My webinar this week looks at the new features in both Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro. Both were released the week before NAB began. This week's presentation is divided into two parts: the first covers Final Cut and the second covers Premiere. Registration, as always, is free.
Thinking of new features, I have several tutorials that cover more of them. First is the new Sliced Scale filter in Apple Motion. Similar to Content-Aware Scaling in Adobe Photoshop, this scales an image while protecting key visual elements. It works for both stills and video. Here's a quick tutorial.
New in Adobe Premiere Pro is the ability to show or hide markers by color. This actually does more than you might expect. Here's an illustrated tutorial.
Recently, I realized that one of the most useful features in organizing media in Final Cut has become almost invisible: Favorites. It fast, easy to use, powerful and hidden. Here's tutorial on how it works.
This past weekend, I was invited back to Maryland Public Television, in Baltimore, to celebrate the opening of their new, state-of-the-art, 15,000 sq. ft. Studio A. MPT was one of the early stops in my directing career and I loved working there. However, I hadn't returned in more than 40 years. Joining 300 guests and talking with friends and co-workers I hadn't seen in decades released an emotional flood of memories. Touring studio control rooms, master control and the data center forcefully drove home the tectonic changes caused by evolving technology. It was good to go back, but it wasn't the same. Studio production had moved on. It reminded me of this quote from Thomas Wolfe: "You can't go home again... back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting, but which are changing all the time."
Change is constant. Stories are forever. Stay safe, stay healthy and edit well.
