Sony Announces Successor to Z1

Sony has announced a new camera in their HDV professional lineup: the HVR-Z5. It's body is very similar to the Z1. The V1 is a smaller size with the LCD located on the left size of the body, while the Z7 has a removable lens.

There's lots of nice upgrades over the Z1. The 3-CMOS imaging system is supposed to handle low-light much better. The lens is wider and has a 20x zoom and an iris ring right on the lens. Traditionally, Sony has relegated the iris control to a small wheel control on the camera's body for their low-end pro cams. There are a lot of similarities to the new Z7, like recording to CompactFlash (with optional HVR-MRC1K), an high-resolution LCD display and viewfinder, and native 24P recording onto the HDV format. The MRSP of the Z5 is $5000.

Earlier this year, I was touting the Z7 as Link's "next camera". I have to eat my words. I should have seen this camera coming--all the features of the Z7 without the removable lens. I think this camera makes more sense for Link. The built-in lens I think will make the Z5 easier to handle and lighter. The Z7 has a 12x lens versus the 20x on the Z5. And I'm guessing the Z5 will be cheaper than the Z7. Although the Z7 price recently dropped on the B&H site for $6300 to $5400.

B&H wrote an article about the prosumer version of this camera the FX-1000. It's covers some of the new features also included on the Z5 in detail.

While I am now predicting this as Link's next camera, I have no idea when we would buy one. Don't hold your breath. But the camera will be available in December.

OT: Sharing files via YouSendIt

OT means "off-topic." So this isn't something that I would normally put on my blog. But I was going to send this info to a few people, and I thought folks on the blog might have some interest in it.

I'm going to give a basic tutorial on sharing files with the free version YouSendIt. YouSendIt is a service that's available in a free version and paid version with more bells & whistles. Link has the Pro account that we pay for, but I'm going to give the example of a free account. (For using the Pro account you don't need to do all the extra steps that takes up the bulk of this article.)

First register with YouSendIt. You know you are going to have to give up an actual email address to use this service. But it's worth it. They mostly use your address to send you useful info, like a confirmation that your upload is complete. Give them your email, then wait for their email confirmation to arrive. Once you get their email follow their instructions so that they will activate an account for you.

Once you have a free account, you can send one file upto 100MB in size. The way YouSendIt works is that you are using YouSendIt to send the file to someone else via their email. Really you are just sending them a notification that they can download the file from YouSendIt. You use their website to upload the file along with the email address of the person or persons that you want to send the file to. The person then gets an email with a link to YouSendIt. When he or she gets the email, they can follow a link to start downloading your file.

Now YouSendIt likes to work with one upload--so what happens when you want to send multiple files? As an example, I'll use sending an album from iTunes. With 10 or so music files in an album, it might seems like you have to send each song individually--that would be a pain and not worth the hassle. But there's an easy workaround that I know of on the Mac to easily send multiple files.

The workaround involves using the Zip technology built into the Mac OS. Zip is essentially a way to compress files. You can zip a single file or multiple files. Because most types of media, like MP3 or video, are already compressed, zipping the files doesn't actually make them significantly smaller. However you can use Zip to take several files and bundle them together into what Apple calls an Archive. So by taking an album and zipping the songs, we create a copy of the album that exists as one file. This single file (containing multiple songs) can then be uploaded to YouSendIt in one go.

So here's an example of how to do this with an album. First find the files that you want to send. It's easy enough to do with iTunes. By right-clickng on a song, use can use the "Show in Finder" command (the third item from the top in the contextual menu.) If your mouse only has one button, then you can hold down the Ctrl button while clicking to get the same contextual menu up.

The "Show in Finder" command will open up a window in the Finder showing where the file of the song is located. So now you see your song along with all the other songs in the album. Now we want to bundle all the files in this album into one single file. To do this, select all the files in the folder, then right-click again. This time you use the "Compress x items" (where x is the number of files that you've selected), the fith command from the top of the contextual menu.

After you've compressed your files, you'll see a new file in the same folder called "Archive.zip." This is a copy of your files collapsed into a single file.


