Notes On Video

It's the holidays! Time for some Do-It-Yourself projects! How to make a rockwool acoustic panel A short how-to-video on Vimeo on making acoustic panels with rockwool and costing about 1/4 the cost of professional panels. I just wish the music in the background wasn't so in the foreground. Vimeo : How to make a rockwool acoustic panel How to build a dolly "Well, I know I'm not the first to do this, but I won't be the last. What follows is my Dad and I building a skateboard dolly. It came out great. For around $100 here is what we came up with... " mike.miller.producer: Skateboard Dolly Build A Panasonic AG-AF101/AG-AF100 test shot We had the opportunity to make a test shoot with Panasonics new AG-AF101 in order to see what this baby can do. We shot on a cold and snowy hamburg day in an old, dark factory with a small crew. We had about six hours of shooting and a hell of a time! 101 Images - AG-AF101 from Saubere Filme on Vimeo . An...

Sebastian Wiegärtner shot this corporate film for pralinen-pieger.de on the Canon 7D using Canon 24-70 mm 2.8 and Canon 100 mm 2.8 L IS macro lenses and the Kessler Pocket Dolly Traveller 2.0 and Manfrotto 504 HD w/ 546 GBK legs. Shot in 720p / 50fps and graded in Apple Color , with additional exposure adjustments in Magic Bullet Looks . Looks like the holidays to me!! Image Film Chocolate Manufacture from Sebastian Wiegärtner on Vimeo .

Marshall V-LCD50-HDMI 5" Monitor Review Michael Reichmann of The Luminous Landscape reviews the new Marshall V-LCD50-HDMI 5 " Monitor: If you're a camcorder or DSLR user shooting video you likely already know of and understand the advantages of a small HDMI monitor. The LCD50 will be found attractive because of its small size and low weight, its modest price – just over $500 at B&H – and range of attractive features. The Luminous Landscape : Marshall V-LCD50 HDMI Monitor Redrock Micro NANO Running Man Rig Review Eric Koretz at The Image Hunter reviews the new light-weight Running Man rigs from Redrock: The video definitely wouldn’t have been as stable if I didn’t have that Nano. The Running Man handheld rig is quick to build, stable when using and easy to pack away. It fills a need that is surprisingly hard to create in hand held rigs. The Image Hunter : Redrock Micro NANO Running Man Rig B & H : Redrock Mico Nano - RunnningMan [$439.95] In...

Amazon says the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH2  [ $998.19 ] is temporarily out of stock, but Engadget reckons that some are turning up in the hands of lucky buyers... Engadget : Panasonic's Lumix GH2 now shipping in America

How to Speed up rendering in Final Cut Pro In Red Giant QuickTip 26 :, Apple Certified Master Trainer, Simon Walker, shows you how to speed up rendering on the Final Cut Pro timeline. RedGiantSoftware:  Red Giant QuickTip 26: Faster Rendering in Final Cut Pro Comparing the Sony PMW-F3 to the Canon 5D Mark II Fxguide has some video that compares these two cameras, and demonstrates that the F3 has less rolling shutter, and doesn't have the artifacts you can get from the 5D because of it's line-skipping algorithm (the 5D has to go from the high-resolution sensor image down to a 1920 x 1080 image very quickly, so it uses a fairly crude algorithm to do it. This can cause moire patterns in fine details.) Some commentors think that the cameras shouldn't be compared because they aren't in the same price range, but that's wrong; independent and some big-studio filmmakers are using the 5D Mark II (just see Canon's recent television add) and the F3 is going after...

I previously mentioned that Aaron Williams has been tweeting color grading tips. Clearly the effort aroused some attention, as he is now blogging the tips with more detail (and graphics) The latest tip concerns using RGB Parade to make simple color adjustments. AaronWilliams.tv

Amazon's Deal-of-the-Da y today is $20 off the Roku XDS Streaming Player . $79.99 Roku allows you to instantly stream tons of entertainment on your TV. Watch over 100,000 movies and TV shows from Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, Hulu Plus and more. Listen to music on Pandora, or listen to your own iTunes playlists. Watch major sports, news, or original Internet programming. Amazon: Deal of the Day

