HD For Indies

Got an email over the weekend from some folks about to deploy into the field that were having some workflow issues with their gear. Emailed back, didn't hear back, but got a call yesterday from them once they had arrived at their remote destination shooting location on another continent.

They were having trouble with their P2 import from their HVX200 - they could play back their clips on camera (verifying the clips were good, thank goodness), but when they tried to import, they got white frames and no audio. As I started through my litany of questions to verify the back story on what they had (they said they were running Final Cut on a just-purchased MacBook Pro), my Spidey Sense starts tingling - turns out they're running FCP 5.1.1 on OS X 10.4.10 (with an unknown version of QT as well, he couldn't check at the time). So right there that was a clue - he was running a version that wasn't as up-to-date as he could make it. FCP 5.1.x can be updated to 5.1.4 via Software Update for free, so I suggested he start there. I couldn't recall exactly what was supported when, so I did a little digging and found this bon mot -


Bring HVX200 P2 Clips into FCP via the FireStore FS-100 | Studio Monthly: "As of this writing, the P2 formats DVCPRO HD 1080/24P and 1080/30P are not yet natively supported in FCP 5.1.1."

A-ha - I'd also not thought to ask him what res/frame rate he was capturing, but I DID know that 5.1.4 would fully support any mode he could shoot on that camera.

Lesson to Learn

This client was in a hurry and had to travel on short notice, which made it difficult to do the right thing - ALWAYS research to make sure what version of the OS & your NLE (or QuickTime if on Mac) are appropriate to match together. With older NLE software, there can be a target range - not too old, not too new - that will be the correct, properly functioning match for your system. For instance, BlackMagic used to recommend a particular version of OS, QuickTime, FCP, and their drivers if you were using FCP 4.5 - not to update beyond what was it? I think 10.3.8 or somesuch (DON'T quote or depend on me for that number, just for example here!).

For latest NLE software, check to make sure you have the minimum recommended version (FCP 6.0 required at LEAST 10.4.9 and QT 7.1.6), but don't assume the latest is the best - some percentage of the time there may be a bug that requires a .0.x type of an upgrade to fix. So not too old, not too new - like Goldilock's porridge, you want Just Right.

Most editors know this, but field production folks having to deal with FCP on a laptop in the field for review purposes may not.

Other lesson to learn - ALWAYS have your post workflow figured out days in advance before travel - so if there is an issue, you have time to resolve it - requiring analysis, implementation, and verification testing that the fix does in fact work. Your production may depend on it - so it is worth the time to take.

Remember - as an indie, you have more time than money. But time is your least controllable asset when deadlines are looming - so as an indie, you need to spend MORE time prepping and verifying stuff like this, since you can't throw money at the problem to solve it.

These folks leaped before they looked - or put another way, pulled trigger, then aimed by going to the remote location without a solution.

I'm picking on them a bit here to make a point - in truth, they WERE trying to solve it before they left, but didn't manage to until they were on location - meaning they had fewer resources to try to solve their problems in the field than if they were at home. There was a point in the conversation when I was saying as a fallback they could reinstall the OS if all else failed - but they couldn't since all that stuff was back at home.

Which is why when I travel, I make a point of having a Commando Kit with me - enough stuff to rebuild a hard drive etc. from the ground up, including OS, NLE, compositing apps and all the standalone updates, all COPIES of original installers, not the original discs themselves - my old joke was air drop me into Somalia with a Commando Kit and some new Macs in boxes and I'll have a studio up and running by the end of the day - hopefully I'll never have to actually do that.

Which is also why my durn backpack is so heavy when you see me at tradeshows - I carry lots of junk, but I ALWAYS have That Cable Just In Case.

UPDATE - they were also having trouble with the record times on their 16GB P2 cards (and don't forget, as earlier reported, that you need to update the firmware in your camera to work with the newer bigger P2 cards!). At first I thought it was a firmware issue, then digging deeper, turns out they were recording to 720p mode, not 720pN. 720p mode records 720p24 as 720p60 with 2:3:3:2 cadence (or similar, don't recall whether that or 2:3:2:3, but the point is that it takes up more space recording 60fps not 24fps).

As always, research and test everything before arriving on set!

It's called prep, people.

Short for "preparation."

Don't forget that "pre" means "in front of" or "before."

Time on set is your most valuable asset, especially if you're in a remote location. Where do you want to be figuring out technical problems - while that perfect sunset is ending at your exotic and pricey location, or two weeks before at home while idling watching a DVD and having a tasty beverage?

A few extra days gear rental can be invaluable to be ready to roll perfectly. Think of it like combat - when the enemy comes over the hill, do you want to be reading the manual on your rifle, saying to your seargeant "Hang on, I'll be ready in 5 minutes." *

-mike

* OK in our current climate I'm reluctant to use a war analogy as I'm against that sort of thing, but this does make the point.

Labels: FCP, Final Cut, Final Cut Studio 2, original, P2, workflow

I'm continuing to get the studio set up for some serious Final Cut Studio 2 analysis - but it is taking time. I now have 10.4.8 or 10.4.9 on two internal drives on each of two machines - My dual 2.5 GHz G5 has 10.4.9 on two different drives, one has Final Cut Pro 5.1.4 and the rest of Final Cut Studio (1), on it, the other has Final Cut Studio 2 full install on it.

My main box, a Quad 2.5 GHz G5, has 10.4.8 with FCP 5.1.4 and Media Composer 2.6 on it (they SEEM to coexist so far OK), and 10.4.9 with FCS 2 on the other internal drive. I've got the Blackmagic Design Multibridge Extreme card in it at the moment, but I plan to test it and my Kona3 to see how they compare with FCS 2.

Some preliminary tidbits: Media Manager SEEMS to be improved in its handling of some issues - Recompress To does NOT clip IRE values over 100 IRE at the moment. Sending clips with >100 IRE to Color works (no clipping) presuming you turn off the default Broadcast Safe filter (I need to study its behavior a bit - I'm guessing that with the filter on, you can dial back and the highlights are still there, just being clipped by the app @ 100 IRE - but I need to verify that myself).

The included DVD (16:9, natch) gives a nice overview of how to get your feet wet in Color. It is DEFINITELY a non-typical Mac app, and has MUCH more in common with the feel & vibe of Shake and other traditional "heavy iron" looking apps that have migrated downmarket. Which this one certainly qualifies as - keep in mind that Color 1.0 that comes with Final Cut Studio 2 @ $1300 includes ALL the functionality they used to include in the $25,000 Final Touch 2K - yes you CAN do 2K 10 bit log DPX film scans in this thing - WOWZA.

Yeah, I gotta start figuring out a way to get a Octo Mac, gonna need it...the Nvidia 7800GT card I have in the Quad G5 is not the optimal for this kind of stuff...

The timing is also unfortunate - I'm leaving town for several days on Tuesday as well (family vacation, the neice/nephew are only going to be 5 & 9 on a beach trip once...)

THURSDAY UPDATE - As I get Final Cut Studio 2 installed on various boxes around the office, I'm realizing...55 GB is an awfully large install! If you install everything from Final Cut Studio 2, with all of the LiveType, DVD Studio, and Soundtrack Pro extras, it takes up a HUGE amount of space - about as much space as laptop boot drives were just a couple of years ago. You can custom install to cut it down for stuff you don't plan on using (for instance, there are THREE discs of audio content), but if you want to comfortably have everything at your disposal, a bigger hard drive may well be needed - I found on a couple of machines I was having to push data off the boot drives to data drives...if there was space there. This update coincided with me "getting pretty full" in the studio in terms of stuff on drives, prompting to think about what I need to do for storage and backup - do I get more SATA RAID 0's? Do I buy an LTO-3 or LTO-4 drive for data backup for the inevitable RAID failure? Is it time to plunk down some serious change for a big fibre channel RAID? Man, it'd be nice to have consolidated storage so I could work with media from any box - a SAN would be great, but that'd be a, let's see:

-4 seats of xSan - $4000
-fibre channel switch - dunno, $4K?
-fully populated Xserve RAID, 10.5TB - about $14K, it'd format to 8.3TB in RAID 50, and only just under 7TB in RAID 50 with hot spare. Eww. I already have about 9TB of RAID 0 in the house...that's not so great. If I'm needing more space, I'd really need two of them, so $28K
-4 fibre channel cards - $500 a pop minimum, so $2K there

Total cost of SAN upgrade (list price): approximately $26K to have less space than I already do, or $40K to increase the space I've got. Considering the fact that I've recently vetoed the $9K Mac Pro that I want based on current financial situation, not gonna happen.

What are my other choices? I could stick with my RAID 0's, but I'd need a solid backup plan. Tape backup? New formats offer 800 GB @ over 400GB/hr backup speeds around $4K+.