This file called "Archive.zip" is the file that you want to send with YouSendIt. You can also compress or zip a folder. If you did this, then the compressed file would be named after the folder and not the generic "Arhive" that is used when you zip or compress multiple files. You can't send a folder via the free YouSendIt, but you can send a compressed version of that folder. Again, the free version of YouSendIt just wants a single file to send.

In this example, the file is 65MB, below the 100MB limit of our free service. Most compressed music is encoded at a bit rate of 128Kbps. At 128Kbps, 100MB equals about 1 hour and 50 minutes of audio. That's enough for a single album. However I've started buying music from Amazon, and Amazon encodes their music at a hefty 256Kbps. That means a 100MB is only about 55 minutes of music. So you may not be able to fit everything in one file. So if you want to send a group of files (like an album) and the total was over 100MB, then you wold need to split up your files into more than one archive, and each archive would need to be under the 100MB limit of YouSendIt and sent separately.

Another gotcha with music is that some music has DRM protection, meaning it can probably be only played on specific computers and other devices (like iPods) that are linked to a particular person. This isn't conducive to sharing music. iTunes is the last big player that is still selling lots of music with DRM. (This isn't about Apple but about the entertainment corporations--but that's the subject of another post.) iTunes has something called iTunes Plus, which is DRM-free music that you can buy (look for the plus icon next to the price of the music). All music bought from Amazon's download store is free of DRM--so they can be shared with anyone. Amazon has a pretty good store--it's nearly as easy to use as buying music from iTunes, and it's usually cheaper. Anything you rip from a CD is obviously DRM-free.

OK back to YouSendIt. Go to their website and log in using your account. Follow the link to send a file. Enter the email address or address of the person or persons that you want to get this file. Then click on the "choose file" button and select the Archive.zip file that you just created. Then click the "Send It" button. This actually starts the process of uploding the file to the YouSendIt website. This will take some time, and it's important not to disrupt the process. So you want to leave that webpage open and your web browser running until the file finishes uploading. Upload times are generally slower than download times. On my DSL it takes about 10 minutes to upload 50MB of data, but I can download that much in a fraction of the time.

Once the file is uploaded, an email will be sent to your buddy or buddies. Then it's up to them to follow the link to download the file. With the free verison, your file will be available for 7 days. So hopefully your friends will download soon instead of procrastinating.

Oh, you will probably want to delete the Archive.zip file now that it's uploaded. It's just a copy of your existing music that's taking up space on the hard drive.

If you are like me and you've been burning files onto disc to share with people, this method offers some advantages. One, there's no physical media to move around, either by hand or by mail. Two, you are helping the environment by not using up plastic to make a copy of your files, and in the case of mail, you aren't using fossil fuels to move a physical copy of the file around. So give it a shot, and let me know what you think of my method for sharing files.

Drobo: Your Data Robot

Drobo has been around for about a year and when it first came out I judged it as "cool but not ready for primetime." Drobo is a unique RAID setup for hard drive storage. The biggest drawback was the Drobo only had a USB interface, which is not cool for video editing. Well, this summer Drobo 2 came out with Firewire 800. Data Robotics, the manufacturer, is touting read speeds of 52MB/s and writes of 34MB/s--not too shabby. They say it's good for uncompressed SD, DV, and compressed HD. They cite DVCProHD as OK, but at those data rates I'm thinking that Apple's ProRes 422 is supported too. ProRes maxes out at about 26MB/s--generally I think if the drive's speed is double the needed data rate, then you are OK.

So what makes Drobo unique? It's got a great combination of redundant data storage and the easy-to-use factor. The Drobo case holds up to 4 hard drives, and you only need 2 drives to get started. Your data is spread across the drives in such a way that if one drive failed then you wouldn't lose any data. Need more storage? This is the great part. Just slide in another hard drive of any size. Drobo incorporates you new drive into the existing RAID. If you have four drives in the case and run out of space, then no problem. Simply replace the smallest drive with a bigger drive to get more storage.

