Media Management

Here's some tips for doing media management. Let's start with a basic media management example. In this case, you are done working on a project but need to keep it around for "just in case" type scenarios. For example, you have to make changes or revisions that aren't foreseeable now, or you might want to pull some shots for use in a different project in the future.

First, figure out what you want to media manage. The way that I recommend doing media management, you're going to be make a copy of a sequence or sequences (and their corresponding media) and then put them in a new project. So figure out what sequences are the ones that you want to keep. For example, for a promo, you made a version for air and another version for the web. I'd recommend media managing both of those sequences to a new project. When you manage more than one sequence, Final Cut Pro can figure out which media is used in both sequences. And FCP will only make one copy of that footage and not one for each time that clips is used. So if you have a bunch of different variations on a sequence (like a premiere promo, a repeat promo, a promo for the web) you won't be taking up a lot more space by managing all the variations at once.

Note that you should check for any offline clips before you select media manager. Open up any sequences and scan for any white clips in your timeline. If the clips are offline in the sequence, then they will also be offline in your new media manged copy of your project. Also, if there's media in the sequences that you didn't end up using, then delete those clips. For example, if you stick some shots that you didn't use at the end of a sequence, I recommend deleting them.

So select these sequences in the browser. Then select Media Manager under the File Menu. Here's a sample media management window.
This is from a speech of Robert Reich. The sequence that I selected references 76.6 GB of media. But not all of that media is actually in the final show. By only considering the amount of media that gets used in the cut, then I can make a much smaller copy of the project. In this case, I can copy all of the media I used (and some handles) to a project that only uses 23.7 GB of media. BTW, the "modified" bar will get updated as you change options. For example, try turning on and off the option for "Delete unused media from duplicated items." Hopefully, turning this on will give you a much smaller project.

Let's go option-by-option through this window.

Copy - I almost always use the "copy" option when media managing. This leaves all of your original media intact and in place. So you could keep working in the original project if you wanted (but you usually don't). One reason I do this is because media manager has a reputation of messing up media when using the "move" option. If that happened to you, you could lose some media--the "move"option deletes the original clips. So I recommend never using the move option. The "copy" option makes another copy of your project and its media. So the onus if on you to get back to the original project and delete any media that you don't need any more.

Include render files - Sometimes I check this, sometimes I don't. If you leave it on, then your new project will included any render file for sections of the sequence(s) that you have already rendered. This is good, if you're sequence has lot of effects that are slow to render. On the other hand, if you have a lot of render files, you can be taking up drive space for something that can be recreated without much editor labor. If you don't have a lot of render files, just go ahead and leave it checked.

Include master clips outside of the selection - I rarely use this option. This will take every master clip in the project and put it in your new project--even if it's not used in the sequence(s) that you've selected. I suggest leaving this off.

Delete unused media from duplicated items - Yes! This is where you can use your drive space efficiently. By checking this selection, you will only copy over the part of a clip that you actually used in your cut. So if you made a 30-second promo for an hour program, you don't have to make a copy of the entire show. You just want to copy the bits of the show that you used in the promo.

Use Handles - I usually use a second or two of handles. This will copy any extra footage available before the in point and after the out point on a piece of media. I like it because if I have to tweak something in the cut, then I can adjust my edit point. Or if I want to use a clip later in another project, then I have some more media to work with.

Include affiliated clips outside selection - I frankly don't know what this does. If you leave it unchecked, you'll still get all of the media that's in your sequence. If you select it, then sometimes you'll get some extra media. Let me know if you know what this means. I suggest leaving this off.

Base media files names on existing file names - I never gave this much thought. The media manager in this case is making copies of all your clips. You can change the name of the new files to what the original clip is called or to what the original file is called.

Duplicate selected items and place them into a new project - Yes, I recommend checking this. This way you'll get a new copy of the project. I like it that this new project is very clean--just the sequences that you've used.

