Automatic Sync's Caption Sync

I recently tried out an interesting new service provided by Automatic Sync called CaptionSync. We needed to get a program closed-captioned for a feed to PBS stations. Captioning is usually either labor-intensive (not real-time) or poor quality (real-time.) And for labor-intensive, also assume expensive. Not only is it expensive to pay an operator to spot all of the subtitles, but the gear to encode the closed-captioning isn't cheap either.

I found CaptionSync a good alternative to traditional closed-captioning. CaptionSync is a web-based service that essentially works on voice recognition. Now, you need to provide the service a transcript--it can't create a transcript from just audio. But you send CaptionSync the audio, and then it will spot your subtitles for you. After uploading a transcript and an audio file, you wait a couple of minutes and then you get an email with your captions in whatever format(s) you asked for. My cost was $45 for a half hour, and I think that's pro-rated based on $90/hour.

There are a few tricky things with the service. They recommend that the audio you send them only include the voice to be captioned/subtitled. I was sending them a documentary, so I had to make a pass on the film and delete all the audio clips that had no voice or were in a foreign language. Some time, but not too bad. The quality of the spotting was good but not perfect. I had a problem getting one bit of dialogue recognized, maybe because the speaker had an Arabic accent. You can resubmit the job if you aren't happy with the results. For example, I accidentally left in some Arabic voice in the audio track that I sent them, and it totally screwed up the subtitles. So I made a different audio export with no Arabic and then the captions were back on track. I also was able to do some tweaking with the formatting after checking out my results. Again, not a problem to resubmit a job with no extra charge.

Now, the tricky part came in getting the closed-captioning into my program. There is software that will encode closed-captions into a QuickTime movie. It's called MacCaption, and it costs $1000 for a DV version and $2000 for an uncompressed version. No, I didn't add an extra zero. That's one to two thousand dollars just to encode the closed-captioning data into video. Obviously buying the software would blow my budget. So I figured out a work-around. Here's what I did.

I asked CaptionSync for an STL file with my captions. DVD Studio Pro uses STL files to generate closed captions. So I burned that to a DVD. Then I played back that DVD and captured the video as uncompressed. The uncompressed capture records the closed-captioning which is in the vertical interval of the video signal. Now, I don't actually want to use video from the DVD--as it has been heavily compressed and then gone through an analog generation. So I composited the video of the program on top the captured video clip with the captioning. I cut the show in the DV codec, so the program's video didn't overlap the captioning. However, I think an uncompressed clip would normally cover up the captioning because uncompressed video has more lines of video than the DV codec handles. In that case, the solution is to just add a bit of video cropping to the top of the video and the captioning will be revealed. I was working with a TV that could display the captioning while I was doing all of this--to make sure that I had the captions and they were staying in place. Then I mastered to Betacam. I think closed-captioning is supported with DVCam, but I don't know how to make that work.

My work-around was time-consuming, but it didn't cost me any more $$'s. If fit my criteria of cheap with a good-looking master and good (but not perfect) captions. If I was going to be doing this regularly I'd have to think seriously about MacCaption's software encoding of closed-captioning.

"Making 3D Text" in Motion

This seems like a handy tutorial on Motion 3 over at the Creative Cow. The technique in the tutorial lets you add some depth to type in 3d space. The whole 3D thing with cameras and lights is new in Motion 3.

The EditBlog has a post about another cool thing for Motion 3--a free plug-in called Vee You. It creates the effect of VU or EQ meters that actually reflects an audio track. You get the plug-in here.

Bad CCD's in Sony and Canon Cameras & Camcorders

This Sunday I found out my Canon Powershot SD100 digital camera was dead. It was 3 years old, and I figured it had reached a natural, if early, death. Truth be told, I was looking forward to getting a big upgrade from my old 3 mega-pixel camera with its tiny screen.

But lo and behold, I just read a blog entry at FreshDV describing a problem with CCD's in Sony and Canon gear. After some more searching, I found out my model of camera is affected by this problem. Canon will supposedly fix this problem for free, even if the gear is out of warranty. Sony has a similar arrangement (with some looming time restrictions).

Sony's bad CCD's affect some prosumer gear. Here's a list that I pulled from FreshDV:
DCR-VX2000
DCR-VX2000E
DCR-VX2100
DCR-VX2100E
DSR-250 & DSR-250/P
DSR-PD150 & DSR-PD150P
DSR-PD170 & DSR-PD170P
DSR-PDX10 & DSR-PDX10P

More detailed information on the problems and the response from Sony and Canon is here.

