Posted by Corne Scheepers on Saturday, November 4, 2017,
I first worked with Red Giant's Magic Bullet Looks a few years ago. It was the demo version and I loved what it did to spice up some rather mediocre 1080i camcorder video. But I pretty much just dumped presets over my footage without really knowing what I was doing. Fast forward to the present where I now have a better understanding of what goes on in Media Composer's waveform and vector scopes and grading as a whole, and the Magic Bullet Looks suite takes on a whole new meaning.
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Saturday, November 4, 2017,
4K, or UHD is all the rage right now. So what is all the fuss about? Well, the resolution of UHD images is absolutely gorgeous! If you need convincing just walk into any electronics store and take a good look at the 4K ready monitors and the demo material Sony, Panasonic and many others are peddling now.
But other than beautifully crisp images there's a very good reason to start upgrading at least one or two of your HD cameras to UHD soon. Most of us edit 1080p HD projects and output that as w...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Tuesday, July 4, 2017,
I've had some weird requests the past six years. Most notably the young lady who awkwardly asked me: "my boss wants you to send us a link for free editing software". Yes, I kid you not (That same client screwed me and a few other folks over spectacularly a few years later, so I should probably have taken a hint then...) Anyway, if that same request came by today I would have smiled and pointed them at Avid. Yes, it's really free. For real, yours to own and use without limitations. Actually th...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Thursday, March 2, 2017,
South Africa has some pretty extreme legislation regarding the use of drones, resulting in a large amount of illegally filmed stuff being out there. So when I was asked to source a commercially licenced supplier for a big corporate video project recently it took some research before I managed to find my drone guys. Currently only eleven companies are commercially licenced in South Africa, and of those only a handful focus on filming for the television and film market. It has become a very spe...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Friday, January 27, 2017,
After a very lazy December holiday season, 2017 has suddenly started off with a bang. Even though I've been doing this for a few years now, every single shoot is new and unique and every single year is different in terms of the types of projects I get to do. And if like me you constantly need new intellectual stimulation to keep going, the variety this type of work offers is fantastic.
I'm currently running Media Composer 8.7.2 and I'll be trying out a few of the new features over the next f...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Saturday, October 1, 2016,
I try to do one big project a year, usually a documentary, and this one for 2016 happened quickly and very unexpectedly when Conroy Cupido phoned me while I was on another shoot. I was also tempted to blog this story earlier in the week, but I decided to wait a few days. Make no mistake I really enjoy blogging; I find the production process and tools I use absolutely fascinating and I love writing about things I have a passion for. But something about this project just wanted me to wait un...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Friday, September 16, 2016,
Nowadays I shoot most of my sit-down interviews with two cameras. As a result I do a lot of multicam editing. A lot. And the good news is that multicam just got better in the latest version of Avid Media Composer 8.6.1
I still recall thinking it was serious voodoo the first time I synced up the footage from two cameras, dropped a group clip into the sequence and then proceeded to fly through a 20min interview like it was a live cut...hit play, then hit cam 1, cam 2, cam 1 on the keyboard. Done...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Thursday, June 30, 2016,
I've been cutting video on Avid software for much longer than ten years now. Probably closer to fourteen years...I started out on an Avid Xpress Meridien system that ran on a huge IBM Intellistation that weighed as much as the equipment desk it was anchored on!
Things have come a very long way since then. Light years, in fact. I can now do more on a laptop in my living room that I could on my old Intellistation with its Betacam SP decks.
Having renewed my annual Avid maintenance in May I only ...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Saturday, October 17, 2015,
With no less than four multicam projects, October definitely qualifies for the title "multicam month". The ability to sync up three or four camera feeds and assemble a basic cut in a live switching-type fashion has always been one of my favourite features in Media Composer. It is also a MASSIVE timesaver, allowing me to do in realtime what would have taken hours to do manually. In 8.4 multicam is still going strong, even on my rapidly aging HP Elitebook.
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Thursday, March 26, 2015,
OK, so if you read my previous post you'll recall I had issues in 2K projects with the alpha channel on imported .psd files being inverted when importing into Media Composer via AMA.
The solution turned out to be a simple AMA setting:
As is the case with direct import settings, simply set the Alpha Channel to Invert. Now try again and see your Photoshop graphic displayed in the 2K timeline as it was originally created to look!
Many thanks to Avid tech Jonathan Smith at Jasco Broadcast Syst...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Sunday, March 22, 2015,
Never stop learning.
