The Moon
Posted by Jason on August 20th, 2011
The moon in transit, moving in real time across the frame. By “real time” I mean that the tripod was locked down and the camera was stationary, pointing at one point in the sky. All the movement here is caused by the motion of the earth and the moon.
Except for some of that shaking. I’m pretty sure that was caused by walking within 15 feet of the camera. Sorry about that.
Shot with a Canon T3i at 24fps, ISO 200 and a FD ƒ/8.0 500mm reflex lens in Brookly, NY.
brooklyn, canon t3i, fd lens, moon, Space
Posted in Video -->
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Reconnect Media in FCPX
Posted by Jason on August 17th, 2011
I’ve been reading a lot about the new Final Cut Pro X and how managing source files and projects can be a bit of a pain. Most notably, that there’s no (logical/easy) way to reconnect media that’s been moved to another drive. It turns out that’s not entirely true.
Say you have an event called Brian Visits Brooklyn on your computer’s internal hard drive, and an associated project called The Moon. The event is huge and you’d like to reclaim the space for your collection of 2011 WWDC session videos. So you connect an external hard drive and drag your source files (your event) to the new hard drive.
Do the same with the project, dragging it to the drive you want and selecting just the project and render files.
Uh-oh, the project is still pointing to the event on your internal drive. That’s no good. So what to do?
Access the project’s properties by choosing File –> Project Properties… from the menu bar, or by pressing Command + J. A new inspector-style window appears with two tabs, Properties and Sharing. Under Properties click the big Modify Event References button. You should see the referenced events on both drives, with the option to drag to the top whichever event you want the project associated with. Click OK and you’re done.
I realize it’s not as robust as it used to be, but it’s a bit more than the nothing I keep reading about.
fcpx, final cut pro x, media offline, reconnect
Posted in Apple, Final Cut Studio, Tips -->
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Making Apps
Posted by Jason on June 23rd, 2011
I’ve gotten a few questions from friends and strangers about how I went from making videos to making iOS apps. Specifically, I’m asked what resources I used to get up and running in the first place.
To be clear, before August of 2010 I didn’t really have any programming experience. I worked in XHTML and CSS2 between 2007-2009. Around the same time I dabbled in learning Ruby on Rails (which was a complete failure). I’ve had an interest in programming for years, but every time I tried to entertain the thought I quickly became overwhelmed with how hard it was.
And it is hard. Really hard. In fact, it’s still hard. But it’s worth it.
Here’s how I got started.
One of the best technical books I’ve ever read is Beginning Mac Programming by Tim Isted. Tim, it turns out, is a fantastic writer. Also, don’t be scared that the book is about Mac programming and what you want to do is iOS. Tim teaches you valuable conventions and best practices that you’ll use in iOS development too.
As a person who previously had no concept of object-orientated languages, memory management etc., I couldn’t have asked for a better resource to help me get started. I loved this book.
If you get through that and you’re interested in learning more about what kind of neat things you can do with the iOS APIs, I’d recommend Head First iPhone & iPad Development by Dan and Tracey Pilone. Now in its second edition (I have the first edition which, unfortunately, was already out-of-date when I read it) this book doesn’t teach you to program. Instead it teaches you to work with the iOS-specific stuff. It’s a great tool to rapidly expand your skill set after getting the Objective-C language and conventions down.
It goes into some detail about working with web services, location-aware applications, animated user interfaces and so on.
One note though, I actually read this book first which was a big mistake. Since I knew nothing about Objective-C I had no idea what most of the code meant. This was a huge disappointment. After reading Tim’s book I reread most of the Head First book and had a much, much better time with it.
If you’ve finished those books and are looking for something exciting to get into (I chose Core Data), I’d advise against getting Marcus Zarra’s Core Data: Apple’s API For Persisting Data on Mac OS X (no link for this one). This might be the worst technical book I’ve ever read. It’s possible it’s just me. Maybe it’s a great book for other people. My experience with it was mostly unmitigated frustration and rage. If you’re looking for a Core Data book, maybe check out Pro Core Data for iOS by Michael Privat and Robert Warner. SO MUCH BETTER.
