Apple Final Cut Pro X Debates Tutorials

Apple Motion 5: EPIC Title Tutorial by Simon Ubsdell

Join longtime VFX artist, editor, software developer, and business owner Simon Ubsdell for some really useful and interesting techniques for creating a fake 3D title treatment with dramatic depth, texture, reflections, staining and other details that goes way beyond what you can achieve with the 3D Title Tool. Not only that, these techniques work well with any graphic object, for maximum motion graphics flexibility.

Simon Ubsdell

Apple Motion 5: Light Art Tutorial

Discover how to create this moody light art scene with Apple Motion 5! Join longtime VFX artist, editor, software developer, and business owner Simon Ubsdell for a tutorial that also includes number of useful tricks, including how to create an ambient occlusion effect and textured specular highlights.

Simon Ubsdell

Apple Final Cut Pro X

Animate Text Without Keyframes or Plug-ins in Apple FCPX

Join longtime editor, VFX artist, plug-in developer, Creative COW leader Bret Williams of BretFX to learn how the FCPX Custom text tool allows you to animate text in Final Cut Pro X without using keyframes or plugins. With the often overlooked custom text tool you can easily create great text animation with just a couple of clicks. Change opacity, position, rotation, scale, duration, spread, blur and easing all without creating a single keyframe!

Bret Williams

Apple Motion Fire Dragon Logo Animation

Fractals, generators, displacements, oh my! You can find everything you need to make engaging fire effects inside Apple Motion 5, and longtime VFX artist, editor, software developer, and business owner Simon Ubsdell shows you how to both build the fire and apply it to a logo. Project files are included, but you'll learn everything you need to apply it wherever and however you'd like, in your own unique style!

Simon Ubsdell

Apple Motion Data Vortex

Join longtime VFX artist, editor, software developer, and business owner Simon Ubsdell for a deep dive into Apple Motion's generators, behaviors, and 3D compositing as you take advantage of the remarkable resources built right into Motion: no plug-ins, no external files, but lots and lots of production and animation tips that you'll be able to use in every Motion project you undertake from here on!

Simon Ubsdell

Apple Final Cut Pro X

Apple Motion 5 Tutorial: Slider Title Template for FCPX

Create this clean and simple title template for FCP X and sharpen up your Motion skills! Join longtime VFX artist, editor, software developer, and business owner Simon Ubsdell for a look at combining masks and other advanced compositing and animation tricks in Motion that you can use for fast, elegant FCPX titles.

Simon Ubsdell

Compositing Secrets Everyone Can Use Pt. 4 - Advanced Alphas

When most people hear the words "alpha channels", they think "transparency", but that's not exactly accurate. The truth is more complex, and a quite bit more interesting! Join longtime VFX artist, editor, software developer, and business owner Simon Ubsdell for Part 4 of the best look behind the technology of compositing that you've ever seen, packed with practical advice for applying the secrets of alpha channels that's simply not possible before understanding these underlying principles. No matter which applications you're using for editing, compositing, or visual effects, this one is a must-see!

Tutorial
Simon Ubsdell

Art of the Edit

Editing The Emmy Award-Winning Phenomenon, Wild Wild Country

Wild Wild Country premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival to great acclaim, and when it hit Netflix a few months later, it quickly became a phenomenon, going on to win the Emmy for Outstanding Documentary of Nonfiction Series and netting editor Neil Meiklejohn an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Picture Editing for Nonfiction Programming. Creative COW's Matt Latham spoke with Neil about managing a project of this scope, treating the eight parts as a single film rather than episodes, his use of Adobe Premiere Pro, workflows with visual effects and music, and much more, including career advice for aspiring editors.

Feature, People / Interview
Matt Latham

Compositing Secrets Everyone Can Use: Pt. 3 - Alpha Channels

When most people hear the words "alpha channels", they think "transparency", but that's not exactly accurate. The truth is more complex, and a quite bit more interesting! Join longtime VFX artist, editor, software developer, and business owner Simon Ubsdell for Part 3 of the best look behind the technology of compositing that you've ever seen, packed with practical advice for applying the secrets of alpha channels that's simply not possible before understanding these underlying principles. No matter which applications you're using for editing, compositing, or visual effects, this one is a must-see!

Tutorial
Simon Ubsdell

Compositing Secrets Everyone Can Use 2: Advanced Blend Modes

Whether you're a full-time compositor and VFX artist, an editor working in one of the many NLEs that supports Blend Modes (including Adobe Premiere, Apple FCP and FCPX, Avid Media Composer, DaVinci Rsolve, and VEGAS Pro), or whether you just want the additional graphics power that comes with insight into the secret world of pixels, this is the tutorial for you! Join longtime VFX artist, editor, software developer, and business owner Simon Ubsdell for Part 2 of the best look behind the technology of blend modes that you've ever seen, with some practical steps you can start taking today to make your work look better than ever.

Tutorial
Simon Ubsdell

Apple Final Cut Pro X Debates & Beyond

Compositing Secrets Everyone Can Use: Pt. 1 - Blend Modes

Join longtime VFX artist, editor, software developer, and business owner Simon Ubsdell for the best look behind the technology of blend modes that you've ever seen. This isn't just for graphics and VFX, but for video editors too -- anyone who puts anything together, and wants to learn more about HOW images combine at the most basic level, in a way that applies to every application you might use, whether Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple FCPX, Avid Media Composer, DaVinci Resolve, VEGAS Pro, and yes, graphics and VFX programs like After Effects, Motion, Fusion, Nuke, Scratch, and many more.

