HD For Indies

More Panasonic Goodies for NAB

This thread on dvxuser.com has more details -

I was just saying I'd want a direct to disk compressed recording solution for the P2 based cameras. Well, almost - this is the AJ-PCS060 device for downloading a P2 card onto a 60GB portable (presumably battery powered) hard disk gadget. Shoot to P2 card, remove card from camera, download via this little box to a hard disk, clear card, reload card, shoot more (or keep shooting on your other cards and have a PA downloading to disk in the background).

Also an LCD monitor for HD usage, and also some P2 optional stuff on this page (see link at top, I'm too lazy to retype).

UPDATED - SEE BOTTOM

Site Claims new Panasonic P2 based camcorder will record 1080p24

I doubt it, but should be interesting to see what happens...

UPDATE: Noah Kadner confirms that it will in fact do 1080p24, for sure. Since it's recording to P2, no tape velocity issues to be dealt with. Will there be a direct to disk recording module? That'd be the killer thing for this camera, the P2 cards will be PRICEY!

Mike's Conjecture: I'm calling this conjecture since I don't know for sure. ASSUMING the camera's CCD is 1280x720 (sounds about right, they are claiming 1 megapixel, 1280x720 is 921,600 pixels, but 1440x720 would be 1.03MP, but that's not in line with other stuff they've done), then DVCPRO HD 1080 res is actually a pretty good solution. The 1080i29.97 format is really 1280x1080 internally, so that would mean you'd get ALL of the horizontal resolution 1:1, and vertically the image would be stretched UP (rather than down) from 720 to 1080. Far, FAR better to stretch up than down, you keep (if slightly distort) all the original info. This is WAY good news! Especially since the DVCPRO HD codec is 4:2:2 rather than HDV's 4:2:0 1440x1080 (from a 960x1080 chip in Sony's 1080 interlaced, not progressive cameras), that is preferable....as a FORMAT, not necessarily as a camera. The other issue will be how to output this 1080p24 stuff - that isn't part of the DVCPROHD tape format as presently supported. New decks, or modifications to existing decks (unlikely), would be required to record DVCPROHD at 24fps 1080p.

BUT...the rumor has been that the PAL framerate for DVCPROHD will be supported in FCP 5 (this is confirmed from Apple), but rumored that it will be 1440x1080 internally for 25p, an improvement from the 1280x1080 of 30i DVCPRO HD. So in THEORY maybe there's some trick to be gained from recording 24p/25p higher res something or other, not sure how that could all be resolved. Again, we'll have to wait and see, but this is all good news.

-mike

Ned over at the LA Final Cut Pro User Group has posted a nice synopsis of the options available for working with HDV. I think I've probably mentioned everything he suggests, but he wraps it up all in one place. Plus, he posts links to everything, which I am obviously lame about.

Cool little notebooks for storyboarding

Podcasts on Marketing, Media, & Global Communications with a Touch of Technology - LET’S DECENTRALIZE ENTERTAINMENT IN AMERICA

Call to action from producer Dwight Adair.

He's throwing down the gauntlet at Big Media - discussing the ability, NOW, to distribute DVD quality video over the internet to a variety of playback devices.

Go Dwight!

-mike

The iPOD and HD-

OK, this is a fun stunt. I heard about this from the Blackmagic folks a few months ago, but was asked to be quiet about it at the time. Now it's out, apparently.

Stunt value mostly. And no, you CANNOT shoot on a Varicam and record to an iPod. Among the various reasons, there is no FireWire connection on a Varicam, and it has been clearly stated that there will NOT be one.

-mike

MacNN | FireWire releases RAID 0 dual drive device

Need to keep two drives online as one volume? This would work. SHOULD (no promises) be sufficient for uncompressed SD and compressed SD & HD with reasonably fast drives.

Wired 13.04: The Cuban Revolution

Article on Mark Cuban and his digital content empire in the making. Content (sports team), creation (2929 Films and HDNet films), distribution (Landmark Theater chain with digital projectors), etc.

Interesting read.

Shimadzu’s million-frame-per-second video camera - Engadget - www.engadget.com. NOT really useful for a lot of filmmaking purposes (low res, monochrome), but geeky cool anyway.

Cine Speedcam is a real choice for high speed digital cinematography, however - it shoots up to 1000 fps at roughly 1500x1000 pixels, higher speeds at lower resolution.

Here's Band Pro's page on it (they rent it), and here's a CML Q&A on it

Final Cut Pro News (Phila FCP Users Group): Free plugins! Some useful (better backwards video), some experimental

AppleInsider | Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" reaches final candidate stage

....so it sounds like Tiger for NAB is pretty close to a sure thing, if this is true. Supposedly to be officially announced on Friday....Apriil 1st. Why announce on April Fool's Day? Dunno.

Ars Technica, a full-on turbo geeky website (I say that in the best possible way), has reviewed Make Magazine, which had the article about the $14 do it yourself Steadicam like device (camera stabilizer). The build and test one and give some conclusions, and even include a sample movie (click on the screenshot).

Thanks Zane Rutledge for the heads up on the link.

-mike

Monday: Updated again, pointing out the benefits of native DVCPRO HD editing - no downconverts, native 24p editing
Sunday: Slightly updated: I clarified a bit about recommended workflow in bold below

So today I've been sitting over at Matchframe in Austin, TX working with colorist Nick Smith on the short film Heads or Tails that my friend Paul (aka RoboGeek) produced and directed. We've been chipping away at it for months off and on, and today we're doing color correction.

This is a great example of successful low cost post workflows - we shot on Varicam (expensive but good quality), and pulled the footage in over FireWire in the native DVCPRO HD codec. The 24fps 720p footage is only about 5 1/2 MB/sec, very low data rate for what's essentially twice the resolution of standard definition video. Most of the editing was done on one of my G5 machines, a dual 2.0 GHz G5 with a Blackmagic DeckLink HD Pro card, monitoring via an HDLink to an Apple 23" LCD. But when Paul wanted to see what we had, I was able to copy all the footage over to a FireWire drive (55 GB worth for two to three hours of footage) and he could review it on his 15" Powerbook. He could have edited on that if he wished, and just brought over the revised Final Cut Pro HD file, which is only a few megs in size. Further updated: I'm so used to this, I didn't even have to think about it - we were able to edit in the native 24p, without having to make DV downconverts OR having to edit on a 30i timeline, saving costs and having greater editorial accuracy.

So today we're doing color correction at Matchframe - I was concerned about what the workflow was going to be, since we had recently done color correction on Termination (another short he directed) for submission at the SXSW Film Festival on their DaVinci color correction system. There had been issues with that one when dealing with the 24p nature of the footage (shot on DVX100A in 24p mode). More on that later. (Termination won Best Texas Short at SXSW, btw. Congrats to Paul, Jen,Herb, Jett, etc.!)

So let's look at this in terms of Method A and Method B:

Method A

Update: NOT that this is recommended filmmaking process! This is "the usual" answer for doing higher end color correction - take it to a facility and do tape to tape with a colorist, regardless of what format you shot on. This is the usually prescribed methodology - shot on 24p DV, but edited at 30i since it was never intended to go to a 24p medium, was offlined on Final Cut Pro HD, output to DV, and then brought over to Matchframe to be worked on their DaVinci color correction system. Pros: Awesome toolset to use, fast and very very clean. Cons: Expensive hardware to work on, and you're married to that edit - if you want to make an editorial change, you have to come back and color correct again. All fades/cuts/transitions are pre-rendered before color correction, so you're stuck with those decisions.

Method B

We acquired in the efficient, camera quality DVCPRO HD codec. We edited in that codec, and when it came time to color correct, the color correction was done by a colorist within Final Cut Pro HD using it's native tools. Pros: we can STILL make editorial changes if we want to. The color correction is just settings applied to clips with the built-in FCP tools, so with the media and FCP file, we can go to ANY FCP HD editing station (that meets minimal specs) to do further work. If we want to make further changes, we can, on our own equipment and timeline. It's still fluid and flexible, NOT locked down like Method A was. Cons: The toolset isn't as rich or powerful as the DaVinci stuff. We could have used Color Finesse, but we didn't have that plugin, and it takes longer (takes forever to render). We could have ideally used Final Touch HD if somebody had that (I still haven't traded in my eval chit yet), and still maintained editorial control after all the files had been rendered (assuming we had a RAID fast enough for the uncompressed color corrected files, which I do but neither Paul, nor our editor Herb Bennet, has).

