The Genesis Project

My personal 'Ultimate, Awesome!' resource compendium (Part 1)

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:19:18 -0500

About six months ago, I began an entry that I thought would be the 'mother of all resources' to things principally related to After Effects but also about Photoshop, Premiere Pro and Production Premium.

That last about a week and I finally erased the entry. Why? Because it's impossible to try and put it all in one entry and it would be incomplete at it's best. So, I've decided to do the next best thing: Tell you about the resources that I like to look at and use. It's long and so I've decided to break it into parts.

HP's DreamColor display - 'simply' awesome

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:09:28 -0500

Video editors and graphics artists have always relied on a monitor to help them achieve their vision. Years ago, it was the size of the monitor that mattered. It was also the refresh rates available. Then came LCD's but they weren't black enough or fast enough. Fast forward a few years and now we're dumping CRTs at the local recycling center and LCD's are the standard - the black and speed issues largely overcome. Well, I've seen the future (at least the near future) and it's the DreamColor LP2480zx professional display. Read on for some more.

Premiere Pro 4.1 getting good feedback

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:24:42 -0500

Premiere Pro has been out for a couple of weeks has been really well received thus far. It's not only addressed some bugs but also added some new functionality like the RED workflows, .VOB editing and Avid IMX import. I wanted to quickly post some of the feedback that's been posted on the Adobe forums. ;-)

"I'm very happy so far with 4.1 - they did a great job"

"They fixed everything in Premiere. Works great now."

"I'm totally happy with 4.1 update. I swear the fixes have already saved a couple hours of life."

"4.0.2 it took 12-15 minutes to render each reel if I clicked the use 'use' preview file…Now with version 4.1 they rendered in 8-9 minutes…AND I didn't have to wait a minute or two for the reels to start rendering. 4.1 starts in like 5 seconds…Also when I open PR or AE project using AME. It doesn't make me wait at least a minute like to pick the sequence to render. Does it right away."

"Adobe - Thank you for V4.1.0 - Still export back to the older versions! :-) No render Q!"

"I agree with another poster in a similar thread. This has got to be a record for getting the full download out the same day as the AUM version…Nice job Adobe!"

"…loading projects is indeed a lot snappier than it was. Loading a 30 minute project (source material is 1:35 hours) with 17 AE comps, 100+ HDV clips, and some miscellaneous material within 4 seconds is not bad."

"…a noticeable performance increase"

"Hats off to Adobe for finally coming through and polishing the decoding for AVCHD….I know we had to wait a while for the update, but I'm glad they didn't rush it and do some hack job, considering the update actually makes editing AVCHD that much more intuitive and efficient. Looks like we have a winner in my book!"

"…my big projects load 10x faster and I get realtime playback with Magic Bullet looks. Also get twice the frame rate when Dl to AE….
Also great better BCC support...cool and even better it only takes less than a second to click back to Premiere from any other program. 8 times faster at least….I'm happy."

"Premiere opens much faster now. It takes a few seconds for a big project instead of several minutes. Transitions between still work now perfectly AC3 audio is now audible."

"That's the quickest I've ever seen an update available on the website, after just being released."

...Now if only we could get every one to spell Premiere Pro right...Ah well, that's a problem that can wait for another day.

ProMax BDA in NYC 6/16-18

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 10:41:40 -0500

If you're in the New York City area, you might want to come to ProMax BDA. It's a high-end design type event around motion graphics and the like. The plus side is that you get to meet with a lot of top broadcasters and post houses. The down side is that it is not a free event. So if you're a full-time designer, you should definitely look at this event as continuing education.

Some thoughts on Premiere Pro 4.1

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 10:21:31 -0500

I'm back in the blogosphere! My absence has been punctuated by visits to the likes of HBO, CNN, FOX and many more. Broadcast is alive and well but my entries have consequently suffered.

In my absence, Premiere Pro version 4.1 has been released. It's a terrific release and I wanted to give some thoughts, miscellaneous tidbits and point people to some resources to learn more.

A wealth of free tutorials at DMN

Tue, 19 May 2009 08:34:07 -0500

You ever have a week where there's nothing you'd like to do more than sit down and use your favorite software on a nice Mac or PC and think up cool stuff and ideas? Yeah, me too and I'm having one this week, but unfortunately business calls!

