Recent Blog Posts

REDucation-X: The next level

Daniel Restuccio — Fri, 04 May 2012 15:55:00 GMT

By Daniel Restuccio

The five-day intensive Red camera training, called REDucation, is headed to the next level with the four-month-long REDucation-X, the first Red "alternative" to traditional film school training for the next generation of moviemakers.

The logic, says Red's Ted Schilowitz (pictured being interviewed for Post-TV at NAB), is that feature films, commercials and "everything in between" are shot with Red cameras. In addition, post production with Red files is happening all over the world, so Red has created a streamlined way to REDucate yourself "if you are a student coming straight out of high school or wanting to reorient your career."

REDucation started in July of 2009 as an "experiment," recalls Schilowitz. "The cameras were a new force in the industry" and Red noticed to there was an intimate relationship between production and post production to truly understand the capabilities of the camera. "You don't really separate the two, it's one thing."

Hence REDucation was conceived.

The first classes were held at Los Angeles Center Studios in downtown Los Angeles and covered production and post production. They had around 50 students from all over the world. "There were students from Australia, New Zealand, South America, Europe, and all over the continental United States," shares Schilowitz.

They ran the five-day intensive course once every three months, mostly in Los Angeles and then expanded to New York and London. The content evolved to include Red Epic and Red Scarlet, as well as the Red One. Post production evolved as well. "When we started there was no Red Rocket," says Schilowitz, referring to the accelerator card that makes realtime playback and transcoding of Red files possible. Now they cover stereo production and as well as more in-depth post topics such as stereo post, color science and the different digital intermediate processes for television, features and commercials.

As they watched the REDucation classes becoming more successful, a revelation occurred. Says Schilowitz, "If you look at the pace of technology, and pace of the motion picture industry that we live in now what people want is a way to immerse themselves in the most relevant technologies and get themselves out into the working world within a few months."

REDucation-X will cover the entire workflow, from concept through completion and distribution. The goal, continues Schilowitz, is that you walk out with all the relevant skills to develop a project, produce a project, "get it through editing, see it through finishing and then get it up on a big screen for millions of people to see."

Students will work with the same high-level production and post production technology that is used on feature films and television. Industry professionals will teach many of the classes.

The four-month course costs $15,000. Applications are being taken now until May 31st on the Red site. (http://www.red.com/learn/reducation-x/reducation-x-2012)

The first class size is limited to 20-25 students and will run from October 1, 2012 - January 25, 2013.

Pre-archive preservation and post-archive production

Joshua Ranger — Wed, 02 May 2012 15:22:00 GMT

I think we can all agree that, while a pleasant theoretical diversion, the auteurist theory of media production is, in practical terms, bunk. Too many other people have a hand in a work's production for one person to take full credit. Likewise, no single person is entirely responsible for the management and preservation of a production's assets. There are too many links in the chain from conception to archive where decisions must be made, problems may occur, and decisions catalogued.

That said, however, I have to admit that in most organizations I've worked with, whether an institution or a studio, the content creator and content user wings don't really care much for the archives. Not that they don't care about preserving and accessing materials, but cultural differences and resource competition between these groups contributes to greater friction than should exist among people with the same end goal - the long term ability to easily access and use the audiovisual materials they create.

Certainly these different groups face different challenges and may have a different perception of the pathway one needs to follow to reach that goal. For a content creator, this means having materials close at hand and easy to work with, focusing on the end goal of a distributable project that may be on a deadline of a few hours. For the archivist - or collection manager, traffic manager, production assistant, or whomever in a company/studio is tasked with taking care of assets - there is a greater focus on creating catalog records or finding aids which are searched or consulted to find the exact (or general) location where the object is stored, retrieving the object, and providing access to a user, sometimes in a matter of minutes, hours, or (unfortunately) days. The archivist (I'll continue to use this as a broad term to keep things simple and avoid cornucopious lists) also needs to enable and execute strategies that ensure the preservation of the objects in question, strategies which are not always conducive to the righthere rightnow needs of production.

The great difficulty with audiovisual materials is the lack of findability and accessibility that arises due to poor documentation (often inherited at the point of deposit to the archive) or technical hurdles such as lack of playback equipment. This results in major backlogs in identifying content and a basic inability to provide access. That creates a situation in which potential users feel that archives are black boxes where materials go to die and archivists feel overwhelmed by piles of tapes they cannot play or even accurately describe. No wonder content creators feel it's better to just keep everything close at hand, even if they themselves do not recall what the asset contains or no longer have the capacity for playing it. And no wonder archivists wish everyone would just settle on one format and pleasepleaseplease write some basic information on the case or in a spreadsheet. Please.

