As of today, it’s been 645 days since Apple last updated the Mac Pro. This means if you buy a NEW Mac Pro right now, you’ll be buying hardware that’s almost 2 years old. I just bought a Mac Pro. It arrives on Friday. It’s roughly 750 days old. That’s right, I bought a used [...]
Read MoreApple Integration and Support
The End of “I’m a Final Cut Editor” or “I Work On an Avid”
One thing became very clear to me at NAB this year, we no longer can or should base our entire careers around a single app or platform. “I’m a Final Cut Editor” Not anymore. I’ve been editing on non-linear systems for about 15 years. I started on Avid in 1998 and switched to Final Cut [...]
Read MoreExample Slate for Printing Your Tapes

I’ve delivered tapes to many broadcasters and producers including NBC, National Geographic, Red Bull, etc. Their requirements are pretty similar, so it’s fairly easy to just use a generic template for all your tape prints. This is one I’ve been using for awhile. I will eventually add more templates for different uses, but this is [...]
Read More apple, beta, beta sp, broadcast, D5, Final Cut Pro, HDCAM, HDCAM SR, print, slate, tape, titleYou Don’t Need A New Computer, or How To Bring Your Old Hardware Back Up To Speed

A Bit of History and The “New” MacBook Air This week saw the release of Apple’s new MacBook Air. Spec-wise, it’s not really all that advanced compared to the Apple laptops that preceded it. It has a 1.4GHz or 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo processor for the 11 inch model (1.86GHz and 2.13GHz for the [...]
Read More apple, Intel, iPad, macbook air, netbook, old computer, repair, SSDDifference Between Different ProResseseseseses, Offline/Online Tip
This post is not technical. This is very simple. What really is the difference in quality between all the different flavors of ProRes? Currently there’s Proxy, LT, SQ, HQ and 4444. Proxy, LT, SQ and HQ are all 4:2:2 at 10bit, but at very different bitrates. I saw a comment by Shane Ross on his blog [...]
Read MoreReader Question: 12v for Editing System

Hi Eric, I came across your blog post on technomadia. I am soon to hit the road in a 12 volt RV. You had mentioned you were looking at putting in an Editing system. Did you do it, and what tricks did you learn? I have a full FCP setup that I want to have [...]
Read MoreError: Out of Memory – WTF? I have 8GB of RAM!
I just finished a commercial project that had a lot of high res still images. Anyone who’s used FCP for even a short period of time knows how terrible it is with images and .psd files. We started getting Out of Memory errors and due to the extremely long hours and tight turnaround, the editors [...]
Read MoreFinal Cut Rendering Glitch
I noticed an interesting (read: incredibly annoying) glitch in Final Cut’s rendering today. I’m color correcting some commercials for Quiksilver. There’s a part where one portion of a shot cross dissolves into another. They are the same shot, but the first clip was rendered out of After Effects, and it’s cross dissolving into a clip [...]
Read MoreBackup Early and Backup Often
The 5 week old hard drive in my laptop gave up the ghost the other day. Since I’m working on about 4 projects concurrently, it couldn’t have come at a worse time. Anyone that knows me, knows how paranoid I am about backup and archive. So of course I had a recent backup ready to [...]
Read MoreGotta Keep Those RAIDs Clean
I spent the weekend over at TGR to give their Xsan system its semi-annual cleaning. Us IT guys gotta work weekends while you office people are out playing. A little disc defragging here, a little blast of air there. The biggest step is removing all the components from the Xserve RAIDs and rolling the [...]
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