I have four new articles for you this week - storage and media management, inside tips on FCP X, and a big "gotcha" when working with digital audio.  More on these in a bit.

Do you realize the NAB Show was only a week ago?  Amazing... The Digital Production Buzz now has all  shows and interviews posted and available to you at NABShowBuzz.com. Stop by and check out the latest news from some of your favorite companies.

Let's see.... I have more favorite iPad apps, two interesting Short Notes, an update to our Compressor training, a very cool featured interview from The Buzz, and updated Top 3 lists. Plus four new articles. All kinds of lovely goodies this week. Let's get started.

Last week, I mentioned some iPad apps that readers recommended. I have more for you this week.

Chuck Savadelis writes:

Adam Wilt's Cine Meter is the best light meter / lighting & scene analyzer available for iOS.

Jon Chappell, from Digital Rebellion, writes:

Cut Notes is an app that allows you to take notes during a screening. It syncs to the timecode of your NLE (FCP 7, FCP X, Avid, Adobe Premiere, Pro Tools) and uses preset note buttons to minimize the time you have to spend looking down to write. You can then export the notes to a variety of formats and use our free Marker Import tool to bring them back into your NLE. It also has cloud features like group note-taking sessions through our Kollaborate cloud workflow system.

www.digitalrebellion.com/cutnotes � 

CinePlay is an iPad / iPhone video player aimed at professionals. Unlike other video players on the App Store, it's designed with timecode in mind and will automatically detect the timecode track in a movie clip. It has other features like masking / blanking to various aspect ratios, timecode overlays, markers (which can be exported to various formats) and safe areas. It also has Dropbox playback support and more advanced features with our Kollaborate cloud workflow platform like automatic color correcting via CDLs.

www.digitalrebellion.com/cineplayios

Media management confuses everybody. So, this week, I decided to write a basic article that describes media management, shows how it works and the variety of options we have when it comes to storing media.

This is a perfect article to send to someone just getting started, to bring yourself up-to-speed on the latest technology, or just help you understand what's going on "under the hood."

This article is relevant regardless of what editing software you are using.

Most of the time, I can answer reader questions by referring to an existing article or my knowledge of the program.

Most of the time, but not always.

This article began as a collection of reader questions that required some research to answer. I finally had time to wander Apple's website. Then, I wrote up the results here.

The intersection of analog with digital audio can be tricky.

As I was prepping for our NAB coverage, I ordered a brand new Mackie mixer which was great for analog audio, but not so good for digital.

This article describes the problems I had, and points out a hidden trap that can prevent you from recording your best audio. The problem is easy to fix, if the manufacturers are interested in fixing it.

Storage is even more important to our editing system than the speed of the computer.

But, which storage should we buy? And what do specs mean and which ones should we pay attention to?

Discover the Five Factors you need to consider when buying a RAID. If you are buying storage to directly attach to your computer, you need to pay attention to different specs than if you are attaching the RAID to your server.

In this article, I explain the terms, illustrate the specs, and tell you which ones you need to pay attention to and why.

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 
• Reflections on the 2014 NAB Show 
• FCP X 10.1: Manage Projects  
• FCP X: Export a Master File 

For an index of all our articles, visit here.

 

Webinars

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

• Jessica Hall: How to Make Money on Your Movie 
• Jeff Foster: All About Drones
• Christina Lee Storm: Documenting the Death of "Rhythm & Hues" 

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.