Tutorial
Simon Ubsdell

Art of the Edit

Always Be Editing: Sculptors & Bricklayers Revisited

Do you edit like a sculptor, or like a bricklayer? It seems a simple enough question, but as longtime editor, post house owner, and VFX software developer Simon Ubsdell shows, the implications for how this affects the way you edit can be profound. His advice, regardless of where you land on the spectrum? Always be editing.

Simon Ubsdell

Blackmagic Design Fusion

Blackmagic Design Fusion 9 Tutorial: The New Planar Tracker

Editor, VFX artist, post-house owner, and plug-in developer Simon Ubsdell draws on over 25 years of experience to dig deep into the compelling features found in the new Planar Tracker found in Blackmagic Fusion. Along the way, Simon offers a wide range of tips and tricks, as well as new perspectives on the relationship between tracking and compositing: in short, tracking done right.

Tutorial
Simon Ubsdell

Apple FCPX Debates

FCPX Workflow: One Smart Collection To Rule Them All

The first key to workflow wizardry is to exploit an application's strengths. In exploring the nuances of FCPX, famed workflow wizard Simon Ubsdell opens up some of the secrets around one of its most uniquely powerful, but sorely underused tools: Smart Collections. This isn't about replacing your existing project management (although it can). It's about leveraging some of the ridiculously awesome power of the Smart Collection to make your work flow far more easily than you might have imagined.

Tutorial
Simon Ubsdell

Apple FCPX Debates

Apple FCPX and the Making Of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Rather than a story about editing software, this is a story about Apple Final Cut Pro X from a filmmaker’s perspective: specifically, how keeping as much VFX and audio temp work as possible inside FCPX during production helped allow Glenn Ficarra and John Requa to open up new options and saved weeks of production time in the making of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, the new wartime comedy starring Tina Fey.

Editorial, Feature
Tim Wilson

Apple Final Cut Pro X

Hawaiki Keyer 2.0: A Tutorial Introduction

After 25 years as an editor, compositor, and VFX artist, frequent Creative COW poster and tutorial author Simon Ubsdell knows what he needs from a keyer -- and knew he wasn't getting good enough results from FCPX or Motion. Discussions in COW forums led him to create the highly regarded Hawaiki Keyer. Enthusiasm expressed by COW members for its latest release led us to ask Simon for a tour. If you're keying on a Mac, you're going to want to check this out.

Tutorial
Simon Ubsdell

FCPX Magnetic Timeline: Apple's New Paradigm REVISITED

NLE interface design pioneer and longtime editor David Lawrence first wrote about the editing approach of FCPX, including its highly controversial Magnetic Timeline, soon after FCPX's release in the spring of 2011. Time has passed, the editing landscape has changed, and 4 years later, David takes another well-reasoned, hype-free look at the heart of Apple's new paradigm.

Editorial, Feature
David Lawrence

FCPX On Air. Coming Soon

Former skeptic John Davidson was right there with everyone else when FCPX was released who deemed it a complete disappointment for broadcast pros. Many updates and much experimentation later, he's now a believer: he has FCPX not only running on shared storage for broadcast work, but for John, it does so even better than FCP 7 ever did. Here he introduces a 5-part series, taking you step-by-step from project set-up to delivery, ready to help other broadcast pros get moving with FCPX.

Editorial, Feature
John Davidson

Workflow Update: iMac, Adobe & the X Factor

With five edit suites currently running at Biscardi Creative Media, and four more on standby, Walter Biscardi and crew need the best possible performance our of their workflow and machines. Here, Walter describes the power (yes, power) of the iMac, the workhorse Adobe Premiere Pro, and some never say never insight on FCP X.

Editorial, Feature
Walter Biscardi

Smoke: A Journey and a Look Ahead

An FCP user and enthusiast since version 1.0, David Jahns looks at Autodesk Smoke for Mac, and discusses color-grading, tracking, editing, compositing and overall performance.

Editorial
David Jahns

High Noon in the Editors' Corral

A group of editors gathered at a Hollywood Post Alliance Sales Resource Group luncheon to debate the merits of today's nonlinear editing systems. In the process, they argued less over tools and complained more about an ever-changing workflow. And, yes, there are a few fans of FCPX.

Feature
Debra Kaufman

For your Bovine Mastication and Consideration: FCPX Can Work

After coming across and commenting on a post in the forums concerning FCPX and its current popularity and possibility for serious editing use, Charlie Austin was contacted by Tim Wilson to expand his original thoughts for Bovine consumption. Care to chew the cud with us?

Editorial
Charlie Austin

A Cautionary Tale for the FCP Switcher

Herein lies the cautionary tale of a long-time user of Final Cut Pro, penned for those who would consider switching NLEs. Are there tools that will positively replace FCP 7? Are there NLEs that are even more powerful than our now evanescent favorite?

Editorial
Walter Biscardi

Colorgrading Round-Up

Dennis Kutchera went to Vegas with a goal - to be tantalized by the new colour-grading options - in essence, to cheat on his beloved Avid. What happens in Vegas, this time, comes back with some great stories.

Feature
Dennis Kutchera