HD For Indies

End of Year Blogwad: 12/31/06

I've been enjoying taking the week mostly off when it comes to blogging, but have been snagging items of relevance and letting the stack up, minimized in my dock.

I started this in 2004, so 2007 will be the fourth year that HD for Indies has touched. As always, thanks for all the kind words and support, and Happy New Year!

So go have fun tonight and think about your new year starting tomorrow, or read this with your hangover over eggs in the manana.

Here it all is, slightly organized:


END OF YEAR STUFF:
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Wired News: Best Shoestring Sci-Fi of 2006...although Wild Blue Yonder literally put me to sleep, several times.

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Videoguys Top 10 products of 2006

This is a very Windows-centric list, hopefully balances my Mac-centric tendency a bit today. Interested in doing HD stuff on Windows? Read this!

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CinemaTech: Ten Pivotal Events of 2006, from the Intersection of Entertainment and Technology

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2006: The year in Apple - Yahoo! News

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Wired News: The Year in Online Video

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Biggest Box Office Flops Of 2006 � Screenhead

Read it and weep...but not for yourself. Most of these deserved their fates, but I'm sad to see The Fountain did so poorly, personally I really enjoyed it and found it very relevant/resonant.

But Poseidon goes down, down, down....buried under the weight of a $160M budget and only $60M in floatation devices....

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ONLINE VIDEO:
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Xbox the top video download success? - DV Guru - Xbox 360 lets you download movies directly to a device that can display them on your TV. OH - and lets you download HD movies for direct display on your HDTV, even with analog connections (no HDMI requirement). Does that sound like stellar news to anybody else? Sure does to me!

Honestly, I think Microsoft is in a great position when it comes to HD content - you can play games on this thing, you can watch HD-DVDs for a $200 add-on to your $300-$500 base investment, or just download HD movies directly with a broadband connection. Or you can spend $500 to $1500 for an HD-DVD or Blu-ray player. Hmm. Not a very compelling argument.

Apple's iTV I think would play well to a different demographic than the stereotypical 24 year old male Xbox 360 player - families. They may not want an Xbox in their home, and the movies you can buy online? The Disney stuff, which includes a lot of the family movies the kids are going to want to watch over and over. And it'll undoubtedly play all your iTunes music, and let you watch your pictures the same way Front Row does now, connecting wired or wirelessly to your Mac or PC (photo functionality almost assuredly Mac only, certainly to start).

But if I had to guess, I'd pick the Xbox360 demographic as the bigger/better market to serve.

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Apple holds 90% of video downloads - DV Guru: " 1.2 million households purchased a video download in the third quarter of this year, while five times as many people illegally downloaded videos from P2P networks. Of these legal downloads, Apple is responsible for 90% of the overall market:"

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Internet Video and how the Broadcast Nets are Missing the HDTV Opportunity. - Blog Maverick

Cuban's purely pro-HD and has a financial interest in seeing it succeed (after all, he owns HDNet, 2929 Films, etc.), so I don't think he's the most balanced voice of reason, but he does make some good points here.

I heard in a conference in the last coupla years someone talking about the crucial point of inflection for HD advertising would occur when HD sports were broadcast in major markets - Chicago/LA/NYC - so that the presidents of companies would see their SD ads looking like crap cut against HD shows and would call and bitch at their ad agency heads.

Cuban is talking about the opportunity for advertisers, and wisely mentions the hassle factor of advertising to a lot of smaller outlets rather a single larger entity. I wish, however, he'd include cost per impression in his argument - what's it cost you to reach a given viewer.

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CustomFlix Announces Support for Amazon Unbox: "CustomFlix Labs, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc.,
(NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced its support for Amazon.com%u2019s video download service, Amazon Unbox, by adding video downloads to its current DVD and CD on Demand services. This new CustomFlix service now enables independent filmmakers and other DVD content owners to make their content available as video downloads to tens of millions of Amazon.com customers through Unbox."

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Possibly Maybe - Screens - Arts - New York Times Blog - make a web pilot, sell it, buyer pulls it. Learn folks, learn! If you don't leave the web stuff up, we won't follow the cookie crumbs....

COLORING/DI/SHOOTING STUFF:
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Colour My World: Repairing and styling colour, featuring 'The Grading Sweet'.

There's a set of color correction tools called The Grading Sweet, with a standard ($90) and Pro ($750) versions.

It is a hand-holding approach to color - you tell it whether the footage is under/normal/overexposed, temperature correct it (tungsten to daylight or vice versa or neutral) then a "sweetener" which sounds like some kind of contrast/saturation thing. Then it has a windowing option, as well as canned color treatment options, vignetting options, glows, and other stuff. There's a Pro version at many times the price as well.

It seems well suited for novice colorists to get their feet wet with this kind of stuff. Jude Cotter wrote the LAFCPUG article that I skimmed to make this entry.

(found via DVguru.com)

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Maintaining the Vision Good article going over various aspects and pros and cons of color correcting projects: "We first went to a color correction house where it wasn't working very well. So we ended up going to a different house,%u201D he says. %u201CAnd once we did that it was great. They were really good, and on top of it.� Part of it is that you really have to have faith in the colorist to be able to tell you, when we blow up to 35, this is going to be okay.%u201D He adds, %u201CMaybe you have a little problem where it looks a little bit too saturated with blue, and they say, don't worry it'll be okay. It's really an act of faith at that point. I really feel that is how you should approach it. For a DP to be controlling the actual numbers is kind of folly, I think. There are guys who are doing it all day long. But you've got to get a good person."
...
“We ended up, mainly for budgetary reasons, going right to HD, telecine to HD,” he says. “In the color correction, I would find something and ask, can we make that a little bit more orange rather than red? And what happened is it would go too far. They'd say, we can't really -- it's got to be one or the other. It didn't have that subtlety of color adjustment which you do if you're going to a higher scan, if you're scanning to 2K or even 4K.”
...but I'd be curious to know what format they went to, was it 4:4:4, was it log, etc.. It seems pretty clear a good film scanner is going to give better results than a good telecine to an HD tape format, but with light or zero compression on a 4:4:4 log telecine, I'd be curious to know the quality difference, and I suspect the cost savings could be considerable.

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Somewhat related, Some TV stars fear HDTV's sharp clarity

While the purists used to argue film retained more resolution, the truth is HD provides a more detailed picture due to a lack of film grain's hiding properties.

Best summed up with the line:
hi-def clarity puts any and all wrinkles, pimples and pores on display in well-lit bathroom-mirror detail.

Oopsie, Brad Pitt.

Makeup artists are having to up their game to maintain good looking stars. Airbrushing is big, but doesn't work everywhere.

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How Clint Eastwood incorporated digital elements into Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers. : "the DI ended up playing a central role in crafting the visuals for both movies, largely because the director had a specific plan for presenting the extensive battle footage of both films"

I should really read this whole thing...but I haven't. Beat me to it.

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Achieving a Film Look with DV and HDV Cameras this is the basics - 24p, gamma, lighting, motion rendering, depth of field, etc.

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Depth of Field Myth - explains how backing up and zooming in doesn't actually make the background any blurrier

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HD House back at Sundance - DV Guru

Going to Sundance? Check out HD House, will have stuff on:

Digital Cameras Exposed presented by Emmy Award-winning Engineer and Videography Technical Editor Mark Schubin
HD Camera Compendium presented by Cinematographer, Director and Visual Effects Supervisor Scott Billups
Digital Imaging Demos with camera and lens first-looks
The Workable Digital Workflow
Digital Intermediate Possibilities for Independent Filmmakers
Data and Digital Cinematography
Painting by Numbers: 4:4:4, 2K, 35, 16
Facts on the HDV Format

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DRIVE/STORAGE/HARDWARE STUFF:
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Mac Pro 4-Drive Internal RAID Tests (Seagate 320GB, 7200.10 drives): "Mac Pro 4-Drive Internal RAID Tests
(Seagate 7200.10 320GB Drives)" - works pretty well, DiskTester and Kona benchmarks

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G5 PCI-X RAID Tests - 4 Maxline Pro 500GB/Seritek 2eEN4 SATA Enclosure/SeriTek 1VE4 Controller - QuickBench and terminal bash results

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Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Quad-Core CPU (Kentsfield) Review: Content Creation: Media Editing and Encoding Benchmarks - review of the latest double double (quad cores on a single die/chip), which in a dual config would allow for an 8 processor system. On Windows, After Effects 7 (labelled 6.0 here) did pretty well, but we don't know what theirtest files were.

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Quick Takes on Real World Macintosh Performance ExpressCard SATA bandwidth woes: "Though the theoretical bandwidth of an ExpressCard is 256MB/s, the current speed limit of all ExpressCards is about HALF of that when used with a RAID set no matter how many drives are connected."

....as expected - I've been told the bus isn't fast enough for uncompressed HD work.

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REVIEWS:
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Macworld: Review: 17-inch MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo/2.33 GHz Nice fast notebook (NOT laptop, cooks your thighs), big screen. Surprisingly a bit slower in their tests than the 15" version that ostensibly should match performance. Overall, pricey but good: "We can think of a few new features we%u2019d like to see in Apple%u2019s flagship laptop%u2014an eSATA port for external drives, for example, and maybe a built-in reader for flash memory cards. Even without those improvements, however, the 17-inch MacBook Pro is a marvelous machine. If you can afford the price and don%u2019t mind the size and weight inevitably associated with such a large display, you won%u2019t be disappointed."

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FresHDV | FX7 VS FX1 footage - translated from German, but lots of details, if you're debating which of these to get, read on

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Boujou4: "Boujou has been the industry standard for camera and object tracking software for quite a few years now. But, like most software, it has had its drawbacks, which most of the ingenious tracking artists have found workarounds for.� In its latest incarnation, 2d3 has answered these problems by opening the black box and letting the users tinker around. In years past, Boujou was used to track point data in the same way a soldier uses an automatic weapon. You simply fire and see what you hit. An artist would bring in the background plate to be tracked, put in the lens data (if he has it), and hit Feature Track.�Boujou would jaw on the frames for a while and try to come up with a solution.�When it worked, it worked well, and when it didn%u2019t, it was easier to move to a manual solution %u2013 often in a different piece of software.�At least, that has been my experience on numerous projects with numerous effects houses."

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Sony HDR-FX7 Camcorder Review: "It’s hard not to like Sony’s HDR-FX7, and only a few years ago we would have loved it....Unfortunately for the FX7, the high-end “consumer” camcorder niche seems a threatened species....Until Sony lowers the price of the HDR-FX7, we can’t give it a strong endorsement...Our advice is to hold off on buying an FX7 until Sony drops its price considerably – or to give the XH A1 some serious consideration."

Stills and video from the FX7 here. Very interesting to hear the Canon so strongly endorsed in a review of the Sony gear. Of course, I'm also very curious to see some reviews of the Sony V1U camera as well.

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Oppo DV-981HD Universal DVD Player - $230, Faroudja uprezzing DVD player with HDMI output. After reading this article, makes me think waiting for high def discs isn't such a bad idea for most folks for the quality and results you'd get at the size and viewing distances most can afford.

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Avid, Final Cut Pro, and Streaming Training Courses: Creating Marker Durations In Final Cut Pro

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HD-DVD/BLU-RAY/DRM/MADNESS
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Media, tech cos probe possible high-def DVD hack - Yahoo! News - maybe it has, maybe it hasn't, not sure yet. The real fun begins if this IS for real, and the studios start revoking keys. The way AACS works (protection scheme in HD-DVD and Blu-ray) is akin to CSS from DVDs, BUT there is NOT one master global key, each title has its own key. Seems that the hacker found a way to extract the key on a title by title basis from the HD-DVD playback software.

There's a video and everything...but that is easily fake-able.

SO....if this is the case, then the software manufacturer should issue a new version of the software, and in theory all new high def discs would include that version of the software on their "don't let this work list" - so if you're an unsuspecting user, one day all of a sudden you put in a new disc, and suddenly ALL your discs won't work....because the studios decided your player was verbotten.

There will ALWAYS be hacks. I was talking with a friend of mine about this kind of stuff the other day, his point was that so long as there is a system in place that keeps most people legal most of the time, it is OK. I countered that as long as there is ANY leak, ANYwhere, there will be the illicit bootlegs sold on the open market, which is where the REAL money loss comes from for the studios.

I suspect it will be possible to get one of the cheapest players out there - an Xbox 360 with the HD-DVD add-on -- and use a $1000 HD capture card to capture the analog HD output to DVCPRO HD, then re-encode and distribute illegally as one wished. If it can be circumvented, it will be. In the meantime, legitimate home users trying to time or media shift will of course be left out in the cold.

Grr. Or brr. Depending.

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...but for all the whinging about next gen formats, DVD players finally outnumber VCRs - "For all of the talk about the battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray, both technologies are far, far away from most family rooms. Yes, the two are just now beginning what could be a long battle for entertainment-center supremacy, but keep in mind that the technology that they are vying to replace has only recently gained the upper hand against the previous-generation technology--a decade after first being introduced. Even if Blu-ray or HD DVD unexpectedly routs its opponent from the market in the next two or three years, it will still be several more years before the victorious format supplants the DVD."

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PowerDVD Ultra: HD DVD and Blu-ray playback for the PC - DV Guru

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OTHER/RANDOM:
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johnaugust.com � Seeing The Nines at Sundance - John August talks about going to Sundance and how to do it, best quotes: "my threshold for tolerating crowds, schwag and auteur-theorists drops considerably when wearing a parka."

"Maybe you’ll meet that special someone who will change your life. Or convince you never to sleep with a singer/songwriter/gaffer."

Also Scott Kirsner's guide on Sundance:

http://cinematech.blogspot.com/2006/11/advice-on-attending-sundance-film.html

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Spielberg involved in "The Apprentice" like show for filmmakers - DV Guru: I like the cynical guess at how it will all play out from the DVguru writer:

"I am intrigued but here is how I think the first season will play out. Most of the 16 directors will be complete morons, power hungry, wannabe-divas that will be eliminated as early as possible. There will be a couple of the good conformist types. The final two will consist of a conformist and a diva. Of course, the conformist will go on to win the show. "

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the Workbook Project is a new site for content creators, worth keeping an eye on. Found via DVguru.com

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No mentioning of the iPhone in Steve%u2019s keynote address! - aMobileME - this guy thinks he knows what Steve Jobs will say at MWSF. Doubt it is all correct, feel free to lambast him when he's wrong. I've been hearing rumors that Leopard has been missing internal bencmarks, so March is sounding optimistic.

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DVX100B of HVX200 for Tight Budget - DVXuser.com -- The online community for filmmaking - I argue the false economy of being able to "almost" afford an HVX.

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Camera 101: Rule of Thirds - a little bit of composition info for the noobs...like me (did I mention I'm not a shooter? I'm not a shooter).

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Studio Daily | News and Tools of the Trade - their version of a blogwad - bunch of tidbits of interest

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FresHDV | Automated lip reading adds Hitler's voice to previously silent films

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A Film Festival Without the Film - DV Guru

Flipbook film festival - not HD, but cool, kool, kewl.

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-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-

In the purely "because I'm self-centered enough to want to know" category, HD for Indies pageviews were 1.416M pageviews for the year (3900/day), that's up from about 956,000 in CY2005 (2600+/day), and an average of 1900/day pageviews the last quarter of '04 that I started using a particular tracking tool, after starting the site in March of 2004.

So after all this readin' and edumacation, I'm off to go celebrate the new year by avidly destroy some brain cells...TAXI!