The day-to-day, in the weeds nature of organizational politics and internal jockeying aside, I have seen these kinds of behaviors create serious issues for companies, ranging from legal settlement to lost opportunity. The common denominator in all is an inability to reasonably and affordably dig out of the mess created. Very often this results from an inability to define or keep in mind the long term value of their materials beyond the initial point of documentation or distribution. We all know the popular success stories where people did plan ahead: Desilu Productions retaining filmed copies of (and future rights to) "I Love Lucy", essentially creating the syndicated rebroadcast market...Neil Young's retention of his master recordings, unreleased live material, and other documentation, assets that are seeing fruition in his Grammy-winning Archives Vol. I box set...Disney's decades-long cottage industry (pre-home video boom) rereleasing films to theatres, and then in the early video market pushing a "We're opening up the vaults for a limited time" marketing approach.

We know these, but what about the stories where organizations faced greater struggles? A few years ago I worked with a large federal government department to establish an inventory of their textual, visual, and audio assets that had been created and stored in worldwide locations over the past 60+ years. The archives had struggled with managing the wide range of formats and standards used as there were no organizational wide guidelines on format selection and documentation. As a result they had trouble efficiently fulfilling access requests. More recent changes meant that things were greatly improving, but today's content creators preferred to retain their copies rather than deposit them.

During the inventory I heard many stories about assets that were lost or simply thrown away during the frequent office moves the creator departments made; about people running out of storage space, not knowing what they had, or not having the equipment for playback anymore; and about creators feeling overwhelmed by having to manage so many tapes or files. In quantifying the massive number of assets and digging up "lost" collections that needed reformatting and preservation work, the administration itself was overwhelmed by the budget and personnel that would be required to perform this previously hidden and unaddressed work. Having failed to gain buy-in to or enforcing guidelines and processes in the past, they faced a situation where budgets would need to be compressed into a handful of years rather than spread out as a simple part of daily operations had they been addressed earlier.

In my archival training we were constantly told to document everything because what-will-happen-if-you-get-hit-by-a-bus-tomorrow-and-all-the-information-about-your-collections-was-in-your-head. Go ahead and chuckle, but currently I'm working on a project for a New York City performance hall with 70 years' worth of concert and event material. Sadly, the audio engineer in charge of the recordings was in an accident and died on the way to work two years ago. For those two years, the collections sat, gathering more dust in their storage area and continuing the march to decay. The organization knows they have valuable content, but they had no idea how to tell what it was or how best to take care of it. So it sat, getting worse and, equally important, not able to be used to support the promotion of the organization's storied history or help fulfill its institutional mission. And once again, a preservation project is driven by a crisis mentality rather than through reasoned planning.

Though the discussion of these topics often devolves into a blame game, there is not a single party at fault here. Rather, balkanization at the department level, a lack of communication about expectations and abilities, and an unwillingness to compromise over what is possible or what is a priority (I must have this...I would like to have this...In an ideal situation I would love to have this...) in collaborative requirements lie at the core of these conflicts.

An aspiring auteur should have a knowledge of the various contributing roles to a production so they understand the impact of certain decision points and how to ask for or understand the creative/practical approach of those collaborators contributing at those points. Likewise, creators and caretakers need to understand the basics of each other's needs and roles so they can better ask for or support those needs and avoid the conflicts that hurt all points of production and preservation. Preservation not as a bug in amber, but preservation as planning ahead to enable continually usable assets for future productions or opportunities. Longevity is not an accident, but a result of healthy maintenance of all aspects of an individual or organizational body.

Joshua Ranger is Senior Consultant with AudioVisual Preservation Solutions.

Petabyte is the new Terabyte

Tom Coughlin — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:07:00 GMT

By Tom Coughlin
Coughlin Associates
www.tomcoughlin.com

Peter Jackson's the Hobbit is being shot at 48 frames per second (fps), six days a week, using 5K Red cameras shooting in 3D. Total content generated each day is between 6-12TB. James Cameron's Avatar follow-up movie is being shot in 3D at 60fps.

Modern high-end video cameras support frame rates as high as 120 frames per second, and at the 2012 NAB show, noted film director/special effects supervisor/inventor Douglas Trumbull said that he is doing video work at a full 120fps. As digital content capture encourages longer shooting times, a leading edge movie project can create multiple Petabytes of raw content. The lowering costs of capturing and storing rich media content means that projects that used to use terabytes of storage will now consumer petabytes. Petabyte is the new Terabyte!

There were many examples of advanced storage systems for content capture and editing. Following are write-ups on a few of the systems I saw.

EditShare has created a convenient set of services including MAM, several ingest licenses as well as shared storage and archive support using their Flow and Arc (pictured below, right) systems combined with the Field storage units. The company announced a new product, Atom, which is 40 percent lighter than Field and has four 3.5-inch drive bays and supports 1GB Ethernet as well as 10GB Ethernet.

NetApp was showing the well-designed E-5460 storage system that it acquired in the LSI Engenio acquisition. Working with Atto and Quantum StorNext they showed a Final Cut Pro Media Content Management Solution managing 22 video streams with an aggregated sustained video read speed of 3.48GB/s.

Isilon, now firmly integrated into EMC, was demonstrating its scaled out storage for media applications. Livestream, a company providing on-line event coverage discussed how it has used Isilon scalable storage to meet its growing content demand.