Include nonactive multiclip angles - If your selection includes multiclips, then this option is important. I usually do not use this. If you leave it off, you won't be missing anything that is in your sequence(s). If you leave it on and you are managing multiclips, then you get all of the angles for those multiclips. This can add up to a lot of footage that's not in your sequences.

Media destination - Select where you want the copies of all the media to go to. Your new project has a separate save dialog box from this.

Please consider using our new G-Speed XSan volume to store your archived projects. There's a folder called "UserArchives" in there. This will put your copy off the main XSan volume, but still in a place where it's easily accessible.

After you press OK, then media manager will ask you where you want to save the new project file. When you've done that, Media Manager actually starts working. It will make copies of your new clips and save them to the destination of this new media. Then it creates the new project, which will then open up in Final Cut Pro. Check it out to make sure it worked OK.

Remember, you've just created a copy of your project. If the point of doing this is to free up space, you still have to go back to original files and delete them. If you don't, you're just taking up more space by creating a copy of your project.

Tips for Media Management-No Reel Names
One weird gotcha with media management is that FCP doesn't like clips without reel names. If a clip doesn't have a reel name, FCP will not delete unused media. So if you use 30 seconds of a an hour-long clip, FCP will still copy over the whole hour. Not an efficient use of drive space. If you add anything into the reel name of that clip, then FCP will delete unused media.

To edit the reel name of a clip, select the clip, then do command-9. This bring up the Clip Info window. Here's what that window looks like:
Select the Logging tab. The second row in this view is for "Reel". Click on the blank spot to the right of the word "Reel" and underneath the name of the clip. Then you can add whatever you want to name the clip (e.g., "none", "unknown", "Tape 3B", "05May2010")--just as long as it's not blank. In the example image, where it says "001" is where you could click to edit the reel name.

Sometimes, you will know easily if a clip doesn't have a reel name. For example, any clip that was imported into Final Cut Pro (as opposed to captured) doesn't have a reel name. So, for example, clips from Crawford will come into Final Cut Pro without a reel name. Other times, it will be hard to figure out which clips don't have reel names. If you try to media manage a project and it seems like your copy is bigger than it should, try to figure out if you are copying clips without reel names. Usually a copy of a minute promo, will be less than 500 MB. If it's over a 1 GB, then you should definitely look for clips without reel names.

Here's a tip for finding clips without reel names. This tip uses Media Manger, but in a different way. Media manage the selection that you want to make a copy of, but instead of choosing "copy" under Media, choose "use existing". (Important! Make sure "Delete Unused Media" is not selected. If you delete unused media, then Media Manager will destructively trim footage from your original media. Ouch!) Save a new project (it doesn't matter where, since you are not going to work with this project for more than a few minutes.) This new project will then open up. In the bin called "Master Clips" are all the clips that were in your selection. Open up this bin in the list view, and then find the column for "Reel". You can see right away which clips have reel names and which don't. For some things, like graphics and music, it doesn't really matter if they have reel names.

I often sort the view by the length of the clips. That way I can start by looking at the biggest clips. To sort the list view by the length of clips, find the column for length, then click on the column header that says "Length." If you click again, it will switch from ascending order to descending order (or vice versa.) You can also sort by reel name by clicking on the column header that says "Reel"--that way all clips without reel names will be listed together. Unfortunately, there are lots of columns in the list view. The reel column is usually way off to the right. You can drag column around to place the reel column next to the length column. The handle to drag a column is its header. (BTW, length is different than duration. Duration measures the time between the in and out point. But length measure the total time of the entire clip.) You can edit the reel name in the list view (you don't have to open the Clip Info window.)

Tips for Media Management-Audio Keyframes
One bug in Media Manager has to do with audio keyframes. For some clips, the audio keyframes get messed up in the managed copy of a sequence. This is a pain because it can screw up your audio mix. So here's what I do as a workaround.

