Notes On Video

Letus has posted a very short video that shows the FOV of their GoPro Anamorphic adapter vs the regular GoPro field of view: This was shot on a GoPro Hero 3+ with and without the Letus Anamorph-X adapter. This is a quick sample straight off the camera showing what the adapter does to the FOV. Shot in 2.7k Protune mode. Trimmed and exported out of GoPro Studio. No other editing done and no stretch applied. The image can be flattened using the de-fish option in GoPro Studio and by tweaking it in post. We are also working with some plugin vendors to build a simple, one click converting option for various post workflows. NOTE: you would of course want to apply a 1.33x stretch to the anamorphic footage to re-establish proper aspect in the image. This is most easily done using the "4x3 to wide" pre-set in GoPro Studio. That applies a 1.33x stretch but does it more intelligently than a standard stretch in post. My personal workflow is to shoot in 2.7k, apply the dynamic s...

Several items from yesterday reappear in today's report. First up, Amira (or is it AMIRA?) prices were sort of leaked yesterday, and today ARRI in Europe confirmed the prices. I was going to link to ARRI's site , but it must be really popular or something, because it wasn't loading while I was writing this, so I have to link to a second source. Now ARRI Officially Announce Amira Camera Prices |  Cinescopophilia Hot on the heels of CVP dropping their ARRI Amira camera and package prices comes the official ARRI announcement that pricing has been set for its new documentary-style camera, AMIRA, and orders have begun to be taken. And Andrew Reid writes a love letter to the Amira. Arri AMIRA priced to compete with Canon C500 – plus, the secret of Arri’s success | EOSHD What’s the secret to Arri’s success? I’m putting my cards on the table straight away… I love the AMIRA. It’s as close to being the perfectly designed single-operator camera as I’ve ever seen. And...

For the past few years Lightworks has been an intriguing dark horse in the editing world. "The King's Speech" was edited on it! And they went and released a -practically - free version of it a few years ago. And promised a Macintosh version (over three years ago.) Nowadays the "free" version costs a little money if you want to be able to output in certain compression formats, and the Mac version is still not released, though they just released an update for Windows and Linux: Major new Lightworks release (Windows and Linux) - and now you can just "buy" it | Red Shark There are some big new features, including background importing, rendering and even exporting. Speaking of which, export to YouTube is now built-in. There's more hardware support with AJA's ioXT now recognised by the software. Subtle changes to the UI make navigation more direct and intuitive, and the screen elements adjust more easily to different screen resolutions inclu...

Drones seem to be "it" at the moment, with lots of different models appearing. This one seems barely larger than the GoPro it carries: AERIAL VIDEOGRAPHY IN YOUR POCKET | Videomaker The Pocket Drone is a multicopter that makes aerial videography possible through the use of an action camera such as the GoPro Hero 3. It's capable of carrying a payload of up to half a pound. Cheap $50 Lens for DSLR Video | DSLR Video Shooter The lens in question is the Olympus 50mm F1.8 fully metal manual lens. I found this lens in EX condition at KEH camera and LOVE IT. The sharpness of this little sucker blew my mind. And the manual focus ring and aperture are perfect for us DSLR video shooters. It also works great with full frame and APS-C sensors. The Kessler Parallax is intended to solve the problem of keeping the camera pointing on a still subject as the camera is moved along a slider. Redrock produced one solution for this; the One Man Crew , but the Kessler product has...

Atomos Samurai ‘Blade’ and ‘Connect’ | James Miller | Philip Bloom One thing to bare in mind is that if recording interviews using external sound into the Blade, for reference or as a master (Audio is not supported over HDMI on Canon 1DC), the sync will be off by a few frames. Luckily if you do clapper tests before your shoot, you have the option to shift sync + or -. This is very handy and will save headaches later in shifting audio layers. One of the problems with CMOS sensor cameras is Rolling Shutter. A global shutter solves that problem, so it would be good seeing that appear on more cameras (though I think the Global Shutter tends to lower the sensitivity of the sensor by a stop or so.) Canon to Offer Global Shutter for 2.5k Video on an Upcoming DSLR? [CR1] | CanonRumors We heard rumour that some folk in the video world are selling off gear in anticipation of a global shutter capable of 2.5k video being made available on an, as of yet, unnamed DSLR. Bad news for Son...

CineAlta Magazine | Sony Welcome to the premiere issue of CineAlta magazine, a periodical dedicated to telling the stories of those using Sony's large sensor digital motion picture cameras in production. Rode VideoMic GO Review | Photography Bay I have one complaint about the VideoMic GO. I wish it was built so that it did not extend behind the camera. If it remained only over the front of the camera (more like the VideoMic Pro), I would probably never take it off when I’m on an outing. Reading a Light Meter: Tips and Tricks | Hurlblog The Sekonic L-758C is the ultimate meter because it is two meters in one. You are able to read the incident light levels with the ball and the spot meter function gives you the ability to read points of light, the wall and buildings in the deep background to make sure there is enough fill level, grey cards, etc. A Film Can be Good, Fast and Cheap But You Can Only Pick Two Out Of The Three | Lights Films School The color palett...

Inspiration vs. Plagiarism | Casey Neistat | Tumblr A frenchman named Maxime Barbier copied one of my movies, the concept, the idea, nearly scene for scene, and in places line for line.  Then he sold that movie to Coca Cola.  Then he thanked me on Facebook for the ‘inspiration’. DOWNLOAD THIS CINEMATOGRAPHY CASE STUDY OF JANUSZ KAMINSKI, ASC | The Black and Blue Stephen Murphy [...] created a series of “personal study documents” – PDF files that compile quotes from a particular cinematographer placed next to stills from their cinematic efforts. Now we’re able to look at the frames of a cinematographer’s film while pairing it with their opinions on how they did it, why they did it, and what it means. 6 Lies of Film Distribution | Writers Store Truth #2: All major distributors track the movies that have been listed in the trades under their production columns. If you were in those columns, you’re going to be phoned. Do not send them a rough cut. Do not send them a...

