HD For Indies

So after seeing The Fountain, we actually went to go see Isolation, on the theory that Edmond was going to be playing at the Alamo starting in a few days anyway, and I didn't know when I'd get to see Isolation, if ever.

So we walked in and sat down and started watching Isolation...and got up and left about ten minutes into it. Two hitmen were sent to an address, and the target turns out to be a little boy, and the movie isn't shot all that well, nor acted convincingly, nor very scary....so it was Time To Go. Turns out that was the 14 minute short, be we didn't know that (oopsie) otherwise I might have waited through, because it won some awards (more on that later).

So we hopped up and left and went into Edmond, written by David Mamet (with his usual dialog style) and starring William H. Macy as Edmond, a fed-up everyday middle aged guy. Denise Richards, Mena Suvari, and others have small roles. Basically, Edmond is an office worker guy who decides he's had enough, and walks out on his wife, and confuses the abandonment of all responsibility with enlightening freedom. Oh, and he's a racist too, which comes back to bite him in the end. It is a tough watch at times due to violence or bigoted speech, and while Edmond ironically gets what he deserves, he's happy with it in the end. It is an interesting bit of work (started as a play), wherein Edmond tells his wife he's leaving, because "you don't excite me, spiritually or sexually" (ouch!). He goes out on the town and basically just wants to get laid, but feels all the women at the strip clubs and "health clubs" are charging too much. He ends up assaulting a pimp who tries to rob him, and the energy he gets from escaping the assault enlivens him, and he picks up a waitress, whom he eventually sleeps with and then scares and then gets mad at and makes her shut up...with his knife...oops. He leaves and has some more odd experiences...I don't know how to read this movie, or frankly to review or comment on it...there are parts of it that are exultant liberation, he has this energy and spark and life and passion at times that cuts through the everyday tedium, but then it comes from having done some terrible things. In the end, it is an interesting performance he gives (Macy always rocks), but I just don't feel like talking about it anymore right now. If you're into strong performances and like the rat-a-tat-tat of Mamet's dialog, check it out, otherwise I'd pass.

Then we went to the closing night party, where I ran into Tim McCanlies (another of the organizers, I failed to mention him earlier, my bad) and talked about a few movies, and what I'd liked about how they ran the show. Ran into Cargill that I'd seen many times (he writes for AICN) as well as Rebecca (she writes occassionally) and Harry Knowles (the man behind aintitcoolnews.com) was holding court in the corner, but I don't really know him (doubt he remembers me) so I didn't want to go up and be all fanboy on him by saying hi.

Tim League, founder/owner of Alamo Drafthouse, got up and announced they were going to present the winners. I really liked the informality of the event - we'd kind of taken over a bar down the street from Alamo Drafthouse, everyone is just drinking and hanging out, and the awards themselves are beer mugs of varying sizes with little plaques on them....and they are actually full of beer! They started announcing the winners in various categories (details on winners below), and in a couple of categories, no one was there to take it...so the rules were, the judges had to drink the beer in the award. Loud chats of "Drink drink drink!" or "Chug chug chug!" on a couple of unclaimed awards (minor awards got cans of Lone Star Beer). On the one hand, totally ghetto, but on the other, I really liked the comraderie, spontaneity, and "no big deal" of how it was done - I HATE formal sitdown things with speeches and pomp and circumstance, this was just a gathering of filmmakers and folks who enjoy movies celebrating together. A very pleasant and cool vibe. After the awards, I hobnobbed and passed out a few cards and then mosied on home.

The official winners are listed further below, but my own pics from the festival:

Special commendation - Best No Budget, Ghetto Indie Production Film That I Saw: Firefly - a good idea competently done, proof that story is what ultimately matters. Even though shot on DV, I didn't care - the story and acting were compelling enough to carry me along. Total DIY indie production, I think I heard someone saying they spent maybe a few thousand dollars hard cash on it - it was all friends for extras and shooting in their own places kind of a deal. For all my discussions of techie stuff, It's The Story, Stupid - get the script right, no get that GREAT, THEN worry about everything else.

My other favorites from the festival, in no particular order:

The Host - great FX, fun, funny, scary, just a really good monster movie, kind of a Aliens vibe with Save The Girl theme, but really enjoyed it

Pan's Labyrinth - beautiful, magical, meaningful, the only film that actually almost made me cry

The Fountain - also very moving, and actually it DOES make sense, ignore those who didn't get it - Doreen saw it as a love story, I saw it as a meditation on acceptance of death. Arronofsky joked that it was either a metaphysical chick flick or a psychedelic something or other, I'll fill that in later when I remember. But in any case, beautiful, thoughtful, meaningful. And kudos to them for the organic effects - stunning and mesmerizing, and kudos again for the no blinking lights vision on the future.

Beowulf and Grendel was a bit stodgy and stiffly acted, and Sarah Polley was miscast, but still a gorgeous film to watch for the scenery and cinematography, and I liked the meditation on the pointlessness of revenge

The Listening Dead was a great little short, intentionally created to look like some long lost silent film - a cute little love story with death involved

Renaissance - INCREDIBLE look (see review from a few days ago), the story was passable but not at the level of the animation - think of it as The Matrix meets Sin City, with some moral quandaries thrown in

Rogairi (Villains) - the short before Beowulf & Grendel, truly beautifully shot little gothic revenge tale

Severance - The Office meets The Hitcher - I like my violence with a sense of humor - the only "tortured in the woods" movie I saw and enjoyed

Starfish Hotel - enjoyed it, gorgeous, worthwhile

I wish I'd seen based on good word of mouth:

Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, but I'll have to wait and see it in theaters like everyone else

Beach Party at the Threshold Of Hell - I heard mixed reviews - clearly a ghetto budget production, but some really enjoyed it

Bugs, but I'll see it theatrically

Frostbite - EVERYONE said it was good, sorry I missed it

I wish I hadn't seen

Hatchet (even though it won first pick for audience award, go figure, tastes vary)

Piano Tuner of Earthquakes - Brothers Quay, go back to music videos and your lovely shorts and STAY THERE

Glad I didn't see:

Broken - too much pain, I felt there were too many "I'm in the woods and have lots of Owies from Mean People" movies here.

As a personal aside, while I respect indie filmmakers that recognize an affordable niche to produce in (torture in the woods), it isn't exactly something to stand proud about (hey, porn is cheap to produce, too). I think there is too much of it coming onto the market, and I hope the trend passes quickly. It isn't pleasant. One thing that bugs me about some of these films that I mentioned (I think) in my Texas Chainsaw review - it used to be you would enjoy the victims Getting It - they were obnoxious, or there was the moral revenge aspect of it, or SOME motivation to make it OK for the victims to get killed. With some of the new ones, there is none of that - you're watching people that you are either neutral about or might like get killed. I'm just not into that.

OK, so that's my own opinion, here's the official winners, my comments in italics:

Films without distribution at the time of their acceptance to Fantastic Fest were eligible for awards.

AUDIENCE AWARDS
1st Place - HATCHET - I'm surprised, I wasn't into it
2nd Place - ISOLATION - I missed it, my mistake
3rd Place -FIREFLY - Really enjoyed it, surprised it didn't rate higher, may be due to audience demographics

SHORT FILM AWARDS
Best of Show - THE LISTENING DEAD - clearly the most deserving
Best Short Form - THE COST OF LIVING
Best Long Form - ROGAIRI (VILLAINS)
Best Animated - IF I HAD A HAMMER
Best Comedy - THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT - missed it, wish I'd seen it

HORROR JURY AWARDS
Best Picture - ISOLATION
Best Director - Billy O'Brien, ISOLATION
Best Script - Dylan Bank and Morgan Pehme, NIGHTMARE
Best Actor - Kane Hodder, HATCHET
Best Actress - Nicole Roderick, NIGHTMARE
Best Supporting Actor - Lance Henriksen, ABOMINABLE
Best Supporting Actress - Kristen Bell, ROMAN
Best Art Direction - Alex Boynton, UNREST
Best Cinematography - Robbie Ryan, ISOLATION
Best Special Effects - HATCHET
Best Make-up - BROKEN

Of these, I only saw Roman, and wasn't that impressed with it overall

FANTASTIC FEST JURY AWARDS
Best Film -THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
Best Director - Simon Rumley, THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
Best Script - Larry Kent and Daniel Williams, HAMSTER CAGE
Best Actor - Leo Bill in THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
Best Actress - Jodie Jameson, VENUS DROWNING
Best Supporting Actor - Alan Scarfe, HAMSTER CAGE
Best Supporting Actress - Kate Fahy, THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
Best Art Direction -STARFISH HOTEL
Best Cinematography - A QUIET LOVE
Best Special Effects - PUZZLEHEAD
Best Make-up -THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

Of these, I only saw Starfish Hotel

Special Mention of the Jury, Blood Tea and Red String
"For its originality and stunning visual audacity! Blood Tea and Red String is a dark psychological fairy tail, a work of creative passion by director Christiane Cegavske. The films eccentric and unique vision will be with you like a feverish dream for years to come."


2006 FANTASTIC FEST COMPETITION FILMS
THE BEACH PARTY AT THE THRESHOLD OF HELL
BLOOD TEA AND RED STRING
FIREFLY
GAMERZ
HAMSTER CAGE
INSIDE
PUZZLEHEAD
A QUIET LOVE
STARFISH HOTEL
VENUS DROWNING
THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

2006 FANTASTIC FEST HORROR COMPETITION FILMS
ABOMINABLE
BLOOD TRAILS
HATCHET
SIMON SAYS
WILDERNESS
THE LAST SUPPER
BROKEN
ISOLATION
UNREST
ROMAN
NIGHTMARE

...and that's it for my coverage of the 2006 FantasticFest. I'll be back next year, and the Austin Film Festival is coming up in about a month, and I'll be hitting that one as well, I'm also going to be on a panel there.

-mike

PS - Special dead Stabby Post Mortem graphic just for you, Paul!

UDPATE: This is a mess as a review, but I did add some further thoughts at the bottom - what I perceived the movie to be about, versus what Doreen, my date perceived the movie to be about. See the bottom of this article.

It is DONE!

FantasticFest is over, and it has been a great ride, and it went out with a supernova bang, literally (OK not literally, but on screen).

I only listed The Fountain as that really was the center piece of the day, and the official closing night film. Darren Arronofsky actually intro'd the funky Fantastic Planet, the 60s French hand drawn animated scifi movie earlier in the day, I saw the last 40 minutes or so of that. Very wacky sense of design from another era, I'd never seen the whole thing, so was very fun to watch.

After that I walked out and immediately got in line for The Fountain. The festival has three levels of access - red badges (actually small bottle opener axes on a lanyard, nice touch!) get first priority, then the lesser green ones, then solo ticket buyers. Since the entire group gets to go in all at once, all reds get in before all greens. Pretty much every red axe sold was in line already for The Fountain when I walked out, so I was nervous about getting in.

I'd already employed RBM (Ruthless Bastard Mode) yesterday to get into Pan's Labyrinth, which there was also a huge line for - the red line was dauntingly long, and I was concerned I wouldn't get in, and I happened to have a shirt pocket that I had tucked my green axe (my "badge") into to keep it from swinging around. So I just nonchalantly walked in and wove into the line going down the hall once they started letting the reds in and basically cheated like the ruthless bastard I am to get into Pan's Labyrinth. All just for you folks, of course - definitely Evil Social Engineering, but all for a Good Cause - hey, I'm Press, right?

So when I saw the huge line, and my friend Paul Alvarado (one of the organizers of the festival) said that MAYBE 20 or 30 greens would get in about 20 minutes before they even started letting anyone in, I figured Fate was going to hand me my hat for the shenanigans the day before. This after I'd already line crashed by saying howdy to some friends from the Texas Film Commision, and then just stayed there, in typical "I'm not saying nuthin', I hope you don't feel the need to say nuthin', but I'm stayin' here so long as I don't get any dirty looks." fashion. So after all the Red Axes were let in, an Alamo Drafthouse employee comes down the line and is COUNTING us as we go...so it ain't lookin' good.

She stops counting TWO PEOPLE behind me and Doreen and says "That's it, right here."

So I got to get in, evil bad negative karma and all. I think The Gods want me to be able to review this movie. (Megalomania starts this way, right?)?

So we get in, and not only is Darren Arronofsky here, but also Clint Mansell - his longtime musical compatriot. If you never saw his first film Pi, run don't walk and go rent or buy it, and also go buy the soundtrack - I STILL listen to it in heavy rotation on my nano during runs. Darren didn't say much, other than it had been a long six years getting this film made.

Warning: TOTAL spolier alert

The Fountain stars Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz, and if you haven't seen the visually arresting trailer, DON'T. The trailer gives the impression that the story literally takes place over three different time periods - 500 years ago, present day, and 500 years in the future. This is not the case, and is deceptive and confusing to walk into. When asked about it, the director said that was more of a marketing thing -the future part was simply in the far far future, with no specific time involved. Having seen the trailer and knowing it was in the future helped put some context on those scenes, which are shown without context and you have to figure out WHY this bald guy is alone in a perfectly clear sphere with a huge tree out in the middle of space.

The story can be interpreted in a number of ways, especially early on - is it a literal story, with three distinct parts? Not quite - my take on it, and there's probably room to argue about it, is that it is simply as presented - the dying wife, portrayed by Rachel Weisz, has cancer and is fading. The husband, played by Hugh Jackman, is a research doctor working desperately on research that he hope will cure her tumor. He tries a plant extract and it works well, amazingly well - not only does the test monkey's tumor (later, eventually) get better, but the monkey gets healthier, testing like it did 2/3 of it's life ago.

While the doctor works frantically to save his dying wife's life, she is at peace with it. She's been writing a story, and researching different cultures and their take on life and death. She's written a story, that takes place 500 years ago, as a conquistador struggles to find the tree of eternal life in the Mayan forests, while a dark and bloody Inquisitor tries to take over Spain, one piece at a time, through blood, torture, and "confession." He means to come after the queen, whom the conquistador (played by guess who) tries to save his queen (get it in one guess, OK?).

The book is not done, and the wife wants the husband to finish the last part after she dies.

My only real complaint about the film is that very early on it is very clear what the final message of the film will be, BUT the journey is so interestingly told, and beautifully shot, that it is no problem to wait for it to get there, and is beautiful when it does. In the future segment, I really enjoyed and appreciated that the space vehicle was NOT what Arronofsky himself described as "all we've had are space trucks - metal around something." It is a clear sphere, with no visible controls. A great future vision for scifi - everything is clean and simple and functional and organic - I'd MUCH rather live in that future than in Star Trek or Star Wars as future models. Instead of CG, he found the guy that did all the Kubrick stuff in 2001 and hired him (for cheap, no less, he's been shooting through a microscope for 25 years) and got some incredible footage, all very organic, through the lens stuff, and then composited that digitally. Arronofsky had a great aside about how CG movies are done poorly, it LOOKS blatantly CG, but people like it just for the big CG-ness of it. Whereas if you go back to 2001, those effects still hold up remarkably well even today - Arronofsky clearly wanted to make a film that'd still look GOOD, and REAL, rather than just state of the art for 2006; so that in 10 or 20 years you'd still see the film, and not the obsolete effects. An excellent decision I feel. This, after the film almost got made 6 years ago - Brad Pitt was going to be in it, they spent 18 million dollars preparing, built Mayan temples etc., then it all fell apart. So he came back to this project later, and re-wrote it to be made for less, and they did it, and it's amazing. This and Pan's Labyrinth have affected me as a person more than anything else I can recall seeing this year at an emotional level. Anyway, back to the plot...

The story of the conquistador is woven into that of the present day and the future, with all three storylines trying to go through the same journey - the wife is accepting her approaching death, the husband wants to fight for her life at all costs, even working on the cure while she lies dying and suffering. Where do you, should you, spend your time in that situation? Is it better to fight for the chance of life, down to the thin, bloody wire, or to accept it and be with the one you love and who loves you?

I meander in my discussion of this, as the film meanders through the story of the conquistador, the doctor, and the traveller. The future portion on the film involves the doctor, who clearly DID figure out how to extend life, as he travels through space towards a dying star, heading towards nova, that the Mayans had picked as the symbol of death and rebirth, and his wife had become enamored of. He wants to take her there. He planted one of these trees of life over her grave, and somehow she is bound up in it after her death - he holds his hand to a portion of the tree and little hairs raise, like those on the back of your neck.

I'm giving myself permission to write in this disjointed way because the film moves and struggles through time and story. Or actually, the film moves gracefully, the doctor character struggles. He wants to find life, or life extension, at any cost, and loses sight of the meaning of death. I can't capture it all with words right now, it is too disjointed in my head.

But the message of grace, and acceptance of death, is I feel well told. I've seen a couple of reviews that call this movie trippy disjointed nonsense, but to me it all made sense, and the fungible line crossing nature of the interleaving stories is the confusing part - did the doctor literally defeat death and live on and travel to the far star, after having planted this tree that grew to huge beauty in the hundreds of years after his wife's death, or did he just write the story and learn to accept that he'd die and write that beautiful ending? I don't know, I'd have to think about it some more, and I will probably go to the movie again to see if I can figure it out...but in the end it DOESN'T MATTER, because the message is the same either way.

Arronofsky has done three films (that I'm aware of): Pi, Requiem for a Dream, and now The Fountain (which Arronofsky joked that they alternately pitched the film as either "a psychedelic fairy tale or a metaphysical chick flick") All deal with trying to find greater meaning in life, and being able to discern what is of TRUE value versus what fame or glory or satisfaction is ultimately hollow. All three are powerful films that are completely different yet still address the same core issues in powerful ways. I think Arronofsky is one of the most important filmmakers working today - or at least important to me in terms of effective, powerful films that address issues I think are important. Both this and Pan's Labyrinth deal with issues of life and death, and what is after death, and what is of true value in life, something that is particularly salient to me in my life right now (pardon the personal digression) - I'm 38, my life is roughly halfway through, and I'm STILL looking for what I think will give me my best life, and my best joy, and my best experience before I die, and what do I want to accomplish and have and experience along the way. Films like these talk about these issues and are touchstones to hold and ponder and treat as prayer beads to worry over and ponder these greater issues.

And isn't that what art should be doing?

I'll stop there - what else more could I add?

Apologies for the delay on this one, I wrote it then clicked on "Save Draft" rather than "Publish Post" by accident yesterday - this isn't much of a review, but was my experience of the film....so be it for today

UPDATE

I thought about this movie some more - to me, there were two possible interpretations:

1.) He really DID figure out a long life drug from the tree (which the present day story hints at), and in X hundred years the tree he planted (same type as made the drug) over his wife's grave was transported to that faraway nebula in a space ship, and he's thinking back on everything in flashback. The queen & conquistador story is the story she wrote about the two of them, he's remembering the story and placing himself and her in it in his mental envisioning of it.

OR

2.) The future story is how he finished the book - he never did actually travel to the star, he may or may not have made a longevity drug out of the plant, but he DID plant one of those over her grave. He wrote the story as his own closure, as he learned to accept her death and let go...finishing the story, writing this fiction about the future, was his gift back to her after she was gone.

Either way, I found it a fascinating meditation on acceptance of death - that no matter how we love someone, or how much we want things to go one way, we ultimately don't have control over it - and some things should just be accepted.

Doreen, who saw the film with me, had this to say (this was her take on it):

This is what I saw:

The Fountain was a love story set in the future, where the 2 characters are destined to be together through rebirth. The female lead is symbolically represented through the tree of life to illustrate her cyclical life from seed (birth) to death. In the conquistador setting, the earliest part of their meeting, she proclaims to be his ‘eve’ which is our beginning of the story. In the modern day part of the story Hugh’s character discovers a scientific breakthrough resulting in a fountain of youth type drug. As a result, we switch between life times and see his life extended into centuries into the future. But, the elongating of his life only delays the inevitable. Ultimately, his life and that of his love will meet and be together again, in another time. Her death, His death and the tree’s death are not the end, and not the beginning; they are at a segment of life’s cyclical fountain and will be reborn again.


...interesting how we heach had our own take on it....I plan on seeing this again when it hits theaters to get a better sense of it - I found Solaris more confusing, but had less to get out of it than this film. My own opinion, of course.

After hearing Doreen's take on it (this was all over dinner discussion Saturday night), I'm liking her idea and wnating to integrate it into my understanding of the film. It was a revelation to me to remember that part of the mythology of the Tree of Life was that OUT OF DEATH comes rebirth - that the tree in the bubble was the tree from her grave, and it was only from death that life could then begin anew - I saw it as sad that the tree "died" before arrving at the star, but that was part of the necessary process (I'm pretty sure) for the cycle to begin anew...again I wnat to think about all this, but what makes this relevant is that the movie makes me WANT to think about all this and get it right in my head. So many other movies are unclear or confusing or ambiguous and you walk out thinking "whatevah" and don't care and don't think about it any more.

OK, enough for now...

Note: this article has been updated several times since originally published (most recently 3pm Tuesday Oct. 17, 2006), newest stuff at bottom of list. I'll keep updating it as new stuff about 5.1.2 comes in, so keep checking back on this linked article.

A few notes on upgrading to FCP 5.1.2:

1.) You must already have Final Cut 5.1.x installed - if you have 5.0.x, you're SOL - gotta pay to upgrade to Final Cut Studio 5.1 or later to get this update.

2.) Beware certain Motion plugins now that you can run FXplug stuff in Final Cut - FXplug is an OpenGL accelerated plugin architecture that has previously been used in Motion, but now can work in Final Cut Pro - I predict more of this kind of goodness with the next major release of Final Cut Studio, presumably v6 at NAB 2007 next April. Wait, back on target - so far I've heard specific complaints about the Zaxwerks ProAnimator and 3dFlag plugins - so if you're updated FCP is crashing or failing to launch, start pulling 3rd party plugings out and see if that makes a difference. Zaxwerks is a loooooongtime Mac developer and got caught off guard with this issue, they are aware of it and looking into a fix. For now, uninstall'em though.

3.) As always, if you're in the middle of a project, I'd recommend against upgrading unless it is KNOWN problem that this DEFINITELY fixes a specific and significant problem you're having. And if you DO want to upgrade, I'd recommend updating a version on another boot drive, and working on a copy of your project file and then test all the way through to see if it actually fixes your problem. The LAST thing you want to have happen is to upgrade/update in the middle of a project and find out a week or two of work later that you've created a significant problem for yourself that will require going back to your old version of project and software.

4.) But there's LOTS of little stuff they've fixed (or at least worked on) in this release, I'd highly recommend reading ALL the release notes I linked to yesterday.

5.) UPDATE: Creative Workflow Hacks � Blog Archive � New FCP-XML Version Offers Exciting Project Management Possibilities - read paragraph 2, has links to stuff on metadata management in QT files and also management of project components - sounds promising, I'll read ASAP myself.

6.) I think I forgot to mention this earlier, but QT 7 no longer plays back Flash media - probably some kind of dispute with Adobe, or a contract ran out or something I'd guess. This is a problem for some folks. UPDATE: Yes it does, just off by default. See here for instructions on how to turn it back on.

7.) I've had a couple of complaints from folks saying they couldn't get the update to work, no idea why that is so yet.

8.) It appears certain codecs may cause problems, sometimes. Avid and Sheer seem to be more likely codecs that cause trouble, but not universally. Scary and odd behaviors if the concerns pan out to be true. Read more about codec issues here..

