HD For Indies

UPDATED Monday 8pm: Missed something - the 17" model has optical digital audio in and out. From the Apple page:

Audiophiles Rejoice
The new 17-inch PowerBook also includes built-in optical digital audio input and output for connecting to devices such as decks, receivers, digital instruments and 5.1 surround sound systems. Because optical digital audio transmits data as impulses of light rather than electrical signals, it enables true, noise-free, pristine sound ó eliminating troublesome ground loops and ensuring higher audio and signal quality

So if you want to do 5.1 channel audio work in the field, the 17" model is the way to go - the 12" and 15" don't have it.

Further updated: see this link for more on other unique features of the 17" model

Apple announced improved Powerbooks today.

Highlights include:

-all models include Airport Extreme (already had in previous versions) and BlueTooth 2.0, which is faster than the 1.0 spec (when working with 2.0 rated devices). Also lets you do GPRS data transfer.
-all models include a new Sudden Motion Sensor which detects sudden changes in postion/rotation such as from dropping the 'book, and quickly parks the drive heads to prevent data loss. This is a biggie.
-all SuperDrive models include 8x DVD+/-R buring SuperDrives
-all models include 512 MB RAM base (finally!) that is of course upgradeable.
-bigger hard drives of up to 100 GB
-all models include the new scrolling trackpad, which lets you drag two fingers at a time to scroll or pan around a document (slick!)
-All 15 & 17 inch models includ the backlit keyboard now

AppleIsider has a nice summary of all the specs.

Mike's Commentary

All of the new models have faster procesors, which is good, but implies that they might draw more power, thus reducing battery life per charge, which is not so good.

Larger and faster stock hard drives are an improvement as well.

Backlit keyboars standard instead of BTO is good, since it greatly helps working in the dark.

An increase to 512 MB RAM is long overdue. For the 12" models, it's actally a bit of a pain, since the cost effective upgrade is to ditch the 256 MB (or sell it on eBay or whatever) and buy a 1GB stick, since the 12" only has one slot for memeory. For the 15 & 17 inch models, the 512 MB stick is a good thing, since that means you can add another 512 MB to get up to the 1GB required for FCP HD editing.

The Sudden Motion Sensor is BIG news, since that vastly increases the survival ods for data on a dropped laptop. Dropping your laptop is perhaps the leading cause of data death among young powerbooks. (Yes I'm punning)

DVD+/-R burning in an 8x SuperDrive: the ability to burn "whatever" media si definitely a plus, and 8x is a big bump up from 4x for DVD burning.

Bluetooth 2.0: nice but not mandatory. I'm not awar of any bluetooth 2.0 devices, but forard compatibility is a always a good idea. The website mentioned something about GPRS data communication that I didn't understand fully, perhaps something about using your cellphone as a modem? Not sure.

The 12": is what I use (I have last year's model) I like that it is very small and has long batery life (up to 3 1/2 hours the way I use it when writing). Pros: small, light, fast enough for FCP editing, can burn DVDs. Cons: 1.5 GHz max, no FireWire 800 port, no PCMCIA slot, no backlit keyboard, screen too small for full sized 720p previewing, tiny speakers. Only one RAM slot, so 1GB max, and it's an expensive stick of RAM (much more expensive per GB than 2 512 MB sticks would be). Screen isn't so great - has been described as "the only iBook screen in the PowerBook line." Single FireWire 400 port can be a problem with some FireWire based video decks.

The 15": Pros: up to 1.67 GHz (fastest available), DOES have FireWire 800 and PCMCIA (PCMCIA will matter for editors later this year, all I can say for now), better speakers, 1280 pixel wide screen is sufficient for 1:1 720p previewing, bigger screen also gives FCP more room to breathe for the UI (user interface, windows etc.)backlit keyboard standard now, 2 RAM slot for more flexible and affordable RAM upgrading, MUCH better/brighter screen than the 12". Cons: Hmm, not a lot. Bigger, heavier and more expensive than the 12", shorter battery life...tha's about all I can think of.

The 17" aka "the Cafeteria Tray": the El Jefe PowerBook. Pros: huge screen gives lots of room to see bins and preview windows in FCP, including a 100% sized preview window AND a timeline at t the same time. Ports etc. are the same as the 15", includes the backlit keybaord standard. Envy of all who witness it. Cons: Big and heavy and awkward. Using it in an airline seat is an Experience, and not in a good way. Bigger screen is big, but not big enough for 1:1 1080 res viewing. Shorter battery life than other models most likely (I don'thae hard numbers on that) but a big screen is a big power draw.

So if you are looking at old vs. new PowerBooks, unless you saved $400 or more dollars, I'd suggest getting one of the new PowerBooks as the way to go.

The 15" is probably a good fit for a lot of people. If you have the budget for the 17", evaluate the practicality of it before plunking down tall coin on it.

If you're on a budget, the 15" is best bang/buck. The 12" does a lot, but does have some functional hindrances (solo FW400 port, 1GB RAM max), and upgrading it to FCP HD specs is costly (single RAM slot, costly 1GB RAM sticks).

Update: but if you want built-in optical digital audio, the 17" is the only model that supports this. Are there FireWire breakout boxes that support 5.1? I'm not sure, I'm not an audio guy.

So evaluate your total package costs, not just the machine "plus stuff".

-mike

Headline says it all.

Worth reading to understand some of the things that will matter to HD folks over the next few years, including HD broadast and high definition DVDs using H.264. A bit of a rah-rah piece for Apple, but still good stuff to be aware of. Not that it's all going to go the way they're calling it, but to see the potential.

-mike

Cinema Minima continues to post great coverage of Sundance, check it all out.

It seems there's a problem with my HDV workflow - it works for FILES imported into iMovieHD, but NOT for video captured into iMovieHD when dealing with 1080i Sony HDV footage. Not having a camera myself, I can't test it.

Apple has released iMovieHD 5.01, which Apple claims resolves some timing issues with audio/video syncronization.

-had a long technical email conversation with a smart geeky guy (and I mean that in the best possible way) who said that HDCAM cameras (Sony F900) basically just have two DV chips in there for sensors, and that's why HDCAM format only records 1440 pixels wide - two times DV's 720 pixels wide=1440. What about vertical resolution? I didn't get an answer that I fully understood, but he was implying that it isn't all that great. Along those lines, the reason why DVCPRO HD is 960x720 pixels is because the CCD sensors in the Varicam cameras are that size - two standard def CCDs (720x480) stood up sideways on their ends (720 tall now) and set side by side (960 wide from 2x480). Disheartening - both Sony and Panasonic go to great lengths to make us think otherwise.

UPDATE But I keep hearing conflictin info in that, so I'm not sure. The CODEC on both of thse is actually lower res (1440 not 1920 on HDCAM, 960 not 1280 on Varicam), so I dunno. yet another source said they were working with the systemand needed to know the resoloution of the CCDs for some code, and it was in fact 1920x1080. So looks like I had it wrong.

Graeme pointed out that the CCDs on the Panavised HDCAM are

CCDwidth 9.59mm
CCDheight 5.39mm

two 4:3 chips glued together wouldn't give you that shape or size.



-mike

Chan Park (and others) wrote in to clue me in to this BBC article about the many issues of making video look like film (as much as possible.)

Beyond issues of temporal frequency (24 progressive versus 30 interlaced frames per second), it also looks into depth of field, sharpness, etc. are discussed.

Worth the read.

-mike

Marcus has posted a page on working with HDR-FX1.

It addresses shooting modes, editing software, frame rates to shoot with, stuff like that.

-mike

A reader requesting anonymity wrote in with some pithily concise comments on Core Image, Shake, and it's use for Digital Intermediate work:

"ok.. i can maybe clear up a few things
core image definitely support at least 16bit half float in hardware
there was mention of 32 bit float relating to the windowing system, but how thats translates to CI and wether thats hardware or software i dont know
as for previewing 16bit images on 8bit monitors..
its usually not a problem... most banding issues are a side effect of pushing that limited 8bit data around.. and the rounding up and down of values that this causes.
as for shake being a usuable DI tool
its would requre a massive overhaul of the way shake's timeline works.
as it currently stands its complete crap for working with more than 1 shot
especially if there is any chance the edit might change..
none of the roto tools for example, can have their keyframes slipped in time"

Voom network has an HD Resource Center on their website, aimed more at the consumer viewing end of HD. Still good info to know.

Voom also has this glossary of HD related terms, but they're all consumer oriented - TV sets and broadcasting rather than cameras and tape formats.

VideoGuys.com has this blog on HD related issues. Looks so-so/decent.

