———— 23 December 2008 ————

Received an inquiry from a reader and after writing up my response realized this might make good bloggery.  His question was essentially How do I look at the stuff I’m shooting on my shiny new Canon 5D Mark II? (my own editorial tone added for consistency’s sake).  Bonusly, I’ve stepped up my blog game and embedded url’s in the pics so click through to get more info.

Monitoring 1080p is a considerable undertaking, especially if you want to do it right.  First things first, you’ll need to start with a

Apple Mac Pro

or a

Apple 17" Macbook Pro

or both.

Burning a Blu-Ray disc requires software like

Apple Compressor 3

and an external BluRay disc burner

LG LightScribe

Bonus link here to build your own Compressor BluRay setting.

Monitoring native 1080p30 out of Final Cut Pro is can be a bit tricky, essentially you’ll need a capture card like the Matrox MXO for instance

Matrox MXO

and a monitor of some kind, preferably with native 1080p resolution like the

Dell 2407 WFP

or the

Apple 23-inch Cinema Display

I’m using a setup similar to this at home.  At work we use an AJA Kona 3

AJA KONA 3

monitoring on an HD  broadcast monitor via HD-SDI

JVC DT-V24L3DU

Otherwise, you can simply view the footage in FCP’s canvas as it plays back in your time line and not worry about the expense of a setup like this until the finishing stage.  Then you could happily walk your project over to a facility with the professional setup and order from their lunch menu while a Colorist cracks jokes and crushes your blacks.

It’s the dollars vs doable decisions that really make this craft an art form IMHO.  Cranking out broadcast quality 1080p material on a 10k FCP setup (and it really is 10k if you’re paying for all the software) is not something you can do overnight. But, it can be done.

proactively • man that’s a lot of alliteration • peter

———— 22 December 2008 ————

It used to be you needed to send 500 bucks to Wes Plate and use his Automatic Duck to go from FCP to After Effects.  Not anymore…

First, send your heartfelt apologies along to Mr. Plate.  He’s awesome.  Then, check out Adobe’s video tutorial.  Rory, eat your heart out.  Now you’ve got a business justification to upgrade to CS4.  And if you’re too lazy to wade through the entire 8min video, the breakdown is:

1. In FCP, export Apple XML v4

2. Open in Premier CS4

3. Highlight clips in timeline, create new After Effects composition.

4. Bonus option, alternatively send from Premier to Encore to make a Blu-Ray disc project.

Of course some of you may deem this as totally silly.  We’ve already got a compositing application in FCS 2 called Motion!  And even Shake can get stuff from FCP!!  Why got to Adobe!?

Well, as a Motion 3 Apple Certified Trainer I applaud your retort and encourage your passion.  But as a real world Editor / Producer, a lot of times the Graphics company I contract with doesn’t work with Motion.  Yes, I would prefer that they did and sent me all my opens, transitions, and lower thirds as Motion Master Templates.  Alas, AE users die hard, just like Avid editors.

So this is good news for us FCP editors who want to string out a sequence with a couple of edits and then hand it off to an AE shop to sexy it up.  Just make sure you media manage your media correctly.  Hrmmm, maybe that’s a topic for a soon to be released FCProse video tutorial…

proactively • not drinking the koolaid, just pointing it out on the buffet line • peter

And here’s a little bit of Vimeo random contact awesomeness.  Watch it in HD, you won’t be disappointed.

Hey, they used After Effects in this so it’s got a little bit of relevancy. Kinda…

———— 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.

————————————————————————————

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

————————————————————————————

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

———— 18 October 2008 ————

Here’s the all-in-one video tutorial showing you how to cut, color, and compress 1080p video captured with Canon’s upcoming 5D Mark II Digital SLR with three Final Cut Studio 2 applications: Final Cut Pro, Color, and Compressor. I recommend clicking thru for the hd version to better see the application interfaces.

In this episode I walk through the steps to edit your footage in Final Cut Pro, perform a broadcast safe grade in Color, and then make a web compression for upload to YouTube and Vimeo using Compressor.

I work directly with the source H.264 video Vincent Laforet made available for download (no H.264 -> Apple ProRes 422 transcode this time around). I also discuss some system specs and rant about High Dynamic Range video. A quick tag surf lead me to this post that has an example of HDR video captured by something called the HDRC® MDC04 CL camera system.

