HD For Indies

I'm bringing back the concept of the Blogwad - everything that I either didn't have time to properly address during the week, or that didn't merit it's own post, or that came in on Friday and therefore gets lumped in with the rest of the blogwad.

I've at least broken it down into categories - post software, post hardware, acquisition, cameras, general...and iPhone, since there's so much going on with that.

POST SOFTWARE

IRIDAS Extends DualStream Stereoscopic Technology across Product Line | Studio Daily - very niche, but good to know

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Click-thru Tutorial: Magic Bullet Looks | Studio Daily

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Click-thru Tutorial: GenArts Sapphire | Studio Daily

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Interview with Automatic Duck's Wes Plate

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Getting Intimate with CineForm Intermediate Part 2 (I trust you can follow the links to part 1)

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Creating Node Trees in Color and the special case of interlaced video (Final Cut Studio 2) -good Ken Stone tutorial, thanks to a sharp eyed reader for sending this in.



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POST HARDWARE

MacNN | MacBook Pro 17" Hi-res: Best LCD yet

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MacNN | Overnight 200GB, 250GB laptop drive upgrades - if you don't want to do it yourself...but what about data backup and data integrity and security?

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Matrox MXO 2.0 review

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ACQUISITION

Codex Digital Announces Portable Field Recorder | Studio Daily

9 pounds, carbon fiber, rubber weather seals, HD to 4K, size of a lunch box, powered by standard batteries, can do dual link 4:4:4, has Infiniband, Ethernet data connections, can do 10 gigabit optical I/O, 8 channels of audio, wireless MP4 video output, Red One RAW output (!!!), this sounds incredibly cool, useful, and improved - I should write more on this later...

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short version - 4K capable S.two to be shown at CineGear

Press release:


S.two Corporation’s DFR4K™ Digital Field Recorder announced at NAB 2007 will premier at Cine Gear Expo 2007.

New 4K capable portable recorder will feature in movie making workflow demonstration with the Dalsa Origin 4K camera.

Reno, NV—June 22nd 2007— S.two announces it will demonstrate for the first time its new 4K recording solution at this week’s Cine Gear Expo. The new DFR4K™ features full integration with Dalsa Origin 4K cameras using InfiniBand Fibre connections. The coupled systems will be shown on the S.two stand #T4 at the Wadsworth Theatre and Grounds June 22-23, 2007.

The DFR4K plays Dalsa 4K images in real time up to the maximum supported frame rate of the Dalsa camera. This closely coupled integration with Dalsa Origin cameras adds all the capabilities of the camera plus all the on set convenience, productivity, efficiency and robustness that S.two has shown on many completed feature films, the most noted of late being David Fincher’s ‘Zodiac’.

An Industry “first”, the 24V DC powered DFR4K™ production units allow the camera to be free of location logistics so that true ‘run and gun’ style movie making can be done in 4K resolution.

This debut showing of the DFR4K™ prototype heralds a complete set of DFR4K™ products for all extended resolution cameras and projects allowing a full choice of palettes for the discerning filmmaker. S.two extended definition workflow will be fully adapted for 4K movie making including offline, archiving and post integration. The DFR4K™ extended definition workflow is added to S.two’s HD, HD RGB, 2K and 3K products supporting other leading cameras.

“As the leading uncompressed digital film recording company, S.two is pleased to be able to provide our field portable, field proven, compact DC powered recording solutions to higher resolution users, bringing our un-rivaled on set experience and reliability to an emerging 4K market” states Steve Roach, Vice President, S.two. “The DFR4K™ provides 4K users a proven end to end workflow with the same benefits S.two has supplied on multiple movie projects around the world.”


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CAMERAS

Ikegami and Toshiba Provide Details of Advanced New Tapeless ENG Camera, Editing and Production System | Studio Daily

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Press release:

DALSA and the Digital Cinema Society (http://www.digitalcinemasociety.com/) are co-hosting a 4K presentation at the Cine Gear Expo, the industry's premiere film, video and digital media expo. The event which takes place on Saturday, June 23rd will explore 4K for production, post, and projection. Various samples acquired in 4K RAW with the DALSA Origin camera, edited in HD with Apple's Final Cut Pro, then conformed using EDL into the final project for color correction and creation of the DCP will be projected in 4K via the Sony SXRD Projector.

Following the screening, James Mathers, President and Co-founder of the Digital Cinema Society, will moderate a panel made up of Cinematographer David Stump, ASC; DALSA's Rob Hummel; Sony's Andrew Stucker; Denis Leconte of Pacific Title, as well as Directors Anurag Mehta and Joe DiGennaro.  The presentation is a great opportunity to find out the benefits and challenges of Digital Filmmaking at 4K resolution.