9.) So I'd recommend waiting a week or two before updating to 5.1.2 to see how it all shakes out (banzai kamikaze that I am, I upgraded my 3 G5s and Powerbook last night...I wanna find the problems ASAP).

10.) (added 4pm CST): Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 won't open after installing Motion 2.1 - see link for the fix

11.) Official response from Apple: Final Cut Pro 5.1.2: Some third-party QuickTime components may prevent Final Cut Pro from starting

12.) More official response from Apple: Final Cut Pro 5.1.2: FxPlug Restrictions and Troubleshooting

From the article:

Only FxPlug filters and generators are supported; Final Cut Pro does not support FxPlug transitions.

Some plug-ins with custom controls are not supported.

Some plug-ins that process data other than video information are not supported.

Onscreen controls, such as control points in the Viewer and Canvas, are not supported.

Effects that result in subtle gradations (such as a Gradient generator or Gaussian Blur filter) can cause colored vertical banding after rendering. This kind of banding is likely an artifact of rendering in a low-resolution codec (such as DV) and not an issue with the filter. Try setting your sequence settings to an Uncompressed 8- or 10-bit sequence preset instead.

FxPlug plug-ins that render in RGB color space may cause clipping, especially when applied to Y'CBCR clips with high chroma or luma values. This may be particularly noticeable when applying an FxPlug filter to a range of a clip, instead of an entire clip.


...but that apparently isn't quite correct - a developer emailed me to say:

Just wanted to correct one thing on your website...

FCP 5.1.2 most definitely does support fxplug transitions, I've got several running now. They work fine.
...
We believe this mention is a mistake in Apple's documentation as actually fxplug transitions are not
supported in Motion, but they are and should be in fcp.



13.) Also just added this article, which addresses RAM usage in Final Cut Pro, as well as optimal RAM install configs for Mac Pros. Read'em both to understand how RAM works with FCP and how much you might want to get for your Mac Pro box.


14.) Both AJA and BMD have updated their drivers (AJA to 3.2, BMD to 5.7.2) for their HD cards, mostly dealing with Intel based Mac Pro stuff. Worth being up to date when you update your FCP. Check with both vendors to find out if they recommend updating/upgrading, however, to make sure there aren't any known hassles or snags.

15.) Final Cut Pro 5 may fail to open with 64 or more QuickTime components installed

16.) What's New in Final Cut 5.1.2 is a detailed, screen grab laden excellent article over on Ken Stone's website, the article is by Andrew Balis, including nifty new keyboard shortcuts, behavior changes in FCP, a TON of new effects, etc.
Handy stuff to know.

-mike

AMUG Addonics Mac Pro PCI Express SATA Host Adapter (ADSA3GPX1-2EM) Review

Typically detailed long AMUG review of the only currently working SATA card for Mac Pros with port multiplying support. There are some performance issues, but for $40, this would be an excellent holdover until the $300 Sonnet E4P cards have working drivers (which are being dilligently worked on but aren't done yet, I checked this week).

-mike

About the Mac OS X 10.4.8 Update (delta)

Mac OS X 10.4.8 was released today. Some notes and observations:

1.) If installing on an Intel based Mac, will restart TWICE after installation; first restart can be slow, be patient and don't interrupt.

2.) Don't interrupt installation - if you do or lose power or whatever, use the standalone installer

3.) I don't see anything video specific that it is fixing in the long list of fixes; so I recommend NOT updating to 10.4.8 for at least a few weeks to see if there are issues with any 3rd party video drivers, hardware, etc.

4.) See above link for full details. I'm about to install it on my 1.25 GHz Pbook G4, will see how it goes...

-mike

Dell UltraSharp 30" Widescreen LCD for $1,529 - dealnews.com Dunno how long the deal lasts, so jump on it quick if you want a big screen. Apple's is $1999 for their panel of same size and resolution. Note that this Dell does NOT have TV inputs as the 24 inch model did/does.

-mike

UPDATE FRIDAY: I asked a high level game designer acquaintance some questions about the console market, the Q&A is added at the end of the article.

Microsoft unveils Xbox HD-DVD price, games partner - Yahoo! News

Microsoft finally announced a price point for the HD DVD player add-on - $200. This means that the total price for the high end Xbox360 with HD-DVD is going to be $600....same as the higher end PS3.

Mike's Comments: The good news here is these prices are barely over the cost of the currently cheapest HD DVD player ($500), so for $100 you get a very high end game machine as well. Xbox360 has been selling fairly well from what I've heard, and so far HD DVD is being better received than Blu-ray - the movies look better (since the first crop of Blu-ray were MPEG-2 encoded, and poorly at that instead of the better looking VC-1), the players cost less, and there's a decent selection of movies out. The only reason to go Blu-ray is the greater capacity and selection of Sony movies. While I've long been hoping for Blu-ray to win the format wars, because I want the greater disc capacity as well as less M$ influence on my media, I'm not so sure that Blu-ray offers a compelling argument over HD DVD. Movies on HD DVD are looking good enough, they can do dual layer for 30 GB of content if needed, and the players are substantially cheaper than the Blu-ray players so far. This is what consumers care about, if anything. For the studios, Blu-ray offers better encryption and DRM and protection from piracy in theory, as well as the fact that Sony makes both movies and the player so you know they'll be distributing in their own format. There has been a lot of hope that the PS3's ability to play back Blu-ray movies would be a huge push to get Blu-ray (or the potential to play them back) into the living rooms of a large number of gamers, but since Microsoft is offering the same advantage as an option for Xbox360 buyers/users at the same total price point, unless PS3 is going to outsell Xbox360 by a wide margin (and don't forget Xbox360 has been on the market since last year), I don't see the PS3 making a huge difference for Blu-ray.

I hereby declare that unless PS3 sells like mad, I think HD DVD is likely to win. How's that for a bold statement? Let me now wiggle and equivocate - the format will win from a consumer side, which is what drives things. Unless Sony can get a lock on enough content to make the format more attractive from a movie perspective, I don't think they can strong arm the industry hard enough. Movies so far look the same or better on HD DVD, and the cost of the players is lower. The winner tends to be driven by the consumers, not the manufacturers, so I now think it likely that HD DVD is going to win. Internally, if HD DVD is selling better, the movie division at Sony will start complaining to the player division until they are FINALLY given permission from On HIgh (if that is how their hierarchy is set up, I don't know, anybody feel free to correct me with facts) to release movies on HD DVD as well as Blu-ray - the economics will demand it if HD DVD sells better, or even if it represents a significant opportunity cost foregone.

To back this up, so far, despite the crappy remote and load times, people are still prefering the Toshiba HD DVD player over the Samsung Blu-ray player. This analysis of Amazon reviews on Blu-ray vs HD DVD is pretty informative, with lots of graphs to back it up - folks prefer the Toshiba clearly. While a sample of 1 player for each format is not indicative of how things will go over the next year as new, lower cost players come out for each format, the early momentum is clearly with HD DVD. But, now that I think about it, this addresses satisfaction with units, not number of units sold - I wish I had those numbers to compare.

I do note the irony of me talking about not trusting Microsoft to control my media, yet advocating Apple to push into the movie market - I guess it is akin to liking the Aggies or the Longhorns - just pick your team and root for'em. I prefer Apple because while they do have some annoying restrictions on DRM, and they do control things in a "my way or the highway" fashion, I think they do a better job on this kind of thing. Plus I like their elegant hardware/software integration - so my decision isn't ENTIRELY irrational...

-mike

UPDATE: And, of course, we're off to the races in the Comments. The first comment is a lengthy detailed rebuttal to my "HD DVD may win" comment, and I reply in detail myself. So consider (at least the first two anyway) the Comments section to be an extension of this article - consider it the "Turn to Page 12 for more" on this article.

Further update: ...and since then the comment count is up to 10 as of 11:18:36 AM CST, all of it interesting and valid, including such things as:

-the influence of porn on the market

-the high sales of PS2 as a predictor of PS3 sales

-my rebuttal citing technology is only as relevant as its price point

-the mixed effects of forced bundling (Blu-ray in PS3) vs not (optional HD DVD add-on for Xbox360)

-the possibility Hollywood will treat predictive sales like they do opening weekend numbers and make a long term decision early on, etc.

Have thoughts on any of this? Click on the Comments link below.

Friday Update: Game Developer Q&A

I asked a trusted source who is in a position to know stats on the gaming industry about this whole thing, here's the Q&A:

1.) How well has Xbox360 been selling?

According to Wikipedia they've sold around 6.1 million 360 units. This might be a little inflated, but 5 million is a safe bet. But they've easily sold 10 million pieces of software.

2.) Is PS3 expected to leap into the ring as a volume competitor to Xbox360?

As of a year ago I think most people would have predicted that the PS3 would ultimately out-sell the 360 by a good amount. The previous generation had Sony selling 3 or 4 times as many PS2s as Microsoft sold Xbox1s.

Microsoft bet *hard* on having a 1-year head start, which most of us devs saw as a huge gamble. But it appears to be paying off, along with Microsoft securing a ton of exclusive games. In the game world it's exclusive content that sells hardware more than anything else.

So in general I think alot of us are expecting PS3 and 360 to be much more neck and neck this time around. This Christmas Sony is going to get their ass handed to them by Microsoft, since the 360s are now in full-production and easy to find and buy at any old store. The PS3 is going to have a very limited first run, and will be super-duper hard to find.

3.) With both systems expected to be available with high def DVD options for about $600 list, does that give either one a serious boost, or is it a wash?

There are two ways to look at this... if you're Joe Blow gamer and all you want to play is Madden NFL 2007, and you walk into Best Buy ready to buy a new system and the game, you have two options:

$300 for a basic 360 + $60 for Madden = $360 $500 for a basic PS3 + $60 for Madden = $560

That's a BIG difference for Joe Blow. Throw in an extra $100 for the premium version of either system, and you're talking about alot of money for nothing besides a console and a game.

If you look at the systems as a movie enthusiast, then yeah... it's pretty much $500 (or $600) for a new game system and an HD movie player.

But it's important to note that the basic $300 Xbox 360 can play HD movies... just not off a disc. You can stream an HD feed from your PC to the 360 (and thusly onto your HDTV or projector). This might be Microsoft's secret weapon. Even if the HD disc formats flop and we all buy our HD content via some iTunes thing, Microsoft can still play ball. Sony is stuck with Blu-Ray no matter what.

4.) Another way of asking - Do you think the PS3 with Blu-ray will be a serious push for the Blu-ray movie format, or does the existence of an Xbox360 HD DVD add-on make it a wash?

No, it's not a wash. If both systems came with built-in HD movie drives, then it would be more of an apples-to-apples thing. The fact that the HD-DVD drive for the 360 is an add-on suggests to me two things:

1) Microsoft is not really commited to HD-DVD (they could switch horses and go Blu-Ray down the road if it turned out to be the winning format) 2) Most 360 owners won't purchase an HD-DVD drive for some time...

Hardware accessories for game consoles have sold notoriously poorly in the past. Sega sold 35 million Sega Genesis systems back in the 16-bit era. But they only sold 6 million Sega-CD add-on drives, which was their first CD-ROM attachment. Now granted, Sega-CD wasn't a movie player, so you mostly bought it for the games. But a 16% attach rate is pretty crappy.

As far as the PS3 having Blu-Ray built in... it could be a push for Blu-Ray. Sony has sold over 100 million PS2s worldwide since 2000. If they can repeat their success with the PS3 then that's a whole bunch of homes with a Blu-Ray player. But it's too be determined if people will take home Blu-Ray movies with their brand new PS3 or not.

My suspicion is that Sony is tying the Blu-Ray and Playstation 3 brands at the hip. It's just speculation, but most people believe each PS3 game will be in a Blu-Ray case, further driving the Blu-Ray brand into everyone's head:

http://forums.firingsquad.com/firingsquad/board/message?board.id=pc&thread.id=25434

One question you didn't ask but I think should be answered is this:

Does the fact that PS3 has a Blu-Ray drive built-in while the 360's HD-DVD drive is option affect game developers?

The answer is hell-yes. Since most games put out by third-party publishers (EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Midway, etc) come out for both systems, we have to use one of them as a lowest-common-denominator. So we have to design our games to fit onto a single 360 disc, which means we'd have to do extra work to actually take advantage of the Blu-Ray drive. And that's money we don't have to spend, so we won't. :-)

So from that perspective, buying the same game for the PS3 is probably not going to look or run any better than the 360 version. So now it's up to Sony to fund and publish the exclusive PS3 games that actually will take advantage of the storage capacity of Blu-Ray. It's their only hope of selling the who Blu-Ray thing to the hard-core gamers.


Thanks to this industry veteran for taking the time to answer, although anonymity was requested to allow direct and honest answers without getting called on the carpet by the brass at the employer.

The possibility of Xbox360's Media Extender capabilities is something I've been meaning to write a think piece about, I'll wrap that into something bigger if I have the time. Hmm..maybe I need to go subscription based for that kind of thing...IF broadband were sufficiently fast and ubiquitous (which it really isn't right now), the ability to directly download high def movies instead of buying a $500 to $1000 player is awfully intriguing - when I say HD DVD might be the winner, I just mean winner between the two formats. Long term, high def downloads start to make a lot of sense, also if and only if people were to start getting used to the idea of a home media server where all this stuff sits.

But in terms of unit and dollar sales, I think it is entirely possible that downloadable movies, even at the relatively weak resolution and compression quality of Apple's present offerings, could outsell high def movie sales cumulatively. Of course, those are two different markets really - high vs. low quality movie experiences.

-mike

This is an updated and expanded earlier article, with the further inclusion on details from Jim Jannard's update posted on DVInfo.net

Full update from Jim Jannard:

Jim Jannard, founder of Red, posted on DVInfo.net last night, stating "Time for a full update."

Salient points:

-on track overall
-still on target to get 20 to 30 cameras put together in December for shakedown testing
-THINKS they'll start shipping March/April timeframe (hopefully, and NOT a promised ship date)
-more explanations coming for REDRAW, which they feel strongly should be your preferred shooting format
-traditional RGB recording will be offered as well (Mike's insert here - yeah, I'd expect 720p, 1080p, 2K RGB REDCODE options)
-Redcine will be key, so get familiar with it, detailed explanations start Nov. 1st
-pretty much final camera, cage, rail, & lenses at that time
-specs on lenses, including MTF charts, around that time (Nov. 1st)
-thermal management is a challenge, two FPGAs in there

Mike's Comments: Read the article for more details. I think the biggest piece of news in there is this is the most specific time frame estimate for when they'll start shipping. As I've got a reservation in queue now (did I mention that? I've got a Red One and a zoom lens on order, will be for rental market), I'm especially interested in that part, and in how long it'll take to fill backorders. They've previously stated that Oct. 31st is the closing day for reservations - no more pre-orders taken after that time.

But I'm pleasantly surprised at this shipping estimate - with the complexity of the product they are talking about, and all of the other details and capability ramifications not even discussed yet, this timetable is ambitious - I had previously thought they'd start getting their first cameras out in the May/June timeframe at best, since this is practically a moon shot in terms of new frontiers and complex systems for this new company. The timetable may still slip, but for them to be guesstimating this time frame is good news - it would be out of character for Jim to pick a date he knew he couldn't make. I would further hazard to guess that this would mean it would be a short number of months to get through the 500-600 pre-orders, and new orders could start being filled sometime in the second half of 2007, probably Q3 '07 I'd guess based on Jim's estimate. But again, these are just my own guesses based on Jim's guesstimated shipping time frame. But at this point, by the time new orders are taken next year when cameras are shipping (after the pre-orders stop being taken on Oct. 31st), there will probably be 500 to 600 cameras working in the field, so there should be good evidence of how well they do (or don't) work. As with many other working professionals, I'd rather see this camera ship late and right rather than early and buggy.

Macbeth color chart image from Mysterium sensor

For the camera hardcore, here's a Macbeth color chart shot with the Mysterium sensor with their test mule camera, no color correction applied, with a digital version of what the thing is supposed to look like in the lower portion of the image - follow the link in the top posting from Jarred.

There's also a link on the second page with composited squares from the "should be" comped over what they have at the moment, makes it much easier to comprehend. Plus, apparently Graeme has done some tweaks to get it even closer.

This is all well and good, but the catch is will it be this close or closer in varying light conditions (tungsten vs. daylight, for instance), in low or overexposed situations, will skintones still look good even if it is mathematically still "right," and will all this survive compression with Redcine OK? Another random thought - will the HD-SDI have the same curves to match the Redcine output? Will the in-camera curves be upgradable/editable easily? This is a LUT issue.

Hard numbers on the ISO rating of the Mysterium sensor

There is also discussion of the ISO rating of the sensor based on empirical data here, started off by Jim Jannard himself stating that the sensor seems to have an ISO rating of 160. Much much geeky discussion ensues, gets over my head quickly (I'm just a po' post guy).

Discussion on the boards about Red

There's also just good interesting discussions in general about stuff like quick conversion for reconfiguring the camera and other stuff. As always, the Red forums on DVXuser.com and DVInfo.net are worth checking out.

Some facts and a lot of conjecture about the break-in at Red

Other Red news - looks like the Mysterium sensor and the Frankenstein test mule camera were not taken, so that's great news in terms of no slowdowns, but the shiny prototype from IBC did get stolen. I'd also be ticked if I were the Red crew if somebody got their test sensor (I'm guessing there's only one working prototype, but I don't know for sure).

In the "totally pure conjecture based on no hard data whatsoever" category, while it still smells like some kind of corporate espionage and not random theft, the thieves weren't completely competent/thorough/successful (thankfully) - while they did get a lot of data and some prototypes, they didn't get some of the most valuable stuff - the working sensor, the test mule camera, etc. One camp would posit that the thieves didn't go after the most valuable items, another would suggest the thieves got what they wanted - comparison competitive data, so that a competitor could gauge their progress and how good the results were, so that they would know how to respond in their own future product offerings. Would a competitor be so bold? I would hope in this day and age not, but there are tens of millions of dollars at stake here, if not hundreds long term. Careers are in trouble. What if some hired third party sent to get info got overzealous, or o'erstepped the intended bounds of effort?

Of course, perhaps the valuable items not stolen were kept offsite or secured somewhere, I dunno. Again, this is all uninformed conjecture, I honestly don't know any more than I've read on the boards. But it sure is a weird thing to happen, and I'll bet Red never leaves themselves that vulnerable again.

UPDATE ON THE THEFT

Some of the stolen items have been recovered it turns out - some of the more personal data, the aluminum non-functional prototype, a lens, and some other stuff. Jim Jannard, founder of Red, stated on dvxuser.com:

"What is still out there are computers that had most of the camera related development info. It appears that the "booty" was broken up into two segments. Our pro investigation team and police are still on the trail of the balance."


So good news for them to get some of their stuff back, interesting to note that the booty was broken into two groups, but the group of stuff with the most sensitive info is still out there unfortunately.

-mike

PS-for those of you waiting, I DID manage to squeak into the screening of The Fountain last night, will post after I get back from a run)

Flip4Mac - Episode Products

update: here's a chart showing the differences between Episode & Episode Pro.
Compression Master is/was a nice encoding product to pick up where Media Cleaner Pro left off (and it got left way off, since there hasn't been an update in a looooooong time (edit - oops, wrong). But Apple's bundling of Compressor obviated it's need for all but the pickiest of users and uses.

Flip4Mac has apparently picked up the product and dubbed it Episode, with a higher end product entitled Episode Pro. There is a demo version available that I'm downloading right now, I'll play with it when I get the chance. With this addition, Flip4Mac continues its surprisingly fast move to become a significant player in the realm of working with digital video formas on the Mac.

They can both encode to MPEG-1/2/4, WM9, DV, 3GPP/2, M4A, MOV, and other QT codecs. You can create and use complex compression templates, and do things like crop, scale, pad, timecode burn-in, gamma, HSV levels, etc. - LOTS of control.

I'm curious to see how it handles gamma issues when converting YUV to RGB codecs, or even just scaling YUV codecs (see recent Final Cut & QuickTime Color & Luma Woes), whether it handles 10 bit codecs at all without truncating to 8 bits, and in general just how useful it can be for high end media manipulation. In the end, it boils down to this - is this giving enough value above and beyond what you get with Compressor to justify the $400 to $800 price tag?

When I talked to the developers at NAB the other year, I was impressed with the depth of control they offered, the seriousness with which they implemented details (sine not bicubic scaling, thankyouverymuch), but was irked by the requirement that each codec supported had to be hand coded in - it wouldn't compress to just any codec you had installed, for instance, and this was a problem at the time since I was very interested in working with the Sheer codec.

Does it justify the cost and hassles of straying off the Apple app reservation? I don't know yet, I suspect it might based on the level of control offered, but I want to play with it and see the quality and speed and workflow before stating definitively. If anybody has an informed opinion on this, please chime in on the Comments using the link below.

-mike

So, now that it has happened, the sneak preview was for Pan's Labyrinth, Guillermo Del Toro's new Spanish language film. I also saw a Hungarian animated film, The District, as well as Roman, from the makers of May but with the director and lead actor switching places for this one.

First up - The District, an animated Hungarian film. Technically, it is a visual mashup - now that computer generated is "cheap" and hand drawn is time consuming and "expensive," the look on this film is an interesting mix of hand drawn textures projected onto 3D or 2 1/2D animated characters. Check out the trailer, otherwise to write about it is dancing about architecture, as they say. The energy level of this film is HUGE, and at times almost exhausting. This animated film is definitely not for children - hookers and pimps and gangs abound, but the story centers on (another) Romeo and Juliet situation - except that this time the kids try to circumvent the tragic ending. The film is very alive and feels very in touch with youth culture, feels very street and real and current and connected, not the distant Hollywood 1950s abstractions we get from some domestic studios. It is also wildly creatively divergent - when the boy decides he needs money to court the girl, he decides to go back in time and make some oil under their neighborhood to make money...and then THEY DO IT. The level of realistic reality rockets up and down through the film, but it is very engaging, if overlong. But if you're any kind of animation fan, DEFINITELY one to see. Think of it as your dirty minded teenage Hungarian buddy's response to The Tripletts of Bellville.

Next up was Roman, directed by Angela Bettis, who was the lead in May, a film with very similar themes that came out a few years ago. Shot on DV with XL2 and GL2 Canon DV camcorders (with apparently zero color correction), the film wavers in and out of "suffciently interesting and engaging" but doesn't maintain a high enough level of, um, engagement throughout. Roman is a lonely man who is a bit odd, and after spectacularly blowing a date with the cute girl in his complex (played by Kristen Bell of Veronica Mars, shot before the series started it sounds like). He then reluctantly takes up a relationship with the artsy girl in his complex, after dealing with the breakup with the first girl piecemeal (read that statement carefully if you saw May). Poorly shot, acceptably acted, sub-par editing and sound design, a predictable plot after a few surprises make this one skippable. But as a first time director in a zero/no-budget DV film, not a bad first turn, this project still needs work even the current form - color correction, tighter edit, etc.

