That goes for me too.  Aside from making it halfway through a book on Rails 2 last year, I had not built any type of web application before.  6 weeks in, I have a working prototype of my application up and running.  It is amazing what I have learned from this program in 6 weeks.

So what next?  That’s what I’m trying to figure out.  I see so many directions and paths that I could take, it’s almost overwhelming. Keeping a focus is so important. I’m still a video and motion guy at my core and I don’t want to give it up. But man, I love building stuff. It’s so fun to see my lines of code form into a functioning application. Tying these 2 worlds together is still my goal. What that job is I’m still not sure yet. Who knows… maybe I have to create it.

For now, I continue with the last half of Code Academy. Getting ready for demo day and fine tuning my application. Stay tuned for my launch page going up soon. I hope to get people beta testing it by the end of December.

Getting back to my freelance work this week, it made me realize how much I want to finish this application as fast as I can. Almost everyday I would be using the application. It even would have saved me a headache this weekend of accidentally using an old HTML page with bad code that prevented the client from seeing the video. Arrgggh… but hey, I guess i just use that as motivation to get this thing done.  My hope is that there are other freelance and small video production houses that could use my app too. I know they deal with the same problems of getting videos to their clients for review and always having some sort of hiccup that prevents viewing of the video. If there isn’t anyone else who would want to use it… that’s fine by me… I want it.  That’s what keeps me going on building my app, it is really for me.

Research is the next step for me and my application. I need to find out what others do to have their clients review videos. I know a lot of the outlets that can and have been used, but getting hard facts is what will let me make this product shine.

If you are a video creator, how do you share videos with your clients for review? Share in the comments.

I couldn’t have asked for a more diverse group of people to learn with. The skills and knowledge that everyone has might be the single greatest thing about Code Academy so far.  Sure I have started to get going with Rails, creating a very basic rails app with a few basic links and pages, but what I have learned from everyone just talking and sharing what they know has been amazing so far.

I can see how having more of a mindset about creating ideas and bringing those ideas to life is way more then just learning code and slapping an app together.  It’s about thinking through what it is that you want to build at its core. Getting into the entrepreneurial mindset is what will really help carry my ideas through. I have to believe in the product I am creating, otherwise why even build it? Who is this product for and how will it help that person using the product be better at what they do?  Those are questions that all relate to building a better product, but have nothing to do with a web app or technology.  It’s what my product is at the core and that will never change.

So week 2 is beginning and I have a big hill to climb. Keeping myself and my product focused is important, but also is learning the code side of things as well. Since that’s truly what I am here for. After week one however, I now know that I will be learning much more then just Ruby on Rails.

After creating video for 10 years I had to make a choice for myself on which direction I wanted to go in this field. Did I want to stick and move forward with only the broadcast and/or film side of things or did I want to also get deeper involved and embrace the new roads that have been created for content delivery? I chose the latter. Recently a good chunk of work I have done has been mainly targeted to be used for website and mobile devices so I felt wanted to get a better idea of how those delivery methods can be created, and even create some of my own.

Digital publishing is just starting to take off. Right now tablets are limited mainly to the iPad and a few other Android tablets, but with Windows 8 right around the corner, tablets are going to be the common place in households everywhere. That means more and more magazines and newspapers will begin to deliver their content in digital form. That is fantastic for video and motion creators.

Articles will increasingly contain videos to compliment the articles, animations to display info-graphics about topics, and advertisers that will want to use it all. It has already begun. I am subscribed to Wired Magazine as well as Golf Digest. Both of these publications allow me to download digital copies of the issues to my iPad along with the paper copy that shows up in the mail every month. I’ve seen some cool stuff done in the issues in regards to the articles, but what really amazes me is the types of things advertisers are able to do with their full page ads in the issues (and how many aren’t taking advantage of anything). You can take that static ad from the paper issue and take it to the next level. Embed a video in the ad, have a photo slide show of your product, take advantage of an internet connection and pull in twitter feeds or user forums for people to share about those products. Additionally that then could allow those advertisers to pull data back to themselves and breakdown who their customers are and how they can better improve their company and product to serve those customers.

So that’s why I’m learning code, Ruby on Rails to be exact. My hope is to be able to help bring these new engaging experiences and help create theses new delivery methods for videos and animations to be seen and used where they haven’t been before. I even have a first project lined up for myself and I’m super excited to share it with the video community in a few months. I hope it can help us all create better products for our clients and save a little headache and time in the process.

I can understand production houses and companies that have multiple systems and have not gotten around to fully updating their edit suites, wanting to get them up-to-date, but frankly it is a waste of money.  You would be much better off investing in software that is new and taking full advantage to the systems we are running these days.

I switched to Premiere as my main edit software about a year ago, before FCPX was released.  The reason was that I didn’t see Final Cut going anywhere.  It had not been updated since 2009 and even that update wasn’t really much aside for support for Snow Leopard (10.6).  Sure there was a couple new bells and whistles, but at its core it was the same software it had been since almost version 1 back in 2001.  It was time for something new that was going to take full advantage of my new computer I had just purchased.

I do a lot of After Effects work and what I found (at least for me and my workflow) was that it was light years over FCP when working with a project that was heavy After Effects.  Dynamic linking saves so much render time as well as just straight up storage space.  No need for render after render filling up that drive space every time you need a new version or make a tweak.  Jump to After Effects, make the change, then jump right back to Premiere and the changes flip seamlessly.  But what really sold me is that is just felt faster overall. With CS5′s release, the production suite went 64-bit for the Mac side and boy was it great. Don’t let anyone tell you that you need an NVIDIA CUDA card to take advantage of the benefits of Premiere either. Sure it can help improve render times as well as let you work better with RAW formats such as 4K RED files natively, but it is not required.

