Sony and Samsung announce a wireless HD signal that would send HD signals to multiple TV's in your home from a single box. But Sony is also involved in another effort to achieve the same goal. Wonder if the signals will ever been good enough for smaller Post houses like mine to send signals wirelessly to our production monitors. that would be pretty cool actually!
We're working on a corporate documentary type of project that involves teenagers who lived through Hurricane Katrina. The project is all shot in high definition and of course, the producer was in the market for some news footage of the hurricane and its aftermath to help craft the story.
Looking around the web we found buyoutfootage.com with the most reasonably priced footage, about $450 for 19 minutes of the aftermath rescues and such. The description of the reel describes pretty much exactly what we were looking for with military personnel helping people, flooded streets, the mayor walking around, etc.... It's available on BetaSP so we naturally assumed it would all be clean, good quality footage. Being on a quick turnaround schedule, we simply ordered the master without getting the sample DVD.
That was a bad decision. When we received the tape, a lot of the footage looked like it had been captured at a very low resolution or it had been through about 5 or 6 generations of dubs. Most of it is very soft, again, like bad transfers along the way.
Well Samsung has released the supposed "iPhone killer" and I've wondered how it stacks up to the newly released iPhone 2.0. Fortunately for all of us, MSNBC has done a really nice head to head comparison of the two. In the end, they both work well, but the one thing I was surprised about is that the "live Sprint TV" they advertise in the ads is not entire shows, just snippets of shows. And the comparison of the screen brightness and clarity is pretty impressive.
Anyway, really good reading for anyone thinking about one or the other.
7 months into our BluRay authoring experience with Adobe Encore and button routing still does not work correctly in the BluRay mode. We're trying to create a very simple Chapter Selection menu, but no matter what we do, the last button in the menu is always auto selected when you choose the menu and when you want to return to the Chapter Menu, you can't, you always go back to the Main Menu.
We notified the head of the Encore team of this issue on May 28th and also notified him that we had a July 1st deadline for 5 retail BluRay titles. They were supposed to download the files that day and get to work on it. Then June 20 we were asked to upload the files again so they could get to work on it.
To date we have no solutions and essentially had to scrap the Chapter Menu on the titles. Just a word of warning to anyone who wants to plunk down money for Encore CS3. DVD authoring is fine, but if you intend to do BluRay discs, be prepared to make major concessions to the failings of this software.
Ok, my dumb advertisement of the week. I'm seeing an ad for FinallyFast.com show up again and again on cable channels. They promise to get your computer running fast again by removing spyware and all those nasty little things that can slow down a computer on the internet.
A disclaimer on screen points out this only works on PC Computers. (this is funny too, but more on that in a moment). So why is this ad so dumb? They prominently feature an iMac an an iBook. Yes, an iBook. In fact, the computer shown more than any other is the iMac.
These Macs are not the newer Intel versions so you could make the argument, "Well you can run Windows on those machines." Nope, these are classic PowerPC computers that are relegated to the Mac OS only. Sorry, this is just a dumb, bonehead, lazy move by the production company and the client to show two computers that can't even be used by the product that is being advertised.
Biscardi Creative Media is proud to announce the completion of "Jayne's Café" featuring Jayne Olderman, owner of Red Warrior Records. Looking for a unique way to present her songs to a wide audience, Jayne created the concept of an unplugged 'café.'
"Jayne and I have been working together for a long time and when she mentioned this project, I immediately jumped in and said we'd like to produce it at BCM," notes Walter Biscardi, Jr., Principal Biscardi Creative Media. "Our challenge was to be able to shoot it well in a very small studio space. There's very little room for lighting and the ceilings are only 9 feet tall and we had up to 6 people for each song and 2 camera operators, so it definitely made for some tight quarters."
Well we thought we had things starting to go well with Encore after we figured out that the buttons would turn into blobs and figured out a workaround, but alas, more things just don't work.
One of the supposed really cool things about Encore is the ability to build your entire DVD in Flash. This allows you to upload a working version of the DVD in a flash based format for a client review. Well, we've tried this multiple times on both our Mac Pro Quad 3.0 and our new Octo Core 3.2 and all Encore does is build maybe 10% of the project and then it simply hangs. Really disappointing.
Supposedly this issue has to do with Leopard and the latest Quicktime, but the Mac Pro Quad 3.0 is currently running Tiger and it doesn't work there either.
Also, we've discovered that Encore CS3 is incredibly unstable on the new Octo Core 3.2 as well. Crashing at least every 10 minutes if not more.
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?
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!
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.
There, I said it. I hate Adobe's Activation procedure. Yes, I understand you have to protect your software from all the complete morons and low-lifes who can't pony up the money to purchase software legitimately, but geez, do you have to make this procedure so asinine that it affects legitimate purchases?
Three weeks ago I installed Apple OS 10.5 on a fresh hard drive on my editing workstation. A day later I installed my copy of the Production Premium Package CS3 to do some After Effects work. The Activation screen obviously pops up, I tell it to go ahead, but it fails. Fine, I'll Activate it later.
Two weeks ago I use After Effects and the Activation warning pops up again, again it fails to automatically activate on the internet. So I go ahead and do the Phone Activation. No problem, it gives me the activation code and I get the "Thank you for Activating the software" and I move on.
We're experiencing a sudden Memory Error issue with Final Cut Pro that has led to bad renders. The issue has been happening on my Mac Pro for about three weeks now and it started happening on our PowerMac G5 Quad 2.5 yesterday. I also checked with a client in New York who is experiencing the same issue.
When working on a project and attempting a render, we sometimes get the following error.
Most often this error pops up if the system has been running a while, four hours or more, or I'm rendering out a full episode of 22 minutes or longer. Generally the error appears about 75% in to the render.