"Save color correction for last" Paul says. Termination had a variety of delays, and in the end had to be post-scored to get final audio work done due to scheduling limitations.

I advocate stuff more along the Method B lines - if Heads or Tails were a movie we were trying to have test screenings of, I'd never want to have to pay for color correction more than once, and I'd insist on having the ability to change editorially after color correction.

Flexibility is key (at least to me). If you're producing a commercial or something that isn't so quality driven or where ongoing flexibility isn't so mission critical, that might not be such a big deal. But for long form projects, the ability to always have control and the ability to change your mind even when you THINK you're done, is very important to me.

I asked Nick Smith, the colorist, what their other HD color correction capabilities are in the Austin office. If not on Final Cut Pro, the only other choice is to use their Fire HD setup, and rate card on that is about $650/hr. This room (with Nick driving it) is about half that or less working with Final Cut Pro HD.

Again, low cost tools, when you can get high quality results, is desirable.

Another cool thing about this Method B workflow - once I get the FCP file home, I can Recompress To the 10 bit lossless codec and re-render the color correction for the cleanest possible DM (digital master). From there, I can digitally scale up that new Digital Master using a variety of software tools (After Effects is my odds on favorite at the moment, I don't know if Compression Master or Cleaner can properly handle 10 bits/channel footage). Within After Effects, there are also some third party plugins to try to get even better results. Time consuming, but again, we have the time on this project, and quality is desirable.

If this were a project destined for film, I'd probably do that for best results, or this would be a good master to go out to a high end tape format like HDCAM SR, which could handle the full resolution without subsampling, as well as the 10 bits/channel (instead of just 8 bits/channel) for smoother results from color correction.

-mike

InPhase Technologies: Tapestry™ HDS 200-R - this looks interesting....it's not out yet, but it's a holographic optical recording device and media. They are claiming $0.25/GB, a quarter a gig, not bad. 20 MB/sec transfer rate is a bit slow for my preferences, but hey, that's what it is.

I'd pretty much blown off optical storage as too slow, too small, and too expensive per GB to mess with. But this keeps it interesting. Depending, of course, on the cost of the drive itself. LTO3 tape is presently the best relatively high speed bang for the buck I've found for handling tens of terabytes of data.

This might be an interesting backup format for the tons of digital data that HD is producing, if you're looking for a low cost solution. The problem is the speed - 20 MB/sec is probably the read, not write speed. In the past, a lot of optical media devices have been able to read much faster than they can write, so it's conceivable that write performance is even lower. At 20 MB/sec write speed, that's means an hour of DVCPRO HD would take about 15 minutes to back up. Not bad. But uncompressed formats fare far worse:
-10 bit uncompressed 720p24 would take about 3 hours to back up one hour of footage
-10 bit uncompressed 1080p24 would take a bit over 6 hours to back up one hour. Not very efficient for a lot of footage.
-10 bit 1080i30 would take about 8 hours to back up one hour of footage. So if you started at 5pm, a two hour master would be done (barely) when you got into work the next day. IF you had an autoloader that could shuffle in new disks, AND presuming a verification pass wasn't required. Ugh.

Thanks to Christopher Barry for pointing this tech out to me.

-mike

Thread on Varicam Workflow - a producer asked about low cost post production workflows with the Varicam and the DVCPRO HD tape format. This thread discusses that, but leaves out/was written before some other options became available.

One of the responders talks about a lack of high quality color correction tools, and suggests bumping up to D-5 or other high end tape format and doing a tape to tape color correction. If you have the money for that and your edit is locked, great.

If not, other options:

-Use the Media Manager and it's Recompress To function to convert the pre-color corrected media to the 10 bit uncompressed codec of your choice, and THEN use a tool like Color Finesse. For optimal results, use Automatic Duck to get the timeline into After Effects and render out your final from there, but not everything that can be done in FCP will carry over to AE, so be careful.

-OR do the Recompress To thing and use Final Touch HD if you have money/access to that system. I'm not sure if the Recompress To is strictly necessary since FTHD will be rendering out it's own files..Hmm...don't know.

The New York Times > Business > Your Money > The Future of the 30-Second Spot: - this New York Times Article discusses the future of TV advertising in the age of TiVO and direct marketing via video. I think they're on the right track with this.

-mike

The New York Times > Technology > A Supreme Court Showdown for File Sharing - article in today's New York Times discusses the latest legal wranglings between the file sharing software companies and the music & film industries. It's going to the Supreme Court, so it's getting serious. If file sharing software companies are held liable for the content that flows over them (that they don't have much control over), I think it would be a dark day for America's technology companies, and a darker day for freedom of speech (not to mention the consumers!).

I feel it's a bit like suing Ford because drugs get carried in pickups. Or perhaps, more like suing U Haul because those vehicles are used to transport illegal stuff.

The Comments section at the end of each article is getting more and more use, especially when I post about something techinical. At the bottom of each article is a small link that says, obviously, "Comments." If there's a number after it, read it. If there isn't, post one of your own if you have something to say. There's a lot of good post-article chatter and debate going on, especially on the color correction and HDV articles.

-mike

Lucas & Cameron talk about working in 3D. Specifically, converting their back libraries. Peter Jackson demo'd some Gollum and dust in 3D that was impressive, and Austin's own Robert Rodriguez has been working in HD 3D for a few years now. James Cameron is in pre-production on a 3D film titled Battle Angel, planned for 2007 release.

Video test with SONY HDV 1080i . Frederic emailed me the other day to ask about keying HDV. His little sample page continues to grow, and this is an excellent example of some of the issues involved in trying to key HDV footage.

Right off the bat, since HDV is a 4:2:0 codec, the way the chroma (color) information is recorded (or at least reproduced with these tools), there are grey lines in the footage, making a key very difficult to obtain.

Take a look at the samples on the page, and how the yellow background (after trying to key) looks.

This may be endemic to the format. Or perhaps there are some better tools to work with it? This reminds me of the fire footage I fooled with before - on footage that changes a lot from one field to the next, the format doesn't record the action in the color portion of the image very well. That's the "0" in the 4:2:0.

OK readers, here's your chance to chime in.

I suggested that he use LumiereHD or HDVxDV to pull in the footage directly to a lossless codec without going through the lossy AIC codec, and try different keyers to see if any of them did any better.

I haven't had to do any keying in over a year (trying to leave that kind of work behind), but I used to like the Screen Correction Layer feature of Ultimatte, because it would let you try to get a more consistent green prior to the keying function. But that's just tweaking - the problems here are far bigger than that (rearranging deck chairs on Titanic).

In the end, it's a heavily compressed format. It was designed to produce a pleasing to look at image, throwing away detail it thinks you won't notice (that's how it compresses in part) in order to get a smaller file size on tape. But the stuff you can't see with your naked eye is what makes for a good color key.

Frederic had original thought to shoot this and downsample the resulting key to standard definition, thinking he'd get a smoother result, but he keeps getting a halo'd edge around the keyed stuff. I think this is an artifact of the scaling algorithm After Effects uses, so I suggested he render out his keyed footage with alpha and then try Cleaner to scale the footage down, which uses a sine scaling algorithm rather than a bicubic algorithm. Haven't seen/heard of his results yet.

So send in your comments and suggestions, and you can download the 13 frame sample AIC movie, but you'll need iMovieHD or Final Cut Express HD installed in order to have the AIC codec installed to see what's going on.

On your mark, get set, play!

This is definitely going to be a common problem that a lot of folks are going to face, so this isn't a one time only problem...

-mike

Here's a field report from a guy who used a preproduction SRW-1 field recording unit, which is the smaller, battery powered HDCAM SR recording unit. It can record full width raster (1920 rather than HDCAM's 1440) and 10 bits rather than 8 bits per channel, with less compression than HDCAM.

In any case, an interesting solution, and interesting how he chose to shoot based on the various limiting factors, such as battery life in a plane, weight, shipping weight of the media, etc.

