Notes On Video

Adobe SpeedGrade Tutorial | Vincent Laforet | Blog A quick tutorial on working in SpeedGrade , the new color grading tool in Adobe Creative Suite: While we only used a few layers in the above example, you are not limited to any number of primary or secondary layers within the application. We also only worked with a single clip in the above tutorial, but for when you are grading entire sequences, there is the ability to have two playheads so you can preview your grade consistency between clips. Reviewing the Sony FS700 and workflow | Ted Setla | Setla Films A video review of the Sony NEX-FS700 : 1. ND Filters : not just 2, but 3 different ND filters borrowed from the F65 ND filter technology 2. Arri adaptor : This addition allows for other 3rd party equipment we already use in the field 3. Focus Assist : E-Mount lenses has a Facial Focus Assist, A-Mount lenses have what is called a Phase Focus Assist which greatly increase the ability to keep it in auto focus with these...

The first good quality USB microphone I ever owned (by good quality I mean a condenser mic with a large diaphragm, or a mic that cost more than $40!) wasn’t a very happy experience. The microphone didn’t work without drivers installed, and even then it often had conflicts with one thing or another. After struggling with it for a month or two I found it was easier to go back to the XLR mic and a USB audio interface. Then I bought an Audio-Technica AT2020 USB microphone, and that was a great improvement. No more problems with drivers and interfaces, and the audio quality was close enough to what I had been getting with the XLR mic that the ease of use - and lack of extra parts - made it my go-to mic. But here comes Apogee with the “ MiC ,” and not only is it a high-quality USB condenser microphone that works with your Mac , it also works with your iPad and iPhone too. Infact, one of the key selling points is that it works with the iPad , and it comes with both a regular USB and a...

CAMERAS: Food Fights with the FS700 | Art Adams | ProVideoCoalition Art and Adam Wilt got to borrow a Sony NEX-FS700 and shot some high-speed fruit: I should mention that I set the camera’s shutter at a hard 1/1000th of a second. I don’t like to use degrees to set a digital camera’s shutter because degrees are relative: the exposure changes depending on the frame rate, whereas I’d like to choose a shutter speed and know exactly what the camera is doing at any given time. Unusual Camera moves with the ALEXA M | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine Seeing a behind-the-scenes shoot with the Alexa M offers some ideas for different ways to place your camera: Don’t have the budget for the Alexa M? Well you can still use that DSLR in the same way that they used the Alexa M, and this video has some really interesting ideas for getting a camera closer to the action. I was particularly intrigued by the methods used in the ice hockey sequence, the skateboarding, and the attachment of the ...

Audio Checklist for Video Editors | Danny Greer | Premiumbeat Tips for editing audio: KEEP YOUR AUDIO TRACKS ORGANIZED Assign different audio tracks in your project to different audio types. For instance, keep all dialogue on tracks 1-4, all music on tracks 5-8 and all sound effects on tracks 9-10. Think to yourself, “if another editor had to sit down at this project would they be able to quickly identify each audio clip?” Colorgrading Round-Up | Dennis Kutchera | Creative COW A look at color grading software at NAB So let me get this out of the way -- if money were no object, I would go for the FilmLight's Baselight with the amazing Blackboard 2 control surface. Every key is a miniature LED video screen and the whole thing is made of wood. The grading tools are fast and powerful at your fingertips. The Blackboard 2 even has a pen tablet built into it. Episode #93 | Digital Filmmakers Podcast An interview with Scott Simmons on Multicam Editing In Final Cut Pro X: Scot...

Testing the FS700: Low Light Performance, Dynamic Range, and Slow-Motion | AbelCine Andy Shipsides at AbelCine checks out the Sony NEX-FS700 and finds that the dynamic range is about the same as the NEX-FS100 (11.5 stops), though the addition of Cine gamma modes gives "a nice smooth roll-off in highlights:" Q: How accurate are the ND filters? A: From my testing, the ND filters were very accurate and did not introduce color shift (properly neutral). I tested this with a waveform monitor to confirm the stop change was accurate. Full Frame Shootout: Review of Nikon D800, D4 and Canon 5DmkIII | Philip Bloom | Blog Philip Bloom posts a shoot-out of three full-frame cameras: The full-frame look, for me, is a wonderful unique aesthetic. I already own three superb super 35mm video camera which all do a better job at shooting video than the three DSLRs in this test – I have the Sony FS100, F3 and Canon C300 (The Canon C300 was used to film this video) but their aesthetic i...

