of Final Cut, have the most difficulty with it.
00:00.240: You know, when I was doing nothing but avid all the time and there was other people trying to learn avid, the one thing that I would tell them is the same thing that I tell people now that are trying to learn Final Cut 10, is that you have to
00:00.240: Think like the edit system.
00:00.240: That actually, Michael, that makes sense in just about anything.
00:00.240: I was working in the old Apple studio, which was in Cupertino.
00:00.240: It was really slick.
00:00.240: like a three finger salute, right?
00:00.240: And sure enough, the thing goes boop, boop, reset, reboot, boop.
00:00.240: I think that they went to market slightly under duress in 2011.
00:00.240: Right, right.
00:00.240: One guy or one gal with an edit system doing production, doing post out of their house, out of a small office.
00:00.240: So this morning I came in and I was expecting to sit in Edit 2 and work on a project that I had worked on all last week.
00:00.240: we don't have centralized storage, but we treat each of our Pegasus drives that are in each of the suites as little mini servers.
00:00.240: So I'm I'm down I'm downgraded to the pony suite.
00:00.240: No big deal.
00:00.240: Ethernet.
00:00.240: And I append the file name with the time and date, okay?
00:00.240: I kid you not, Michael, a $69 gigabit switch from Best Buy and some Ethernet cables.
00:00.240: is they build top notch, kick ass systems for doing major release motion pictures or big broadcast facilities where you're kind of like that reality thing, where you really do need
00:00.240: you know, here, all of a sudden, now I'm a financial analyst for Apple, right?
00:00.240: a handful of our clients, we have actually advised them to go the direction we're going.
00:00.240: The founders were from Buffalo and then they moved to San Diego and started this wings and things restaurant.
00:00.240: Yeah.
00:00.240: you know, because that's that's the that's the direction that they went.
00:00.240: Originally, in my brain, it was just going to be a cut.
00:00.240: Behind him, and we'll see the crew pulling the green screen out of the scene as he's walking into the restaurant.
00:00.240: And this wasn't a well-lit key.
00:00.240: And when you have your sound bytes keyed locally to your editor, I mean literally I'm taking a half a day of work
00:00.240: And being able to have those sound bites in a time line, have the have the you know, like so for me, a typical edit would be
00:00.240: And then I say, hey, so are we doing the standard background for this client?
00:00.240: Right.
00:00.240: Lining right.
00:00.240: Yeah, yeah.
00:00.240: Yeah, it just made my life so much easier.
00:00.240: A notice from YouTube.
00:00.240: In Final Cut 10, it was just so easy to do it.
00:00.240: Right.
00:00.240: Work with a team of filmmakers here in San Diego, and we've done the 48-hour film project for the last, I don't know, since 2008.
00:00.240: I mean, typically I start getting footage for those that don't know how the 48-hour film festival works or film project works, is on like on a Friday night, you'll pull a genre out of a hat.
00:00.240: but I can still take that circle take and just audition it in there.
00:00.240: Yeah, until you actually see it work and actually kind of grok what it's doing, it's hard to describe to people how powerful audition is.
00:00.240: when you emailed me and said something about dump trucks, I had forgotten about working for my friend Dean back then.
00:00.240: Okay, so the ability for, you know, to audition multi-cam clips, which I just mentioned, dynamic trimming, which we mentioned.
00:00.240: So, if I'm working with a producer, can I do this already?
00:00.240: is if you turn on your um it's called skimmer info, okay?
00:00.240: Right.
00:00.240: Right, I get that.
00:00.240: I personally would love to see a way to take the information, the currently sorted and browsed information that is in the Timeline Index.
00:00.240: producer's best friend.
00:00.240: Yeah, that was a totally odd one.
00:00.240: Here's what I believe, and I have no evidence.
00:00.240: Apple has gone out of their way to give us an astonishing plugin support for some of the best, highest quality plugins in the industry.
00:00.240: I think the evidence, I think the best way, and somebody said this to me once, I can't remember who it was, the best way to understand where Apple is going, I think it's Sam Nesman.
00:00.240: Screens go black, you know?
00:00.240: No, it's actually.
00:00.240: All right, Michael, thanks a lot.
00:00.240: I was working in Premiere and did this was back before when it only did track-based keyframes for mixing.
00:00.240: Fascinating guy, really wicked smart.
00:00.320: and really appreciate all the stuff that they've done.
00:00.320: it opens people's eyes to things that maybe they're not hearing from pundits and reviewers and the press.
00:00.320: That he would he had he had these special rams built and he would drive his little bobcat tractor up onto the back of the dump truck and then drive it around town
00:00.320: And the truck the dump truck wasn't level.
00:00.320: So, anyway, yeah, I was a bad dump truck driver.
00:00.320: when in the late well, I guess it was late 80s, early 90s, the construction industry was kind of falling apart in San Diego and I thought, you know what, I'm just going to do this.
00:00.320: Actually, what it would do is it had a still store on it.
00:00.320: So, not a full dissolve.
00:00.320: And it's w when you talk about these things with kids today, they look at you like, really?
00:00.320: down the road of Avid.
00:00.320: And I think four or five years later, I sold it for $3,500.
00:00.320: Areas of the business.
00:00.320: I know my boss sold one to the window washer.
00:00.320: And um but uh but you know that's in the computer world.
00:00.320: Do you plan on how long do you plan on owning it?
00:00.320: Right, right.
00:00.320: in the sense that, you know, for a long time in post-production world, you buy a computer and you've gotten, you know,
00:00.320: And so that camera is not a full it's well, it's not a full frame sensor, but it's it's it records an excuse me.
00:00.320: What what camera is that?
00:00.320: Exactly.
00:00.320: So I made the move, kind of slowly made the move with because at the time I was all PC based.
00:00.320: At that point, got used to using it, started using Soundtrack Pro with it as well.
00:00.320: God, it was it was before Adobe owned it.
00:00.320: And like everybody else, I just immediately went, Oh my God, Apple just killed Final Cut.
00:00.320: And so my intention was to stay with Final Cut 7 for and just kind of write it out a little bit.
00:00.320: I always thought, you know, I can always go back to Avid.
00:00.320: Go and look at it.
00:00.320: And there was no paste attributes.
00:00.320: And I had heard wonderful things about the keyer.
00:00.320: You know, the missing, and then, oh, it's kind of there, and now it is there.
00:00.320: The shortcomings have always been highly publicized.
00:00.320: There have been some very very um verily no very highly uh publicized episodes of this show where there's been a lot of controversy about
00:00.320: Yeah, and again, this has been talked about a lot.
00:00.320: I just don't.
00:00.320: And then you try and use a Comcast DVR.
00:00.320: Okay, the crack that kept me coming back to Final Cut 10 was the keyword organization of footage.
00:00.320: Right.
00:00.320: As I go.
00:00.320: Yeah, it's it's I think that's one of the things, you know, and I've been saying this for nearly a year now, that Final Cut 10 solves problems that editors don't even know they have yet.
00:00.320: I just saved you an option key.
00:00.320: just 'cause it works so different from a track-based timeline.
00:00.320: when it comes to making revisions to a project.
00:00.320: To the right of my playhead, I don't have to worry about knocking any audio out of sync.
00:00.320: to appreciate was the magnetic timeline.
00:00.320: Yeah, I and I've said this many times.
00:00.320: And yet you put Final Cut 10 in front of young kids and they never have any problem.
00:00.320: with the students.
00:00.320: And when you do, it'll make it a lot easier to figure something out.
00:00.320: It was a giant semicircle of racks with like a center bridge, you know, like a center desk.
00:00.320: And I looked at it and I thought, hmm, it's a computer and it's confused.
00:00.320: The head, the mind of the people that are writing the software and understand kind of their intention.
00:00.320: And it will help you out of a lot of problems.
00:00.320: Now, you know, because it's just you have to realize that the default position is to make it easy, and then you can peel out the extra windows to make it more complicated.
00:00.320: I mean, the era outside of Hollywood, right?
00:00.320: The trick is that you have to move the library file to the local machine.
00:00.320: Now, keep in mind this is important.
00:00.320: direct all of your media and generated media to a location outside the library file.
00:00.320: Okay, so now I have a library on my desktop.
00:00.320: I had Navrat was in one suite, I'm in one suite, and Sasha's in a third suite.
00:00.320: Well, yeah.