The time slot is 10-10:45 AM on Saturday, the 23rd at the Wadsworth Theatre at Cinegear.  Note:  You must be registered for the Cine Gear Expo - Free of Charge Until June 15: For more information on Cinegear, visit http://www.cinegearexpo.com



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Zacuto to offer turnkey HD camera packages with Redrock M2 adaptors

Press Release:

Zacuto and Redrock Micro today announced Zacuto will begin offering turnkey digital camera solutions equipped with the Redrock M2 adapter.

"We've had great success providing camera packages setup for the Redrock M2 and have gotten to know it very well," said Steve Weiss, Marketing Director at Zacuto. "Offering our customers complete packages including Redrock's M2 made perfect sense to us. We are thrilled to be teaming up with another US manufacturer."

"Zacuto is putting together fantastic camera packages for digital cinematographers," added James Hurd, Chief Revolutionary for Redrock. "We're delighted to be working with a company that maintains a strong reputation for quality, expertise, and customer service."

Zacuto targets their cinema bundles to customers requiring a complete camera package and have a budget ranging from $20,000-$30,000. The Zacuto cinema solution bundles will include a Zacuto-branded Redrock adapter kit, Panasonic HVX-200 camera, Zeiss Nikon-mount lenses, tripod, Zacuto support system, fitted Zacuto case, and other needed accessories.

Redrock's M2 35mm lens adapter is always available directly from Redrock's website, available with other Redrock accessories including the award-winning microFollowFocus, microMattebox, and microRemote. Redrock pricing starts at $995 for complete SD solutions, and $1,295 for HD solutions.

Redrock and Zacuto will both be at Cinegear Expo 2007 in Los Angeles June 22nd and 23rd. Redrock will be in Booth 30 (located near Panasonic and JVC booths). Zacuto will be located at Booth 77.


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GENERAL INFO

Proposed Amendment Would Ban All DVD Copying - News and Analysis by PC Magazine

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Cinematical Seven: Tips for the Indie Filmmaker - Cinematical

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Shooting Animation Verit-Style for Surf's Up | Studio Daily

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HD DVD Production - white paper details on HD DVD structure/setup

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Apple`s Safari for Windows offers simple interface, good performance but not essential

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MacNN | Apple patent: power adapters for security

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Mac OS X 10.4.10 Released

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YouTube to Test Software To Ease Licensing Fights - WSJ.com

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CinemaTech: Could new RealPlayer spark legal action?

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SoftRAID 3.6 doesn't work under 10.4.10 - so don't upgrade yet!:

"SoftRaid 3.6 does not recognize 10.4.10, and will not allow access to preferences for changes or statistics. The only option is to close the software. To paraphrase the error message, it says that I don't have the proper OS installed and that I should install 10.4.X.

I sent an inquiry to SoftRaid, LLC about this and I received an answer back in under 5 minutes as follows:
'Either go back to 10.4.9, wait until 3.6.2 is out, or ask to be on the beta list for 3.6.2. This is caused by Apples hack to make a 10.4.10 possible, which violates their naming standards.'"


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IPHONE

iPhone data plans to surface before launch day - Engadget
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AppleInsider | New iMac, iPhone hints turn up in Apple software update

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AppleInsider | AT&T exec: iPhone data plans to be announced June 29th [Updated]

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AppleInsider | Apple retail stores to close, re-open ahead of iPhone

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AppleInsider | AT&T recommending "Crowd Control Devices" for iPhone launch

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AppleInsider | Apple gets new EU extension; iPhone dock; 7.6 percent Mac share

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Apple - iPhone - A Guided Tour - new on Apple's site.

EDIT 9:45PM - I'm watching this right now on my HDTV via my AppleTV (the file is Apple TV compatible, natch). My garage got burgled today - my trusty mountain bike (Bridgestone MB-1, heavily modified over last 16 years) got stolen, and my car pilfered. Drat it - so much for my comfy neighborhood vibe - alarm to be used EVERY time I leave the house from now on. But anyway, feel better sitting home tonight and locking all the windows, etc. Back on topic - the iPhone has more little features I hadn't noticed before, so that's good. A silent ringer dedicated button. Speaker and microphone both on bottom (odd!). Another speaker up by your ear. Sleep/wake button is nice - can still receive calls and listen to music, but the big screen is off to save battery. The speaker on the bottom is for speakerphone mode - nice! Conference calling is nice and easy - I could never figure it out on any other phone system before without going to the manual. Lots of subtle quality UI touches. The cost is starting to not matter as much seeing all this - this is how it ought to work. If they released a phone with no video, no audio, and just the UI in a smaller form factor..it'd sell just fine. can surf multiple simultaneous pages - keep'em open. Email on iPhone can read/view JPEG, PDF, Word, Excel, RTF, HTML, etc. The keyboard is "smart" they say as it catches typos, etc. They suggest starting with your index finger and then advancing to thumbing - "in about a week you'll be typing faster on the iPhone than on any other phone" - so get ready for a learning curve. Still only being demo'd in vertical keyboard only mode - I've always been wondering when they'd get a wide mode keyboard mode - I have fat thumbs (and all that...oh never mind). Stock widget is exactly like the OS X widget. Google Maps - it doesn't seem to be self-aware of where you are as some has hoped - you have to tell it where you are. Traffic updates can be live - nice! YouTube - yeah, gotta be on WiFi from what they seem to be saying. Has an airplane mode - no WiFi, Bluetooth, or cell signals come out of it in this mode (well thought out!). Set your ringtone - they don't mention loading your own, but part of me wants to use this one (NSFW).