DataDirect Networks showed its WOS Cloud Storage system for collaborative workflows as well as a new MXF server. The MXF server can be used for paid ingest, copying and managing media content in a compact package.

Facilis showed their TerraBlock storage (pictured below) system that used 6Gb/s SAS drives and offered 600MB/s content transfers using Fibre Channel SANS (which should reach 16Gbps data rates in a short period of time).

Harmonic provides its MediaGrid systems that are being used in major media and broadcast central storage applications such as at Modern VideoFilm in Burbank.

Nirvanix was offering 1TB of cloud storage for free for 30 days for qualified NAB show attendees. Nirvanix cloud storage is being used for a number of media and entertainment collaborative applications as well as content backup.

Active Storage intro duced its mMedia storage system. This product continues Active's focus on media and entertainment post storage using efficient metadata storage to speed workflow processes.

Many other companies supplying storage for small and large scale digita l workflows were at the NAB including A3iO, Accusys xaSAN (whose ExaSAN was showing external PCIe storage arrays offering 1,200MB/s data transfers), Avere, CineRAID, CRU-DataPort, G-Tech, IQstor, JMR, JetNAS, LaCie, Nexsan, QNAP, SNS, Tiger Technology, Virident (in the AIC booth) was showing a PCIe FlashMax storage device to help accelerate workflow IOPS.

Some other surprising finds were a line of small storage devices servicing the digital cinema market offered by WiebeTech (part of CRU-DataPort). Ciphertex had an extensive line of various size portable storage boxes including data encryption for storing and transporting post production video and audio content. Note that there were other cloud storage offerings at the NAB as described in another blog.

Storage solutions are fundamental to the continuing development of more immersive entertainment experience. The sky is the limit on potential storage needs (and consequently system performance) for all aspects of modern digital workflows since more content translates directly into more resolution in time as well as space. That is why there is so much digital storage on display at the NAB show and why there will be exciting storage opportunities in this industry for many years to come.

Top 5 Picks from NAB 2012

Tom Baurain — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:31:00 GMT

My Top 5:

1. Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera

Perfect this camera is not, but that this price point, you can't not help but be excited about this camera. Including Resolve and UltraScopes makes this something of a no-brainer. An odd form factor, 2x crop, and internal battery all revolve around saving costs. Apparently Super 35 sensors are not that cheap, and BMD wanted to price this camera competitively. There are already solutions coming from companies like Letus and Anton Bauer to make up for the camera's deficiencies. I am not an early adopter by any means, but 12 bit Cinema DNG, 10 bit ProRes/DNxHD make this my next camera of choice for ownership. Blackmagic, shut up and take my money.

2. Adobe Creative Suite 6

This latest release of Adobe's Creative Suite is a big leap forward for many. For After Effects, features like advanced 3D extrusions and ray tracing will attract many. Their 3D camera tracker, and how it works, could not help but make me smile. Keeping it all in the family continues with their release of SpeedGrade, meant to compete with other high end color grading solutions like Resolve. There are way to many good things about the entire suite to list, but this is a quantum leap forward for the entire suite.

3. KesslerCrane ShuttlePod Mini www.kesslercrane.com/product-p/sp_mini.htm <http://www.kesslercrane.com/product-p/sp_mini.htm>

KesslerCrane had a common theme throughout many of their products that are either brand new or have been updated: make it lighter. A complaint I've heard with their gear is weight, and the team at KesslerCrane is addressing that while still maintaining top quality that you can depend on. The ShuttlePod has been a great tool for longer motion controlled moves in a variety of applications, and now they have made a smaller, lighter version that will fit mine and others needs a bit better.

4. Zeiss CP.2 Lenses http://www.zeiss.com/cine/cp2

Admittedly this is more of a lust factor, but I couldn't help but visit the Zeiss booth and check out their new lenses. They've got new Super Speed versions of their 35, 50, and 85 CP.2 lenses. Sebastian Wiegartner used these new Zeiss lenses to great effect in his short film TUMULUS( http://vimeo.com/39266449 ) shot on the Sony F3. They also released a 70-200 CP.2 zoom lens that looked fantastic a great lightweight telephoto zoom.

5. Fastec Imaging TS3Cine Camera http://ts3cine.com/

High speed was certainly a big trend at this year's NAB, and delivering high speed in a small form factor certainly took center stage in the trend of high speed. The interface on this camera really impressed me. It's a great combination of touch screen and manual buttons. The camera can also record uncompressed RAW in Cinema DNG or TIFF sequences. It can do up to 20,000 fps at reduced resolutions, but most will probably capture at 720p doing 720 frames per second. I talked briefly with Mike Sutton at their booth and he said this camera lends itself towards shooting with anamorphic lenses, which are coming back in a big way this year.

Tom Baurain operates The Red Owl in Kansas City. He can be reached at: tom@theredowl.com.

The 'cloudy' haze of NAB

Jonathan Moser — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:41:00 GMT

By Jonathan Moser

LAS VEGAS - Trying to navigate the broadcast geek-fest known as NAB in half-a-day is about as realistic as taking in the glories of the Sistine Chapel by looking at one fresco...but I'll try.

