HD For Indies

DV - Reviews - Canon XH A1

Adam Wilt reviews the Canon XH A1. At the $4000 MSRP, sounds like this may be the winner in that price category - clearly get this over a Sony Z1U (but what of the V1U?).

-mike

DV - Columns - Exploring The Panasonic HVX200

I linked to this briefly in a prior post, but this is worth singling out - Adam Wilt gets my kind of nerdy all over the HVX200. Turns out we made some poor choices at the Texas HD Shootout last year, but that was not determinable until Adam spent some time with the camera. LOTS of specific bits of advice, LOTS of test shots.

Adam does it right.

Some of the things noted:

The HVX200 has 960 x 540 CCDs, so its limiting resolution is low; adding detail enhancement improves the apparent sharpness of the image. In Texas, we used -7 (detail off) and the image suffered for it. Set detail to +7, and everything picks up harsh edges. I usually use -2, which crispens the picture without adding too many objectionable outlines and halos, but others (for example, DP Chris Oben; see www.chrisoben.com/hvx200article.htm) opt for higher settings like +2. Why so different?

While repeatedly going back and forth between settings, I discovered that the Cinelike gammas have roughly half as much enhancement applied for any given detail setting as non-Cinelike gammas do.

....

Contrasty glass and metal that have specular highlights often looked better between -4 and -6; brightly sunlit scenes improved with a setting of -3 or -4, whereas similar scenes in the shade might warrant a setting of 0 to +2; +7 gives you an exaggerated "TV news" look.


...and so forth. Read on. If you have one of these cameras or are planning on shooting with an HVX200, this is a must read.

-mike

DV - Features - Build Your Own HD Workstation

Frequent readers may recall I mentioned some weeks ago I was busy finishing up a magazine article - well, it's gone live (link above).

It's all kinds of goodness on how to build your own HD uncompressed workstation, whether you're starving artist or modestly budgeted facility, there's an option there for you (including a "best bang for the buck" moviemaker's config.

There are illustrations of the configs and everything, breaking it all down by category:
-the box (workstation)
-RAM
-graphics cards
-Computer monitors
-Storage
-HD-SDI cards
-video monitors

UPDATE - there's a set of typos on the storage section that can be misleading - it says Mbps (megabits per second) instead of MBps (megaBYTES per second, an eightfold difference). It's being fixed in the online and PDF versions...

More articles to follow in future months...

-mike

PS - surfing around the front page, there are also articles on:

-DV - Features - First Look: Photoshop CS3 Public Beta - hits some of the video-specific functionalities in the beta.

-DV - Features - RAID! - a deeper look at RAID levels, but I have one quibble - RAID 50 is RAID 5's striped together, not RAID 0's in a RAID 5.

-DV - Columns - Exploring The Panasonic HVX200 - hihgly respected uber-geek Adam Wilt gets nitty gritty wit the HVX200

-DV - Columns - The Big Picture for the Small Screen: Trends to Watch an interesting overview I generally agree with, but I take notable exception that Final Touch is ready for freelancers (without considerable investment/sacrifice)

-there's more, so surf around over there. They don't have an RSS feed (hint hint guys!) so you have to go dig around manually

Labels: Apple, post

AppleInsider is running this article that includes a video that some folks created that sniffs out a few more details on iPhone's capabilities - ringtone management, calendar event creation, etc.

Labels: Apple, iPhone

Major Update... - Reduser.net

Jim posted a lengthy piece on Reduser.net summarizing the State of Red, and it is overall good news.

Summary:

CAMERAS AND SHIPPING STATUS:

-first units anticipated to be delivered "around NAB"
-the first 100 or so will not be feature complete (more on that further down)
-all cameras field firmware/software upgradeable to add missing features
-all features expected functional by June or July
-production ramp up to be slower than originally guessed - meaning take longer to catch up on all backorders/reservations
-they THINK they can fulfill all reservations by Sept/Oct timeframe
-Redcine, EVF, LCD, drives & rails all available when the cameras are shipping
-110% refund to any dissatisfied reservation holders after NAB
-full price list of everything announced in 2 weeks

NAB

-WORKING CAMERAS IN THE BOOTH AT NAB
-Sony 4K projector in booth, projecting 4K
-full shooting/capture/workflow demos in booth
-"significant announcements" at NAB - partnerships, etc.

Read the post (link at top) for further details.

MY GUESSES & ANALYSIS

They say units 1-100 will not be feature complete, and in a later posting on the thread Jim mentions RGB recording modes won't be there. So my GUESS, not based on any hard data from Red, is that 4K compressed recording will work (that HAS been confirmed), but RGB recording won't (Jim mentions this in a later post on that thread). And I'd GUESS that recording scaled 1080p and 720p might be another of the features not included at first, as those are RGB derived deliverables. But since you can shoot 4K and convert to 1080p/720p with Redcine, might that be the plan at first? If so, that isn't much of a punishment - you'll still be able to get good results, the hassle will be reduced record times - if you COULD record at 720p instead of 4K, you could obviously get a lot more recording time on the Red Drive by recording those smaller frames. The only thing that I think would be truly limiting would be if you couldn't shoot windowed 2K footage at first, that would obviate (or at least seriously limit) PL mount Super16 lenses. Since the workflow is more roughly analagous to a film camera rather than a video camera, these omissions aren't as big a deal - you fix that in the "lab" or "telecine" - in Redcine, their conversion software.

Not mentioned were the B4 and still lens adaptors, but my understanding has always been that those would ship after the camera did. I'd guess when all the prices are announced, we MIGHT get some more dates on accessory availability.

I read on one of the threads the other day that due to the disk format of the Red Drive, recorded files will get chunked at 4GB apiece. While QuickTime will read these correctly and sequentially (I'm guessing some QT reference file cleverness), it is yet another little stumbling block that will be leading you back to Redcine as your one stop processing shop to put it into a format you like that you find useful.

Also, a point I'd like to get clarfication on - Jim said:

We are on track to begin delivering the 1st RED ONE (Spike) cameras somewhere around NAB as promised.


Now, is that delivered as in completed, to be used for internal testing, or is that actual delivery to clients? The lowest #s I know of for non-Red folks are for OffHollywood, my friends Mark & Aldey up in New York (who will be renting them out, but only if you do post with them last I heard). They have units 6 & 7 reserved. So does that mean Mark gets his around NAB, or that lower #'d units are for what, internal testing? First units for internal testing is definitely a significant milestone, but first units delivered to paying clients is the biggie.

UPDATE: Steve Gibby dropped me an email to remind me he's got number 8 - he's an Emmy winning indepedent shooter/producer in California, his company is Cut4. He's written on Red for Studio Monthly a number of times, and will have Day Zero articles at NAB I'm sure. Between him and OffHollywood, I'm pretty damn sure I'll be testing the first publicly available Red units ASAP.

So, if:

1.) 1-100 won't be feature complete
2.) ramp up of production line will take longer than expected
3.) All features to be enabled by June/July
4.) Sept/Oct for all 1500 reservations to be filled

(and this is conjecture based on the above)

-does this mean it'll take them until June/July to get those first 100 out?
-if the above conjecture is correct, that would imply a pretty aggressive ramp - if it takes 2-3 months to get the first 100 out, that would imply 1400 more in the following 4-5 months

Having seen that they'd just gotten first prototypes together at the end of December, this is IMPRESSIVE progress - I'd quietly been surmising they wouldn't ship until summer just based on the date of prototype assembly and knowing the level of complexity of the project, getting those zillion parts to all dance in harmony is a major, MAJOR challenge - so hats off to the team for moving this fast.

Thinking about this accelerated delivery schedule, I briefly worried about them rushing something out the door that wasn't 100% reliable, but I don't think it would be in Jim's character to ship something not ready for the rigors of actual production - certainly not knowingly, anyway - so that puts those concerns mostly to rest. I've had long talks with Jim about this thing, he wants it to be a tank in the field, reliable and rugged. And it would be entirely their style to delay and fix it rather than meet a designated ship date - they've been saying that all along.