00:00.320: That market is something that Final Cut 10 will appeal to.
00:00.320: And he sees me as a you know, a bit of a you know, a trailblazer, whatever.
00:00.320: And so, what that also means is he calls me a lot and he's like, Hey, what do I do?
00:00.320: Town, and they're in Premier.
00:00.320: Yeah, yeah.
00:00.320: outside in cold, snowy Buffalo to San Diego, what we're going to see is all of a sudden the green screen's going to pop up
00:00.320: That was falling on this guy, aka instant mashed potato flakes, that was falling on him, and that stuff all keyed perfectly.
00:00.320: But so many times now, I would say 95% of the time, I am perfectly happy with the cure and what I'm able to do right in Final Cut 10.
00:00.320: off of a typical edit.
00:00.320: started, you know, getting into nonlinear editing.
00:00.320: Right.
00:00.320: You know, because you can take on more jobs.
00:00.320: And it turns around, and in a couple of hours, you get to bill for a minimum half day or whatever it is.
00:00.320: And the producer walks in, drops the script down, and I start punching in numbers and hitting the letter E and appending, appending, appending, appending.
00:00.320: Yeah, but you know, I mean, even if you can wind up with more billable hours, but it becomes painful because it's so difficult to do anything, then that's just now you're into your stomach lining rate, right?
00:00.320: And I had really hadn't spent much time with the retiming in 10 prior to doing that spot.
00:00.320: everything kind of moves backwards, and there's also some slow motion stuff in it.
00:00.320: And then you have 48 hours to produce a film based on the genre that you pulled.
00:00.320: commenting on my stuff otherwise I'd get sick of those notes.
00:00.320: And I'll have that director's circle takes on those notes.
00:00.320: You can't audition something else on top of a multicam.
00:00.320: Skim on the Time Line.
00:00.320: Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.
00:00.320: and they have to come and sit in my lap and scroll through that list to manually copy, type out all the things.
00:00.320: You can multicam, do color correction, and that color correction will pass through to your timeline.
00:00.320: From the timeline on a sync clip, you have to go back to the sync clip and stabilize the whole thing.
00:00.320: Apple knows everybody wants that.
00:00.320: That's what I think.
00:00.320: Yeah, because if it keeps it in one tool, then I don't have to worry about going out and conforming things.
00:00.320: Anyway, Michael, we got to wrap this up.
00:00.320: Underscore Tau and it's spelled T-O-W-E.
00:00.320: So, um, be looking for that.
00:00.320: He wrote the Final Cut Pro 10 shared environment workflow guide that came out 13 months ago and then was updated with 10.
00:00.320: It's on its way.
00:00.400: South of the Las Vegas Convention Center on whatever road that is, I don't can't remember what it is, you'll find the Renaissance Hotel.
00:00.400: You know, podcast.
00:00.400: But I had always kind of done production stuff kind of on the side, fun stuff.
00:00.400: And hold it in a still store, and then it would re-trigger the deck so that it could roll the second, you know, the B side of the edit.
00:00.400: What year was that, Michael?
00:00.400: Yeah, yeah.
00:00.400: While at that corporation, things grew a little bit.
00:00.400: Like, like easily.
00:00.400: It records an anamorphic signal.
00:00.400: Yeah, and actually if you're doing a ton of green screen work, if that's the vast majority of what he's doing, then this camera that I'm using, this 250, is a beautiful camera for it because you don't have to worry about
00:00.400: Final Cut 7 for avid editors, which was great.
00:00.400: And a copy of Final Cut.
00:00.400: And you know, this thing I've got a lot of talking heads that were two cameras shot on green screen, so I can just multi-cam all that stuff.
00:00.400: I want to get to why you like it.
00:00.400: And hit stop and have that edit point go there.
00:00.400: then it it you don't like not having it.
00:00.400: Messing with Final Cut 10 at 10.
00:00.400: Keywords to a piece of footage.
00:00.400: Yeah, yeah.
00:00.400: To say, hey, can we show the new final cut?
00:00.400: How would I make this easier if I was going to teach my dad how to edit?
00:00.400: To, you know, when I always hear talk about how, well, it doesn't work really well in it being X, doesn't work really well in a shared storage environment, which I don't totally agree with.
00:00.400: 10 is better geared towards that.
00:00.400: to have anybody walk away and go, yep, Fenwick said it's just for single user guys.
00:00.400: You know, it would be nice to be able to go and grab something on the screen.
00:00.400: All I have to do is double-click that library.
00:00.400: At one point, oh, when the Lean Library functionality became a reality, we did a test day.
00:00.400: Sasha was using media on my drive, I'm using media on Navret's drive, and Navret's using media on Sasha's drive.
00:00.400: Right?
00:00.400: You know, because I do a lot of work for him and he wants to be compatible with what we do.
00:00.400: And I actually just got a call.
00:00.400: Source clips, export them out with an overlay of source time code so that they can do that paper cut and I can reference back to the clip.
00:00.400: And I pulled the clip out and since it was track based, none of my keyframes slid down.
00:00.400: I think there's going to be some cool stuff happening.
00:00.480: I also want to say, and I hinted to this last week, and it's now official, I am going to be in Vegas at NAB, and I have been asked to participate with the
00:00.480: and more just be able to work faster.
00:00.480: I'm excited to be there, and I look forward to seeing you guys come by and see what FCP Works has to show you at NAB.
00:00.480: put out by a German company called Fast Electronics.
00:00.480: And a couple years in, we decided we needed to move to something bigger, something better.
00:00.480: For, you know, it's one of those typical, you know, how that it's the life cycle of in-house corporate video, right?
00:00.480: Until 2008.
00:00.480: A P2 camera, one of the smaller chip P2 cameras that I bought two years ago.
00:00.480: You don't need the shallow depth of field stuff, right?
00:00.480: Soundtrack Pro, and then you know, come back and forth between those two applications.
00:00.480: No, I think it was there was another company after COSA that owned it.
00:00.480: entered our landscape.
00:00.480: Well, and with keywording, with smart collections, if I've got a client over my shoulder, or if I've got a director, if I'm working on a
00:00.480: I am constantly updating, if you will.
00:00.480: And I'll just, you know, if I see something that looks like a sound bite that I want, I mark it in and out and I just throw it into that keyword collection.
00:00.480: Oh, yeah.
00:00.480: Totally agree with that.
00:00.480: And the thing was it had crashed.
00:00.480: And as it turned out, they did show it, and they were dead.
00:00.480: They've each got local storage.
00:00.480: I will tell you that today, all day long, I was cutting in one room and the media was on a system in another room.
00:00.480: The next thing I do is I take the remaining library file, the original library file that's still in edit2 in the job folder.
00:00.480: And so and again, I understand that there are more pro ways to do this, and there is additional functionality.
00:00.480: The gag in the commercial is that we start off with the spokesperson in Buffalo, New York, talking about how brutally cold it is in Buffalo, and then we transition into him being in Southern California because the company itself
00:00.480: And that's I think that's why Adobe created the render in place feature or something.
00:00.480: Just drag it out.
00:00.480: Tutorial that I had done for Jason Wingrove about a year ago, actually, coincidentally, a couple of days ago, it was exactly a year.
00:00.480: And then, of course, everybody, I'm going to get on the bandwagon of wanting a rolls-based mixer.
00:00.480: It's hard.
00:00.560: Conversation with an old timer like me.
00:00.560: Coincidence in our own personal histories back in 1984.
00:00.560: Right, right.
00:00.560: So you've got some history in this.
00:00.560: Video tool.
00:00.560: Yeah, I mean, and that was that was the high technology of the time, and it was the coolest thing in the world, right?
00:00.560: So, from the whole fast electronic things, it paid off for me.
00:00.560: And no, it would have been 95, 96.
00:00.560: And Media 100 was the other one.
00:00.560: I decided to try and make the move over to final cut.
00:00.560: After Effects, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, Final Cut 7, that kind of became my workflow.
00:00.560: And there was also a lot of green screen stuff.
00:00.560: You know, when I talk to people now, they go, Well, it doesn't do this.
00:00.560: Yes, yes.
00:00.560: Those could be a favorite too.
00:00.560: Uh no.
00:00.560: It's not a lot.
00:00.560: Hmm.
00:00.560: embra extend and embrace the prosumer market.
00:00.560: I'm a broadcaster.
00:00.560: large production houses in San Diego anymore.