I have to confess it's been over 20 years since setting foot in the chaotic but exciting arena of the Las Vegas Convention Center's NAB Convention, showcasing the latest, fastest and brightest in technology and trends. (The last thing I saw at NAB in 1992 was a $40,000 HD monitor with little HD material to show on it.)

There have been profound changes not just in sheer size, but in what constitutes the new Broadcast Paradigms...so this report is seen through the smoky glasses of over two decades of change and is also limited in scope to what hit me as the most exciting trends skewed to the post production editing professional.

It became obvious I'd have to do a lot of mental filtering to try to see through the more than 745,000 square feet of exhibit space where almost 1,500 exhibitors spun their wares with me having less than five hours of time before flying back to LA.

Avid and Adobe had a huge presence. Apple wasn't on the show floor, but they did have a demo suite set up at the Bellagio showing the newest updates and partnerships.

Also clearly gone was any sign of tape as a broadcast medium... servers and other distribution methods were rampant and file-based and cloud were the whole reality. It's hard to get excited over storage solutions but there were plenty in sight. It also makes me realize that the days of tape libraries are almost over...now closets and shelves are populated with an infinite number of hard drives, data tape and optical disks...somehow lacking the warm nostalgia of film cans and videotapes.

There were lots of innovations and products to be seen, (3D without glasses, smarter software, thousands of new distribution tools, lots of cool lights and gadgets and effects, cheaper and better cameras), but the one thing that stood out as paramount was the nascent roll out of cloud-based broadcast technologies.

Cloud is the future. Signs of its impending role in future tele-production were everywhere. I think cloud-based editing will shake up our local and world broadcast and media community more devastatingly than nonlinear editing changed the post paradigm - hold on to your seats, it's going to be a bumpy ride. My belief is that if you're a post professional and don't hop onto learning and understanding cloud-based post now, you and your career will disappear faster than the dinosaurs did 65 million years ago. It's that important.)

Being an Avid guy, I was shown their entry into the world of cloud-based editing and saw the implications (way beyond the technical progress) into the very nature of how we've handled post and what editing has been about in the past...and its implementation will affect us in profound and very personal ways.

Avid showed me the ropes on their Sphere Interplay implementation so far. Right now this technology is geared toward news gathering but that will change. It will allow a journalist (or producer/cameraman/preditor located anywhere in the world with Internet access) to simultaneously edit on their laptop, upload and acquire assets at any other Internet-equipped location while their HD media is being uploaded in hi-res (and relinked to the final timeline) to the cloud...all in realtime and all viewable and editable anywhere else in the world. The ramifications are incredible.

Any question you may have about bandwidth allowing the streams necessary to edit quickly and accurately are reasonably moot: low-res proxy media (at H.264) can edit over the 'net through Avid's Interplay Sphere (see picture) environment in realtime. And it's only a matter of time and new compression codecs before higher def streams with full effects can also be seen. (But keep in mind that in Avid's case, all of this media is uploaded and upres'd transparently even while editing is taking place, so that the final product is full HD.) Obviously lingering questions of bad Internet connections will be raised and addressed, but the groundwork is laid.

It's clear taking this paradigm even further that physical location will no longer matter. To edit you won't have to be either near the media itself or in a post room somewhere - and the idea of editors in New York, LA, Hong Kong or anywhere else being tied to a favorite producer will go away. Any talent anywhere in the world could engage this technology. We will now all be in direct competition with each other around the world. And the first to get those cloud-based jobs will be those who know how to work with it.

Like it or not, it's a whole new world of competition in the post marketplace. And it's only going to get more technologically advanced and fierce.

Don't let the name Cloud fool you: It'll hit us like a ton of bricks.

NAB 2012 has come to a close

Mark Heitke — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:31:00 GMT

By Mark Heitke

NAB 2012 has come to a close and man what a blur.

The last day and a half have been filled to the brim! Wednesday I tackled the North Hall exhibits and caught up on the newest broadcast tech. It was really interesting to be able to see the brains behind the major networks. It is always a bit fun to peek behind the curtain and understand a bit more how the content I produce ends up at its final destination.

I also revisited some of South Hall to spend some more time with a couple things that caught my eye. It was nice to be able to sit down and really explore some options that might help out in future projects. The first place I stopped by was SquareBox. They make the Media Asset Management software CatDV. I have used their software before and really enjoyed how it integrated with my workflow. I was excited to see they have some updates that should help boost performance coming out this summer.

After SquareBox I swung over to the Sonnet booth to check out their new Mac Mini blade serve device. This thing is great, although a bit pricey considering. They have integrated a mini into a 1RU case that has 2 PCIe card slots and connects Thunderbolt. While the device felt very much like a prototype, the idea was great and I hope to see it show up more. A mini in this setup would make a great xserve replacement and would have a ton of power.

