As you output your project to tape, or to DVD...whatever. Or before you encode it for the web or DVD...watch it all the way through. Even if you have seen it three dozen times, it would be very wise to watch your project before you do your final output, or an output that is going out to the network.

Why?

Well...one of the other editors here came to me with a big issue...one that I have never seen nor heard of before.

Looking for a little help here from folks familiar with Encore. Creating a custom menu in Photoshop using one of the stock Encore Menus as a template. Got nice looking icons in the Photoshop file, but they turn into blobs when they get into Encore. See below.

So here's how the menu appears in Photoshop. Notice the icon next to "Original Songs for Projects" is a nice bow and arrow icon and you can see the file naming structure to the right is correct from Encore.

So now look at the button as it appears in the Preview Mode in Encore next to "Original Songs for Artists." It's just a red blob. And yes, it also appears this way on a burned DVD.

So anyone have any thoughts on why my icon turns into a blob?

Always trying to come up with clever headlines for these blogs, today I settled upon Random Access Memory. We in the video business are always talking about RAM as it relates to using multiple programs at once, having enough juice to run your software. But in this case I am talking about the availability of information in a randomly accesible fashion.

Take a database, or a simple Excel speadsheet - randomly accessing desired information is as simple as a search or a query. However as we all know, the specificity of the search is limited by the details of the data stored.

For example, if I have a database of oh, I don't know, surgical videos. We store the name of the procedure, the author/s, the year produced, the running time, the available formats and a brief description of the video, either something written by the author or the first few lines of narration.

Thus, i can search for: Cholecystectomy AND Jones to find videos on Cholecystectomy by anyone named Jones.

My producer from The Mexican American War and Andrew Jackson is teaching a 4 week workshop. Time permitting I might see if I can pitch in when it comes to the editing phase. Anyway, here is the press release for this event:

HISTORY/DISCOVERY Channel Producer to conduct summer HVX-200/Final Cut Pro workshop at LA's Citrus College

A week ago last Sunday we did a 3 camera shoot for a wedding and I must say that the combination of the EX1, Macbook Pro and our little G-RAID Mini made the SxS Pro memory card transfers a total breeze and dirt simple. My wife was the card wrangler and was creating quite the stir over at the venders' table in the back of the room when she dragged out the Macbook Pro and started transferring the files over. She caught the interest of the photographers, DJ, restaurant staff, wedding planner and even the bride's parents as she previewed some of the EX clips using the Sony Clip Browser software after each card transfer. "Amazing new technology" was the most frequent comment. I wish I was shooting with 3 EX cameras instead of 1 EX plus 2 MiniDV tape based cameras. Oh well......

 - Don 

And guys can check it out too...

www.funnynotslutty.com

I thought it would be good to have funny content geared toward women in one spot. It looks like a lot of web humor is more guy oriented. Does not hurt to support female comedians, writers, humorists and producers either.

There's a social network too if you want to check it out. Click "Network!" in the nav bar. Please take a look, let me know what you think, join the network and pass it on!

Published this sucker this weekend and I still have a lot of work to do, but hopefully you will get the idea. Suggestions always appreciated.

Jacki

Here's a tool for anyone working with the solid-state and tapeless workflow, for example the Panasonic HVX200 and Sony EX1. If you've been dragging and dropping footage from your folders to your hard drive you could be a bit more at risk than you realize.

ChronoSync is a data management tool that allows you to efficiently synchronize files and folders from one disk location to another with full verification and resume capabilities. In other words, it's perfect for copying footage from your SxS card or P2 card onto your hard drive.

About the only real drawback with ChronoSync is that it doesnt generate a checksum for the files. So verifying can be a a bit slow.

For more information and to order, visit econtechnologies. Here's the link:

For those of you who are purchasing a new Mac Pro Octo Core and planning to upgrade your RAM after the purchase, be aware that Apple's instructions on upgrading are actually wrong.  

