Editblog's QuickTip of the Day

The Editblog is doing a Final Cut Pro tip every day this month and today's looks like a good one.  Ever wonder why Motion projects take FOREVER to render in Final Cut? Well today's tip might just speed things up.  Check it out here.

An In Depth Look at the AF-100 In Action

That's not how that brake light's suppose to look!

Stunning Good Looks over at the ProVideo Coalition has a nice fairly in-depth look at shooting with Panasonic's AF-100.  The article covers the strengths of the camera and the limitations, including a tendency to clip the chroma values of the camera.  As you can you see in the picture above, the brake lights of the car are suppose to be an orange red, not yellow.

The article points out the many strengths of the camera too, especially how the images benefit from the large sensor, but overall you can't help but feel a little disappointed about the limitations of the 8-bit AVCHD codec.   Bottom line, if you can control the lighting, the camera shines. But under many real world conditions the camera presents some issues to work through.

Read the article here.

Canon T3i

Canon's new T3i - picture from DP Review.

Canon has released an update to their Rebel line with the T3i (600D).  Looks like essentially the T2i with a flip-out screen (plus some "photo filters" like fake tilt-shift).  Most interesting is the digital zoom feature which seems to minimize quality loss as you zoom in.  Gizmodo has a write-up with a sample video featuring the digital zoom.  Check it out here.

Also check-out the always-great preview from DP Review.

Another Urban Exploration Video

Here's another cool urban exploration video featuring Steve Duncan, the star of "Undercity".  This one isn't quite as polished as Undercity, but it's still fascinating nonetheless.

Magic Lantern

One feature I skipped over with the Magic Lantern "hack" for your Canon T2i is bit rate control.  You can actually crank up the bit rate your camera records at and improve the quality.  It appears that the T2i likes 60 mbit/sec the best. Likewise you can actually lower the bit rate and get longer record times (up to 30 minutes potentially). I have to try this out.

Check out this link for a few videos that show the various data rates possible.

The Best Video Card for Motion

It's easy to get caught up in trying to make your system "Adobe CS5" ready,  or "Resolve" ready. Both of those involve the purchase of a second video card from Nvidia that will cost you $1,000 or more.  Premiere Pro CS5 and Blackmagic's Resolve both take advantage of Nvidia's CUDA technology.  But what if you're sticking to Final Cut Pro and do most of your graphics builds in Motion?  Eric St-Martin did some testing between ATI's 5870 and the Nvidia Quadro 4000 to see which comes out on top.

Who wins?  The ATI card.  It's not a surprising finding but it clearly creates two different camps for Mac Pro users and the video cards they stick inside.  If you want the best performance for Apple products, you're probably best sticking with ATI cards and specifically the 5870.  And hopefully, HOPEFULLY, down the road Final Cut will tap in to Apple's own OpenCL standard and the 5870 should scream even more.  But if you want to get the best performance for CS5 or Resolve, you have to go Nvidia.

The only middle ground seems to be that Blackmagic has certified with 5870's little brother, the 5770, as a "GUI" video card (meaning it can only be used to power the CPU monitors and not as GPU acceleration).  In some of the testing I've seen the ATI 5770 does a better job handling Motion than the Nvidia cards.  It certainly beats the Nvidia GT120, another Blackmagic approved GUI card.

To read more about Eric's testing, check out his site here.

Some Links

Some interesting links to peruse:

• Is Panasonic's AF100 hackable (ala the GH1)?  Maybe so, according to the original GH1's hacker.
• Fairly recently Magic Lantern added the T2i to its list of hackable cameras. This isn't a magical bitrate booster but instead adds a lot of useful features to the camera such as zebra stripes, crop marks (16:9, 4:3, etc), manual audio gain and many more useful features.  This of course carries a warning of USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.  If you're daring, check it out.
• Matt Jeppson is at it again with another great post about being careful what we wish for when it comes to the eternal quest for raw video.
• And @EOSHD (a great source for DSLR links) has linked to a comparison video showing the GH2 in its native AVCHD mode vs. the 40fps burst modes in 1080 and 3.8K modes. So yes you can shoot near-4K video with a GH2!  But for only 40 frames at a time (so not even quite 2 seconds if you edit in a 24p timeline). Not so useful at the moment, but maybe a hack in the future will take care of that?

