Updating Editing Skills with Lynda

  Editing   might seem unrelated to a site dedicated to my compositing skills, but as a compositor I from time to time do a little editing.  Often I need to check something in context, and it's a lot easier to use an editing program than build an edit in a compositing application.  Mostly, I learned editing hacking away at my own demos with a little guidance from a friend.  And an 8000 page (or so it seemed) pdf manual.


Friends have been telling me to visit lynda.com for their great tutorials.  I procrastinated, there being many other priorities, and I wasn't sure I wanted to commit to the subscription.   Boy was I wrong!

What got me to move was the Visual Effects Society's Linwood Dunn Online Training Scholarship.  This scholarship gives VES members who apply two-weeks of premium access, on a rotating basis as slots are available.  Shortly after I applied, my number came up.

When I went to Lynda.com I was a bit overwhelmed by the sheer volume of offerings.  My biggest interests, Mocha and Mokey are among the few applications they don't yet have lessons for.  I decided to start with Final Cut Pro, and took Larry Jordan's  eight hour Final Cut Pro 5 Essential Editing.  I chose FCP 5 because, well, that's what I have at home.

Let me tell you, it was great.  Of course, it really took me a bit closer to 16 hours with stops and starts.  At first I thought I'd just listen to the parts I "needed".  But as things progressed, I became more familiar with the site and discovered that they give certificates you can print or link to from your website.  This meant finishing all the lessons in the course.  And naturally, I thought I could get by without the excercise materials, but when I got to the audio section, I just had to do the lesson excercises.  They downloaded in a snap.

So I finished this class and I can say that my skills --and confidence --are greatly improved.  I decided I had to have Lynda in my life.  So I bought myself a month's gift certificate.  Gift certificates are nice, there is no automatic renewal, but the drawback is that they don't offer a premium gift certificate.  Remember, premium has the exercise files.  I hope to upgrade to a premium annual pass.

Once I finish Jordan's second editing class, I plan to brush up on my After Effects with the latest version.  A few months ago I taught myself NUKE doing the NUKE 6 tutorials on the Foundry website.  I might just go back and do Lynda's Nuke 5 lessons just to see if I missed anything.  (Not much, afterall, I did just teach Nuke 6 in India.)  There's a bunch of other stuff I want to update and learn as well.  So much for TV!

I liked Lynda.com so much I signed up for their affiliate program. In return, they're letting me offer my readers a free 24 hour pass to lynda.com.   Enjoy!