Masters3D

From the Blog

Sep

Final Cut 6 and NL video editing.

Posted by CheYo XimeneZ at 11:30 am

I started editing video with final cut since version 5. I was lucky enough to go to a college that had a mac computer lab and I was able to edit most of my church project on the mac. Prior to using the FCP (Final Cut Pro) I used Sony Vegas. Vegas was a joy when I started to edit video. I remember the countless hours that I would work on my computer editing .avi video and all the frustration times that I found myself in when windows will crash or when the render time will take hours and hours and I was an a reliability fast computer at the time in fact no much faster than what I am using now, the only difference is that with vegas I was using a desktop and Now I use my laptop. Anyways, Switching from Vegas to Final Cut was not so easy, With Vegas I had no limits on what I could use yet I had more problems With Final cut I had more restriction as far as what kind of quicktime fine I could use and audio compression etc. But now I realize that those restrictions were in place to make my life easier in the long run also it allowed me to understand the workings of files.

Recently our lab was upgraded to final cut 6.0.4

and while I was been using final cut studio 2 four about a year the little 6.0.x are not backward compatible meaning that anything created with final cut 6.0.3 was not compatible and other computers was is odd but thats the way it is with final cut. Little advice. DONT EVER UPGRADE IN THE MIDDLE OF A PROJECT!!! NEVER!! You are not a beta tester and unless your program is not working the way it is suppose to, Don’t ! ! it will be pain. Well I upgraded and BOOM my file that I had been working for the past year ( its a comp that I am always updating) stopped trying to render!!! what that heck? It would not render. There was a “general Error’ well it would have been fine but I had a dead line at 9am the next day and it was already 10pm. I googled my fingers away trying to find an option. See it is fine if you are going to start a new file but the old files don’t transfer that well most of the time. I searched and searched and it was about 6 in the morning when I found the error. What was the error? I had downloaded some pictures off my email and had included them in the composition. All I had to do was to open up those pictures and save them again. And presto! my file rendered and I had lost a night of sleepy time and I was tired but I met the dead line and that is what is more important.

I love working with final cut in dual screen mode because I have a laptop and the screen gets to small when working on a long project but there is a glitch in final cut 6 under tiger and I don’t even know if it is resolved in Leo 10.5 but after a while the screen flickers the video and I have to restart final cut. At any rate the advantage of having an extra screen to have your time line is so great because it allows you to work faster.
large-preview-with-dual-screen-track My screen setting for final cut 6 that you can load by going to windows, arrange, Load.

Cheers

Sep

I need to buy an external hard drive..

Posted by CheYo XimeneZ at 12:45 pm

Hey cheyo. I need to buy an external hard drive.. Any suggestions as to where to buy it, and what brand? Cause i really dont know much about hard drives.

From my experience:

There are two kind of external Hard Drives (HD): External, and external portable.
That is the first thing you need to deside. if you want something that you will like to leave home or something you want with you at all times.

external HD

If you something you would like to leave home there are many options specially if you just need to back up things. Now if you need something faster than USB for video recording then firewire is the choice 400, 800 or the new 1600 or even eSata depending on what your pc has. It very important to realize that these HD are not meant to be carrie arround in a backpack because the disk might get ruin which is easy to do.

Portable external HD

Meannt to be carried with you. Most of the time these tend to be smaller and are USB. My recommendation is that you get one that gets power from the laptop instead of having to plug in to a jack, it defeats the purpose of being portable. Popular Mechanics has an article about the ones that can last longer

GET INSURANCE!!!

I can’t stress this point enough. While HD manufactures incluse standar insurance many dont recover the data and just send you a new one. With insurance you sometimes the offer to recover the valuable data for you for cheap. I cant tell you enought how much I hate to see some harddrive that a year ago cost me 500 dollars and now are just paper weights because they do not work anymore.

where?

I like the way Frys electronics way of dealing with insurance on HD and most of the time they have good offers. Alternative, BestBuy or alike also have some what alrite insurance but they seem harder to deal with.

You can find good deals online too like newegg.com or amazon.com and tons more but maybe their insurance is not as great as being able to go to a store and talking to someone face to face.

Favorites?

LaCie, Iomega, G-tech

Post your commets or questions. Thanks

Sep

Itunes, online radio and more!