I will first do the media management. Then I go back to the original project with my good mix in it and do an export of the sequences that I have media managed. Go ahead and export the video and audio--not a bad idea to do an export of the picture to for reference. But you really will want to have the audio in place and sounding the way you want in this copy. Export these movies to the same folder where your managed media is. Then import this clip or these clips into the media managed project. Then you are going to cut this mixed down audio into your managed sequence. Go ahead and leave in the old audio too--don't delete it. Having both sources of audio in at first will help you to make sure your mixed down audio is in sync with the timeline. Once the mixed down audio is in and synced up, just turn off all the other audio tracks in the timeline except for the 2 tracks where your mixed down audio is. Now your sequence should sound just like it originally did.

BTW, for promos at Link, don't put in any dates or times in the exported audio. Since this voiceover needs to be updated regularly, we don't want that in the mixed down audio.

If you want to learn all the ins and outs of media manager, then I suggest checking out some of the online tutorials at lynda.com. There's a whole section on the media manager in this course Final Cut Pro 6 Essential Training. Let me know if you don't know how to log on using our lynda.com account (these tutorials aren't publicly available for free.)

Compressor Troubleshooting & Tweaking

Compressor error: "Unable to connect to background process"

Good info on Compressor problems and bugs from Digital Rebellion. They also have a good uninstall app for the whole Final Cut Studio that I had to use recently, FCS Uninstaller.

And here's a tip on speeding up rendering for those with 4 and 8 core systems from kenstone.net:
Compressor - Enabling multiple Cores

Accurate World Maps

So if a Google image of a country isn't good enough for your graphic, then here's a possible way to get a good, high-quality map of a country. Also before you do all this elaborate GIS stuff to get border info, try this page at Wikipedia, Blank Maps for pretty simple borders. It's not good for detail but if detail isn't need or even desired, then save yourself a bunch of hassle. These images at Wikipedia are SVG, and I give a few tips about the SVG format below.

There's probably an easier way to do this, but here's a method that I found for getting very accurate country borders for Mac users.

1. Source of Information
Digital Chart of the World Server
Select a country. Next you select "download data". Then it asks you what kind of information about the country you want. Not very intuitively (none of this is intuitive by the way), you make no selection and press "continue". The next screen gives you a few options--I skipped the ArcView projects, and selected PC Compression. The next screen gives you a download link to the data--HTTP link will do a regular file download. You now have data for the borders of that country. I did about 15 downloads and one country, Turkey, I couldn't get to work.

2. Render Data
I used some GIS software to render the data. I used the GrassGIS. This is open-source and free. There a couple of versions for Mac. I checked out two that I found were buggy, and I ended up using both to complete the process. The less-buggy version is for download here.

The other version, which is more buggy, is from Open OSX, for donwload here. The 6.2 version wouldn't open for me, but the 6.3 version ran. The Open OSX download came with a tutorial. Do this tutorial or otherwise you'll never figure out the Grass software. Again, not intuitive at all.

The Open OSX and the less-buggy version are similar enough but the menus and commands are layed out a bit differently. The Open OSX would crash as I added layers, but the less-buggy version built up 10 layers for me with no problems. But the less-buggy version crashed when I tried to export the files. Luckily projects would open up in either versions. So I imported the map info into the less-buggy version, saved the "workspace" (which is different than the project--again, you gotta do the tutorial)--then I opened up the project and workspace in the Open OSX version to export the map. The project is where all the data is stored, and the workspace is how it is displayed.

So the Open OSX seem to be bad at running a bunch of layers. As each country is only one layer, it's possible that you could do everything in the Open OSX version without it crashing. I was trying to work with a bunch of countries, so I want ahead and worked with the less-buggy version. But eally you can only export one layer at a time anyway, so I'm not sure if there's any real advantage to working in the less-buggy version for what I describe below.

One handy thing I figured out on my own was that if the software crashed, then it was actually still running. You had to go to the Terminal window where Grass is running and type "exit". Then Grass would stop running, so that you could restart it. Don't worry about starting up Terminal becuase both of these apps automatically open up terminal windows when they start--make sure you find the terminal window that has Grass to enter the exit command.