Last week Adobe rolled out their Adobe Creative Suite 6 update, and on Friday they started up their Creative Cloud . The "Cloud" is a subscription model for the Creative Suite . For $49.95 a month ($29.95 introductory for the first year for existing CS users) you get access to all of the Creative Suite software. For users, software subscriptions offer the following advantages: You're paying a monthly charge rather than the full up-front price (upgrading from CS5.5 is $379.) Adobe says they'll be making available interim releases throughout the year. You also automatically get access to both Mac & Windows versions, as well as foreign language versions of the software. Easier installation and transfer from machine to machine. 20GB instead of 2Gb of storage on the Cloud. Some additional features and software not available through the regular software purchase. For Adobe it promises a number of advantages too: A regular income stream A mechanism for relea...

SpeedGrade Tutorials  | Tutorials | Adobe TV A selection of tutorials on SpeedGrade at Adobe's website, including: Exporting to SpeedGrade Creative Cloud and CS6 Tour for Video Professionals Introduction to SpeedGrade Rendering With SpeedGrade CS6 Secondary Color Correction in SpeedGrade CS6 What's New in SpeedGrade CS6 Premiere Pro CS6 - easy transition | Andy Field | LAFCPUG In this forum post Andy lists the things he likes about switching from Final Cut Pro 7 to Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 , which he describes as an "extraordinarily easy transition," with only one drawback: this is the biggest difference -- you get the time hit on ingest with FCP7 - transcoding and re-wrapping video with PP - you get the time hit on export - it doesn't use render files (if you chose to render in timeline - but it's not necessary) it basically transcodes everything on export to the format you want....this takes much more time than you are used to in FCP 7 GPU (C...

On Thursday Adobe hosted another webinar in their CS6 series, this one on After Effects and featuring After Effects Product Manager Steve Forde . Steve focused on four primary areas in the demo: the Global Performance Cache, 3D Camera Tracker, SpeedGrade and 3D modeling. He also talked a bit about graphics cards and answered other questions from the audience. Global Performance Cache Adobe has made significant changes to the way After Effects caches rendering. The Global Performance Cache (which has it’s own tab in the timeline panel) is about “ understanding how something was rendered, when it was rendered, and do we ever have to do it again. ” Pointing out that in past releases – and in many other video applications – if you changed the top layer of the composition, everything has to be re-rendered. Steve said that in this release they wanted to minimize that need for re-rendering. “ A lot of information [doesn’t have to be] thrown away, so by using it, we can improve perfo...

A QuickStart Guide to New Adobe Premiere CS6 Features | Danny Greer | Premiumbeats It's Adobe CS6 release week, so here's a guide to new features in Premiere Pro CS6: 5. Trimming Many editors will tell you trimming is the heart of editing, and having the right tools is crucial. Trimming in previous versions was clunky and you were unable to trim numerically from the keyboard. Premiere CS6 features advanced trimming, with a new trim window and better trimming in sequences. It really shines now. You can use J, K and L keys to dynamic trim. Also, the timeline won’t stop playing as you trim, which is a major improvement. 3D camera tracker | Brian Maffit | Adobe.tv This video explains the new 3D Camera Tracker in After Effects (which does look pretty cool!): Learn how to use the new 3D Camera Tracker by creating a 3D project that adds animated text to a movie. See how the tracker works in the background to analyze a scene and then automates the addition of an animate...

GPU (CUDA, OpenGL) features in After Effects CS6 | Todd Kopriva | Adobe Adobe explains the OPENGL support in After Effects , though "We won't recommend a specific card, but more CUDA cores and VRAM help." This level of GPU acceleration simply requires OpenGL 1.5 or higher with Shader Model 3.0 or higher. Most ATI and NVIDIA cards meet these requirements, as do the Intel HD Graphics 3000 and Intel HD Graphics 4000 chipsets. If your GPU does not support these requirements, After Effects CS6 will use the CPU as it did in After Effects CS5.5, although there are some improvements for the CPU version of this feature in After Effects CS6, too. OpenCL and Premiere Pro CS6 | Todd Kopriva | Adobe And here's information for Premiere Pro CS6: What can Premiere Pro CS6 process with OpenCL? Everything that Premiere Pro CS6 can process with CUDA, with four exceptions: Fast Blur effect Gaussion Blur effect Directional Blur effect Basic 3D effect In our first iteration o...

