We’re going to take a look at some of the books available for Final Cut Pro X.

Apple Pro Training Series

The Apple Pro Training Series book is the definitive book used for revising and taking the FCPX certification exam. It’s just been updated to the Second Edition to cover all the new updates in the latest version of FCPX 10.0.7.

Final Cut Pro X – Making the Transition

In this useful, cut-to-the-chase guide to the program, popular trainer and Final Cut guru Larry Jordan takes these experienced users through all the components of the software, from importing footage and organizing media to export and sharing. Along the way, they’ll learn the best ways to edit footage and add transitions, effects, and filters, do basic color correcting, work with audio, and utilize a variety of HD workflow techniques, to name a few.

Within a weekend, users will learn the best ways to start editing in this groundbreaking program in this must-have guide.

Final Cut Pro X: Visual QuickStart Guide

With this new release of Final Cut Pro, Apple has completely re-engineered its popular film and video editing software to include an incredible lineup of features intended to close the gap between the prosumers and the pros. Following right in step, this Visual QuickStart Guide has been completely revised to address all the new features as well as the new paradigm of editing that Apple has put forward. An undisputed master of the digital video medium, Lisa Brenneis once again demystifies the complexities of the program and she is joined this time by the Final Cut Pro guru Michael Wohl to provide a clear, straightforward guide to Final Cut Pro X. Tasked-based, step-by-step instructions and loads of visuals and time-saving tips make it so professionals and newcomers alike can quickly find and learn tasks specific to their needs, benefiting from the award-winning Visual QuickStart style. Topics covered include essential editing tasks and media-management strategies, transitions, effects and filters, rendering options, and much more. It includes coverage of all the new features such as the new dynamic interface, Magnetic Timeline, Clip Connections, Auditions, Content Auto-Analysis, Range-Based Keywords, and much more. Now in four-color, this must-have reference also includes several free downloadable videos from the publisher’s site.

The Focal Easy Guide to Final Cut Pro X

Step into the 21st century with Rick Young’s Easy Guide to Final Cut Pro X and learn the essential editing techniques you need to know to master this software. In this step-by-step guide, Rick Young clearly explains key concepts and ways to achieve results quickly, regardless of the level you work at. Essentials such as system setup, editing, audio, effects, and importing media are thoroughly covered to get you up and running in a matter of hours.

Packed with tutorials and real-world examples, the Focal Easy Guide to Final Cut Pro X will take you through the ins-and-outs of the software and have you editing and outputting your digital movies in no time.

The Craft of the Cut: The Final Cut Pro X Editor’s Handbook

The art of professional video editing Although technology is rapidly evolving, it is still complicated to edit video. This unique book not only teaches you the art of professional editing, it also gives you authentic professional experience. You′ll be guided through a typical industry production workflow; you′ll have access to raw footage, including alternate takes of each scene from a professional short film; and you′ll make your own decisions. By the book′s end, you′ll have completed your own version of a film. It′s the perfect primer for aspiring editors who want to ascend to industry–level positions. Immerses you in the actual experience of editing a film, from video rushes to the shooting script and continuity notes Provides actual media, including alternate takes, and you make all the decisions Walks you through the post–production of a professional short film; by the book′s end, you will have acquired the skills to complete your own version of the film Shows you how to use Final Cut Pro X as part of the production process The Craft of the Cut goes deep inside the world of professional video editing and equips you with skills for professional–level editing.

Final Cut Pro X Cookbook

The “Final Cut Pro X Cookbook” contains recipes that will take you from the importing process and basic mechanics of editing up through many of FCPX’s advanced tools needed by top-tier editors on a daily basis. Edit quickly and efficiently, fix image and sound problems with ease, and get your video out to your client or the world easily.

No program gets you from application launch to the actual editing process faster than FCPX. After covering the basics, the book hits the ground running showing readers how to produce professional quality videos even if video editing isn’t your day job.

