3D World

NAB 2011 Camera News

2011-10-11T10:12:00.003+05:30

Life in the desert takes on a new meaning every spring, alternately freezing us to the bone, or pummeling us with a vicious wind that constantly propels us across the expansive parking lot of the Las Vegas Convention Center. One thing holds true year after year, though: you are going to be desiccated and exhausted when the show is over.

This year's NAB Show brought new things to consider. I wondered as I walked between the postcentric South Hall and the camera-centric Central Hall how much the earthquake and tsunami in Japan would affect the products being shown. The destruction of the factory that is the only source for Sony HDCAM SR stock has been widely discussed, including of course in Debra Kaufman's extensive coverage in this issue, but manufacturing facilities for lithium Ion battery and disc media manufacturing and assembly were also lost.

There are also a vast number of small but critical suppliers to the industry that have been affected. One of the few public confirmations of production hobbled by the loss of some of these sub-component manufacturers was RED Digital Cinema's delayed release of the production model of their EPIC camera, but there were others as well.

In any case, it was not a camera year like we saw last NAB, where eight new top-of-the-line cameras were announced. Far fewer new products were announced than I anticipated, but companies showed off the largest number of camera prototypes I think I have ever seen on the show floor. The desert was definitely bringing winds of change.

SONY
The camera stories this year were 3D and 4K or more, or as Sony proclaimed in their booth, "Beyond HD," starting with the newest addition to the CineAlta line, the F65. It features an 8K sensor (8768 x 2324, or 20MP per frame), and Sony was showing the camera's live output at 4096 x 2160, the true 4K DCI projection spec.

Sony F65 CineAlta™ Digital Motion Picture Camera.

Sony really upped the bar overall, complementing their newest flagship camera with the SR recordable media lineup, from the lowest cost SR-R1 tapeless recorder to match with the PMW-F3, to the SRR3 designed as a dockable replacement for the SRW1 on the F23/ F35 camera system. At the top of the line, the new SR-R4 unit is designed to mate with the F65, allowing for 16-bit 4K or 2K RAW recording when attached to directly to the camera.

Sony's PMW-F3

Sony has also joined the high-end independent digital disk recorder companies like Codex and S.two. The entire file-based SR product lineup records to either 500G or 1T versions of the SR2 Media. The brand new SR-R1000 is part of that lineup, a desktop unit that allows up to four pieces of SR media to be transferred or backed up at one time.

Sony SR-R1000 is a desktop unit that allows up to four pieces of SR media to be transferred or backed up at one time.

The NXCAM line was also updated, with Sony showing the NEXFS100, an ultra compact full frame S35 imager camera designed for the indie and prosumer market. Sony's Juan Martinez showed me the 3D masterpiece of the NXCAM line, the HXR-NX3D1. It offers both 2D and 3D recording modes, in addition to full frame packed 3D output via HDMI.

A 3D shoulder-mount addition to the EX camera line, the PMW-TD300, uses ½" Exmore CCDs and records right and left eye data to separate SxS media cards. It also uses a more reasonable 45mm interocular preset that allows a minimum convergence distance of 1.2 meters (47 inches). Sony also showed off the PMW-F3 camera. My review is coming but let me say I really love what Sony is doing with the F3. Offering not only a large imager, but to additionally give true 4:4:4 dual link recording and native 3D sync capability in a camera this compact is just outstanding.

ARRI
One of the most remarkable things to see at the show was hidden at ARRI, and it was literally a last minute addition to their booth: an Alexa, burned to a crisp in a camera truck fire, powered up and producing pictures underneath a Plexiglass cover. It was the ultimate testament to the toughness of ARRI cameras.

ARRI also announced a soon-to-be released Alexa software update that will allow Alexa owners to record 4:2:2 ProRes files internally on SxS media, at 120fps! Details on external recording at that frame rate was limited, but I am going to assume that the ARRI-branded Codex recorder being built to record ARRIRAW might be able to handle the same at some point in the future.

Other innovations at the ARRI booth included the Alexa Studio model. This is the tricked out, top of the line version of Alexa that finally allows access to imagery using the entire 4:3 sensor, a necessity when working with the anamorphic lenses popular in big budget Hollywood productions. The Studio model also showed a new optical viewfinder for the Alexa that eliminates the delay associated with digital electronic viewfinders. (All EVFs lag at least one frame, with some ENG cameras suffering more than a 5-7 frame delay.)

