Notes On Video

Canon Lens Price Increases | CanonRumors Canon has announced increased prices on six lenses, most of which aren't even shipping yet. Effective July 25h LaCie pushes back Thunderbolt Little Big Disk to late fall | Electronista No reason given from LaCie, though other manufacturers are shipping products. Low fly of Venice Italy in HD | F9photo | ProPic Spectacular low flying shot of Venice Italy shot along the Giudecca Canal past the Piazza San Marco and St Mark's Basilica (Basilica di San Marco in Italian). Hurlblog Interview - Frieder Hochheim of Kino Flo | Shane Hurlbut | Vimeo Hurlblog Interview Kino Part 2 | Shane Hurlbut | Vimeo Founder Freider Hochheim talks about the direction and future of lighting company Kino Flo. Shooting in Senegal (Part 1): Talent Comes First | Chris Collins | WideOpenCamera The trials and tribulations of shooting in Africa. Sony NEX-FS100 Accessory Mounting Plate | Berkey Systems Accessory plate mounts to the two 1/4-20...

News International Price Changes In recognition of changing exchange rates, Apple has adjusted the price of some of their software in the Mac App store. This means that in the UK, the price of Final Cut Pro X has gone up, while it Australia, there price has gone down. Save $100 on the Matrox Compress HD card | Matrox Until September 30, 2011, when you buy Compressor 4 , you can save $100 on the Matrox Compress HD card, bringing the cost to $395.[ Info at bottom of the page ] Tips How to Make Final Cut Pro X More Like Final Cut Pro 7 | J.R. Bookwalter | MacLife Making the timline look and feel more familiar, displaying audio meters, managing media, and other tips. Launching Final Cut 7 with FCPX Installed | geniusDV Explains problems Final Cut Pro 7 might have after installing FCPX and Motion 5 . Tutorials A free fifteen part course on color grading within FCPX | T Payton | FCP.co An impressive collection of instruction on color correcting within Final Cut ...

5 Keys to Writing a Summer Blockbuster | John Truby | FilmmakerIQ Five different types of storyline for a blockbuster Social Media Club July Book Club: Get Seen by Steve Garfield | Social Media Book Club | GoToMeeting Webinar featuring author Steve Garfield on Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 2pm EDT Amazon : Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business (New Rules Social Media Series) How the Polish Brothers Are Raking It In With a Stealth, No Budget Movie | Steve Pond | The Wrap A film made for virtually nothing that's made $200,000 in iTunes sales. iTunes : For Lovers Only Sony Spraycam NX70 | Jon Fauer | Film & Digital Times A user report of the weather-proof Sony HXR-NX70 . " The fact that it can shoot almost anywhere makes the NX70 a wonderful tool for any documentary or news crew. " B & H: HXR-NX70U NXCAM Compact Camcorder [$2,799.00] The FS100 Page that will grow.. | Sam Morgan Moore | Dslr4Real Despite the blog title, Sam ...

I'm at the Brattle Theater and a bluegrass band is playing. This is rather odd in and of itself; we are in Cambridge MA after all. There's garden chairs, flags and pink flamingos decorating the stage. I'm not sure if these are the remains of their July decorations, or were put out especially for the night.  It is Cambridge after all. There's beer being served, and the audience is animatedly talking to one another. I can't really hear what the lead singer is singing, but occasionally they get loud enough to rise above the cacophony. The band would be good if they were easier to hear, or maybe we should have sat closer. This is why Les Paul invented the electric guitar. This is a movie theater, right? Yes! It's the Trailer Treats & 2011 Trailer Smackdown event and we're not exactly sure if it's started yet. The Brattle Theatre is one of the last art house movie theaters in Boston, and the fact that they continue to survive in the heart ...

More excitement amongst the Avid user community as Avid held an event yesterday talking about their current plans and laying out a roadmap. There were, however, a couple of caveats, including: Anything discussed, described or shown was not necessarily going to make it into a future Avid product. No committments were being suggested made. But that was hardly enough to dampen the enthusiasm of Avid users. Randall Rike posted a short summary to the Avid Community Discussion , while Shane Ross offers more detailed impressions in a blog post covering cost, software update frequency and a new UI design: Nice update, great look without changing the tools and locations of buttons we have gotten used to. VERY sleek. I love the look of the Audio Tool. Over the past few years, Avid has significantly lowered their prices and increased the frequency of software updates, good news for existing - and possibly future - users. Having switched from Avid to Final Cut and now planning to move bac...