Reader Stuart Willis pointed out that Stu Maschwitz (helped create The Orphanage, Magic Bullet, and eLin) has updated his blog with a piece on color correction.

I've heard Stu's name come up over the years, and emailed with him a few times. The guy is frighteningly smart.

If you want to do your own color correction, or understand what's going on in color correction, check it out.

It explains the differences and benefits of color correcting in linear vs. gamma corrected space. Geeky? Yes. Useful? YES.

-mike

Warning: Gratuitously personal blogging follows, but there is some quasi-valid reviewish/analysisish stuff at the end.

Updated 9pm with more details on AAC on the fly encoding to iPod Shuffle, see below.

The Apple Store here in Austin called me to say they got iPod Shuffles in stock, first come first serve. I think the key might have been in the ignition before the phone hit the floor in the house.

(Yes, I am a gadget freak, I freely admit it - "Hi, my name is Mike, I have a problem with technolust" "Hi, Mike!" What's your power animal?)

So I blast over there bending the laws of space, time, and certainly breaking those of the Texas Highway Patrol.

There's a line 6 people deep, and they have about 20 of the Shuffles sitting out.

They only have the 1GB size, and I ask for three (one for me, others for friend/family) and they tell me One Per Customer. Drat.

A little social engineering later, the nice woman that I asked to buy one for me (paying by cash always helps) gives it to me outside the store. I pay her $10 for her trouble.

Note for Social Engineering Efforts:

1.) Wearing a freebie t-shirt I got for running a marathon, ratty gym shorts and Tevas, with no shave and having a No Hair Product Day is NOT the recommended solution. In general, looking like a Decent Human Being would be a plus.

2.) Asking the nice 30ish woman with the giant diamond ring who looked like she was from Dallas was maybe not an optimal choice.

3.) It DOES help to say you would like her help so your Mom won't have to drive out here herself (this is actually true)

4.) She asked if this was fake money, and in general looked like she thought she was about to be scammed. I don't blame her, I was asking her to buy it on my behalf to skirt store policy, and paying with cash.

5.) Being a nice guy and friendly about it certainly helped, and for karma's sake I offered her $10 after the fact to buy herself lunch or something which she took.

So got it home and opened it up. There's a rule in retail the that the smaller and more valuable the retail item, the more you need pliers and a blowtorch to free it from it's little plastic bunker.

Actual Potentially Useful Information Instead of Bad Personal Blog Rambling

The unit is truly tiny and weighs virtually nothing - like the pictures show, it really is pack of gum sized.

Unlike some earlier user reports, the unit does in facct have a Hold function which will prevent accidental button pushes - you just hold down the play button for three seconds.

As usual, Apple's done an outstanding job on the user interface. You can play, pause, fast forward/reverse, next track, prior track/start track over, volume up.down, turn it on/off, shuffle of linear playback mode, lock/release controls (Hold function), reset the unit, and see battery charge status all from only 4 control surfaces. Amazing. OK, really 7 buttons, but on 4 surfaces.

For the competent, everything you need to know is all on one little double sided card, conveniently business card sized with rounded corners printed on a nice card stock. Tuck it in your wallet and you'll have it all there.

It points out that there are 4 levels of battery charge indicated - green, yellow, red, nothing (figure'em out)

Somebody online complained that all songs are converted to AAC format. NOT true - there is an option in the preferences to downsample high bit rate stuff to 128 AAC just for the iPod, implying that it'll keep the high quality originals on your computer hard drive. Very nice.

UpdateI tried this - at first I just changed the setting after a bunch of music was already on there, and it did nothing. OK. Then I emptied the iPod, then dragged the contents of the playlist I wanted on the iPod. Transferring to iPod is much slower now (on 12" 1.33GHz G4 PowerBook), but all the tracks are being converted to 128 kbit AAC ON THE FLY as they are loaded onto the iPod. All of the source tracks are still in their 200-220 KB VBR MP3 source. Very, very slick. So you can squeeze more tracks on your iPod but keep your source high quality. (I'll have to check to see if this works with my iPod Mini too) This is extra nice - this way, my source stays high quality so I can play it through the high quality speakers in my living room (via Airport Extreme) or studio (connected to studio monitors in there), AND have high quality on the iPod Mini for car listening through the cassette adaptor into the car stereo("Skyscraper I Love You" with the top down at 120 mph over the Golden Gate Bridge, in the fog, at 3am, is my personal favorite). And then for jogging and other very casual listening, 128 kbit AAC. Very very nice indeed.

You can configure the unit to reserve a chunk of it's space for use as a memory stick. Very slick. The reason for his is that Autofill will just fill up the unit with music. So you can reserve whatever amount of space (a slider to set it) for data. I dropped some installers I use frequently on the 256 MB I reserved for data. So it's a 256 MB memory stick with an additional 768 MB of music as well. Or 512/512, or 100/900, or whatever you want.

And it fits in your jeans pocket no problem. Now the problem is I have too many small metal/plastic devices that have to be one per pocket and can't be sat on (no rear pocket usage). Press play, use the Hold function to prevent accidental button mashing, and slip it in your pocket. Be discreet and run the wires under your shirt if you wish.

Plugged into the laptop to recharge, it's a little awkward having this thing sticking out three inches from the left side on the frail little USB connector. It makes me change how I rest the computer on my lap. A friend has already pointed out "It makes it look like your computer has a hard-on." I responded "Hey, at least it's not pink." (Sorry, if that hadn't actually happened I wouldn't have written that here!) : )

Devices like this make it very obvious that cell phones are where MP3 players are going.

Almost by definition, everyone that can afford and wants an MP3 player already has a cell phone. What do you carry with you all the time, every day? Your keys. Your wallet (I and some friends are post-cash these days. Change is given away, cash is folded in a cheap clip, and credit cards go in a little hard case in lieu of a wallet). And your cell phone. What's optional? An MP3 player. If you're geeky, a Palm. A voice recorder if you're really, really a geek like me. And notice that Palm devices aren't all that prevalent. They aren't selling like they did a few years ago. And what's taking their place? Cell phones. What do you really use a Palm for? Contact info and calendar. Cell phones do this handily now. My Sony Ericsson T616 syncs with Address Book and iCal seamlessly via BlueTooth. That smooth integration was why I specifically sought at that phone. And how hard will it be to fold MP3 player functionality into a cellphone?

These iPod Shuffles are 512KB and 1GB for the price point - if it's going to be $250 for 2-4GB, might as well get the iPod Mini. But for a phone, you might want 2GB of songs, and they DO make memory sticks that size, and if it's included in the cost of your nice phone, why not. If you can put this much functionality in a device the size of a pack of chewing gum, putting the crucial guts in a slightly larger cell phone just isn't going to be a problem in a year or two. Or now. The power needed can be drawn off the cell phone battery instead of the built in battery, so that makes the device even smaller. I'd hate to lose the convenience of the itty bitty scroll wheel (we need a new name, it doesn't scroll) but it you could just use the phone's volume controls, and the other buttons on the phone for navigation. And as we've heard Apple and Motorola are going to have a phone with iTunes capabilities this year, it's on the way. Plus you get a screen and navigation and sort by artist/album/genre and all that good stuff.

Round 3 or 4 of car adaptors (round 2 showed at MWSF) will be how to integrate your phone, with iTunes functionality, into the car stereo. Put a microphone up by the driver's side visor for hands free phone usage.

Cool.

Apple definitely will sell a ton of these.

Here's a product for someone to make: we already have cassette adaptors for cars. Make one that the shuffle just clicks onto/into, sticking out of the front of the car stereo. Squeeze the unit to press the buttons. $40? No reason to be more.

-mike

Posted by: Mike Curtis / 1/26/2005 08:31:00 PM (0) comments links to this post

I just stumbled over this feature of my own site - at the end of every article are two links - the second one takes you to any comments that readers have added about that particular article (and my responses to those articles, and the FIRST one will take you to a single article view of that article, without the rest of the blog around it. You can right click on it and "Copy Link to clipboard" (or the Windows metric equivalent) and you'll have the URL for just that story.

To get the link, it's right after "Posted by:" at the bottom of each article, and it'll say "Mike / 5:37 PM" (or whatever time I published)

It's right under these words on each article. Use it if you like.

