I recently consulted with Mike @ HD for Indies (highly recommend his services, money well spent) about putting together a new Mac editing suite for handling HDV footage. We put together a fast enough system to handle cutting a feature with online capability.

And here is my question. I have some experience in editing DV and now I’m jumping headlong into all of this new gear with limited knowledge and need to find resources that can get me moving in the right direction. I have bought the Total training FCP 5 package that should get me up to speed with the software, but where can I look to find introduction to the layers of understanding work flow issues, new technology, and all of the techno-babble that flies over my head constantly.

Would people recommend Steve Mullen’s HDV book? What about instructional material on configuring the actual editing components?

I have been reading the posts from this site for a couple of years now and have learned much, but without a context much of what is shared here is lost on me.

Any info/experience that people could pass along will be greatly appreciated!

Check out Larry Jordan's site at www.larryjordan.biz and sign up for his free newsletter. His site also has a lot of good free articles on FCP and Mac OS. Also if you need some more training go to Lynda.com where you can pay $25/month (no minimum purchase) and you get full access to all their online training movies. There's movies on all kinds of software not just FCP.

Thanks Nate. Jordan's site looks good. I have been toying with subscribing to Lynda.com for a while now.

Have you joined? Any feedback?

Yeah I joined Lynda for one month and watched all the Final Cut Movies (which coincidentally are taught by Larry Jordan) and then I just cancelled my subscription. It worked out good for me because for $25 I got access to training worht a lot more and I had a decent knowledge of Final Cut so I just marathoned the movies over the month and took notes on new stuff I learned. I keep an eye on the site because it adds new titles a lot so if I see one or two of intereste I can re-activate for a month and watch them. I can't vouch for too much stuff because I mainly stuck with Larry's Final Cut stuff but what I did watch was great quality and very thorough so I'm sure the rest of the content (Photoshop, After Effects etc.) are all just as good.

I just spent an hour over on Jordan's site looking through his archives, all of this mystery is beginning to unfold.... Color space, HDV GOP, Codec, are coming onto focus.

Amazing what an hour can do when looking in the right place.....

Thanks again Nate, you advice has helped greatly.