Notes On Video

It’s not exactly video related, but I’m currently helping a client with some audio issues. They have a contractor coming in and providing wireless mics and projection equipment for a monthly meeting, and they’re thinking it might be cheaper to do the job themselves. For the audio they have two wireless handheld mics and a lavaliere going into a mixer, which is then connected to house speakers. Mixer The mixer the contractor uses is a Mackie 1402-VLZ3 Fourteen Channel Mixer with 6 XLR Mic Inputs ($399.99) A nice little box with multiple inputs, and it even has sliders! Given that the client typically only has three sources at their events (the three mics) they could get by with the Mackie 802-VLZ3 8-Channel Compact Audio Mixer ($199.99), even if it has knobs instead of sliders. Mackie 1402-VLZ3 However, an eight-input mixer doesn’t mean eight individual inputs. The 802-VLZ3 has 2 mono lines and 3 stereo line inputs. So that’s really five channels, and if they decide they ...

It's Friday, February 8 2013, and everyone in the Northeast is battened down and waiting for the biggest snow storm of the season. And while I still have power - and the internet! - here's the news of the day. Canon C100 stuff It's been an interesting week for Canon C100 news. I'd just put up a report on Filmmaker ( Canon C100 or C300: Which One to Get? ) about the Canon C300 vs the C100 image, speculating whether the Atomos Ninja would really make a big difference in image quality when Paul Antico emails me to say he just got one and tried it with his C100 and felt it was making a big difference in image. Exciting. ( Canon C100 Does 4:2:2 with the Ninja Video Recorder ) I must admit that if I had the money, I'd buy a C100 . Yes, it doesn't do 4K or overcranking, but for 99.999% of what I'll be doing over the next few years, it will be more than sufficient. The only problem is that it's outside my camera budget. The Canon C300: Field Tes...

Well, this looks cool. It's P roCutX for Final Cut Pro X , an iPad interface for controlling Final Cut Pro X that actually looks cooler than the interface of Final Cut Pro X . But $24.99? Hmmm.. I must admit, I purchased another - sort of similar -  iPad app that controlled Final Cut Pro 7 , and used it exactly twice. It wasn't because it didn't work, it was just that I could work very well with the keyboard and mouse...switching to the iPad didn't really seem like that useful. So yes, I find it intriguing, but I'm not certain that if I bought it I would actually do anything more than try it out once, go 'that's so cool,' and then never use it again....which is about the story for half the apps I've ever installed on my iPad .

You Don't Have to Go to Film School to Make It: A List of Film Schools 2013 Sundance Directors Attended | BRYCE J. RENNINGER | Indiewire 64 filmmakers responded, and the results may be surprising. 29 said they had no formal training in filmmaking. Some learned skills in design or photography school or as journalists but had no formal film school education.  The most popular film school from the filmmakers we surveyed was NYU, which had seven respondents. My Review of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera | Daniel Freytag | Blog It's a nice camera with nice images. But it's not that unicorn what everyone expected. I think there are simply to many disadvantages to use it for my productions. It has some nice things like 10-bit SDI out, 2.5K RAW recording with 13 stops of DR but on the other hand it has a huge crop-factor, it doesn't have 50/60p and the battery solution is not optimal. Canon EOS 1DC test short “Hyber Nation” & review | Nino Leitner | Blog Last but...

Using a Home Projector for Rear Projection | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine The projector mentioned in this article, the Vivitek D950 1080p HD (at $899), did an amazing job:  I was amazed at how bright the projector was; given the size of the image (about 40 feet across) and the fact that the curtain wasn’t a real projection screen. The room was darkened, but it was still quite impressive.  1. Write the Feature. 2. Make a Short. 3. Get the Feature Made. (Coming Soon: a MANCHILD Short) | Ryan Koo | No Film School This section isn’t easy to write, because I can hear this hypothetical comment ahead of time: “Wait, you got us all to give you money so you could make your movie and now you say you need MORE money?” Sure, but I’m not asking for more money on Kickstarter; we’re looking to raise more financing to make MANCHILD by augmenting the Kickstarter funds with traditional independent film financing. Most Kickstarter campaigns only cover part of a film’s production...

Cinematographer Ben Smithard (My Week With Marilyn) on choosing Sony’s F65 for Belle | Chris Patmore | movieScope The Sony is better than a lot of other digital cameras and is probably the closest to film that I’ve ever seen. I really hope that the F65 becomes a standard because it’s a great camera and it would be good for the film industry to settle on something, because there’s a lot of money swilling around the pot that could be better used somewhere else. F55/F5 RAW support (in addition to F65RAW) | Sony Sony releases support for Sony's F5 and F55  in Premiere Pro: This plug-in adds support for Sony RAW MXF files in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 products, allowing viewing and editing capabilites. What's New: F55/F5 RAW support (in addition to F65RAW) THERE AND BACK AGAIN: LEARNING TO LOVE (AND HATE) THE CANON 1DC | Andrew Wonder | Blog Now putting the 1DC in the real world it becomes harder to see the differences that 4K brings to the table. Yes it appears sharp...