The ARRI ALEXA M was shown at the Cameron-Pace Group (CPG) keynote and press conference.

The Alexa M model was shown at the Cameron-Pace Group (CPG) keynote and press conference. The team led by 3D pioneers James Cameron and Vince Pace will have exclusive commercial access to the first systems to be made available in September 2011, pioneering its use in a variety of exciting 3D productions during which the design will be enhanced and optimized with new 3D application features unique to the CPG/ARRI.

Pace's Shadow 5D rig

When I showed the web's first walkthrough of the Alexa's menu structure at CreativeCOW.net last summer, I hinted at major changes coming in the camera's architecture. At this year's NAB, we saw it: the Alexa imager block separated from the camera body, allowing for smaller, remote operations, especially designed for 3D production.

L-R: Dr. Martin Prillmann (ARRI), James Cameron, Franz Krause (ARRI), Vince Pace of Cameron-Pace.

With 3D the focus of the CPG announcement, ARRI has certainly taken the lead in 3D production tools on the high end. I cannot wait to see some of the other compelling 3D companies like 3ality Digital and Element Technica to also take advantage of the Alexa M for handheld 3D production's next generation.

RED
RED's presentation booth at NAB 2011.

RED returned to NAB this year, tattoo parlor and all, to show off both the EPIC M camera -- this is the handmade version available to existing RED ONE owners only. More than one working Scarlet prototype was also seen, heightening the buzz about an impending release date.
RED EPIC with Shoulder Mount

RED announced a partnership with Band Pro Inc. to market the EPIC camera with Leica Summilux-C lenses under a package agreement. RED also jointly announced with AJA the Ki Pro Mini as the preferred 1080 ProRes recording option for EPIC, speeding the TV and industrial workflows when using EPIC for noncinematic production.

RED announced a partnership with Band Pro Inc. to market the EPIC camera with Leica Summilux-C lenses. Photo courtesy Band Pro Inc.

Lastly, as I was writing this article, the Cameron/Pace Group, announced that, in addition to the Alexa M investment that they had already announced, they had purchased 50 of RED's EPIC cameras to help them accommodate their upcoming 3D production schedule.

RECORDERS
There were an unbelievable number of digital disk recorders shown this year.

In addition to the ones I just mentioned, I noted the Gemini 4:4:4 unit from Convergent Design. However, I was not allowed to view the Gemini unit in their booth next to the mango smoothie stand in the Central Hall, having been blocked by one of the booth personnel because I had on my AJA exhibitor badge.

Notable too, was the new Apple ProRes/Avid DNxHD recorder from audio recorder company Sound Devices Inc. In addition to recording, it uses the camera's timecode connection to provide visual feedback, in-camera, as to the status of the recorder -- something not possible with any other digital recorder that I am aware of.

3ALITY DIGITAL
The true gem of the show was tucked away in the far reaches of the noman's land between the South and Central Halls, one of the most ground breaking pieces of technology I have seen in years: 3aility Digital's booth showed more of the future of 3D than anything else at the show.

From their command center next to a basketball court, 3ality ran a live 3D production multiple times daily.

From their command center next to a basketball court, 3ality ran a live 3D production multiple times daily, showcasing the most advanced 3D tech for live broadcast that I have ever seen or even heard of. Because I was given hints a couple of months ago, I thought I knew what to expect, but what I saw far surpassed what I had imagined.

The real innovation for me was the 3space™ technology suite. IntelleMatte allows real-time keying of 3D graphics with accurate control of those mattes in Z-space. I have to tell you, the optical flow processing to handle this type of key in real time will change the future of live mattes and key in sports and broadcast. IntelleScene automates the process of transitions and scene convergence that are the bane of every 3D live broadcast -- those cuts between scenes in live broadcast are among the greatest sources of discomfort. Shown to the audience without a single convergence operator, the live footage being shot and transmitted was well received by everyone that I talked to, with IntelleScene automating the smoothing and even prevention of many of those painful live-action scene transitions.

Lastly, I saw IntelleCam, their automated camera and rig control alignment tools. 3ality's presentation at the show was running eight 3D rigs, controlled and maintained from a single processing unit taking up less than 10 RU of rack space in the truck.

