Notes On Video

Adam Wilt writes up his experience of using the 5D Mark II for ENG (Electronic New Gathering) at NAB. In general he was happy: Overall? I’d say that shooting stable handheld ENG-style video with the 5D MkII was no more difficult (and possibly even easier) than shooting with any decent handheld HD camcorder. A shoulder-mount camcorder would have given me more stable results, but at a loss of some mobility—and at a cost in weight and bulk. Though he did note some issues: the lack of auto-focus, difficulty using the LCD to monitor for anything other than eye-level viewing, and exposure issues: Changing the aperture, whether automatically in Program or Tv modes or manually in Manual or Av modes, causes the video to stutter, repeating three frames or so at the time the change occur Still, he'd do it again. Would I do it again? Well, yes, actually, I would. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised at how well the 5D MkII worked as a run’n’gun / docco / ENG camera. Adam Wilt: …Winding dow...

Filmmaker Chico Colvard recently completed his first film, Family Affair . Colvard was a corporate litigator who almost stumbled into filmmaking – and this project – when he started video taping interviews with his family nine years earlier. He discussed his movie, and the production process, at the Discussing the Documentary panel at the recent Independent Film Festival of Boston . The following is an edited transcript of his comments: My story begins with an accidental shooting when I was ten years old. I had discovered one of my father’s rifles and I was very in to Rifleman at the time. The gun went off and I accidently shot my sister in the leg and she thought she was going to die. Believing she was going to die she revealed to our mother, and then later to the police at the hospital, that our father had been sexually abusing her and our sisters for years. The family came apart. But for me that’s not really the story. For me the story became trying to make sense of why my s...

Some purchasers are discovering that the Avatar Blu-ray disc won't run on players with older firmware . The solution should be simply; update the firmware; assuming the user a) knows to do it and b) knows how! - I guess I should be glad I got a Blu-ray Player that has a wi-fi connection....except I haven't had it check for updates in a while...

The rumor about the Canon 60D having a 13mp sensor has already been put to rest: now it's gone up to a more believable 18mp sensor (just like the 7D and T2i.) Which all makes sense, though I have to say I was intrigued by the idea of a camera with a smaller resolution chip (not that I think I'll be getting a 60D unless it does something absolutely amazing like....uhhh..well, auto focus while shooting, now that would be amazing. But I'm not expecting it. But the latest rumor at Canonrumors.com suggests it will have some new feature not available elsewhere... Couldn't Canon please leave one of these at a bar so we can all find out what the story is ?

PluralEyes is a tool that automatically synchronizes multiple audio (and their attached video) clips. The cool thing about it is that you don't need to use clappers or time code; it "looks" at the audio tracks and figures out how to match them up. If you're doing multi-camera (or dual-sound) recording, then this could really be a god-send. It's already available for Final Cut Pro and Sony Vegas , and now they have announced support for Adobe Premiere CS4 & 5 . PluralEyes for Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 and CS5 will be available in beta in April with final release in Q2. Apple Final Cut Pro and Sony Vegas Pro is available now for $149 USD and users can also download a fully functional 30-day free trial version .

This starts today! Vincent Laforet is giving a 3 day HDDSLR cinema workshop starting April 30th, and creativeLIVE is streaming it on the web. You can watch the stream live for free, or you can "purchase" a copy afterwards for $79 if you miss some or all of it. He's posted a fairly indepth schedule for the program: SCHEDULE FOR UPCOMING CREATIVELIVE HDDSLR WORKSHOP

You can download trial versions of Adobe Creative Suite 5 from Adobe's site . The upgrade for the Adobe Creative Suite 5 Production Premium Upgrade from CS4 [Mac] is almost $20 cheaper on Amazon, and the Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 Upgrade is a little cheaper too, though Amazon lists ship dates of May 25th at the moment.

Universal Studios Hollywood is running a short film competition with an $8,000 prize to promote the launch of the theme park's " King Kong 360 3-D " attraction. The competition invites filmmakers to make a one-to-three minute film short that depicts the havoc Kong might wreak had he stomped though their hometowns as he makes his way back to Universal Studios Hollywood without revealing the figure's whole face or whole body in any of the scenes. Entries can be submitted through June 7, 2010 and must include the following three key phrases for consideration: "King Kong 360 3-D," "Universal Studios Hollywood," and "Summer 2010." All entrants must be 18 years of age. Details and submission info can be found at www.zooppa.com/contests/king-kong . Eleven winning shorts will be announced on June 14, 2010. The winning film short will be awarded a grand prize of $8,000, with second and third place winning $3,000 and $1000, respectively. ...

Check Philip's page for pictures from the New York City Meetup last night, information about a Filmmakers workshop in June in Florida, and a short interview with the creative director of the Hanson video that was shot using the 7D and Nikon AI lenses (the video, an homage to a scene from The Blues Brothers , is actually really good!)