I'm looking forward to their announcements at NAB, should be VERY interesting. Considering that last year at NAB was when they launched specs and pricing of the Red One, and a year later they'll have working units in the booth, that is moving FAST in this industry. And it will be VERY interesting to see what they consider "significant" announcements.

I'll be there reporting it all, you can count on it!

-mike

Labels: NAB, Red

Leopard 9A343 Gallery | 19.jpg

They DO pay attention! This is a screen grab from an unreleased build of Leopard - note "HD 709" that is the native high defintion video colorspace - this bodes well that Apple is paying attention to our needs...

Labels: Apple, OS X, Production

Paramount, Fox embrace BitTorrent | CNET News.com:

In February, BitTorrent will launch a video store where customers can download movies from Hollywood studios such as Paramount Pictures, Lionsgate and Twentieth Century Fox Film, as well as TV shows from MTV Networks. Earlier this year, BitTorrent announced a similar partnership with Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.

...but is still pretty lame - rental only, $4/pop, can't burn to DVD or watch on your TV, only plays on the computer you downloaded it to. Downloaded movies "die" after 30 days or 24 hours after you start to watch it.

A step forward over no legal content, but until it is easier to get content to the living room, this is dumb. The advantage BitTorrent offers is speed of download - the more popular the movie, the more peers will be out there, the faster the download will be - so it actually scales up rather than down for popular files.

But once you've got that file, unless your computer is attached to your TV, you're stuck - no burning of DVDs, no transfer to another playback device, etc.

So the speed benefit gets killed right there due to the hassle factor and limitations placed on the content by the studios.

I wonder if studio execs will look at the numbers in a few months and say "See? Not many people are downloading, this is not the future..." and write it off, overlooking the utterly hamstrung nature of the details.

It used to be said "the last mile" was the problem with broadband content distribution - getting a fast enough pipe from the trunk line into the neighborhood. Now we're facing a problem of the last 10 feet - how to get content from your computer to your TV.

-mike

Labels: online content service, online distribution

Lawrence Lessig

Big progress for Fair Use advocates, this is particularly germane to doc makers:

This is a huge breakthrough. As many of us have been arguing, the real constraint of fair use comes not from the courts, but from those in the market who are trying to avoid any risk of copyright exposure. This market-based solution will now clear the way for many films to be released which before could not secure insurance. And we are eager to use the inevitable cases that will emerge to solidify the fantastic Statement of Best Practices developed by the Center for Social Media.


Read on for details.

-mike

EFPlighting�Introduction

Found this one via FresHDV - a good overview site on lighting for field production. Good for beginners & intermediate shooters.

-mike

Labels: Production

CinemaTech: David Fincher's 'Zodiac': The Latest Feature Shot with the Viper FilmStream Digital Camera

More on Zodiac, bunch of links (including to an article I wrote), and this nice little pull quote:

The straight-talking Savides describes the situation bluntly: “Everybody who’s shooting this stuff is a guinea pig right now.”

“Everything is still R&D,” he elaborates. “I feel like these movies being made are just little experiments for the big conglomerate studios. They’ll see what it’s like, what’s gonna happen, see the best way to handle it down the road.”

The fluctuating nature of the technology means that most filmmakers still have to fight to shoot their films on HD. Directors like Steven Soderbergh and Robert Rodriguez can get away with HD because they keep their budgets down.


Read on, lots of links in Scott's article, and lots of links in the article of mine he links to.

I'm looking forward to Zodiac to see how it all looks as a finished product. Should be interesting to see the high def DVD (Blu-ray or HD-DVD? Which studio from, hence what format?), coming from a digital master file having never gone through film's soft-yet-detailed effect.

-mike

Just got this email from Apple:

To Our Valued Apple Customer:


Thank you for ordering the new Apple TV, an easy to use and fun way to
wirelessly play all your favorite iTunes content from your Mac or PC on your
widescreen TV.

Wrapping up Apple TV is taking a few weeks longer than we projected, and we
now expect to begin shipments in mid-March, not in February as originally
anticipated.

You may check the status of your order any time by visiting our online order
status website at http://www.apple.com/orderstatus.

A shipment notification, with tracking information, will be emailed to you as
soon as your order is shipped. There is no need to contact us unless you
choose to change or cancel your order.

We appreciate your business and thank you for shopping at the Apple Store!

Sincerely,
The Apple Store Team


...which fits into rumors and prior behavior - Apple announces Neat New Product at MWSF, says it'll ship in a month or two, then a delay occurs.

I've been out of pocket today - had a meeting this morning, went for a run, got the text message that SXSW Music wristbands were available and waited in line for 2 1/2 hours for my out of town friends to get their wristbands (see what a good friend I am? SEE???). The line wrapped around a city block, probably 700 or 800 people in front of me when I got there. Then walked back to where I'd parked my car blocks away and dropped in on my old boss and friend, Mark Rolston, creative director at frogdesign (my old employer). Turns out he's been busy working on his home theater setup too at the same time I had, putting in a 1080p projector and a drop down silver screen. Seems 1080p is on a lot of people's brains. He's always had a killer setup, buying a70+ inch HDTV set many many years ago when that was direly expensive. He now has a Xbox360 w/HD-DVD option and PS3 to play back all high def media. According to his research, the PS3 is both the cheapest and best Blu-ray player - interesting! I'd expected it to be hampered in some fashion, but apparently not.

As for my own home setup, I finally got almost everything hooked up, took 4 runs to the to-be-unnamed electronics shop to FINALLY get the right combo of crimper, stripper, cable and BNC ends to finish up some wiring to get the studio all talking to itself and to the living room at the same time, but it is 90% of the way there (one box can only do single not dual link until I make some more cables.)

All stories mentioned last week are still pending, have some interesting paying workflow consulting to do, and a review to finish as well for an upcoming magazine article.

-mike

Labels: Apple, AppleTV, HDTV

ArriD20

This guy did a bunch of testing with the Arri D20. He's got uncompressed DPX files, screen grabs of the waveforms, a diagram of his workflow, all that kind of stuff. Turns out the red channel was noisy beyond spec, but other than that the data is solid.

I've yet to sift through it myself.

-mike

Labels: acquisition, cameras, high end

Daring Fireball: Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Macrovision CEO Fred Amoroso's Response to Steve Jobs's 'Thoughts on Music'

This one's fun - I love this guy...

Labels: Apple

The No-Name Brand Behind the Latest Flat-Panel Price War - New York Times

Cheap TV brand (Olevia) coming on strong, pushing down prices on name brands so that they remain competitive.

Labels: HDTV

HDV To HD-SDI Video Converters Professional Video Equipment HDMI To HD-SDI Television Studio Equipment

Hardware to convert HDV to HD-SDI ($1000) or HDMI to HD-SDI ($700). Includes necessary deck control hardware.

Handy if your NLE doesn't support natively.

-mike

Labels: post, post equipment

And for my acting Oscar, I thank the special effects-Arts & Entertainment-Film-TimesOnline


Tweaking actors' performances in post. It was always possible to tweak the PERCEPTION of a performance through clever editing, but it is quite another thing to paint a tear onto the frame. But it can be done. And it IS being done.

Just vewy, vewy, kwietwy.

thanks yet again to Paul Alvarado of Robogeek.com for this one.

(and you thought they were shy about talking about painting out wrinkes...)

Wired News: The High-Def FAQK

Funny/cynical look at what's up with HDTV.

Labels: HDTV

Apple - Support - Downloads - Final Cut Pro 5.1.4 : "Provides important bug fixes to resolve plugin issues. This update is recommended for all Final Cut Pro 5.1, 5.1.1, 5.1.2 and 5.1.3 customers."

Colorista, Automatic Duck, and other plugins were broken by FCP 5.1.3, so this will in theory fix it. If you're still running 5.1.2, I'd stick with it for another week or so and wait to read the other user reports.

From the usual PDF documenting changes:

Late-Breaking News About Final Cut Pro 5.1.4
Final Cut Pro 5.1.4 is a maintenance release that resolves the following issues.
FxPlug Plug-ins with Custom User Interface Elements
FxPlug plug-ins that have custom user interface elements now work as expected.
Importing XML Files
Importing XML files with missing elements now works as expected.