Stillmotion Photo + Cinema was hired by Canon Canada to make an advertisement about a new service they are offering where they will turn a photo into an oil painting (using real oils and real artists!) Interesting . But what I found particularly interesting is the making-of-video. I actually like it better than the commercial! ...we wanted to bring the viewer into the scene where they are hammering on the deck but to do that we had to get very low to the ground where the action was. one of the things i like most about the cinevate atlas30 is the ability to shoot underslung. we actually removed the legs and just rested the end blocks on apple boxes so that we can quickly go between standard and underslung mode throughout both shoot days. There's a blog post explaining how the project was planned and shot, working with a slider, etc. There's some nice shots in there... canon artworks behind the scenes from stillmotion on Vimeo . Stillmotion blog : Artworks By Canon...

...here comes the Mac Apple Store . It's been reported that the Final Cut Pro download site will close on January 6th...that's the same day that the Mac Apple Store opens, so I don't think you can take that as an indication that Apple is abandoning Final Cut !

Noise Industries has released a free update to FxFactory, 2.5.3 . This update adds two new effects; an Analog TV filter which adds scan lines, distortion and the curve of an analog tube TV to footage, while the Channel Switch transition  emulates a channel switch on an analog TV. PHYX Stylist is a new set of filter effects that includes Skin Light (for adjusting skin tones) as well as Fog Generator , Cathode Ray (emulates night vision, old or damaged televisions and electronic rifle scopes), Haze Removal and Sparkle Star (photographic star filter) All work with After Effects , Final Cut , Final Cut Expres s and Motion . Video demos : Analog TV , Channel Switch & P HYX Stylist . Noise Industries

Creative COW DSLR Video Podcast Richard Harrington and Robbie Carman have started a podcast on DSLR Video. You can download it from iTunes . CreativeCow : Creative COW DSLR Video Podcast DSLRs for Digital Cinema DP, effects cinematographer and VFX supervisor Dave Stump talks about how he thinks HDSLRs fit into the film cinemtographers toolkit. He's neither totally for or against them, seeing both the advantages and disadvantages: It obeys a really old axiom, that when the only tool you own is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you know only one kind of camera, then every job you do looks like a job for that camera. But ultimately, what we learned from CAS is that every camera has its strengths and weaknesses. If you let the job tell you which camera to use, rather than just your knowledge of only one camera, then you are ultimately doing the greatest service to your producer. Creative COW : DSLRs for Digital Cinema: Their Potential, Your Responsibility Dian...

Philip Bloom has run a few short movie challenges over the last few months, and now he has an end-of-year competition that even has some prizes. You have until December 31st to produce a video no longer than 5 minutes that reflects what this year has meant to you. More Details: The biggest and best “weekend/ holiday challenge” so far…PRIZES TOO!

Singular Software has launched the DualEyes for OS X public beta program. Winner of TV Technology's 2010 Mario Award for its breakthrough technology, DualEyes is a standalone application for the automatic synchronization of video and audio clips in dual-system audio production. Designed to work alongside any video editing application, DualEyes is streamlined to accomplish the task of replacing in-camera scratch audio with separately recorded high-quality audio. The DualEyes for OS X public beta program is available for Mac OS X 10.5 and later, and can be downloaded here: http://www.singularsoftware.com/downloads.html . My review of the PC version can be found here: DualEyes for Windows

Here's a follow on from the question earlier in the week dealing with Flip footage that was in a Final Cut Express sequence set to DV-NTSC 32 kHz Anamorphic (I suggested he change the sequence to Apple Intermediate Codec 720p 30)... I didn't know I could change existing sequence settings - huge revelation! Thank you. So I changed the settings to Apple Intermediate Codec 720p 30. Then my sequence, which had the video filling the frame, changed to look like this: So you can imagine I'm like, "Whu?" Maybe a different setting? Or...? A test export looks great, and is 1280 x 720! But I can't afford to start from scratch at this point. Recommendations? -CW I'm not sure if there's a quick way to change it (i.e. change everything with a click of a button.) I feel like someone once told me about doing that, but I can't remember how; though it might have been in Final Cut Pro ! The slightly easy way to do it is this in the sequence; double...

