Local Tv Hero

Like my exhaustive over-long DAW shootout a few months ago, I’m now doing the same with my editing software. I’ve been a Final Cut Pro editor for years, but I gave Premiere Pro a shot back in 2009. Despite cutting a music video with it, and even liking some of the features, I found the CS4  experience to be clunky and buggy. It wasn’t hard to stay with FCP.

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…).

Every now and then, while walking the halls at work, I stumble upon something cool. We produce a lot of original programming here, and given that, we work with a number of local artist (musicians, authors, painters, performers, etc).

Today I came upon the audio setup for “Minnesota Originals” (MNO – for short). The music segments for the show are usually done in bulk – recording and taping 8 (or so) bands over several days. The performances are then edited with accompanying interviews and spread out over the course of a season.

Of course the audio setup caught my eye, and after a brief run through by Joe, I was allowed to take a few pics.

It’s a round-about way to record bands, but the setup offers a high degree of options for post. Eight discreet channels are recorded directly into Final Cut, so the editor has options for a rough mix while cutting. In addition, the audio is mult’ed to a separate system (through a MOTU/DigiMAX combo). Those tracks then get mixed by Joe in Pro Tools after receiving picture-lock from the editor, and that mix is re-synced in FCP for the final line cut.

It’s a round-about way to go, but it ensures that show will sound great for air.

I get to “look over their shoulders” for the next show taping. Now that is cool…