I wanted to thank everybody that showed up Wednesday and special thanks to Alina Hushka as she was our only NAB attendee representative.  We covered a number of topics from plugins to utilities.  I copied down the web links to the products discussed and I’ve noted them below:

1) First was CRAM Compressor which is a set of 330 Compressor presets for FCP Compressor.  You can download the total list of presets here.

2) Next was a FCP plugin from Digital Anarchy called Beauty Box.  This is a great plug in for anyone who does a lot of head shot interviews or weddings where there are a fair amount of post cleanups are required on the talent.

3) There was an iPhone app that I believe quite a number of AZFCP members use called MovieSlate.  This is a slick little app for your iPhone that is a digital slate, clapper board, shot log, and shot notepad.

4) We talked a little about the new Canon XF300 and XF305 pro series video cameras.

5) The subject of conversion utilites came up which of which a common one that is used is MPEG Streamclip from Squared 5.

6) Conversion to the Windows side most always involves using Flip4Mac so we talked about that for a bit.

7) … as well as Perian which allows you to play FLV files within Quicktime players.

Alina also mentioned that for those interested in creating Blue-Ray authored DVD’s for distribution, the cost of generating the masters has come down by about a factor of 10.  To get everything you need it is still in the $500 to $1000 range but it is a lot cheaper than what it use to cost.

We then talked about FCP installations and in particular upgrading to Snow Leopard and 64bit vs 32bit booting.  The current version of FCP, as we all know, is still 32 bit but the new version of CS5 is 64bit ONLY on the Mac.  While the current version of FCP does not take advantage of 64bit memory space, it will work fine while the kernel is booted in 64bit mode.  If you want to boot into 64bit mode you need to hold down the 6 and 4 keys on your keyboard while you boot up your Mac.  This can be more than a PITA if you have to continually repeat this.  There is however, a way you can make a simple change to a configuration file so that you can always boot in 64bit mode.  If you want to do this, all you need do is make the following change to the following file:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

NOTE: BEFORE EDITING ANY SYSTEM FILE BE SURE TO MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF THE FILE SO YOU CAN RESTORE THIS FILE TO ITS ORIGINAL STATE IF REQUIRED

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Edit the file:

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist

Insert arch=x86_64 into the Kernel Flags field.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>Kernel</key>
        <string>mach_kernel</string>
        <key>Kernel Flags</key>
        <string>arch=x86_64</string>
</dict>
</plist>

You should use a standard text editor like Text Wrangler.

You can verify that you have booted into 64 bit mode by going to your apple menu and selecting “About This Mac” and then click on the “More Info” button.  You will be presented with the screen below.  Click on the Software tab and you can see that the kernel has 64bit mode enabled.

Indicator kernel is in 64 bit mode

That about wraps it up. Once again thanks to all that came. Next months meeting will be on Thursday May 20th at IFP. The topic will be 3rd party media such as audio, video and pictures for you to use in your work. Hope to see you all there!