I'll admit that I wasn't that impressed when Rode announced the  iXY Stereo Recording Microphone for iPhone/iPad recently. At $199 to add a better microphone to the iPhone, I felt that the money would be better spent on a dedicated recorder. Now they've gone and announced the smartLav , which goes and turns an iPhone into a recorder - also - but this time with a lavaliere mic. Is that a good thing? Well the downsides, as Dan Chang notes in his article , include the fact that you need an iOS device, it has to be in Airplane mode to avoid interruptions, and you can't monitor the recording, so you can't be sure that's it's working correctly (the mic gets obstructed.) But then that's true for most self-contained recording devices. I guess I like a few things about this: the cost is said to be about $60 which is more affordable it could be useful for recording audio only sessions; a lav mic is less intimidating than putting even an iPhone in ...

Animating the Inanimate: Interview with Charlie Collier | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine At 20 years of age, Charlie Collier of Zapamation may be a young filmmaker, but he’s already got almost eight years of stop-motion experience behind him. A self-taught animator, he says he was able to get into this partly because of the flexibility he gained from being homeschooled; he was able to incorporate animation into the curriculum.  Stop-Motion Music Video Uses Hundreds of Polaroid Pictures | Brian Anthony Hernandez | Mashable Cool animation using Polaroid pictures... The video weaves a stop-motion tale using hundreds of Polaroid pictures, whose once-blank canvases were provided by ex-Polaroid employees now leading The Impossible Project. FocusMaker – A unique focusing tool for stills lenses | Matthew Jeppsen | Fresh DV Here’s a tool that I don’t really know how to classify…it’s called the FocusMaker, and it’s a simple $89 device that straps directly on to...

Seeing RED at Sundance | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine RED was part of a seminar hosted by HP: 4K and Beyond: The Evolving Role of Technology in Digital Filmmaking. Moderated by Schilowitz, the panel featured a number of post software developers including Adobe, ASSIILATE and Autodesk. The seminar focused on the 4K workflow, with the message that “you can edit 4K now.” F5 & F55 Launch Event & Workflow Technologies | Sony Professional | Vimeo View highlights of the F5 & F55 Launch Event, and learn about some of the workflow solutions presented at Sony's DMPC (Digital Motion Picture Center) on the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City, California. Working in True 4K with the F65: Belle - the UK's first 4K cinema production | Andy Stout | Red Shark "We were after a really naturalistic look for Belle, in keeping with the period," explains Smithard. "The F65 produces images which have a softer, more pleasing quality, and you could really fee...

Day for Night: Magic Bullet Looks vs Baselight suite | SUPER MASSIVE | Vimeo An interesting comparison. Baselight maybe looks more 'realistic' but hard to see what's going on!: Footage shot with various camera settings on ARRI Alexa, 19-90 zoom lens. Half graded with Magic Bullet Looks and FCP 3 way colour corrector, gradients added. Half graded on Baselight suite for comparison.H264 compression very harsh on all gradients and masks, horrible artefacting - all baselight graded material looks perfect on Dolby monitors. Download least compressed h264 for closest impression. (But still knocked down to prores and then H264). How to Keep Track of Your Battery Levels | DSLR Video Shooter Most people don’t know this, but there is a built in way to label your batteries as full or empty. This works best with the Canon LP-E6 batteries, but you can make it work with any battery with a simple mod. If you look at the back of your LP-E6 battery you will see two colors, blue and...

Color Matching a Canon C300 to an Arri Alexa | Art Adams | ProVideoCoalition The C300 doesn't have the subtlety of color that Alexa offers, nor can it match Alexa's dynamic range, and it doesn't duplicate that delicate Alexa softness that makes everyone and everything look great. On the other hand, the C300 is less expensive and much smaller and lighter, and is the perfect tool for certain projects. MATT ALLARD GOES HANDS ON WITH THE NEW SONY F55 – NO HIGH FRAME RATES UNTIL SEPTEMBER | Matt Allard | DSLR News Shooter I found the camera design to be very good. Everything was easy to find and the key camera functions are accessible without having to go into deep menus. Even as a first time user of the camera, it is very easy to get it turned on and shoot quickly. There is one major design flaw: the connection cable for the new Sony OLED or LED viewfinder sticks straight out the side of the camera.  While it is reasonably secure, it would be easier to knock and broken...

A SHORT WEEKEND WITH THE C100 | Sean Meehan | Cross River Pictures Sean has been shooting recently with a Canon C100 and loves it: First and foremost, I love the image out of this camera. So many of us have fallen in love with the look of the C300, and I would say that, to my eye, they’re pretty comparable. They could certainly intercut, and if you’re contrasting with Canon HDSLRs, the difference in sharpness, dynamic range and resolution is big. It’s not surprising, considering it’s processing the image in a way very similar to its bigger brothers. You're Not Too Old | Vimeo HOW WE MADE THE ATC MUSIC VIDEO “READY OR NOT” | Rick Macomber | Macomber Productions I wrote about this for Filmmaker Magazine, but here's Rick's report: The video has two distinctive shooting styles. Most of the narrative scenes were either shot on a Miller Solo tripod, on the Kessler slider or the Kessler Crane, all donated for the entire length of the shoot by Mike Sutton and Paul Ant...

