DSLR Video and Aliasing Artifacts

If you are shooting video with one of the hot new DSLRs, you are probably aware of the aliasing issues found in some of your footage. If not yet, you will at some point. Just keep shooting, it will show up. Fine detail aliasing has always been an issue for any camera system, but it’s particularly prevalent in DSLRs as they lack an Optical Low Pass Filter (OLPF) that is specifically tuned for video. In the case of the 5D & 7D, engineers at Canon have also chosen to sample a limited number of lines from the image sensor to downsample to 1080p. This is quick solution, but not the highest quality way of doing things; it creates aliasing image artifacts, and reportedly limits the resolution of the cameras at around 720p. It’s almost as if these tools were primarily designed as still cameras! How strange. At any rate, I’ve learned to warn my clients before interview shoots not to wear shirts with fine detail patterns, as they will moiré faster than you can say “how the hell do you pronounce that word?”

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…

11 Excellent FCP Tips & Tricks

Editor/Colorist Oliver Peters has posted a really nice collection of Final Cut Pro tips that are bound to save you time and effort. His suggestions are not “how to use”, but more about Preferences, Settings, and project setup options that can help you avoid the gotchas of editing with FCP. There are great tips here for novices and seasoned editors alike. Check it out.

Increase your Canon 7D or 5D dynamic range

Stockholm-based Canon 7D shooter Luka has posted a wonderful tutorial on Vimeo on maximizing the dynamic range of your DSLR video. As he states in the video, the tutorial is not aimed at making pretty pictures directly from the camera…it is intended to give you more information to work with later in post and color correction. It’s a very well done tutorial, and applies equally well to Canon 5D MKII Picture Styles. It’s also rather funny. Check it out below.

What is the role of a Camera Operator?

In this fantastic short video clip, professional cam op Gerard Sava talks about what it takes to efficiently and successfully perform the role of a camera operator on a production set. Watch below.

MacMediaTech podcast premiere episode

MacMediaTech podcast premiered the other day, and I’m one of the guests in the premiere episode. I like the format of this podcast, and really enjoyed the discussion with fellow filmmakers Paul Del Vecchio, Paul Zadie, and Kenn Bell. Give this one a shot if you’re into podcasts.

Canon 5D MKII Cut / Color / Compress Tutorial

Editor Peter Salvia has been posting a series of video tutorials on editing with Final Cut Studio. The following is an all-in-one tutorial on cutting Canon 5D MKII footage, color correcting and grading it in Apple Color, and exporting for the web with Compressor. If you are just getting started with Color, this tutorial should get you up and running quickly. It’s a good, quick overview of common functions and workarounds you’ll run into. Check out the video tutorial below.

Import FCP Projects into Adobe Premiere CS4

Here’s a great little segment on Adobe TV about how to import and work with XML projects from Apple Final Cut Pro using Adobe Premiere CS4. It looks quick and relatively painless, and can even map motion keyframes between the two systems. It’s an interesting way to translate FCP projects over to take advantage of Adobe’s very useful Dynamic Link capability. The video tutorial is embedded above.

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