What then happens is the render actually keeps going, but the renders are all screwed up. Partial lower thirds, graphics in the middle of dissolves, graphics from somewhere else in the project.
Just a note that I'll be bypassing NAB after all this year. Our production schedule is very fluid right now and I just can't justify the cost and time away from the office right now. I was hoping to meet many of you at the Artbeats booth this year, but it'll have to be another day. I will be creating a pretty cool demo for Artbeats that'll be online in April though.
Riley's Run in Albany New York is holding a raffle for an Eli Manning Autographed Football or Super Bowl Program. Best of all, the money will go towards the sugery for a sick labrador here in Georgia sponsored by the Labrador Friends of the South. So give and give often. $5 for one ticket, $10 for three!
http://www.ryleysrun.org/home.html
Raffle Ends March 1 so hurry!!!
And here is Lisa's Story, the labrador you'll be helping with your donation.
Apple released some nice speed bumps on both the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines. Can't remember the last time both versions of the laptops got updates on the same day.
MacBook Pro: (all have SuperDrive with the spiffy new multi-touch pad)
2.4Ghz, 2GB RAM, 200GB HD $1999
2.5Ghz 15", 2GB RAM, 250GB HD $2499
2.5Ghz 17", 2GB RAM, 250GB HD $2799
Nice update all around, but if you have a one year old or less MacBook Pro, don't really see any reason to run out and purchase a new one. But if you're still on a PowerBook G4 or older laptop, certainly some nice new machines out there.
Ok, late news flash as this information is actually from MacWorld (what two months ago now?!?) but the folks at ATTO were able to crank up two MaxxDigital EVO HD SAS/SATA units to 1200MB/s. 1200!!! Good Golly Miss Molly that's some serious horsepower.
Ok, ok, ok, how did they pull this off since you can't connect two systems to the same card? Easy, two ATTO R-380 SAS/SATA cards in a Mac pro. Then connect a MaxxDigital EVO HD unit to each card. Stripe both EVO HD units as one large storage array and presto, 1200MB/s.
Hmmmmm, how many streams of video would THAT be? You could do the Brady Bunch Open times 5 at least I suppose. Would be fun to test that out with Uncompressed HD and see if there's any way to do multiple streams of HD in realtime with filters.
Here's a photo only a mama could love. A bunch of tech geeks standing next to the unit with the speed tests displayed on the screen.
Hello Apple Engineers! Word is Toshiba is dropping HD-DVD. BluRay is the winner by a knockout!
So how about including BluRay authoring support in DVD Studio Pro now? I mean hasn't Apple been on the BluRay side of things since the format was announced? Doesn't Compressor already create files for both HD-DVD and BluRay? Don't BluRay burners for the Mac already exist?
Why am I asking so many questions?
For some reason, despite Compressor supporting BluRay and HD-DVD, despite BluRay burners being available for the Mac, despite Apple supporting the BluRay format (how I'm not sure), we can't author BluRay using Apple products.
So we own Adobe Encore CS3, which of course required us to purchase Adobe Premeire in the process. We own the FastMac internal BluRay burner (excellent) and even own a Panasonic Dual Burner Blu-Ray Replicator (excellent). We've authored 4 BluRay titles to date and will probably author 8 to 20 more before the end of 2008. At some point, I would much rather prefer to work across the Apple Studio Suite rather than having to go from FCP to Compressor to Encore to Toast to the FastMac burner.
So after dropping NAB once then reappearing, Apple has decided to join Avid and skip the NAB show floor altogether. This is an incredibly disappointing decision for a company that supposedly supports over 800,000+ Final Cut Pro users and countless other pro-apps users.
I've found out that our very own Aharon Rabinowitz is now doing occassional Technology reports for NPR! How exciting is that?! He's done one report and hopefully this will lead to many more. As someone who has gained a LOT of knowledge from this guy with all his After Effects tutorials and training, I want to congratulate him on this latest achievement. Hopefully this is just the first of many reports we can expect to hear from Aharon.
Going out on a limb here, but figured I'd take a stab at predicting today's game. I'm a Big Blue fan all my life so it's hard to go against my beloved Giants. They played a very tough game that last week of the seaon and while the Patriots are going to score a lot of points, I think it's the Giants by a field goal.
Amazon has put together a nice links page to update your HD-DVD and BluRay players. If you don't already know, many machines require firmware updates to be able to play the latest discs, particularly the recordable discs, such as BluRay BD-R discs.
If your machine won't play that latest HD disc, check to see if there's an update for your machine.
So you want to work more efficiently in Final Cut Pro? Well I have just the answer for you, Tabs! Yeah, those things you see in the corner of every window. They can make your life so much easier if you would only use them. Here, let me show you how in my newest tutorial!
Peter Wiggins has released his newest creation for Final Cut Pro called SupaWipe! Ok, we've all had to create sliding graphics in order to create custom wipes. You know, you do an edge wipe underneath a graphic that you slide over the transition to make it appear as if the graphic is actually doing the wipe.
Well, this is what SupaWipe does all as one transition! Peter supplies you with a bunch of preset graphics like an airplane and construction tape, but the really really cool thing is, you can use your own graphics. Anything you've created and it will create the transition using that graphic.
For those of you who followed my blog about the issues with the Primera Bravo II DVD Replicator printer, you know that I purchased a DiscMakers Medley unit to replace it.
So according to a new Reuters article, over 1/4 of the Apple iPhones sold in 2007 have "gone missing" by the end of the year. In other words, they have been unlocked and are running on other networks. Maybe they don't want to be snooped on by at&t (see related blog entry) or maybe they just want to be able to choose which phone they want to use on which network. Gee, that's an original concept!
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