Perfect Color Balance for Less than $7

One way to address color calibration between your angles is to use a calibration card when shooting. This is relatively easy if you just remember to put a fresh color balance card on your clapboard for each shoot.

One of our favorites is the QP Card, an affordable reference card (http://www.qpcard.se). Priced at less than $5 per card, this is a great investment in accurate color.

1. They are small and lightweight, easily fitting in your gear bag.
2. Relatively inexpensive and disposable, so you can use a fresh card periodically. Old cards tend to fade in the light.
3. It’s adhesive on the back so you can easily attach it to your clapboard.
4. With a white, black, and neutral grey surface, color correcting with Final Cut Pro’s three-way color corrector is a snap.
5. $7 spent per shoot is well worth hours saved on color correction. In most circumstances, just three clicks per angle will calibrate across each camera.

Distressing Text Edges - Photoshop for Video

Instructor Richard Harrington shows you how to use a patterned image to degrade the edges of your text for a unique text effect in Photoshop.

Make Your Gray Skies Blue in Final Cut Pro

It’s not unusual for your skies to be washed out. This is often a problem, because video doesn’t offer the same dynamic range as film (the difference between darks and highlights). Fortunately, Final Cut Pro allows you to isolate the color correction, so you can achieve a fix just to the problem area.

1 Apply the Color Corrector 3-way filter, and access the filter’s visual controls.

2 Using the Select Color eyedropper in the Limit Effect controls, select the desired color you’d like to keep.

3 Click the key icon to view the matte. Use the Select Color eyedropper while holding down the Shift key to add to the matte. You can click in the Viewer or Canvas window.

4 Finesse the matte by adjusting the Width and Softness sliders for the Chroma, Saturation, and Luma values in the Limit Effect controls. When the desired color is clearly selected, there will be no holes in your matte. Also, adjust the Softening slider to improve the matte. You may get a better matte by using fewer limiting ranges.

5 Click the key icon twice to toggle back to View Final.

6 Adjust the color balance wheels and saturation of the shot.

You may need to add a second color corrector to finesse the scene or isolate another problem area.

Like this tip?  It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

Why Every Post House Needs an Apple TV

There’s been a lot of ho-hum reviews on the Apple TV… too much of this, not enough of that… but these have all been focussed on the consumer space and the living room.  What I’m here to tell you is why video pros should care about the Apple TV (and why we swear by it in my shop).  Here are a few reasons we use Apple TV at my shop, RHED Pixel.

Client Review Sessions
We often need to have clients into the office to look at progress… sometimes these meetings happen in the edit suite, sometimes not.  Our conference room is a great place for reviewing projects at many stages (and doesn’t feel like a microwave with a bag of popcorn it).  All the editors need to do is quickly export the timeline using the built-in Apple TV presets and drop it in their iTunes library.

You can Share the iTunes library of up to 5 computers.  As soon as the clip is in iTunes (which the editor should keep running in the background) it appears on the Apple TV.  This means you can review HD clips without needing to was time compressing for Blu-ray or burning overpriced discs (currently around $18 a pop for one-time burn).  The quality of the Apple TV is excellent, and its very easy to view clips.

Tons of Storage
The Apple TV can be synced with one computer.  This is very easy to do with just a click and a short code you enter on the synced computer (making it secure).  This content can be transfered to the device so it can be viewed even when the computers are off or the network is down.  The basic unit clocks in at 40GB for $229, but the 160GB unit for $329 is the way to go.  Apple states up to 200 hours of video for standard def content, but you can still easily hold 50+ hours in high-quality HD.

For the Road
We’ve started sending them out for tradeshows and events.  You can easily load a video for playback for booths and exhibits.  Tell me any other solution designed to work with Plasma screen or HDMI that costs this price.  HD playback for less than $250 is just unheard of.  Load up the client’s videos and send them on their way.  From lobbies to tradeshows, these things are fantastic and an absolute steal.

For Inspiration
The staff at my shop have found Apple TV to be great for both relaxing over lunch or a source for inspiration.  With it, you can watch free podcasts as well as quickly look at movie trailers.  We’ve also found ourselves taking advantage of rentals when someone wants to discuss an editing technique or approach.  Plus its nice to have so many commercials and short films available via YouTube.  The Apple TV puts the world of web video at your fingertips and on a giant screen.