Here's also a FAQ on the HDCAM SR format and the SRW-5000 studio deck for that format.

-mike

Details here.

The Los Angeles Final Cut Pro User Group Meeting is going to have their annual meeting on Wednesday, April 20th at 6:30 to 9:30 pm (doors open at 5pm) at Stardust Hotel Conference Center in Las Vegas during NAB. The schedule of stuff to be discussed is unannounced, so it's quite likely that Final Cut Pro 5 will be discussed in detail. If you have strong interest in Final Cut, this is THE place to get good info, detailed answers, and in general learn the latest bestest scoop. If you're going to NAB, this is MANDATORY.

See the lafcpug website for more details. The schedule will be secret until after the press event on the 17th.

-mike

Steve Mullen has written this article has more info on the upcoming JVC 720p camera that will shoot 24p, the GY-HD100U. Steve's been writing about HDV for over a year that I've been reading. New info gleaned:

-definitely records 24p
-it can record uncompressed PCM audio, but the feature may not be included for technical reasons including a 6 frame delay (more info in article)
-it records to tape at an honest 24p, not a stuttery repeated 24p over 30i or 60p or whatever. This is GOOD.
-that also implies more efficient use of the codec
-timecode has a track on the tape format, so I'm hoping/guessing it's "for real" SMPTE timecode
-a new 17" broadcast LCD monitor, the BT-LH1700W, to come out at NAB, with SDI, RGB, component, composite, and s-video, displays 1080/24fps, 1080i, 720p, and 480i (not clear that 720p24 is displayed directly, but assumably so), 1280x768 native res, available Q3 2005
-workflows with HDVxDV are also discussed in the article
-there's a paragraph or two on the 0.7 wide converter for the FX1 and Z1U Sony HDV cameras.

The consensus seems to be that Tiger will be announced April 1st and ship for NAB, and that Final Cut Pro HD version 5 will show at NAB if not ship simultaneously. Other goodies:

DVDs making more money than theatrical release - an interesting tidbit. Somewhere I also read that one reason why the gap between theatrical and DVD releases is closing so fast is that studios, now realizing the income to be had from DVD sales & rentals, are wanting to take advantage of the carry-over marketing campaign benefits (and cost amortization) from the theatrical release to the DVD release. (Found via Cinima Minima.

-Things China is doing to bring in more moviegoers. Cinema Minima points out the contrast between these actions, and Hollywood's attitude that "there's nothing to be done" to bring in more theater goers. I can't point a stronger finger at The Way To Do this than to direct anyone's attention to the marvelous work Tim & crew have done with the Alamo Drafthouse chain that started right here in Austin. They just recently opened their fourth location...in Austin.

-Boxx 8200 workstation certified for BlackMagic DeckLink HD Pro

FW Depot has this FireWire hot swap 4 bay enclosure. This could be good for a 4 drive RAID 0 or two mirrored RAID 1 pairs for standard definition or compressed high definition video work. It's FireWire 800 and USB 2.0. It's $500.

-LCD TVs: Quality up, prices down this is an interview with someone from Westinghouse, so beware bias

-Law & Order: Trial By Jury being shot on 16mm and posted with an all data workflow. They claim to be saving $15,000/episode compared to other workflows. Interesting reading for those thinking about working with film and DI process. At first skim, a whiff of "puff piece" detected, but the how's and what's should still be interesting

That's what I think is relevant of late for the indie crowd. Some other stuff got announced recently, but I thought it way too niche for this readership.

I've been reading my new copy of Cinefex magazine (as in the hold-in-my-hands, actual printed copy). If you have any interest in visual effects, even from a producer's standpoint, this magazine is a MUST READ. It comes out quarterly and is hard to find in stores, so subscription is heartily recommended. This quarter's edition has a long, LONG series of Q&A with a bunch of industry leaders talking about the business side of doing visual effects, and it's depressing. Basically, it's a for love not money industry, and shops are recycling (aka new ones starting and existing ones folding) all the time. It's not anything anybody's going to get rich doing. Another reason I got out of that industry - too much demand for No Sleep Till Brooklyn multi-allnighter assaults come deadline, too little pay, too much scope creep (job gets incrementally bigger and bigger, budget and deadline stay the same), and just too much hassle for me. It's fun, but I don't love that side of image creation that much. But definitely worth reading, especially this issue if you have need of visual effects in your film.

-mike

This article suggests that Sony may be open to some sort of agreement with the HD-DVD group to avoid having a dual format high definition DVD format war. Thank the heavens, because two competing formats would kill the future viability. High definition audio had been similarly plagued by competing formats, but high definition audio hasn't exactly caught on like wildfire. Of course, hi def DVDs could face the same fate - two competing standards, low consumer interest in the first place, few titles, high player costs, not much market penetration.

The article gets a few things wrong - AAC is not an Apple proprietary or originated format, and Windows Media 9 is NOT the only video codec chosen for HD-DVDs. BOTH Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will support MPEG-2, WM9, and H.264 AVC video codecs.

That would be ugly.

There's also this article at Macworld saying much the same thing, using the word "detante" about the possible arrangement. This second article has better technical background info on the competing formats if you're not all up to speed on it.

-mike

Way Off Topic: A Day in the Analog World

Well, I almost went on a road trip to Death Valley and the Grand Canyon this week, then I realized it was both my Mom's birthday and Easter this week, so bailing for another state wasn't going to fly. My ex-girlfriend, now just friend Rhonda Schneider wanted me to go. Rhonda is great - in our relationship, I was very much Marlin to her Dory. I felt she couldn't be solid enough to hang on, and I definitely was gripping the world too tight to let go. We definitely didn't find our Nemo, but we're great as friends now.

-phone rings at 5:30am, I'm thinking it's Rhonda calling to wake me up, I think dark deadly thoughts at the phone. It falls into silence.

-phone rings at 7:30, it IS Rhonda this time. She's sooooo cheerful and chirpy in the mornings. I am...much less so. I say I'll get up soon. I go back to sleep.

She calls back at 8:30am, and I say I'll get in the shower. She calls back at 9 something and I pick up the phone, say "Stop pestering me!" and hang up.

While I'm in the shower, she leaves a message saying she was trying to give me directions out to her country place. Woops.

I call back and am apologetic now that I'm awake.

So I start driving out there (towards Llano). I've driven west on 290 a million times, so it's a familiar drive. Unfortuantely, I'm supposed to be driving on highway 71, not 290, and I don't realize this until Dripping Springs.

shit Shit SHIT.

So I buy a map and figure out the quickest way and call Rhonda and leave a message to tell her I've fubared my navigational skills for the day.

I finally get to LLano and call her and she drives her ranch truck down to the end of the road to meet me, since I clearly can't be trusted with any instructions more complicated than "exit your driveway."

On the drive down the dirt road to Happy Hilltop (she has no street address out in the boonies, so when she went to get a new driver's license, they asked her where she lives she said Happy Hilltop [there is, of course, no such road]. So that's what it says on her driver's license. Really.)

So on the drive down to Happy Hiltop off of the highway, she slows down, rolls down her window, and starts calling for her pet/friend: "Donkey!" [Honks horn repeatedly].."Donkey!". Unfortunately today he's a no-show. I've seen pictures of him before, and even a little video that Rhonda included in her submission video trying to get on a reality show called "Texas Ranch House." A friend sent her a weblink to the submission page, and she thought it was one of those shows where they come fix up your house (this when she still described her place as "not so much a house, more like a structure out in the country." Anyway, on her submission video (that I showed her how to drive iMovie to edit - see? This is post related! ...so on her submission video, there's footage of Donkey trotting eagerly over to her car at the gate, sticking his head in the window (he likes candy, she loves candy, so they have something in common). Donkey sticks his head in the window, she gives him a peppermint, she gets out and he lets him pet on her while he chews his peppermint. Rhonda's friend shooting the video is next - as Rhonda pulls her car through the gate, Donkey trots back to Kim's car and sticks his head in her car window, looking for Tweats. Alas, none to be found.

So anyway, that's Donkey. He's her friend. He gets credit as Don Key on her submission video.

