Meeting began at 6:30PM with the introduction of FCP Gurus Ralph Fairweather from 2-pop.com and and Cinematographer Andrew Balis, both of whom urgently walked to the front of the room, stared into the eyes of the audience and dared them to ask questions on what, if any, FCP problems they were encountering. And wouldn't you know it, a lot of problems there were. Some of which I recount here using the indecipherable notes taken by Doug Lindeman. Dr Rawstock FCP instructor, Jim Foreman also joined Ralph and Andrew in answering questions.

Question: What causes dropped frames?
Answer: (Ralph) User error. Next question.

Question: I use a VX2000 for capture and I keep getting audio distortion problems once it's into FCPs timeline. What's up with that?
Answer: (Jim) Assuming your recorded sample rate is the same as your capture rate, your audio might be too hot. Lower your overall level in the time line 7 dbs. Using cameras as decks for playback and capture are not as forgiving as decks them selves. Seems to be something in the mechanism of the cameras.
Answer: (Andrew) Huh?

Question:How can I monitor my audio levels capturing via Firewire?
Answer: (Andrew) Get external VU meters.
Answer: (Ralph) Yeah. I was going to say that.

Question: I did these titles in FCP and then when I transferred the movie to VHS the titles which were in white broke up and looked really grey. How come?
Answer: (Andrew) You used non NTSC safe colors and thats what is happening. If you don't have Photoshop than set your saturation levels to no more than 85%. Otherwise do your titles in Photoshop and use their NTSC safe colors and import back into FCP.
Answer: (Ralph) Blacks and Whites are too intense for NTSC. You can use a "legalizer" but they are expensive. PS settings for white output should be no lower than 16 for black and no higher than 235 for white.

Question: I get these damned dropped frames during playback. Why? It's really got me bugged.
Answer: (Ralph) User error.
Answer: (Andrew) Well, it could be fragmented hard drive, not enough ram, incorrect settings, overlapping windows, corrupt files, lots of things.
Answer: (Ralph) User error

Meeting was called to order at 7:15 PM. Joseph O'Connor asked members to help him for an upcoming seminar he his doing at UCLA on behalf of the LA Digital Media Center. Those who want to show clips of their work cut on FCP should contact Joe ASAP. He also gave details about very low cost FCP training that the media center is doing at Pasadena City College. Write Joe for more information on this.
We also decided to have Decembers' meeting on the 13th and devote the entire night to Show and Tells and spiked egg nog. More details on this in a couple days.

Our first Presenter of the night was Jim Foreman, chief technologist (whatever that is) and head FCP instructor at Dr Rawstock. Jim took us all through the adventures of editing in the timeline and did so in record time. He covered the tool palette, the Viewer and Canvas Window, the 134 buttons in the windows and the 134 ways to mark an in and out point. Ok, so I exaggerate, but there are many ways to do this, and Jim showed us how. We got a demo with the help of Doug Lindeman on the difference between the various types of edits. Using three sheets of paper, we got a nice visual picture of just what is the difference between a slip, slide, roll, ripple, insert, replace, overwrite edit. Awkward terminology made simple via three sheets of paper.

Jim brought up the trim edit window and spent a few minutes on that. He covered some keyboard short cuts. L cuts, split edits, markers, and even nesting. (For me, Nesting will have to be a 45 minute demo. I still don't get it.) He even brought up the Yak, the coolest Easter egg in any app.
Not enough time but a real good overview of editing in FCP timeline and well, I learned a lot.

First show and tell of the night was from Jeff Reese who got us all laughing with a clip from his "mockumentary" The Final Moo, the story of the last days of a childrens television show and the dysfunctional Minnesota family that produces it. (All show and tells tonight were first time FCP projects in keeping with our "Salute to Newbies" night.)
Shot on High 8 film and edited in FCP and making extensive use of graphics, and VO, Jeff tells us he is planning on entering this movie into film festivals and we wish him big time luck. Go check out a clip on the Final Moo web site. Thanks Jeff and great beginning for ya.

Next up was our good friend Cawan Starks form Promax with a few very cool toys from Sony and Panasonic to show off. First was the Sony DSR-11 VTR which is a mini-DV, DVCam, NTSC and PAL format deck in one. Quite probably a DSR-20 killer, this deck is small, portable and does the dishes.

The AG-DV1000 from Panasonic is a real cool mini-dv deck that will flag 16:9, adjust audio levels, has s video in and out and VU meters. It also does the dishes.

But the one toy that had everyone drooling was the Sony DSR-50 mini DV, DVCam, (mini and full size) VTR that will read PAL, has 26 pin component I/O, XLR, audio adjust in, will start TimeCode, copy TimeCode, run on Batteries, wash your dishes, AND raise your children. This is the deck I want for Christmas. Please send check too...
Thanks Cawan for making us drool and Promax for giving us the opportunity to touch these things.

So we were about 40 minutes behind at this point when I brought up our crack treasurer and FCP guru Ned Soltz for a demonstration on FCPs Title Generator. So Ned got up and turned to the audience and said, "Don't use it. Get Boris Graffiti. Thank you."