Thanks to Shane Ross of Little Frog in High Def, it is one of many things he's blogged on today, including a new bundle of Nattress Plugins (yo Graeme - where do you find the time!) among other stuff.

-mike

Think Secret - Final Cut Pro 6 set for NAB release, again

Was trying to not blog anymore today, but every once in a while I see something so off base I just have to write about it.

In short, this article thinks FCP 6 will be seen at NAB 2007: that part I agree with.

They think it'll be shipping at NAB: I'd love for that to be true, but I doubt it.

They think it was going to debut last year but got delayed - so phenomenally wrong. Last year, they'd barely gotten a Universal Binary (runs on PPC and Intel Macs) out the door, they weren't going to be shipping a new version scant months later. They've been busy. Hopefully doing cool stuff like freeing FCP's deep code from the "one codec, one framerate, one resolution) limitation of the timeline, but we'll have to wait and see.

Will it REQUIRE Leopard and an Intel Mac? I doubt it - they'd be leaving soooo many machines behind if they did that. Might they have features that only work on Leopard and/or Intel Macs? That I think is much more likely, perhaps even some things are realtime on Mac Pros, for instance (maybe requiring Leopard, maybe not), but they'll still render non-realtime on PPC hardware.

As for Final Cut Extreme - they say it is rumored to be $10K for hardware/software combo to do 4K and that puts them in Avid pricing territory. This is so laughably wrong in so many ways;

1.) Avid hardware costs either a lot less (Mojo, Mojo SDI) or a lot more (Adrenaline)

2.) Avid's editorial lineup doesn't do 4K

3.) Apple can't even properly do 2K yet (you can get 4:4:4 or 10 bit, not both at same time, and no realtime FX for either, just playback) - let'em get that right first

4.) New RAIDs are likely - 4 GBit cards shipped recently from Apple

4K is SUCH a small niche market at the moment - only highest end feature films are getting mastered to 4K - that Apple has no business getting into it yet. YEARS away from there being enough users that Apple's current business strategy would make that make sense.

More misinformation or off-base data continues through the rest of the article....but suffice it to say, I'm betting we'll see something new at NAB, but I'll betcha it won't be close to shipping. They may SAY it will ship "soon" or "in a few months" but historically, anything shown at NAB as Not Done Yet doesn't ship until July to September (witness Motion, witness FCP 5.1.x update to get 24p HDV)

UPDATE Thursday 2pm- already added 3 or 4 things in here, re-skim if you read it orginally

Been busy learning lots of stuff and getting things done, here's a bunch of links that I thought were of interest that I don't have more time to spend on:

Final Cut Pro: Nested Cross Dissolves with still-images may produce unexpected results: "Final Cut Pro: Nested Cross Dissolves with still-images may produce unexpected results" - read on for details and the fix.

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MacMerc.com: Sonnet announces under-desk mounting bracket for Mac Pro and Power Mac G5: "Sonnet Technologies announces MacCuff Pro, an under-desk mounting and security bracket for Mac Pro and Power Mac G5 computers." - looks interesting, I'm pondering get a few of these - the more stuff you can keep UP off the floor, the tidier you can keep your studio - gobs on cables on the floor can't be swept under, so that's where the Dust Buffalo roam. This gadget attaches to the underside of your desk (bolts or screws I'd guess) and even has holes for cable routing - nice!

MRSP $130, due Feb 23rd 2007.

My only hesitation is about putting yet another 170+ pounds of strain on my desktop (3 G5s with lots of goodies).

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The Editblog � Interesting blogs from the American Cinema Editors site - ACE members shout out about FCP vs. Avid. I found this from Matthew Jeppsen's FresHDV blog. Haven't read it, but let the holy wars commence, and it is always the LITTLE things that make you love or hate.

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Haven't read CinemaTech in a few days? Go do so. As always, Scott's way up on how tech is affecting distribution and the deals being made to distribute content online.

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Lucid Movement - A gallery of high-speed / slow motion videos. Whee! I mentioned sitting in on the Phantom HD test shoot the other day, my friend Jake Maymar (that works with some other ex-co-frogdesign employees at bad-ass mographix shop naka), he immediately pointed me over to this site. Not only are there cool videos to watch (flaming spray cans, lighting matches at 1000s of fps), you can buy the clips as well. Schweet geeky joy! Now, if Craig at naka would ever return an email...

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Studio Daily | Matsushita Opens Panasonic Hollywood Blu-ray Testing Center: "New Blu-ray Test Center Allows Producers to Check Release Before Replication" - a necessary step, good to see. Will matter more in the future, but there's only a very limited # of Blu-ray players out there. This makes me VERY curious - with DVDs, the spec called for up to 10 megabits of datarate for audio/video content. However, because a lot of cheap crappy DVD players were made that couldn't handle it, 8 megabits was the recommended max, and MANY MANY MANY major Hollywood releases were encoded at around 7 megabits, when they could have used almost 50% more datarate. WILL WE SEE SIMILAR PROBLEMS WITH BLU-RAY AND HD-DVD? YES, I'm screaming in bold there, but I think this is a very important issue. Not that you'd want to encode the entire movie at high datarates, but high speed action sequences really due benefit from pouring on a bit more bitrate sauce (and NOT the Chunky HomeStyle!*)

* Chunky HomeStyle = home encoded, thus poorly encoded, with lots of quantization blocks, aka Motion Chunkies.

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The official AVS Guide to HD DVD Authoring. - AVS Forum - this one's really a note to myself so I can find it later (MUCH of the blog is for that purpose) - I've been having some trouble making red laser DVDs that play properly on my HD-DVD player (Toshiba HD-A2) and said so on the blog the other day, so Allan Barnwell of Omega Broadcast Group here in Austin was kind enough to send me this link that I've yet to explore.

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HD to 35: Scratch - A Robust DI Solution On An Indie Budget

Reader Paul Schleicher has his own blog "HD to 35" (link above, I'm lazy), and he went to a demo of Assimilate's Scratch digital intermediate product and has a nice long detailed review/analysis. He also points to article:


Studio Daily | A DI Workflow for Indie Film

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Secret Notes - Photoshop CS3 shaping up for March release - whether it is shipping or not, I'll betcha we see if at NAB. My wish list that I'd like to see for video folks:
-support for Y'CbCr processing (or at least a preview!)
-support for more video non-square aspect ratios (again, preview it)
-support for title/action safe/etc. without me having to build a layer every time
-for video legal, add Rec 709 (HD colorspace) in addition to just
-can we get a better scaling algorithm? I mean, really, bicubic is just soooooo 20th century...
-and if I could dream, break away from integer math!

...but it is likely NONE of these features will be in there...anybody know?

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Panasonic USA Pressroom: " Available by late summer, the 2K processor allows professionals to record and process pristine quality 2K and HD images to D-5 VTRs for editing, interchange and distribution.
�
Designed specifically for use with telecine systems and especially within the rapidly growing DI workplace, the AJ-HDP2000 processor uses JPEG2000 compression, the same compression scheme specified by the Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) for cinema release. The AJ-HDP2000 processor accepts 12-bit 4:4:4 %u201C2K%u201D 2048 x 1080 resolution film image data, or 12-bit 4:4:4 sampled 1920 x 1080 HD images, and records to the AJ-HD3700H, AJ-HD3700A and AJ-HD3700B D-5 HD VTRs for editing, archiving and distribution."

Interesting! Pricey ($35,000 MSRP), but interesting. D-5 got sand kicked in its face by HDCAM SR - D-5 was the first full raster (records ALL 1920 pixels across) 10 bit recordable HD tape format AFAIK, but when HDCAM SR came out with the added ability to do 4:4:4, and with arguably better image quality at any color sampling level at roughly the same price, Panasonic was in trouble. This'll help even up the odds, but the price point may still be an issue - but they have until August ship date, and Panasonic has been lowering prices aggressively on their cameras over the last year, will they do so for decks as well at NAB?