What’s High Dynamic Range (HDR), you ask? Check out yet another Chad Richard HDR timelapse (click thru for the full HD effect):

Mr. Richard has done a lot of heavy lifting to convert a series of HDR stills into 1080p video (and then compress for Vimeo, of course). Check out his tutorial for this process here.

We’re at the forefront of a paradigm shift where digital photography and high definition video are converging. Check out Romy Ocon’s 5dmkii bird photography, err, video:

Right now is an exciting, exciting time.

proactively • sitting in a front row seat • peter

———— 7 October 2008 ————

Whipped up a quick video toot for anyone who wants to edit the Reverie footage but is having a tough time working with the native 1080p h264 Quicktime files. I recommend clicking thru for the HD version to see the FCP interface text clearly.

Hopefully everything I’m saying there is making sense. Fast, good, and cheap; I picked fast and cheap.

**UPDATE**

Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation has posted their video analysis of 5dmkii source footage.  With the disclaimer that this analysis is based on footage produced by a beta model of the camera, they report:

It looks like the GOP-structure of the clips are one I-frame for each 15 P-frame. No B-frames.

Click thru for the full report and pics of bitrate histogram and footage properties! (In English)

**UPDATE END**

And in case you haven’t seen the Reverie film because the Canon link is down, here’s the video on Vimeo until it’s taken down:

And here’s some more footage shot with the 5dmkii for your viewing pleasure:

——————————————————————————————–

——————————————————————————————–

With the wireless WFT-E4A backup disk attached:

——————————————————————————————–

Vimeo member Sebastian Stevens commented on this last video, stating

Watching the movie above seems to show the seem rolling shutter problem the nikon D90 has, but when you download the original video file, the video is very stable and shows no weird image skews.

I’m really looking forward to finding more original footage from this camera. In the right hands, this is going to be a killer video capture device. Now, what about audio recording… ?

proactively • 5dmkii’ing • peter

———— 3 July 2008 ————

Just stumbled upon the LAFCPUG FCP FAQ Wiki.

This is an amazing resource with links to legacy Quicktime installers and brain dumps of all kinds.

proactively • spewing forth acronyms • 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

———— 10 June 2008 ————

Here’s a pictorial walkthru of the latest system config. First, the workhorse:

Here’s where you can find the Expansion Slot Utility:

Here’s how the Expansion Slot Utility needs to be configured for the Kona 3:

Mix all these ingredients into your cauldron, add a pinch of pretty please, and SHAZAM, running FCP 6.0.2 with Quicktime 7.3.1, I can now successfully digitize Apple ProRes422 1920×1080i 29.97 to internal 7200rpm SATA drives. And external FW800 drives. Don’t hate.

proactively • in glorious high definition • peter

———— 5 June 2008 ————

Shane Ross is one of the bloggers I look up to and, to some extent, model my blog after. Here’s Shane’s input in the eternally continuing Avid vs FCP saga.

He’s very balanced and I think the flame-off invocation of the muse is very encouraging.

Tool-agnostic is a digression I myself make in every Avid vs FCP discussion I have. Unless it’s with an old person who sucks.

more about “MacVideo Interview with Shane Ross – …“, posted with vodpod

———— 28 April 2008 ————

Here’s the breakdown of the Kona 3 setup and FCP config that is working consistently for me at the moment:

Mac OS X.4.11

QT 7.3.1

AJA Kona 3 5.1 drivers

FCP 6.0.2

AJA Control Panel Setup:

FCP System Settings:

This combination is per AJA Support’s recommendation and has performed flawlessly since I implemented it four weeks ago. Resolved assemble edit and insert edit issues when laying back to Sony MSW-M2000 MPEG IMX VTR.

proactively • promoting permanence of knowledge • peter

———— 25 April 2008 ————

Shake@fxshare.com rumor-mill monger Randy Little struck again earlier today with his Autodesk Rumors subject heading:

Did anyone else get told by Autodesk that apple is selling off its pro apps? A friend of mine was told by an Autodesk employee this rumor. I don’t really believe it. Little OT but I thought it goes with my last post a little.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/02/12/is-apple-shedding-its-final-cut-pro-apps-at-nab/

I too was privy to an onslaight of pre-NAB 2008 Apple pro-app rumors, mainly flung from the Avid base. Rumors such as “Apple Pro Res 422 is going to be discontinued due to copyright infringement” and “Steve Bayes stole Avid’s dnx_hd code to create the Pro Res 422 codec” and so on. Haters.