We finally get out to her house (it's moved up the scale from "structure" to "place where I can sleep if I have to, and it's now just after noon. I change into cycling clothes and we ride mountain bikes towards town. It's a gorgeous day, about 70 degrees, a few clouds lazily drifting past. It's about 7 miles to town, we have a nice tailwind and it only takes about half an hour. We're in the outback of the Texas Hill Country, so there's lots of green, the wildflowers are starting to come out, and we slow down to say "MooooOOOOOOooooo!" at the cows.

Because that's what one does in such circumstances.

It's around this time that it dawns on me that Rhonda is Dory from Finding Nemo. It takes a little longer for me to realize I am sooooooo Marlin (fearful of new things, etc.). We pass a very young bull that starts to trot after us. She thinks it's cute and that he wants to follow us, I think he's being territorial and am wary of turning around to go check him out. How exactly metaphorical is that?

: )

We arrive at the Castell General Store. Castell is a thriving Texas metropolis, population 13. Yes, thirteen. If Randy moves, it's 12.

I've been out the the General Store once before, last year, and there were some folks cooking barbecue that day, so we'd had some great pork loin sandwiches. Unfortunately, we were too late today for that. So we got some Moon Pies and a cinnamon bun (the kind you only find in rural stores off the highway, all prepackaged in plastic with a shelf life like plutonium). MMMMMMmmmmm, good.

We shoot the breeze with Randy, the proprietor for a bit. Rhonda knows him well, she's up here all the time. She jokes about what the townfolk must think of her, bringing all these men by. There's me (ex boyfriend, you know the rest), her current French boyfriend Arnaud whom she met New Year's Eve during a disastrous date with Drew (asshole - Drew not Arnaud, she's in LoooooOOOOOoooove with Arnaud, I approve), Ken (an inline skater from San Jose she met at the Paris airport), Jeremy (23 year old triathlete and virgin by choice (!!), a good Catholic boy).

We chat with Randy a bit - he used to work bidness in Houston, but got sick of it and moved out to Castell. He runs the 100 year old general store most of the time when he doesn't go fishin' in the Llano River which is about 100 yards out back. It's still open when he's not there, you just leave your money on the counter. Plus, there's Cock-A-Roo to keep an eye on things. He's a rooster. No shit. He wandered in while Randy & Rhonda were sitting at the table catching up amidst all of Randy's newspapers. He's very worldly - he had newspapers from Austin, Houston, Mason, and Llano. Cock-A-Roo pecked a bit at Rhonda's feet when she darted playfully at him. Perhaps not a good game to play in Birkenstocks, but a fun game nonetheless.

The Castell General Store is a meeting place - every day around 4 or 5 some locals drop by after work to have a beer and catch up with their neighbors and friends, and any strangers in town that are happening by. Rhonda showed up one day and was hanging out, talking to everybody, "getting caught up on the gossip" after she had biked up to the store and kayaked home - everybody knew about it. It was also the day she helped Don & Shirley herd cattle with her mountain bike amid all the cactus and prickly scrub - definitely challenging terrain. (All her stories apparently quickly become legend around the Castell General Store.) When she arrived that day, there were four or more horses tied off in front of the store on the hitching post. She was chattin' with these folks, and some of them belonged to the horses. A guy drove up in a truck with a bunch of feed in back, and he's wearing his cowboy hat, and snap up western shirt, his Wranglers with chaps over'em (not the assless urban kind), with his boots and spurs. She finds out later he collects spurs, and his name is Cameron Nelms, aka The Cowboy. They chat, and discover they live about a mile and a half apart on the river, and that he's her closest neighbor, her country next door neighbor. A couple days later Kim is filming the video for the TV show, he comes riding up the river, "all cowboyed up" and drops by to visit. He's all proper and such - everything is all "yes ma'am" and "no ma'am" and the harshest word he's ever exhibited in his vocabulary is "Dagnabbit!" He hobbles his horse in the front yard (with hobbles he braided himself - he's full-on Real Cowboy). When Rhonda asked him what he does, he says he's a cowboy - he's a roper. And yes, you can make a living doing this, if you're really good.

(Rhonda's kinda smitten with him, in an "Aww, shucks ma'am" kind of way.)

(Rhonda then corrects me, saying she's not smitten, she's enamored. "Because what's his name - Arnaud - is my boyfriend." I cut her some slack because we just split a bottle of Liberty Hill Cabernet at Hilltop Cafe - more on that later).

Randy shows me his videotape of him on the news, with Cock-A-Roo's infamous dislike of fish. He has a Billy Bass singing rubber fish, when he starts it up on the floor, Cock-A-Roo jumps on it and starts pecking it. (Later, we saw Cock-A-Roo performing some rated R activity on the Billy Bass, truly a fitting fate for the wretched rubber thing.)

As we were sitting inside just talking and watching Cock-A-Roo, the chicken (still getting over that), a woman comes in to get some stuff. Randy says she just rode in 7 miles to get an ice cream sandwich and three pounds of bacon. I'm assuming she rode in on her bike, but we go outside, and I get a big surprise....

...she rode in on her horse and buggy. Or more accurately, her horses and buggy. She has a buggy with two dogs in it that's made of modern materials, metal pipe and modern wheels with rubber tires. But the real shocker was the horses...or more accurately, THE HORSES. They are Belgians, which are essentially just like Clydesdales without the metal rocker band hair around their ankles. These horses are HUGE, their eyeline is above mine (I'm 6-3, 6-4 on a good day in boots on a date). Their heads seem like they are three and a half feet long or more. But they are gentle and sweet - they let us, total strangers, walk up and pet their faces and stroke their noses. I felt like I was subject to some CAD program's scale function, since these horses were just enormous, off the scale of what I'm used to seeing. Rhonda still had peppermints in her pockets that she had intended for Donkey that she hadn't been able to find. She fished out one and held her hand flat to feed one of the Belgians, but the horse's lips are so big it seemed like feeding a whale a Certs. The male horse took it, toyed with it in it's mouth for a bit, than casually, no big deal, just dropped it on the road.

Belgians don't like peppermints, apparently.

(Donkeys and cows do, for the record. Don't tell Rhonda's neighbors. She's spoiling their cows.)

She tried with the female horse, and it too sampled then politely, quietly, without making a fuss, dropped it on the road. I love that. Adults can't just push food they don't like out of their mouths, the last time I saw that stunt was my nephew when he was a weejun trying squash for the first time. No muss, no fuss, no change in facial expression, he was chewing and then he was pushing it out of his mouth to fall in his lap. Tweren't nothin' but a thang.

The owner was a sweet older woman named Anne McCullough who appeared to be about 60 ("unless she worked on a ranch all her life, then she's about 35." according to Rhonda). She was nice as could be, although after petting one dog, the other snarled at Rhonda. Silly dog! Rhonda is the sweetest woman in the world, and loves all critters. That was about when the phone rang for Randy, and shortly thereafter it was time to go.

We rent kayaks from Randy (this was the plan), and he's about to drive us and the kayaks down to the river when he gets a phone call. Mary ??, a local woman with Parkinson's Disease, apparently is having an issue. He tells us he''ll drop us off on the way. As we're pulling out, a pickup pulls into the store. He loops back with us sitting in the bed of the pickup with the kayaks, and yells to the old timer in the other truck "Mary's locked up, I gotta go help her. You're in charge. Take all the money." And with that, we're off.

We drop in Castell Slab and it's still just a gorgeous day. Perfect temperature, no clouds, abundant grass and greenery on the sides. The river is a little higher than usual, so our sit on top kayaks are perfect - we rarely scrape bottom with our few inches of draft (vessel below the waterline). We saw cattle and horses on the shore, we saw several blue herons, a sand piper looking bird, and turtles either sunning or poking their heads above the waterline. Oh, and vultures circling above, hoping we got REALLY stuck on a sandbar. I flipped them off to show my resolve when I got stuck. I Shall Survive (insert theme song).

Castell is fairly unique in that instead of the usual limestone (highly water porous), there's literally tons and tons of granite everywhere, these huge 100 ton boulders flopped lazily in the river, smoothed by patient aeons of water flow and time.