: )

-mike

Last night I got an email from Jim Jannard, founder of Red, entitled "Spike is here!" - Red's goal was to get prototype/s built in 2006, and they are just squeaking in under the wire - Spike (prototype) is all put together and they are starting to put it through it's paces. Congrats to them!

There's a thread at the new Reduser.net showing off these same pics, plus a lot of discussion there as well.

Hats off to the whole team, and thanks to Jarred for taking these pics.

This is that same prototype as discussed in this post from the other day, just powder coated a matte black - looks good.

With powder coat and a lens on it, looks like a "real" camera now. Oh, and ports galore - to paraphrase Luke, "Look at the side of that thing!"

Looking forward to the first pics from Spike they feel like sharing with the public. But apparently this one doesn't do everything yet - as for the level of functionality in Spike, Jim said on Reduser.net:

"We aren't going to publish anything (for now) other than shots of Spike. We have a combination of test beds. Frankie, Frankie 2, Spike, and boards on a bench. I don't really want to get into the details of what each is doing everyday or what images came from where. I will say that Spike is not full function enabled at this time, nor was it intended to be at this point. We are bringing up different features on different test beds for now. Remember, the goal is to ship early 2007. All is good (today).

Jim"


They are squeezing in under the wire on 2006 protos, practically testing for real will be mostly in earliest 2007, with field testing probably starting in later January or February is my uninformed guess. But the revised goal of shipping in "early" 2007 still seems entirely viable, with early being defined as late as May 31st by Jim. They do hope to be shipping by NAB 2007, but as always, no promised ship date - they keep saying these are targets not promises.

But it's lookin' good! I'm looking forward to a lot of dropped jaws at NAB 2007 with working units in the booth in Vegas.

As usual, click for larger view, command-click to open in a new tab in Safari (you HAVE set your prefs for tabbed viewing, haven't you?)

-mike

PS - working on that long delayed blogwad...

(click for bigger view)
Several things of interest concerning the Red One camera have happened in the last 24 hours:

First Pictures of "Spike" - the first Red One functional prototype (a different pic than above)

Jim Jannard, Red founder, said on DVXuser.com (click for picture):

Here is a quick sneak preview of "Spike" before final assembly. It is a bit later in December than we had hoped for, but here she is. This is aluminum "Spike" and NOT a rendering. As soon as she is locked and loaded, we will post more images on the new www.reduser.net website, which should go live tomorrow. This is NOT from production tooling. It was machined at the RED garage in Orange County. She should be operational shortly (days, not weeks).

We have chosen not to show internals for obvious reasons... AND production RED ONE will NOT be shiny silver. :-)

Someone asked in that thread about whether reservations would open up again, Jim responded:

Chris... we have thought about this often. It is possible that we will open up reservations for a few days (maybe 3) early next year. The terms and pricing will be slightly different than the 1st round of reservations, but good just the same. We will absolutely open up for firm orders at NAB. My bet is that you would want to get in before that.

Somebody else asked if they are just now putting together prototypes, whether this would affect ship date, Jim responded:

The only timeline we have officially published is: 4k footage in the fall (2006)... we were two weeks early, our 1st camera together in December (that would be Spike), and production early in 2007. What we do with test cameras until shipping we reserve the right to do in private, especially since our plans change daily. Test units will certainly be out before production, but I don't want to commit to when, where, who and why. We'll keep you posted as we go along, but we have enough pressure to ship early 2007. We will not be held accountable for any other milestones.

While we have said that shipping 1st production units around NAB is our goal, "early" can technically be May 31st.


My read: if they are just getting the shell ready on Wednesday the 27th, that's good that it is ready. Far more important and challenging is the status of the guts of the thing and whether they are ready to go in and WORK. If the guts are ready to go in, they're in good shape. Ideally, they'd flip it on and shoot ANYTHING (how about Jim's smiling mug?) just to say "Did it!" and squeeze under the "in 2006" self-imposed target date. And if there is a snafu that pushes them back a week...I don't really care, they would still be generally on track. I'm not so concerned about shipping on a given day (although a big "We Are Shipping!" banner at NAB booth would have great PR value), as I'm concerned about shipping in GENERAL - if I can get mine by summer (and I mean the "normal" definition of June-August), I'll personally be satisfied...and I don't have an exceptionally low reservation number.

Jim mentions their goal is to ship "around NAB" - even that leaves them some slack. But it does sound like they will absolutely have working units, perhaps even production units, in the booth at NAB. And for PR and market reasons, that's the most important thing to have done.

There's also another picture here:

another "Spike" sneak peek... - Reduser.net

You'll notice that is on Reduser.net - it is the new new, Red specific forum board, started by DVXuser.com's Jarred Land.

Site looks good Jarred!

If you were a member of dvxuser.com you'll need to register again for reduser.net. The Red threads on DVXuser.com will be locked down in the next day or two for archival purposes, so start going to reduser.net for your new info. I predict that is where most of the up-to-the-minute skinny will happen, I'm just skimming the cream off and reporting it here (until Jarred barks at me to link not quote!) : )

So go sign up so you can see everything and post your own thoughts and questions over there.

And as always, check the above threads, lots of discussion/conversation going on over there. If you have a question, post it here (using Comments link below) or over on dvxuser or reduser and the Red team will usually respond pretty quickly.

-mike

PS - oops, I actually got at least one of these quotes from this thread on DVinfo.net:

Spike Sneak Preview... - The Digital Video Information Network

Walter Graff, a very experienced DP, has a great page with a ton of HD related articles that I just stumbled across. How good is it? Good enough that I've added it to the Great HD Links list on the permanent right hand side of this page.

The main page of articles is:

Bluesky Media - Instruction

Some of the ones that caught my eye are:

HDTV - more perception than defintion

Setting up an HDTV monitor for proper color rendition

Good HDTV: It's More Than a Numbers Game

SD or HD?: "SD or HD: down and dirty down conversion"

Lighting Is All About Chiaroscuro - THIS IS MY FAVORITE - read this one, has some great examples putting classic paintings next to frames from great movies that appropriated those looks.

Depth of Field Myth: "I can't tell you how many times I have heard the phrase, if you are shooting an interview and you back up your camera and zoom in your lens putting the person back into frame, you will decrease the depth of field making the background softer. I have heard this from first time movie makers all the way up to very experienced 25 year directors of photography. And there you have one of the greatest myths involving depth of field. It is such a myth that many textbooks print it to this day.
Let me quantify the statement and perhaps you will see where the myth comes from. If you are shooting an interview but the background looks too sharp and you back your camera up and zoom into your person again keeping them the same size as you did when the camera was closer while keeping the same f-stop on your lens, THE DEPTH OF FIELD DOES NOT CHANGE."

Prosumer HD - A Lesson In Marketing: The New 1/3' HD Cameras (Bigger does not mean better) -
If anyone was to use the term "better" when trying to sort out the different cameras available in the prosumer HD world then I think you are missing the boat.
Three different areas of processing are involved with these cameras that are important together in making the overall experience ; 1, the lens/CCD, 2, the DSP (converting that image to numbers and how the signal is processed), and 3, the recording format."

BlueSky - Lighting examples-Green Screen: "Down and Dirty Green Screen"

Walter Graff- Bluesky- Greenscreen #2: "What do you do when you are given an hour to set up a green screen"

Women Deserve Soft Lighting: "I Like My Women Soft "

6GOPHDV and P2-DVCPRO HD - HD100 vs HVX200

...and there's still many others.

LOTS of interesting looking articles here - good reading...

-mike

Variety.com - XBox up on downloads: "The relative success of video downloads on Microsoft's Xbox Live and disappointment of Amazon.com's Unbox point to two factors that differentiate Xbox from Amazon and its many other competitors -- consumers who download a movie want a simple way to watch it on their TV, and those with high-def TVs want high-def content.Thanks to the Xbox 360's direct connection to a TV and the console's focus on HD content, Microsoft can deliver both."

Xbox360 is a pretty logical choice for HD downloadable content - big company behind it, large user base, enough clout to realistically court the studios to make their content available. Oh yeah - and it is a killer game platform as well.

Apple's iTV advantage? It can show your pictures and play your music that is on your computer....but I'll bet that'd be cake to add to Xbox if it can't do it already. A nice user interface? Certainly something Apple can do. If they DON'T have HD movies available, and pronto, why WOULD you want to buy from Apple, other than they have a good rep for downloadable content? XBox 360 starts at $300 for a core system (right?), so about the same price. Some folks aren't going to want that kid looking device, nor certainly want to use a game controller or too spacey looking remote to control their HDTV content - consider this the Grown Up Factor.

But cross that against the core demographic of who is likely to download HD movies and...oops, Xbox 360 again.

Gee, Apple, you better be on the ball come January 9th. I'm rootin' for you and all, but still...

-mike

Best Mac Performance Products of 2006

Robert (aka Rob-ART) has this list of best performing Mac products - all backed up by his own testing.

A nice little list of goodies.

-mike

GRINDHOUSE on Yahoo! Movies

The trailer for Grindhouse, the Tarantino/Rodriguez back to back tag team movie pairing - Rodriguez does Planet Terror, Tarantino does Death Proof. Total, TOTAL back to the 70s trailer trash heaven.

Insert "Yeehaw!"

: )

Whatchoo wanna bet Rodriguez shot his digitally? UPDATE - he did, Genesis.

This was shot (at least in part) in Austin - they were shooting process car shots about 5 blocks from my house for a few days over the summer. Note the Death Proof poster shows a Burnet Road Drive In in Austin premiere date - hopehopehopehopehope...

-mike

Final Cut Pro: Troubleshooting Basics - the basics. You'd be surprised how many reader emails could be answered with this - stuff like "I shot 24p HDV and my Final Cut doesn't capture it. I'm using Final Cut 5 and an HDV preset and everything, why isn't it working?"

...because you're running 5.0, not the latest/correct version that supports that FLAVOR of HDV.

Stuff like that.

-mike

MacNN | Clovertown to debut alongside MWSF keynote

Intel is going to announce their quad core Clovertown processor at the same time Steve Jobs is going to be taking the stage at MWSF. Therefore likely that EIGHT processor Mac Pro towers will be announced...these are why I held off on first gen Mac Pro towers for myself. If follows usual Apple pattern, the lower end models will be either immediately available or quoted as "within weeks" with the top end model stated to be available in February, but it may take as long as March/April for them to be in steady/ready supply. Apple has been getting better at holding to announced ship dates since the move to Intel, with the exception of the delayed server.

Also, expect iTV to be announced/revealed in full at MWSF, and I'd be awfully surprised if high definition weren't mentioned a bit more. Why buy another box, and $300 at that, when Netflix, DVDs, Blockbuster, $50 DVD players, and VOD are all readily avaiable? Of course, this was said about downloadable music, too, and iTunes Store seems to be doing OK. But audio is a portable background experience in a way video isn't.

Anyway, Octo Macs. Kewl.

-mike

Best & Worst of 2006 - DV Guru

DV Gurus has posted their best and worst of the year. I gets a shout out as their Favorite blog of the DVgurus:
It is the most cited source on DVguru. We actually have a chip inside of Mike's brain so we can track him at all times.

Woot!

Thanks guys!

Oh, wait, I wondered why I woke up feeling hung over with a scab at the base of my skull that morning after the NAB party...but that explains why I get XM Radio through my back molars. (A-ha! Purported Voices In My Head explained!)

Red gets some luv for Best excitement generated by an unreleased product.

Youtube gets the expected accolades, Four Eyed Monsters gets some well deserved attention, HDV gets the nod over DVCPRO HD, and much much more.

Go read.

-mike

(and yes, I've always been kidding about voices in head)

...Christmas...ehhhhhhhverywheeeeeeerrrrrrre you goooooo...."

I mean, it's beginning to look a lot like a slow news cycle.

Gee, maybe I should go do my Christmas shopping...yeeeeeeeeah, that's the ticket!

Seasons greetings to all, and to all, an HD night.

Between a missing laptop power brick, present shopping, going out of town for a few days, the fact that nobody launches products around Christmas, and wanting to catch up on actually DOING some product reviews, this will be a good time to slow down on the blogging...

-mike

PS - ALTERNATE VERSION -

"...a lot like my optical audio port is stuck on....alllllll the tiiiiiime I goooooo........"

My Macbook is stuck with optical audio port on - the regular Audio Out doesn't show as an option, and it glows Red in the little port all the time. Maybe it is jealous of all those coolio Red images of black devices with a red glow coming from inside. It wants to sit at the big kids' table too.

If I try to adjust volume with the keyboard keys, it shows a little circle with slash through it UNDERNEATH the row of dots - never seen that before. In System Prefs under Sound, Digital Out is the only thing listed right now.

Anybody have any clues?

Would muchly appreciate it if anyone knows anything to comment below or email me (address top of page).

Thank you, and happy seasonal greeting of your choice/affiliation/spirituality to you all!

Truly and sincerely meant,

-mike

Another REDner. I mean REnDer. Render. Yeah, that. Click for larger view in another window, or command-click to open in a new tab.

Notes:

-EVF seems to be shaping up nicely
-is that a finger twistable knurled knob to adjust the angle of the handle? If so, NICE detail - hope all lockdowns are like this
-seems to be - I see two back by the Red Drive
-rods at bottom - I see that there are front and back rods, great for adjusting individually
-BUT I also see what appears to be a hard stop inbetween them - can't slide any further than that
-I'd kinda want the option of a single, continguous rod for greater strength. Maybe even if it weren't absolutely necessary, I'd feel better about it
-if they WANT a hard stop, fine, make a little flip-down lever that CAN stop rod progress fore and aft, BUT can flip out of the way for full length, contiguous rod usage - the power of AND, not the tyranny of OR
-I see the high speed port in their last few renders, maybe they are working on that as the Red Flash might be more finalized in design
-I like the glowing indicators on the side of the battery to indicate charge level
-be nice if the Red Drive had a similar indicator either on it or on the screen on the back of the device as a progress bar somewhere always visible (or certainly visible while shooting). I'd want that info on the viewfinder too, BTW
-progress bar and time remaining at current frame size/rate/compression ratio
-looking closely at the things that hold the rods on, they seem to have some kind of finger operable snap to tighten/loosen - good again
-I wonder where the SATA cable comes from the camera body to connect to the Red Drive? I'm getting a little worried about all the cables that will need to be all over this camera - consider microphone to body, battery to Red Drive (unless they mate somehow in the mount), battery to Red One, EVF to body, etc.
-thinking further on those lines, I hope they have some kind of positive latching connection from body to Red Drive, SATA and eSATA can pull right out. And if you're able to slide the rods to move the battery/Drive package fore/aft, could slide too far to unplug, or snag on someone/something to unhook. Yeah, gotta have a positive latch for body to Red Drive.
-user assignable buttons on EVF GOOD idea
-note little breathing holes on bottom of camera - fans draw air in or out of there I presume
-I spy 8 or 10 buttons around the screen on back, plus the twist 'n push control. Bodes well for getting into the frame size/frame rate/etc. controls pretty quick with something better than a drill down and down and down 1980's DOS menu structure.
-look at these from the other day, too, different view angle

OK, enough for now, yowza, 11:38pm, time for bed!

