Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Googling Final Cut Pro 7

So I'm looking up something about FCP7 in Google and Google decides to try and help me. Just thought I'd mention this not just because it's hilarious but because it's pretty sad.

Disk Drill

Disk Drill (FREE while it's in beta) is a data recovery app for recovering all...heck I'll let them explain it:

"Disk Drill, Mac Data Recovery Software, recovers data from HFS/HFS+, FAT, NTFS & other file systems right from your Mac. It helps you undelete Mac OS files using its 2 powerful Mac recovery methods: quick or deep scanning. Disk Drill data recovery locates and recovers deleted files from any mountable media like your main drive, external hard disk, memory cards, etc. Disk Drill can recover photos, music, documents, applications and many other known formats."


It's free for now and pretty shiny spiffy and all.


It's really nice when a client deletes files that don't really look important mainly because they have utterly no idea what they are (.xmp wha?) and what you don't know can't hurt you right?. However, it does tack on billable hours for editors so really, if you think about it Disk Drill has the potential to pay for itself with only a few clueless clients.


It's like a stomach pump for lost files.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Ripping Sections of DVDs with Free Stuff

I've been working on a monster of a documentary and some of the footage is showing up on DVDs despite what I've been telling sources and clients. I am typing this in english right?

So here's my (free) workflow for ripping portions of source DVDs to extract the bits of footage that's needed for this project.

You'll need:

MPEG Streamclip
Perian

Optional:
Fairmount

I'm avoiding using Cinematize Pro because, frankly, it's old. I think the last update was something like two years ago. Ok, here we go...

0) Optionally, use Fairmount to copy the DVD's VIDEO_TS to your hard drive. (I'll let you figure this one out on your own but it's of Very Low Complexity)
1) Open up the VIDEO_TS folder and start looking at the .VOB files until you find the one with the clip you need. With Perian, you can open them up in Quicktime Player 7 (which I like to call Quicktime That Doesn't Suck).
2. Make notes of which .VOB files you need and then open them up with MPEG Streamclip. Why not open then with MPEG Streamclip right away? It's your choice but I feel that Quicktime is faster for previewing.

Oh, Quicktime will likely be unable to play the audio since they're MUXed files so if audio is important head straight to MPEG Streamclip here. I should have told you that earlier.

Now, when you open a .VOB file with MPEG Streamclip you may (probably will) see this:

Since the purpose of this post is to just get sections of .VOB files and not the entire file hit "Open 1 file".

3) Now, set In and Out points in MPEG Streamclip using the I and O keys. How about that?
4) Under File in MPEG Streamclip select "Export to Quicktime..." and choose your poison. I like ProRes but select whatever you want. Hit "Make Movie" and grab a sip of coffee.
5) There is no step 5. Hah!