December Blogwad

I seem to do most of my blogging when I'm at home sick. Well now that I've got a cold, here's a backlog of interesting links on the web.

MacWorld Review: AppleJack 1.5
This is a piece of shareware for servicing your ailing Mac. It's a command-line utility, that helps simplify running some commands that can help fix your Mac. Includes a copy of memtest, which does a thorough check of your memory that helps diagnose bad RAM.

MacWorld First Look: boxee
boxee is an application for accessing digital media that is on your computer and on the internet. It's in alpha right now (I've run into quite a few bugs). But it's a promising concept that illustrates well the future of TV. It's got a 15-feet interface, so you can sit back on your couch and control the app with your Apple Remote. Lets you access Hulu (watch The Daily Show, 30 Rock) and (just added) Netflix support. So you can use the boxee interface to navigate and watch Netflix video that's in your Instant queue (oh, that's something that NetFlix recently allowed on Mac's--you don't need boxee to do that.) boxee runs on Mac's, Linux, and on Apple TV. You can sign up to get into the alpha release or ask a friend for an invitation. I wish Apple TV had this functionality built-in--Apple needs to up their game if they want to stay competitive with hardware and software for entertainment in the living room.

Digital Rebellion: How to keep your job as an editor
This article cover some technical gotchas that will mar your work and how to fix/avoid them in FCP. It goes over my current pet peeve--incorrect field dominance. I've been seeing more and more of this recently. Unfortunately, DV video uses a standard, lower-field dominance, that is very rare in video. Most other formats, like HDV, are upper-field dominant. You can run into a lot of problems when you mix formats in a timeline like DV and HDV. All of this is made more complex because anyone working in HD is probably not using a display that is interlaced--so it's easier to miss these problems. That's one reason why I'm not going to give up on my CRT any time soon--you've got to be checking for interlacing issues.

AppleCare Articles
Convert MP3 and AAC audio files for compatibility before importing
I've run into some weirdness recently with 44 KHz audio files in FCP--if they get rendered then the audio is from a different part of the track then it should be. Solution: convert the audio file to 48 KHz as described in this article.
Creating an Easy Setup for capturing DV with 32 kHz audio
Speaking of audio issues... For those of us still working in DV, once and a while you'll run into some audio at 32 KHz, instead of the usual 48 KHz.
Restoring a DV device connection in QuickTime 7
Can't say I've ever done this, but I've definitely run into issues with DV device connection in FCP. Maybe this will do the trick for you.

A couple of good lists of video tools:
Final Cut User: My Compression Tools
The DV Show: Big List of Video & Audio Converters Mac, PC, and online applications and tools

slashCAM: HD Camcorder Comparison
Looking for a new camera below $10K? This is a great resource. A giant database of specs that you can access in a comparison layout. Also has test shots, and some review info.

Vincent Laforet: 7 DAYS, 7 SHOOTS - EOS 5D MKII
A very beautiful-looking video shot with a Canon digital SLR camera. I haven't been blogging about video on DSLR's--there are a lot of pitfalls to this approach. But check out the video, just to get a sense of how pretty low-cost video could look.

Larry Jordan: Fixing Fluorescent Flicker
This is a nasty problem that I've seen a lot in footage that comes from developping countries. It's caused by cheap fluorescent lighting (can't say I've ever seen it in footage from the States.) This solution won't fix every bad shot, but it could help.

Kensington Mice and After Effects CS4
Oh, we've got a copy of Adobe Production Premium CS4 in house. I'm excited to check out the new 3D features (including real 3D models). One new 3D feature relies on a 3-button mouse. This article helps you set up your current mouse to work as a 3-button input device.

Studio Daily Blog: Multiuser
This looks like a handy piece of software that will set up different user settings on the same computer.

FxFactory Freebies: Pan and Zoom
A free plug-in for FCP. Looks good for stills. I'd avoid applying this to standard-def footage, as SD footage looks like crap when it gets scaled up (especially if it's interlaced.) But I'm much more open to zooming in on HD footage. Just make sure that you capture your HDV footage as native HDV and that the deck isn't downconverting it over firewire. (Caveat: watch out for our old-frenemy interlace flicker if you put your HDV footage in a DV sequence.)