-mike

Here's the Blogwad I didn't get to over the weekend - a bunch of stuff of interest in no particular order:

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

Studio Daily | BandPro Debuts the Sony F23: "4:4:4 1920x1980 RGB imaging, Three 2.2 megabit 2/3-inch progressive CCD imagers, 14-bit A/D conversion, Support for 1080/23.98p, 24p, 25p, 29.97p, 50p, 59.94p, 50i and 59.94i formats, Support for multi-frame rate and SR motion, with 4:2:2 Capture at up to 60 fps and 4:4:4 Capture at up to 30 fps"

"Cree ran down the design criteria for the F23, which required that it include “film-like conventions” with improved dynamic range, be a cable-free 4:4:4 system, offer advanced video processing, be off-speed capable and be available at a “reasonable cost point.” Cree also highlighted the camera’s weight (32 pounds with the lens and viewfinder) and said back-focus issues occasionally experienced with the F950 have been resolved."

Pricing to not interfere with F900 owner operators - read that as higher than F900s. F900R is $80 or $85K, I forget which. I
think I heard a guesstimate from someone of around $115K somewhere along the line, but I could be entirely wrong.

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

A little Mikey Note on travel - I take my laptop with me when I travel, and in order to keep the voices in my head quiet, I like to read stuff online. Catch is, I don't always have online access on the plane or in the airport. So before I leave, I open all the articles of interest in tabs. Don't use Tabs in Safari? Oh, you SHOULD! Go into your prefs and turn it on. For articles like this, you can just Command-Click on your Mac on each link of interest and it'll open the article in a new tab within the window you're looking at. Give it enough time to load in the full page, check to see if the articles span to a second page (command-click those as well), and you've got all your reading cached and waiting to go. The only downside - with a bunch of windows open, especially if they have those stupid Flash ads going, it'll burn CPU cycles and thus chew through your battery charge faster. Minimize all but current window to allay this (hiding not as good I've found).

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

ProLost: Now You Con Duit: "Pauli Ojala, one of the masterminds behind Conduit, has a blog where he demonstrates the power of the plug-in's nodal niftiness."

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

First PS3, XBox HD DVD Add-On Sales Numbers | High-Def Digest: "PS3 has sold 197,000 units in the U.S. so far -- a total sellout of all domestic shipments Sony was able to deliver to retailers through November.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's HD DVD add-on for the Xbox has moved 42,000 units since
its launch in mid-November (the company has not released total number
of units delivered to retailers, preventing any sold-versus-shipped comparisons)."

You HAVE to buy a Blu-ray player with PS3 - it is integral. Whereas the HD-DVD add-on is an overt, positive, definitive statement of intent to watch HD movies.

So it isn't the 5:1 advantage that it might seem at first.

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

HDBlog.net � Blog Archive � PS3 Review by Ultimate AV: "Note that the PS3 decodes TrueHD to digital PCM, if you wish. Not so with DTS HD Master, however. If you want that track in full glory, you%u2019ll need to use the HDMI 1.3 connector to a receiver or pre/pro that supports DTS HD Master. And%u2026. none of them currently do.
While we%u2019re complaining, the PS3 also doesn%u2019t put out 1080p/24. Not a biggy, but it would have been nice. Note also that the PS3 can%u2019t convert 720p up to 1080i. Which would suck if you had a display that didn%u2019t accept 720p. (Of which there aren%u2019t that many out there.)
But how does the video quality look? In a word: excellent."

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

Final Cut Pro: Capturing audio and video to separate files not available with HDV - and Mike's Secret Notes on the pros/cons of split audio capture.

This is one of those little points of arcana that can make such a difference. If you do split captures (which this article is telling you HDV can't do), that allows you to get away with more realtime layers if you're using audio from one clip and video from another. FCP when doing non-split captures has to read all the video data as well as the audio data - two full video tracks. Imagine doing this if you had uncompressed HD files. With split capture, it only has to read the tiny audio file in a mixed edit, not the unused enormous video file. BUT...that means twice as many files to keep up with. In a fully tweaked setup, I recommend a separate drive for audio that has fast seek times. RAID 1 with SoftRAID even better - protected data, striped reads.

But more files to keep up with, can be confusing when batch recapturing & relinking, etc. Hassle vs. payoff.

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

General Specialist - Tips, Tricks and Tinkerings: Behind-the-Scenes of ILM: "Here's an interesting but hard-to-read look at the VFX for Pirates of the Carribean, including some light reading on motion capture, plus some behind-the-scenes videos and images."

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

General Specialist - Tips, Tricks and Tinkerings: Floating in 32-bit Space (where no one can hear you scream): "Sure, you might have been able to use 32-bit/HDR/float in After Effects 6.5 by using Stu Maschwitz's plugin eLin, but if you're anything like me, you never got around to it.It wasn't until the 32-bit mode in the AE 7.0 beta that I finally took the plunge and 'saw the light.'Here are a few starting points that explain the workflow in AE 7.0 Pro:"

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

Brightcove's CEO on Future of Television - DV Guru: "Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of Brightcove.com recently discussed 'The Future of Television,' at his Keynote speech from the Fall 2006 Video on the Net Conference (video below). If you are really serious about using the internet to distribute your content then Brightcove is definitely a company you should be considering. Listening to the various talks that Jeremy gives will really help you see where the industry is heading."

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

AVCHD Converter From Canopus - DV Guru: "Canopus 'will be releasing a new AVCHD converter product that will convert your footage into an editable format. However, because of the fact that it converts it into the 'Canopus HQ Codec,' it is unlikely that the files will be usable outside of Canopus' Edius NLE systems.'" - so the issue of being able to edit is STARTING to be addressed, but I wouldn't want to cut a feature on Canopus. But you could then transcode from there...maybe.

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

Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine talks about Web TV and niche audiences - DV Guru: "Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired Magazine, was interviewed by Levi Shapiro of IPTV Evangelist prior to Chris' Keynote address at the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE). In the interview Chris discusses what he calls silvercasting (the use of a medium such as the internet to reach micro audiences),"

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

Pre Roll adverts unlikely to be beneficial to small time content creators for time being - DV Guru headline says it all...I agree, read on for details.

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

2006, Brought to You by You - New York Times - good article on user generated content - link found via DVguru.com.

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

Best Screencast Codecs - DV Guru - total geekage. I need to read this for my own usage - what codec is best to use for screencasting - recording and then broadcasting your on computer screen stuff?

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


Studio Daily | New 4K Mastering and Playback System Doremi JPEG2000 based mastering and playback system, feeds 4 HD-SDI or 4 DVI links to generate a 4096x2160 image - just over 4 times 1080p size.

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

FatFreeFilm - Scott Billups, digital guru/honcho, talks pixels 'n stuff.

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

NetFlix new film previews leads to movie download rumors - DV Guru: "It is rumored that NetFlix may be planning a video download service after the company launched a film preview service where you can watch previews of movies that NetFlix thinks you might like. It uses Windows Media Player and the quality is good and like the Amazon Unbox service you need to install something first to watch the videos." - It is was more than rumored - Netflix CEO has talked about downloads are the future, but that DVDs will be with us for at least 5+ years I saw on CNN or somesuch. But anyway, it is a step in that direction for them - leverage their net play to make it more likely that you'll watch. Trailers is such a natural for them. But I don't like that you have to download and install something to watch. Ah, well, Apple makes you download iTunes, so...

-=-------------------

Choosing archival CD/DVD media - DV Guru: " a thorough technical explanation of optical media and what makes a good disc. To summarize his findings:

DVD R has superior error correction and burning control.
Taiyo Yuden makes the best discs.
Gold plated discs don't offer any added protection. "

Go read the full deal to get a better understanding.

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

Photoshop CS3 hoopla, links to join in - DV Guru - all things CS3 to learn all about the new version. I see no video specific goodies, like YUV color previewing, 4:2:2 previewing, new video aspect ratios, title/action safe, etc.

DURN IT! Hopes dashed.

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

Mac Rumors: ZFS in Latest Leopard Builds [Update] This is groovy because it allows for saving versions of a file, and if a write fails, you still have the last saved version. It makes sense that Time Machine (the backup system for OS X 10.5) would be predicated on this. Great for boot and file drives, performance concerns for media drives and arrays. Somebody told me ZFS allows for expanding a RAID set - adding drives without having to restripe the whole thing - that sounds tremendously useful...

Also see:

Think Secret - Gallery: New Leopard build reveals OS far from finished, but earning its stripes (or spots) for latest on OS X 10.5 progress & screenshots - it has a ways to go, no way shipping announcement at MWSF.



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

FirmTek SeriTek enclosure and adapters for Intel Macs

We tested the two bay SATA enclosure using both the ExpressCard/34 host adapter on our MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo and using the PCI Express host adapter on our Mac Pro

ExpressCard did better than I thought - short of a PCIe card, but not at all shabby. Not appropriate for uncompressed HD, but certainly compressed HD.

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

Complex 3D tracking in a TV commercial - DV Guru: "Great 'how we did it' article over on fxguide that discusses the challenges of creating a TV commercial for a railroad association. The look of this commercial needed to provide the illusion that it was all one continuous shot. The creator utilized green screens, rotoscoping and 3D tracking to pull off the desired result. "

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

FxFactory 1.0.1 reviewed - DV Guru: "The FxFactory software includes an assortment of visual effects packages, including filters, transitions, and generations for both Final Cut Pro and Motion, with a Pro version that lets you easily create custom effects. David A. Sarceno took the software for a run and shares his thoughts"

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

Get into After Effects expressions - DV Guru: " Expressions are based on JavaScript and provide a way of programmatically creating interactions between elements in an After Effects animation. That sentence may be scary to you, but it's really not too bad. " Expressions are waaaaaaaaaay powerful - the dark juju of After Effects. Here's a place to get started.

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

CinemaTech: From CustomFlix: Filmmakers Can Now Sell Movies on Amazon's Unbox: "Good news for indie filmmakers who want to make their work available as a digital download, alongside studio content: CustomFlix (a division of Amazon) now makes it possible to sell movies on Amazon.com's Unbox download service. "

===========

Apple to release HD-format Disney movies in 2007 - Digital Lifestyle - Macworld UK: "Apple may release HD versions of Disney movies through the iTunes Store in 2007." - well, "Durf!" as my friend Dianne would say - I've only been predicting this for about a year and a half. Why do you think those iTVs have HDMI not component connectors on them? Why do you think Steve Jobs said "those big flat panel HDTVs in your home" at the launch? 960x720 native res to start I'll betcha, just to take a swing at it. Maybe 960x540 if they are REALLY gimping it. I just HOPE they'll do non-square pixels aspects, so we can get widescreen playback advantages.

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

Creative Workflow Hacks � Blog Archive � Help me beta test a Sequencing Utility for Final Cut Pro Geeks unite! Pull that starter cord on your propeller beanie and dig in!

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

CardRaider 1.0 %u2013 Mac OS X %u2013 VersionTracker: "CardRaider's familiar Mac OS X interface makes it simple to detect and unerase lost pictures." - not HD, but handy - I have a similar utility....somewhere...

......aaaaaaaaaaand that's all, folks!

Colorista is a new color correction tool that works in Final Cut Pro, After Effects, and Motion on Intel Macs (and G5s, of course, adding Avid Xpress Pro), and After Effects, Premiere Pro, press DV, Xpress Pro, Media Composer, and Avid Symphony on Windows based systems.

It works the same way in all programs.

It works like the high end tools do - lift/gamma/gain rings, and shadow/midtone/highlight color wheels - just like Final Touch, Lustre, discreet, daVinci, etc. high end color correction & grading systems.

You can do power windows - soft feathered resizable/rotatable square/oval vignettes.

You can stack multiple instances safely without tearing up your image.

Your 10 bit projects STAY 10 bit when using this in FCP...unlike Color Finesse and some other options.

It uses the GPU and can be realtime in up to 720p projects.

And it is only $200.

Insert Keanu "Woah." Merry Christmas to us indies indeed!

I'd been holding off waiting to do a big long write up on why this is a big deal, but Stu, the creator of it, beat me to it, and probably puts it better, too. I'm wholeheartedly (with permission) ripping off his blog entry on it, since he puts it well. I try to avoid press release regurgitation, but I know, like, respect, and trust Stu, so I'll let him speak for himself (plus I'm short on time):

-------

Why did we make a 3-way color corrector to sell to people who, with the exception of After Effects users, already have a built-in 3-way CC tool? Six reasons:

Correct Like The Pros
Colorista works like Final Touch, Da Vinci, Discrete Lustre, iQ, and other professional grading systems that use the industry standard color model of Lift, Gamma and Gain. The ASC is even working towards codifying this into a system that can be communicated as universally as an EDL. Lift/Gamma/Gain allows you to correct highlights, midtones and shadows, respectively, but without the need to define the value ranges, which means you spend more time color correcting and less time fiddling with controls. In other words...

Fewer Controls, More Power
Colorists need to work fast and efficiently, so having fewer knobs is a good thing. We took the most-used aspects of professional grading systems and packed them into an efficient, easy to use package. Colorista does more than most built-in 3-ways, and with fewer controls.

Power Masks
Isolating areas of the frame to correct is one of the power tools in the colorist's kit. What can you do with piddly little circles and squares? Ask a Da Vinci operator. Sure, sometimes you need deeper masking, but for that you can jump into After Effects. Face lights, vignettes, and spot corrections should be fast, easy, and render in realtime.

Realtime?
Depending on your hardware and video resolution, yes! Works especially well in host applications that lead the market in realtime operation, such as Apple Motion and Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0.

Grade, Don't Degrade
In After Effects 7, Colorista is a 32-bit floating-point plug-in. Stack as many of them on top of each other as you want, you cannot hurt your image. Finally, a tool you can use to effortlessly color correct HDR images.

Three Rings to Rule Them All
Just when you started to master Levels, you need to do some color work in Final Cut Pro. Just when you learn to produce decent results with FCP's 3-way, you take a freelance gig using Avid. Colorista works the same in every host application, meaning that you can learn it once and use it everywhere. And one seat of Colorista licenses you to use the plug-in in every one of the host applications, on Mac or Windows.

---------

Click here to go to Stu's blog entry that has a nice little demo of how this rocks.

Stu and I have swapped a couple of emails on this, and I'd asked, in light of his upcoming book (review/interview forthcoming), whether this changed the picture on using FCP for finishing, or whether to stick to using After Effects as a render pipeline like the DV Rebel's Guide suggests. He said that since you can use this plugin in both, do your temp/pretty damn good work in FCP, and finish with a better/best render in AE (I'm paraphrasing, pardon Stu). OooooOOOOOOOOooooohhhh....good indeed! Scaleable options are always BEST!

The only omission that makes me sigh is the lack of secondary color correction tools - but this is a version one product, and the developers are keenly aware of the user base's demand for this feature. Besides speed, that is one of the key features that truly separates the professional tools from the rest.

Other coverage on Colorista:

ProLost: Colorista!

Magic Bullet Colorista v1.0 - overview page from Red Giant

Magic Bullet Colorista - features page from Red Giant

Studio Daily | Red Giant Offers New Color Correction Tool: Magic Bullet Colorista

Red Giant presents Magic Bullet Colorista v1.0 - DV Guru

MacNN | Red Giant ships Magic Bullet Colorista

So I'll have more to say after talking to Stu as soon as I can arrange it. I need to spend some more time with it myself - it looks incredibly promising, offering the kind of power & control that Final Touch did that I worked and sweated over for months. It won't be as fast, but at a tiny fraction of the cost, without the pain of leaving the FCP environment, this is a big big deal.

-mike

PS - It has been possible to use Color Finesse for a similar workflow - do CC in FCP, then Duck it into AE for rendering, but in FCP, Color Finesse was limited to 8 bits (like Magic Bullet was), and was non GPU accelerated, and cost more, and wasn't Universal Binary until quite recently (just noticed something on it a few minutes ago). This just seems Mo Bettah at the moment.