OK, so how do you import and export the data? When you start up Grass you either open an existing project or start a new project. So I suggest naming your project, like "countrymap". (BTW, I think Grass doesn't like any file names with spaces.) The import command that works with the data you have downloaded is under the File Menu, scroll down to "Import vector map" then choose "Multiple formats using OGR". Pick the file that you got from Digital Chart of the World server, which was called "ponet.e00" (all files downloaded from the site are named that, so you might want to name the file after the country.) In OpenOSX, all the relevant import options are under "Optional" (go figure.) "OGR datasource map" refers to the file you are importing. Enter a name for the "output vector map" and the "new location to create." After you did this, OpenOSX would crash. But it still would import it, and when you restarted you would have a new location. Open that new location (not the new mapset.)

This only imports it into your project, then you have to make a vector layer for it--I won't describe how to do that, again you got to do the tutorial. After you make the vector layer, then in the Display window, hit "Display active layer" and/or the "Redraw all layers" buttons. Then you finally get to see your map displayed.

Unfortunately, only Open OSX would do the export of the map for me. So if you are working in the less-buggy version, save your workspace. Make sure to add the .grc suffix to the workspace file. Open up your "country map" project in the Open OSX verion, then open up your workspace in the Open OSX version. To export your map, go to the File Menu, select "Export vector map", then "SVG". It opens up a window, where you select which layer you want to export (I couldn't figure out how to export more than 1 layer at a time.) Then under output type, select "line" (poly, which is the default, doesn't work.) Name your file and go ahead and find the directory where you want to save it, but make sure to add .svg as the suffix to the file name too.

3) Merge the Border to a Background Image of Earth
Not many programs seem to like the .SVG format. You can see it in a web browser. But Photoshop won't open it. Illustrator does. I don't have Illustrator on my laptop, so I jumped backed into open-source software and downloaded GIMP for Mac. I went ahead and also updated X11 as the GIMP site recommends, but I don't know if that's necessary.

GIMP runs pretty much like Photoshop. It's a raster-based editor. So when it opens your map border, it wants to render it out to a raster image. So make sure you pick a good resolution to render the image to when you import, but the path is just as important because it will preserve vector data too. So when opening, select "Import Paths" and "Merge Imported Paths". You could do the rest of the work in GIMP, I think, but if you know Photoshop, then just save this file as a Photoshop document and do the rest of the work in Photoshop. Just make sure the rastered image resolution is big enough to work with in Photoshop because the paths don't get transfered to Photoshop unfortunately.

The background image I use is from NASA. It's the Blue Marble: Land Surface, Shallow Water, and Shaded Topography. The way the earth is projected onto the map seems to align with the export from the GIS program. NASA has other world images with this projection in their Blue Marble collection. There's actually a special version of this image called a GeoTIFF at unearthedoutdoors.com. The GeoTIFF can be imported into Grass and the country maps will align perfectly over the image. Cool, but it's really only valuable as a preview because you cannot edit the image in Grass.

Sorry I'm going to skip how to composite your border and the background. I actually did this in Illustrator, but you could do it in either Photoshop or GIMP. I align my map and background in Illustrator. Then I edited the image the Photoshop. Finally I wanted to do a spinning globe thing, so I brought the Photoshop doc into After Effects. In After Effect, I used the CC Sphere FX to put my flat map on a globe.

I actually was working on this GIS workflow, then I found the Blank Map SVG file at Wikipedia which had plenty of detail for my map. Plus, there's over 50 countries on this map, and it would taken a super-long time to handle all of those maps in Grass and align them properly. Here's the result of what I did with that (BTW, Bosnia is not a Muslim-majority country).

Muslim Countries Rough Animation from Matt DeVries on Vimeo.

DVD's Bad for Archiving

Homemade DVD’s: Going, Going, Gone?