Hmm...in the meantime, installation of Final Cut Studio 2 on the Dual 2.0 G5 is taking much longer than on the Quad G5 - slower optical drive to blame I would imagine - checking now, read speeds are about 8 MB/sec on that box as it installs off the DVD. So keep in mind, your install times can vary wildly, depending on:

1.) whether you do a full or custom cut-down install, as well as

2.) how fast your optical drive is (hard drive speed probably won't make a meaningful difference, optical drive speed will be the gating/limiting factor)

-mike

Labels: Apple, FCP, Final Cut Studio 2, original

OK, so you may have seen my rant last week about not getting FCS 2 upgrade.

Today, I called the Apple Store to see if they'd received any of the $499 upgrades instead of the $699 upgrades - she said yes. I said is that the $499 upgrade or the $699 upgrade? She didn't know had to go check (trepidation!). She came back and said yes, they had the $499 and plenty of them.

So I drove up there, walked up to the counter, and within 2 minutes someone was fetching it out of the back. I got rung up, tax exempt was no big deal (Texas has a sales tax exemption for products directly used in production, software/hardware counts).

All in all a good experience, with the one tiny quibble that the woman I originally spoke to had to double check that she had the right one when I asked.

I got some flack from folks when I originally said:
Lesson to Learn - nice enough people, but they do not know what the frickazoid razzle frazzle mumfaluff they are talking about. Remember, they are making Mall Wages.

Was I angry and irritated after spending nearly an hour of driving time for a fruitless quest? Yes I was. But I think part of what I do on this blog, legitimately, is express how an experience was for me - and from that perspective, I think that was a fair thing to express at the time. Do they ALL not know what's going on? NO. I've known some very knowledgeable and cool people up at my local Apple Store (Barton Creek Square Mall). After recognizing Naka in a movie line at Alamo Drafthouse once and geeking on moviemaking with him, I always sought him out when I went up to the Apple Store thereafter (he's since moved on I think). The biz sales guy went out of his way for me a number of times and I very much appreciated that, he was thoroughly knowledgeable and helpful and nice. That said....the Apple Store is, in fact, in a mall. And I've heard tell online and elsewhere folks that work there talking about how the pay is not stellar for those who know what they are doing. It was unfair of me to paint with that broad of a brush, but it is ENTIRELY possible to run into folks there who talk well beyond their knowledge.

And it isn't entirely their fault, either - it is, in fact, in mall, and they are, in fact, getting paid retail employee wages from what I can tell and have heard. Which is why many of them move on after a time there. If someone isn't an audio or video afficionado, to expect them to sell iPods and laptops and also know Final Cut Pro upgrade options is expecting a lot for what these folks are getting paid - Apple has a LOT of products, and they change fairly often. And that's a dig at Apple corporate, not Apple retail employees. An Apple retail store is a GREAT thing to have, I love it, but there are times as a professional working with high end Apple gear that it can be frustrating dealing with them - and this was one of them. The timing belt is off on my S2000, can Bubba Joe stop working on the Accord station wagon and see what's up when I take it over 8500 rpms under load....

An Apple Store makes great sense if you want an iPod, want a MacBook, want to buy & learn about iLife, etc. But if you want Final Cut Pro, or need to know about hardware intricacies for Logic, etc., it is a bit like having a Corvette and getting it serviced at the local Chevy dealer (or an S2000 at the local Honda shop) - if you've got a high end gadget, do you really want the folks who work on the soccer Mom vehicles working or recommending stuff for you? Maybe they know their stuff, maybe they don't, but the high end stuff is a fringe part of their job, not the day to day things they HAVE to know about(another reason to get a consultant or go with a VAR, IMHO...or just have someone to ask who KNOWS). Sometimes you get someone knowledgeable, sometimes you don't.

OK, back to installing Final Cut Studio 2:

-notes on installing FCS 2 on a MacBook (yes, a lowly Macbook, not a Macbook Pro)

it asks right up front about installing distributed Compressor & Qmaster - nice!

-lets you customize what to install, which is good, because full install is 55 GB (!!!!)

I tweaked mine down to a 6.7 GB install, and that is LIGHT - no PAL presets, no Motion Library content, no PAL DVD Studio Pro presets....LIGHT install

These days, a 250 is dead minimum for a "full install box" - what if you want all of FCS 2, all of CS3, all of our pics, movies, and music all on your boot drive?

For me these days, that'd require a 500 GB drive right there probably.

I clicked INSTALL at 10:01 pm...took to 10:35, but I missed a disc swap or two...

It installs!

FCP 6 launches!

720p24 SF Bay project opens!

Digital Cinema Desktop seems to be working OK as well, and a cross dissolve played back in realtime with no rendering required.

Color launches, but doesn't really work right - screen is too small

======

On to installing Final Cut Studio 2 on the Quad G5:

started the install (double clicked installer) at 11:09pm, by 11:10:30 it was installing after entering serial #, distributed rendering preferences, and what I wanted to install (everything!)

Some other notes - sounds like, from emailing somebody who already has installed it, that Media Manager no longer clips over 100 IRE values when Recompress To is used....but I wanna test that myself..

I was hoping to see some presets for things like live transcoding of HDV to ProRes on capture, or similar for P2 import of P2 media - I haven't found it...yet. I also noticed that while there are AIC presets for HDV at 720p30, 1080i60, 1080i50, but NOT 1080p24. Can we capture 1080p24 as HDV then transcode to AIC or ProRes? And do so WITHOUT clipping over 100 IRE values? (Hint: FCP 5.1.4 can NOT).

I'll update as this progresses.

Took until 12.17 to get installed (started 11:09, and I stayed right on top of the disc swaps - comes with 9 discs!)

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

-mike

Labels: Apple, Final Cut, Final Cut Studio 2, NLE, original

I started writing this one in November 2004 and never finished it. While digging for something else I stumbled across it and decided to make a quickie run over it (as in with a car) to get it out there as well. I've fixed a few glaring errors, if anybody else spots something wrong please let me know. Keep in mind, MOST of this info is two and a half years old except for a few things I've updated. I thought it was of enough interest to go ahead and get it out there (finally). The info presented is NOT all inclusive - so if something isn't listed doesn't mean it doesn't do it.

--------------
UPDATE: Randy from Band Pro caught a big mix up in the HDCAM SR part - I was talkin' HDCAM not SR. Apologies. That's what I get for publishing a 2 year old draft...

So, at long last, here is the second part of my coverage on What's Wrong with Videotape Formats.

In the last installment, I talked about DV, DVCPRO 50, Digibeta, and HDV. Now I'll be getting into the professional HD standards: DVCPRO HD, HDCAM, D-5, HDCAM SR (4:2:2 and optionally 4:4:4), SRW-1 double rate 4:4:4 RGB.

HDCAM

Sony claims anything over 1500 pixels of resolution on F900 is only going to be capturing noise. OK, if you take that at face value that merely implies Sony's CCDs aren't resolving the full detail capability of HD. Fine. Things will improve over time.

HOWEVER from what I hear back from DoPs in the field, they like the color better on the Panasonic Varicam cameras. Is it a function of the higher color sampling, or the CineGamma, or just better "stuff" in the camera? "Um, whatever, it just looks better when we're done." was the response.
"A 10-bit, 1920x1080i image makes a 1.5Gb/s data stream -- a healthy payload. Sony deals with this by converting the 10-bit data to 8-bit, bringing the stream down to 996Mb/s. Now for the controversial part: Sony "pre-filters," or down-samples, the data, reducing it to 662Mb/s. At this point, the Y sampling is technically 55.68MHz (vs. the ATSC 74.25MHz). The sampling ratio becomes 17:6:6 (vs. the ATSC 22:11:11), which calculates to 1440:480:480 pixels.

If you just look at the numbers, you'd say HDCAM is inferior, as D5 is the full 1920:960:960 and D7 is 1280:640:640. Some even describe HDCAM as a 3:1:1 system. (If 1920:960:960 were represented by the numbers 4:2:2, then mathematically 1440:480:480 would equate to 3:1:1). You might be thinking, "Hey, 3:1:1 is worse than a prosumer DV camcorder, which has 4:1:1." But keep in mind that the first number of the compression ratio represents something different in the HD and SD worlds. Comparing SD 4:1:1 to HD 3:1:1 is like comparing grapes to grapefruit. The ratio to use is 17:6:6 compared to the full 22:11:11."

I don't recall where I got the above, apologies.

