television

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

LA’s Citrus College of the Performing Arts is conducting a 4-week summer INTRO TO PRO HD workshop with Emmy-winning HISTORY/DISCOVERY Channel writer/producer/director Jim Lindsay. One of LA’s best-kept secrets for arts education, Citrus has been the home of the Grammy Foundation’s summer “Grammy Camp”. Having offered terrific “real world” education in the recording and performing arts for junior-college tuition rates, Dean Robert Slack is moving into the video world, kicking it off with this workshop using Panasonic HVX-200 cameras and Apple Final Cut Pro. Jim Lindsay’s daughter Sara (former “Grammy Camper”) attends Citrus in the singing/songwriting track, thus the connection. Lindsay has been responsible for many of HISTORY’s highest profile specials including the 3-hour ALEXANDER THE GREAT, 2-hour MEXICAN AMERICAN WAR hosted by Oscar De La Hoya and most recently the 2-hour ANDREW JACKSON,(edited by Creative Cow Final Cut/P2 guru Shane Ross). Workshop will run Monday thru Thursday, 10 AM to 3 PM, June 23 – July 17, 2008. Cost is $400 per student. (No, that’s not a typo, $400 for 4 weeks, not 2 days. That’s why Citrus is LA’s best-kept secret.) Class size is limited to 24.

Lindsay has “done it all”, from shooting, to editing, to screenwriting (Showtime’s CONVICT COWBOY starring Jon Voight), to directing NBC’s UNSOLVED MYSTERIES all 9 years, and writing/producing/directing 50+ hours of prime-time specials for HISTORY, A&E, DISCOVERY, NBC, CBS, FOX & LIFETIME. So this will be no “academic theory” workshop. It will be classic Citrus “real world”, warts and all. Every student will come out with their own short film, shot in DVCPRO HD on the HVX-200’s and edited in FCP. (Jim will be taking students through the exact same HD workflow that he and Shane use for their HISTORY/DISCOVERY shows.) Jim will be covering every aspect of production: from story/structure, to network pitching, to prepping, budgeting, shooting, lighting, editing, finishing, distribution, the whole enchilada. Depending on their schedules, several members of his production team, including Shane, may be contributing as well. Overall, a rare opportunity to learn from folks who really “do it” for a living at levels of very high standards both creatively and technically.

For information on Citrus College, go to http://www.citrusarts.org/ or call the sign-up office at 626-914-8580.
The workshop brochure page can be viewed here
Jim Lindsay’s website is Jimfilm.com. Specific questions can be directed to Jim directly at jim@jimfilm.com
Digital Content Producer also featured the Lindsay team and their workflow in this article

The official title of the History Channel Series I am working on is STRANGE HISTORY. The stories will mainly deal with taboos, cultural and sexual, and strange cultural practices from around the world. There, now you know.

The first week there I was working on one of the rental systems. Because my computer hadn't come in yet and because they didn't play on renting my system for a few weeks yet. Now, this rental system was a bit lacking. Sure, it had the Octo Mac 3.0Ghz and a LARGE Mackie Mixer (that you would find on an Avid system) with 16 channels, 4 of which we use. Two for FCP, two for the deck...oh, 5...one for the microphone (temp VO). It had a Kona 3 card, was on one of those HUGE editing desks, was nestled in a rack, and had big HD LCDs. Not color correctable ones, but an early model Sony Luma series that was fine for producers to look at. The computer monitors? Lacking....WAY lacking. 17" square LCDs...brand I haven't heard of. SMALL, to say the least. I suffered on these for two weeks. The third week I was on my system. The rental didn't start on it until THIS week, but I wouldn't allow myself to suffer any more.

About the mic. We had it plugged into the Mixer, but then, how to get that audio from the mixer into the computer? The Kona 3 cards only have AES EBU audio in, so what do we do? Well, I happen to have the Griffin iMic, a device that takes an audio input via RCA and plugs into the computer via USB. This shows up on the INPUT list in the VO tool just fine. ISSUE...I had one, but Griffin no longer made the iMic. So for 3 weeks we have been shuttling back and forth from bay to bay. I finally searched EBAY and found a few. We will be getting them in soon. Why not get a USB mic and be done with it? Well, we already had mics, and to control them from the mixer is a breeze, so why not just get the $20 tool that allows you to use that?