I finished my day at the show looking at Smoke and Premiere again. I, like everyone else is looking for a new NLE to possibly replace Final Cut Pro 7. My mind as of now is leaning towards Smoke. It is a powerful tool that really combines a lot of things I would like to see in one box. Premiere CS6 has some potential but it is not quite there yet.

NAB has flown by in a flash and I can't wait to come back next year. I am off for some dinner at Mesa to celebrate!

Thanks POST for the chance to blog this years show and thanks for reading!

The ties that bind them

Tom Coughlin — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:09:00 GMT

By Tom Coughlin
Coughlin Associates
www.tomcoughlin.com

LAS VEGAS - The 2012 NAB South Hall had an ever-growing complement of booths showing digital storage products or using those products. There were of course some smattering of storage vendors in the North and Central Hall just to give the storage aficionado a bit of exercise. The lower South Hall is becoming ever more the digital storage ghetto, where one passes storage box after storage box and often as not passes beyond, into the ethereal realm of the cloud.

This piece looks into the ties that bind storage devices to their hosts and to each other. Many important developments are afoot that will transform the media and entertainment industry, giving it the storage and bandwidth resources to enable higher frame rate, higher resolution, ever more immersive content.

We start of course with Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt was but a gleam in Intel's eye with showings at the annual Intel Developers Forum and other industry events in 2010. But with Apple's introduction of Thunderbolt connectivity for its MacBook Pro computers in 2011 all that changed. At the 2011 NAB we saw our first batch of Thunderbolt products from a few companies such as Promise Technology and G-Tech (part of HGST).

At the 2012 NAB Intel had a large booth with the planned implementation of Thunderbolt support in their upcoming CPU chipsets. Integration of Thunderbolt hardware into computer and server motherboards in addition to lower cost cables and host interfaces will cause the price of Thunderbolt to drop to a level approaching that of the ubiquitous USB interface. A Lenovo computer with the Thunderbolt interface was on show in several booths with rumors that other computer vendors will be coming out with Thunderbolt interfaces shortly. Late 2012 and 2013 will bring 10Gb/s connectivity to the masses!

The media and entertainment industry still has many facilities using the Fibre Channel networking technology for block based SANS to support video production work. ATTO was showing a PCIe board that could be plugged into a computer to provide Thunderbolt to Fibre Channel connectivity. This was an interesting approach that adds network connectivity to the list of capabilities with Thunderbolt.

Ethernet connectivity is important for general LAN traffic and many file based storage systems (or NAS) use Ethernet for their network connections. Arista Networks was showing a 10Gb Ethernet (GE) switch that significantly lowers the cost of high speed Ethernet connectivity, apparently by a factor of about four to one. This switch allows category six Ethernet cabling to be used for 10 GE transport up to 100 m, less than the 300 m that optical fiber Ethernet connections but enough for many data centers. Using copper wire Category 6 cables rather than optical cables lowers the costs enormously. With Intel Romley I/O controller support 10 GE content transport will become very inexpensive-opening up additional uses for media and entertainment storage and connectivity applications.

Cab adventures at NAB

John Parenteau — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 01:57:00 GMT

By John Parenteau

(Note to reader: This is a TRUE story. If anything, I cut some craziness out!)

Fade in

Int. cab - evening

John, (46) dark haired, handsome, enters the cab.

John

Palazzo, please.

Once the door is closed, the driver guns it, throwing John back in his seat.

Driver

God damn, f**king, sh*t!

The driver seems oblivious, or so John believes, to the looming white van already in the lane he is zooming in to. The van screeches veers away.

John

(suddenly nervous)

Uh, is Everything ok?

Driver

I sat at this f**king light for three cycles last time and never got a God damn green light!

John, noting that they are not near a light, assumes the driver means some future, upcoming light.

The driver suddenly veers off hard to the right on a side route, taking John through an under ground path that could be a short cut or a trip through Vegas hell.

A speed bump looms, but instead of slowing, the driver speeds up, bouncing his vehicle and poor John in the back seat.

Driver (CONT'D)

(child like voice)

Wheeee!

Recovering, John tries to quickly re-evaluate his odds at surviving this trip. The driver sees another cab pulling up in the neighboring lane. He accelerates again, and John begins to wonder when they start using the close cement walls as bumpers.

Driver (CONT'D)

(suddenly)

I hate California drivers.

John isn't sure this is a reference to the other driver or that he has had some psychic moment and knows that John is from the very state he is criticizing.

John decides to try a friendly tact.

John

I like how you drive!

(beat, no response)

You're very aggressive, and I mean that in a good way!

As if John didn't say anything, the driver continues.

Driver

California drivers have no f**king clue how to drive.

John

(strangely defensive)

I'm from Oregon.

Driver

That's good.

(beat)

These f**king Californians slow down for everything.

The driver shows what he means, John suspects, by NOT slowing down, or stopping, for a stop sign. Another speed bump comes up. The cab hits it hard.

Driver

(again, in child like voice)

Wheee!!!

Recovering again, John starts to worry. The cab has burst out in some back alleyway, seemingly heading in the right general direction, but on such a different route that no other cabs are visible.