Input resolution: 10 bit 4:2:2 1920x1080, 29.97 interlaced frames per second (NTSC) or 23.976 psf, or 24.0 psf (progressive segmented frames), 29.97p, 30.0p
Output resolution: 8 bit 4:2:2 1440x1080, @ 25 or 29.97 interlaced frames per second, or 23.976/24.0/29.97/30.0p, compressed
Compression type & amount: compression is about 7:1 (the jump from 10 bit 4:2:2 down to the recorded 22.5 MB/sec)

Panasonic D-5

"Panasonic's D5 HD machines, because they are based on the D5 format, work in the full bandwidth 10 bit domain (there's no prefiltering or postfiltering of the signal as is done with the Sony HDCAM. Also the HDCAM works only in the 8 bit mode.) Panasonic's D5-HD is also switchable to an 8 bit mode. While in that mode it uses a 4:1 intraframe compression. In its 10 bit mode, it uses a 5:1 intraframe compression.
The VCR is switchable between 59.94 fps and 60 fps, and also handles 23.976 and 24.0 fps, and also handls 720p with flag framing for 24p work (by padding out to 720p60 and flagging the "good" 24 frames - thanks to commenter for pointing out my dangerously ambiguous prior phrasing).

One thing setting the D5-HD apart from other formats is that it records a true 1920 pixels by 1080i image (Panasonic's DVCPROHD records only 1280 pixels and Sony's HDCAM records only 1440 pixels). It is also switchable to 1035i and 720p. One reason why the D5-HD machines can record such a detailed picture is that they're throwing 235 megabits per second onto the tape, (as opposed to DVCPRO-HD's 100 megabits per second, D9-HD's 100 megabits per second, and HDCAM's 140 megabits per second).

EDIT MAY 2007 - I heard tell of a mod to do DCI Spec 2K - 2048x1080 on it, but I don't recall the full details. Since at HD resolutions it was only 4:2:2 and single link, I'm thinking the 2K would be 4:2:2 as well, but I don't know that for a fact (anybody with a link to prove one way or the other please use comments). IF only 4:2:2, that is just "Umm...feh." in terms of what i desirable - 2K work is generally 10 bit log RGB 4:4:4 color space/sampling, not Y'CbCr 4:2:2.

It's compatible with native 720p and 1080i full-bandwidth 22:11:11." Oh, and it is 10 bit

I don't know where I got the above, I'm quoting from...somebody. I wrote this over a year ago, and I apologize for not citing my source - if anybody knows, tell me and I'll be happy to link to it.

HDCAM SR -

EDIT MAY 2007:

HDCAM SR is generally considered the highest quality HD tape format (sorry, Panasonic). With the ability to handle 720p, 1080i, as well as 1080p at FULL raster (fully 1920 pixels wide recorded, not 1440 or 1280), and is 10 bits not 8 bits of bit depth (1024 steps black to white not 255...actual numbers are even less for both).

Modes are:

10 bit full raster 4:2:2
10 bit full raster 4:4:4, if has the 4:4:4 board in it
normally 440mbit, but SRW-1 and 5800 can also do 880mbit (does the 5500 as well? Can't recall - anybody? Bueller?)

I've learned a bit more since then. There's the Sony 5000 (HDCAM SR only), 5500 (HDCAM as well), HDCAM SR (HDCAM and I think Digibeta too optionally). The 5800 is the only one AFAIK that can handle the double data rate of the SRW-1 for 880mbit (the super high quality mode), and also for 1080p60 work with the HDC-1500, F23, and other new cameras from Sony.

And AH, here's the scoop:

SRW-5000 deck - plays/records HDCAM SR up to 440mbit, can do 4:4:4 with addl. board. Plays back HDCAM as well, but doesn't record to it.

SRW-5500 deck - plays AND records HDCAM SR (up to 440mbit, not 880 mbit) AS WELL AS HDCAM. Plays back and upconverts Digibeta as well (but doesn't record to). RGB 4:4:4 capable with optional card.

SRW-5800 - plays/records HDCAM SR (up to 880mbit, up to 1080p60), playback only on HDCAM & Digibeta. The big difference here is support for 880mbit HDCAM SR from the SRW-1 (which does 440 or 880, but James Cameron sez you can't tell the diff even for keys), as well as for 1080p50 or 1080p60 footage from the new high end cameras (F23 & HDC-1500 & others). 1080p50/60 is handy for making a "world master" - can make excellent, uncompromised 720p50/60 or 1080i50/60 (those are the broadcast standards) from 1080p50/60 footage. If you convert 720p60 to or from 1080i60, there's a quality/resolution compromise - not so if starting from 1080p50/60.

IN SUMMARY: The point of all this was to show how much information you're throwing away when you record that you can never get back. When people talk about capturing uncompressed in post, they often make it sound like they have the best possible image. Well, not quite - they have the best possible image given the compromises on the TAPE. The point of this exercise was to show that all, All, ALL HD tape formats involve some compression, involving throwing away some portion of the source imagery. Unless you're using a Codex or S.two or RaveHD or homebrew AJA/BMD setup over single/dual link HD-SDI to uncompressed files...you're compromising your image quality to some degree. Shooting 4:4:4 880mbit HDCAM SR? You probably can't tell a meaningful difference through normal post processes between that and uncompressed. Shooting HDV? Hell yeah - can spot it in any still.

Consider this: 1080i60, if you recorded RGB 4:4:4 at 10 bits, would be a 240 MB/sec datastream. LOTS of information. HDCAM SR pulls that down to a max of 110 MB/sec - and just naked eyeballing the two side by side, you'd probably never tell the difference, nor if you'd done a "reasonable" amount of color grading or other work on it. Keys? Ehhh...mebbee...I can't say for sure.

Then consider HDV - that 240 MB/sec gets keerunched down to 3.5 MB/sec - that's about 70:1. Yeah - you're losing some goodies in there - you've dropped from 1920x1080 to 1440x1080, you've dropped from 10 bits to 8 bits, you've dropped from 4:4:4 down to 4:2:0 color sampling, you've dropped from negligibly noticeable to significantly noticable compression artifacts. You can tell. And your audience certainly will, on either a 2 foot especially on a 60 foot screen.

Various notes/flotsam

READ THIS ARTICLE; http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HFE/is_2000_Jan/ai_58629718

D-5 is 4:2:2 10 bit (FROM THEIR OWN WEB PAGE)

4:2:2 vs 4:4:4 defined on BlackMagic website: http://www.blackmagic-design.com/site/3support.htm

luma vs. chroma sampling, downsampling, DCT, interframe compression, intraframe compression, etc.

DV
DVCPRO50
IMX
Digibeta
HDV 720 (JVC) vs. HDV 1080i (Sony)
DVCPRO HD
HDCAM
D-5
HDCAM SR


DVCPRO HD

720p23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 59.94, 60, or any other progressive framerate between 4 and 60 in 1 fps increments
off camera (Varicam): 10 bit 4:2:2 1280x720
to/from tape: 8 bit 960x720

1080i: 59.94 or 50
to/from tape: 1280x1080 8 bit

HDCAM
1080p23.98, 24, 25, (possibly 29.97 and 30? Can't recall)
off camera (Sony F900): 10 bit 4:2:2 1920x1080
to/from tape: 8 bit 3:1:1 1440x1080

D-5
to/from tape: 1920x1080 10 bit 4:2:2

until I get better info, I consider the 4:2:2 quality a tie from what I know right now. However, as a deck, I give the nod to the HDCAM SR deck, since for the price of a D-5 deck you can get an SRW-5000 HDCAM SR deck with the RGB 4:4:4 board, and then you can do things the D-5 can't ever do (4:4:4 RGB).

HDCAM SR 4:2:2
to/from tape: 1920x1080 10 bit 4:2:2

HDCAM SR 4:4:4
to/from tape: 1920x1080 10 bit 4:4:4 RGB

SRW-1 HDCAM SR deck
besides all the HDCAM SR options of the SRW-5000, it also has a "double time" 4:4:4 mode where it only uses 2.7:1 instead of roughly 4:1 compression that the SRW-5000 does. That's the 880mbit mode

Labels: advanced, cameras, FAQ, hardware, high end, original, post equipment, techie, workflow

Big Announcement #2:

Short version:

Did you see that DV Magazine article * I wrote (cover story April '07) about uncompressed HD workstations?

Did you wish there was a simple way to get exactly that gear in one place, from one vendor, customizable, who could sell & support it all?

DONE.

Meet the HD for Indies configurations over at Silverado Systems!

I've been buying my own gear for a couple of years from Torrey Loomis over at Silverado, and we've partnered up to offer the configs I wrote about in the article. They are:

System 1: for the truly starving indie type - the bare minimum to capture, edit, & monitor uncompressed HD.

System 2: for the moderately budgeted indie who wants a proper setup but doesn't have tons of cash.