Following up my on recent post about disapperaing data on hard drives, comes a warning about the short lifespans of recordable DVD's. David Pogue, the technology writer for the New York Times, mentions some DVD's he made that after 2 years were already unreadable on many computers. I was taken aback by 2 years. I knew recordable DVD's didn't have a really long lifespan, but I was hoping for something more like 10 years.

The short takeaway is that recordable DVD's are not an archiving format. They are a distribution format.

Cool Camera Shootout

Zacuto's Great Camera Shootout '08

I recommend this video, which includes a good camera shootout.
The cameras/formats tested are:
35mm Film
Red One
Panasonic HPX3000
Panasonic HVX200 (with three 35mm lens adapters)
Sony EX3
Panasonic HPX170
Canon XH-A1
Canon 5D Mark II
Nikon D90
There's a long discussion at the start which you can skip through. This shootout I feel gives a good comparison of what you can get with these different kinds of setups, especially if you are going for a filmic or cinematic look. I recommend downloading the 1280x720 h.264 movie if you want to see more detail than you get with Vimeo's flash player. That's a good thing about Vimeo is that they give a higher-quality download option for their movies--just scroll down the page and look for the download link on the right column.

I'm most interested in the comparisons between the EX3, the HPX170 and the Canon XH-A1. The cheapest camera, the XH-A1, looked really good, and I really like how the HPX170 renders colors, more natural than the Sony camera. This test doesn't tell everything, by any means, (e.g., the EX3 is supposed to do better than its competitors in low-light), but it's a good place to start thinking about different cameras and what kind of images they create.

LCD Displays: TN Panels Not So Hot

We've recently gotten some LCD displays that I haven't been thrilled with the quality on. The first was a Dell S2409W--hey it was only $300. What did I expect? The display is crisp, but the colors are clearly washed out. It replaced a 20" Dell Ultrasharp (It think it was the 2005 model) and the colors weren't as good on the new one. Next came, a new 20" iMac. Same thing--washed-out colors. I also noticed a noticeable viewing-angle effect--as you move off-axis, the colors go off and the contrast drops. (BTW, the display on the 24" iMac is supposed to be much better than the 20".)

So I've been trying to do some research on the web. I'm not an authoritative source on this, but here's what I've gleaned. The lower-quality displays are probably using a technology called TN for the panel. These are much cheaper than some competing technologies for LCD displays. The best is supposed to be IPS displays--Apple uses IPS displays for their pricey Cinema Displays. There are other technologies out there too that are better than TN, for example our Dell Ultrasharp 2408WFP display isn't IPS, but another technology called PVA. If you really want to know the ins and outs of these LCD display technologies, there's an article at Wikipedia.

Unfortunately, manufacturers don't always tell what kind of display technology they use. One clue that you are getting a TN display is that the viewing angle will be lower than 178°. For example our Dell 2409W lists a display angle of 160° / 170°. Dell is good in that they tell you straight-up that it's a TN panel too--duh, that's why it's half the price of the Ultrasharp 2408 24".

One thing that the Wikipedia article says is that TN's displays often don't natively show millions of colors. They often use 6-bit color vs the 8-bit color needed to display millions of colors. My memory of binary math, says that 6-bit displays have about 1/4 of the info on color as an 8-bit.

So in summary, there are a lot drawbacks to the cheap LCD's that use TN displays. If you aren't doing critical color work on the monitor, then it might be OK. I wouldn't do a lot of graphics work on it. I definitely wouldn't use it to color correct your next video. LCD display technology is complex and there are many issues that go into making a good (or bad) monitor. But you should definitely know up front what you are getting when you pick a TN display.

One scenario were I think using a TN panel is OK is as a general workspace.  Say you are doing video and have a good external video monitor.  The external video monitor is where you do your color correction--so your LCD computer screen's quality isn't critical.  It may make more sense to spend you computer screen dollars on a bigger workspace than a smaller screen with a better quality image.

Comprehensive List of S-IPS Based LCD Monitors
This website lists some monitors that use a good display technology, S-IPS.

Macworld Review: Apple LED Cinema Display
Apple's new display is not only IPS, but it also uses an LED backlight, which is a whole new technology for desktop displays.

