Notes On Video

Sony Europe held a Facebook chat with Den Lennie about the new HXR-NX3  (currently $3,795) on Thursday. You can read it here . I've put together the highlights below: Q: Will the NX3 replace HXR-NX5 (currently $3,395) ? Alvaro Ortiz:  No, NX3 won't replace NX5. They will live together. However, both products, even having almost the same body (as that of Z100), have different specs: WiFi, 50p, SDI, HXR-FMU128 compatibility... but, to be honest, I love NX3 even more! Kanta:  The NX3 isn't a direct successor of the NX5. NX5 has SDI and it is good for those who really need it for broadcast system etc. NX3 is more general purpose camera at lower price. Alvaro Ortiz:  BTW, for those interested, as you can see we are basically sharing the same body between HXR-NX5, NX3 and Z100. The main reason is that most of NX5 users were really glad about the weight, the balance, and the lens touch of such chassis. Also, that lens allows us a little margin with different sen...

Should Professional Editors care about FCPX (again)? | Pro Video Coalition Last October Kevin McAuliffe told us in two articles that Final Cut Pro X wasn't worth caring about: "FCPX is still not ready for professional use". He caught a lot of crap for saying so, but he was right... in a very constrained context (which, if you read his rants, he carefully delineates). If you were a full-time editor working for or day-playing at an established production house, FCPX wasn't even on the radar. Tokina AT-X 12-28mm f/4 Pro lens review | Digital Camera World This lens is "just" $499 , for APS-C sized sensors: Image quality is impressive across the frame. Typical of ultra-wide lenses, sharpness drops at the extreme corners, especially if combining the shortest focal length with the widest aperture. Sony UWP-D Wireless Microphone Series | Cinescopophilia The UWP-D series uses new hybrid digital processing technology to achieve high quality sound. This...

GoPro Wins Emmy Award | Creative Planet Network GoPro today announced that the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has recognized the company with a 2013 Technology and Engineering Emmy® Award in the category of Inexpensive Small Rugged HD Camcorders. GoPro was selected for its groundbreaking HERO3 camera technology, which has enabled television production professionals to capture engaging perspectives that were never before possible. Another Update on Adobe Creative Cloud |  Aharon Rabinowitz When Adobe moved to subscriptions a lot of people predicted bad things (including me!) Aharon takes a look at how things are a year later. While he has a point, I'm not sure that a year is anywhere near long enough to determine the effect of monopolies. Of course that raises the question; when is long enough? Can I just go on and on saying 'well, there's been no effects, but just wait!'? I guess not. So I'll be reckless and say that if in five years ther...

Amazon Launches Free Storyboarder Tool | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine Amazon continues its adventures in moviemaking. Amazon Studios, which began as an effort in crowdsourced content is moving towards content produced by professionals, but they still seem to be interested in moviemaking by the masses. They’ve already released a free storyboarding tool, and now they have Amazon Storyboarder, a tool for outlining stories using a corkboard metaphor.Corkboard interface Why I am going with 4K and why you should too | EOSHD Finally line skipping, moire and aliasing is going to die out. No more horrible electronic jaggedness and weirdness. 4K will not eliminate it altogether (the Blackmagic Production Camera does have some aliasing) but it will vastly reduce it and it will make 1080p look much cleaner. Rough edges and flaws at the 1:1 pixel level have a tendency to soften out when you’re producing 1080p oversampled from 4K. CES 2014: 4K round up | Cinema 5D The GH 4k c...

