Little Frog in High Def

All CalDigit products are compatible with Leopard. This is a good thing as I am flush with Duos and a Firewire VR. Not that I have Leopard yet…on the G5. I do on my Powerbook, and I use these on this machine. And I can say that yes, they work.

Oct 29, 2007 Placentia, CA CalDigit, the new leader in RAID storage solutions is pleased to announce the immediate compatibility of all of its products with Apple’s new Leopard OS X operation system.

Starting with the FireWireVR (Triple Interface RAID), our FASTA-2e 2-port eSATA card, our FASTA-4e and FASTA-4X 4 port Superlane eSATA cards, FASTA-1ex ExpressCard34, to our HDPro and RAID SHIELD Management utility, all CalDigit products are ready to go with Leopard.

“Everyone’s been asking us recently and we’re pleased to announce that CalDigit is ready for Leopard”, said Jon Schilling, Sales Manager of CalDigit. “Our users can now take advantage of all Leopard has to offer in full conjunction with ALL of our products.”

CalDigit Inc is the leading manufacturer of affordable, quality RAID products.
CalDigit is located in Orange County, California at 1941 Miraloma Avenue,
Suite B, Placentia, CA 92870. For further information, please contact sales@caldigit.com or visit
our website at http://www.caldigit.com.

To edit your version of her latest music video, BOUNCING IN THE CLOUDS.

The website has posted FULL RES quicktime files of each camera angle (five of them) in the DV codec. And from the look of it there is a LOT of green screen work for this. So this isn’t only an exercise in creative editing of a music video, but also compositing work with green screen. Now, green screening DV, which is a bit of a task, but some good practice nuntheless.

Now, I find this to be a BRILLIANT idea. Release the footage to a the aspiring editors out there and have them edit their vision of the music video. You might get a LOT of bad videos, but, there are some talented people out there that just need the chance for you to see them shine. So these aspiring editors get the footage to practice, and if they are good they get the exposure. And the company gets a music video.

Sure, the prizes are on the cheap end (Grand Prize is a couple of tickets to a Tori concert, and second prizes are iPod Touches), but this is intended for the beginners, the aspiring filmmakers….not us Pro’s who don’t even have time to edit family home video…although I am downloading the footage as I type this as I haven’t edited a music video before so…so…family video gets neglected again.

This reminds me of the guy who edited an iPod ad that he posted on YouTube that is nowbeing picked up by Apple and will air. I mean…how cool is that? Like the Doritos ads that people made and that aired on the Superbowl this year. Giving creative opportunities “to the masses” opens creative channels that have been untapped for years. I applaud this.

OK guys…get downloading.

Quite a bit ago, back on August 3, 2007, Alpha Dogs in Burbank CA had what they dubbed the “HD LCD Monitor Shootout.” This was a comparison of many HD LCDs…all presented side-by-side in a proper gray room, all showing the same footage…for people to look at and judge for themselves what is the best HD LCD.

The models displayed were:

TV Logic LVM 240D
Front Niche
JVC DTV 24L1D
Teranex ClearVue
DIT DTS-OR23.NS4
DIT DTS-OR23.NS3
eCinema DPX
Panasonic BTLH2600W
Sony LMD-2450WHD

Now, the eCinema wasn’t an HD LCD, but is what they call the “CRT Replacement.” And it wasn’t quite ready yet…the demo model didn’t dislay any real image. It was there just to show us that it could “do black.” Well, that it did. But priced at $37,999, that is a BIT out of the reach of most of us. This monitor is destined for Post Houses only…ones that can charge $350-$750 an hour for color correction. So I’ll leave this one out of the equasion.

Now, I have seen the Panasonic monitor in action at NAB and a few peoples editing setup, and I was impressed. But for this monitor shootout, it was REALLY CRANKED UP. Something that Terry Cullen (the host) dubbed “something you would see at Circuit City.” This was very disappointing to us, because we knew that the manufacturers representatives that brought the monitors also set them up. The Panasonic rep really did their monitor s disservice.

That being said, I would like to point out my favorites…my TOP THREE. The top three because these were ones that were easily head and shoulders above the rest. All the models presented were of the 24″ variety.