My experience with RAID has never gone beyond buying a G-Raid. Whenever I looked into setting up a RAID on my own, there were always enough drawbacks to keep me from making the plunge. It just seemed too difficult to manage all the drives. We are in drive overload anyway. Plus the added expense of more drives and SATA gear was always an issue. Granted Drobo is not cheap. At $500 without any drives, that's a hefty expense to swallow. But I think over it's life it will make up for that in the cost saved by not buying drives with cases, plus the peace-of-mind that you get with redundant storage.

There could be some drawbacks to Drobo. One is that you are putting all of your eggs in one basket. Yes, you are protecting yourself against the failure of a hard drive, but what if Drobo fails. Then you could be in real trouble and pray that Data Robotics will come to your rescue (and do so promptly). Also all of the management seems automatic. That's good if you don't want to deal with the hassle of repairing a RAID with a bad drive, but bad if the maintenance takes place in the middle of a big deadline. If a drive dies, then you don't lose any data. But then Drobo has to start shuffling around all of your data between the existing drives that are still working, and this will take a lot of time. While you are supposed to still be able to access Drobo while it does this automatic maintenance who knows what kind of performance you will get as Drobo and the drives are very busy. Will the Drobo still be able to playback and record video while it rebuilds? So while losing a drive could mean no lost data, it doesn't necessarily mean no downtime for us video editors. But overall, I'd prefer losing no data but have a slower system for a day or so, then totally losing the data.

You are also giving up some of the transportability of a G-RAID. While the Drobo can be moved, it will probably end up having all of your storage on it. If you like to put individual project on a drive, which gets moved around, then Drobo is probably too expensive for that. So it's both good and bad that Drobo can be the only drive case that you will need.

Here's an example of a Drobo system once you get the drives.
Drobo...$500
(3) 500GB Hard Drives...$325
Total Cost...$825
Total storage...930GB
That compares to my favorite type of storage a G-Raid, which gives you the same amount of storage for $355. So that's $500 up front is a lot to ask for. But I'll be thinking about his seriously in the future.

Here are some links on Drobo:
Drobo in Action
A video from Data Robotics on how Drobo works.

Drobolator
See how much storage Drobo will give you when you put different drives inside.

Drobo Firewire 800 Review
A short review of the new Drobo that gives more info on the benefits and setup of Drobo.

Some Bay Area Events

A couple of interesting events I thought I'd share with others.

SFCutters is doing an event on Thursday the 28th with a some focus on compression. The author of 'Real World Video Compression' Andy Beach is speaking. I was recently checking out a blog post from him that compares Compressor with some other competing encoding apps that was worth a read. Article points out some weakensses in Compressor, like the poor default deinterlacing and its slowness. Also there will be some training on the oft-neglected LiveType, and there will a presentation by Adobe on Flash CS3, which we have a couple of licenses for at Link. $10 to go and you have to pay online before you go at the link.

There's also a conference October 17 & 18 at the Pacific Film Archives in Berkeley called The Conversation. It's subtitled "The Future of Cinema, Games & Online Video: New Tools/New Distribution/New Rules". Looks like a lot of interesting panels. Only problem is I think it's a bit pricey--$150. How about some non-profit discounts? I guess I could call them and ask.

How I Download Flash Videos

Here's how I download Flash video. I'll use YouTube as an example, but I've found that the method works on other flash video, but not by any means all online video.

1. Start playing the movie in Safari.
2. Open the Activity Window in Safari. It's under the Window menu.
3. Find the movie in the Activity window. The Activity window lists a lot of things, like all the graphics on the webpage (and for all open pages.) But I usually find movies because they are the largest--in the MB's not KB's. Also the movies size is usually changing--as long as the movie is downloading.

In the image below, the movie is the file 3rd item from the bottom whose name starts with v6.cache.googlevideo.


