Awesome Dog Trick

Julian and Dodger performing indoors.  Dodger is getting up in years, but can still kick it with the young dogs.  I would call the first trick a "back vault mouth toss."  The second trick is a more traditional "leap in arms," which this team does a really nice job of.

This was at the Seattle Kennel Club dog show in Seattle in March of 2012.  It's a little bit odd because our group WOOFD2 (Washington Owners of Flying Disc Dogs) is all about rescue and foster, but the kennel club is breeders.  Anyway, it was an indoor gig and it was a lot of fun.  Met some cool people too!

This video was made on my iPhone as I was madly dashing about announcing and performing with my dog.  I edited the video on iMovie, then tweaked it further in Final Cut Pro X.

Iphone 4s Review:  decent image quality, given that I shot it with backlighting (see that gargantuan window on the left) that wanted to heaving darken out the rest of the image.  I had some trouble finding the buttons on the camera and recording when I thought I was recording, but that will come in time.

The sound was awesome that day, no copyrighted music to worry about, just a voice and crowed reaction.  I really wish I had caught more video.

The backlighting issue was resolved in Final Cut Pro X, where I color balanced the video and tweaked it bring up he detail in the floor and the audience.  It looked bad before I did that, but it looks pretty good now.

The slow motion segments are at 60%.  Yeah, 80% would have given me a better frame rate (24 fps rather 18 fps) so that's why there's some streaking lines through the slo mo.

I was also really glad to catch some nice video of J and Dodger, because they have been my friends for a number of years.

Peace and love,

Jimmyjumpnive

Final Cut Pro X Review (part 2)

Click Here for a Dumb Dog Trick Video!


Apple Final Cut Pro X review (part 2).

Most of what you see in this video was created in iMovie.  Most of what you can hear has been manipulated fairly heavily in Final Cut Pro X.

This time my focus was on voice over and sound quality.  I started in iMovie and roughed out the project.  I left a blank section for the first title, which was then created in Final Cut Pro X.  Then I went to work on improving the quality of the voice and the mix between the voice and ambient sound.

The sound (voice and ambient) were auto tuned, bass boosted and adjusted with the hum and noise reduction options.  I would have added some echo on the voice, but couldn't figure out how to do it.  I had already done a loudness adjustment in iMovie and the other mentioned tweaks in Final Cut Pro X.

The end result is okay.  Next step will be to focus on the mixing of sound -- voice over and music -- to see what the best way is to do it.  I am totally thinking to mix it in iMovie then tweak it in Pro X.

I really had to steer myself away from the image-effect options.  Two of them were really drawing me in -- this video almost ended up with either a "fish eye" effect or a "geometric block" effect.

I will definitely come back to the video effects pre sets in Pro X.  The video camera effect was good.  The distortion effects were also interesting.  Many ways to improve projects or catch moods and some odd scrambling effects.

Next time it's full onto mixing a bumper sound, a voice over, and a song.  Not sure if the song will be original, but an original song will probably be a bigger challenge in that I tend to crank the distortion when I do rock music in Garageband.

So far so good.  This is my second day using FInal Cut Pro X and I am beginning to get a good feel for how to improve or attempt to improve videos.  Honestly, though, this may take a month or so to fully get a passable working knowledge of the program.

Jimmyjumpnjive March 6, 2012.