As I continue to make the transition from Final Cut Pro to Premiere Pro 6, I plan on posting video turtorials of some of the more interesting features of the application. One of the first features that caught my attention was Dynamic Link, which makes workflows between Premiere Pro and After Effects almost a no-brainer. For those editors out there who's primary tools are FCP and AE, you will wonder why you didn't make the switch sooner. Take a look at the video below and see for yourself.

Happy weekend!

Here are 10 interesting reads to feed your brain while you are taking it easy this weekend.

• This post on 7 reasons why video production values matter for video marketing should bring warmth to the hearts of production companies and editors that are feeling the squeeze from cut rate competitors that may be cheap but can't tell a good story.

• @premiumbeat has done a good post with tips on 10 Ways to Increase Editing Productivity and Profits. The bottom line, stay on track, manage client expectations, and be methodical in your approach.

• Betakit has a good post about an Australian startup called Setkick that has rolled out a production management platform that promises to streamline the production process for film, TV, and music videos. The tool looks like it provides an easy way to import scripts, break down elements in the script, manage cast and crew, and keep track of locations. All this for $30/month. If any of you have tried it, let us know your thoughts.

• Interesting story about how Pixar nearly lost Toy Story 2 due to a combination of human error and a bad backup. Moral of the story? Backup your work, AND make sure that your backups work.

• We’ve covered a lot of CS6 stuff in our roundup for switchers earlier this week. That said, there is more good stuff being written by the day. Here is a post from Scott Simmons that highlights 10 things FCP editors might be missing in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6.

• In case you have been stuck in your edit cave for the past few years, smartphone usage has been exploding and just recently crossed the 50% mark of mobile subscribers. If you’re not already outputting mobile video, odds are on the rise that you will be soon. @Reelseo has the details.

• Dollars and cents. How much should you be getting paid, or how much should you be paying yourself. Check out That Post Show, The Wages of Post -- with Steve Cohen, Shane Ross, Mike J Nichols, Paul Zadie and Ryan Summers. They discuss wages (or rates) in the post production world. Everything from video / film editing, to compositing to visual effects.

• While we are on the topic of money, it’s worth reading this post by Shane Ross who tackles the tough question about whether the decreasing costs of tools causes other professionals (clients, agencies, production companies) to devalue the skills of editors that work with those tools.

• Who doesn’t love Wes Anderson movies. Can’t wait to see Moonrise Kingdom when it comes out. In the meantime, I’ll have to get my fix by watching teasers and reading this account of Andrew Weisblum’s adventures editing the film.

• Are you a master story teller? If so, there’s no reason to check out Inside the Story, but if you’re a mere mortal of a story teller or are curious to see if there are any nuggets of wisdom to take your story telling to the next level it should be worth the read.

Last week Rich wrote about his decision to switch from FCP7 to a combination of Premiere Pro and Media Composer instead of FCP X. Since then, Adobe released Premiere Pro CS6 (along with all the other CS6 tools) and a number of people have published first looks or accounts of switching to the increasingly popular NLE. Here is an annotated roundup of the best of those articles, as well as, some resources on how to get started if you are unfamiliar with Premiere Pro.

If you've seen any other good articles, or if you have a story to tell about your experience with CS6, please get the conversation going in the comments below.

CS6 Lovers

• David Lawrence is a long-time Final Cut user who has been reviewing his NLE options since deciding that the magnetic timeline in Final Cut Pro didn't mesh with his editing style. Based on his extensive first impressions with CS6, it looks like he has found a new home. While he covers many aspects of the tool, the thing that blew his mind was real-time playback while editing on a relatively old system. In his words, "the Premiere Pro timeline is the honey badger of timelines." In terms of David's experience switching, he found that the adjustment to using the new NLE was much easier than relearning how to edit in FCPX. This one is well worth reading.

• Cinematographer, filmmaker, blogger, and DSLR expert @PhilipBloom provides a great account of why he moved over to Adobe Premiere CS6 from Final Cut 7. Bottom line: The software is essentially what he needed Final Cut to become. The biggest strength is the ability work on multi format timelines with NO TRANSCODING?" Working with all native footage, all on the same timeline, is a huge advantage for someone editing a doc that combines epic, F3, a f100,5dmk2 footage.

As mentioned previously, over the coming months I will be presenting a number of alternative solutions for cloud video collaboration. There should be no surprise that ScreenLight will be the foil for these posts as it is near and dear to my heart. While I believe that ScreenLight is the best cloud video collaboration tool for many video producers and editors, there are a number of general purpose tools, one of which is Dropbox, that can be made to work if you're willing to make some tradeoffs.

We’ll start off with an overview of Dropbox’s service as it pertains to video collaboration projects, compare and contrast Dropbox with ScreenLight to highlight the differences of the two offerings and provide a breakdown of some of the circumstances under which each solution may be the most appropriate.