Panasonic's AF100's Sensor Too Small?

Matt Jeppson over at FreshDV has a nice article up about the sensor size of the AF100, the latest AVCHD codec based camera from Panasonic.  The article covers just how much smaller the AF100's sensor is compared to the full-frame sensor found in the Canon 5D, but that it compares favorably to Super35 and the Red cameras.  Most interesting is when you compare the AF100, a sub-$5,000 dollar camera, with the Sony EX1 (a camera that sells around $6K):

The AF100 clearly surpasses (at least in terms of sensor size) the EX1, which was to date really the only affordable large sensor camera you could get your hands on. And it does all this without forcing you to make the myriad workarounds and concessions required when shooting DSLR.

Read the full article here.

Christopher Nolan Screenplays

This might be slightly off-topic for this blog but if you're in to shooting video, you're probably in to movies as well.  I'm a big Christopher Nolan fan.  I love the way many of this films are constructed in a non-linear fashion.  If you haven't seen "Following", do yourself a favor and rent it.  Anyway, the site nolanfans.com has posted all of Nolan's scripts in the PDF format.  Definitely worth checking out if you're a fan of any (or all) of his films.

You can find the scripts here.

Final Cut Server Gone?

Remember the only thing Apple seemed to talk about at 2009's NAB?  Final Cut Server MIGHT be history.  Hardmac (via 9to5mac.com) seems to think that Final Cut Server and Xsan, both apps utilized by many video professionals, might be the next to go in what seems to be Apple's purging of its server applications and hardware.  I DO NOT think this signals or should add fuel to the rumors that Apple will eliminate Final Cut. We have Steve telling us how "awesome" the next release is going to be.  But it is an indication that Apple is willing to give up on the server side of business and it will obviously impact post production companies down the road.  Oh, and it goes without saying, take this with a grain of salt. But since Apple's already cut Xserve it's not totally out of the realm of possibility.

Should I Work For Free?

Great chart by Jessica Hische on whether or not you should work for free.  Something all of us freelancers have had to decide at one time or another.

I The Pro Res Maker

I waited an entire day to watch this after seeing various links appearing on Twitter.  I don't know why because it's funny and worth your time since you're in to this whole video thing:

5" Sony Monitor

Sony's CLM-V55

Sony has introduced an affordable field monitor.  The CLM-V55 is a 5" monitor that plugs in to your camera via HDMI.  The price is expected to be around $399.  The resolution of the monitor hasn't been reported as of yet, but for the price I can't imagine it's anywhere close to 720p. One of the most affordable full 720p HDMi monitors out there is the SmallHD DP6 which sells for $899. However I imagine the pixel count will be high enough to aid in focusing.  We shall see.


For more information about Sony's CLM-V55, check out Pocket-lint's full write up here.

Undercity

I'm utterly fascinated with photos and videos about abandoned and underground places.  I love photos of ghost towns, abandoned hospitals and subterranean places like subways and tunnels.  There's a great video about the exploration of New York City's underworld over on Vimeo called Undercity.  If you haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favor and watch it now (even at its length it's more than worth it):

UNDERCITY from Andrew Wonder on Vimeo.

Reopening for Business

I'm going to resume blogging again and have decided to return to my Blogspot site (which is the one you're reading now).  More traffic still comes this way than my Squarespace page, so I might as well resume posting here.  I have an upcoming post coming comparing Premiere CS5 and Final Cut Pro 7 with editing AVCHD material. And I'll try and provide some random links (most of which you'll probably have already come across) soon. There have been a few cameras released since I last updated, including Panasonic's AF100 which uses it's "AVCAM" variation of the AVCHD codec.  So this codec is definitely still alive and doing well for the time being.