Adobe has a great blog post explaining what the mercury playback engine is and how your system uses all its parts. Link to Adobe blog post.

Now in full disclosure I have purchased FCPX to test out and see how it runs. I have not done any client project on it yet, but I would have to say i’m very interested to see its future. However, to say that it is not a “Pro” application is completely false and unless you are a large multi-system production house, I would judge for yourself whether it will work for you and not just strictly go off what the interwebs are saying. There are a lot of professionals out there new to video editing and feel Final Cut has a tough learning curve, and frankly it does (all editing software does, they are pretty much the same).  FCPX tries to break that curve down, and that is a good thing.  People can focus on their story and not how to use the software.

The point I am trying to make here is that change is not easy and all of us in the post-production world have our workflows that we have used for years, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a point you have to move forward and make changes. AVID is there, Adobe is there, Sony is there, and many others too.  When it comes down to it they are all just a non-liner editor and deep down they are all the same.  So go out and shake things up, learn some new software and move forward, its not worth living in the past.

Role: motion graphics design and animation

Commercial for New Blood Fight Gear for TV and web advertising.

Client: New Blood Fight Gear

Agency: Audia, Inc. Photography and Film

Role: Edit/Color/Graphics, B-camera

With Final Cut Pro, Apple was able to bring professional editing tools down to an accessible level for an individual video/film maker. With the progression of iMovie and other consumer level editing tools and then YouTube as a place for non-professionals to share their masterpieces, everyone can now create video and broadcast to the world.  Now look what Apple has gone and done, $300 for my pro software?  Every mom, kid, and grandparent who dabbles enough in video to have bought an express version of FCP will now have the same high end tools that I have.  Should you be worried?  Only if the only thing you do is edit, and market yourself that way.

With the age of the internet, the difference between the pros and the prosumers is experience and knowledge.  If the only thing you are going to do for your client is edit their video and hand them over a file you have lost already.  You need to be your client’s distribution partner. Ensuring they get the most out of the video they paid you big bucks to make. I don’t mean TV distribution either. Making sure they use the internet and social media channels properly to get the most of their hits and analytic data.  For example, posting the video to YouTube, then use that embed information to post it to all your other social and internet portals. That way every view they get from all the different sites is registered to that YouTube upload. You can then view the data on those views. I’m not saying you should become an SEO or marketing agency, but learn about it so you can at least guide your client the right way.

If you say that doesn’t apply to you and most your work is done for studios and agency that are already taking care of that, fantastic.  You are one of the lucky ones.  However, there are lots more small production companies and boutique shops that don’t have that kind of work and are working directly with a company or store who the project is for.  These are the pros who can show why they are pros, and give their clients reasons to come back.  In the age where everyone has a son or nephew that has Final Cut at home and makes “great” videos, we need to prove what makes our services worth the value.

Now I know most people will quickly snap back and say but my _______ (insert tool of choice) has this feature that the others don’t or mine is much faster at ______.  I totally agree.  In all discloser i’m a Final Cut guy.  I have been using it since version 1 and will probably be upgrading to this new version right when it is released (I skipped version 7, but that’s a different post); however, I also have no problem working on Premiere or AVID or Media 100 or any other software that is currently being used for the project i’m working on.  As far as i’m concerned they have all the same tools, they are just in different places.  Once you understand the basics to be looking for, you will be able to jump in and work on any editing project regardless of what system they are on.

Bin, Viewer, and Timeline

That’s all you need to get going and every editing program has them.  From Window’s Movie Maker and iMovie to AVID and high end finishing systems like Smoke.  Now many of these programs have a much higher learning curve then others, way more tools and menus to dig through, but at is core its all there.

The Bin or browser or whatever name it has will let you organize and arrange the assets of your project.  This lets you rename and put different types of files and clips on different bins or folders. Its a basic step to editing anything efficiently.

You then have a Viewer.  This is where you can preview those assets you have organized and set in and out points to make your edit decisions.

Finally you need the timeline.  This is where those marked clips can be arranged to create your edit.

Now I know there is way way more to it then that, but in a way there isn’t.  Most higher end editing systems will have 2 viewers, one to preview individual clips and the other to playback the timeline.  But a lot of the lower end ones will just use the single window for both.

The other thing most experienced editors run into is not knowing the keyboard layout for the new system they are working on.  I totally agree, it sucks, I know Final Cut’s keyboard layout so well I struggle when working on other systems.  But since I know what tools i’m looking for I just have to do a little more mouse action then usual to find the ripple-edit or the slip tool, or any other tool.  Most of the time, if you let the mouse hover over the button, it will tell you the keyboard short cut.

But the one set of keyboard commands that will be on almost every professional editing software is “J,K,L, I, O”  (play backwards, pause/play, play forwards, In point, Out point).  That is all your need to get going and make your edits.

If you are new to video editing and haven’t fully embraced all the keyboard commands and mostly edit with the mouse.  You have no excuse but to explore new software.

I’m not saying everyone has to own or master every piece of editing software, I just want more people to recognize that they are no different then using a hammer from Craftsman vs Staney, everyone has their preference but they both get the job done.

Hopefully this new version of Final Cut Studio does kick ass but remember all the NLE are all the same.