Reader Lance Cooper wrote in to say:

Hey Mike,
I've got one of the famous HDR-FX1s, and I was going to let you know I'd be glad to send you some raw footage captured with Apple's DVHS. I guess I could burn the raw .m2t files to a DVD or something. I used the camera on a trip to south america this past month, and I think the footage looked pretty great. I have been using mostly DVCAM for the past few years, and I think Sony's HDV looks way better to the naked eye. This may be partly due to the native 16x9, or the larger chips. I think the down conversion to DV looks a lot better than shooting with a PD-170. I agree, it's never going to look as good as HDCAM, but for the money I don't think your going to get anything better. There does seem to be a little blocking going on with high motion and high contrast images. I imagine something like the crowd at a sporting event might look pretty bad. I think this camera is going to be a great tool for documentary films, and even some real low budget fiction things. With good lighting I think this camera does have the potential produce some great images. Most of the stuff I have shot so far has been outside, but I am real interested to see how it will hold up shooting in a studio with controlled lighting. If you are interested in getting some clips to play around with let me know, I'll try to get a few out sometime next week. Keep up the good work on the site, it's always enjoyable to read.

Lance Cooper
Editor/Video

I emailed him and asked if I could post his letter, and if he'd tried the iMovie HD stuff yet (it's only $80)



I haven't tried iMovie HD yet, because I don't have a copy yet. I am going to probably break down and buy it next week sometime, but I've just got too much going on until the weekend. I've got a few random clips captured, but I'll try and digitize a couple of more, and at least one that runs over a minute. I know it's hard to watch those downloaded clips that are handheld and last only 10 seconds. The stuff I shot in South America was just for me, so there is no deadline on it. What I am going to try to do is offline it using the DV down conversion built into the camera until the updated Final Cut comes out, then hopefully I will be able to re-digitize it as HDV and finish it in this format. I am pretty sure it keeps timecode when doing the downconversion. Like I said, until next week I am booked, so as soon as I can get some out and do some more testing of my own I will.

Posted by: Mike Curtis / 1/26/2005 02:24:00 PM (0) comments links to this post

Woops, this was a mess, I published a draft not a final. Cleaned this up a little bit below and added some new stuff

Some readers have had some interesting questions lately that I thought would be of benefit for the community, so here goes:

Reader Douglas Smith asked:

I've been googling like crazy to find a straight answer to how much
data this thing (The Sony HDR-FX1, or FX1E puts out, and how much drive
space (thinking Lacie Firewire 800) I will need.

I've read the figure of 25 Mbps (which I'm fairly sure means BITS per
second), but I also read a reference to that being the RAW data rate,
so I'm not sure if the actual compressed output will be less (hoping
so!).

Presuming I needed, let's say, 300 minutes of raw storage space for
video, any idea how much space this would take?

(Also, I'll likely be looking at the PAL, or whatever you want to call
it, 25fps model, but whatever. Just need a rough idea here in any
case.)

If 25Mbps is the actual rate, my back of envelope calculations put it
at about 2.5 TB, which is certainly a shitload of hard drives.


I figure I'll need 3 firewire drives, a big one for video, a small one
for audio, plus a third big one for back-ups and swapping out for
off-site storage.

And while I'm at it, any particular opinions on the viability of
fluorescent light kits (kino-flo, etc.) for studio and blue-screen
work? Shooting in Thailand, heat is as much a concern as is kicking
out the circuit breakers.

OK, one more stupid question: Is there any chance in hell I'll be able
to cut this thing on my G4 powerbook, once FCP 5 comes out? Or will I
be losing my mind waiting for every effect to render? That would save
a pile of money because I'd only really need to buy one HD monitor
(thinking the 23" Apple Cinema) to complete my set-up. I suppose I
could start on the G4, and if it just isn't working out shell-out for a
nice dual G5 and a second monitor.


Mike's Response:

Check out my links to the HVR-Z1 article on Cinema Minima, I may have been overly harsh on the FX1 footage because

a.) It was unprofessionally shot
b.) some of my analysis I now realize was based on zoomed in footage
c.) I was just being overly harsh, tired of people trying to compare the two cameras based purely on the pixel math-I wanted to beat them up a bit on the reality of the deal.
d.) I'm having overly harsh memories of DV, and I've been working with a lot of 1920x1080 uncompressed HD lately, which might skew my eye towards the flows of HDV

Yeah, the HDV footage is about 3.2 MB/sec. But transcoded to the working codec on Macs (Apple Intermediate Codec) kicks it into the 7-14 MB/sec range.

300 minutes is only abut 55 GB of raw HDV, and anywhere from 110ish to 220ish GB of Apple Intermediate Codec.

No opinion on lights, not my area. Check out DV Magazine's website, I know they've written about low cost lighting in the past.

On a PowerBook, FireWire is your only storage option, so multiple drives with backups, yeah.

Viability of editing on PowerBook - you can do it but it's time consuming. Read the "yes you can" article on HDV in FCP I wrote over the weekend, and notice the render times on a dual 2.5 GHz G5. Not much will be realtime in high quality if anything, based on what I saw on a dual 2.5 GHz G5. So you might have to drop to Medium (or Low) quality just to get playback on your PowerBook. I'll test on mine in the near future.

The one area that's a "come to complete stop" is monitoring - the only way to monitor HDV on a video screen right now is using a PCI-X HD card, which has to go in a G5, unless you convert to DVCPRO HD, and then you lose some resolution. Then you could FireWire out to a $350/day Panasonic AJ-HD1200A deck attached to a broadcast monitor. But in my experience that deck is picky about being the ONLY thing attached to a FireWire bus (or maybe that was a BlackMagic card issue, not sure), so your external storage might be a no-go.

PowerBook is great for scratch editing, but not for trying to color correct, in short.

Reader Gidon Mead asked:

Mike,

Thanks again for your advice on workflow. One supplementary question: you've recommended the lacie electron blue monitor several times on the blog - would this at a pinch be usable as a primary viewing monitor for colour correction etc? Even the 19-inch version can in theory show a full 1080P image and the price has now dropped to about $350. Also, (OK that makes 2 questions!) do you know whether the Digital Cinema Preview function in FCP will work with this kind of display? All the marketing hype is about DVI monitors but I'm guessing that is just marketing hype.

Incidentally, film festivals in Europe are still ridiculouly snobbish about film vs digital even for shorts - of the top 3, Berlin and Venice insist on film and Cannes is suspiciously silent on the issue. Guess that keeps down the number of entries for them. Thankfully, at least you only need to worry about projection format ONCE the film has been accepted...

Cheers,


Mike's Response:

It's not a video monitor, display characteristics are different. For film work maybe, for video work...challenged. Typical brightness, contrast, gamma, and white point. Some of these things are calibratable, some are not. Digital Cinema Preview is great for showing clients, not great for finicky work. Also, won't show 1080i signal in High Quality, even on a DP 2.5 GHz G5, which in another reason to use HDP or HDLink with an LCD.

DCP will technically function on those displays, but will it deliver what you want is the other question (as described above)

Filmout is still $30K-$60K last I checked depending on length, quality, vendor, and work needed on the footage (uprez, color correction, etc.)


On Jan 24, 2005, at 6:17 PM, Andrae Palmer wrote:

Mike,

I was under the impression that I could monitor HD with the video card that came with the G5 and dual monitors with one or both being HD displays? Is this a big negative. Theirs no way to output HD in Final Cut Pro through the video card to an HD display?

Thanks,
Andrae

Mike's Response:

In some ways yes in some ways no.

Without an HD card, just using the video card, you can put the Final Cut Pro output on an external display using Digital Desktop thingy (like my technical terms? : ) ).

BUT - 1080p24 won't play back realtime full size (pixel for pixel) on a 23" LCD in High Quality, and if you drop to medium quality it might, but you're working at 1/2 res. AND on top of that, it has temporal anomalies - smooth pans are slightly irregular in speed, etc.

It's not video gamut - the image looks different. The HDLink has a different gamma and some stuff. You can adjust the display somewhat around this, but doesn't help for the

If medium res suits your needs, go for it.

All depends on what you want to be monitoring for. If you just want to see what you're doing, set to medium res on a fast box and go for it.

If you want to color correct and have anything close to an HDTV's output, or you want to see every pixel of the signal in motion, and you want to it play back at a smooth full speed (and not 21 fps for 3 frames, 24 fps for 5 frames, 22 fps for 2 frames, etc.), it's not sufficient for that.

But for editorial process (not including color correction other than general scene to scene matching), it's adequate. For client review, it's adequate (for most clients)

By HD display I presume you mean some kind of an HD monitor.

I just received in the mail an adaptor from ATI that works with some of their cards that will supposedly let it drive an HDTV. Haven't tested it yet. Essentially you could then use an HDTV hooked up to that. My concerns would then be gamma, white point, etc., because a graphics card that thinks it's driving a computer display may behave differently than an HD signal output to an HD monitor.

Even if you got the white point and gamma working, you'd still have the temporal anomalies, you'd still have the not-full-resolution problems, and I think it might have trouble with interlaced footage but I'm not sure since I haven't tested yet.


