For those of you that know, I’m from Dade County, GA, which recently was hit by several tornados. My family is all safe, thank God, but there was much destroyed in the county, as well as the cities in Alabama and Tennessee… and many lives lost. Our prayers go out to all those communities trying to rebuild. As for me, I’ll be headed up this weekend to help clear a couple of trees my dad and brother have been working on getting off of my grandmother’s lawn. It will be sad to see the devastation.

In other news, I’ve been extremely swamped with work recently. I’ve had simultaneous projects with Caterpillar and Coke through Indigo Studios, as well as a Comcast Bands on Demand episode, and music video we’ve been working on for awhile with Twin Lens Productions…. sigh.

Oh, and last month Indigo asked me to edit their 2011 reel one afternoon. So you can see that below. Has exceprts from a couple projects I worked on for them. Enjoy:

New FCP-X was announced tonight at the NAB FCP Supermeet. Overall, it looks like a much needed overhaul.

Highlights are: 64bit, background render, new media management, updated timeline, audio sync for multicam, independent res timeline, new timeline features (keyframing in timeline, audio editing nice features, etc. etc.), native H.264 editing, plus a good bit more.

Overall, it seems like a good update and overhaul of FCP. However, no word on Color, SoundtrackPro, Motion and DVDStudioPro. And this version of FCP will be released in June, only in the AppStore for $299, which, last year, was the upgrade price for the whole suite. Not sure if they’ll offer an “upgrade” price of less than $299 (that would be nice), but I doubt it.

My complete and total guess, is that they are in complete overhaul mode of the entire Studio suite (except for DVD Studio Pro, which will only exist in legacy versions after this year…again, my guess, but there is no reason to update the program). But everything else is currently being updated to 64bit, and whatever feature set that they want to be cross-app… but it’s not ready yet. So they release FCPX in the interim period to satisfy their core user base, while next year we get a full Studio update….but released on the AppStore (like everything else) and split up, so users buy what they want. FCPX gets a ~$299 price-tag.  Again, just a guess, but it makes sense. Theres no real reason why Apple would dump a fantastic program like Color (or at least sell it). Soundtrack Pro gets a ~$199 price tag…. Motion a ~$199 price tag… Color a ~$399 price tag…. who knows. But it makes sense.

Anyways, my two cents. I will be upgrading in June. Will still have FCP 7 on my system for any issues that crop up. But the updates seem worth it to me.

The flexibility of RED 4K is crazy-awesome. I love it. I will own a RED one day.

Working on a project for a non-profit that required shooting up in NYC this past weekend. So I flew up for a couple of days with the client, walked around in the cold all over Queens. Shot with my 7D, lots of interviews, MOS stuff, etc. It was fun to test out the mobility of my rig….DSLRs just give you a great freedom in that. My Kata backpack is also invaluable in the field.

However….Consequence: I now have the flu. Just gotta push through and deliver the project! Fun times.