Posted by CheYo XimeneZ at 12:11 pm

So apple released itunes 8 last week or so and I decided to give it a try because of the new feature called Genius. At first I thought it was the kinna feature that was localized meaning that it worked kinna like the way itunes tries to level all the music’s volume by ANALYZING each song for volume. Well, I can tell you that the “genius” feature doesn’t do that, instead it reads the names of the songs and compares them against its apple itunes store database then it makes suggestions, while this features might seem great for people that own all their music, It doesn’t work for people that started digitizing their CD’s back in the day Real Player and Winamp were kings. I have about 20 gigs of music (and that’s a little compared to people that have 160 gigs ipod full of music) and about half that music is not in itunes, I have a lot of underground rap, many christian unsigned bands and not to mention all my Spanish music. Hopefully the Genius apple itunes feature will be turned into something that will work for any song.

I got tired of trying to listen to my music and to tell you the truth it is hard to find something I like anymore in my library so I decided to start all over again. I am backing up my whole library and I am going to kinna follow this tutorial by djsnack.com
I have all my music backed up and I have tons of space to grow a new music library from the old by taking it little by little I should be able to tag and select only the song I want in my library anymore. None of that I’ll take any crappy music into my library anymore.

I was looking for Itunes alternative and really there might be one but not too soon. Its called SongBird and it has everything that one would like in Itunes except that it not quite there yet. I do Like to listen to my music outside of itunes and for that I use VLC (sadly as of this writing I am not able to use themes/skins in the mac but hopefully I will in the future) But mainly I want to be able to understand my music by just going to the folder structure because many DJ programs like VirtualDJ, Scratch live etc use a folder structure for the music.

Online Radio: DISCOvering new music.

Pandora.com
last.fm
SoundClick.com

Back in the day I used to use mp3.com to look for new artist and now that site is dead and its not what it used to be. SoundClick.com is kinna like mp3.com used to be but it not near what it was. I remember recording music from the FM Radio in a casset and thinking it was the coolest thing. Now one can do the same with many online radio stations.

I was so frustrated because there was a song on a online radio station that I had listen to and I could not find to buy any where. I have a mac and most of the online radio recorders work only in windows. Just by googling “record online radio stations” you might find what you need but it takes a lot of time but don’t get frustrated just take your time and be patient. I stumble upon an application for the mac called pandorajam for the mac and it looks like it can do everything I want and its cheap.

well, I talked for a while. Any comments or questions?

Sep

So you want to learn 3D

Posted by CheYo XimeneZ at 9:31 pm

Just until recently, learning 3d meant to spend hours and hours trying to figure out just where to start. I know, you may know photoshop or even after effects (AF) yet AF’S 3D system is not a total 3d animation system and its what its called pseudo 3d because its not real 3d. Seen a new movie from pixar? well, we all have at some point but do you know how it works?

Well, the subject is more complex that what I can explain here but If you new to 3d or computer graphics, let me guide you.

Modeling (wikipedia) :

Usually you want to start by modeling an object. To do that you will need a program, there are many programs out there that can do this but if you are new to 3D you might want to start with an awesome program called MODO. Modo will make the modeling progress as easy are working with clay and with the amount of training that you can get for cheap on their website you will be up and running in no time. If you are familiar with photoshop you will find the layers to be what you would expect from photoshop. Once you have done a model, it is time to render it.

Rendering (wikipedia)

Rendering in modo is as easy are hitting the F10 key. It is taking a picture of the object you just model. In modo realistic results are very easy to obtain.

There is much much much more to talk about 3d but seriously. Give modo a try. The cup above, I made under five minutes with modo. They have a free trial. check it out. Let me know your experiences.

Cheers

Update Sept 14 08:

I found a great tutorial that shows how to start with modo/3d by making a cup/mug . at http://www.vfxworld.com/?atype=articles&id=3759
I recommend clicking in the print view and click on show pictures.
And just in case the article goes offline, vfxworldcom_modocup

Enjoy,

Sep

A renew mind is the key

Posted by CheYo XimeneZ at 1:54 pm

Your typical sunday service at my church.(jk)
On a more serious note, today is the 11 of September and of course everybody remembers and while remembering is ok, we can not afford to live in the past.