'Tis nearly the holiday season, so time to wrap up a few loose ends and a couple of items we missed over the last week. Some updates, a new product and a lot of reading to be done over the festive break!
Simon Says
We start with a quick message from Mike Matzdorff that the transcription service Simon Says now works on sync and multicam clips. Nearly every interview we do these days is with multiple cameras, so this will be very useful. Don't forget that Simon Says has a workflow extension available.
Ripple Training
On the subject of workflow extensions, we missed the announcement of the Ripple Training workflow extension for FCPX. To make up for it, we asked Steve Martin a few questions:
Why did you release a Workflow Extension?
We released our first tutorial as an extension because we liked the idea of folks learning Final Cut from within Final Cut
How it can be used? - e.g. side by side you might have seen the recent tutorial about controlling your extensions with workspaces.
I really liked the tip for creating a layout where our UI literally becomes part of the FCP X UI. The utility is in the name itself - the window extends your workflow.
We redesigned our app window so that it could be resized and placed anywhere on the screen that's convenient for following along with the lesson.
What are your future plans for workflow extensions?
As a tutorial company, we have plans to bring more content into the extension. Notice I said "content" and not just tutorials.
The workflow extension SDK, has opened up our thinking to how we might create an even better learning experience for our customers in the future.
You can find Ripple's workflow extension on the Mac App Store.
Frame.io Workflow Guide
If you haven't checked it out already, take a look at Frame.io's comprehensive Workflow Guide. Featuring contributors such as Ryan Connolly and Denver Riddle, the guide is at over 100,000 words at the moment and will get updated regularly.
Although the guide is NLE agnostic, there is huge amount of FCPX info included, especially in the extended sections.
New FCPX Plugin Developer Red Egg Productions
Another new (or nearly new as we mentioned them back in 2013) plugin developer and another indicator of the growing FCPX user base.
eggBW is a new plugin from Red Egg that enables users to achieve black and white effects in FCPX and Motion.
Using eggBW, you can quickly and easily make much more interesting black and white video than simple desaturation. eggBW goes beyond simply separating the RGB channels for mixing and instead analyzes each pixel to weigh its value toward Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, Magenta, and Neutral colors, then uses these weights combined with your input to create the resulting black and white image.
The plugin is available for $29.99 on the Mac App Store now.
FCP.co Forum
Users may have had trouble creating new accounts on the Forum over the last few months. There was a problem with the CAPTCHA anti-spam device not showing up properly. We have made some fixes, but we are not too sure if it is 100% fixed, so please bear with us.
We also have a problem with the secondary data changing such as trying to swap out a user photo. This is because we had to shut down an area of the website that was being targeted by hackers. We hope to sort this out soon as well.
Happy Holidays
This might be our last post before the break, if it is then we wish all readers a very Happy Christmas and New Year. See you in 2019 with hopefully some exciting news.