#3 – The Sony LMD-2450WHD. Good colors, decent blacks. Good controls. Off axis viewing made RED turn to SALMON…but, you get that with most (note I say “most”) of these monitors. This one goes for about $5500.

#2 – JVC DTV 24L1D. This is all around the best monitor I saw there. Good price range, decent off axis viewing (a little better than the Sony), good blacks, great colors. If I was pressed to give up my Sony PVM-14L5, this would be the monitor I would get, because it is in my price range…and looks very good.

But…the monitor that REALLY impressed me, the one that I would get if I could afford it, is:

#1 – TV Logic LVM 240D. This is a monitor by a Korean manufacturer and MAN, have they got it! This was an AMAZING monitor. Off axis viewing was by far the best. Very little color drop off. Great blacks, vibrant colors. Just an amazing monitor. Cost? $7999. Yes, a lotta scratch, but man, if you have it, get this one. I had the pleasure of seeing the LARGER models at IBC, and every one of them was just sharp. The 42″ is what I’d love to have in my bay…but the price was…a wee tad higher than the 24″.

So there. The best deal is the JVC, but the best of the batch (eCinema not ready for primetime at the time) is the JVC.

Oh, why did I mention “off axis” viewing? Well, this is because when color correcting with a producer or director of photography in the room, you both need to see the monitor, so it needs to be angled in a way that you both have a good view. But in doing that neither one of you is looking directly at the monitor, but slightly “off axis.” If a monitor displays RED as SALMON or PINK off axis…that isn’t a good thing.

The new version of Mac OSX is due out on October 26…Leopard. To install, or not to install, THAT is the question.

Now…those of you with editing systems should proceed with caution. I always, repeat ALWAYS say, “if you have a stable working system, DO NOT UPDATE IT!” Having a stable working editing system is the key to a smooth running business, a stress free life, and more time you can devote to reading, riding your bike, playing with the kids…ANYTHING but sitting in your office for hours trying to figure out what went wrong.

OK, if you find that you MUST update your system and play with all the new toys it has to offer, I have a few suggestions to make to cover your butt:

1) CLONE YOUR SYSTEM DRIVE. Get Carbon Clopy Cloner and an external firewire drive that is as big as your internal, and clone your nice, clean, WORKING system onto it. This way, if things don’t work out with leopard, you can always go back to your properly working system.

2) GET A NEW HARD DRIVE AND INSTALL ON THAT. Now, this only works if you have a MacPro or G5, or G4…a tower where you can swap out drives. I listed the other option first because anyone can do that, towers, laptops, iMacs, MacMinis. This is the cheaper way to go as internal SATA drives are cheaper than firewire drives. Pop out the current system drive and pop in this new drive. Or, if you happen to have an open drive slot, install this in there, so you can have a DUAL BOOT system. Working system, NEW system. Then boot up on the Leopard Install disk and jump through the installing hoops.

Well, that about covers it. Oh, wait…you DON’T want to spend money on another hard drive? Well, OK, if you don’t have $80 to spend on a 250Gb internal, or lacking the funds to buy a $200 external FW 250GB drive….because getting Leopard tapped you out…then this is what you can do. Mind you, it’ll not be nearly as slick as the other options.

Back up all your files. Project files, work documents, spreadsheets, pictures, movies, music…you should be doing this anyway. If you don’t have a back up drive…what the heck are you thinking?!?! Ahem, anyway, then erase your system drive and install Leopard from scratch. Yeah, you can install Leopard on top of Tiger, but this way you ENSURE that you will have a clean, fresh OS. Then install all your applications and copy back all your files.

OH…and the most important thing I can stress: Do not upgrade while you are in the middle of a project. I cannot stress this enough. If the upgrade messes things up, then you have downtime. And downtime is a killer…because in the editing world there are deadlines. Now, if you are NEVER in the middle of a project, and have several that overlap (I know several people and places this applies to), do the upgrade when you can spare the time to do it, test it, and fix it if things don’t work. Weekends are good for this, or any time you can spare a couple days, or have a few days down time and it not be a burden.

But really…honestly…what I’d REALLY suggest you do?

Wait.

Wait and let others install Leopard and find all the issues with it. OR, if you have TWO computers, one you use for work and then another one you use for web surfing and e-mail…install Leopard on that one. The biggest thing I want to get across is that if you are using a machine to earn a living, and it is working fine…don’t do something that might cause it not to work. You need to eat.