Reader Jim asked:

why can't I get FireWire out?

Mike's Response:

FireWire out for HDV? Is that your question?

I would expect FireWire out to/through HDV cameras (like DV into a camcorder, then video to TV) to NOT work, since the HDV gets transcoded to Apple Intermediate Codec, and to play out during realtime would require delivering an MPEG-2 transport stream to the FireWire port, which is very much not a realtime, on-the-fly kind of a thing.

The benefit of the BlackMagic card (perhaps Kona2 as well, haven't received a test unit yet (hint hint AJA)) is that it will play out most stuff you feed it if formatted correctly.

-mike

Ok, this one's extra bloggy - loose, rambling, self-contradicting in spots. I wanted to get my notes down and publish something today, I'm actually having to do some work that's distracting me from my blogging and websurfing. : )

So take this with a grain of salt, it's just rough notes below. I may or may not rewrite this and make it purdy.

So you've edited your masterpiece in Final Cut Pro. You were smart and allowed yourself to work in 10 bits/channel for the maximum possible quality. The catch is, if you're working in 4:4:4 RGB, or want to use some plugins to create a look, you're stuck at 8 bits/channel (256 levels) in FCP for processing, not the 10 you want (1024 levels). And FCP's color correction tools are decent but not outstanding quality (see here as to why).

So what's better?

What we're really looking for here is a solution that maintains the maximum feature set of Final Cut Pro HD, and ideally lets us come back to FCP to change our minds on edit decisions. A "real" project is inevitably going to go through a number of revisions, leading the notorious "FinalFinalFinalEdit#6_version12.fcp" file on your hard drive. "One way" trips, where you can do high quality work, but would then lose all your color correction decisions if you need to make an edit, are not a great solution.

The options as I understand them are:

PUNT: take to high end finishing station
Pros: realtime, high quality
Cons: expensive, not everything will carry over, you can't go back and edit from that

PUNT 2: tape to tape color correction

actually, not so bad - you just have to recapture all your footage and make sure the timecode matches.NOTE: this is wrong. I wrote it at 1am without thinking very straight. Read below
Pros: traditional high end interface, speed, and quality
Cons: It's tape to tape. It's another encoding cycle that degrades the quality of your footage. Again. Also, unless you do it the wonky way I described above (which nobody does apparently), your edit is locked.

UPDATED

Jeff wrote in to point out my errant ways:

Er, that's not how traditional tape-to-tape correction is done.

Almost always, you start with an edited master, typically on tape, but it could be played out from an edit system right into the color corrector to save a generation -- with the editing system emulating a deck under RS422 control.

But typically you are adding one generation of tape -- which, in SD, with Digibeta, is not all that big a deal. With HDCam it might be, with HDCam SR it's probably ok.

You wouldn't want to color correct before you've finished editing, because a lot of the work of color correction is getting adjacent shots to work together -- and unless you see them justaposed you can't really do that. Need to see how it's edited.

For dissolves, you can program most hardware color correctors (like the daVinci) to dissolve between two settings between frame x and y -- also useful for exposure changes in the original material.

Of course, if you are dealing with multi-layer montages, you may well want to work with material that's color corrected before it all gets mixed together. The Abekas A84 switcher was designed (by Martin Snashall) for on-line editing, and had color correction on each input -- very popular way of finishing high-end spots in the late 80s and 90s, as you could tweak all layers in real time. (These sources were usually tape or else elements copied onto Abekas A64 disk recorders (also designed by the talented Mr. Snashall).

The Avid Symphony also lets you do this -- correct each layer separately, and it also lets you assign corrections by tape number if desired, useful for some sorts of editing where all shots from the same tape would get the same overall correction -- which can be further tweaked if needed. If Avid were smarter, they'd have made an uncompressed 10 bit 4:4:4 Symphony -- but they killed it off. If Apple were smart, they'd imitate as much of the Symphony color corrector as possible, and add it to FCP. But that's another kvetch.

Hope that's clear enough!

Thanks Jeff.

Others have written in to say I'm over obsessing on the "round trip" stuff. I only based this on discussions from last year's Digital Cinema Summit, Alan Daviau was talking about the workflow on Van Helsing, and that compressed production timelines (at least on big films) are requiring editorial, FX, and CC work to be somewhat simultaneous - you can't wait until picture lock to start on the other stuff.

I'm just imagining the process of finish an edit, screen it, change it, and not have to do CC work again.

I'm very big on repeatability, and recognize that Thing Change, even when you think you're done.

No great surprise, my theory outruns my experience on the traditional workflow stuff.

FCP to Shake

Shaky - barely gets the footage in with transitions intact, lose everything else. No plugin support
PROS: high end tools available, native LOG support
CONS: strictly a one way ticket, all CC work must be done each time send it to Shake (unless copious careful copy/paste of settings is used, and who wants to do THAT?), and you lose all you plugins etc.

I guess you could export each video track as a separate file and re-assemble it that way, but again a pain requiring a LOT of manual work.

Not having used Shake but only watched demos, someone pointed out that Shake is very shot oriented. The idea of taking an entire timeline into it is not very practical. You could go shot by shot, but there'd be lots of exporting from FCP, importing into Shake, doing the work, then rendering, then importing the rendered file back into FCP. Not very smooth.


pros: extensive controls
cons: awkward, really needs to be done shot for shot, no "return trip" back to FCP easily, lots of manual steps, easy to get lost/confuse yourself/introduce timing mistakes/editing errors. Expensive

FCP using Color Finesse

Pros: nice interface, keeps you in FCP the whole time
Cons: 8 bit rendered output only. If not going to D-5 or HDCAM SR, is fine (RIGHT? DOUBLE CHECK THIS!). sloooooow render. Seriously - I've heard the results are gorgeous if you start with 8 bit footage (even compressed) then color correct in 10 bit. But if you're going back to 8 bit, and the 10 bit color corrected footage is going to be truncated (not dithered) back to 8 bit, does it make a difference. It's late, too tired to mentally chug the math or set up a test, but I could see it going either way. Anecdotal evidence says it may help, but I need hard evidence. Not sure what to say on the 8 vs 10 bit thing. But if you're mastering to a 10 bit format, it definitely helps.

FCP to AE using Automatic Duck's tools, use CF in AE (better yet use the settings from CF you set in FCP and just render)

Similar to above, but you're essentially just using After Effects as a render module, and trusting everything lines up. In this approach, while you COULD make tweaks in After Efffects, there's no way to get those tweaks (short of manually doing it, who wants to do that for every shot in a feature/) BACK into FCP for future use.

So you don't touch anything on the timeline in After Effects, just using it as a high quality rendering algorithm.

Pros: very high quality rendered output
Cons: slow, one way ticket - can't go back and maintain the color corrections you set up in AE back to FCP. If you change your edit in FCP, have to ditch your present AE CF CC work and start over or hand match the edit in AE. A big mess. The only way to keep your post cycle fluid, and not have to hand match a million edits & pieces and tweaks and stuff, is to do some CF work in FCP, spot checking as you go. Render overnight and eyeball it. If you like it, export to AE and render from there to a DM (Digital Master). If you cooked out a 10 bit digital master, drop that back into FCP on a new timeline to drop it to tape.

AE can work in 16 bits/channel, plenty of linear color space to handle 10 bit log files (even 12 bit log if anybody made those). Very high quality output.

While in AE, you can use RAM preview to spot check. Bonus round: you don't have to have realtime HD drive performance for this to see SHORT segments of video color corrected. AE has built in tools to (slowly) build a RAM preview at every other frame, or 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 res, etc. in high or draft quality.

Hidden secret bonus - if your project started in DVCPRO HD, you can render straight from that codec to uncompressed with excellent results. You don't even need a disk array to render out the results, just disk space for that big final file.

I had previously written this:

This workflow CAN work, but you better be DONE with your edit when you start color correcting in AE. UNLESS you do all your CC work in FCP using CF, then just use AE for a rendering module. Hmm....this is viable again. Just slow.

....but that only applies if you do ALL your CC work in AE. Sloooow.

Color Finesse 2.0:

-the feature list says that it will let you export XML from FCP, do your CC work in a standalone Color Finesse 2.0 application, render the color corrected footage, export another XML file from CF 2.0, then open that in Final Cut Pro again. This lets you "round trip" it so you can bring the work back into FCP and still change your mind editorially. You can use the FCP plugin as well, it may or may not let you render to 10 bit, not sure yet.

One catch with all these is workflow - what if you have a dedicated colorist working on the footage, but have an editor still editing away?