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Movies 2.0: Digital Effects Magic Explained - Popular Mechanics

Popular Mechanics has a series on digital Hollywood - let's see what they get right and wrong....more links on this page...

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Creating Hi-Def DVDs Using 4.7GB Type 5 DVDs - more on making high def DVDs, but for Mac playback - this skips a few important steps if you want it to play on set top boxes - found via FresHDV yet again.

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Digg - Shopping for HDMI cables? Check out this price list. - there are HUGE price disparities on HDMI cables. If it is new, people are frightened of it, and people throw money at what they are scared of and don't understand. When I was shopping for a 50 foot HDMI cable, I found price disparities of 5 fold...and even the least expensive wasn't cheap (more on that later).

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Sony hints at downloadable HDTV and movies on PS3 - Engadget - MS is doing it with the Xbox360, but Sony kinda has an edge with the whole Sony movie studio tie-in. They have a hard drive (how big? Can you attach an external?). Be interesting to see if they offered HD movies to download, or if they'd not because it would cannibalize Blu-ray sales (players and movies).

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on the other side of the fence - Is "3X DVD" HD DVD's secret weapon against Blu-ray? - Engadget - which I don't think is a winning play, unless they are CHEAP, and the studios ALL jump in (which the Sony affiliated ones never would)

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DV Rack 2.0 HD for $199 until March 15 - headline says it all! Good tool, SERIOUSLY worth considering, but keep in mind NAB is a month later and Adobe bought these gus (wait, right, it WAS these guys, right? Blogrolling, gotta keep moving...)

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David Fincher - Zodiac - Movies - New York Times - Fincher on Zodiac, his latest movie shot with Viper & S.two (like Michael Mann did on Miami Vice).

UPDATE - oops, in my haste I got it wrong, and my friend Randy Wedick of from Band Pro corrected me and added some interesting info:

Hi Mike,

Still working my way through the blogwad, but quick correction. I tried to leave this in comments but I kept getting redirected to the same page.

In the lead-in for Zodiac, it says Zodiac & Miami Vice were done the same way, but they are actually done in opposite ways.

On MV, the Viper was in videostream 4:4:4 and the look was painted and finalized on a BVM monitor and then rolled down to HDCAM-SR tape. Mann & Dion Beebe had a clear vision of the look they were going for and signed off on each set up on the day of shooting.

It’s just a matter of preference. I have recently hung out with some top-flight feature DITs and they have a variety of opinions but they seemed to think that a better image could be created in camera on the set. This was due to taking advantage of 28 or 30-bit processing in camera, before it gets written out to a 10-bit format. On a Genesis show, the DIT sits in a tent and operates a DaVinci style device to create a non-destructive LUT. This is probably the same with Viper in filmstream. In a Sony/Videostream/video camera show, the DIT does lots of knob-twiddling to take advantage of high-bit processing in camera before the close-to-final image is rolled to tape. These guys were in favor of the latter. But they were also DITs who need jobs.

Later,

Randy Wedick
Band Pro


Thanks for catching me on that, and especially those extra tidbits - I'd always kinda figured if you captured 10 bit uncompressed (or very lightly compressed 10b444 HDCAM SR), that was as good as tweaking onset, plus you'd be able to fool with it later in post at your leisure so long as you got full range (no clipping shadows or highlights) - apparently not necessarily the case. Is this a last 2% quality difference or a last 10% quality difference? That's a crucial question...but if your DP can nail it on set, you don't have to worry about drifting off intent in final CC, when the DP isn't there...

On the one hand, if it were possibly to get a noticeably better image, these'd be the guys to know. 28 or 30 bit processing it definitely mathematically superior to 10 bit. Then again, these ARE the on set guys, so if they said you could do better in post, they'd be out of a job! Always worth asking as to the motivations of the source (me included).

Hmm..pondering....I think the crucial question is this:
Does the camera generate meaningful data at or beyond the recordable 10 bit log? If it is just noise beyond that, EVEN STRAIGHT OFF THE CAMERA HEAD IN THE PROCESSING MATRIX (or whatever you call the internal processing guts), then I don't think it matters where you do your image manipulation - on set you've got 28 or 30 bit processing and whatever controls the DITs have, and in high end post, you're often working in 32 bit floating point space, quite possibly with a richer toolset (secondaries, power windows, etc.), with less time pressure (it is still an expensive room and operator, but you don't have a whole crew standing around on the clock waiting for you to finish).

Yo pros out there reading this - thoughts?

=======

Also, just added an over-the-shoulder shot to my earlier posting about updating the studio wiring - used iSight to do a quick over the shoulder shot of my mini-rack in progress - there's just tremendous value to having infrastructure in place ready to go - the difference between click an icon in my dock, pick up the MacBook, tilt over the shoulder and click "shoot", then be able to click on a button to build an outbound email with the pic already in it....that's a few steps that took maybe 20 seconds, think how long it would take to go get the camera, shoot a picture over your shoulder with you in it (and frame it right), find the cable, offload the picture, crop it, export JPEG, email, etc...all of which is to say I'm hoping I'll be much more productive once the studio is all laced up right, and everything is right where I need it always handy, always pre-wired, always route-able in 20 seconds (including running it out to the living room 1080p HDTV).

If the running shoes and shorts are already laid out the night before and the alarm set, you're much more likely to go run in the morning...

=======

And finally, your geeky reward for slogging through all this - this is killer cool - Tip: Hidden Diagnostic Tool in Final Cut Pro - got a RAID? Wish FCP could report on performance during playback? IT CAN! Read on...

But wait! Another one, last minute -

my fried Paul Alvarado from Robogeek sent me this one - need a sound effect? Here ya go - FindSounds - Sound Types: "Search the Web for Sounds"

...you can specify file format, number of channels, Minimum bit depth, minimum sample rate, maximum file size, etc. This is a great searchable database for sound effects from the web. dunno about rights, but you can find stuff here.


-mike

...and for those who didn't see it yet, I've been requesting donations to keep HD for Indies going. Read the link for why.

Labels: blogwad

AJA Video - Serial Digital Video Interface and Conversion

Not sure when AJA slipped this in there, but they now have the Kona 3X, which appears to be identical to the Kona3 (dual link, 2K capable), except it has a PCI-X instead of PCIe bus - so older G5s can work with it.

It appears they've disco'd (that's discontinued) the Kona2 card, which is OK by me since Kona3 so much better.

-mike

Hey all -

One of the changes I want to make on the blog is more original content - my own reports, R&D, interviews, etc., rather than just link trolling and reposting.

Without A Box exclusive interview

So it has been a good week for that - I interviewed David Straus, founder or WithABox.com the other week, I need to tidy that up and post it - they are going to offer yet more services for indie filmmakers, interesting stuff to deal with rights management.

Donations

Thanks to all who have contributed, your generosity is very much appreciated. To those who have, THANK YOU! To those who haven't, I humbly request that you consider doing so if you've derived benefit from the site.

Hands On with Phantom HD


I got a call from my friend Sam the other day and he told me they were going to be testing/doodling with an interesting HD camera the next day up at the University of Texas at Austin's RTF (Radio/Television/Film) department - the Phantom HD. For those who don't know what it is, it is a high speed digital camera with a square 2Kx2K sensor, and when you crop that down to 1920x1080 you can shoot 1000 (yes, one THOUSAND) frames per second. So of course I got up early and high tailed it up there. I'll have a full report when I get a chance to sit down and type it all up.

Home Studio HD rewiring
Update - here's a quickie over-the-shoulder iSight pic from Thursday, mini-rack for studio patch panel in progress, click for larger view

The last several days I've been busy trying to rewire the home studio, so that I can get analog and digital high def video/audio going in both directions between the studio and the HDTV in the next room. Luckily, I live on a hill in a pier and beam house, which means I have a pseudo-basement, which means I can stand up underneath (most of) my house. After I bought the house 8 years ago, I ran heavy duty coax to all the rooms from the closet in the front bedroom (which has been converted to the home studio). There's groupings of cables that sprout from trap doors in the floor around the house, with the biggest gob emerging in the studio. I'd originally planned to run s-video and analog stereo pair to all rooms from a duplication amplifier in the rack in the closet, but that plan never quite worked out - the DA I bought on eBay had issues, and I got hum on the audio as I routed it around, due to hum from A/V gear being on different power legs.

