Saturday, May 28, 2011

Loader organizing software

Loader from Digital Heaven…


"…works alongside Final Cut Pro (launching and quitting automatically) and appears as a small tab on the left side of the screen. When tracks from iTunes or files/folders from the Finder are dragged onto the tab, it slides out to reveal a list of projects currently open in Final Cut Pro. After dropping the items onto the desired project, Loader copies them in the background to the assigned media folder linked to that project. In addition, those audio file formats that don't play nicely in Final Cut Pro (.caf, .m4a and mp3) are automatically converted to an AIFF file before import. When the copy is complete then the copied files are sent to a new bin in Final Cut Pro. 

Loader also offers the ability to sort copied media into subfolders according to the file extension. By default, subfolders are automatically created for audio, graphics and movie file types and settings can be changed at any time to suit specific requirements."


also

"Some types of audio formats don't play very well with Final Cut Pro so if you drop an mp3, AAC or Core Audio Format (.caf) file onto Loader then it will automatically convert it to an AIF file."





It's $79.00 but if you find yourself in FCP and doing lots media ingesting and organizing this could be a fairly handy timesaver. I haven't tried it yet and it seems a tad pricey and word on the street is that it copies all your media which could be an issue if you have large assets and limited space but it could eliminate some hassles which is always a good thing.

Check it out here.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Making 1920 x 1080 smaller and keeping the aspect ratio

Just a quick note, when you want to make 1920 x 1080 smaller but keep the same aspect ratio here are the most common sizes:

1080/1920 = 0.5625

For 1920 they're:

1920 x 1080
1440 x 810
  960 x 540 (this is half-size)
  480 x 270
  240 x 135

720/1280 = 0.5625

For 720 they're:

1280 x 720
  960 x 540
  640 x 360 (this is half-size)
  320 x 180
  160 x 90

424/640 = 0.6625

For 640 they're:

640 x 424
480 x 318
320 x 212 (this is half-size)
160 x 106
  80 x 53

If you like math I posted something about how to calculate your own aspect ratio sizes years ago here.