00:00.560: Off of a drive that is not local to the physical machine that we're sitting at.
00:00.560: Yeah, but it makes you the guy that saves the day for him, right?
00:00.560: You know.
00:00.560: And I'm looking at it in the monitor and I'm really, really worried that when I get back into post, am I going to be able to pull this thing off?
00:00.560: Hold on, that's a great idea.
00:00.560: I have had people in the past, there's a guy, I'm going to say like mid mid early mid 90s when I started getting into post.
00:00.560: That is amazing that we have that kind of plug-in support right there in the timeline.
00:00.560: It's a lot of fun.
00:00.640: I always firmly believe, and this goes back to the earliest inception of the show, that talking with people that are really using this software in an objective, level-headed way
00:00.640: So it would basically control decks and it would roll your A deck and your B deck and do whatever transitions you needed to do.
00:00.640: It just so happened that a buddy of mine's wife worked there and we got to talking and she's like, Oh, well, you know how to use this thing and that got me hired on there.
00:00.640: And that was with the Meridian-based Avid.
00:00.640: in two years.
00:00.640: just to pay for itself, we're trying to make a living off of it.
00:00.640: Okay, so we've sidetracked into the camera world.
00:00.640: Uh the iterations uh I simply turn rebuild, I got time like uh
00:00.640: For the most part, that it does in Avid.
00:00.640: So it just it just keeps or worse if it takes if it takes ten clicks to find it, but you only have patience for nine, that clip effectively doesn't exist.
00:00.640: And so you can go back to those favorites, and now you only have like 20 shots to look at instead of 60 minutes of footage to look at.
00:00.640: Because in the corporate world, I deal with a lot of talking heads, and so I'll just, I just have a keyword collection called soundbites
00:00.640: Many years of experience in, you know, Avid or Old Final Cut or something like that.
00:00.640: You know, control-alt-delete, if you will.
00:00.640: What I believe, and I don't know, nobody has ever said this to me, but I'm just inferring.
00:00.640: A B roll suite, you know, very expensive decks, switcher, the whole nine yards.
00:00.640: Right.
00:00.640: With the same lighting grid for three days.
00:00.640: To try and get this thing finished up so that it can be submitted.
00:00.640: Anyway.
00:00.720: I think it did, though, take the transition and like digitize that little section of just the transition into the system.
00:00.720: 2008.
00:00.720: Like 1280 by 10 by 1080.
00:00.720: And I just don't I don't have to think about it.
00:00.720: time remapping and also trans a smooth transition from one speed to the other speed.
00:00.720: Right.
00:00.720: But when you skim over the clip, the timecode window tinks over and shows you the time code of the clip.
00:00.800: So, um I'm sorry, I'm getting distracted.
00:00.800: And I think what that meant was that you could roll off of a tape machine and the X-roll was coming off of the hard drive, I think.
00:00.800: because they had a video department that was doing it was more of an engineering support kind of video department, but they wanted to take it to the next level.
00:00.800: So in 04, out of there, started my own thing, which is M2 Digital Post, which is my company I own now.
00:00.800: Taming.
00:00.800: It was it looked you very much felt like you were on the enterprise when you walked down the hallways.
00:00.800: But apparently there was some dude in Hollywood who was good friends with Steve, and he had said to them he had said to Steve in early 2011, he goes, If you don't show this thing this year, you're dead.
00:00.800: When you I think that Apple's intention was to extend and embrace the prosumer market.
00:00.800: I'm telling you, I do it all the time, and we don't have any problems with it.
00:00.800: I worked on another spot, same director, and it was his concept on this spot.
00:00.800: When I transitioned over to 10 and started cutting those pictures in 10, because these are very, very compressed timelines to edit in.
00:00.800: Right, so we did I did multi-cam clips of everything or multi-clips, whatever you want to call them, of all of the stuff that was shot multiple camera.
00:00.880: maybe even this week, with more details about what we're going to be doing, who we're going to be talking to.
00:00.880: Thanks for having me.
00:00.880: And it's really important.
00:00.880: So started cutting in Final Cut 7, Final Cut 6, then made the move to 7, and Final Cut just kind of became my workflow.
00:00.880: Yeah, and again, and I think this is something that I said to Austin Flack when he was on the show.
00:00.880: And it didn't have an actual power switch.
00:00.880: The growth is much different.
00:00.880: Because I normally don't have the director in the Edis Suite with me when I'm doing the first cut on it.
00:00.880: And get that out as a text file.
00:00.880: I work in corporate.
00:00.880: I don't know why I have one that's a dot and one that's an underscore.
00:00.960: And to my point, I think guys like you and me, that's kind of where the future of post outside of Hollywood is going or has gone.
00:00.960: Talk about the cure for a little bit.
00:00.960: meant a work or even if you're going to do it in Premiere, had meant a round trip through After Effects.
00:00.960: It was easy to cut a sentence off of something you've already keyed.
00:00.960: It's important to remember, and it's not an overlay.
00:01.040: You know, where it kills you is when you're doing that event and you got to pull guys into a hallway and shoot an interview in an
00:01.040: It was January 2012 when 1003 came out.
00:01.040: And there's been some great videos that have been put out.
00:01.040: And I will say, Wes, I don't get it.
00:01.040: Because it kind of feels like you're grabbing one side or the other with a pair of tweezers and sliding it back and forth and then replaying and then sliding and then replaying.
00:01.040: I immediately recognize the power that that has.
00:01.040: And it's a it's a an extension work or extension of the university.
00:01.040: And then, and then the, of course, the real beauty is when the client walks in and they go, Yeah, I like that next sentence.
00:01.120: Hello, hello, you there?
00:01.120: Great, great book.
00:01.120: And I had this corporate job that was it was event coverage.
00:01.120: Oh, yeah.
00:01.120: So yeah, I mean, I wish I could get there's a couple of my clients I wish I could get switched over to to 10 because I wind up having to do stuff in Premiere.
00:01.120: And, you know, something else that was that was really helpful for me, because I edit a bunch of different kinds of stuff.
00:01.200: And the camera guys, they've in a way, I joke with the camera guys that I work with that they've kind of now entered our world.
00:01.200: And I would love to see that style of trimming come back into Final Cut.
00:01.200: It's not a new occurrence for Fenwick.
00:01.200: Yeah.
00:01.200: And I haven't really experimented a whole lot with the favorites yet.
00:01.200: Yeah.
00:01.200: And I know there's a lot of people out there that are going to say, Fenwick, you can't do that.
00:01.200: Yeah, but you know, you it's the it's called the future, you know, Will Robinson, Captain Kirk, you know.
00:01.200: Thank you so much for sharing some of your insights in the history and the dump truck thing.
00:01.200: But what I'm asking for is not so much in the application, but I want the ability when I get a producer that wants to do a paper cut, I want to be able to take those clips.
00:01.280: What did and I do this and so you know, this is a podcasting lesson for everybody.
00:01.280: I believe was when Pro Tools first came out.
00:01.280: From the computer side, the actual transition and then pick back up the role on the B deck.
00:01.280: And then, you know, that's the other end of the cycle.
00:01.280: But I just hung on to seven, right?
00:01.280: It's just smaller houses.
00:01.280: So you had sent me some links to some projects that you had done, some things that you were really excited about in 10.
00:01.360: And I wound up after the Illuminator 16, I bought what was kind of at the time, I guess you could say it was the video toaster in the PC world.
00:01.360: I think they're interesting, and I've gotten a lot of flack.
00:01.360: But we all know well, I don't know if we all know, but I have heard many a story of people having problems with the dynamic links.
00:01.360: And again, nobody has told me.
00:01.440: It's literally just across the driveway.
00:01.440: Like, I mean, one of the reasons that I wanted to do the show is because X has become my editor of choice after years of using other editors.
00:01.440: I don't know.
00:01.440: This guy has an older, I believe it is a P2, it's like a Panasonic, I want to say like a 500.
00:01.440: I think if it takes you more than three tries to get it, you don't know what you're doing or that edit should not be happening.
00:01.520: Like to do a keyword is option, and if you have it as one of your keyboard short-cutted keywords, you range base it and go, you know, option two or whatever.
00:01.520: I I use the Finder networking, I reach into Edit two.
00:01.520: Yeah, it's wonderful.
00:01.520: It blew me out of the water when he brought it up to me because I'm like, no, of course you can stabilize it right out of the timeline.
