MediaStorm Guide to Upgrading to Premiere Pro CC 2015

This article is part of a series of posts with tips and tricks from our producers' experience working with Adobe Premiere Pro CC after years of working in Final Cut Pro. To read more about why we made the switch, check out this post. Two weeks ago Adobe released Creative Cloud 2015. And while Premiere Pro promises lots of new features, we at MediaStorm are always a bit gun shy about upgrading immediately, particularly when in the middle of a project. But if you can’t wait to dive in, here’s how to do it safely so that the new install does not overwrite your previous version. This way you can always revert back in case you find CC 2015 not to your liking. Click the Creative Cloud menu bar, then select the software that you’d like to install. You’ll be presented with a new update window. The key here is to uncheck…

Continue ReadingMediaStorm Guide to Upgrading to Premiere Pro CC 2015

MediaStorm Guide to Organizing Camera Phone Pictures with Hazel

If you’re like me, you probably take lots of pictures with your phone. Organizing thousands of images can feel overwhelming. Apple has tried to makes this a seamless process with the introduction of iCloud and the new Photos app. As convenient as it is to automatically upload all your images to the cloud, Apple’s service has one glaring omission. You can not delete individual pictures. It’s an all or nothing solution. So I’ve created my own workflow. With my phone connected to my Mac, I use Apple’s built-in utility Image Capture to download all pictures to a specified folder. I make sure to delete the images from the phone as I download, ensuring that I don’t end up with duplicates. Next, I use Noodlesoft’s Hazel ($29) to automate organization. Hazel is a system utility that applies specified rules to a given folder. In this case, after I’ve downloaded my images to my…

Continue ReadingMediaStorm Guide to Organizing Camera Phone Pictures with Hazel

MediaStorm Guide to Selecting Edit Points in Premiere Pro Without the Mouse

This article is part of a series of posts with tips and tricks from our producers' experience working with Adobe Premiere Pro CC after years of working in Final Cut Pro. To read more about why we made the switch, check out this post. A reader who is new to Premiere Pro writes, “OK, I cry uncle. I can’t for the life of me come up with an efficient way to use the keyboard to select the end or beginning of a clip. How do you do it? Do you use the mouse?” Turns out that selecting edit points with just the keyboard is simple. Just press the T key and Premiere Pro will select the edit points closest to your playhead. Here’s the trick though: Premiere Pro will only select the tracks that are highlighted in the left column. In the example below, pressing T selects only the edit point for…

Continue ReadingMediaStorm Guide to Selecting Edit Points in Premiere Pro Without the Mouse

MediaStorm Guide to Sharing Sequences Between Computers in Premiere Pro CC

This article is part of a series of posts with tips and tricks from our producers' experience working with Adobe Premiere Pro CC after years of working in Final Cut Pro. To read more about why we made the switch, check out this post. Sharing sequences between team members is easy with the latest version of Premiere Pro CC. As often happens during our workshops, a participant will cut a sequence using her laptop. We’ll then need to import that work into the main project on a second computer. Here’s how we do it: In the Media Browser window (Shift–8), navigate to the project file that contains the sequence you’d like to import. Double-click the file and you’ll see all of the sequences and media available in that project. To import, simply drag the relevant sequence from the Media Browser to the Project window. A couple of caveats: first, make sure that…

Continue ReadingMediaStorm Guide to Sharing Sequences Between Computers in Premiere Pro CC

In Defense of Taking Your Time

Editing–good editing–is rarely done quickly. You might call it a slow process but I prefer to think of it as a deliberate one. We think, we ponder, we reconsider. Because good work, work that illuminates some previously hidden part of ourselves and the audience, does not come quickly. For me, creativity is always intertwined with intuition. David Mamet described it like this, “Art is the spontaneous connection of the artists to his own unconscious—about insight beyond reason.” Sometimes it feels like scampering around in the darkness. We dig and we shape. And we take up time. Once, I wrote and directed a five-minute film that took three years to finish. A two-minute one took the better part of a year. To finish is to exhaust all other possibilities. I don’t know a better way. You can compare yourself with others, worry about sliding in to a deadline last minute but here’s the truth:…

Continue ReadingIn Defense of Taking Your Time