System 3: for the well heeled solo operator that needs bulletproof reliability, or perhaps for a small single room facility.

System 4: Probably (I hope) of most interest to a lot of readers - my Best Bang For The Buck recommendation on a system to do feature length uncompressed HD editing & finishing (up to 1080p RGB 4:4:4) on a budget.

They are all accessible from this page on Silverado Systems' website.

The configs are a little different than what I wrote about in the article, I've tweaked & improved since I originally wrote it.

LONGER VERSION:

I've been formally & informally recommending systems to clients, employers and friends for about 15 years or so. For a brief time during the desktop publishing revolution, I was a VAR (value added reseller) myself, but I don't do that any more as that isn't where my interests and passions are.

But in the meantime, I've been recommending system configurations for HD editing for a few years now, and it usually boils down to me recommending a list of gear. Then the client asks where should they get it, and I say say try this that or the other vendor, and inevitably the client comes back to say that they can't get all my recommended gear in one place from one vendor. All too often it seems there's always a substitution or two, or a vendor recommended substitution or upgrade is of dubious value, or more likely a component or three that simply isn't available from that vendor. Which means if there's trouble, it is all the more likely that there will be finger pointing between Vendor A & Vendor B and much gnashing of teeth will ensue. And nobody wants that.

So I decided that the only way to get simple, turnkey, one click, gimme-that-one-right-there simplicity was going to be to partner with a VAR and give them the mandate that they'd need to provide exactly the spec I recommend without substitutions, and ALSO offer the upgrades that I wanted to provide, in the order that I recommended them. And after a LOT of work from both sides, that's what Silverado and I have worked out.

If you go to, for instance, the Indie Bang for Buck system, you'll see a list of gear and options. All of the upgrade options are ONLY those that I recommend - I've deleted a lot of what I consider bogus upgrades. The upgrades that ARE offered are also in the order that I recommend them - so while a 17" JVC HD CRT is the recommended monitoring choice, there's also a 24" professional LCD listed, as well as both, or a "step down" option of the JVC CRT and an HDLink/Apple 23" LCD option listed as well. I recommend a 2nd internal drive, but if you want to remove that you can. Or if you want to step down from the default 8GB config to 4GB of RAM, that's possible as well if it makes sense for your setup.

If any of this doesn't make sense, just scroll down the Silverado page for the config you're considering and each of the optional categories is explained in depth, with recommended options for different usage scenarios, when it is worth getting those, etc.

So you're getting the benefit of my latest and best advice, as well as turnkey solution from a known & trusted vendor. I was buying my own gear from Torrey at Silverado for two years before we set this up, hopefully that carries some weight with you folks.

What do I get out of this? Yes, I do get a cut out of the deal, which is why I've spent many days and late nights getting all this set up, but it comes out of Silverado's end - you're not paying any more than if you approached them with this parts list on your own.

Over time, I'll be putting up other configurations for other usage scenarios, and I'll be announcing them here. The options listed here will work for most folks for most scenarios, but as always, if you'd like a fully customized solution to your particular project's unique challenges, I'm available for consulting.

Personally, I'm really excited to offer this service, I think it makes for a good marriage of good advice, a trustworthy single source vendor, and solid gear that can get the job done - at an entirely reasonable price - that should make everybody happy.

And yes, this is that bigger deal I was mentioning several days ago about buying a new Mac editing setup. But I also still have at least one more announcement to go...

* For the record, DV Magazine is not involved in this deal, nor do they officially endorse, recommend, or have any role in this in any way shape or form. I'd just received a lot of requests about where to buy such a config, and folks were having difficulty getting all those exact parts in one place, so this just seemed like a good idea.

Labels: hardware, Mac, Mac Pro, NLE, online store, original, post, software, workflow

SHORT VERSION:

Hey all -

Want to know what gear to get, or what gear I recommend, or maybe support HD for Indies but don't have extra money sitting around to hire me for advice? No problem - go to the brand new HD for Indies Amazon Affiliate Store.

From there, you can buy all your usual Amazon stuff - books, DVDs (including Blu-ray & HD DVD), training materials, Macs, monitors, accessories, iPods, AppleTV, etc. etc. etc. - all with the same great Amazon price, support, return policy, etc....except that on my pages, you see what I think of the gear, you see what I specifically recommend, and if you buy from my pages, and HD for Indies gets a small commission on the sale.

LONGER VERSION

I see this as an "everybody wins" kind of a thing - if you buy stuff from Amazon, I'd appreciate it if you'd buy it through my store - you're still buying from Amazon, just that HD for Indies gets a commission. Same price, same everything you usually get, I don't see your credit card #s, etc. But I've also done a lot of sifting for you, and boiled it down to just the good/valid choices.

I have it organized by category and subcategory (see below), and I've included notes on those products that I specifically recommend (look for Mike Recommended in the notes). Just the good stuff, none of the rest of the fluff. I've gone through and scoured Amazon's bazillions of options and filtered it down to the stuff that I think you and I would be most interested in. And if there's something you'd like to buy that I don't have listed, please tell me and I'll add it to the store right away.

Aside from computer hardware and software, there's also an extensive listing of training materials, all of which I've vetted for "Is it good?" The ones that I have more intimate knowledge of and recommend most I've labelled with Mike Recommended.

Curious about what books are best for Adobe or Apple software? Want to know which HDV camcorders I recommend? Want to know what's the best deal on an uprezzing DVD player, or HD DVD or Blu-ray player? It is all in there.

So feel free to peruse the hundreds of items I've already added to the store, with more to follow:

HD For Indies Store - Home Page

BOOKS: Books on Movie Making, Final Cut Pro/Final Cut Studio Books, Avid editing books, Adobe editing/post books

CAMERAS: HD camcorders, Recommended Consumer Camcorders

MACS: Tower Macs (Serious Editing), Mac Pro Accessories, Mac laptop computers, iMacs, Macs for editing, Consumer Macs

MOVIES: DVD New Releases, HD-DVD New Releases, Blu-ray New Releases, Movies Mike Owns - Part 1, Movies Mike Owns - Part 2, Movies Mike Owns, Part 3

SOFTWARE: NEW Apple Video/Audio software, Apple Software UPGRADES, NEW Adobe Software, Adobe Software Upgrades

TRAINING MATERIALS: Training DVDs, Training Books

AppleTV & iPod: AppleTV and cables/accessories, iPod Shuffles, iPod nano, iPods (full size, video), iPod Accessories

HD Players- HD-DVD & Blu-ray

HDTVs

You can also buy:

DVDs from my store:



HD DVDs from my store:



Blu-ray movies from my store:



And again, if you aren't familiar with how an Amazon Affiliate Store works, you're dealing with Amazon, just through my front end built with Amazon's tools. The pricing is exactly what you'd otherwise get from Amazon.com, I never see your personal or credit card information, it IS Amazon except that you're going through my front end, where I've organized it in a hopefully useful way for you.

This is the first of several announcements I'll be making in the next day or three. If you're interested in buying a Mac based editing system, this is ONE OPTION, but NOT the bigger deal I was hinting at the other day.

-mike

Labels: online store, original

Hey all -

so why so quiet this week with so much still to report from NAB?

Bwahahahahhaaaaaa....there be reasons, chile.

If I blog all day, I can't work on New Things.

Some hints:

1.) If you've been thinking about buying a Mac edit system, maybe holding off a few days could be a good idea.

2.) If you don't have a Google and PayPal account set up yet (for shame!), now might be a good time. And if they are both under the same email address, all the better.

3.) YES, I said announcements, plural.

Intrigued?

Good - then my work here is done.

Stay tuned over the next several days, by sometime next week some Good Things shall be revealed....

-mike

Labels: online store, original

OK, short and sweet:

IF YOU WANT TO "MAKE A MOVIE"*

11.) Thou Shalt 16:9.

11.5) Thou Shalt NOT letterbox. This means thou.

12.) Thou shalt 24p, but not CineFrame (once again).

Based on recent client conversations, I felt it needed to be said.

*-and by "make a movie" I mean make something that looks and FEELS like a movie - ya know, widescreen, 24fps...or else feel free to...you know...do it WRONG. Your call. These are follow-ups/additions to this and this.

Labels: acquisition, original, workflow

So yesterday, among other things, I spent some time on the phone with clients doing consulting. Interestingly enough, I ended up having two conversations with DIY filmmakers - one before production started, another at the very tail end of production.

