Well, as an update the previous posts about our Final Share SAN, yesterday we installed a new Ethernet card to bypass the new Mac Pro ports altogether, but unfortunately ran into another snag. Final Cut Pro won't even launch with the card in the machine. No clue why at the moment. My guess is some sort of a conflict with one of the other cards that are in there and for whatever reason, FCP is just throwing up when it tries to launch. So more head scratching and sleuthing for the guys to see what's causing the conflict. Their suggestion...
Okay, okay, I know I say I don’t write about programs that cost big bucks, but this one is important, and security is something that some amount of money is well spent on. In this case we are talking about $48.44 (including tax) for all of your computers, and your iPhone or Palm. In return, you get some decent password management and strong encryption (whatever that is). 1Password may be old news to many of you out there in password hell, but not until I read this debate on Slashdot: Poor Passwords A Worse Problem Than Poor Antivirus , that...
Those of you who read some of my posts may have bumped into my enthusiasm for Philip Kotler's " Chaotics: The Business of Managing and Marketing in the Age of Turbulence ." If I had to pick the single most important business book that I read during all of 2008 (when I started it) or 2009 (when I finished it), it would be Chaotics. To be honest, people that read this book don't really finish it, they keep referring back to ideas and bits of it -- flashing through its pages so as to rekindle points raised within the book....
Dan Desmet came by today with one of the new FSI 2470W LED backlight monitors today so I could compare it to our 2450Ws. So right off the bat, this unit features an RGB LED Matrix backlight vs. the fluorescent backlights of the 2450W. This makes the display lighter, use less power, run cooler and makes it basically "instant ready." The 2450W has to warm up for at least 30 minutes to be fully accurate in color. In addition, the LED backlights are even more precise giving you a wider and more accurate RGB display. Now before we go any...
After several months of debugging, it looks like the newest and fastest Mac Pros have serious issues with the Final Share SAN system. For whatever reason, the Mac Pro keeps disconnecting itself from the SAN, usually at the end of a render, though it can happen when launching FCP, launching a project that uses the SAN or a myriad of other reasons. It started out happening once in a while but it's at the point now where it has really put a crimp in our feature documentary and causing delays in deliveries to our client. Because it's so unstable, I'm...
We are happy to announce that Creative COW has just launched a discussion forum related to Closed Captioning. This is something that we have wanted to add to the forums line-up for a long time, now. But finding the right person to support it has been tough. Recently, Jason Livingston wrote us and asked if we would consider adding a forum for Closed Captioning. When we checked out his credentials, Jason has quite an impressive resume, one part of which is both writing and supporting closed captioning systems. We look forward to working with Jason, and if you would like...
So here in this section of the Atlanta area, our cable provider is Charter Communications. About 4 months ago we dropped their TV service that we’ve had since about 1998 because their HD picture left a lot to be desired. Specifically, we had about 12 HD channels and of those, only 2 were sharp on any given day. The others were a mess of very obvious compression artifacts. And at one point we had Charter install what was supposedly an HD DVR but it was obviously some really REALLY bad analog DVR that did some horrible upscaling of SD material...
I don’t usually write about MS products, but this one deserves a few lines: Win7. I had been using (if you could call it that) Vista Ultimate in a Fusion virtual box for some time, and just upgraded to Win7 Ultimate by going through the upgrade process and not a fresh install. To my huge surprise, almost everything worked without a hitch. The only major problem was with VMWare, and not Windows, as to upgrade you need to have about 12gig free in the virtual partition, and to expand that partition you can’t have any snapshots stored. So it took...
In this entry I'll take you on my daily walk around the office. Maybe you'll pick up some business advice along the way. 8am - finish breakfast, feed the cats, make some ham sandwiches and make my wife a hot cocoa. Hey, it's getting chilly. Managing the home is just as important as managing my work responsibilities. Looking after my family is the most important task of all. 8:30am - Knowing Waterbury, CT I'm stuck in traffic. In the 1960's a huge interchange between I84 and Rt 8, colloquially known as the Mixmaster, was built. Almost instantly, gridlock was the...
Just had a great demo of CatDV 8 which is a media management tool and much much more. After seeing Final Cut Server in action a few months ago, I can already tell this thing seems much much easier for the end user to use. The fact that it can be used in the field and tie directly back to the main server is incredible in and of itself. Clients can view their proxy files over the internet directly off our server? Cool! No more window burn DVDs!!! Yay! Due to our frantic production schedule I don't really have time...
