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.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

PMW-EX1: XDCAM Transfer 2.5.1 for Mac Released

Adam Wilt | 03/06- 05:07 PM

Fixes clock-mode timecode import bug; qualified for OS X 10.4.11 and higher

Sony has released XDCAM Transfer 2.5.1, software used to import XDCAM clips into QuickTime and Final Cut Pro. This version fixes a bug where PMW-EX1 recordings made with CLOCK-mode free-run timecode were not being properly imported, and it is qualified to run both on OS X 10.4.11 and 10.5.x.

Monday, March 03, 2008

Staggering Mistakes: Reversing Field Order

Chris Meyer | 03/03- 12:23 PM

People are still screwing up field order - on national TV.

The two most-watched cable channels in our household are CNN and Speed (guess who watches which). Speed just started a new game show called “Pass Time” where several of the bumpers as well as in-show inserts exhibit the maddening two steps forward/one step back staggered motion of fields that have been reversed (maybe they thought it was a “look”...). CNN isn’t immune to this either; through the years some of their graphics have also exhibited this reversed-field judder.

This prompted us to upload an updated version of a classic column we wrote on interlacing, field rendering, and separating fields; you can find it here. But like any good motion graphics designer who tries to reverse-engineer any graphic they see on television, this has led us to speculate what might have been at the root of this particular problem.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

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

Adam Wilt | 02/24- 04:21 PM

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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