OK…the time is approaching. Friday will soon be upon us and Leopard will come out.

And I swear, 4 minutes later there will be a post on one of the FCP forums where someone says, “I just installed Leopard, and now I can’t _______ in FCP. HEEEEELLLLPPP!”

Don’t be that guy. Or gal.

This serves as a reminder that there are so many things about FCP that I just don’t know about. Here’s one that I’m sure ALL the Avid people would love to know, because I liked this feature in the Avid.

If you add effects to clips in an Avid, and DO NOT render them, the footage will play back fine, just without the effects. VERY handy when you make changes and want to see how the cut works without spending a long time rendering and re-rendering.

Now, I felt this feature was missing in FCP…because when I made a change and then hit play, UNRENDERED lit up the screen in all it’s RED glory. This forced me to render it before I saw it, or hit OPT-P and play through it slowly…which doesn’t work when trying to look at a cut creatively and in context with the story.

So I bitch about this to a friend of mine who says “Oh, just turn on PLAY BASE LAYER ONLY. That will do what you want.” Sure enough, in the RT menu on the timeline, there is that option. If the clip has a filter on it and it is rendered, it’ll play the rendered clip. But if the clip has a filter on it and ISN’T rendered, then it will play the base clip without filters. THAT, my friends…is cool. To me it is anyway.

I’d sure like to take credit for knowing this, but…I can’t. The friend I bitched about this to is Patrick Sheffield, a regular on the Apple forums. The credit goes to him. He mentioned that he discovered it pretty early on, and that it was the most “Avid-like” feature of FCP that he’d seen.

In case you haven’t heard about it, Red Giant Software has released it’s color correction software, Magic Bullet Looks Suite.

Now I am a HUGE FAN of Colorista, and I do have the Magic Bullet Editors 2 package (discontinued in favor of the Looks Suite)…I like what they do.

“You can use Magic Bullet Looks as both a plug-in and a stand-alone application. The plug-in launches the LookBuilder design application, accesses presets and renders looks inside a variety of applications, including Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, and Avid Systems. The application lets you refine and create looks anywhere, from on set to your edit suite, using any image as a foundation. Go from pre-visualization to final output, all with the same look.”

This is a great looking low cost color correction solution for those of you looking for alternatives to Apple’s Color.

There is a demo available on their site to take it for a test drive.

Time for me to upgrade my Magic Bullet Editors 2? Oh the possibilities.

DevilDodo on the Creative Cow has done some research on this topic:

“After looking into LTO tapes, Hard drives, DVDs and Blu-ray there seems to be no clear winner. Here’s how it breaks down (all prices in NZ dollars):

LTO3:
– Most expensive setup cost (the cost of the drive itself) at around $2000. In terms of tapes, it works out to about $0.19 /GB
– Large storage space (200GB or 400GB compressed) on the one I looked at.
– Approx. 30+ year lifetime.
– Write speed is quite slow when compared to DVD. Read speed is quite slow (due to the fact it has to do it sequentially. IE it’s not random access).

HDD:
– Relatively cheap, around $0.48 /GB with no setup costs.
– Storage space varies, but significantly larger than DVD or Blu-ray.
– Unreliable. 3-5 year lifetime.
– Harder to store.
– Very fast write speed, random access.

DVD+R:
– Cheapest of all options at $0.18 /GB.
– Comparatively very small storage space.
– Fast write speed compared to Blu-ray and LTO.
– 10-30 year lifetime.
– Less reliable. Prone to damage.

Blu-ray:
– Most expensive at $1.41 /GB. Setup cost of around $1200 for burner.
– 50GB at dual layer. A lot larger than DVD, but still small when compared to LTO or HDD.
– Slow write speed (around an hour per 25GB depending on burner).
– Apparently very robust. 100+ year lifetime.

Take from that what you will. This information was taken from various places on the net, so is by no means definitive.

A few thoughts of my own: To me, Blu-ray seems like a very viable solution. The 100+ year lifetime may sound a bit ridiculous, but I’ve spoken to several people who have said that they are incredibly robust and that really the only way to destroy the information is to physically snap the disc.