Blu-ray Burning 101

Not sure if everyone really knows about the Blu-ray burner that we have. We bought the OWC Mercury Pro 2x Blu-ray Panasonic SW-5582. It's an external burner that burns 25GB and 50GB over firewire. Right now it's hooked up to the G4 that interns have been working with.

We got it to back up data mostly. Blu-ray is more reliable than a hard-drive and 25GB is decent capacity for backing up video files. We are hoping to use it to free up some of our hard drives that are sitting around not getting used because of old projects that no one wants to delete.

The discs aren't cheap, around $10, but it's reasonable, especialy when you consider that it's a robust, easy-to-use archiving solution.

So how do you use it? I'm not going to into all of the setup here (if you are interested ask me), but there's a video that covers burning discs in the Mac's Finder and with Toast. This video shows Toast 9, but we use Toast 8, and it works pretty much the same (I think the main difference is that they tweaked the interface.)

MacVideo: Step into Blu-ray - for less than £200

I looked for that drive mentioned in the video and couldn't find it. This guy is British, and I couldn't find anything as comparably cheap or anything with the same model number in the States. Remember folks, the dollar is a currency on the wane, eventually our greenbacks aren't going to go as far when buying all those imported, electronics.

Now, you can't watch any blu-ray movies on Macs. Apple needs to add support for that both in hardware and the operating system, and as I've written before Apple has made no announcement indicating that they will support Blu-ray movie playback at all. However, you can author Blu-ray movies using Adobe's Encore software on an Intel Mac. Right now we have that up and running on the new Octo-core Intel Mac Pro that Hiawatha uses. But until Link gets a Blu-ray player or a Playstation 3, then we don't have any way to playback those Blu-ray movies. (I'm all for getting a PS3--how about some Rock Band jamming at the office?)

Here's an article from Adobe discussing workflow for encoding high-def video using Compressor to burn onto Blu-ray using Encore:
Apple's Compressor & Encore Blu-Ray

Adobe--Photoshop and Future Technologies

PHOTOSHOP FOR VIDEO
With Photoshop CS3 Extended, you can now bring in video to Photoshop. Why would you want to do that you ask? What about After Effects? What about Color? Well I just came across a cool site/podcast that gives you a number of interesting ideas about how to harness Photoshop to make your video better.

Here's a video from the Photoshop for Video site that shows you how to use the Shadows-Highlights command on video. I recently used the shadows and highlights command in iPhoto to save some snapshots, and I was thinking "if I can do this on software that's practically free, why can't I do this in Final Cut Pro?". Well I still don't know how to do it with FCP, but I could correct my video this way with the latest & greatest version of Photoshop.


Back to the issue about Color. I haven't used it yet and frankly I'm not thrilled about learning a new interface. Now I have the option of harnessing my knowledge of Photoshop to do some cool tweaking. Also, for you folks who don't know Photoshop, I think this website/podcast is good way to pick up knowledge about the best image editing application out there.

Here are some other cool videos from Photoshop for Video at Adobe TV that I recommend:
Spot Color Grading
Making Alpha Channels for Logos (I do this lots)

So this appears to be regularly updated via a podcast--good way to use podcast subscription to do some regular learning if you're interested in Photoshop. Oh, video in Photoshop only just got added to the Extended verison of the latest Photoshop. But not everything on this site is about this feature, good stuff that can be done in older versions of Photoshop is available too (e.g., the alpha channels for logos movie.)

ADOBE'S FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES
While on the topic of Adobe, there's another interesting video from NAB where Adobe talks about some future technologies. The most interesting one for me is what they call "End to End Metadata". In particular, they were demoing speech recognition that generates transcripts for movies. Then that transcript can be leveraged in editing (Premiere Pro) and in delivery to the web (Flash video.)

Avid has already deployed some of these tools with their Script Sync, which I wrote about on this post. Basically you can hop around in the text of a script or transcript, and the software know where people are saying that bit of dialogue. But I like how Adobe takes it another step further by allowing delivery of the text too--think subtitles, think closed captioning, think searchable text on the web.