Related posts:

1. More great free effects and filters for Final Cut Pro X
2. Six Great Effects and Transitions for Final Cut Pro X
3. New guest post at Fuel Your Motionography – ‘What does professional mean?’

We’ve recently launched a new sister site to Motion Design Love, concentrating on Apple’s Final Cut Pro X. The idea is to provide a central resource for all official and 3rd party effects, applications for FCPX, training and transitions. We’ve also got forums to discuss your issues with FCPX. We’re launching features fairly regularly so if you’re a FCPX fan then go check it out.

Visit fcpxcentral.com

Related posts:

1. Motion Design Love welcomes new site sponsor Rampant Media Design Tools
2. Quick Tip – How to remove roles in Final Cut Pro X
3. Six Great Effects and Transitions for Final Cut Pro X

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It’s been a while since the last Nice Type Tuesday, i don;t want to spoil you after all! But now it returns with some great typographic goodness. This week we have videos from ISType, Richard De Souza, anthony rhoads, jules tardy, trestipos and Philippe Tytgat

If your a fan on Nice Type Tuesday then why not subscribe or check out more type related videos on the Nice Type Channel on Vimeo curated by

ISType 2012 Transmit from ISType on Vimeo.

1975 from Richard De Souza on Vimeo.

Evil, I Title Design from anthony rhoads on Vimeo.

Civic Builders Gala Video 2011 from jules tardy on Vimeo.

Moda & Belleza – La Nacion from trestipos on Vimeo.

Agesandages – No Nostalgia from Philippe Tytgat on Vimeo.

Related posts:

1. Nice Type Tuesday 39
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3. Nice Type Tuesday 38

If you don’t know who Crumplepop are, they’ve been making effects and items to enhance your video for Final Cut Pro for a while now. They’ve got a range of products from Grain35 (for adding film style grain to your videos) to ToneGrade (which is HDR tone mapping for FCP X) to SplitScreen X (easy split screening for FCP X)to the product we’re going to review today, Colorkit.  All the products they sell are very useful and useable and all incredibily easy to use with great controls too.

The product we’re looking at today is one of the newer ones they’ve released. Colorkit is essentially 2 separate parts, the first part is 34 professionally design presets for grading your footage, the second part is 3 colour grading tools to help refine your grading look.

The first tool is leveler. This tool helps  your to balance out the exposure of your footage, using a combination of input and output black and white, a gamma control.  The second of these tools is overlay, this gives you chance to give you footage a bleach bypass look which can help to increase the contrast.  The last tool, Patch allows you to correct specific windows (so like a vignette in Apple Color or a Power Widow in Da Vinci Resolve).

All these tools are great tools for beginning to colour correct your footage, allowing you to level your image before creating your look, or even colour correcting a specific area.

Of course you don’t have to use these before you use the other part of Colourkit, the grades or looks that that form the 34 professional presets.

The 34 presets have been designed with a set of diverse looks so you should always be able to find something that matches your look or mood.  Take a look at the image below to view some of the different grades available in Colourkit

As you can see from the pictures, there’s quite a few variations so i’m sure you can find something!  The other great thing is that, when your looking through them, as it’s been designed for Final Cut Pro X you can just drag and drop them onto the clips and you’ll see the results instantly!  There’s not any rendering with Colourkit and Final Cut Pro X!

However, just because there are presets doesn’t mean you can’t tweak them!  We all know that every shot is slightly different and has slightly different colour correction needs, so Colourkit allows you to apply the preset and tweak it’s settings to completely match your shot.

Want to find out more? Then check out the video from Crumplepop below.

CrumplePop ColorKit from CrumplePop on Vimeo.

Would i recommend this product? Definitely. The colour correction tools in Final Cut Pro X are already more powerful than the previous version and Colourkit adds to this and takes it to the next level, allowing you to stay in Final cut Pro and grade your footage, it’s also relatively cheap at $149 (compared to paying for Da Vinci Resolve and hardware to run it!).

Find out more about Colorkit here.

No related posts.