Man, I am all about Red this week. Every time I sit down to try to sift the coupla hundred articles of possible blogging interest, there's another Red tidbit out there that is just so easy to write up in 90 seconds in my obsessive compulsion to be THE place to get all the latest info.

Click the above images for the full size view, and for much, MUCH discussion on them, read the following:

RED ONE render (newer)... - DVXuser.com -- The online community for filmmaking

Here is another RED ONE render... - The Digital Video Information Network

Comment away here (using comment link below) or over on either of those sites to discuss likes/dislikes and questions.

-mike

LITTLE FROG IN HIGH DEF: DVCPRO HD GREEN SCREENING

Keylight does a nice job for Shane on motion blurred footage, but he's noticing noisier blacks and elevated luma. One reason - crazy luma handling behavior between FCP and After Effects, boiling down to QuickTime issues.

I say key it in Keylight, color correct in FCP.

-mike

Blackmagic Design: Intensity

Blackmagic's $250 Intensity card is now shipping - it does HDMI in and out, but that's it.

Interesting for:

INPUT - if your camera has HDMI outputs, you can capture uncompressed 4:2:2 or online JPEG (Windows) or DVCPRO HD (Final Cut Pro) on Macs. Note no device control on card, gotta use FireWire device control. May be possible to use serial adaptors for 9 pin control? Maybe at best. Note HDMI standard only supports the broadcast standards, so no 1080p24/23.976.

OUTPUT - low cost HDMI based HDTVs are a low cost monitoring solution. I'm not aware of any that have professional callibration features like blue only or underscan mode, but if you're on a super tight budget, this is a great way to see what most consumers will be looking at when your project is done. NSTC/PAL/720p/1080i capable.

It seems like the inexpensive JVC 17 DTV-1710CG HD CRT is going away - that was the last inexpensive professional HD CRT on the market I'm aware of.

That leaves two lower cost options - Blackmagic's HDLink to an LCD panel (1280 or 1920 wide depending on video format desired) or the Intensity card paired with an HDMI equipped HDTV.

This card also comes with the new On Air software, which allows you to mix two live signals and output live, with graphic overlays (wow!). For low cost live HD 2 camera mixing, a great deal. And yes, as this implies, you CAN have two of these cards installed - so two ins with a live mixed output.

On Air 2.0 allows for mix and match as I understand it - so an Intensity card and a Multibridge in theory could be used together AFAIK.

-mike

PS - this reader tip was so good and on target for indies, it deserved promotion into the article itself:

Other cool uses for this card:

1) JUST AS AN OUTPUT CARD for SUITE #2: In a studio where one person has a full HD capture card, captures footage, hands the drive over to a second editor on a less expensive system that has a consumer HDTV. Now HDV, DVCPRO-HD, and uncompressed HD, captured from a pro system, can be monitored live from the timeline in suite #2 at minimal costs.

2) A HDV TO DVCPRO-HD transcoder: if your footage is being captured from an HDV camera with HDMI, you can LIVE transcode to DVCPRO-HD on the fly and then monitor your DVCPRO-HD timeline.

-Christopher S. Johnson


Well said, Christopher! Entirely right.

-mike

Specs changes... - DVXuser.com -- The online community for filmmaking

Late last night, after I posted this article, Jim Jannard posted on dvxuser:

Specs changes...
Here we go. We are in the process of simplifying the record options in camera. With the development of REDCODE and REDCINE, it seems evident that the number of format options can shrink without consequence. We will be posting the new Format Options page shortly. Anything you want will still be available either in camera or with REDCINE.

As a side note... anyone who doesn't record REDCODE is making a mistake (IMHO).

Jim


....so a clear example of "specs subject to change at any time"

Jarred posted shortly thereafter (in part):

....2k REDCODE RAW records almost 2x as much time as 1080p RGB.

....which means my calculations are off somewhere, I'm showing something closer to a 3:1 difference - 6.4 vs. 18.1 MB/sec for 24p. Since they are about the same resolution....hmmm....don't know where I'm off there...which is too high or too low?

For details on what got changed, see the article below, and either click on the UPDATE link towards the top of the article or just scroll to the bottom of it.

-mike

...so earlier I wrote the previous piece (see below or here) talking about how the Red Drive is now a small two drive RAID with 320 GB capacity. Almost certainly two 160GB drives. If they'd said 360GB, that would open the door to three 120GB drives, with possible fault tolerance (third drive for RAID 3 parity storage). But they didn't, it looks like a two drive solution. So that got me thinking about about what kind of storage times you'd get. And that got me thinking about other recording formats and what kind of datarates, storage requirements, and storage time on Red RAID you'd get.

UPDATE - so since yesterday when I posted this, the Red One Formats Chart has been updated - scroll to bottom for latest info

So I put on my propeller beanie, and got to thinkin':

Redcode RAW compressed 4K@24p is 27.5 MB/sec, thus 1.15 MB/frame. This is what we've been told by Red on the record, but all specs subject to change, yadda yadda. (I said uncompressed earlier, my bad.)

4K frames are 4096x2304, or 9,437,184 pixels, and only one channel (RAW, remember?)

What if you want to shoot 1080p or 1080i?


1920x1080 is 2,073,600 pixels, but is RGB - so three channels. Multiply by 3: 6,220,800 pixels.

So, if the compression ratio juju is all the same, short of any more firm data from Red, it looks like 1080pRGB could/should be about 2/3 the amount of data. Assuming everything is constant (which it probably isn't, but lets wing it for now), that would imply 1080p RGB frames would 2/3 the size of 4K RAW frames - so about 0.755 MB/frame. 1080p24 would thus be a bit over 18 MB/sec, 1080p30 would be 22.65 MB/sec, and 1080p60 (from which 1080i60 would be derived) would be 45.3 MB/sec. That's a lot of datarate! Oddly, note that the format required to record broadcast standard 1080i60 RGB is higher than that of 4K@30p RAW.

What about 720p?

Following the same kind of math, 720p (1280x720 RGB) frames are 29.3% the size of 4K RAW, so about 0.337 MB/frame. Thus:
720p24 Redcode RGB = 8.1 MB/sec (cake!)
720p25 Redcode RGB = 8.4 MB/sec
720p30 = 10.1 MB/sec
720p50 = 16.8 MB/sec
720p60 = 20.2 MB/sec
and the maximum 720p120 recordable onboard is 40.4 MB/sec

So given all that, the biggest challenge is 1080p60 RGB - and all the broadcast folks will be wanting that (but don't forget you can spit that out the HD-SDI live as well).

So back to the Red Drive - at 320 GB, I'm presuming it is two drives, thus 160 GB drives. Looking at Tom's Hardware, there are two 160 GB 2.5" SATA drives on the market:

the Hitachi Travelstar 5K160:

Min sustained read: 23 MB/sec
Max sustained read: 46 MB/sec
Min sustained write: 18.4 MB/sec
Max sustained write: 45 MB/sec

and the Fujitsu MHV2160BT:

Min sustained read: 15.6 MB/sec
Max sustained read: 41.3 MB/sec
Min sustained write: 20.3 MB/sec
Max sustained write: 41.3 MB/sec

The challenge for a storage device like this is that it needs to be able to read and write the worst case scenario ideally across the entire capacity of the disk - the fastest outer tracks to the slowest inner tracks. Whatever you can write you better be able to read in real time as well to play it back. So you have to find the WORST performance of minimum read and write and go with that. Since we're talking a 2 drive RAID (at least, I'm presuming two drives), we can almost double the performance of the drives. In my experience there is some overhead penalty vs a single drive - on my 4+ drive RAIDs under Mac OS X, which probably isn't the case here, but let's assume the worst for the moment - a 10% hit in RAID config.

SO:

Of these two drives, the Hitachi looks preferable - it's lowest performance is an 18.4 MB/sec write. Hmm. In a two drive RAID, with idealized performance, that is still only 36.8 MB/sec - well short of the 45.3 MB/sec required (and that with no overhead or safety margin!). So I'd guess off the bat that if they are using the Hitachi drives in a RAID, they'd have to partition it to NOT use that too slow portion of the drive - I've described coping strategies for this kind of thing here - you partition at the point beyond which performance is below target data rate + overhead.

So you'd have to figure out where performance is over 48.3 MB/sec plus a safety margin - let's say 20% to pick a small but plausible sounding figure - thus about 58 MB/sec. I don't have a chart handy specific to the drive falloff of the Hitachi, but based on typical performance of other 2.5" hard drives, I'd guess that point would be very roughly around 70% capacity. So in the end, you'd sacrifice about 30% of the capacity of the array (about 90 GB) in order to ensure ALL formats could be recorded to ALL portions of the array at ALL times.

Otherwise, it would get far too confusing for the typical shooter - imagine you've been shooting for 1080i60 in the morning, switch to 1080p24 for a while, and the Red is telling you there is still 20 minutes of 1080p24 space available. You switch over to 1080i60 mode, and it oops, it is too full, the array is too slow now, no 1080i60 recording availble. Who'd want to deal with that?

So that knocks about 30% off the possible recording times. The stated data rates haven't changed, just how much of it will reliably fit on the array with realtime performance.

SO - based on all my potentially erroneous assumptions above, here's what recording times might be with a 2x160 Hitachi based 320 GB RAID 0, IF it can only use 70% of it (about 207 GB):

720p24- 7.1 hrs
720p30- 6.9 hrs
720p50- 3.5 hrs
720p60- 2.9 hrs
720p120 (highest frame rate possible recordable onboard) - 1.4 hrs - but played back at 24p, that's over 7 hours!
1080p24- 3.2 hrs
1080p25- 3 hrs
1080p30- 2.5 hrs
1080p50/for 1080i50- 1.5 hrs
1080p60/for 1080i60- 1.3 hrs (these two are the biggest surprise, so a common format records almost the least amount of time)
2Kx1080 RAW @ 24p - 6.4 MB/sec - about 9 hrs - wow, what a deal!
2Kx1080 RAW @ 25p - 6.7 MB/sec - about 8 1/2 hrs
2Kx1080 RAW @ 30p - 8.1MB/sec - bit over 7 hrs
2Kx1080 RAW @ 50p - 13.4 MB/sec - about 4 1/3 hrs
2Kx1080 RAW @ 60p - 16.1 MB/sec - about 3 1/2 hrs
2Kx1080 RGB has been removed from the format chart - no longer an option - see bottom of article for details
4K@24p or 4K@25p - a bit over 2 hours
4K@30p- about an hour & 40 minutes

An interesting note for folks interested in lightweight packages that can get a lot of recording time per day - windowed 2K compressed RAW is actually the most space efficient format the camera can shoot! 2Kx1080 windowed RAW at 24fps is only 6.4 MB/sec based on these calculations, that's about 23 GB/hr. Note that is BETTER than 720p24, which you'd think would be the most efficient shooting format. NOPE. Since 720p is RGB, thus 3 channels, and 2K RAW is only 1 channel, 2K RAW is actually lower datarate. With a lightweight PL mount 16mm lens and a single Red Drive, assuming you have enough batteries you could shoot for NINE HOURS nonstop 2K windowed RAW 24p! Whereas is you shot 1080p, you'd have to be recording in RGB, and would only get roughly a third of the recording time. 2K windowed RAW is a DEAL when it comes to shooting efficiency - the only tradeoff is that the 1080p RGB COULD (doesn't have to) be derived from full sensor so you'd get 2x oversampling in both dimensions - 2K RAW you MUST shoot windowed, no oversampling. But....it is always nice to have choices!

Conversely, 1080p60 RGB for 1080i60 delivery is surprisingly "expensive" in terms of recording time - IF these calculations are correct, you'd only get about an hour and 20 minutes of record time on a Red Drive. If you could convince your producers to go for 24p on the project rather than 60i, you'd get nearly SEVEN TIMES the recording time on the Red Drive. Sounds crazy, but true.

I also suspect that lower res formats may need to be run a little "rich," on data rate, whereas higher res can get away with being run a little leaner based on the nature of wavelet compression, so that may well influence all this too.

Keep in mind, there's a boatload of presumptions and assumptions in all this, so this is just the sketchiest of guides. Those decimal places are misleading - these numbers aren't that accurate. - the idea being, a 320GB RAID won't yield a full 320 GB of storage capacity - reason one being formatted capacity (knocks you back to 296 GB), reason two the slowest part of the array may need to be partitioned off and not used in order to guarantee performance. If they are using some other drive, or can get clever with counter-striping (one drive starts writing at inner tracks, other drive starts writing at outer tracks), the situation may be much better. But my understanding is that Medea, now owned by Avid, has a patent on such implementations, and they may not be in a mood to license that technology to other vendors. (Anybody know for sure? Clue me in if I'm wrong.)

If they DID counter stripe, and it worked the way I think it might, they'd be in luck - if they could use the full capacity of the array, those times would all go up 40-45%.

The other issue with this announcement - a RAID 0 (still what I'm presuming until I learn otherwise) is an inherently riskier data situation than a single drive. Not only are you doubling your risk of failure (one drive fails all data lost in RAID 0), BUT in the event of a drive failure, RAID 0 DATA IS NON-RECOVERABLE, UNLIKE A SINGLE DRIVE. Or at least, that is what I've been told from data recovery firms when I've asked. With a single drive that fails, you grit your teeth and pay several hundred to a few thousand dollars and get your data recovered if you have to. With RAID 0, I've been told it isn't possible.

Bigger is awfully convenient in the field, but also is a bigger basket with all your eggs in it. A tape goes completely bad, you lose one hour of footage worst case scenario. A Red Drive goes bad, if my above conservative calculations are correct, you could lose up to 10 hours of footage (full capacity usage of 720p24 footage) - ouch! So protecting against a head crash, directory damaging power loss, or other risks will be crucial on the Red Drive. I've been running RAID 0 arrays with 8 to 10 drives in my studio for a couple of years now - I presently have two 8 drive arrays and one 10 drive array that I own in the studio, and loaner/review units of 4 and 6 drives in the studio. I have yet to have a data losing crash or failure with any of my arrays, BUT:
-I am careful
-all are ALWAYS on a UPS
-the important data is backed up at all times
-MOST importantly - they all just sit perfectly still and are off when not in use.

With 2.5" drives in laptops, which is a similar situation as compared to Red Drive - it gets moved, knocked around, much higher risk of getting dropped - so the life expectancy is MUCH shorter. I've had a laptop drive fail on me in less than two years (my 12" PowerBook), I've also had THREE friends have their laptop drives die on them in less than three years, and they then came crying to me. Point being, life for a hard drive used in a portable environment is TOUGH. Putting that in a two drive RAID 0 doubles the risk, so again, shock isolation will be key, and it'd be good if there were some way to know how much use a given unit had been through (rental market especially?) to know when it was time to retire it.

Of course, if any of that makes you nervous - just get the Red Flash recording module - only 32 GB to start, but solid state - MUCH more secure recording technology - just higher cost per GB - we've been told 32GB will start around $1000. Drat, now I'll feel compelled to make up a chart on that one...maybe I'll update later in the day...UPDATE - now with Red Flash estimated times: yeah, I couldn't resist - I added a third image to the Excel sheet screen grabs, is on the same page as the Red Drive rates (see link next paragraph). The surprising news - for narrative shooters, 4K @ 24p you get about 18 minutes. But for broadcast folks wanting to record 1080i, you get as little as 11 minutes if recording in RGB. Ouch! For broadcast types, that's pretty damn slim. Of course, you SHOULD be shooting 2K RAW windowed 60p (for later crop & conversion to 60i) and you'll get half an hour of recording time - much more reasonable. And 2K windowed RAW 24p? A whopping 77 minutes - take THAT, P2! : ) And solid state has a consistent transfer rate (AFAIK), so no partitioning worries there. And of course, 64 GB would double all these record times.

