I'm sorry I was gone so long. I'm writing this during my two week whirlwind training trip that started in Alaska, traveled to London and now finds me north of the city in Beaconsfield, UK. I'm writing this from a hotel conference room.

The training sessions were fantastic - great turn-outs, with very enthusiastic audiences. I want to thank John Rusyniak at ASTE, Eve Harper at BVE, Hatice Ozdemirciler at Ravensbourne College and Clive North and Ian Stubbs at GTC for doing such a great job at promoting our events and making me feel welcome.  I look forward to coming back next year!

The downside of all this travel and teaching was that I was totally unable to write last week's newsletter and I'm a day late writing this week's issue. My apologies. I don't want to make missing issues a habit.

This week I have four new articles, plus some short notes, a new Buzz show direct from the UK, and I've updated all our Top 3 Lists.

This article grew out of tip suggested by Ian Stubbs, during my UK trip.

Keywords allow us to organize our media so we can find stuff. In this article, I'll show you two different ways we can find stuff faster using keywords.

Built into FCP X is a fast way to test an effect without first applying it to a clip.

But, what you may not know is there is an even faster way to test the main settings contained in that effect while still looking at the effect in the Browser, as this article explains.

There are three types of media in Final Cut Pro X:
 
 * Camera Native
 * Optimized
 * Proxy

However, it is not easy to figure out what, exactly, you are editing, because there is no one place you can look.

In this article, I show you how to tell what media types exist for your files, where to look to find them, and how to tell which media you are editing.

Knowing the media you are editing can help make you faster, and improve the quality of your images.

One of the benefits to using Final Cut Pro 7 was that it was easy to update a graphics file in your edit by  replacing the old file with the new file using the same file name.

However, when working with Photoshop PSD files, that no longer works - and I'm not really sure why.

But there is a very cool work-around that works great - provided you know what to do. This article explains the secret and makes updating graphics files as easy as if you were working in FCP 7.

Here are the most popular articles, webinars, and audio interviews for the past seven days across all my websites.

Articles

We expanded this list to the Top 4 for more variety:

• Media Management is the Biggest Change in Final Cut Pro X v10.1  
• Apple Releases Final Cut Pro X v10.1 
• FCP X v.10.1: Manage Projects 
• FCP 7: Pick the Right Version of ProRes 

For an index of all our articles, visit here.

 

Webinars

• #119: 3rd-Party Plug-ins for FCP X 
• #117: Media Management in FCP X 
• #118: Integrating Motion 5 with FCP X 

This list is based on the webinars watched most often by our monthly subscribers. For a list of all our webinars, visit here.

 

Digital Production Buzz Audio Interviews   

• Sam Mestman: 4K and Collaborative Editing with Final Cut Pro X 
• Josh Apter: Shooting Video on an iPad
• Hans-Werner Meyer: How to Build a Career as an Actor

For a list of all the audio interviews we've conducted on The Buzz, visit here. 

With the release of Final Cut Pro X v10.1, Apple also updated Compressor to version 4.1 An all new interface, improved compression settings and better monitoring. So much changed, in fact, that we went back and re-recorded all our training for the new version.

• Better organized
• More informative
• Tighter focus on making your images look great.

These days, everything we do ends up on the web.
Which means that if we don't know how to compress our video to make it look good, all our work during production and post is wasted.

In this in-depth video training, Larry Jordan shows you how to make the most of Apple Compressor 4.1.

Whether you are a new or experienced, this training will help you make your media look and sound great!

Larry Jordan

Larry Jordan & Associates

P.S. I always love hearing from you. Feel free to write.