MacBook Pro editors rejoice – new Premiere Pro CS6 supports OpenCL for renderless timeline not just NVidia CUDA! | Andrew Reid | EOSHD Andrew discovers that his MacBook Pro 's video card is supported by the Mercury Engine in Premiere Pro CS6: Previously even MacBook Pro users with high end (for the time) CUDA capable NVidia graphics found themselves without quite enough video RAM and in need of a hack to get it to work. That has all changed with CS6. I have a MacBook Pro 17″ 2011 with ATI Radeon card, running 64bit Lion and the performance in Premiere Pro CS6 is a big leap up from CS5.5, in terms of general responsiveness, editing, playback, FX, etc. MERCURY PLAYBACK AND THE 27" IMAC | Kanen Flowers | Scruffy Thinking But Adobe currently only supports two MacBook Pro cards. If your Mac video card isn't listed, you might be able to add it by editing the supported cards list for Premiere Pro : I use Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 almost exclusively these days. I use i...

Join the BOSFCPUG as we team up with our friends at SMPTE New England for yet another must-attend networking & socializing mixer to be held int he studios of National Boston Video Center at 115 Dummer Street in Boston! With special thanks to SMPTE member David P. Allen, the contributing Editor, Emeritus of Videography Magazine, we are pleased to present a special evening of retrospective and reflection with Ralph H. Baer, a distinguished Video Technologist, Inventor and Consultant. Ralph H. Baer , inventor, technical developer (with over 150 U.S. Patents) and consultant is the creator of the first video game console (Magnavox Odyssey) and considered by many as the "father of video games" In 2006, he was awarded the National Medal of Technology for inventing the home console for video games and spawning the video game industry. SMPTE NEW ENGLAND & BOSCPUG PRESENT: "PIONEERS OF THE VIDEO INDUSTRY" DATE : Wednesday, May 23rd TIMES : 7:00PM - 9:00PM (Doo...

Nikon D800E video samples show stunning resolution in 1080p | Andrew Reid | EOSHD Andrew reports that the D800E  [$3,299] without the anti-aliasing filter is probably the one to get: I wasn’t expecting fine detail to be this clean on the E… Removing the anti-aliasing filter seemed like a recipe for disaster. But this footage is very encouraging. When you also bear in mind this is compressed footage from in-camera, rather than via the Atomos Ninja, it truly seems like a very nice result from the rare ‘E’ version. Lenses and putting the life back in – Why expensive is not always better | Andrew Reid | EOSHD Andrew also sings the praises of odd, old lenses: I have never felt compelled to look at MTF chart when buying a lens, rather, I look at the images it produces on Flickr. Here’s an example of something unusual… a vintage cinema lens, the Cooke Kinetal 12.5mm. It is far from technically perfect. The coating is 1950′s technology. There’s a rainbow all over the right hand ...

Red Scarlet, Testing for a Commercial in Madrid   | Den Lennie | F-Stop Academy Den is perhaps better known for getting his hands on prototypes of the Sony NEX-FS100 and NEX-FS700 . Here he talks about preparing to shoot with the RED Scarlet for the first time, and also about lighting: Light is Light is Light….. no matter what format you choose to shoot on. The fact that I’m shooting Red Scarlet will not have any particular impact on my lighting style. How intense the light is, what colour it is and how hard or soft it is will be up to the fine tuning on the day…. but the approach and principles remain unchanged. I’ll be using the Sony PVM 1741 to light with and check my ratios. Are Indie Movies Getting Too Pretty? | Jason Bailey | The Atlantic I think what he really means is that people aren't using image to enhance the feeling of the story; they're just making it all look pretty: What's more, should films like the Detroit-is-burning documentary Burn or its Su...

At today's Boston Media Makers  meeting there was a brief demo of Video Time Machine , an iOS app that let's you browse through video from the 1860's forward. It's really just a video browser and it's playing content from YouTube so you need a live connection to view anything, but it's free today, so may be worth downloading!