Widely recognized as the standard in the industry, Apple’s Final Cut Studio brings high-end video production features down to a price almost any ministry can afford. By using Apple’s line of proven and reliable workstations and portable computers, almost any video format can be captured, edited, and output.

Are you shooting HDV, DV, XDCAM EX, AVC-Intra, MPEG-2, or something else entirely? Did your head spin when you read that last sentence? Don’t worry, Final Cut Pro can handle all the settings for you. Just drop your video file on the timeline and Final Cut will reconfigure it’s settings to match whatever you video is, keeping you from having to know much of anything about what video format you’re working with. Extreme flexibility is a two-edged sword: Final Cut Pro can work with almost any video format (yes, including footage from the RED One camera) but if you mess up any of the settings you may not know how to get back to what works. With Final Cut having the capability of matching your incoming video format you can sit down and get to work knowing that it will work with whatever you throw at it.

But that’s not the end of the story. Final Cut Studio comes with five applications: Final Cut Pro for video editing, Motion for creating motion graphics, Soundtrack Pro for recording, editing, and correcting audio, Compressor for outputting your finished video to almost any format, and DVD Studio Pro for creating professional quality DVDs with completely customized menus and content. These are the ones you’ll use all of the time but there are two more applications included that are for the true geeks out there. Color gives you true Hollywood style color manipulation, masking, keying, and motion-tracking while Cinema Tools allows you to convert to and from many esoteric frame rates, timecode formats, and film related settings. Never fear though, because Final Cut Studio is well suited for the growing video ministry because you only need to expand out and use those additional programs as your proficiency grows. Begin with Final Cut Pro to get your video edited and then expand out to the other applications only if and when you need them. Once you’ve used a professional suite of production tools like Final Cut Studio, you’ll wonder how you ever got by with anything less.

Call to find out how you can bring the video editing power of the pros into your ministry to help capture and spread your message in a better looking and more efficient way.

Fowler would like to congratulate Michael Roten for being the winner of our ‘Apple TV Give Away’!

Be sure to check us out at NOC on November 5th and November 6th in San Diego, located at booth #106 and #205, for another chance to win an Apple TV!

Click her to register>>

Even if you missed the first ever Catalyst west coast gathering, you can still experience Catalyst in a number of ways. Be sure to register today at the best rates available for Catalyst West Coast 2010, being held April 21-23, 2010. The Catalyst movement continues to expand with Catalyst One Day events with Andy Stanley and Craig Groeschel.

Going to Catalyst? Follow us on Twitter to find out how to win a FREE Apple Tv!

Fowler will be at Catalyst October 8th and October 9th in Atlanta.

Be sure to visit us at booth #29 and #30.  See you there!

Since the prospect of learning an entirely new operating system can be a little daunting, we’re here to make it as easy as possible. Fowler can provide training on a large number of things but in some instances though, there’s no sense in reinventing the wheel. In the case of Apple products, some of the very best training that can be had is both free and readily available straight from the horse’s mouth.

If you want to learn how to move from a Windows based computer to a Mac, watch some of the videos on this site: http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/

If you’re up to speed on the Mac but are ready to take the next step and start working on your big blockbuster debut, these videos will help you get started: http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/#imovie

Be sure to watch the tutorials covering iMovie and Garage Band if you’re interested in podcasting. You’ll likely end up using one or both of these pieces of software.

Remember that we’re here to help so if you have any technical questions, operational questions, or workflow questions, give us a call. There are many people on staff that have “been there and done that” so there’s lots of experience we can bring to your situation.

When you’re thinking about ways to get your message in front of as many people as possible, have you considered podcasting? Eww, it’s a techie term! What is podcasting? It may sound scary if you don’t know what it is it but rest easy, it’s really pretty simple.

Let’s start with some terminology. There are just a few ingredients that go into making a podcast and they are XML, RSS, media files, web servers, and an RSS reader. In order for everything to make sense, we have to start with XML. Hang with me; it gets really easy at the end.

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a programming language of sorts. There are lots of things you can do with an XML file but what we’re concerned with is using it to create an RSS feed. These two go hand in hand. An RSS feed is a simple way for someone to subscribe to quickly changing information. Think of an RSS feed like the text crawl along the bottom of news sites like CNN, Fox, or MSNBC. RSS feeds are short in nature and serve to update the subscriber when there is new information published.

Now, I’m going to skip ahead for a minute to the RSS reader. An RSS reader is either a website or an application that gathers and displays a series of news–style headlines. This is an important part of the distribution model that makes podcasting so popular. When a new podcast (or news headline) is published, the reader automatically downloads and displays it for the viewer.

In a podcast, the media file is the actual file that you want the end viewer to receive. Technically, a podcast can be either an audio file, a video file, or a document like a .pdf file. The web server is where that file is stored until it is downloaded by a subscriber through their aggregator.

Are you still with me? It’s all downhill from here!

Here’s a typical workflow for publishing an audio podcast. I’m going to use some specific names you might recognize as a part of this example:

• Record your Sunday message into a MacBook Pro using Garage Band with the built-in audio input jack.
• Using Garage Band, edit your podcast with an opener, closer and possibly a little cleanup.
• Export your recording from Garage Band into iWeb
• Create a podcast page in iWeb and add your recording to that page.
• Publish your podcast site.
• Copy the link from the podcast site and paste it into the iTunes podcast form.

Garage Band is a multitrack audio recording software and iWeb is a very simple software for creating web sites. Both of these are included for free on Apple computers and if you have a subscription to MobileMe, a web based service from Apple that provides everything you need for podcasting, then you’ve got all the ingredients to get a podcast recorded, edited, posted, and listed for free within the iTunes Store.

There you go, you’re published! Now, the particular workflow I described above is Fowler’s recommended solution. It’s about as simple as it gets. It’s dependent on a MobileMe subscription to provide the hosting service for the media files but that’s one of many options for hosting your files. Notice I didn’t mention XML, RSS, web server, or RSS readers. iWeb creates the XML file for you in the background, the RSS feed points to your iWeb site, an online storage server called iDisk is the web server for your media file, and iTunes is the RSS reader. The beauty of this solution is that all of the techie stuff is hidden from the user.

See? Completely painless, right?

The FowlerInc Interview podcasts are back upon iTunes. Click here to check out the videos, more coming next week. Be sure to subscribe!

Videos include:
Success Stories: part 1
HS-400a Product Review
JVC NAB Interview
Christie NAB Interview
Panasonic NAB Interview
Roland NAB Interview