To figure all this out, I made an Excel sheet and took some screen grabs, peruse it if you wish - based on all my guesses in here, has MB/sec data rates, GB/hr storage requirements, and recording times for a Red Drive with and without partitioning based on assumptions. For the zillionth time, this is my guesses, all extrapolated from public info, is not official from Red, etc.

On a related note, there's a thread over on DVXuser about footage handling on location & archiving footage with the Red camera. I was in a pessimistic mood and got all frothy in posts 41 and 45. I talked about the practicalities of freelance shooters working with digital data and the issues I'd experienced in the past when having to hand over a lot of data to clients on relatively pricey media.

-mike

PS- for the curious, here's some links used in researching this article:

One new spec... - DVXuser.com -- The online community for filmmaking (Red Drive RAID announcement and discussion)

footage handling on location & archiving footage - DVXuser.com -- The online community for filmmaking (my stuff starts on page 5)

Tom's Hardware - this is 2.5" hard drive minimum sustained write speed comparison chart, with Hitachi and Fujitsu 160 GB highlighted. You can use the pop-ups at top to see other specs (min/max sustained read/write was what I was most interested in) and to highlight other models. Super duper handy page! Also available for 3.5" disks as well, see test link above chart.


200 GB, 2.5", SATA: Fujitsu's MHV2200BT | Tom's Hardware - drive performance falloff chart. Shows how drive speed falls. I used the shape of this arc as a guideline for estimating Hitachi falloff point, scaling to pertinent values of Hitachi.


2.5" Hard Drives by Toshiba and Western Digital Rev Up | Tom's Hardware - another similar chart, used to double check for the reasons stated directly above

RED / RED ONE Format Options - this chart updated a few weeks ago, and I used it to verify max frame rate/frame size/format stuff


UPDATE TUESDAY MORNING -

So the Red One Formats chart has been updated - it used to be this, now it is this

Here's what has changed:

2K RGB has been DROPPED entirely - you can either record 4K RAW, or 1080p RGB for full aperture, or 2K windowed RAW with 16mm/B4 lenses, or 720p RGB.

1080i RGB recording has been dropped entirely - as Stuart mentioned in an interview I did the other week, 1080i formats are derived from 1080p recordings - so shoot 1080p50 for 1080i50 and 1080p60 for 1080i60.

OK, so what about 1080i formats out the HD-SDI? Losing that would have a huge negative impact on the viability in the broadcast market for live events. RECORDING 1080i is clearly out, but what about passing it through? I'd be very surprised if they dropped it, but confirmation that it still exists would be nice. UPDATE: CONFIRM FROM RED - 1080i OUT THE HD-SDI IS STILL THERE.

Perhaps never a clearer example of "all specs subject to change at any time" - I think I may have hastened the chart update with this article.

Since 2K RGB was sendable over the HD-SDI, I was presuming 2Kx1080 since that is a SMPTE standard that I know can be sent over HD-SDI. But 2K RAW couldn't - perhaps it is 2Kx1152 or somesuch? Why the discrepancy? Because 2Kx1080 isn't 16:9, it is just what would fit down HD-SDI. 2Kx1152 is a true 16:9 aspect ratio. If it were 2Kx1152 not 2Kx1080, then my datarates for 2K raw should be about 7% higher to account for the taller frame.

I've edited this article a bit since originally posted, and I will update the graphs shortly on the linked page...

Also, my math is demonstrably wrong somewhere - both Jim and Jarred have told me that 1080pRGB is about twice the datarate of 2K windowed RAW, not nearly 3 times as I've calculated. I'm not sure where my error lies, but know that my guesstimates are wrong - probably on the 1080p data rate side. I'll double check my math...

-mike

So a friend of mine emailed me:

Mike,

Trying to figure out what I need from BMD to work with my system.

I have a PMG5 1.8DP/512/160/SD/GF5200/PCI-X-USA

I essentially want to be able to ingest analog HD & SDI and output to SDI at times, analog component HD others and DVI and HDMI.

I guess the ideal would be the Multibridge Extreme but I don't have PCIe.

It looks to me that the DeckLink HD Pro 4:4:4 PCI-X only does digital in & out.

The HDLink™ with HDMI and DVI is probably what I need for monitoring.

What to use for ingesting?

Thanks for your wisdom on this.


I replied:

BlackMagic Design (BMD) makes the DeckLink HD Extreme ($1000) which has analog in and out, but that is PCIe only. As are the Multibridges, including the Multibridge Pro ($1600) which would otherwise be perfect for you. At one point they were talking about a PCI-X adaptor for it, but that never happened.

DeckLink HD Pro 4:4:4 PCI-X is their last PCI-X card, BUT it doesn't do analog in, it doesn't do DVI/HDMI out. List is $1500.

So, options as I see it:

AJA, however, is still making the Kona LH card - is PCI-X. List is $1800 on that, add $450 for a HDLink for HD-SDI to DVI to 23" LCD for pixel for pixel monitoring and you can do all you want.

However, if you get the Kona LH, that won't go into any future box - everything is PCIe now.

At that price, however, you might think about this - That $2250 or so you'd be spending is almost a new box right there - if you had a PCIe box, you could spend only $1000 for the BMD DeckLink HD Extreme for everything but HDMI. Hell, for an extra $250 you could throw in an Intensity card as well (CAN have 2 BMD cards installed). Or $1600 gets you the Multibridge Pro - does EVERYTHING on your list. Actually, is just HDMI out, not DVI - if you want DVI w/HDMI adaptor and 4:4:4, splurge for $2600 and get the Multibridge Extreme.

If you wanted AJA gear, Kona3 ($2700), a K3-box ($300ish) and an HD10AVA converter for analog in (around $900) AND an HDLink for HD-SDI to DVI would get you there as well...for over $4000.

If you DID get the DeckLink HD Pro 4:4:4 PCI-X, you could buy an AJA HD10AVA converter, and that would get your analog HD in. But then you'd need the HDLink for output as well, and that's a lot of money - around $2900, and no breakout box.

This might be time to upgrade if you really need all those capabilities - then you could use that $1000+ device in the next box.

And MacWorld is right around the corner, with a likely announcement of 8 processor Mac Pro towers....

-mike

A few new things going on over in the Red One camp in the last week-

1 - Red Drive is vastly expanded in capacity - not 40 or 80GB, but 320GB for under $1000

2 - Geoff Boyle of CML (Cinematographer's Mailing List) posted a comparative exposure lattitude test including Red, SI, F950 and others; Red appeared to compare poorly with only 8 1/2 or so stops of lattitude, BUT

3 - After some debate, Red figured out Red team had made an error in the test imagery as presented, and is showing a different testing methodology that shows much greater lattitude, matching their earlier analysis.

4 - A new image of "Spike" - what the Red team is calling their actual, hand-holdable prototype for the Red One camera.

First up - Red Drive is now a 320GB RAID -

1 - One new spec... - DVXuser.com -- The online community for filmmaking

The RED DRIVE is now a mini-RAID for under $1000. It is a better choice because it offers higher speed, the ability to use the entire drive for recording and has a 320GB capacity. The higher speed gives plenty of elbow room for REDCODE RAW and 4 channels of audio... plus metadata.

-Jim Jannard

So the good news is that the price has held, yet he capacity has gone up 4 to 8 fold (we were originally told that worst case was 40GB for $1000, then recently 80GB was mentioned on the Red website).

With 320 GB capacity, formatted capacity would be 296 GB. At the stated 27.5 MB/sec of 4K@24p Redcode RAW compressed, that would be almost exactly 3 hours of recording time.

At 4K@30p (34.375 MB/sec), that would be 2 hours 23 minutes.

That's a goodly chunk of recording time - for most narrative efforts, that is more than enough time for a full day's recording that can be offloaded overnight.

If you're shooting reality or something else that needs a lot of footage per day? Even if you shot 9 hours of footage a day, 3 Red Drives would be enough.

CML's LATTITUDE TESTS:

Geoff Boyle of CML took the time and trouble to run some tests on the posted Mysterium frames that Dave Stump shot last month at Red's offices. Geoff opened up each image, found the 18% grey square, and recorded that value on a 0-255 8 bit scale. Since the sequence of images were shot in 1/2 stop exposure increments, he just mapped where the 18% grey measured for each frame. So the horizontal axis is as the exposure is increased from one sample frame to the next, and the vertical axis is just the brightness measured. If it helps, instead of 0-254, just think of it as 0-100%. That is why everybody clips at 255 - pure white. The sooner it clips, the poorer the response. Here's that chart. 8 bit images were what he had to work with, but it is worth noting that at the bottom end, working with 8 bits can be misleading - you're dealing with the noise floor, so all the info you can get the better.

The Red team, and Red supporters on CML, had two areas of question/concern:

1.) The indicated 8 1/2 stops of lattitude was well below what Red was finding inhouse, and

2.) The Red is still in development and was being compared to shipping cameras without pointing out that difference (since corrected)

After much running around and many comments from all parties involved and interested on CML with the usual bickering, it turns out Red made a mistake in the processing of the files as provided - Jim Jannard (founder or Red) said on CML:

The mystery is solved and I am the one with egg on my face (I certainly don't like it when this happens). We have been turning this place upside down to figure out why the disparity in tests results... Graeme discovered this morning that the images shot by David Stump and posted on CML were processed through the REDCINE prototype with incorrect settings. It was NOT Geoff's testing and it was NOT the way David shot the images. I made an error in processing. Simple as that. Ugh.

So the test was valid, the data provided was incorrect/improperly processed, truncating the information needed for best results.

RED'S TEST - USING STOUFFER 4110CC CHART

Red, after having figured out what went wrong, found another test that they thought quicker and easier to evaluate dynamic range a Stouffer 4110CC wedge chart (that page references a 21 step chart, Red used a calibrated 41 step chart), and posted their own new test chart over on DVXuser.com - lots of discussion ensued.

Red's using the same methodology as used by dpreview.com, aka Digital Photography Review. A single image is taken of a test chart that has 41 carefully calibrated squares that go from white to black from one end to the other. The goal is to be able to discern as many squares from each other as possible. When you can't tell the difference between two adjacent squares in the captured image, your sensor can't differentiate, therefore is outside of the capabilities of the sensor (tautology, excuse me). The good thing is that it is one frame required, is quicker, can be automated to create the chart, and has less possibility of human error or calibration error due to ND filters, marks on lenses, etc. I've exchanged numerous emails with many of the parties involved and read numerous posts on CML and DVXuser about the pros and cons of each method. Both testing methodologies mentioned here have their uses and strengths, but I don't feel like going into all that arcana here - go read CML or DVXuser if you feel compelled.

I wasn't sure what I was looking at this chart, so I called Graeme, who did the tests and built the chart. Here's my takeaway based on that conversation:

If you look at it, its a diagonal line going up to the right. What the hell does it mean? It is basically a reading of how much light was shown to the sensor, and how much the sensor could register. The vertical lines indicate the floor and ceiling of meaningful response - to the left of the left vertical line, the sensor wasn't responding to the low level of light - it couldn't discern between pitch black and a little bit of light. On the right side, beyond a certain level, the sensor just saw pure white, and any more light was just as pure white. So in between there was the zone where the sensor worked - it could discern light from dark. The total range of sensitivity is about 11 1/3 stops. At the high end, there appears to be a roll-off, the otherwise generally straight line starts to taper off to flat - so a BIG increase in brightness shown on the sensor only generates a slightly higher registered value. (Graeme corrects me on this one - "There's not actually a roll off in real life there. It's just that one data point is just below clipping and one just after and the graph is interpolating between them. It's actually linear up to clipping. That's a graph artifact.") At the bottom end, the graph lifts off at a certain point but records the same signal level for about a stop - not terribly useful information, this is down around the noise floor. So the MEANINGFUL part of the chart is the part that is pretty much a straight diagonal - about 10 stops here.

Bottom line - using the same metrics everyone else does, this test indicates about 11 1/3 total stops of exposure lattitude. BUT...with the bottom all noisy and the top blown out, that isn't the part you'd do good work with. The USEFUL exposure lattitude, based on this chart, seems to be around 10 stops - the flat part of the cart. Both of those numbers are significantly higher than the 8 1/2 stops indicated by the erroneously processed data that Geoff Boyle had to work with. So dynamic range is significantly greater than 8 1/2 stops, definitely.

LATEST IMAGE OF "SPIKE" - THE REAL RED ONE CAMERA (not just an imager test platform)

Remember how Red is always making changes? Here's the latest fully done-up rendering of Spike (what they are calling their prototype cameras), less an LCD or a viewfinder. No, you probably wouldn't shoot with it configured thusly unless on a major production - this just shows ALL of the Red Cage & Red Rail options done up:
(click for larger view)

There's also a lengthy thread over on DVXuser about this image and it's ramifications as well - Spike... latest render - DVXuser.com -- The online community for filmmaking

If you've been following the evolution of the Red camera, you'll notice the thicker (2 drive I believe) Red Drive at the back, with the battery behind it. Lots more buttons on the control surface on back of camera. Rubberized grips on Red Cage as shown in LA last month. Hand grips can be tilted both out and forwards/backwards. Note discontiguous rails at bottom - as sturdy as solid? Solid/contiguous likely as well, nice to have adjustable options. Note mounting holes eh-va-ree-where. Also looks like this one's configured with the high speed optical port. Since the battery stacks on the back, leaves it open to have bigger batteries attached. In this config, access to rear panel is awkward to get to since the battery pack is in the way. But you can rotate the battery pack down, or even underneath the rail since that mount has two pivot points. This thing is really turning into a Lego kit - build it any way you want. It'll be interesting to see what "best practices" emerge for what shooters in what circumstances.

-mike

Four Seagate 750GB RAID inside the Mac Pro

Excellent article on 4 drive RAID setup in a Mac Pro - including Seagate 750GB vs. Hitachi 500GB vs Maxtor 300 GB vs. Raptor 10K 150GB. Transfer speeds of just shy of 300 MB/sec!

Read on for details, there's some kinks to be double checked, and don't forget these are PEAK sustained transfers - drives and arrays slow down as they fill up.

-mike

Thanks to reader Nicholas for pointing this out! If you find something good online that fits the themes I cover here, ALWAYS feel free to point it out to me!

-mike

I've been having severe difficulty with Blogger, the service that I use to run this site - it either wouldn't post or would eat my posts. So I've got a couple things of note to bring up today, then it'll be a blogwad for the weekend.

I say that....I've tried to post this several times with no luck so far...

-mike

UPDATE: Reader Bruce clued me in:

Photoshop CS3 beta is out

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=labs%5Fphotoshop

PC, Intel Mac and G5 versions all available. It's a 2 day trial unless
you have the CS2 serial no.



AppleInsider | Adobe Photoshop CS3 beta to drop this friday

This isn't HD, but Photoshop has been a staple of my production toolset for over 15 years (wow..that long!).

Got CS2? Then you'll be able to download the Photoshop CS3 beta Friday.

From the article:

In its labs, Adobe has also been developing an 'Advanced' version of Photoshop CS3 -- geared towards the video and science markets -- with enhanced capabilities for the most demanding and specialized images.