Slow motion at 1% using Optical Flow in FCPX | Emmanuel Duclos | FCP.co Pretty amazing slow motion effect created in Final Cut Pro X Presto 1.2 | Singular Software Free version 1.2 update of this presentation tool for Final Cut Pro adds: Four new layout templates, Slicker transitions between layouts, Smoother presenter tracking, Option for rounded slide corners Significant Update... | Jim Jannard | RedUser Info on EPIC-M and EPIC-X delivery, and some price increases are coming. The Visionaries; A Roundtable of Documentary Editors | Bridgette Bates | Sundance Institute Tips and observations from the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program Announcing the Winner of the Public Knowledge "Copyright School" Video Challenge! | Public Knowledge To counter the YouTube "Copyright School" Public Knowledge asked people to produce a more balanced educational video. Here's the winner. How to Achieve Cinema Like Video With Shutter Speed | Oli...

A few days ago I was asked whether the Canon HF G10 was a good camera for shooting short interview pieces, and I said I thought it was a great camcorder, though it lacks good audio inputs and won't give you the shallow depth-of-field of the large sensor cameras. But then I got a follow-up question: would the HF G10 produce video that was good enough for broadcast TV? If it's like most of my local TV station's, it will probably look almost as good as the stuff the station produces for it's news segments!; providing you don't make mistakes in how you use it. Backlighting or poor lighting, out of focus, or shaky camera work, those kind of issues will stand out more than the image quality itself There are some exceptions: if you want to make a documentary for the BBC, then you might have a problem, because the camera doesn't meet their technical specs! The BBC - and many other large broadcasters - have guidelines about what acquisition cameras they will accep...

Zacuto has announced a new rig specifically configured for the Sony NEX-FS100 . "We created a specific kit for the FS100 as it has a little different platform than the other video cameras like it. It still uses the trusty Universal Baseplate as the base but we had to add a spacer (Z-spacer) to raise the lens to the correct height for aligning the matte box," says Zacuto VP of sales and marketing, Mandy Rogers. While it's configured for the FS100 , the rig can still be used with other cameras. FS100 Filmmaker Kit Includes: Universal Baseplate w/ 12" Rods Z-Spacer Shoulder Pad 10" M/F Rods Zwiss Plate Zgrips V3 Z-Focus ZipGear Prime Lens Kit EVF Rod Mount 1/4 20" Lens Support A Zacuto EVF is not included. Zacuto says that they are also working on a new top handle for the FS100 that will be available late summer. B&H : Zacuto Z-FS100 Filmmaker Kit $3,330.00] Zacuto Store : FS100 Filmmaker Kit #Z-FS100 $3,515 Zacuto : Sony’s NEX FS100 ...

Tips FCPX Quick Tip: How To Use the Position Tool To Override the Magnetic Timeline | Danny Greer | Premiumbeat.com Yes! It's possible to override the FCPX magnetic timeline and create "space" in the timeline. Safe | Jonathan Eric Tyrrell | PostPost Jonathan looks at how to apply the Broadcast Safe Filter in FCPX , and how to avoid mistakes: In Final Cut Pro X you can also apply the new Broadcast Safe effect to a clip or a Compound Clip. However any corrections you make to an individual clip appear to be applied after Broadcast Safe in the effects pipeline. As before any adjustments you make afterwards will overrule the effect and if you’re not careful you could push the clip outside the regulatory requirements. Preparing for Final Cut Pro X | Silverado Systems An 18-page PDF that's free; for a Tweet or Facebook post. What kind of Mac should I edit with? Do I need a tower? How much RAM should I buy? What graphics card should I get? Canon XF workfl...