Driver (CONT'D)

You know what else I hate?

(not waiting)

I hate pedestrians.

Strangely intrigued, John, gripping the seat as subtly yet firmly as possible, can't resist.

John

Oh?

Driver

I never slow down for them. It's their fault if they get hit.

John

(playing along)

Especially if they're in the road. The road is for cars.

John has said something right. The driver looks at him in the mirror with a smile John can't determine is friendly or insane.

Driver

Yeah! I never feel bad when a pedestrian gets hit

Having won him over, John is suddenly part of the game.

Driver (CONT'D)

(as if asking for permission)

We've got three more speed bumps coming up!

John

(with a smile)

Go for it!

The driver hits the bumps like Evil Knievel hits a ramp. But John is ready.

DRIVER

Wheeee!!!!

JOHN

Wheeeee!!!

As the car settles, the driver begins rummaging through an overhead bin.

DRIVER

I think I have a sandwich.

John isn't sure if he's going to offer him some. But before he can refuse

DRIVER (CONT'D)

I've got a banana!

(beat, brandishing the banana)

Two bananas a day, is what I say.

He giggles.

The car finally comes to a red light. Across the street is John's destination. The Driver revs his engine as if at the start of the race.

DRIVER (CONT'D)

(gleeful)

One more light and we're there!

The light turns green and the driver guns it. A lone pedestrian, still in the cross walk, hustles out of the way as the driver practically aims for him.

Finally, the car pulls up to an abrupt stop at the casino. John hands the driver money, scrambling out of the car quickly. As the door closes, he can hear a voice in the distance.

DRIVER (CONT'D)

Have a nice day!

The end

NAB 2012 - Last Day

TJ Ryan — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 19:15:00 GMT

By TJ Ryan

Last day at NAB and 2012 holds many meanings. My hotel room number ended with a 12, I had 12 hours of sleep since S unday, 12 is my starting hand for just about every game of blackjack that I played, my daughter is 12 and I have 12 minutes to write this before my flight leaves. Guess I should have been playing roulette.

Today I looked at scheduling software and asset management software. Xytech, Studio Suite, and ScheduAll are the ones I like the best. For large scale facilities, Xytech and ScheduAll are the ones to look at. If you are a small post company then I would recommend Studio Suite.

Altermedia's Studio Suite is a Filemaker Pro-based software the can run on a Mac. A five-seat version starts at under 5k about half the price of the competition.

What started as a rain drop is now an ocean of options. I am talking about Asset Management Software and Media Server solutions. The number of options for these are just too long to list but the important thing is more options means lower prices. It is the same thing that is happening with everything in the industry.

A few years back we had the actors strike, then writers strike, then the producers strike. That led to more reality TV and content that could be produced for less. Post solutions took the biggest hit because once they realized they could get something finished for $50k they will never pay the $200k again. Then the recession hit and manufactures had to drop prices. DaVinci became a $1k software solution and the rest are following. This NAB, Quantel introduced Pablo as a software solution as well. Red is making a 4k projector for $10k. What cost $2 million five years ago now costs $200K.

If you are a small company growing your artist this is great news. If you a large company carrying loans on millions worth of equipment it is a scary time. I fit into the small company profile so I leave NAB with a big smile on my face. Thanks for reading my blog. To check out what's going on in my world you can go to www.chophousepost.com. And if you need some advice on how to build your next space look for us at www.digitalfactoryinc.com.

Lost At NAB + Impressive Blackmagic Camera

Andrew Kobliska — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 19:56:00 GMT

By Andrew Kobliska

As many of you no-doubt know, the 2012 NAB Exhibit Floor is massive and simply overwhelming. After carefully scripting my route of attack the night before, I still found myself lost and disoriented early in the day during my initial recon mission. I'm usually pretty good with directions (just ask my wife), but this space is spread out over two floors in several adjoining exhibit buildings ... And did I mention it's massive?

I did happen upon the Blackmagic booth early in the day and noticed the massive crowd gathering around a plexiglass glass shrouded piece of equipment. I couldn't get close enough to see what was inside, and I hate navigating crowds, so I asked a guy exiting from the area what the fuss was all about and he said Blackmagic has come out with a 2K camera for under $3000 bucks, and it looks F'ing nice."

I thought to myself: "Blackmagic has a camera? They make telecine software?" I had to see for myself. I fought the crowd for a few minutes and soon got a close-up view of the goods and was surprised to see not only a camera, but an amazing piece of technology!

I wonder if this announcement was as big of a surprise for Canon, Sony, Red and ARRI as it was for me? They can't be happy.

I'm pretty sure our creative team at BIGSMACK will be. No doubt we'll be taking it for a test drive in July when it becomes available. Check out the impressive specs: http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/blackmagiccinemacamera/

NAB Day 2 Mark Heitke

Mark Heitke — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 07:13:00 GMT

The show rages on.

Today was a day to check out everything cameras and production, which meant I lived in Central hall.