Now for the types of footage we are working with. Plenty of Varicam DVCPRO HD 720p24 footage. A few 32GB cards worth of P2. Then comes the temp footage. DVDs with screener footage, temp stills, FLASH MOVIES from the internet...VHS screeners. Hoo boy...where to start. DVDs we are ripping using DVDxDV. I find it much more stable than MPEG STREAMCLIP, and the encode process is fast and very clean. I have the PRO version on mine, because one show I worked on had DVD as a master, and I needed to encode it uncompressed SD to match everything else.

The flash video (odd that we have to do this, but the clearance people said that is where they were directed) presented a problem. We tried FFMPEGX but that didn't do it. And we tried iSquint, but that didn't encode to an editable format. I could have gone with Visual Hub....but our budget was tight, and we had other fish to fry. OH, and FIRST we had to get them off the web using a few website services that did this. SO I did a test capture using iShowU and that worked out very well. I took the result into Compressor and used the Advanced Conversion presents (DV/NTSC) to upscale it and make it into a workable codec and all was good. And because of the open format timeline, we could mix DVCPRO HD and DV just fine without rendering.

Mind you all of these DVD rips and internet downloads are ALL temp. WE are putting reel numbers that indicate that they are TEMP only. When we lock picture, THAT is when we order the master footage and capture it properly.

OK...now on to how I spent my days. The first 3 days I spent looking at footage of female boxers. Figuring out how to use markers to mark and name the footage, then use those markers to subclip the master tapes. The other editor just went with the markers, but I liked the actual subclips. Of course this presented me with a few issues in dealing with these subclips...which I talk about on the Apple forums. Then I was presented with a script...well, semi OUTLINE with interview soundbytes paraphrased...and no transcripts. So I then spend the next two days listening to interviews and making a few selects. The BIG producer came in and said that this segment wasn't going to be in the first episode anymore, they have changed the order of a few things, so I was asked to start looking at footage for another segment. Again, no script, just interviews, so I listened to them.

The next week I was told to move onto yet ANOTHER segment, as it had more stuff to get into. And it did, the other one had no b-roll, it was all interview. It had to be, the story takes place in communist China in the 1970's. There would be generic b-roll, but we didn't have any yet. This other segment had more, and the producer had more of an idea about what points he wanted to hit, so I moved onto that. I spent the rest of the week cutting up the 3 hours of interviews into a 15 minute story. On Friday, I was handed a script. I was off.

Did I mention that the first rough cut for the first show was due the FOLLOWING Friday? I didn't? Oh, well either did they. I find this out on Tuesday.

Well, I can't go into details, but the delivery was pushed until Monday, then after a screening it was pushed to Tuesday, because huge structure changes needed to be addressed. What looked good on paper didn't on TV...which is typical. So I came in on Sunday and worked for 12 hours, then came in on Monday and worked hard until I finished my segments at 3. WHEW. All we needed now was a quick tease, to tie the segments together and find a bridge...or leave that alone for now. Just need to get the network something to show how we want to approach things. Then I come to find that we need more changes, and delivery was pushed until this Friday.

WHEW.

So today I was back on boxing girls until I get a new script. Mind you, this is all very typical for this kind of work. I grow to expect it. And I know that all the effort I put in on the weekend might get tossed aside in favor of a new approach. BUT, that work still served a purpose. To find out what works and what doesn't. Knowing what doesn't is a pretty big thing. Now all we need to do is find out what does work.

IFC, the Independent Film Channel, is having a film contest.

To promote this contest they have made a GREAT promo video...

What makes me like it more is the fact that I WORK in broascast TV, and must adhere to those rigid standards. Frankly, it can be a bit tiring. I mean, make the colors look good, make it not look to hot, but when I get a show kicked back because I am .02 above 100IRE...that pisses me off! What about my content? Oh, yeah, the networks have hacked that to death with their notes and there are structure rules to follow and then we get to the show timing, and my head REALLY swims when it comes to the technical mathmatical crap that we have to know about video levels. Sometimes I just want to make a good story that people will enjoy.

Sorry, ranting. Rough weekend. Watch and enjoy.

IT'S HERE! It was supposed to be delivered tomorrow, but it got here a day early. I was tracking it on FedEx and it seemed to be sitting idle in Fort Worth Texas...it was there for a while. But then I looked up the tracking number just after lunch yesterday and suddenly it was in Sun Valley CA (here in the Valley, close to Burbank Airport) and on the truck to be delivered! I called my wife...she was going to be out of the house from 11:45 to 3:00...and sure enough, that was when the delivery occurred. But then they made another attempt later in the afternoon and my wife was home and I GOT MY NEW MAC PRO!

