MediaStorm’s 10 More Ways to Improve Your Multimedia Right Now

As a followup to a previous post, here are ten more ways to improve your work right now, no matter how challenging your original assets may be. Make edits with purpose. Always ask why you are making an edit at a particular place. Is the cut motivated by action? A musical beat? A pause in narration? If you don't have a reason, you need to find a new location for your edit. Every edit must be motivated. When editing your visuals, don't cut in the middle of a word. Doing so is confusing. Edit between words, or even better, edit according to written grammar: at a comma, a period, or to emphasize a word. Cutting after words like because and however is also effective. Edit rhythmically. Make the first cut at the beginning of a spoken phrase. Time the first phrase so it ends right before a musical beat. Cut to another…

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MediaStorm’s Guide to Using Subtitles

Sometimes the most difficult challenge regarding subtitles is deciding whether to use them or not. Subtitles present obvious aesthetic challenges—from inevitably covering the most important part of an image to turning a visual experience into a written one. If at all possible, avoid them; the obvious exception being when someone speaks a language other than that of the intended audience. Then subtitles are essential. So how do you know if you need English subtitles for someone speaking English? It’s often difficult for a producer to make this call. After listening to the same clips again and again, we learn a speaker’s cadence and nuances and they become clearer to us. Probably the best method to make this determination is to play your project for a group of people who haven’t seen it yet and see if they can understand the narration without subtitles. With fresh ears, they’ll quickly let you know if…

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MediaStorm releases updated Multimedia Gear Guide

One of the most frequent questions we're asked is "what gear do I need to do multimedia?" While there's no quick and easy answer, we've put together a revised MediaStorm Gear Guide, detailing the equipment we use and recommend for gathering multimedia. With technology changing so frequently, it's often hard to keep up with the latest and greatest gear, so I've also tried to give insight into why each type of equipment is ideal, and to provide different options when there are multiple versions available. If you have any questions, or suggestions of combinations that have worked well for you, we'd love to hear from you in the comments. See our Gear Guide.

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MediaStorm’s Guide to Using Apple’s ProRes 422 Codec

One of the questions I'm asked most frequently about Final Cut is, "When do I use Apple's ProRes 422 codec?" To tackle this question it's first necessary to understand a few things about codecs. Shooting video is a very intensive digital capture process. It requires cameras to capture lots of information in a short amount of time. To handle so much raw data, most cameras need to compress what they capture. A codec is essentially a compression scheme, a way to encapsulate so much material into a containable format. Standard DV footage, for instance, uses a compression scheme referred to as the DV codec. Similarly, HD footage -- 1080i60, 1080p, etc. -- uses the HDV codec. Codec takes its name from “encoder” and “decoder” since your computer must now decode the encoded file during playback. When you create a new sequence in Final Cut, you are building what will become a new…

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MediaStorm’s Guide to Custom Final Cut Shortcuts

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Frequently when working in Final Cut, I need to find the source of a clip. The most obvious way to do this is to right-click on the clip and select Reveal in Finder. But I’d prefer to use a faster method, specifically a keyboard shortcut key. To find a function’s shortcut, enter a keyword into the Help>Search field window. You’ll see all of the menu items that contain the word ‘reveal.’ Use the down arrow key to select Reveal in Finder. A large blue arrow points to the item under the View menu. Notice that there’s no shortcut key to the right of the menu. This indicates that Apple has not assigned a default keystroke to this task. Not to worry. Final Cut provides a straightforward method for customizing your keyboard with new shortcut keys. Choose Tools>Keyboard Layout>Customize or Option-H. Final Cut launches the default keyboard layout window. This tool illustrates each…

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