The Blackmagic Production Camera 4K Guide (Part One): Ergonomics and Specifications | wolfcrow In short, Blackmagic Design has created a product so revolutionary, that they themselves don’t really know which market it will ultimately end up serving the most. To be fair though, judging by initial videos from the Blackmagic 4K Camera, it looks like a winner, and somebody will buy it! A fun comparison between the late Blackmagic Production Camera 4K and the rumored Panasonic GH4 4K Camera | wolfcrow The ISO range of the GH4 should be at least usable till 6400 ISO, and this would give it a leg up over the Production Camera. On the other hand, due to the larger pixel pitch, in theory, the Production Camera should have lower noise levels. Thom Powers Curates Distribution Advice for Filmmakers | Filmmaker Magazine In a detailed intro, Powers discusses various distribution options, ranging from traditional to hybrid to DIY strategies. Then, he gathers specific advice from filmma...

10 Stupid Mistakes Screenwriters Make | Raindance Film Festival So you want to write a screenplay? That’s fantastic! But why? Is it to make a lot of money? Or is it to impress your friends? Is it because you have a story to tell that will work best in the cinema? Try and write your screenplay before you decide the ‘why’ you want to write it. will eman, almost cetainly, your writing will be encumbered. Attention, Documentary Filmmakers: Here Are 9 Tips for Finding and Securing the Archival Material You Need | IndieWire 1. Beware the internet. "Everything is being pulled from the web and then, under deadline pressure, [filmmakers] are trying to find out who owns it. Usually, those filmmakers end up having to hire a very experienced research clearance person to try to sort out things. There's a way to work with things from the internet, but it's the wrong approach to take everything as placeholders and then at the very end, under a time crunch, try to figure out how ...

Kevin Pearce and Lucy Walker Talk The Crash Reel | Filmmaker Magazine I went to a screening for this movie and found this documentary fascinating. As well as the Q & A afterwards: Watching the movie, consisting of so much footage of events just prior to the accident, as well as footage of the accident, it was easy to assume that the filmmakers had already been following Pearce when the accident happened. But as Walker revealed in the Q & A, she didn’t even know Pearce at that point. Affordable 4K cameras galore at CES! GREAT! Now can we also have some stunning HD shooting DSLR cameras too pretty please? | Philip Bloom Philip wants better HD; maybe just subsample the 4K down to HD: One of the things I am most curious about is what the actual HD image is like. After all with these 4K cameras popping up, and I am sure many more will follow, I ask the obvious question, “Shouldn’t you get your HD image right first?” The GH3 does have one of the better HD images out there,...

Sony's New 4K Consumer Cam Unveiled | News Shooter At CES Sony have surprised by announcing the FDR-AX100 , a compact handheld camcorder that offers 4K video resolution using a 1″ 20MP sensor (14MP in video mode) and a 12x f2.8-f4.5 lens. It usefully features built in ND filters and records at up to 30fps using Sony’s XAVC-S codec XAVC-S (the consumer version of XAVC that is found on the F5/55). Here's a video shot with Sony's PXW-Z100 4K Camera (that's the $5,400 camera, not the just announced $1,999 camera.) Mac Pro and Premiere Pro CC (mid Dec 2013) | Philip Hodgetts This article also provides an interesting perspective on the different ways Final Cut and Premiere let the user configure playback performance. The different approach to controlling performance typifies the approach each company takes. Adobe gives fine control, down to using different resolutions for playback and paused (where you would use Full in most cases). The control geek in me like...

It's CES week, and while there aren't any real pro-camera announcements so far (or really expected), there are still some interesting bits of new gear, as well as some other bits of news. The regular News Gizmodo reviewed the Blackmagic Pocket Camera and they give it an unequivocal 'maybe': "I have no hesitation in saying that for certain applications, it's still worth buying." Over at CanonRumors , Sigma announced a 50 f/1.4 Art lens , as well as 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 DC Macro OS HSM Contemporary. Not sure what the price is. While you're there, check out this interesting article about plastic vs. metal in lens mounts. " Are Metal Mounts Better Than Plastic? " There's an interesting graphic on different codecs and when to use them. Adobe has announced support for new GPU's in Premiere Pro CC 7.2 , including the ones in the Mac Pro . Philip Bloom has been working on his review of the Sony A7, A7r and RX10 , and he po...