The 3space suite is a real leap ahead for 3D production, addressing the key issues of cost and complexity. It reduces the equipment and manpower costs to set up 3D rigs for broadcast or cinematic productions, and simply makes those productions easier to run, thereby reducing the overall cost entry for future live 3D productions.

Article by :
Gary Adcock
Chicago Illinois USA

Panasonic AG-AF100 Camera

2011-07-29T18:46:00.008+05:30

Love the bank abyss of acreage you get from DSLRs, but absence all the video-oriented appearance those still cameras lack? Panasonic’s AF-100 merges a big DSLR-style sensor with all the video camera appearance you’ve taken for accepted over the years. See how this cocktail turns out...

DSLR cameras, decidedly Canon models, accept become hot items for video shooters over the aftermost brace of years, but their allowances the bank abyss of field, the affordable lens selection, and the baby admeasurement additionally came with a agglomeration of headaches that accepted video cameras apparent years ago.

Panasonic AG-AF100

So I was actual absorbed back Panasonic started aircraft the AG-AF100 ($4,995), which is the aboriginal video camera that offers a large-DSLR-like sensor and changeable lenses, but affiliated with abounding video-camera functions that shooters expect, such as:

* The adeptness to attach two XLR mics (two channels total), adviser them through headphones, and see akin confined during recording.

* A congenital ND clarify caster (3 stage) for bound accepting you to the f-stop you want.

* Zebra patterns for highlighting key IRE levels in your viewfinder or LCD.

* Virtually absolute blow lengths (as against to a Canon DSLR's 12 minute absolute per clip).

* High-res rotating, swiveling LCD viewscreen so you can see what you're cutting no amount area you authority the camera.

* The adeptness to accelerate an 1080 HD arresting to outputs like HDMI or HD-SDI, so you can see what you're cutting on a bigger adviser (the Canon 7D can adviser up to 720p, but the 5D and 60D alone adviser in SD resolution).

* Metadata to pre-name clips (for instance, "Interview_Jack_Black"), or admit appearance title, ambassador names, and added advice which can advice beat break organized.

* The adeptness to admit markers in footage for important moments, to advice producers/editors acquisition highlights bound already they get the footage.

QUALITY of IMAGE

The AF100 annal video to the AVCHD format, in either 1080 (24p, 25p, 30p, 50i, 60i) or 720 (24p, 25p, 30p, 50p, 60p). Either resolution looks acutely crisper than you'd get from a Panasonic HPX170 or an HPX500. Panasonic says the AF100 has 800 TVL (TV Lines) and I've apparent an absolute analysis that appropriate it was afterpiece to 680 TVL, but it still feels absolutely in the "HD" camp, against a camera like the HVX200/HPX170, which generally acquainted bendable by HD standards (especially on advanced shots).

The AF100 uses a best bandwidth of 24 Mbps, with 4:2:0 blush sub-sampling, and 8 $.25 of blush depth. You can additionally beneath or overcrank your anatomy rate, in 20 increments, from 12 fps to 60 fps. Off-speed recording is annihilation fresh for a camera like this, but what is fresh is that you can shoot offspeed in 1080p, instead of accepting to bead bottomward to 720 like the all-inclusive majority of cameras assert you do.

You can acquisition formats like DVCPRO HD or AVC-Intra that accept added breadth for blush alteration or keying. You can acquisition formats that accept college abstracts rates, like the 48 Mbps MPEG4 acclimated in Canon DSLRs. But the AVCHD architecture is a decidedly acceptable and ample advantage that does the AF100 justice. It delivers a actual crisp, apple-pie angel that suffered from none of the macroblocking you would see in an earlier prosumer codec like HDV. I additionally carefully attempt footage with the amiss white balance, and underexposed by a stop or alike two, and begin abundant breadth to color-correct or stylize footage after it breaking down. One thing's for sure: AVCHD is far added good than HDV, which is still acclimated to shoot a lot of shows you see on advertisement networks like Investigation Discovery. AVCHD has alert the abstracts amount of HDV, and additionally uses a far added able codec (H.264 vs the age-old MPEG2), and a college resolution (1920x1080 vs 1440x1080). Hopefully, the AF100 will advice assuredly retire a lot of Sony Z1 and Z7Us out there.

