My wonderful fiance sent me this earlier today. She’s been trying to talk me out of buying an iPhone since they day they announced it. I know I shouldn’t get one. They’re over priced, 1st generation, only available through AT&T (which has crappy service here) and I’d have to break my contract with Verizon (swallowing the $175 disconnect fee) just to get one - but damn I still want one.

People have been complaining about the cost of the plans but at $99.99 for 1350 minutes and unlimited data, it comes in at about $70 cheaper a month than my Verizon plan for my Blackberry. If you look at it that way - I’ll save enough the first year to justify buying the phone.
The other gripe that keeps coming up is - who pays $499 or $599 for a phone? Well I bought my blackberry for $329 18 months ago and at that point Trios were much more and so were some other smart phones. I think the big craze is that this is really the first fully Mac compatible phone and those of us who have been dying for something like that are going nuts.
The real downer is that not only is it a little over priced, but the battery thing sucks. 8 hours of anything is not enough. Especially if you use your phone for business. Also what happens when you just drained your battery watching Pirates of the Caribbean and you suddenly need a ride, or an emergency arises, or your running late for dinner? I tell you what happens - you get frecked - and if that dinner was with your significant other you probably get chewed out too.
Having a battery powered all in one entertainment device is a novelty and take it from a tech junky like me, just pretty cool in general - but when you start mixing these all in one novelties with a practical device or business tool and have them all running off one battey you seriously risk not having the tool when you need it because you got too caught up in the novelty.

The sad part is that even after all that I still want one really badly.

A week to ago today was Go Skateboarding Day. Pretty cool idea if you ask me, but some police officers in Hot Springs Arkansas didn’t think so. In fact they went way overboard. Check out the video below. It doesn’t seem so excessive at first, but check out the action about 2 minutes in. Watch this and if you feel angered or inspired write an email to Police Chief, Bobby Southard telling him how shitty his officers acted.

Hot Springs Arkansas Police Department
Phone: (501) 321-6789
Fax: (501) 321-6708
Chief of Police, Bobby Southard
Email: bsouthard@cityhs.net
641 Malvern Avenue Hot Springs, Arkansas 71901

I posted a high quality QT of the Heliflight video I just won a bronze Telly for. Check it out

Keep up to date with the latest product releases
Final Cut Pro
DVD Studio Pro
Soundtrack Pro
Motion
Color
Compressor

Just as I was preparing to start complaining about the lack of AVCHD support in Final Cut 6, my system update window popped up alerting me of the ProApplications Update 2007-01 that just became available.  
After updating you’ll notice that 5 more updates pop up relating to FCP Studio 2.

 Update Break Downs
Pro Application Update 2007-01
Includes improved encoding performance for G5s with Apple ProRes 422. The updates also includes filter improvements for Motion 3 and Final Cut Pro 6 along with shared components updates specifically with Plugin and Helium frameworks.

Soundtrack Pro Update 2.0.1
Release notes are available here

Motion Update 3.0.1
Release notes are available here.

Compressor Update 3.0.1
This one has some goodies, including:
256 kps Bit Rate encoding for compatibility with iTunes Plus
Entering Pixel Aspect Ratios!!! You can force conform the pixel aspect ratio on export. While this solves a topic once confusing for some, I can only imagine how many issues it may reintroduce for those same people.
Importing Annotations - Allows you to add and edit a variety of metadata from a .plist file
Automatic Center Cropping - Adding options beyond Letterboxing, you can now select from a variety of standards - which includes making a cropped 4:3 version of a 16:9 source!!Set poster frame for Preview window - somewhat self explanitory.
iPhone support!!!!
Read the rest of the release notes here.

Final Cut Pro Update 6.0.1
Includes AVCHD Support through Log and Transfer interface!!!!
Improved support for the Master Templates I mentioned earlier today.
New Defocus Filter - which was incorrectly listed as part of the 6.0 update and more.
Read release notes here

Color Update 1.01.
There are a ton of bug fixes and increased support in this one.
Release notes here

And the Updates will keep coming.

I love Starbucks coffee.  Anyone who knows me, knows it by the shear volume of it that I consume.  The conundrum is that like many other people in Burlington, I prefer to support local business and take blows against the corporate machine 5 bucks at a time - but Starbucks is just so good.  There are two main reasons that I continue to patron Starbucks - speed and consistency. 

Speed - When I have the time to sit down and enjoy a latte for all it’s worth I will and still do on occasion head down to a local coffee shop and chill for a while, but when you’re in a hurry - as I am all the time - the only thing I can count on is getting in and out of Starbucks with a fresh latte in 3 to 7 minutes.

Consistency - I travel quite often for work and my need for coffee everyday travels with me. The beauty of Starbucks is that you can go anywhere in the country, walk into a Starbucks and walk out with a cup of coffee that is just as good as the one you enjoy everyday at home. You can’t expect that anywhere else. It’s a wonderful security if your coffee is important to you. Not to mention I can’t even count how many times I’ve paid 5 bucks for a crappy latte in coffee shops across america.

