You can find us at OneYearPhoto.com. The theme is pretty general: Light & Color, but I think we’ve got some interesting stuff so far.

I volunteered to be on call for the weekend (total no-brainer), and ended up getting a call Friday evening that there was a heart coming in. They asked me to shoot some stills for the Akron Beacon Journal, in addition to shooting video for the Clinic.

It’s an incredible story that’s still unfolding, and I’m hugely grateful to Porter and his family for trusting me and letting us in on a very difficult part of their life.

Full story on Ohio.com

Akron Beacon Journal front page for Jan. 7, 2012.

And so another year passes. Lots of changes for me. New (old) city, new job, engagement. This is just a collection of images from the past week or two. Getting ready for the holidays and everything.

File management: they’ve taken a page from iMovie, and moved to “Events” and “Projects.” I’m not 100% sure why I need both, and can’t just have a folder with my FCP file, and video files. If you have a file management system you’re used to using, it appears you’ll need to rethink most everything.

Editing: by default the timeline isn’t visible. I spent about a minute and a half swearing and trying to drag clips around. Command+2 brings up the actual timeline you need to put a project together. Also, the default view for the audio portion of the clip is tiny. If you expand it so you can actually see what’s going on with the audio, it looks like you can’t trim audio and video with one move. Think of it like having linked selection off, permanently.

Audio meters are hidden by default, if you click on the icon next to the timecode, it’ll bring them up.

I’m having problems with playback lag. I pulled some 1080p30 ProRes 422 LT clips into FCP X, and it’s definitely dropping frames where it never did before. I’m on an i7 MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAM and GT330M, also connected to a 30 inch Cinema Display. Haven’t tried it without the display, but this is ridiculous. If I hit K (stop) while a clip is playing, it takes at least two seconds to respond. It’s set to high quality playback. Switching to “better performance” smooths out the video, but my audio meters still aren’t in real time. This is bad.

They also changed many of the keyboard shortcuts, so my six month old FCP keyboard is useless. They got rid of the F9-12 quick keys to insert clips. It looks like W is the new insert (old F9) and E adds the clip to the end of your sequence.

There is no pen tool. UPDATE: FCP X keyframe editor

Tracks in the traditional sense are gone, you get little bubbles for your clips, which can still be layered. Like this:

There’s no saving, everything is automatic a la iMovie.

I haven’t tried adding non-video media, so I’m not sure how it handles stills or audio yet.

I hate to sound negative, but it seems like they did everything I was afraid of when I first heard about FCP X. Making a video editor that works for absolutely everyone is a pretty tall order, and one I’m not convinced is a good idea at all. I’m not giving up on FCP X, but using it gives me a huge sinking feeling. Did the best video editing suite on the market just take a big step backwards?

UPDATE: I forgot to mention the App Store purchase process. One glaring flaw with my actual purchase of FCP X was that the App Store offers very little control over how  you actually pay for things. If you have a gift card balance, it’s going toward your purchase whether you want it to or not, and it doesn’t support multiple credit cards. I had to go in and switch the payment card over to my business AmEx, then change it back, because I don’t want iTunes purchases going on that card all the time. I also lost my $15 gift card balance. I can write off the cost of FCP, but music isn’t tax-deductible, so it would’ve been nice to actually keep my balance.

Regardless … I’m back in Ohio for the moment (anybody want to hire me away?). Trying to freelance while looking for a permanent job. I went through my archive to find some images I liked, but that hadn’t seen the light of day for one reason or another. Flagged several for consideration, toned and uploaded a few already. I may go back and work on the others … or I may not. Who knows?

I have a bunch of really quirky alpaca images shot during the 2009 Fall Workshop. The project ended up being nearly 100% video, so the stills really didn’t get much play. I shot some late in the day, after I had most of the video footage I needed. Beautiful light, and some really funny animals. The wide angle lens added that extra little bit of weird.

I was trying to emphasize the contrasting warm and cool tones when I processed the second shot. I used Lightroom’s split toning feature to punch up the shadow blues and highlight yellows.

The Fall Workshop – a video about headphones from Jamie De Pould on Vimeo.

Stills shot on a D700, music in Garage Band, edited in Final Cut Pro.

President Bill Clinton speaks Monday night at the State Police hangar facility near Hancock International Airport. Clinton spent the day campaigning for democrats in Kentucky and West Virginia before finishing in Syracuse, one of his "favorite places."

Tommy Newton, 5, of Cicero, N.Y., sits on his father’s shoulders at the Oct. 11 Democratic rally in Syracuse, N.Y. Bill Clinton spoke to the gathered crowd for about 40 minutes to bolster support for incumbent Rep. Dan Maffei.

Tommy Newton, 5, of Cicero, N.Y. lays at his mother’s feet while waiting for President Bill Clinton to arrive at the Oct. 11 rally in Syracuse, N.Y.

Jennifer Newton, of Cicero, N.Y., kisses her daughter Allison, 7, as the family waits for President Bill Clinton to arrive at the Oct. 11 rally in Syracuse, N.Y.

President Bill Clinton and Rep. Dan Maffei (D-N.Y.) take the stage at a Syracuse, N.Y. rally Oct. 11, 2010. Clinton gave a 40-minute stump speech, emphasizing the economy and education.

President Bill Clinton speaks Monday night at the State Police hangar facility near Hancock International Airport. Clinton spent the day campaigning for democrats in Kentucky and West Virginia before finishing in New York.

… And one more bonus picture of Ana’s reporter face:

The best-laid plans …

I spent most of today doing research for Handshake Magazine (the MNO capstone project) on the federal seizure of seven–no, six–no, nine–websites accused of illegally streaming first-run Hollywood movies and other copyrighted content. I had three Firefox and two Safari windows open, with about 30 tabs each–don’t ask why I used two different browsers at once, I don’t know–tracking down warrants, domain registrations, news items, blog posts and all manner of public record. We called the U.S. Attorney for Southern New York, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, VeriSign and the owner of a new site cloned from one of the sites that got confiscated.

The end result? About 400 words.

My colleague, and fellow “breaking news powerhouse*,” Ana Yanni has all the sordid details over at Adventures of a News Duck.

*Credit for the “breaking news powerhouse” title goes to Matt Doxstad, editor of Handshake.