Flash forward to to the release of FCP X (and all that went with it), and a lot of folks are taking a serious look at Premiere again. I’ve begun playing with the new version and I’m amazed that I can pull T2i footage off the card, right into Premiere – no transcoding needed. To be fair, you could do this in CS4, but it didn’t always work (at least for me).

With CS5, the Canon footage played with little effort on my MBP. Again, I’m taking footage right off the card – I haven’t added color correction, fades or attempted to composite anything yet.

For now, I’m getting reacquainted with Premiere, and thanks to lynda.com, and it’s training series for FCP editors making the transition, I’m digging it so far. If editing Canon’s version of AVCHD doesn’t bring my laptop to a crawl, I can see the benefit of switching to it. I can’t count the hours that I’ve spent waiting for transcodes. I often shoot several commercials in bulk over a few days, then edit over several weeks. I batch-transcode with Red Giant’s “Grinder”, and that experience can be like watching paint dry, not to mention the crazy big file sizes associated with converting to ProRes.

With the added benefit of Photoshop and After Effects integration, this could be a no-brainer. It will take working through a project to see if I’m my cutting in FCP will be final. (yeah, I went there…).

I’ve been out of the loop for awhile, so I’m researching the current crop of PC motherboards. The main requirement is a PCIe slot for the Blackmagic Intensity Pro capture card. I was given the card today, so I can spec out a board, chip, memory and case. As always, price is a consideration, which means this has to happen with little or no budget.

*sigh*

I have to admit – I’m more than a little intrigued by the Intensity Pro card, and can’t wait to get it into a system. If for no other reason than to see how performs. If successful, the info gleaned here may be useful on another project of mine. The box says that multiple cards can be installed to control multiple cameras, so it’s worth investigating.

It’s shaping up to be a fun side project. I’ll keep you posted on it’s progress…

While waiting for Logic X to arrive, I began testing the waters of the competition, and I spent 6 solid months with Reaper during the Alpha and Beta test cycles. The truth? I like(d) it a lot. Reaper is a powerful program, but I find that, at times, it can get in the way of creativity, mostly because of it’s power and sheer number of choices. An oft written refrain on the Reaper forum is “I just want to make music and not code a program”.

That brings me to Studio One. I was excited by it when it was released over a year ago. However, it was too limited at the time (no AU plug in support was huge for me), so I passed and took a “wait and see” position.

Thankfully, PreSonus dropped a bomb 2 weeks ago with version 2 of Studio One. The biggest selling point for me was the Melodyne integration. Melodyne is THE ultimate in pitch correction software. It will correct damn near anything without the dreaded T-Pain effect (unless, of course, that’s what you’re after).

I’ve been a Melodyne user for years, but I often reach for Auto Tune because, frankly, I’m lazy. Melodyne requires some work, and a small dose of music theory. In short, you can do more harm than good if you don’t know what you’re doing. The bigger Melodyne issue for me is with the plug-in itself. It runs “in tandem” with your DAW, making file management tricky. It’s easy to lose the pointers to your corrected files if you work with multiple drives.

To solve this issue, Celemony created the ARA protocol for Melodyne and partnered up with PreSonus. ARA provides internal two way communication between the plug in and the host. The bottom line is it’s now easier to use. If you’re not interested in S1, but want the Melodyne integration, fear not. The ARA protocol will appear in other hosts early next year. PreSonus is getting the head start.

As you can tell, I’m a bit excited about S1, and I’ve been test driving it a great deal. Yesterday, I decided to use it for voice over recording and audio sweetening on a commercial spot I shot recently. Let me say that the workflow for video post is well… awesome is the word I’d use… It’s much faster than Tools, Logic and Reaper.

In the screen shots above, I dropped a reference cut into S1. Imported the audio. Opened the Video window. Set a level on the FirePod and within seconds was recoding my VO. After some EQ and compression, I had it pushed back into Final Cut. I did the final mix in FCP, but next time I’ll mix the entire spot (music, VO, and sound effects) in S1 and print the final mix there.

It’s never been so easy… I haven’t even touched on the music aspects yet. I’m sold, and Apple had better bring the pain with Logic X, or I’m staying with S1.  I’ve already transferred some Logic songs to S1 to mix, and I like what I’m hearing.

As always, your mileage may vary…

I’ve done more than my share of self-builds back in the day, and I forgot how much fun it is to be in the innards of a computer. Yeah, call me a geek. I’ll cop to it.

Long story short, I have to get this particular PC up and running so that it can accommodate a PCIe capture card. However, upon closer inspection, it may not be up for the task of streaming HD video, let alone editing. Dell seems to have some proprietary stuff going on in there on the motherboard, so it may be cheaper to build a new one.

Lucky for my son, I don’t give up that easy, and like a puzzle that needs to be solved. I’m on it. The problem with that is, I now have the urge to build again…

The song “Vampires” was born out of usual frustration with the people and things that suck the life out of others on a regular basis, and NOT the crappy movie types with bad skin and tons of hair gel that women in their 40′s fantasize about.

But I digress, and that’s another rant filled blog entry all it’s own…

I realized that my approach to writing and production hasn’t changed much in awhile. With the exception of guitars, I normally do everything “in the box” (drum programming, bass lines, keys, etc) and that gets old. Just because one has 2000 drum samples, doesn’t mean you have to use ‘em all the time. And with that, the urge to stretch out and experiment with different mics and recording techniques took hold, and I figured the best place to start was with percussion.