Of course, a huge advantage to the Blu-ray solution for those of us in the video profession is that buying the bruner gives you the ability to master high def Blu-ray discs (with the right software, of course). Which is a huge plus, espcially if working with the HVX.

And prices are coming down on the burners fast. I compiled this information only a couple of months ago, but recently I’ve seen a burner for $800 that claims to write 25GB in 25 minutes!

My research into HDD storage has been widely varied. Ultimately I’ve concluded that it is complete luck as to when or whether you HDD will crash on you. I’ve obviously had a lot of bad luck – in the year we’ve been in business we’ve lost a total of six external drives. Completely randomly. Thus, I personally have vowed to never use them again as a storage system.

At the moment we’ve resorted to using DVDs to archive until we make a decision. It’s been working fine so far… Though it is a pain having to manually split the 16GB folders into 4GB segments… “

Now I have been leaning towards Blu-Ray myself…but…how long will they last given the HD DVD war that is going on? You’ll have to make sure that you have a Blu-Ray READER that is compatible for all that time IF the other format wins out. Then again you also need to hold onto your LTO tape drive as well, and the computer that it can connect to (say you have an OLD one that has a SCSI interface). Either way…and even with drives (which are still my current TEMPORARY solution) you need to make sure you constantly update the drive itself so that it can connect to a computer, or hold onto a computer it can connect to…which shouldn’t be too tough.

Decisions…decisions…

Right now I only have two shows worth of P2 files to back up, so Blu-Ray isn’t cost effective. But if I went to series…hmmmm.

Thoughts? What are others considering? I’d like LTO, but man…$2000 for a drive. I can get a Blu-Ray burner for $600…SINGLE layer. Ahh, the Achilles Heel of the tapeless workflow…archiving.

AJA announces on the Creative Cow.

Finally. And while it may be late…better late than glitchy.

“Io HD is simply the most sophisticated product we have ever built, and it obviously took longer than we first expected. The final result is nothing short of spectacular, from the pristine hardware implementation of the Apple ProRes 422 codec, to the huge host of solid software and hardware features. Io HD is by far the most feature-rich and stable version 1.0 product we have ever released, and we hope you will agree it was worth the wait.

As a quick refresher, here are some facts about the Io HD:

– 10-bit 4:2:2 full-raster HD over Firewire 800
– Apple ProRes 422 and Apple ProRes 422 HQ Codec hardware integration — SD, HD 720/1080, full-raster 10-bit 4:2:2, realtime
– Up/down/cross-conversion, 10-bit, realtime, in hardware
– SD-SDI and HD-SDI input/output (x2)
– Component input/output (SD and HD)
– Composite and S-video input/output
– HDMI video w/2-channel audio input/output
– Embedded SDI 8-channel audio input/output
– AES/EBU 8-channel unbalanced audio input/output (BNC)
– Analog 4-channel balanced audio input/output (XLR)
– Analog 2-channel unbalanced audio output (RCA)
– Genlock, terminated with buffered output
– RS-422 machine control
– LTC Timecode input/output
– All-new AJA-developed QuickTime driver software
– Core Audio support
– 3-year International Warranty and Support
– No proprietary cables!
– Designed specifically for Apple Final Cut Studio 2 on Mac OS X

– US MSRP $3,495

AJA I/O HD MAIN PAGE

OK…first I buy a MacBook Pro…or MacPro…then I buy this. Perhaps the MBP as I like the portability idea…

Now…where to get the money…

While I was in the middle of trying to finish my third pass at Act 2 on the current show I am working on, I was given a really interesting challenge. And while I needed to get this Act finished, and move on to Act 3…I did need a little break from the creative process, and I do enjoy a technical challenge

The company I work for needed some DVCPRO HD 720p60 footage converted into slow motion. From 59.94 fps to 29.97fps…a frame by frame transfer that makes for very smooth slow motion. That’s doable….no problem.

Issue #1 – This is an Avid shop, and older Avid’s at that. They did have an Avid Adrenaline that could read this footage fine, but it couldn’t do the slow motion conversion internally. With an Avid, if we wanted slow motion from DVCPRO HD, we’d make sure that we shot that footage on a separate tape so that we could take that tape to a post facility where they’d run it thru some process during dubbing that would then produce a tape with slow motion footage. And the budget on this series was getting thin, so they wanted to see if this could be done another way. Sure…no problem. Final Cut Pro has a tool that you can install to do that, the DVCPRO HD FRAME RATE CONVERTER (in the EXTRAS folder on the FCP install disk). I have a tutorial on this process.

