August 25, 2025

Our Save 50% promotion continues now through the end of Labor Day (Sept. 1). Any webinar or bundle qualifies - but not gift cards or subscriptions. Enter coupon code - Larry-50 - during checkout.

500 titles covering Final Cut, Premiere and Resolve.

Because of this sale, there are two webinars I want to call to your attention: "Animate Stills in Final Cut" and "Animate Stills in Premiere Pro." (The Resolve version will be presented in September.) While these were recorded 2 years ago, they are still current and unique in that I demo a complete stills workflow from scanning still images (LaserSoft SilverFast 9), repairing images (Photoshop), upscaling images (Topaz Photo AI) then manipulating images in either Premiere, Final Cut and Motion.

With our 50% off sale, each of these is less than $8 (US). I was watching one recently and impressed with how much I covered in less than an hour.

Last week, long-time industry veteran, Andy Marken, sent me a preview of how new AI-based software is cleaning up live production from sports to music. We'll learn more at IBC.

I found this case study presentation interesting and got Andy's permission to share it with you.

Last Thursday, I finished adding subtitles to the last three years of webinars. These are now a regular feature in our Video Training Library. As I wrote last week, this experience opened my eyes to how difficult our NLEs make this process.

One of the comments to this article upbraided me for confusing "subtitles" with "captions". Since I casually toss around both, I looked up definitions in Apple's Dictionary:

• Title: A caption or credit in a movie or broadcast.
• Caption: A piece of text appearing on a movie or television screen as part of a movie or broadcast.
• Subtitle: Captions displayed at the bottom of a movie or television screen that translate or transcribe the dialogue or narrative.

So, all titles and subtitles are captions, but not all captions are subtitles or titles. That certainly makes things clearer.

As I was creating all these subtitles, I realized that simply creating them is only part of the process. Yes, it is laborious and time-consuming to manually transcribe text. My first company, before I started this one, transcribed trade show conferences, then put those sessions on a searchable DVD. It was a good business until the Internet appeared, which killed the business model. 

So, yeah, I have a very clear understanding of just how much time automated speech-to-text saves. But there is more to subtitles than that. 

Just as with human transcribers, software-based transcription makes mistakes in content, spelling, and punctuation. Correcting those remains a manual process. More insidious is correcting the timing of when a subtitle appears and what should be in each one.

Many a joke is ruined because the punchline appears prematurely, because software has no sense of humor. Or the flow of a sentence is wrong because the subtitle break occurs at the wrong time. 

What I learned is that even with auto-generated subtitles, it still takes a long time to make them accurate and timed properly. It makes me respect even more those companies that take the time to make their subtitles right. That work is neither easy nor fast.

TUTORIALS & REVIEWS

» Compare Export Speed in Final Cut, Premiere & Resolve (Tutorial)

   » This measures the speed of the software and the storage that supports it.

» Caution: Batch Export in Resolve 20 Export May Cause Problems (Tutorial)

   » Batch export in Resolve is deceptive and yields unexpected results.

» BorisFX Acquires High-End Audio Product Family From MAGIX (Interview)

   » Larry interviews Boris Yamnitsky, President, BorisFX about the news.

» Use AI to Improve Real-Time Video Production (News)

   » Andy Marken showcases new software appearing at IBC next month.

TOP 4 TITLES LAST WEEK