Impressive SmoothCam Example

This is a cool example of what SmoothCam can do. Before, shooter handholding a Sony Z1 while walking backwards as actors stroll. Afterwards, looks like it was shot on a dolly. Very impressive. Scroll down the page to see the before and after movies.

My concern about SmoothCam is that the footage must either be progressive or high-def. Standard-def, interlaced video would take too much of a hit from the processing that SmoothCam would have to do--namely deinterlacing and then scaling up the video.

If you didn't know already, SmoothCam is a new feature in Final Cut Pro 6 and Motion 3.

Creative Cow Recommends RAID-5 System

Here's a review at Creative Cow that recommends a system for a RAID-5 setup from Dulce. The reviewers says that is has very good ease-of-use and is pretty darn fast.

I've written before about RAID-5 here. This Dulce system does RAID-3 too. I'm not even sure what that is. The low-down on RAID-5 is that your data is stored across an array of hard drives and if one dies, then you don't lose your data.

My latest thinking is that hard drives are so cheap, why not just backup up all your data to cheap USB hard drives. No, you can't keep working immediately if a hard drive dies, but at a quarter per GB, you can't really get much cheaper than that. Use Retrospect or your backup app of choice to backup up your media drive at night. USB isn't fast enough to edit with, but the transfer times are OK. With USB drives, it's pretty easy to expand storage, the capacity of the drives are high, and did I mention it's cheap. At least you have peace of mind if not 100% certainty that you won't miss a deadline if a hard drive dies.

Sony Offering Rebates on HDV Gear

Sony is offering mail-in-rebates for HDV gear bought between 4-1 and 9-30. Here's the after-rebate prices on Sony HDV gear at B&H (rounded up):
HVR-Z1U $4,100 ($300 off)
HVR-V1U $3,600 ($300 off)
HVR-M25U $2,800 ($100 off)

There are also $300 off of the HVR-A1U and some other deals for a LCD HD monitor. More details and links over here at FreshDV.

What You Could Do with Color

Yesterday, I pointed out some tutorials for Apple's Color app. To see what you could do with Color, check out this posting by Stu Maschwitz over at ProLost. Stu made a sort of before and after color grading using stills from the movie Transporter 2. Gives you an idea about how the feel of an image can be radically changed with color grading.

I've written about Stu before and his book "DV Rebel's Guide", which provides guidance and even some basic tools for color grading.

Primer on Audio for Video

"Upgrade Your Images with Audio: A primer on audio monitoring for HD video editors" by Mike Curtis

I recommend this article over at DV.com (registartion req'd). Goes through various setups for montioring audio from budget to pro surround sound. Recommends some actual gear to get, which is helpful. I'm not an audiophile and I can't really figure out which speaker is better than any other. I've sort of just latched onto M-Audio because I recognized the brand and their prices seemed reasonable. Now Mike Curtis from HD for Indies has given me some ideas for speakers the next time I'm setting up an editing system. Also here's a link to Mike discussing the article and some others on audio.

Video Tutorials on Color

Walter Biscardi is working on a series of tutorials about Color over at Creative Cow. As a total Color newbie, the tutorials gave me much more of an impression about what an alien product this is compared to any other Mac app that I'm working with. There are 3 videos in the series so far--short and worth watching if you are wondering about Color.

Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer

"Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer - The Definitive Guide"

A very in-depth article on the subject. Basically I see two times when you want to get content off of an iPod (instead of onto it): 1) Your computer crashed and the only backup of the music or video is on the iPod 2) You want to share music or videos that are on an iPod. If you are doing the latter, just skip to the article's section on applications that help with copying. A free app for doing this on Macs is SenUti.

One thing I learned from the article is that Apple changes the format of its database of music with new versions. So if you are using an app to access your iPod, it can be a problem if the app is not up to date.

The Trouble with G-RAID's

I often get asked for recommendations for hard drives for editing. Personally, I've probably bought 10 G-RAID's in the last couple of years and haven't lost any data yet (knock on wood.) Although, I know folks who have, and I have had some problems with these units.

One of my big concerns with G-RAID's is that they are RAID 0. As this article ("Don't get burned by RAID zero") points out RAID 0's have three potential points of failure--two hard drives, and the RAID controller. If any of these fails, you are hosed.

I also recently discovered that G-RAID's performance drops significantly, even dramatically, when used in a daisy-chain fashion (especially write speeds.)

At the moment, I'm still not satisfied with the alternatives for my lean budgets. So I'll probably buy some more G-RAID's in the future, but when people ask I can't whole-heartedly recommend them.

Prices Dropping on Big LCD Displays

For years, I've been dreaming about replacing my two small LCD monitors with one 24" LCD display. This year has seen some big prices drops with a lot more competition in the 24" LCD market.

