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Thursday, June 07, 2012

Quick Links

Don't Mean To Be Alarmist, But The TV Business May Be Starting To Collapse
| Henry Blodget | Business Insider
Interesting suggestion that television is in the same place as newspapers was a few years back...i.e. heading for doom...
We still consume some TV content, but we consume it when and where we want it, and we consume it deliberately: In other words, we don't settle down in front of the TV and watch "what's on." And, again with the exception of live sports, we've gotten so used to watching shows and series without ads that ads now seem extraordinarily intrusive and annoying. Our kids see TV ads so rarely that they're actually curious about and confused by them: "What is that? A commercial?"


Anatomy of a video file | Bryan Hastings | Macworld
A look at MPEG4 and AVCHD:
AVCHD (pronounced by its initials) stands for Advanced Video Coding High Definition. It arrived on the scene in 2006, is more fully featured than MPEG-4 and is rapidly gaining broad acceptance. Think of AVCHD as a kind of MPEG-4 "Plus’’. That’s because AVCHD is a container format that includes the MPEG-4 format, but tosses a lot of other stuff into the mix, like coding for audio, writing to different media including DVD and Blu-Ray discs, and Digital Rights Management, such as copy protection.


DV101: Raw Deal: What Does It Mean to Record Raw Imagery? | Jay Holben
| Creative Planet Network
And a look at what RAW means:
raw describes data that is recorded without any image processing or compression. After the analog-to-digital conversion happens at the camera’s sensor, you are recording the “raw” data from the sensor’s photosites.


OWC SSD in 17″ MacBook Pro | Vincent Laforet | Blog
Vincent recommends going SSD and replacing your CD/DVD drive with something like this: OWC / Other World Computing Data Doubler Optical to SATA HD Converter Bracket Kit for Mac Laptops with 240GB SSD and Optical Drive External Enclosure [$325.99] and $20 rebate through June 30.

Now that I think about it, that might be a pretty good idea; given that the DVD drive in my MacBook doesn't work any more!
I’ve removed the optical drive (what’s a CD/DVD anyway these days!?) and replaced it with a 256GB SSD from OWC (technically there is 240GB of writable space – the other 16GB is allocated for real time redundancy and error correction). So now my computer has two drives – a 256GB SSD, as well as the original 1TB, 7200 rpm drive that came installed in the laptop. In an ideal world I would have two SSD drives in there.


Stereo3D Toolbox 4.0 | FxFactory | NoiseIndustries
FxFactory 3.0.4 includes support for new versions of Stereo3D, both Pro and regular:
The advanced stereoscopic 3D post-production tool now supports Final Cut Pro X through a newly redesigned on-screen UI. The new version is a free update for existing customers. Compatible with Final Cut Pro 6, 7 and X, Motion 3, 4 and 5, After Effects CS3, CS4, CS5, CS5.5 and CS6.


John Schwartzman, ASC teams with director Michel Gondry to create an eye-popping look for the vigilante adventure The Green Hornet | Iain Stasukevich
| American Society of Cinematographers
This is from last year - and the movie wasn't that great - but they evidently shot it using a lot of "old" techniques, and this article describes some of them:
Schwartzman accentuated Reid’s alter ego with complex lighting cues. In a scene at a Chinese restaurant that’s filled with background extras and waiters buzzing between the tables, the camera dollies in on Reid as the ambient lights dim and a spotlight appears overhead. As he launches into a soliloquy, everyone else on the set freezes. At the end of his monologue, the camera dollies back, the lighting returns to normal, and all the players resume their actions.


Introducing Adobe SpeedGrade CS6 | Eric Philpott | Adobe
Adobe's new color grading tool SpeedGrade has it's own blog:
Welcome to Moving Colors, the new SpeedGrade blog! SpeedGrade CS6 is a new addition to Adobe Creative Suite and Creative Cloud and gives you professional color grading tools to take your visual storytelling to the next level.

Color grading used to be the domain of a select few, in part because of the high costs of the technology. But that has changed. Now you can do sophisticated color correction and look design on a laptop if you want to.


Why You’re Broke and Other Video Professionals Aren’t | Kris Simmons
| Dare Dreamer
Tips on marketing yourself:
Success Principle #3 – Get Religious About Staying In Touch With Your Network
I’ve worked with hundreds of videographers since 2007 and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that someone has their marketing toolbox in place, they network all the time but when I ask what they are doing to stay in touch with their network week in and week out, all I hear are crickets chirping on the other end of the phone.


New part numbers reveal Apple to refresh most of Mac lineup at WWDC
| Neil Hughes | AppleInsider
Everyone thinks Apple will announce some new hardware next week at the WWDC, but what?
A total of 14 new Mac models arriving next week would mean that Apple may upgrade an uncharacteristically large number of its computers at once. At present, a total of 20 different Mac models, not including build-to-order options, are listed in Apple's store among its five product lineups: MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, iMac and Mac Pro.


A man who won't forget Ray Bradbury | Neil Gaiman | The Guardian
When Bradbury found out that he wanted to be a writer, he invited him to his office and spent half a day telling him the important stuff: if you want to be a writer, you have to write. Every day. Whether you feel like it or not. That you can't write one book and stop. That it's work, but the best kind of work. My friend grew up to be a writer, the kind who writes and supports himself through writing.



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