Since the introduction of Creative COW Magazine back in early 2006, we have been asked repeatedly to make the print edition available to our friends and members around the world. Unfortunately, we were not set-up to accommodate international mailings and we had no way to bill them and maintain the record keeping -- well, unless our small team wanted to work around the clock! ;o) But recently we have added the means to allow our friends worldwide to receive the print edition and we are delighted that the response has been beyond our expectations, with orders arriving quite regularly. It...
All, If you've been following the FCP forum on here you might have seen a fairly heated debate over the Canon5DmkII http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1060351 A guy who has been in television long enough to know better said: Because there are those out there operating under the delusion that it's an actual and proper TV production tool. There are some fools who actually think they can use it and it alone, that's why. It's a TV toy. So I thought I'd post some notable examples of 5D work I've found and let everybody out there make the call. The clips look great in...
There's a somewhat lively debate going on in the COW Final Cut Pro forum about vDSLRs (still cameras like the Canon 7D or Panasonic GH1 that have HD video recording ability) and their viability as HD video cameras vs more "traditional" HD prosumer level video cameras. A few reasons why the vDSLRs (or HD-DSLRs depending on which acronym you prefer) are a hot topic is because of the low price, interchangeable lenses, and shallow (film-like) depth of field that has been sought after by so many people using sub-$10k cameras. Some downsides to vDSLRs are non-standard frame rates (7D withstanding),...
No clever title this time. As we have been editing HD projects over the past year we have been collecting sample clips showing surgical and non-surgical training footage. This is just a sample. The Sony HVR-V1U has proven to be a great camera for use in the sensitive operating room environment. It is lightweight enough to hang over an open incision, the battery life is long and the images are astounding. Given the potential negatives of HDV, we have found it to be a robust format with good color reproduction and ease of editing using Premiere. It is a processor...
Hello all. This post follows a really good article by Mark Boulton about good typography I read, and specifically, how to deal with bullet points. Below are 2 images he gives to demonstrate how bullet points should and should not look. The problem here, as Mark Boulton points out, is that modern graphic software such as InDesign, is not set up to deal with bullets correctly. I have often been guilty of bad typography in this area in the past...when you are doing a project such as a credential brochure which needs to get out the door yesterday, it is...
I know, not as clever as some of my headlines. Today was a day to unwind, and take advantage of perhaps the last perfect Fall day of the season. Mid-60's, sunny, leaves at peak color. Woke up to a typical Sunday. Hearty Breakfast. No shaving on the weekend, thank you. Meet the Press makes breakfast a bit less appetizing. Leaves are changing...and falling. It's a beautiful day. Don't let it get away. Thanks for the advice Mr Hewson. Destination: Meriden, CT - just a few miles away. Hubbard Park, designed by none other than Frederick Law Olmstead, has miles of...
We creative types work hard. We should play hard, but sometimes that takes a back seat. This past Summer, a great way to unwind from 8 hours in the office chair would have been to hop on the mountain bike and ride. Maybe it was the humidity or the seemingly constant rain we had here in New England, but this year my couch potato genes took over. Actually that would be "chair potato" because most of my downtime was spent in front of my home computer, either watching Hulu, or working on my own pet projects. And no, emptying Rusty's...
I have often wondered what motion picture audiences would think of film-acquired images if digital imaging had come first. Would the grain structure, the motion blur, the organic judder, and the characteristic soft shoulder inherent in the celluloid medium be lauded, or would these characteristics be labeled simply as artifacts? Would, for instance, the limited dynamic range and sharpness of the digital format be viewed as necessary characteristics to be duplicated or mimicked in film, or would they have been seen, from the beginning, as an artifact to be eliminated by means of research and development. Would film have even...
After a week of travel, which was more like 3 weeks due to the preparation and focus on nothing but the end goal, it is like returning from a long journey. Amazingly, the voicemail was empty and there were no packages piled on my chair. Why? Because nearly everyone I work with on a regular basis was in the same place as I was, many of them at the same hotel. So it was like I was at a high school reunion, assuming that I was part of a class that took 20 years to graduate. So here I am...