Issue #2 – All the footage was shot on P2. But this wasn’t the issue. FCP can work with footage shot on P2. No, the issue was that the file structure of the P2 card was gone. Avid doesn’t need the CONTENTS folder or the LASTCLIP.txt file in order to work with the P2 files. All it needs are the Video and Audio files. So what the assistants do is make a folder on the media drives and copy into that ONLY the video and audio files…all of them lumped into one folder. I did spend about 30 min trying to rebuilt the fle structure of the P2 cards with no success. Without the PROXIE and CLIP files (the folders were empty, of course), FCP didn’t recognize the card as valid. I couldn’t import the footage.

Hmmm…think think think. OK…back to the cut. I need to make this surgery that really isn’t dramatic or exciting into, well, a dramatic and exciting surgery, and show that they are losing the guy. OK, cut this, pull up that…Oooo…nice CU of the young female doctor…ick, avoid the close ups of the open abdomen. This is a surgery show, but let’s not gross people out…

Hey! What about Raylight? I keep hearing on the Creative Cow and DVXUser forums (mainly from Barry Green, a huge Raylight advocate) that with this application, FCP can read the MXF files natively…no need to import. I could try this. Not long ago Marcus van Bavel, the owner of DVFilm, sent me a beta of Raylight to test. I hadn’t even unzipped the archived file. Lemme try this.

I launch Raylight. That really is all that is required…for it to be running in the background. There were a few settings I had to check…and it didn’t detect the MXF files right away, because the CONTENTS file structure wasn’t there. BUT, there was an option to manually input a path to the MXF files. I did this and Raylight saw them. I then HID the application and launched FCP. I created a DVCPRO HD sequence with the Easy Setups, imported the P2 footage and…and…

Hmmm…Since these aren’t quicktime files, I can’t use the converter on them. Now what?

My producer walks in and wants to see Acts 1 and 2 and see how they flow. Pretty good…I just need to bridge a couple of sections, but good. He wrote a couple VO lines to help there, and to help finish the act on a cliffhanger in the OR. Then off he went to address another issue in another edit bay. I finessed the bridges, started finishing the surgery to end the act on a…

Idea. The MXF files can’t be converted…but if I was to export them as a Quicktime file, DVCPRO HD 720p60 at 59.94, and reimport that, FCP should be able to convert that, right?

I tried a self contained Quicktime Movie. I reimported that and tried the converter and…nope. It said it couldn’t do it…”file 0014FG.mxf cannot be converted. The file needs to be a DVCPRO HD 720p60 file at 59.94 in order for FCP to convert this.” Or something to that effect. Why was it still reading this as MXF?

Hmmm… What if I export using Quicktime Conversion, and choose DVCPRO HD, and current settings. This took a WHILE (on my powerbook G4). After 2 hours (17 min sequence) it finished. I reimported that file, applied the frame rate converter and…SUCCESS! It converted the file into ultra smooth slow motion! WooHoo! The clip was now 34 minutes long, and slow. I broke the footage up into two segments, as I needed to lay the result onto tape so that it could be captured by the older Avids, and because Discovery requires source footage to be on tape…they do not accept data files..

So I set about doing the second sequence…following all the steps I did the first time and…well crap. It wasn’t working. No matter what I did, it kept asking for some .mxf file. So now what?

OK. Back to the cut. Trim here, add footage there…write some VO to explain what severe acidosis is and record it. Figure out where a good dramatic place to end the act on a tense moment would be. Find good footage to cover that. Play it back…looks pretty good. I think I need some VO to explain this one section…

It kept referencing a .MXF file. Why? (what, me…ADD? Nah…why do you ask?) I wonder…what if I quit Raylight, so it can’t link to that MXF file. Nope. OK…quit and restart the computer. Launch FCP…try again. Nope…same error…claiming that the exported QT file is an MXF file. Well…they have all the MXF files on the Avid…what if I threw mine out and erased them? So I do that, tried the converter and VOILA! It worked!

SWEET!

OK…back to the cut. Add the VO, cut in some dramatic music, edit that music…bridge a gap or two…and done. Whew.

