———— 23 October 2008 ————

Membership has its benefits, so here’s a few screen grabs of Travel Channel’s upcoming America’s Scariest Halloween Attractions 3.  Premiere will be this Sunday, October 26th, at 11pm following Ghost Adventures.

Had a lot of fun editing and grading this show.  A whole lot of around the clock work.  We averaged 125 shots or more per 4 minutes, which trumps the hell out of the 600 shots per 44min show average I read somewhere.  Here’s the final time line before going to tape.  Mind you, this is after conforming for the grade in Color, QC’ing flattened titles and what not, and syncing audio stems:

00:44:45;00 to the frame per Travel Channel clock.  Ow, my brain…

And just because I love you guys, here’s a sample screen shot from the color grade.  First pic is 30″ left hand Apple Cinema Display, second pic is right hand 23″ Apple Cinema Display:

Oh yeah, and here’s the two main errors I experienced during post:

Not too bad, but I recommend the hell out of getting 8GB of RAM for posting any 1×60 HD program.  Got this show printed to tape by the skin of our teeth after crashing 4 minutes in on the first try.  Seriously, yes, 4GB of 667Mhz RAM is worth the extra 1200 bucks.

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Epic shout outs:

Susan Norton – Executive Producer

Thomas Quinn – Supervising Producer

Arthur Hsu – Associate Producer

James Morley – Editor & Segment Producer

Ashley Kalena – Production Assistant

Joel Reyes – Engineering Support

Archie Bustamante – IT support

Mom & Dad – Love & Support

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So, tomorrow is the move to the new apartment 4 miles away.  Saturday the new leather sofa arrives.  Sunday, resorting it up at the Travel Channel offsite.  I’ll have a beer and a shot in my hand 11pm Sunday night for the premiere, hope you enjoy it!

proactively • HD 1×60 in the can • peter

———— 1 August 2008 ————

So, I came across this post on putitup through the wham city tag thread. A brief segment:

…talked about what motivates these reasons for using low-grad equipment and fidelity and the possibilities of it being more emotive and effective than strenuous attempts of “professionalism.”

My comment:

When it comes to pulling a key I think you have two choices: make it perfect and seamless or make it bad with obvious jaggies along the edges.

On the one hand a seamless key will imply a higher level of competency with the visual craft and focus the eye on the overall composite and production value. To some extent the goal is making a believable scene which the untrained eye would not assume compositing was involved.

In the case of this video, I believe the rough key evokes a response of “what the hell is this?” in the audience, even the lay person, because they know something isn’t quite right.

I’ve watched this MGMT video dozens of times. The first time I watched it I hated it and stopped watching it after 12 seconds. But the music made me come back and reconsider what I was looking at. The rough keys make the experience more enjoyable for me with an appreciation for the simplicity and truth of the composite. I feel as if the director is saying “Hey, look at this crappy key. Isn’t it awesome? Now watch while I work with it as art and truthiness rather than focus on the lack of production value. Doesn’t it make you kind of warm and fuzzy inside once you get over yourself? Like a child with scissors, a glue stick and a stack of magazines.”

It’s the democratization of the chroma key and the director telling young people out there you don’t need to shoot HDCAM in a studio and digitize as 10bit uncompressed HD with 4:4:4 color space to make art well crafted and realized composites. Grab that 4 year old mini DV camera and a green cloth, shoot in your walk-in closet and use your frickin’ imagination already.

The suspension of disbelief is much more enjoyable when everyone’s in on it and goes with it together as opposed to a “how did they do that?” experience. At least in this case. IMHO

Love it or hate it, pulling a crappy key can be a good thing. Welcome to the new fake.

proactively • setting up a chroma key in my broom closet • peter

———— 15 July 2008 ————

Here’s my blog plagiarism post of the week. From Little Frog in High Def:

Ken Stone wrote a VERY in depth article on the Matrox MXO over at KenStone.net. He goes into how to set the device up when you pull it out of the box, and into all of the various settings in the MXO System preference.

You may have read one of my other posts about my initial difficulties with my MXO. Well fear not dear reader, because Ken’s walkthru is ridiculously awesome and thorough. It even has pictures of the install screen!

Skipping ahead to the end, Ken notes three essential ingredients to make your MXO work correctly:

1 – The sequence settings must match the clip settings.

2 – In the FCP View menu > Video Playback must match the sequence settings.

3 – In the FCP View menu > Audio Playback > MXO Audio

Where have you been all my life Ken Stone Matrox MXO Setup Guide? This should be required reading for anyone even remotely considering purchasing an MXO. And it should be on a dvd in the box. Or at least on a piece of glossy paper.

Ken Stone, you are a godsend. Thank you!

proactively • reconfiguring my hasty matrox mxo setup • peter

———— 2 July 2008 ————

The Black Keys – Strange Times

We used three cameras for the production of The Black Keys Private Artist Showcase:

2 x Canon HV20 recording HDV 1080p24

1 x Canon HF10 recording AVCHD 1080p24

Ideally, we would have had 3 HV20’s for total parity. Alas, Mike the Mailman decided to purchase the Canon HF10 which records 1440×1080 24p in AVCHD to a solid state memory card. And here the troubles began.