4. Select the movie file in the activity window and copy it. This will copy the location of the video.

5. Open a new browser window and paste the movie's location in the address field.

6. Safari starts downloading the video. Download window should automatically open.

7. Wait for the video to finish downloading. Then find the video file. The magnifying glass next to the file in the Download window will take you to it. In OS.10.4 it's probably on the desktop. In OS 10.5, it's probably in the Downloads folder.

8. Rename the file to add the .flv suffix if it doesn't already have the .flv suffix, e.g., get_video.flv. You might as well add a descriptive title too while you are at it.

Now to work with flash video on the Mac, I use the free Perian plug-in. It lets QuickTime recognize the file, so that you can use it in Final Cut Pro or any app that uses QuickTime.

YouTube now has better quality video available on some videos. Check to see if the video you want is in better quality before downloading. If there is higher quality video, then you'll see the link below the movie "watch in high quality."


Click on that link and then follow the instructions above to get a much better looking video from YouTube.

Earlier this summer I posted a link to a post from Final Cut User that recommends transcoding the flash to something that FCP is used to working with, like the DV codec. I haven't had any problems working with Flash video, but it could speed up your workflow if you don't have to render the movies in the timeline.

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

Compressor and Conversions

Compressor 2 and 3 have very powerful tools for converting and upscaling video, as well as doing slo-mo. The optical flow technology, which Apple acquired when they bought the powerful compositing application Shake (only later to kill it), is the key to the results that you can get from Compressor. The key to getting the best results is the Frame Controls settings in Compressor.

Compressor is very good at standards conversion or converting video to a different frame rate. People often call this PAL and NTSC conversion although this isn't really accurate, but it will handle the same tasks that systems that do this do--namely the scaling and frame rate conversions. Frame rate conversions in particular are difficult to do really well. There are some standalone products from Teranex that just do this for around $2500 Well Compressor does this really well, but Teranex does it in real-time and Compressor is really slow.

Optical flow can also help in up-conversion of interlaced footage. Interlacing makes it really hard to do upconversion because your vertical resolution is basically split in two. For an example of how to scale things up badly look at what Final Cut Pro does in the timeline. FCP basically throws away half of your vertical resolution as soon as you scale a video clip. So the difference between 100% scale and 99% or 101% scale is crisp video and a blurry messy. When scaled up like this over 200%, not unusual when putting in standard-def footage into a high-def project, fine detail like type also starts shaking up and down from the interlacing--it looks ugly.

Compressor is an improvement on how FCP works in a number of ways. First, it can analyze the image and decide to selectively keep detail from both fields when the video isn't moving--if visuals in a part of a frame is moving, then only that part of the frame will lose resolution. With the optical flow technology, Compressor guesses how a part of the frame is moving and intelligently creates an image with more resolution than other results. These two approaches are handled in the deinterlacing settings in Compressor--the first approach is described as Better while Best uses optical flow.

The Retiming controls are where Compressor handles different frame rates. For example going from 25 fps video from Europe to 30fps video over in North America, usually handled as 60i (interlaced) especially in standard-def. The Better and Best settings in Compressor use optical flow. Like with deinterlacing, optical flow analyzes your video and recognizes object and how they are moving--the optical flow then intelligently creates new frames that move objects smoothly without losing detail. By the way, going from 24fps, which is a progressive format, is not a problem for us folks working in 60i. You can do this right in FCP without any fancy conversion (assuming you want to keep the 24fps filmic look.)

As an example, here's what I recommended to someone doing PAL to NTSC conversion:
Resizing: Better
Deinterlacing: Better (motion adaptive)
Retiming: Better
In this case, the scaling is going down (PAL has more resolution than NTSC, so you should get good results without jumping through a lot of hoops.) I reserved the optical flow use to only retiming at the Better setting. I didn't recommend optical flow on deinterlacing to save time. But if time isn't an issue then using Best for deinterlacing should improve results.

Unfortunately, all this intelligent analysis by optical flow is very processor and time-intensive. So for example using optical flow for retiming and and deinterlacing makes my quad-core G5 slow to a crawl--I'd give a ballpark estimate of 1 minute to process 1 second of video. But if quality is important, then the results can be excellent.