I spent most of time visiting with camera vendors since as a Post Producer I deal with new cameras and workflows daily.

Looking through all the choices, I still love the Alexa but am really impressed with Canon's C500 as well. These two cameras have the best look and feel for me and workflow wise are manageable, well as much as any digital workflow can be.

After spending a few hours looking through lenses and framing random models doing completely odd, mundane tasks I headed outside for some sun and 3D. I grabbed some lunch and checked out the 3ality booth. They were showing off some Hip Hop dancing in 3D. I am impressed at how every year they stand out as one of the few groups who show 3D as a creative tool rather than just a funny new tech.

Refreshed and reenergized I swung back into Central hall to spend some time with GoPro. The little monster of a camera has a giant following and rightfully so. GoPro released a new color tool this year, for free, that allows users to work with their footage and should help make extreme sports videos look better an better. The tool itself is fairly nice to use but it is no Lustre. I also demoed their WiFi pack that allows you to use your iPhone to control multiple cameras from a distance. This was awesome! A have a friend who is working on a shoot in Alaska. After seeing the demo today, he will be utilizing the cameras to shoot multiple angles of a helicopter and control all the cameras form inside. A really fun prospect and it proves that GoPro is certainly growing as a viable option for DPs.

Having finished successful day, I headed off to the CPUG (Creative Professionals User Group) meetup at the Tropicana. While this event has been great in the past, this year was a mess. The presentation was stopped cold by bad mics and flickering projectors. The audio feedback was so bad that I had to leave after about 30 minutes there. Too bad because the schedule they had planned was certainly shaping up to be really fun.

Oh well, the one thing that helped with was giving me a window to sleep. The crazy part of NAB is the endurance challenge it becomes. Long days, long nights and early mornings makes for a bleary eyed Mark. I really appreciate everyone who has been following my posts and responding on Twitter. Please check out my Twitter and Instagram feed for more bits as I continue to wonder the show.

Mark

@mheitke

The languages of NAB

John Parenteau — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:31:00 GMT

I don't really speak any languages. I like to think I remember some of my cumulative 5 years of French, and because I'm half French, that I have a genetic predisposition to know it, but I'll be honest. I suck at it.

But having some understanding of language makes me appreciate communication even more. At NAB, so much of the experience is about understanding what the heck someone is talking about. Sure, some of it is experienced simply walking the floor. It can be like a United Nations field trip, without all the translators (or angry political disagreements). I've heard people here from parts of the globe I didn't think had TV!

And it's not just on the floor. Even jumping in a taxi cab can be an adventure. It's a little strange that so few native English speakers chose the profession, but it is rare to find a driver that you can clearly understand.

(Side note to Vegas cab drivers: I love you all. Now please don't circle the block three times to run up the tab. I promise I'll tip!)

And sometimes you wonder simply if you heard them correctly. My last two trips here in cabs have both degenerated in to conversations about where to find the ladies, even though I never mentioned it. But if I heard the driver correctly, I can get a very special massage at the right price if I just ask.

I didn't ask.

But one of the biggest challenges for me is the language of technology. I'm not super techie, but in my job I have to know enough to hold a fairly intelligent conversation. The language of technology has a horrible habit of degenerating in to a level of complexity boarding on World War II crypto systems if you let them. What happens early in the conversation is that I usually have a split second decision to make. As my contact begins to devolve in to words and phrases that sound like the Teletubbies to me, I can either stop them and admit I have no idea what they are talking about, or I can nod intelligently, smile, and pray there isn't a test.

More often than not I chose the latter. I assume I'll figure it out, and if not, it sounds much better than saying, "can you repeat that using monosyllabic words commonly found only in Dr Seuss books, please?"

But the great thing about NAB is that it is all about learning. Spend a day on the floor and before you know it you're an expert in third dimensional transwarp storage multipliers.

(Just nod and smile. I'll think you know what I'm talking about.)

Monitor, Monitor on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?

TJ Ryan — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 22:25:00 GMT

When I come to Vegas, pressing the 6 and putting a hundred on a hard eight is a gamble I'm willing to make. But, when it comes to equipment, like monitors, I don't gamble on picture quality.

I started out in this business in Telecine Dailies. Working with a Sony CRT, a DaVinci 2K and a Spirit Data Cine were things I took for granted. But now, as a partner in Chop House Post, and President of Digital Factory Inc. I can't afford to make a mistake with my money or my clients.

Since the end of the CRT I have been looking for a monitor that can compare in picture quality, black levels and off axis of viewing. I can assure you that search is a painful and endless effort. One must eventual come to the conclusion that there are no LCD or Plasma monitors that compare to the original Sony BVM CRT's.

At Chop House Post we use a combination of projector for the DI room, TV Logic 42" LCD for the Smoke finishing rooms and Panasonic Plasma's for the offline edit rooms. With Digital Factory I have installed TV Logics at Paramount and AOL; Sony LCD's for shading rooms in the studios; and most of the HD trucks we build with Marshall rackmount monitors.