AF100 main controls

The AF100 uses a MOS sensor, which is declared to amalgamate the aerial sensitivity/low babble ancestry of accepted CCD sensors, forth with the low-power burning of CMOS chips. In the absolute world, best shooters apperceive that any dent with "MOS" in its name can ache from adverse angel quirks--for instance, warping vertical curve back you bound pan the camera. One of the affliction examples I've apparent of this alleged "jello" aftereffect came from Panasonic's old HPX300 camera, which additionally acclimated a MOS sensor. If you bound panned the camera beyond a city skyline, you'd see skyscrapers angle as if they were accomplishing side-stretches. The AF100 is far added acceptable behaved than that -- quick pans do appearance slight jello warping, but it won't be audacious for the all-inclusive majority of situations.

The camera additionally exhibits actual little to none of the aliasing or alive moire patterns that you frequently see on Canon DSLRs back cutting baby elements that are abutting together.

Dynamic ambit seemed to be about what you get from an HPX170 or HVX200A, but a little decumbent to draft out highlights a bit eventually than expected. A Panasonic rep told me that this is aloof a amount of ambience gamma controls differently, but I did apprehension that back I accompanying recorded footage in AVCHD (to SD cards) and a Ki Pro Mini acreage recorder, that the Ki Pro's footage seemed to handle the highlights smoother (see beneath for added about recording to alien units). As for low ablaze performance, it was acceptable but not amazing like a Canon 5D. At the camera's absence ISO (400), I could see some ablaze babble in blacks -- again, about area I've apparent lower-end P2 cameras. But blame up the ISO (aka Gain) on the AF100 captivated up a lot added acceptable than those earlier cameras could manage. I was cutting central on a apathetic f/5.8 lens and begin myself about 2 stops underexposed. I upped the camera's ISO from 800 and again to 1600, and was afraid to see how able-bodied the footage captivated up, abnormally in the blacks, already I was able to attending at it on a 25" monitor. It was a little rougher than the 400 ISO footage, but not that much.

So technically, the AF100 produces admirable adumbration for a $5K camera. It additionally gives you amazing ascendancy over the image, with altered gamma modes, blush matrixes, and added settings such as adept pedestal, detail level, detail coring, blush level, blush appearance and bark accent detail (along with arena files to bound about-face amid them). That's the mark of a able-bodied imaging system.

Aesthetically, I begin the AF100 to aftermath a attractive image, but one that looked a little "digital" to my eye, abnormally appropriate out of the box. Personally, I've consistently gravitated appear Panasonic cameras because of their filmic, accurate look. Cameras like the HVX200 or the Varicam didn't alike film, but they could feel like they were "inspired" by film. The AF100 doesn't absolutely bear the aforementioned accurate look, in my experience. I would use words like "bright" or "poppy" to call the camera's out-of-the-box aesthetics, but it's absolutely not as "cinematic" or "filmic" as added Panasonic cameras (or conceivably alike a Canon 5D). This is abnormally accurate for scenes in ablaze light. You can get added acceptable after-effects by tweaking the camera's gamma, cast and detail settings. Sure enough, if you browse a lot of the AF100 footage on a armpit like Vimeo, you'll generally see filmmakers citation their highly-customized settings. I've apparent some footage that approaches the added "cinematic" attending I prefer, but still anticipate the camera leans appear a added "digital video" look.

The added affair I noticed with the AF100 is that handheld movement suffered a bit from attenuate micro-jitters, the aforementioned way abounding added "MOS" cameras assume to (Canon DSLRs included). I'm not talking about the archetypal strobe aftereffect you get back animadversion at 24fps. Instead, it's a awe-inspiring little jitter aftereffect that you can see in hand-held footage. You don't consistently apprehension it back watching video in a baby window on Vimeo, but it gets added apparent back the footage is played at beyond sizes.

Using a advanced bend lens can advice abate the jitter, axis off optical angel stabilization on your lens is additionally a acceptable idea, and ascent the camera on a bigger, added rig additionally helps. But in my tests application both the AF100 and an HVX200 I had handy, it was bright that the HVX200 acquainted smoother as I panned it about handheld (using the aforementioned bang settings).