There are some plug-ins that specialize in upconversion, namely InstantHD. Check here for my post on upconversion.

Here are two good articles on using Compressor. Macworld discusses standards conversions here that walks you through the whole process:
Send video abroad
This post at Digital Rebellion gives detailed info on all the settings in Frame Controls.
Using Frame Controls in Compressor

The Macworld article also recommends an interesting workflow using Cinema Tools to convert PAL to NTSC by conforming the PAL to 24fps, scaling and deinterlacing in Compressor, then adding pulldown in FCP. Interesting workflow that I've never seen used.

The Retiming controls in Compressor can also give you some very good slo-mo results. Here are some cool tests done that compares Final Cut Pro versus Compressor at various speeds on two shots.
"Final Cut Studio slow motion demo"
"Final Cut slow motion at various speeds"
The author brings up a good point--if you are shooting a shot to be slo-mo, then shoot at as high a frame rate as you can--60p, 60i, 50p, 50i are good, where 24 fps is bad for slo-mo. The more samples per second of the image you can acquire, the better the slo-mo will work.

$500 Shopping Spree

So what would you spend $500 on? I'm soliciting opinions. In another interesting variation, on budgetary outlays, I've been offered $500 to spend on anything I want. The reasoning is that we are charging someone around $500 to make some dubs, and the money can go towards equipment.

Well, after figuring that I couldn't slip a receipt for a Playstation or a 32GB iPod Touch past accounting, I've turned my mind towards more practical purchases.

My number one idea is to replace the tube of the Sony monitor on the A system in Edit 2. Am I the only one noticing that the image is looking greenish? $500 should cover the cost of replacing the tube in that monitor. I'd rather do it now when we have the money--otherwise I'll have to wait around until it is so obvious that the folks holding the purse strings can perceive the bad color on the monitor. That could take a while.

However, I've been thinking about other things too. A few months ago, I was making a big fuss about better production equipment. In particular, I was recommending a new tripod, an LCD field montior and a telephoto lens adapter for the Z1. An LCD field monitor is not out of the question for $500. I wanted to get a high-def one for closer to $1K, but there's a kit for a widescreen one with a resolution of 1440x234 for about $500. Check out the Varizoon kit at B&H. I don't know if this is much better resolution than the Z1's LCD viewfinder, but at 7" it is much larger--ergo easier to see. I've been griping about out of focus shots on the Z1. This should help.

Another idea for production gear is a wireless mic. Anyone recommend a wireless mic for about $500? I doubt $500 is enough for a good tripod but I'd be glad to be proved wrong.

In short, if there's some gear or software that you think would really help our work at Link for $500, please let me know. Please leave your suggestions in the comments sections--that'll let other see your suggestions and allow them to rag on them. Oh, and it's got to be near $500 or under $500--no $500 towards a new computer or something. No saving for a rainy day here--when you've got it, you spend it.

Summer Blogwad

I'm just dumping some interesting links here to check out.

Digital Rebellion: Recommended QuickTime and Mac OS configurations for Final Cut Pro
A list of recommended combos of FCP, Quicktime, and OS versions. Let's just call this why not to update your systems unless you absolutely need to. On the other hand, it sucks being caught in FCP 5.1.4 world while everyone else has moved on. That's more of a money issue than a technology issue though.

Digital Rebellion: List of QuickTime downloads
A continuation of the theme of don't upgrade if you don't have to. If you have to upgrade but it's not to the latest and (ahem) greatest, then this page will help you find the appropriate upgarde for QuickTime. Similarly, the LAFCUP has a wiki page on Quicktime updates.

Little Frog in High Def: APPLE PRO APPS UPDATE 2008-02
Good advice on downloading all updates to Final Cut Pro even if you don't intend to upgrade. The reason is that Apple doesn't make old updates available for FCP (unlike QuickTime). There are situations where you might want to upgrade but not to the latest version--if you don't have the update then Apple isn't going to help you. You can download updates through Apple's Final Cut Pro page--you don't have to upgrade through the Software Update control panel.

