Matt Jones Tech
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  • I’m a Purist

    Opinion

    This idea has been with me since I was a kid learning card tricks. The purist in me never liked some special custom-made gimmick or some thing that essentially made the trick possible. Because suddenly, now I’m relying on that gimmick everywhere I go. Now I can’t perform if I don’t have that gimmick.

    The same holds true in my professional life. And instead of gimmicks for magic tricks, it’s plugins for applications. They might seem cool at first and give you some ability you didn’t have with the stock version of the software, or save you a bunch of time in creating a custom look or help you deliver an effect on a tight deadline.

    Reasoning

    However, in the end, just like with card tricks, now you’re stuck relying on this plugin that now you can’t live without. And even worse, if you’re working on a team and need to hand off a project to another team member, they can’t work on the project unless they have all the same plugins you have.

    Just a minor, technical note: for the sake of this article and the naming conventions used by different softwares and companies, I’m using the term ‘addon’ and ‘plugin’ interchangeably. There very well may be a technical difference between the two terms, but Premier and After Effects call them plugins and Blender calls the addons. They’re almost the same thing to me.

    Of course there can be exceptions with regard to my ‘purist’ view on the idea of this subject. One is the nature of the plugin, and Blender definitely falls into its own category when it comes to plugins/addons. Especially since it comes with its own addons panel in the preferences menu, addons are an integral part of Blender. Plus you can bake or otherwise export things that you make using addons into a filetype or object that anyone else can import and use. The addons are limiting in that way.

    Paid addons for Adobe products on the other hand, have the potential to cause issues. If you’re on a team and need to make some minor changes to a project, but don’t have the addons, now you’re in trouble. Plus you might even run into licensing issues, depending on the plugin.

    matt

    April 23, 2019
    Blender, Linux, Video Editing
    addon, Adobe, after effects, b3d, Blender, plugin, premiere pro

  • Flowblade Review: Most Capable NLE on Linux?

    Flowblade 2.0 Released

    Janne Liljeblad and other contributors released Flowblade 2.0 recently and I thought I’d try it out. I edited a quick 1 minute video from about 10 drone clips shot in 4k. The first impressive feature was how easily I was able to render proxies. It was just as easy to replace them with the original media before the render.

    As both a Premiere user and a Linux user, I’ve been on a quest to find an NLE that is just as capable and intuitive as Premiere, but on Linux. So far, I’ve used only a few and had just ‘okay’ experiences. My first Linux based NLE that I dove headfirst into was Kdenlive. I was cutting some footage for a client and built out the complete project in Kdenlive for a few reasons. First and foremost, at the time, I no longer had access to Adobe CC through a former employer. And finally, even if I had $53/mo, I could think of 1,000 things I’d do before I got an Adobe CC subscription.

    But I digress, this is a post about Flowblade. My experience with Kdenlive was fine, the hotkeys took some getting used to. The alpha channels weren’t automatic either, but it worked. Flowblade, however gave me a much more ‘automatic’ experience. I’m on an older mid-range GTX-970 machine and 4k footage doesn’t playback smoothly. Regardless, it felt like proxies were easier to create in Flowblade than in Premiere. Just a few clicks and it was done. Updated right there in my timeline. And encoding was a breeze. Once I made my edits, which was a pleasure by the way, All I had to do was choose “replace proxies with original media” and I was all set to render.

    Intuitive Experience

    There were several hotkeys that carried over from Premiere and others that just made sense. The i and o keys set in and out points, the HOME and END key pops your playhead to the beginning and end of your timeline, stuff like that. The alpha transparency and title card system took some getting used to, but it wasn’t that bad. I feel like color correction is slightly easier in Flowblade than in Kdenlive. That’s just my experience, and the clips I happen to be working on.

    Overall, I still can’t completely commit to Flowblade, even though it’s a pretty great application for basic edits. If I were a vlogger and just needed something to spit out videos with speed, I’d definitely use Flowblade for everything. And even as a pro editor, I still may use Flowblade for some quick edits here and there, based on the situation. But as long as Resovlve remains an option for Linux users, it no doubt offers the absolute best postproduction experience so far. The grades are otherworldly. I’ve never had so much control over color. Not even in Premiere. Lumetri Color doesn’t even compete with Resolve.

    So far, my only issue with resolve is it can’t take Panasonic .MTS files by default, they have to be transcoded first. And that just may be a “free version” limitation, I’m not sure. Either way, I’m just a few freelance jobs away from picking up a full copy of Resolve for my personal Linux machine, so I’ll keep you posted if my experience changes once I get everything up and running. Until next time.

    matt

    March 19, 2019
    Linux, Ubuntu, Video Editing, Vlogging
    Adobe, creative cloud, kdenlive, linux, nle, postproduction, premiere, ubuntu, video editing

  • How to Create Seamless Patterns in Adobe Illustrator

    In this example, let’s say you want to create a seamless pattern in Adobe Illustrator using vertical stripes. First create a 1:1 artboard at any resolution you like. If you’re creating this for use in 3D, powers of two work best (1024, 2048, 4096, etc). Next, create your first stripe with a solid rectangle, and be sure to turn off the stroke.

    Single rectangle, no stroke.

    Next, ALT+Left Click and drag your rectangle so it snaps to the right edge of your original shape. This is a quick and easy way to copy/paste or duplicate an object, and move it around at the same time. Once you’ve done that, set the fill color for your next stripe. Continue this for as many colors as you want. I’ll do three.

    Three rectangles, snapped to each other, all different colors.

    Now, with all of your stripes selected, head up to the Object menu and click Object > Pattern >Make.

    I didn’t even know this existed!

    Once you click that, you’re brought into a special pattern editing view. From there, you can set specific parameters for your pattern. But by default, it’s seamless. By the way, this pattern (or swatch, as Illustrater calls it) is NOT square, and doesn’t have to be. We’ll get there. When you’re done, click done at the top.

    I just clicked ‘done’ at this point.

    After you click done, you’ll have a brand new swatch in your Swatches panel.

    Last step! Turn off your stripe template and grab the rectangle tool and drag it across your entire artboard. Make sure you’re snapping to both corners and holding SHIFT while you drag. Then, set your fill to that fancy new swatch you just made. Done!

    So stripey…

    Export it at whatever resolution you want, because vectors are cool like that. Hope this helped, hope you learned something new, and you’re rad. See you in the comments!

    matt

    November 12, 2018
    Graphic Design
    Adobe, graphic design, graphics, Illustrator, patterns, seamless, textures, vector art

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. 1 Thess 5:21