00:01.520: And I think that anything that you can envision or dream up or think about that would make that tool more of a one-stop tool, I gotta tell you, my belief is
00:01.600: Are you really?
00:01.600: It's the HPX two fifty.
00:01.600: So when was that?
00:01.600: I I don't know, I should probably talk to Philip about that, but I would just like a export text file.
00:01.600: I really appreciate your time.
00:01.600: It is a very important, very influential guy.
00:01.680: I feel honored to be on the grill.
00:01.680: It was so frustrating.
00:01.680: See?
00:01.680: Thai hadn't you know, and I just saved you uh you know, I mean
00:01.680: In every instance in my career, and I've been doing this for 30 years, and let's face it, we both started in a tow truck.
00:01.680: I mean, I know nothing, but when you look at what is in front of you, you go, Yeah, you know, I see it happening.
00:01.760: Okay, you keep talking.
00:01.760: And I'm going to say, I like to throw out some of my own personal tips.
00:01.760: And it's the kind of thing where, like, you know, you talk to people, well, at least I do.
00:01.760: He said, I remember in college, because he was my college roommate, he always said, you know, you got to think up like the guy who designed something.
00:01.760: Anyway, they had a really cool device that I could go into, it doesn't matter.
00:01.760: And I'm looking at the front panel, and I'm like, if I'm the engineer designing this, which three of these buttons are screaming Control-Alt-Delete?
00:01.760: I've been doing this for decades.
00:01.760: I did have to go as far as like selecting a range of color, and that was it.
00:01.760: So turning on Skimmer Info allows you, when you skim across stuff in your browser, it allows you to see the time code of the actual clip.
00:01.760: There is no such thing.
00:01.840: Here's my premium beat hint of the day.
00:01.840: I had to do it in one of the B-suites and in a little portable rig.
00:01.840: And like the video toaster, and I've talked about the video toaster in the past.
00:01.840: I mean, if you want a really interesting education, start talking to people in different
00:01.840: I got to say, efficiency is always better.
00:01.840: I don't use it a lot, but when I do, it's really cool and it's great.
00:01.920: Yeah, that's another way.
00:01.920: This is, I've talked about this many times: the lean library or the trim library.
00:02.000: Okay.
00:02.000: And like everybody else, I sat back and started seeing the crazy post of everybody that had seen the initial launch.
00:02.000: Just hit the letter F.
00:02.000: And I think that Apple is addressing a market that is drastically changing.
00:02.000: So, like last week, I was cutting an auto, a car dealer's spot, and I was back in Premier doing it.
00:02.000: So it's very, very compressed editing timelines.
00:02.000: I'd also like to see on sync clips, I want to see things pass through to the timeline.
00:02.080: And it's and it's tough, man.
00:02.160: Now I can't tell you all the details because they're not all finalized, but we're going to have some more news coming up.
00:02.160: Okay, so I had I had a very weird um track into the post-production world.
00:02.160: And they go out and they buy a bunch of equipment and they staff it up.
00:02.160: I'm constantly updating my metadata so that when I want to go back to it, I don't have to go, gee, yeah, I saw that.
00:02.160: You could just hit the letter F, it's one step less.
00:02.240: Hey, Michael.
00:02.240: Ask a computer.
00:02.240: At the time, we were producing a weekly online show, and so
00:02.240: And so when I look at this functionality and I think, wow, I can cut a half a day off of an edit, but I charge by the hour.
00:02.240: Uh, they have told me they have like a whole staff of people doing like social media stuff.
00:02.320: I was just about to wrap up the show.
00:02.320: A friend of mine well, kind of.
00:02.320: That would have been 92, 93.
00:02.320: You know, and because then in the next year or two that you own it, if you can own it for three years, and that's pretty tough these days, because
00:02.320: I knew that it was getting long in the tooth.
00:02.320: Yeah, I'm sure it is.
00:02.400: And actually, it even got better with the release of 10.
00:02.400: It's smaller shops.
00:02.400: And I'll say I've even done screen grabs of that portion of the window and just emailed that to them.
00:02.480: Well, you can't do it 'cause you're dealing with infinitely more data.
00:02.480: So the small sensor doesn't kill you.
00:02.480: The ability to create smart collections from pieces of footage is just so powerful.
00:02.480: It's going to be awesome.
00:02.480: And I'm just talking about one guy, one drive, one project across the network.
00:02.480: But the director that I was working with on the project came up with this brilliant idea where he said, No, no, no, it's not a cut.
00:02.480: In every instance in my career when I was able to be more efficient, it turned out to be better in the long run.
00:02.480: Thank you again.
00:02.560: This is episode one zero nine with Michael Toe.
00:02.560: I spent nine years there doing corporate production.
00:02.560: So at one point, we had a couple of media composers and a Unity.
00:02.560: Well, it it has always been a problem, but we didn't have things to compare it to, and there's better tools now.
00:02.560: Yeah.
00:02.560: Yeah, because this it was a spot we did for a local Southern California Hot Wings place called Wings and Things.
00:02.560: That spot would have taken at least two times as long to edit anywhere else.
00:02.560: I have no reason to, I'm not divulging any sort of insight or information at all, but here is what I believe.
00:02.640: He'd come and get me.
00:02.640: And so that kind of got my brain starting to wrap around Final Cut 7.
00:02.640: It was bin-based.
00:02.640: I don't even know if it was it.
00:02.640: This is like a thirty minute intro to the show.
00:02.640: I think that the people that have the most difficulty with it are the people that have been, you know, many, many the older people.
00:02.720: Is there one?
00:02.720: And at that point, I said, Well, that's great.
00:02.720: I'm looking.
00:02.720: Don't expect it to work like your brain.
00:02.720: And it to me, it is very obvious that what Apple wants to do is to give us a one stop tool.
00:02.720: You're going to enjoy next week's episode, next week's interview.
00:02.800: Sorry about that.
00:02.800: I mean, in 2005, I purchased an avid adrenaline.
00:02.800: And with there's a lot of history.
00:02.800: Like, even to the point where the way the remote rests in your hand.
00:02.800: I just know where I've got things.
00:02.800: It was just the sun.
00:02.880: So, I'm sorry, go ahead.
00:02.880: It was freeze, dissolve, and go.
00:02.880: Let's get back.
00:02.880: Kind of cool, huh?
00:02.880: I mean, that was the toughest one, that was the toughest hurdle to get over.
00:02.880: And I basically work out of a studio out of the back of my house.
00:02.880: And in the corporate world, that means he's coming back to you with a bag of money.
00:02.880: One of my clients was a guy who had a full-on, you know, beta SP
00:02.880: And then the other thing that I want to mention real quickly before we go that you were excited about was the time remapping in the trampoline commercial.
00:02.960: Yeah, it's a thin raster.
00:02.960: Because you can't take that background and blur that thing out and it becomes all bokealicious and nobody knows that it's, you know, a hotel hallway.
00:02.960: It kind of just laid out everything that you would do in what you're looking for.
00:02.960: There is no such thing as picture lock.
00:02.960: So I look at it and the engineer's behind behind the rack and I go, Hey, do me a favor, unplug this thing.
00:02.960: And we do chapter markers, and the producer wants the chap, they want to know the chapter markers, the time code, and the name.
00:02.960: Yeah, thanks for having me on the show.
00:03.040: And I was on Avids and it would have been from 96 until
00:03.040: It's going to be out the back door in two years.
00:03.040: And so we decided to go down that road.
00:03.040: If you have a YouTube channel, anytime somebody comments on it, they'll send you a little note.
00:03.040: But a guy who was saying that um he really liked uh my retiming
00:03.040: It's hard.
00:03.040: No, I know.
00:03.120: You're like, oh yeah, I know that.
00:03.120: So if you think about the geometry of that, so and it was filled with concrete that was very heavy.
00:03.120: I hung on to seven for a little while.
00:03.120: Dude, I'm telling you, gigabit Ethernet and Final Cut 10 works fine.
00:03.120: It was really great.
00:03.200: You go out the front door and you see the Renaissance.
00:03.200: I'm just like, Yeah, it does.
00:03.200: No, I don't think so.
00:03.280: Michael's been doing this for a long time, and we actually find a very interesting correlation or a
00:03.280: I mean, I'll tell you, when I buy a computer, a CPU, my intent is that that thing will be replaced.
