This seminar will get you thinking like a colourist and is designed to give you the insight and tools you need as a film-maker or producer to capture the right look for your film, documentary, short, commercial or on-line video. During the seminar, Simon analyses images and gets to the heart of what makes a successful grade, covering story exposition using visual language and how grading can change the mood and atmosphere of a film.

These seminars will run in the UK and across the EU with the Dublin date scheduled for Saturday 28th January. The event will take place in Filmbase, Temple Bar.

You can find out more about this latest version on Avid.com such as the new features, system requirements, upgrade options as well as the free 30-day trial.

As Avid had a number of beta testers using MC6 these last few weeks and months, there have been a few great articles online about this new version. Michael Kammes of Key Code Media has a list of all the top features on his blog. Shane Ross also has an excellent article over at his blog Little Frog in High Def which includes plenty of screenshots while Chris Marino has a short video over at Wide Open Camera. Walter Biscardi who has been very vocal about his switch from FCP7 has also been testing MC6 at his post facility and has a short article at Creative Cow.

Finally, Avid have just added videos to help FCP users get started with Media Composer 6 which is scheduled for release next week.

This time round, we spent most of his time on stage talking about his latest project, HBO’s Hemingway & Gellhorn starring Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman. The buzz for this event was even greater then usual as this was also the 2-time Oscar winner’s first public appearance since the release of FCPX.

Chris Portal was the first to post details on the presentation and is still the most comprehensive so read it here for all the details, however I’ve included Chris’ summary of what Murch had to say about FCPX.

Walter was in Cupertino when Final Cut Pro X was first dangled in front of a few editors. It was a beta version, and Apple highlighted things like 64 bit support. After that initial exposure to FCPX, he dove into making a film, and it wasn’t until June when FCPX was published that he revisited it. He quickly looked at it, and said he couldn’t use it, wondering where the “Pro” had gone. It didn’t have XML support which he depended on, the ability to share projects on a raid with people, etc. He was confused and wondered what was happening.

He wrote Apple a letter asking what was behind everything that was happening, especially since they had end-of-lifed the current version, as well as a list of things he needed. Like a report card children often get, without XML, Walter explained to Apple that FCPX “did not play well with others”. The lack of tracks was another killer for him. While he doesn’t really need to work with 50 tracks, he does need to leverage the ability to selectively raise or lower the levels very specifically.

Walter sees there having been a shift at Apple over the last 10 years. They have benefited from the professional market, and we all have made a lot of noise about Apple, but starting with the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, Apple has broadened out into a mass-market creature, wanting to democratize capabilities even further.

While Walter is encouraged by the updated FCPX version last month, he hasn’t used it on any real work yet, so he is cautiously optimistic (and still traumatized he says). “Do they love us? No…I know they like us….but they keep saying they love us??”

Also worth a read is the FCP.co post on what Murch had to say, if only for the reason that it suggests that one of the all time great editors doesn’t know what he’s talking about and that they expected more of him! **Update** There is now a video of Murch at the Supermeet and all the comments are fun to read too.

“Project X₂7 (Project 10 to 7) – an import translator for Final Cut Pro 7 – translates the brand new Final Cut Pro X Project XML (fcpxml) and converts it to Sequence XML for import into Final Cut Pro 7 or other applications.”

While FCPX’s ability to “play with others” was greatly improved with the first update to version 10.0.1, certain applications have still been out of reach for FCPX editors. This new application from Philip Hodgetts (Assisted Editing) attempts to solve this problem by allowing FCPX sequences be converted to an XML that Final Cut Pro 7 can read. From there, you can move to Color, Soundtrack Pro, Adobe’s Premiere Pro and After Effects.

You can find out more on Philip’s Assisted Editing website.

I haven’t purchased and tried this myself so please feel free to post your comments here if you have used Project X₂7.

We hope to have Avid as a guest at a future meeting once this new release is available.

A full list of the leaked details can be found at FreshDV.

Avid are still running a crossgrade promotion for Final Cut Pro 7 users. While the price increased on October 1st, it’s still a great saving and worth checking out.

*UPDATE* On Thursday 3rd November, Avid announced Media Composer 6 which is available from 15th November 2011. Check out Avid.com for more details.

This is the kind of info we can expect from his upcoming book ‘The Cool Stuff in Premiere Pro’ to be released in 2012.

This particular post is about Automatic Ducks recent partnership with Adobe. For those of you who don’t know Automatic Duck and co-founder, Wes Plate, they make translation plugins for getting projects from one application to another. The most popular of these has been for getting FCP7 sequences into After Effects. The open letter announcing this new partnership with Adobe is still the home page atAutomaticDuck.com so read that first before Scott’s Q&A session with Wes Plate. As I am a recent switcher from FCP7 to Premiere Pro, this is very exciting news to me.

I found this on Art of the Guillotine (one of the best sites out there dedicated to post-production) and comes from Jason Valentine.

Instead of listing everything here, just go to the Apple FCPX update page for more details but the big features are the inclusion of Roles (assigning various roles to clips on the Timeline allows for the export of separate files and different versions of projects – with titles, without music etc.) and the ability to export out a FCPXML file allowing projects to be moved to third-party applications like DaVinci Resolve for grading.

Larry Jordan (one of the few to get a preview of  the pre-release FCPX back in February) has a good article about these updates on his blog.

Haven’t tried FCPX yet? There’s a 30-day trial so give it a go and feel free to come back here and leave some feedback.