Dropbox

Dropbox is the first broadly successful and easy to use storage-as-a-service product targeted at consumers. Since its inception, Dropbox has offered a free tier to their service that starts with 2 GB of storage that can be increased by referring people you know to sign up for Dropbox. For a referral to count, they need to download and install the Dropbox software and sign in with their account. Each referral will get you an additional 500 MB of storage.

¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

Looking for a break from the festivities this weekend? Try these reads on for size.

• With the future of the Mac Pro always in doubt and Rich's impending switch to CS6, we started talking about what it would take to build a hackintosh and whether such a machine could be counted on as a primary editing system. Our #PostChat friends @sedvideo and @nrogers directed us to tonymacx86.com and OSx86 Project to get our inner geeks on.

• Some great tips for avoiding some of the pitfalls of working with clients on video production. Tips in this guide can help streamline the process and ensure that everyone involved is happy with the final product and the journey getting there. Good, Fast & Cheap? Avoiding Some of the Pitfalls of Pro Video Editing.

• Something to whet the appetite of those of us who are waiting for the release of Premiere Pro CS6. Scott Simmons provides a fairly detailed first look at editing in the much improved NLE, which he says was a joy to work with. Random notes from my first "real world" Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 edit

• If switching to a new NLE is on your mind, Oliver Peters provides a number of good tips for FCP users that are looking to start using Avid Media Composer. He also links to a couple comprehensive resources like Steve Hulfish's on demand tutorial for FCP users looking to switch Avid Media Composer. Tips for the FCP Switcher

• In a rush to produce online video, it's easy for marketers to forget that clients need to see the ROI. Grant Crowell from Video-Commerce.Org reviews the reasons why social video ROI measurement is a critical element to the success of a social video program. Video ROI – Does It Really Matter?

• Do you think it would be cool to cut trailer for big budget action flicks with lots of explosions? If so, here is a chance to demonstrate your chops in a cool promo by Marvel, who is letting fans make thier own Avengers Trailer using the WeVideo online editor and YouTube. Beyond the fun of the promo, it's a great example of a brand doing of socially engaging its fans in a much cooler way than a FaceBook page and a like button. Marvel, WeVideo, Lets Fans Make Their Own Avengers ReMix On YouTube

• The Canon C300, Canon 5d Mark III or the RED SCARLET - which one should you pick if you're shooting at night and are unable to add light? NoFilmSchool does the leg work to give you the lowdown on which camera performs best under these challenging conditions.

• PremiumBeat offers up some great practical advice for managing the customer relationship. As always, reading tips like this is the easy part, putting them into practice and making them habitual is where most of us fall down.

• AVID has pumped up Avid Studio for iPad with the ability to record voiceovers directly to the timeline, 14 new transitions, multiline titles and the ability to seperate audio and video tracks.

• Nielsen released a report about what we watch and where we watch it. Nothing really surprising here - internet, timeshifted and mobile viewing is on the rise while traditional TV viewing is declining. Interesting that they distinguish between internet and mobile as they both allow content producers to go direct to consumer cutting out the traditional broadcaster/cable TV operator which to me is the most interesting opportunity for producers to capture more of the aggregate value.

The last five weeks have been a sprint. Two weeks of hectic preparation for NAB, a week for the event, and 2 weeks of personally following up with everyone I met. While I've still got a lot of action items, I have finally had a chance to reflect on how NAB went for ScreenLight.

ScreenLight at NAB 2012

Team members were equipped with a personal mobility device (new shoes), a branded mobile backdrop (ScreenLight t-shirt), and several personal cloud access devices (iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro).

Overall it was a really positive experience. Yes, it was tiring, and yes, there was less sleep than I am used to, but it was great to connect with the production community, meet new people and connect with many of the people that I've been interacting with virtually over the last year.

While it's still early (and always difficult) to quantify the ROI for the five weeks of time that I invested in the event, I would say that we met our objectives of building awareness for ScreenLight and filling the marketing funnel with sales prospects.

Our Performance on Key Objectives at NAB 2012

I believe that our initial hypothesis that meeting on the floor can provide similar benefits to a booth, without the high cost held true. To meet our objectives of increasing awareness and filling the marketing funnel, we allocated our time to meeting with four key groups of people. Here is how we did.

Meeting Potential Clients

This aspect of the event went well for us. I had a number of meetings scheduled in advance, and in spite of some scheduling hiccups, I met with a bunch of really good people. Aside from educating them about our service, these meetings were a great source of feedback on where we should go in terms of product development.

Connor Crosby just published a great review of ScreenLight on the EditingWhiz website. The review highlights ScreenLight's security, branding capability, broad support for video formats, and the ability to view videos on desktops, mobile devices and AppleTV as strong points of the service.

Overall, I am impressed with ScreenLight’s service. It was very snappy and easy to use. Uploading a video didn’t seem to take that long – I’d say about the same time as Vimeo or YouTube. I would definitely recommend ScreenLight to any company looking to become more professional and share videos privately across the globe. Plus, ScreenLight has excellent customer service! Whenever I send them an email, I usually get a reply shortly after!