Anyway, the AF100's hardly less-cinematic image, and the slight micro anxiety I tend to see in handheld movement are hardly deal-killers. Abounding bodies artlessly won't see them, or care, accustomed their projects.

LENSES for AF100

The camera takes any Micro Four Thirds lenses natively, but you can use adapters to attach accepted Four Thirds lenses, Nikon lenses, Canon lenses, and PL lenses. Aback the camera's imager uses a Micro Four Thirds mount, you should bifold any lens' focal breadth to get the still angel 35mm agnate of how it will behave on the AF100. That agency a 50mm lens on the AF100 will accord you the aforementioned framing of a 100mm lens on a 35mm still camera (such as the Canon 5D Mark II). A 24mm advanced bend lens on the AF100 aback looks added like a 48mm lens would on a still 35mm camera.

This 2x "crop factor" is bigger than what you'll acquisition in the DSLR world. A Canon 5D has a 1X crop agency (a 50mm lens absolutely behaves like a 50mm lens) and a Canon 7D and 60D accept a 1.6x crop factor, axis a 24mm lens into added like a 38mm. If you shoot wildlife or sports, area you're far from your subject, again the AF100's crop agency can be actual useful, aback it gives your lenses added reach. For example: you'd charge a whopping 400mm lens on a full-frame camera to get the aforementioned framing of a 200mm lens on an AF100.

On the added hand, aback you go to use a wide-angle lens on the AF100, you'll acquisition the AF100's 2x crop agency to be a absolute limitation, aback so abounding advanced angles lose their aftereffect (a 17mm - 35mm Nikon zoom now becomes 34-70mm). If you appetite to assignment with advanced angles, your best bet is to use a lens advised for the Four Thirds or Micro Four Thirds architecture (they accept the aforementioned framing). For instance, you can get a 7-14mm f/4 Four Thirds lens from Olympus, which gives you an agnate 14-28mm focal ambit on a 35mm camera. Panasonic additionally makes some advanced Micro Four Thirds zooms, forth with a brace of primes, such as a 8mm angle eye and a 14mm f/2.5.

One added affair about the AF100's crop factor, which relates to accomplishing a bank depth-of-field. Alike admitting the AF100 finer doubles the focal breadth of any lens you put on it, you're not activity to get the aforementioned bank depth-of-field you would accessory with a lens at that angled focal length. Here's what I mean: if you put a 100mm lens on a full-frame Canon 5D, footfall aback several feet, and anatomy a talking-head interview, you'll get a actual bank depth-of-field which puts the accomplishments accurately out of focus (assuming you're application a low f-stop...a bank abyss of acreage comes from application a best rather than beneath focal length, and a lower rather than college f-stop). But that doesn't beggarly you can put a 50mm lens on an AF100, and apprehend to get the aforementioned bank depth-of-field that you get with a 100mm lens on a Canon 5D. You'll get the aforementioned framing, but the AF100's depth-of-field will be what you get from a 50mm lens, not a 100mm one.

That's article to accumulate in apperception if you're, say, planning to shoot in bound spaces, but still appetite to get the accomplishments accurately out-of-focus. You'll accept abundant added adaptability with a full-frame Canon 5D, or alike a 1.6x crop-factor Canon 7D/60D/etc. On the added hand, you can try to aerate bank DOP by application actual fast (low f-stop) lenses with the AF100. One abundant lens would be Olympus' absurd 14-35mm f/2 Zukio zoom lens (the downside is that the lens costs able-bodied over $2000). And you can get 1.8 and 1.4 f-stops by activity to prime lenses as well. But cutting in bound spaces with a archetypal f/2.8 lens will apparently be disappointing.