The Oscar-winning director is helping to build a high-resolution 3-D camera on the next-generation Mars rover. The camera will be mounted atop Curiosity, the next rover mission to Mars, set for launch next year. CBSnews: James Cameron Helping NASA With 3-D Camera

Philip Bloom reports there will be a live twitter chat with “ House ” 5DmkII team of Director Greg Yaitanes, DP Gale Tatersall and Post Guru Allen Palmer It’s on Friday the 30th April at 10am PST

MusicRevolution.com is an online marketplace for production, or stock music. There are four purchase options for customers, including single tracks, CDs, subscriptions and an Internet music stream. “To date, the production music business has largely been conducted offline. With the launch of MusicRevolution, we believe that this is about to change. As an online platform, MusicRevolution enables buyers to find and license the best stock music using affordable and easy to understand royalty-free license terms. And MusicRevolution’s Internet music stream for retail, business and website background music is the first offering of this type to use production music,” says Chris Cardell, Co-Founder of MusicRevolution LLC.

FilmFellas Cast 7: Documentaries “Masters of Non-Fiction” features documentary filmmakers David Grubin, who has 10 Emmys and numerous awards for groundbreaking series’ for PBS Television ( The American Experience , The Jewish Americans , RFK , FDR ), Ondi Timoner 2009 Sundance Grand Jury Prize for We Live In Public & DIG and Sean Dunne, the next generation of web based documentarians and Sundance Official Selection for The Archive . The participants discuss getting to know your subject on a personal level to make a more insightful film.

Luca Visual FX, has released Light Box 1.0 for the FxFactory platform that works with Adobe After Effects CS3 / CS4 / CS5, Apple Final Cut Pro , Apple Motion and Apple Final Cut Express . Light Box 1.0 includes 9 customizable light and image enhancement GPU-accelerated plug-ins and transitions. Highlights include: Light Flicker : Simulates TV ambient, vintage projector flickering and disco strobe lights. Light Pulse : pulsing lights of any speed, color and style. Multicolor Gradient : overlay a variety of color gradients of modifiable tonality, size, and intensity over images. Multicolor Vignette : apply a smooth, multicolored vignette onto images. Regional Light : localized light effects, with or without flicker. Stylizer : a video stylization plug-in. Vivid Touch : combine contrasting effects, like glow and sharpness, to achieve either more vivid images or dream-like atmospherics. Burn Wipe : dynamic light and burnout wipe transitions of any intensity, thickness and c...

After Effects NY meeting 6:45PM-9:00PM on Thursday 29th Philip Bloom will be speaking about DSLR filmmaking and also showing footage from the Great Zacuto Shootout.

Noted last week , Apple did some fiddling with OS X 10.6.3 which would make it possible for Adobe to address the GPU, and now Adobe has released the Flash Player "Gala" Preview release : Introduces support for H.264 video hardware decoding on Mac OS X 10.6.3, the most recent release of Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Gala allows developers to preview Flash Player with hardware acceleration of H.264 video on supported Mac computers equipped with the following GPUs: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M. The hardware acceleration functionality in the Gala preview release of Flash Player is expected to be included in an update following the release of Flash Player 10.1.

Vincent Laforet is giving a 3 day HDDSLR cinema workshop starting April 30th, and creativeLIVE is streaming it on the web. You can watch the stream live for free, or you can "purchase" a copy afterwards for $79 if you miss some or all of it. [ UPDATE ] He's now posted a fairly indepth schedule for the program: SCHEDULE FOR UPCOMING CREATIVELIVE HDDSLR WORKSHOP

The Gorillapod Magnetic ( $24.95 @ Amazon ) is just like a regular Gorillapod, but with magnets on it's feet. They say it can hold up to 11.5 oz (325g) which I'm assuming is the weight the magnets can hold, not just the weight the legs can carry... If that's correct, while it's billed for use with compact cameras and mini camcorders (like the Flip) it could also carry something like the Sony HDR-CX110 - which is 9 ounces (255g) including battery - making it a useful alternative (or addition) to a Window Suction Cup Mount .

Sonic Solutions is big on the " next big thing " in home video — 3D. Most interesting is their announcement of Roxio Video Labs 3D , a consumer product for 3D authoring - unfortunately, other than the press release, there are no details yet about what exactly this product does, or how it works. Professional 3D Authoring Technologies 3DAccess is a program that provides professional authoring facilities to prepare 3D premium video entertainment for distribution on Blu-ray 3D and electronically over the web to 3D-enabled consumer electronic devices. Digital 3D Entertainment Delivery The RoxioNow entertainment platform serves a broad range of premium content, including new movies and next-day TV programs, to home and mobile electronics including PCs, connected TVs, set-top DVRs, Blu-ray Disc players, smartphones, and mobile media devices. 3D Consumer Playback Roxio CinePlayer BD allows users to play 3D Blu-ray titles as well as content downloaded from on-line video...

What's happening with Indie films? An article that appeared Sunday in the Media & Advertising section of The New York Times paints a picture of an industry that had been flourishing, but after the financial collapse, downsizing of distributors and the end of the DVD boom, is now struggling to come back as a leaner version of itself: Producers who routinely spent $12 million on a film five years ago are now being advised by Mr. Sloss and others to keep their budgets to a third of that. “The independent film landscape is so different than it was, this is not the heyday of the ’90s,” said Mr. Rao. His Sri & Company has made a pair of Bollywood-style films, the second of which, “Badmaash Company,” is scheduled for release by Yash Raj Films of India next month. Mr. Rao’s company is lean enough that it has no office at all unless a film is in production. “It’s an overhead-free world,” he said. BUSINESS A Rebuilding Phase for Independent Film By MICHAEL CIEPLY Published: Ap...