The Tao Colorist

Sunday Morning Fun(nies)

• Is Seeing Believing? What happens when our eyes don't agree with our ears? Hear's an optical illusion of a different note. (kottke.org)

• [Timelapse] Flying Over Planet Earth - From the Space Station. Kick it up to HD and full screen for the best experience. (YouTube.com)

• NASA Ringtones - From the sound of Sputnick to the sound of President Kennedy. We paid for these (or, in some cases, our parents did), now download and use them to identify when your favorite nerd calls. (Nasa.gov)

• Super Freaky Real-Time Facial Substitution - It's Super. And Freaky. Bonus: Click on the link to Tom Selleck's moustache - in which every movie is made awesome'r with a touch of that Selleck facial hair. (Kottke.org)

• Things Apple Is Worth More Than - And not just the GDP of the most productive countries in the world, but the entire worldwide illegal drug trade, the entire US automotive aftermarket and more... (ThingsAppleIsWorthMoreThan.tumblr.com)

• My Beautiful Streaming NFL Weekend - On the road and NEED to watch your local NFL team pound it out on the grid-iron? With the right service and a decent WiFi connection... you can take the NFL with you! (Gigaom.com)

Gear Heads

• A New & Improved Moore's Law - 'Koomey's Law' is quickly eclipsing 'Moores Law' as the most important selling point of today's most popular electronic and computing devices. What's 'Koomey's Law'? There's a link for that... (TechnologyReview.com)

• Apple's Thuderbolt Display Doesn't Play Nice with Mini DisplayPort (ArsTechnica.com)

• LaCie 'Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Series' Now Available (ProVideoCoalition.com)

• Review: BlackMagic Design's Hyperdeck Shuttle - It's an 'SSD Meets Walkman' with HD-SDI & HDMI inputs. My impression: RS422 deck control would make this a no-brainer. Get the full details on this portable SSD recorder... (DefinitionMagazine.com)

Down Time

• Portal 2 and WOW Shootout: The Five 'Top' 2011 Macs (BareFeats.com)

Cause I Can't Ignore It . . .

• FCPx Update: Release Notes, version 10.0.1 - Apple bills this update as the 'Pro' update. The big news for Newsletter readers is XML Export from FCPx. And word is that Resolve will support importing this brand new XML Interchange 
  
  Note: Some websites have claimed that the impending DaVinci Resolve 8.1 update will support importing the FCPx XML format. This in unconfirmed. DaVinci has not stated (privately or publicly) if this feature will make it into Resolve 8.1 (which is due to drop by the end of September). (support.apple.com)

• The Straight Dope: FCPx 10.0.1 As Apple Sees It - An interesting interview with Apple about this release, how it's targeted at Pros, and where they see the future leading us and the app. (PostMagazine.com)

• Final Cut Pro 10.0.1: More Details - Larry Jordan had a meeting with the Apple Pro Apps marketing peeps just after this update was released this week. He breaks down what they told him and what he found with the new release. He was also given a quick demo of DaVinci Resolve importing an FCPx Project.  (LarryJordan.biz)

• Free: Test Drive Final Cut Pro X for 30 Days - First time ever Apple has done this with Final Cut Pro (assuming you consider FCPx to be the inheritor of FCP Legacy). (Apple.com)

• The FCPx XML Format - Digital Rebellion takes a look at the guts of FCPx 10.1's new XML format and definitively answers: It is nothing like FCP Legacy's XML format. (DigitalRebellion.com)

• Project 'X 2 7' - Workflow solution provider and pundit Philip Hodgetts revealed his latest project... XMLing out of FCPx into FCP7. Apparantly he's not doing it the other way since he thinks there's a strong likelihood Apple is doing this themselves. (PhilipHodgetts.com)

• Why Is It So Hard To Convert from FCP 7 XML to FCPx XML? A primer on XML and many of the various and completely unrelated versions of XML that post-pro's are likely to encounter. (PhilipHodgetts.com)

• Why Are 'Roles' Superior to 'Tracks'? If you're both colorist and online finisher then you'll grok why this is in the Newsletter: New in FCPx 10.0.1 is the ability to tag audio tracks with 'Roles' and then OMF out just the Roles you want. Roles such as 'Dialog', 'Music', 'Effects'. You can also create your own Roles and sub-Roles. And Roles can also be used to ID video tracks as well. This is really powerful stuff that allows professional editors to let FCPx move audio tracks around as needed while allowing the post-pros keep track of the underlying audio and sending it out for the mix. It's an elegant solution to a thorny problem. If you're still not convinced, read on... (PhilipHodgetts.com)