Among the many features expected in Photoshop CS3 Advance, due alongside Creative Suite 3.0 in March, are: Vanishing Point 2, HDR support, rotoscoping, Dicom support, 3D file support, and a fast fourier transform filter."

Wonder what the video features will be - more pixel aspect ratio stuff? Automatic action/title safe lines? Ideally, a YUV preview or video legal preview and color picker, with options for 601 vs 709 color spaces.

Working on an article for a magazine - 3000 word article you folks will definitely want to read once it hits. No, can't say what or for whom. But you'll like it, I promise.

So bloggage on hold...

-mike

PS - and as I sit here typing with the TV on in the background, is anybody else as disgusted, annoyed, repulsed, and aggravated to the point of having to restrain yourself from throwing the remote at the TV whenever that "It's your watch" Seiko ad comes on?

Are we that gullible and manipulable? Somebody in a marketing department certainly thinks so - according to them, it's not your clothes/neighborhood/favorite color/music that defines you...it's your watch. AAAAAAAAARRRGH!!!!!! It is bad enough that we are a rampantly consumeristic society, but are we going to be THAT shallow about it?

As an aside - I DON'T WEAR A WATCH, and few of my tech/geek/design/creative industry friends do either - if we want to know what time it is, we all reach for our cellphones. And if I don't have my cellphone? Then I probably don't care what time it is. I really don't feel the need to carry an obsolete piece of redundant technology around with me at all times that serves a strictly decorative purpose.

I DO firmly believe in having whimsy in one's life (pre-blog I had a ponytail and at one point even further back wore thumb rings), but poseur artifice just makes me mad...and being messaged at to buy artificially expensive redundant hardware posuer artifice on my body all day long incenses me.

(and um, yeah, I'm procrastinating by writing this...and apologies to Chris, your stuff rocks)

RED / Gallery

OK, so they shot uncompressed at 4.9K, scaled to 2K, cropped to 1080p, and somewhere in there was encoded with Redcode before being saved out as a 4:2:2 PhotoJPEG.

So KIND OF indicative of what Redcode will do for you, except that it has been re-encoded to PhotoJPEG for you to view.

It's an 11 second 1080p24 shot from the bus sequence, the new stuff shown in LA last month.

I've got to go get a BitTorrent client installed, I wish they'd just host these files directly.

Anyone who has already downloaded and checked it out, please feel free to Comment away using the link below....

-mike

PS - blog needs to take a back seat whilst I finish up a magazine article...

...so I think my new thing will be this - since I keep falling behind on the news and struggling to catch up (getting nothing else done in the meantime), I think my new motif should be this - the most important stuff gets blogged on FIRST, then down the priority list. Each weekend, everything that didn't get it's own "for real" entry gets dumped into a blogwad for your casual over the weekend reading (or ignoring. Go ahead, say it, I can take it.).

So without further ado...Blogwad!

(I imagine saying that like the ref in the movie of the same name - "Dodgeball!")

AppleInsider | Apple's iTV may extend "beyond streaming video": "Apple has already acknowledged that the device will also be capable of streaming photos, music and podcasts. But during the meeting it also hinted at additional features such as an 'internal hard disk drive for storage' and 'advanced user interface software.'"

Well, durf, I always expected this to do anything iTunes can play, and anything FrontRow does, but stream it over the connection. I'd expect iTV to have enough graphics horsepower and brains to handle UI stuff. It seems Apple is one of the few companies that can do a good consumer UI AND has the buying clout to push the price down by mass volume production to amortize all that R&D and get good component pricing due to the volume.

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HDBlog.net � Blog Archive � Sony Ships Blu-ray Player: "Sony is shipping their BDP-S1 BD player to retailers across the US. The BD player is available for an MSRP of $999. This is inline with what the Samsung originally sold for, and what the Philips player sells for.
Of course the BD player puts out 1080p over an HDMI output, but many questions remain. We know it does 1080p/24"

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HDBlog.net � Blog Archive � XBox 360 10 Hour HD Download: "It looks like Xbox 360 owners who want to download programs or movies in HD might have to wait a bit. And by %u201Ca bit%u201D, I mean 10 hours %u201Ca bit%u201D. Microsoft started its TV and movie download service a week or two ago, and it looks like it%u2019s having some problems. Some dude at Video Business tried to download an HD movie, and it ahorted after 6 hours. Later he tried it again and it finished downloading."

Ooooooops. Nobody's got it all working right yet, but kudos to MS for first MAJOR platform out of the gate with HD downloads.

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ProLost: BG Renderer in AE: "Lloyd Alvarez has released a script that allows you to render in the background while continuing to work in After Effects 7. If you have a multi-core or -proc machine, you can render multiple frames at once for a substantial speed boost, all without any noticeable impact on your interactive work in the foreground."

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Indie-Pictures: DVD distribution for indies - DV Guru: " Indie-Pictures is one of those companies, and they take an approach to distribution through releasing and selling DVDs online and attempting to get them into stores across the country through their own network."

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MacNN | Cineon/DPX PRO QT Components updated: "Glue Tools has released version 2.0.5 of its Cineon/DPX PRO QuickTime Components for Mac OS X, which add infrared dirt and scratch channel support for film restoration. The Cineon/DPX components now deliver film restoration capabilities to QuickTime-enabled applications."

What's new in this version:
IR Dirt & Scratch Channel can now be imported.
8-bit Alpha channels can also be loaded.
Major stability improvements for PPC based Macs.
Display Gamma and DGamma settings now default to Industry/Kodak/SMPTE norms.
Stress tested to work with over 80,000 HD frames

These guys are ever tweaking this groovy little tool. I keep reading about it, but has anybody reading this used it in production? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Comment away or email directly if you have a user story, good or bad.

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Blu-ray VS. HD-DVD: The match is on - DV Guru: "he article is a pretty comprehensive look at the current format war and, while there isn't much new for anyone who has followed Blu-ray and HD-DVD closely, it is a pretty good article.Taves discusses some of the lesser known issues, such as boot up time,and box design, and also dredges up the video game console argument."

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

AppleInsider | Movie studios want new "anti-piracy" model from Apple: "Amid growing concerns over digital piracy, major motion picture studios are pressuring Apple Computer to develop a new distribution model for digital films before they agree to make their flicks available on the company's iTunes download service."

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

CinemaTech: What to Watch For with 'Ten Items or Less': "The new Morgan Freeman movie, `10 Items or Less,' is the latest experiment in altering the motion picture industry's traditional 'release window' structure."

Scott astutely goes over what to watch for as the movie rolls out. Do read on, good stuff if you're into digi-distro (yes I made that word up).

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

CinemaTech: The Flaws in Wal-Mart's Digital Download Strategy: "I'm a big supporter of experimentation. Even when experiments go awry, you tend to learn something. When they go well, they can reinvent your career, your business, or an entire industry.That said, I think Wal-Mart's recently-announced digital download strategy (or at least, Phase I of their digital download strategy) is going to prove to be a bad experiment for Wal-Mart, the movie studios, and consumers"

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

High-Def Penetration Explodes with Strong PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 Add-On Sales | High-Def Digest: "As expected, the debut of Sony's Blu-ray-driven PlayStation 3 last
Friday boosted the format's installed base exponentially, while Microsoft
is also reporting strong numbers for the HD DVD add-on drive for its rival Xbox
360."

===========

Wired News: Azureus' HD Vids Trump YouTube - uses P2P technology for HD and DVD quality content, not the crappy quality of YouTube. BitTorrent based.

Plans to have movies and TV shows, has deals with 12 TV, film, and media companies - which ones? Unknown. H.264 or VC-1 formats supported.

===========

QT Movie NoteTaker - DV Guru: "If you need a simple program that allows you to take notes while watching footage, you might want to check out QT Movie NoteTaker. Just play a Quicktime video with the software and anytime you need to make a note just press stop. It automatically records the current timecode and allows you to enter whatever comments you need to."

===========

Creative Workflow Hacks � Blog Archive � Great After Effects Scripts: "Well, recently I ran across his collected scripts in english, and I must say they are a really nice set of scripts. I particularly like the auto orient camera script and createCylinder script. There are also a ton of utility scripts for making your every day life easier. "

And a note on these kinds of things - there are TONS of add-ons and enhancements. I know a lot of folks that say "I don't have time for that." with the unstated but implied "I probably wouldn't save that much time, and I don't have time to get bogged down in learning anything else." Uh-huh. My career is built on walking over the hunched over, never-looking-up backs of people like this. Not that I'm trampling them, more like I'm just walking past.

ALWAYS take the time to learn your craft better. There is the art side, but there is also the CRAFT side. I'm a very craft-y kind of a guy, not so much in the creative/design-y vein (witness this horror of a site color scheme). BUT....I take the time to improve my CRAFT, which isn't the same as improving my ART if I were an editor/VFX/compositor/whatever person. Long term, art is more important than craft. BUT...if you get better at your craft, you have more TIME to refine your design and do the arty part of your job, or at least do more revisions and passes on it. And you're ALWAYS going to be on a deadline. So being able to do things fast, repeatably, easily modifiable will engender good will from your employers and co-workers in my experience. Of course, if the work is sucky/ugly, it don't matter how fast yew kin git'r dunn.

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

MacNN | MySpace worm exploits QuickTime: " As much as a third of MySpace could be contaminated with infection beginning by visiting a journal with an embedded QuickTime movie. The contaminated movie uses JavaScript to display a menu that links to an external website where users are asked to enter login information which is promptly stolen, and in turn used to infect the user's own MySpace journal."

Beware! I think I actually got nailed by this one already.

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

A Little Ditty about Web Video and HDTV - Blog Maverick: "So how many people are going to upgrade or replace their PCs in order to connect to their new HDTVs ? How many are going to put the brand new or upgraded PC they just spent good money on close to, and shared with their HDTV and their high speed data connection and give up CPU and Bandwidth performance rather than just leasing a box from the satellite , cable or telco provider ?"

I typically like what Cuban has to say, but I gotta disagree on a couple of things. If people had to fully replace their PCs to get a DVI or HDMI output to connect to their new HDTVs? YES, that would be a huge drag on the industry.

Enter the media extender. "Buh-whaaa?" you say, in a fashion Stewart-esque?

Xbox360 can play back HD content you download over the web.

Apple's forthcoming iTV will do the same.

Both have high definition connections for HDTVs.

Imaging firing up iTunes and clicking on "buy HD movie now" - when the movie was (finally - hello coffee straw/oil drum dillemna) downloaded, pick up the iTV remote and scroll to it like you would with FrontRow now on an Intel Mac.

I don't know the particulars of Xbox360's way of doing this, but it is probably not too hugely different.

So new computers NOT required necessarily - you don't have to directly connect your computer to the HDTV, you just have to stream content from any old computer to a media extender device that handles the physical connections and decoding - and this can be done over wireless technology.

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

Clickstar - New movie download service for Independant films - DV Guru

Morgan Freeman's production company is involved with ClickStar, a movie download service for Media Center PCs. Indie content is allowed with this system, so it is something to watch.

The new movie 10 Items of Less will be released on Dec. 15th via ClickStar.

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

It's all about the editing - Mary Poppins as a horror movie? - another spoof trailer.

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


Studio Daily | Putting DNxHD Through Its Post Paces

They put HD 4:4:4 up against 2K film scans and then side by side them on a 2K screen...which by definition can't show all the res of a 2K scan (1556 vs. 1080 pixels tall). Then they compare the HD to 4:2:2 DNxHD side by side. Real test would be DNxHD side by side with the 2K scan. Doesn't appear they did that. But working with HD transfers for a feature film? Yeah, I kinda like that idea. :)

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

Apple updated their Xsan client and Admin software. From MacInTouch:

Apple's Xsan 1.4.1 Filesystem Update addresses overall reliability, usability, and compatibility. According to the release notes, it also includes specific fixes for:

- metadata controller failovers during power outages and network disconnects
- memory related errors that can result in slow system performance or hangs
- reducing fragmentation of large files and frame drops during ingest
- preventing file system metadata corruption
- hosting Xsan volumes on Intel-based metadata controllers
- defragmenting files after a volume bandwidth expansion
- compatibility with Apple and third party applications

Apple also released an Xsan 1.4.1 Admin Update that "delivers overall improved reliability for remotely administering, configuring and maintaining Xsan deployments" and includes the following fixes:

- labeling and initializing Fibre Channel LUNs larger than 2TB in size
- expanding storage pools and volumes
- working with multiple Xsan metadata controllers in a heterogeneous environment
- displaying progress messages while performing lengthy operations
- preventing custom configuration changes from being overwritten during a save
- accurately reporting Fibre Channel multipathing errors


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

Roxio DVDit Pro HD - DVD Authoring %u2013 Features

Roxio has released DVDit Pro HD - lets you build Blu-ray discs. Features:
-Author once and output to Blu-ray and DVD
-Deliver 1080p. 1080i or 720p movies on Blu-ray Discs
-Design interactive menus at full HD resolution
-Drag and Drop HD Slideshows
-Up to 8 uncompressed audio & 32 subtitle tracks
-Professional mastering features for DVD and Blu-ray

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

Variety.com - 'Pirates' DVD sells 5 million: "Disney's 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest' -- expected to be the biggest seller in an already busy holiday season -- tallied nearly 5 million sales in its Tuesday bow, tying the March debut of Warners' 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.'" - sometimes it pays to be big.

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

here's a nice little Christmas goodie for your nerdie friends (or yourself) - Ecamm Network: Huckleberry Webcam Mirror for MacBook and MacBook Pro

Not exactly high def (not by a longshot), but fun and nifty - a little mirror attachment for your Macbook or Macbook Pro that lets the built-in iSight camera see in FRONT of the computer.

So who is going to organize the first film festival shot with laptops?

: )

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

CinemaTech: Conversation with Lance Weiler about `The Future of Web Video'

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


Studio Daily | Digidesign Unleashes Pro Tools 7.3 Software for All Platforms - I usually focus on picture related tools, but Pro Tools is The Standard high end audio tool.

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

Century Xtreme Fisheye for HVX200 and DVX100 - DV Guru: "Schneider Optics has introduced the Century Xtreme Fisheye for the Panasonic AG-HVX200 and DVX100 type cameras. The Century Xtreme gives that super-wide field of view that you can't get with a regular lens."

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

DV - Features

The interesting stuff:

-Canon showed their XH A1 and XH G1
-JVC showed the GY-HD200 and GY-HD250 that shoot 720p60 to HDV
-JVC 1920x1080p LCD studio monitor - 20 and 24 inches w/HD-SDI & DVI-D for $3K & $4700
-Panasonic showed mockups of HVX500 - imagine an HVX200 with 2/3" CCDs, 5 P2 slots, interchangeable lenses, AVC-Intra codec
-Avid previewed Intel Mac native Media Composer
-Automatic Duck showed Universal Binary versions of their products
-Sorenson Squeeze 4.5 is UB also, and is much faster
-AJA showed their H15 adaptor, takes SDI and HD-SDI and outputs HDMI

Lots more, read on.

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

VideoLAN - Free Software and Open Source video streaming solution for every OS!

VLC 0.8.6 - Now Mac version has Flash and Windows Media 9 playback support

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

Enjoy,

-mike

1080p Does Matter - Here's When (Screen Size vs. Viewing Distance vs. Resolution)

LOVE this - this is probably my favorite propeller beanie twirler of the week. Just my kind of geekery I always wanted to know - OK, so based on 20/20 vision, just how far back from an HDTV screen of a given size do you have to be before you can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p? Between 480p (SD) and 720p (bottom rung HD)?