Next up was the highlight of the day - Guillermo Del Toro's new film (Spanish language no less), Pan's Labyrinth. A shame Guillermo couldn't be here, he's contractually bound to do a New York screening as the first North American screening with him in attendance, but he used to live in Austin and is always scathingly funny and engaging to hear speak before his movies (I've seen him at Blade 2 and Hellboy, he was hilarious and fun). Similar thematically to the Devil's Backbone, it is set in wartime and involves magical realism, dark notes, death, and children. In this one, the setting is Spain in 1944, right before the Allies arrived. The movie opens as a young girl and her pregnant mother are driving to their new home - the father had died, and the mother remarried for security and convenience to a captain in the Nazi sympathetic Spanish army. The hardcore Captain is a ruthless man, set on hunting down the remaining rebels, and establishes his location on the moral compass early in the film when he encounters two men who may or may not be spies for the rebellion. The mother's health is not good. But the story centers on the little girl, and the maid Mercedes who helps her. The little girl sees a bug that she thinks might be a fairy - and it turns out to be, changing in a magical moment on camera that works - I totally bought into it. It leads her into the labyrinth that is next to the big house where the captain lives, and she meets a faun who tells her she is the reincarnated long lost queen. A series of challenges are set out for her. Meanwhile, the rebels in the woods (including Mercedes brother Pedro) have their trials and run-ins with the local Spanish authorities. The magical and real worlds slowly start to get closer together throughout the film, and at the end the question is left to the viewer as to which you believe in...or more accurately, which you WANT to believe in. Feh - I'm not doing a very good job of describing the experience of the movie - it is beautifully shot and well acted, a fairy tale for adults, riding the line between what might be and what is in terms of whether the magic is real or not. I actually was this close to crying at the end - the Mercedes character is actually the standout for me in the film, not the little girl - patient and kind, but also brave and strong - she rocks, I'd marry her in a heartbeat. She also gets some of the best lines in the film, especially towards the end. OK, I'm rambling now, it is late and I'm tired - suffice it to say it is beautiful to watch, but I found the magical realism a bit troubling. It all depends on whether you think there is indeed magic in the world. The ending requires you to pick one - real or magic - and the realistic ending is brutal and deeply tragic, whilst the magical one is happy and transcendant. I don't like being forced to the magical ending - I want to be a realist at heart, but hate where that leads to if that's the only choice, both in the movie and in life (that says more than you know right there). And that is the choice I felt the movie presented, to be decided by each viewer. Doreen liked the film too, but found it overly predictable, I didn't have as much of a problem with it as she did. Perhaps tomorrow I'll be in a more analytical mood about it, I think the structure of the film has some problems about which is it - a real world or a magical one, and that may create problems for the audience. Plus, it is in Spanish with subtitles, so that'll limit the appeal as well for a mass audience (that doesn't speak Spanish, anyway). I liked it though - it was moving and (almost) made me cry, and that's a rarity in any case - nothing else I've seen has so moved me at FantasticFest. And that's certainly enough to be worthy of praise right there - you can argue structure, plot, casting, cinematography, all that other superficial crap - but does it move you? - and here, the answer for me was an emphatic yes.

-mike

Studio Daily | Sony On Its New HVR-V1U CMOS Design, and Why MPEG-2 Isn't Going Away

Quickie post - this article has some more info on the 1/4" CMOS that Sony is calling ClearVid - the three 1/4" CMOS sensors are 960x1080 resolution, BUT they are diagonally arranged, and Sony is claiming that and the CMOS helps with low light, high pixel count, small sensor light sensitivity. There's a Flash based animation to explain all this.

Movie's is starting, gotta go, but the article also talks about how Sony is happpy with MPEG-2 for now, no AVCHD in the near term.

-mike

Yesterday was a recovery day after catching a midnight movie - I didn't feel like going the distance, so "only" saw three movies.

First up was Shinobi: Heart Under Blade. Think of it as Romeo and Juliet set in medieval Japan with Super Ninja Powers, and instead of the Montagues and Capulets, there are two villages/clans of assasins who all have specials Arts of death infliction. But instead of bad action and yelling and bad dubs, this is MUCH more akin to a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Ninja vibe, with a bit of Hero and that, um, other one with green in the title (can't think of it now, somebody clue me in). Truly gorgeous cinematography, talented leads, good action scenes, a script that gives us characters we can care about, set in a time of vast change. The two villages have had a 400 year ban on fighting each other, but are the ninjas for hire amongst the ruling elite. The Lord of Lords realizes he can't have these kinds of weapons just sitting around, waiting to be hired, so orders each village to send their best 5 to fight each other to the death, to help choose the next Shogun. Much is at stake, and of course, our two star crossed lovers who met each other at the creek between their villages are chosen to go. Each of their companions has different Arts, of course, and we get to see them revealed throughout the course of the movie. This isn't as good as Hero or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but it is close, and definitely worth seeing. Some great set pieces, fights, and lines in there too - after one character gets run through with a sword and is presumed dead, he suddenly appears and runs through his attacker. The dying man says "Curse you...you're immortal!" and as he fades, his killer says "No...I'm just bad at dying." OK, I guess you gotta see it to follow the vibe. This is a keeper, though, and definitely worth seeing if you get the chance if you like the other films I've mentioned here. Technically, my only complaint was some truly bad digital FX work - esp. ninjas hopping through the trees or the eagle flying around - it was so bad it was distracting. Other scenes, esp. the hair/sleeves guy, had competent CG and compositing, so maybe just a bad vendor?

I had debated whether to see Shinobi or Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell...my friend Zane Rutledge went to see it, and it sounds like I made the right call.

Next up was FireFly, a truly indie DIY effort. Shot starting in 2002 on a DVX100 (the original, right after it came out), and then in post for two years as the filmmakers continued at their day jobs, these guys have pulled off what every no-budget DIYer hopes to do - to make an interesting, compelling movie shot on DV for virtually no budget. The story involves four individuals' all having unusual experiences and the four storylines finally coalesce. Read the link above for a summary, but the important part was that the movie was interesting to watch, the acting was good enough, the story was compelling, and you just let it go that it's shot on the cheap. They did a good job making their movie that a LOT of others screw up - it is a far, far better thing to do something simple, and do it well, than to reach too far and try to make something fancy and do it poorly. Strong story, characters we care about, and a plotline that always carries that itch of "what happens next?" to keep your audience interested without irritating them with BS answers. The movie is slow to get going and perhaps overly long*, but it is a ride you the viewer are interested in taking. Kudos to the team that labored forever on this one, with some script work, I could see this not getting picked up, but being remade with a real budget and coming out as a potentially mainstream interesting film.

* as a side note, there have been shorts before some of the films, some good, some kinda "feh", but they ALL suffer from being too in love with your own product - they are too long! All could have benefited from being edited tighter and cut down to just what was needed to tell the story.

Last up was a retrospective on the portrayal of drugs in American Cinema, starting back in the 30s. Being a fan of bad governmental disinformation, and having just come back from "smoke pot with the cops, we JUST DON'T CARE!" Amsterdam, I thought this'd be fun to sit in on - they had original 16mm prints of government, military, and private industry films talking about the dangers of LSD, marijuana, etc. The author of a book on the subject, Jack Stevenson, was kind enough to come over from Sweden to introduce the films, and this sounded like it'd be fun to watch.

....but I was wrong. Jack took waaaaaaaay too long introducing the upcoming pieces, and the pieces themselves were run in large chunks, when a few minutes would have been MORE than sufficient. Plus, a problem with many screenings, the audio was just painfully too loud (am I getting into Crotchety Old Fart mode here?). Way too loud, overly long movies about bad tripping when I'm tired - it was my own Bad Trip. As with the shorts, EDIT TO THE SALIENT PART, THEN MOVE ON. As Mr. Dahlberg, my 9th grade English teacher used to say about an essay's length: "It should be like a woman's skirt - long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to be interesting."

Aside from the lawsuits that comment would instigate today, Jack failed to follow this advice...so we bailed after half an hour.

Today, I plan on seeing either Puzzlehead or The District, Roman or A Quiet Love, then the 9pm Special Screening that they have a poster up for in the lobby but I'll be nice to Paul and Tim and not say what it is yet...but it's gonna be gooooooood, and I am REALLY looking forward to it. If I'm up for a midnight movie, I'll go see Lie Still.

If you're in Austin, you can buy solo tickets for any of this stuff, and if you have time, you can still catch Firefly today at 3:30, that Special Screening tonight at 9, or The Host at 11:30pm. Tomorrow, Fantastic Planet with Darren Aronofsky introducing, The Fountain, and then Isolation (I'll see it) or Renaissance for those who haven't yet seen it will screen. Edmond is also showing, but that opens at the Alamo soon anyway - catch that David Mamet written, William H. Macy starring psychological thriller.

-mike

Monday was a full movie day - I saw several, so I'll just dive right in.

First up was Hatchet, a throwback to the 80s slasher flicks of yore (and gore.) A low budget horror movie of the "people stuck in a swamp with a possibly undead crazy revenge seeking mutated angry swamp hick" variety. You either are into it for the nostalgia, or not. Our introduction to the Bad Guy (Victor Crowley) is to see him run out of his cabin with a (you guessed it!) hatchet, and chop Midwestern Guy repeatedly through the collarbone on down through the chest. Then Victor grabs the wife's jaw and peels/snaps her head off her neck. That's either funny or it's not. There's a little bit of boob flashing (it is set in New Orleans), and some kinda fun banter between White Nerdy Guy and Hipper Black Friend (reminds me of going to Vegas with my friend Sloan, we fit those roles pretty well), but I found the movie lacking - a bit too Skinemax, a bit too All Done Before Better. For the genre fans, it's kina fun though.

Beowulf and Grendel, however, was an entirely different affair - starring Starsguard and Sarah Polley, it is a beautiful, majestically shot ode to the folly of revenge. In the 1600s in Daneland, Grendel the troll (big strong hairy guy) starts killing off the king's men, and others come to help the great king, including the legendary warrior Beowulf. Beowulf comes and starts to wonder why the beast is killing the king's soldiers, and starts to doubt the purpose of his mission. Sarah Polley plays the local witch who straddles both worlds - the civilized and the wild. Beautiful, interesting, meditative, worth seeing as a film devotee. A little slow, a little self importantly slow and grandiose at times, suffering a touch of the "I am an epic, see how important I am, so it's OK for me to be languid and slow" disease, but worth seeing, if for the gorgeously tough cinematography and scenery alone. Definitely one you couldn't shoot in Texas on DV for the same results!

Next up was The Host, which is one of my favorites of the festival so far - it is a Korean monster movie...but don't let that throw you. While subtitled, it is still thoroughly engaging, as it is more about about a loose and disjointed family banding together to try to find the young daughter/neice/grandchild girl, rather than about the monster, which is actually background for this story. To further that point, you get to see the monster in full detail in full daylight - while the movie was introduced as having similarities to Jaws, not true - Jaws was all about NOT seeing the creature until the end (a pattern started by accident when Bruce the mechanical shark wouldn't work, but is now standard cliche fare in the genre), the film starts with a long, protracted, full daylight, fully revealing attack not 10 or so minutes into the film. And the creature is GOOD - interesting design (never seen a creature quite like it before), and it is VERY well rendered - kudos to The Orphanage (Stu Maschwitz of Prolost that I like to from time to time is one of the founders) for their EXCELLENT work on the creature and visual effects in this film. The movement, design, and photorealstic integration (esp. the water integration, which is truly top notch even in the film print we saw) is all FAR beyond the quality level you'd expect in a film of this nature. Actually, especially in comparison to the truly sub-par work in the otherwise outstanding Shinobi, it is all the more surprising that a movie this "small" has effects this "big" and good. Anyway, back to the point - it is a funny, actually touching movie, and then on top of it you get this truly new, unique, scary monster, which has various interesting tricks up its many tentacled sleeves - how it gets around, how it deals with its prey, all kinds of new twists. There are a couple of scenes in particular with the girl and the creature in its lair that are especially get-under-your-skin creepy, and make it all too clear that this thing is not just a mindless beast. Again, I'd put The Host in my Top 5 from the festival that I enjoyed. Too bad it's in Korean...or maybe not - I could totally see a remake of this for the US market just by setting it in, say, Boston Harbor rather than the Han River. I'm sure the VFX crew at The Orphanage wouldn't mind doing it again with a bigger budget...

Next up was the midnight movie Severance that I'd been hearing good things about. There's some connection or analogy to Shaun of the Dead that I haven't pinned down yet (same writer? Or just feel?). The movie is about a group of employees of a defense contractor out on a team building exercise that end up in the Wrong Place, Wrong Time, and start to suffer badly as Scary Men With Knives start showing up and picking them off one by one. The characters are great - you have the Terrible Boss, the Ass Kisser, the Nebbishy Glasses Girl, The Stoner, The Sales Prick, etc. Just the staff interactions alone are entertaining as you recognize people you've worked with...and don't mind seeing them blowtorched, beheaded, etc. The script is a blast, the scares aren't too many (more on that in a minute), the gore isn't too much, and you DO care about the characters who do get away in the end. Magnolia Pictures has picked this one up, and I recommend it once it is out in the theaters.

As a side editorial note, there are a LOT of movies of the "people stuck in the woods getting hunted and/or tortured" motif, and I'm not liking it one bit. If that's all that is really going on, if that is the focus, it just isn't fun if doesn't have a point (other than a jagged one), or a sense of humor, or characters I care about other than to not see them sliced up like carpaccio and served with fava beans and chianti...fufufufufuffff. The movies Saw and Hostel started this trend as far as I can tell, and since the horror genre is the cheapest way to get into the movie game (shoot in the woods, don't need name brand talent, no extravagant sets, etc.), lots of folks are piling on. And it just isn't fun to watch. Hostel was shockingly intense when that was a new thing, and I don't mind the pervy joy of the mix of sex now, violence later it offered. At least it had a redemptive ending and took the "OK, killing and torture is bad, m'kay?" road in content if not in context. But this new crop - Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, Broken, The Wilderness, Hatchet, and others - are just lame. Somebody said they'd expect Chainsaw to make at least $50M...I hope not. I like a good scary movie, but these are just intense for it's own sake. When the producers said they wanted to take back the gore thrown for the series, I agree with that in spirit, but I don't like the end result.

And this attitude has been getting into other styles, too - I loved how someone put it in context when talking about Mel Gibson's new vs. prior work:

"Yeah, I already saw Jesus Christ Chainsaw Massacre, I don't need to see it again."

Perfect.

-mike

Go and hit up your Software Update folks - Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 is available right this minute.

Based on what I saw at IBC, new features should include:
-24p HDV support for Canon XL H1 and JVC GY-HD100U/HD110U
-improved scopes that are live during playback
-improved XML import/export
-and more stuff

From the limited Software Update info:

Final Cut Pro Update 5.1.2 provides important bug fixes and compatibility updates for certain Canon, Sony, JVC and Panasonic devices. This update is recommended for all Final Cut Pro 5.1 and Final Cut Pro 5.1.1 customers.


Compressor also got an update to 2.3 in the last day or two as well, no useful details given.

CinemaTools gets an update as well - Cinema Tools 3.1.2 addresses inter-application compatibility and fixes some potential issues with reverse telecine when using files larger than 9 GB. ...which will be relevant for folks working with big HD files.

There's also a Pro Apps Update as well - more info here, relevant parts:

HDVCodec

HDVCodec addresses compatibility issues with Sony's XDCAM-HD 1080p24 25 Mbps CBR format and playback for the XDCAM-HD 540-line VFR formats.

This update is required for customers using Final Cut Pro 5.1.1 and the "Cine Alta" filmmaker features of Sony's XDCAM-HD cameras.

Uncompressed 422

Uncompressed 422 delivers a fix for changes in color-space and/or gamma when moving clips between Final Cut Pro and Adobe After Effects and addresses a codec issue leading to drawing errors in 16bpc After Effects projects. It also fixes discrepancies found between former AltiVec and the current Intel (scalar) code and delivers some performance improvements on Intel-based Macs.

This update is required for customers using Final Cut Pro 5.1 and recommended for customers using any of the Final Cut Studio 5.1 applications and Shake 4.1.

IMXCodec

IMXCodec delivers a fix for ARGB encoding on Intel-based Macs.

This update is required for customers using Shake 4.1 and recommended for Final Cut Studio 5.1 customers.

LiveType Support

This fix improves application stability when doing round-trip edits between Final Cut Pro and LiveType or Final Cut Express and LiveType. This also addresses an issue where LiveType could cause OverTheEdge's Unity to stop responding.

This update is required for customers using Final Cut Pro 5.1 and Final Cut Express HD 3.5.

FxPlug

FxPlug delivers a single image-processing plug-in architecture for pro applications.

This update is required for customers using Motion 2.1

Requirements for the Pro Applications Update 2006-01

Mac OS X 10.4.4 or later
QuickTime 7.0.4 or later


From the PDF on Late Breaking News for Final Cut Pro 5.1.2

Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 addresses effects compatibility issues and video format compatibility,
and resolves long-standing issues with video scope performance and audio output. For
updated information about format support, choose HD and Broadcast Formats from
the Final Cut Pro Help menu.
Note:
The Download Only option in Software Update is disabled for the Final Cut Pro 5.1.2
software update package.
HDV Format Support and Easy Setups
Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 includes native support and corresponding Easy Setups for the
following HDV formats:
Â
720p24 and 720p25 (JVC GY-HD100 ProHD camcorder)
Â
1080p24 and 1080p25 (Canon XL H1 HDV camcorder); also called
1080F24
and
1080F25
DVCPRO HD 720p25 and 1080pA24 Support
Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 updates compatibility with DVCPRO HD camcorder devices by adding
two new Easy Setups:
Â
DVCPRO HD 720p25:
This Easy Setup is used for native editing of DVCPRO HD 720p25
footage imported from Panasonic P2 cards. Final Cut Pro does not support
DVCPRO HD 720p25 capture from or output to tape.
Â
DVCPRO HD 1080pA24:
This Easy Setup is used to capture and output DVCPRO HD
1080p24 footage with advanced pulldown (2:3:3:2) to and from tape. This format uses
the same advanced pulldown technique as NTSC 24p. The footage on tape is actually
recorded at 29.97 interlaced frames per second (fps), but Final Cut Pro removes
redundant fields, resulting in a 23.98 fps progressive scan QuickTime movie on
your scratch disk.
Panasonic P2 Support
Compatibility issues with Panasonic P2 camcorders have been resolved. For more
information, see the Panasonic P2 chapter in the HD and Broadcast Formats document,
available from the Final Cut Pro Help menu.
Sony XDCAM HD Editing Support
Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 supports native editing of XDCAM HD. Ingest and export of XDCAM
HD video requires additional software from Sony. You can find out more about the
XDCAM and XDCAM HD formats at http://www.sony.com/xdcamhd.
For a thorough explanation of how to use XDCAM HD with Final Cut Pro:
Â
In Final Cut Pro, choose Help > HD and Broadcast Formats and refer to the chapter
about XDCAM HD.
Â
See http://bssc.sel.sony.com/BroadcastandBusiness/markets/10014/docs/
FCP_XDCAMHD_whitepaper.pdf.
Real-Time Support for MPEG IMX at 30 Mbps
Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 solves an issue that allows real-time playback and effects support for
MPEG IMX at 30 Mbps (this includes both NTSC and PAL standards).


There's more, just keep reading, especially pages 6 & 7 about live video scope output. Actually, just keep reading - I'm sitting in a theater at FantasticFest, about to watch Shinobi...

-mike

Phorum :: FCP FAQ

All hail acronym only headlines!

This is the Los Angeles Final Cut Pro User Group's Frequently Asked Questions page. A handy reference for a lot of FCP questions you might have.

-mike

New technology could nip DVD format war in the bud�|�Tech&Sci�|�Technology�|�Reuters.com

Engineers at Warner Brothers have come up with a way, they claim, to put all three video formats on one disc - a standard DVD on one side (single or dual layer I wonder? Dual layer necessary to get a decent sized film at good bitrate on there), Blu-ray on the upper layer of the other side on a semi-reflective surface, and HD DVD on a deeper/lower layer of the same disc. By focusing at different heights on the same disc, it could either read the upper Blu-ray layer, or see through to the HD DVD layer beneath it.

Sounds interesting in theory, iffy in practice, and might be size limiting - only single layer potentially for the 3 formats, which might not be enough space to get high enough quality (high enough bitrate) streams on the layers.

The idea is One Disc To Rule Them All, and in the dark pressing line, Bind Them.

While it would be a more expensive disc to manufacture than any single format, it would be cheaper than making three individual discs according to the article, and they claim it would have decent yields (percentage of viable discs of those manufactured).

At that point, it fixes the studios' problem of what format to produce a movie on, and also for consumers - just pick up the disc, it'll play on whatever.

That then leaves the manufacturers of these playback devices in a bit of a quandary - if the same content is available from the same studios on the same disc, and is likely to be encoded using the same codecs for both HD formats...so why is it again that there are two competing formats?

It is so stupid.

-mike

UPDATE WEDNESDAY - there's two issues going on here, one is inaccurate scopes, the other is difficulties getting unclipped YUV codec data out of FCP and into Compressor, After Effects, etc. FCP 5.1.2 has changed scopes, so that issues MIGHT be put to bed, but not sure (is still possible to have zero or 100% luma with chroma in it, something you wouldn't want for broadcast). There's a wealth of good info in the comments, HIGHLY suggest you read it. The other is a problem exporting YUV codec Quicktimes and getting non-clipped values into other apps, as well as not suffering a gamma shift. The gamma shift issue is purportedly addressed in this release, but I haven't had a chance to test it yet, but the clipping problem has been a longstanding issue in QuickTime and is unlikely that they've fixed it, maybe QT 8 with FCP 6 at NAB 2007? That's just me wishing/dreaming, though. End Update.

Creative Workflow Hacks � Blog Archive � Inaccurate Scopes in Final Cut Pro Workaround?

Read this one and shiver, my friends! I've been hearing more and more on the grapevine about inaccurate software scopes, be in in FCP, FTHD, AE, whatevah.

(FCP 5.1.2 is supposed to have more accurate scopes, BTW, due Any Day Now).

(I've also heard complaints about inconsistent blacks with FTHD)

The fix proposed is to export via QuickTime, which will clamp/clip/limit blacks to 9 IRE and whites to 100 IRE, suspected to do so in part because it gets converted t RGB in the process. Useful for broadcast limits, but for format conversions, it clips your whites! This is bad! Or at least, it is bad if you're trying to convert from one format to another and hold the color the same - such as converting a compressed format to uncompressed for a cleaner post workflow - I've been recommending to folks that shot HDV, for instance, to Media Manage to Uncompressed for their final online. The good part about that is that it'll NOT recompress the results to HDV after coloring, titles, transitions, etc., but for color work, it'll ditch any values below 0 IRE and above 100 IRE...in other words, it is tossing potential shadow detail and (esp. bad for video) highlight detail out the window in the conversion.

When I was using After Effects to remove 3:2 pulldown from the HD-SDI captured material from the Texas HD Shootout, apparently I was doing the same kind of clipping.

So for those trying to get the best possible results, to export to QuickTime is to truncate some of the values in your source material, and That Is Bad - you're potentially clipping shadow and highlight detail.

I've also been told, and need to do some testing to verify, that After Effects does this to any footage you bring in, again something to do with conversion to RGB. Ugh. Is there a correct, perfect, non-destructive solution out there? I don't know, but I need to look into it further.

So it appears that:

1.) Exporting to QuickTime will do this truncation
2.) After Effects may do this truncation on import, in terms of how it handles, interprets, and displays QT media brought in
3.) FCP's scopes (as of v5.1.1) are known to have some problems
4.) No idea if the recently released QT 7.1.3 does anything about this

I can guess where this might come from - for most folks, it is desirable to limit to legal values. But at times, you WANT the illegal values as valuable data to be manipulated in post. That QuickTime is "helping" you by clippng values is a pain for the pros, even if great for the everyday users.