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.)

Refreshing Hard Drive Storage

Larry Jordan has recently been warning against the dangers of leaving drives on a shelf for periods over a year. He says that after a year, the data will start to essentially disappear. There's a way to avoid this effect of the vanishing data, and that's to have the computer read the entire disc.

Larry just posted an article on how to do this preventive action on his recent newsletter (not sure if this link will work for long, as these newsletters are only available for a limited time.) Here's the basics of the preventitive action.
-Make sure your user account has administrator access
-Open the Terminal applications, which is in the Utilities directory
-Enter this command: sudo cat /dev/rdisk0> /dev/null
Actually that command will read your entire boot drive, which is probably not the drive that has been sitting on a shelf for a year. You can run this task on different drives, but first you have to figure out the identifier for the drive (hint: it's not the name that you called the drive.)

To get the disk identifier, go to Disk Utility, also in the Utilities folder. Select the drive, not the volume--the drive's name usually starts with the capacity of the disk followed by the drive's manufacturer, e.g., Seagate, Hitachi, LaCie--the volume is what you named the drive or a partition on the drive. After selecting the disk that you want to run the maintenance on, click on the info icon at the top of the application window. This opens a new window with info on your drive, the disk identifer is the word "disk" followed by a number. If the disk identifier was disk2, then your command would be: sudo cat /dev/rdisk2> /dev/null

The command will take a while to run--we're probably talking hours. You can interrupt this procedure by hitting Control + C while in the Terminal.

Disappearing data is only one risk you run by using a hard drive as long-term storage. But this seems like something worth doing if you care about the data that you have left on a drive.

Blu-ray Burning with Toast 9

"Taming the Wild Blu, yonder... " By Bruce Nazarian

"Taming the Wild Blu, part 2..." By Bruce Nazarian

Two good articles that cover the Blu-ray burning featues of Toast 9 on Macs. The first article covers the basics of burning Blu-ray and has a good tutorial on burning a Blu-ray data disc. We are currently using Toast 8 to burn Blu-ray discs to archive movies and old FCP projects as data. For some reason, I can't get Toast 9 to recognize our burner, but Toast 8 works fine for this--this tutorial will still help if you are trying to figure out how to burn a BD with Toast 8. There's a new version of Toast 9 out, 9.0.4, which I need to try out--hopefully the problems with the BD drive will go away. Recently, I blogged about a video tutorial that covers similar ground as this article.

The second article gets you into creating a Blu-ray discs with high-def video. So you've got your snazzy HD camcorder, but how are you going to playback your next high-def project? Apple isn't really helping you out--you can't playback video from Blu-ray discs on your Mac (much less author a Blu-ray disc with their software.) But this article points out the other options, namely Blu-ray players, which already cost less than $200.

Toast 9 does basic authoring of Blu-ray video discs. Simple menus, encoding of video to MPEG-2 or H.264, and, of course, burning your Blu-ray disc (or even regular DVD if you have about 20 minutes of video or less.)

Don't forget about Adobe's Encore CS3, and now CS4, which I blogged about earlier this year. Encore has a much more sophisticated tools for authoring Blu-ray discs than Toast's. But for simple discs, Toast looks like an easy way to put your high-def video onto disc.

Just for Fun: Digital Conversion PSA Spoof

This is a funny video about how your average grandmother will handle the conversion to digital TV. The sad part is that there are really going to be a lot of older people out there who will lose their TV when the old analog stations turn off their over-the-air broadcast. Well, I guess it's a growth opportunity for Link--think of all the dishonest satellite salesman out there who will get granny to buy Dish or Directv when her shows disappear come 2-17-09.

Is Your Video Looking Rough Around the Edges?

"Am I Rendering And Viewing At The Best Quality With FCP?" By Andrew Balis

This is a very good article over at kenstone.net. This is a topic that I sort of took for granted that I knew everything that I needed to know about rendering--then I find out features that I didn't even know about. One of these is the audio mixdown vs item levels rendering. There was also a setting for HDV rendering that I had totally misinterpreted the meaning of--it would cause me to have to re-render all my HDV footage, which takes a long time.

