by Kevin P McAuliffe

Music is a big part of any production, and picking or having someone compose the right piece of music for you can be essential in getting across a specific mood in your show or film. To hire a composer, in many cases, can cost you a lot of money, and taking music from stock libraries has you run the risk of hearing the same piece of music in someone else's production.

So what do you do? Well, why not create your own music? These days there are many companies...

When setting up your editing suite most thought usually goes into computer hardware and software purchases, here are five often overlooked things that are worth considering when setting up a suite.

1. Don't Skimp On A Cheap Chair.

Editing is an unhealthy business and does not provide any daily requirements of exercise or nutrition of any kind. Basically buy a good adjustable office chair with lower back support. Adjust your chair so that your arms rest on the keyboard with a 90 degree...

One thing I try to do with the articles I write, is to give everyone a quick and easy way to speed up their workflow, no matter what the application is that they are using. 

For today's article, we're going to look at how to speed up your workflow in DVD Studio Pro, by having someone else (your client) create a list of Chapter Markers for you to simply import, instead of you having to create them yourself.  This process works much the same as importing...

I thought that for this article I would take a look at a great feature of After Effects that will help you in ways you might not even think of, and that is a Null Object.

Most people might not understand what a Null Object is because the definition of Null is "without value, effect, consequence, or significance", but as we, as graphic artists know sometimes nothing is really something.  Let's take a look at what I mean, and how you can use Null Objects to make your life easier...

My name is Kevin P McAuliffe, and I am currently a Senior Editor working in HD Post in Toronto, Canada. A little bit of background about me is that I started working in post over eleven years ago as an assistant editor on an Avid Media Composer, and I currently online in high definition on a Final Cut Pro, and most of the work I do is either episodic or concert work.

Some of my clients include Alliance...

So you have decided to go through with shooting a video directly for the internet...

Don't worry your not alone.

As many others in your position have found, publishing a video straight to the web can be fun and invigorating. Unfortunately some negative side effects can occur when your beloved video goes under the knife, is reduced in size and compressed. Side effects include, blurry vision, impaired audio quality and reduction in viewable size of your once healthy...

After Effects can seem like a daunting application for newcomers, and in some cases for intermediate and advanced users as well. I thought that I would take a look at five techniques that a lot of motion graphic designers overlook when using After Effects. These techniques will not only speed up your workflow, but give your animations a new look they never had before, and even correct a very common problem that a lot of editors/designers run into.

SPLIT TRACKS

This is a great,...

One typical e-mail that I get on a regular basis is from a reader that is at the eleventh hour of their project, and they have their back up against a wall, and they can't export their project because Final Cut Pro is giving them an error, and they ask me in a panic....WHAT DO I DO????? So, I thought I would look at two very simple, yet always effective things that I do when I'm running into a problem.

The first question I always ask someone when they have a problem is "what were you doing when the...

Welcome everyone to Reelclever.com's first edition of "Ask the Expert". My name is Kevin P McAuliffe, and I am currently a Senior Editor working in HD Post in Toronto, Canada.

A little bit of background about me is that I started working in post over eleven years ago as an assistant editor on an Avid Media Composer, and I currently online in high definition on a Final Cut Pro, and most of the work I do is either episodic or concert work. Some of my clients include Alliance Atlantis, Much Music...

I thought that for this article I would take a look at a program that a lot of editors shy away from, but if you understand how it works, you can get some really great results, and that program is Apple's Color.

Color, formally Final Touch, was added to Final Cut Studio 2 about a year ago, and it's main function is to handle all your primary and secondary color correction needs.  In future articles, we will look at how Color works, but for this article I want to look at the workflow that you will need...