Filmmaker One: Before

First guy was getting ready to embark on his production - he was trying to figure out whether to shoot on F900 or Varicam or HVX200, so I went over the pros and cons of that in terms of color, resolution, ease of working with cameras, which one's easiest to get good looking results quickly without a DIT, free downloadable settings files to improve results, etc., starting out with "If you can afford to do better than the HVX, do so." I then brought up the post ramifications, which was an area he hadn't thought of - one route he could do FireWire ingest and potentially just capture once for offline/online, and the other route would require HD-SDI cards, RAIDs, etc. EDIT - but with Apple's new ProRes, maybe he won't need a RAID...

He was in a hurry because he was on a limited budget (perfectly understandable), didn't want to spend a lot of time on the phone/on the clock, so we zipped through the broad strokes of post production - after acquisition, ingest, editorial, picture lock, audio handoff, conform to high quality, color correct, QC, mastering, etc. He wants to edit his own film, and hasn't edited before.

My spidey sense starts to tingle.

I say that while it is possible for him to figure it out, most self-edited films (that come my way) done by first time editors have problems that cause major problems down the line, often requiring recapturing ALL the footage to sort things out. It'd take him a while to get up to speed, things would be slow and frustrating at first, etc.

I said my biggest concern would be what I've seen happen too many times - that the process would seem daunting and complex and wearying, and if the generic self-editor did learn "the right way" to do it, they'd find it complicated and time consuming, and "Why can't I just do it THIS way, is SO much easier?" Let me make a point about "this" way - while "this" may vary from case to case, it can all too often be similar to the beginning auto mechanic who finds putting all those teeny bolts & screws back in exactly the right place just so much tedious work. You can step back and it will hold together, it might start, but sooner or later, stuff's going to start falling off or the engine's gonna blow, or the pieces are laid out to do quiet, deadly damage that won't be discovered until Too Late. While creativity should be a significant part of the indie filmmakers process, and new tools and techniques are coming out all the time, and I encourage folks to stray from SOME "tried and true" old school methods of post workflows (usually to get better quality at lower cost), straying from the path of Good Workflow Process is a potentially dangerous, dangerous game. Here there be lions, and tigers, & bears...oh my.

I encouraged him to do lots of research, buy books, hit the usual forums up for free (sometimes questionable) advice, or feel free to call me back and I could walk him through the steps on the clock if that were within his budget.

So while it is technically possible to learn the stuff and do it yourself, I really, strongly do not recommend it for most commercial endeavors...is that really where you want your finite, limited mental time and energy going? Or into the creative end of the film? If at all possible, get an experienced editor on the project. Not just the technical skills, but the storytelling ability, and the objective, disinterested viewpoint are actually bigger assets in trying to get a good project made. That said, get your project done any way you can. If ya gotta edit it yourself, and that's the only way it'll happen, more power to you.

But he was doing the smart thing by doing research well before the production started. In my opinion, that's the only way you're going to have any chance at a smooth and hopefully successful project. If you want to focus on the creative side, then surround yourself with the smartest, most informed, most flexible people you can, however you can.

So that's the Before on an indie DIY effort, starting to do the right thing by researching in advance. Here's another route and way it can turn out, call it the After...

Filmmaker Two: After the Edit, Before the Apocalypse

So later that night, after the Tim League outdoor inflatable screen coolness, I got an email from someone I'd never spoken too saying call them, its urgent. So I call (its after midnight), and I get the guy on the phone. Turns out he's basically the above guy, just (metaphorically) some months later. They'd shot their footage on HVX. He'd edited it himself, in Sony's Vegas ("...it seemed the Universe wanted me to use Vegas for this"), using a third party codec/solution to get DVCPRO HD MXF files into Vegas. Now Vegas is a fine little editor, especially with its codec agnostic approach and EXCELLENT audio manipulation capabilities, but not something I'd recommend for feature work usually. Viable for a low cost solution to do audio heavy work for short form - think music videos. His Vegas didn't support MXF ingest, so he bought a third party tool to get his footage in..and the tool wasn't exactly designed for what he was trying to do - a bit of a workaround/hack to use it in this particular way from what I could tell. Now he needed to screen it in high def, in a theater, this weekend, and was trying to figure out how to get the files from Vegas to some playable form to show. He's short on time, tools, and budget.

He said something to the effect of "I'm not a very technical guy, I didn't want to get dragged into all the technical arcana...I just want to make my movie, ya know?" I totally get it and don't blame him - he wants to focus on the creative, fair enough, and somebody's got to keep the eye on the far horizon - the end goal. However, think of it a bit like going to the moon, or at least taking a road trip through the hinterlands of the desert...it'd be a really, really good idea to have somebody technical along for the ride to make sure you get where you wanted to go, and that if something does come up (or break) along the way, it can be dealt with without unreasonable delays or expense, and hopefully without chaos, blood, or tears.

One of the first things he expressed concern about was that he was seeing what he thought was judder. When I asked him to explain exactly what he meant, he started talking about how the motion looked funny in some scenes, how confusing all this tech was, that his 1920x1080 HD shows up as 1280x1080, that the 24p shows up as 29.97 even though the project settings are for 23.976 and he didn't quite get what that was all about...

Bag the spidey sense, alarm klaxons are going off in my head - it sounded like he broke Rule 4 - he said he saw this ghostly fringe behind the actors when they moved - was this interlace lines scaled down on his screen and blended together? Sounds like he shot at least some of it 24p with 3:2 pulldown perhaps? He also mentioned odd motion - perhaps at least some of it was shot 24pA? Either way, their intended footage was ingested at 30fps not 24fps and had either 24pA cadence or 24p's 3:2 pulldown pattern added. He'd not used the "Remove 3:2 Pulldown" option that he'd seen, or if the software/codec import stuff was clever enough to have a 24pA import mode, he didn't use it. And if it is just getting dropped on the 24p timeline...I could see how that would create all kinds of stuttery motion. Perhaps he should just kick it out at 60i? At this point...PUNT. It would take FAR too long to re-import and correct this issue - gotta go with what he's got. If he had an extra week, a different story. But for now, if he gets a workable playback copy secured, I've got another pass we can take to try to minimize the artifacting caused by this. But this is a classic case of a mistake made early on that messes with you later - like forgetting to put the radiator cap back on securely...

When he called me, he was halfway done exporting massive files via a dozens-of-hours process in a format that was...probably not going to work. He'd previously talked to some folks that gave him a path to work with:

Choice 1: make a Blu-ray disc was recommended that he kick out a high def MPEG-2, buy a Blu-ray player, upgrade the firmware, use software so-and-so that could read that file and burn to a Blu-ray disc with a brand new burner that would play back on the set-top box once the firmware was updated. This may work just fine. But for me, it sounded like a bad, Bad BAD idea for a number of reasons:
-the client didn't have a lot of technology experience and more importantly, troubleshooting resources on hand
-there's lots of "ifs" and "maybes" and "it should work"'s implied in the workflow he was describing
-minimal time to test and troubleshoot any problems
-a 90 minute feature to compress - so would take quite a while to convert
-Would the MPEG-2 be in the right format & settings? Would the software work to make a self playing disc? Would the firmware update let it work right? Would it be easy to get the firmware updated? Would the new Blu-ray burner work right? Far too many variables for me to safely recommend, mostly boiling down to - Neither I nor anyone I knew/trusted had gone through this exact process successfully before. And with the limited time and troubleshooting resources available, that sounded all too fraught with peril. I wanted something that I KNEW could work, in the limited time available, that he could safely do himself. Therefore I recommended:

Choice 2: Macbook Pro playback He has a new Macbook Pro, and the projector he's using has a DVI input, and he can do a dry run on this thing the day before the actual screening. So the plan was to have him play a QuickTime movie from the laptop directly. I chose this route because with time this short and resources this slim for him, I wanted something that I KNEW, 100%, would work.

I was going to have him export to a codec that I knew would cook out pretty quickly from Vegas on his PC but also play back on his Mac, look good, be low enough bandwidth to play back from a FireWire drive, and be low enough CPU load that his laptop could play it back without the CPU choking.

Turns out he couldn't change ANY QuickTime settings - perhaps due to the third party codec he'd used to get MXF in, or perhaps due to something else entirely, if he clicked Custom under QuickTime settings, his machine would crash. UGH. This isn't Vegas' fault as far as I can tell, normally this works fine. So we had to go with the default export, which was the None codec. The good news was that it is a lossless codec, the bad news is that it makes HUUUUUUUUUGE files - his 90ish minute piece was going to be over a terabyte big.

Fortunately, he has a new 1.25TB LaCie drive. The catch - if he wants to use that drive cross platform, he will either run into a maximum file size problem if the drive is formatted so Mac/PC can both read it, or he needs a piece of third party software to mount his Mac formatted volume on the PC so that he can write out a 1TB+ file (we touched on kicking it out in smaller pieces, but the technical challenge of putting the pieces back together for him led me to the One Big File approach).