I had previously done some codec testing (remember when I was bitching about 10 bit codecs in AE?), and had made a 10 bit, white to black ramp in AE, and exported and reimported it with success. That was for content generated synthetically within AE...but now I'm thinking/wondering if acquired media, created outside of AE, with values over 100 IRE, is getting auto clipped or tone scaled or something inside AE.

Anybody have any knowledge on this? Click on the comment link below to contribute.

AppleInsider | Intel roadmap reveals quad-core Xeon details [u]

Article on the quad core chips, pricing, and scheduled release. It is likely that Apple will use the quad core chips in upcoming machines, MAYBE to be introduced at MWSF...which is why I'm not buying a Mac Pro yet, when in X # of months there will be one with TWICE the number of processors involved.

Some preliminary test results are pretty impressive, too, but indicate that the chip development is moving faster than most software development - software is playing catchup to include support for multi-processor and now multi-core CPUs - so having more processors or cores doesn't always accelerate your applications - case in point, Final Cut Pro doesn't hook into all the goodness of my Quad G5 for maximum processing power on almost all tasks.

-mike

Thanks Bruce for sending in the link!

Mel Gibson - Apocalypto - Movies - New York Times

Mel Gibson came to FantasticFest Saturday night and showed Apocalypto, and as I heard it conveyed, when somebody in the audience asked about whether Mel saw any similarities between the film and the current war situation, Gibson said that sending kids off to war in Iraq was akin to the human sacrifice scenes, or words to that effect. Interesting that the press is picking up on the analogy, which the questioner started.

In any case, a bit more about the film in the article, which folks who attended are telling me looked beautiful, and I know it was shot on the Genesis camera.

-mike

At the Photokina show (still photography oriented), both Apple and Adobe updated their shipping or soon to ship RAW image manipulation tools. Apple updated Aperture (AppleInsider Aperture 1.5 report), and Adobe released beta 4 of Lightroom (AppleInsider report on Lightroom b4). Apple's update is a free Software Update for all Aperture 1.x users, the Adobe software is beta and pricing and exact ship date are still TBD.

New features include better sharpening tools, more accurate white point and color curve controls, etc.

Now, this is good news for the stills folks, but why does this matter for us video folk?

After spending the week at IBC with the Red gang and talking about their compressed RAW workflow, and talking to Ari and his gang at NAB about the already being field tested similar workflow for their Silicon Imaging camera, and then reading about how Geoff on CML is shooting with the SI mini-head, the benefits of RAW are very much in my mind.

Read the above linked articles, and note how much control they are giving you over your source image. Note how much control you have over the image, color, size, white point, etc.. Now think about Redcine software, which has been getting some online guff for using that name (come on folks, it is a METAPHOR to help people understand it, not LITERALLY a telecine machine/software!). Do you want that kind of control over your video? I do!

Jason Rodriguez, one of the guys working on/with the Silicon Imaging camera project, had some well reasoned thoughts and concerns about working with RAW images for video workflows. Speed is a major concern - if it takes 1 second per frame (semi-arbitrary guess) to process that 4K compressed (or even uncompressed) RAW to a usable RGB frame, including demosaic, scaling, color correction, white point, etc., it'd take about a day to process an hour of footage on a single machine. Ouch! You'd need a render farm to keep up with your dailies! Unless you had a deck to play it out in real time, in which case you better have a system to track metadata from that playback matched to the files on hard drive. He raises good questions about how to track it all.

Cineform, a product that has been shiping for some time, now has a RAW codec (what Silicon Imaging is using) that decodes on the fly - no transcoding/Redcine necessary, you can edit with it natively - this is a very good thing. The only drag is that it is Premiere Pro ONLY, so no Avid or Final Cut (or anybody else) until/unless you transcode it...much the way Red is proposing to transcode REDCODE into any codec installed on your computer.

UPDATE: Jason Rodriguez emailed me to ask me to include a link to the Cineform RAW workflow PDF, so here it is. It discusses many of the same topics as I have written about here, but at greater length, with diagrams, and discusses Cineform's RAW codec, and how by maintaining access to the RAW data all the way through post (using the native codec in the NLE during color correction, for instance) for maximum quality, by not doing any destructive editing/decision making until as late as possible in the process. End update.

I look at Redcine, and the first part of the process sounds a LOT like Aperture - demosaic, set your white point, use curves to color correct. I also note that my friend Frederic Haubrich, co-creator of Lumiere HD software, is a friend of Red and was present in Amsterdam as well - look at the theory behind LumiereHD - if you have an incompatible format, transcode it to something usable, scale it to something workable for offline, and be able to relink to high res source when you're ready for your online.

So in the end, I'd expect Redcine to thematically resemble a mashup of Aperture and LumiereHD in terms of workflow and theory.

Now thunk on that - power, control, choices. Hmmm...

Of course, Silicon Imaging is getting closer to shipping a camera that records and edits in a similar fashion, but with native editing (preferable!) albeit with the "also ran" NLE in terms of popularity with editors. Premiere Pro is a decent piece of software, and for anything less than highest end VFX work I really like the idea of tight integration with After Effects (I used AE to make a living for 6-8 years). But when I talk to indie editors, the usual answer as to which NLE is "Avid or Final Cut?" - everybody else feels like the "E.) Other" category. Cineform has been making noises about coming to the Mac, and I was bummed to not hear anything at IBC about this (unless I missed something, Davids?), at which point the Silicon Imaging as a package becomes a whole lot more interesting.

The takeaway - I think recording data not tape in a non-RAW format is going to be an excellent choice going forward, and wavelet based compression seems to be a good way of going about it if you can't readily/easily/viably record uncompressed onboard. Then, in post, the ability to manipulate at the RAW level - which gives access to ALL the data recorded at the sensor head, without reducing quality (no drop in color sampling, no clipping of channels to set white point, no horizontal scaling down, etc.) regardless of compressed or not, is the way forward for image quality and maximum, fine control for cine-style applications (but not necessarily for broadcast type projects with their need for faster turnaround).

Companies like Silicon Imaging (about to ship) and Red (scheduled to ship next year) are leading the way forward - maximum flexibility (variable frame rates), capturing maximum information from sensor, recording as data (possibly with wavelet compression); and I hope others join then as time goes by.

OK, enough ruminations for today - time to go watch more movies at FantasticFest!

-mike

PS - I should be fair and mention the modified DVX100A project that records right off the chip, the Andromeda, as well, but it isn't a truly HD camcorder, and doesn't record RAW Bayer pattern data, but did do many Good Things Right early on. As well as the unreleased Kinetta camera, which plans to record to RAW as well, but I haven't heard anything new in months on that front.

I didn't end up seeing anything yesterday - between car troubles, the rain, and an out of town commitment, no movies. Turns out Tideland was not an audience favorite - no one I spoke to really liked it, some hated it, most optimistic comment was that it was a very intense movie, and you had to be into that kind of intensity to like it. Too bad, I was hoping it would be good. I still have no opinion since I haven't seen it.

Today, my first movie was Origin: Spirit of the Past a japanime movie from Studio Gonzo. In classic second tier anime style, you have no idea what exactly is going on, and there are big chunks of the plot that never make sense, and the characters get happy and laugh at the most non-Western rational moments. But the movie involves killer sentient plants run amok raised on the moon that come to earth and make the forests turn on mankind. There's a water shortage, reason not quite clear, and there are Druids, which may or may not be half plant, some wood sprite looking hot anime female creatures that can bestow mighty powers, and a girl who has been in suspended animation for 300 years. There are some good bits, good visuals, but not a great film.

Sounds like I should have gone to see Isolation, a classic "genetically mutated experment run amok and taking down the scientists and locals" genre film, or Unrest, about 1st year surgeons and a woman looking into why her cadaver doesn't seem at rest - the division between body and soul gets explored. Heard good word of mouth on both of those.

My second film of the day was Piano Tuner of Earthquakes. From the Brothers Quay, who do all that amazing stop action figurine stuff. They should have stuck to that - the film was a mess, and a slow mess at that - I fell asleep a couple of times before walking out.

The winner of the day, and my favorite film of the festival so far, was Starfish Hotel, about a salariman in Japan whose wife dissapears, and his world and the world of his favorite mystery writer get closer and closer together. Throw in a dosh of Donnie Darko (mysterious guy in rabbit suit) and David Cronenburg (mutating people) for an interesting and well done mix. In Japanese with subtitles but entirely worthwhile. Well shot, well acted, interesting plot, etc.

My last film of the day was Simon Says, from the director of Harry and the Hendersons that wanted to escape that "kid friendly" label in the worst way and succeeded. What would otherwise be a run of the mill parody of "kids go camping in woods, fail to recognize all signs to leave, and get picked off one by one" is saved by the portrayal of the bad guys (twins) by the very singular Crispin Glover. Not his best work by far, but his flair is what elevates this movie. Crispin rides the line between joyous genre overacting and well, just bad overacting. But this movie definitely has a sense of humor, and such moments as, and picture this in Simpson's Comic Book Guy Voice: "Best. Pet Death. EVER."

In theory I should be sitting down right now to watch "the best Swedish vampire movie ever" - Frostbite, but I'm not up for it (still not 100% well), seen enough movies for one day, and I'm sure I can catch it on Netflix at some point.

I'm loving the scheduling motif at FantasticFest - an easy start - no movies until 1pm on Sunday, so sleep in, have some nice breakfast tacos (mine at Nueva Onda), and mosey over at your leisure - no scrambling out of bed to make the first show.

Ran into Tim McCanlies today, chatted briefly with him about high end digital cameras - the Genesis (Apocalypto was shot on it), and told him a bit about Red but tried not to get into Glowing Eyed Passionate Mode about it - I o'ergeeked on him once a coupla years ago and STILL flinch at the thought. Live and learn, mistakes you make as you go.

Turns out last night's sneak was a work print of Apocalypto...with Mel Gibson in attendance doing a Q&A. Missed it, durn it, had to be out of town. BUT...

I also got some wink wink nudge nudge about Wednesday's special screening - it is something else, but I'm excited to see what it'll be, it is from a known friend of one of the organizer's, and I'll be in line ready to roll for it.

Other good word of mouth from others I talked to: Unrest, Frostbite, Severance, maybe the Hamster Cage, Isolation, and The Host.

-mike

Break-in... - The Digital Video Information Network

There was a break in at Red's offices last night - "there was a break-in at the RED offices last night. Everything they took was camera and camera file related. " according to Jim Jannard, company founder. They "lost computers, files and drives plus prototypes that we would have preferred to keep in-house"

Industrial espionage? Sounds like it. The plot thickens...this is too interesting to not report! They are offering $100K reward. If you hear anything, sound off. Why do I get the feeling no prints will be found?

Also similar info over on dvxuser.com

-mike

Studio Daily | Panasonic Announces the Availability of the AJ-HD1400 AC/DC-Operated DVCPro HD VTR

Pretty much like the 1200A, but can run off batteries, has more editing functions, and is same price. Still a half rack width, so small and one hand transportable.

-mike

UPDATE: They are slowly rotating out the images for higher resolution ones - there is now a 4K of the girl with the bubblegum.

RED / Gallery

...has a bubblegum shot, the two women lighting a cigar shot, the watch shot, and the car shot. Just got an email these were up, figured you'd want to know. Best viewing gamma and color profile mentioned at bottom of the page. 4K images due to be posted soon.

-mike

Engadget is launching Engadget HD, which consists of their Borg-like assumption/consumption of HDblog. Good for all, I'll be checking it regularly.

But they first article I see when I fire it up?

Why hasn't Apple included a Blu-ray drive in any of their computers? - Engadget HD

What I wrote in their comments, in an obviously cranky mood:

OK, this is totally, TOTALLY stupid, folks. Apple is in the downloadable media business, TRUE. And I think they are going to have HD content, TRUE (and I've been predicting an iTV like gadget for over a year on hdforindies.com).

BUT...I think the rason why there isn't a Blu-ray drive are manifold:

1.) I think Apple wants to intro a burner, not just a player - so wait for MWSF for that move, possibly paired with an 8 proc system

2.) they could go third party, but they have their favorites - they historically like to start with Pioneer - see past machines

3.) To NOT include a Blu-Ray (even the player) just to try to encourage downloadable, lesser quality content is just dumb. Dumb idea to think of, dumber to do.

4.) Blu-ray movie support is non-trivial - look at the home entertainment PC sector - you have to have a secured monitor, a secured optical disk, a secured OS, a secured player, etc. Not all the pieces are in place yet, and Apple doesn't like to release partial or incomplete or difficult to use solutions. When they ship a drive, it'll WORK, and not just be "sorry, data only, no movies" or some such nonsense.


..and then I went and read Robert Cringley's article and then hmm....maybe there is a reason. I could see Apple playing "give me this I'll give you that" with Sony over "sell us movies, and HD movies eventually over iTunes in exchange for us buying, using, and promoting Blu-ray in our computers" - that is completely believable. But I doubt that Apple would be holding back on high def optical discs purely to promote sales of their own movie format over that of another. Because unless Apple has H.264 (yes they do), MPEG-2 (maybe), AND VC-1 (seriously doubt it) decoding tech in the iTV, you wouldn't be able to stream Blu-ray or HD-DVD content (still encoded) to the iTV for decode and playback (although that would be a killer feature to have).

As for the USB port, iSight, movie sharing...I dunno, I'll have to thunk on that some more. (But moviemakers absolutely DO have to pay to have people watching a movie in another movie - that part is wrong).

-mike

Studio Daily | 16x9 Mounting System for FireStore Recorders

....ostensibly about a new mounting kit for the FS-4 and FS-100 to put'em on an HVX200.

But I also wanted to take a moment and say that while I recommended the product early on, I've been hearing numerous complaints about the product in field usage.

Item 1: flimsy/breakable FireWire connectors - too easy to break, or inconsistent connection concerns - this is a fixable concern, just industrial design/manufacturing

Item 2: Because the drive is formatted in a particular way that is inexpensive to support and works cross platform, you're unfortunately stuck with a 2GB maximum file size limitation - and this is a real problem when recording 1 GB/min HD! So every two minutes or so, it starts a new clip. Now, footage is recorded seamlessly, but back in the edit bay, it shows up as a ton of 2 minute clips. "No big deal, just put'em together." any producer will say.

"Go to hell, YOU do it then!" any (uppity) editor will say - let's assume you're doing a lot of short takes for narrative stuff - if your takes are under 2 minutes, you never care.

Let's say you're shooting interviews for a doc, and you were busy all day, shooting 10 30ish minute interviews. Each interview is going to be in 15ish pieces. Which glob of clips goes with which interview? Where was that break point where you took a break and then started shooting again? Good luck trying to edit those - the only feasible way is to marry them all into one larger clip...chewing up more prep time.

Nobody wants that.

What we REALLY need is a a sturdier device without the 2GB file size limitation. They need new firmware or more likely, a new version of the hardware that won't have that problem.

-mike

I've fallen behind, so here's some quickie info on the new HVR-V1U camcorder, which Sony is claiming does an honest to Higher Power 1080p24 progressive image on HDV. It is a kissing cousin of the HVR-V1E that was intro'd at IBC the other week, which I was lame/lazy/too busy to blog on.

Info:

-3 CMOS, not CCD
-1/4" not 1/3" imagers (!!!!)
-same imaging system as the FX-7
-but has XLRs & other upgrades
-the relationship between the FX1 and Z1U is much the same between the FX7 and V1U
-nearly identical to the V1E Sony intro'd at IBC, but the V1E is PAL - does 25p & 50i
-this one does 1080p24 (really 23.976), 1080i60, and 480i60 (so yeah DV too, and I'm betting plays HDV as DV out as well for offline)
-is first model Sony calls pro with 3 CMOS instead of 3 CCDs
-timecode over FireWire (FX-7 lacks)

-stuff the V1U has the FX-7 doesn't:"Cinematone Color, Knee, Black Compensation, color bars, aspect and safety makers, 6 assignable buttons, and more"
-see comparison chart for differences
-Sony also intro'd the HVR-DR60 HDD 60 GB hard drive recorder, uses same batteries as the camera, records about 4.5 hrs of DV/HDV
-camera and recorder expected in December

Mike's Comments: Well, I haven't seen any images from this camera, but it sounds promising. True 1080p24, assuming no loss in vertical resolution in progressive mode, is certainly a boon. I read somewhere that it has 960x1080 res with pixelshift, so that should help the resolution of the device. I'm not clear as to whether the recently added 1080p24 HDV preset in FCP will support this new camera since the camera isn't even out yet, so I'm guessing not. Since the camera doesn't debut until December anyway (if I'm recalling correctly), then it is entirely possible that IF it doesn't work with FCP out of the box, we'd be waiting perhaps until NAB in April for native NLE support.

But I'm guessing this should make for a very interesting camera for indies, esp. the doc folks - the ability to fit an hour of 1080p24 on a cheap tape is definitely a good thing (not that Canon isn't doing that already with their pricier XL H1).

The only serious concern I have is over the imager size - it is 1/4" not 1/3" for the CMOS. If CMOS is supposed to be cheaper to produce anyway, why drop the size and make the marketing concern (or give marketing points to the competitors?). Douglas Spotted Eagle is saying it works fine and isn't a concern, but I'll have to wait and see.

But this is certainly a weclome addition to the range of indie choices.

Just extrapolating based on specs, I'm thinking this will be a competitor for the JVC GY-HD100U/110U, which lists for about $1200 more, but has interchangeable lenses, which the V1 series does not - about right for the money difference. But of course, we'll have to wait and see pictures to determine for ourselves.

This article was drawn from, and further info can be found in:


Sony Introduces HVR-V1U and HDD Unit in US - Pro News - News - Professional Camcorders - Camcorderinfo.com

Josh Oakhurst's commentary

Sony press release on it

HDVInfo.net article

Studio Daily article

So after some transportation difficulties (involving Your Reporter riding his bike to the Alamo, good thing it is close in the Texas heat, see what I do for you folks? Other than go to Amsterdam and see movies? : ) ), I saw the tail end of Inside - I had met the director yesterday - it appears to have been shot on DV (do I smell a DVX100B? I think I do), and I'd say it was an interesting premise (the voyeur who gets invited inside, the tables turned, and what motivates people to need beyond the rational). But it is also a good first attempt, but not ready for prime time. A few tweaks of performances needed, definitely a tighter edit, and shot better would make this a for real deal. I could see this being the starter kit that carries it into "OK, now we'll get some real actors and cameras and do this for real." I'm sure they put their all into it, it just wasn't that much all to be had budgetarily it looks like. Plus some unintentional laughs from the audience. We get it, move on. But the core idea is valid, it just needs work and better execution.

After that, I got to see Renaissance, which is one of the movies I'd most been looking forward to. If you haven't seen the trailer, check it out (it's late and I'm too lazy to link, REAL movie fans would take the trouble to find it, capiche?). Again, fortuitously, I ran into Paul Alvarado and told him how much I was looking forward to this movie. Turns out he hadn't seen it either - they booked this one based purely on the trailers and online snippets available - they badly wanted to see it too.

If you haven't seen the trailer, you should definitely check it out - the look is GORGEOUS, and what Sin City really should have been. The whole thing isn't black and white, it is black OR white - it is all high contrast 3D renderings, driven by motion captured human performance. But the beautiful thing about it is the details revealed from the blacks. There are so many mesmerizing scenes in this film, it is great just to watch light crawl across an inky black surface to reveal lovely delicate minutiae of detail. A sweeping car headlight reveals the forward edge of every cobblestone, and as light falls across black hair you see fine lines of individual hairs' details. Even light on a human face - instead of a cold, computer rendered hard edge, the line is broken up softly. The texture and modelling teams have done an amazing job here.

And perhaps that is the problem - the film is a bit too in love with its own look, and lingers overlong in some takes (and I say that as a former 3D animator who knows how much work these things are). The storyline involves an all too predictable arc, and jumps around a bit, but gives us lovely and/or awesome set pieces to admire, or characters to study how light falls across their face. I don't want to talk too much about the plot, but some of the early takes on it about "Sin City meets the Matrix" aren't too far off the mark. But at least it does take a humanist approach to the technology it revels in, and takes an honest look at where true power comes from. If you watch the ad that opens the movie, you can pretty much tell where the whole thing is going - I did, and all I knew was what I'd seen in the trailer.

After that, we went to go see Zhest, which the film iteself identified as "Hardcore." The film is about a woman journalist that gets pulled into circumstances beyond her control, with madmen, abandoned towns, hero cops, hero masked men, hallucinations and more. Oh, and the whole thing is in Russian with subtitles.

It is a bit disjointed, and there's probably tons of subtext and symbology that we Americans miss entirely, but there was more THERE there in this film than there was with Renaissance. Issues of truth, madness, the way of the world, what we can do about it, etc. all come up.

I'll need to cogitate on this one a bit before I have more to say on it.

I'm still not feeling well, Doreen says my cough is getting worse, so I skipped the midnight showing of Street Trash - I figure I can always catch it on DVD later. Haven't even figured out what I'm going to go see tomorrow yet.

-mike

So FantasticFest began on Thursday - after returning from Amsterdam and Prague late late late last night, I slept in and took care of a little bit of back home now bidness, and headed over to the ever-so-conveniently-close Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar location, not 7 minutes from my house.

We walked in and immediately ran into Paul Alvarado, a friend of mine and one of the organizers of the festival (as are Harry Knowles of AintItCoolNews.com and Tim League, founder of Alamo Drafthouse). It couldn't have been a better setup - I say hi to Paul, introduce him to my date (Doreen), and Paul introduces me to Jeff Mahler, direct of Inside that shows today (Friday) at 4pm. Inside actually looks to be an interesting and intelligent film for the genre (based on the trailer). Which isn't exactly the case for the opening night film, Texas Chainsaw Massacre - The Beginning
This is the creation story for the series - where they came from. We learn about where Leatherface came from (literally), who shaped him (R. Lee Ermey of Full Metal Jacket fame plays his father figure), why the family is cannibalistic, etc. And, of course, there are teenagers to be Done Away With. Jordana Brewster (whom I recall from The Faculty, but she was also in The Fast & The Furious among others) plays the Designated Hotty Who Might Survive, she runs around and screams a lot, but at least has gumption and isn't just a Designated Victim. Harry Knowles introduced the film, and was just giddy with delight talking about how in this film, you get to root for the Bad Guys, and get to watch what a psychotic, cannibalistic R. Lee Ermey would do to a draft dodger in 1969. A scary enough thought, indeed.

Perhaps it is because I'm still getting over from being half sick in Europe, or maybe I'm just getting Too Old, but I think I'm falling out of the demographic that is into this new style, started with films like Saw and Hostel. I thought the most interesting part of the evening was the Q&A after the film, with Harry Knowles moderating, with Jordana Brewster, R. Lee Ermey, the big muscley guy that plays Leatherface (and honestly, is anyone else going to think of him in any other way?), and the director/producers of the film. They talked about wanting to take the crown back for the franchise in terms of King of Gore, so the movie falls directly into the same genre as Saw or Hostel, both of which made me squirm in my seat due to their direct, unrelenting, unflinching portrayal of not just gore but overt torture. Perhaps it isn't just the realism of the gore, but also the realistic setting of the gore - I'm just not into it. I thoroughly enjoyed Slither (go rent it on DVD if you haven't seen it), which has some deliciously nasty but funny bits (flying through the air and slithering along the ground). Perhaps because it was all in fun and known to be a farce. But for The Beginning, the producers wanted to reclaim the crown, and that places the gore bar (flying) rather high. I'm just not interested, or enjoy watching, things pushed that far - a running chainsaw through the chest, a fillet of meat taken off a live guy's arm in direct camera view, etc. - label me Old Fart, but it has its limits for fun's sake. I was more into the cinematography and color treatment - once again Stefan Sonnenberg of Company 3 did his thing here, giving the film a dark, gritty, dirty, grody feel to every frame. And I think in this day and age, the cinematographer/colorist relationship is changing the look of films - how much is cinematographer and how much is colorist? Both have ample control over the look to create something either plain or intense. Some very plain Jane, pedantic stuff can be made quite striking with a good colorist. Or the cinematographer nails it in camera and the colorist just tweaks it or barely touches it - as viewers, you can't really tell. Cinematographers have been getting the credit, but colorists hopefully will start getting their due more and more over time.