We got a little bit of rapids action, which was fun to zoom through. The kayaks were easy and a blast to deal with - I haven't been in a canoe in years, and I don't think I've ever kayaked, but it was easily mastered. Well, maybe not mastered, but easily "dealt with" enough to get buy. I accused Rhonda of giving me the kayak that likes rocks, but perhaps my 60 pounds and less than deft skills played a part in that.

We cruise down the river, paddling or not, flowing with the current, getting stuck on the occasional rock (me almost always). To remove yourself from a rock, practice your pelvic thrusts repeatedly to dislodge yourself from the rock three inches at a time.

Rhonda grew up out here, on some family land that has since been sold. She bought some of it back from her uncles so that she could renovate "the structure" to live there or use it as a second house. She has a strong connection to this family land, and it's been a major goal of hers to reclaim and renovate it. She has family history and personal history out here. As we float down the river, she points out various features by name, and things that happened there. Honig Rock was where she used to buiild forts, sit out and sun, and jump into the river when she was a kid.

She points out a particular spot on the river where she lost her virginity to her first boyfriend, Tommy. I asked if it was a special night or something "Nope, it was the middle of the day, we'd been riding out on our three wheelers. What can I say, I'm a daytime girl? We were trying to wait till my 16th birthday, but we were madly in love and horny as hell."

Further down the river, we come to her property and we beach the kayaks and hike up to her house. We make sammiches with bread she liberates from her mom's house (100 feet away). We sit out back in a couple of chairs and watch the river flow by for 20 minutes, then walk back down to the river. Rhonda's laid out a couple of giant smiley faces in rocks on the sandbar, and used her feet to scuffle out a 30 foot diameter smily face with spiraling eyes a few weeks ago. It's still quite recognizable.

We paddle down a further stretch, and arrive at Schneider Slab, which is where we stashed the ranch pickup earlier. Schneider Slab is named from her family, her family built it, they were one of the very first families to settle in these parts. Her great-great-great grandfather was one of the first two settlers in the county - that and the Castells. "That's why I never dated local. Miles (another ex, a four year relation) was from out of town, and he's still my distant cousin...he's also Randy's (from the store) cousin."

We pull the kayaks and get'em into the truck, and drive back to Castell's store. We lug our kayaks back to where they are stashed - in a horse trailer - and get them put up. We go in and chat with Randy, we forgot to pack money after getting back in the kayaks, so he says no problem, and we put a couple of ice cream snacks on the tab while we're at it.

Nothing tastes as good as a good cold ice cream sandwich after working out for a few hours. Mmmmmm.......yum.

We run logistics to fetch bikes, return truck, get back to the ranch (as I call it). I wash up quickly and head out, because I'm supposed to have dinner with my family for my mom's birthday. We were supposed to have it yesterday, but dinner was called on account of a six year old running into a door with his head.

I get changed up into my "Mom caliber duds" and start driving home. As soon as I got into cell phone range, I got a call from my Dad, who told me that dinner was called off once again, this time because "Mason's eyes are funny" after his head trauma from the night before. I don't worry too much, his mom, my sister, used to be team lead on a spinal injury rehab unit, so she's double dosed with Mom Paranoia. She'll be on top of the situation, I can trust there's nothing practical I could do. If he's in the hospital, I'll see him tomorow if there's really a problem, which I doubt.

So I call Rhonda to let her know, and I head back to her place. We decided to go to Fredericksburg, nearly 40 miles away, but on the way are passing Hilltop Cafe and decide to eat there.

Hilltop Cafe is great - it was started by Johnny Nicholas and his wife. Johnny used to be a member of Asleep at the Wheel, a famous (well, locally) Texas band. He and his Cajun wife started this restaurant out in the middle of nowhere in an old gas station slash bar on a remote highway. He's greek and she's cajun, so that's the food, and it's AMAZING, especially in context - 15 or more miles from the nearest town of any size whatsoever. We had blue crab cakes and split a bottle of Liberty Hill Cabernet Sauvignon (my favorite affordable red), she had shrimp mytillini, I had a steak.

After dessert, Johnny came out and played a song on the piano. Awesome.

Side note: Rhonda's Uncle Fritz and Grandpa Reuben used to stop at the Hilltop for a beer and gas back in the day.

Ahhh. A great day.

I'm going to crash at her house and then go back to Austin tomorrow.

It's good to have a day off in the real world, and leave all this pixel shit behind.

-not mike today, just mikey

More pictures of Happy Hilltop here and here.

To see what it looks like when Rhonda wakes me up to see the sunrise REALLLLLLLLLLY early, see here.

UPDATE: It's been pointed out to me that the licensing terms of this source code make it OK to download but not to distribute in the way I was thinking. As Sean posted in the comments:

Unfortunately, you can only use the code for "internal development". So basically your dream of a QuickTime codec is going nowhere unless someone gets a real "license" from Avid. Also, this static C library is unoptimized, so forget about realtime transcode or playback--Altivec and SSE2 optimizations are strictly forbidden in the download license.

I think the reasons Avid put this out was 1) it makes them look an open source friendly company, 2) it could be used by post houses that wanted to read DNxHD media frame by frame into a compositing system 3) companies could evaluate it for licensing in devices. Ikegami has a camera in development that will record DnxHD 220.

While it is a great codec, it will not never be a widely used codec outside of Avid systems.


...so it looks like a QT codec for general public use isn't going to happen. Too bad. I think I wrote about it this way in the past but forgot.
END UPDATE

Avid has made the source code available for download for the Avid DNxHD codec. This is Avid's compressed HD codec, available in both 8 and 10 bit versions. It's very efficient, I've seen some footage and it looked pretty good. I'd love to see somebody make a Mac QuickTime codec from this, it shouldn't be too hard to do...hint hint, coder geeks!

And unlike other compressed HD codecs available for Macs, such as DVCPRO HD or HDV, it's full raster. DVCPRO HD is either 960x720 (instead of full raster 1280x720) or 1280x1080 (instead of full raster 1920x1080), and is always 8 bits/pixel, allowing only 256 shades per channel. 10 bit codecs allow for 1024 shades per channel, much more subtlety...

There are several options available: a 145 megabit 8 bit codec, a 220 megabit 8 bit codec (only 4:1 compression), and a 10 bit 220 megabit codec (6:1 compression).

Then it would be up to Apple to support it as a codec for RT effects to make it truly useful..not a very likely scenario.

-mike

The author calls it a $14 Steadicam, but I don't have the heart to call it that. Call it a $14 camera stabilizing device, then. But anyway, for 14 bucks in parts, it's a device for stabilizing hand held shots. A good idea for the starving indies out there. Pics and purchase info in there.

Combine this with iStabilize for cheapie smooth shots.

Damn. Actually, I wanna try this now....

-mike

According to this MacNN article, Avid is to acquire Pinnacle for $462 million. Why? Because Avid wants to have their consumer line of editing products, so that they can feed into Avid's professional line of products. From the MacNN article,

"We see this acquisition as the next logical step in our long-term strategy. Just as our acquisition of M-Audio in 2004 brought us into the consumer audio business, by acquiring Pinnacle's consumer video business, Avid will be able to tap into the next generation of video editors while they are still learning their craft."


And this fro Avid's press release:

Following the closing, the parties expect that Pinnacle’s award-winning professional products – such as the MediaStream broadcast playout server and the Deko on-air graphics system – will enhance Avid’s end-to-end broadcast production pipeline, which has helped Avid become a global leader in that industry. In addition, Pinnacle’s consumer video business – which to date has shipped more than 10 million units -will form the basis for a new consumer video division at Avid, providing the company with an immediate avenue into that segment.


...so it's not just the consumer/prosumer lineup that Avid is interested in.

Mike's Comments: This should be interesting. I think it's smart on Avid's part to have some consumer level stuff - their lowest entry point software would still be pretty daunting to a rank amateur. But how will it integrate? Just because Avid owns it doesn't mean the current software will be a logical stepping stone into the other Avid products. Avid will have to add features and export tools to hand off editing sequences from Liquid to Avid's existing editing packages. I guess this means that Avid will eventually add support for any codecs proprietary to Liquid at the moment, so that's good news. But what's to happen to the higher end products in the Pinnacle lineup, the ones that overlap with Avid's products? Are they to be discontinued or allowed to languish? And how long will it take to get integrated versions of the product lines from Avid and Pinnacle, such that they can communicate, or at least hand off from Pinnacle to Avid products? It usually seems to take a year or more from acquisition to delivered products.

