Notes On Video

More on the Panasonic AG-AF100 Peter Parnham at Crews.tv has been spending some time with the Panasonic AG-AF100 , and one thing he's found is that - in the limited tests they've performed - using the AG-AF100's HD-SDI out to capture video doesn't give much image improvement compared to using the camera's AVCHD compression. It's unclear whether that's due to the test (which didn't include much motion) or because the AG-AF100 only puts out 8-bit video out the HD-SDI port. Crews.tv : AVC Codec Curveball Meanwhile, El Skid writes that he wants to hate the AG-AF100 because it threatens to kill the DSLR revolution. I want to hate it, because it is the moment the DJ announces the last song, it’s three minutes of extra time, it’s the recess bell. The video community will go back to being the video community and the stills community will return to being the stills community, just now with moving image attached. elskid.com : Why I want to hate the Panaso...

101 Things I Learned (TM) in Film School  i s a collection of ideas, thoughts and observations about film making, bound together in a handy little book. The author, Neil Landau gave a book reading recently at the Harvard Book Store , along with editor and illustrator Matthew Frederick . Frederick, who wrote 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School   and is the creator, editor and illustrator of the series, started the event with a short introduction and some prizes for those who knew their Boston movie and TV trivia (I think I knew the answers to two of the questions; but I didn't, for example, know that Shutter Island was Martin Scorsese's highest grossing film worldwide.) In the 101 Things series, each topic gets two pages; one side is an illustration and the other side is a short description/explanation. Think of them as more like ideas than essays. But that's the point of the series; a quick transfer of information. Topics include: A movie is a novel turned ...

Jeff Regan on the Panasonic AG-AF100 In the latest 16x9 Cinema podcast they interview Jeff Regan, founder and owner of Shooting Star Video . He talks about the evolution of video technology, bringing the cinema aesthetic to video, traditional video camcorders vs HDSLR gear, and the vital role collaboration plays in producing creative works. He also talks about the new Panasonic AG-AF100 4/3 micro camcorder and answers a number of our questions about the camera, bit rate obession, AVCHD codec vs other codecs, etc. 16x9Cinema: Digital Convergence Episode 39 - Jeff Regan of Shooting Star Video iMovie Check For Studio Names The new movie trailer templates in iMovie checks to make sure you aren't using a trademarked studio name like Universal Studios or Paramount. Of course, you could always slightly miss-spell them! Engadget : iMovie blocks studio names in new trailers Shooting Rescue Me Tom Houghton , ASC and American Cinematographer writer Iain Stasukevich discuss T...

Daniel Berube of BOSFCPUG has started the Boston DSLR Meetup on Meetup.com; and there's going to be a Meetup on Sat Nov 20 @ 2:30pm at the Somewhat North of Boston Film Festival - SNOB! Meetup.com : Boston DSLR Meetup

Features for Final Cut Philip Hodgetts looks at the the new iMovie and thinks about what of these features he'd like to see added to future releases of Final Cut . [ Philip also doesn't think there will be an update to Final Cut until 2012 ] Philip Hodgetts : Apple Keynote - Back to the Mac: Implications for Final Cut Pro One manufacturers 3D hardware doesn't work with anothers... Philip Johnston reports that the Samsung 3D LET-TV doesn't work with the P anasonic SDT750 3D Camcorder . I'm assuming he means he can't just plug one into the other, and I imagine that if he burned a 3D Blu-ray spec disc (assuming he has the software to) he could play it. Of course this is an extra step, and does suggest that it you want to buy one of these camcorders, you want to think about getting a Panasonic 3D TV as well. HDWarrior: WARNING Samsung 55″ 3D LED TV not compatible with Panasonic’s SDT750 3D camcorder Marshall 5" V-LCD50 HDMI review Sneha...

Celebrating Ten Years of SuperMeets - Join the FCPUG Network for the largest gathering of FCP, Avid and Adobe editors, HDSLR filmmakers and digital content creators and Gurus on the Planet on Friday, January 28th. SuperMeet.com: Tenth Annual San Francisco FCPUG SuperMeet

The local Apple store had iLife 11 , though none of the new MacBook Air's. They warned me that it required Snow Leopard . The Read Me notes that 10.6.3 or later is required, and that only iPhoto , iMovie and GarageBand have been updated.

From the "Making of" documentary for " The World at War ," a 26 part TV series on World War II produced by Thames Television in the early 1970's. We were trying very hard to get something that was really authentic. We didn’t want to have a lot of fake material, etc., and we’d have endless discussions about ‘is this genuine, is it training, was it shot after the action, is it actually a news reel cameraman out there at the front shooting?' A lot of the British material was all re-inacted afterwards, they’d get soldiers trotting through the sand, firing off Bren guns, artillery pieces, etc. A lot of the Russian stuff was again set up, but very much more elaborately set up. Some of it was very hard to spot that it was set up. A lot of the German stuff was much more genuine, and the American stuff was much more genuine. You’re then cutting all this material together, you might have a lot of film that you know came from that particular battle at that partic...

