Happy New Year to all our friends and clients.

I hope it’s a prosperous 2012 for everyone, we look forward to seeing you all soon.

Stay tuned……..some exciting news coming soon……….including a brand new website.

After the initial excitement of Apple releasing a new version of Final Cut called Final Cut X we have decided to stick with Final Cut Studio. The new software does not offer the flexibility that we need as a company and many features such as backwards compatibility, multiple sequences in projects and even Multicam support, for now, are missing.

We feel that by using the older software our clients will benefit a lot more, which is a real shame as we were all looking forward to upgrading to Final Cut X in the hope that it would build on Apples superb Final Cut pro 7.

Over the coming months we will assess the situation and see what arises, we will also have to look at other editing packages in the long term to upgrade our facilities if Apple refuse to correct the problems with Final Cut Pro X. We feel from being the market leader in user friendly, stable and flexible editing Apple have abandoned the professional editing market. The new editing software lacks many features that professional editors are used to and require as an essential part of their workflow.

We have just invested in 2 brand new high def camera’s to add to our growing list of equipment. We have bought both a Panasonic AG-AF101 and also a Canon 5D, that can not only produce some amazing results with video but are nice and small for those shoots where we need to move around quickly.

It was all very exciting as we all eagerly unpacked them…………….only to decide that we may as well buy new lenses as well. On second thoughts maybe we just got into a buying fever. It’s like Christmas without the snow and cold weather.

We popped down to Silverstone a few weeks ago to film the Formula Student event, we had a great time filming some amazing footage, both in the pits and also of the cars on the track. We got completely soaked in the morning with torrential rain but as the sun came out in the afternoon we soon dried off.

JTA Media have been working closely with Sheffield Hallam University on the video for their brand new University pages located at http://www.shu.ac.uk/university

We were given the task to create videos of certain University buildings to highlight their facilities. The videos had to work alongside the brand new University section of their website. The solution we devised was to not only use graphics in the video to show the location of the building but also to utilise students to give the viewers a brief guided tour of a particular building which would then integrate with the other media being produced to sit on the pages for each of the buildings.

Last Wednesday JTA Media were in London to film interviews at both the Olympic Stadium and also the London Olympic organising offices. We saw the new Olympic Park, which is taking shape and looking very impressive.

There had been rumblings in the media world that TV advertising revenue would be on the decline. However, the 2010 figures from the Advertising Association however seem to show the opposite with 4.3 billion spent on TV advertising. TV ad spend had 26.9% share of the advertising marketing, where in 2009 it was only 25.6%, that’s 1.3% up on the previous year, and the 3rd year of growth.

In troubled economic times we think that it backs up the whole idea that TV advertising is as effective and popular as it ever was. In fact other forms of advertising spend were down such as Print and Radio. It’s great to see that TV adverting has still lost none of it’s charm and effectiveness and long may this continue.

With the announcement of Final Cut X by Apple the editors here at JTA Mansions are getting very excited about getting their hands on this new piece of software, hopefully it will be more than a simple update, with the promise of a rewritten platform.

However, how Final Cut X relates to the current version of Final Cut Studio is still up for debate as it seems from Apples announcement it may replace Final Cut Studio. If so, what will happen to all the other programs that are included within it?

What worries us a little is that Apple may change a program we all love, let’s hope they don’t change the interface too much, it’s what makes Final Cut Pro a joy to use.

Only time will tell.

We are often asked, what goes on behind the scenes at JTA Media? Well now you can find out as we’ve uploaded a behind the scenes video of one of our recent TV commercials. Take a look and see what goes into making a broadcast commercial.

http://www.jtamedia.com/examples/granite-behindscenes/

Coming soon a behind the scenes of the office………on second thoughts we wouldn’t want to inflict that on you!

The past couple of weeks have seen a transition at JTA Media as we have moved into our new offices in Sheffield City Centre. Our new home is Velocity House and they serve nice bacon sandwiches here.