So now my plan is to:
-consolidate the output from my three uncompressed HD capable edit stations to a patch panel in the studio instead of running a million cables on the floor back and forth and making a mess every time I interconnect machines
-connect analog and digital HD & audio connections to/from the living room
-think of it this way - if it were a facility, I'd be interconnecting three uncompressed HD suites into a master patchbay with separate client 5.1 & HD monitoring in another room. Yeah - LOTS of wires! And figuring out the patch panels and receiver interconnects is a BITCH...

...so I'll have a lengthy report on that I'm sure - there must be at least 100 cables involved in all of this, in all kinds of formats and connectors - HD-SDI, SD and HD component video, toslink, digital coax, SPDIF, AES/EBU, RCA stereo pair, XLR balanced audio, s-video, etc. etc. etc.

It is amazing how long it takes to figure it all out.

Latest challenging detail: if I do a direct cable run from analog outputs of Decklink HD card straight into the HD component inputs on the HDTV by running a cable across the floor, the picture looks great. If I go HD-SDI to the Multibridge Extreme, then go component analog out of that, through the patch panel, that cable runs under the floor to the patch panel in the closet, that cable goes back under the floor into the living room and straight into the HDTV, I get horizontal lines (changes in luma) that crawl slowly up the screen. Is it the cables? Is it interference? Is it the patch panels? I dunno, gotta troubleshoot it.

I also don't have enough HDMI and toslink/digital coax inputs/outputs everywhere, figuring out how to solve that as well.

When I'm done (or closer to done) I'll put up a lot of details on this, I'm sure it'll useful for a lot of folks - I've found some great deals on stuff...

HD-DVDs from DVD Studio Pro on the Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD player

Did some initial tests that looked promising - one MAJOR dissapointment - according to my first tests and something I read online, you can't make H.264 encoded content that will play in HD-DVD players. Dunno exactly why yet, need to research further, details to follow, if you have details please do share.

-mike

Labels: blogwad

Designing for sound by Randy Thom

Long article on sound design in the design of a movie. Found this from Stu's excellent ProLost blog.

-mike

Hey all -

so I've been running this site, writing 99% of the content myself, for nearly three years now. It ends up taking hours a day, time I could be spending doing other things...more profitable things.

I'm getting to the very, very firm conclusion that as much fun as I have writing the blog, and sharing this info, I need to spend my time doing more profitable things. If that is to include the blog, I need it to generate more income for me.

Along those lines, I've created a new feature on HD for Indies - a donation button, sitting up in the upper right hand corner of the page. It is a PayPal "Make a Donation" link, it will take you to a PayPal page where you can enter your PayPal info. It is safe and secure, I don't see any of your financial info.

In the past I'd decided to NOT solicit direct advertising in order to avoid the appearance of bias - the simple strip of ads on the side of the site is from Google's AdSense program - I have no control or influence over what ads run there, and in return I get lunch money levels of income out of it. So the income helps, but is nowhere near enough to justify the time spent.

So - if you've ever gotten benefit from HD for Indies - learned something useful, saved some money, found out about something you wouldn't have otherwise - I'd appreciate it if you'd make a donation to HD for Indies so that I can (hopefully) continue the site as it has been and keep it otherwise free and available.

Please think about the value you've received, and the time it took to generate that value, and do what you think is fair and right.

Thanks,

-mike

Labels: original

Speed Comparison between 802.11g and 802.11n

Review and tests on speed of the new new Apple wireless. It IS much faster - a one gigabyte file copied about 4 1/2 times faster...IF you're using a 802.11n Mac (Core2Duo or newer Mac Pros).

Labels: Apple

...so I've already covered that HDMI is a cousin of DVI, and that a DVI to HDMI connector can successfully drive a 1920x1080 HDTV in 1080i mode (at least my KDS-60A2000 that I have).

It tends to overscan, which is a pain, but then I found this:



At least with this display, you can click off the Overscan button (which defaults to on on my setup) and it'll substantially crop in the image on the HDTV - too much in fact, giving me about 3/4" top and bottom of black, and 1 1/2 to 2 inches on the sides.

The SIZE isn't so much a big deal, but the HDTV is now scaling to non one-to-one pixels, so the image is softer and harder to read. So in situations where you NEED mneus, there is a solution. If you don't care, it's sharper but no menus.

It'd be nice is there were an AppleScript to toggle it directly without going to the Sustem Prefs & Displays - anybody know how to do that?

Ideally map it to an F-key to switch back and forth (F8?)

-mike

Labels: HDTV, home theater, tips

Then there's this I, Cringely article which claims the hard drive will be used as part of an Apple-only P2P network for distributing content.

Nope - it says on Apple's Apple TV Sync page: " Pair Apple TV with your computer and your TV shows, movies, music, podcasts, and photos sync automatically." - that 40GB is for caching content. What if I have more than 40GB of content, as i do? Probably pick playlists and albums to sync and have to stream the rest.

He also claims Mac Mini, AppleTV, and new Airport Base Station are stackable.

Nope - not only are they different sizes, but Apple goes to pains to stress that Minis shouldn't be stacked, they breathe top to bottom to dissipate heat. Apple just likes consistent design is all.

I like Cringely, we had a great banter some time ago (well before the AppleTV was announced) predicting such a device - I called it the Airport Express A/V at the time in the summer of 2005.

But he's off base here - he needs to do his homework.

Will Apple do a P2P play? They'd only do it if proprietary and not let you share other file types. Would it make sense the way Cringely suggests? I dunno - P2P only works well as it scales up, and I personally don't like the idea of P2P running sucking up my bandwidth.

What we DID agree on is that Apple would have high def downloads at some point, and since the tech specs call for up to 720p24 playback, that's a high def movie:

Apple - Apple TV - Tech Specs: "Video formats supported: H.264 and protected H.264 (from iTunes Store): 640 by 480, 30 fps, LC version of Baseline Profile; 320 by 240, 30 fps, Baseline profile up to Level 1.3; 1280 by 720, 24 fps, Progressive Main Profile. MPEG-4: 640 by 480, 30 fps, Simple Profile"

...it is just a matter of when.

At that point, AppleTV is still less expensive than HD-DVD and Blu-ray players, but with a tiny library, no DVD playback capabilities, and other hindrances. When AppleTV is about $150 then it gets more interesting, and if they came out with a 1080p24 or 1080i60 decoding capable unit next year with an HD-DVD or Blu-ray or other optical drive for under $500, that'd be even better.

-mike

Labels: Apple, online distribution, original

I haven't linked to CinemaTech in a bit, but Scott continues to nail all the good stuff. Here's a link from today:

CinemaTech: From the WSJ: 'Hollywood Weighs Copyright Protections'

...but go back and hit the main CinemaTech page and keep reading - Scott is absolutely on top of the latest trends in digital distribution options, I'd say the leading authority on it in the press.

Lots of good stuff of late, I just haven't linked to it

-mike

Apple - Support - Downloads - Final Cut Pro 5.1.3

from the PDF:

Render File Compatibility
Render files created on both PowerPC-based and Intel-based Macintosh computers now work properly on either type of computer.

Keyboard Layout Issues Resolved
Final Cut Pro 5.1.3 adds several commands to the default keyboard layout that were missing in the previous version.

Issues with Cross Dissolves in Nested Sequences Resolved
Final Cut Pro 5.1.3 resolves cases in which cross dissolves did not work as expected in nested sequences containing still images with adjusted motion parameters.


That's all they say...

UPDATE:

Colorista has a UI problem that makes it inoperable, Wes of Automatic Duck says there are problems -Duck Support Blog has details on that.

My advice - hold off a few days in general. If the above listed fixes a mission critical problem, update but be prepared to go back to earlier version (disk image using Super Duper of your boot drive). If you use Colorista or Automatic Duck, DEFINITELY do not upgrade until there are updated, proven to to work versions.

As always, careful jumping on the upgrade train!