We’ve previously done a round up on Motion Design Love but there’s been there’s been lot’s more good ones since then.  So here we go with a round up of some of the latest ones.

wvl_RGBbalance

This is a an basically a filter that recreates the old RGB balance from Final Cut Pro  7.  Whilst not a flashy effect, this is a great tool for colour correction/grading and if you used to use in the old version then it’s pretty much the same! Download it here

TKY Cut and Shut

This is a great stylised effect for using on two video clips, essentially though it’s a split screen with the ability to colorise one of the clips. Download it from here.

 TKY Shadows and Highlights

This is another colour correction type effect.  This uses a slightly different way of colour correcting than the built in colour correction in Final Cut Pro X.  This effect uses a luma keyer to correct the highlights and shadows. Download it from here.

wvl_ColourGrade_v2

Another colour grading filter here (It’s always good to have a few different options of grading!) With this you can use the tone and RGB controls to balance your image before using the other controls to get more of a look. Download it here.

TKY Lomography

This filter is intended to give your video a lomographic type look which is fairly popular at the moment. Download the lomographic effect here.

If you’ve seen any great effects or filters for Final Cut Pro X then let us know!

Related posts:

1. Six Great Effects and Transitions for Final Cut Pro X
2. Review – ClipExporter for Final Cut Pro X
3. Top tools for Final Cut Pro X #2 – 7toX

We’ve reviewed some of Rampant Design Tools products before on Motion Design Love here

But since then the guys over at Rampant have gone from strength to strength and expanded their product lineup even further from a few products to numerous products that now cover areas from After Effects templates, stock footage, textures and photos and sound effects and music.

Before we take a closer look at some of their products, it’s worth telling you a little about Rampant Design Tools.

Rampant was started by Sean Mullen a number of years ago, Sean has multiple credits to his name and over the years has created vfx elements for network tv shows and feature films. So he knows what the job of an editor and motion graphics artist is like.

Since then Sean has been joined at rampant by some other great people in the business such as Chris “Ace” Gates, Perry “All Right!” Jenkins , Casey “Sorry About Your Face” Faris and Alan “A-Ball” Pfeil. All these guys have work in the business day in day out, so you can be sure that the products they’ve helped to create will be useful in real projects and on a day to day basis.  If you want to find out more about the guys themselves then go check out there about about page on the Rampant Design Tools website.

Last time i reviewed their products they were great for the motion graphics artist and editors and since then they’ve improved!  The elements have been featured on high profile programmes such as America’s Got Talent, Dancing with the Stars, Criminal Minds.

Now we’ve had a brief introduction to Rampant themselves, let’s take a look at some of their products.

Rampant FilmFx

The first product we’re going to look at is Rampant FilmFx. FimFx is a collection of light leaks,  flashes, aberrations, vignettes and scratches so you can stylise your footage to look more “film like” once you’ve done your colour corrections.  Want a quick preview of them, then check out the video below.

Rampant was kind enough to give me a review copy of FilmFx and allow me to play around with and use it one some projects. Once i’d played around with them for a bit i knew they brilliant and i’ll probably use some elements of most projects i do.  These kind of looks and effects are fairly popular at the moment so it’s likely that if your clients aren’t already asking for them, then they probably will be soon!  The other great things  about all these is that they’re in Full HD in Apples ProRes 422(HQ) codec so they’re high quality for use in your HD projects.

If you want to take a look at some real videos and projects that have used these then check out the samples below.

If you want to find out more or download Rampant FilmFX then check it out on their website.

SmokeFX

The next product i got chance to try is another new product since the last review, this time i got to play with SmokeFX.  First of all, these things are huge! by huge i mean that the quicktime files are 3k resolution, which means it’s great for full HD, (there’s even a bit of room to play with if you use them in HD compositions.)

I think these are ideal for motion graphics artists and vfx artist, you can use them in your graphics when you explode things and use them in your films to simulate smoking buildings etc….

If you want to find out more or download Rampant SmokeFX then check it out on their website.