I don't know about the voice recognition engine creating automatic transcriptions. I can't believe voice recognition is that good--on the other hand, I'm sure our government is spending billions on voice recognition software so that they can monitor everyone's phone calls. Eventually that technology will filter down to us mere mortals--just another great benefit brought to us by the Bush Administration.

Here's the outline of the Adobe technology presentation if you are interested in any of the other stuff:
1. Cinema DNG
2. End to End Metadata
3. Mobile Delivery
4. Interactivity without scripting

So I found out about these video over at Pro Video Coalition, which is turning into my main source for video news.

Apple Rumors (and a little news)

I try not to pass along rumors, but there's a scary one that's been floating around enough that I thought I'd mention it. I think it started around the time that Apple said that it was going to skip NAB. The word from the grapevine is that Apple is going to sell its Pro Apps, which includes Final Cut Pro.

The rumor has been pretty persistent, enough for Apple to officially deny it. In Robert Cringely's latest article he says that Apple spent the NAB conference looking for buyers for their Pro Apps. He's been saying for a while that Apple will buy Adobe in order to get Flash. If that's the case, then Cringely thinks that Apple can't keep both their Pro Apps and Adobe's competing products, like Premiere, After Effects, and their other audio-video apps because of anti-trust concerns. He's more convincing than any of the other sources that I've heard with this rumor or similar ones, so I'm a little more concerned about it. Although, Cringely goes on to to suggest that if Apple really did buy Adobe, then it would sell the Adobe apps that compete with Apple's.

I still think it's unlikely that Apple would sell Final Cut Pro, and for that viewpoint there's a short blog at Final Cut User.

For a bit of official news, there was a statement from an Apple employee on why Final Cut Server took so long to appear on the market--nearly a year after it was announced. According to this interview at TVBEurope, Apple went back to the drawing board to make Final Cut Server easy to administer. Apple's marketing director for professional video apps said that they were reworking Final Cut Server so that it could run "without an IT department to support it." Final Cut Server seems to have been based on asset management software that Apple acquired late in 2006 from a company called Proximity. If they were simplifying the software, I can appreciate that. I'm not interested in becoming an IT professional, but I'm the most likely person to set up and run Final Cut Server at Link TV.

In the same article, Apple's marketing guy says that they have sold a million licenses of FCP. He also said that FCP had 49% market share in 2007 versus Avid's 22% share.

Blu-ray and Macs

As I've said before on this blog, Apple isn't giving Blu-ray any love. No drives, no playback, no authoring software. Apple is supposed to offer some support for burning Blu-ray data discs now, but Apple has been slow to jump on the next-gen for optical media (remember how Apple was out in front with DVD players in their computers back in the day?).

Right now, 3rd party software is providing support for burning. Toast 8 and 9 let you burn data Blu-ray. Toast 9 is supposed to let you burn high-def video to Blu-ray that will playback on Blu-ray players. But Adobe's Encore, part of Production Premium CS3, is now the best solution for putting high-def video onto Blu-ray. With a Blu-ray burner on the way to Link TV, and a copy of CS3 Production Premium available, we are on our way to burning our first Blu-ray discs. (Now if I can only convince my boss to buy a high-def TV and a PS3, so we could play the darn things.)

Adobe can encode your video for you, but there's a recent blog post Apple's Compressor & Encore Blu-Ray from Adobe that helps you figure out how to encode your high-def in Compressor. Adobe gets kudos for playing well with others. They don't pretend like they are the end-all and be-all of post-production software and that anything you would ever want to do can be done on their software. And I like the concept of an Adobe blog as a personable way to distribute info about software. The closest thing Apple gets to providing updated info on their software is their antiseptic support documents.

Adobe can't find a way to get h.264 encoding from Compressor working with Blu-ray, so they are using MPEG-2 encoding. Adobe will encode your high-def to h.264 for you, but it's nice not to have to do an export of your entire high-def show before you even start to encode.

I found this blog post over at Final Cut User who is also bemoaning Apple's lame response to Blu-ray.

FCP's Competition--Avid & Adobe

Big news from Avid today. The cost of the software-only version of Media Composer has been cut in half to $2500. And they are killing Xpress Pro.