-mike

Labels: Apple, FCP, Final Cut, NLE, post, software

Ideal Front Row experience - AppleTV, older G5, or Mac Mini?

Just got off the phone with my lifelong friend Charlie Wood (who just opened public beta on his Google/iCal syncing software), he wanted to know how well Front Row worked with the computer hooked up to the HDTV - he was thinking about using a computer as a DVD player and Front Row driver hooked up to his high res projector.

Turns out it works pretty well!

While the top pulldown menu is clipped off the screen (If I select About This Mac, I see "bout this Mac", and about one pixel above those words), and the dock is clipped such that the System Prefs icon clips one pixel below the grey Apple logo on this particular set (WHY does HDTV overscan? Why why why?), Front Row works fine - none of the text ever clips, everything is safely inset enough.

And popping in a DVD, MAN it scales nicely! I recall reading an article somewhere not too long ago that graphics card scale video for DVD much Much MUCH better than even the expensive DVD players, and I believe it *. Popping in Flyboys (only rented because shot on Genesis), the intro text scales VERY nicely.

* - I'm writing this line from the couch, watching the text appear 10 feet away on the 60 inch set running at 1920x1080, and I can read it in default 9 point Monaco. It could be sharper, but I can read it just fine

Charlie was thinking about using an AppleTV as his primary DVD watching device. I pointed out that the AppleTV doesn't have an optical drive, and he asked if it could stream it and I said I didn't think so, it only streams H.264 AFAIK.

Then I mentioned I was already planning on running an HDMI from the studio from the Multibridge Extreme, then I thought about running it from a standard DVI port - I have a Gefen DVI switcher that keeps both ports "hot and live" at all times, so I could route the output from a G5 here to the living room.

Then I thought about using my eldest G5 (a dual 2.0) and putting it in the closet that is behind the HDTV behind a wall. I could use a DVI to HDMI cable, run it through the holes already in the floors and through the basement (thankfully I can stand up down there), use my Kensington IR remote that has the IR receiver on a USB cable to remote the whole thing to the living room. That and a Bluetooth keyboard/mouse if I want it and I'm off.

I'd been debating putting a server in that closet anyway, but I'd need to put a fan or some kind of ventilation in the ceiling in there, buy all these long run cables etc., so the price goes up pretty quickly from there.

Then Charlie and I were talking about what WOULD work best - the AppleTV is neat and relatively cheap at $300, but the small 40 GB drive is a limitation - I already have 50+GB of MP3 files from all my ripped CDs. I'd been idly debating bulk re-ripping them to ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) that is about half the size of uncompressed - I'd end up with hundreds of GB of audio files.

Front Row can ALREADY stream audio and video from a remote machine - I did that the other week - I'd downloaded an episode of Lost I hadn't seen on a G5 in the studio, but wanted to watch the show in bed. So I left iTunes running on the G5, made sure Sharing was on, took my MacBook in the bedroom, hooked it up via s-video and fired up Front Row, and have you noticed that Front Row has a "Shared Videos" option under Videos? That's right, you can stream video just fine, even over my first generation Apple Airport (the flying saucer model) and it ran without a hitch. A little slow buffering at first, and fast forward/remind was utterly screwy/almost broken, but for basic viewing it was fine.

But the G5 is big and hot and heavy and would require some finagling to get it nearby. I don't want it in the living room because it is huge and the fans are loud. So what else?

A Mac Mini.

The HDTV has a HDMI in port, and I'm using a GMA950 based video card in the MacBook right now on that screen, same as the Mini has (or had, has it been upgraded?). A Mac Mini with an external hard drive starts to make a lot of sense - put all your media content on a fanless FireWire drive, and hook up that tiny Mini in the living room as an A/V component. Watch DVDs that'll look better than most players, use Front Row for downloaded videos as well (and for more than just H.264 encoded ones, a limitation of AppleTV), play CDs, MP3s, watch pictures, etc. Of course, that'll be about $800 for a Mini to do that, which is pretty expensive, but it'll do a LOT of stuff, and is pretty much infinitely expandable as far as storage goes - just get a bigger (750GB now, 1TB coming this year) hard drive, or just daisy chain additional ones. So $1000 for the Mini and an external hard drive for a great DVD player and Front Row experience. (Edit - base one I'd use is $600 not $800 - Charlie would want it for a usable machine, I just want a media box, and I could use that $200 to get a MUCH bigger drive).

OH OH OH OH - only in an email somebody sent me about HD-DVD players did it dawn on me - DUH - I have a HD-DVD player that will read DVD-R discs, and I have a DVD-R burner and DVD Studio Pro that will create red laser HD-DVDs!!! I'll be tsting that SOON, trust me!

I see one hitch in that process - I have a dual layer burner in my Quad G5, but I THINK it only does dual layer DVD+R discs, not dual layer DVD-R discs, and I noted support of DVD-R but not DVD+R mentioned in my HD-DVD player manual. Darn it if so, but single layer still lets me test a lot of stuff and ideas.

This makes me want to be able to route outputs from the studio in here in a variety of ways:
-each machine has HD component output - route that
-each machine has DVI output - route that as well?
-each machine can send HD-SDI to the Multibridge Extreme, then I can send HDMI out from that as well

In the living room, I've got HD-DVD and cable box taking over the two HDMI inputs - seems like I'll need an HDMI switcher then to flip between studio, HD-DVD, and AppleTV input.

OK - what else? There's so much to think about with all these toys.

AppleTV

PROS: CHEAP. Quiet. Plug & play. Small, sits in A/V rack nicely. Totally quiet. Cover Flow

CONS: If I do the AppleTV (still have one on order), it'll be interesting to doodle with but limited in a variety of ways:
-limited storage (but can stream from elsewhere)
-can't play anything but H.264 video
-no DVD playback
-720p24 playback MAX - no 720p60, no 1080p24 or 1080i60
from Apple TV Tech Specs page: "Video formats supported: H.264 and protected H.264 (from iTunes Store): 640 by 480, 30 fps, LC version of Baseline Profile; 320 by 240, 30 fps, Baseline profile up to Level 1.3; 1280 by 720, 24 fps, Progressive Main Profile. MPEG-4: 640 by 480, 30 fps, Simple Profile"
-so CAN attach my 1080p/i capable display
-so how to efficiently navigate LARGE music/video/media collections?

Convert an existing G5

PROS:
-can attach to TV for Front Row (with available patch/hack)
-can also use as a serious server in the house for all other files & media
-extensible storage - throw a 750GB drive in there and that'll hold me for a while!
-can run non-H.264 video content
-can play DVDs very nicely (just gotta put it in the box in other room around corner)
-if I go to the trouble, should be a pretty awesome A/V experience. Plus, my server can run a 1920x1080 screen!

CONS:
-expensive install - gotta get long DVI-HDMI cables, long USB, Bluetooth keyboard and mouse (and Bluetooth upgrade for G5) if I want more control over it (and will they work through a wall anyway?)
-plus I need to ventilate that closet - a thermostat driven fan that leads to the attic? The attic gets over 120 degrees in the summer Texas heat - I'm pushing air into there?
-no CoverFlow
-gotta buy Bluetooth keyboard/mouse, will they work through wall?

Buy a Mac Mini
-base model is $600 - for $200 more, you get 80 not 60GB drive, slightly faster processor, and a DVD burner not Combo drive - but this this utilization, who cares? I'd have to add at least 512MB of RAM to keep it zippy, though

PROS
-fast box, fully featured, good experience
-practically unlimited storage capacity - just keep adding FireWire drives
-small, fits in A/V space just fine

CONS:
-priciest up front cost of all the options
-decent but not outstanding graphics performance - but does that matter?
-no Cover Flow, tougher to navigate large libraries, gotta buy Bluetooth keyboard/mouse to be effective

What else?

I should probably break down the costs for each and ponder the pros/cons some more.

This is total DIY HDforIndies project - what do you folks think? Please chime in with your thoughts!

-mike

update - I've learned that I need to get an OTA antenna for better reception of the major networks, 19.2 mbit vs 10-12 mbit on my expensive digital HDTV cable (harrumph). The Terk was recommended, I just don't know whether I need the $30ish passive or the $100ish amplified model.