The Camera Company, Dedham MA is having a "Manfrotto Day" this Saturday, October 23rd. Manfrotto Specialist Stan Kaplan will be demoing tripods, still and video heads. Also on display; Gitzo tripods, Lastolite and Elinchrom lighting products and Genus DSL camera rigs/accessories. The Camera Company

At today's Apple event, it was announced that: iDVD Lives! There had been rumors that iDVD would be removed from the suite, but like the creature that couldn't be killed, it is still in the suite. No demo, and I wouldn't be surprised if it hasn't actually changed, but lets be grateful for small mercies. iMovie '11 -Steve Jobs introduced iMovie 11 , saying that their goal is "to do extremely sophisticated editing, really easy." The new features are: All new audio editing, One step effects People Finder New themes Movie trailers Randy Ubillos came up to demo the new release. It features the same project and event views. Audio Editing : They've added audio wave forms displayed below the clips. It has a nice simple interface for adjusting audio level and for creating an audio fade in and out for a clip by simply clicking and dragging. In addition, you can select part of a clip, and then adjust the level (and fade in and out points) for th...

During the making of " The World at War ,"- a TV documentary series about World War II - one of the issues the producers had to deal with was the authenticity of the film they used. Whenever possible, they wanted to use actual footage of events, not staged footage taken later. As one example, they showed film of a battle that the Soviets recreated; with the camera carefully located in the center of the action. Our rule was; don’t invent, don’t reconstruct, don’t use material that you know to have been reconstructed, unless you absolutely have to, and don’t do so even then without saying that you’re going to. We used to look very suspiciously at, but we sometimes did use, battle scenes where the camera is suspiciously steady, or is apparently quite safe in a supposedly dangerously exposed position. Jeremy Isaacs, Producer ‘ The World At War ’ I was reminded of this while watching the latest episode of Top Gear on Monday night [BBCAmerica]. Top Gear is one of my favorit...

Getting Busy Today, some articles about creativity and how to get your project off the ground: Chase Jarvis: 7 Habits for Creativity + The Missing Link 1. Get into adventures. Instead of saying no, say yes. Whether it’s agreeing going to the South China Sea or to Sundance festival or the grocery store.  2. Devour popular culture. Examine the work of other artists, movies, books, magazines, the interwebs. [...] And once you have the inspiration, you want to think about how you go about it. Sheri offers an interesting set of suggestions that applies to anyone embarking on a project, whether they are using crowdfunding or not. Sheri Candler: Top 5 Ways to Fail at Crowdfunding I do get frustrated by the ones who contact me because they have embarked without thinking through the strategy or they are very close to the time limit and very far from their goal. I thought it might be helpful to list out some ways to fail in this endeavor so you can be sure to avoid these...

I'm betting there won't be anything about Final Cut , but here's what I'd like to see at today's announcements: A much better iMovie . They are going to update iLife , and I really hope they fix iMovie . The current version was an interesting try, but I don't think it made anybody happy. iMovie for the iPad ; and I mean iMovie , not the bastardized thing they released for the iPhone . Some sort of announcement about the future of Final Cut More out there things I'd like to see: HyperCard for the iPad . Maybe not HyperCard itself, but an end-user authoring/publishing tool for the iPad/iPhone would be really cool! Bu-ray support. [ Yeah, it's not going to happen ] Announcement Apple is going to purchase Adobe [ and free ponies for everyone! ]

For want of a better term, the big-chip video cameras (the Sony NEX-VG10 and the Panasonic AG-AF100 ) are getting a lot of attention at the moment. Will they kill the HDSLR? The Sony NEX-VG10 is a decidedly flawed camera; stiff lens, moire effects, lack of ND filters and manual audio controls, to name just some of the limitations, yet the price is attractive, and it can produce some nice results if you know how to use it. Philip Johnston has blogged a couple of times about his experience with the camera over the last couple of weeks, and has now posted a "conclusion." His is a decidedly professional perspective: This is a hard one…on one hand we have a superb shallow depth of field camcorder and on the other hand limitations.  [...]…well surprisingly the “look” grows on you, as long as you take on board it’s limitations and use manual focus, turn it down to 0dB, turn it onto 24Mbs, take off auto white balance the camcorder performs very well in daylight. I think he ...