Maybe you just export all the bins of shots used, organized by scene. Those get color corrected then brought back and relinked (hopefully seamlessly/automatically) so that the edit can keep moving on another machine while color correction is taking place.

Pros: dedicated, high quality tools
Cons: It round trips, but freezes the edit (I think, maybe can work around this) to do it. Potentially long renders for high quality.

Final Touch HD:

The F-16 solution. Expensive, but powerful and fast. Similar to the Color Finesse 2.0 approach - you export XML from FCP, import that XML into FTHD. The difference is that Final Touch HD is realtime. Lots of realtime. When done, you render out your high quality footage, export a new XML file, and open that in FCP.

If you were clever with your render folders and naming structures, maybe the edit could keep moving while you color corrected, then take footage offline in FCP and relink (in bulk) to the new directory with the new, color corrected footage. This approach could work for Color Finesse 2.0 as well.

Pros: realtime performance including fancy power windows type stuff (realtime previews, still render when done)
Cons: raw cost of software ($5000), and relatively high hardware requirements (two large monitors, high speed disk array, lots of storage, fast computer, etc.)

Iridas Speed Grade

After all I've said about Final Touch HD, Jeff Kreines wrote me to say I should check out Speed Grade. A few thoughts upon briefly checking out their website:

-it does realtime high speed stuff, with a virtually unlimited number of layered tweakings of color
-it does 8 bit (fine for most video) but for 10 bit, you need to buy additional software
-the web page said Mac version due out Q4 2004, then said June 2005 elsewhere I think. It hasn't shipped yet according to the web page
-I didn't see mention of power windows, maybe I missed it. Based on my biased (I've seen more of Final Touch HD and talked to the developers and I like it so far), at first glance it seems FTHD has more features in some regards. But that's a grossly unfair comparison considering how little I've seen of Speed Grade.
-with no Mac version, while it can handle QuickTime, do those QuickTime files have to be flattened? (Old Mac/PC compatibility issue). I need to test and find out. If the files can move back and forth smoothly, great.
-But with not XML import/export on a Mac, obviously a more convoluted process of getting access to the files from a PC
-don't know pricing yet but it was implied it's in the ballpark of Final Touch HD.
-this is a really, really vague and amateurish analysis (yes I've been up for two days with 4 hours sleep)
-but until Mac version ships, it's not nearly as integraed a solution as the Final Touch HD appears to be. Appears - haven't used either of these yet myself.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: READ THE COMMENTS (link right below the end of the article), I've posted some further rants/theory on why I obsess over all this repeatability after a reader viably question why I geek out so hard on all this stuff.

Another thought about why I geek out so much: the traditional workflow gets harder and harder to back up and change things the further you go. The workflows I pursue allow you to change your mind up until you need to render your transitions (and possibly effects and color correction) and master to tape.

Flexibility is the mantra of digital. If it is conveniently arrangeable, why NOT maintain maximum flexibility up until the last moment?

-mike

(and click on Comments below and scroll to end of article to read'em)

I've been thinking about what I wrote the other week comparing the FX1 vs F900 footage (HDV vs. HDCAM).

I was cranky from all the folks saying "it was the just as good" based largely on the math, HDV looked better than DV, and they'd never seen HDCAM on a good monitor - maybe just HDTV shows.

As I wrote the other day, the comparison was also less than fair because of:

a.) It (HDV) was unprofessionally shot
b.) some of my analysis I now realize was based on zoomed in footage from FX1
c.) I was just being overly harsh, tired of people trying to compare the two cameras based purely on the pixel math-I wanted to beat them up a bit on the reality of the deal.
d.) I'm having overly harsh memories of DV, and I've been working with a lot of 1920x1080 uncompressed HD lately, which might skew my eye towards the flows of HDV

So while F900 HDCAM still looks much better than FX1 HDV, HDV isn't as bad as I made it out to be.

Also:

Marcus van Bavel of DV Film wrote in to say:

Mike I read this on your website and had a few comments. I am using some of this same footage for a film out test:


-footage of fire causes problems due to 4:2:0 issues... [snip]

It sounds like your mpeg-2 decoder does not have proper spatial and temporal filtering on the chroma. When this footage is converted to quicktime with DVFilm Maker 2.1 you don't see those problems, the color is smooth


-pushing the footage in post to color correct will break it pretty quickly.... [snip]


Same problem, lack of chroma filtering causes this


-Mosquito noise was prevalent in any shot with a lot of fine detail. If you don't know what mosquito noise is in video, Google it. It's an artifact of compression, it shows up particularly clearly when you have fine detail next to a flat color, like small tree leaves against a sky. Once color corrected, it was very apparent.

Again same problem. The mosquito noise is for real but you make it far worse by not filtering chroma.


-color correcting HDV makes almost decent looking stills, but you get all kinds of distracting popping in compression block artifacting once the footage is playing. Compression blocks are areas that the codec decides should be perfectly flat color...even when they shouldn't be. These blocks tend to dance around distractingly.

Same problem


-lots of motion forces the codec to sacrifice quality in each frame. Travelling car footage, especially out the side window? LOTS of square edged artifacts.

Do you really see those in real time? I can't, goes by too fast. If you see a lot of blocking in real time, it may be due to your real-time decoder if that's what you are using.

Also a lot of those clips that are posted were shot without a tripod. I was wondering if your HD 900 stuff was shot the same.



I wrote back, then he responded (his answers interspersed with mine:


On Thu, 20 Jan 2005, Mike Curtis wrote:

F900 shot from tripod.

------

It's not a fair comparision then, unless the handheld camera is using very high shutter speed, (and the clips you used weren't, they are mostly 1/60th) since motion blur will act on the image sharpness making it look as if it's never completely in focus. However you are comparing the image with the little artifacts which of course are always in perfect focus.

---------

Used LumiereHD to convert to 8 bit lossless 4:2:2 codec (Blackmagic's)

I have a chroma filtering FCP plugin, was doodling in AE so didn't use it on it.

---------

Doubt if either of those has proper temporal filtering for 4:2:0 but I don't know for sure.

--------------

Thanks for feedback.

Does DVFilm Maker have a downloadable demo?

-------------

Yes it's at http://dvfilm.com/maker, but no version for the Mac yet. I'm hoping that Apple has made a decent mpeg-2 decoder for iMovie HD so that I don't have to roll my own. If you hear of any clips online decoded with iMHD please let me know.


(the above was before iMovie HD had shipped)

-mike

Reader Steve wrote in to say:

Mike,

Here's a heads up for you and your readers.

Amazingly, Mac OS 10.3.7 and the Panasonic AJHD1200a
do not work together via firewire in FCP 4.5.

I upgraded my system on Apple's advice (firmware and
OS) to help a thermal runaway problem. That problem is
solved. But now I can't get video from the deck. FCP
controls the machine but no video passes to the
computer.

I tested the system with a Panasonic AJSD93 via
firewire and it works just fine. It's only the DVCPRO
HD deck that's not working.

This problem has been comfirmed by Promax. But
unbeleivably, I can't find a mention of the
incompatibility anywhere. (Maybe my Google skills need
help.)

Updating the OS is always scary. This one bit me.

Steve


Personally, I found 10.3.5 to be the most stable/robust.

The older I get, the more hesitant I get to install software updates if I have something working securely.

-mike

I was doing some ego surfing (come on, admit it, we all do it from time to time) and came across something I'd meant to write up but never got around to.

Stu over at biki.net did something I meant to do - he posted our email conversation on the possible future of Shake and it's integrated workflow with Final Cut Pro HD.

I think it's interesting, you may or may not.

The gist of it is that we'd like to see better handoff between Shake and Final Cut Pro HD, since Shake has much better color correction tools. If Motion turns out to be a practice run for Shake in terms of realtime GPU driven performance (rumors I've heard indicate this, but they are just rumors), then it could truly rock for doing detailed/picky color correction on Final Cut Pro HD sequences.

My ardor for this workflow has waned since I saw Silicon Color's Final Touch HD at MacWorld the other week (use the Google bar at the top of this page to search for Final Touch for more info), but the idea is still cool.

It also looks like Color Finesse 2.0 will be available as a standalone product that will be able to import and export FCP sequences. I'm guessing it'll ship (or at least be announced) at NAB but that's conjecture. It's been a LOOOONG time coming.

That could be another possible workflow route for high quality color correction from Final Cut Pro based projects.

Using Automatic Duck's tools (Wes Plate's stuff) to port a Final Cut Pro HD project to After Effects is another possibilitiy.

-mike

I could keep posting links to the individal articles, but I don't have enough time in the day.