Final Cut User: Using FLVs in Final Cut Pro
Some good tips on using video downloaded from the web from sites like YouTube. I didn't know about using the QuickTime wrapper to help the editing of FLV's--sound like a helpful tip.

"Ten Tips For A Better Final Cut Pro Experience"
This is a good read. An experienced editor wrote down 10 good tips. Good write-up on media management. Also some interesting tips on multicam, amongst a number of other good ideas.

kenstone.net: Color Workflows With Different Types of Sources
By Andrew Balis
Want to work in Color? This seems like a good guide for getting footage in and out for your next go as a colourist.

Overview Video on Sony EX3
I don't think I've talked about the Sony EX3 because I think the MSRP was over $10K and that's my cut-off point for talking about cameras. But it lists for under $10K, and it looks like a good upgrade to the Sony EX1. I've been hearing about and seeing folks use the EX1. Seems like the XDCAM format on SxS memory cards could take off.

ProLost: On Clipping, Part 1
Very tech-y. But interesting to get a theoretical understanding of how video works. Folks interested in Red should read. It helped me understand why there is more grain in dark areas of video than in light areas. Also discusses important differences in how film and video represent light.

ProLost: Go Naked pt. 2
A good example of the guerrilla filmmaking model as described in Stu Maschwitz's "The DV's Rebel Guide." More interesting to me is that Vimeo not only streams HD, but allows downloads too of Quicktime movies (the film shown is downloadable at 1280x720). You can upload up to 500MB per week to Vimeo. An interesting way to share footage encoded in h.264--nice that it allows both streaming and downloading.

stockfootageforfree.com
Not awesome but could help in a pinch. I did about 10 searches on foreign countries, and the only video I got was touristy stuff from Cancun. Some OK shots of D.C., SF, and NYC. [via freshdv.com]

Streaming Video: Quality Comparison and Trends

There's a pair of interesting articles about streaming video at Digital Content Producer:
Encoding Best Practices, Part 1
Encoding Best Practices, Part 2

Part 1 is a report based on samples of what kind of streaming video is out there on the web. It's not a huge sample, but he does look at about 20 sites from broadcast video. So that's a good comparison for Link. Flash and Windows Media far outpace any competitors, like Quicktime and Real. One trend in streaming is growing bandwith and image resolution. Most broadcasters were streaming at a frame size of 460x325 and at a data rate of 500 kbps. Lots of good charts showing trends on this as well as frame rate and audio bit rate.

Part 2 is a quality comparison of h.264, on2 vp6, and VC-1 (Windows codec.) VC-1 gets the lowest marks. Both articles are interesting reads. I found them over at FreshDV.

Troubleshooting with Activity Monitor

Recently Activity Monitor has been instrumental in troubleshooting problems for me. Activity Monitor is part of the Mac OS and lives in the Utilities folder, which is in the Apps folder. It gives you read-outs on things going on with the computer, including what the CPU and RAM are doing.

Here are a couple of good descriptions of the RAM display in Activity Monitor:
Final Cut Studio - System Memory Usage--Larry Jordan's Tip of the Day
Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor--Apple Support

The two pages actually give somewhat contradictory advice. Larry Jordan says that if your wired and active memory is regularly half of total memory then you could benefit from a RAM upgrade. While Apple says that even if you only have 10MB of free memory you don't necessarily need more RAM.

I've been noticing some bad examples of slow FCP that I blame on memory issues. So I think it's important to keep track of your RAM issues. Here some tips to keep your RAM usage streamlined and efficient:
- If you don't plan to switch back to an app, quit it and don't leave it open
- Avoid running multiple apps at once, especially programs that can suck up memory, like FCP, DVD Studio Pro, After Effects, and Photoshop
- Only keep open FCP projects open that you need, same things with sequences
- Restart your computer at least once a day and if your system seems really slow then restart it
- Web browser and webpages can use a surprising amount of RAM--avoid browsing with lots of windows/tabs
Now all of these RAM saving tips can reduce your efficiency in working. So it's a tradeoff. If your system zips along fine, then don't worry about it. But if you notice that your system starts the day zippy and ends up later trudging along, then try to follow some of or all of these tips.