Aaron Williams , DI colorist, filmmaker, drummer and self-described "all around nerd" [ as if drummer wasn't bad enough ] says that "in order to be useful for once on Twitter" he plans to post daily tips on colorizing of the things he's learned over the years. Some examples: 1: Order of Operations 1. Match shots within scenes 2. Create your look 3. Use windows to fix specific problems & distractions. Stick with that order and you'll never leave a time limited session with an unfinished product/unhappy client 2: *always* watch the footage all the way through before coloring. then your looks will fit & change w/the mood of the film. You'll also be able to grade faster since you know what's coming up & will already know the problem shots/scenes Follow Aaron at: @videoaaron Home Page: AaronWilliams.tv

I've been playing with color correction in Final Cut Pr o using the Three-Way Color Corrector for some time now, and though I'm getting better at tweaking things the way I want them to be, I still have a long way to go to get really good at it. And never mind Apple Color ... Which makes the idea of a preset bunch of color correcting filters somewhat appealing. Phyxware has released the color filter set  PHYXware Color , which runs within Noise Industries FxFactory ( FxFactory is both a collection of video filters, as well as a filter engine that other developers can develop and sell their own filters for.) PHYXware Color consists of five filters: BleachBypass , Glow Dark , Selective Saturation , Shift Suppress and Techni2strip . The first two provide a wide range of general image manipulation, while Selective Saturation and Shift Suppression adjust a specific color range within the image. The Techni2strip film simulates the Technicolor 2-strip process first introdu...

Fixes a phenomenon in which captured images may become overexposed when using the camera’s built-in flash or an external Speedlite in combination with the lenses listed below: EF300/4 L IS USM EF28-135/3.5-5.6 IS USM EF75-300/4-5.6 IS USM EF100-400/4.5-5.6 L IS USM Canon : Download page

2010 was an exciting and interesting year. The year where HDSLR's went from strange oddities to acceptance in television and film work. We saw many firsts, including the first TV episode shot on an HDSLR, the first consumer 3D video cameras, and the first iPads . Not all the action was in the budget and consumer end of things, with the arrival of products like the ARRI Alexa , Zeiss CP.2 lenses , and AutoDesk Smoke . But it wasn't all clear sailing for manufactures, with RED having problems trying to keep ahead of increasing competition, while several manufactures - Redrock and Tiffen to name two - announced products and then seemed unable to ship them. The consumer electronics industry wanted this to be the year of 3D, but it truly was the year of HDSLR video. And now with Panasonic and Sony poised to release new large sensor video cameras, we may be in for even more changes. An amazing year. Here are some of the highlights: January  Sony adds support for SD c...

A recent question arrived about how to burn video captured on a Flip to a DVD. You'd think it would be pretty straight forward, but... Earlier this year I got a Flip. I tend to use it for family videos. I'll take bits of footage and edit it together in Final Cut Express , and then export little 400 x 225 movies via the QuickTime Conversion / MPEG-4 export option (H.264). Then I email those mp4 files to grandparents, etc. The files are nice and small, look good, and everyone (Mac and PC users) can see them - works out great! So my problem: It's the time of year where I make DVDs to give to family members. In the past, it's been 640 x 480 video and I've used iMovie and there have been no problems. This year I'll be exporting 1280 x 720 sequences, via Final Cut Express . I'm wondering if you can recommend a formula for exporting from Final Cut Express so the video will look good on DVD? I've been trying Quicktime Conversion / MPEG-4 / H.264 and, even ...

In the early rounds it looked like Adobe Premiere CS5 had scored a knock-out blow with it's ability to easily edit H.264 files without need for transcoding. Though you can edit H.264 files from DSLRs in Final Cut without transcoding to ProRes first, it can get tedious as  the program constantly wants to Render the content before playing. I admit to being biased; as a long time Premiere user who switched to Final Cut when Adobe stopped Mac support a few years back, I've been loath to jump back, but I kept hearing these good things about Premiere CS5 . Another important detail; I'd heard some time ago people saying that you shouldn't edit natively in Final Cut because of issues with decompression/recompression, and I had wondered whether Premiere had any of the same problems. But when I didn't hear anyone mention it, I assumed not... So at the risk of being too easily lead by my own prejudices, I am intrigued by this article from Paul Joy where he tries expor...