00:03.280: And there is the, it's hard to explain, but the advantage of dynamic trimming is to be able to be watching something play.
00:03.280: It's so much it's so much faster and it's so much more of a liberating way to work in a in a timeline.
00:03.280: It's tough to look at an editor and go, Yeah, you spent the last 12 years learning all this stuff, and now I want you to forget about it and learn a brand new way.
00:03.280: And I copy that attribute, and I'm like, okay, w uh, can we d do lunch now?
00:03.360: The Facebook is michael.
00:03.440: I'm sure there is, but I don't think anybody has bothered to just say, hey, we're just going to talk about Premiere.
00:03.440: Because that corporate job lasted until 2000
00:03.440: And after downloading it, I kind of played with the keyer a little bit and went, Yeah, this key's pretty rocking
00:03.440: Range base, star it, favorite it, you know?
00:03.440: And it is as though I am in the room.
00:03.440: It's not that that's where the growth is going to be.
00:03.440: And I just want to say this because it is a little bit of post-production mathematics.
00:03.520: Again, they have a curated collection of music, meaning it's the good stuff.
00:03.520: I need you today.
00:03.520: So so you did some Avid, and then somewhere in there, I'm assuming you got into Final Cut 7, I believe, right?
00:03.520: It had locked up.
00:03.520: It wasn't.
00:03.520: That's the route they went.
00:03.520: You can double-duty things.
00:03.520: Your timecode window shows you the time code of the Time Line.
00:03.600: No worries.
00:03.600: Well, you basically ambushed me and you said, dude, I want to talk.
00:03.600: At the time, you know, they had some killer deal going on on Symphony for like a grand.
00:03.600: I'm going to try and see if I can find this.
00:03.600: I am constantly updating my metadata.
00:03.600: Yeah.
00:03.600: How do people follow you on the internet?
00:03.600: It's going to be fun.
00:03.680: So it only could only bring one deck in at a time.
00:03.680: And it was just that.
00:03.680: You know, we have a a a vendor that we hire um quite often.
00:03.680: Okay, cool.
00:03.680: Yeah, that's the one thing about Tim is there's so many different ways to organize footage.
00:03.680: And most of these things are, you know, it's the three-finger salute.
00:03.680: And I was like, got it.
00:03.680: I get it, and the overlay would be cool.
00:03.680: Sorry, Michael.
00:03.760: A friend of mine had a little tiny demolition business in Palo Alto, California, and he had um he had a 1957 eighteen foot Ford flat I think it was a Ford flatbed dump.
00:03.760: Yeah, yeah.
00:03.760: So, one multicam clip cannot audition on top of another multicam clip.
00:03.760: And I know that.
00:03.840: Now you've mentioned in your email to me, you mentioned some of the other edit systems that you have worked with.
00:03.840: Cameras, you know, that you've gotta you've gotta decide like how much time
00:03.840: That would have been around the 0.
00:03.840: Yeah, you know, I will say, you know, we all saw it.
00:03.840: There's some great episodes.
00:03.840: This is what I expect to do.
00:03.920: So that's what that's what we have in store today.
00:03.920: And what's interesting is everybody loves to kick a guy when he's down, but nobody wants to, you know, so hey, good job standing up, you know, right, right.
00:03.920: My friends at Apple are very tight-lipped.
00:04.000: So anyway, let's get to the interview today with Michael Tao down in, I think it's Toe Tao.
00:04.000: Aldus, Aldous, some company.
00:04.000: Eventually it was that Apple would release an operating system that wouldn't run it.
00:04.000: The Comcast DVR is crap.
00:04.000: Outside of large markets, Hollywood, New York, markets like that, the industry is changing.
00:04.000: Now, I would agree, but I will say that I don't want on this show
00:04.000: We call it the bitch suite.
00:04.000: He goes, Yeah, yeah, you know the thing.
00:04.000: Hey, before we go, can I do my wish list?
00:04.000: There is no picture lock.
00:04.000: And then I also have a Facebook page.
00:04.080: And the music boys used to call it Slow Tools because it was so awful.
00:04.080: Whereas if you never have done dynamic trimming and it's always been, I don't know, I kind of call it
00:04.080: But once I started to get an understanding of how it works
00:04.080: A good friend of mine who's been a guest on the show, Jeff Dykaus, he's the audio composer and engineer in Southern California.
00:04.080: I have the remote drive mounted on my desktop.
00:04.080: I also see growth probably in corporate houses, in-house corporate stuff.
00:04.080: And one of the things that was hugely helpful for me, in addition to keywording, was auditioning.
00:04.080: Well, I just I don't want to go to I don't want to go to Logic.
00:04.160: Learn the composers.
00:04.160: So I'll go to motion for that kind of stuff.
00:04.160: This is not good radio.
00:04.160: I don't I don't understand.
00:04.160: Yeah, it looks the same.
00:04.160: I mean, we've got two edit bays here.
00:04.160: And as I'm cutting through, I may find a better take.
00:04.160: Just the other day, I got a call from Scott Simmons and he's like, Okay, Fenwick, you final 10 guru, how do I do this?
00:04.160: Okay.
00:04.160: And I'm like, what is this mythical unicorn beast you're referring to?
00:04.160: Well, I'll tell you, I know we're we're having great interviews and great things to do at the FCP Works Suite at the Renaissance Hotel.
00:04.240: So I'm going to tell you that much, and there's going to be some more official words.
00:04.240: But how long are you willing to wait until it is paid for?
00:04.240: Yeah, I heard that show.
00:04.240: And funny, funny story: many years ago, 24 years ago, 23 years ago.
00:04.240: I was like, Ugh, hold on, let me save what I'm doing.
00:04.240: Yeah, I know.
00:04.240: We'll do this again sometime.
00:04.320: Come on.
00:04.320: None of the controls on the front of it were doing what they were supposed to do.
00:04.320: So the
00:04.320: No, what you can do, however, what's important to remember, and this also doesn't work too good with a multi-cam clip.
00:04.320: com.
00:04.400: I did an another interview this mor uh earlier today, and I had I I couldn't use like
00:04.400: And at the time, the two systems that were out there were Media Composer
00:04.400: So I hate to be like editing, and I get this great idea
00:04.400: And like you, I live in the corporate production world, and that is
00:04.400: And the same goes for software.
00:04.400: It's becoming an it's becoming a boutique market.
00:04.480: It was just a matter of this button does this instead of that button doing it.
00:04.480: Just to grab things and pull them and stretch them and just have them all kind of lay in there the way I needed them to would have been a hell of a lot harder in another edit system.
00:04.560: Yeah, the DDC Pro stuff.
00:04.560: Wes Plate, a guest on the show, he made one showing how great the trimming is in Avid.
00:04.560: And I mean, the first time I went to
00:04.640: Mm-hmm.
00:04.640: And so that was my first foray to go back to your question of edit system that I used.
00:04.640: It totally does.
00:04.640: I would love to see because you're a hardcore, long-term Avid editor, so you know how all that works.
00:04.640: You have to make your brain work like it.
00:04.640: And it was like, you know, because it was in a rack, you just plug it in, it always works, allegedly.
00:04.640: So that way, when the director comes in, I can show him what I've got.
00:04.640: It's the number two on the Twitters.
00:04.720: It was a cab ride away.
00:04.720: The guy was like washing the windows.
00:04.720: And so we finally just recently, we like put the hammer down and said, dude, you cannot shoot with that camera anymore.
00:04.720: And it's shooting full color space.
00:04.720: Let's see, at the time that would have been final cut six.
00:04.720: And it's something that's just a feel thing.
00:04.720: And I know that there's some workarounds in Final Cut 10, and I've tried them, but it's just not that same feel.
00:04.720: I think it's a familiarity thing.
00:04.720: So I'll normally start getting footage somewhere late in the evening on Saturday, and I'm editing all Saturday night and all through Sunday.
00:04.720: And I'll give you one particular instance.
00:04.720: I'm really looking forward to it, and I'm glad we could work out all the details to make my time available to be with those guys.
00:04.800: I'm like, oh, I don't want to drive the temp truck.
00:04.800: So in 04, they said, you know, they were on the bottom end of the cycle.
00:04.800: Um, uh, you know, that's where you're actually making money off the gear.
00:04.800: And then, so your edit system sees that, sees the flag on it, pulls it out to fit the raster of 1920 by 1080.