Cinema Minima keeps post up a string of great articles from Sundance, from conference track comments to great witnessed moments in What Not To Do. Best example: the aspiring filmmaker who blew a meeting with a studio exec because he "was busy" at the first time the studio exec mentioned, and then lost a chance to meet at all because of it. Moment/momentum lost, never to be regained.

Plus lots of other great stuff, so just go keep reading it every day during Sundance (and possibly thereafter, too!)

-mike

Frederic Haubrich of LumiereHD has posted another bit of coolness to the whole iMovieHD as a capture/layback tool for HDV. You can capture the MPEG transport stream (the raw MPEG that goes to the camera) using the trick he suggests. It's at the bottom of this post.

More Cinema Minima coverage: Cinematographer Jody Eldred on the upcoming Sony HVR-Z1 camera (the better featured follow up to the HDR-FX1). Best quote so far:

There are different cameras for different needs and the HVRZ1 isn't for everything, but, if for a low-budget, or a documentary, this camera is the way to go.

Everyone knows that shooting DV in high contrast and low light will generally result in images with a great deal of noise in the shadows, streaking in the highlights, blooming in the reds and visual stutter. Not the HVRZ1.  THIS FOOTAGE FROM THIS CAMERA WAS AMAZING. Great detail in low light and high contrast.  With the gain up 12dB, still no noise in the shadows.  With black stretch on and Cinemalook filter, the shots were unbelievable. You could see the spray of the fountains against the night sky (with detail still evident in the background).  At the football game, the cheerleaders in red uniforms showed no blooming.  Skin tones were great.  And, the African American male, shot in high contrast light at night, had amazing depth and detail in his face. 


-mike

Cinema Minima has this nice piece on yet another way to get your feature made: make a short from the material first. 10 features at Sundance this year were made by people that got shorts into Sundance in the past.

Mike's Commens:This is yet another way to get your project out there. Plus, shorts are a great way to learn your chops, and if nothing else the short can work as your calling card.

In case you hadn't noticed it, Cinema Minima has multiple folks at Sundance attending the conference stuff there (I should have planned ahead and attended that instead of MacWorld perhaps). Check out their coverage, it's great so far.

The New York Times wrote this article (and then pulled it, as they always do), so here's a link to a HTML'd PDF version of it.

It talks about the odds of getting into Sundance (2603 submissions, 120 screened, maybe 10 get distribution deals).

Fun odds, isn't it? And the odds of getting into Sundance are somewhat stacked (read the article for details).

Then it talks about how to possibly write your way into Hollywood and the odds against that.

Then it talks about the odds of original material that isn't a comic book, remake, sequel, or adaptation from a novel. Very, very thin.

These are all discussing the odds of getting a movie shown in theaters.

Mike's Comments: a very sobering read, but good to know what you're up against. A more viable approach is to make your movie with the option of going theatrical - make a 24p master, preferably having shot in HD if shooting video. But be prepard to try to sell it to a cable network or go straight to video (OK, DVD) and hope for the best on NetFlix or Amazon, because you'll never get into Blockbuster.

Want to feel optimistic? Go read The Long Tail. This is the most likely way you'll get distribution or make any money.

-mike

Well, durnit, I was hoping to be first online with this, but I gotta give props where props due. Although I do think I was first to post the possibility (and here, too) the other week at MWSF.

I was in the middle of doing my testing and taking notes and getting ready to write up this exciting news when I got an email scooping me on this one.

Frederic Haubrich from Lumiere HD sent me this link for a write-up he just did posted over at DVInfo.net. that documents how to get HDV into Final Cut HD using iMovie HD as an intermediate step. If I hadn't gone to the screening of the newly remastered three hour long version of The Big Red One last night (with Sam Fuller's wife in attendance), I might have been first on this one.

See his write-up for detailed step by step instructions. My version is below.

The basic gist of it is this iMovie HD installs a new codec called Apple Intermediate Codec, and HDV footage is transcoded to this. iMovie HD and Final Cut Express HD use it, Final Cut Pro HD 5 undoubtedly will too. You can use iMovie HD to import the footage, then import that footage into Final Cut Pro HD to edit with it's superior feature set, then use iMovie HD to put it back out to tape.

By the way, for all newcomers, please check out the main page of this website to keep up on all kinds of HD, HDV, DVCPRO HD editing news, tips, techniques, gear, etc. Or use the convenient RSS or Atom feeds if you use an RSS aggregator or browser.

In not-so-short, it works like this (this is my version):

1.) Use iMovie HD to import the footage from the HDV camera (or import .m2v files that LumiereHD has demuxed, but import them one at a time - if you import multiple files, it screws up the aspect ratio, and renders with black bars on the sides)

2.) Crack open the iMovie HD project file that you just made by right clicking (or control clicking) on the file and selecting Show Package Contents. Then you can see the Media Folder. Copy or move those files to the directory of your choice

3.) Make a new setting in Final Cut Pro HD for this new timeline. Email me and I'll send you a preset, or build your own as follows:

Name: (whatever you want, I call mine AIC 1080i60)
Frame Size: 1440x1080
Aspect Ratio: Custom (4:3) (select this before setting frame size)
Anamorphic 16:9 set to ON (checkbox)
Field Dominance: Upper (Odd)
Editing Timebase: 29.97
QuickTime Video Settings-
Compressor: Apple Intermediate Codec
Quality: 100%
click on the Advanced button underneath and select Preset: HDV 1080i, then type in 29.97 under Frames Per Second
Audio Settings/Rate: 48.000

4.) Import your clips from that iMovie HD project

5.) Drop them on the timeline

6.) Fix the Aspect Ratio on your clips: double click on a clip to open it up in the Viewer, go to the Motion tab, toggle open Distort, set Aspect Ratio to 0 (zero)

UPDATE: A reader wrote in with a slicker way to handle the Aspect Ratio Problem:

You can fix the aspect ratio just by selecting the clip in the bin, press Command-9, then check mark next to Anamorphic in the clip setup window.

Or you can do it right from the bin, without excessive clicking back and forth between the viewer window and the motion tab.


7.) in the timeline, with that same clip you just double clicked highlighted, press copy (command-c).

8.) Select All (command-a), then Paste Attributes (option-v). In the dialog that appears, click on Distort and press return

9.) Edit away! Now all your footage is ready to go

10.) When done, export a movie using File/Export/QuickTime Movie, using Current Settings, Include Audio & Video, and Make Movie Self-Contained (last is optional probably)

11.) Go back to iMovieHD, make a new HDV project, import this movie in, then select File/Share, and select Videocamera in the dialog that appears. Tell how much black you want at beginning and end, then sit back and wait - it has to re-encode to MPEG-2, it'll take a while. (Frederich clued me in on this non-obvious menu)

12.) DONE!

Mike's Notes on the process:

-the only HDV files I have sitting around are the downloaded ones I mentioned on the blog in the past, they are 1080i from a HDR-FX1

-because of this, I used LumiereHD to demux the files. iMovieHD WILL import the demuxed files (you can use some freeware to demux as well, I just had LumiereHD sitting around)

-iMovieHD does NOT import the source .m2t files, however. Doesn't recognize them.

-importing .m2v files is timeconsuming to transcode, even on a dual 2.5GHz G5.

-doing that import, processors ran 50-60% capacity, so the process isn't super efficient (could be faster with optimized code)

-importing .m2v files to transcode from built-in drive takes roughly 3.5-4 times realtime. 12 1/2 second clip took about 45 seconds to import.

-according to iMovieHD documentation, a 1.0 GHz G4 with 512 MB of RAM is required for HDV editing. Therefore a Mac mini IS sufficient to edit HDV or DVCPRO HD after upgrading the RAM. Obviously it's limited hard drive capacity and single FireWire cable will be an issue (can't capture DV/HDV to a drive on the same FireWire bus, doesn't work), but it will let something be done. NO, I don't recommend this as a primary editing machine unless it is your last option.

-Final Cut Express HD can open iMovie HD files, but Final Cut Pro HD can't. Expect version 5 of Final Cut Pro HD at NAB, and that it will import FCE HD and maybe iMovie HD files as well.

-Apple Intermediate Codec

-Playing back Apple Intermediate Codec on my dual 2.5 GHz G5, playing out through the BlackMagic HD card WORKS!

-file sizes vary with the AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec) - I've seen clips be anywhere from 6.9 to 13.8 MB/sec with 1080i60 footage. So it's MUCH larger than the 3.125 MB/sec source MPEG-2 data on tape.

-realtime effects WORK, I got the 3way color corrector to work with Playback Video quality set to High

-playing off of my internal drive, attempting a realtime cross dissolve dropped frames. Copying the media to a 5.6TB X-Serve RAID (very lovely to have sitting around but it's going back to Apple Monday) didn't help

-so SOME things are realtime, others are not.

