April 27th, 2011 Rich
Since Final Cut Pro X was previewed during NAB this year, I’ve heard lots noise about this update. Of course, no one has seen it in action, only as a preview. It wasn’t available in Apple’s booth, either. So we’ll have to wait until it is released. But there are lots of FCP users waiting with baited breath. There are some exciting updates coming.
Actually, I’m pretty amazed, too. It has lots of new features that I’ve using for the past year with Adobe Production Premium CS5. Good to hear FCP is finally catching up.
Oh, but wait! Adobe is releasing CS5.5. I guess Apple still has some more catching up to do.
– Rich Pulham
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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 22nd, 2010 Rich
As Vincent Laforet says, “For the filmmaker, Neutral Density Filters are an essential tool.” Yes, they can be a great help for obtaining that desired narrow depth of field. But what about the downside? ND filters can also get quite ugly.
Filmmakers don’t have the option of changing shutter speeds like still photographers. At 100 ISO, you could be shooting at f16 on a bright sunlit day. ND filters will help you get that iris opened up for the narrow depth of field that is so important for that “film” look. That’s good. Right?
Whoa! Back up a minute. No, that’s not always right.
Laforet is talking about a camera with adjustable settings like the Canon 5D Mk2 or 7D. What about guys like me that are shooting cameras like the Canon HF S100? It still can shoot great hi-def video under the right conditions. But ND filters can turn bad and even ugly with those kinds of cameras.
If the goal is a narrow depth of field, there is something you need to know about these cameras. The lens on these puppies goes from f/1.8 to 3.0. Since it cannot stop down to f16 on a sunny day, it turns down the gain on the video to correct the exposure. It’s a cheap solution. And I don’t know how much the 10x zoom limits the f-stop. Maybe zoomed in all the way limits the iris to f3.
So what happens if you start adding ND to the camera? If it starts increasing gain to correct exposure, you will add noise to your video. That’s the ugly.
Add a heavy ND to your camera when set on a bright scene and you will see two exposure changes. There is a fairly quick change in exposure. I assume that is the iris. And then there is a slower change in brightness. I think that must be video gain and where noise would come from.
Now this doesn’t mean I don’t carry ND filters. My favorite is a graduated filter. It lets me correct a bright area of the picture, the sky for example. I also watch my zebra bars to fix those kinds of problems.
If you are using this kind of camera, there is a great way to get narrow depth of field. Use your zoom. It may require the use of a tripod (which you probably should be using anyway). But this way you can avoid the problems associated with trying to change exposure.
– Rich Pulham
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