Dumb Marketing

I just received an email from Pinnacle Systems touting their latest tutorial, "Making A Documentary Part III." Hoping to share this information with you, I clicked the link only to find this:


I appreciate when manufacturers provide tutorials and I've heard plenty of good things about Pinnacle Studio, but this is a surefire way to scare off customers.

Synthetic Media In Premiere Pro

It's good to see that Layers Magazine finally began offering Premiere Pro tutorials about six months ago. In this tutorial, Franklin McMahon demonstrates the uses of media created within Premiere Pro.


The tutorial demonstrates how and why to use transparent video in your timeline. Also note that in Premiere Pro CS4 color mattes support an assortment of blending modes which opens up some visual possibilities. (Here's a link to information on blending modes and what they do.)

Quicktime Alternative

Typically one needs to install Apple's Quicktime player in order to support .mov and other video file codecs. Unfortunately, the installation can be a little tricky. The Quicktime player is available free on Apple's site. But be warned that the page defaults to the full Itunes download, which you may not need, and if you're a Windows user, may not run at all. Ugh.

Remember to check the appropriate boxes
when downloading Quicktime from Apple.
Otherwise you'll download software you
don't need and receive email you don't want.

Here's an easy alternative to avoid those potential hazards. You can download the Quicktime Alternative instead. The file is about half the size of Apple's version and has performed just as well.