I also uncovered a problem recently with Mosaic where the Mosaic project file had become huge even though there didn't seem to be that many clips or edits in the project. The size of the project file can give you an idea about how much memory an FCP project will take up in your RAM and how many resources the computer will use to work with the project. I'm not really sure why the Mosaic project file got so large--over 300MB. But I think it hurt that the editors were just adding stuff into the same project file day after day--even if they were deleting old clips and sequences regularly. I think the Mosaic project seems to have retained data from old clips and/or timelines that had been deleted and didn't appear in the project view. So I created a new project and just copied the timeline and clips that were visible in the project window--the new project was something-like one-tenth of the size, and the system got much quicker. I also read recently that clips that are really long are more taxing on the computer than more shorter clips that have the same amount of media.

Another things that Activity Monitor does is measure CPU usage. This was helpful recently when I was having problems with the single processor G5 computer. An intern was having problems capturing DV footage from a DV deck. I had set up an unusual firewire cabling setup, so first I tried changing that--no luck. Then I brought in a different deck. No matter what I did, I was still getting dropped frames and funky audio dropouts. I noticed that the intern had Firefox running, which I didn't think was I big deal--she was checking her Gmail. Then I opened up the Activity Monitor and I saw that Firefox was quite active. It's CPU usage was hopping all around, peaking at up to 15% of the computer's CPU usage. And it wasn't even like she was actively browsing--that's was up to 15% of the CPU just to keep up with Gmail. Well I quit Firefox and the computer started capturing fine and did about 5 hours of capture with no problems.

Now I'm lucky to have a four-core G5, and I regularly have multiple webpages, email client, and even iTunes running all while I capture from DV. But for a single-processor G5 the demands of running FCP, capturing DV, and having Gmail open were too much. So it is important to know your computer. Also remember that laying off is at least as demanding on your system as capture and almost always much more. You are almost always playing back multiple clips at once (remember all your audio tracks) and your system is probably trying to apply some real-time effects to the video and/or audio. So be even more conservative about what your computer is doing when you lay off to tape.

BTW, I recommend Larry Jordan's Tip of the Day. I don't want to visit his website everyday, so I subscribed to the RSS feed and check out the tips when I have time.

Simplify media transcription with hotkeys and AppleScript

I got inspired by this article to write my first Applescript:
"Simplify media transcription with hotkeys and AppleScript" - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

The article talks about setting up hotkeys to control Quicktime Player. A hotkey is when you assign a command to a keystroke. That way you can transcribe or log in a Microsoft Word or some other word processor and still control the movie playing back without switching applications. The article describes how to create hotkeys by using a freeware app Spark to create hotkeys that run an Applescript.

Well, at Link we tend to have stuff logged from DVD with timecode burned-in to the video. So I set up some simple, one-line Applescripts to play, pause, rewind, and fast forward DVD's.

Play
tell application "DVD Player" to play dvd

Pause
tell application "DVD Player" to pause dvd

Rewind
tell application "DVD Player" to rewind dvd

Fast Foward
tell application "DVD Player" to fast forward dvd

I checked it out with Word, and assigning the scripts to option+J, option+K, option+L, and option+space bar seemed to work fine.

If you do log/transcribe from a Quicktime movie then I blogged about a free app last year that combines logging and playback in one app, QT Movie Notetaker. The program makes time notations based on how far into the movie you are but doesn't read timecode. If you want to spend $99, InqScribe has a unified playback and logging interface and has timecode support for Quicktime movies. That's sort of the complete package for handy transcribing and logging.

Guides on Audio EQ and Compression

Here are some good guides to the concepts and practice for EQ and compression:
"Basic Guide to Understanding EQ"
"Taming Your Audio Signal with Compression"

I've always thought of myself as a visually-attuned person, but much less sensitive to sound. So while I think I have a natural proclivity to catching things with my eye, I think I have to work much harder for sound--I think I learned much quicker what looked right and how to make it that way than I was to learn when something sounded right and how to make it so.

