We have to give a big thank you to Larry Jordan for spotting this one. Make sure you have Hoovered the carpet in the office this morning as that's where your jaws will be after watching and more importantly listening to the demos.
We love to be amazed by technology and that's exactly what happened this today when we found out about a couple of Audio Unit plugins from Zynaptiq.
Final Cut Pro X has built in audio enhancements that can be toggled on to fix problematic audio automatically. Issues such as hum or removing excessive level changes can be sorted out quickly.
But what if the Director brings into the edit suite an important interview that was accidentally recorded on the camera mic, or have you got a piece to camera that was recorded in a very noisy environment? Without having to use the canoe position metaphor, there wasn't really anything you could do about it apart from reshooting.
So what exactly is Unveil? It's an audio plugin for DAWs, but as it supports 64 bit Audio Units, it will also work (complete with custom GUI) in FCPX. Audio Units (AU) are an Apple OSX system level plugin architecture powered by Core Audio.
'UNVEIL is a real-time plug-in that allows attenuating or boosting reverb components within a mixed signal of any channel count, including mono. It utilizes state-of-the-art artificial intelligence technology to recognize reverb and other perceptively insignificant components and then uses this knowledge to de-mix/separate those components from the signal. If that sounds like science fiction to you...well, "science" is correct. "Rocket science", to be precise.'
Enough of the science, let's get on to seeing the plugin in action. We recommend that you use high quality audio monitoring to watch these videos, headphones might be even better.
We will start with the Zynaptiq demo video, it's not running in FCPX but it does show the plugin removing reverb and ambient noise best.
Next up is Larry using the plugin within FCPX, spin through to about 1:33 to get to the demo.
Both videos are pretty amazing. Unfortunately so is the price! A licence of Unveil from Zynaptiq will set you back $399, which is a whole $100 more than FCPX itself! Then again the pain and cost of having to go and record a CEO of a company another time is a lot higher. Good job Zynaptiq offer a 20 minute timebombed free trial so you can try it out on your problematic audio first.
The other product Zynaptic offer at the moment is called Pitchmap. We have no idea if it would be of any benefit within FCPX as it is targeted at musicians and remixers.
The video is so cool we though we would post it up anyway!
I am the Editor-in-Chief of FCP.co and have run the website since its inception ten years ago.
I have also worked as a broadcast and corporate editor for over 30 years, starting on one inch tape, working through many formats, right up to today's NLEs.
Under the name Idustrial Revolution, I have written and sold plugins for Final Cut Pro for 13 years.
I was made a Freeman of Lichfield through The Worshipful Company of Smiths (established 1601). Though I haven't yet tried to herd a flock of sheep through the city centre!
Current Editing
2020 has been busy, the beginning of the year was finishing off a new property series (cut on FCP) for Channel 4 called The Great House Giveaway. I also designed and built the majority of the graphics as Motion templates. It has been a great success and the shows grabbed more viewers in the 4pm weekday slot than any previous strand. It has been recommissioned by C4 for 60 episodes, including prime-time versions and five themed programmes. The shows have also been nominated for a 2021 BAFTA.
Although both were postponed to later in the year, I worked again on ITV's coverage of the Tour de France and La Vuelta. 2020 was my 25th year of editing the TdF and my 20th year as lead editor. The Tour was the first broadcast show to adopt FCPX working for multiple editors on shared storage.
BBC's Snooker has played a big part in my life, I've been editing tournament coverage since 1997. I'm proud to be part of a very creative team that has pioneered many new ideas and workflows that are now industry standard in sports' production. This is currently an Adobe Premiere edit.
Covid cancelled some of the regular corporate events that I edit such as trade shows & events. I was lucky however to edit, from home, on projects for Amazon Kindle, Amazon Black Friday, Mastercard and very proud to have helped local charitable trust Kendall & Wall secure lottery funding.
As for software, my weapon of choice is Final Cut Pro and Motion, but I also have a good knowledge and broadcast credits with Adobe Premiere Pro, MOGRT design and Photoshop.
Plugin Design & Development
I'm the creative force behind Idustrial Revolution, one of the oldest Final Cut Pro plugin developers. It hosts a range of commercial and free plugins on the site. One free plugin was downloaded over a thousand times within 24 hours of release.
I also take on custom work, whether it is adapting an existing plugin for a special use or designing new plugins for clients from scratch. Having a good knowledge of editing allows me to build-in flexibility and more importantly, usability.
FCP.co
Now in its 10th year and 4th redesign, running FCP.co has given me knowledge on how to run a large CMS- you are currently reading my bio from the database! Although it sounds corny, I am pretty well up on social media trends & techniques, especially in the video sector. The recent Covid restrictions has enabled live FCP.co shows online. This involves managing a Zoom Webinar through Restream.io to YouTube and Facebook.
The Future
I'm always open to new ideas and opportunities, so please get in touch at editor (at) fcp.co. I've judged film competitions, presented workflow techniques to international audiences and come up with ideas for TV shows and software programs!