* The AF100 lets you bake-much of the same metadata supported by the P2 format (user clip names, program titles, producer titles, etc., though there are no text or shot markers). You can use Panasonic's P2 CMS app to set up that metadata, and then save it to an SD card.
* You can bring in AVCHD footage into all major editors. Adobe's Production Suite (Premiere, After Effects, etc.) works with AVCHD footage natively, with no transcoding to another format. Avid's Media Composer transcodes AVCHD into its DNxHD format, and Final Cut transcodes AVCHD into ProRes. However, as I was finishing up this piece, Panasonic announced a new Apple QuickTime plug-in that lets QuickTime-supported apps (like Final Cut) import AVCHD footage natively. That means you should be able to import AF100 footage into Final Cut without doing a Log and Transfer conversion into QuickTime. Panasonic's plug-in is scheduled to ship in "summer", so we'll see how it works then.
* The camera records to SDHC cards instead of P2 or CF cards, which makes the AF100 the first pro-ish video camera where you don't have to wring your hands over the high cost of solid-state media. I was able to start shooting immediately by using a cheapo 4GB SD card (class 6) I bought 2 years ago in some Paris convenience store (you'll need class 6 or 10 cards to shoot slow motion in 1080). And a 64GB Class 10 card costs about $150, while recording 12 hours of footage on the AF100's highest quality setting. In other words, media costs are no longer an issue. And one more bonus: there's no need for proprietary card readers that cost hundreds of dollars. I used a $10 card reader to Log and Transfer my footage into Final Cut.
* The AF100 also includes a waveform display. That's a great tool for judging exposure, and Panasonic's $30K cameras don't have it.

* A little annoying: the AF100's battery (which lasts about 2-3 hours, and costs about $170 on the street) looks just like the batteries used by the HVX200 and HPX170. And yet, it's ever-so-slightly-different enough to prevent you from using your old HVX/HPX batteries with the camera. On the plus side, the AF100 will take batteries from Panasonic's HMC150 and other AVCCAM cameras.
* If you're shooting interviews or action that can benefit from two or more cameras, you might consider getting Panasonic's newish DMC-GH2 as your second body ($999.95). It has a similar look to the AF100 (it actually appears a little sharper), also records in AVCHD, uses the same lenses, and supports full-res HDMI out, so you can monitor it in HD. With the AF100 handling audio duty, the GH2 can give you a lot of bang for the buck as a B/C camera.

Helmut Kobler

The Moment you are in Tension..

2011-05-20T15:41:00.001+05:30

The moment you are in TENSION.

You will lose your ATTENTION.

Then you are in total CONFUSION.

And you'll feel IRRITATION.

This may spoil our personal RELATIONS.

Ultimately, you won't get COOPERATION.

And get things into COMPLICATION.

Then you may raise CAUTION.

And you have to take MEDICATION.

Why not try understanding the SITUATION.

And try to think about the SOLUTION.

Many problems will be solved by DISCUSSION.

Which will work out better in our PROFESSION.

Don't think this is a free SUGGESTION.

It is only for our PREVENTION.

If you understand my INTENTION.

You'll never get into TENSION !!!

Usefull Tips For Windows XP Users

2011-05-20T15:28:00.005+05:30

You've read the reviews and digested the key feature enhancements and operational changes. Now it's time to delve a bit deeper and uncover some of Windows XP's secrets.

1. It boasts how long it can stay up. Whereas previous versions of Windows were coy about how long they went between boots, XP is positively proud of its stamina. Go to the Command Prompt in the Accessories menu from the All Programs start button option, and then type 'systeminfo' . The computer will produce a lot of useful info, including the uptime. If you want to keep these, type 'systeminfo > info.txt'. This creates a file called info.txt you can look at later with Notepad. (Professional Edition only).

2. You can delete files immediately, without having them move to the Recycle Bin first. Go to the Start menu, select Run... and type 'gpedit.msc' ; then select User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Windows Explorer and find the Do not move deleted files to the Recycle Bin setting. Set it. Poking around in gpedit will reveal a great many interface and system options, but take care -- some may stop your computer behaving as you wish.

(Professional Edition only).

3. You can lock your XP workstation with two clicks of the mouse. Create a new shortcut on your desktop using a right mouse click, and enter 'rundll32.exe user32.dll, LockWork Station' in the location field. Give the shortcut a name you like. That's it -- just double click on it and your computer will be locked. And if that's not easy enough, Windows key + L will do the same.

4. XP hides some system software you might want to remove, such as Windows Messenger, but you can tickle it and make it disgorge everything. Using Notepad or Edit, edit the text file /windows/inf/ sysoc.inf, search for the word 'hide' and remove it. You can then go to the Add or Remove Programs in the Control Panel, select Add/Remove Windows Components and there will be your prey, exposed and vulnerable.