At first this seems like a good idea, but there will be portions of the Pinnacle product lineup that just get lopped off over time, I'd bet. And again, what EXACTLY will make the Pinnacle software a good first step into the Avid world? One of the things that I DON'T like about Avid's software is the user interface (but I haven't sat down on one in over a year, so I don't know what changes have been made) - while it's familiar and comfortable to thousands of video professionals, it feels cumbersome, unintuitive, and dated to me. Will they be putting an "Avid face" on Pinnacle's software? I don't know, but if so I don't necessarily consider that progress.

But other products, like MediaStream and Deko, will have obvious benefits for the pro product line.

-mike

NYTimes review of Old Boy.

I didn't even mention the following in my commentary earlier:
-an actor eats a live, wriggling squid, such that it wraps its dying tentacles around his hand and face
-an actor cuts out his own tongue. In close up. (OK, close up on his eyes, but to see the scissor handles closing....)
-teeth are removed with a claw hammer (by twisting, not hammering - which is worse?)

Anyway, read the review.

Saw two films after posting yesterday - Dust to Glory and Old Boy.

Dust to Glory is a documentary about the running of the Baja 1000, an offroad race down in Baja Mexico that is open too all comers in a variety of classes from $2 million dollar custom designed and built trucks to unmodified pre-1982 Volkswagon Beetles. It is the harshest road race I've ever even heard of. Engines fall off, multi-million dollar vehicles with three feet of suspension travel break their frames, it's just unGodly. Oh, and it's all run on an open course. On the road sections, they still have to deal with ONCOMING TRAFFIC. There was a great little snippet of a support van driver driving out of the race area along 15 miles of skinny little road with the unlimited class vehicles going the other way....at 140 MILES AN HOUR ON THE SAME ROAD. Whoah indeed, Keanu. A guy named Mouse decided to ride the whole thing with himself as the only rider...on a motorcycle. It's such a test of endurance and will and courage and riding that incredibly thin line between your limits and Too Far. It's a big love story about the race, the people, the environment in which it's run. It's insane, it's beautiful, it's thrilling, it's crazy. Kids scurry across the course, photographers are half into the race course snapping away, the crowd flinches back as a vehicle gets off its line and veers towards them. Somebody's Winnebago gets sideswiped and nobody even looks back. The film is a big guy fantasy of speed, challenge, and thrills. While the dangers are acknowledged and discussed, the film is in love with the endeavor and that is the focus. Definitely thrilling and worth watching.

After that I saw Old Boy, and WOW, I had no idea. It's an Asian film with subtitles, the story of a man who is snatched off the street and held captive for 15 years without explanation, and then suddenly released. It's original, it's intriguing, it's very well shot, and just when you think you've seen or learned the worst of it, it gets much much worse. Almost too painful to watch at the end, it's violent, it's emotional, it's the most full-on plotted revenge tale I've ever seen. Definitely memorable and haunting. Somebody said there's an American remake on the way, I can't imagine them possibly having the grit and intensity of this one, and especially I can't see them holding true to the plot line's most painful, most effective details that make the film what it is. As a side note, it has one of the most believable "one man fights off a bunch of bad guys" fight scenes I've ever seen. Note to self - always carry a claw hammer when in doubt. But MAN, I had no idea the ride I was in for - this was definitely the most powerful film I saw at SXSW, blowing Hooligans out of the water for emotional intensity.

By the way, the SXSW Award Winners are up on the main page of SXSW Film site.

Now that SXSW is done, here's what I plan on working on:

-a recap and analysis of SXSW
-get back to analyzing all the footage from that 5 camera test shootout, which will also entail of the following:

-analysis and review of de-interlacing software (Magic Bullet, DVFilmMaker, Film Effects 2.0)
-analysis and review of scaling algorithms (Final Cut Pro, Compressor, Compression Master, Cleaner, Algolith plugings, etc.)
-hands on reports on working with Automatic Duck's Pro Import AE, since that'll be how I get the FCP timelines into AE for filtering and analysis

Then on to other things:

-finish that Kona 2 review
-write up a Kona2 vs DeckLink HD Pro comparison, hopefully with some recommedations about which is more suited for certain tasks
-re-organize the website to be NOT just one huge page, but have sections on cameras, post, consulting, FAQ, downloadable PDFs for purchase, etc.
-get back on some product/business ideas I've been working on (OK, that one's not for public consumption, but it'll take up a lot of my time)
-prep for NAB

-mike

The original link got pulled, but I kept it open on in my browser, so here's more details on the camera from that article.

-true 24p capabilities
-ProHD format - basically a modified HDV
-uses three 1/3" CCDs, newly developed
-1280x720 resolution, about 1 megapixel, "with micro lenses" - I think this means the surface of the CCD is treated to bubble up to focus light directly on the sensors on the chip. That's conjecture, though.
-1280x720 resolution natively - no funky 960x720 scaling or somesuch, honestly 1280x720 pixels.
-provides realtime playback in all major DTV formats - I take this to mean realtime downconversion, whether to SDI, analog, or DV not stated. Probably DV at the least
-user selectable motion settings
-can shoot in SD mode as well (as a DV camera, unknown if it supports 24p in this mode as well)
-includes a standard detachable 16x Servo Fujinon lens - so other lenses are possible. Cool!
-13x (3.5mm) wide angle lens optional
-wide angle converter for standard lens optional
-optional adaptor for standard 1/2" lenses as well
-"focus assist" in viewfinder - sounds like what Sony does with the HDV, that zooms in on a portion of the image to get critial focus
-can be connected to optional hard disk recording module. I'm positive the hard disk module is only recording the MPEG-2, nothing better, so don't get too excited.
-two XLR audio inputs, records "CD quality audio" - perhaps audio isn't compressed in ProHD? That'd be nice...
-customizable settings can be saved to an SD memory card and loaded onto another camera
-a third party HD-SDI output will be available to go straight out with an UNCOMPRESSED signal. Very nice! This could mean that an indie could practice with the camera as is, but when you want to shoot something serious bring in a deck or digital recording device for the "real" shoot for better quality. A GREAT option!
-auto or manual iris control
-smooth servo zoom
-backfocus adjustment
-can FireWire dub to a D-VHS deck.
-optional shotgun mike
-optional Anton-Bauer battery pack
-optional tripod mounting plate
-optional hard drive recording module

Mike's Comments: The system records to MPEG-2 - at heart this is just HDV. They may do some cadence tricks to record 24 frames per second to a 60 frame per second tape source, much in the same way the XL2, DVX100a, or Varicam record multiple duplicates of frames for 24p onto a 30/60 frame per second media, so that you can extract just the original 24p frames in post. If this is the case, and I'm betting it is, that means your 24p comes from a 19 megabit 60p datastream, so each frame is about 40 kilobytes. Eek! That's SMALL for 1280x720! How compressed is that? For comparison, DV, with about 1/3 as many pixels, uses about 4 times as much data per frame (120 kilobytes), albeit with a much less efficient compression algorithm. So that's about 12 times as much information per given chunk of video screen size. I hope that compression algorithm is verrrrrrrry efficient.

I think this will be a very interesting camera to check out, and a very interesting option for indie filmmakers. We'll have to actually see it, and see how well it shoots, and how well it posts & color corrects, before making any final recommendations, but it's an interesting thing.

My one beef is that I think ProHD is a terrible name - to me that implies that it's better than existing HD formats. ProHDV would have been a MUCH better name to position the format in the market - HDV was a good name because it implied the association of high def DV - which is a fair analogy. ProHD implies professional level HD (and isn't HDCAM or DVCPRO HD professional enough as is? Hello?), and it thoroughly is NOT.

