Short Division
You can now use SendTo (version 1.1.1) to send clips from Final Cut Pro X to After Effects CS5.5, as well as Motion!
Here’s how it works: export your FCPX project as .fcpxml, drag it onto the app, and select the clip you want to send. Then click “Send To” to setup a composition preset with in/out, duration, frame rate and resolution in Motion or After Effects. It’s a great way to save time setting up compositions, and get right to work on grading, effects, etc.
After Effects support is available as a free update to SendTo from the Mac App Store – or if you haven’t purchased the app yet, it’s only $10.
Hendstrom is a fantasy web series that I started working on in January with my wife Kierstyn King, and my two sisters, Hannah and Amanda King. We’d been wanting to produce something with a fantasy spin for a while, but we kept putting it off because we couldn’t come up with a story.
Hendstrom is our attempt to stop procrastinating and start practicing the craft with the resources that we have. We came up with the script for the first episode in a limited amount of time, to help us actually get something down on paper. From there we made props, costumes, did some color and effects tests, and started shooting. Once we had some footage to work with, we started to edit, grade, and add the effects as we went along. We’re currently working on finishing the edit for the first episode, getting started on the score (we used Garageband on the iPad for the trailer), and writing the dialog for episode two.
Our inspiration for the project came from two places – Jonathan Coulton, on the Nerdist podcast -
If you’re ever stuck creatively, make it your goal to create something that is bad and worthless. Because as you start doing it, you’ll realize you’re actually making something good.
We’d been waiting to come up with the perfect premise – but all the time we were waiting was time spent not practicing the rest of the process. That was our second inspiration – Ira Glass in this video on storytelling – the gist of it is, lots of practice is important. While we were shooting videos on a regular basis, it wasn’t narrative content, and we felt like there were quite a few things we weren’t practicing at all (that was true – we discovered exciting things like shot lists during the course of shooting).
So hopefully that explains what we’re trying to do with the project. I’m hoping to share more of the details in future blog posts. In the mean time, check out the trailer on vimeo or youtube!
Updated to 1.1.1 – send clips to After Effects CS5.5 as well as Motion!
Now available on the Mac App Store!
Updated to 0.9.3 – timing fixes, Snow Leopard support, and compound clips.
Updated to 0.9.2 – fixes issues with clips that have timecode.
I love Final Cut Pro X, but there are still a few features missing. I wanted to be able to send edited clips from my FCPX timeline into Motion 5, without having to setup the project, lookup the in and out points, and replicate that in Motion. So I made an app that lets you send a clip from Final Cut to Motion.
Just export your project as .fcpxml (File > Export XML), drag it onto the dock icon, select the clip you’d like to export, and it’ll create and open a new Motion project, setup with the right length, clip, and frame rate. It’s not perfect, but it saves a lot of time setting up projects and copying information by hand.
You can now purchase it on the Mac App Store for $10.
Thanks so much to everyone who helped me beta test it! Feel free to continue using the beta version – although the App Store version contains several UI improvements, and is the one we’ll be updating and officially supporting.
Follow @eyechartapps on twitter for updates!
I wanted a “credits logo” to show off projects that were shot on a DSLR, sort of like the Edited on Final Cut logotype. There didn’t seem to be any available, so I thought it’d be fun to make one. Here’s what I came up with –
Download the logos with or without the text here – feel free to use them!
If you have a Canon 5d Mark II, then you probably already have a 50mm lens that you use frequently. If you instead have a DSLR with an ASP-C instead of a full frame sensor (like the Canon t3i or 7D), you may be unsure about getting one. The Canon 50mm f/1.8 is very affordable for it’s speed (compare to the 35mm f/2.0 at $376), but with the 1.6x crop factor on ASP-C cameras, it’s actually an 80mm lens, not a 50mm.
I’ve been using the 18-55mm kit lens on my Canon t3i for about a year, but finally decided to buy the 50mm f/1.8. After using it for a few weeks, here are the pros and cons I’ve seen as of yet.
Continue reading »
Be sure to stick around for the effects breakdown at the end.
Until recently, I’ve been doing audio crossfades in FCPX by detaching the audio of one track, dragging it under the next clip, and fading each audio track. This works pretty well, but since the audio is detached, it can get out of sync. Turns out there a better way, using L-Cuts and J-Cuts. I’m sure most people already know about these, but if you don’t, I made a graphic explaining how to use them in FCPX.
- Double click on the audio track of one clip
- It drops down – notice it’s still attached to the clip
- Drag the audio clip under the other clip
- Fade the audio on both clips – you now have a nice crossfade
- If you like, you can double clip on the audio track again to collapse it back, keeping the crossfade/L-Cut intact
It’s fun and simple!
One more audio tip – right click on the audio fader to change the type of fade (linear, s-curve, +3db and -3db).
Credit to John August’s post on Final Cut Pro X which had a reference to using J-cuts and L-cuts instead of detaching audio. They were also mentioned in this helpful video about FCPX.
I’ve been doing a lot of 3d tracking using the Pixel Farm’s PFHoe - it’s fantastic for the price ($99, or $199 for Pro), but it’s a limited version of its more $840 cousin, and you do start to notice those limitations. So here’s a few tips that might help my fellow low budget match movers.
- Check out the manual – I’m not used to software having manuals (seems to be a video thing) – turns out you really need to read this one. It’s hard to find some features without it.
- Know about the keyboard shortcuts – if you don’t read the manual, however, know that the spacebar brings up a secret menu in most steps, holding option while dragging zooms the viewport, and holding shift while dragging pans it.
- You do need to mask out moving objects – while it doesn’t have a built in way to make masks (I’ve been using Motion 5 – $50), not adding them really messes up the track.
- Keep some sort of cube in the shot – since PFHoe doesn’t allow you to set the focal length, you’ll need to estimate it using a cube (it also helps with estimating the ground plane). If you’re doing tracking on a green screen, you’ll want to put a box on it somewhere, or a box with a box on top if the floor isn’t in the shot. I ended up taping several together and covering it in tracking markers.
- If you’re tracking with a green screen – you’ll need to put tracking markers on it, and you’ll need to have something in the shot to demonstrate parallax, like a mic stand. There’s a really great 25 minute tutorial on placing tracking markers on the samples page for this course (it’s the second one down).
- If you’re shooting with a DSLR – don’t keep your apature wide open if you have tracking markers setup, you want them all to be in focus at once. You’ll also want to have you shutter speed higher than normal, probably at least 100 to reduce motion blur (also mentioned in this video).
- Check your start frames – if you’re noticing slippage in your 3d software you didn’t notice in PFHoe, make sure that the footage in your 3d program (if you have a video background on your camera for example) has the same start frame as the tracking data you imported. This is especially a problem in Blender.
- If you use Blender – know that it doesn’t work in the latest version, 2.5. It does, however, work in Blender 2.49, which means you import it into that version, save project, and then open it in the new version. It’s a pain. I’ve started developing a script that would let you import directly from 2.5, but haven’t been able to get some of the left-right handed conversion to work (so take a look if you’re good with python and math).
Also speaking of Blender, libmv is currently being integrated thanks to Google Summer of Code. So we’ll have open source match moving right inside Blender (you can check it out on the tomato branch). Seems to work pretty well so far, should be interesting to see how it compares to PFHoe.
My wife with our tracking marker setup.
Feel free to comment with your own tips!
In case you didn’t know (many people do not).
Bit of fan art.
Vimeo
