News of our next two meetings. Jan & Feb 07

It's a new year and the start of many, many more editors using Final Cut Studio in our region. This e-mail is going to our regular members and a few others I've had the pleasure of meeting during '06 in the training room. For their information, weFCPug (West of England Final CUt Pro User Group) is a monthly gathering of editors and film makers to share techniques and tips, learn about who's doing what and to have demos from leaders in their field. Last year saw evenings on Panasonic's new HVX200 camera and high definition in general plus many warm conversations on the merits of whatever Apple throw at us next. This year we promise some real treats. But first, news of the January meeting:

Monday 15th January at BBC Whiteladies Road, Bristol. (Please use the side entrance.) Start time 6.30pm for 7.00pm start. Usual wrap time about 9.00.

To include:

Richard on Steve Jobs keynote speech at Macworld, Las Vegas.

Phil on cyTV, IPTV and ad-hoc networking - fingers crossed for a live demo across the room!

and a special presentation from Pete Lawrence of the BBC talking about their switchover to using Final Cut Studio.


Sneak Preview of one month later:

Thursday 15th February (location as above) - NOTE THE DAY

To include:

Richard on new (and old) toys at Video Forum
Phil on his latest project, the weFCPug podcast - which might have even launched by then

and special guests, in person:

Oscar Stringer demonstrating I Can Animate

Larry Jordan (yes, THE Larry Jordan!) on his forthcoming seminars in Bristol - more information on this at the January meet

Please e-mail Richard to let us know you are coming to either meeting and, for February, I'm afraid pre-notification is a must. We expect to be very busy that night!

Since our inception 18 months ago we have been lucky enough to have had the use of Granada TV's facilities. Now that we have to move on we'd just like to extend a final thank you to Dave Blackham and his staff for accommodating us over all those months. Thanks Dave.

See you Monday 15th Jan,
Richard

Sign of the times?

As those who attended the last meeting will know, this unsolicited gift appeared on my doorstep. It's a sure sign of superior technology - Avid now have pens that LIGHT UP! All the better to write edit lists (or fault reports) in the dark.

We can but wait for the Apple retaliation - which may be coming in the MacWorld announcements later this month, of course. Pens which speak? Pens which edit on their own?

A timely reminder to all to -em- defer buying any new stuff until after the announcements, should there be any. Or then again, wait until NAB in Spring, or MacWorld next January....

What you DO have to wait for is the next wefcpug meeting. All being well, it'll be on Monday 15th, venue yet to be confirmed. The February meeting will also be around the middle of the month, for reasons to be announced shortly :-)

In the meantime, happy new 2007
Phil

What happened in November - and coming up..

November’s meeting was a night at the movies:

The Player

Emmy award winning filmmaker - and wefcpug member - David Herman gave us a preview of ‘Fairplay’, the documentary he’s making which explores the relationship between a playwright and her elder brother who has Down Syndrome. It’s based on the highly acclaimed play ‘The Choice’ that Claire Luckham wrote about a couple who decide to abort a child with Down Syndrome.

Short Cuts

Richard gave us a run-down of what’s new in the latest ‘point’ update to FCP. Running against the usual form, Apple have incorporated several all-new features and improvements, rather than just fixing bugs. So we gasped at the new all-singing all-dancing, all-TV lines scopes and waveform monitors, and played to our hearts’ contents with the newly-incorporated plug-in ‘Motion’ effects, all there in the FCP interface, waiting to enhance your footage.

Pret a Porter

So what will come 'off the shelf' with the next OS X? Phil polished the crystal ball and divined the future from the runes on Apple’s ‘Leopard’ preview pages and their latest notes to developers. A proper write-up may appear here one day, possibly even before Leopard itself, but Phil’s tips on what he liked were:

1. Time Machine - the first backup/restore application that might actually be used regularly. Brilliant intuitive interface, check out this link
2. Core Animation and resolution independent window resources - pointing the way to an even cleaner, classier interface to apps like FCP
3. Improvements in iChat (integration into the OS) and QT (including alpha channels in QT movies using H264 coding).

M.A.S.H.
(Mondays are soon here)

December's meeting is Monday of next week, meaning December 4th,usual time of 7pm. It’s probably our last meeting at Granada Bristol, so come along to see out the old year there. Main topic will be audio - we’ll be demoing a cost-effective control surface for audio mixing which works (with a bit of pushing) with FCP, and in tribute to the late great Robert Altman’s overlapping dialogue style I suggest we all talk at once in the ‘Stump the Guru’ section. So no change there then. See you on Monday, Phil

And yes some of the titles were rather forced...