Also, I'm having difficulties importing in my Squarespace posts. One of their mantras is that you can go in and out of Squarespace easily.  However they output to a "Movable Type" formatted TXT file that Blogger will not import for some reason.  So if you're just coming upon this site, there's additional content here.

More to come, I promise.

Moving

I want to redirect you to where this blog will now (rarely) get updated - please click here to continue reading the sporadic postings for me. I'm searching for a (working) way to auto redirect folks who come here. Thanks for stopping by and I hope to have more posts coming your way soon.

Lighting Tips

Lowel, a manufacturer of lights, has a nice lighting resource site called LowelEDU. Here they break down the various components of interview lighting and give you examples of lighting techniques and placement through their interactive players. Check out LowelEDU here.

MPEG-LA

Matthew Jeppson over at FreshDV has an interesting and potentially scary write-up on MPEG-LA, the organization which holds patents over MPEG and h.264. You know these two codecs which almost all of use in our cameras? Basically when you purchase a Canon, or Panasonic, Sony, etc., your camera only comes with a MPEG-LA license to use that camera in a non-professional way. Since most of us are buying these cameras for professional use, this is a real eye-opener. Read more about it here.

Using the MXO2 Mini

One of my clients started the move towards HD and added 1080p LCD monitors and Matrox MXO2 Minis to their suites to output and view HD. I personally own the Blackmagic Intensity card but had considered purchasing the MXO2 Mini. One problem - it wasn't out yet at the time and somehow I had convinced myself I needed to get an HDMI out solution ASAP. I kind of wish I waited for the MXO2 Mini.

If you're not familiar with the Mini, check out this link. Essentially it's an external box that's available with both "desktop" and "laptop" options. The box has HDMI in/out, component, a convertor for S-Video and RCA audio outputs for audio monitoring. One of the big selling points of the MXO2 series is the monitor calibration tool that you'll find in the System Preferences tab:

Here you can tweak the brightness, contrast, hue and chroma of your outputted image. There is also a "Blue only" checkbox that helps you set up your monitor when used in conjunction with color bars. When you install the drivers for the Mini you'll now see several dozen output options in Final Cut Pro. It's a bit daunting to sift through, but every possible outputting format seems to be there. This is one real strength of the box - format support. You're extremely limited in your output options with the Intensity, but with the MXO2s you have just about every flavor of HD, SD and frame rates to choose from.

There are some bugs with the box. Audio seems to be shaky. Frequently audio will distort and sometimes cutout altogether in playback in Final Cut. Usually after a moment or two the audio would return, but on a couple of occasions I had to restart Final Cut to get the audio to come back. Also, lip sync seems hard to achieve when viewing A/V out of the HDMI. There are of course offset tweaks in FCP, but I can never seem to get it exactly right. That, and it seems to be a fluid situation with sync - sometimes it's on, other times it's off just a bit. Hopefully an eventual fix will come out for this.

Another quirk seems to be in the way it handles 720p video, especially if you have certain LCD monitors like the Vizio. At first, anytime I tried to output any flavor of 720p video, the resulting output would yield green and distorted video. Doing a Google search revealed others with the same problem and the fix seems to be to change the "Set main channel format to:" option to 1080. Doing this with the appropriate 720p output setting in FCP yielded noticeably sharper video. The TV is still receiving a 1080p image, but the Mini must be actively uprezzing the video to 1080p. Whatever voodoo magic that's taking place seems to be for the better.

Annoying Bug in FCP

John Chappell talks about an annoying bug in Final Cut that still has yet to be fixed involving the browser window. There are a number of bugs like these that seem to be overlooked by Apple's Pro Apps team. Maybe it'll be fixed in the magical 64-bit ground-up rewrite they'll announce at NAB next week, right???