Turns out not as far as I thought - read the article and study the two charts in it - this makes me suspect that HD isn't going to really take off until BIG screens get CHEAP - because you need something more akin to theater-like field of view (that screen covers a lot of your eyeball viewing) before the advantages really shine.

For instance - got a 40 inch set? Sitting 10 feet away? Even with 20/20 vision, you can't make out all the detail of even a 720p signal.

According to their math, with a 40 inch set, you'd have to be 5 feet away to make out all the detail (each and every pixel) of a 1080p set. And who is going to do that?

NOW...that is presuming the math here is right. Anybody willing to call shenanigans on their math? I haven't double checked it, but it makes a compelling argument.

If you want high res viewing, and want ACTUAL benefit from it rather than just bragging rights, a projector starts to make a whooooole lot of sense.

And maybe I DON'T need a 1080p set in my living room - my couch is 10+ feet away. According to this chart, I'd need about a 75" set to get maximum advantage of 1080p, and a 50" set to see all of 720p (although anything over 50" I could see the difference, in theory, between a 720p and 1080p resolution image).

So I interpret this as HDTV pre-recorded movies won't make a dent until we can SEE the damn difference - and that'll take BIG screens, which are still expensive as hell, and that'll take a while.

The flip side? Use these charts to figure out your typical viewing distances - maybe you DON'T need a super high res set after all - if you study the chart, oftentimes in terms of being able to "see more" you'd be better off with a bigger, lower res HDTV screen rather than a smaller, higher resolution one.

This chart may end up being proof of the postponement of the viability of the HDTV and HD disc market - if people can't afford a big enough, high enough res screen to tell substantial difference between it and standard TV, why would they buy high def gear? Put another way - if DVDs look GREAT on my 720p res TV I sit "too far" back from, and the high def disc doesn't look substantially, demonstrably, "you can see the difference without them side by side" BETTER, and regular DVD players are $40, and high def players are $500 to $1500, why on EARTH would anybody buy one? I mean, anyone other than you and me, like Joe/Jane Consumer?

At the current pace of price drops, (which are great and all, but finite) it'll be YEARS before most folks can afford a big enough, high enough resolution set to really show off the advantages of HD discs. And even if they were cheap - how many average consumers have the space, AND are willing to dedicate that much space to TV/movie watching? And again, I'm talkin' civilians, not you and me here.

As much as I REALLY want high def to catch on in the home, ESPECIALLY for high def movie playback, since that is a way for indies to get into the game (broadcast & pay-per-view being limited mostly to the studios' fare), I fear for the time being, between these issues as well as the stupid format war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray, we're still looking at the feared Laserdisc 2.0 Syndrome, where only the hardcore video fanatics go to the trouble and expense of having the full HD setup. I hope not, but that is a SERIOUS risk at this point.

(EDIT - I fear I'll also make even worse run-on compound sentences, too)

After reading this article, I decided that holding out for a 1080p set probably isn't actually worth it in the near term- since at my viewing distance, I probably couldn't tell anyway. I started seriously considering mounting a projector in my laundry room with a glass port into the bedroom with a BIG pulldown screen that would block a three window wide space - THAT is what it would take to REALLY get the benefit of HD discs - and I'd STILL be 15+ feet back from the screen, which isn't all that far in theatrical movie viewing distance context.

And then whoever wants to watch better be comfy watching movies from my bed.

But maybe that's a conversation for an entirely different, and different kind, of blog.

; )

-mike

Studio Daily | CineSync 1.2 Released

I saw a demo of this over the summer, and was impressed - it is a good tool for distributed group review with annotation capabilities - everybody is watching the same thing at the same time, and you can take notes all over the place - can literally draw and type on the picture content area to add notes. Especially when dealing with VFX or motion graphics, this could be hugely useful.

I don't have time to go over all the features, but this looks really useful and interesting if your team is spread out geographically, or even in the same town but doesn't have time to drive around (and helllllllllooooo, LA, after recent painful experience - "Meet for lunch? Sure!" - oh crap, that's 60 miles away...)

So go read the details if you think you might be a candidate for this one.

-mike

Apple - Pro Applications Universal Crossgrade

Have Final Cut Pro 4 or 4.5? For only $199, you can get the full Final Cut Studio, with Final Cut 5.1, DVD Studio Pro, Motion 2, Soundtrack Pro, Compressor, etc.

Your upgrade must be POSTMARKED no later than December 20th, 2006 else it won't be accepted, you won't get that pricing.

So if you've been "meaning to" upgrade, IT IS TIME. See the linked page for full details.

You may need to send in your original install discs (I did for the 5.0 to 5.1 upgrade), so start diggin' through drawers and under the couch cushions as necessary.

-mike

Techcrunch � Blog Archive � Comparing The Flickrs of Video

OK, this is ultra-groovy - comparing all the video hosting services in terms of image quality. WITH SAMPLES.

-mike

Learn about Panasonic's AJ-HPM100 - DVCPRO HD/50/25 P2 HD Mobile Recorder/Player with IEEE 1394 and USB 2.0 Interface - UPDATED FRIDAY MORNING

It slices, it dices, it juliennes. It is SMALL, like dinky laptop small, and has six P2 slots. It'll play back every P2 format currently available (DV, DVCPRO25, DVCPRO50, DVCPRO HD), and in July they'll have a AVC-Intra board for it as well. It'll up/down/cross convert 720p to 1080i and HD to SD.

But it is $12,000.

Oh.

For heavy productions, this may well be the bee's knees - tiny and powerful. For 90% of the folks reading this, it may be a case of "that's nice - gee, I wish it were 1/2 the price then I'd think about it." A PC laptop with a reader and some software would have many of the (but not all, and with different) capabilities of this, so indies ponder your needs carefully before plunking down for this. If you think of it as a customized laptop, it will seem expensive. If you think of it as a tiny professional HD deck with up/down/crossconversion capabilities, then it is fairly cheap compared to the alternatives - a 1200A or 1400 series DVCPRO HD deck is about $25K properly kitted out with HD-SDI and FireWire (which this has).

Ah! But one killer aspect - it RECORDS - so it isn't an ingest station - you can record 48 minutes of DVCPRO HD into this thing.

Jog/shuttle controller, 9 inch screen, folds flat, 100X shuttle review, etc.

Bonus round - and its so cute! It is about as close as you're going to get to Hello Kitty cute in a piece of professional video gear...and I duly acknowledge how often that is a mission critical feature.

: )

-mike

CinemaTech: From Release Print: Cinema's Future Belongs to Indies (As Does Its Past)

Nice long article on why indies are the driving force of innovation in film's past, present and future. Nicely put:

Preservation vs. Innovation

Since the days of Edison and Eastman, established movie studios and big-name filmmakers have tended to focus on preserving their reputations, their status, and their revenue streams, not on innovating. As director Robert Greenwald puts it, “Throughout history, it has always been the individuals – the mavericks – who make the changes.”

In other words, to track the future trajectory of cinema, keep the camera trained on the indies and outsiders.

dvGarage Product - conduit15

Conduit is a GPU accelerated node based compositing plugin for Motion 2.1 and Final Cut Studio 5.1.x.

Why would you want it?

--Greenscreen keying (DV, HDV and all the way up to uncompressed 1080p HD) - especially when the footage isn't perfect...I know that doesn't happen to anyone. :)

--Color Correction - Conduit runs in 32-bit float giving you tons of headroom to make adjustments.

--Sky Replacement and other luma keys - build mattes without blue or green! To do this, you need direct and easy access to the individual keys...Conduit has it all.

--We also added blurs (something that was heavily requested), more movies, and more documentation in general.

So, dig in boys and girls! You're never going to look at Final Cut Pro in quite the same way after you see Conduit in action. As usual, don't believe the hype. I could be lying to you. Go to www.dvgarage.com, download the demo, watch some tutorials, play with it, and see what you think...


It is 1/3 off until midnight FRIDAY - I said Thursday before, I was wrong. So you CAN STILL GET IT for under $100, not the list $149.

-mike

SXSW submissions due December 8th - DV Guru: "Final deadlines for film festival submissions in all categories (narrative feature, documentary feature, narrative short, documentary short, animated short, experimental short, and music video) for the 2007 SXSW fest in Austin, Texas are coming up on December 8th."

So git on it! Time's a wastin'.

Yes, I seem to be channeling some redneck from my past today. Pardon me while I take out my dip.

-mike

DigitalCinemaMag - The Daily Digital Cinema Resource

Crank was shot on Sony F950 and the T cam (just the optical head of the camera remoted) and Vince Pace's Advantage camera. Recorded on SRW-1 (records HDCAM SR tape format).

Lots of good DP geekery, a good read I've only had time to skim. Uncompromising shooting conditions - gotta use it in broad daylight.

I love finding out after the fact that movies were shot on HD - it is RAPIDLY getting to the stage of "Who cares what it was shot on - is the movie any GOOD?" And as a secondary question, "Oh yeah - how did it look?"

-mike

OK, so WTH is up with all them thar letters?

Slowly for the kids in the back:

The Los Angeles Final Cut Pro User Group will be having a humdinger of a meeting at MacWorld San Francisco next month.

While I was a bit bummed about MWSF last year as a techie filmmaker type, THIS ALONE makes it worth the trek if you are in the Bay Area - they'll have folks who worked on two of the hottest digital productions talking about their workflow on MAJOR features with top tier directors:

First up - how about a little Francis Ford Coppola action? With Walter Murch in the mix?

Associate Editor Sean Cullen who is currently working with legendary film editor, Walter Murch on Francis Coppola's new film, "Youth without Youth." This movie is being filmed using the Sony HDC F950 HD Cam and marks the first time both Walter Murch and Francis Coppola are going "filmless." Sean will discuss the digital workflow they have developed.

OK, you think Coppola is a little too old skool for your tastes? How about David Fincher? Snappy enough for you?

Also scheduled to appear will be film editor Angus Wall who just completed “Zodiac” for director David Fincher. Angus will discuss the all tapeless workflow they developed for Zodiac. The film was shot using the Grass Valley Viper Film Stream camera and Angus will be joined on stage by tech consultant, Andreas Wacker.

(I had a big article on all things Zodiac the other week)

Tickets are now on sale for the sixth annual FCPUG Network “SuperMeet” to be held Jan, 10, 2007 from 7:00PM - 10:00PM at the Mezzanine Club in downtown San Francisco CA., as part of Macworld Expo. This event promises to be the largest gathering of Final Cut Pro users and Gurus in the world.

Rounding out the evening will be an assortment of Show and Tells, a special appearance by Apple, “World Famous Raffle,” and much more.

Tickets are only $10.00 per person and includes 2 raffle tickets. Tickets are now on sale online only and it is expected this event will sell out.

For more information including directions to the Mezzanine Club as well as a link to buy tickets, visit the Los Angeles Final Cut Pro User Group (lafcpug) web site.

http://www.lafcpug.org/macworld_07.html

It ought to be a good one - if you're into digital feature film workflow stuff, this should be VERY interesting, and is the single most interesting thing going on at MWSF as far as I know so far (OK, iTV and octo-processor boxes and video iPods are possible, but we don't know about those yet, and there will be PLENTY of coverage on those for everyone not attending)

-mike

So Apocalypto is going to open soon - super violent, Mel Gibson's next, controversial, yadda yadda whatever.

The IMPORTANT thing, ya see, from my own teeny tiny, obsessive compulsive disorder point of view, is that he shot it digitally, on the Panavision Genesis.

And I've seen a bit of it (oooh, wouldn't you like to know where) and it looks GOOD. I'd comfortably say it is the best looking Genesis shot film so far, and I'll need to see the whole thing before I could say the best looking digital feature so far, but that is yet TBD and pretty subjective anyway. But it looks rilly rilly good, m'kay?

SO: let's talk geek.

For starters, here's an LA Times piece about the movie:

Waiting for the end to come on 'Apocalypto' - Los Angeles Times

Talking about digital:

Semler and Gibson had discussed the idea of digitally shooting "Apocalypto" two years ago,
.....
Both men knew, given the subject matter, that shooting "Apocalypto" digitally was a no-brainer. Semler had a good track record with new digital tools,

(no brainer? really? Hmm... -mike)
....
So Semler took Gibson to Panavision's screening room to eyeball early comparative test footage shot on both film and the new Genesis digital camera projected out to film. Neither the director nor the director of photography could tell what was shot on film versus tape, the cinematographer recalls.

(and I have to say I've seen some similar demos at Panavision - differences were MINOR on the footage I saw, and you had to know where to look - at windows to outside, etc. in the footage I saw -mike again)

Article goes on to discuss how they protected the cameras from the fierce heat of the jungle, some crazy slo-mo acting they had to do to accomodate the limited frame rate of the Genesis (as compared to film cameras), and some more good details of how they got it done.

Variety.com - Reviews - Apocalypto: "More remarkable still is that pic was shot on the new high definition Genesis camera system. Without a doubt, 'Apocalypto' is the best-looking big-budget film yet shot digitally; one can't tell it wasn't shot on film."

Scott Kirsner, ever on the ball on this how tech affects Hollywood, reports about digital cinematography:

Digital cinematography: "In fact, DPs continue to rely on film cameras for shots that require variable shutter speed or especially high frame rates. 'We carried an (Arriflex) 435 because the cameras we had initially wouldn't go beyond 30 frames a second,' Semler says. 'But about a month into 'Apocalypto,' we were given three new (Genesis) camera bodies that could do 50 frames per second.'"

And here's how you start an article: TIME.com: Apocalypto Now -- Mar. 27, 2006 -- Page 1: "'I need to see the blood!' shouts Mel Gibson. 'Your character is going to die soon!' He picks up a bullhorn: 'Attention! We are all dying here! We are all dying!'"

Camera maker sharpens its focus - Los Angeles Times: "Four years ago the picture was bleak for Panavision Inc.Massive debt, bad management decisions and rapidly changing technologies threatened its stature as Hollywood's gold standard for cameras and lenses used in shooting television shows, movies and commercials.

Now Panavision, whose logo on film credits has been familiar to moviegoers for decades, is regaining its focus."

-mike

CinemaTech: Advice on Attending the Sundance Film Festival

Good detailed "So how do you DO Sundance?" article.

Did I mention I'll be there, Jan 18-23rd?

-mike

OK, so I'm two days later reporting this one. The news starts with:

We are pleased to announce that all Proximity technology and intellectual property, including artbox workgroup and artbox enterprise, was recently acquired by Apple.


What does that mean? They have been assimilated by the Apple Borg Squad, fresh off of their strip mining mission over at Silicon Color.

OK, so what does Proximity make? What's this Artbox thing?

artbox workgroup is a media asset management software package designed for creative teams to maximize creative time and minimize administrative overhead.


No, seriously, in non-marketing speak, WTF does it do?

artbox workgroup can catalog all your content, enable you to easily search, find, browse your media and create rough cuts from anywhere and integrate with your editing tools like Apple Final Cut Pro.


OK, that's a better answer. But what does that MEAN?

It means you can catalog all your assets - pictures, audio, video etc. All in one place, that anybody in your workgroup or enterprise can access. I see this as useful on anything bigger than the smallest indie productions, and TREMENDOUSLY useful in, say, ad agency situations. When you import something into the database, it makes a proxy still and a proxy video copy of it, so that anybody can play a low res version of it from across the network.