Back to the listserv report, Tim Turner chimed in with an illuminating post:

In one of the Fxguide NAB podcasts, they said that Apple Officially denounced that rumor, and made a point of it, because Apple never responds to any rumors.

And if you weren’t interested enough (yet) to click through the above link, commenters responded with posts such as Brau’s

All these Pro Apps have filtered down to the average Mac user in some form and there’s no way Apple will divorce themselves from them. In my own case, after using GarageBand on a 900mhz G4 tower, it convinced me to upgrade to a G5 Quad and invest in Logic Pro. The improvements Apple made, followed the radical price drop, were an incredibly welcome surprise. I also know a few people who have upgraded to Final Cut after having taken iMovie to its limits.

and daniel.lucas’s

I’d like to see an Adobe acquisition by Apple but I’m not sure how realistic that is. With so many apps in the Creative Suite it might be a little too much for Apple to handle along with their current pro apps plus consumer apps plus hardware.

and then lehenbauer’s stroke of poetic rhetoric reared it’s furious head summarizing

Video and audio production are to Macs today as desktop publishing was twenty years ago. With an upgrade path from free to semi-pro to pro apps (iMovie -> Final Cut Express -> Final Cut Studio, GarageBand -> Logic Express -> Logic Studio), anyone can start with the free apps and grow into completely pro apps on which mainstream movies and TV shows are produced (Logic can even load GB files.)

The idea that Apple going to ditch the pro apps is nothing more than, at best, wishful thinking or, at worst, an attempt to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt among an Apple stronghold.

One of the most interesting snippets I found in the article was the time line of Final Cut Pro’s evolution:

• NAB 2000 Final Cut Pro 1.2.5 with support for 16:9 video format and native YUV color space, Matrox real time video cards.
• NAB 2001 Final Cut Pro support for more real-time DV hardware from Pinnacle, Canopus and Matrox.
• NAB 2002 DVD Studio Pro 1.5
• NAB 2003 Final Cut Pro 4, LiveType, Soundtrack, Compressor, DVD Studio Pro 2, Shake 3.5
• NAB 2004 Final Cut Pro HD, Motion, DVD Studio Pro 3
• NAB 2005 Final Cut Studio, Motion 2
• NAB 2006 Shake 4.1, 500,000 Final Cut users
• NAB 2007 Final Cut Studio 2, Color, Motion 3, Final Cut Server. 800,000 Final Cut users

Finally back to the listserv reporting, Deke Kincaid arrived on the scene with his shake@fxshare.com voice-of-reason-hat firmly in place reminding us

That’s February old news, where have you been?

Well Deke, your humble narrator isn’t too proud to serve day-old bread. And if you too are in awe of the awesomeness that is Roughly Drafted Magazine, check out a few more links of interest:

Microsoft’s Plot to Kill QuickTime

How Microsoft Pushed QuickTime’s Final Cut

Mac Office, $150 Million, and the Story Nobody Covered

proactively • narrating away • peter

———— 11 April 2008 ————

Just posted by Terrence Curren to the FCP-L:

The unedited, or less edited versions of the red workflows captured at the
Editor’s lounge are now online.

And here’s a direct link to the video. Bloggging before watching, so I hope it’s good (I’m sure it is).

proactively • getting my learn on • peter

**UPDATE**

Special thank you to Terence Curren and Alphadogs for providing this footage. I’ve edited them into digestable segments for your viewing pleasure:

———— 11 April 2008 ————

Two immediate highlights I see is the addition of an SD Anamorphic Apple TV preset in Compressor and the addition of an HDV 4:2:2 codec.

My advice is to let the early adopters out there find out how well this works before trying it yourself. And if you are an early adopter, I’d love to hear your feedback!

Here’s the link to Apple’s website for the entire release notes. My highlights are:

Final Cut Pro 6.0.3 Release Notes

This section contains release information about Final Cut Pro 6.0.3.

Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard Support

Final Cut Pro 6.0.3 is compatible with Mac OS X v10.4.11 and Mac OS X v10.5.2 Leopard.

