Working As A Production Professional Without Subscription Software

Can you do pro-level work without a monthly charge for software?

Daniel Brockett

Adobe Creative Cloud is one of the most popular subscription software suites. We’ve all been there. It’s review time for your monthly bill-paying session. If you’ve been in this business for any amount of time, you’ve witnessed a whole new paradigm in how you pay for software that is integral to your job. It doesn’t matter if you’re an audio... Read more

Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve 15.1

Can this postproduction package really compete with the competition?

Daniel Brockett

It’s still 2018, as of this writing, and in some ways, it’s been a banner year for creators of content. In fact, never in the history of film, video, television and media content creation have we had so many tools with so much power at our fingertips. Additionally, low-priced cameras offer more power, features, sophistication and quality than cameras... Read more

Shooting Video With Still Cameras

Adding motion to your workflow

Dan Brockett

As the saying goes, the only constant is change. With significant knowledge and skills in image composition, creation and lighting, still photographers looking at generating a significant portion of their income with video have a leg up on professionals from many other fields. Adding video to your skill set requires a lot of work and knowledge, though;... Read more

Red Giant Universe 2.2

To showcase the new features of the GPU-accelerated plugin series for editors and motion graphics artists, Red Giant creates the short film Hewlogram

Dan Brockett

While many software companies release demo footage of what their new products are capable of, few have done so at the level of Red Giant Films with the recent release of an ambitious sci-fi comedy short film called Hewlogram, which can be viewed here: youtube.com/watch?v=KbK3CFkcBr4 The 5:22-long film follows the antics of a modern-day animator who... Read more

Final Cut Pro 10.4

A small version number change, a big update for Apple’s legendary video editing tool

By David Schloss

Apple’s Final Cut Pro X is a program that exemplifies Apple’s recent design aesthetic: minimalist, powerful and a tad bit confusing. The dueling interests of adding sophistication to a tool while keeping that tool free of confusing interface elements is at the heart of all great design, and sometimes the complexity of a system gets so great that... Read more

Lightroom CC: The Truth Is In The Cloud

An Adobe Lightroom rant, but in praise of it

DL Byron

Look, anyone surprised by Adobe supposedly killing the pro version of Lightroom (now named Classic) and launching a cloud version hasn’t been paying attention. There’s so much going on in tech, photography and the world, in general, I won’t blame you if you haven’t noticed. I did because it’s my job and I’ve been using a prerelease version... Read more

RAW Video Formats Explained

In the world of video editing, there's a big difference between the quality of different formats and how they affect your work.

By Andy Shipsides

At the video rental house AbelCine, where I work as the Chief Technology Officer, we offer a class on video formats that covers a variety of different terms and compression formats. One of the more common questions I’m asked is, “What’s the difference between uncompressed video, raw and Log recording?” With so many cameras these... Read more

Storage Wars Of A Different Kind

Do we invest in our existing archives as a potential revenue source, or keep the material but not spend the hundreds of hours it will take to catalog and keyword all of the footage?

Dan Brockett

I’m at war with myself. Well, perhaps war is too strong of a word. Let’s tone that down to “in conflict” with myself—over drives. A few weeks ago, I decided to do some end-of-summer housekeeping in our edit bay. I went through every hard drive that my company owns. I took screen captures and created a file folder using screen caps of file... Read more

DaVinci Resolve 14

Getting to know the video editor with legendary color control could change how you grade colors forever

Brian Hallett

When Blackmagic Design acquired the assets of the legendary but financially troubled post-production company da Vinci Systems in 2009, it took over stewardship of Resolve, a color-editing tool with roots going back to the videotape-grading tools the original company developed in the 1980s. The company stepped up the R&D budget for the program, and... Read more

Taking Your Media Assets With You

Moving video files from location to studio or client can seem daunting, but technology is here to help

David Schloss

WD MyPassport Wireless Pro Getting video and image files back to your studio or to the client is oftentimes more daunting of a challenge than the actual creative assignment. The files created by video cameras and still cameras keep getting larger as sensor sizes and video resolutions increase. While a lot of location work has the luxury of a timeline... Read more

Red Giant’s Magic Bullet Suite 13

Is this the only plug-in you will ever need for editing video?

Dan Brockett

Red Giant’s Magic Bullet Suite 13 includes seven separate plug-ins designed specifically to let editors manipulate, color, style, refine and polish videos, and is available for $899 for the full version. Used by over 100,000 film editors worldwide since its initial release in 2001, Magic Bullet Suite 13 builds on the historic plug-in, adding several... Read more

Making The Cut

In the not-so-distant past, editing for film and television was a well-established practice, but in our modern tech-savvy world, how exactly has the process changed?

By Dan Brockett

The role of editor has changed drastically from days of old, where professionals toiled in tandem to shape and carve out the final product. The ingest process would convert footage into an edit-friendly, low-res format that was logged by an assistant editor before an off-line editor shaped storyline, culminating in an on-line edit to conform to all... Read more