Reader Paul Antico of Anticipate Media passed along his initial thoughts on the new Mac Pro : So.... my very preliminary testing with our new Mac Pro using the plugin I use most (filmconvert -FC), shows that Premiere CC needs more optimization for the dual GPUs. In fact, I'd say the CPU utilization is not up to snuff either. I know FC only uses one GPU presently from the developer. That will change. In the meantime, using a couple of typical projects with that plugin as an example, I'm only seeing 25-45% speed up in exports over our maxed out late 2012 27" iMac exporting the same project. That's significant of course but not the 100%+ one would think we would be seeing at the least given the MacPro config of 8 cores and dual D700s. Premiere Pro CC seems in fact to never maximize CPU (never mind GPUs). I have yet, in my very limited testing, see it "pin the meters" like I did on the iMac. Of course that's just testing now two short (under 5 mi...

B& H sent me a list of new devices they have arriving soon or that are just in stock. These are the ones I found interesting (though not sure I'd actually buy any of them!): Sony PCM-D100 High Resolution Portable Stereo Recorder | $799 This looks like a nice recorder, I'm sure it is. But for that price, I think I'd want XLR inputs! The PCM-D100 High Resolution Portable Stereo Recorder from Sony is capable of recording audio from its built-in stereo mics in up to 192 kHz/24-bit PCM, 2.8224 MHz DSD, or 320 kbps MP3 files. It has 32 GB of internal memory and supports external memory via its SD-XC card slot. The PCM-D100's stereo mics can be arranged in 90° XY or 120° wide stereo positions, depending on the subject being recorded.  Moog Theremini | $299 I suspect this would be little more than a toy for me...but I always liked the sic--fi noise they make: To assist in learning to play the instrument, the Theremin features a built-in tuner that allo...

Drowned Drones: When a Multicopter Hits the Water | MAKE Even if you manage to retrieve your aircraft, you will likely lose all of your electronics, your camera, and your gimbal. Getting footage back is about all you can hope for, and even that isn’t a given. A fully-loaded DJI Phantom 2 quadcopter with gimbal, GoPro and first-person view transmitter (FPV) is currently worth about $1,400. Losing a rig like that is very painful, but losing a larger multicopter with a gimbal-mounted SLR can cost upwards of $10,000. Netflix ends 2013 with 44 million subscribers, will keep experimenting with pricing | Engadget Netflix had a big year in 2013 with award-winning original content, new features and millions of new customers. Now, the company's fourth quarter report reveals it wrapped up last year with over 44 million customers worldwide. Interestingly, an entire section of the letter to investors is related to the recent appeals court ruling that struck down key parts of net neutra...

Evolution of the Dolly Zoom | VashiVisuals Nice compilation of clips from movies from Vertigo to Jaws: The Dolly Zoom is a camera shot made famous in Alfred Hitchcock’s VERTIGO (1958). It was invented by cameraman Irmin Roberts to visually convey the feeling and effects of acrophobia by zooming in with the lens while simultaneously dollying the camera backwards…or vice versa. Since 1958 it has been used hundreds of times in motion pictures…sadly most of the time only as a trick shot. UK Colourists Want Their Say On New Cameras With Newly Formed DCA | Definition Magazine  “The idea was basically with the advent of more digital cameras and the need for on-set monitoring or LUTs that we all try and get together to try and share some information and find some common ground. It is quite tricky as we’re all from different companies - no one wants to give away their trade secrets. Mac Pro Shipping Times Slip To March; Is “Made In USA” To Blame? | Cult of Mac A month later,...

Getting Started in Aerial Video | Make The most popular quadcopter for aerial filming is the $679 DJI Phantom because it’s ready-to-fly (RTF) out of the box and was designed to hold a GoPro camera. (The new Phantom 2 Vision has a built-in camera instead, plus an FPV system — see tip 4 below.) The Phantom is the perfect platform, even for beginning hobbyists, because it’s easily hackable — there is a vibrant third-party accessories market, mostly consisting of enterprising individuals selling mods online. Open Source Apertus Axiom 4K Camera Project Exploring Swappable Sensors, Lens Mounts, & Filters | No Film School The Axiom Alpha prototype with the CMV12000 image sensor is just the beginning, we want to offer a wide range of different image sensor modules in the future. Whether it be a Super16, Four Thirds or Full Frame Sensor or a module that allows fine-tuning the sensor alignment shift for Stereo 3D, there are so many possibilities.  Tutorial: Making an eye in 3...

Joseph Oxford and Bradley Stonesifer Create a World in Cardboard for Me + Her | Filmmaker Magazine Director Joseph Oxford and cinematographer Bradley Stonesifer created an imaginary world using cardboard boxes and rubber bands for their animated short film Me + Her. A labor of love that evolved over four years, their work was rewarded when the film was accepted into Sundance’s Short Film program. Blackmagic Design Announces DaVinci Resolve 10.1 with FCP X 10.1 XML Import Blackmagic Design today announced the release of DaVinci Resolve 10.1 software which adds new editing and 3D stereoscopic features as well as support for Final Cut Pro™ X 10.1. DaVinci Resolve 10.1 is available now for download free of charge for all existing DaVinci Resolve customers from the Blackmagic Design website. Calibrate That Display! | Alexis Hurkman One of the most frequently asked questions I’ve gotten over the years is “I’m planning on using a plasma display for color critical monitoring, but...

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...