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How To Prepare For 48 Hour Film Project

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Last year I took part in 48 Hour Film Project for the first time, and loved every second. I wrote extensively about it. This year I was also eager to participate. To my surprise, it turned out that I was supposed to not only head the post-production team, but to be its only member, with perhaps the exception of a music composer. That meant ingest, audio sync, editing, grading, sound mixing, maybe sound design all rested on my shoulders. In the end, it also meant doing one VFX shot. I had hoped that this state would have changed before we started, and to have at least one other person with me, but it was not meant to be.

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PEV04 – Norman Hollyn on Performance Enhancing Visual Effects

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This interview is part of the larger series about Performance Enhancing Visual Effects. Norman Hollyn is an editor best known for his work on Heathers. He’s a professor at USC, where he teaches editing. He wrote two books on this topic as well, “The Film Editing Handbook” and “Lean Forward Moment” which I heartily recommend. For those more visually inclined, a great course of his, “Foundations of Video: The Art of Editing“, is available on Lynda.com, and you can find a few of his webinars on Moviola.com. 

Before I published my previous interviews with Alan E. Bell and Zbigniew Stencel, I sent Norman drafts of those and asked for his opinions. Here is his reply. see more →

SpeedGrade Is Like Photoshop

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Quite often I hear from new users that SpeedGrade is not intuitive, difficult, and completely different from any other Adobe application. Curious but unaware people are quickly discouraged by its seemingly complicated and impenetrable interface. In some sense this is true, there are complex and dark places in SpeedGrade frequented only by those few who dare, but with each release, the software is becoming more and more similar to this company’s most famous application – the ubiquitous Photoshop. see more →

Warning about using RGB and Luma Curves in Premiere Pro CC

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Update: The 7.1 version due out in October is going to fix the issue altogether. Great job, Adobe!

Update: The 7.0.1 patch for Premiere Pro CC fixes some of the below mentioned issues, although unfortunately not all of them.

To my great chagrin Premiere Pro CC changed the way curves operate. Right now the curves, both RGB, and Luma, clip the superwhites and superblacks, and there is no interpolation going on after the curves hit 0 or the white level (255 or 1.0). In CS6, the curves followed the general slope, and it was possible to recover some of the “overshot” material. Right now, if you stick to curves, all clipped data is lost.

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Curve's interpolation in Premiere Pro CS6 allowed to recover superwhites or superblacks, and correct the contrast in the same instance.
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Premiere Pro CC clamps all superwhites and superblacks, and recovering the detail is not possible with the use of RGB or Luma Curves.

This is completely new, unexpected, and if you ever used curves, it changes your workflow dramatically, even if you don’t know it yet.

It means that you must remove the superwhites and superblacks from the clip before you use RGB curves. It means that if you were like me, using curves to apply the basic correction and contrast in one go, you cannot do it now. You have to first make the signal “legal” – reduce the superwhites and raise the superblacks with for example Fast Color Corrector, so that they fit between the range that curves operate on – RGB scale that is not overshot in either direction, even if you are working in the floating point (max bit depth).

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In Premiere Pro CC you need to use Fast Color Corrector or Three-Way Color Corrector to bring the superwhites back into the RGB scale. Only then you can apply curves, and be sure that you are not loosing data.

It also means that there is no real backwards compatibility within the projects that used curves. Your colors will not be the same, if you had any superwhites in the project. I highly advise you to finish your current projects in CS6, and only then create the new ones in CC, being mindful about the necessity to use Fast Color Corrector before applying curves.

Adobe is aware of this issue, and hopefully some fix will come soon, but while using CC 7.0.0 version of Premiere you need to remember about this very real problem.

The Case For Three-Button Mouse Editing

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RzrNaga2012_view3Mouse-driven editing has usually been associated with the lower end of video editing, and to a certain extent justifiably so. If I see a person using only his or her mouse to edit, I don’t consider them very seriously. Editing is a tough job, and a human being has two hands, so why not put both of them to work? Put that left hand on the keyboard right now!

The question of whether the right hand should spend more time there as well or not is debatable. Even though I have been driven through CS6 mixed bag of innovations to make more extensive use of my touch-typing skills during editing, I am still looking to improve on the mouse side of things, because the hybrid mouse + keyboard editing has been historically the fastest way to use Premiere.

When it comes to mouse mastery, nothing can beat 3D artists, especially modellers. The necessity to constantly change the point of view in three dimensions clearly showed that not only a single mouse button is not enough, but that even two will not suffice. You need a 3-button mouse to work in a 3D application. Period.

Granted, using the middle button with most mice is something that requires a bit of practice, since often it entails pushing on the scroll wheel. However, the newly acquired skill gives you more flexibility, and options. Why then not use a 3-button mouse in editing? And why not take advantage of the fact, that pushing the middle button is not as easy, as pushing the other ones?

One thing that I found myself using a lot during mouse-driven editing was delete and ripple delete. Even after remapping my keyboard, it still remained a two-click process. First select the clip, then hit delete. Fortunately you can use both hands, but still, there is some space for optimization here. The middle mouse button could be used to perform a single click ripple delete.

Another idea for middle mouse button is to map it to “Deselect all”, and it might become pretty handy with the incoming CS Next confusion about the primacy of selection over playhead, or targeted tracks for example during applying transitions.

Both of these options are available now via many macro recording and automation pieces of software. Personally I use the ones that came with my mice – either Microsoft’s IntelliMouse or Razer Synapse. They both allow remapping the middle mouse click for certain applications to a macro or a shortcut key (and much more, if you wish to explore them further). Therefore I first make sure to create the keyboard shortcuts to “Ripple Delete” or “Deselect All”, and then to map these shortcuts to the middle mouse button. And voila! Single click ripple delete or deselect all are literally at your fingertips now.

The quest for ever more efficient editing continues, and I hope to have some exciting information for you soon.

NAB Special – KEM roll and a multicam trick in Premiere Pro next

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No typical tutorial this week, but a small demonstration of the KEM roll (sequence editing) feature in the next version of Premiere Pro, and a little multicam trick which can help you to “unnest” your clips from a sequence. I hope you’ll enjoy it, even if the software is not available yet.