Netflix has upped their prices and some customers are seeing red. The announcement came yesterday that the price structure was changing: There are no longer any hybrid plans that offer access to DVDs and Internet streaming. There's one plan now for DVDs and a separate plan for streaming. Each costs $7.99 per month (for one disc at a time). To access discs and Web video, people have to pay for both plans and that means $15.98 a month. Even though I'm not a subscriber, I was hardly surprised, having read an article earlier this week that said that Netflix was facing increased costs from the studios. Whether the recent price rises are a result of those cost increases, or the fact that customers were continuing to order DVDs at a high rate as Netflix said in their announcement, remains unclear. One thing that has surprised me is that both yesterday and today I have run in to people complaining about these price increases. Clearly it has struck a nerve! CNN : Angry Netflix subs...

More than 10% of new TV's 3D-enabled by end of 2011 | 3D Radar Manufacturers predict between 10 and 20% of new televisions sold will be 3D in 2011: The competition between passive and active shutter glasses is being seen within the industry as a battle which will ultimately drive prices down for the consumer. Zoom H2n Handy Recorder | Samson Samson has announced the new H2n , a smaller recorder which offers stereo and surround recording, but lacks XLR inputs. Expected in August for $199. The H2n features our best microphones yet and is the only portable recorder with five mic capsules onboard. This design enables the H2n to offer four unique recording modes: Mid-Side (MS) stereo, 90° X/Y stereo, 2-channel and 4-channel surround sound. Panasonic AG-3DA1 Full HD 3D Camcorder Really Is Out Of This World! | Panasonic Blog Panasonic has provided NASA with AG-3DA1 3D Camcorders, BT-3DL2550 25.5” 3D LCD monitors and ruggedized Toughbook® laptop computers that have documented...

Patricia Aufderheide , a film-studies professor, and Peter Jaszi, a law professor at American University helped author this short, free guide for documentarians; the Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use, Documentary filmmakers have created, through their professional associations, a clear, easy to understand statement of fair and reasonable approaches to fair use. Fair Use is the right, in some circumstances, to quote copyrighted material without asking permission or paying for it. It is a crucial feature of copyright law. In fact, it is what keeps copyright from being censorship. You can invoke fair use when the value to the public of what you are saying outweighs the cost to the private owner of the copyright. It covers several topics, notably: ONE : Employing Copyrights Material As The Object Of Social, Political, Or Cultural Critique TWO : Quoting Copyrights Works Of Popular Culture TO Illustrate An Argument Or Point THREE : Capturing Copyrighte...

A Faster PluralEyes for Premiere Pro | Singular Software Singular has a preview of a new, faster version of PluralEyes : Thanks to taking advantage of multiple processors and general algorithm improvements, the new PluralEyes can be 3x to 10x faster than previous versions. You can try it out now by downloading from the link below. This will eventually be a free upgrade for all users, but we have a few more tricks up our sleeve to implement before we release to everyone. What Price Pro for Hire? | Jennifer O'Rourke | Videomaker After Sunday's link from Jared Abrahms,  How Much To Charge For Camera Work. What’s Your Day Rate? , comes this link to an article - from a couple of years ago - that offers a couple of stories about bad decisions made based on price: I wonder sometimes, why people are so willing to pay an attorney $100 an hour, or and accountant $75 an hour, without really knowing the amount of time these skilled professionals really put into their cases, but t...

It seems that with all the Final Cut Pro X excitement over the last couple of weeks, I totally missed Panasonic's announcement of the AG-AC7PJ Shoulder Mount AVCHD Camcorder . Panasonic AG-AC7 The AG-AC7 is a surprisingly affordable $1,175, and the press release mentions: A variety of manual functions, affording shooters enhanced creativity, includes Manual Focus, Manual Iris, Manual Shutter Speed, Manual White Balance and On-Screen Assist Functions (Zebra Pattern/Luminance Level/Histogram). The AC7PJ is touch-screen driven, with controls set simply by touching the 2.7-inch LCD screen, making operation intuitive and easy. I'd want to check it out first before buying, as I'd be concerned about how easy it is to operate the manual functions through the touch screen. I already own the AG-HMC70U , which is a previous generation shoulder-mount AVCHD camcorder from Panasonic that is now discontinued. I really like a shoulder-mount camcorder for doing stand-up interview...