Check out a promo video below for SmokeFX.

Rampant GunFX™

If you’re using SmokeFX it’s probably a good idea to get GunFX too, these also come at 3K resolution and are ideal for things like action movies. You get a series of Muzzle flashes which have all been matted so it’s really easy to add them to projects, no spending ages masking and keying things out!

The other thing i like about these is that all the elements have been shot for real, not simulated in a programme. As with the other products they do, all their products are both mac and pc compatible and will work in most NLE’s.

If you want to find out more or download Rampant GunFX then check it out on their website.

Related posts:

1. Win $500 worth of products from Rampant Design Tools
2. Motion Design Love welcomes new site sponsor Rampant Media Design Tools
3. Giveaway: Win a $100 Gift Certificate from Rampant Media Design Tools

If you haven’t heard of Rampant Design Tools before then they offer motion graphics and video editors a series of products to enhance your videos or motion graphics. I’ve previously reviewed them on the site a while back (and they were good then!). But since last reviewing them them they haven’t stopped, they’ve expanded their product line up to include everything from stock footage, footage for composting, colour grading presets and effects, after effects templates and music and sound fx. Find out more about them at their website.

As we said previously, Rampant and Motion Design Love are giving you the chance to win some of their great products.

What are we giving away?

We’re giving away the following great products with a value of over $500.

Rampant FilmFX 2

Brand new 100 4K (4096×2304) royalty-free Quicktime Movies of simulated light leaks, flashes, lighting effects, digital film grain, noise, dirt, scratches and more. Instantly add a film look to your video project without rendering. Great for editors, compositors, and motion graphics artists. If you like FilmFX 1, you’ll LOVE FilmFX 2 – 100 All New Film elements in our highest resolution ever.

Check out the promo video below or check out the website to find out more

RAMPANT REALITV™

Royalty Free Music from Rampant Design Tools. REALiTV is 15 royalty free modern and fresh promo tracks. Each track comes as a full length a :60.

See the promo video for Rampant REALITV or check out the website to find out more

RAMPANT MOTION DESIGN ELEMENTS

Over 750 Motion Design Elements at Your Fingertips. You don’t have to be a high end motion graphics artist to get a high end motion graphics look. Rampant Motion Design Elements are easy to use and can be used in any application that reads Quicktime. Instantly add design spice to your edits or build complex motion graphics – all in a snap.

See some of the examples of Rampant Motion Design Elements or check out the website to find out more

So how do i win all this stuff?

To win this great bundle of products there’s two things you have to do.  The first step you need to do is download the Rampant Design Sampler pack here. This gives you the chance to have a taster of some of the products they offer.  Once you’ve downloaded the pack, it’s time to get your motion graphics chops out.

We’re asking you to create a 5 second animation (so nothing to taxing) using at least 3 elements of the sampler pack. There are no real rules about what the 5 second animation needs to be about as long as it contains at least 3 elements, you can add extra stuff to your animation, 2D, 3D, whatever. You could use this as an opportunity to add something to your showreel, think of it that way!

The second step once you’ve created your animation is to post a link to it in the comment of this post, and leave your twitter handle or your website so we can get in touch with you should you win.  Me and the guys from Rampant will view all the videos left in the comments and make a decision on who wins, so do your best to impress us!

The third step is a simple one, all you need to do is tweet the following “I’ve just entered the @motiondesignluv and @rampantdesign competition to win $500 worth of video products and elements http://bit.ly/MLtr3f” or if you’ve not got twitter then like this post on Facebook.

That’s all there is to it!

So to recap what you need to do -

1. Download the Rampant Design Tools sampler pack.
2. Create a 5 second animation containing at least 3 elements from the sampler pack (plus anything else you want to add).  Post a link to your animation in the comments.
3. Tweet this or like this post on Facebook

The competition starts on 4th July 2012 and it’s going to be running for the next two weeks, so the deadline for posting your video is the 18th July 25th July. We will be judging the entries and choosing a winner in the week after the competition so we’ll be in touch shortly after that.