— Connor Crosby - EditingWhiz

Check out the full review here.

If you haven't checked out the EditingWhiz site before, you should. The website is dedicated to providing high-quality video and written tutorials to the post production community. It features a range of tutorials on After Effects, Media Composer, Final Cut Pro X, as well as, reviews of post production tools.

They say don’t knock it before you try it. And sure enough, until recently, I have been fairly open to the idea of adopting Final Cut Pro X as my NLE of choice. But I have just delivered my first project cut exclusively on FCP X and must say it was a completely unpleasant experience. "Everything just changed in post", is the tagline for FCP X on Apple's website. It sure did: for the first time in 9 years as a professional editor I actually didn’t enjoy editing.

Some of the most well documented deficiencies upon the initial release of FCPX were the lack of XML import/export, multi-cam editing, and broadcast monitor support. The absence of these features from the new version caused an unprecedented uproar from the post-production community, and Apple moved quickly to add these features. Having said that, the lack of any of the above features (with the exception of XML support) was not much of deal breaker for me. The bulk of my business is corporate video, where everything from graphics and audio mixing is done in house. In fact, FCP X seemed like it was built for the kind of editing I do.

So why am I turning my back on Final Cut Pro? First is the fact that it is such a completely foreign interface. Now, I’m the farthest thing from a Luddite and I don’t fear change, but I spent the last 9 years of my life becoming very proficient at something and now it’s just gone. There is a huge cost in terms of both time and energy associated with learning new ways to do things in FCP X. Right now it seems like it would be far less disruptive to my workflow to switch to Premiere Pro CS6, or even Avid than it would be to continue using Final Cut Pro X. Sure, my skills as an editor are not dependent on my tools, but being extremely knowledgeable about the primary tool of my trade is a selling point when I market myself to potential clients.

FCP X: Taking The Editor Out of The Driver’s Seat

Apple has decided to take the "hassle" of media management out of the mix by organizing all project assets automatically into Events. I never saw media management as a problem. In fact, it was again a marketable skill.

Crowd funding is an Internet phenomenon that has steadily been growing over the past few years. For the uninitiated, crowd funding is a process of creating online groups, consisting of people who network and pool their money and other resources together to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. Crowd funding has been successfully used to fund a number of projects, from disaster relief to book publishing to developing new software. In fact, crowd funding is being used to fund every manner of project (check out the recent Wired article "The five weirdest crowdfunded projects").

Not surprisingly, independent filmmakers have turned to crowd funding as a viable method of financing their films, and there are a some great success stories out there. Late last year, filmmaker Ryan Koo successfully raised $115,000 for his first feature film, "Man-child".

A number of sites exist that make setting up a crowd funding project easy. The two most popular are Kickstarter or IndieGoGo. They are both quite similar, the main difference being that Kickstarter is all-or-nothing: you set a campaign goal amount and a time limit for the campaign, and if you don’t reach your goal within the allotted time, the money reverts back to the donors. IndieGoGo allows you to keep what you raised, although they do take a larger cut as a fee (9% vs 5%). Either way, with hard work and an understanding of social media, you can conceivably raise funds well into the tens of thousands. Certainly enough to help fund a micro-budget feature film or documentary.

We are a young and privately funded company. While we occasionally eat something other than ramen noodles, we have a pretty tight marketing budget. When we evaluated how to participate at NAB this year, we had to take a hard look at the return on investment of exhibiting.

ScreenLight at NAB

Team members will be equipped with a personal mobility device (new shoes), a branded mobile backdrop (ScreenLight t-shirt), and several personal cloud access devices (iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro).

On the plus side, exhibiting at NAB would potentially increase awareness about our cloud video collaboration service. It would also make it easy to engage in lots of great conversations, as a good booth can draw people in.

The big negative of exhibiting at NAB is cost. The hard cost of a small booth is somewhere in the $5,000 range. Creating signage, promotional material, swag, etc. easily adds thousands more. After adding in flights, hotels, meals and entertainment for 3 people, we would easily be pushing into the $15,000-$20,000 range.

An equally large consideration for a startup is the opportunity cost. Spending a significant amount of time preparing for the event, and having all of us man the booth (this isn't a job for 1 person) means that time gets diverted away from improving the product, engaging in other marketing activities, and keeping the business moving forward. Everything gets put on hold for the big event.

There is also uncertainty around the true awareness generated by a booth. With so many exhibitors at NAB, smaller companies can be overshadowed by lavish booths from companies that have large brand marketing budgets. Sometimes you get lucky and get placement by a prime draw, and sometimes you get tucked away in a back corner.

Our Hypothesis: Meeting on the Floor Can Provide Similar Benefits to a Booth, Without the High Cost

Given the high cost of a booth and the uncertain return in terms of awareness and leads, we decided not to get one.