Now for the Bitching -
It’s 93º here today, not the hottest it gets - but pretty hot. The thing that drives me nuts is that everytime it breaks 70º here and I order a cup of coffee it’s instantly assumed that I mean iced coffee. When I clarify “hot” people look at me like I’m freckin nuts. To each his own and all, but I hate iced coffee, lots of people like it - but its a recent fad. People have been drinking coffee hot since the 9th century and iced coffee has only really gained popularity in the US over the past 7 years or so. So how the hell does 7 years of drinking cold coffee negate 1200 years of drinking it hot?
Not to mention that iced coffee has been around for a while in another form - it’s called Coke and it tastes way better.

Speaking of Starbucks - I think I’m going to add a “Buy me a Bucks” button as I have seen on another users site! Hmm - Coffee.

So you think you’re a smarty pants?  Do you know more then anyone else about something and you’re itching to tote it?  I’m considering adding more authors than just Justin and myself.  Drop a line if you think you have something to offer. 

Finally I am sitting down to start going over this stuff. It’s a huge update in some areas and definitely the biggest update for Final Cut Pro ever. I’m going to pop this one out now and then head off to take my Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Trainer re-certification exam for the update. I love the ACT program, it’s just a kick in the nuts that you have to pay for re-certification, for each application and level at each new release. It’s not so bad for most if you’re employer is paying for it, but for people like me that are freelance - you end up eating it. Oh, that reminds me. I am available for hire or consulting. nate@finalcutuser.com

Let’s start this series as easy and simple as possible.The first feature I would like to highlight is actually part of a larger feature, better integration of Motion 3 into Final Cut Pro 6. You can access motion templates and work with them within Final Cut without ever going to motion. This speeds things up a bit and allows a user to take advantage of Motion templates while being able to manipulate them within the confines of the familiar Final Cut interface. This is a bonus for those who aren’t familiar with motion because rather than having to familiarize yourself with Motion right off, the templates are presented within Final Cut with an interface similar to any plug-in you may have used before.I’m not sure if I’ll ever really take advantage of this myself, as I’m not a huge fan of using templates for anything stylistic, but I will concede that everything has it’s place. The other downer, which is extremely evident once tried, is that when you run these templates within Final Cut you don’t get the added benefit of motion’s video engine - so be prepared to render or chug along in preview playback.

You can access these integrated templates by clicking on the Generator icon in your Viewer Window. At the bottom of the list you’ll see a new section entitled Master Templates. These include all of the updated templates that ship with Motion 3. You can preview all of this in realtime within the Motion application itself.
I’ve also rendered out samples of all 35 3D Text Projects. You can check them out at the links below.
Final Cut User Motion 3D Test Template Samples
Atom Strand, Barrel Turns, Bunch , Cracked, Crowd , Directions , Dotted Axis, Atom Strand, Barrel Turns, Bunch , Cracked, Crowd , Directions , Dotted Axis, Dotten Axis Trio, Float, Fold, Half Capsule, Illumination Triplet, Large Format, Looseleaf Lower Third, Marquee Title, Plywood Tower, Pointer List, Rotation, Side Tab, Spin Cluster, Plywood Tower, Pointer List, Rotation, Side Tab, Spin Cluster, Spin , Text Assembler, Text Feature, Text Ferris Wheel, Text Field of View, Text Knock Down, Text Line Reveal, Text Mondrian, Text Rack Focus, Text Sliding Panel, Text Spin Cycle, Text Spiral Staircase, Text Vertical Boom, Winners Circle

I get things from amazon if you buy stuff by clicking through me….
so do it a lot and often.   Yeah.. thats the ticket

Compression an art, or science rather, and the modern editor/videographer must have a basic understanding of this science in order to display his/her project in the best quality no matter the situation. I’m sure most people reading this site probably know alot (probably more then I do) about this subject, this is more for the young buck editors. So why compress? Obviously, to fit your video project onto some type of media (web videos, DVD, HD DVD, digital cable). Knowing your media is the first step into knowing how much compression is needed. Certain medias hold more and others less. What I’m trying to get at is if you don’t use the correct compression and correct compression settings your media will not look professional, and you’ll come off as an novice, and we don’t want you looking like that. H.264 as compression is not only accepted as the new standard, but being used and proven in alot of media that you’ve probably already seen. Your blu-ray movies are compressed in H.264, your online movie trailers from quicktime.com are H.264. Some countries are now switching their broadcast standards to H.264 to accommodate HD material. For me understanding how it works will help me understand how to use it. So the way it works is that it samples the frame in units of macroblocks (16×16 and 4×4 displayed pixels) then it makes a prediction from previously encoded frames or surrounding macroblocks from the same frame. H.264 is more accurate in predicting then previous compressions, giving us all a more clean pictures. MPEG-2 (standard for DVD) for example can only use the previous frame or the following frame to make a prediction, while H.264 can use up to 32 previously encoded pictures. There is a lot more that goes on this is just the surface of compression. All these settings and numbers mean and do something; understanding these values will not only take the frustration of exporting away, but it will also help you increase the video quality of your project. So in short compression isn’t simply FILE— EXPORT — QUICKTIME MOVIE it’s a entire universe, and unfortunately it’s another thing that the starving video editor has to self teach and “boy oh boy” do we already have to know more then our fair share. Don’t skrew with me on this one, just learn it while your young, and get it over with.