It’s often the little things that improve your editing workflow. Here are a few quick items that can expand your editing arsenal.
Hawaiki Super Dissolve
The classical approach to editing transitions suggests that all you need is a cut and a dissolve. Given how often most editors use a dissolve transition, it’s amazing that few NLE developers spend any time creating more than a basic video dissolve, fade or dip. After all, even the original Media Composer came with both a video and a film-style dissolve. Audio mixers are used to several different types of crossfades.
Since this is such a neglected area, the development team behind the Hawaiki plug-ins decided to create Super Dissolve – a dissolve transition plug-in for Final Cut Pro X with many more options. This installs through the FxFactory application. It shows up in the FCPX transitions palette as a dissolve effect, plus a set of presets for fades, dips and custom curves. A dissolve is nothing more than a blend between two images, so Super Dissolve exposes the same types of under-the-hood controls as After Effects and Photoshop artists are used to with compositing modes.
Drop the Super Dissolve in as a transition and you have control over blending modes, layer order, easing controls with timing, and the blurring of the outgoing and/or incoming image. Since you have control over the outgoing and incoming clips separately, different values can be applied to either side, thus enabling an asymmetrical effect. For example, a quick fade with a blur off the outgoing clip, while bringing the incoming side up more slowly. As with the default FCPX dissolve, there’s also an audio crossfade adjustment, since FCPX transitions can effect both audio and video when these elements are combined. If you really like the ability to finesse your transitions, then Super Dissolve hits the spot.
XEffects Audio Fades
Free is good, so check out Idustrial Revolution’s free effects. Although they are primarily a video effects developer for Motion and Final Cut Pro X, they recently added a set of audio fade presets for FCPX. Download and install the free pack and you’ll find the XEffects Fades group in the audio plug-ins section of your effects palette.
XEffects Fades includes a set of preset fade handles, which are applied to the audio on your timeline clips. Drag-and-drop the preset with the fade length closest to what you want and it automatically adjusts the fade handle length at both ends of that audio clip. If you want to tweak the length, apply the effect first and then adjust the length puck on the clip as needed. Existing lengths will be overwritten when you drop the effect onto the clip, so make sure you make these adjustments last.
AudioDenoise and EchoRemover
CrumplePop is another developer known for its video effects; but they, too have decided to add audio effects to their repertoire. AudioDenoise and EchoRemover are two Final Cut Pro X plug-ins sold through the FxFactory application. These two effects are easy-to-use Apple Audio Units filters designed to improve poorly recorded location audio. As with Apple’s own built-in controls, each filter includes a few sliders to adjust strength and how the effect is applied. When applying any audio “clean up” filter, a little goes a long way. If you use it to its extreme range, the result sounds like you are underwater. Nevertheless, these two filters do a very nice job with poor audio, without presenting the cost and complexity of other well-known audio products.
Alex4D Animated Transitions
For a little bit of spice in your Final Cut Pro X timelines, it’s worth checking out the Alex4D Animated Transitions from FxFactory. Alex Gollner has been a prolific developer of free Final Cut Pro plug-ins, but this is his first commercial effort. Animated Transitions are a set of 120 customizable transition effects to slide, grow, split and peel incoming or outgoing clips and lower third titles. Traditionally you’d have to build these effects yourself using DVE moves. But by dropping one of these effects onto a cut point between two clips, you quickly apply a dynamic effect with all the work already done. Simply pick the transition you like, tweak the parameters and it’s done.
Post Notes
One of the best features of Adobe applications is Extensions. This is a development “hook” within Premiere Pro or After Effects that allows developers to create task-oriented panels, tools and controls that effectively “bolt” right into the Adobe interface. One example for After Effects would be TypeMonkey (and the other “Monkeys”), which are kinetic effect macros. For Premiere there’s PDFviewer, which enables you to view your script (or any other document) in PDF format right inside the Premiere user interface.
A new extension for Premiere Pro CC is Post Notes. Once installed, it’s an interface panel within Premiere Pro that functions as a combined notepad and to-do list. These are tied to a specific sequence, so you can have a set of notes and to-dos for each sequence in your project. When a to-do item is completed, check it off to indicate that it’s been addressed. This tool is so straightforward and simple, you’ll wonder why every editing software doesn’t already have something like this built-in.
Hedge for Mac
With digital media as a way of life for most editors, we have to deal with more and more camera media. Quickly copying camera cards is a necessary evil and making sure you do this without corruption is essential. The Mac Finder really is NOT the tool you should be using, yet everyone does it. There are a number of products on the market that copy to multiple locations with checksum verification. These are popular with DITs and “data wranglers” and include Pomfort Silverstack, Red Giant Offload, and even Adobe Prelude.
A newcomer is Hedge for Mac. This is a simple, single-purpose utility designed to quickly copy files and verify the copies. There’s a free and a paid version. If you just want to copy to one or two destinations at a time, the free version will do. If you need even more destinations as a simultaneous copy, then go for the paid version. Hedge will also launch your custom AppleScripts to sort, transcode, rename or perform other functions. Transfers are fast in the testing I’ve done, so this is a must-have tool for any editors.
©2016 Oliver Peters
digitalfilms 