Of course then I realize that this would ALL have been easier if they output the p2 clips to tape, Id captured those tape into FCP making them QT files by default…THEN using the converter. GAH!

Ah well…this is a great solution for the instances when you don’t have access to a deck.

Thank you Barry Green (if you even read this) for constantly mentioning Raylight on the forums, and URGING me to try it out.

Thanks to Matt Jepsen from FresHDV for this, who found it via Digital Camcorder News.

How to capture and edit Canon’s 24f format in Final Cut Pro.

Now, I don’t own an HDV camera, but I have shot with the XL-H1, and I tested all the modes, including 24f. Now, I couldn’t even FCP to recognize the camera, so I resorted to capturing it with my Kona LH as DVCPRO HD. But, if I did have one of these cameras I’d opt for the cheaper HV20, not being a pro shooter and all. Not too expensive…full raster 1920×1080 (pixel shifted, whatever that means) and with a Redrock Micro so I end up with this rig. Iffin I was a shooter. I tend to blow all my cash on post related equipment.

But anyway, here is the workflow for MANY people who own this camera and want to get 23.98 fps out of it. And it isn’t too convoluted. Isn’t convoluted at all, really. I know a guy who has one…maybe I can borrow it for a day or two and test.

OK…this was a posting over at the Creative Cow, and I felt that it just HAS to be shared:

“Not in broadcasting? Then skip this post, please, because it doesn’t apply to you. But if you are……..

I’ve discovered that for many people who toil in broadcasting, the 24p to 30p odyssey unfolds like this:

• Cool! I can shoot 24p! Just like they do in the movies! I’m gonna do it right now! What? Aaaah, how important can those details be? This stuff’s GREAT!

• Hey, what’s wrong?

• Cripes, how come this stuff isn’t working right? What were those details about, anyway?

• EEAUGGHHH! How do I get out of this mess?

• Help! Help!!! HELLLLP!!!

• I have to do what? WHAT??? Jeez, the whole thing’s edited! Well, there’s GOTTA be another way!

• Grumble… curse… stinkin’ waste of my time….. grumble…. curse…. this’ll take twice as long as I thought…. grumble…. curse…. whoops!… grumble… make that three times longer…. grumble…. curse… curse… curse.

• There, DONE! What, the dentist wants to schedule my root canal? Tell him no problem.

• You know, I think I’m going to compare some 24p footage and some 30p footage.

• How hard is it to work in 30p? You’re joking. That’s it? No, really… that’s IT?

• Cripes, how important are six stinkin’ fewer frames a second, anyway?

• Cool! I can shoot 30p! I’m gonna do it right now… and no details to worry about! This stuff’s GREAT!

Not in broadcasting? Never Mind. Once again, this doesn’t apply to you.”

Dave LaRonde
Sr. Promotion Producer
KCRG-TV

EDIT: If you are required to deliver a 29.97 master, don’t shoot 24p, and don’t edit 23.98. Well, you can shoot 24P I suppose, as many cameras shoot 24P at 29.97fps…but shooting 24pA or other 24p format at 23.98 and editing at 23.98 is more of a headache than it is worth. Shooting 30p at 29.97 yeilds the same “film look” and yet makes editing and delivering a 29.97 master easy.

EVEN MORE EDIT: This post from Mike Curtis a month ago kinda relates to this, only from the OPPOSITE view. Shooting to GET 23.98 for either HD output or possible film out. So…examples of when to use 24p and when NOT to use 24P.

Well, I’ve done it. I have FINALLY replaced the last piece of…uh…*cough* “borrowed” *cough*…software from my system.

Yeah…right…like you’ve NEVER done this.

Well, the last piece of software that I have let go was Photoshop. Nice application, but did MUCH MORE than I really tapped it to do. Crop, resize, couple titles, scan something to make a gift card, maybe a little touch up on photos, played with a few filters….but nothing that really dug into what this app could do.

And I tried Photoshop ELEMENTS and didn’t like it. And a few other chinsey applications that just seemed…lacking. SO I stuck with Photoshop, but really couldn’t come up with $650…well, JUSTIFY the $650 to pay for it. I know…bad…bad.

