Larry Jordan's Newsletter

Feb. 27, 2023

It is good to be back! My trip to New Zealand was amazing, but I missed our conversations. To start, if you are running the latest version of Final Cut Pro, you need to upgrade macOS to fix a significant FCP bug. Here are the details.

Link: Important Final Cut Pro Bug Fixed in MacOS 13.2.1

In the Tutorials & Reviews section, I have two detailed articles looking at the storage needs of multicam editing in Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro. With the right gear, we can do amazing things.

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Lots has happened over the last few weeks. Here are highlights in the news:

MacWorld reports that pirated copies of Final Cut Pro may infect Macs with crypto-mining software. If you got your copy via the Mac App Store, you are OK.

Link: Pirated Final Cut software infects Macs with malware.

Blackmagic Design announced ATEM Television Studio HD8, a new family of all-in-one live production switchers that combine broadcast features with extreme portability. They also announced the Blackmagic Studio Camera 6K Pro, a new more powerful studio camera model that features an EF lens mount, a larger 6K sensor for improved colorimetry and fine detail handling, ND filters and built in live streaming via Ethernet or mobile data.

Link: Blackmagic Design ATEM Switchers

Link: Blackmagic Design 6K Cameras

Rohde & Schwarz is showing an end-to-end proof of concept, staged in co-operation with technology partners including Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., Spinner, Cellnex, Ateme and the Academy of Broadcast and Science (ABS) in China, to show a broadcast stream transmitted across the city. As well as empowering new media services like nation-wide and localized exclusive live media to mobile devices, it also opens up valuable new services for unparalleled In-Venue and In-Car customer experiences.

Link: https://www.rohde-schwarz.com/us/home_48230.html

The 2023 NAB Show celebrates 100 years this year. The exhibitor list continues to grow, as does the conference. It also looks like more people are attending.

Link: https://nabshow.com/2023/

Alteon released Alteon LaunchPad, a tool that demystifies NFTs for mainstream content creators, even those with little to no Web3 experience, allowing them to mint NFTs in just a few clicks. It works with the Opera Crypto Browser.

Link: https://alteon.io

Arch Platform Technologies now gives creative professionals a “single pane of glass view” for adding, managing, monitoring and utilizing on-premises or data-center hardware alongside cloud resources. It also allows you to move creative teams to the cloud.

Link: https://archpt.io

Lumecube introduced "edge-lit lights." An edge-lit light has LEDs positioned around the inner edge of the light, instead of on the back wall, hence the name edge-lit. This means the LEDs shine inwards, bounce off the back wall of the light then travel outwards through a built in diffusion layer.

Link: https://lumecube.com/blogs/news/what-is-edge-lit-technology

Digital Bedrock announced it has reserved over 30.5 million files. All files bit health is verified on an annual basis; there have been no errors or bit loss on any of the 30.5 million files. They can also migrate data from legacy media, verified, re-organized, and copied to a new target location (cloud, LTO, drives, or the client’s servers). Digital Bedrock can migrate older generation LTO data tape from generations 2-8, and can write data to LTO-8 and LTO-9. They can also deliver and receive files electronically.

Link: https://www.digitalbedrock.com

Gavi Zeitlin, CEO of ReplyShake, created a free cheat sheet of email follow-up templates video companies can use to close deals and move projects forward faster. He writes: "There's no catch and no strings attached." These templates can move leads through your pipeline faster, get proposals signed faster and reduce “dead time” during projects.

Link: Free Email Marketing Cheat Sheets - via Google Docs

We've partnered with FMC this year to help promote PostProduction World at NAB this spring. Even better, if you register you can save 10% - just use the code LJ10. I'll have more on this year's conference as we get closer.

Webinars will restart NEXT week. My goal is to look at Adobe's plans for speech to text editing. I'll have more details in next week's newsletter.

It has become increasingly clear to me that as video technology changes, frame sizes increase, cameras become cheaper and multicam becomes more common, the speed of our storage becomes more important than the speed of our computers. To this end, I have three tutorials that look at the combination of computers and storage for multicam editing:

Link: How Fast Storage Needs to Be for 4K Multicam Editing in Apple Final Cut Pro

Link: How Fast Storage Needs to Be for 4K Multicam Editing in Adobe Premiere Pro

Link: Compare 4K File Size Differences and Compression Speeds for Video Editing

Jerry, on YouTube, asked how to put four images on screen at the same time in Apple Motion. (Old-timers call this a "quad-split.") So, this week, I wrote a tutorial that shows how to do this for HD, 4K and vertical video.

Link: Display Four Images At Once – a Quad-Split – in Apple Motion

Smile... I left sunny New Zealand and came back to sub-zero temperatures in Boston. It is hard to type and hold a warm cup of tea at the same time, but I'm trying. Still, spring is on the way. I know this because NAB is getting closer and the clothing catalogs are showing people running around in T-shirts. With the increasing speed of changes in media technology, this year's NAB will be, I think, a watershed year. The rise of AI will create as big a disruption as the move from SD to HD. My concern is the impact on jobs as this technology rolls over us.

Well, there's no shortage of things to watch or watch out for. In the meantime, stay healthy, stay safe and edit well.