5. For those skilled in the art of DOS batch files, XP has a number of interesting new commands. These include 'eventcreate' and 'eventtriggers' for creating and watching system events, 'typeperf' for monitoring performance of various subsystems, and 'schtasks' for handling scheduled tasks. As usual, typing the command name followed by /? will give a list of options -- they're all far too baroque to go into here.

6. XP has IP version 6 support -- the next generation of IP.

Unfortunately this is more than your ISP has, so you can

only experiment with this on your LAN. Type 'ipv6 install'

into Run... (it's OK, it won't ruin your existing network

setup) and then 'ipv6 /?' at the command line to find

out more. If you don't know what IPv6 is, don't worry

and don't bother.

7. You can at last get rid of tasks on the computer from

the command line by using 'taskkill /pid' and the task

number, or just 'tskill' and the process number. Find

that out by typing 'tasklist', which will also tell you a lot

about what's going on in your system.

8. XP will treat Zip files like folders, which is nice if

you've got a fast machine. On slower machines, you

can make XP leave zip files well alone by typing

'regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll' at the command line..

If you change your mind later, you can put things

back as they were by typing 'regsvr32 zipfldr.dll' .

9. XP has ClearType -- Microsoft's anti-aliasing font

display technology -- but doesn't have it enabled by

default. It's well worth trying, especially if you were

there for DOS and all those years of staring at a

screen have given you the eyes of an astigmatic bat.

To enable ClearType, right click on the desktop,

select Properties, Appearance, Effects, select Clear

Type from the second drop-down menu and enable

the selection. Expect best results on laptop displays.

If you want to use ClearType on the Welcome login

screen as well, set the registry entry

HKEY_USERS/. DEFAULT/Control Panel/Desktop/

FontSmoothingTyp e to 2.

10. You can use Remote Assistance to help a friend

who's using network address translation (NAT) on

a home network, but not automatically. Get your pal

to email you a Remote Assistance invitation and edit

the file. Under the RCTICKET attribute will be a

NAT IP address, like 192..168.1.10. Replace this with

your chum's real IP address -- they can find this

out by going to www.whatismyip. com -- and get them

to make sure that they've got port 3389 open on

their firewall and forwarded to the errant computer.

11. You can run a program as a different user without

logging out and back in again. Right click the icon,

select Run As... and enter the user name and password

you want to use. This only applies for that run.

The trick is particularly useful if you need to

have administrative permissions to install a program,

which many require. Note that you can have

some fun by running programs multiple times on

the same system as different users, but this can

have unforeseen effects.

12. Windows XP can be very insistent about you checking

for auto updates, registering a Passport, using Windows

Messenger and so on. After a while, the nagging goes

away, but if you feel you might slip the bonds of sanity

before that point, run Regedit, go to

HKEY_CURRENT_ USER/Software/ Microsoft/

Windows/Current Version/Explorer/ Advanced and

create a DWORD value called EnableBalloonTips

with a value of 0.

13. You can start up without needing to enter a user

name or password. Select Run... from the start menu

and type 'control userpasswords2' , which will open

the user accounts application. On the Users tab, clear

the box for Users Must Enter A User Name And

Password To Use This Computer, and click on OK.

An Automatically Log On dialog box will appear;

enter the user name and password for the

account you want to use.

14. Internet Explorer 6 will automatically delete

temporary files, but only if you tell it to. Start the

browser, select Tools / Internet Options... and Advanced,

go down to the Security area and check the box to

Empty Temporary Internet Files folder

when browser is closed.

15. XP comes with a free Network Activity Light, just in

case you can't see the LEDs twinkle on your network

card. Right click on My Network Places on the

desktop, then select Properties. Right click on the

description for your LAN or dial-up connection,

select Properties, then check the Show icon in

notification area when connected box. You'll now see a

tiny network icon on the right of your task bar that

glimmers nicely during network traffic.

16. The Start Menu can be leisurely when it decides to

appear, but you can speed things along by changing

the registry entry HKEY_CURRENT_ USER/Control

Panel/Desktop/ MenuShowDelay from the default

400 to something a little snappier. Like 0.

17. You can rename loads of files at once in Windows

Explorer. Highlight a set of files in a window, then

right click on one and rename it. All the other files

will be renamed to that name, with individual

numbers in brackets to distinguish them. Also, in a

folder you can arrange icons in alphabetised groups

by View, Arrange Icon By... Show In Groups.