More info gleaned from the web:

This is from the web from unverified sources, so take all below with a grain of salt. The above is based on a press release, so was assumed to be "from the factory" valid. So here's some might be true, might not info (found from here):

-about 5 pounds
-can record 720p24, 720p30, 720p60 (I think), 480i, 480p, 1080i uprez playback
-component out, composite out, FireWire I/O
-shipping June 1st, 2005
-under $10K with lens
..and then the rest of the thread is all just your usual forum flaming and web wanking, no useful info on the camera

I've been busy seeing movies, so I haven't posted links to anything going on in the news in the HD world, so here's some stuff from the past week, in no particular order. I get some blogging critique for not including links on stuff I write, so ya folks want links? Here's links! This should pick up my averages:


Landmark Theaters buys 4K projectors sight unseen! They have agreed to buy about 60 of the as yet unreleased 4K projectors (4096x3072 pixels).
Mike's Comments:This seems dubious. Mark Cuban is behind this, he's a huge digital advocate, and for that I applaud him, but this move seems inappropriate. For starters, at present only the very very highest end special effects films are even CONSIDERING finishing their digital intermediate process at 4K (SpiderMan 2 had a 4K DI, but a lot of the effects were simply uprezzed 2K files). "OK," you might say, "they'll be ready for the future." ...but that's not right, why not wait until the demand is there? Why not wait until the product is ready for it? Why not wait until there's 4K product and demand, and THEN plunk down for whatever is the latest and greatest. These Sony projectors are around $100,000 if I recall correctly, and this is EXACTLY the kind of bleeding edge technology that drops RAPIDLY in price over time. My bet is that this is a nice deal to announce for Sony and Landmark, but the terms of the deal are 6 this summer and 58 over time. I bet they either never finish this contract or alter the terms before completion (such as drop the price or quantity of delivered units, or buy alternative units). It just seems nuts to commit to this at this point in time.

Screenwriting template in Word - eventually, you'll probably want to use real screenwriting software (aka Final Draft), but in the meantime this will get you started (via Cinima Minima).

Apple article on importing Motion projects into Final Cut Pro HD - it is straightforward, but here ya go (found via Philadelphia's FCP user group site)

Exporting clips from FCP HD to get into Motion - this is a link to the Philadelphia Final Cut Pro user group site's link to the Apple article.

FireWire out doesn't work after installing Motion if you have an older version of FCP installed. Again via PhilaFCPUG.

Issues with graphic sizes (in pixels, not megabytes) when moving stuff from FCP to Motion - details on if you've scaled a graphic in FCP and move it to Motion. Again via PhilaFCPUG.

Article on compression for shiny disks - Ben Wagonner, compresion guru, has a lot to say about compression options available for non-web usage. (found via Cinema Minima)

Apple's Blu-Ray stance - commentary on Apple's decision to join the Blu-Ray group...and all that that implies...

...plus there are a whole bunch of other links on the Philadelphia Final Cut Pro User Group Site. Just put it on your list of daily things to check, as well as Cinema Minima. Most of what they post is relevant and/or interesting.

An essay called "Back to the Future" about all the different times that video has attempted to supplant film. This puts HD in an interesting context.

Apple doc with all supported file types for import and export via QuickTime. This is handy stuff to know - is TIFF supported? What about 16 bit TIFF? What about layered Photoshop files? With layers or no? All answered.

QiPO is a simple little one trick pony application - it takes QuickTime movies in, and generates previews, either via icons or picture preview stills. Handy and useful to make storyboard stills of what you've got in your footage.

Making movies the new fashioned way - some folks wanted to make a movie about werewolves, so they asked fans what they wanted in a werewolf movie. 2 million hits in 3 months on the message boards. An interesting approach within the genre realm. (found on Cinima Minima)

Popwire ships Windows Media 9 Export Component for QuickTime. It can be used with any application that exports QuickTime, including but not limited to Final Cut Pro, Compressor, Cleaner, After Effects, etc.

Imax pushes into 3D for films. Mike's Comments: They mention Polar Express as something that has been converted from 35mm theatrical to 3D Imax. Considering that all of the material was computer generated, and most of it 3D rendered, I wonder if they went back to source files and re-rendered the multi-camera (one for each eye) passes, or if they had some quick/cheap method of matte extraction to generate depth layers for each eye? Certainly, 3D computer graphics rendered movies would be much easier to make 3D after the fact than a shot on 35mm feature.

African films go digital - because it's the only way they can afford to produce local cinema right now.

DIY Cinema - article about Tarnation, movie picked up for distribution made for $200...plus about $400,000 in music rights.

Caonpus Workflow to debut at NAB - they'll have various network, encoding, editing new goodies at the show

Boxx workstations Certified for BlackMagic cards - Boxx is now offering Premiere Pro based solutions using the BlackMagic line of cards. Somewhere I heard that it supports realtime 10 bit effects - that's good news.

Movie costs down, profits up - Average cost of making and promoting a full-on Hollywood movie dropped below $100 million dollars. Movie receipts $9.54 billion.

One for the good guys - a bill is being proposed to legitimize fair use again in a post Digital Millenium Copyright Act era.

Wanna download TV shows & stuff but getting lost in the jargon? Read this.

...and finally, dessert - a cute little video critiquing our over reliance on drugs to fix our problems.

Whew! That'll keep you busy for a while...

-mike

Pinnacle Liquid Edition 6.1 has added native HDV editing (multi-stream, at that!) to it's feature list with this latest release.

Mike's Comments: carefully reading the press release, it looks like it's an honest native HDV editing solution. Unlike most other solutions (for Premiere, Vegas, Avid, Apple) that transcode the long GOP MPEG-2 to some other codec for editing, Liquid v6.1 lets you edit in the native MPEG-2. So there are no transcoding losses, which occur when the HDV is converted to another codec for editing that isn't a lossless codec.

-mike

When you can't get up to catch the start of the 11:30am show, it should tell you something.

I came in late for the Texas Shorts program and missed some of the earlier ones. http://2005.sxsw.com/film/festival/screenings/film/2445.html">Love Math was cute and fast paced, but didn't seem to come to any serious conclusions. It's an everybody has dated everyone else 2 degrees of separation story. I am of course partial to Termination, since I helped on it a bit with the post production on it. It's about a guy having a bad day, but seeing the bigger picture. Inky pinky parlay vou. It also won Best Texas Short, which was gratifying to see my friends' work (Paul, Dianne, Jenn, Bob, Annika, etc.) do well. Once and Future Asshole was a good if slightly overlong short about the making of an asshole, and how we all play a part. Probably more going on there than I was picking up, but it was good. Red Walker's Secret was a fun little short, but nothing earth shattering.

Also, a word on my comments and reviews on movies - how a movie hits you is a highly contextural, subjective experience. I was tired and cranky when I saw The Roost, so I blasted it (it's not good, but man, "it stank" is pretty harsh). My headspace and the portion of the film that I saw concerning "Waterborne" doesn't seem to line up with everyone else's - those who saw the whole thing weren't as impressed as I was with the last 1/3 or so, best summed up by "It was good until it fell into cliches..again and again."

The Puffy Chair is getting lots of good word of mouth, but I got up and left 20-30 minutes in, because one of the conversations between two lovers in a relationship on the decline struck a little too close to home to me - I think that says more about the good writing in the film rather than my opinion of it - I didn't want to see the rest so I left.

I barely said anything about Hooligans last night, which swept the audience and jury awards. It was entertaining but no great shakes. Learning about the Firms of British football was interesting, but not world changing. As a full on, star vehicle movie I'm being more critical than I am of the DV based indies. The most memorable thing about Hooligans to me was the line about "It's not about knowing your mates have your back, it's about knowing that you've got theirs." Probably pulled from some researcher's notes. Elijah Wood seems definitely intent on purging himself of the Frodo perception, and this is probably a good career move. The film has whiffs of Fight Club in it, in the self confidence through fighting motif. Fight Club meets Fanatic, or something.

I just saw Ellen Spiro's Troop 150, a doc about a girl scout troup for daughters of women prison inmates. Very real and direct, since it talks about teh direct impact of the generational influences between mothers and daughters, and tries to back the pattern of crime and prison that the mothers have gotten into. Julia, the real life social worker and head of Girl Scout Troop 1500, was very impressive to see in the film and in person at the Q&A. It's so nice to see people driven by passion (there's lots of that here in the filmmakers present), but also driven to do something socially relevant to Hands On change the world, rather than, at best, sway opinion indirectly through film to try to advocate for change. Just get in there and do it yourself. Way to go, Julia, and everyone else involved in the program. It matters, keep it up.