The Bottom Line
Every media pro who comes to our shop stops and plays with Apple TV.  Its intuitive, its fun, and its useful.  Clients feel the same way, its super easy to load up what you need for an important meeting or review session.  Add in the Elgato Turbo H.264 and you can compress video even faster.

We save a ton by being able to review HD content in the conference room.  That’s not to say I’d master a show for broadcast this way, but it does a nice job of simulating the consumer experience.  Audio engineers often do the road test of burning the music to a CD and popping it a car and driving around town.  Same holds true with Apple TV, its a great “real-world” test for if a video works.

If you haven’t tried this thing yet, do it. Go to an Apple Store and try it out.  If that’s not an option, Apple offers a virtual tour at their website that gives a great overview.  The Apple TV should be in every post house, it saves time and money (and helps make review sessions fun again).

Photoshop Disasters

One of my favorite sites that I like to check out on a regular basis is Photoshop Disasters. The site is a freakshow gallery of Photoshop gone wrong.  The site is driven by user submission and acts as both entertainment and education.  There mission:

“Have you seen a truly awful piece of Photoshop work? Clumsy manipulation, senseless comping, lazy cloning and thoughtless retouching are our bread and butter. And yes, deep down, we love Photoshop.”

Be sure to check the site out, it’ll make you look at things a little differently.

Cool Video Prodution Widgets for Your iPhone or Laptop *UPDATED*

Monday, June 02, 2008
I often find I have too much information to remember (and for some reason people expect me to be able to spout pixel aspect ratio numbers like a multiplication table). Fortunately the fine folks over at Digital Rebellion has solved this (and for free). They offer several video widgets that do important math, these run on a web browser or iPhone (and a couple can run offline as well).

Video Footage Calculator – Calculates how much storage you’ll need for your footage type and duration.
Web – iPhone version – Offline version

Film Rate Calculator – Determines how much film you need for a particular scenario.
Web – iPhone version – Offline version

Aspect Ratio Calculator – Determines the aspect ratio for different footage formats.
Web – iPhone version

Depth of Field Calculator – Calculates depth of field for many camera sensors.
Web – iPhone version

Pixel Aspect Ratio Calculator – Determines relationship of Pixels for many digital formats.
Web – iPhone version

Lens Angle Calculator – Helps calculate the lens angle for a given sensor size and focal length.
Web – iPhone version

Power Load Calculator – Calculates the load on a circuit to see if it is excessive. You can also calculate the minimum circuit breaker size for the given load.
Web – iPhone version

These tools are cool, free, and useful…. three points that make them a must have for my iPhone.

Dock Options for Mac, Windows, and iPhone

Looking to get organized? If your Desktop is as bad as mine, you need all the help you can get. Here are three Dock options for Mac and Windows users that truly help clean things up.

Overflow
I’ve recently switched to an alternative style dock for OSX (giving it a thorough tryout). Overflow from Stunt Software has been a welcome addition to my productivity. You can quickly configure a floating window with multiple tabs (I’ve organized mine by job categories). You can launch applications as well as open documents using a few clicks or keyboard shortcuts. It’s a useful tool and one that helps the more visually-oriented crowd who are confused by an overloaded Dock.

ObjectDock
Now Windows users can use a Dock! ObjectDock is a welcome replacement to the Windows start menu. With several layout options (and more themes to download) this is a very visually appealing option. You can organize Windows shortcuts as well as see running applications. What I really like is the constant development cycle with small incremental improvements (okay, I’m a TQM junky).

MockDock
If you own an iPhone, then be sure to bookmark MockDock. You can find a plethora of iPhone-ready web apps, plus organize them for easy browsing. Make shortcuts to favorite phone numbers and even find some cool games. The site is constantly updated and makes good use of the unlimited data plan that comes standard with the phone. Even if you don’t have an iPhone, this is a useful site to bookmark as a lot of user-friendly web utilities and fast-laoding websites can be found. You can also use the features of the newer iPhone software to store these sites as buttons on your home screen.

Using Video Chat On Set

Author and video podcaster Richard Harrington explains how to use your laptop’s video chat capabilities to create a live video feed from your location for remote viewing and interaction.

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