installing the fcs3 upgrade

I thought I’d chart out the process for everyone out there planning to upgrade to FCS 3 but not ready to take the plunge.  As a general rule, I never recommend upgrading your FCP version during an ongoing project.  Wait until your project(s) is finished, delivered and (hopefully) paid for.  This way you don’t get caught under a crashing deadline while troubleshooting a new bug or workaround that nobody, at least nobody available on the phone at 530 on a Friday, knows the answer to.

Jumping straight to the most important part of the install, make sure you’ve got a half day – yes, a full half day – to install the upgrade.  Personally, I got caught up watching Murderball and forgot to check in to insert the next disc a few times.  What’s your excuse going to be?  Hopefully napping.

Also extremely important to note: before you go and plunk down the 300 bucks for the upgrade make sure you’ve plunked down the 2500 bucks (or more) for your Intel Mac Pro.  Yes, as you can see in the picture, FCS3 REQUIRES AN INTEL MAC TO RUN.  Sorry legacy G5, I love ya but it’s time to delegate you to the digitizing ranks from here on out.  Not sure if you’ll be able to digitize the new ProRes codecs included in FCS3, that will require a little bit of experimentation.  I’m keeping FCS2 installed on my MacBook Pro right now, I’ll let you know what I find out in the coming days…

This fancy-dancy bar graph can be found in the Apple ProRes White Paper.  Click on the pic above to download or here.  Quite excited to see how the ProRes 422 (LT), which will hereby be referred to as ProRes light, and ProRes (Proxy) look after digitizing.  Is ye olde offline and online Avid workflow coming back into fashion?  Looks like Final Cut Server will become more and more significant as production facilities want to digitize ProRes (HQ) but send ProRes light or proxy to their edit suites.  Am I sure I even want to be considering this as a possibility?  I guess we’ll also see how well the media manager does at reconnecting ProRes LT to ProRes HQ in FCP 7…

Also, there’s an Extras folder on the FCS3 Install disc that includes, well, here’s the screen grab:

Looks like the only update to DVDSP is right here kids, enjoy!  OK, so back to the install process.  Here’s the standard install config (which I went with):

And here’s how much space it will require:

Good to keep in mind that 40.3 GB of required space for all your MacBook and MacBook Pro installs.  Just opt out of the Apple Loops and what not, you’ll be fine.  Hope this has been a help to those of you wondering what to expect, maybe it even piqued your interest into some new possible work flows leveraging the new ProRes formats.  Before I forget, make sure you also check out the brand new FCS Help Library.  It’s the replacement for the manuals that are no longer killing trees and boosting monitors 10 inches off your desk.

proactively • upgraded • peter

fcs3 highlights

By now you’ve probably heard the news that Final Cut Studio 3 has dropped.  Very cooly, Ripple Training has already produced 19 free video tutorials from Apple Certified Trainers to help you get to know the FCS 3 upgrade.  Two of my T3 trainers, Mark Spencer and Alexis Van Hurkman, helped produce these so definitely check them out!

If you simply want to know what’s new click here, otherwise here’s my very quick highlights with linkage:

As you can read below, ProRes gets a few more mouths to feed in its family and even has options for offline workflows (wow, is offlining coming back in style?).

For the full rundown get the ProRes white paper here.

I was just working on a prject yesterday where we were superimposing a screengrab of 4:3 safe on a 16:9 HD timeline.  As more and more projects utilize legacy SD footage in an HD show it’s great to know that this simple yet very important feature has been added.

This would have been awesome to use on the first season’s production of Sailing Channel Theater episodes and we’ll certainly use it in the future.  Our previous workflow was to turn Skype on the MacBook Pro and face it to the computer monitor so Dad and Jon could do remote viewing as I made final tweaks to the show.  Cool to see this is now integrated into FCP 7 andcan’t wait to try it out!

The number one Color update is fricking incredible and will literally shave hours if not full days off your color grade.

No more futzing with your speed effects, still moves (with handles for dissolves!), and multicam clips in order to get them ready to send to Color.  Thank you version 1.5!

Secondly and very importantly, Apple has announced a new line of affordable third party control surfaces specifically designed to work with Color.

Could I please stop mousing my way through Color and get some affordable surfaces to speed up my workflow?!  And thanks to Eddie Sullivan’s post on the FCP-L I was able to find a pic of the new Euphnix MC Color.

It looks like Motion is getting much more full 3D-ish.  Shadows, reflections, and depth of field… oh my!  Click on the pic to get all the info you want.

Even more excitingly is the major placement of a new product I had never heard of before.

What an awesome looking mouse!  Exactly the kind of intuitive device that makes navigating in 3D space treasure, not a toruture.  I guess Apple is doing it’s part to stimulate the economy by allowing third party manufacturers to cash in on their product launches.  I bet Logitech’s stock jumps a few points today.

Curiously, Blu-ray dvd creation is listed under Compressor’s new features.

Hey, as long as it’s in the box I could care less what product does it.  Maybe this is an attempt to phase out people’s asociation with DVD Studio Pro as a delivery app?  Who knows.