A big benefit of the 24" LCD is its resolution, which can display the full raster of 1920x1080 HD video. Some displays like the 24" from Gateway even do a decent job of displaying HD video, as well as working as a good computer display. (BTW, in tests I was not happy with how the Dell 24" LCD did displaying video--it makes a great computer monitor though.)

Now competition is heating up with more LCD brands getting in the mix. Within the last year there was a lot of competition in the 22" and 20" display range and prices have fallen dramatically. I even see deals for a 20" display for around $200 at dealmac. Last year, you couldn't get a 24" below $600. Now CompUSA has an Acer 24" for $450. I can't say if this is a decent display, but it definitely signals some changes in pricing. Viewsonic is selling a 28" display with 1920x1200 raster for about the same price as a Dell 24" display. Makes 24" sound kind of paltry.

Apple isn't interested in price competition. They excel at style and they don't really have any competition in that game. Their 23" is still running at $899. There are some legitimate reasons to choose Apple's 23". Not just to impress clients. Namely I was thinking of its ability to do a great job of displaying HD for criticial applications with products like the Matrox MXO.

Macworld Reviews Final Cut Studio 2 (Updated)

UPDATE: Macworld added their review for Compressor. Highlights of Compressor 3: Optical flow does good job frame rate conversion (e.g., 60i to 24p), easier clustering (including on one system), streamlined interface (oh no, does that mean we have to bid adieu to Batch Monitor!?), watermarking, more formats supported.

MacWorld has revews of all the new apps in Final Cut Studio 2, except for Compressor. Worth a read, especially if you haven't been keeping up on what's new in these Apps

Motion 3
I think the first paragraph really sums up the value of Motion:

Motion, Apple’s motion-graphics and video-processing software, has always stood apart not so much for what it does but the way it does it. In many visual and video tools, you spend much of your time preparing graphics and then watching rendering progress bars, but Motion’s workflow is built around real-time adjustment and experimentation. With Motion 3, Apple has focused on the major capabilities previous versions lacked: motion tracking and stabilization, painting tools, and a true 3-D graphical environment to augment speed and easy, improvisational control. Motion may not become your only motion-graphics program, but it could easily become your favorite tool for quickly creating visuals

Color
Caveats galore for Color--just because you edited something in FCP doesn't mean that it will work in Color. This article doesn't even mention the problems with the HDV format that the Creative Cow mentioned. I imagine when I start using Color, it would just be for a shot or two at a time and not taking in a whole project. So far, this is how I've also used...

Soundtrack Pro 3

Final Cut Pro 6
Review by Mike Curtis of HD4ND's fame.

Final Cut Studio 2 gets x.0.1 Updates

All the apps in Final Cut Studio get updates--looks mostly like bug fixes. HD for Indies has good coverage of what is in the update here.

One big addition is support for the AVCHD format, which is mainly consumer-oriented. However, Panasonic has been using it widely, including within its pro line of cameras with the small AG-HSC1U

More Scope Software

This is a follow-up to a recent post about using software to mimic a waveform monitor and vectorscope. A dedicated pair of waveform monitor and vectorscope aren't cheap--for composite video, new can cost you almost $4K. I've tried buying used ones, and it is a pain. For a decent used set from a reliable vendor for composite analog video, you are looking at $1,500 easy. While I really like being able to have a dedicated display for my levels, some new software apps are worth looking into.

Hamlet Vidscope-VX a Windows-only application. I read a short plug for this recently in the Creative Cow magazine (offline only). The HD version is supposed to go for $995. The SD version for $665. Seems steep but in comparison to a dedicated waveform monitor and vectorscope it is reasonable. You'd need a host PC and capture hardware for the setup.

ScopeBox is a Mac app. This is geared toward production, but it looks like it will do a strong job of mimicing a waveform and vectorscope from the demos on their web site. $799 for HD (doesn't handle HDV), and $399 for SD.

VeeScope Live from the makers of DVDxDV comes in at $99. Again, geared toward production. I haven't tried it out, but I'm not even sure you can get a simultaneous display of vectorscope and waveform.

Adobe OnLocation CS3 part of Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 ($799 retail, under $400 nonprofit). Adobe incorporated an app called DV Rack into the new Adobe Premiere and changed the name to OnLocation. OnLocation only runs on Windows but it looks like it will come bundled with the new Mac version of Adobe Premiere.

And of course, there's always Final Cut Pro. You can also turn on the Video Scopes in Final Cut Pro to get an idea about both video and audio levels. These setups alway require a host computer that should be pretty much dedicated just to this task. And these Mac programs tend to recommend beefy systems. You also need to get video into the system. Firewire might work, but a dedicated capture card might work better too.