In my case, I purchased an Octo Core 3.2 with the minimum 2GB RAM and ordered an 8GB Upgrade Kit from Crucial.   This consists of 2 sticks of 4GB each.   According to Apple's instructions, if you have the standard 2GB RAM configuration (1GB on each Riser) you should install the next pair of RAM equally on each Riser.  

So I placed a 4GB stick on Riser A and a 4GB Stick on Riser B.  That didn't work.  The machine still showed 2GB RAM and all the other memory slots empty.   So I contacted Crucial using their handy dandy "live chat" service to speak directly with a support agent.

He told me to move the Apple installed RAM to Riser A and the Crucial RAM to Riser B.  Did that, and voila!  I have 10GB RAM now showing up in the machine.  Just a note for you folks out there and kudos to Crucial for such a handy dandy live chat service.  Got me up and running again in less than a minute.  Yay!

If you're having any problems with Sony XDCAM EX footage the latest version of the XDCAM transfer software might be a big help. It has some new error correction built in that can recover corrupted material.

The PDZ-KP1 XDCAM Transfer Software is an import plug in for Final Cut Pro. XDCAM Transfer Version 2.5 supports the current XDCAM HD and SD optical products, the new PDW-U1 optical XDCAM drive, and the PMW-EX1 XDCAM EX camcorder which records on SxS flash cards.

Check it out:

https://serviceplus.us.sony.biz/sony-software.aspx?model=pdzkp1

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Someone ought to write a book called "I'm a project manager, Now What?!"

Hey, not a bad idea for a book.

Back in 2003 I began the gradual transition from video editor/shooter to project manager. Mind you I do plenty of editing, but depending upon the project I am in fact managing, sometimes more sometimes less. But the particular responsibilities are no less important than the others.

At the time, we had about 3 times as many employees, so I was also a department manager. There was some resentment, such as "can you do my job as the web master? how can you possibly manage me or review my performance if you can't do my job yourself?"

I'm not making this up, but the same guy who said that, in the same conversation, said "you know, I turned down other jobs since I've been working here for more money because I thought I could make that money here, and I like the people I work with. Now you're telling me you're not happy with my performance? How could you judge my performance, you don't know what I do...yadda yadda yadda."

This can actually fall into many categories. Scope creep is when the initial project plan morphs into something you could not have anticipated, often thanks to last minute "emergencies" and clients changing their minds.

As a customer service oriented organization, it is easy to say "yes, no problem." A better response, based upon the estimated budget and a signed contract which explicitly discusses overages, is "yes, no problem. That will cost an additional $4,000. How would you like to proceed?"

See the difference?

Which response you give has to do with how you have structured your financial terms with the client.

Here are a few semi-autobiographical examples (the names have been changed to protect the guilty!):

Client XYZ

We shot a re-make of an older video, approx 90 minutes running time. The client provided little feedback on the transcript for the original video, aside from "yeah, let's shoot it." The agreed upon deliverable was a DVD, perhaps with chapters.

The first edit took a couple of weeks - we made it match the original video, except with more up to date graphics and narration.

Once we have the actual shot, we can then control the downloading of footage from the camera using Vision Research’s software. Thus far they’ve only released a version that runs on Windows. In order to preserve the Mac-loving image of Simplemente, we decided to run it on a MacBook Pro with Boot Camp. We can then select the ins and outs of any particular shot. Typically the exact moment you want to save is a tiny fraction of that 6 minute take and the rest is a lot of frames with no activity you can delete. The selected portions are then saved out to a hard drive using Vision Research’s proprietary Cine file format.

It hasn't been a good week for my hard drives.

On Wednesday my old G-Raid...the one I bought four years ago...finally gave up the ghost. It had begun clicking over the weekend when I was copying footage to and from it, which is not a good sign. It did this before, when I owned it for about a year. But, I took it to G-tech in Santa Monica and in two days, I had it back in my hands. The same thing happened back then...clicking when copying. 

Well, after a few days of the clicking...it decided not to show up on my desktop at all. Nor in the Disk Utility. And the warranty expired. So I cracked open the case, pulled out the two PATA drives and connected them both directly to the computer via a spare PATA firewire case I have lying about. One worked, the other did not. Dead drive. Fine, I relegated it as a Clone Drive for my G5 and tossed the bad drive in the trash.