It is interesting to note that they DID have to pull back on the gore in three scenes in particular, and talked about "the MPAA didn't want so much flying meat in the air" during certain chainsaw attacks. But the way he discussed it - each time saying "dont' worry, that'll be on the DVD" - clearly indicates that for many filmmakers, the definitive version IS the DVD. But DVD is so low res, we say. But ahh...high def DVDs are coming...so if we can get a 1920x1080 good looking version, that makes for a decent reference version of the film for consumers to watch at home. "Director's Cut" doesn't always make it into theaters, and very few films are re-released as the director's cut, but the DVD gives an easy way to release it as intended.

The producers said that their next project is to do a creation story for Friday the 13th, recast in this modern (slit) vein, with the new full-on gore style. Hmm. For fans of the genre, it'll be a full-on experience, but I may have to skip that one.

It is perhaps not just the style, but the emotional intent of these films - in the Old Style, there would be teenagers who would Sin (Sex, drugs, rock 'n roll, whatevah), and the Scary Dude With Sharp Painful Thingy was a moral force of correction, kinda nailing (sometimes literally) our American dichotomy of relishing in vice but feeling guilty about it - the teenagers would sin, or the bikers would be a**holes, and Choppy The Wonder Boy would come along and punish them for us. In this new style, however, the filmmakers directly and intentionally build up a rapport with the victims, and then take them down. The scene with the protective older brother war veteran getting nailed down to the torture table and taken slowly apart was horrific...and therein lies the line - is it BETTER that we care about him when his face gets peeled/pulled off, or is it WORSE that we do - or is it BOTH? And which of those is more desirable as a moviegoer? For me, it's worse, and far too the worse. Label me a wussy, or old, but I'm not into it. Now, if it was a "We've seen no conclusive evidence cigarettes are harmful" tobacco industry weasel, hand me the cigar cutter, and I'll ask him a health related question ten times...maybe eleven. In any case, I'd say this is definitely going to be fodder for a slew of social observer dissertations etc....

Not to sound a downer, esp. since this IS FantasticFest, and horror is a major part of the lineup, but this one wasn't for me. Others were definitely into it though, and it is a treat to watch R. Lee Ermey go off his rocker.

I skipped the opening party, a tactical error, but one I felt was necessary to rest up and be ready for the rest of the week.

Other stuff -

I like how they've scheduled the lineup - movies start around 3:30 or 4pm during the week, and around noonish on weekends, so you can definitely take your time and do other stuff during the day, be it work or play.

They've definitely nailed how to do a website for a film festival - for each film there is a page with images, trailers, a writeup, and all times the film is showing, reviews/ratings from other attendees, etc. You can view the movies by title or by looking at the schedule, and there's a little +/- sign next to each movie's showing to add or subtract it from your own schedule. So it is cake to go through and flag all the ones you're interested in seeing, and to then see the schedule with all your selections flagged in grey to stand out from the background - makes figuring out what to see much better - you can skim down and find the stuff you're interested in, and if there is a conflict, click on the title to see when else it is showing. I hope this trend continues, the old days at SXSW of flipping through the maddening catalog to several different places to figure out what to see next is hopefully a gristly bit Leatherface has nailed to a wall somewhere after excising it with a brutal thrust from a rusty knife. (See? It CAN be fun!)

Today, for instance, I'm looking forward to seeing Inside at 4pm, then Renaissance (that gorgeous black and white animated thing I linked to a few weeks back), which screens at the same time as the new Terry Gilliam film, Tideland. But Tideland shows again tomorrow during the day, so I'll catch it then. I still need to figure out what to see at the 9pm slot (maybe Zhest?), but if I'm still up a retrospective screening of Street Trash could be fun to catch at midnight.

More later, I'll see if they have broadband at the theater and can do semi-live blogging from there...

-mike at FantasticFest

PS-my goal is to see a few movies each afternoon/evening, but keep pecking away on my work, other blogging (still have pics and writeups from IBC & Europe, as well as Matrox MXO review and LA trip writeups to do), so those will hopefully get woven into my FantasticFest coverage.

-mike

Got in late last night after a 27 hour travel day, slept like a rock at the bottom of the ocean.

Tons of emails, physical mail, bills, client emails to follow up on, and Fantastic Fest starts tonight, so I'll be eeking back into my regular blogging existence, and catching up on my world over the next several days.

But I'm back, and back on it.

-mike

Reservations to close... - The Digital Video Information Network

Quickie note I came across as I catch up on my surfing:

Jim posted over on DVInfo some new info:

-Red Zoom Lens (18-85mm) will be $9500 (under $10K as promised)
-reservations will be taken starting next week
-reservations for ALL Red products (Red One, prime, and zoom) will close Oct. 31st

More details on the thread linked above.

Hey all -

If anyone cares, I've posted a few pictures from the last couple of days in Amsterdam and Prague, as well as a very short video of the 10 man beer cycle I saw on the square in Amsterdam (yeah, you gotta watch it).

So yesterday was my last day in Amsterdam - I slept in (still catching up from the prior week), then headed out to Vondelpark (pictured at left, click for high res) to meet Jose Nuno Pereia, a vlogger who introduced himself at the Red tent and wanted to interview me on camera. Vondelpark is one of the many beautiful parks in Amsterdam - SUCH a gorgeous and wonderful city. We hung out for the rest of the afternoon, shooting in two locations - one (fittingly enough) at the outdoor cafe at the film museum in the park, and then we moved to sit on a beautiful willow tree by the water away from the noise of the crowds...and then a family with three children decided to come play in the tree while we were taping. Oh well - it was all fun.

Jose designs websites by day and has a vlog (video blog) on the side, I think we got over an hour of tape about the nature of work vs. blog, blogging vs. journalism, the line between journalism and promotion, was I an embedded blogger for Red, what's up with Net Neutrality, the true challenge for indie filmmakers (distribution and especially marketing), etc. etc. etc. He's awaiting arrival of his new computer to edit footage shot with his tiny Sony HDV camcorder, I'll post a link when it is done.

In any case, a delightful day spent walking around the park, then over to a square to buy chocolates, wooden shoes, delftware, etc. for my neice and nephew and other family. We (Jose still hanging out) decided to go to a nearby cafe for Jose's recommended apple tart, and he called his girlfriend to see if she could meet us there. In a perfect bit of Amsterdam serendipity on a perfectly gorgeous Amsterdam day, Rosa (yeah her) was already there with a friend, so we enjoyed the day sitting out in the sun by a canal and drinking and eating cake until it was time for me to catch my flight.

A little drama later, I arrived at the airport ready to go to Prague. Note: neither the Netherlands nor the Czech Republic seem concerned in the least what I might carry out of or into their countries - nobody so much as looked at my bags with the plethora of electronics (although yes it did get X-rayed). I could even (gasp!) carry actual, harmless water on the plane without a problem. If only America could be such a land of the free....but I digress.

Arriving in Prague around 9pm, my first thought:

If ever I need a getaway driver for a bank heist (real or filmed), I'm gonna get me a Prague cab driver, based immediately and solely on the G's he pulled away from the curb and out of the airport, right past security. He was cruising at over 135 km/hr on the highway, sucking down slower traffic like nobody's business. He first took me the wrong Ramada, but he did it so fast and the fare was so cheap I didn't even care.

So today I woke up feeling like total hell - you know it isn't going to be a good hike and around and explore day when you get tired and dizzy taking a shower. So I decided to cut my losses and try to recover, and spent the day in bed, sleeping, reading the excellent David Foster Wallace's "Consider the Lobster" (LOVE and aspire to his use of vocabulary), and only ventured out for dinner on the touristy main street where my (chicken American that I am with no time to plan) Ramada is.

I'll probably not be able to sleep much tonight after slugging it all day, so I'll find some good things to do in Prague to add to my list I got from a native (thanks Misha!). I'm looking forward to exploring more - the city (or at least the very limited part of it that I've seen) has a beautiful sense of typography for signage, and as a someone who worked with digital type daily for years, it is a pleasure to see - I'll take lots of pictures.

Here's the view leaning out my hotel window that actually (gasp!) opens, click for high res:


I've also been cogitating on all the new stuff from Red and will have some analysis on it, as well as the limited number of other new things I saw, heard of, or read about from IBC, so I'll catch up on all that as well...when I feel like.

-mike, from Prague (and yeah, that's fun to write)

UPDATE: this picture doesn't show DVCPRO HD 720p25, nor 18 or 35mbit XDCAM HD. All I know is, this is a screen grab of the version they were showing at IBC, and yes "Show All" was checked. I also know that I specifically asked, and was specifically answered, by multiple people, that YES, 720p25 and 18 & 35mbit were going to be in the SHIPPING version, which doesn't ship for up to 30 days, so therefore they are clearly not done with it and didn't include non-functional/finalized formats in the build at the show. Somebody commented my screengrab must be "wrong" - it is simply a screen grab of what they were showing. I linked to an earlier post somewhere else that was from an Apple rep, and it specifically included the formats in question. Oh, and it WILL be possible to put 18, 25, & 35 mbit on the same timeline and have it work as expected. End update.

-------
IBC_Pick_Pics is a page I just punted up by power scrolling through iPhoto and clicking on stuff I thought was fun/interesting, tried to stay relevant, didn't always succeed.

Whatcha get:

First up, a screen grab (pictured here) of ALL the modes Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 supports out of the box (AJA/BMD/MXO obviously more if installed). FCP 5.1.2 is expected to be available within a month they said on the show floor at IBC.

Then some pictures of Red almost related and related stuff - the booth, MORE pictures of the camera itself out from under the glass, and some screen grabs from FXplug NoiseFactory product FXfactory - I'll have more to say about it later, just wanted it online.

This is just a quickie post today, I spent most of the day travelling for a 2 hour client meeting, it's 9pm and time to swap hotels (no rooms for me here) and get some dinner...hmmm....where to go!

: )

-mike

UPDATE: I posted pictures from the evening's outing - canals of Amsterdam and a tapas bar.

So after my quickie post last night, I zipped out the door with the Red team and we got thoroughly debauched. Sufficiently so that when I got back to my hotel room, it was after five am. Thus I slept through a goodly chunk of the day, blissfully unconscious while my body struggled to process toxins. Mmm....toxins......

So we got up, and the gob of us went out for lunch, and I enjoyed the view out the window. It truly is a worldly town - you can catch snippets of every language, you see people with variance in every human trait - except that the women are consistently thin with amazing cheekbones. In a city where everyone cycles, very few overweight people. Refreshingly different from America. Meanwhile, I of course have been hammering down more alcohol in the last week than I have in the last 6 weeks back home, and eating LOTS of excellent foot as well - I'm becoming more average American daily. But as for everyone else, it seems every few minutes a threesome of women walk by that you would seriously contemplate casting as the new Charlie's Angels. Wow, what a town.

Then we wandered down to the Anne Frank house & museum. Wandering through the well designed and structured tour, reading about who was in those rooms, and that most didn't make it.....incredibly moving. I couldn't help thinking about what it would have been like to have been there, to live in fear of being seen by a neighbor who might turn you over to certain death, to never go outside, to be afraid of running the sink for fear of discovery.

I saw her actual diaries, and seeing her handwriting, one can't help but to picture a young girl, dead silent in the middle of the day, paitently writing line after line.

A constant reminder: Never Again.

We came out of their quiet and contemplative, and Ted Schilowitz last, with some things from to take home to his kids. We wandered along the canals, finally having learned to stay out of the bike lanes and jump to when we heard the "ding!" of a bike bell, and enjoyed the beautiful day. We've been lucky - not a drop of rain at a time of year when it is often damp.

We looped back to the hotel and went out on one of the many canal dinner boats, sitting out under the stars, cruising along the canals, looping out into the harbor, drinking (only moderately, for once) wine and snacking on cheese, taking pictures of all the gorgeous architecture flowing past. There are whole rows of buildings leaning out over the street, and I've only seen one building braced as if there were any concern it would fall. Churches, the opera house, the harbor, house boats, bicycles catching the light leaning on the bridge railings, even the row houses - all beautiful in the evening light, and all so refreshingly different from what I'm used to.

I got some fun pictures I'll post as soon as I can.

Along for the ride were a few friends from other companies - one of which was Gary Adcock of Chicago, a consultant in the digital imaging, video, editorial, workflow, etc. space. Gary and I met a couple of years ago I'd guess, and we've chatted at shows in the past and always enjoy running into each other 2 or 3 times a year, but this was the first time we got to really sit and talk at length without the noise and time pressure of a trade show. Gary is looking into all kinds of cool things, and I asked if he'd be interested in writing up any of his thoughts to post on here and he seems into it, so I hope he has something to share with us soon on here. He's a smart fun boisterous enthusiastic guy; it'll be fun to hear what he has to say.

We went to a cool little tapas place with a friend Ted knows from his AJA days who used to live in Amsterdam. Very old world craft watching them prepare the food at the bar. Fun stuff.

Then back to the hotel to pack, tomorrow I have a one day trip out of the country to visit a new client. That all done, I type this at 2am, and have to get up in 5 hours to catch my flight. Should be a fun day.

-mike

2 minute blast before I head out to dinner -

So, last day of the show..whew!

Still busy in Red booth even though last day.

Stopped by Apple booth and got the full format list, got the scoop on FXplug format, saw some demo'd plugins.

Stopped by AJA booth and got update from Silicon Color on Final Touch.

Stopped by BlackMagic and got full scoop on their new products.

Saw the 8K projection demo - wow, but kinda.

Saw some more stuff I'll blog about tomorrow, after some glorious SLEEP!

-mike

UPDATE Wednesday: I left too soon! The press event was occurring as I was about to go to dinner, it sounded like it was wrapping up and I headed out to dinner before I heard about iTV, Apple's set top box to do all the stuff I've been conjecturing about for over a year. The only major difference is that I figured it'd be a wall wart Airport Express kind of a thing, but since they are clearly putting some graphics brains in it, it is a media extender fully fledged, so it has to be a bit bigger. I got the functionality right - wired or wireless streaming of movies downloaded to ANY computer, with a decoder box to handle the codecs. It doesn't ship until next year, but It clearly handles at LEAST H.264 if not MPEG-2. At $299 (again, in line with my predictions I'm pleased to say), it is expensive for a DVD player, but cheap IF it will decode HD content - the fact that it has an HDMI and component outputs bodes EXTREMELY well for that - it ALREADY drives an HD monitor, but why have SD content on an HD monitor (I can already here the Steve speech in my head). How they'll deliver that content at truly HD quality remains to be seen.

This is big, BIG news, as I expect Apple in the future to get more studios in, maybe offer indies access to distro online in a year or two, eventually scale up to HD, etc. etc. etc. all kinds of exciting stuff.

But I'm on vacation now, so this is what you get for the moment. More analysis to follow, but I'd rather go wander around Amsterdam and see great art than sit in the hotel and type - can you blame me?

: D

Anyway, details on the box:

Think Secret - Apple debuts updated iPods, iTunes 7, and movie sales; previews iTV

Macworld: News: Apple 'It's Showtime!' event -- live coverage

Live from the Steve Jobs Keynote -- "It's Showtime" - Engadget - this one's the best/most thorough with LOTS of pictures

Hands-on with the Apple iTV prototype - Engadget

AppleInsider | Apple previews iTV set-top device

AppleInsider | Apple introduces iTunes 7, previews iTV device

Apple unveils online movie store - Yahoo! News

Apple to release iTV video streaming box in 2007 - Engadget

New Apple Announcement - Blog Maverick - this is Mark Cuban's thoughts on the matter

END UPDATE

So, iTunes 7, Movie Store, Disney mostly movies. $13 this week, $15 for new movies next week. $10 for back catalog (on the money). 640x480 for TV shows and movies; so either the 16:9 stuff is stretched, letterboxed, or really only 640x360. If 640x480 and stretched horizontally, that is good. Dolby surround audio (I hadn't thought about audio), so that bodes well for the future hardware decoder box, because there are dolby decoder chips out there for cheap. No Airport Express A/V as I expected. New iPod, nano and shuffle. No "true" video iPod, as I expected.

Mike's Takeaway: not enough of a proposition for the movie thing. No living room viewability, same or higher price than DVDs in terms of actual street/Walmart pricing, lower than DVD quality. The nice thing is since the new iPods play the new movie sizes, you'll be able to rip your own to that quality too presumably.

Poor cost/benefit as compared to regular DVDs. But give me a living room solution, and make it HD, then it suddenly surges past the competition. Hell, the first round could even be 960x540 and doubled up, or 960x720 to claim "true" HD size (that's Varicam and HVX200 720p size).

I can't buy a movie, I'm in Amsterdam, the service is US only this year.

Somebody go buy one and Comment (use link below) on the quality and experience.

-mike

I've been thinking about Apple's expected announcement of a movie store, so here's my prediction:

1.) No Airport Express A/V device as I've written about in the past today.

2.) A true iPod video will be announced, widescreen - be nice if it had video outputs.

3.) downloadable movies will be the size of the new screen, maybe 480 pixels wide

4.) Hence movies will be below DVD resolution

5.) Prices will be as rumored- $15 for new, $10 for older movies

6.) This is a sucky price/value proposition - you can buy DVDs for same or less, rip'em with Handbrake, and have a DVD AND a digital asset for iPod etc.

7.) LATER, maybe WWDC, they might intro the Airport Express A/V type device. It'd have a wireless router with audio and video outputs, you download a movie to your Mac or PC, it gets streamed or wire connection to the AE A/V which decodes the signal and sends to TV, remote control signals are passed from AE A/V back to computer to start/stop/play/browse/etc.

8.) 6-12 months after that, an HD version, using a higher speed wireless interface for streaming

9.) At each step along the way, the res of the available movies increases, the price stays the same, the older/smaller version either goes away or is available at a lower price (probably just goes away though).

10.) Disney/Pixar movies to start - you can buy'em. If other studios, more likely rental model for those. More will follow, same as iTunes Store was.

All conjecture, of course I could be wrong, but it is always fun to guess.

My theory is that, as usual, Apple has waited to see if there is a possible market for something, will step into it slowly, one step at a time, and increase their presence and quality and commitment to match a bell curve of increasing demand over time for these kinds or products/services.

-mike

RED

Today was another very busy day in the booth - I was surprised, I figured it would slow down on Monday, but it didn't. It actually picked up at the end of the day - perhaps folks left work early to catch the end of the day at the show (tomorrow the show closes at 4pm...hooray! Last day!).

I've heard conflicting reports about show attendance - one person said attendance was down from last year, another said it was up. All I know is the Red booth has been busy, but that isn't everyone's story - see these pics taken in a short time span - it is all the booths around Red's, then Red's. Note attendance. Red also got mentioned in the "What Caught My Eye" thing at IBC - only 8 products or companies were selected from the entire show.

I've been seeing LOTS of representatives from other camera companies coming through - some are just friendly and curious, like the nice young engineering guy from Arri who just dug the configurability of the unit, while some others have very serious looks on their faces as we run through the specs. I keep noticing reps from certain companies coming in waves - first one guy, then two more, then a couple more...and the reps get older and the suits get nicer with each round.

I'm starting to round up my thoughts on this new design stuff and the new news, I'll post when I have time to finish my thinking and organize my thoughts.

As for other stuff at IBC:

-sat down and got a good demo of Assimilate's Scratch - after working with Final Touch HD, I can easily say this blows it away. Of course, the software is $60K, but it it rocks. I have lots of notes, will write'em up when I can.UPDATE: Lucas from Scratch emailed me, said is modular and runs from $12K for playback only up to 60K with all bells and whistles - they've yet to sell a $60K system, color correction config is usually $35K up to $60K.

Somebody's video from Red booth at IBC

From around the web:

-Macworld UK - New, 3-layer, combo DVD-HD DVD disc developed

-
Studio Daily | Ciprico Debuts Latest RAID Storage at IBC - Ciprico is releasing that crazy fast 40 2.5" drive array - 4x10 drive sleds (vPods) that EACH have their own 4Gbit controller, so it can do over 1GB/sec. Yes, over one gigaBYTE per second. (You could catch full res, full frame rate Red uncompressed RAW with that!). No price quoted, at NAB they were talking about north of $30,000. 6.4TB capacity I think. Odd that at the hotel in bed on 'net I can find out more than I could on show floor while working another's booth..

-HDBlog.net � Blog Archive � Blu-ray vs. HD DVD Take Two Blu-ray is catching up now that it is being encoded with VC-1 not MPEG-2.

-DVXuser.com -- The online community for filmmaking - View Single Post - Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 - the full official list of changes in FCP 5.1.2 - besides new format support, there is also BWF compatibility, Media Manager fixes, FXplug support (that is BIG!), and a host of other useful fixes. Free downloadable upgrade for 5.1.x users, due within a month. Oh, and here's a good pic of Easy Setups in FCP 5.1.2 - shows you supported stuff.

-Macworld: News: Sonnet offers SATA adapter for MacBook Pros - has two ports, they DO port multiply, so can hook up 2x5 drives, website not updated, $130, very very interesting. Makes all kinds of field data storage applications leap to mind.

-G-SPEED - Fibre Channel RAID�Protected Storage for Content Creation - G-Tech's G-Speed fibre channel disk array is shipping, it is interesting but as yet untested by me. Also they have the G-RAID mini - itty bitty 2 drive RAID.

Ba-deep ba-deep that's all folks!

yes I am loopy - late and tired.

-mike

IBC-2006-RedConfig

Folks were confused as to the configurability of the camera - so James reconfigured the prototype - took off the cage. If he'd had more time and shorter rods, he could have tucked everything in, folded the drive/battery mag underneath, or remounted it under the front, or something.

The idea is that the camera can be configured however you want it pretty quickly. Even with this prototype, took about 5 min to remove parts and reconfigure.

I'll have more pics later, I gotta go through and edit & label'em, it is nearly 3am - time to crash, 3-5 hours of sleep each of last few nights.

Thunk.

-mike

Some subjective notes on Red's IBC 4K footage - so in the Red booth they're showing it at 1080p, but in the D-Cinema screening, they had it on a 50+ foot screen running on a Sony 4K projector.

Some thoughts/commentary:

Shot 1:

What: an Oakley Time Tank watch, shot macro style

What makes it tough - it is an extremely shallow depth of field, it has some contrast challenges - shiny metal, detailed black surface of watch face, fine details in watch face and watch hands, shiny highlights.