Also, Charlie Wood followed up with a link to MacHTPC.com, a site all about using Macs as home theater PCs, and I'm sure they've been thoroughly all over all the issues I've been wrangling with. I'll be reading up on stuff over there. I want a home theater box, a server, and possibly a gaming platform out of it, so I'm not a typical user here.

-mike

PS - sitting here all day tethered to the HDTV on laptop, I can definitely appreciate the idea of wireless HDMI.

Labels: HDTV, original, studio, think

Mike's first thoughts on his HDTV, HD-DVD player, and HD cable, in rambly blog fashion.

thoughts on new HDTV:

-I got my Sony KDS-60A2000 HDTV delivered. It is a 60" SXRD (Sony's flavor of LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon)), then I got the Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD player, and Time Warner Cable's HD cable box

-setting up wasn't as bad as I thought - not as many initial "must decide" decisions to be made, but a ton of color correction choices, mostly involving turning "enhancements" OFF.

I found this handy page that has cnet's settings they'd clearly spent time coming up with to optimize viewing.

The default "Vivid" settings, especially in a bright room, are far too contrasty, oversharpened, and saturated - looks good in the showroom, but a guy with dark hair and a dark suit is a black blob all too often, especially on modern shows like CSI with that high contrast look.

There are three presets - Vivid, Standard, and Custom, which you can tweak as needed - I'm thinking I'll use a modified Standard setting for day and Custom for night.

Nice features - you can fine tune sharpening, edge enhancement, white point, gamma, etc. All those settings..and most of them I end up turning off or waaay down.

Each input retains its own custom setting - a VERY nice option allowing fine tuning of each input - I anticipate setting up my Multibridge Extreme to use both HDMI and HD component outputs to feed into the HDTV via usage of long cable runs under the house (yeah, I'm that kind of geek), so I can route from studio to living room.

One downside, though - viewing angle is CRITICAL - even standing up (from sitting on couch) creates a HUGE shift in luma (brightness) - side to side there is some variation, but if I display a flat grey screen, I can move up/down a foot and see the grey shift darker and bluer. Standing in front of the set, even 5 feet back, gives a completely off-the-map bad viewing experience, so the sweet spot to view is sitting on the couch, about 3 people wide. Hmm. Of course, two people is really optimal for Movie Palace Mode viewing. : ) I've tested extensively with a wide demographic cross section.

The HD-DVD player takes a long time to fire up, and the UI is interesting - the difference between reading about it and then actually using it is interesting - I got King Kong and Batman Returns in HD-DVD, and while King Kong follows the expected DVD main menu structure, Batman Returns just starts playing the movie until/unless you press a menu button.

Then you get a UI that pops up from the bottom WHILE THE MOVIE IS PLAYING which is pretty cool but a little distracting, it is superimposed as a graphic layer over the playing movie. Pretty slick. You can explore the menu stuff (and even get descriptions) while the movie is playing, surf for other chapters while the movie is playing, etc.

But an interesting note about how the HD-A2 HD-DVD player works - it is like a computer with an anemic graphics card, struggling to do what it is doing, barely able to do it. Fast forwarding is rough and skippy and not smooth, the UI elements slide out in course chunks, not smooth. I've heard HD-DVD players are essentially comptuers with video outputs, and if this is true, it has a slow CPU and a not-great GPU. I picture future players capable of smoother fast formwarding (mine goes in chunks, and not even time chunks of same size!), smoother UI motion, etc. Curious to know if the $1000 players do any better. I'd like to have the HD-A20 due this spring with 1080p capability, but I don't know if that'll actually play any better - is the 1080i output here just 24p with 3:2 pulldown added? How would a 1080p player work with 24p footage? 2:3:3:2 or 2:3:2:3 cadence to play back progressive frames? And will it run the UI any more smoothly?

When you pause, after a couple of minutes a Universal (the studio not generic) screensaver comes up - interesting.

TV stations - turns out my digital cable service offers HD digital cable - all I had to do was drive 10 minutes away and swap out cable boxes. I kept also traded out the old one to use in my bedroom for an extra $7 a month - not bad.

I stayed up late, watching Lost in HD then The Departed on my plain jane DVD player going into the component outputs - looked good, but nowhere near HD good. Mosquito noise is glaringly obvious at this scale.

Scaling oddnesses - there's Normal (4:3 pillarboxes), Full (16:9 full screen), Zoom (for 16:9 on a 4:3 screen) and Wide Zoom (same thing but for what, anamorphic? it squishes it vertically a bit more)

Had a few issues - audio dropouts during Lost every few minutes - turns out it is doing that to everyone. And annoyingly, changing audio volume on the remote doesn't do anything. I already had tech coming out from Time Warner cable, and he couldn't figure it out - all he did was make the cable remote change the volume on the TV itself...where there was no audio (DVI link from cable box to TV carries no audio signal, using toslink (optical) to receiver). As it is toslink I need to adjust volume on the final device audio is sent to....all this is yet another factor in the fact that all this HD related stuff is waaaaaaaay too complicated for the average consumer - if it is a pain for ME, what might it be like for someone like my Dad who can barely get a regular DVD to play? Typical consumers are completely out of their league - if it took me hours and hours of research to make an informed but still compromised decision, what's it like for normal people? I figure at LEAST 2-3 years for prices to get more affordable and interoperability to get resolved for the most part, and several more years for affordable Apple-level-of-ease to make it work well together.

My old Sony XBR 32" CRT had speaker inputs to use the TV as a center speaker - unfortunately, the new TV doesn't have that capability. Can't use HDMI downmixed as there is a delay - if both running I get an audio difference and an echo. So a center speaker is on my list. And while I've been happy with my Alesis Monitor Ones for providing base, time maybe for a subwoofer as well.

I now have to sell off some old gear to get some new toys - I'll put it up on eBay etc. and let you folks know.

Picture quality is AWESOME - I got my HD-DVD and watched the T-rex fight in King Kong and the Batmobile run in Batman Returns, and the detail is great. Black levels need to be adjusted to be right for day or night viewing.

SD content looks just so-so - the higher end XBR2 set supposedly has better SD uprezzing circuitry, but that was out of my comfort zone on price.

The compression artifacts in digital cable - on static scenes it is OK, BUT for fast moving scenes with lots of high frequency detail, MAJOR compresion artifacting, makes me think about getting that Algolith Flea HDMI device for mosquito noise and blocking reduction - but it is $1000, so never mind.

I'm definitely flip flopping on my "can't tell the difference" statements from before about DVDs on too small HDTVs seen from too far away. At roughly $2K if you shop aggressively online, this Sony KDS-60A2000 shows MILES of difference between SD and HD content. And with only 16 HD channels compared to the zillions of SD ones, my previous argument stating that most folks couldn't tell the difference....isn't quite the same anymore now that I've seen this.

The set I got for a bit over $2K was intro'd at a list price of $4500 just last summer. So I'd think it isn't unreasonable to think prices for something this size and approximate quality to cut in half again in another 6-12 months.

At that point, one's willingness to have something this large in your living room becomes the limiting factor.

It is definitely one of those things that once you see major HD, you don't want to go back. And even 1080 res stuff - I can see how I'd want it to be sharper - seeing how sharp the CG graphics are as compared to the footage - MOST of the footage shown isn't as sharp as this set.

I hooked up my laptop and ran iPhoto slideshow from some 5 megapixel digital stills - I can definitely see the advantage of higher res, even from my cheapie $300 Canon Digital Elph (a 450 model).

This bodes well for Red, Dalsa, and other greater-than-HD acquisition cameras.

Major quality glass is also a part of it.

-HDNet is woefully repetitive - clearly they need more content, and GOOD content. NOT HVX200 type stuff, either, but F900, 950, F23, Viper, Dalsa, Red One, (maybe SI-2K), with top-notch glass to really show it off. Will that work financially? I don't know.

