Knob Twiddling

Some gadgets are small and some a very big. This one is somewhere inbetween. Yesterday I bought the Tascam FW-1082 as an addition to my Final Cut Pro (FCP) editing set. It is a Firewire-connected control surface which means that I can actually physically move the faders on the mixer and via MIDI it tells FCP what I did. FCP then sets keyframes to represent where I faded sound in and out. Editors used to have to do this by hand which takes forever and is extremely non-intuitive.

I am still struggling to get everything on the mixer to work (particularly plugging in a microphone and having FCP recognize the Tascam as the input device - as yet no sound coming through alas), but I'll get there. It's a matter of figuring out which parameter in which of the five different preference settings I need to change. It's almost like Windows, guys!

Next week I'll be working on the online edit for the third Margreet Dolman DVD which also entails mixing the sound... so I am looking forward to putting the Tascam to the test then!