It's CES week, and Sony has gone and done it; they announced a 4K camcorder for $2,000. Wow. It's almost like I predicted it...wait a minute, I sort of did back in September ( When cometh the $1,000 4K video camera? ) Am I unusually prescient? Unfortunately, no. But if past isn't prologue, then this is one of the worst cases of déjà vu, because Sony did a very similar thing when they starting releasing HD camcorders. First there was the HDR-FX1. Six months later, Sony announced the HDR-HC1, with an MSRP of $1,999. This is the HDR-HC1: And here's the FDR-AX100 camcorder they just announced: And you can pre-order it for $1,999 . Now as a 4K camera for doing a 4K production, I'm not that interested in this camera as I doubt I'll be giving anyone footage in 4K for at least a year...but I wonder what the 4K footage scaled down to HD will look like, and whether being able to crop the 4K picture when converting to HD will make this a useful tool.

TO RAW OR NOT TO RAW: THAT IS THE QUESTION | News Shooter This week I enlisted the help of Wushu expert Alex Leng to test the performance of the new Convergent Design Odyssey 7Q when recording 2K RAW at 240fps from the Sony FS700. [...] be warned 2K RAW at 240fps eats up a lot of storage space in a real hurry. . There was only 10 minutes of record time available using two raided 256GB Convergent Design drives (they need to be RAIDed to do this). Amazon Studios to Shoot in 4K | Red Shark "As a premium original content creator, we’re excited about 4K and the future of Ultra HD technology, particularly as we move into drama series next year,” said Roy Price, Director of Amazon Studios. “All of the pilots and series we produce next year will be shot in 4K. YouTube: 2014 is the year of the high-def stream | C|Net VP9 is a big deal for the Internet, and YouTube's support of it is both an in-house quid pro quo and beneficial for the Internet at large. Matt Frost, a se...

This is disappointing: it seems that the Sony 18-105mm lens suffers from some pretty severe distortion (at least on video cameras) But Cory Shubert tried it on his NEX-VG20, and thinks the problem isn't so severe: A webinar from Imagineer Systems covering planar tracking stabilization techniques with Mocha. Shooting with the MoVI and the Sony NEX-FS100 and using the Sony 10-18 lens: Another effort at color grading the Blackmagic 4K camera footage:

ARRI Amira update (sort of) Back at the IBC show ARRI announced a new digital documentary camera, the Amira . It would be based on the sensor of the original Alexa, but other than that, ARRI was rather cagey about what it would cost or even when it would ship. But they have been showing prototypes and gathering opinions from users. According to Den Lennie , he and Rodney Charters got a demo of one of only three prototype cameras last week. Part of the demo took place at Britain's oldest pub . OWC Confirms Mac Pro 2013 Processor Upgradeable | OWC We got our hands on an Intel E5-2667 V2 8-core 3.30GHz with 25MB Cache processor, installed it in the new Mac Pro and have done some benchmarking to get an early look at the performance vs. the stock Apple / Intel E5-1650 V2 6-core 3.50GHz with 12MB Cache model.  Thunderbolt 2 is NOT twice the speed of Thunderbolt 1 | Red Shark News It turns out that the main difference between the two Thunderbolts is that version 2 ha...

Letus posted the following to their Facebook page  about the new anamorphic adapter for the GoPro that they teaser yesterday: Letus AnamorphX-GP (left), Letus AnamorphX for 35mm lenses (right) Here's a few specs for the AnamorphX-GP: 1.33x squeeze factor Custom CNC aluminum housing Use the GoPro 3+ waterproof housing for mounting. The adapter replaces the waterproof lens housing element. The unit will retain waterproof property. In 1080 mode, when the Letus AnamorphX-GP is attached, it will convert the 16:9 aspect ratio into 2.39:1 aspect ratio without the need for cropping (post production de-squeeze is required). In super-view mode the GoPro records in 4:3 aspect ratio and digitally stretch the image into 16:9 aspect ratio (dynamic stretching: http://gopro.com/support/articles/what-is-superview ). The center of the image is kept same but the outer of the image is progressively stretched outward and that is what causes the distortion, especially on the edges. This is...