Then comes Saturday. 

I wrote two articles for the Final Cut Pro User's Group Supermeet at NAB. They appeared in the SuperMag magazine. Here's part one of the second article looking at Simplemente's work with the Phantom HD camera:

Rune Hansen and Monica Reina at Simplemente in Mexico City recently acquired a Phantom HD Digital Cinema camera from Vision Research. We got to shoot a bunch of slow-motion footage and then worked with it in Final Cut Pro to create demo reels for theatrical projection. We needed to accomplish all of this in the space of about 48 hours.

The Phantom HD’s claim to fame is the ability to shoot uncompressed, high speed footage at up to 1,000 frames per second (fps) and up to 2K (2048x2048 pixels) resolution using a special CMOS imager. It accepts standard PL-mount 35mm cinema lenses and is also capable of capturing in standard and HD resolutions from 1 fps all the way up to 1,000.

I wrote two articles for the Final Cut Pro User's Group Supermeet at NAB. They appeared in the SuperMag magazine(which I named btw). Here's part two of the first article looking at an Apple network system that is being used at the Beijing Olympics this summer in China. For part one click here.

Simplemente chose to work with Gallery Software, a UK-based company that has been making QuickTime-compatible applications for over a decade. For the Beijing project, Simplemente selected Gallery’s SIENNA, a complete integration suite for connecting Final Cut Pro workstations to the traditional newsroom broadcast workflow. SIENNA was developed in response to the huge demand for Final Cut Pro integration from the world's leading news broadcasters. It brings compatibility to existing newsroom equipment for workflows based around native QuickTime and enables single media shared storage with Apple's Xsan.

Hello everyone !

I've been doing editing since the last 3 years, I've heard and read a lot about the subject and even though I still consider myself a newbie, I believe that the editing software we use has NOTHING TO DO with the quality of a movie. Editing is the art of puting video sequences at the right place at the right time. In my mind, even with Windows Movie Maker, people like Terry Rawlings or Pietro Scalia for example would still create a masterpiece !

If there's something that bugs me is when I see people arguing about using this or that software or this or that version. Keep in mind that not very long ago, someone was cutting the tape with a knife ! On many websites, blogs, forums, I'm always amazed to see that the best movies of all times are more than often, old movies !!!

Regards

I wrote two articles for the Final Cut Pro Supermeet at NAB this year. Here's part one of the first article looking at an Apple SAN network system that is being used at the Beijing Olympics this summer in China:

Last NAB, we visited Simplemente, a production/post-production house and Apple Authorized Training Center/Dealer based in Mexico City. They’ve been working hard alongside one of their biggest clients, Televisa, the world’s largest Latin American broadcaster. This year Simplemente embarked on its most ambitious project yet, a complete post-production solution for Televisa’s coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China.

Here's one last little NAB item from RED. Interesting little device, essentially it's a 4K media server in a $1,000 box. You encode your 4K footage to REDCODE, burn to a standard dual-layer DVD-R and voila you have a 4K file you can playback directly to a projector. This could prove to be revolutionary to theatrical and festival presentation. Or not... Let's let time, actual delivered product and reality tell us!

SPECIFICATIONS:

* PLAYS 4K, 2K, 1080P, 720P AND SD FROM RED DISC AND RED EXPRESS
* ALSO PLAYS NATIVE RAW R3D FILES FROM COMPACT FLASH

SPECIFICATIONS, DELIVERY DATES AND DESIGN ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE.

Over the past two weeks I attended several medical conventions as an exhibitor.

First was the SAGES meeting, discussed in my previous post. Last week was a combined meeting of surgical program directors and coordinators, held in Toronto. The unique aspect of the exhibits at this meeting were the uses of multimedia technology aimed at surgical education.

