Notes On Video

The GoPro HD Motorsports HERO Camera camera is currently $233.56, and the GoPro HD Motorsports HERO Camera is $289.95.

Have you got phonetic search tool Get for FCP? Good, cause it’s gone | Scott Simmons | The EditBlog This is a bit of a shocker; the Get phonetic search engine for Final Cut Pro has been pulled. Was it because of slow sales or the release of Final Cut Pro X ? Or is it some license disagreement between the software developers and the developers of the search engine itself? My colleague actually called Nexidia and was told there was some type of contractual issue between Nexidia and AV3 Software ... and with that Get is gone. The article goes on to explain that Nexidia's phonetic search - which was used in Get - is also used in Avid's ScriptSync and PhraseFind features, but also notes that prices for those have been rising. The Difference Engine: Beyond HDTV | N.V. | The Economist Forget 3D " the novelty has quickly worn off " it looks like we're going to go to beyond HD to 2160p "Quad HD" or 4320p "Ultra HD" It is no coincidence that...

Rule Boston Camera 's ongoing educational programs: Wednesday AUG 3 | 10am - 12 noon CAMERA SUPPORT SYSTEMS & ACCESSORIES Wayne Schulman , Video Products Manager for Manfrotto discusses video and hand-held camera supports, remote controls, monopods and shoulder rigs, plus matte boxes, follow focus products and techniques along with an intro to the Genus 3D Rig. Wednesday AUG 10 | 10am - 12 noon CODEC 101: USE, PURPOSE & THEORY Tom Talbot , Director of Technology for Rule, offers a "Big Picture" review of video compression covering various in-camera codecs such as XDCAM EX, AVCHD, ProRes, H.264 and more along with trade-offs, workflow complications and storage consequences. Thursday AUG 18 | 6pm - 8pm PUB NIGHT Director of Photography Tom Guilmette shares his experiences with social media from the basics of using the web and a website to promote himself as an industry professional to "going viral" and using the web as a teaching tool (and more). ...

Zacuto EVF Flip Review | Andrew Reid | EOSHD The Zacuto EVF seems to be getting a lot of love from users; just last night at the Rule Camera Pub Night, Paul Antico of Need Creative was telling me I had to get one. It's useful not just for DSLR users; owners of the NEX-FS100 and some other video cameras are finding them very useful in place of the camera's own EVFs. I have the Zacuto Z-Finder already, so in theory all I have to do is buy the Z-EVF-1S EVF Snap [$641.25] or the EVF Flip-Up Electronic View Finder [$736.25] and save $123.50 or $213.75 respectively compared to the price of the Z-Finder EVF , though given that a Z-Finder costs $360, maybe I want to get buy the combined unit and get a second Z-Finder at a discount! Andrew Reid offers an in-depth review: The Zacuto EVF is the start of a line of accessories that will be part of the landscape for a long time. This kit will eventually go hand in hand with DSLR video. In the future it’s logical to assume th...

ShotList , an iPhone/iPad app that allows filmmakers to schedule and track movie and video shoots has been upgraded to version 2.0, adding many features that were requested by users. Shotlist can also be used as a daily “To do” list on larger productions, storing essential notes and storyboards against scene numbers, and tracking progress throughout the day of the shoot by checking off scenes and shots as they are completed. New features in this release include: Select and move multiple scene and day strips at once. Duplicate scene and day strips, singly and in groups. See thumbnails of Storyboard frames right on the Details screen, and mark them off as you shoot (iPad) Show cast as names rather than numbers (User options provided in Settings give separate control for the Stripboard and Details screens. Added "INT/EXT" and "Green screen" options to location type reel, added "Morning", "Evening" and "Day For Night" options for t...

A couple of days after it was reported "in the wild" in Canada, and now the Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM Fisheye Ultra-Wide Zoom Lens [$1,499] is now available for pre-order at B & H (there's no ship date quoted, though B & H now only charges your credit card when the product ships; though they do send through an authorization.) I love wide-angle lenses, and would love to have one of these. Note that you only get 180 degree fish-eye if you have a full-sensor camera like the Canon 5D Mark II . L-Series Optics 180° Diagonal Angle of View Produces Circular & Full Frame Images Fast Ultra-Sonic Motor (USM) Autofocus Ultra-Low Dispersion (UD) Glass Floating Focus System Close Focus - 6.2" / 0.16 m Rear Gel Holder Up to 3 Pre-Cut Filters Subwavelength Structure Coating Protective Fluorine Lens Coating

This adapter claims to let you mount Canon EOS lenses to Sony NEX mount cameras (the page at B & H mentions the NEX-3 and 5, but I'm more interested in how it works with the Sony  NEX-FS100 ) and it gives you a manual aperture adjustment (not automatic from the camera, but we'll take what we can get.) It's $174.95. I don't think there are any other adapters that give you control over the aperture with Canon EOS lenses on an NEX camera; the Birger mount is supposed to, but it's still MIA and is going to cost several times this. The interesting sentence in the description is: This adapter has an aperture, which offers manual adjustment of exposure.  Does that mean it has a diaphragm of it's own, or that it controls the one in the lens? What's with the "123456" numbers on the side? Bower's own website doesn't seem to have a listing for this item yet, though it appears as a "New" item in the PDF of their catalog. NOTE: ...