Letus Corporation @letus35 Letus Tweeted this i nteresting idea  yesterday; an anamorphic adapter for the GoPro Hero! Introducing the newest member of Letus Anamorphic Club: 1.33x anamorphic lens adapter for @GoPro  Mac Pro Reviews Mac Pro, Final Cut Pro X 10.1, and five streams of native R3D | Philip Hodgetts Benchmarks, schmenchmarks: this is the performance I care about. Bottom line: multiple stream native RED 4K editing without proxies is practical if you have the storage speed. The New Mac Pro: Ridiculously Fast | Larry Jordan Here’s the speed of the Mac Pro talking directly with its internal flash drive. Holy smokes! I have never measured speeds this fast — BUT, even this speed does not fully load a single Thunderbolt 1 pipe. The new Thunderbolt 2 protocol, which the Mac Pro also supports, is more than twice as fast as the internal flash drive. The Mac Pro Review (Late 2013) | AnandTech Cheaper to build your own, but would it look as sexy? Th...

An initial look at the Digital Bolex D-16 | Philip Bloom First impressions, some sample footage, and a short video shot on the new Digital Bolex: Absolutely no moire or aliasing that I have seen. Zero, zlich. A very filmic image, more so than the BMD Pocket Camera. It really has a proper S16mm look to it, not just a S16mm sized sensor. Rain City: Initial shooting with the Digital Bolex D-16 from Philip Bloom on Vimeo . Philip compares the Digital Bolex to the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera, so here's another review of that: Taking a look at the Pocket Cinema Camera from Blackmagic Design. Is this the perfect camera for low budget filmmakers? It's a quirky little camera that packs a big punch, but there are some set backs to be aware of. Sony CineAlta 4K F-Series Webinar | Sony You can watch this 48 minute webinar; but you have to give them an email address to see it: What is the Digital Motion Picture Centre Europe and how you can make the best of ...

It's the New Year, and I should do a year in review piece , but I already did that for Filmmaker . And I just want to point out that I did 2014K a day before RedShark News published their piece on why this will the year of 4K . Not yet convinced that this will be the year of 4K? Canon just dropped the price of the C500 down to $20K. For the next three days you can buy it for $16,999 at B & H thanks to $3,000 in instant savings. If that's still too rich for you, the C100 is now $4,999 ....makes you wonder what will be coming at NAB... Meanwhile, Kai at DigitalRev takes a look at the retro Nikon Df DSLR , and doesn't like it at all (and it doesn't even do video!) Here's an example of color grading , using SLog2 4K footage from the Sony F55. And here's a really interesting video showing the effect of moving the positions of your lights . Amazing video of a brushless gimbal (the MoVI?) doing it's thing. The Playlist has a list of the 1...

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Color Correcting Video in Photoshop | Photofocus You’ll learn how to color correct and grade your sequence.  You’ll learn how to refine the color and exposure of video footage. You’ll also learn how to use Lookup Tables in order to quickly apply a style to several clips.  The Photoshop editing interface is easy to learn and master. Credit Suisse: Only Canon, Nikon and Sony will survive in the digital camera market | Sony Alpha Rumors “Only those who have a strong brand and are competitive on price will last – and only Canon, Nikon and Sony fulfil that criteria,” said Credit Suisse analyst Yoshida. The new Hobbit movie saw Weta Digital make Smaug larger than a 747 in one scene yet use GoPros in another | Pocket Lint That said, the scene where Smaug chases Bilbo about the mountain of treasure is jaw-dropping and obviously took a lot of work. Yet the barrel escape scene seems more straight forward. That intricate blend of 4K footage and GoPro shots is thanks to Wet...