There’s been a lot of talk about Chrome lately.  No, not the new Google web browser but Chrome Digital our sister facility across the pond.  Have a look at their website:

Very interesting read from editor Oliver Peters.  As long as AVID and FCP are competing in the same market, there will continue to be the debate as to which is a better NLE.  Think you know my choice.

Avid vs. FCP – Market Dominance?

Steve Martin, no not the actor, but Steve Martin of Ripple Training provides some great tips for using Adobe CS3 and Production Premium with FCP.   This is definitely woth a look for some Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects tips as well as Encore, the Adobe DVD authoring program.  It has the ability to do something I was just thinking would be so cool if we could do it… instead of burning DVDs, what if we could deliver a digital file that played just like a DVD with menu, chapters and the such?  Well with Encore you can courtesy of Flash.  Yeah, I know, we don’t have CS3 or Production Premium.  Well actually JoJoe does.  We can only hope for the future.  Want this now!

Good article on when to stay in your native codec and when to convert to something else.

More and more of the work we do, especially pitches, rips etc. will be shown on LCD or Plasma screens. Since these screens are in a 16×9 format, it makes sense for us to consider this when starting a project.  So before starting an edit I would recommend trying to get the answer to the question, “What kind of screen will this be shown on?”.  This was recently the case for an Army project I worked on.

If you have a Hi-Def TV at home you’ll wince at the times you see all those 4×3 letterboxed commercials running on HD channels.  They look like a postage stamp lost in a mass of black screen.

That’s alot of black space.  So if your source material consists of lots of letterboxed 4×3 sources the result would be what you see above.  In a 16×9 sequence you could scale this video to fill the entire screen and not lose any picture.  

As far as regular fullscreen 4×3 content you may have only one choice and that is to keep it 4×3 and have pillar bars on the left and right.

If you were to scale this video to fill the screen you’d lose picture on the top and bottom.

Two other approaches to dealing with the black space with 4×3 footage is to put it the shot(s) on top of a upscaled and blured version of the same shot.  This is a common technique you see use with sports and news.

Or lastly, you can use any image or graphic to fill the black space.  You could even have something designed specifically for the project.  Here I just used a still of camouflage.

So don’t forget to ask the question where the finished video will play before you start the project.  It will save you headaches and also give you a better looking video in the end.

Here’s a site I go to often for forums, reviews, tutorials.  When I lived in LA I used to attend their meetings.  Check it out if you want to learn something or visit the forums if you’re having a specific issue you want an answer to.

Los Angeles Final Cut Pro User Group

Wanted to see how Vimeo’s HD streaming flash player looked with the Intel piece.  Take a look.