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!
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
(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.
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.
The New York Times reports that Warner Brothers has now lined up in Blu-Ray DVD corner effectively giving the Sony format about 70% of the high definition DVD market. They'll continue to release movies on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray until May and then switch exclusively over to Blu-Ray. This leaves Universal and Paramount along with Dreamworks as the only major studios backing HD-DVD.
As a production company that had to jump into Blu-Ray production in support of one of our clients, this is welcome news for us. I have to say, if you have not seen Pixar's "Cars" and "Rattatoule" on Blu-Ray disc, you have not seen the true capabilities of Blu-Ray. Jaw dropping is the only way I can describe what these movies look like in HD. Better than what it looked like in the theater.
So there's been a lot of talk on the forums lately about Magic Bullet Looks now being available for use in editing systems and I'm even going to try it out shortly myself. But for those of you with Final Cut Studio 2, keep in mind you have probably the most powerful color grading software available for desktop computers in Color just sitting there. Yeah it's not perfect, there are some issues to work around, but I have to admit, even with the issues, the end results are nothing short of stunning.
Quite a bit ago, back on August 3, 2007, Alpha Dogs in Burbank CA had what they dubbed the "HD LCD Monitor Shootout." This was a comparison of many HD LCDs...all presented side-by-side in a proper gray room, all showing the same footage...for people to look at and judge for themselves what is the best HD LCD.
The models displayed were:
TV Logic LVM 240D Front Niche JVC DTV 24L1D Teranex ClearVue DIT DTS-OR23.NS4 DIT DTS-OR23.NS3 eCinema DPX Panasonic BTLH2600W Sony LMD-2450WHD
To be specific, my cable system just added the HD feed of the Food Network. Walter handles the HD editing, color grading for Good Eats, among the most popular shows there. Walter also handles both HD and SD animations for Good Eats, among the most distinctive parts of the show.
Wally and I have the Red Sox postseason to thank. Okay, and to a much, much, much lesser extent, the Yankees, Cubs and Phillies.
The Red Sox were pioneers of local sports programming - among the very first to own their own cable network (New England Sports Network, NESN), the VERY first to build schedules of major pre-game and post-game coverage (usually an hour, often 90 minutes), as well as extensive original programming, ESPN-style studio newscasts, talk shows, documentaries, etc.
At long last, my traning DVD for Apple's Color is now taking orders! If you've been staring at this incredible color grading software for a while, it's time to start using it! "Stop Staring, Start Grading with Apple Color" is what you need to get going.
Here's the sales page with all the details and an incredibly cool trailer. It's my absolute pleasure to bring this title to you guys!
So we've had a lot of discussions on the Final Cut Pro and Apple Color forums about what can we use to replace the current Broadcast CRT monitors that are EOL? I've not been overly impressed with the current crop of LCD monitors out there. My favorite to date, the Panasonic 1700W and 2600W are both good, but cannot completey replace my Sony CRT Broadcast monitor.
Jonathan Demme's new documentary, Man From Plains, about former President Jimmy Carter had its World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 7th, 2007. The film received a two minute standing ovation and will next be presented at the Toronto Film Festival with the Carters in attendance on Monday, September 10th.
The film is an intimate two-hour portrayal of the 39th President set against the backdrop of Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid book tour.
This is Part 2 of a 4 Part series on Starting and Running your own business in the creative industry. In Part 1 of this series, I posed the question, “Are You Ready?” A link to Part 1 is at the end of this article in case you missed it. If you’ve thought long and hard on this and your answer is “Yes,” then let’s proceed with Part 2 of this 4-part trilogy. Here we’ll explore a lot of questions on setting up your company and getting ready to open those doors!
So I just have to pass along this wonderful experience we've had and it really underscores the tremendous community we have here at Creative COW. For about a year I've been contemplating an upgrade to our facility to make it more efficient. When I started in 2001 I had one edit suite and hoped to add a 2nd one at a later date. In 2003 we expanded to that 2nd suite and I was eventually able to get a full sized rack unit to hold all my tape decks, my computer and some storage.
Hi all. We're entering the wonderful world of Blu-Ray authoring and with it, we've discovered that not all Blu-Ray DVD Players are created equal. To author our discs, we have to use BD-R media, as in Blu Ray Disc Recordable. We're using Sony Discs and to my surprise, my $999 Sony Blu Ray player does NOT support BD-R.
I am spending this week with my parents in Florida. As a good semi-retired couple they dutifully purchased a 60" Sony rear projection LCD tv upon moving into their new home. Perhaps the problem is Comcast digital cable, but here are my observations:
1. There are not many HD channels.
2. On the HD channels, not all of the content is HD.
On Sunday, April 15 at the NAB Apple Event, I fully expected to see the application formerly known as Final Touch re-released under the Apple name. What I did NOT expect was for the product to re-christened Color and for the application to simply be given away as part of the new Studio 2 package.
So as many of you know, in addition to being an editor and owner of Biscardi Creative Media, I'm also the animator for the Food Network's Good Eats. As such, most of our animations are based on food or food history. Now generally I rely on clip art / artwork books, websites like clipart.com and istockphoto.com along with my own photographs of headshots and hands to pull together the necessary elements for the script. But there are times when you just have to take matters into your own hands.
So I've been dealing with several issues with an international network that has a primarily European distribution area. We seemed to have everything worked out this morning and suddenly I get a notice from QC that our audio was suddenly rejected as being 8db too hot. 8db too hot!
I'm completely dumbfounded. How can audio on this show, which was professionally mixed, be 8db too hot? We've already delivered three episodes and each passed QC with flying colors and suddenly we screwed up this big?
CNN reports that Apple has started charging credit cards for the shipment of Apple TVs. They continue, "Analysts say it's likely to sell well initially." Wow. You think so? The same analysts believe that Apple has taken pre-orders for more than 100,000 units, and, well, since I read it on the internet, it must be true.
So a recent thread in the Creative Cow Final Cut Pro forum about Internal vs. External RAID's got me thinking more about the subject. I'm a firm believer in external RAID's and really don't have any desire to install 3 or 4 drives inside my Mac Pro tower.
At long last, my Creative Genius will be unleased on national television. I will be appearing as the Negative Guy in a scene to be shot Friday, March 8, 2007 for an uncoming episode of Good Eats on the Food Network.
We've discovered an audio issue when using the Panasonic AJ-HD1400. A high end "crackle" is being added that sounds somewhat like sizzling bacon or crackling cellophane when laying back to tape via Firewire. I honestly can't hear it as I have a hearing loss in both ears, but the fine folks at CineFilm in Atlanta who convert our DVCPro HD masters to HDCAM heard it and alerted us.
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