I had the Canon5DmkII for a while and although I had shot a few tests, I hadn't really made anything that I could post properly. As you might know, I edit for BBC & IMG on the coverage of the Snooker & Darts here in the UK and thought this would be an ideal opportunity to give the Canon a good outing. I have to say I was amazed at the results. Colin Nuttall who is one of the best cameramen I work with got some amazing shots. Gorden Lugrin assisted and Jason Woodward held it all together by directing....
I finally decided to take a stab at this blogging thing. I've picked up a lot of good info reading other people's blogs and I'd like to be a contributor of knowledge as well as a receiver. Last night I attended the October meeting of the Los Angeles Post Production Group (LAPPG) and even though I didn't win anything in the raffle I did manage to mingle and learn a few things from the presenters that evening. First up was Jeffrey Way from AJA Video Systems talking about the Ki Pro . For those that don't know the Ki Pro...
It has been previously established that I travel a good deal for work. I find myself in some exotic location like Cleveland, but almost always after dark is the first free time I have. It breaks my heart to see folks taking flash pictures at night of beautiful architecture or scenery, knowing that they will get home and just have pictures of nothing, or blown out faces surrounded by shadow. In the case of architecture, you get highlights and uneven contrast. However, sometimes without a flash and without support, or even with intentional movement, you can get a truly incredible...
In other words, don't try to be something you're not. We all want to grow, and we creative professionals should always be learning new things: skills and practices. It is the practices that I will focus on in this entry. First skills. There is an abundance on the web and in the real world of opportunities to get new skills. Training classes for Final Cut, graphic design, using the RED camera or whatever. I get the Maine Workshops catalog every year listing everything from an intro to lighting week course to a 6 month live in sabbatical where you write...
The past 7 days have been spent preparing for a big convention that we participate in every year. our responsibilities include processing roughly 150 videos, mostly produced by outside entities (doctors) and about a dozen from our shop. We decided this year to finally do away with DVCAM tape and do all of the projection in about 15 half-day sessions via MPG2 files on hard drives. We created a simple html launcher and carefully organized the files by session. The next step was to review the MPG2 files to ensure that they are appropriately representing the original quality. The original...
Sharing the love to all, Work in progress... I render this 3d car in 3ds max, using mental ray engine, used 3 lights one dome and 2 1K spots, Composited 27 layers in adobe After effects + cool sound fx. D...
Today I spent about 8 hours reviewing videos for an upcoming event. I had previously viewed all of the videos off a hard drive to be used for projection, and made a list of originals to check. If the original looks better than the MPEG2, then I copy the original to my hard drive for future re-compression. In many cases, the original is in fact MPEG2, and with adding logos and trimming heads and tails, a recompression pass is sometimes a bad thing - especially if the original was not up to MPEG-2 quality to begin with. Thus, during the...
Tuesday night (29-09-09) saw Black Country Cinema unveil its style of video poetry at the Light House Media Centre in Wolverhampton. It has been a fairly long build up seeing as our first meeting with Peter McLuskie regarding the Screen Forum event was over a month and a half ago. However this didn’t stop their being a race to organise everything for the event, promote it and prepare for our first audience. Even the drive to the venue was frantic through all that Wednesbury traffic, but I digress (slightly). We were stationed in the upstairs cinema, which was perfect for...
Recently, I attended an excellent HD Workshop & Mini-Expo presented by Digital CONNtent Creators http://www.digitalct.org/ at Tripeg Studios in Hamden, CT. This event was very informative and I am still amazed by how rapidly the technology in our industry evolves and grows. There is no question that in order to survive these changes you must understand and embrace them, so thanks to Keith Larsen and the rest of the crew that put this show together. This November marks my 25th anniversary in this industry and throughout my career I’ve witnessed the many changes in the tools we use to do...
'Twas a week before deadline, And all through the office, Desk jockeys are working, To add that last bit of polish. Whiteboards are filled to the edges with tasks, And hard drives are spinning fast. From office to office computers are buzzing, The i7 and quad core renders are mind numbing. With K-cups dripping and snack products stocked, The workflow is humming and may never stop. But as time ticks past like blank discs from a spindle, Day after day the punch list will dwindle. A hundred and fifty mpeg2 files await, On a hard drive destined for arrivals late....