What works: the extremely shallow depth of field shows off what is difficult/impossible for a smaller sensored camera to do - get this extreme depth of field. The dynamic range is broad but not impossible, but I personally watched Graeme Nattress abuse the crap out of it in post before I saw ANY noise AT ALL in the blacks. The watch face was totally blown to white at that point, the blacks were lifted very high, and THEN, FINALLY I started to see some noise in the blacks. Insanely clean as compared to other digital images I've seen. Also, by rotating the watch and leaving iris alone (and not buggering with it in post with windows etc.) you get a great revelation of dark to light detail - the highlights on the shiny metal bumps, the smooooooooooth contone on the rounded watch links, the fine texture of the watch links, the shadow detail as the watch face rotates away from the light....all good proof of image quality...plus the exellent sharpness of the image on the fine lines of the sweep hands, minute markers, etc. This really is one of the hero shots.

Shot 2: Joanne blows a bubble, Ted pops it

Joanne (Red employee) is blowing a bubblegum bubble against black, Ted is in background and leans up to pop it.

What makes it interesting: Ted is in background, so get proof of 35mm depth of field - he's out of focus. Good skin tone demo on Joanne. She has dark hair, so the black on black demo of shadow detail is good. Good detail in the bubble - you can see texture and thickness inconsistencies in the bubblegum. Ted leans in to pop it and travels in/out of focal plane. Smooth contone on bubble highlight. I defy anyone to call this a "plastic fantastic" digital image.

Shot 3: guy lights stogie

I forget this guy's name (apology, it's 3:15am, somebody clue me in and I'll update) - he's wearing a black shirt, against a black background, with black hair, and dark glasses frames. He lights up a cigar and you can make out the subtle details of the flame - the blues and oranges in the flame edges. You can see a LOT of detail in the smoke he puffs...all while simultaneously maintaining black level detail in shirt and his hair against pitch black background.

Shot 4: Models lighting cigar

Two (quite lovely I must say) models, one lighting a cigar for the other. Skipping over the allegorical ramifications, it is shot against a black background, and the left model is wearing a white patterned top that maintains excellent detail against the black background. The right model (with cigar) has darkish brown hair, shows good delineation between shadow detail of hair and black background. When lighter flame flares, can see blue in base and orange in flame - good highlight handling. Of course, their skin tones look excellent, soft smoooooth contone on the highlights on their shoulders, cheekbones, etc.

Shot 5: model 1 blowing bubble

What makes it interesting): dark hair shadow detail. Good skin tones. Detail in her white teeth. Smooth contone of highlight, yet visible detail in the bubblegum bubble.

Shot 6: model 2 blowing bubble

What makes it interesting: same stuff as shot one, but this one is blonder, and good detail in her blond hair as the light hits it.

Shot 7: rotating glasses

What makes it interesting: A pair of Oakley glasses slowly rotating with a soft matte box reflecting. Smooth, banding free image in the highlight, nice depth of field, nice greyscale representation.

Shot 8: Porsche 959

What makes it interesting, other than that it's a 959: It's a white 959 with lights shining on it, but including one practical light in the shot. Smoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooth gradations of white across the car, nice shadow detail while not blowing out the highlights. Subtle shadow details in background - a crewmember noticed an orange extension cable in the dim background that he figured would never show on camera....oops. The dynamic range in the shot is the big story here - the hood of the car has bright lights on it, but the underexposed lower portions of the car have good detail as well. The REAL kicker is that there is a practical light on set. Asking folks what they thought of the footage in general when they left the 4K auditorium, multiple DoPs (who are NOT affiliated with Red) pointed out that shot, and volunteered that it looked like anywhere from 12-15 stops of lattitude (their guessed range of numbers not mine let me stress) represented in that shot. I'm not a shooter so I can't vouch or give opinion on that, but these were qualified guys, and that's an impressive figure coming from their lips.

And again, for those that didn't read it earlier, the footage was NOT noise reduced - just some very, very simple color correcting - as Lucas from Assimilate put it (and he was techincal supervisor on the color correction) -

Something important for everyone to know - from the final 5K RGB images pre-color to the rendered images at IBC - with the exception of one shot (the girl blowing the bubble at the beginning of the sequence) the only color processes we did to the images were Lift (master) down, Gain (master) up, Saturation up, Lift (Blue) down. That's it. No shapes, keys, or secondaries. The RED team has done a very nice job with their debayer/matrix algorithms.


...which I think is indicative of the quality and cleanliness of the final images.

You'll really have to see them for youself in some decent environment to truly evaluate the quality, but I was VERY impressed.

As I said before, I think this DEFINITELY puts the Red camera in the same league as the other high end d-cinema cameras - the Panavision Genesis, the Dalsa Origin, the Arri D-20, etc. * I'd love to do some side by side comparisons on all these cameras and see where their relative strengths and weaknessses were...but have to wait until Red has a more finalized camera.

-mike

*(My apologies to those folks for not having said more since LA, my MacBook's spontaneous failure at the airport prevented me from finishing up my commentary on them before IBC started as I'd planned)

This is far from complete, just what I've stumbled across since their booths are close to Red's:

Apple - I guessed it right, there IS a new version of Final Cut Pro! It is 5.1.2, but doesn't ship for about a month. They fixed all my ingest gripes from the Texas HD Shootout:
-improved native P2 import - can batch, can preview before import, can set ins and outs on each shot, is faster, is all around waaaaaaay better.
-XDCAM HD: native support for ALL frame rates and resolutions now, including 18 and 35mbit
-JVC 24p support - can ingest JVC's 24p from the GY-HD1xx series of cameras
-Canon 24F support - can ingest natively Canon's 24F format from the XL H1 and presumably from the two other models recently introduced.
-and if they could remove 3:2 pulldown perfectly from Sony's HDV camcorders in Cineframe, it'd be pretty damned complete!

Blackmagic has two new capture cards, one of which is $250 and does HDMI in and out, which sounds just insanely cheap. I'll go have a chat with Grant Petty and get the full scoop.

AJA is just down the way but I haven't laid eyeballs on any signage indicating new product, but I'll definitely be checking in with Jon Thorn.

I'm sure there's more out there, I just haven't seen it yet. Heard about some killer product of interest to the HD4NDs community? Comment below and let me know the company name (and better yet their booth # too) so I can check it out and report back when I get a chance.

-mike

PS-site was down after I went to bed - there was a problem after I hit "Post" and closed the laptop thinking it was going to work as I went to bed at 2:30am Amsterdam time, and I didn't know about it till I got up this morning. Sorry about that - I'll babysit it more as the week goes on...but now I see I'm having trouble publishing with Blogger, and there's NOTHING on the site...ugh...I'm working on it...stand by...ugh...

Red at IBC: New hardware details were announced at IBC today.

The Facts:
------------

New viewfinder - is 720p res viewfinder, is in line with the Red philosphy - can be bolted on anywhere on the camera. There will be some kind of focus assist that isn't being discussed yet, they are aware that a 4.5K image with a S35mm depth of field has a strong need for a strong focusing capability.

Red Rail System - the rail setup originally shown at NAB is getting more refined - all built to be able to finely adjust where stuff goes and how it balances for shoulder mount, and flexible in mounting options - put stuff on side, on top, flip it under/over, all kinds of options. Think Lego bricks kind of modularity, choices, and configurations.

Red Cage - substantially different from NAB, but largely the same from Cinegear. It is a cage for mounting the small camera on big stuff, or mounting stuff to the small camera. All those holes are for mounting anything anywhere. No more gaffers tape and velcro - have a REAL mounting point for all your accessories. Again, more Lego holes for mounting stuff - whatever, wherever.

LCD Panel - no details given, but it is built to be mounted anywhere, and is on a doubly articulated arm to swing around and angle how you want it. Solid design strategy there. They haven't said anything about it, but I'm guessing it'll be pretty high res, and have various clever capabilities in line with the rest of the Red strategy.

Recording and power - the hard drive unit and battery have been taken out of the camera body, and put together to go at the back of the Red Rail system, or bolted to top or bottom of the camera body itself. They are saying this is for better camera balance and flexible configurations - now they can make batteries and drive modules any size and not be limited to what the internal spaces would allow for. Hmm. More to say on this later.

Camera body itself - has been tweaked to be smaller and lighter. Much more detail is being shown about controls, buttons, screen locations, readouts, etc. on the models, but that isn't one of the talking points at the show. Study those renders - you can now recognize ports on the camera, and start getting a sense of how this sucker laces up when fully in use.

Red Zoom Lens - ah, the zoom! Vaguely discussed as basically "yes we're gonna" at NAB, now there are details - 18-85mm, f2.8, under $10,000. Shipping? In roughly a year, engineering target date, disclaimer disclaimer. But that is the next lens they are making.

Random detail - the handgrips on the RedRail system are from a late 1970s Oakley motorcycle handgrip design, one of Jim's early ones...just a fun detail he wanted to include.

Other than that, the specs are as stated at NAB - Super 35mm sized sensor, 1-60fps at up to 2540p res, windowed 2K performance (using Super 16 lenses) up to 120 fps, single/dual link HD-SDI & HDMI outputs, synced audio, etc.

-mike

At IBC today, Red announced their first software product - a cross platform (Mac/PC) applications to read in the data from a Red camera (either REDRAW, the uncompressed 12 bit linear RAW format, or REDCODE RAW, their 4K wavelet based 10 bit log codec) and convert it to something useful - like a codec your NLE can work with.

What the company line is (from the brochure at IBC in bold):

1.) Shoot 4K

This can be done either to 4K REDCODE RAW to an onboard recorder (Digital Magazine (hard drive) or Digital Micro Magazine (solid state memory)), for a roughly 28 MB/sec data stream at 24fps. Portable, on your shoulder, battery powered, etc. Wow, that's a pretty killer claim. OR...shoot uncompressed RAW and record to get a 12 bit linear 323 MB/sec data rate at 24fps for completely lossless quality.

Step 2: Process (the footage): Demosaic, Mysterium Profile

Demosaic is the process of converting the checkerboard of the greyscale RAW image, where some squares are from green pixels, some are from red, some from blue, and converting that into an RGB color image. Just like a digital SLR camera's RAW. And like a DSLR's RAW, there are different ways of demosaicing an image - different algorithms, different quality, etc. In any case, you have to demosaic the image. The next step is to choose a Mysterium Profile...the short answer is you're picking your color space, most likely Rec 709 (standard for HD) for most folks.

White Balance - setting color temperature for white

Step 3: Correct:

You'll have normal color correction tools at this point - think Photoshop. The benefit here is that you're still working with uncompressed, debayered 4:4:4 RGB at this point.

Output Size:

At this point you select what resolution you want to deliver. Video deliverable? Choose 480p/i, 720p, 1080p, 1080i. For feature workflows, you have further options of 2K, 4K, or the full 4.5K resolution (4520x2540). Your choice. Or, if you want to do offline/online, do an SD or HD for the offline, and higher resolution for the online.

Export (pick a codec, any codec)

The final step is to export to the codec or format of your choice. Industry standard stuff applies - for film style workflows, Cineon, DPX, JPEG2000, TIFF, PSD, all kinds of image sequences.

For video workflows, good news here - ANY codec you have installed that any regular app can encode to. For your offline you might want DV or DVCPRO HD, but for your online you might want DNxHD or uncompressed 10 bit 4:2:2 or 4:4:4.

But if you want DVCPRO HD for your final, or 8 bit 4:2:2, that's all doable - again, any codec you have installed.

So the overall picture - if you pretend the RAW format is the metaphorical equivalent of your camera negative, you have to telecine it to do some useful work on it. Redcine does that - converts it to something useful, and you can color correct it in the meantime. The good news is, Redcine doesn't cost like a telecine system does, nor do you have to buy/rent an expensive deck. It is an all digital process that takes place on your computer.

So you shoot, copy it over, pick which shots to convert, select a few pop-up menus (pick your white point, size, codec, etc.), color correct at this stage if you wish, then kick out the shots the way you want them. Later, if you need online versions, reload the "session" (or whatever they end up calling it, I'm just making that up), and reconvert with the same settings to create the online versions at higher resolution, bit depth, etc.

Mike's Observations/Comments: Somebody on the show floor asked me how long it will take, I don't know - your computer's speed will obviously be a factor.

But the good news is that Red is not waiting around for NLEs to support the codec natively - they are proactively putting a solution out there that should work on ANYBODY'S NLE. The only downside is that since there isn't native codec support, you have to software transcode it (time consuming) to a native codec. This also means you're increasing the amount of storage space you have to dedicate to the project, and now potentially track as many as 3 sets of files - the source RAW, the offline, and the online. Ideally, Apple, Adobe, Avid, Sony, etc. would all natively support this format for direct editing.

Hint hint...you boys listening out there?

Me personally, I would like a Mac QuickTime codec that Final Cut Pro had on the "blessed" realtime architecture list, so I could get realtime color correction, cross dissolves, etc. out of it.

Redcine is a good stopgap solution to kickstart support in different workflows. For film style workflows, it's actually pretty great - built to generate offline and online media, and let you diddle with the color too. Not serious color grading workstation grade, but decent. But for video workflows, if you are in a hurry and just want to shoot, ingest, and edit, it is a bit cumbersome - native NLE codec support would be best.

-mike

RED Digital Cinema has updated their site with TONS of new info. No frame grabs or motion footage online yet, but I understand their goal is to do so soon. Too much to go into, but all the new info revealed at IBC is over there, go sponge around.

-mike

IBC 2006 Red News: REDCODE

THE FACTS:

Redcode RAW is Red's own codec:

-10 bit log
-full raster
-wavelet based
-4K RAW REDCODE is about 28 MB/sec @ 24fps (and yes, it is VBR)

OPINION:

At NAB it was stated that Red's compression solution would be called Redcode, and it would be up to 2K, 10 bit, full raster (no horizontal shrinking like some other formats do), wavelet based. They lied - it is 4K not 2K! They are talking about RAW not RGB as well. At 4K 24fps, it is about 28 MB/sec.

Errr...thunk! Come to complete stop and think about that -

Red is now saying that they can record 4K. ONBOARD. At 28 MB/sec using REDCODE RAW, which is totally doable on a single 2.5" SATA drive .

And that's megaBYTES, not megaBITS. So it is a 200 megabits/sec compressed codec (approximately). That is a HIGH data rate...and it is using wavelet technology, which is more efficient than the DCT based compression used in most camera codecs. (It also just gets soft when the data rate is too low, as opposed to mosquito noise and banding/blocking). It is also all I-frames - no frame to frame compression, which can potentially introduce artifacts as well as increase the horsepower required to edit it (although it does drop the data rate heavily, which IS useful). DVCPRO HD is all I-frames, HDV isn't. HDV at 1080i res is same # of PIXELS as DVCPRO HD at 50i, but the HDV is about 1/4 the file size, but requires more computing horsepwer to edit with.

At 28 megabytes a second, that is a heavy data rate, but it is within the capabilities of all recent, modern, decent 3.5" SATA drives. How good is the quality at that data rate? Good enought that Graeme Nattress, Red's codec guy, is happy with it. I know Graeme, and he's PICKY, so I take that as a VERY good sign. EDIT - I got to see a short sample of Redcode in the booth playing back on a 3840x2400 pixel monitor, and got inches away for 10 seconds and squinted at it - didn't see mosquito noise, didn't see banding....looks very, VERY clean. Of course, the ultimate test is to take it into post and do some color correction, see what happens when you lift the blacks, change the gamma, try to pull a color key or secondary correction, etc. - all in due time.

28 MB/sec is kinda high, but considering the source is about 325 MB/sec (12 bit linear), that ain't bad!

As for that data rate, let's chug some math:

28 MB/sec equals:
1.68 GB/min
100.8 GB/hr

...so that if you're shooting on what was called RedFlash, and is now called Digital Micro Magazine, which has a minimum capacity of 32 GB and an estimated price of roughly $1000, that is a bit under 20 minutes of footage at $50/min for storage (obviously you'd copy it to something less expensive after shooting).

...and if you were using one of the Digital Magazines (referred to at NAB as REDDRIVE), it has been discussed at NAB that those are in the 40 to 160 GB capacity range - so that'd be about 24ish minutes on the 40, up to about 95ish minutes on a 160 GB drive...

Quibbles and Concerns:

The catch is going to be this - if it is about 28 MB/sec at 24fps, then it is (since all I-frames) almost surely going to be about 35MB/sec for 30 fps. This data rate is still doable by 3.5" SATA drives, but is getting up there for the 2.5" drives they are talking about recording on. Doable, but getting to be a stretch. And what about the advertised 60fps? That'd be 70 MB/sec...more than a single 2.5" drive can do at ANY point in it's capacity. Is Red planning on a multi-drive tiny RAID type of recording device for onboard recording? Or will you have to work with the as-yet-no-details REDRAID in order to record high frame rates? EDIT - they are talking about external hard drive cages in larger sizes in the booth - multiple drives then? And can the onboard stuff compress that much data that fast to keep up anyway?

They've also talked about 323 MB/sec for 24fps 4K RAW - this would imply about 800 MB/sec for 4K @ 60fps...while I saw several RAID systems capable of this at NAB, they certainly weren't cheap, small, readily portable, cool, or battery powerable.

Some remaining questions:

-no new news on RGB codec
-no new news on 2K/1080/720 codec - RGB or RAW?
-for post workflow, writing back to the codec - can you write back to RAW from RGB? Or just an RGB codec?
-can you run it back to the camera for playout?
-I'm sure I'll come up with more, but I'm beat for now...

-mike

Quickie post before heading out, more later:

Today at IBC Red showed the first footage from the Mysterium sensor. It was shot at nearly 5K using the full sensor (about 4900x2600, although usable on shipping will be 4520x2540), and projected using the Sony 4K projector. They showed about a half a dozen shots - mostly people, but also a slow dolly on a white Porsche 959.
The screening for press and reservation holders was actually the first time I got to see the full res, projected at 4K footage...and expletive free words cannot describe how good it looked.

Really.

Kid safe I'd say: tack sharp. Amazing dynamic range. Totally film like depth of field. Great color and skin tone. More later.

We (Red team) were asked to try to collect quotes from folks about what they thought of it, after the third screening I was joking that if we had an exit survey to match the reactions we saw, it would say something like:

Select one of the options below to finish the line "Holy..."
-mild expletive
-moderate expletive
-strong expletive
-compound strong expletive

...ok not really, this was a polite European crowd, but you get the idea. NO ONE complained that it wasn't good enough/up to expectations, everyone I spoke to was pleased and impressed.

There were representatives from other companies in the audience, and they were obviously impressed as well - it is clear that they weren't expecting the footage to look this good - and I heard reports from others observing that confirm that reaction as well.

Saw a few DoPs I know, saw some reps from other firms and it was nice to catch up. I'll need to follow up via email and find out what they thought of the footage - but EVERYONE liked it, didn't hear a single complaint.

Gotta head out, the group's going out to celebrate tonight.

On a personal note, for all the heat I've taken from some groups about my comments about the quality of Red, or whether they're going to make it, or whether I was mindlessly gulping Kool Aid...I feel completely vindicated by this footage.

I'll close as I said in my original comments on footage that wasn't even this good:

"So if you can, come to IBC to "say hello to my leetel frien'"....the dragonslayer. The industry changer. The Point Of Inflection."


I feel that is the case even moreso than when I wrote it originally.

UPDATE FRIDAY NIGHT:

Ted Schilowitz introduced the footage with a few points:

-8 months ago decision was made - didn't have a finished sensor design, no camera design

-tonight showing what many said was impossible - everything you see done in last 8 months

-at NAB, said target was to show 4K footage in the fall - 2 weeks early, here we are

-today is work in progress

-sensor has not been characterized in any way, no dead pixel correction, wrote the color profile in one day, is truly "first look footage" - "It is exactly what we envisioned when we started eight months ago."

-"Up to now we've just talked about what we wanted to do, now we'll show what we're doing"

-now time to let footage speak for itself

Other tidbits - the footage was shot with Cooke and Zeiss and Red primes, so obviously good glass never hurts.

I also asked Ted if there had been any specific post processing on the footage - any noise reduction, stuff like that to clean it up. He laughed and said no, they barely color corrected it. Over on CML, and then in the comments (see comments link below for the full workflow demonstration) Lucas from Assimilate (their SCRATCH product that I keep hearing good things about was used for color correcting) walks through what happened on set and during post. The only color changes were:

Something important for everyone to know - from the final 5K RGB images pre-color to the rendered images at IBC - with the exception of one shot (the girl blowing the bubble at the beginning of the sequence) the only color processes we did to the images were Lift (master) down, Gain (master) up, Saturation up, Lift (Blue) down. That's it. No shapes, keys, or secondaries. The RED team has done a very nice job with their debayer/matrix algorithms.


I also like step 3 - "Downrez to 4K"

: )

The big deal there was that there wasn't any heavy handed manipulation to get the image looking as it did. You can detail an image to death - "polish a turd" as they say - to make a crappy image look good...this wasn't the case here - good in, good out. Click on the comments link below for the full scoop, interesting stuff.

-mike

So after a loooooooooong day (30 or 40 hours up with one two hour nap), I crashed and crashed hard last night around midnight, then got up at 10:30. Ahhhh....much better!

Walked out of the hotel (love the 12 foot ceilings) and wandered down a canal street, enjoying the view, the people, the differentness of the vibe. At first all the close car driving freaked me out - cars drive inches from cylists. Cyclists are blasé about cars - they don't look before rolling into the street, they talk on their cellphones as cars come at them on one way streets and they don't get alarmed...but then I got it - with tiny dense streets and the need to get around, of COURSE cars and bikes get dominance, otherwise nothing ever gets anywhere. It is your job as a pedestrian to get out of the way. And there are TONS of bicycles here - EVERYBODY has a bike. I've seen two nice cars here - an Aston Martin and a 911 - this is the antithesis of LA, a car centric town.

The town has good genes - there are gorgeous women with impeccable cheekbones every 9 feet in this town. Wow.

Anyway, walked down a canal street and had lunch outside, reading a couple of hundred emails. Caught a cab over to the RAI (the IBC convention center) and got hosed for the cab ride, taking the extended tour - was 28 Euros. Got there and realized I'd forgotten my loaner badge (alas Jarred Land can't be here - you are missed, my tall brutha, but I'm surfin' your badge), so tried to get mine..not in the system. Tried to get my press badge...computer down. Cabbed it back to the hotel, he waited with meter running, fetched badge, came back...32 Euros. Definitely got soaked on the first one.

By this time I'd missed the test 4K screening, but Red folks were agog over how good it looked, so I'm very much looking forward to it. I have my headline pre-written for when I see it, it's a going to be SWEET.

: )

Some chaos in the booth getting ready - there's always a last minute challenge. We assembly line stuffed a few thousand brochures with an extra sheet...you folks are gonna like what it has to say, trust me.

Remember I mentioned the test footage of the watch? Remember the watch. Wow.

Had late lunch at an outdoor cafe with the group, went back to the hotel, met up with Jim Jannard (he flew in today), and we all went out to dinner, then wandered and bar hopped for a bit.

Tomorrow is the Big Day, but the show doesn't open until noon, so I get to sleep in and show up at 11...if I'm not too hung, I'm gonna go for a run along a canal and enjoy the scenery in the morning.

So not too much to report today - tomorrow I need to remember to take lots of pictures, I'll post'em up in the evening, which will be late afternoon/night US time....unless I can get online in the booth, which is possible, since I think I saw Hugo (IT guy) with a broadband router...so check in on the site throughput the day and we'll see what I can post when, but remember there's a 6-9 hour time difference from the states.

-mike, 2:40am Amsterdam time

[ Hardware.Info ] - The word is out; Blu-Ray and HD-DVD playback will be possible in Windows XP!