Fringe Issue in Older Canon C300′s Solved? | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine Since its release, the Canon C300 has received a lot of praise for its image quality and low-light sensitivity. But some users have reported problems with color fringing: incorrectly colored pixels that appear on in-focus vertical or horizontal borders adjacent to a blown out – or nearly blown out – background. This most commonly appears on man-made objects like railings and window edges, though it can also be seen in specular highlights on ocean waves. Review: Sony 10-18mm F4 OSS Wide Angle Lens (Sony NEX) | PETER WALKOWIAK | The Photoblographer With it's image stabilization and wide-angle of view, this lens is intriguing for NEX owners. It's not cheap though, at $848 : The lens itself has a metal body and feels very dense. It is a heavy lens due to its construction but did not feel uneven when paired with the NEX-6. The lens has a fairly wide base compared to the 50mm or kit lens and ma...

The Five C’s of Cinematography | Stew Redwine | Fresh DV Cameras don’t tell stories, people do. Since we can all agree this is the case, there is really only one thing you need to tell great stories… YOU. However, none of us are born knowing anything about the tools of the trade. In an effort to improve the one tool all storytellers have in common, their mind, a must-have addition to their library is Joseph V. Mascelli’s The Five C’s of Cinematography . Cine Meter for iPhone | Adam Wilt | Website Turn your iPhone into a lightmeter? Cool! Cine Meter is a professional film/video/photo application for your iPhone®, iPad®, or iPod touch®, using the built-in camera to provide a shutter-priority reflected light meter, an RGB waveform monitor, and a false-color picture mode. Cine Meter works on any iDevice with a camera running iOS 5.0 or higher. Shooting DNxHD with ALEXA in paradise | ARRI News One of the major challenges in the tropics is the humidity. From t...

Sony grows E-mount lens collection with 20mm pancake, 18-200mm power zoom | Zach Honig | Engadget Sony's doing its part to make its products more appealing by adding two new lenses (for a total of 13): a 20mm f/2.8 pancake and a 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 OSS powered-zoom optic, which first made its debut with the VG30 camcorder, but will now be available as a standalone purchase. B & H:  Sony 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 PZ OSS Alpha E-mount Lens ($1,198) Expected end of Feb B & H:  Sony 20mm f/2.8 Alpha E-mount Lens ($348) Expected middle of Apr. Hands-On Camera Review with the Panasonic GH3 — [Side By Side Comparos + Can it Beat a $250 eBay Bargain?] | Ben Pitt | Chase Jarvis Blog In many of my tests, the GH1 and GH3′s videos were hard to tell apart. The GH3 had a slight advantage for sharpness and its colours were a little punchier, but there wasn’t much in it. Here’s a frame from each camera’s 1080p output, split into three to show the GH3, GH1 and Sony’s NEX-5N – a...

Getting the Shot: Scenes from the Making of the Music Video, “Ready or Not” | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine Filmmaker : How did you do the hood shot? Macomber : Originally I was going to lie down on the hood, but there was nowhere to grab on to the front of the vehicle. And there was no budget so I couldn’t afford the suction cups. Understanding Your New GoPro | ABE KISLEVITZ | Blog A friend just bought a HERO 3 and has been struggling with the many image options it offers, so here's some help: A few things need to be explained when talking about the technical aspects of video resolutions, framerates, and video quality.  In digital video there are a lot of different variables that go into what makes up the overall IQ (image quality). 1080P on a GoPro is FAR different than 1080P on an Alexa – and it’s not just the image sensor that makes it different. Processors in cameras are a huge determinant to how video gets from the sensor to the SD card. There are tricks and s...

Review of the Canon C100 | Philip Johnston | HD Warrior Philip Johnston puts together a video-only review of the Canon C100. He seems pretty impressed with the image quality that closely matches his C300. Blackmagic Cinema Camera (Part 2) POST & Other considerations | Den Lennie | F-Stop Academy Den : [The Cinema Camera workflow] made me sell my 17″ MacBook Pro and buy a 15″ Retina Display one. I took the decision early on to get the infrastructure to support this. I bought FCP X about 18 months ago and didn’t really start using it ’til early this year, but I’ve embraced it fully, don’t even have a copy of FCP 7 anymore, and so I’ve realised to go down the Thunderbolt route – I’ve got a Thunderbolt MacBook Pro and an iMac, with the full Resolve setup on both machines – it’s very, very important that you have to get the right hardware. DaVinci Resolve 9.1 – adds Retina Macbook Pro support | Cinema5D In the newest update to the famous color correction software DaVinci...