Final Cut Pro's Documentary Oscar Winners

MacWorld has an article that notes that nine out of ten 2010 Academy Award nominees in both the feature and short Documentary categories were edited with Final Cut Pro. (All of the shorts were done with FCP.)

This includes feature winner, The Cove, and short category winner, Music by Prudence.

Freesound.org - Free sound effects

Freesound.org is a a great source for finding sound effects for films. The every growing database of sounds come from people making their recordings available through a Creative Commons license. These are not music loops but sounds often recorded in the field. You are required to register before you can download, but you can search and listen to sounds to see if they have what you need. Registration is free. You will need to credit the creator of any sound you use.

The Freesound Project aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, ... released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License. The Freesound Project provides new and interesting ways of accessing these samples, allowing users to

• browse the sounds in new ways using keywords, a "sounds-like" type of browsing and more
• up and download sounds to and from the database, under the same creative commons license
• interact with fellow sound-artists!

Set-to-Screen Videos and Curriculum - Free

I have updated an earlier post on the Set-to-Screen podcast series that was on the Apple website. It featured an in depth look at Baz Luhrman's Australia. That webpage is now down, but you can still access the videos and lesson plans. The series is aimed at high school students and is excellent.

DebugMode Wax - Free PC video editor

DebugMode Wax is a free video editor and compositor for Windows computers.

Wax can create 2D & 3D special effects and can work in two modes - as a standalone application which would appeal for home users/beginners, and as a "plug-in" to video editors/NLEs which would be more useful for professional editors.

There are a few tutorials that can show you how to use some of the features. Some show how to to do the lightsaber effect. The one below shows how to make a fireball.

InternetAudioGuy - Free Music

InternetAudioGuy.com has 14 tracks of free music on his website.

These are royalty free music beds to use as much as you like for broadcast, internet, audio books, CDs, training programs, walk-in music or anything you like.

MediaCollege.com - Video Resources

MediaCollege.com is an excellent educational website containing free tutorials, reference and other resource material in all areas of electronic media production.

Final Cut Pro Color Correction - Video Tutorial

Digital Content Producer has a video tutorial on Final Cut Pro Color Correction, which is presented by Jan Ozer.

Of all the skills necessary to successfully edit video, one of the most important is brightness and color correction. To understand how to adjust brightness and color optimally, you have to know how to read a waveform monitor.

In this tutorial, first we'll learn how to enter Apple Final Cut Pro's color correction mode and read the waveform monitor.