An A to Z of Building Projections - Part 1

If you have any interest in motion graphics at all, you’ll have noticed the increasing popularity of building projections all around the world.
This two-part presentation gives a behind the scenes look into two different building projection projects – a small scale production for New Year’s Eve in Melbourne, Australia, and a large scale event for the Alfa Bank in Russia – the largest building projection ever staged to date.

The Masters of Compositing Series - Part 2: Paul Vlahos

This is the second in a series of interviews with the pioneers and masters in the compositing/VFX film & television industry. I originally recorded these interviews for my published book “The Green Screen Handbook” (Sybex/Wiley, pub) and had intended to produce one full-length documentary from the materials. But after a couple of years past now, I thought they would be better served as individual parts of a series to help educate and inform people about these historic times from the early days of VFX compositing through modern-day techniques.

Quick Look: Sony PVM-740 OLED Display

OLED—Organic LED—is said to be the display technology of the future… and it’s here today. The PVM-740 is the smallest of Sony’s trio of professional-series OLED displays, and Sony lent me one for a while when I was testing the NEX-FS100.

It’s nice. I mean, it’s really nice. Perfect? Well, not quite, but darned close; let’s just say I’ve reset my expectations when it comes to reference displays.

REVIEW:  Blackmagic ATEM 1 M/E Video Switcher

I’ve been working in TV stations for over 30 years now.  I can trace one of the primary reasons I made this career choice back to a basic fact of my DNA:

I love buttons.

Why an iPad is like a 4x5 view camera, and why you’ll need a black “focusing cloth”

In case you hadn’t heard yet: Apple has just established the iPad (2012) as a viable HD video camera (among many other things). Back in the days when still photography was done with 4x5 view cameras, photographers used something called a “focusing cloth”… defined by Merriam-Webster as: “an opaque dark cloth used to cover the rear of the camera and the head and shoulders of the photographer in order to exclude most of the light except that coming through the lens”. In the case of still photography with a 4x5 view camera, it was primarily to help the photographer focus. In the case of the ultra-glossy iPad screen when used outdoors to shoot HD video, you’ll need it even to see the screen properly, in order to compose and assign the subject for autofocus and exposure… and even to start and stop the recording. In this article, I’ll cover what an iPad has in common with a 4x5 view camera, show a iPad tripod mount, a “focusing cloth”… and make a request to FiLMIC PRO, Hoodman USA and Zacuto.

Sound Device’s PIX recorders: a closer look as of firmware 1.07

Many people know Sound Devices as a renowned manufacturer of very high-end audio equipment for field production. They make some of the best (and higher-priced) field audio mixers and recorders available on the market, and do so since 1998. Later, Sound Devices began selling high-end USB audio interfaces, one of which I reviewed. Those items have frequently been used for audio-for-video for over a decade, but only in April 2011 did Sound Devices announce its first two video products, the PIX 220 and PIX 240 HD video recorders that offer several types of ProRes422 (Apple) and DNxHD (Avid) códecs. In this article, I’ll cover many details about these two recorders as of firmware 1.07. Yes, in less than a year, there have been seven firmware updates!

Bandito Brothers use multiple HP DreamColors + Adobe Premiere for Act of Valor

I recently had the pleasure and honor of being invited again by Hewlett Packard to their 2012 media event, where I was able to speak with Jacob Rosenberg, Chief Technical Officer and partner of Bandito Brothers, which created Act of Valor. Jacob was one of several guest speakers at the media event which took place in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. He described several technical facets of the production of Act of Valor for the audience, including the camera, workstations, software, and monitors which I’ll summarize in this article, together with the somewhat surprising color space chosen by Bandito Brothers.

GH2 adds missing AVCHD 29.97PsF… but worsens its already non-standard HDMI output

The segregated 59.94Hz version of Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-GH2 camera (aka GH2) originally offered just two combinations of progressive internal AVCHD modes: 1080p23.976 (commonly but imprecisely known as “24p”) and 720p59.94 (commonly but imprecisely known as “60p”). With firmware version 1.1, Panasonic added a 29.97PsF AVCHD mode at 24Mb/s to the 59.97Hz segregated version of the camera (together with some other improvements), and after the update, the GH2 fortunately does make an internal AVCHD recording at 29.97 fps. Sadly, what was already unfortunate with its HDMI output before is now worse after this update, as I discovered when testing the PIX 220 HD recorder from Sound Devices with the GH2 (and other cameras). This is ironic since Panasonic originally advertised this camera as having a clean recordable HDMI output. This article will explain what this means in detail, include some test footage, and what you should know and possibly do about it.

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