March 15th, 2011 Rich
Apple and Intel have announce a new technology called Thunderbolt. It is touted as being twice as fast as USB 3.0 at 10 Gbps. According to Apple’s website, this new technology lets you connect high-performance peripherals and high resolution displays to a single port.
Whoopty doo! I think I’ve just seen a case of a marketing department gone wild.
It’s what you don’t hear that’s important. Who would need that kind of throughput? Someone editing huge 4k files like those from a Red? I suspect anyone working with those kind of files has already found a solution or the Red wouldn’t be used much. They would probably be very high-level pros. Perhaps Apple’s market is those looking to replace their aging computer.
So what is Apple offering that would make Thunderbolt a must have? How about a notebook. Yes, a notebook starting with a 13 inch monitor. Just what the pro editor could use. Or there is the top end with a 17 inch monitor, 2.3 Ghz quad-core and 4 or 8 gigs of ram. How sweet is that?
As a pro editor, you should also know something else even more important. There are no peripherals available to hook up to it that use Thunderbolt. Ooops. I don’t think you are going to ditch your current edit bay computer for this puppy.
Blogger Larry Jordan says, “Thunderbolt is absolutely, and only, designed to meet the needs of the Pro market. “ What? Is the pro market going to build an edit bay around a notebook?
Marketing hyperbole aside. What kind of market is there that hardware manufacturers are going to invest big bucks in? Let’s see: pro editors, very high-end, who are going to replace their current equipment with a notebook. Hmmm. I don’t see much of a market.
Anyone with a current motherboard can handle 6 Gbps harddrives or 5 Gbps USB 3.0 for external drives like a Raid 0 array. And if you don’t have USB 3.0, you can add one to your PCI Express slot for less than $50. That beats Apples’ $2,500 notebook.
If that isn’t fast enough for you, how about CS5 running a CUDA video card and 12 or more gigs of ram. That ought to give that aging computer more pep.
Or you can wait for the announcements at NAB as suggested by Larry Jordan. But I suspect all you’ll really hear is gee-whiz speak about how wonderful Thunderbolt will be when . . .
– Rich Pulham
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December 28th, 2010 Rich
Box office for the Christmas weekend dropped 44% over last year. IndieWire called this a “horrendous Christmas weekend.” I call it an omen that the studios should be paying attention to. Perhaps they are asleep on the job.
Some might say the numbers are skewed because last year at this time, Avatar was showing. Sure, it’s huge success pumped up last year’s box office. But last year’s box office needed to be pumped up. Not only are DVD sales off, so is theater attendance. 3D movies have increased ticket price which makes things seem better than they really are.
Maybes the real problem was that spending the Christmas weekend with family was more entertaining than the movies being offered. Here are several examples:
“Little Fockers” — the title is play on words for the kind of language I don’t appreciate in the first place. It screams for immature audiences. It is a sequel to pump out more money on something that already has a track record (easier to get financed). And a local movie review gave it one star out of ten. The PG-13 rating is based on: Language, Mature Sexual Humor Throughout, Some Drug Content, Crude Content, Not Rec. for Young Children, Language May Offend, Coarse Language, Sexual Content, Crude Sexual Content, Crude Humor, Moderate Sex References. This was the top box office for the weekend? Must have been a lot of kids with nothing to do.
Next down the line was “True Grit.” Actually, grit is the key word here. The studio fought for the PG-13 rating: Disturbing Images, Int. Seq. of Western Violence, Strong Violence, Violence. The movie had to be strongly re-edited to avoid the R rating. Certainly not a John Wayne type of movie. It was supposed to be more true to the original novel. Ok. But it doesn’t exactly fit the holiday mood, does it? The release date does make it eligible for the Academy Awards this year. Perhaps the studio felt there would be enough weak nominations that it would stand a better chance for a nomination.
What I would like to see is a better offering of films, something that would make me excited to go to the movies. Apparently, that isn’t going to happen.
– Rich Pulham
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December 28th, 2010 Rich
I particularly recommend Vincent Laforet’s workshop on shooting HDSLR video.
– Rich Pulham
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December 12th, 2010 Rich
Read some posts last night by Bloom, Laforet, et al, about HDSLR filmmaking. Checked on lenses and stuff like that. Of course, financially it is way out of my range. Yes, cameras are cheap. Lenses will add up to the cost of the camera or more. And then there are all the add-ons that will boost the price up beyond cameras and lenses. There doesn’t seem to be any real savings here. But you can do things you can’t do with a regular video camera.
I’m not there yet. If I buy an HDSLR, it will be the start of a money pit that will not produce any movies.
Another interesting aspect of this HDSLR frenzy is that you won’t see it in the production values. Sure, you can do some shots you might not see otherwise. It offers more flexibility. But you can adapt and shoot within your means and no one will notice you are missing a fancy follow-focus or whatever.
I’ve been working on a project that requires some setups that I cannot do. One requires a scene shot in a medical research lab. Another has a helicopter flying over and landing at a tent city in an abandoned oil refinery. And I have a shot of a congressional investigation in one of their fancy meeting rooms. Is anyone going to give me access to those? Is there even such a thing as an abandoned oil refinery?
What I’ve mentioned requires digital sets. Those are production values that are seen on the screen. They can make my el cheapo production look like it had a multi-million dollar budget.
I’ve already created my medical lab assembling various pieces in After Effects. Thanks to the U.S. Navy flyover of a tent city in Haiti, I have Photoshoped my tent city. I’ve nearly finished my abandoned oil refinery in After Effects. Got a really pretty sunset from NASA for the background.
So far, I haven’t had to do any location scouting except for some Google searches. I don’t need to make arrangements for shooting on location, getting releases, insurance, and all that stuff. There are no logistics involving cameras, equipment, cast and crew. And yet I can do that which is way out of my league.
Why aren’t I seeing more blogs and articles about those things? Aren’t they what really matters?
– Rich Pulham
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September 16th, 2010 Rich
I keep getting calls from people who want to convert their VHS movies to DVD. My answer is — You don’t want to.
First, VHS looks terrible when compared to DVD. It is half the resolution. We have an upconverting DVD player connected to our high-def TV. DVDs look great. But when we try VHS, the results are almost unwatchable. Tapes look okay on a smaller, standard-def TV, however.
Second, converting a 2-hour movie will take 2 hours. Then I must add rendering time and burning the DVD. The cost is going to be greater than buying a new DVD.
If you want to have a physical product, go buy a new DVD. Most older movies are available at very reasonable prices.
Another option is not to buy the DVD at all. Netflix probably has just about everything you have in your library. They may also have the movies in video-on-demand so you can watch it any time you want. Newer TVs, DVD players, Wii and other game consoles probably have access to Netflix built in.
– Rich Pulham
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