Whew!

That'll hold us for a bit...

-mike

Labels: Apple, blogwad, cameras, Cineform, codec, Color, disk based recording, Final Cut Studio 2, hardware, high end, iPhone, Kirsner, Mac, NLE, plugin, post, post equipment, tutorial, workflow

ProLost: New Look

Stu Maschwitz, the brains behind the original Magic Bullet and more recently Colorista, couldn't help himself but to talk a little bit about the next version of Magic Bullet that is due to be demo'd at NAB.

Some tidbits of interest from his blog post with commentary, his in italics, mine in plain

Rather than a regular plug-in with a ton of sliders, Magic Bullet Looks features a standalone application with its own UI.


Hmm....I'm not sure about that, I'll have to see it in action. So much of what needs to be done gets done on THAT shot rather than applying a look. Stu gets workflow, so I'll have to trust him on this one until I can see it.

Interjection: I'd emailed Stu to talk about this, and he replied back:
Stu said:
I totally hear you -- the standalone UI is a double edged sword, but we're working to make it as non-modal as possible, and when you see the UI you'll understand why there was no other way.

Like the previous Look Suite, this tool isn't meant to be a color corrector in and of itself. The classic use would be Colorista followed by Magic Bullet Looks. You'd use MBL as a kind of LUT over your corrections. That way all the shots in a sequence have the consistent look but their own shot-by-shot corrections underneath. So there will be at least one mode of working where MBL will be somewhat fire-and-forget.

-Stu

That is certainly an interesting concept - Colorista for the tweaky tweaky color balancing, then MBL for applying a look. One key detail will be how the architecture in your app works - does it do Colorista in 32 bit floating point, then return results as what? Hopefully at LEAST a 10 bit space, not 8 bit RGB before THAT result gets sent to the next plugin (MBL). I don't know all the details on how exactly that works in each app, but it can make a substantial difference in the final quality results.

Back to quoting his blog entry...

Called Looks Builder, this application is launched when you apply the Look Suite 3 plug-in in After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Avid, or Motion.

I like that modularity, and the ability to use same looks in all those apps (don't forget Premiere Pro is coming to Macs this year)

Within Looks Builder, you build and edit looks using Look Tools; modular mini-effects for things like bleach bypass, gradient filters, and film stock simulation. All of these tools work in realtime and can be tweaked and edited in context. All processing is done in floating-point color.

Floating point GOOD, preservation of >100 IRE better - Stu tipped me to this in my own workflow issues, so I'm guessing he'll handle it right, or as rightly as the software & APIs allow him to do so.

With over 30 Look Tools to assemble however you like, you can create an infinite variety of Looks.Or choose a preset. Pop open the Looks Theater to see 100 different preset looks applied to your image (not a canned thumbnail) in realtime.

This bodes well for him "getting it" the way I want it to work.

Magic Bullet Looks was designed to be easy and fun to use, but it's powerful enough for pros too. Filters and exposure adjustments work in real-world units. Color corrections obey industry standards. Cineon film scans and digital cinema images, such as those from the Panavision Genesis camera, are interpreted correctly and can be converted to video or left in their native color spaces. The same look that you develop on an Avid rough cut in video color space can later be applied to a 35mm scan.

BINGO. If he's supporting Panalog, that bodes very, VERY well that he'll be handling a lot of other high end things I want to be able to do (Viper balanced LUT?). And all this with hardware acceleration on an 8 core Mac Pro with a good GPU? Bwahahahahhahaaa.....the POWER! Now, if he could just get secondaries in Colorista...

-mike

Labels: Adobe, After Effects, Apple, Avid, DIY, FCP, Final Cut, Genesis, NAB, NLE, plugin, post, software

Studio Monthly | A Complete Guide to Plug-Ins

Handy list of plugins for all the major NLE & compositing apps (& PShop).

-mike

Labels: FAQ, plugin

Ampede | Press: "PDFLink 2 is a fully-integrated Final Cut Pro generator plugin that renders vector content from PDF and Adobe Illustrator files frame by frame, so the image is always razor-sharp regardless of scale, movement, or rotation. Vector content can be seamlessly mixed with QuickTime content, and the geometrics are fully keyframeable using the standard Final Cut Pro interface editors already know how to use."

Labels: FCP, plugin, post, software