THAT hurdle cleared, he'd already kicked out some short (5 second) test clips, so I quickly built him three customized Compressor setttings (he fortunately was on latest version on his Macbook Pro, FCP 5.1.4 same as me), emailed them to him (they are tiny), told him where to drop them, and he cooked out his test file. Codec 1 had a gamma shift and looked washed out - scratch that. Codec 2 at quality settings medium and high both looked fine. Higher quality (higher datarate) played back fine full screen in loop mode - so let's try that.

Before we hung up, I gave him a roadmap to try:
1.) Cook out a one minute test sequence from PC
2.) Bring to Mac, via either Mac formatted LaCie Drive using 3rd party tool, or just write across the network to the LaCie.
3.) Test codec presets again, running full screen (he had a DVI to HDMI adaptor running to his HDTV as a practice setup for the DVI connection to projector this weekend)
4.) Pick the one that looks best but still plays smoothly
5.) Then convert your whole movie to that.

At dry run, make sure all is going smoothly, hopefully will have finished file by then. If all goes smoothly, bank that one, and try to address the 24p/30p motion issues with a post filter. If there's a problem, he'll still have 24 hours to try to fix it, and the codec I'm recommending will let him make multiple attempts in that timeframe.

In the end, he'll have something that he can show. I haven't seen a frame of the film and know nothing of its content, but I'm confident he'll be able to show SOMETHING on the big screen at full res. It may have some motion artifacts, but his story will be told (OK shown). I have no idea what kind of color correction or anything else has been done with the project, we just focused on these issues in the wee hours of the night.

But if it were my film, I'd want that 24p to all be done right.

Point of all this being....do your homework, or get someone else to do it for you to draw you a detailed map. Get the help you need to navigate the treacherous waters of all the possible choices in this new world of post. It used to be pretty easy - didja shoot DV or Digibeta? Didja shoot drop frame or non-drop frame? You could get fancy and maybe shoot PAL instead of NTSC. Go back far enough, ya cut on Avid, because That Was It for NLEs. Nowadays, there are two sizes of HD to contend with, half a dozen possible frame rates that might be used all with their own twists for ingest depending on format, many different HD acquisition formats, tapes vs. solid state vs. optical discs, lots of different NLEs with different versions & feature sets & support for the different formats that varies yes/no even depending on the frame rate...it is complicated. WAY complicated. Even though there are lots of low cost tools out there that CAN be used to make good to great looking results at low cost with the right post workflow and folks driving the process, it is also ENTIRELY possible to go with inexpensive tools and bury yourself in time and costs later by making the wrong decisions at various points along the way. I keep encountering folks coming to me AFTER mistakes have been made, and they inevitably spend more of their own time fixing it, and spend more of their budget talking to me, than if they'd come to me (or somebody else like me) and gotten a good roadmap before driving off the cliff (or at least into the ditch and needing a tow, causing expense & delay...and maybe scratching up their Pretty Thing in the process).

No names have been used, and certain details fuzzed over to protect the privacy of the individuals & some of the companies involved.

I'm sure there are DIY efforts out there that go flawlessly, and the Gods of Post smile benificiently down upon them, and all goes well.

I rarely get urgent emails from those folks after midnight.

-mike

PS - if you haven't read my 10 things NOT to do list, and you're planning on DIY, perhaps you should.

EDIT - other little story - got on the phone with a client recently and talked about their potential project, they had a particular tool they wanted to use, I didn't think that was a wise choice given their intended deliverables and creative goals...but that is what the client wanted to use. They had a very decent sized budget, but were reticent to spend $10K+ on a workstation and software setup that would comfortably do what they needed it to. Just because advice is given, doesn't mean that it will be taken. It's hard to hear someone say "I'm buying steel wool underwear" and you say "I really don't think that's a good idea." and they smile and nod and still pick it up off the shelf - what do you do then? How hard do you press the point?

Talking to my editor friend Rita today another analogy came up talking about tools and the above situation - "Just because I like my little Honda doesn't mean I should enter it in the Baja 1000." Just because a tool is similar to that which is used for more demanding tasks, and you are familiar and used to using it for those lesser tasks, doesn't make it the best or even a good or even valid choice for that task.

-m

Labels: original, techie, tutorial, workflow

BUSY first day in the booth, LOTS of new stuff to talk about in the Red booth, 7:30pm, dinner in 1/2 hour across the Strip, so a quickie update:

first off, the fun gossipy stuff -

As you may already know, Red was approached by a director who wanted to shoot some test footage - so Red said OK. That meant spinning up Jim's jet for a nonstop flight to New Zealand to drop in on Peter Jackson.

Thinking he wanted to shoot some charts and stuff and maybe set up a scene or two, they showed up with Boris and Natasha, the two testbed cameras. Turns out he had a script and actors and extras and everything...and everyting included planes, tanks, shooting from helicopters, 'splosions, teddy bears, the WORKS.

So they shot for 2 days with two alpha level dev cameras 2 1/2 weeks ago. Then they edited it in a pre-release Final Cut Pro (with the native 4K footage), did VFX, color graded on Weta's Pablo, and kicked out 4K files that are being screened in the Red booth in 4K on a projector in their own little 40 seat theater. And WOW, it looks GOOD. So there's a twelve minute short directed by Peter Jackson set in World War I showing in 4K in the Red booth with two storylines - one literally in the trenches (that was my cheating allusion the other day), and the other in the sky. They shot from a helicopter chasing two vintage WWI planes dogfight around the sky.

If you're at NAB, COME SEE THIS.

Other gossipy bit - Red is developing new product lines - 4K projector/s, 4K display/s, and a mini, handheld professional camera. No timetable, no prices, just know they are coming. Perhaps what they are showing at the booth will be convincing enough for folks to take them seriously when they say they are going to do something.

:D

I'll break it down more later, but that's the coolio news.

Next up - new lenses. The bad news first - the 18-85 that was due later this year is "on delay" with no set timetable. Bummer. The good news, however, is that an 18-50 zoom will be promptly available to folks as their cameras are ready. And YES you can switch your reservation over. And YES, it costs less, only $6500 not $9500. I'm probably going to switch over for my camera.

Other good news - reservation holders get priority, so don't sweat freaking out about nailing down new accessories immediately - they'll call you when your # is up and you can sort it out then - no need to panic and order - priority based on reservation # - you get all your toys at once, so don't worry.

Other new lenses - primes! UPDATE - I had them wrong previously, the correct #s are: 15mm f2.8, 25mm f1.9, 35mm f1.9, 50mm f1.9, 85mm f1.9. Prime set for about $20K for the full set (and only sold as a set, but Jim has said thinkin' about selling the 18 & 85's separately has been reported elsewhere).

-Redcine - waaaaaaaaaay more powerful than I'd expected -this would be at LEAST v3.0 for anybody else. Lots of gestural controls, keyboard shortcuts, stacked views of scenes (horizontal) and takes (stacked vertical on top) etc. - this sucker is built for speed. That said, it is daunting to sit down on for the first time - there is no "Oh, clearly I start here" about it. Even knowing what it was supposed to do, there was a lot I had to wrap my head around. It bears a strong relation to Assimilate's Scratch in its organizational structure, but no wonder - Scratch has been color correction tool of choice for all presentations to date (IBC, LA, NYC, etc.).

Another major thing to wrap your head around - it is NOT a color correction tool - no secondaries, no vignettes, etc. What it does, and all that it does, and all that it is SUPPOSED to do, by DESIGN, is...mimic what can be done in camera. You have curves. You have exposure controls, the units are exposure stops. +1 is 1 stop over, -1 one stop under. You have channel controls, etc. So anything you do when assigning non-destructive color decisions in Redcine....can be saved to a file and loaded into the camera via SD card as a preset look, so that future stuff will have that look assocaited. But it doesn't bake that look in - it is just metadata associated with the clip that rides forward. So when you play off the camera, you'll see that look. I think it is some kinda combo LUT/matrix kinda thingy they are doing, gotta find out more. But the idea is that is just a non-destructive look applied to footage - you can remove that look and still edit/alter the RAW data. That's the power of it. Think of it as shooting RAW mode on a digital still camera, and bringing it into After Effects and tweaking the colors there (or dropping into FCP timeline and applying 3-way CC on it) - you can change stuff, but always change your mind and put it back the way you had it. And those looks can be transferred, saved, loaded on camera, loaded on 5 cameras on set, etc.

All the benefits of this will take some time to soak in and percolate.

Redcine is waaaaaay more than just a conversion tool. There are storyboarding things that help, there's...lots to learn, and clearly they have ambitious plans for it. Wait and see.