All of the books I’ve mentioned here are available in ePub except for the Head First book. Oddly enough, it’s still only available as a PDF. Kind of a bummer since reading technical books on an iPad vastly improved my learning experience. Being able to annotate something for later, or easily search for a term days after having read it, saved me a lot of time and headaches. Highly recommended.
Beyond the books I’d suggest making use and familiarizing yourself with developer.apple.com and devforums.apple.com. Both are indispensable tools you’ll come to frequent. The forums are part of a paid developer membership, but the iOS and Mac documentation is freely available. I found that reading Apple’s documentation was off-putting and frustrating at first. But now I love it. Mostly. There’s just so much information that it’s a little overwhelming when you’re starting out. And not knowing what most of anything means was really frustrating. But it’s like anything; if you stick with it you’ll start to pick it up as you go.
Another go-to resource is Stack Overflow. It’s a huge forum where programmers go to ask other programmers for help with things. As a bonus, if you format your searches like this: “[ios] UITableView” (without the quotation marks) you’ll be amazed at what you can find. The best part is that somebody has probably already asked the question you want answered. Spend some time there and you’ll probably find what you’re looking for. Stack Overflow is the first place I search when I run into a problem.
The last bit of advice I have is to seek out other people that are trying to learn this stuff too. Or, if you get lucky and can find somebody who’s already doing development, try asking them some questions. Most people are pretty friendly if you’re not a jerk about it.
And with that, I’d like extend an offer to leave a question for me here (which I’ll do my best to answer) or via email. My email address is jason at makefilmwork dot com. I trust you can sort that into a workable address.
I hope you’ve found this writing helpful.
How to, Learning, Objective-C, Programming, Xcode
Posted in iOS, Mac -->
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Introducing Preflight
Posted by Jason on May 13th, 2011
In the last half of last year I made a decision to start moving away from freelance video work and into software development. Specifically, development for the Mac and iOS. Today I’m happy to announce that my first iOS app, Preflight, is available for sale on the App Store.
What is Preflight?
Preflight was designed to be a quick and easy way to take notes and make short lists of things needing to get done.
There are no shortage of task-management apps on the App Store. I don’t expect to redefine the category. But I’ve yet to find a to-do list app that really works for me, so I thought I’d do something about it. I felt like it would be a good first project to go after.
Preflight is currently US $0.99.
What’s Next?
I’m already working on version 1.1 which will include a few big updates and a few small ones. I’ll probably be looking at initial feedback too, trying to incorporate what I can into the next release.
If you have any feedback for me, I’d love to hear it. I can be reached (for app-related inquires) at jason [at] flightdivision.com. Thanks, I hope you enjoy Preflight.
App Store, Apple, Flight Division, iOS, Preflight
Posted in iOS, News -->
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Snow on Norman Street
Posted by Jason on December 27th, 2010
We got our first major snowfall here in Salem and, just like last year, I wanted to try and capture it. If you’ve ever scrolled through a long grid of photos in iPhoto, Aperture or Lightroom you might have seen something that looks a little like the video above. That’s where I got the idea anyway. Unfortunately, it didn’t really turn out like I had imagined. I was hoping the difference in color would be really apparent as the snow blew in and night fell. But, at this point, I’ve already spent two days on this and I’m sick of looking at it.
I used the iPhone’s camera and let it shoot every five seconds for two hours. The phone was supported by my Glif on top of a camera extender on top of my Manfrotto 501 baseplate.
I used a replicator in Motion, each offset by one frame in a six by six grid. That was enough for my computer to beg for death, so I baked it out and finished the rest in Final Cut. The music is Dirty Glass by WHY? [iTunes].
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My name is Jason. I have 8 years of freelance experience editing and shooting videos. I'm also a Mac and iOS developer.
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