This is good - this'll help Apple get into more broadcast type shops, because this tool integrates well with FCP - so well in fact, you can import/export XML files back and forth in between. You can even set up a cuts only edit in artbox and kick it out as an XML to go into Final Cut Pro - and the XML will link to the "real" versions, not just the proxies. You can edit metadata, and the biggie - you can do google style boolean searches for things like "find me all the 24p footage shot in the last two weeks but not today, that is 16:9 and references the Smith job." BANG. Now you have it, and can scroll through it, pick your selects, and hand those off to the editor as a bin essentially (if I follow this thing right).

Watch the FCP integration demo, download the PDF if you want more info.

Oh, and of course this thing works with Xsan, and you can catalog all the assets on your Xsan. How's that for handy?

More links:

proximity

proximity _ products _ artbox _ workgroup

proximity _ products _ artbox _ enterprise

AppleInsider | Apple acquires firm specializing in broadcast media software: "Proximity caters to a client base of over 150 broadcasters and some of the industries biggest names, including CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, ESPN, BBC and KBS."

AppleInsider | "Proximity" key to Apple's advance into the enterprise: "ThinkEquity analyst Jonathan Hoopes said the acquisition supports his thesis that Apple's industry leading software holds the key to further Mac market share gains and margin expansion.

'We expect Apple to leverage the Proximity asset to bolster its core position in the enterprise space (as defined by creative professionals)"

(includes screen grabs)

-mike

-mike

Panasonic has a new camera out - think of it as a morph between the HVX900 (itself a Varicam-lite) and an HVX200 (the P2 based HD camcorder). It is a shoulder mount camcorder that records to up to 5 P2 cards, and can record to the DVCPRO line of codecs (/25/50/HD) as well as DV and the brand new AVC-Intra codec. What is AVC-Intra? Think of it as H.264 for the shoot & edit set, rather than just a delivery codec.

Here's the schpoop on the camera:

-uses AVC-Intra codec - half the datarate of DVCPRO HD
-ALSO records to DVCPRO HD/50/25 & DV - so MANY options to shoot with!
-holds up to 5 P2 cards
-$27K MSRP
-2 data rates for AVC-Intra - 100mbit (same as DVCPRO HD) but is 10 bit, and also 50 mbit as well
-since not stated, is 50mbit is 8 bit?
-thanks to reader Glensser for finding out the deal - 100mbit is full raster 1920x1080, 10 bit, 4;2:2, and 50 megabit is 1440x1080, 4:2:0, 10 bit
-they are comparing 100mbit to D-5 quality - therefore is it full raster like D-5?
-both Apple & Avid promised support for the format in FUTURE versions of their NLE products - whether that is by or at NAB '07 is of critical interest
-shoulder mount camera
-1080p, 1080i, 720p, PAL/NTSC capable
-3 CCD
-2/3" CCDs
-can continuously record seamlessly, just keep rotating out full P2 cards
-3.5" LCD monitor onboard
-ready to shoot in 2 seconds
-15 second pre-record buffer function
-14 bit A/D processor
-sensitivity of F11 at 2000 lux, min illumination of 0.007 lux (at +74db gain, and who is going to use that?)
-DSP allws gamma and color adjustments
-has "Dynamic Range Stretching" to adjust aperture automatically
-I/O includes USB 2.0, FireWire (IEEE 1394), and HD-SDI, genlock, SMPTE timecode, composite video
-optional boards for other stuff - " A 10-pin RCU terminal connects the optional AJ-RC10G remote control unit. GPS mapping connection is also available."
-48/16 4 channel sound
-4x digital zoom
-formats supported: "1080/59.94i, 1080/50i, 1080/29.97p, 1080/25p, 1080/23.98p, 720/59.94p, 720/50p, 720/29.97p, 720/25p 720/23.98p and more"
-12-color correction matix
-16GB P2 cards expected as well, price/avail TBD

Mike's Comments: for fans of P2, this is DEFINITELY the bigger, more serious brother of the HVX200. Curiously, it does NOT have the variable frame rate options that the HVX200 does - perhaps Panasonic is reserving that for the Varicam's successor?

This seems very much like the P2 version of the HVX900 camera recently discussed.

As for the AVC-Intra codec, I stand corrected - at one point I said that the AVC stuff wouldn't be used for pro caliber cameras...oops, guess I was wrong on that one. This is the least expensive 10 bit onboard recording format capable HD 24p camera I'm aware of from a traditional/established manufacturer. Still dunno about full raster, but I can say with some confidence that this will take a pretty good bit of horsepower to edit - that's seemingly always the trade-off - more efficient compression requires more computing horsepower to decode or encode. So when the NLEs do support this natively in time, expect the hardware requirements to be higher than DVCPRO HD, and probably even higher than HDV. Look at the class of machine that is reqiured to even play back 1080p or 1080i H.264 movie trailers...that should be the MINIMAL BASELINE AT BEST for editing with this format at similar resolutions I'm guessing. Even though this is intra not inter frame compression (each frame stands alone instead of relying on parts of neighboring frames to render the full frame), the math involved is pretty brutal. Decoding interframe for playback is a much simpler proposition than the random read and reconstruction requirements of an editing environment. Eh, that's opening a big techie discussion - suffice it to say, you'll need a box with some huevos to edit this format, and the very very latest NLEs that aren't going to ship until sometime well into next year at BEST.

UPDATE: Well maybe not - somebody reported the 50mbit playing back well/smoothly on a $1000 laptop. And somebody else reminded me that AVCHD is the consumer long GOP format, but AVC-Intra is the pro format, and I mixed them up in my head a bit. If it is all I-frames, then maybe it DOESN'T need a mongo machine to edit, and that's actually good news.

(Yeah yeah yeah, Silicon Imaging and Red do/will have 10 or better bit depth recording systems onboard, but the intended audience for this camera is less likely to look to new market entrants.)

From what I've heard through the grapevine (and anybody feel free to correct me if I'm off base here), it is the same imaging CCDs as the Varicam uses, just different DSPs and stuff involved. For $27K, this is a lot of camera for Panasonic, and the lack of Varicam-style frame rates or PN modes (a la 24PN/25PN/30PN from HVX200) are my only complaints in the omissions category. So while the camera does record in 1080p or 1080i, it is upscaled from a natively 720p image (right?).

I can't help but thinking, however, as these new cameras get announced, that with Red purportedly just a few months away from shipping, that this will be a good choice for the typical HD4NDs reader (or at least the mythical reader in my head, the indie looking to make docs & features). For ENG/EFP and other applications I can see this making good sense, and integrating well with established P2 workflows etc.

The AVC-Intra codec will help make P2 more cost effective by effectively doubling the recording capacity of the P2 cards, or increasing the quality to 10 bits per channel rather than merely 8. This gives 1024 possible gradations of color/luma rather than just 256. But is it full raster? Panasonic's PR material compares AVC-Intra to D-5 quality, and D-5 is full raster. Somebody report back - is AVC-Intra full raster (1920 pixels wide recorded) or is it subsampled like DVCPRO HD is (to 1280 or 1440 pixels wide recorded)? I don't know, and I'd really like to. Similarly, is the 50 megabit codec 8 or 10 bit? Subsampled or not? I haven't found a chart yet to illustrate all this, and I think it is important. If you find out, please email me or post the info (or a link if you have one) in the Comments using the link at the end of this article. Doing some digging on the H.264 standard, I see full raster and subsampled profiles are both possible, I want to know what THIS camera does - which should be indicative of what Panasonic plans for all their pro-level AVC-Intra camcorders.

With an expected January ship date, and native format support expected from Avid and Apple at time unknown, NAB '07 is the first likely demo of native support in those companies' NLE packages...but isn't a guarantee - it could well take them longer. I've heard that Avid regrets missing the bus on DVCPRO HD, and are keen to be more aggressive on supporting new formats natively faster than they have in the past. This bodes well (but promises nothing).

DO beware shooting on AVC-Intra until you have a KNOWN post plan - with no decks out as yet supporting this new format (the $12K little P2 thingy won't have a AVC-Intra board until next July). Having faced the dilemna of working with formats that can only be recorded straight off the camera, it can be a REAL hassle. Keep in mind that while some cameras do send SMPTE timecode down the HD-SDI, your NLE is NOT NOT NOT set up to handle it that way. When I've had to record straight off an HD-SDI or worse, off the analog component output, it has typically had various limitations - 3:2 pulldown added to the 24p stuff, and I've yet to deal with a high end camera that had a 9 pin deck control cable on it. I managed to get tricky with the XDCAM HD camera and use FireWire for timecode, audio capture and deck control and HD-SDI for picture capture, but you can't count on always being so lucky - the JVC HD-100U refused to be recognized in any fashion connected over FireWire when dealing with 24p footage.

All this is to say, don't count on editing anything other than "wild" (no timecode) uncompressed from AVC-Intra shot footage for a while - and you might rather just deal with recording in DVCPRO HD for the meantime with this camera, or have a VERY carefully verified workflow for dealing with posting footage from this camera.

(edit - of course, you could capture and convert on the fly to a compressed format like DVCPRO HD in Final Cut Pro...but why didn't you just shoot that format in the first place?!?!? PPro users, 10 bit Cineform could be a very interesting single use (offline AND online from same capture) workflow until natively NLE support comes along. And since Adobe wasn't standing cheek and jowl with Apple and Apple up on that stage, will they support it? And if so, HIGH likelihood they won't even be demoing it at NAB 2007 - if they were gonna, they'd likely have been up on stage with Apple & Avid at the announcement.)

...and that leads me to this - as much as I try to give due credit to all the other cameras on the market or coming to market, with Red scheduled to ship right around the corner from this camera's expected January ship date, and costing less and doing more than this camera is supposed to....with the exception of the X # of months (2? 3? 5-6 ugly scenario?) between Panasonic's and Red's launch....would this be the right camera for your project shooting narrative/docs? The again, horses for courses - one of the Red team pointed out there is no image stabilization for Red as it will currently ship (future motion sensors to record metadata for post stabilization is one possible mentioned fix), that right there may be a deal killer for some kinds of projects and some kinds of shooting.

I hate to be Johnnie (Red) One Note, but the window where this is "The Right Move" may be fairly narrrow.

That aside, this sounds like a very interesting indie viable camera for medium budget HD projects - 10 bit capable, 24p, 2/3" CCDs, replaceable lenses, etc. If the image quality is what we've come to expect of Panasonic's 2/3" HD camcorders, that's all very good news indeed.

Stories I used as source material:

Studio Daily | Say Hello to Panasonic's 24P AJ-HPX2000 P2 HD Camcorder

Panasonic Announces Shoulder-Mount AJ-HPX2000 P2 HD - DVXuser.com -- The online community for filmmaking

Learn about Panasonic's AJ-HPX2000 - 2/3" 3-CCD 16:9 P2 HD Camcorder - (this is Panasonic's own page on the camera, look to this for "horse's mouth" answers)

-mike

How To Shoot a Network TV Pilot With the Panasonic HVX-200

This is a long, detailed article that really gets to the nitty gritty of what it is like trying to work with a large indie project (3 cameras with LOTS of footage each day) shooting with the Panasonic HVX200 camera and recording on P2 cards.

There are lots of possible gotchas when working with P2 - accidentally erasing master material when recycling cards, limited recording time capacity of the cards, TRANSFER TIME getting the media off the cards, keeping track of the files, differences between Mac & PC P2 workflows, additional staff & equipment required on set, etc.

All discussed and addressed in this EXCELLENT article.

IF YOU ARE THINKING OF SHOOTING A FEATURE OR OTHER LONG FORM PROJECT WITH THE HVX & P2, THIS IS A MUST MUST MUST READ.

There, is that clear enough?

: )

-mike

Quad vs. Dual Duel: Intel Core 2 Quad vs. Intel Xeon Core 2

Charlie White puts a twin dual core up against one of the newest twin quad core boxes. Surprisingly (or not, depending on your Jaded-O-Meter), it isn't always the fastest box when running existing software. And when it is faster, it isn't twice as fast, it is just a little bit to substantially faster. In After Effects, for instance, some projects took TWICE as long to finish on the quad core box, and when the quad core was faster, it was maybe 50% faster.

Other applications, such as Maxon's Cinebench (a 3D model/render/animation app), benefitted much more from the quad core processors - with 8 cores at it's disposal (twin quad core), it was about 4 1/2 times as fast as a single core processor - still not an 8x improvement, but certainly a well appreciated boost in performance.

The quad box mentioned here is probably similar to what Apple will offer next year in their own Quad Core box (I'm guessing a MWSF launch with quoted immediate availability).

And, as the article shows, while the hardware is there, the real key to taking advantage of this new hardware will be up to the software developers to take advantage of it. Some kinds of code multi-thread well, others do not. Fortunately, video tends to be a task that can be broken down better than some others for multi-processor acceleration.

Thinking ahead, will Apple's Final Cut Pro developers have had enough time with the quad core chips to do meaningful acceleration for the next version of Final Cut Studio, which we hope to see at NAB 2007? Time will tell. And if they SHOW it there, that also doesn't mean it is shipping there. It is almost certain to be a major update (since there wasn't one this year, just Intel compatibility, bug fixes, and new format variations supported). Thus a paid update, thus no compelling reason to have it shipping at NAB (unless we get lucky and the schedule just falls that way) - just to be able to show it off well at NAB. Shipping when, summer 2007? Just a guess, I have no hard data on this.

-mike

So, digital boyz and girlz, where's the beef? Where've I been? After the flurry of activity early last week, I've posted all of ONCE since last Wednesday.

So here's what's up: I have a habit of surfing my RSS browser (NetNewsWire), opening articles of possible blogging interest in the background, letting them stack up, then sifting through them and blogging as I find time and good stuff. Insufficiently interesting/non-blog worthy entries get closed, The Chosen get visited by the "Blog This" link fairy.

Every once in a while, however, in my speedy haste, my fingers stray...and instead of the desired Command-W to close the window or tab I'm looking at, I'll hit Command-Q and quit Safari, losing all those open windows.

"No biggie - why not just go back through your History and find'em?" Because, gentle reader, the wheat to chaff ratio is regrettably low - I go through LOTS of articles, and surf hundreds of pages a day. Sifting through that pile, especially through the Red Mist of Fury obscuring my eyes, is not something I look forward to.

And this happened TWICE recently - Friday morning and Saturday afternoon, and I was so ticked off I didn't want to fool with it. So I've salvaged a few particular articles and I'll be catching up on the day's news.

So it's coming. Patience. I know about the Artbox acquisition and the new P2 based Panasonic pro camcorder, I just haven't finished researching to write on them yet.

-mike

Got a reader asked this question:

HD for Indies is a great resource! But for those of us who are sitting on the sidelines, rather than doing this professionally, can you offer a quick and dirty summary of what we should ask for from Santa for christmas? I'm looking for the best bang/buck in a prosumer style video camera that I can shoot family videos with, something like the HDR-{SR1,HC3,UX1}. Clearly there are lots of options/parameters, but a timely recommendation for the holiday season might be a useful resource for folks like me. Just a thought...

Thanks for all your hard work!

(name withheld to respect privacy of the writer)


Mike's answer:

There is so much to follow in the stuff that I track, I'm pretty narrow in terms of what I read up on, and unfortunately consumer grade gear is one of those categories. I've seen/doodled/heard nice things about the little Sony HDV camcorders, specifically heard a lot of pre-release excitement about the HC3 before it came out, but I haven't spent serious time with any of them.

I'd say that is a question best asked over on the expansive DVinfo.net in their highly detailed and heavily trafficked forums.

Sorry can't be more help than that, but other readers - feel free to chip in on the Comments section using the link below, and share your Must-Haves and your See-This-Scar-Here stories.

-mike