Ah well, it's okay. In the absence of regular posts, let me offer up to you these tutorials by content digital portal - Digital Media Net I came across this this morning and was very pleased to see so much material and resources available for Premiere Pro (and many other Adobe applications). So, if you haven't visited them in a while, give 'em a look this morning and tell me what you think.

Searchable video now available for you to create!

Wed, 13 May 2009 09:38:34 -0500

It looks like we've taken another small step forward in making video searchable on the web easier than ever before. Recently, a page on searchable video was updated to include a downloadable excerpt from a book on making video searchable and a SWF player that you can use to embed your video with the search ability.

Layers Magazine does AE and PR

Wed, 06 May 2009 09:05:14 -0500

Layers Magazine is a part of NAPP but about all things Adobe and so they have churned out another 100 wicked tips which is an annual feature. This year's version has contributions from both Michael Coleman and Giles Baker - product managers within the digital video group. I just gave them a read and they're both very useful and insightful, so that means you should head on over there to check them out - right? Right!

Go there now - Layers Magazine 100 Wicked Tips!

PS - you'll find the AE and PR tips towards the bottom of this article.

HP dreamcolor display

Mon, 04 May 2009 13:24:46 -0500

I've had a 24" HP DreamColor display for some time now and I've recently included it in my new Adobe TV rig for creating Adobe Beginner Classes shows. The basic premise of this display is that instead of 16.7 million colors that are possible on a normal LCD, you can see a billion.

Adobe CS4 Productivity report

Fri, 01 May 2009 09:58:38 -0500

In a tough economy, it's more important that your company (or you!) work as efficiently as possible and certainly things like video production can eat up a tremendous amount of time with various tasks. Whether it's creating final output types, making a DVD, importing video, or even the editing process, having control of your system - to keep creating with your hardware and software - is critical.

Adobe Beginner Classes - Camera Shake is live!

Fri, 01 May 2009 06:29:14 -0500

Well, I had thought I had run out of tutorials on Adobe TV and was thinking that I needed to come up with a few more when I looked this morning and saw that another one had been posted. This is my most recent 'boot leg' episode and basically takes a note from a recent Video Copilot tutorial where I thought Andrew glossed over some of the more basic ideas. Leave it up to a simpleton (me) to try and simplify some great ideas.

Iridas talking up Cinema DNG

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 08:57:50 -0500

Cinema DNG is becoming big news as Adobe continues to develop and publish updates about it. If you're not in the know about it, it's no big deal yet. DNG is an open standard created and overseen by Adobe. It stands for Digital Negative and is a great way for photographers to keep their raw data and work with a variety of software products. DNG also happens to provide lossless compression so as cameras get bigger and you need to move your 10,000 photos - DNG might be a good way to go.

Photoshop User and NAPP: All things Photoshop

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 08:36:33 -0500

Every year or so, I imagine countless thousands have discovered the Adobe blogs and have recently gotten into creative fields using some number of Adobe tools. However, in this day and age, there is so much information from so many resources on so many different topics that one gets SO overwhelmed!

To that end, I like to point out a few of my favorite resources once in a while. The one that I'm mentioning today is National Association of Photoshop Professionals. They are the publishers of Photoshop User magazine as well as Layers.

These guys are just INSANE about Photoshop and it's related products and quite honestly, they taught me a LOT about Photoshop when I just joined Adobe. Now that I've been with Adobe for over four years, I still learn a LOT about Photoshop from them. They're that good.

What I like most about it, is that it is not JUST the magazine. In fact, the subscription fee is more about the web site and the services you get there than anything else. The magazine just becomes a bonus. They're is tech support, user forums and a lot of tutorial videos. Is it worth the $100 or so? Well, I wouldn't be mentioning it if it wasn't... ;-) Check out the link below to get started.

Photoshop User (NAPP)

Closing days for Adobe upgrade offers

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:24:54 -0500

While the purpose of this blog is about information, I do try to stay away from information related to sales. At the risk of coming off as a pushy used car salesman, I wanted to make sure that people were aware of the offers that are currently available, but will end soon.

NAB announcements

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:32:06 -0500

Benefiting (depending on your point of view) from waking up 4:30AM pacific standard time I thought I would sneak in a quick post about some of the stuff that has been announced by Adobe or companies that support our products.