My brother Jon searched far and wide for a method to convert the .m2ts HF10 media to a format that Final Cut Pro 6 could understand. The solution he found was Voltaic.

Voltaic has the ability to convert Canon HF10 footage to 1440×1080 29.97 AIC Quicktime. Fantastic.

Not so fantastic is that it takes forever and there is no progress bar. Prepare for the suck.

Suckier still, this means the footage Jon captured from the two HV20 tapes as 1080p24 HDV now needed to be converted to Advanced Intermediate Codec (AIC) 29.97 to match the HF10 format so we could create a multiclip to edit. Grrr.

And all of this takes time.

Yes, these Private Artist Showcases are a labor of love. But try capturing 2 hours of tape and 1 hour of AVCHD from the HF10. Then use Voltaic to convert the 1 hour of .m2ts HF10 footage to an editable Quicktime format over the course of 4 hours (or more according to Jon). And then, convert the two hours of HDV to AIC over the course of another 2 hours.

You are now close to 10 hours of capture / ingest time and you haven’t even started to edit yet. For 3 hours of footage. And this is all on a dual 2.6GHz MacPro tower using FW800 LaCie drives. Not a slow setup by any means.

Hand me a gun so I can shoot myself in the face.

Tune in next time when things start to go bad.

proactively • pricking his finger on the tip of the iceberg • peter

———— 2 July 2008 ————

You may know about The Black Keys.

And you may know about the Canon HF10 and HV20 cameras.

Throw them in a pot with a slathering of blood sweat and tears, a tablespoon of the right industry connections, and mix with 12 hours of your life that you will never, ever get back, then bring to a rendering boil.

Equipping backup underpants is highly recommended before viewing due to the high concentration of fiber-optic content.

Assuming you’ve had the chance to wipe, I’ll continue with outlining the hell(s) that was posting this footage:

1st Level of Hell

Capturing Footage

2nd Level of Hell

Converting HF10 footage using Voltaic

3rd Level of Hell

Conforming footage for multiclip

4th Level of Hell

Identifying the Corrupted Portion of the HF10 Quicktime that causes FCP to crash

5th Level of Hell

Discovering Color cannot read the HF10 Quicktime

6th Level of Hell

Finding out FCP cannot export the final Quicktime in any way. Period.

7th Level of Hell

Realizing you’ve spent 6 hours of your life just troubleshooting this entire workflow and you will never get those 6 hours back.

So there’s the initial outline of the post process, each step with its own personalized level of Hell all to itself. Check back soon for descriptions of each Level of Hell in excruciating, awful detail.

proactively • not looking forward to reliving this • peter

———— 17 April 2008 ————

Thanks to Richard Harrington over at RHED Pixel for producing this:

from nabshow.blogspot.com posted with vodpod

Thanks VodPod!

Looks like it would fit in my Swiss Army backpack along with my 17″ MacBook Pro just nicely. Guess I’ll have to send in that RFP for the documentary on Amazonian Jungle Babes WIFV wants to produce, see if that battery power feature is all it’s cracked up to be.

proactively • peter

———— 16 April 2008 ————

As you may or not know from my previous posts, I ordered a Matrox MXO from B&H but it had hardware issues. While this was seriously frustrating at the time, Matrox customer support was incredibly efficient with troubleshooting the issue and expediting a replacement unit.

Received the replacement unit today but after a long day of ups and downs, I’ll plan to unbox and install tomorrow. While I had initial knee-jerk regrets from purchasing the Matrox MXO only to have the Matrox MXO 2 drop yesterday at NAB, I’m pretty sure I’m over it.

Rory found out from the Matrox Booth that the MXO 2 won’t ship until July. And I considered the additional 500 bucks. And, I can still capture PS3 in game footage via component. And, I can still output to my 55″ Sony SXRD if I really want to. I think. But I don’t really want to.

So <taking a deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth> welcome home Replacement Matrox MXO! I promise to love you unconditionally, just like I did with your predecessor. Until he broke. The poor, helpless bastard.

proactively • moving on • peter

———— 11 April 2008 ————

Gulio at Matrox offered great over the phone tech support. He immediately filled out an RMA to replace my faulty MXO. No redundant troubleshooting necessary, he said, I trust you went through the steps I outlined in my forum post and that’s good enough for me.

This is customer service the way it’s supposed to be. Better than it’s supposed to be, actually. I’ll update as soon as I receive the replacement MXO, sometime next week I suspect.

In related news, the OptShiftK team came over tonight doing a test calibration of my Dell 2407WFP with both the Spyder 2 Pro and Spyder 3 Pro. Look to the new brain trust blog www.optshiftk.wordpress.com for full calibration details (coming soon).

———— 9 April 2008 ————

Had a great telephone convo with Gulio from Matrox. He offers up some troubleshooting advice for my issue:

Dear psalvia,

As per our phone conversation;

1 ) Using the Uninstaller Utility- Uninstall the MXO software which was previously installed.
2 ) Shut down computer.
3 ) Unplug MXO’s AC Power and USB cable.
4 ) Power On computer.
5 ) Run Apple’s updater, Leopard Graphic Update and update Quicktime to version 7.4.5.
6 ) Shut down computer.
7 ) Power On computer.
8 ) After system has booted; power up and plug in MXO’s USB cable.
9 ) Download and install MXO 2.1.2 Drivers
10 ) When Updater asks to ‘Force Firmware Upgrade’, please proceed with it.
11 ) If it installs correctly- verify by going into MXO Control Panel and investigate MXO readings.