I raced home from work...as fast as one can race in rush hour traffic...and burst through the door. There it was, in the entrance hall. Too heavy for my wife and kids to move. After dinner I unpacked it and...well, OK...I'll go into more of that later. Posting pics and all...as if you all care. I'm getting a new machine, it is exciting to ME. But I'll post a few pics as to what I installed and how crowded it is inside there.

But I did want to mention one thing. One thing that put a damper on this machine. I replaced the stock ATI x2600 card with the ATI x1900XT. I read on BareFeats.com that this card works in the newer MacPros. I plugged in a monitor and fired it up and....nothing happened. The card was spinning VERY FAST AND VERY LOUD...but nothing appeared on the screen. DRAT! I took the Kona 3 card out and put the x2600 card back in and fired it up again. Yup, now I can see something. I looked in the System Profiler and it saw the 2600 card, but it said GRAPHICS CARD...then ATI...in slot 1. It wasn't working.

GAH!

I updated the system fully. Nothing. I looked to see if there was a driver for this, and I found that there was a Firmware Update. I downloaded that and ran it, but the computer said "that is unnecessary for this computer" or something like that. GAH! So I e-mailed Rob-Art of Barefeats and told him my predicament. He responded with "You have to upgrade the firmware on the X1900 XT with it installed in a 2006/2007 Mac Pro." OK...fine. I can do that. Rather I can have a friend with an older MacPro do it for me.

More after the weekend. BIG post when it is all installed into the edit bay.

(Freemont Street light show - I was in Vegas this weekend)

I am on the verge of buying a new edit system for my next project, so I thought that I'd take this opportunity to talk about setting up a good working system. Unfortunately I won't get into exact details on OS versions and QT versions, because that is information that I and others keep closely guarded as this is information we use for consulting. But I would like to explain the general steps and reasons for those steps.

First off, lemme get into the specs of the system. This machine will be one of four edit systems on an XSAN shared network storage, so the specs of this machine will need to match the other 3 exactly. Not that you MUST do it this way, but the more the machines are the same, the better. I will be getting a Dual Core 3.0 Ghz Mac Pro with 4GB of RAM and a 4GB Fibre switch. I will also be getting a Kona 3 with K-Box and the AJA HD10AVA mini converter so that I can convert analog signals into HD SDI, since those are the only inputs the Kona 3 has. Finally I will be getting an Intel Mac, after relying on my trusty Dual 2.0 GHz G5 for 2.5 years (It will still see regular use, just as my home system).

On this I will install Final Cut Pro Studio, Adobe Creative Suite 3 (mainly for Photoshop and After Effects), Panasonic P2CMS and HDLog, as we will be dealing with P2 footage. I might get Firefox on there as I like it better than Safari, but that is about it, besides the drivers for the Kona card, which is a given. No games, no funky widgets, no neat little applications from versiontracker.com. The OS and versions of Quicktime will all be exactly the same as the other three machines. All of the Final Cut Studio apps will be updated to the exact same versions. AND WE WILL NEVER EVER EVER PERFORM ANY AUTOMATIC SOFTWARE UPDATES ON THESE SYSTEMS. It is never advisable to do that. Go into the System Preferences and turn that option off. Ignore every prompt iTunes sends you asking to update to the latest version. We are going to inform every editor to NOT update the machines in any way. Print out, in big bold letters on a sheet of paper, "DO NOT RUN ANY SYSTEM UPDATES ON THIS COMPUTER." Put it on the wall behind each edit station. A simple system update, even to iTunes, can throw a system out of whack and suddenly it won't work well with the others, and the system administrator will have to wipe the system clean and install everything from scratch, and that is not a way I like to spend my day. When an update says "adds enhanced functionality to Quicktime. Recommended for all Apple users," don't believe it. Apple is lying to you...well, that little blurb is lying to you. Sorry, but you have to believe this. This Quicktime update might be designed for Apple's new video rental system, and often very little consideration or testing was done with Final Cut Pro and the third party hardware you have installed, so there is no guarantee it will work. Don't do it.

