Play Composition in After Effects

This video tutorial and article is on the different options to play (preview or playback) your composition in Adobe After Effects.

Over the Editor’s Shoulder: Part II

OverTheEditorsShoulderPartII

Hey! Last week I started documenting my journey through a new freelance video project I’m working on. You can find Part I here. This is Part II of Over the Editor’s Shoulder and it will chronicle my progress, struggles, successes and more over the past week for this project.

Read more

Over the Editor’s Shoulder Part I

OverTheEditorsShoulderPartI

Hey there! I started a new freelance video editing project this week. I feel like it’d be a fun exercise to document my journey through it. You’ll get to see my workflow for a freelance video editing project from beginning to end. Hopefully you can pickup some useful tips based on things I do. By doing this we will get to see my workflow and by stepping back and looking at it we can see where I excelled and where I could have done better. And most importantly it will keep me accountable to stay on track with it.

Want to join me on this journey?

Read more

My Course is Live!

MyCourseIsLive

Hey guys! First off, I know I’m late on this week’s post. My bad…it’s been a hectic week. Long story short I had to make an unexpected mad dash to New York City on Monday and got there just in time for a shoot. Then I got to make a fool out of myself on national TV.

Me at the Yankees game on Monday giving a heart symbol to my wife watching from Virginia.
Me at the Yankees game on Monday giving a heart symbol to my wife watching from Virginia.

On the train ride back on Tuesday I was going in a complete different direction with this week’s post. I simply ran out of minutes Tuesday and Wednesday to finish it but it worked out in the end. I found out this morning that my Tuts+ course Introduction to Video Editing in Avid Media Composer went live!

In this post I’ll tell you about my course and how to watch it (and hundreds of other courses) for free.

Read more

One-On-One Video Editing Coaching

AnnouncingPremiumOneOnOneCoaching

I want to make you a better video editor. That’s what I’ve been doing through my site, YouTube channel and other avenues for the past year. Pretty much this entire time I’ve been helping a faceless audience. I’ve been guessing at what you want to learn and hoping I’m using something relatable to be able to teach you. I know it’s working for a lot of you (I love the thank you emails I get!). However a lot of the time I still don’t know what you are struggling with. You, the one reading my words right now, I want to help you. That’s why I want to be your coach.

Recently I’ve had a huge problem. I have had several requests come in for complex custom tutorials that can’t be reused for everyone. I want to help these individuals out but I have such limited time after my 9-5, creating content for this site, walking Peyton, another new secret project I’m announcing soon (!!!) and trying to have something close to a social life. I have two options. I can:

  1. Spend several hours creating these custom tutorials, which results in lost time either with my family or creating content for this site or
  2. I can keep my family time and EVF content creation time but not be able to help these individuals in the way that they want/need help since email and screen shots aren’t enough sometimes.

Neither option works for me.

I cannot justify helping one individual person at the expense of not being able to create content for this site (and thus helping many). It isn’t fair to everyone else…that means you! My family time will always come first and with my limited free time I need some grounds for cutting out on one of them. That justification comes in the form of private, one-on-one premium coaching.

Read more

When You Have Enough Tools and It’s Time to Start Building

WhenYouHaveEnoughToolsAndItsTimeToStartBuilding

Me, and a lot of other editors, like to say that knowing an NLE is just another tool in your tool belt. I like to take that analogy and go a step further. Every effect you learn to apply, software trick you implement, skill you acquire, connection you make, value you create for others and anything else you can think of that works towards improving yourself is a tool. Your tool belt consists of all of these. Each tool preforms a certain action whenever you are working on a project.

With your fully loaded tool belt you can build all sorts of things. The majority of time we tackle two types of projects. The first project is something simple, let’s say a chair if we can turn my analogy into something physical. We know there are four legs, a seat and a back to it. We have at least a rough blueprint we can follow or can easily find someone (or a YouTube video) to guide us. The other type of project is to build more tools! We build ourselves another screwdriver or a hammer or drill bit. These two types of projects pay our bills (barely) and (we hope) make our bosses happy. Are you happy though? If you are anything like me then you might not always be satisfied with the things you are building and their outcomes. Do they have enough reach? Do they improve my life or someone else’s life substantially?

Sure, we’re content after we sell off our chair or put away our screwdriver. We sold enough to pay off the mortgage this month or make ourselves more valuable candidates for a future job by having more tools. What we built was average. Deep down that’s not what we want. That’s not why we do what we do. We want incredible. As I lay here at 11:00PM drafting this on my phone in bed with my wife and dog already asleep long ago I’m reminded about how much incredible I want in my life and how little I am doing about it. For now…

Read more

NLE Marker Workflow

UsingLocatorsForRevisions

This article is on how to establish an NLE marker workflow. It describes how to use markers, sometimes referred to as locators, in your video editing processes. An NLE marker workflow can be used in Avid Media Composer, Premiere Pro, After Effects, or any editing software that uses markers.

Markers play a crucial role in post production workflows. I use them for a variety of reasons but mostly for revisions. This article covers what markers are, how to use them in a revision workflow, and some tricks when using them.

Read more