Anywho, hope you enjoyed these highlights.  I’m sure there will be much more to come here in the days to follow with additional info, opinion, and general blather.

proactively • upgraded • peter

sailing channel theater episode 1 online now

Awesomely quick turnaround by the folks at WLIW 21.  You can see the premier episode of Sailing Channel Theater 2 days ahead of the broadcast premier by clicking on the link above or right here.  I’ll be getting back on topic with some traditional pro • active • ly insightful tutorials in a bit, but right now basking in the contentment of bringing my first independently produced series to broadcast and beyond.  Love the forward thinkery of WLIW 21 putting the full show up online for everyone to see!  Would love to hear any and all feedback on this show so if you watch it drop me a line.  At the very least, be sure to catch the hand drawn 12 second opening animation by up and comer Katie Better.  Starts at 35 second mark…

Soundtrack Pro was particularly helpful in fulfilling the audio prerequisites for the PBS Red Book, might have a video tutorial coming up here whenever I slow down.  The thing about producing and mastering two 30min shows for air each week is that as soon as you lay two off to digibeta, you gotta get to work on the next two.  And then try and to remember if you ate lunch!

proactively • proud as heck • peter

sailing channel theater premieres this weekend!

Following yet another considerable blog sabbatical, I’m coming back at you with a passionate what-I’ve-been-working-on post.   What the press release won’t tell you is Sailing Channel Theater is a father, son and son production with a lot of love and support from Mom, family friends and the sailing community.  If you’re outside the WLIW 21 viewing area, become a fan on Facebook and get a link to the full show (which we will be streaming following the broadcast premier) on TheSailingChannel.TV.

In the meantime,  I’ll be whipping up that compression and delivering two more episodes before the fireworks go boom this weekend.  Here’s the awesome press release from WLIW21.

proactively •  Happy Fourth of July! • peter

rumorama – apple buys nuke

Hot off the FCP-L presses, Ian Wilson posts:

Roomer has it, that their Persuasion product, which was to replace Shake, has been canned and replaced with Nuke.  There has just been a Company buy out at the Foundry announced, which adds some weight to the roomer.  4 more sleeps if you are in OZ will tell the story.

Not quite sure how to read that last line, Ian.  Regardlessly, James Culberston quickly followed up with:

Hmmm. Nuke for $999. Send to Nuke from FCP, Keylight included with FCP … the mind boggles.  I’ll take that over Blu-Ray authoring any day.  Fun to contemplate anyway.

Any validation to these “roomers” being reported out there?  In the meantime, I’ll be putting mocha for FCP through its paces.

proactively • rumor mongering • peter

editing for editors, by editors

Two awesome videos have popped up in recent FCP-L posts talking about editing from an editor’s perspective.  Firstly, BBC World News America’s Bill McKenna has been named ‘Editor of the Year” by the White House News Photographers Association.  Mr. McKenna was asked to edit a video to be shown at the event. It offers a rare glimpse into his world to reveal what inspires a top TV picture editor.

Twicely, Joy Moeller (Creative Director/Editor, 19 Below) gives us the do’s and dont’s of edit suite etiquette.

And if that wasn’t entertaining enough, the stories FCP-L’ers shared kept the laughs (or tears) rolling:

I worked with a producer who always kept track of downtime. She considered anything as downtime, including the editor re-doing an edit. She considered only the finished edit was payable. She had a stopwatch and it was always going.  At the end of the day, she would total it up and ask that it be taken off the edit time for that day.  Remarkably, she had a very successful career as a producer that lasted for many years. It’s just as well I was a producer at the time and not an editor, as I would have cheerfully strangled her.

Bill Affleck / Wasteland Productions, Inc.

Back in the linear days, I had a client who sat with a stop watch and actually clicked it on and off for anything. Go to the bathroom, click, call someone to come to the bay, click, get a drink of water, click. Man that was irritating. I always rounded down for clients anyway, but not this guy.
Also in the linear days, I had the finger snapper one time and it was late and I was tired, I finally stood up, offered him my chair and said he get more accurate edits if he ran it himself. Actually cured him and he requested me from there on out.

Terrence Curren / Alphadogs

You can see more of Terry Curren alongside industry veteran editors Billy Weber, Glenn Morgan and Carol Streit on Studio Daily extemporaneously discussing war stories, battle tactics, and all the things they learned on the job that really have nothing to do with editing but are crucial to the job of an editor.

proactively • ediblogournalising • peter

***UPDATE***

Swung over to Shane Ross’ Little Frog In Hi Def blog and found this gem.  Falls under the “nothing to do with editing but crucial to the job” category.  Enjoy!

blog bomb – 5dmkii manual control!

We spoke and Canon listened!  No more need to compromise with inferior workarounds, this firmware update makes the 5dmkii perform like a video camera that also takes ridiculously awesome stills.  Does this added firmware, with the implication of more to come down the road (24p anyone?), effectively trump the release of Red’s Scarlet?  With the 5dmkii’s 1080p and a full frame 24mm x 36mm sensor, all Scarlet has on the it is 3k image capture, 24p, over and under-cranking… ok maybe that comment is more provocative than plausible.  But with the tag line An epic begins with M I do believe Canon has flipped the flame switch to on.