More good news - WORKING CAMERAS (YES PLURAL) IN THE BOOTH. Live output from one on a 64" plasma, working EVFs in the booth, working LCD panels (the little ones on camera) in the booth, new widgets in the collection of stuff for the cages,

No demo of focus assist, exposure control, no working Red Flash units are only bummers.

Cameras 1-12 shipping over next 6 or so weeks, then ramping up to hopefully fulfill the 1500 or so pre-NAB pre-orders

Speaking of orders, no more reservations, they are orders - no fixed serial #s, gotta put 10% down on PayPal or credit card.

More details at red.com, I haven't even had a chance to look today.

OH! And I forgot to point it out this morning - my buddy Steve Gibby got the scoop du jour with his article on all the new details, he probably covers tons of stuff I missed.

OK, gotta zip, gotta clean up and go to dinner.

OH OH OH - one other thing I got WRONG yesterday - Final Cut Studio 2 due next month will NOT support Redcode RAW from the get go - a FUTURE version will. We were demoing it running in FCP today, you can File==>Import==>Redcode to pull it in, and works w/4K footage and extracts 1K or 2K (depening on horsepower, a MacBook Pro can do 1K) in REALTIME on the timeline. Or can import and directly transcode to ProResHD, low or high quality.

-mike

Labels: NAB, original, Red

OK, I'm blogging while irritated, which is not recommended. Or actually, blogging whilst frustrated is a more accurate description, because I keep seeing the same problems over and over.

Kinda like my friends that lived in the house right after the sudden curve on Enfield. They dubbed their house "Casa Magneto" because drunken frat boy cars seemed drawn to end up in my friends' front yard about once a month, and bonus points if the car was upside-down after launching off the berm in the other neighbors yard Dukes of Hazzard style. They'd hear a screeeeeeeeeeeech....CRASH and pick up the phone, walk out on the yard dialling 9 and 1, waiting to see if anybody was hurt to dial the final digit. The fact that they had A System For It kinda informs you of the situation.

I feel like that today. Not that indie filmmakers are akin to drunken frat boys (thank God), but that's the situational metaphor that popped to mind, so I'm going with it.

I just sent yet another email off to a client that approached me after all the shooting had been done for a doc or feature, and capture had been done, and once again, the classic mistakes had all been made.

DISCLAIMER: If you're a client and you've made these mistakes, this isn't aimed at you in particular, there are many, many of you out there. I may be grouchy here, but I am trying to help. Details have been changed or merged on some of these to better make the point. That Which Does Not Kill Us Makes Us Stronger (Nietzsche). Mike's Corrollary: That Which Does Not Kill Us Makes Us Want To Take A Nap.

It has long been said that most indies will gladly save a nickel Friday that costs them $20 on Monday, either because they don't know any better or simply don't have the $2 on Friday to prevent the $20 error on Monday. Add zeroes to amounts until it applies to you/your project.

So, even though this is potentially giving away some work, let me spell it out for folks out there, in no particular order:

1.) THOU SHALT NOT USE CINEFRAME MODE on Sony HDV cameras. EVV-ARR (that's "ever" with emphasis for the non-teenage literate out there). It looks bad, it isn't true 24p, there are Better Ways, even with that same camera. Somebody shot Cineframe to intercut with 720p24 and 720p60 in FCP - what a mess to resolve correctly (doable, but finicky & time consuming).

2.) If you want to "shoot a movie" on DV, shoot 24pA mode, or at least have only slightly bungled it and shot 24p. 30p is one of the worst frame rates to use. 24p doesn't compress as nicely as 24pA, therefore doesn't look as good. DV is already challenged enough, don't beat up the little bruised kid any further. The catch is in the capturing, which leads to Item 4 in a minute...

3.) If you want to "shoot a movie" on the DVX100/A/B, PLEASE shoot anamorphic. Anamorphic 24pA, to be precise. Having shot it letterboxed, or "Well, we'll just letterbox it and blow it up for the theatrical version!" is the usual self-pleased answer, not realizing they will have a grand total of 720x360 pixels to blow up to 1920x1080 - that's a threefold stretch vertically instead of 2.25 - congrats, you can reposition vertically, but you've thrown out 25% of your resolution - something you were already very thin on with the DV format. And even fewer if you want that 1.85:1 or 2.40:1 ultra-widescreen vibe. And plan for your festival HD uprez, and realize that bumping up DV to HD resolution looks several thousand light years not as good as having shot HD inthe first place, but that's a couple of other whole other long posts entirely....

Now, if you're going for regular 4:3 broadcast, skip the above. This only applies if you want a 16:9 deliverable.

4.) DO NOT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND ALL THAT IS EDITORIALLY HOLY capture 24p or 24pA as 29.97 "normal" DV if you want to "make a movie" and have a 24p master (which you probably do for more reasons than filmout). Easily 80% of the folks I talk to that shot on DVX100/A/B gladly and glibly capture all their footage INCORRECTLY at 29.97, which makes it a royal bitch to get to a 24p master. This happens with alarming frequency. It screws up your ability to make a 24p master, makes VFX harder, makes your DVDs look worse than they could, even if you're not going out to film. The fix? Go back and recapture all final selects again. UGH. Do it right the first time. EDIT - Jan Crittendon of Panasonic reached out to let me know that in my frothing fit I'd mis-stated the case - actually, technically, you DO capture at 29.97, but you're removing 3:2 pulldown and writing 24p do disc. My intent was to say end up with 24p footage on disc, not 29.97 for your timeline. Thanks Jan! Good eye.

5.) If you or your crew did screw up and shot 24p, 24pA, and 60i on your various tapes instead of just the intended 24pA during the shoot, label the tapes as what they are so you don't make the editor or asst. editor want to kill you. And then capture them correctly. Look at the captured footage to make sure it is right.

6.) If you are "making your own movie" and aren't a TRULY experienced editor, or sat down and had at least a 30 minute SOBER conversation with someone who is an editor about the exact and precise specifics of your project, odds are at LEAST 90% that you will screw up video capture sufficiently that someone else will have to come back and redo it ALL to get a proper 24p master done later on. Log your tapes properly too while you're at it. RTFM on that one. And get a real editor if at all humanly possible - it is what they do for a living.

I'm switching over to Q&A mode now, from a draft I'd never finished/published, and I was in a nicer mood. These aren't all "do not do's" but are still useful/informative I think.

7.) Question:I want to shoot my documentary fiilm on the HVX-200 out in the middle of nowhere and my budget is tight. Tell me how to do this without running over budget. I also don't have much crew."

Answer: You've hosed yourself most likely. If you're shooting a doc that doesn't lend itself to a small amount of footage shot each day, and ESPECIALLY if you need to shoot a lot of footage each day, the HVX200 doesn't lend itself well for that if you want to shoot HD remotely with small crew. For narrative projects with few and shorter takes, it can be a great solution if you have AC power and a backup solution or a P2 Store (the portable hard drive for offloading) - see this article for more on P2 workflows in the field. But with no AC power and needing to shoot a lot of footage, You Are In Trouble.

The HVX200 is a nice camera for a lot of reasons - I like the color on it, the Final Cut workflow is pretty good (still some rough edges), the over/undercrank ability is super sweet and easy to use, the flexibility of modes is great - DV, DVCPRO50, 720p, 1080p, 1080i - all good stuff. BUT...the P2 cards are the weak link - they are VERY pricey and small in capacity and you have to dump the data somewhere before you can reuse them, and this is what will kill a small doc shoot - you need too many cards, or too much extra gear (P2 Store is a good option though, or multiple P2 Stores, when are they putting a 160-200GB drive in that sucker? NAB I hope?), and the real killer - too many man hours tied up in managing all that stuff if you're a small crew. You also almost certainly need AC power as well, and in the boonies that can be a dealbreaker.

There are other options worth looking at. Email me about consultation.

Lesson to learn: tools that are great for one job aren't necessarily great for another. "I have a bucket of nails and my favorite shiny lovely screwdriver. Crap."

8.) Question:I want to shoot JVC GY-HD250 (because I can buy it cheap) to cut with my letterboxed DVX100 footage in Final Cut. I like that it shoots 60fps progressive that I can use for overcranking, and I like the idea of FireWire ingest. My post house suggests bumping it all to another tape format for ingest for HD conform and uprezzing with a Teranex for the DV footage, but I can't afford that.