After level changes, the next basic tool in your audio kit is EQ. Back in the day, when someone told you that she or he wanted to make something sound better in the edit room, you were going to turn to the EQ. I've done a fair amount of linear editing, and that meant using the EQ knobs on your mixer. I still turn to the mixer from time to time. It's a quick way to check out how adjusting different frequencies will affect your audio. The Mackie VLZ mixer, which most of our editors have, has low-end, mid-range, and high-end adjustments. If may not really improve the track, but it's a quick way to check if you can make something sound better by raising or lowering the level of particular frequencies (just remember to turn those pots back to unity when you're done testing--so you don't screw up someone else's audio.) Then once I've found a setting that I like, I'll recreate it with an EQ filter in Final Cut. The B&H article Basic Guide to Understanding EQ describes different kinds of EQ beyond what you'll find on your basic mixer. Shelving and cutting are also available in Final Cut Pro as filters.

Nowadays I usually find myself turning to compression first when I want to help an audio track--especially a clean track, like one recorded in a VO booth or a quiet studio. I'm pretty conservative on compression. I think it's overused on a lot of TV and radio, especially when annoying white guys are yelling to be the loudest person in the world. But even in milder forms, it can give a voice some punch. So for example, this article Taming Your Audio Signal with Compression recommends compression ratios of 2 to 4, whereas I usually keep my ratio at below 2. BTW, a ratio of 1 does nothing. Of course, this is the default setting, so if you're not familiar with compression then the first time you use it, you might think it does nothing.

Final Cut Pro does compression, but Soundtrack Pro's multipressor effect is even more powerful. I use multipressor to have a little noise gate in the effect, and I like the graph display so I can the audio levels where the noise gate is working and where the compressor is working. If I have the time then I'll often take a track to Soundtrack Pro. If it's shot in our studio, then I'll want to do some noise reduction first, then I'll do a multipressor, and then I'll apply the limiter in Soundtrack Pro. Soundtrack Pro's limiter works much better than FCP's. I like how you can see how much the limiter is working in the filter settings window. The limiter works similarly, but more crudely, than the compressor in that it can be used to give your track more punch.

I found these articles over at FreshDV. These articles are part of the B&H Pro Audio Newsletter, which you can subscribe to on their homepage. Most of what I have learned about audio I learned from the writings of a guy called Jay Rose . I keep a copy of his "Audio for Post Production" around the office, which I recommend for both beginners and experienced editors who want to dig deep into sound issues.

Maintenance Tips for Your Mac

MacWorld: "Essential Mac Maintenance: Rev up your routines"

This a good article at MacWorld.com. A bunch of tips on how to get your Mac in good condition for the long run. I highly recommend the article.

One useful tip I liked was using SMART tests to regularly check on the health of your hard drives. Apparently these tests can give you a heads-up on ailing hard drives (before you lose data.) It's not bullet-proof, but it's supposed to protect against some of the more common types of hard drive failures. Michael Kinimoto says he has had good luck with doing regular SMART tests. The article recommends installing some freeware that regularly checks your hard drive's SMART status: Smart Reporter. Unfortunately, SMART tests don't work over firewire. It may work on an external hard drive hooked up through SATA, but that depends on what kind of hardware connection you have for your external SATA drive. The Firmtek Seritek PCI and PCI-E cards I've used pass along SMART data. But at the very least, you can be checking your internal drives on your Mac.

Cheap Tip for Matching Cameras

Pro Video Coaltion: "Perfect Color Balance for Less than $7"

This sounds like a good tip for shooting, QP Card. Cheap cards with black, grey, and white swatches. Shoot these, and the in FCP use the 3-way Color Corrector to quickly color balance.

Seems like it would be particularly good for matching cameras. Under the light that you will shoot in, have all cameras record a couple of seconds of this. Then the cameras should match very well (assuming the cameras are the same models using the same settings.)