-playing with it some more, short dissolves were realtime, longer ones weren't (RAM limitations or what? Dunno, this box has 1.5 GB RAM)

-realtime color correction worked realtime..sometimes. It's clearly taxing the processors very heavily, 85% or more on dual 2.5 GHz G5. Sometimes it played through without dropping a frame, sometimes it didn't. (I have mine set up to abort on dropped frames during playback so I can tell if it did or not).

-color correction with transition ALWAYS dropped frames promptly

-if I dropped the Playback Video Quality to Medium, however, it worked fine - several times in a row I played back a realtime cross dissolve between two clips that BOTH had RT color correction going, worked fine.

-one apparent glitch - Final Cut Pro HD THINKS it can render this stuff in realtime, but if it can't you have to "give it a kick" to get it to render things that aren't playing back right. Selecting Render All for a timeline that included selections that weren't playing back correctly did nothing. I had to go to Sequence=>Render=>Full to get it to render that selection. So it isn't perfect, but at least it works...

-rendering is pretty slow - even using a high speed RAID as a scratch disk (don't know if that helped, but it certainly wasn't slowing anything down), a 1 minute sequence with that consisted of two color corrected clips (using the 3 way color corrector) with a 2 second dissolve between them took 2 minutes and 10 seconds to render on a dual 2.5 GHz G4 with 1.5 GB of RAM.

SO: you can edit in HDV in realtime, sometimes at High quality Video Playback, but Medium works well for the stuff you're likely to want - a realtime cross dissolve between two clips that EACH have their own realtime color correction applied.

I'm recanting a little bit of my rant against HDV - maybe the AIC codec is doing some chroma filtering my other process wasn't, but HDV is holding up to some color correction fairly well.

More later as I learn more.

-mike

This is a nice article covering what you need and how to set up to do edit a Varicam shot (DVCPRO HD) production. Final Cut Pro HD settings, necessary hardware, how to capture off-rate footage, etc. all in one place.

-mike

PS-thanks to Graeme Nattress for sending this in

I wrote about it at NAB, but they've finally shipped the Kodak Look Manager System, and even discuss v2.0.

Kodak's Look Management System is a previsualization tool for filmmakers to work with images to define a look, to come up with a style and be able to communicate that effectively throughout the post process.

It's really designed for working with FILM, not video (unless the video, HD or otherwise, is being transferred to film, and then only some of the tools here apply).

You can preview what it would look like if you were working with X film stock (Kodak stock, of course), with this or that filter, gel, lense, etc.; or developing processes such as skip bleach, push, etc.

There are two parts: the Look Manager System for these "what if's" as described above, and the Display Manager System for calibrating displays.

Mike's Comments: From what I saw at NAB, this stuff would be a helpful tool when shooting on film for film distribution. For HD moviemakers, it might have it's uses to a lesser extent, especially if you know you're going back out to film. As a previsualization tool, I think it has some legs for FILMmakers. It's not a totally accurate "my film will look like this exactly" tool, just a guideline from what I saw and heard 9 months ago.

I asked Roland with Silicon Color (maker of Final Touch HD) about whether they integrated this Kodak stuff into their product - he said that they offered to pay for a license for the technology to integrate into Final Touch HD, but that Kodak wasn't going to do it. So all of the other vendors - Discreet, Da Vinci, etc. - are left out as well. Kodak is sitting on the tech until they can roll out their own product, perhaps?

I mentioned Kodak Look Management System in my NAB coverage here, here, and here.

This piece from Wired talks about tech companies' presence at Sundance and why they're there. It touches on the same kinds of stuff I ranted at length about in this piece from a week or two ago.

If you didn't read it, read it now, and think about how this year's Latest Greatest is mundane in 5 years (or 2 or 3).

(Eek, I just re-read it, typos & grammatical mistakes and all - risks of power blogging in the wee hours.)

-mike

Interested in making independent film? Of course you are, why else would you be reading this geeky site? Read this article (registration required) in the NY Times about the studio system's in house indie productions and their role in Oscars etc. Best quote:

"I think it's wonderful and I think it's awful," Mr. Urman said of the current ascendance of the specialty divisions. "My concern," he continued, "is that moviegoers, if they feel they have satisfied their quotient for alternatives with something that is readily available and omnipresent and advertised - they don't have to pick up a magazine, don't have to work, don't have to read much. The film has big stars. They see it and say, I'm smart; they congratulate themselves, and that keeps them from seeing the really challenging film"

But it may also be possible - it can, at any rate, be hoped - that some of the audience will be led by the middle-size movies toward more difficult and specialized pleasures, toward the little films that will continue to occupy the vanguard of this constantly evolving art form.


-mike

I found this from something I found on Cinema Minima. It discusses what's involved in gettings right to music, television footage, etc. that you might use in your film. Best quote so far:

"When shooting verite, always turn off the radio, always turn off the television."

It includes several good examples of the workarounds required when obtaining rights is too costly.

Absolutely essential that you understand the issues involved before starting a documentary film, and still extremely useful info if shooting narrative.

-mike

This one from Viewsonic, the VP231wb has a claimed 250 nit brightness and 500:1 contrast and a very low 16 ms response time. But will probably cost around $4300 mail order. Ouch.

There seems to be some confusion about the Movie in a Boxx offer due to my unintentionally misleading headline, which I've since altered.

The deal is this: it is NOT a free system being offered!

It is a discount on a bundle, or 2 free Sony 23" LCD monitors and a Sony HDR-FX1 with purchase, whichever way you want to look at it.

The usual deal on the Boxx HD[pro]RT is $19,995.

The Movie in a Boxx deal is the same HD[pro]RT, at the same price, but ALSO includes two Sony PremierePro 23" 1920x1200 LCD monitors and a Sony HDR-FX1 camera, included at that same $19,995 price point.

If you were thinking about getting the HD[pro]RT, this just sweetens the deal substantially.

Boxx sells those 23" LCDs for about $2200, the Sony streets for around $3500, so it's nearly $8,000 worth of freebies in the deal.

If you'd like more info with all the specs, send me an email and I'll send you the PDF.

Sorry about the confusion,

-mike

Graeme Nattress has written this excellent overview of what tape formats will work with Final Cut Pro, what cameras are natively supported, what decks are supported (with model #s and price points for cameras and decks), pros and cons of native codec editing, workflow overview, hard drive options, why 24p, all kinds of stuff.

This is a lot of information in one article, a better summary than I would have done.

Read this and my reader mail questions get cut in half.

-mike

This is part 3B of HDTV Buyer's display technology roundup, talking in depth about CRT vs LCDs for HDTV viewing (more oriented towards living room gear than studio gear, but still good reading).

It addresses issues of black levels, contrast, brightness, grayscale linearity & response curves, all kinds of good geeky stuff that is useful to understand when buying a display device.

There are links to the earlier parts as well.

Highly recommended to understand the pros and cons of plasma, projectors, direct view, LCD, CRT, etc.

-mike

OK, so I will assume you've read the review below of the Boxx Technologies HD[pro]RT system.

As an exclusive (for now) offer for HD For Indies readers, I've been designated middle man to try to help seed about 20 of these units to folks who are going to actually use them. Along those lines, they wanted to put together a system that folks could get out there and actually use. So here's what they're doing:

-Boxx HD[pro]RT system (as reviewed here, Boxx page on it here)
-throw in TWO Sony PremierPro SDM-P234/B 23" 1920 x 1200 LCD monitors
-and just so you have some HD footage to play with, also included is a Sony HDR-FX1 HDV camera, which is gives the best resolution for the money in a digital video camera

...all for the same price as the standard HD[pro]RT ($19,999).

How good of a deal is this? It's two monitors that Boxx charges about $2200 for, and a $3500 camera. So this is about an $8000 freebie.

This is as the name implies - Movie in a Boxx. Everything you need to shoot, edit, & post a project in HD resolution.

Want one? Just email me.

There's wiggle room on the exact specs if you want to change the config a bit as well.

Their goal is to seed some units out there to get the word out on this unit, to put it in the hands of working filmmakers.

So drop me a line if you want one, I can send you the PDF with the detailed specs.

-mike

Recently I had a chance to sit down with some of the folks up at Boxx Technologies and discuss their current products and plans for the HD market.