I'm getting ready to see The Devil & Daniel Johnston, a doc about the songwriter. A friend's husband was involved and it sounds interesting so I wnated to check it out.

After that, Dust To Glory, which I've been anxious to see because a.) it looks cool, b.) they shout on all kinds of media - everything from DV to HD to 16mm (for the slomo), then edited on Premiere Pro using the compressed Cineform stuff on a Boxx system. They captured only once to the wavelet based Cineform codec, and actually went out to film from that. This will be projected in HD, but I'm curious to see how the compression holds up on the big screen, if the 16mm or HD exhibits any artifacts.

After that, I may stick around (it's out at the theater on the north end of town) to see Old Boy. If not, I be DONE with movies for the week. I've probably seen about 15 or 20, thats enough for a week.

Considering the fact that I went to the wrong theater because I thought it was Saturday already should indicate how much of a blur a long conference/film festival can become.

It's 4:30pm and I'm sitting in the new Alamo Drafthouse South, on South Lamar in Austin, TX. It's about a 5 minute drive from my house, so I'm expecting to see a LOT of movies here.

I just saw Kissing on the Mouth (sorry, no link, offline right now), a nice little human drama about four twentysomethings out of college trying to find their way. It's also very sexually explicit, but not in an exploitative kind of way. The most interesting thing to me about the film is the fact that the four actors are also the directors, camera operators, etc. The four of them made the film pretty much by themselves (and it didn't suck).

Before that I caught the last few shorts of the Animated Shorts program. It was OK. The most interesting one I saw was The Meaning of Life, which implies some good points about complaining doesn't matter, we're all going to die anyway at some point, and it's probably the same everywhere else. I got a nice little lesson for my own life right now - repeating the same thing over and over through your life is a waste of time. Move on, don't dwell on things in the past. The film was also interesting in that it was shot 4:3 aspect ratio on film and they made a point of stating that no computers were used in the production of it, and it looks it. Some lovely organic effects work done, with a soft penumbric glow that you really can't get in video.

While I'm waiting for the next movie to start, here's some news bits I've been meaning to post about earlier in the week:

Want to make an indie werewolf movie that appeals to the fans? ask them. A small company opened up a website to solicit input from fans about what they'd want in a werewolf movie, and got 2 million hits in 3 months on the bulletin board. Woops, lights going down, more later...

DISCONTINUITY

now it's 9pm, and I'm going to go see Hooligans at 10pm, then on to my friend's party for Open Labs, a badass 88 key musical keyboard with an embedded computer in it - where else can you perform music, edit music, surf the tech support website, and play Halo on your musical keyboard? Pro Tools & Quake on your synth - pretty rad. Anyway, I'm changing into Disco Mode for the party later. No more "dude" mode, as Angela Lee from Film Austin described me (in a nice way).

I saw both Kissing on the Mouth and Four Eyed Monsters, both films about relationships in the twenties. I've read elsewhere comparing those two movies, in addition to The Puffy Chair, as being a new kind of voice and a new kind of filmmaking. I'll have more to say later, but I was really impressed with both of these films, and especially that they were made by a small group of actor/director/editors, and were able to make these things and NOT have them be self indulgent suckiness. There's also a lot to be said about reflexive media - one story is about a real couple's relationship that they decided to turn into a movie, and in the other, two actors become lovers in real life, although they portray lovers in the film. Their first kiss ever was the first kiss in the movie onscreen.

Somebody could certainly write a dissertation on that.

I think this bodes tremendously well for the next generation of filmmakers coming along now - they feel very free to work with the media in a way that works for them, and aren't as constrained by the concepts of filmmaking that have come before. Four Eyed Monsters was made by folks who didn't go to film school, but it's still interesting and engaging (they were both artists, so that certainly helps).

I gave out cards to both sets of filmmakers, I'm hoping to follow up with them this weekend.

Then I went and saw Hooligans, with Elijah Wood. It was good but not fantastic.

-mike

So it's only 10:15pm as I write this, my earliest night back home yet (although I still need to go out to eat, I've got Fight Club Fridge - condiments only, no food).

Today I slept far too late to to see Reel Shorts 1, but I caught Reel Shorts 2.

Desastre is a cute little film with a very nice twist. Light and fun. A boy is Born French, speaking French, even though he was born in America. He only eats cheese and smokes as a child, and seduces the maid at age 9. A whole lot of fun from the American stereotypical perception. The audience howled at this one.

Long Story Short is exactly what a short should be - fun, interesting, and a proving ground. Well shot, well acted, professionally done. One African American woman's adventure in trying to get the hair she needs for the big date. Fun and informative for us white folk that don't understand the intricacies of black hair. It's getting made into a feature, and I look forward to it, so long as they can avoid the dreaded SNLSSS - the Saturday Night Skit Stretch Syndrome, where a fun simple idea farrrrrrrr overstays it's comedic welcome.

The Death of Salvador Dali - this was by Delaney, the guy who interviewed me the other day for Studio SX (a webcast, I'll post a link once they tell me what it is). As he described his short I wasn't sure about it, but seeing it I really enjoyed it. Salvador Dali goes to Sigmund Freud to become insane to create great art once again. The actor, first name Salvador, really is the heart and sould of this piece - he's totally charming. Well shot with nice lighting and art direction and some great locations, I really enjoyed this.

The Kings of Christmas - ten minutes on guys that take Christmas decorations in th Bronx waaaaaaaay too seriously.

Heavy Mental - kind of fun but so brief and simple it's barely there. A guy has a dream about psychic abilities. It should have been shorter - this kind of small punchline needs to be quick and to the point.

After that, I saw Highway Courtesans, a documentary about the culture of roadside prostitutes in India. There is an entire culture of villages that survive by having their daughters be prostitutes to support the entire family, including the men. Made over a 9 year period, a very interesting piece, with a lot to say about the weight of culture and tradition influencing lives. I'm hoping to follow up with the filmmaker, a very interesting woman with an interesting next project.

After that, I went over to the Paramount Theater, the beautiful old classic theater (as in plays, not movies) that is the keystone of the SXSW film experience - this is where all the big premieres are held. I saw Occupation: Dreamland, a documentary about a group of soldiers stationed in Falluja in Iraq after the cessation of "major combat operations". If this sounds a lot like Gunner Palace, it is similar, but an entirely different project. The filmmakers went on patrol and interviewed the soldiers about the experience. Many of them didn't agree with the politics that brought them there, grew to dislike the Iraqi people, but they are still there doing their jobs day by day. Hellllooooo Vietnam 2.0. (Or 3.0 depending on how you're counting.)

Then I got a call from the producer of Waterborne, she needed to get quick VHS dubs made from their Digibeta master to send out some review copies. A few calls later I found her a quick cheap good local place. We were trying to see if a call had been made to get us on the list at Elyseum for the M.I.A. music show, EVERYTHING is a zoo downtown this week with the SXSW Music Festival in full-on swing now, so we bailed after it wasn't looking hopeful. I hung out with the Waterborne crew again for about an hour, and then they were off to go see Murderball, which is GREAT but I'd already seen it a few days ago, so I put them in a cab and they were on their way.

Then I cabbed it home, snagged my trusty PowerBook, and now I'm sitting at the Magnolia Cafe, THE late night eatery in South Austin. It's also 5 blocks from my house, so I know a lot of the staff by name and they take good care of me. List? What wait list?

; )

The local's advantage.

-mike

PS - The Muppet Sing Along is coming up at the end of SXSW. This is so corny, it wraps around the dial to be fun and cool. It's like mainlining chlidhood - we haven't heard this stuff since we were about 9 (if you're of my generation), so how can this NOT be fun? And if it isn't, you just need to drink more beer, and pronto. Now I just need to find me a date for this...any smart/fun/brilliant/athletic/movie geek women going to be in Austin this Sunday for this? Someday I'll find it....the rainbow connection....

Another day, another 2am blogging sessions, sure to be replete with typos, unlinked content and omissions. It's late, grant me mercy.

Today was the day of half movies - I was late and missed the start of the Troop 1500, the doc on Girl Scouts that are kids of moms in prison that was made by Ellen Spiro. So I went to go see You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone, the Rock