This of course was not on the schedule so after negotiations Ned reluctantly, but with the enthusiasm of the pro that he is, gave us an excellent tour on doing titles in Photoshop and THEN bringing those titles into FCP. (Good compromise, I think) Ned says it's just a lot easier and you can make sure your titles are "safe and legal" using Photoshop safe colors. In FCP you have to guess. He gave us a demo on how to make titles transparent, told us to make sure we set our window to 720X534 and 72dpi, do our titles, and when we finish, change to 720X480 for import back to FCP. He told us of Ken Stones excellent article on doing Credit Rolls and Titles in PS which offer numerous advantages over the limited capabilities of FCP.
He then went into FCP and imported what he created in PS and gave us a few more tips and tricks but time was running short and I forced to cover Neds mouth with tape and beg him to stop so we could all take a well deserved break. And so we did. Thanks Ned for your wonderful enthusiasm and sorry about that PowerBook mouse.

First up after a 15 minute break was FCP pioneer, creator of the FCP PowerStart CD, Instructor for the DV Revolution Workshop, and President of DVCreators.net, Josh Mellicker. When does this guy sleep?
Josh is not only one of the countries most knowledgeable FCP experts, but he is also one of the most knowledgeable video camera experts. So instead of having him grace us with more FCP know-how we had him give us a how-to on using a DV camera to make your movie look a little less "video looking."
Josh started off giving us a brief tour of the cameras controls using a Canon GL1. With the camera pointed to the audience, and the resulting image projected on the screen, Josh played around with the aperture, shutter,and sharpness controls. Each control giving a distinct "look" to your video. Josh recommends you leave your shutter speed at 1/60 unless you are photographing fast moving objects. Play with the aperture but keep it wide open for shallow depth of field. Just move the camera back and zoom in. Works pretty well. The sharpness control will give you a cool look depending on what level you set it. Try it out. There are lots of possibilities here.
Josh then borrowed a member of the audience and had him sit in a chair and showed us a down and dirty and fast way of achieving nice lighting using an inexpensive Lowel To Go light kit. It's OK to have shadows, says Josh.
He showed us the look that a black pro mist filter will give you. He played with gels and the overall look, at least on the projector, was very UN video like. Real cool.
Josh gave us tips on making our own lighting kits using what you can get from Home Depot. He showed us a clip from a soon to be released video dvcreators.net is producing. We got a lot of info in a very short time and I can't imagine even the most seasoned pro not picking up something useful here. Really good stuff and I encourage you to go to dvcreators.net and hang around for more info. Josh will definitely be coming back many times to the lafcpug.

Our next show and tell was from Brian and Rose Wilson with their parody of "The Perfect Storm" called "The Really Bad Storm." Shot in one day, this very funny short with a well made score was edited on FCP and told the story of a group of men going off to get fish in really bad weather. The stories about shooting this movie are as funny as the movie. But then, aren't they all. The budget was said to be under $1,000,000. the movies composer was Mark Justin. Thanks Rose and Brian for a great time and very funny movie.

Actor/film maker Nick Jameson was up next. His very first project using FCP was his actors "demo reel" A one minute, MTV style fast cut compilation of several of his TV and movie appearances. With really cool use of titles generated in FCP, and a bit of the Knoll Lens Flare thrown in for good measure this was one damn fine first effort. It just goes to show you; Actors make the best directors. <g> Nick is off and running now doing other projects with FCP and hopefully he will show us some of what he's doing.

Director Duane Stinnett came on up and showed us clips from his short film, "The Curio Trunk." The story of an elderly couple who buy this trunk for a vacation only to discover the trunk has a secret. And a dark one at that. Photographed by Andrew Balis and shot on 35 mm film this comedy/horror/thriller left us wanting more. Big question of the night was, "What the hell is in the trunk?" Great work Duane and we can't wait till it comes out so we can find out.

World famous raffle was next and while I was getting things together, Ned Soltz begged to show a clip of what I thought were FCP titles, but was a clip of my appearance on NBCs "Titans" last week. Of course Ned had to change the sound track a bit to keep interest high, but luckily several empty coke cans were thrown at the screen by various members of the audience and we cut the clip short.

We want to thank Lowell Kay, Jim Foreman, Joseph O'Connor, Josh Mellicker, Lisa Brenneis, and Promax for the following donations to our raffle.

Raffle Winners:
3 TDK mini DV tapes - Chris Teed
3 TDK mini DV tapes - Anthony Scarpa
Visual Quickstart Guide - Barbara Simon
Promax T-shirt - Phil Gray
Dr Rawstock T-shirt - Tony Scarpa
Promax T-shirt - Roger
Visual Quickstart Guide - Val Kuklowsky
Dr Rawstock T-shirt - Dabling Harwood
Promax Dual Head Card, (DH-MAX) - Phil Nee
Power Start CD - Ned Soltz
Power Start CD - Fae Kuen
Free Dr Rawstock 3 day boot camp - Ben Dent
Free DV Revolution Workshop - Roger Phillips

Thanks to all of you for showing up and see you December 13th for our first annual Show and Tell/film festival/Christmas party.

Michael Horton
HeadCutter