Sony XDCAM HD422 Support

Final Cut Pro 6.0.3 supports editing media in the XDCAM HD422 format. You can now choose the following XDCAM HD422 Easy Setups:

• XDCAM HD422 1080i50 CBR
• XDCAM HD422 1080i60 CBR
• XDCAM HD422 1080p24 CBR
• XDCAM HD422 1080p25 CBR
• XDCAM HD422 1080p30 CBR
• XDCAM HD422 720p50 CBR
• XDCAM HD422 720p60 CBR

For more information about XDCAM HD422 format support, open Final Cut Pro and choose Help > HD and Broadcast Formats.

Exporting Stills with the Correct Aspect Ratio

When using Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 to export video to formats compatible with Apple TV, iPhone, or iPod devices, the video was scaled to the correct aspect ratio. However, exported still images were also scaled, leading to a loss in quality. When using QuickTime conversion in Final Cut Pro 6.0.3, still images are exported at their native aspect ratio.

Compressor 3.0.3 Release Notes

This section contains release information about Compressor 3.0.3.

Anamorphic Pixel Options for Apple TV

Compressor now includes options to create media files for Apple TV with anamorphic (non-square) pixel aspect ratios. The pixels are scaled by Apple TV to fit the intended aspect ratio during playback. In Compressor 3.0.3, an additional item appears in the Device pop-up menu of the H.264 for Apple Devices Encoder pane:

Apple TV SD (Anamorphic)

Apple HDV Codec 1.4

This release of Apple HDV Codec provides 4:2:2 support in Final Cut Pro.

So there’s a new HDV codec with 4:2:2 color spacing?? As far as I was aware all HDV cameras recorded 4:2:0 colors pace. Maybe this is Apple tipping it’s hand towrads upcoming NAB announcements and releases.

———— 10 April 2008 ————

I stumbled on Scott Simmons’ Studio Daily rant “What’s wrong with the young FCP editor?”

And I responded:

Ok Scott, as an English major with a concentration in Language, Writing and Rhetoric from University of Maryland at College Park, my initial observation is that you are caught up in the rhetorical analysis of definition, i.e. “What is an editor?”
As a 29 year old editor & producer (yes, a Preditor) who was trained on Avid and now holds Apple Certified Training certifications in Final Cut Pro, Motion 3, and Color, I’d have to say your comments are borderline ageist and NLE biased. But I digress.
I found lots of value in your observations that many young editors don’t understand efficient timeline management, media management, how to output an edit decision list, etc. But guess what: regardless of your perspective that these are fundamental skills inherent in the title of an editor, kids with FCP skills are still getting their videos up on YouTube and Vimeo with millions of views, millions more than most broadcast shows will ever receive, despite how many iterations of dvd sales and ipod sales they go through.
I have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to matriculate my Avid offline / online workflow, my Avid media management workflow, and many other Avid-centric skills, and implemented them into a Final Cut Studio workflow with great success. Many of my peers don’t have the opportunity to learn an Avid workflow because the old steel doors are sealed shut unless you want to work a 6pm – 2am shift with lavish titles such as E2 or Digitizer with the hope that one day, 10 years in the future, once you’ve crossed the age 30 barrier, the old Avid guys will swoop in and title you Assistant Editor. Now you can try making a stringout!
Or, buy FCP, a Macbook Pro and a Canon HV20 and start shooting, cutting, and posting to a the growing New Media outlets available to everyone right now. Which choice would you make at age 21?
So to bring this back to my initial point, as an industry we may need to reconsider what it is that defines an editor. I’ll take it on my 29 year old shoulders to assist those who don’t know why betacam sp tapes are pre-blacked with timecode starting at 00:58:30;00, why it’s important for a Color grading workflow to have a timeline with just one video layer and all your motion projects and still images exported as self contained quicktimes and then reimported, and why you might want to check out the manual controls on the HV20 to control the amount of light being recorded. I hope you can realize that endless finger pointing, role defining, and ageist viewpoints will only isolate the old Avid farts into a corner to find themselves drowning in the crashing new wave of innovative video production workflows.
I look forward to a continued civil discourse.
Best Regards,

Peter Salvia
www.petersalvia.wordpress.com

———— 9 April 2008 ————

Here you go girl: