Friday, April 11, 2008

Locking HDMI cables!

Adam Wilt | 04/11- 10:44 AM

Finally, a non-self-ejecting HDMI cable

Left: normal HDMI cable. Right: locking HDMI cable. Note the cantilevered paddle with two tiny retention hooks.

A colleague and I were discussing the sorry state of the physical HDMI connection; we call it a “self ejecting” technology. HDMI cables fall out of HDMI sockets with surprising ease. Fortunately there’s now a solution to this problem: a locking plug that works with any HDMI socket. 

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

RED? Or Cyan?

Adam Wilt | 03/25- 11:31 AM

Why the RED’s highlights went cyan and dark, and how to fix ‘em.

In my unfair comparison of three cameras, I found that RED’s overexposed highlights went cyan and got darker than surrounding, non-overexposed areas. Here’s why it happened, and how to fix it—it’s an easy fix, but you’ll appreciate it more if you see what happens if you don’t use it!

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Media 100 Mac Intel Codecs Available

Frank Capria | 03/25- 09:46 AM

After customer complaints, Media 100 relented and and is offering its latest codecs for Intel-based Macs as a free download. With these free codecs, editors and graphics professionals can playback and render modern and legacy Media 100 media files in any QuickTime-based application. The codecs include Universal Binary versions of the Media 100 i and Media 100 HD codecs as well as the PowerPC Instant Media 844/X codec. Download here.

Friday, March 21, 2008

Red to Avid Workflow Utility

Frank Capria | 03/21- 10:09 AM

XMiL Sequencer offers a way for Avid editors to preserve Red metadata throughout the offline process.

Rainer Standke, longtime participant on the FCP-L and Avid-L2 mailing lists, editor, and software developer, has released XMiL Sequencer. This handy utility allows editors to import file-based camera originals, such as QuickTime movies created from Red’s R3D files, into Avid environments while preserving all necessary metadata. 

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Creating interactive web video with a tool you already know and use.

Nate Gentner | 03/16- 02:27 PM

(now with an example at the bottom)
Encore CS3, Premiere Pro’s trusty DVD authoring sidekick has a few new tricks up its sleeve to help give you a competitive edge.  I’ll talk more about high definition Blu-ray disc authoring in another post.  This post is for those of you in the traditional video workflow who want to be able to create interactive web video experiences, BUT you don’t want to have to learn a new tool. 

Encore CS3 can now export a version of your existing DVD project for use on the web. 
Here’s how -
1. Author your DVD or Blu-ray project as you normally would using Encore’s intuitive interface and integration with Photoshop and After Effects. 
2. In the Build panel choose “Flash”
3. Select your quality preset
4. Click “Build” - you’re done!

Encore encodes all your videos to .flvs, creates a .swf that provides all the DVD-like interactivity, and creates an .xml file that ties the .flvs to the .swf.  Encore also embeds the .swf in a template .html page. 

The result is a DVD-like experience on the web complete with features like main menu and chapter menu navigation, motion menus, slideshows, extra features, and the ability to skip to chapters.  When compared with the typical web video experience where the only control you have is play and pause Encore’s Flash export is a significantly better experience.  It allows you to create the design and chapter navigation viewers are used to on DVDs. 

Give it a try and let me know what you think. 

Thanks for reading,
Nate

A little bit about me.  I’m the product manager for Adobe Encore and Visual Communicator.  Additionally, I am also working on developing community related features for our DMO products.

Here is an example of a project one of our customers sent me created with the Flash export feature in Encore. 
http://www.theatreofillusion.com/online-dvd/

Monday, March 10, 2008

Exporting stills from FCP

Adam Wilt | 03/10- 10:22 PM

Correcting for FCP’s assumptions, and a surprising discovery.

I recently had a chance to compare the PMW-EX1 with a RED and an F23 (about which, more will be said in coming days). I collected quite a few video clips from the cameras and I’m going through the process of exporting still frames from the two Sonys, using Final Cut Pro. As I want to capture the full exposure range in the stills, there’s more to it than just parking the playhead on a frame and doing File > Export > Using QuickTime Conversion. As it turns out, there’s also a surprise.

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