If you are still experiencing difficulties with your MXO, please feel free to contact us here at [number removed].

Keep me posted…

Kindest Regards,
Giulio

Thanks again for the tech support Gulio. My fingers are crossed that this works when I get home. But first, taking the G5 into the emergency room…

———— 8 April 2008 ————

Just posted this rundown to the MXO user forum and the Creative Cow forum:

MXO not recognized

System Specs:

Macbook Pro 17″ HQ
2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Mac OS 10.5.2

Two weeks ago I had successfully installed my Matrox MXO with the 2.1.1 drivers that shipped with the product. Plugged in today for the first time in two weeks and the MXO is not recognized. I believe all connections are correct, sending DVI out to a Dell 2408WFP.

I’ve tried uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers that shipped with the product to no avail. I’ve tried installing and reinstalling the 2.1.2 drivers downloaded from your website with no luck. The install continues to get stuck when detecting the MXO.

I did update the firmware of the MXO when installing the 2.1.1 drivers. The MXO has the potential to be an essential addition to my hardware setup. Please help I just want this to work!

I guess when it rains it pours with computer issues. It’s really weird to me that the hardware isn’t recognized at all. I’ll update with fixes as I find them.

proactively • scouring the internets • peter

———— 8 April 2008 ————

So I tried to install Leopard this evening and my dual 2.7 GHz Powermac G5 won’t successfully restart with the install dvd in the tray. Argh. This is a repeat performance of restart issues I experienced a few months back. Hopefully a return to the Apple Store in Bethesda will result in a new logic board or power supply or whatever hardware issue is causing this problem.

And I really wanted to get Leopard installed to 10.5.2 so I could then install the Matrox MXO 2.1.1 drivers so I could then install the software for the shiny new Spyder 3 Pro I just got a Micro Center
in Rockville. I opted for the Spyder 3 Pro over the Spyder 3 Elite to save a hundred bucks. Does anyone out there think the Elite is worth another 33% in price??

The G5 goes in for an appointment Wednesday eveining and I anticipate it will be down for at least a week while the parts are ordered and further tests are run. I just want it to work. Once it’s in the shop I’ll get the Spyder LUTs installed on the 17″ Macbook Pro feeding the new Dell 2408WFP over DVI or the Dell 2407WFP over VGA.

Hrmmm, the Matrox forums will be seeing me soon I imagine.

proactively • peter

———— 7 April 2008 ————

So I’ve slowly been reassembling my home edit and color grading suite and yesterday I finally rebooted my dual 2.7 GHz Powermac G5 and connected my new Dell 2408WFP 24″ LCD Monitor. This monitor combines with my slightly older Dell 2407WFP 24″ LCD monitor for a (potentially) sweet setup. I really like the addition of HDMI inputs in the 2408 model. As far as I can tell, the Dell 2408WFP is the smallest and cheapest 1080p monitor on the market at the moment.

Already I can see the green left to right cast on the 2408 that had been reported on the FCP-L and with both displays side by side with Mac OS X Medium Grey for the background, the 2407 seems to have an even red cast and to be slightly dimmer than the 2408. Hopefully the some kind of Spyder calibration will be able to reasonably balance these two displays. A quick search shows me the Spyder 2 has been upgraded to the new Spyder 3 Elite that I might need to get my hands on. But I dunno, seen a couple of negative reviews on Amazon of the Spyder 3 and the Spyder 2 Pro is still a solid product. A successful color calibration will be crucial for using my Matrox MXO to monitor grades in Color.

Additionally, there are tiny green specs showing up on the 2408 which I think stem from limits on the ATI X800XT graphics card although I don’t no for sure if this is the case or if Dell shipped me a bad display. I’ve also experienced drastic horizontal banding on the 2408 while displaying 1920×1200 resolution. After having been powered on for 24 hours the horizontal banding has not re-occured…

If anyone out there stumbles on this and has experienced similar issues your input is much appreciated!

proactively • peter

———— 19 March 2008 ————

Drove to the UPS delivery center in Laurel to pick up my Matrox MXO.

This has been a purchase 4 months or so in the making. My setup of a MacBook Pro 17″ Santa Rosa, Dell 2407WFP LCD monitor, Matrox MXO, and Color makes for the most portable and versatile entry level color grading suites for broadcast that smart money can buy. IMHO.

Bought the Leopard family pack so I can install 10.5.2 on the laptop and dual 2.7 G5 tower to host the Matrox MXO 2.1.1 driver.

Trader Joe’s chicken burrito’s just came out of the oven, so fo those of you interested in reading more about what the Matrox MXO can do, check out the Creative Cow forum. I’ll work on the setup tonite and tomorrow and hopefully will have some pics and first impressions by the weekend.

proactively • peter