....aaaaaaaaaand go read it. Basically, ya need an HD optical drive, the right kind of graphics card, drivers & monitor to be HDCP compatible....good luck on that.

Then you need WinXP SP2, dual core processor and a 256 MB graphics card. These high end codecs take some horsepower to decode in real time.

-mike

Studio Daily | Fujinon Debuts Two 18x HD Lenses For 1/2-Inch HD Cameras

...and that's all the time I have to spend on it - go read Studio Daily for details...

Sony Launches New Version Of Vegas DVD Production Suite at IBC 2006
is the boring PR Newswire version. Matthew Jeppsen has a summary over on his site, FresHDV.com

-mike

Think Secret - Apple upgrades iMacs; 24-inch model debuts

-Core 2 Duo processors
-$1000 for a 17" 1.83 GHz/512MB/160GB/Combo drive/GMA 950 graphics
-$1200 for a 17" 2.0 GHz/1GB/250GB/SuperDrive/Radeon X1600
-$1500 for a 20" 2.16 GHz/1GB/250GB/SuperDrive/Radeon X1600
$2000 for a 2.16 GHz 24"/1GB/250GB/SuperDrive/GeFroce 7300GT

All have Airport Extreme, $1200 and up have Bluetooth, 24" presumably 1920x1200, and FW800 on the 24" only.

New Minis: now with Core Duo - $600 for 1.66 GHz model, $800 for 1.83 GHz model.

(I had Core 2 Duo written earlier, my bad, is not)

-mike

Sony intro'd the HVR-V1E camcorder, shoots 25p (what about a V1 that shoots 24p?).

-3 CMOS (not CCD)
-shoots 1080i50
-progressive footage shot plays back in any HDV product, can be edited in major NLEs already - so I take it it is written as 1080i50 even though it is progressive footage
-optional hard disk recording unit, HVR-DR60, which records HDV/DVCAM/DV
-camera has timecode presets
-a TC Link (timecode) to sync multiple cameras
-2 XLR inputs
-cam profile feature
-same size/weight as PD-170
-3.5" LCD
-HDMI output
-1.2MP still picture capture

-mike

MacNN | Sony debuts HDR-FX7 three-chip camera

-HDV 1080i
-3 chip CMOS
-takes 1.2 MP stills while shooting
-37.4-74.8 zoom
-20x optical zoom
-can PRE-order Sept. 8
-$3500
-up to 8 hours shooting w/optional high capacity battery
-See picture here

More elsewhere, in a hurry, checkitout

-mike

Got in around 7am this morning after not being able to sleep on the plane. Frederic and Ted were on the same flight, and I met Grady Sellards of AMP, who makes some cool stuff I'll have more to say about later.

We got to the hotel but couldn't check in - too early - doh! So we groggily sat around and worked on some stuff - got on Internet, worked on fine tuning preso, etc. Finally got into rooms and took a Disco Nap for a couple of hours, then walked around a bit and found a place for lunch. Wow, Amsterdam is beautiful. I love how multi-culti the place is, huge melting pot action. Most everyone speaks several languages here, so English only not a problem.

Went over to RAI (the convention center) and checked in on the booth - Apple, AJA, BlackMagic and Red are all very close together. IBC is DENSE, doesn't have the spacious feeling of NAB at ALL. The Red booth isn't going to have the big red ball logo hanging over the top - look for the big yellow Kodak flag, we're right next to it. Red tent same as at NAB if you saw that.

Went and checked out the theater where the 4K footage is going to be shown - WOW - HUGE screen, so that should answer any questions about footage quality. Did some techie stuff there, then went back to the hotel to clean up (up 30+ hours, time to shower!).

Went out to dinner as a group, about ten of us at a place called Gusto (excellent Italian food), then wandered around downtown a bit before looping back to hotel and falling in bed with a THUNK. Woke up at 10:30 - oops, time to get rolling! The show starts tomorrow.

More later,

-mike

Hey all -

so I'm sitting on the plane to Washington D.C., and on to Amsterdam thereafter as I write this (actually posting from Amsterdam - couldn't get online fast enough):

A few things to say:

1.) I'm working in the Red booth for most of my time at IBC as their representative, wearing their colors, flying their flag so to speak.

2.) So yeah, I have a relationship with these folks. What's the deal, and how does this affect my coverage of other stuff?

#1 - I'll be in the Red booth, working as their representative, giving the company line while I'm in the booth. Some have said this makes me an employee of Red. Well, for a few days, I'm representing them, that's all. When I'm not repping them, I'm me, Mike Curtis of HD For Indies. As I've said in the past, I wear many hats. At any given trade show, a goodly number of people in the booth (esp. at smaller and/or newer companies) are not direct employees or staff, but outsiders either brought in to help or volunteering to help for various reasons of their own. I've done this for numerous companies in the past, some I maintain connections or friendships with, some I don't; some for pay, some for fun or other reasons. (I even worked one show for free just to better evaluate a company I was considering investing in.) I don't see it as a big deal to work a few days in somebody's booth - before the blog, I spent over 10 years working in high tech business to business marketing communications, sometimes working for Dell, sometimes Compaq, sometimes Power Computing, sometimes Motorola, etc. It wasn't a problem to work for direct competitors at different times, because there was trust that everyone would be professional and maintain proper boundaries about disclosures.

#2 - So how can I rep them and still cover everybody else? Pretty easy, actually. Let me walk you through it...

MIKE'S DISCLAIMER

For the record, I have a relationship with Red. I've known Ted Schilowitz for years. I've known about the Red project since before they went public. I've been in meetings with them, and I'm under NDA.

My relationship with Red is not unique - I have similar relationships with other companies. I'm a consultant by trade as well as a blogger/reporter/whatever I am.

Unlike a traditional magazine journalist, I'm not paid. By anybody. For any coverage whatsoever. Nobody walks my dog, mows my lawn, or tells me I look like I've lost weight in exchange for me writing about them or their company.

I write about what I find interesting, and that centers around technology that helps independent filmmakers make (and sometimes distribute) their films. I'm into the post process and I've been getting more and more into the cameras over the last couple of years.

I do work for vendors' companies from time to time, one of the reasons that I started the blog in the first place was to cover these issues and hopefully raise my knowledge and profile enough that I'd be on the radar of companies for consulting gigs.

Similarly, I'm choosing to work in the Red booth because:

a.) It's fun, and I didn't have to do any of the heavy lifting - "I'm with the band." in Almost Famous-speak. : )

b.) It gets my name/face out there for exposure to meet interesting folks, just to be known in the industry as well as so that I can...

c.) Hopefully make some contacts that will (later, obviously, not while repping Red in their booth!) lead to some consulting work

I predict that the Red booth will not be a bad place to meet folks, and that it won't be unbusy there.

When I first heard about the Red project, I was stoked - it fit EXACTLY into what I was into, and what I'd been writing about for over a year - it is why I got to talk to them in the first place - our goals for next-gen cameras were aligned. I've been very interested in what they're doing - so I've been covering it - a lot. I've met more members of the team, and they're smart guys doing what I'd like to see done for a camera, and I know and like these guys - so I pay attention to what they are up to. As I do with other cool stuff I like - I was way into the Sheer codec last year, I was into that field acquisition device I was designing, etc. - I'm passionate about what I'm into at the moment.

However, I do my best to not let that influence the essence of what I write - if Red pulls a blunder, I'll tell it like it is on the blog. When they do things I don't like, I try to bust'em for it (see the recent discussion on 1920x1080 10b444 on DVInfo.net for example). And I try to cover everything interesting, but there aren't enough hours in the day for me to write as much, as well as I'd like, about everything I find interesting going on in the field.

So far, Red's achieving their ambitious goals, and I like what I see...so I write enthusiastically about it. I've met'em, I know'em, I trust that they're not trying to snow anybody.

In my coverage of other vendors, cameras, gear, etc., I'll write from the perspective of what I believe and am interested in - primarily digital filmmaking, and what/how I think it viable, especially for indies that don't have stacks of cash. Since I like indie-viable pricing, that makes me especially interested in the Red project.

I think I've done a decently good job of reporting the facts about Red. I've been enthusiastic, but I have been honest (or so I think). Some accuse me of being overly Rah Rah about it....but there are things that not everyone knows, so I can't exactly publicly rebut those comments. If anything, my biggest self-knock is that I haven't given other vendors, such as Silicon Imaging enough attention - they have what looks to be a very indie viable camera about to get to market (Red is still 3-9 months from shipping I'd guess) and I haven't spent a ton of time on it - in part because I don't know Ari and his guys as well, in part because it is locked to a PC at the moment (hope that might change at IBC if Cineform for Macs is announced) and I'm Mac centric just by experience and the gear I personally own; and in part because they aren't based in LA or Austin - the two places I spend my time on this stuff. They also haven't had a lot to say publicly recently other than the blog on the Spoon feature - they have a very different marketing approach than Red. I hear people expressing preferences either way for the two different marketing styles. Take your pick.

I've never accepted banner ads on HD For Indies, specifically because I didn't want to have the appearance of favoritism or advertising pressure. I write what I do because it is what I think - period.

Since I've been pretty open about my relationship with Red, I don't feel bad about my dealings with them while writing about them at the same time - I'm not an employee of theirs, just someone they know. And since this should make my relationship abundantly clear, I'm going to continue to write what I think about all the new toys and PR at IBC.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about what I do on this blog, and how I use it. I've been realizing I've been spending HUGE amounts of time on here, and I've been enjoying it. However...it's also time for me to start paying attention to my own world a bit more. I need to spend more time on my for-profit endeavors. I also have been thinking about what and how I write on here - in general, it takes about 3-5 times longer to write something "magazine grade" rather than just "blog grade."

I don't have enough time to write as well and in depth about everything I want to - even if I didn't have any for-pay projects.

So while it has pretty much been the case up to now, it definitely will be in the future - this is a BLOG, a collection of notes and quickly written musings. Typos, grammatical errors, etc....I'm going to get stuff wrong, just roll with it. This isn't the NYTimes. It's my blog. There are times I'd rather cover issues sloppily rather than not be able to cover them at all (I have far too many abandoned half written articles stuck in Draft purgatory). I still think there will be interesting and valid and unique information to be found here, but it is still a glorified notebook that I share.

So if you're comfortable with all that, continue reading the blog. If not...do whatcha gotta do...

...but of course this also means I'll have all kinds of skinny on the latest developments at IBC...so check back often!

Plane's landing, gotta go...but I promise, it's gonna be a helluva week!

-mike

I'm writing this on the plane - I'll be arriving in Amsterdam Wednesday morning and will be working during the show (more on that next article). The show ends the 12th, and I'll be in Amsterdam until the evening of the 16th, when I'll be leaving for Prague. I'll be in Prague for 3 days then flying back to the states.

So...if you are going to be attending IBC in Amsterdam and have time and interest after the show to sit down for some consulting services, I'll be avilable these dates:

AMSTERDAM CONSULTING AVAILABILITY: Sept 12th-16th

PRAGUE CONSULTING AVAILABILITY: SEPT. 17-19

I can be reached via email at mike AT hdforindies d0t com, or also at hdforindies AT mac d0t com.

-mike

UPDATE - SEE BOTTOM - rumored movies to be released, and see the Apple invite, and I don't think Airport Express A/V yet

AppleInsider | Apple to roll-out iTunes movies and 'one more thing'

If Appleinsider is right (and SOMEtimes they are), it sounds like Apple may FINALLY be about to roll out their iTunes movie store, and I've been predicting for over a year how Apple should have an Airport Extreme A/V device. Initially would likely be standard def with RCA and optical audio out (like current Airport Express), but would also add video out - at least composite and s-video if not component. I predict standard def only to start with, and in 6-12 months they'd add an HD version, with HDMI outputs for an extra $200 or so.

My guess is $300ish for the device that would take streamed video via ethernet or WiFi from a Mac or PC running a new version of iTunes. You'd download the movie, and once downloaded (or enough of it) it could be streamed to the TV. The remote would talk to the iWatch (or whatever they're going to call this thing), and the commands would be relayed back to the host computer to start/stop, drive the UI, etc. via the connection from comptuer to iWatch.

Movies would be DRM'd of course. Resolution? 480x360 or better I should hope, preferably 720x480 if we're lucky. Maybe 720x400ish for movie aspect ratio. Something like that.

So...you'd download a new version of iTunes, install it on your bedroom/home office computer, browse for the movie you want, download it over broadband (takes loooooong time, but accelerated via Akamai). Go into living room, press the Apple remote to start the video streaming from Mac/PC in other room to the iWatch, the audio and video go to your TV/stereo. Then you could start/stop/play/browse with the remote. The iWatch would need enough brains to decode MPEG-2 and H.264 and drive a user interface, esp. for browsing.

My HOPE is that Apple would go HD eventually with a follow on product, and do this for HD movies and supplant the whole HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray thing - and you'd be able to watch on your computer, into the living room, or either natively or converted to run on your iPod (with some DRM management of course), and stream to multiple iWatches in the house from your home media server....your regular computer. All your regular computer would need to be able to do is connect to broadband internet, and be able to maintain the streaming speed to the iWatch - no need for it to do any heavy computing, since it is just pushing encoded data - the iWatch does the decoding via dedicated hardware. So no expensive, high end "Home Theater PC" required - just this little box...Microsoft is calling this kind of concept a media extender, and XBox 360 can do stuff like this too in theory. The Xbox 360 could also drive a much nicer UI, since it has all that dedicated graphics power as well.

Whatcha think folks? Yes? No? Not yet? Something else? Chime in with the Comments link below.

If I'm right, I'm going to feel awwwwwwwfully smug. If I'm wrong, I can play it like AppleInsider does, and say Apple must have chosen to delay this device for some inscrutable reason...remember Asteroid? (It was a FireWire based audio thingy that never saw the light of day).

-mike

Update Tuesday morning - iPod movies unveiled by an iPod related site, but is NOT confirmed - lots of Disney stuff, no surprise - Buenva Vista, Pixar, Touchstone, Miramax, Lion's Gate - but only a limited selection, not all of everybody's stuff (except for Pixar). Click link for list of movies and further details. Pricing still looks to be $10-$15...which is frankly what you could pick up a lot of these DVDs for, THEN rip'em with Handbrake for a better result anyway...sheesh....what's it gonna take to be reasonable? I love how Walmart is apparently holding up this process, since they sell 40% of all DVDs....hence all online plays can't undercut them...even though the particular advantage of downloads is ZERO physical packaging, ZERO manufacturing, ZERO physical shipping (but yes bandwidth costs), and that is all supposed to make it cheaper...harrumph!

Wednesday from Amsterdam update - AppleInsider | News flash: Apple confirms Sept 12 media event - and check out the invite - YEP! But as much as I want the Airport Express A/V...I'm thinking not now - if it is in development, they aren't releasing it yet - I think maybe I'm still in Fyou-Chorr Think Mode. Maybe new video iPods instead? Something a bit more accessible and realistic? But something more than just the service...it wouldn't make sense otherwise to JUST have the service without a better thing to watch it on....

-mike again

Netflix is getting into movie acquisition in a variety of ways. Indies, you listening? They claim they will eventually have a deal for EVERY movie at Sundance, instead of the usual 10% that get any theatrical deal with anybody.

Articles in Wired, BusinessWeek, Hollywood Reporter, and the blog deepstructure.

Somebody makes a good point about studio releases with their print and advertising budgets vs. indies that lack the budget, and even with the speed of word of mouth on the Internet, can't build enough of an audience fast enough in order to get people into see the indies in big enough numbers before it is taken off the screen (the marketing problem, see yesterday's piece on harsh).

Netflix, which epitomizes the Long Tail approach, DOESN'T have to rush to get folks into seats - they just want folks to eventually rent the DVD which gets mailed to them.

With $100M budget for acquisitions, that should buy a goodly number of indie flicks.

By adding another possible means of success, different from theatrical distribution, it helps break the "yes or no" success metric of whether a movie gets theatrical distribution, and puts it into a place where word of mouth can spread, and the "if you liked that one you'll like this one" data mining can steer folks to the smaller films.

DEFINITELY something for indies to consider - there are SO many possible distribution options these days...

-mike

DVXuser.com -- The online community for filmmaking - View Single Post - RED thoughts

Barry Green goes on a rant, and I mostly agree with him. He's talking about how even if Red (or any other production technology) revolutionizes production, how to successfully advertise and market your film is the real challenge. Even if you had a thing of beauty in the can all done and paid for, it is STILL a challenge to get it into theaters, get folks interested in it, and get them to come out and see it. The star system adds some consistency and reliability to the effort - we recognize stars, and their agents etc. try to only place them in projects they think will be successful, so if Clooney is in it, it CAN'T be TOTALLY wretched, etc. - stars are less about their innate talent (from a business sense) and more about their associative power to bring people into the theaters...but recent studies (somebody throw me the link, midnight on Sunday here, CinemaTech maybe?) show that star power....doesn't really matter all that much. And sometimes even hurts box office (or hurts the likelihood of box office success).

Anyway, I'm veering off course here - Barry puts it down, hard and true, about the challenges of the movie business. He then goes on about YouTube and filtering unheard of talent, and the Soderbergh quote I referenced the other day pops to mind:

I don’t know where the middle point is—“I can’t find anyone to vouch for the legitimacy of this thing that somebody’s asking me to download”—and access that’s being controlled by a bunch of people...


The context was big sucky movies get marketed to death because (not said but presumed) they work that whole lowest common denominator thing. Truly indie pfhunky stuff from the fringe can't cut through the noise of the herd to be heard - so what's the middle ground that relies on word of mouth, BUT gets somewhere, WITHOUT going through the official Arbiters Of Taste.

Go read, good food for thought. I sat here typing this, and the Voices In My Head (when not telling me to clean the guns, sharpen the knives, and wipe all the drives) were debating whether I should be a good marketer, and rah-rah about how digital technology will revolutionize and empower the indie filmmaker, or if I should be brutally honest and say lower cost production and/or better quality for same money is nice, but does NOT profoundly change the game. If anything, for some projects, the only thing it can do is greenlight a project that couldn't afford to me made the other/old way...but the challenges of distribution remain the same. Maybe digital makes it easier to greenlight a tight budget cable project, but for features...if the camera and editorial/coloring post budget is a major portion of your budget...you don't have a terribly large production going on. You still need a talented cast and crew....oh yeah and don't forget a good story, cogent direction, good performances, etc. etc. etc. Insert the old quote about the 3 movies: the one written, the one shot, and the one edited.

My internal cynic says pretty much only the Big Folks get the big marketing budgets to push their stuff. But the other voices say that the little guys DO get to pop up out of nowhere if they make something good with their friends and no stars every once in a while an it gets picked up. The catch is, how often? The odds are onerously stacked - many thousands of films get submitted to Sundance, 100ish get in, and what - 10 get theatrical distro deals? If that many? That's terrible odds. Counter voice - but you can't win if you don't play. Counter-counter voice - yeah, but for every 10 great little indie flicks, Holllywood says "Bag it - let's make 'Garfield II' instead!"

Oh, the horror, the horror....

In any case, I'm not trying to dash anyone's dreams and be the cynical "I TOLD you you couldn't do it!", nor do I wish to be the unrealistic "Rah Rah! Change the world with your movie! Anyone can do it with hope and a dream if you believe in yourself!" type. Oh, god, just barf on a rainbow for me, OK?

I just want to be honest and straightforward about all this. (But I also want to hang on to that "red guitar/three chords/truth" vision, too!)

{evilmikey}
Then again, I do want your consulting dollars, too.
>: D
{/evilmikey}

Mostly kidding there - I got into all this because I got sick of doing motion graphics for high tech biz to biz marketing communication stuff, and wanted to do something that I gave a damn about, but also thought I could be good at (using the skills from my previous career). But I DO want to earn a living, and blogging 3-6 hours a day, while fun as all get out, don't pay the billz! So I gotsta consult, and sell some DVDs, etc. to support my R&D blogging habit. And, as a post in another day or two will talk about, there's the whole thing about do I say nice things about the companies I work with, or do I work with the companies that I like the products of, and therefore say nice things about them? Yeah - I work with the folks that I think rock and that fit into my view of what I think is a good idea.

Alright, I think that's enough midnight on a Sunday open mental spigot flow - now it's your turn to sound off - what do YOU folks think of all this? Comment link below or email me (address at top of page).

-mike

Random Macbook Shutdowns. Solved. At Last. Hopefully. � Martin Backschat%u2019s Blog

Some German dude thinks he knows why - that it is a cable that overheats. Maybe.

More on mine - Apple Store called on a Sunday (bonus points!) to say they'd tested my MacBook, that the problem was definitely the 3rd party RAM - that when they installed Apple RAM, it didn't happen, but when they installed my 3rd party RAM, it did. Hmm. OK, maybe.

Oops - I should clarify - "it" in this case is the bizarre streaky organicly fading in lines on power up - which seems related to the random shutdown thing (at least was in mine). Click here for description, picture, and video. Before I got a new motherboard and hard drive, it was doing the stripes thing as well as randomly powering down spontaneously.

So I went back to Apple Store and picked it up. Brought it home, popped out the 2 1GB sticks they said were bad, and put in a brand new different 3rd party 1GB stick, and a 256 MB stick that it had come with. Power up and....stripes. Uh oh.

I power down, reseat the RAM, zap PRAM, reset the PMU, slaughter a chicken, do something illegal in Texas to a goat, power it up and it seems to be working OK. But that does tend to make me squint and stare hard at their explanantion that it is because of third party RAM. I'm going to be typing a LOT on the laptop between now and my departure Tuesday, so if it happens again, I'm FUBAR'd and will have to borrow a different laptop or something - can't be without laptop for 2 weeks.

Drama drama drama, and not in a good way. So now I have 1.25 GB RAM and need to return the RAM I bought for this originally...

UPDATE MONDAY: GOD DAMMIT! - I rebooted and got the color striped thing again on the MacBook - does this mean spontaneous shutdowns are in my future? Insert ALL the four letter words I know here. I need to decide whether to risk taking the better machine, or just take the old PBook G4 and have to migrate everything over and get it ready for the trip...and I know what I ought to do and I don't like it. AAAAAAARGH!!!!

UPDATE Wednesday - I decided to wing it and live with stripes, hoping it wouldn't spontaneously shut down. However...sitting in the airport, waiting for my flight...it spontaneously shut down. And wouldn't restart.

So I called my friend that had dropped me off at the airport, and she met me at the airport to make the switch - I'm writing this on my two year old Powerbook G4 12". Hopefully the battery won't burst into flames....very frustrating that Apple said it was the RAM and otherwise OK...clearly and demonstrably not the case, since I had two different DIMMs in it...

-mike

Slow Motionis a video tutorial for Shake over on the Creative Cow. If you don't know about their forums, it is one of the best places to get specific about software and ask questions and get answers - they have specific forums for particular pieces of software, and some truly excellent moderators. Now that Shake is $500 (in the "expensive plugin" category), forget about retiming shots in FCP except as placeholders. Use Shake's Optical Flow technology to retime your shots for truly excellent results.

-mike

OK, not like anybody else is as excited as I am about this, but when I logged into edit a post, I realized I've now posted more than 2500 articles, reviews, editorials, rants, whatevah on here.

A little history (cue the "Where are they now" music from VH-1)

-blog started March 2004, right before SXSW 2004
-since Aug 8, 2005, I've had 859950 daily visitors
-as of this writing, 2,073,287 pageviews since Sept 9, 2004 (when I set up AdSense)
-and let's just say loooooooooooots of time spent on the blog.
-traffic continues to grow - August had over 120,000 pageviews (thanks folks!), so at this rate nearly 1.5M pageviews a year...sure to be more as the pace continues to grow
-and, as I said, over 2500 articles posted

Anyway, a fun little statistic I'd been watching out for in recent weeks, waiting to see when I'd get there.

