Traveling anytime soon into or out of the United States? Homeland Security is now authorized to detain your laptop for a "reasonable amount of time" with absolutely no warrant and no suspicion whatsoever. From MSNBC.com today:
WASHINGTON - Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.
Wow, can't wait to travel out of the country again sometime soon. This is just getting ridiculous.
I'm really happy to report publicly for the first time that we'll be providing all post production for 3 feature length documentaries that are currently destined for major film festivals and network HD broadcast in 2009 and 2010. We can trace at least part of this announcement to our investment in BluRay and in-house self-publishing of the high definition discs.
Yesterday a sample 9 minute version of the first of the three proposed documentaries was presented to the Carter Center here in Atlanta. Among the people present were both hollywood executives and an executive of an international television network and most importantly, President Jimmy Carter. It has been Mr. Carter's mission to eradicate major diseases to impoverished areas of the world and in this particular presentation, the story was Guinea worm and its debilitating effect on people, especially the very young. I'm going to be very honest and say that for the first week I had a very difficult time cutting the piece and had to walk out of the suite multiple times a day to get away from the screams of the little girl who serves as the primary focus of this presentation. It was a natural sound story told through the stories of the man who oversees the eradication program for the Carter Center and the volunteers on the ground. All in all, it presents a very powerful emotional punch.
In order to present the project properly, we authored and created a BluRay disc and the production company purchased a Panasonic DLP HD projector for the event. Actually that part is kind of cool because now we have full access to a large format DLP HD projector anytime we need one. In addition to the presentation disc, we duplicated 20 BluRay and 30 DVD copies for all the board and associated personnel to take home. All packaged in proper DVD and BluRay cases with full four color sleeves designed in Photoshop and printed on our own laser printer. The discs themselves were printed on our new FlexWriter IV DVD duplicator / printer.
The fact that we were able to deliver and present the project on BluRay made an immediate impression before the viewing even began. At the conclusion of the presentation, the accolades for both the story and technical quality of the presentation were overwhelming. We will most likely debut at least one of the documentaries at the Sundance Film Festival and it is very likely that all three documentaries will appear on a major international H.D. network in 2009 or 2010. The narrator will be a major hollywood star or potentially several stars, talks are already underway.
What we were able to accomplish by not only jumping in to the BluRay authoring realm, but also the duplication and finishing was to allow our client to look incredibly good in front of a very demanding audience. It's because of this ability to not only tell the story on screen, but deliver it in the highest possible quality anytime, anywhere, that we were granted the offer to be a part of these three documentaries and essentially have one edit suite already fully booked for 2009.
BluRay self-publishing is here and it works.
Equipment used:
Apple Final Cut Pro, AJA Kona 3, Apple Compressor 3, Adobe Encore CS3, FastMac BluRay Burner, Panasonic BluRay Duplicator, FlexWriter IV DVD Printer, HP LaserJet 3000 Printer .
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.
So I called buyoutfootage.com and it was explained to me that all of the footage is from the Department of Defense and it was all dubbed from the original sources at an Air Force Base.As there's no way to know what types of cameras the various folks were shooting with, the quality varies from very good to really really poor. That fact is not mentioned in the synopsis.
Synopsis: The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a category 3 storm, which made landfall on the morning of August 29, 2005. Aerial views of the flooding in New Orleans and helicopter rescue of people trapped by the floodwaters.
Scenes of people being removed from a freeway overpass by helicopter, and aerial view of the Super Dome. People waiting at the airport. Short scene of President Bush and Mayor Ray Nagin walking toward camera. Shows devastation of homes along the Gulf Coast.
In fact I was told I was the first one to complain about the quality of the footage and that there are "DV folks" and then there are "video connoisseurs." I guess I fall into the later and the DV folks don't know the difference in quality? Regardless, approx. 80% of the footage is far below what I could consider full quality video and really should not be sold to anyone without an explicit note in the description along the lines of "This footage was shot by Department of Defense personnel using consumer and professional cameras. Video quality varies widely."
The person on the phone told me I really should have ordered the DVD Sample disc (for $35) before ordering the footage. Yes, we will definitely do that in the future. To be absolutely fair here, the folks at buyout footage were very pleasant to speak to the phone and they did do a makegood offer so that we will have enough images to make this project work.
So for those of you seeking out royalty free and low cost footage, especially of major events, be sure to:
1 - Ask how the footage was obtained.
2 - Ask what the quality of the footage is. (Is it first generation? What cameras / format was it shot on?)
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.
Now about that "only works on PC Computers" comment..... PC stands for Personal Computer. Personal Computers run Mac OS, Windows, Linux and even UNIX operating systems. What they should have said on the ad was "only works on Windows operating systems." But that would definitely be asking too much of a company that features Apple computers for a Windows based product.
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."
DP Clay Walker setting up the lighting
Director of Photography Clay Walker created the overall lighting design and shot with an HVX-200 in standard DV mode while 2nd camera operator, Cheryl Collins, shot with a DVX-100B. "The decision to shoot in DV was predicated by both the budget and Jayne's decision that this was to be a YouTube only project so high definition was not needed. This also allowed for easy matching between the 100 and 200," said Biscardi.
A total of 8 performances were recorded in one day using two primary setups for guitar and piano based songs. A real challenge in Post Production were the live recordings and trying to match up the various takes. "When we first met on this I requested that the performances be recorded in advance and the singers lip sync to make for easier editing over multiple takes of the song. But Jayne insisted that they be recorded live during the taping. Of course with live piano, live guitar and live singers, each performance of a song came out slightly different so trying to match up the singers with various takes was definitely tough at times."
Rachel Farley and Jayne Olderman perform "He Made Woman." Pam Kennedy, Tiffany Milagro and Rachel Little back the duo up.
In the end, the live performances were the right call. "Jayne was absolutely correct to insist on the live recording as we did get some really great performances from the singers."
Jayne's Café is being rolled out over the next few months on YouTube, currently the live recordings of "Real Life" and "He Made Woman" are uploaded along with a previously produced commercial for "Love Big," which was also directed and produced by Walter Biscardi, Jr. The performances can be found here:
http://youtube.com/user/mightymusemusic
Equipment / Software used: Panasonic HVX-200, Panasonic DVX-100B, Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Color, ProTools.
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?
Professional Video Editor, Producer, Director since 1990.
Credits include multiple Emmys, Tellys, Aurora and CableAce Awards.
Owner / Operator of Biscardi Creative Media, a full service video and film production company with about 65% of our work in HDTV. The show you know us best for is "Good Eats" on the Food Network. I developed the HD Post workflow and we also create all the animations for the series.
Favorite pastime is cooking with pizza on the grill one of my specialties. Each Christmas Eve we serve the Feast of the Seven Fishes, a traditional Italian seafood meal with approx. 30 items on the menu.
If I wasn't in video production I would either own a restaurant or a movie theater.