The more you share this competition and the more entries we get means we may even be able to up the value of the prizes so make sure you tell everyone you know about it.

If you want to find out more about what Rampant Design Tools do then go check out their website.

Related posts:

1. Giveaway: Win a $100 Gift Certificate from Rampant Media Design Tools
2. $100 Gift Certificate from Rampant Media Design Tools Giveaway Winner Announced!
3. Rampant Design Tools – The Review

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3. Quick Tip – How to remove roles in Final Cut Pro X

When Final Cut Pro X was released, it changed all that, the very first release of Final Cut Pro didn’t have the ability of exporting XML and when the update came out that added XML it was in a newer format which meant all the old apps that used to be able to use the XML to move things into other apps no longer worked.

A few months later after all of this, meet ClipExporter for Final Cut Pro X.

What is ClipExporter for Final Cut Pro X?

ClipExporter for Final Cut Pro X has been developed by Mindtransplant and essentially takes a Final Cut Pro X XML file and provides an easy way to get your clips out of FCPX and into your favourite apps like Nuke, Syntheyes, After Effects or just plain Quicktime references movies for any other app.

The great thing about the way it does it too, is the firstly it’s super simple to do, all you have to do i export a XML file from Final Cut Pro, then when you open ClipExporter it asks you to load in the XML file, and then you can configure your options before export and secondly it has some great feature in dealing with the exported clips such as:

• Supports roles for selective export of a single clip or a group of clips.
• Adds handle frames (optionally). Extends each clip length by a given number of frames.
• Creates shot based folders with naming conventions.
• Creates subfolders (optionally).
• Saves disc space by refering to the original source media. No files are copied.
• Export for After Effects. Translates the complete project to a composition.
• Exports Quicktime reference movies. These files can be opened in other applications like Mocha, Motion, PFTrack etc.
• Exports Nuke files. All in-/out-frames and timeline positions match your exported Final Cut Pro X project.
• Export for Syntheyes. A custom (.synInfo) file format is created for import in Syntheyes. Therefore an importer sizzle-script is required, which can be downloaded here

The great thing about the app supporting roles is that now roles can become pretty useful in Final Cut Pro X, you can give your clips in FCPX roles such as After Effects, Nuke, Colour Grading, Roto etc… then use ClipExporter for Final Cut Pro X to send them to the right apps.

Another great things thing the app does is that when it create the reference movies it will allow to add handles to  each side of the clips, this are invaluable when your clip is part of a transition with another clip.

You can also create shot based folder with naming conventions and sub folders, invaluable in keeping your projects highly organised.

There are a few known issues with the app currently, for example -

• Retimed clips are not supported. Please “unretime” all clips before export. ClipExporter warns you, if retimed clips were found in your project.
• Multicam clips are not supported. Please “flatten” Multicam clips before export.
• Effects, translations, animations and every other Final Cut Pro X related modification on a clip will be discarded (Nuke & Quicktime only).
• Video-clips with unsupported or odd fps (frames per second) values could cause inaccurate timming results.
• Event-XMLs are not supported.

As long as you take these into account then this app is great and is definitely a must for anyone using FCPX and a post production workflow.  I’ve spoke to Thomas the developer of the app to and he assures me that some of the known issues are being worked on, Multicam for example should make it’s way into an update to ClipExporter and is something he is working on currently.

If you want to find out more about ClipExporter then check out the videos below.

ClipExporter for Final Cut Pro X from Mindtransplant on Vimeo.

ClipExporter v1.1 Exports FCP X Projects to After Effects from Mindtransplant on Vimeo.

I would definitely reccommend this app and urge everyone to download it from the app store, it won’t break the bank and is perfect in a post production set up.

Visit the website or download it from the App Store now.

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1. Top tools for Final Cut Pro X #2 – 7toX
2. Top tools for Final Cut Pro X #1 – Editoid
3. More great free effects and filters for Final Cut Pro X