Thanks again to all you folks for reading, please continue to do so, and I'd appreciate it if you felt like clueing in your friends to read it too. The blog has opened all kinds of doors for me, been tons of fun.

-mike

Studio Daily | Autodesk Introduces Lustre 2007

Missed this one the other week - Lustre 2007 - more features, etc. Expensive like a house. No time for summation, read it yourself if interested.

Hey all - here's a bunch of stuff that isn't really qualified, vetted, edited, or just plain organized. I don't have time to sit down and organize it all, so here it is in blob format, otherwise I'll never get on here:

Talked to some folks who track this stuff - there are problems with the FS-100 (the hard drive recording option for the Panasonic HVX200):

Firestore blows... cable connection breaks loose and causes corruption ( mini firewire issue).. and it cant record in 720pN mode.. no native mode, so your forced to record at 60i, which is a killer cause you cant shoot variable frame rates, nor save space by recording 24p (more than 2.5x the recording capacity savings)

As for Cineporter availability: "Cineporter-- maybe December. not holding my breath."

everything gets written to cards at 60i except 720PN, in native mode in 720 you can record at any frame rate and it writes that to the card.. for example, if you record 2FPS (which is a frame rate hack we found out about) you can record 2FPS for hours on one card.

Since our analysis during the Texas HD Shootout confirmed (according to Adam Wilt) that optically, shooting 1080p is only about 10% sharper than shooting 720p. And in your storytelling, is 10% sharpness difference going to make your storytelling "better?" Think about it - if you showed one version, stopped for a minute and showed another (that was 10% less sharp but you didn't say anything about it), would anyone in the audience be able to say there was a difference? OK, if one or two, does the VAST MAJORITY of the audience notice, let alone give a damn?

All this makes me wonder about the viability of shooting certain kinds of footage with the HVX in certain scenarios. If you're doing a lot of short takes for narrative filmmaking, I can see it working, if you have a way to offload the P2 data (like a laptop, preferably with attached FireWire drive and AC power). But if you're shooting long form documentary or interview footage with small crews or with touchie subjects? Forget it - it would be so distracting to be rotating P2 cards out to your subject, or too big of a hassle to be trying to download footage from this shot, to rotate the card back in, while copying data and moving cards and.... it would likely interrupt the flow, or increase the crew size requirements, etc.. Travelling to remote locations and don't have AC power or a huge stack of those pricey P2 cards? Forget it - HVX probably isn't the camera for you.

UPDATE - boy, I touched a nerve saying that! See the comments for some good back-and-forth on the topic!

Final Touch HD - six months after I stopped using it daily, it still has problems:

I spoke to a trusted source who said:

-FTHD has black level problems - they claim it's fixed - have not verified it

-FCP & FTHD scopes not reliable/trustworthy for 4:4:4 work
I would say not sufficient enough for QCing - that's a MAJOR problem then

We also talked about film scanners:

-Spirit 2K is really HD uprezzed to 2K (is that right? Or only some stuff works that way? Anybody want to confirm/deny/verify/explain this?)

I'm not sure which Spirit model is HD sensor/imager - I have been told that MOST of the Spirits doing 2K (with a $150,000 upgade board) upres from HD - so I am confused if a there is a difference between "models" of the Spirit - I'd like to know myself -

(from my notes, I can't even tell where the source's quote drops off and my commentary begins, but you get the idea)

=======

..... >> VFXWorld / Feature Articles << .....

ILM is working on previz software easy enough for anyone to use - compose scene, place cameras, animate, even edit - I saw it demo'd at DGA Digital Day, was damned impressive. Even more impressive is their plan to use a game engine for lighitng and physics, and the fact that it dovetails into their inhouse proprietary workflow stuff. Cool. And it is clear that George Lucas wants to make this tech widely available - even using game controllers for camera control in the environment. Kewler.

===========

Red update:

More screenings scheduled for IBC
Additional (open) screenings are scheduled (if everything runs smoothly):

Friday, September 8th
@ 16:30 (4:30pm)
@ 17:00 (5pm)
@ 17:30 (5:30pm)

Saturday, September 9th
@ 11:00 (11am)
@ 11:30 (11:30am)
@ 12:00 (12pm)
@ 12:30 (12:30pm)

True 4K at IBC? - The Digital Video Information Network - this thread is wondering about the true resolution of the Mysterium Sensor, and Red's Graeme Nattress gives a pretty techie answer

RED Reservations... - The Digital Video Information Network - Jim Jannard himself steps in to declare that the titanium "R"'s will only be given to the first 1000 preorders, after that you just get a receipt. What's the R? See link for picture.

=================

Mike bitches about RAID stats
Macworld: News: CalDigit ships 1.5TB 5-bay RAID systemCalifornia-based storage specialist CalDigit has released its 1.5TB 5-bay RAID system. The S2VR HD, SATA II, 3Gb/s device is an all-in-one unit that also comes with CalDigit's PCI-e or PCI-x 4 port controller card, drive modules, enclosure, driver CD and eSATA cable. The system supports multi-streams of uncompressed 1080/60i HD, DVCPRO HD, DVCPRO HD, HDV, DV and DVCAM non-linear video editing systems. The CalDigit S2VR HD is capable of speeds of 230 MB/s, according to the company. The S2VR costs $2050 and is available from the company's Web site.

...but I'm kinda miffed at these guys - they claim 230 MB/sec, but that is the HEAD performance, not indicative of the performance you get for the full capacity of the array. Of course, LOTS of vendors engage in this kind of "up to" specsmanship. I kinda feel like it is saying a car goes from 0-60 in 8 seconds...but only the first time you try, or only when it's about out of gas, or only on a downhill, etc. I emailed them, their response:

We edited 10 bit uncompressed HD 1080/60i with our S2VR HD with 78% of the
hard drive capacity filled without dropping frames.


78% seems an awfully specific number to pick....my napkin math says that's about where it might start not working. 1080i60 10 bit 4:2:2 is about 165 MB/sec, and you need some overhead for QuickTime's inefficiencies.

I'm busting on these guys in particular, but frankly, all the SATA RAID folks could be more forthcoming. Also, frankly, there's really no secret performance sauce for these RAIDs - it is really about cabling (port multiplying or not) and drives chosen - other than that, it is just aesthetics, price, cooling, reliability, etc....which are important, but they all sell based on performance delivered, and full disclosure is usually lacking. Other vendors I know sell similar systems and don't recommend their functionally identical 5 drive systems for 10 bit editing.

I'm talking about CalDigit here, but their product is similar to others'...I'm not meaning to single them out, the issue just came up...I haven't tested their gear yet, but I have no reason to suspect it isn't as valid an enclosure as those from MacGurus, Sonnet, etc.

=========

Apple has started specifying the fibre channel cards as 2 gigabit in their product SKUs - a hint that Apple may have 4 Gbit may be in the not too distant future? They used to just say fiber channel card, now they've added 2GB at the end. They are different part numbers, though - so maybe a tweaked model? (And I'm still talking about PCIe for both, so this isn't a jump from PCI-X to PCIe)


===========

Matthew Jeppsen over at FresHDV.com beat me to it - I was going to do some linking and analysis on the recent Slashdot article about the lame Blu-ray and HD DVD sales to date - go read that and then read the below....go ahead, I'll wait...

Sounds like HD DVD and Blu-ray are both underperforming by large margins...people just arent' into it. The benefits also aren't huge - yeah, it is somewhat sharper, but other than that, it is just like the regular DVDs...just that everything costs waaaaaaaay more. If you can get a decent DVD player for $50-$200, what would it have to offer the AVERAGE (NOT you, I can tell you're not average since you're reading this) consumer in order to make them want to spent $300-$1000 more?

It would have to offer a LOT more utility...and it just isn't doing that right now. Prices will have to drop below $300 for players before there will be SERIOUS uptake...and I'd say that is easily a year off.

Also, in order to SEE the benefits of ANY high def DVD, you need a good, big, high res screen, and to sit close enough to see the difference. With the current high price of HDTVs keeping people from buying optimal viewing sized screens, and the way that Americans like to sit waaaaaay back from the TV, and the fact that most sets out there are really 720 res not 1080i native resolution (regardles of the formats it can read, how many pixels is it displaying that signal WITH)....HD uptake is looking kind of grim right now.

The initial enthusiasm that I wrote with a year or two ago about shooting HD and having an HD home market to show it in is...not as strong as it once was. I think it still makes sense to make movies with high resolution digital technology, but I hear myself putting different conditionals on it, depending on who I'm talking to. Some folks were talking about shooting some stuff and I was asking them what they thought the realistic venue for it was...they said they hoped for a direct to DVD deal. I recommended shooting with the Panasonic SDX-900 for better dynamic range, color and contrast (2/3" imager, typical good looking Panasonic color) rather than a similarly priced (to rent) HD camcorder.

People see color and contrast first, resolution afterwards...so make sure you get that first before you commit to HD. I'd rather shoot with a DVX100B than with the cheapest HDV camcorders in some circumstances, for instance, if an SD deliverable was all I was really concerned about.

Along those lines, check out this thread over at DVXuser.com, it talks about best modes to shoot HVX200 with for SD deliverable) - DVCPRO50 wins for convenience, and is damn near as good looking in the end as HD from same camera once downconverted to SD

It also looks like Blu-ray might be in serious trouble if the PS3 doesn't seriously kick ass and change the game, AND play back Blu-ray WITHOUT some kind of lame hamstringing - like no 1080p playback, degraded decoding performance, something like that. HD DVD is cheaper and the initial movies are looking better. It can be argued that initial Blu-ray titles are looking poor since MPEG-2 was chosen instead of VC-1 or H.264...but if the initial wave of consumer reaction is "more expensive, not as good looking, bag it I'm going with HD DVD" then Blu-ray might be doing some permanent damage if things keep going as they are. HD DVD has name recognition that makes sense to consumers, costs less, and looks better - why on EARTH would the average consumer go with Blu-ray at this time? I sure wouldn't.

-----------

Other stuff:

Final Cut Pro: Send To Motion evokes QuickTime Player instead of Motion: "If you have designated QuickTime Player as Final Cut Pro's external editor for video files, you might find that the Send To Motion feature fails to open the resulting Motion project in Motion. Instead, the .motn project opens in QuickTime Player."

...so change your prefs, see article, explains how

----------

got an email from Jeff Carlson letting me know the first chapter of his book on iLife and iDVD '06 (for the TRULY starving indies out there) is free to download:

Chapter 1, "The Digital Camcorder," contains valuable information on
buying a camcorder, including which features to look for (and avoid).
You'll learn about different video recording formats such as
standard-definition (SD) and high-definition video (HDV), image
interlacing, and more.

I hope you'll help me get the word out. The PDF is, naturally, full
color and weighs in at about 700K. It can be downloaded here:



For more information, see my iMovie Visual QuickStart Guide blog at:

Posted by: Mike Curtis / 9/02/2006 02:47:00 PM (22) comments links to this post

Oops, a little more blogwad, but I thought this one deserved to get cracked out as its own article:

Assimilate Scratch (a Windows based color correction and digital intermediate color grading tool) to support QuickTime media import:

Assimilate's Scratch software is getting some upgrades - they can now import QuickTime media (and this IS confirmed with them):

"SCRATCH now support quick time IMPORT. It'll be public in the next software release which i think is plan for this coming weekend. BUT go ahead and get the exclusive and mentioned it.

When you'll build your SCRATCH system "a la carte" you must include SCRATCH EXTENSION- Media Layer. Media Layer today inc. the ability to import quicktime.mov files into the SCRATCH timeline/CONSTRUCT. WE plan to add more file formats to it moving fw.

Anyway, as soon as the new software build is release i'll send both of you what's new on it."

That was followed with some more emails:


"Mike,
 
the workflow for FCP would be the same as with basically any other offline suite, edit and export EDL cmx3600, export QT movie Reference of the offline,  scan or capture full res 2k/hd to DPX 10bit log with TC embedded on header, load media into the SCRATCH CONstruct, load EDL, assemble. done.
cut/dissolves , speed changes , flip/flops , comments/notes are all supported via standard EDL.
transformations as in repositioning, rotation and scaling , aspect ratio adjust , custom notes , multilayering are all supported via XML.
 
the other way around also works, as in bring the media as a conformed clip, use EDL to reverse assemble, that cut in events the single shot, then work on SCRATCH in a shot by shot basis.
SCRATCH do not handle interlaced footage correctly for repos, you would need to de-interlace that footage first or merge fields with a process/plug-in to avoid any artifact on transformations to that media.

--------

I asked about codec support in this model - there are some codecs that are Mac only, I consider these to be the "Pro" codecs - the ones that come with Final Cut products.

The answer:

Mike, you are right about some of your guessing. DVCPRO,50, HD and HDV does not work with Quicktime on windows, at least on my system as I do not have a codec for it. DV and Apple 8 & 10 works ok, same with all of the cross platform video I/O hw. below is a list of some files tested today.
 
(I had asked about gamma shift due to Mac/PC differences:) - can't comment on the gamma shift due to Mac/PC.
 
supported:
AJA KONA 10bit log RGB
AJA KONA 10bit RGB
AJA KONA 2Vuy
AJA KONA 2vuy
AJA KONA V210
Bluefish444 V210
Bluefish444 BV10
DRastic YCbCr
AVID Packed
AVID 1-1x
AVID DNxHD
AVID DV
AVID DV100
AVID meridien compress
AVID meridie uncompress
Blackmagic rgb 10bit
HD Uncompressed 10-bit 1080i50
HD Uncompressed 10-bit 1080i60
HD Uncompressed 8-bit 1080i50
HD Uncompressed 8-bit 1080p24
HD Uncompressed 8-bit 1080i60
HD Uncompressed 10-bit 1080p24
Default QuickTime Movie
Animation NTSC
10-bit Uncompressed PAL
uncompress 8bit 422
Photo - JPEG 75 NTSC
H.264 40Kbps
H.264 100Kbps
H.264 300Kbps
H.264 800Kbps
H.264 LAN
10-bit Uncompressed NTSC
8-bit Uncompressed PAL
8-bit Uncompressed NTSC
8-bit NTSC
DV NTSC
DV NTSC Anamorphic
none
DV PAL Anamorphic
uncompress 10bit 422
DV PAL
Photo - JPEG 100 NTSC
HDTV 1080 8 bit
NTSC 8 Bit
NTSC 10 Bit
PAL 10 Bit
PAL 8 Bit
HDTV 720 10 Bit
HDTV 720 8 Bit
HDTV 1080 10 bit
Cinepak
Intel Indeo Video4.4
Motion JPEG A
MPEG-4 video
Video
Planar RGB
Component video

not supported:

DVCPRO HD 720p60
DVCPro50 NTSC
DV50 NTSC
DV50 NTSC Anamorphic
DV50 PAL Anamorphic
HDV 1080i60
DVCPro HD 1080i60
DVCPRO HD 1080i50
DVCPRO50 PAL
HDV 720p30
DVCPRO HD 720p60
DVCPRO HD 720p24
Pixlet NTSC
HDV 1080i50
DVCPro HD 1080i50
DV50 PAL
Sheervideo (This one works OK under windows with QTPlayer)

----(end email)-------

...so if you shot in an unsupported format, you could always Media Manager Recompress To a supported format, like AJA or BMD's uncompressed codecs. So at least that is one step closer, and you don't have to go to tape or convert the whole thing to DPX files.

....thanks to Nacho and Leo for taking the time to answer all my persnickety questions!

-mike

MacProJournal has the step by step instructions. Not trivial! But crucial to get reasonable performance. In conversations with video capture card manufacturers, they all say that common storage is the stumbling block at this time.

Since Apple has been very, very clear that they will not be offering tech support for WinXP running on Mac Pros (or any other Intel based Mac), how seriously can we take the "One Box To Rule Them All" approach of running XP and OS X on the same box?

Without confirmed driver support for third party (or even Apple's own) cards, that is kind of a deal breaker for the idea. Hey Apple - will there be a WinXP driver for the Apple fibre channel cards? Will it be possible to access an XServe RAID, or Xsan running on same, under WinXP? What about even a local SATA RAID? Some companies (Sonnet says on their website) are working on XP drivers, but none have shipped AFAIK.

I think that for small or one man shops you can kinda wing it if you're willing to risk it, but for larger shops that need certification and support, it's a deal killer right there.

Chime in with your comments with the link below.

-mike

AMUG SoftRAID 3.5.1 Review

SoftRAID 3.5.1 is the latest version of the disk formatting software. Back in 10.3, SoftRAID was the tool to use instead of Disk Utility because it would allow you to partition RAID volumes, which Disk Utility didn't (at the time). SoftRAID also let you set block sizes for RAID volumes, which Disk Utility didn't either.

Since Tiger came out, you can partition and set block sizes in Disk Utility.

However, through trust and just "feel better" reasons I still prefer to use SoftRAID for my large RAID volume formatting tasks. I like the UI better, too.

You can use DIsk Utility to make striped mirrored volumes (it's a pain), whereas SoftRAID cannot at this time (I've been bugging Mark on this for over a year).

Where SoftRAID REALLY shines, however, is for mirrored volumes. If you've got serious data that you need a constant backup of (such as your FCP project and other original, created on computer assets like AE & PSD files), mirrored volumes are good. SoftRAID does mirrored volumes much better than Disk Utility - it'll do striped reads, increasing throughput, and I've heard reports of Disk Utility mirrors losing sync and NOT telling you about it (was from 10.3 days, dunno if 10.4 still has that problem).

Read the full review, but I like and unhesitatingly recommend SoftRAID for RAID and mirroring tasks.

-mike

The Believer - Interview with Steven Soderbergh

There's a tipping point. If you're going to make a movie for ten thousand you can talk everybody into doing it for free. You could make a really good-looking movie right now for ten grand, if you have an idea. That's the trick.


That's Steven Soderbergh talking about Bubble - he spent $1.6M to do the film, because he paid people. But talking people into doing it for free - that's the trick, isn't it?

By the way, isn't that the most lame, drag-your-ass-in-here attention whoring headline I've written? I'm kinda proud of how much that headline sucks.

: )

Long interview ranging all over the place with Soderbergh - porn, politics, truth, chanigng your mind, cheap movies, vetting quality, etc.

Other quote:

I don’t know where the middle point is—“I can’t find anyone to vouch for the legitimacy of this thing that somebody’s asking me to download”—and access that’s being controlled by a bunch of people who, it’s possible, if you met, you’d actually hate.


He's talking about the arbiters of access to the bigger markets (painters in NYC in this case), but it has pretty damn obvious corollaries to indie moviemaking.

On making mistakes:

BLVR: Do you generally blame yourself when that happens?

SS: When I’m on the set? Yeah. Everything is the director’s fault—you can quote me on that. There are no excuses.

Take that one to heart, folks - in the end, if you're directing the movie, it is YOUR responsibility. If things go wrong, it is up to you to fix it (with the help of your team, obviously...but you picked them...if they aren't great, your fault....if you couldn't afford a good enough team, then NOT the budget's fault, your fault for not raising enough money...etc....)

On Full Frontal:

At the time, I was interested in the contract between the filmmaker and the audience. What’s the fine print? What are you allowed to do and not to do? For two million dollars, let’s find out. And I learned something—I learned that, for most people, I really went off the reservation there.


Fun stuff, go read it.

-mike

Studio Daily | Iridas to Unveil SpeedGrade HD at IBC

OK, this is MAJOR news for the FCP hounds out there - Iridas, maker of the respected Speedgrade application for working with 2K log film scans for DI purposes, is coming out with a new product, Speedgrade HD. For the Wintel folks, it's good that there is now a less expensive HD version. But the product is brand new for Macs.

It is $9,999 Euros, which at today's exchange rates is about $12,825, so I'd expect a $12,500 or $12,995 retail price in America.

It does non-destructive grading - your changes are stored as XML files. It'll auto-conform EDLs from NLEs including Final Cut, can do primaries and up to six secondary color corrections, works with the other Iridas software for sharing looks (they have some on-set stuff as well). NVidia Quadro FX 4500 or better required (hey, finally a justification for these things!)

Mike's Comments - this sounds GOOOOOOD. I've heard of their product and had back burnered it in my own mind since I primarily work with Macs and QuickTime, but now that it is coming to Macs I'm perking up and taking serious interest here. I've worked extensively with Final Touch HD, and while it is a power coloring solution, the workflow stuff....always had little bugaboos and issues to be dealt with - it wasn't as clean and tidy as they said it would be (but then what complex software ever is). I'll be checking into this for sure.

Sooo.....I'm leaving for 2 weeks starting Tuesday. It's a holiday. So what happens? Stuff breaks this week.

Item: I updated firmware on a loaner (for review) BlackMagic DeckLink HD Pro 4:4:4 card. After the update, it is never recognized by the computer again. Tech support thinks it is a bad pin on the firmware chip, can't read in data, so my firmware update was bad. It is now a paperweight - I send it back.

Item: My Blackmagic Multibridge Extreme, that I bought with my own money, works beautifully, I've been using it for 8 or 9 months. It runs HOT, though. I've noticed speckly single pixel dots on the analog HD outputs, though - talk to tech support, something analog is going back. Prompt RMA, I'm shipping mine back and they'll send me a new one. I'm not in a rush since leaving town, but I'd bet that they'd cross ship or ship & return if I'd needed minimal downtime.

Item: My 2002 Acura RSX Type S has had a difficult to replicate problem that only presents itself after driving hours in the extreme Texas heat. It's about to go into the shop for the EIGHTH time to try to resolve a spin-off problem - bad catalytic converter.

Item: My MacBook, after working fine the first few months, had the spontaneous power down and streaky lines problem (documented here, here, and here). I sent it in, it took a bit to get it fixed, and then it was operational...until 2 days ago. Then it started happening again. Four or five times, it would spontaneously shut down. Not fail to wake from sleep, but just go Bloink! and not be powered. Even with a battery in it. Fully charged. WITH AC power plugged in and verified working. So I call tech support, they have me reseat the RAM, zap PRAM, reset the PMU, and it is working. Until the next morning - spontaneous power loss, all unsaved work lost (working on reviews, thankyouverymuch), and on reboot I get the streaky lines again. Since I'm leaving town Tuesday and it is a holiday weekend, I'm feeling doomed.

However....I go to the Apple Barton Creek Store, talk to Jameson (biz sales guy) about the situation, and he takes beautiful care of me. All I can say is be patient, be nice, be polite, explain your situation, know what you're talking about, and it is amazing the results you can get. Thanks to the team at the Austin Apple store, I'm up and rolling for the trip. You folks will appreciate it too - it is my blogging box.

As an aside, when purchasing stuff, there are other options besides the Apple website - Apple Enterprise sales will work with you on edit suite purchases, and if you go into an Apple store ask for the business sales person, they usually have a little wiggle room. More you buy, better the deal.

Point of all this? Stuff does break. Be prepared. But don't go apopleptic on the people you deal with - it only makes them less interested in helping you out.

Other stuff - a friend of mine just got a Pro Mac and will be messing around with a Kona3 (I haven't written up my experiences yet), it'll be interesting to see what an FCP editor new to HD-SDI cards thinks of the whole deal.

More to follow, gotta make an emergency Fry's run now.

-mike