Sunday, February 24, 2008

Sticky: Traveling with batteries, Pro Apps Updaters, etc.

Stuff to watch out for; tips ‘n’ tricks

• FAA rules on lithium battery transport
• Apple Pro Apps - save those updaters!
• PMW-EX1: XDCAM Transfer 2.5.1 for Mac Released; fixes CLOCK-mode timecode import bug.

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Thursday, December 04, 2008

Calibrated Codecs

Use MXF media natively in FCP and on Windows; use FCP media on Windows and non-FCP Macs.

Need to use MXF media (P2 DVCPRO/50/HD and AVC-I, IMX, XDCAM) natively in Final Cut Pro, or in Windows NLEs? Need to play FCP-captured or FCP-generated Quicktimes with HDV, DVCPRO50/HD, or XDCAM/HD/EX content on Windows machines, or on Macs without Final Cut Studio? Check out http://www.calibratedsoftware.com/welcome.html.

Importers and codecs available singly or in bundles, from $60 - $110 (with free, watermarked demo versions so you can see if they solve your problems before you spend your hard-earned). I haven’t tried ‘em myself but thought I’d pass on the info, because if this is the sort of thing you need, you really need it.

(With a tip of the hat to Rich Young on the SF Cutters FCPUG mailing list for pointing these out!)

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Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Events: DCS & MFM discuss CineAlta; FCPUG SuperMeet; Broadcast Video Expo

Three months, three events, in the SF Bay Area and London.

Get out, meet people, see cool things, and learn stuff. December: Learn about CineAlta cameras and different recording gammas in Cupertino. January: party with the FCP faithful at MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. February: the UK’s own miniature version of IBC takes place at Earl’s Court in London. Be there, or may your pixels be ever non-square.

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Saturday, November 22, 2008

The 24 fps Prayer

It’s a religious issue…

We at Meets The Eye have been discussing frame rates today, triggered by the article at http://www.projectorcentral.com/judder_24p.htm. We’d like to use frame rate as a creative control, not as overcranking or undercranking, but as a presentation tool to affect mood and perception. None of us are particularly enamored of 24 fps, and Tim Blackmore was feeling frustrated enough by it and its persistence as a baseline for production and distribution that he composed the following:

Our Frame Rate, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy cadence.
Though new display technology come,
thy blur be done,
on LCDs as it is on Plasmas
Give us this day our daily motion sickness.
And forgive us our disgust,
as we forgive those who use slow frame rates to spite us.
And lead us not into 2:3 pulldown,
but deliver unto us both HD and 4K.
For thine is the look, the feel and the tired old standard.
for ever and ever. Amen. 

You might disagree, but then, that often happens with religious issues…

(Oh, and it’s © 2008 by Tim Blackmore. Pass it on, but give the guy credit if you do!)

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Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Green/Magenta?

Testing RED ONE for green/magenta sensitivity, and what we found.

Art Adams and I have observed here on PVC that the RED ONE seems unusually sensitive to green and magenta colors. The topic keeps coming up on the cinematographer’s mailing list, too, and on reduser.net. I decided to compare the R1 to several other cameras under a variety of lighting conditions. I got more than I bargained for.

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Sunday, November 16, 2008

RED ONE: Obsolete Already?

Where does the current RED hubbub leave the RED ONE?

With last Thursday’s epic announcement (pun intended) from RED, the other shoe has fallen.

Four years ago at DV Expo 2004, a couple of folks working on what was then simply called the “Oakley Special Project” took me aside to discuss a top-secret operation, launched in a remote mountain stronghold in southern California. Eccentric millionaire playboy Jim Jannard (it seems like most modern superheroes have that as a lifestyle description), a camera fancier with something like 1,500 cameras in his personal collection, had decided to build the One Camera to Rule Them All… only it wasn’t one camera.

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Monday, November 10, 2008

Review: Hood-Pro Sock-loupe

$80 turns your PMW-EX1’s LCD into a big, beautiful viewfinder.

Lots of people have said, “if only there were a viewfinder lens I could mount on the PMW-EX1‘s LCD, I’d be happy.” Palm Desert shooter Mike Stevens not only said it, he did it: his Hood-Pro hood is a strap-on LCD hood, and the Sock-loupe is, well, a sock with a +7 diopter loupe sewn into the toe. Pull the sock over the hood, and hey presto! You’ve turned the LCD into an eye-level EVF, arguably better than the one on the EX3. The floppy sock squishes up against your face, whether or not you wear glasses, providing a good seal against extraneous light, while the two-element lens provides a close-up, detailed view of the LCD.

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Monday, November 03, 2008

Making “One Man, One Vote”

Production and post for a seven-minute short.

Ten years ago a fellow named Marshall Spight posted a challenge on DV-L called “Throwing Down the DV Gauntlet”, in which he said, “everyone talks about shooting serious dramatic films with DV, but does anyone actually do it?” I responded, and we wound up making a 20-minute short called “The Beautiful Thing” using Sony DCR-VX1000s, the first 1/3” 3-CCD DV camcorders. It came out so well (it was for a time the top-rated dramatic film on iFilm.com, an early and long-defunct predecessor to YouTube) that we set about making a short political drama/comedy (?), “One Man, One Vote”. This one gave us a few more challenges.

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