For my new freelance business (have I mentioned I went freelance?) the 5dmkii could totally be the defacto webisode camera of choice.  Knowing that one should always produce with broadcast hd standards in mind, 30p is a great source frame rate for video destined for the web and can be easily dropped into a 29.97 time line and printed to HDCAM SR, IMX, DigiBeta or what have you.  All that with a little bit of ye olde ProRes transcode and Color grading, of course.

LATimes.com, WashingtonPost.com, NYTimes.com; take a page out of the Tyler Ginter combat photographer’s handbook and put these puppies in the field.  The 5dmkii very well could become the video journalist’s weapon of choice. Great stills, great video, and with a little bit of help solid sound.  Check out Tyler’s demo of the 5dmkii combined with a  Sennheiser Evolution G2 100 wireless lavalier mic:

Gotta run to a meeting of the minds, but hope this news gets your engines revved.

proactively • pulling focus • peter

***UPDATE 2 June 2009***

Here’s the link to download the firmware and a quick review of the firmware install by my friend Paul here.

everybody likes free plugins

Just saw these posted on the FCP-L.  While the plugins may not be everything I’m looking for personally, the write-ups are awesome.  Andy’s got a really cool ease in ease out tutorial well worth checking out.  There’s a bunch of free FCP plugins out there and I will post more as I find them.  And hey, if you know of some share them with a comment.

proactively • peter

time lapse dolly

Following up to yesterday’s blog interview, check out this time lapse dolly rig created by Tom from timescapes.org. Fancy, right?

Wrap your head around this timescapes.org video with footage from the dolly:

proactively • wowed • peter

blog interview – michael rissi’s swiss winter time lapse

While I was cutting and color grading hot bodies on beaches in bikinis for Travel Channel, Michael Rissi was freezing his ass off making this epic time lapse of winter in Switzerland.  Click on the above pic for a link to his website.

Michael was kind enough to answer a few questions for me, so here ya go:

ME: So Michael, your HD time lapse photography is stunning. What cameras are you shooting with to bring this imagery to life?

MICHAEL: I have a Canon 400D (Digital Rebel XTi) and since 2009 also a Canon 50D. I was a little afraid that after around 200k shutters, the 400D’s shutter might fail at any unfavorable time… As lenses I have the wide angle Sigma 10-20 and the Sigma 17-70.

What is your approach to framing and exposing your time lapse photos?

I like wide angles a lot, as I shoot mostly landscapes. But as in landscape photography, finding the right subject is not trivial, people (me as well) tend to try to fit to much onto their images. Wide angles, however, allow in the post production smooth pans and zooms.

What software applications are part of your toolkit to produce these HD time lapses?

I always shoot in raw (or sraw), with the result that I filled a 1TB disk in about 3-4 months… Usually, I use Adobe’s Camera Raw for the raw images, or directly photomatix when I create an HDR time lapse and then tone mapping with Photomatix. After camera raw/photomatix I rerun the images through Photoshop to correct the colors, remove dust spots if necessary, apply a tone curve or in case of winter time lapses, I also “whiten” the snow slightly. Then I save all images as jpgs and import them into Adobe Premiere Elements (the poor man’s solution).

The most important filter is the deflicker plugin (gbdeflicker). Flickering is a big issue in digital time lapses, especially for HDR processing. I save the movie as quicktime with H.264 1920×1080p. Apple somehow has another definition for the gamma value, so I correct this with Quick Time Pro (explained here)

How did you achieve such smooth zooms and pans? It looks like you do this in post from where I sit, am I correct?

The zooms and pans are done in post with Premiere Elements. That’s why I usually shoot with the wide angle.

As an accomplished HD time lapse producer, what other time lapse videos have inspired you?

I came to shooting time lapse movies from photography. I saw on YouTube the great tutorials and movies from milapse…

…and knew that I want to do that too! Last spring, I found the time lapse forum timescapes.org. This is a great forum with awesome people, who have impressive ideas and technical skills, it’s really astonishing! And for sure, I also like the movies from Reggio, mostly Koyaanisqatsi…

and Fricke’s Baraka

What’s the next time lapse you think you will produce?

In my “real” life, I write my phd thesis about gamma ray astronomy. This involves travels to the Canary Island La Palma, where our telescope is situated on top of the volcano (in a rather remote area on 2500 m). I already made last year time lapses from the moving telescope at night…

…but I have lots of ideas for improvements. We also built a second telescope, so I hope to be able to shoot them dancing in stereo. The whole island of La Palma is a great place for shooting time lapses, with very interesting cloud formations, so I hope I will collect lots of footage there!

Another ongoing project is the one from Zurich, where I shoot every day 10 minutes at around 7:45am the same view onto Zurich.

Thanks again for giving me the heads up on your new time lapse Michael, it’s breathtaking. Great choice of music and superior pacing and editing.

Thanks a lot Peter, great that you liked it!

proactively • the pilot episode of blog interviews • peter