This year at NAB I did a monitor evaluation of the following maufacturer's Sony; Boland; TV Logic; Panasonic; Canon; and Marshall. And the winner is... just kidding. Before I do, we need to qualify a few things. First we should agree that the LCD monitor solution that is being offered by all will never be the same as a CRT. Second, when I am looking at monitors I am mostly interested in Color Critical viewing.

I started at the Boland booth and spoke with Gary Litwin. He showed me the new SE series of monitors boasting full 10-bit color space, 1920x1080, 1300 to 1 contrast ration, 178 degree off axis viewing and over a billion colors. "You know what cooler than a million? A billion." The Boland monitors look really nice and range in sizes from 24" all the way up to 70". Clients wont be complaining about looking at a 70" rec 709 monitor, will they.

Right next door to Boland was the TV Logic. They have a new XVM series color critical monitor. I was looking at a 32" LVM next to a 32" XVM and I could not see a difference. I ask the salesman if could see a difference and he explained that the LVM is 8 bit processing and the XVM is 10 and 12 bit. contrast ration and color space matched the Boland and both offer an LED back lighting.

Next up was Panasonic. in the LCD world they have the BTLH monitor series. I have seen this monitor in many edit bays, but I for one am not a big fan. For my eyes the black levels and the white don't look as good as they do on the TV Logics and Boland. Also, Panasonic only goes up to a 25" monitor and for client monitors I like to at least be over 42". But they have made some nice impovements on their TH-50T300U plasma monitors. I have seen the plasma's used around Hollywood in some top facilities and this is a nice option especially when you add the HD SDI input card. The liquid blacks of the plasma still look better than LCD's

On my way to Sony I passed the Canon booth. Canon was showing off their new 4K reference display. I couldn't get much info on it since it a prototype only, so no brochure or web info. In terms of just a quick view it looked good. I will wait till it is closer to being released before giving a full opinion.

3 years ago I walked into the Sony booth and said show me your LCD solution that you plan on selling to replace the CRT's. They hadn't quite caught up to other LCD manufactures and what they had was not impressive at all. Especially as they were still trying to sell it at the CRT price. This year I was blown away by the Sony Trimaster EL. Hello blacks, where have you been. Right in front of my eyes I see liquid shiny blacks and off axis viewing just like in the old CRT days. Sony is using OLED technology to get deep blacks with high dynamic range. I was able to wipe the drool from my mouth using the monitors $26k price tag.

Last stop was Marshall monitors. Marshall has always been the option I would use for installing in racks and trucks. I love the quad monitor. They fit perfect in a rack with 4 AJA Ki Pros. Looks slick. The new thing with these guys is waveform monitor vectorscope with RGB parade. So here is what I was thinking. Pick up a V-R72DP-2C, that's the dual 3 RU 7" monitor for $1999 and put the vectorscope on one side and the waveform on the other and you have scopes for color grading and post for under $2k. Of course you could just by a videotek, or a techtronix, or a leader for over $12k and do the same thing if you want. I'm looking to get a 17" DLW series and put it on the desktop for audio meters, waveform, and vector all under 4k.

All right, I am done talking monitors. I know I promised you a winner. So here it is. They winner is... all of them. Don't get mad, hear me out. In terms of having a great Rec 709 monitor for a super price Boland is the winner hands down. Pound for pound with the technology being the same no one can compare to the price point that Boland is offering. Plus they have a bunch of really cool guys that are always willing to help out. The winner for best picture is Sony as soon as I can offord it I want a trimaster. But if I can't, a lot of my clients can and I will be recommending it for use in color suites and shading stations. And finally, the best quality scopes with full RGB parade goes to Marshall. I used to put in a rack moun rasterizer and then feed the DVI output into a Marshall monitor for a cost of $20k. Now I can do the same thing for under $4k and it looks exactly like the $20k option.

Alright, back to the floor. Good luck with your monitor hunt and happy viewing.

TJ Ryan

For Us...The Winner is Premiere.

Ian Karr — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 15:12:00 GMT

I never thought I'd write this, but I think IKA Collective is going to become an Adobe Premiere house.

One of the main missions I had for this year's NAB is to decide on a new editing platform. Final Cut X isn't an option for us.

99% of all editing is cuts or dissolves...and all editing software does that perfectly. The real measure for us is how the application fits into our workflow. Adobe has taken a "holistic" and format-agnostic approach that really resonates. I love the in-app image stabilization, adjustment layers, seamless integration with After Effects and Photoshop, and the ability to natively edit in h.264 Sign us up for 7 licenses.

Blackmagic Casting a Spell

Ian Karr — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:53:00 GMT

By Ian Karr

The new Blackmagic cinema camera is getting a lot of attention. Offering 2.5K resolution for a 3K price tag, this could be really cool. I hope the images it generates look better than the camera itself...it's channeling a 1990's era Kodak digital camera. But hey...I love retro.

To me, Blackmagic has become the "Apple" of the video tool/converter space. AJA is showing great stuff as always...but their culture seems decidedly more "tech" than creative.