00:04.800: So I long time history with After Effects.
00:04.800: You need a server.
00:04.800: I can't remember what it's called.
00:04.880: But it eventually got you into post-production.
00:04.880: So I um I did that for like five or six years and I'd always kind of done production stuff on the side just, you know, for family and friends.
00:04.880: I loved that capability to go out to sound
00:04.880: I'm pretty sure it went COSA Adobe.
00:04.880: Good show.
00:04.880: Yeah, the other things about Final Cut 10 that, I mean, it took me a while to.
00:04.880: Because you're just bringing all that baggage with you
00:04.880: So it's it's older students that that are doing night stuff.
00:04.880: I've been really pleased with what I can get away with with the Chroma Key here.
00:04.960: The video machine thing paid off for me because there was a corporation in town who had purchased one.
00:04.960: So you've got to upgrade to a new computer.
00:04.960: We had done a bunch of multi-cam stuff
00:04.960: I can make those adjustments and I can create those smart collections on the fly so that I can, you know, sort of reorganize.
00:04.960: One click away, I'm there.
00:04.960: Yeah, it kind of is.
00:05.040: I should probably find like who does the premiere
00:05.040: I mean, because that's what we had to work with.
00:05.040: And at one point, I just kind of kicked myself and said, okay, everybody else thinks this thing sucks, but don't be a sheep.
00:05.040: It's like, well, it does the same thing.
00:05.040: And then you could make a smart collection of all your favorites.
00:05.040: I mean, you're constantly making revisions.
00:05.040: And he's also kind of banking on the fact that I'm doing all the RD and figuring out the workflows and stuff.
00:05.040: And I said to him, I go, Hey man, when are you going to get into something computer-based?
00:05.040: But on a sync clip, it won't.
00:05.040: Yes, it's different.
00:05.120: I will put links to both Scott's video and Wes Plate's video in the show notes for this show so you can go watch this because I think they're interesting.
00:05.120: You can say, yep, yep, I got that.
00:05.120: And it was a spot for a Mission Federal credit union.
00:05.200: So it's going to be close.
00:05.200: I did that.
00:05.200: And, you know, went out and got a book that was like
00:05.200: And there was a lot of things that were like missing.
00:05.200: Wes hammered me saying, Fenwick doesn't get it.
00:05.200: I don't have to worry about knocking music out of sync.
00:05.200: Yeah, I've been teaching a workshop on 10 up at one of the universities here in town, and that's exactly what I've noticed.
00:05.200: He's like, what?
00:05.200: I mean, do a fair amount of work for the local ONO, NBC ONO here.
00:05.200: It is a different beast.
00:05.200: Take care.
00:05.280: I'm sending a text message to a friend.
00:05.280: Exactly.
00:05.280: And so we started looking at which system to buy and wound up going with the Avid Media Composer.
00:05.280: If it's simple, you know, the lower thirds, things like that, I'll go to motion for it, especially with the ability now in X.
00:05.280: Good grief.
00:05.280: It's like, I might be able to use that swish pan in the intro.
00:05.360: You'll hear about that.
00:05.360: And so I and that's one of the reasons why I went to it, because I knew that the multicam had come in in 10.
00:05.360: 1.
00:05.360: Because we had it in Final Cut 6 and we had it in Final Cut 7.
00:05.360: And I go, Yeah, yeah.
00:05.360: It's Facebook Michael.
00:05.360: tow, and then the Twitter is at Michael underscore Tau.
00:05.440: It was a computer-operated video switcher that lived in the computer, but it was still very much a video switcher.
00:05.440: And five or six years later, some new guy's running the show and he goes, Why are we spending all this money on production?
00:05.440: Started using motion a little bit, but I'm like an old school After Effects guy.
00:05.440: Apple has gone out of the way to give us subframe audio editing in my video editors.
00:05.520: You'll find that like I went through a thing and I made like a collection of things I really liked, and then all of a sudden I noticed like most of them were like the same guy.
00:05.520: You want to hear something really scary?
00:05.520: It was just a switcher that was computer controlled.
00:05.520: So like a camera, like in my mind, a camera has to pay for itself in six to twelve months.
00:05.520: And I said it's kind of like the TiVo thing.
00:05.520: You need something to check those valves out.
00:05.520: And I take that and I scroll it away into a folder where we put old library files.
00:05.520: And I will tell you unequivocally.
00:05.600: Let's just put it that way.
00:05.600: And almost to the point almost not not exactly, but almost to the point where I can almost give them away.
00:05.600: And Final Khat 10 users say, oh, it trims just fine, and avid users are like,
00:05.600: Right, right.
00:05.600: Edit three.
00:05.600: I got everybody in the office trained to like keep an eye out for that special little icon.
00:05.600: Thanks for being a part of the show.
00:05.680: Mm-hmm.
00:05.680: One of the listeners of the show made me a really cool timeline that goes through all of the
00:05.680: And actually, I should publish this timeline because it's really cool.
00:05.680: I mean, my kind of way of doing that
00:05.680: You know, younger kids that are coming up and doing their own stuff or working for small shops.
00:05.680: So the transition
00:05.760: Uh so you know this is a nice casual
00:05.760: 2.
00:05.760: And I think that that
00:05.760: But to get the next sentence, it's like, ah, got to get the original footage, got to send it back out to, ah, now it's just drag it out.
00:05.760: Can I do my final cut wish list?
00:05.760: I totally agree.
00:05.760: Please, please, please.
00:05.760: No, it's not three-way color corrector, but it is still very powerful.
00:05.760: Yeah, bye.
00:05.840: And this would have been like 95, 94, 95.
00:05.840: Why don't you sell me a system and outsource it to me?
00:05.840: What's your company website, et cetera, et cetera?
00:05.920: That's what I would have guessed.
00:05.920: But nobody really says, oh, yeah, and they fixed that.
00:05.920: I mean, yeah, it's a big deal if you're cutting reality and you've got twenty
00:05.920: So I knew the cure was pretty good in 10, so I wasn't too worried about it.
00:05.920: And I'm like, this can't be right.
00:06.000: Yep.
00:06.000: Exactly.
00:06.000: Because when it comes to editing, at least for me, the most important step
00:06.000: Because I mean, we have four suites.
00:06.000: Yeah, I've heard you talk about this before, and I've actually thought about trying to do that here in my shop, because there is times where
00:06.000: I open up the job folder, I take the library file, I copy it to the desktop of my machine in Edit three.
00:06.000: And so the ability to re-time and reverse timing
00:06.000: Skimmer info is really important.
00:06.000: So I'm looking forward to that.
00:06.080: So I had some settings wrong.
00:06.080: It's not a 1440 by 1080.
00:06.080: It totally does.
00:06.080: I like to say one of the things that I do quite often when I'm editing, either by myself or with a shoulder surfing producer, is
00:06.080: I mean, but to be honest with you,
00:06.080: I said, I think I got it.
00:06.080: Now, and I will say that when we
00:06.080: And at first, I went, What do you mean we're going to see the crew?
00:06.080: You know, it's funny when you
00:06.080: And then when you said when it was, I was like, oh my goodness, I was doing the same thing.
00:06.080: They're like, you know, you walk in their, if you are allowed to walk into somebody's office, boom.
00:06.160: And while at that department
00:06.160: And then I went, okay, now how do I copy and paste this to the next clip?
00:06.240: And the computers really sucked back then.
00:06.240: Yeah, no, there's no money in old gear.
00:06.240: And I, and frankly, I think Apple knows that.
00:06.320: And I can tell you this, last year FCP Works had a
00:06.320: Got one of those, had one of those, moved on from there.
00:06.320: I mean, if you've spent so many years on Avid trimming that way.
00:06.320: I do a lot of work for him, yes.
00:06.400: I do this because I firmly believe that when you know more about Michael and his background,
00:06.400: And it was a board.
00:06.400: Hey, what are you guys doing in there?
00:06.400: No, it doesn't.
00:06.400: When you started messing with Final Cut 10 at 10.
00:06.400: I go plug it back in.
00:06.400: And I drop it in and I adjust the first key or it's the same headshot for three days.
00:06.400: So it's corporate stuff.
00:06.400: Every film has to have like a required line.
00:06.480: There's some stuff I want to talk about.
00:06.560: Yeah, those were bad days.
00:06.560: It was around the corner from Infinite Loop, and it was a beautiful facility.