Well, thanks to my podcast listening habit (MacBreak Weekly, This Week In Media), I have heard about a GREAT photo editing application called Pixelmator. All the tools I used most are here, plus a few that I didn’t but want to get into. This is a REALLY powerful application. Truely a Photoshop replacement I can justify. Because it costs only $60. Perfect for the non-photo professional…just the tools that I need.

Check it out…they offer a demo.

OK…I am posting a link to another funny video.

Back in May I posted a link to the VERY funny THE PROFESSIONALS.

Today, I’d like to share with you…Designer//Slash/Model.

Be sure to watch the BEHINDS THE SCENES videos too…

This comes from HD For Indies which in turn comes from Robert Ashe. For all those who read HD For Indies regularly…I apologize for the cross post…but I really thought it was a good one. For those who don’t read HD for Indies….WHY THE HELL AREN’T YOU? Seriously..it is like THE blog to read about HD. I am a nice little…garnish if you will. He is the steak…I am the side salad. Or the desert. But I am…just getting odd here.

AJA I/O HD Reader Report

I am SERIOUSLY thinking about this as my next capture device…because I know my next computer purchase will be a MacBook Pro. And I can get the HD Pro from CalDigit to work on it with the Express34 card…and that it will handle ProRes just fine…so…

But I am waiting for the NEW MacBook Pros to come out…so I can be top of the heap for 6 months. Tired of buying RIGHT BEFORE the new models are released. I hope they come out before December…unlikely, but…

Whew…what a hectic two weeks. The two weeks I talked about two posts ago. But now, that pressure is off. Well, not off, but lessened by QUITE a bit.

Met with the director, the lead actor (also a producer) and the main producer on Saturday to look at a rough cut of the first half of the show and talk things over. Overall they liked it. Wondered why a few things were missing, and it was due to it not being in the script and me not knowing where it went. So I took notes and we talked things over and…well…the Producer…the person who recommended and hired me…got into asking a lot of questions about the show…questions and concerns that I had but didn’t feel like I could voice. She voiced ALL of them. And got a few of them cleared up, and…well…just did everything I wanted to do. And I didn’t have to ask her to do it…she just had the same feelings I did.

It was amazing.

And the pressure of getting a cut in soon…gone. I have more time to do it. The reason they were so anxious and pressuring me…to which I was going to say “hey stop…I am doing this as a favor, I am being paid VERY little, and said from the start that I couldn’t devote a lot of time to”…was because they hadn’t seen the dailies. They didn’t know what takes they had and what they had to work with. They wanted to see it. The Producer cleared things up. I was going to provide all the dailies to them on DVD (TEN HOURS worth) and they were going to look at the footage. And they were going to give me SELECTED TAKES TO CHOOSE FROM!

This is huge.

Normally you have a script supervisor on set who takes notes and draws lines on the script. One of the BIG notes that they take…that is really important to the editor…is noting what takes the director liked. For this to happen, the director needs to indicate what takes are good, and which ones are NOT good. This way you eliminate the bad stuff…cut down the amount of footage you have to look thru. Now, I might “mine” that footage later for looks or reactions or snippits of something, but I won’t look at them for performance. That saves a LOT of time. This being an inexperienced crew, there were no indications of what the good takes were because the director didn’t say so, so the script supervisor didn’t write them down.

People don’t realize the importance a lot of factors are to post…it seems that the script supervisor is a “throw away” position. But they have LOTS of jobs. Paying attention to continuity of action (“uh, on that line he is supposed to be taking a sip of wine”) so that I can intercut takes. Noting on the script what character is on camera for what take. This is done by drawing lines on the script…down the page vertically…a straight line if they are on camera, squiggly if they aren’t. So I can, at a glance, note what angles have a certain character on camera. They also make notes about the take…like the director liked the first half of the take, but not the second half. Or that there was discontinuity of action at one point.

ANYWAY…I am straying from topic. I just wanted to say that the pressure is off…I can edit at a more leisurely pace, and I will be getting notes from the producer and director as to what takes to pay attention to, and which ones to ignore.

Ahhh….my old friend SLEEP…how I missed thee.

And time off…I got to put in a post for a clothes line, and play chess with my kids. Just what I need to relax the mind.

OH..and I watched BIONIC WOMAN. GAH…what a mistake. Stupidest new show of the year….