Users report video-related freezes in Lion | Christian Zibreg | 9 to 5 Mac Reports of several different kinds of freezes, including one that seems to be QuickTime related: Other people report freezes when playing back video clips in iMovie, iPhoto, GarageBand and other apps. Moreover, the problem is persistent regardless of whether users have the latest version of Flash Player installed, or any version of it for that matter. Interview with MediaStorm Producer Rick Gershon | Matthew McAllister | MediaStorm An interview with Rick about gear. It includes a great picture (annotated) showing his traveling kit: Really to me this is about multiples of everything: I have 6 adapters, 6 batteries, 2 chargers, 5 cards, 2 circular ND filters, a 6 stop filter, and a few UV filters, 5 XLR cables, 2 Shotgun mics, 2 Sennheiser Wireless Kits, I have a couple of different small hot shoe mountable shotgun mics, 3 or 4 HDMI cables for my monitor, multiple tripod mount plates because they disappea...

Zacuto has posted the second part of The Great Camera Shootout 2011 , an exhaustive comparison of "large sensor" cameras. In this year's test they compared a number of high-end cameras including the Sony F35 , RED OME MX , ARRI Alexa , Panasonic AG-AF100 and Sony PMW-F3 , as well as a few Canon and Nikon DSLRs. This second episode looks at "Sensors and Sensitivity," including tests for low light sensitivity and sharpness. They also do some comparisons of the quality of uncompressed vs compressed images for those cameras that have the option of sending out an uncompressed signal. Note that in those situations, the difference you see is probably due to the different color space used (the uncompressed is either 4:4:4 or 4:2:2, while most compressed formats use 4:2:0.) Philip Bloom offers his thoughts on the test, noting that: For the vast majority [...] the cameras we are watching in this documentary are just fantasy anyway and something we just aspire to!! ...

I once produced a video recording of a software demonstration. To do it, I set up one video camera recording the projected demo, and another to record the presenter. Once that was recorded, I imported the two video tracks, synched them up - which was not that difficult - and then spent a lot of time finessing the whole thing together. This involved scaling the video of the presenter between a thumbnail and full screen through the hour long presentation. It was an exercise in tedium, and I had been lucky; my presenter was sitting down, not moving around a stage, which would have made the task much, much harder. If I'd had Singular Software's Presto , I probably could have done the job in half the time, and done a better job too. Presto is an external application which automatically inserts the slides, and lets you choose the arrangement of speaker and slide, before sending the results to your editing application for final finishing. For those that need to make video's of ...

Matte Painting - After Effects Breakdown "I Am Legend Spoof" | The VFX Bro | YouTube This video takes you step-by-step through producing three effects shots in After Effects . It's amazing what you can do these days with very little; a green screen and After Effects and away you go! Original iPhone Film Festival | website Enter the Original iPhone Film Festival , it's free! Deadline is September 30th Zacuto EVF Firmware 1.01.00 | Zacuto The first firmware update for the Zacuto EVF is now available. If includes: Audio meters enabled that are able to be positioned in any of the four corners. Battery meter can now be positioned in any of the four corners Audio loop through enabled Cinematic geography and the problem of genius | John August | JohnAugust.com A couple of weeks ago Rob Ager posted on YouTube a clip " Film psychology THE SHINING spatial awareness and set design " where he looked at parts of Kubrick's movie "The Shini...

I was pointed to Joe Simon's work by a post at John Nack's blog: [ Cool DIY aerial filmmaking .] I'm a big fan of low aerial shots, and have been intrigued by these video's shot using small remote-control helicopters. This one is very well done: Heli Test #1 from Mutiny Bikes on Vimeo . But then I saw this other video: Denton/Fort Worth TX from Mutiny Bikes on Vimeo . I really like this video; some of the choreography between camera and bikes is particularly impressive [see : sequences starting at 1:27, 1:54 and 2:38.] I'd like to know what rigs they are using; you can see the cameraman at 3:50 using some kind of Steadicam, though in some of the sequences the camera surely is on a bike or rollerblades, or similar, to keep up with the bikes! You can see more of Joe's work here: Joe Simmon Films

Bugs Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5: Systems with two graphics cards may export QuickTime movies with green artifacts | Support Note | Apple You may notice green artifacts when you export a QuickTime movie. This can occur on a system that has two graphics cards installed and a display attached to a DVI port on each card. Resolution : To work around this issue, only use Final Cut Pro X or Motion 5 with a single graphics card installed on your system. How To Remove The Audio Popping In Final Cut Pro X | AppleTechViewer | YouTube This may not be a bug, but if you have problems with popping in audio, this tutorial may help. It demonstrates using the free utility Smart Converter - ShedWorx (on the Mac App Store) to convert an audio track, and then use Synchronize Clips to attach the new audio to the original video clip. Not explained is why the popping problem is occurring in the first, though it's likely to be a difference between sample rates (which I've encountered no...