Whew! OK, let's break down the many issues here:

-AFAIK, the JVC GY-HD250 isn't supported by Final Cut at this time for native FireWire ingest at 60p- anecdotally I'm hearing that 24p and 30p capture work, but I don't have a rock solid confirm on that. 60p is almost certainly out from what I'm hearing, but again I don't have a gospel answer on that one. Lesson here: Be SURE that not only does your camera choice make sense, but that your post options are as expected and affordable It is ALL to easy to pick the "wrong" format for your NLE or post workflow and end up spending more in post than you would have in production if you'd picked the "right" camera for the job. Dubbing to higher end HD tape formats has gotta be what, $75+ per tape? On a doc, that'd be lethal to the budget - shoulda bought/rented a different camera with a proven post workflow and saved money over the "I think this'll be cheap and good" approach.

-Next issue - intercutting with 4:3 DV. While you CAN just drop footage on an FCP timeline and mix sizes, codecs, frame rates, and aspect ratios, it has to render, and that is slooowwwww, even on fast modern boxes. And it'll render to the existing timeline's settings, converting your HD to SD if that is what the timeline is. Plus, there are other issues if you've shot letterboxed (mistake # 4 above) and want to intercut HD. There are ways around or to deal with these problem with minimal time and expense and quality sacrifice...available to my clients (See? I'm only SLIGHTLY evil....)

-Issue after that - conforming this mixed timeline to an HD master - because the 24p mode on the JVC is delivered as 2:2:2:4 cadence on a 60p stream, it is damn hard to extract to cut with a regular 24p timeline. The client's post house, an entity I've heard of from across the country, was suggesting an expensive and time consuming solution requiring dubbing ALL tapes to another tape format. I had a software based solution that wouldn't require that.

Other related issue - how to make deliverables - if an SD 4:3 and an HD 16:9 are requested, then how do you optimally prepare each deliverable? How do you conform to the HD version without expensive tape dubbing, uprezzing the DV footage using a Teranex, etc.? I have solutions for all this, and I've done it before. All it takes it some proper prior planning and some relatively inexpensive computer time...and the knowledge to drive it all.

If you're having trouble figuring out how you're going to conform or deliver to HD, especially from a mix of SD & HD acquired footage, I have extremely high quality, affordable solutions for you that don't require a lot of time on traditional "heavy iron" at a post house. As Stu Maschwitz of The Orphanage put it so well in his book on indie post, desktop tools can offer BETTER quality than the high end post facility tools, they just aren't as fast. You just have to know how to use them well.

Lesson to learn: look at your ENTIRE production process and costs in their entirety. It is all too easy to change a solid plan and think you'll be saving money, and end up hosing the production or the budget.

9.) Question, phrased in many different ways: "Will you work on deferral?/Will you take less money if I give you a better credit on the film?

Answer: Let me explain - almost all of my clients are making independent content. I don't do commercials, I don't do industrials, mostly indie content. There are so many independent films out there being made, by so many earnest, well intentioned people, that will never even recoup their hard costs, let alone sell for enough profit to pay full residuals. Everyone thinks that their film will be different, and sadly, regrettably only a slim few will be correct in that assessment. Look at the recent SXSW, for example - over 3000 films were submitted, they ran roughly 100 or so, and of those, if you take out the ones that already had distribution before they got there, and just look at the ones that truly walked into the festival seeking full size theatrical distribution...the number will be dishearteningly low. Probably fewer than can be counted on one hand. So based on those odds, I really can't.

The same thing applies for film credits - it doesn't behoove me to do so. I've had more than one discussion with clients where we walk through a whole range of options, often including them suggesting they edit the film themselves when they've never edited before, and want me to defer my fees "until we get distribution." I wish I could, but if I did, I'd go broke Waiting For That Day. Especially for self-edited films. Not to be mean, but that bumped up credit that is supposed to help me out? Everyone in the business knows what Executive Producer means these days, and if it is on a small film that wasn't acquired, how exactly does that help me? I'm uncomfortable claiming a title I didn't earn. I do what I do, no more, no less.

10.) Question, again phrased many different ways: "Will you just answer me this ONE more question for free? Then this one? Then this one? Then this one? (Repeat ad infinitum) or more bluntly "Will you spend lots of time on my project for free? It is a REALLY good project. C'mon, you know the answer already, just TELL me!"

Answer: I'll try and calm down and be nice on this answer, and it similarly applies above - answering questions is what I do for a living. I don't work at a post house or a rental house or have another business where this is a sideline - consulting is my living. Unlike working professionals who share information with peers freely because it isn't going to affect their business (and I do help out my friends and peers frequently), I can't afford to spend time answering all the questions that come in, especially without charging. I'd be at it all day. And moreso, answering questions, especially well, thoroughly, and accurately, takes time, even if it is just finding a link to something I wrote in the past. If you can't find it easily, I probably can't either.

Also, stating "I have no budget/I'm a student" does not change anything on my end about my time availability nor effort required to answer.

Kindly, respectfully, there are forums out there where you can get free advice, although the quality of that advice varies wildly. When in doubt, pray to Google, but YMMV. It never hurts to ask, but if I (or someone else) says no thanks I/we/they don't have time, please respect that. Asking nicely up front appreciated as well. Nothing turns my generosity of soul sour more lately than folks complaining, repeatedly, that I won't help them out for free. Sigh.

OK, that's a lame Item 10, and isn't really something to really avoid (nor is #9), but that rounds it out to a nice round 10, and lists need 10 items according to the advice I read on the Interweb tubes. But back to the general point:

It is not your fault that you didn't know before you started. But it IS quite arguably your fault that you didn't ask and find out before you started shooting.

Addenda - stating "I just want to make my movie/I'm the creative, I don't want to focus on the tech" is an excuse...and not a valid one. Stating you don't want to be an auto mechaic doesn't fix your blown engine, nor excuse you from never having changed or checked the oil before it blew.

I could probably whip out another 20 (or 50) tips like this, but it boils down to planning and research.

The key to making a successful indie project, AFTER you have a great script and good actors and DoP and all that other stuff, is to plan, Plan, PLAN it to death. Then have contingencies, preferably what I like to call graceful contingencies - so that if the big goal isn't met, it isn't an all or nothing deal, you can just slide down one rung on the ladder rather than fall all the way to the bottom. And how do you do that? You plan. You research. You ask questions. LOTS of questions. If you don't know, or don't have someone willing to spend a lot of time helping you figure it out who does know, find folks who do. Maybe even hire a consultant, but that isn't the only way.

OK, end of rant, apologies for the rude tone, but it had to be said.

-mike

ADDENDA: Commenters have said CineFrame24 is troublesome but CineFrame 25 & 30 are OK....but you're still tossing res, and I'd rather use a better software deinterlacer like Nattress' anyway for better results. I still don't like it.

When I say capture as 24 fps, I'm shorthanding to mean 23.976 fps. But that doesn't matter really, as the inexpensive cameras can't do 24.000 fps, they always do 23.976 anyway. Higher end production gear can do either, but if you're working with those and get it wrong...you REALLY should have known better.

When I mention shooting 24p as opposed to 24pA, 24pA is by FAR the preferable. when I mentioned capturing 24p as 23.976 not 29.97 fps, I was thinking of a particular project where we recaptured via SDI - FireWire based 24p capture is a different thing as someone noted in the comments, but it can be captured that way.

As for 60fps out of the HD250, 24 & 30 are claimed to work just like the 100/110, so that shouldn't be a problem. 60fps, however, is claimed to have same frame flags as DVCPRO HD and be capturable over component analog. That statement does NOT make sense to me, since a.) where are the flags on an analog signal as compared to HD-SDI, and b.) the patterns are different - one uses 2:3:3:2, the other uses 2:2:2:4. Anybody clarify that for me?

Tuesday update - just talked to the editor on one of these challenged projects - more on self-edited films:

One of my clients discussed how the filmmaker editted the film himself, capturing 24p as 29.97, and because timecode was giving him trouble he turned off abort on timecode break and just captured entire tapes as individual files...thus guaranteeing cadence breaks and making it impossible to correctly capture the footage.

This is the post production equivalent of snapping the key off in the lock then liberally applying superglue all over it.

Now that the footage has already been captured and edited as 29.97, it would almost be an entirely manual process to rebuild the edit correctly as 24p and still maintain best possible quality. There are fixes to get it to be 24p, but so far all involve quality losses due to either DV recompression, >100IRE highlight clipping, or both.

The fillmmaker also shot letterboxed not anamorphic as his coup de grace.

So if you'd like some help avoiding these and other other problems, or just want to know how to save money, make your movie look better, and stay flexible in your options, get in touch - mike [at] hdforindies [dot] com.

-mike

PS - another short way of summarizing a lot of this - never commit to a camera until you have a known, proven, MATCHES EXACTLY way to post that footage. If you need to change NLE package or camera for some reason, make sure you still have a working match.

Labels: DIY, NLE, original, post, tips

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

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

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