Why We Do What We Do
We’ve been doing a lot of “under the hood” work on Urban Revolver over the last few months. Most recently, we’ve been putting a lot of thought into why we do video. After a lot of discussion and soul searching, we realized that our main motivation is connecting people through producing creative, and inspiring videos.
Everyone and everything has a story. We pride ourselves in pulling those stories out of our clients, and showcasing them to their audience. We want to tell our story to you, so we’re working on creating our own personal videos introducing you to our creative team. Stay tuned for more details on that!
Here’s a great article offering three things to avoid when producing a good web video.
I love the new color match feature in Final Cut Pro X. These screen shots are a perfect example of its usefulness. At the beginning of our trip, I forgot to adjust the white balance on the camera before I began filming, and it came out way too blue. (See first screen shot).
In FCPX, I located a properly white balanced clip that I wanted to use right next to the incorrect clip, and I needed both these clips to match in color. FCPX did this correction for me automatically! Awesome!
First Review of Final Cut Pro X
Now that I’ve had a chance to start playing around with Final Cut Pro X a little, I thought I would share some of my initial findings. I decided to use my recent trip to Johnston Canyon near Banff National Park as a test project. I’ve had the raw footage kicking around for a few months, and now I’ve got a good excuse to spend some time editing it.
A Couple Things Missing:
Two of the biggest disadvantages of the all new Final Cut is the lack of any Multi-Camera editing abilities. This isn’t a big deal for projects that are shot primarily with one camera rolling at a time, but we do get projects where we have two or three cameras rolling simultaneously. With this scenario, we would be unable to use the new FCPX to do realtime camera switching in post production. The other important feature missing is the ability to import or Export XML files. We use this regularly to import projects from other people working on the project, or from different editing suites like Adobe Premiere.
Rumor has it that Apple is already working on adding these features in the next update to FCPX. Let’s hope that comes soon.
There have been some early reviews on FCPX that say it is not a pro level video editing solution. Here are a few features I’ve discovered that, to me, make it equal or better than the previous Final Cut or the current Premiere:
1. A full key command editor that has an intuitive programable design.
2. Auto categorizing of raw footage. I was impressed at how well FCPX grouped single people, two people, or groups of people into folders automatically when I imported the raw footage. Very useful! It also determined which shots were shaky or steady, and offers auto-correction of shaky footage.
3. Proxy Files: FCPX gives you the option to have it create proxy files for all your eaw video when you import it. Proxies are great when working with massive HD footage. FC will create down-res’d versions of your footage that are smaller in size and easier on your hardware for editing and adding effects. Once you’re ready to export your project, FC will grab the original high resolution files.
I know there are many pro editors out there who are hating the new Final Cut Pro X, and I can understand why. I too will still need to use the older Final Cut Pro, and Premiere for certain projects, but I like what I see in Apple’s new take on video editing, and I’m willing to learn and adapt.
I will write more reviews on features as I work on my first Final Cut Pro X project.
We created this motion graphics ad for one of our clients. Motion graphic ads are a great, affordable way to promote your company or event.
We produced this video for Doug Griffiths who’s running to be the next leader of the PC Alberta party when Stelmach retires this Fall.
About me
Urban Revolver is a Calgary video production and design company. We have a passion for creativity and excellence in every project we do: Corporate videos, documentaries, web and music videos, print design, logo creation and corporate branding.
