November 10, 2025

Strada is introducing a new, collaborative file-sharing service that bypasses Cloud servers to provide secure, private, and fast peer-to-peer media review and file transfers between Mac, Window, iOS and Android devices.

Here’s a first look.

My lead story is a guest post from Michele Smith.

The digital video landscape evolves constantly. The result: creators must manage multiple aspect ratios, audio levels, compression rates, and export standards — all while preserving brand consistency. Here are some tips to help optimize your projects for social media.

This week's webinar - "Essential Editing Workflow in Apple Final Cut Pro" - illustrates the full range of editing techniques in Final Cut to create a finished project. My goal is to showcase those elements you really need to know to edit effectively – shortcuts, workarounds, best practices and more.

This is a great refresher and an easy way to discover techniques you may have forgotten. As always, registration is free.

Thinking of webinars, Ruth complained that it is very hard to find the Final Cut, Premiere or Resolve Master Bundles in the Video Training Library. They were there, I told her, but they were really hard to find.

So, last week, I added a much better interface to find these bundles quickly. All the links you need are gathered in one place at the top of the Library home page.

In Michele's article, above, she talks about Compressor's ability to create a compression network using multiple computers to speed compression.

I realized that it's been seven years since I last wrote about how this works, so I decided to re-test this and write up my results.

My favorite demo from last week's webinar - Ask Larry Anything! - showed how to create a jittery, "silent movie" title card using Apple Motion.

Even if you don't use Motion, the results are fun to see. 

This demo illustrates a better way to set audio levels in Adobe Premiere than simply dragging audio level lines up or down. The secret is to use the tools in the audio track mixer.

I use this technique in all my mixes.

Kristen asked: "What's the best way to archive media and projects?" It is a simple question that is very difficult to answer.

Regardless of which video editing software you use, safely archiving your media and projects when the editing is done is always a priority. But, what should you archive?

DaVinci Resolve has lots of titles available in its Effects panel. But, most times, you want something custom that matches the look of your project. Fusion templates are exactly what you need – they are shared between projects and you can customize them as much as you want. The only problem is that they are impossible to figure out without a map and a flashlight.

Building on my Fusion webinar, this shows how to save your custom titles for easy modification and reuse.

My kids are long-since grown, but a phrase from their younger days keeps coming back to me: "The key task for a teen-ager is to learn how to grow away from their parents and become independent." As anyone with teen-age children will attest, that "growing away" process can be painful for all concerned. 

What brought that to mind was Greta's comment in last week's webinar that she "hates vertical video." Yeah, well, I don't hate it, but I sure don't like it very much. Then, I realized that vertical video is designed for social media, just as horizontal media is designed for traditional broadcast and cinema. And, when compared to traditional media, social media is a teenager.

Social media likes breaking the rules: vertical instead of horizontal, jump cuts rather than B-roll, wildly bad audio, weird titles, and the never-ending parade of AI-generated images. (I won't even get into copyright, privacy, or ethics, all of which social media seems particularly unable to respect.)

In fact, anything the "old pros" used to do, social media does the opposite. Partly out of defining who they are, partly out of spite, and partly because they can. As many teen-agers like to say: "Who's gonna stop me?" 

The lament of us old pros echos the voices of parents the world over: "Why can't they be more like us?" A lament as old as time and just as likely to be ignored now as we did when we were growing up.

I don't know why, but I find it reassuring to think of social media as a rebellious teen-ager. It may not excuse their behavior, but it helps me understand it a lot better. Still, I would be much happier if there were a responsible adult in the room.

TUTORIALS & REVIEWS

» Strada Introduces Collaborative File Sharing (News)

  » A new file-sharing service that avoid the Cloud, yet is really fast.

» Efficient Workflows: Exporting Video for Multiple Social Networks (Tutorial)

  » A look at the different specs of social media networks.

» Create a Compression Network Using Apple Compressor (Tutorial)

  » How to use multiple computers for video compression and a speed test.

» Create a Jittery, "Silent Movie" Look for your Video (Tutorial)

  » Here's how to make video look hand-cranked, jittery, & unevenly exposed 

» The Best Way to Adjust Dialog Levels in Premiere Pro (Tutorial)

  » This technique is a much faster – and better – for audio.

» What's the Best Way to Archive Media? (Commentary)

  » Regardless of your NLE, archiving media and projects is not easy.

» Convert Custom Resolve Fusion Titles into Reusable Templates (Tutorial)

  » Fusion templates are perfect – but impossible to figure out.

TOP 4 TITLES LAST WEEK