I’ve always
held this belief and in the video production business I doubt you’ll survive
long if this isn’t your approach to the tools that you use every day. I also believe
that experimenting and testing is something you don’t do on a paying customer’s
bill, so my holiday movies have become R&D opportunities.
Cameras recording at 2K and 4K resolutions are becoming more common and so too have the ability of post tools to handle
higher-than-HD resolution media. ...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Sunday, January 25, 2015,
Above: Konova K3 camera slider with my Sony FS100 camera mounted.
I've been looking for a camera slider for what seems like ages now. Especially one that won't require me to sell the house, the bike and one of my kidneys, because they tend to be seriously expensive and hard to source locally. Until now. I pulled the trigger late last year on a Konova slider and the kit arrived via courier just a few days before I left for my December holiday.
It is lightweight, compact and, having now used i...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Monday, June 16, 2014,
I've been using Avid software for what must be more than ten years now and honestly, I can't imagine editing with anything else. I even named my company Match Frame Media after a timeline function that I use a lot! I've been hanging onto my version 6.0 licence for a while now and a heap of cool new features in Media Composer 7.0/8.0 finally made me hand over the cash for an upgrade.
First things first - version 8.0 is basically version 7.0 with a few minor tweaks and of course renumbered for ...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Saturday, May 10, 2014,
April 2014 has come and gone and
with it no less than 12 promo projects in a little over 4 weeks. Insane! The upside
of course is that with this much content to produce you’re presented with an
opportunity to really think outside the box to keep things innovative and unique. One of my biggest projects for April was a combined video/interactive project on DVD for the NWU’s School of Music and Conservatory.
Above: main menu page of the interactive development. The project is rolled out on ...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Sunday, November 10, 2013,
The reason I'm posting this has more to do with the tools used to cut this on than the footage itself. Not that the footage isn't significant - it is! 30 minutes of unedited Star Wars footage once thought lost to mankind. And who doesn't like Star Wars anyway? If you don't you're most likely from a world far, far away.
So here's the story - this was originally cut on a non-linear editing system (NLE) developed by Lucasfilm back in 1983. In those days film editing was very much a painful linear...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Friday, August 3, 2012,
Title animations seems to be all the rage right now and I had the opportunity to complete a promo clip for a client recently that uses a lot of them. That, and plenty of stock footage clips.
I've had to deal with a lot of 29.97fps video lately and getting what is essentially NTSC clips to play smoothly inside 25fps (PAL) timelines have proven to be a bit of challenge. There's a number of workflows out there but the one that has worked the best so far uses Avid's Fluidmotion effect to do the...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Sunday, July 22, 2012,
To be honest, the first time someone mentioned the term "flash mob" to me, I had no real idea what it was. So I turned to the source of all known human knowledge...I Googled it. The oracle then told me that it would in fact require a full multicamera shoot if I wanted to do it right.
When the NWU's School of Music approached me a while ago to do this project I realized that I would need a second camera operator. I enlisted the help of my friend Andrew Wallis who brought his Canon DSLR and...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Wednesday, March 28, 2012,
Yep...I'm back to a dongle for my Avid licences. Online activation probably created more ulcers, headaches and flame mail for the folks at Avid Licencing than it was ever meant to prevent. Memories...best dongle story I ever heard was how one broadcaster kept losing them because people in the edit suites were taking them home thinking they were thumb drives!
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Wednesday, February 29, 2012,
This first version of Media Composer I ever used ran on a tired old system operated by a company that produced horse racing inserts. That was nearly ten years ago.
After I installed MC6 for the first time this morning and I was amazed just how different it looks from that first version I used nearly a decade ago. Avid overhauled the entire UI to something that is now very attractive to look at. I still need to spend a lot more time with the software but one of the first things I noticed is th...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Tuesday, December 27, 2011,
We recently upgraded our post-production setup and if you’re a client of ours you’re in for a treat in 2012! Having wrapped up the last projects by early December we were able to reformat, rewire and rearrange the current work area to something that is now very close to my dream (home) edit suite.
The new edit suite now features:
A new custom designed desk. This is a huge improvement over the previous.
Mobile HP workstations with the latest versions of Avid Media Composer, Adobe...
Posted by Corne Scheepers on Thursday, August 25, 2011,
I recently completed a promo clip for the friendly folks at the NWU's corporate communications department. The project brief called for an effects clip that tie closely into current corporateidentity graphic design. I love FX work and this project was right up my alley even if the deadline was desperately tight - only five working days available from the first phone call to the delivery of the final video media in multiple consumer formats!
Technical projects like these seriously appeal t...