In the past, I knew a few friends that had either purchased Boxx products or done artwork for their advertising materials. They were all Lightwave artists, and raved about the products for 3D usage and about the company that supported them. My uninformed seat-of-the-pants understanding was that Boxx usually catered to the 3D marketplace, and assembled very powerful, robust, tweaked systems for heavy 3D users on the PC platform, and that Boxx knew how to support those kinds of clients very well - they knew the products and knew their clients' needs. But I perceived them as skilled box assemblers/tweakers, without unique technology of their own.

I was wrong.

Boxx has an extremely close working relationship with many software vendors such as Adobe and Cineform, and in some cases co-develops technology for their products with software vendors that is exclusively available on Boxx systems.

I sat down with several folks from Boxx and had a long talk with them about their HD[pro]RT system.

Here's the basic specs:

-Dual Opteron 250 WinXP Pro system (pretty loaded)
-Adobe Professional Video Suite, which includes:
  -Adobe Premiere 1.5
  -Encore 1.5
  -After Effects Professional 6.5
  -Audition 1.5
-Cineform Prospect HD software (that does VERY high quality compressed video)
-single HD-SDI input (also doubles as SDI input)
-single HD-SDI output (again doubles as SDI output for SD footage)
-1394 (FireWire) input/output
-$20,000 for the basic system not including monitors

This means that it can take in pretty much any flavor HD or SD video you can think of - 1080p and 1080i footage at all the normal broadcast frame rates, 720p at 59.94 or 60fps (no 24p or variable support....at this time), NTSC, PAL, DV, and even take in native HDV via FireWire/IEEE 1394a. So all of the common formats (except 720p24 and DVCPRO50), plus HDV to boot (even for the new Sony HDR-FX1).

So what's the big deal then? I've been advocating Final Cut Pro HD rigs for some time now that have had all these specs and more.

Two key differentiators:

1.) High quality, full resolution 10 bit compressed codecs. DVCPRO HD downsamples 1280x720 to 960x720, and 1920x1080 to 1280x1080, and it's only 8 bit, not 10. This is the codec Apple works with natively and supports realtime effects with when doing offline HD (at HD res). Not so with the Cineform stuff - it's FULL raster, meaning full res (1920x1080 and 1280x720), AND it's 10 bits/channel, meaning there are 1024 gradations of color per channel, not just 256. This gives you a LOT more latitude when color correcting and looking to go to film to maintain subtle quality. (There is also an 8 bit codec if you wish to use that as well.)

2.) Multi-layer, real time performance for color correction, transitions, effects, composites, even in 10 bit. Final Cut Pro can do realtime, and can do 10 bit, but NOT both at the same time. With this system, you can be editing full raster (full res/full size), 10 bit/channel 1080 res HD video, AND get realtime color correction, AND do a realtime cross dissolve, in realtime, no rendering required to see it. Wow.

3.) Mix and match differnt kinds of footage on the same timeline. Final Cut Pro HD is infamously picky about everything having to match EXACTLY to edit on the same timeline and even just play back at full speed without rendering in real time. If you want to mix codecs for the same size and framerate, gotta render, won't play back without it. If you want to mix sizes of footage in the same codec, same problem, gotta render. Not so with the Boxx system.

The one bit of funkiness, however, is how it does this.

One significant architectural difference between Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro is how they handle realtime performance: Final Cut Pro takes a rather absolutist, brittle approach: it's realtime or it's not, and if you override the safeties and tell it to go for it, it either works of the frame rate takes a significant hit. You can manually tell it to work with lower resolution footage (Playback Quality High/Medium/Low). Premiere Pro takes a different, more flexible approach: if it can't do the realtime effect (be it a color correction, transition, PIP, whatever), it will first drop the RESOLUTION of the footage viewed. The footage still takes up the full video window, but is reduced resolution.

This is similar to Final Cut Pro HD when you tell DVCPRO HD or DV footage to play back onscreen in medium or low resolution. (So actually the two aren't so different I guess). But the key difference is that in FCP, you have to manually instruct the footage to play back at lower quality, in PP (Premiere Pro), it starts with best quality and drops quality as needed to achieve full frame rate with effects applied. If it can't do that, then it drops the frame rate.

The Cineform software takes this concept even further - it reduces the high frequency detail of the image but keeps on working in realtime. Boxx didn't say this, but I get the impression that Cineform internally stores the video frames in a pyramid type structure - the coarse layer and additional layers of finer detail stacked on top of it. Something like that, that allows the Cineform to only slightly reduce the quality of the footage if too much is being asked of the host to process in real time. When you stop on a still, the footage is processed in full quality.

I noticed this when watching a clip from the upcoming film Dust To Glory (see trailer here). They were demonstrating a lot of simultaneous effects, and the image quality looked fine. When they stopped playing the footage, it suddenly popped a little sharper.

Dust to Glory is a documentary shot on film, HD, and DV, all edited together on a Boxx HD[pro]RT, all in real time on the same timeline. Something you categorically can't do with FCP HD.

So what about the image quality?

The filmmakers of Dust to Glory carefully scrutinized several different possible workflows for their project. They had a tremendous amount of footage from their shoot about the infamous Baja 1000 rally race - they literally gave DV cameras to spectators and told them to shoot the cars as they raced past.

So what this means is that you get realtime performance, but sometimes you get it at reduced resolution (but still full size) if it can't do everything at once.

This bugs me, because I'm a quality fanatic.

But the more I think about it, does it really MATTER? Since the system can handle 10 bit footage with realtime color correction with a realtime cross dissolve, how often are you going to get into that situation?

The reality of this system is that it will let you work very quickly with 10 bit footage and realtime effects in a final quality format. This is a HUGE advantage over Final Cut Pro HD, which must render all of it's 10 bit effects and transitions, which is a huge pain and breaks the creative flow of the editorial process.

If you're trying to judge color, even their reduced res is sufficient to judge color, and it only does that when the system is overtaxed. If you're trying to evaluate detail, when you stop on a frame it will ALWAYS process it full res. So sometimes you'll be watching footage with effects and it looks fine to your eye, and then you press stop, and a brief instant later the image pops into sharper focus/full resolution. Is this ideal? No. Is this usable? Definitely for almost all situations. And you're only going to run into this reduced resolution situation sometimes.

Would I prefer this over FCP HD? Often. If the HD[pro]RT system can deliver full resolution when doing "real" color correction (Color Finesse or 3 way color corector), I'd consider that great and superior to FCP. If it couldn't I'd consider that a real problem. One catch is that the basic 2 way color corrector is realtime, but the 3way is not at this time. There was some discussion of drastically improved performance from Color Finesse on their system, but I didn't get a definitive answer on that.

Boxx is suggesting working with Prospect HD codec all the way through and not recapturing uncompressed - this makes me nervous, even though I've seen the results and it looks quite good. How good is good enough, and is this good enough for filmout? Dust to Glory used it and was happy, but did they see the results side by side with uncompressed? That I don't know. But the real question is always "Is it good enough?" rather than "Is it as good as it could be?" I think that it's likely that many people will find it sufficient unto their needs.

One catch on this system - no uncompressed option on this system - wish it were there very much to have the option if I want best possible quality.

Further notes on the system:

I do think it's a bit pricey at $20K for the basic system with software and 9 hours of compressed HD storage. But then I try to think of what else can do this at all, with a common application like Premiere Pro, that has tons of third party developer support. Then I shut up and realize it's a good deal for the money.

Codec & Data rate: using the Cineform HD codec (it's wavelet based, which is related to how they do their "reduced detail" mode), 1080p24 10 bit 4:2:2 averages about 15-16 MB/sec. Because it is VBR (variable bitrate), it can range from about 12 to 20 MB/sec depending on the complexity of the scene. For 8 bit 1080p24 footage, it's about 15% less than that (yes 15, not 20, what I was told).

HD-SDI spigots: one in, one out - would prefer 2 outs (one for deck, one for monitor), plus an analog out. Not an option. Boxx will sell you an adaptor to connect to an analog HD monitor.

DeckLink HD Pro can do HD/SD split out - HD-SDI, SD-SDI, and SD analog, which this system cannot. For budget indies, monitoring details on an LCD via HD-SDI adaptor (HDLink or HDP), then evaluating color on a downconverted SD monitor is an efficient solution.

There is no support for 4:4:4 (but then again, how common is THAT? $100K decks)

Definitely can work faster in 10 bit than FCP can and that's a HUGE bonus.

But looks like, from what I saw, that BOTH require rendering for final, full quality output.

That brings it back to the crucial difference that you can edit, and more importantly, color correct, in a 10 bit colorspace (although compressed) in realtime on the Boxx system - and at full resolution, not horizontally downsampled.

Plus, it's on a WinXP system running Premiere Pro 1.5, so that if you're wanting to do a lot of effects work the handoff between AE & PP is VE