Creative COW Magazine Writer, Web Writer, Contributing Editor
Timothy Duncan
Zap Digital Media Nashville, Tennessee USA
Timothy
Duncan may be a newcomer to Vegas, arriving at version 3.0, but he has
been a deep explorer into the world of NLE's since the very early days
of Avid and EMC2. His experience covers a broad range of
linear/nonlinear editing, engineering, systems design, color correction
as well as multi-camera video and film production. His earliest
memories are of WBBJ-TV, an ABC affiliate located in Jackson, TN, where
he began coming to the studio at age 2 and started running prompter at
age 8. By age 12 he was editing, directing, and producing the number
one rated religious program carried on the station for his local
church. At age 16 he designed a portable multi-camera system and
traveled the country doing 1 hour television specials for churches. He
graduated from Riverside High School as Valedictorian, turned down
offers to teach communications at Evangel College, and Southeastern
University, instead choosing to move to Nashville and attend
electronics school and get a business degree. Having been around
engineers who made him think most engineers were too lazy to work hard
up front to make it easy for the end user later, he wanted a degree
which would enable him to do just that. Timothy's first job in
Nashville was at Elite Post (later to become Henninger Elite) where he
became known as the "whiz kid" editor. He has experience editing many
types of videos from music videos for MTV, VH-1 and CMT to national
adds and nationally distributed television programs. He has also
authored DVDs, Web Sites, and enhanced CDs for such notable clients as
Dreamworks. As many editors do over the years, he played musical chairs
with the major edit shops in Nashville and ended up being a free-lancer
who was comfortable in practically every room in town. In the early
90s, he became a contractor for Northern Telecom (which later became
Nortel Networks) where he built and designed a D2 edit suite that
allowed the editor to sit face to face with the client. He also was an
early beta tester of Pro-Tools and Ensemble Designs.
As
an early Avid adopter, creating pre-read lists by hand before programs
existed to do it, Timothy dreamed of finishing entire projects directly
on computer at full resolution. He installed the first Avid in the
southeastern U.S. which had the broadcast video board and Pinnacle 3D
effects. Knowing there had to be a more cost effective and higher
quality option, Timothy has devoted the rest of his life searching for
the perfect NLE system. His tour has taken him through Media 100,
Plumb, DPS, Pinnacle, Newtek, Matrox and various editing applications
and beta programs including After Effects, BorisFX, Avid, EMC2,
Premiere, Video Action NT, Speed Razor, Online Express, Final Cut Pro
(he was an original beta tester for version 1.0), Incite, and now his
most favorite application: Vegas Video. On top of all the video
production, Timothy managed to find time to run a systems integration
and service company selling customized turnkey video editing systems,
and also launching Incite in the U.S., providing the first level of
dealer and end-user technical support and training.
"After
spending years on alpha and beta teams begging the developers for
simple editing features, it only took a few minutes playing with VV to
realize that their developers were very, very different. It was obvious
to me that the people in charge did indeed have a full understanding
and total grasp from the editor's point of view." Timothy beams and
with a southern drawl continues, "Editing in VV is an absolute
pleasure. Normally when I edit with other applications, I have a little
counter in my brain keeping track of all the extra and un-necessary
steps I have to take over and over. In VV, I just edit. If only VV
talked directly to uncompressed SDI I/O hardware... that would be my
dream system."
...No more hair pulling!
Currently, Timothy runs Zap Digital Media, a full media production company based in Nashville, TN.
In this prosumer hd dv camcorder review from The Creative COW Magazine, Timothy Duncan discusses his first impressions with the CineAlta-branded XDCAM HD PDW-F350, along with the PDW-F70 recording deck. Sony's XDCAM HD F350 is an optical disc-based variableframe-rate camera that shoots in both HD and Standard Definition DVCam.
In this article, Creative Cows Timothy Duncan explores how Northstar Studios used Sony Vegas, the Excalibur plug-ins, multi-cam wizard for Vegas and SD-Connect video converter from Convergent Design to help create this years 20th Annual Stellar Awards broadcast -- a ten camera shoot recorded January 15th in Houston, Texas. With a deadline of delivery by 8:30am on January 20th, Timothy had his work cut out for him to edit and fine-tune the shows pacing using these three tools offline for later finishing on an Avid|DS system. How did these tools perform together? Read on for the complete story...