I haven't worked on Avid in over 5 years now. So I can't really comment on how it measures up now to Final Cut Pro. IMHO, I don't think this is going to upend Final Cut Pro's dominance. But it may help Avid from losing too much more market share. They are also offering an educational license of Media Composer for $295. For owners of Xpress Pro, you can upgrade for $500.

Good commentary on these blogs about the latest news from Avid:
ProVideo Coalition
HD for Indies
Studio Daily Blog

I'm about to get a copy of Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium. I'm getting it is as a swap. Unlike Avid and Apple, Adobe has a non-profit pricing. So Production Premium CS3 retails for $1700, but the non-profit price is under $600. When you look at everything that's in the Production Premium, it's a competitive product. Here are the apps:
After Effects CS3 Professional
Premiere Pro CS3 (runs on Intel Macs but not PowerPC Macs, e.g., G5's)
Encore CS3
Photoshop CS3 Extended
Flash CS3 Professional
Illustrator CS3
Soundbooth CS3
Device Central
Ultra CS3 (Windows Only)
OnLocation CS3 (Windows or Bootcamp)

Afters Effects and Photoshop Extended each cost $1000 retail if you buy them separately. So the bundle has some value. When you compare what Apple is offering for $1300, it leaves me wanting more from Final Cut Studio. While I'm very happy with Final Cut Pro, Apple needs to do more work on the secondary apps. Color has bad buzz for being unstable. I know Motion 2 left a lot to be desired in reliability and performance--I'm hoping that once I start working with Motion 3, I'll be happier. And no update for DVD Studio Pro when Final Cut Studio 2 came out. What is up with that Apple? I'm still holding out hope that Apple's waiting until they can introduce a Blu-ray burner in their laptops and then they are going to announce support for authoring Blu-ray discs in Final Cut Studio. But I wouldn't hold your breath. Adobe's Encore CS3 already does Blu-ray authoring. (Recently Toast 9 was announced with support for authoring Blu-ray video discs.) The fact that the MacBook Air doesn't even come with a DVD drive makes me worried that Steve Jobs thinks that the iTunes Store means that no one needs a disc to watch video anymore--or reading between the lines, Blu-ray is just competition for Steve's dominating video like he dominates music.

The things I'm most looking forward to in After Effects CS3 are better performance and 3D text effects. But frankly, I'll probably never even try out Adobe Premiere. I worked on it ages ago and felt burned. I'm happy with Final Cut Pro and it's not worth it for me to learn a new app when I don't know that if it's as powerful and reliable than FCP (much less better.) Not to mention the advantage Final Cut Pro has by being the de facto editing package for the type of work that I do.

After Effecst CS3--Runs Faster

"Adobe After Effects CS3: Cranking it up to 11" from Studio Daily
"ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS CS3: A justification for buying an 8-core Mac Pro" from Bare Feats

Reviews and tests of CS3 are rolling in. To me, the big news is that CS3 is running much faster on both G5's and Intels. The last version After Effects 7 was not a Universal Binary and wasn't designed to run on Intel chips. But looking at Bare Feats tests, there are big performance gains to be had for G5 owners too by upgrading to CS3.

The other big feature that I would use is 3-D text animation. Good thing Adobe added this, otherwise Motion would really begin to push past After Effects on the features for the type of quick-n-dirty motion graphics that I do.

Lots of Adobe Stuff Going On

"Adobe offers Premiere Pro, After Effects betas"
Betas of Premiere Pro for Mac and After Effects Pro 8 available. Premiere Pro is only for Intel Macs, not G5's or G4's. After Effects Beta is only available for folks with a serial number for After Effects 7, but the article doesn't mention any similar restrictions on Adobe Premiere Pro for Macs. Article reminded me that Adobe is working on Blu-Ray authoring for Encore, which will be on Macs later this year. What's up Apple? Where's your next-gen authoring for DVD Studio Pro?

"Adobe to show off media player"
Adobe is working on a stand-alone flash player. Looks like it has sort of an iTunes interface.

"Adobe ships Creative Suite 3"
Days after I order a copy of Creative Suite CS2, Adobe ships a new version. (OK, there are good reasons why I ordered the old version after I knew CS3 was on its way.)