I'm doing pre-production planning for a documentary, and one of the first questions I've been trying to answer is; 24p or 30p? To be honest, I don't usually give a lot of thought to what format to use for short projects, but since this is going to be a fairly "big" one, I decided that I should think about whether I want to risk shooting at 24p, which is not a format I have used much. I dropped Jared Fleischer an email asking him what he was shooting in. He's in the middle of his second documentary feature, Sourlands , which he is shooting with the Panasonic GH2 . This is what he had to say: I'm shooting mostly at 24p (I'll explain "mostly" below.) I did spend some time thinking about frame rates before deciding on 24. -The big benefit of 24p, obviously, is that it looks the most filmlike. And since I'm going for other filmlike qualities by using a DSLR, it seemed like 24p was the right choice. -Another small benefit to 24p is th...

FS100 Scene Files from AbelCine | Andy Shipsides | CineTechnica Andy put together some scene files for the PMW-F3 some months ago, and now he's created some matching ones for the NEX-FS100: I put the two cameras together and made matching scene files that incorporate some of the settings I described in my FS100 dynamic range blog. Unfortunately, there’s no way to load scene files into the FS100 with a memory card, so you’ll have to dial in my settings manually to try them out. Gamma Mea Culpa | Alexis van Hurkman | AlexisvanHurkman.com Alexis notes a small correction to his book for the display gamma for digital Rec. 709 displays. Since publication, it has been brought to my attention via Charles Poynton’s own open letter to the industry that there, in fact, has never been a formal display gamma standard for Rec 709, as gamma was an implicit characteristic of CRT displays that was simply “built-in.” The actual gamma employed by CRT displays is quoted by Poynton as falling b...

Canon presents the latest in their professional camcorder and HD-SLR line-up featuring the XF305 with 50Mbps MPEG-2 4:2:2 recording to CF cards, multiple recording bit rates, resolutions, variable frame rates and a robust workflow. July 27 | 10am to 12n with Breakfast RSVP : events@rule.com Rule Boston Camera | 395 Western Avenue, Boston, MA 02135

Over the last couple of weeks there's been some buzz about a KickStarter campaign for an Open-Source video editor called Novacut . After reading the page and some of the associated links (see below) I was curious about the project, and managed to talk to Lead Developer & Project Visionary  Jason DeRose about this interesting project. As of today, the project is more than half way  to their $25,000 goal. Michael: What is Novacut? Jason: It’s two things. We’re building an editor, and we are also building a distribution platform. What’s your role? I’m the lead developer, and this is my brainchild too. I’ve had numerous help refining the idea from the other two co-founders, Tara Oldfield and Jeffrey Ballagh. Where did the idea come from then? My wife Tara is a photographer and when she got a 5D Mark II we started playing with the video, and started realizing there was going to be an explosion of new content producers because of the cost reduction. I’m an open s...

This past Thursday evening was the first meeting of the Boston Final Cut Pro Users Group since the release of Final Cut Pro X. With that in mind, I was dying to see what  Final Cut users thought about the whole thing. The meeting also featured a presentation by Steve Martin of Ripple Training specifically talking about Final Cut Pro X , so if ever there was going to be a focus group to talk about the new release, this was the one. As luck would have it, the first three people I spoke to were all Final Cut Pro 7 users who weren't sure whether they were going to upgrade to Final Cut Pro X . Interestingly, none of them seemed to be concerned about the lack of pro features; they were aware of all the kerfuffle on the internet, but weren't sure how it applied to them. They were waiting to see where the chips fell. I had more success with a couple of guys from a local cable access station. They already have some Final Cut Pro editing suites and aren't sure what they ar...

Ridley Scott: “I’ll Never Work Without 3D Again” | Today3D The director speaks - via satellite - at Comic Con Correction regarding hardware acceleration of Flash on Mac OS X Lion | Adobe GPU acceleration for Flash Player seems to be broken in Lion , and some people - even Adobe - thought Apple had broken it on purpose. Adobe has now released a clarification: The final release of Mac OS X Lion (10.7) provides the same support for Flash hardware video acceleration as Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6). The previous “Known Issue” described in a tech note suggesting that video hardware acceleration was disabled in Lion was incorrect and based on tests with a pre-release version of Mac OS X Lion that related to only one particular Mac GPU configuration. The Tao Colorist : DaVinci Resolve Lite | Patrick Inhofer | Tao of Color Today's Tao of Color newsletter collections together items on DaVinci Resolve Lite . Also, check out the list of features in Resolve Lite vs. the full rel...