00:06.560: Right.
00:06.640: And Michael works in San Diego and he makes commercials and
00:06.640: So, that's the lesson here, kids.
00:06.640: But if it starts getting a little too crazy and a little too heavy, I still my comfort zone is After Effects.
00:06.640: But anyway, so let's not talk about dynamic trimming.
00:06.640: I've got what I need.
00:06.640: And once you get past that, once you clear that hurdle, you're going to have such an easier time.
00:06.640: Right.
00:06.640: It just magically keyed.
00:06.640: So it's just all that is.
00:06.720: And so, um
00:06.720: Well, and I have to say that when it comes to
00:06.720: Yes.
00:06.720: And you could stand there and you could see the front of every rack because they were all perfectly pointing at you.
00:06.720: They're not tied together.
00:06.720: And I am literally just using very simple gigabit.
00:06.720: And once I started working on it and started understanding how retiming worked.
00:06.800: You're going to want to know the schedule of what's going on because we're going to be doing different things all week long.
00:06.800: And the first couple years of it, it was using this video machine product.
00:06.800: And they've turned it into iMovie Pro and all the other things that everybody was saying about it.
00:06.800: So I I went back I went to it at 10.
00:06.800: I'm just gonna s I'll say it again.
00:06.800: I'm always like, let's say I'm shuttling through looking for one thing.
00:06.800: And
00:06.800: And sometimes the thing that helps me the most is if I just say,
00:06.800: You know?
00:06.800: We're doing
00:06.800: But it's important to remember that when you
00:06.800: So, you'll
00:06.880: What was it?
00:06.880: So I don't think that they totally turned their back on the pro market.
00:06.880: And so I'd like to see that.
00:06.960: Um yes, I'd multitask.
00:06.960: Again, horrible technology that we thought, oh, wow, this is going to be great.
00:06.960: And but if you were to put up two PowerPoint slides extolling the features of what
00:06.960: You know, think like the people that invented the gear, that built the gear.
00:06.960: And actually there's one worse than that.
00:06.960: You know, give it to me.
00:06.960: He wrote, his name is Alexander Snelling.
00:07.040: Come on.
00:07.040: Yeah.
00:07.040: Right.
00:07.040: I mean, somebody comes in and goes, why are we spending all this money to do production?
00:07.040: And to be honest, it really wasn't all that different.
00:07.040: And each of us was launching media off of somebody else's drive.
00:07.040: I'm not saying I can do real world or anything like that, you know?
00:07.040: We'll be back next week with more exciting stuff on the grill.
00:07.120: Well, for years,
00:07.120: The cure will work great.
00:07.120: Again,
00:07.120: So, like, for example, I'm just going to review this because I know I've talked about this before in the past.
00:07.120: This whole, it's like musical chairs with hard drives or something.
00:07.120: It's always better.
00:07.120: I always do that.
00:07.120: And so I went in and I did all, you know, I mixed the whole thing and then the client wanted to pull a clip out.
00:07.200: If you have not, and I hope you have, go check out PremiumBeat.
00:07.200: Not anymore.
00:07.200: And like the tech room, instead of being rows and rows of racks
00:07.200: We're going to shoot this guy on green screen right out in front of the restaurant.
00:07.200: And which luckily not a lot of people are
00:07.200: tow
00:07.280: This year, they're going to be at the Renaissance Hotel.
00:07.280: So I went out and bought a MacBook Pro.
00:07.280: And and you see little things where you just go, I'm gonna need that.
00:07.280: He's like, what'd you do?
00:07.280: And that's when Apple kind of strong-armed the user group thing, whatever it's called, the Super Meet.
00:07.280: I come in, I realized on the schedule, oops, I don't get to use edit two.
00:07.280: One of them was a I think it was a Hot Wings commercial with some Chroma Key work.
00:07.280: But in every instance, when I was able to be more efficient, it turns out to be just plain better.
00:07.280: Really?
00:07.280: I don't want to go to Pro Tools.
00:07.360: And I don't know, maybe I shouldn't have said that much.
00:07.360: Hey, welcome to the show.
00:07.360: In 1984, I was driving a dump truck.
00:07.360: You've got to help me.
00:07.360: So it would roll the deck and it would grab the last frame of the outgoing clip.
00:07.360: But they were editing music in a computer.
00:07.360: I think it.
00:07.360: This will make you cry.
00:07.360: But that's not the growth in the production market.
00:07.360: So we get the footage back into post.
00:07.360: This must be a mistake.
00:07.440: I was like, okay, let's do it.
00:07.440: That's a nice computer.
00:07.440: So it was as though it was like, you know, blue screen of death or something.
00:07.440: If you can get your head around
00:07.440: Okay.
00:07.440: Yeah.
00:07.440: It's, you know, commercial spots.
00:07.440: I want timecode overlay from source time code.
00:07.440: And here's why.
00:07.520: So we were working in a shared storage environment in that whole world.
00:07.520: Cosa
00:07.520: I could be wrong.
00:07.520: Right.
00:07.520: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:07.600: But I tell you
00:07.600: Really?
00:07.600: It's shooting 422 at 100 megabit.
00:07.600: What do you do when a computer is confused?
00:07.600: And so by doing that, I go, well, okay, yeah, okay, there we go.
00:07.600: Otherwise, it gets too damn big.
00:07.600: And sometimes it just gets painful.
00:07.600: I do a thing where it's a
00:07.600: We will be back next week.
00:07.680: The end of time.
00:07.680: So I bought Symphony software and started looking at it.
00:07.680: And one of the things I tell people a lot about Final Cut Pro 10 is that
00:07.680: It's becoming
00:07.680: And if you're in Premiere, yes, you can dynamic link that stuff.
00:07.680: Absolutely.
00:07.680: The best way to understand where Apple is going is to look at what they're giving us.
00:07.760: People laugh at it now.
00:07.760: He's a he's a great guy, uh very easy to work for uh work with rather.
00:07.760: The dynamic trimming was there, it worked the same way.
00:07.760: I just start dropping the pieces in that I need or removing the pieces that I don't.
00:07.760: So if you think about that and you think, okay,
00:07.760: You know, just today, I got a
00:07.840: Yeah.
00:07.840: Does that make sense?
00:07.920: This is what you are, this is what you thought you were looking for, this is what you're going to need.
00:07.920: I heard an interesting story, and it's probably a I don't know anything about the veracity of it.
00:07.920: We're in the three main suites.
00:07.920: So I'll get notes from Scripty.
00:07.920: If he still wants to see that circle take, it's a click away.
00:08.000: So, like, literally, if you're like in the C, I believe it's the Sea Hall, which is the one that's furthest south.
00:08.000: If you want to get into post-production, to hell with college.
00:08.000: I mean, they've got to look at the same type of turnarounds that we're looking at now.
00:08.000: But that's like ridiculous.
00:08.080: Gotcha.
00:08.080: That was technology?
00:08.080: You know, I believe that Apple's intention was to
00:08.080: He goes, Well, I don't want to do that.
00:08.080: You know, and it's like, you know, it's like nine twenty in the morning or something.
00:08.080: You could if it was the original clip.
00:08.080: And Facebook, you said is is Michael underscore Tau also.
00:08.160: So I took some money I had saved up.
00:08.160: Yeah, those were really bad.
00:08.160: So it would roll the two decks.
00:08.160: I just did find it.
00:08.160: And especially
00:08.160: And I go, come out, come out front.
00:08.160: That's the nature of the business.
00:08.160: Let's hear your wish list.
00:08.160: So like on a multicam clip.
00:08.240: This was the era when, like, hey, look, I have a computer.
00:08.240: And that kind of sounds like a cop-out, but sometimes it's hard to really feel
00:08.240: So, to get to that point where I have to start making revisions, and I really don't have to think about anything
00:08.240: Most of these things are written by PC-based people.
00:08.240: And I'm going to put a link to that because it talks about how you do
00:08.240: Again, don't forget Vegas and NAB.
00:08.320: I'm pretty sure.
00:08.320: 03 release.
00:08.320: And actually, we're going to.
00:08.320: And when you're and if you're sitting there thinking, yeah, but I don't want to take a take work away from myself,
00:08.320: Maybe there's something in the performance that I liked better, and I'm going to use that take.
00:08.320: I'm doing something wrong.
00:08.400: They're purposely picking people that know how to write music.