First, of course, the Cine-Med display featured our latest books and our online video libraries, and a demo of our forthcoming Multimedia Atlas of Surgery. At this meeting, the most popular items were the books. Particularly a book about improving communication techniques for surgeons. The ACGME has mandated that surgical education serve one or more of six core competencies, including communication and professionalism. This book covers these two competencies. Click here if you want to see more:

http://cine-med.com/index.php?nav=books&id=COM100

I mentioned this briefly in my series on how to get your film distributed and I wanted to expand on it just a little. I cannot emphasize this enough, get photos of your movie as you're making it. Now there are two basic types of photos you need and both are important: behind the scenes and production stills.

Behind the scenes photography are the photos where you can see the movie crew and the gear being used to make the movie. Now of course you'll be tempted to photograph your cool crane that you managed to borrow or steal for a day or the Steadicam operator running after your actress. Or maybe you have a car mount or maybe a really nice Panavision or RED camera. These are all great to have but not the most important.

The most important behind the scenes photo, as least as far as the success of your movie is concerned is a shot of you, standing with one of your actors or near a movie camera pointing. Now this is silly, but read just about any movie magazine like Entertainment Weekly, US, Maxim, Moviemaker, etc and you'll see oddles of the directors, "directing." Now of course some of us might actually direct like this but probably not. Anyways it's a must.

There has been a lot of fuss over the use of the Duel Systems Duel Adapter (PC-express to PCMCIA card adapter) in conjunction with the Mac Book Pro. New users and others migrating up from their older PowerBooks with a built-in PCMCIA slot have posted many entries expressing frustration with the integration of the Duel Adapter with the Mac Book Pro. Mostly this comes from failure of P2 cards to mount on the desktop after a previous card has been ejected. Users experience this problem whether or not they are using a program like HD Log or P2 CMS, or just plain old drag and drop for offloading. This might lead one to believe that the problem lies with the adapter itself and not with the P2 workflow, but my experience is that this is probably not the case.

Here's the first bit of info out the gate from RED about their new Scarlet Pocket Pro Camera:

Not confirmed but rumor is under $3,000 SRP. Take that AVCHD.

* NEW 2/3" MYSTERIUM X SENSOR
* 1-120 FPS (180FPS BURST)
* UP TO 100 MB/SEC REDCODE RAW AND RGB RECORDING TO DUAL COMPACT FLASH
* 4.8" LCD
* 8X T2.8 RED ZOOM LENS
* FULL AUTO OR FULL MANUAL SHOOTING MODES
* HDMI and HD-SDI
* FIREWIRE 800 and USB2
* STILL MODE
* COMPATIBLE WITH MANY RED ONE ACCESSORIES
* WI-FI CONTROL

This is a really impressive chart from Gizmodo, that shows the difference between standard definition and HD and then goes on to compare it to 2K-5K including the Scarlet and EPIC cameras they introduced at NAB. Those are some really big frames. Of course that needs to be backed up with really excellent optics in front of the sensor.

So a while back I wrote about our new DiscMakers Medley and how it was a so-so DVD Printer / Replicator.

http://blogs.creativecow.net/node/402

Well, I have to tell you, this thing is a piece of garbage and if you're considering one of these "all in one" DVD copier / printers, stay away from anything with the DiscMakers name.

To date, we've been able to duplicate and print about 250 DVD's. Then the printer stopped working. We've called tech support for approx. 6 straight days. Oh and tech support is not DiscMakers, it's a company called XLNTIDEA INC . They actually make the duplicators, and in fact if you look on various websites of companies that sell duplicators, you'll see the exact same machine with differnet names.

This past week we attended one of two major surgical conventions, the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons, this year held in Philadelphia.

As usual, we setup our booth on the show floor, to advertise and sell our videos and books.

The most satisfying events during these 3 days are when our customers and business partners say hello, offer praise and extend invitations to explore new business endeavours.

Here are a few example:

Doctor A - wearing Naval uniform: I take your penetrating trauma textbook with me whenever I am deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. It and the video CD are invaluable.

This is great to hear, that videos I shot and a book I helped to create are used to help save the lives of our brave soldiers and presumably the local citizens in war zones. Regardless of one's opinion about the war itself, soldiers who are volunteers do their assigned jobs and deserve the very best medical care.