There’s nothing like adding a little live percussion to a sterile programmed track, but the only percussion instrument I have is my Prince tambourine (and I’m not pulling that trophy off the wall), so I had to dig through my kitchen cabinet.

It’s amazing what you can do with a container of Sea Salt…

I’m now a believer. Playing it live (whatever it is) beats the hell out of programming it any day of the week. So grab something, put a microphone in front of it and shake it, strike it, or beat on it. Trust me…

BTW – Although Reaper is featured in the video, my DAW of the moment is Studio One by PreSonus – at least until Logic X comes out. In all seriousness, Studio One is worth taking a look at. One of my heroes, Teddy Riley, gave it an extremely enthusiastic endorsement, and is largely why I picked it up. Teddy produced and mixed Michael Jackson’s posthumous album with it, and he likes it better than Pro Tools. That’s all I needed to hear. I’ll post my thoughts on S1 soon.

Now I have to get back to the business of slaying vampires…

Today, I find myself in Ely Minnesota, which is literally a stones throw away from Canada, on a radio station consult. I never thought I’d ever be this far north, but here I am, and it was a blast. The gig was to recommend a new and better workflow for the on-air folks – which is cool.

Personally, it’s a chance to feed my lust for all things gear and dig through a radio station. I will say that WELY is a cool small town station, and the staff is super awesome – extremely friendly and inviting.

The instructor was using Logic, but upon closer inspection, this was no version of Logic that I’ve ever seen. Logic isn’t really “skinable”, although some have ventured into the code to tweak it. The instructor finished his presentation and opened the floor up for questions. I thought long and hard about asking, but held off. However, 20 minutes later, I was bursting at the seems and finally typed my question: “What version of Logic are you using?”

It hung there for about 30 seconds, then the moderator came on and said, “Well, that’s it for questions. If you want to watch this webinar again, it will be available at waves.com.”

I cannot claim that my questions about a seemingly beta piece of software brought the whole works to a halt, but it is an odd coincidence. Who knows? Maybe they were “out of time”…

What I do know is Mac Rumors posted screen shots of Logic X a few weeks ago (which I did not see), and they were removed as fast as they went up. I’m posting what I have because - A: I don’t know if it is indeed Logic X, and B: If it is, then it should not have been used in a live webinar by Waves.

Armed with that, and a huge sense of righteous indignation, I present what I grabbed. I’ll let you know if Apple comes knocking…

Went into IPR today with Tom to discuss the class with another staff member. We’re responsible for the lecture portion of the AV200 class, but the students get the lab from another instructor. This method presents it’s own unique set of challenges to navigate, but so far, we haven’t crashed the bus.

We did, however, need to peek over each others shoulders and share info. During the meeting, we had a chance to look in on a student lab. IPR has, what I like to call, the Audio 101 room, and it’s here that students get a crash course in signal flow. The room is a bare-bones setup with older gear (mixer, outboard gear, etc) that is completely unwired.

Students are tasked to “hook it all up and make it work”. We came in just as a student was unplugging it all, so I didn’t get any pics of that, but it was still cool to see.

Audio 101 rocks. I wish I had a class like that back in the day. For most of the Instructors, it was OJT – all on the fly…

Fortunately for me, I made a few good purchases last year – the Lilliput external LCD monitor being one of them. I’ve only used it a handful of times, but it’s served me well. There is an underlying problem with it and the T2i, as the HDMI connection will cause both the monitor and the camera to lock-up occasionally. When this happens in the field, I have to disconnect everything and start over. I’m not sure why this happens, and I haven’t invested the time to figure it out.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yeah… So, I have the H4n, and I need to mount it. I began looking at various mounting schemes online, when it occurred to me that I already had a mounting adapter in my possession – courtesy of the Lilliput. After rummaging through my extra gig bag, there it was. I pulled it off the monitor and before you could call me late for dinner, I had the H4n mounted to the camera.

The biggest problem I have now is how do I mount the wireless receiver to the current configuration. I’m leaning towards a velcro strap, but I’m way into esthetics for that.

Ok… Let’s get greedy…

I now want to mount all of this crap (H4n, LCD monitor, wireless receiver, etc) to my ULTRAcompact™ Rail/Shoulder system – which is currently sitting in pieces in my closet. Ouch. I’ve had my battles with the ULTRAcompact over the years, BUT it seems like a good time to resurrect it – mostly because I now have enough gear to attach to it.

Some of the mounting screws are messed up (from changing configurations every 10 minutes), so I have to order replacement parts. I think it will be worth it. However, the accessory world for DSLR’s has changed dramatically since I stopped looking for stuff (ie – ran out of money), and there are a number of new tasty (better) mounts available.

My system works well, but like anything, could stand a few upgrades. I’d like to ditch the LCDVF loupe for a Zacuto Z-Finder, but yeah… $350 for a viewfinder… yeah… My only justification is that I’ve worn out my LCDVF. I’ve been through 2 magnetic mounting strips, and I’ve dropped the damn thing so many time in the filed that it can now be qualified as battle-damaged. I also hate wearing the strap for it around my neck, but I like being able to take it off the screen at a moments notice.

More than anything, I covet a red stripe lens. What I wouldn’t do or give for an EF 16-35 f/2.8L II USM.

*sigh*

I can dream, right?