This is the key to a solid functional editing machine. And when you are in a shared editing environment, you really should use exactly same machines, versions of OS, Quicktime components and versions of the software. Any deviation from this can lead to issues. Very often I have seen on the forums people trying to work on the same project but on different systems. From completely different systems like an Intel iMac and a PowerPC G5, one running FCP 6.0.2 and the other running FCP 5.0.4....to two systems running FCP 6.0.2, but one is a Dual G5 and the other is a Quad Intel MacPro. Obviously you will have issues with the iMac and G5, as the versions of FCP are very different. The only solution there is to exchange XML files of your sequences. Obviously this is far from ideal. And you would think that the Mac Pro and the G5 running the same versions of FCP and QT should work, but often they don't. The wonderful "the project is unreadable or too new for this version of Final Cut" might rear its ugly head, and you are stuck. It doesn't seem to make any sense...you have the same versions of everything. Well, it could be that one computer is running a different version of the OS than the other computer. And if they are both running the same version of the OS, then it might be the fact that one machine is running a PowerPC processor and the other is Intel processor based. So many factors, and such small ones that you wouldn't think they'd matter. But they do.

Why would that matter? Well, I am not an engineer so I can't even fake my way through an explanation. Other than small system enhancements and applications might run some system resource that interferes with FCP or QT in some way. So the need to not have your machine cluttered with applications, and the need for everything to match as exact as possible (even down to the RAM manufacturer) is very important in maintaining a solid shared storage editing solution. This has always been the rule on the Avid editing platform...specific versions of everything, and all the machines running the same version of everything. Big notes on the wall warning against running system updates. Being on a FCP system doesn't change the fact that specific

But what if you aren't in a shared storage environment, as I'll wager 90% or more of you will never find yourself in. Finding and maintaining the perfect balance can be a difficult and time consuming thing. Once you find it, DO NOT MESS WITH IT. Same advice on automatic updates applies. DON'T DO IT. If you are a professional, avoiding the updates and neat widgets and small cute applications might be an easy thing, because your work computer is only for work. If you use the computer professionally, then find your balance, install the applications you need to do your job, then leave your machine alone.

This is a bit more difficult for all of you prosumers, semi-pros, independent film makers and hobbyists. You might use your machine for not just editing, but all of your e-mail and web surfing and playing games. So you might need that update to iTunes and Quicktime so that you can rent those movies online like you have been wanting to do forever. Just know that in doing that you might damage your ability to edit. If you can, have the one machine for editing and get a second machine for web surfing and word processing and e-mail. If you simply cannot afford to do that, I understand I've been there myself when I was starting out. I had an iBook that I used for editing and for everything else I did. In this case, before you updated it would be wise to clone your working OS to a firewire drive so in case the updates mess things up, you can always go back to your working OS. I use Carbon Copy Cloner (found at www.versiontracker.com) to clone my hard drive before I perform any updates. And I recommend firewire drives because they are bootable, and you will need the drive to be bootable if you want to clone this system back to your machine. You'll need to wipe the machine drive clean, then clone back the OS on the firewire drive.

OK...sorry for the long post. I hope even though I had to be vague with details that the overall general points I make are helpful. I have spent many an hour and day fixing editing machines that have had some small update mess things up...dating back to Avid Media Composers running version 6.5 on NuBus Macs. It isn't fun to fix, and is frustrating to find that one simple extension was the cause for the edit system not working properly. Play it safe, err on the side of caution and never ever mess with a working system, unless the update provides functionality that you need in your workflow (added support for new camera formats). And always cover your ass by cloning your system.

I saved posting the airdate until the time was close.  Well, it is close.  And it will air THREE times very close to one another...so you will be sure to catch it.

<a href=http://www.history.com/shows.do?episodeId=251189&action=detail target=_blank>Andrew Jackson.</a>

Sunday, November 18  08:00 PM
Monday, November 19 12:00 AM (that's right...MIDNIGHT)
Saturday, November 24 05:00 PM

Not sure if these are Eastern or Pacific times...there have been times when it was set to air at 8PM and I find that it is on a 5PM...so 8PM eastern, 5PM Pacific.  But then it re-aired later that night.

Anyway, this is my third History Channel high def show cut with FCP...and since I have maybe 4 shows that air a year (specials...all of them specials) announcing when one airs is a big thing.  Now, when I get a SERIES, I can be more casual about it and say "catch this every Tuesday at 8:00 PM" and it won't be such a big deal because you see it all the time.  Well, it will still be a big deal, just not a quarterly event.

ONE of these day's the network will publicize a show I work on...one of these days.  Until then I have to shout it from the street corner...

"HEY!  WATCH MY SHOW!  IT'S REALLY COOL!"

When my SURGERY SAVED MY LIFE episode airs on Discovery Health (gah, they HAD to move it from the main Discovery channel for some reason)...I'll let you know.  That will be my...2nd show this year?  The third I am working on now.  MAN, I need a series.

I case you didn't know, the Hollywood writers are on strike. For those of you who are unclear exactly why (like me)

lays out very clearly why.