DATE : Wednesday, November 4th TIMES : 6:00PM - 9:00PM VENUE : YAWKEY THEATER WGBH 1 Guest Street Boston, MA 02135 6pm Doors open 7pm: The Avid File-Based Workflow Presented by Bob Russo - Avid 8pm: The FCP File-Based Workflow Presented by: Doug Hynes - AV3 Software, Kai Pradel - MediaSilo, Gary Adcock - Production and Post Workflow Consultant Register: BOSFCPUG & BAVUG Joint Mixer

AppleTV Steve Jobs famously described the first AppleTV as a hobby, but they just announced that they sold 250,000 of the 2nd gen AppleTV in the last quarter. Oddly enough, I have no idea if that's impressive or not. If you have an AppleTV, MacWorld has an article about using a secondary Mac Mini to stream to the device. MacWorld : A better Apple TV workflow [ UPDATE : Jonathan Seff at MacWorld speculates about what it means: Jobs touts Apple TV sales figures ] More on the Panasonic AG-AF100 Zacuto got to spend a bit of time with the Panasonic AG-AF100 , and tried it out with some different rigs and their upcoming EVF viewfinder. Zacuto : The Panasonic AG-AF100 Video: Camera Cinemized by Zacuto HDSLR Video Shooting Tips National Geographic has a series of short videos with shooting tips from John Burcham that covers; basics, stabilizing the camera, capturing the moment and accessories. National Geographic : DSLR HD Video Tips: Shooting Basics Dave Dugdale got h...

Wow! Canon releases another firmware update for the Canon 5D Mark II: This firmware update (Version 2.0.8) incorporates the following changes and fixes. Fixes a phenomenon in which movies are not taken at the shooting mode registered in the user's settings if a shooting mode Aperture priority (or Shutter priority) is registered in any of the camera's user settings (C1, C2, C3) and the user attempts to shoot a movie. Fixes a phenomenon in which the shutter will not release when pressing the shutter button when the auto power off function is set to "on". Fixes a phenomenon in which overexposure occurs when shooting a Live View shooting simulation with the ISO speed set to L. Fixes a phenomenon in which the settings of the Speedlite transmitter ST-E2 revert to the default settings when both the camera and the ST-E2 are set to auto power off. Fixes a phenomenon in which the Macro Ring Lite (MR-14EX, MT-24EX) and slave flash do not sync while shooting wirelessly. ...

The second annual New England Broadcast and Cable Expo will be held Thursday, November 10 at the DCU Center, Worcester, MA . The event will be held in conjunction with the 13th annual Video Educators of New England fall conference and the New England region Society of Broadcast Engineers Ennes Workshops . Each of the three events offers the region’s premier opportunity to learn, network and see firsthand emerging trends and technology. Admission to the expo floor is free and open from 10:00 am to 7:00 pm. The DCU Center provides a state of the art conference center, centrally located with access via public transportation or ample local parking at reduced rates. New England Broadcast and Cable Expo : Info Page Society of Broadcast Engineers : New England Ennes Workshop Video Educators of New England

What are Picture Styles? Not sure what Picture Styles do? The 5D Mark II Team has a tutorial. If you're shooting video, and will be able/plan to color correct in your editing application, you should follow the "final tip" and use a flat picture style. 5DMarkII: 5D Mark II PICTURE STYLES TEST Cheap lens or cheap Camera? DigitalRevTV asks the question; Which is best, an Expensive camera with a cheap lens or a  Cheap lens and expensive camera ? and then takes a Canon 1D Mark IV with a Sigma 28-300mm f/something (3.5-6.3) and puts it up against a Canon 550D (i.e. Canon T2i ) with a Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L . They were looking at still photos rather than video, but it was still a surprise to me that the 550D was so good that the lens differences were more important that the differences between the cameras. A video test, would make the differences between the cameras even less noticeable as so much of the image is thrown away. From personal experience, I real...

Two events being held at Rule Boston Camera on October 27th: ELEVATE YOUR CLASSROOM WITH AVID 2-4pm for Educators Media Composer 5.0, RED, Sibelius and Pro Tools
 Join Avid and Rule Boston Camera for an exclusive event featuring complete end-to-end solutions built to enhance your school’s video and audio programs. Snacks + Drinks Provided RSVP Now AVID Media Showcase 6-8 pm for Everyone Join us for a unique showcase of the two most significant solution rollouts today—Avid® ISIS® 5000 shared storage and Media Composer® 5 editing systems. Avid ISIS 5000 is an advanced video storage solution that helps you make the most of your media—at a price you can afford. Featured demos include: Profile of the ISIS file system and hardware Review of models, options, system set-up, network configuration and management console Outline of the integration of ISIS 5000 into NewsVision, the latest advanced, affordable newsroom production solution Media Composer 5 is the wo...

Wednesday, October 20 10am - 12noon Rule's Tom Talbot and Engineering Staff provide an overview of Panasonic's new, all-in-one 3D camera, the AG-3DA1 3D and the accompanying Panasonic BT-3DL2550 25.5" 3D LCD monitor. 3D glasses provided! Rule | Boston Camera Register by email: events@rule.com