First-Person Final Cut Pro X, Day One: Completely at Sea | Matthew Levie | TUAW An interesting blog of Matt's experience, including his miss-conceptions experienced along the way: It turns out, of course, that all of these basic features are in the program, but the documentation isn't very well written. You'd think that if they were going to radically change the way we edit, they'd throw us a lifeline and walk us through it. In fact, when I looked up split edit, it proposed a really Byzantine five-step process involving a ripple trim. It only takes three with a rolling trim. Of course, in FCP 7 it only took one step. That's not promising. There's also a followup: First-Person Final Cut Pro X, Day Five: Trimming and Closing Thoughts So today I had to go back to a multicamera FCP 7 project and, truthfully, it was quite a relief. FCP X – Initial Reactions | Tim McLaughlin | MediaStorm The prospect of waiting years for FCP X to mature is a depressing thought...

Carl Zeiss Compact Prime CP.2 Lenses | Nigel Cooper | DVUser Zeiss' Compact Prime lenses are expensive, but if you're serious about lenses, these are reportedly the bees knees. Nigel gives an in-depth review, wrapping up by stating that these are "probably the best you can buy for digital video filmmaking." The first great thing about these lenses is that there is no focus breathing, unlike photographic stills lenses, which are not designed for video. Even some ENG style video lenses suffer from focus breathing. These CP.2 lenses are free of any horrible focus breathing phenomenon so your pull-focus shots will look amazing. They are also pretty much free of any colour aberrations and vignetting around the edges of the image. These modern CP.2 prime lenses with their ultra tight tolerances ensure low distortion, high resolution and superb colour rendition resulting in very sharp and punchy images. How to ensure proper Audio/Video sync through a QuickTime conversi...

Sony will stop manufacturing the MiniDisc Walkman in September. It's unclear if that means they have ceased manufacture of all MiniDisc devices, but it's probably as close as makes no difference. They do say that - for the moment - they will continue to manufacture the MiniDisc discs, but the format is definitely on it's last legs. Not that it was ever that popular. I have a Sharp MiniDisc recorder that I bought probably 15 years ago; before the solid-state digital recorders became available. It worked well; I particularly liked that your could jump from track to track rather than having to fast forward with a tape recorder. The other advantage was that the MiniDisc's are "relatively" inexpensive, and you could use them to archive the audio you recorded. Sharp MiniDisc Recorder With the availability and falling cost of solid-state recorders, I bought a solid-state recorder about five years ago, and the MiniDisc recorder hasn't gotten much use ...

7 Things FIlmmakers Eat For Breakfast | Elliot Grove | Raindance Some great - and different - tips to get you going in the morning! 4. Exercise A healthy body means a healthy mind. Don't ignore it. It's not just about going to the gym either. Learn some of the stretching exercises like Yoga or Pilates. Stretching exercises release energy, keep you supple and healthy and fights aging. What color are the sash and bonnet in this painting? Wrong. | Esther Inglis-Arkell | IO9 Interesting article about how the names of colors have changed. Also check xkcd article for an amusing take on how men and women see - or describe - colors. At the time this was painted, over 200 years ago, they would have been considered yellow. Colors aren't as eternal as we imagine them to be. The way our cultures perceive colors changes over time, just like everything else. xkcd : Color Survey Results How Much To Charge For Camera Work. What’s Your Day Rate? | Jared Abrams | Wide Open Cam...

I received an email from Royalty Free Music Library , which was interesting both because I've never bought music from them, and because of the subject matter. I'm not too sure how I got on their mailing list, but this email had some interesting news about YouTube: Important YouTube News If you use production music in your YouTube videos, THIS IS IMPORTANT TO YOU! Youtube faces an increasingly difficult job making sure that any music used on the site is properly owned by the account owner, or properly licensed by the account owner. In an effort to make sure your videos do not get muted or improperly removed, all of our music will be ingested into the YouTube system over the coming weeks for easy recognition. If you have used our music in your YouTube videos, you may get an email stating the following: "Your video may have content that is licensed by BFM Digital. No action is required on your part." There is no action required on your part, and your videos...