00:08.400: Yeah, we're thinking of selling it.
00:08.400: I talk to people all the time.
00:08.400: You know, I'm I've I've dealt with the headaches.
00:08.400: One of my New Year's resolutions was to be more active on the Twitters.
00:08.480: So I purchased an adrenaline system for around $50,000.
00:08.480: The real question is, and this is an important thing to do with any purchase, and it's
00:08.480: So there had to be some replacement for it.
00:08.560: And so it it really helps.
00:08.560: And so they everybody was trying to do anything they could to build a computer based
00:08.560: No, it really doesn't.
00:08.560: And here's my paper edit.
00:08.560: Yeah, it does.
00:08.560: And somebody stumbled, a student stumbled onto this the other day.
00:08.640: And that started
00:08.640: And I started cutting things together.
00:08.640: If you came from that world, you get really good at doing that style, that type of editing.
00:08.640: So I'm in edit three, but all my media, all my files, all my assets are in edit two.
00:08.720: And
00:08.720: And that's what I've noticed.
00:08.720: And you know what, there might be a way to do it with
00:08.720: Everybody knows why.
00:08.720: Apple knows that.
00:08.800: So it's like, hey, look, I'm working on a computer.
00:08.800: Is that a thing?
00:08.800: I use Isotope, RX3 and 4 all the time in Final Cut.
00:08.880: And that went on until Final Cut 10.
00:08.880: I don't understand why it takes so long to find an edit point.
00:08.880: And he br it powers down.
00:08.880: They are all tied together
00:08.880: Networking.
00:08.880: I want to be able to make these changes within Final Count.
00:09.040: But anyway.
00:09.040: And that was Avid based.
00:09.040: And that's just me.
00:09.040: It was a piece of equipment that had crashed.
00:09.040: And I think that's the final cut 10 is going to make inroads there.
00:09.040: And he went, Yeah, you know, you're going to see the whole crew and everything pulling that green screen out.
00:09.120: Yeah.
00:09.120: Gotcha.
00:09.120: I thought so.
00:09.120: And I've done a few short films.
00:09.120: It also sounds a little bit like the plot to inception.
00:09.120: I see, and I think that that's where we're going.
00:09.200: So I kind of started with a built-in client, and that was in 04.
00:09.200: And I have friends, my friends at FCP Works, that's what they do.
00:09.200: I go, Why not?
00:09.280: Actually
00:09.280: Right, right.
00:09.280: Right?
00:09.280: I drop it into 10.
00:09.280: So much of the talking heads that we had done in 7.
00:09.280: And you know what else I would like to see?
00:09.360: Yeah.
00:09.360: One of our clients, he said to me flat out a couple of years ago, he goes, I'm doing whatever you do.
00:09.440: Now, if you get out your Vegas map and you find the L VCC just
00:09.440: And it never really worked like it was supposed to.
00:09.440: Well, yeah, it kind of was.
00:09.440: It's actually.
00:09.440: I use that camera for green screen stuff all the time.
00:09.440: Yeah.
00:09.440: And quite often, we are drawing
00:09.440: You're a nerd.
00:09.440: So I you know, I went to the Adobe uh forums and posted in there about it and some guy some guy came back and went,
00:09.440: I got a great interview for next week, by the way.
00:09.520: And it would do like a dissolve over a still frame.
00:09.520: When it got to the transition, it would play out
00:09.520: Where was I?
00:09.520: Very cool.
00:09.600: I kind of did, didn't I?
00:09.600: I don't even know.
00:09.600: 0.
00:09.600: I mean, I was blown away.
00:09.680: So I did that for, you know, five or six years.
00:09.680: Again, this is kind of a recap, but if you've ever used a TiVo D VR,
00:09.680: 03, what were those aha moments where you just said, oh, wow.
00:09.680: It's like, well, have you tried, have you thought about this?
00:09.680: If you haven't heard of Alexander, you're going to want to listen to next week's episode.
00:09.760: Well, there wasn't the controversy with it, right?
00:09.760: So what what did you start editing with?
00:09.760: Really?
00:09.760: And I think Final Cut.
00:09.760: And he goes, 'Cause this stuff's not paid for.
00:09.840: Because you got to remember, the gear doesn't exist.
00:09.840: It's all in the user interface.
00:09.840: I want to talk about the things when you started
00:09.840: You couldn't if it was the sync clip.
00:09.920: We don't want to be doing production anymore.
00:09.920: I'll explain it to you.
00:09.920: But then we get on set to shoot the thing.
00:10.000: I'm sorry, Michael.
00:10.000: And I have offended plenty of people, believe me.
00:10.080: Right, right, right.
00:10.160: 3.
00:10.160: What was that?
00:10.160: You reboot it.
00:10.160: There are no
00:10.160: I don't know anything.
00:10.160: And I said, Skimmer info.
00:10.240: Right.
00:10.240: The the the people, the kids that are in there that have spent time in Premier,
00:10.240: And they want to see that it's spelled correctly, etc.
00:10.240: Later, later.
00:10.320: And one of those tabs is More Songs Like This.
00:10.320: I think it's getting much better at that.
00:10.400: It had just crashed.
00:10.480: com.
00:10.480: Now, not that they're labeled Control-Alt-Delete, but it's going to be
00:10.480: And then they know, oh, there's another take there.
00:10.560: Okay.
00:10.640: Yeah.
00:10.640: And when we transition from being
00:10.640: 1.
00:10.720: They've been very generous to help us and support this show.
00:10.720: Eh, kinda.
00:10.720: And we even had some practical snow.
00:10.720: You're past your hourly rate.
00:10.720: And I'll say
00:10.800: I think I started working with After Effects.
00:10.800: So 10.
00:10.800: Everybody's pulling footage from somebody else's bay.
00:10.800: And in the spot,
00:10.880: That's where that camera just gets, it falls short.
00:10.880: They are talking to us every single day.
00:11.040: And that started me
00:11.040: But for guys like you and me, I'm telling you, it really works.
00:11.040: I mean, you've got to move on.
00:11.040: I will tell you what I know.
00:11.040: 2.
00:11.120: Oh, it's just fine.
00:11.120: We're not a production company, we're an engineering company, or we're this company.
00:11.120: Yeah, it's so sad to call
00:11.200: Look at me.
00:11.200: So I'm thinking, okay, this needs a control-alt delete.
00:11.280: So we were always fighting it.
00:11.280: And I think what happened was, like,
00:11.280: You've got to put a TiVo remote in your hand, and even to the point
00:11.280: And I and we because we had already unplugged it and that didn't help.
00:11.280: And he's like
00:11.360: And I think that
00:11.360: Like it wasn't working.
00:11.440: Down in San Diego, California.
00:11.440: That there was with that.
00:11.440: I can't remember what bin I was in.
00:11.440: I don't know if I've ever mentioned it before, but
00:11.440: I also see some growth.
00:11.440: That's amazing.
00:11.520: We don't.
00:11.520: Talking about exporting and whatnot.
00:11.600: I mean, I've got.
00:11.600: 0.
00:11.600: You can't do a stabilization.
00:11.680: There was always the Premiere route.
00:11.680: Okay, that makes much more sense.
00:11.680: Whatever.
00:11.760: And so the.
00:11.840: Also,
00:11.920: And it is a beautiful camera for that.
00:11.920: And
00:12.000: What was your first
00:12.000: You're into stomach lining.
00:12.000: So I am at Michael.
00:12.080: It was an edit system called Video Machine.
00:12.160: There you go.
00:12.160: We sell them.
00:12.160: But anyway.
00:12.160: We hope to see you there.
00:12.240: 3.
00:12.240: Very weird.
00:12.320: Yeah, and I will say that, you know.
00:12.400: Right, right.
00:12.480: And there's some great composers.
00:12.480: So we're just going to.
00:12.480: 03.
00:12.480: And I went, What do you mean we're
00:12.560: And he's in um
00:12.640: And and I decided that
00:12.720: So check that out too.
00:12.720: Now a lot of people will argue against me.
00:12.800: We put a lot of them on eBay.
00:12.880: It's another possibility.
00:12.880: You could not.
00:13.120: Interesting.
00:13.200: So it's not painful for you.
00:13.200: , etc.
00:13.439: , etc.
00:13.440: So
00:13.600: It dealt with
00:13.680: And I'm using like
00:13.840: Very good feature.