The article points out that the quality of real-time previews sometimes isn't as good as rendered quality. I used to see this everytime I did Latin Pulse. I like to use dissolves on title clips. If I had a color-correction on the video below the title, then the title would drop to half-resolution even though the timeline said it should be "Full Quality." So I would have to go in and render all of these little dissolves or change my settings to render out everything that should playback at "Full Quality."

So if you want your video to look as good as possible and your audio to sound as good as possible, I recommend this article.

Firewire vs. USB Performance in New Laptops

So Apple has dropped Firewire from the MacBook and don't expect to ever see it againon the consumer-level laptop from Apple. This is too bad, especially since Apple really boosted the performance of the new MacBook--it would have made a decent computer for editors if it had had Firewire.

The lack of Firewire raises two big issues for video folks. First, the performance of hard drives over USB has traditionally been really poor on Mac's--usually half the speed of Firewire 400. Second, there are all kinds of other gear that uses Firewire--decks, cameras, Firestore, video monitoring/digitizing equipment. We layoff to DVCam at Link and get most of our footage from DV and HDV tapes.

One good bit of news about peripherals with the new laptops is that Apple has finally raised the performance of USB. Check out this article at Bare Feats to see the results of a comparison of hard drive performance of USB, FW400, FW800, and Sata drives on the new laptops. USB is almost as fast as Firewire 400 on the new MacBook Pro.

I still wouldn't recommend doing any serious editing with USB drives on these new laptops. I guess it could work, but Firewire was supposed to be a better standard. My guess is that you would run into problems with capturing and laying off if your media was on USB drives. But these are educated guesses at this point. This may change if Apple does a better job of implementing USB on their Mac's.

October Blogwad

"3D Objects from Photoshop in After Effects CS4"
Adobe CS4 is shipping. The thing that most interested me is you can have 3D objects in After Effects. There are a number of limitations on this. This little video shows you the basic of working with 3D objects and discusses the limitations in After Effects (the biggest for me is objects don't respond to lighting in After Effects.) More new features described here.

"Top 10 things you didn't know about the new MacBook"
New MacBook and MacBook Pro's were announced. Each model lost a Firewire 400 port. That leaves the MBP with one FW800 port, but the MacBook with no Firewire port and no way to add it. Some good things about the new laptops too (besides looking really slick.)

"Final Cut Pro: Free plugins to make all fonts available"
Why by version of 6, Apple still hasn't fixed this I don't know. But here's a text plug-in that is supposed to let you use all of your fonts in FCP.

"Final Cut Pro: My free Closing Credits plugin"
From the same guy who made the type plug-in above. The cool thing about this is that it lets you control the lines per second speed of your scroll. I basically almost always use one speed for credit rolls--120 lines pers second. (To know why read from Adam Wilt here). I do keyframe animation of Title 3D to do this, but it's a pain. This plug-in is an easier way to get the speed right, but you lose all the nice type editing features of Boris 3D.

"Build your own affordable SAN -- that works!"
Remember my crazy idea to use Jonathan's computer to build a SAN. This is where I got the idea. I'd still like to do it, but nobody wanted to give me $3K to play around with this, instead of letting editors use the computer.

"What to do if you lose your Pro App serial number"
Title says it all.

"Final Cut Pro Audio Filter Guide Part 1"
"Final Cut Pro Audio Filter Guide Part 2"
Bone up on FCP's audio filters with these helpful articles. Basically they describe what the various sliders do for the filters. However, if you're like me and not an audio person and you don't know what you are doing, then you will probably make your audio sound worse by playing around with filters. On the other hand, I learned the little I know about audio mainly by playing around with filters.

