apple core skills April 11, 2010

Overview

The world of Final Cut continues to grow at a phenomenal rate, with more than 1.3 million paid users and more than 200 partners offering compatible plug-ins, control surfaces, I/O devices, and integrated systems. Building on this strength,
Apple has designed the new Final Cut Studio to offer powerful new features, a wide range of enhancements requested by the worldwide community, and dramatically improved performance.

Over 5 days these sessions are designed to help you make the most of these features, work better and faster not harder - working with an Apple Certified Trainer who is also an experienced editor and programme maker get the maximum out of
your investment in Final Cut Studio.

Course Content

Day 1

Editing - with Final Cut Pro

- 10 techniques that will help you edit faster
- mixing formats on the timeline (H.264, HDV, AVC, XD-CAM), uprezing SD to HD
- the fast way to make speed changes (retiming footage and slow motion)
- stabilising and tracking footage
- easy moving mattes, alpha transitions and global transitions
- automatically updating all the transitions in your movie (global transitions)
- making your timeline legal (doing the on-line edit)

Day 2

Motion graphics & post production - Final Cut Pro, Motion

- the fast way to create convincing complex animations in 3D space (incl. shadows and reflections, depth of field, automatic camera framing)
- high quality rostrum camera moves (how to prepare and animate still images)
- fixing green screen problems (creating clean alpha channels when compositing and keying)
- creating (and updating) a credits roll, animating text for the screen
- animations that animate themselves(combining behaviours and parameter linking, automatic text animations)
- relighting a scene in post (using 3D lights to change the lighting in your footage)
- automatically updating all the graphics in your movie (Motion templates)
- treating and simulating film footage (using the new filters in Final Cut Studio)

Day 3

Colour correction & grading - Final Cut Pro, Color

- workflows for FCP & Color
- primary and secondary grades, grading with scopes
- changing the mood of shots
- day for night, bleach bypass and other looks (fun in the FX room)
- vignettes, shadows and stylising footage
- fixing problems
- 10 time saving techniques
- rendering and sending back to FCP

Day 4

Outputting, uploading & Blu-Ray - Final Cut Pro, Compressor

- getting the best quality out of your timeline (the right codec for the job, the new ProRes codecs)
- creating Blu-Ray discs (menus, customising templates, compression)
- making FLV and WMV files from your FCP timeline
- one-click uploading to YouTube, mobile devices (and other benefits of the Share menu)
- speeding up your workflow (background encoding)

Day 5

Audio fixing and sweetening - Final Cut Pro, Soundtrack Pro

- roundtripping with FCP
- noise removal and cleanup
- repair and restore damaged audio
- microphones and mic technique
- saving time with scripts
- time stretching and compressing
- filters and audio effects
- performing and editing a narration
- composing a score with loops
- multitrack editing

About the Trainer - Simon Walker

Simon is an Apple Certified Trainer in video editing, motion graphics and colour grading (Final Cut Pro, Motion & Color). He has been
filming, editing, designing and animating short-films, adverts, interactive programs and motion graphics sequences for 15 years.
As well as delivering a range of Apple Certified courses, Simon uses his real-world production experience to write, edit and produce
custom training packages for the media industry (including Video Optimising & Compression, Internet Film Making, & Motion
Graphics for FCP Users). He has also written and produced two award- winning interactive training packages for Somerfield PLC.