I had access to about 200 images (no video) and pretty much had free reign to do what I wanted – just keep the energy UP! For this project I used Apple Final Cut Pro 6 and Motion 3. Most of the project was completed on a MacBook Pro.

The video was projected on a 50′x25′ super lightweight material that was to be removed in about one second at the end of the video to reveal Kristen Chenowith on stage.

The project was projected by playing a standard NTSC DVD – Widescreen. However, I created the project at 1280×720(HD) in case they decided to use a Blu-Ray player.

Final Cut Pro is a good tool but it’s not my favorite. It does require (in my configuration, anyway) a lot more rendering than Sony Vegas Pro or Adobe Premiere CS4 to playback in the timeline but since I was “round-tripping” with Motion it was the way to go in this case.

Motion is a very cool program and, in some ways, it’s easier to create something quickly than in After Effects. That being said, I still found myself working in ways similar to After Effects. Also, if you go the Final Cut Suite route, make sure you have enough RAM for the job. The stock MBP comes with 2 GB of RAM which was a problem with outputting the final render. Upgrade to 4 GB if you’re working in this configuration.

Here’s the video:

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If you’ve done any post-production work (editing, video encoding, etc) you know how time-consuming some common tasks can be. Production Assistant let’s you automate a lot of processes that might otherwise take you out of your project “flow”, tie up the system or keep you in the editing seat well into the evening.

Production Assistant can be launched from within Sony Vegas or operate as a stand-alone tool and is much more than a batch processing tool. Batch processing, if you’re not familiar, is basically automating repetitive tasks (think resizing a folder of images) by setting up the process once and then clicking “Go”. Production Assistant takes it much further, though. You can add markers or station ID’s to the timeline at set intervals, effect specific clips in the timeline, remove unwanted black space between clips, export specific clips, automate the creation of show opens, create audio “ducks”, add backgrounds behind 4×3 footage in 16×9 programs, create thumnails from video or export image sequences and output multiple file formats, all automatically. The processes are customizable to fit your needs. It’s really a very cool add-on (to an already great piece of software) that could save you a lot of time which you can instead invest in your editorial.

Go to Sony Vegas Production Assistant and click Learn More and see video of it in action. The demos are very good, presented by Douglas Spotted Eagle of VASST software and tutorials, an expert of the Sony Creative Software lineup.