FreshDV NAB 2011 Video Coverage

Welcome to FreshDV’s coverage of NAB 2011! The FreshDV crew is in Vegas for NAB week, bringing you video coverage from the show floor. If you can’t be on-site at NAB, we are the resource to watch. Watch our coverage of the show in the playlist below. If you’ve enjoyed it, drop us a line on Twitter @FreshDV. Watch below…

Which ProRes quality level is Good Enough when editing DSLR footage?

So I wanted to share some personal findings after working heavily with DSLRs for about a year and a half now. I’ve been converting most of my DSLR footage to ProRes LT for post-production, and have found it to be a good size-to-quality happy medium. In most cases, my projects will end up on DVD, web, or some kind of Standard Definition delivery, so LT allows me to strike a quality compromise that tends to be invisible after output. Even for HD applications, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find visible quality issues when editing with ProRes LT, assuming that you aren’t pushing the image too much in color-correction and grading. And let’s be honest, you probably shouldn’t be heavily grading DSLR footage anyway…for as much as I love DSLRs, the footage doesn’t like to be pushed hard. Read on…

Analyzing what you see in a film frame

This new study by David Bordwell provides fascinating data on where viewers look when watching a film. Researchers used infrared pupil tracking to correlate attention to what was happening in the film, and their findings will surely be of interest to DoPs, Directors, and Editors alike…

Martini QuickShot Creator puts pre-viz directly into FCP

Just watched the demo for Martini Quickshot Creator, and must say that this $199 software package looks AWESOME. Check out the demo here...you can quickly build pre-visualized scenes for a project from a library of characters and scenes. All from within Final Cut Pro. This software looks simply brilliant.

Rarevision 5DtoRGB vs MPEG Streamclip for transcoding

There’s a new transcoding tool making the rounds on that newfangled Twitter thingy the kids are using these days, it’s called Rarevision 5DtoRGB. It’s a free app for Mac users that they claim offers a much higher quality conversion from H.264 DSLR raw footage to an editing codec (ProRes is a common choice, in one of several flavors and bitrates). Two blogs have done some comparison testing between this new tool and MPEG Streamclip (another popular free option), and I wanted to point them out here for your pixel-peeping enjoyment…

iPad KeyPad Pro wirelessly controls your pro apps

Here’s an interesting $4.99 app for the iPad; it’s called KeyPad Pro and it’s basically a wireless client/server app that allows you to control your multimedia pro applications from the iPad. It can either be used to augment your keyboard, maybe programming just certain complex commands or shortcuts into the iPad software, or control the apps fully from a distance (think client review from the couch). The server software is available for both PC and Mac (XP+ and OSX 10.5+). Read on…

Release the Hidden Graphics Processing Power in your Macbook Pro

Since sometime in late 2008, Apple’s 17” and select 15” Macbook Pro models have included not one but two graphics processors, the nVidia 9400M and 9600M GT. It is my understanding that by default the laptop uses the integrated lower-wattage 9400M, which includes 256MB RAM and helps extend battery life. It will run the main laptop display and push an external display as well. The additional nVidia 9600M GT graphics option is actually a discrete internal PCI-E card featuring 512MB of RAM and offers significantly faster Motion GPU rendering performance. You can see both of these cards listed separately in your System Profiler. So how do you tell which card you are using, and how do you switch between the two cards? I’m glad you asked, grasshopper. Read on and I’ll tell you how…

Apple’s new iFrame codec implementation

So recently Apple released specs on a new video format they are calling iFrame. What is it, and how will it affect you, the video professional? As all consumer codecs seem to trickle into the professional space in one way or another, I expect the same to happen with this format. So here’s some info to provide perspective in case you are called upon to deal with the codec by clients. Read on…

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