Workflow

Is this some new innovation in editing software?

Hold on George Lucas, don't get too excited. Let me explain.

Let's say I have a rough cut of a surgery (or any documented event for that matter).

I have cut this to the best of my ability, without any sort of Vulcan mind meld to know exactly what the client wants. Now that would be cool.

Next step is to have a meeting with the client, to review the video together. Let's say that the client has such limited time that the only time available to even review the edit is face to face for 1 hour a few days after the edit was completed.

Step 1

View edit on laptop - point video camera at laptop, lav on client, roll tape.

Step 2

Do not stop tape.

Step 3

It's Saturday morning (at least it was when I started this post). Sleeping past 7am can be a real treat. Make a cup of coffee (as much as I like the convenience of highway gas station coffee, making it at home is so much nicer), eat breakfast whenever, and plan out my day.

Now certainly weekend time is valuable and precious, however it is also an opportunity to be productive without working too hard.

Here's my home office setup for the weekend. The morning sunlight casts a comforting glow on my workspace, normally provided by fluorescent lights:

This gives the phrase Capture Window new meaning - it is nice to be able to capture video while looking out the window, reading, eating or catching up on a week of TiVo recordings.

And so my Spring travel season comes to a close. Like the annual monsoons in India, my Spring travel takes me to conferences and various shooting locations, as recounted in previous posts. The only problem with so much travel, is one needs to get into the swing of things to actually cut the videos and move toward project milestones and eventual completion.

I have blogged before about project management, workflow and organization, but I feel it necessary, especially for independent contractors and some of the younger folks who read these blogs to reiterate the importance of being organized.

Getting organized can be easier than staying organized. I tend to change up my methods periodically. Whatever method I use, I follow one maxim: use paper.

Here you can see my current incarnation of brain management - the linear calendar.

This question comes up a lot- how does one label a DVD-R? I would never use a print on inkjet disc- because they smear with just a droplet of moisture nor stick on labels because they peel and jam. Instead- I'd go for one of three technologies- depending on budget and how professional the labels need to look:

1. Sharpie. This is cheap as dirt and works like a charm for sending to replication houses and for internal backups. But not so much given to clients- looks decidely ghetto for that...
2. LightScribe- this is a type of DVD burner than works with special media and lets you burn a monochrome image directly onto the disc surface. Looks a lot more pro than Sharpie for clients and has no issues with peeling off.

Now here's something interesting, the folks over at Silverado Systems have partnered up with Vuze to create a different kind of contest. OpenCut is a completely open-source film competition designed to encourage people to take professionally shot material and edit it in their own way. As there is no "one way" to tell a story, so too can stories benefit from being re-edited and re-told from many different vantage points and perspectives.

They have a short film shot on the RED camera with dailies they'll copy over to your hard drive. Then you cut it altogether any way you want using Final Cut Pro. It's a good way to get your hands on RED footage if you haven't already and maybe even get credited as the editor on the final version as they submit it to festivals.

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:

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."

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.

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 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.

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.

So I have set my sites on jobs when I graduate. It's pretty clear I'm not going to be inducted to the orphanage as their newest lead compositor straight out of college, not that it hurts to dream mind you, but it certainly hurts to expect such things. So I've been focusing on a much more realistic vacancy: Roto Artist.

If you're like me you have a million things to do. Oddly, none of those things happen to be writing blogs, but hey, I ticked off 7 items on my to do list today!

Yes, I would like a gold star, thanks for offering.

As outlined in previous posts, in addition to shooting and editing video projects I also am a project manager.

When I realized that 50% or more of my days were being spent project managing, I did some research on ways to improve efficiency.

For a while I listened to a project management podcast by Cornelius Finchner

http://www.thepmpodcast.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20...

Hi. My name is Mike. It has been 3 months since my last blog post.

Hi Mike.

I have missed all aspects of the COW. I receive my Business and Marketing forum e-mails, but frankly have had little time to read these, or browse the forums or the blogs.

Well, dammit, I pledge to find the time. Here is a little review of what has happened these past 3 months, and why I have strayed from the COW's fertile pastures.

Ooh, that last sentence may have come from a Mike Huckabee speech!

LOL

Early October 2007

With the looming medical convention in New Orleans I have these key projects to finish:

The newest news: our friends at G-Technology have been acquired by Fabrik Inc. They're a California company whose previous offerings were in the consumer space, but who were interested in G-Technology for their Mac and professional content creation orientation.

G-Tech also announced the world's first 500 GB 2.5" external drive -- bus powered over FW, no less. (It also supports USB 2.0.) They also have an update to the G-RAID mini line, now up to 1TB, also a triple interface device (FW 400 and 800, USB). The details aren't up yet, but we can assume it's in more or less the 9x5x3-ish inch form factor as the current mini.

Ok, so I supose I should start one of these with an introduction to my self, and though I will be talking about me whenever i'm talking here and my experiences, we all had to start some where, and the start is where we are at. So lets begin shall we?

First off, if you have issues with bad grammar and possibly bad spelling, than I recommend you leave asap, as I am good at neither.

Secondly, I want to thank you for reading the following, and any subsequent entries. If it wasn't for the COW, and the readers at the COW, I wouldn't be the person I am now. So thanks! Ok lets begin shall we?

Originally posted on The Editblog.

I recently got suckered into a low budget music video. How low budget? The decision was made not to hire an audio person for playback. Without that audio person it meant there would be no audio master made for the song and no timecode slate for syncing later in post. What was the solution? Use an iPod with video and make our own timecode slate!