HDNet's movie channel also runs a lot of ooooollllllld movies that have been re-transferred. While it is a delight to see a 1970s movie (McCable and Mrs. Miller) in high def, COME ON Mark Cuban, let's get some newer content on here! It is weird to see 80s hair and makeup in high def...

I'll be curious to see what the max bang/buck Red One setup, using still lenses for docs will be able to create.

In any case, over the next week or two I hope to get everything all wired up so I can readily monitor from any of my three uncompressed HD capable Macs, via HDMI (using the Multibridge Extreme) or HD component analog. Should be fun to see how it all looks!

While I could clearly see the difference between this set and the $6000-$8000 consumer HDTVs, it is still pretty good. It isn't as sharp as a a pixel-for-pixel like LCD would be, but watching the desktop from my Macbook from 10 feet away running at 1920x1080 (and it overscans, I can't see the top pulldown menus!) is comfortably legible and looks GREAT.

I'm now juggling four remotes - the HDTV, the digital cable box, the HD-DVD, and the receiver's. Usual thing to sit down with all the new manuals and cross pollinate all the control functions - they all have the capability to control multiple devices.

I find myself watching stuff I wouldn't otherwise - just watched Ant Wars and some quest for giant crocociles on DiscoveryHD. Hell, even though I ADORE Lyle Lovett, I'm wathing him on Austin City Limits in HD (rocks that it is my local PBS channel, and I know it was shot about 3 miles from my house!).

-and oh yeah, I'm a total noob on HDTV, HD cable, and HD-DVD - so be it, this is where I am. I know it has been covered elsewhere, it is just new to me as as an owner setting it all up...

Everything takes longer with HD - and I'm not talking about renders in Final Cut here - the HDTV takes a while to warm up, is dark dark dark when it first turns on. The HD-DVD takes about half a minute to get rolling, and another chunk of time (too lazy to stopwatch it, you can Google and find out how slow) to start playing from the time the HD-DVD is put in. Again if it is a computer, it is a slow one. And changing channels on HD cable is sllllllooooooooow as well - can't just click-zip through like you can with regular cable, the Guide starts to make a lot more sense and be highly useful, because it takes 2-5 seconds (varies) from final button press until the picture and sound are up. And speaking of audio delay, after pausing or chapter skipping, it takes seconds for the HD-DVD audio to "catch up" with the playing audio. Switching inputs on the HDTV (which has nice labelling capablities, so it isn't Input 6, it is Cable Box or HD-DVD or Studio Feed) is also slow and takes seconds. Switching back and forth between shows/inputs is vexingly slow.

BTW - I ended up deciding to get the HD-DVD player as an upgrade from the $230 I was expecting to spend on an good HDMI uprezzing DVD player. For an extra $170 from Amazon it does good DVD uprezzing and OH! It plays HD-DVDs too. I've said it before, I'll say it again - technology is only as relevant as it's price point. A $400 2nd gen HD-DVD player, or a $600 PS3 or $800+ Blu-ray player? As a $150 bump up from a good uprezzing DVD player, it fits into the "kinda pricey upgrade but worth it", vs a major financial commitment (as gear goes) that you think twice or thrice before committing to. A $175 upgrade to something they were already buying (almost doubling it) is in the "Ehhh....I might." category. A $370 upgrade? Gotta check with the wife/girlfriend/back account/conscience...

Speaking of the player I got, I was surprised to see it does NOT support MP3 discs! Crazy considering what all it does - the Oppo uprezzing DVD player did DVD-A and the other high def audio format, as well as a bunch more stuff. While the HD-A2 does play DVDs and DVD-Rs and DVD-RWs (kudos), I was suprised at the lack.

I've got an AppleTV on order, but at this point the only thing it'll do I like is a nice interface for my iTunes collection...which won't fit on the 40GB hard drive anyway. I was thinking of making a dedicated media Mac with an old G5 (that I rarely use, sadly) that I could leave hooked up to the HDTV full time (or optionally with a long run DVI cable), and it'd do more and cost less (you can get Front Row to work on non-Intel Macs with an available hack). In any case, I'm letting the AppleTV order stand, in part just to keep up on things. The stuff I do for you guys...

OK, enough rambly for now.

-mike

Labels: HD-DVD, HDTV, original

johnaugust.com � Seven Things I Learned from World of Warcraft

This is actually really good, and about life not WoW.

At Sundance, I got a lot of extremely useful-to-know but painful/bleak advice and feedback about some things I've been doing that haven't been working out as well as I'd like.

In case you hadn't noticed, I've been kind of pessimistic of late, cranky and cynical.

I don't like that.

People have been emailing for advice, and instead of sharing in the leave-a-penny, give-your-old-bow-away motif (read John's thing), I've felt like hitting them up with the "I'm a consultant, I won't do that for free." messaging.

It is making me cranky, closed off, and not in the headspace I want to be - out of balance.

I'm trying to let go of the blog for a bit (not spend so much time daily) and catch up on life balance stuff.

What does this have to do with WoW and exactly what John said? Some but not everything.

Gotta pay attention to having a plan but not watching the map too closely.

Gotta find some freedom and randomness and adventure.

I've been thinking too hard about trees, then the forest, and not enough about going for a pleasant walk.

If this doesn't make sense, don't worry about it, I just wrote it in 2 minutes non-stop.

-mike

Labels: think

Studio Daily | Telestream Announces Availability of Flip4Mac XDCAM v2.1 Software:
the component enabled editors to ingest IMX, DV and HDV content directly from Sony's XDCAM Professional Disc production system into Apple's Final Cut Pro 5 application for editing. Version 2.1 software adds the ability to also export IMX 30/40/50 media across the entire XDCAM family


....but with the free XDCAM HD software from Sony, I don't see why you'd want to buy this - anybody have a reason?

-mike

UPDATE - see Comments for why you'd want it - Ethernet support!

Labels: NLE, post, software

We've been hearing rumors about Octo Mac Pros (twin quad core processors) for some time and many (myself included) hoped to see than at MWSF but it didn't happen.

Yesterday's introduction of dual and quad link 4Gbit fibre channel cards hints at upcoming 4Gbit RAIDs.

The next Radeon card is rumored to be the high end choice for the next Mac Pro:

AppleInsider | ATI Radeon X2800XT with CrossFire rumored for Apple's next Mac Pro

So: 8 processor Macs connected to 4Gbit RAIDs with CrossFire graphics cards...gonna be nice!

But WHEN?!

From the AppleInsider article, Apple has ...reportedly deferred on a release until a time closer to a roll-out of Adobe's Intel-native Creative Suite 3.0 software bundle.

I held off on first gen Mac Pros waiting for 8 processors. I'm ready, Apple, are you?

-mike

Labels: Apple, future, hardware, original, post

POMFORT - SilverStack

I think I linked to this before, but I've got a friend testing it and wanted to revisit the issue if I hadn't before.

ANYBODY USED THIS YET? HAVE EXPERIENCE WITH IT?

Here's a refresher from their website:

With Pomfort SilverStack you open and inspect image sequences such as scanned 35mm film or rendered sequences as you would expect it from professional tools:

Browse sequence-based and timecode-oriented with a unique info-timeline
Open movie-typical file types such as DPX, Cineon, TIF in practically any resolution (PAL, HD, 2k, 4k, 6k)
Extract color-channels and inspect color with a selective RGB histogram
Visualize clipping pixels in blacks and whites
Zoom and pan to see every single pixel even on smaller screens
Apply Gamma- or LUT-based color linearization with custom presets
Apply primary grading (basic RGB-grading capabilities for both linear and logarithmic color spaces)
Playback-preview of image sequences on any machine using built-in QuickTime player.

---

Choose frame rate, resolution, codec and quality of your movie
Append a sound track to the movie
Zoom/pan/crop your images and apply black bars to fit various aspect ratios
Add a center cross or action safe- and title safe borders
Choose various textual burn-ins such as timecodes in different fps, frame numbers, file and folder names, disk volume and custom metadatadata in selectable font, size and position for the movie
Apply primary grades and linearization filters to your movie
Store presets of your setting to apply them to multiple image sequences


So - anybody have any real-world thoughts on this thing?

-mike

Labels: post, software