My current favorite filter is Soundtrack Pro's limiter. It works much better than the limiter in FCP. But it's a pain to export to Soundtrack Pro and reimport. It really makes sure that your peaks aren't out of control and cuts off all sounds at a consistent level without distorting it. I usually set it to -10 limit with a +10 boost.

"Another electronic slate for the iPhone"
"Finally a few timecode calculators for the iPhone"
Rejoice iPhone owners (and iPod Touch owners.) Video-centric apps for your iPhone.

"Anything Worth Backing Up…"
Good thoughts on backup strategies and technologies.

"All About Video Fields"
For extra credit, read this long, tech-y article on fields. Written from the perspective of a software engineer, but all the issues come up for video editors too.

SD Cards in the Sony EX-1

This seems like some exciting bit of news. Apparently, folks have figured out how to shoot onto SanDisk SD cards with the Sony EX-1 and EX-3 cameras, instead of Sony's expensive SxS media.

The EX cameras are supposed to be great (see latest EX-3 review from Adam Wilt.). Excellent performance in terms of resolution and low-light sensitivity. Their 1/2" sensors work much better than the smaller 1/3" sensors in the Z1, Z5, Z7, HVX200, HPX170, and Canon cameras. The big problem for me with the EX cameras was shooting on the expensive SxS media. Like the Panasonic's P2 cards, these are much more expensive per GB than run-of-the-mill flash memory--e.g., $850 for 16GB of SxS Pro storage. It just wouldn't make sense when you are shooting a lot of stuff because the hassle of making sure all your footage was safe on hard drives all the time.

Well, this guy says you can use a 16GB SanDisk SD card for $60 that will do just about everything that Sony's $850 card will (the notable exception being over-cranking, used for slo-mo shots.) You just need a particular Kensington Expresscard adapter for $40 that you put in the camera.

It still doesn't make the the EX-1 ($6450 at B&H) a no-brainer for Link. That's still $60 to record about an hour at 35 Mb/s or 90 minutes at 25 Mb/s. The camera's more difficult to handle than the Z1 or Z5, or even Z7. Plus the Z5 has a 20x lens versus 14x lens for the EX cameras. And we are hardly ever delivering HD--so we usually downconvert in the deck, which is both a good and easy way to get SD footage from HD source material. If quality is what really counts, than the EX cameras are a real winner in the sub $10K range, but I think, but there are some significant drawbacks to the camera when compared to more practical, tape-based cameras like the Z5.

If you are seriously interested in this, then read the fine print here:
Overcoming the cost of SxS media: Introducing KxS.
Also, I don't know of anyone personally doing this. I would probably wait for some trustworthy sources to vouch for this before I committed to buying an EX camera.

UPDATE: Adam Wilt (a very trustworthy source) says that he's heard good things from Sony about working with off-the-shelf memory cards on the EX cameras in the comments section of this post on ProVideo Coalition.

I tried looking for the Kensington card reader, and it seems to be out-of-stock everywhere. Also read on a forum that it may have been discontinued. Not good news for this concept.

Farewell Messages to Kathryn

Hi all Link staffers,

We are doing something new for Kathryn Binovi's going away party, and I need everyone's help. I want to make the video equivalent of a card that we would give to Kathryn. So I want to get nice thoughts and reflections from the staff about Katherine. I plan to make a video that will play on a TV screen during the party. On the screen will be text with messages from Kathryn's co-workers (that's you!).

Please try your best to think of something unique to say to Kathryn--it would be nice not to have 10 messages that just said "We'll miss you" and "Good luck." Also try to keep it shortish, as the type will have to be pretty big to be legible. Feel free to recycle these messages in any actual physical card.

To make it easier for people not to duplicate each other's messages, I'm encouraging people to write out their thoughts as comments on this blog post. Please make sure to write your name at the end of your comments. To make a comment, click on the "Post a Comment" link at the bottom of this post. You don't have to log in to post a comment--just select anonymous option on the page where you write your post. But again, remember to write your name in the message.

If you are receiving this message in an email, follow the link to go to my blog where you can post your messages to Kathryn.

Thanks!
Matt