18. Windows Media Player will display the cover art for

albums as it plays the tracks -- if it found the picture

on the Internet when you copied the tracks from the

CD. If it didn't, or if you have lots of pre-WMP music files,

you can put your own copy of the cover art in the same

directory as the tracks. Just call it folder.jpg and

Windows Media Player will pick it up and display it.

19. Windows key + Break brings up the System

Properties dialogue box; Windows key + D brings

up the desktop; Windows key + Tab moves

through the taskbar buttons.

Cavity of the Moonlight / සඳ එලියේ ආවාට / Short Film

2011-05-17T11:08:00.001+05:30

Mennna Honda Short Film ekak. මෙන්න හොඳ කෙටි චිත්‍රපටයක්.

කැමරා අධ්‍යක්ෂණය - නඳුන් ඩී.ඩබ්. දිසානායක
Director of Photography - Nadun Dissanayake

අධ්‍යක්ෂනය - තරිඳු කංකානම්ගේ
A Film by - Tharindu Kankanamge

තිර රචනය - සමන් ප්‍රියනාත්
Story and Screenplay - Saman Priyanath

How "Star Wars" Changed the World

2011-05-11T06:59:00.002+05:30

The sky is blue, grass is green and Star Wars is influential. Three totally undeniable statements of fact. And while you need science to figure out exactly why the sky is blue or grass is green, to figure out why Star Wars is influential you can now simply look at this chart. Made back in 2005, Wired writer Michelle Devereaux created a highly detailed graphic showing how almost every single of Star Wars, from its technical advances, story points and even alumni, affected the world after it. So while we all know that Star Wars was influential, now we can trace those influences step by step.

Though this was designed by Michelle Devereaux in 2005 for Wired, we were alerted to it by the website Bit Rebels. Thanks to them both for creating and alerting us to this awesomeness. It’s important to realize though that, because this image is six years old, it’s already kind of dated. But we can kind of fill in the blanks after what’s on here. Check it out.

For me, the things that I knew about – but still blow my mind – are the computer applications. John Knoll created Photoshop, Editdroid spawned Avid and ILM birthed Pixar which was bought by Steve Jobs, who created Apple. To think that if George Lucas hadn’t created Star Wars, we wouldn’t have iPad, iPhones or iPods is an almost preposterous leap to make – but – there’s most certainly a small link. Then again, this chart also simplifies things to their most common denominator so other, non-Star Wars influences are missing. But still, it’s pretty impressive.

Article by Germain Lussier

බුදුන් සෙවනේ..

2011-04-10T22:01:00.000+05:30

සබඳ අපි "අලි" නොවෙමු,
උනුන් කාගෙන මැරෙන.....
"බුලත්" හපයොත් නොවෙමු,
එකම පවුලට වඳින.....//

බොල් "සීනුවක්" නොවෙමු,
දනන් ගොනුනට අඳින.....
සිහළ බොදුනුවෝ වෙමු,
හෙළය නින්දෙන් මුදන.....//

(මම මේක කාලෙකින් යාවත්කාලීන කලේ නැති නිසා උපුටාගන්නා ලද්දක් තමයි දැම්මේ. අයිතිය වෙන කෙනෙකු සතුය. මාගේ මේ ව්‍යායාමය හුදෙක් මාගේ බ්ලොගය මා විසින්ම සැකසීමට හා සිංහල භාෂාවෙන් නිකුත් කිරීමටයි)

Dress for Success with RED

2009-12-18T16:00:00.001+05:30

"When in doubt, wear RED." - Bill Blass

----------------------------------------------------------------------

While statistically unproven, not having to wear a suit and tie is possibly one of the top 3 reasons people go in to production.

Fashion designer Bill Blass once said, "When in doubt, wear RED." So while he may not appreciate my daily attire over the past 20 years but, he hopefully would appreciate my taste in cameras. In this case the RED ONE digital cinema camera.

As a boutique facility in a small market, Florida Production Group, Inc. has a fortunate history of adopting new and affordable technology to help give us a competitive and creative edge.

For many of us in these smaller markets one creative edge we've been chasing for years, that holy grail, has been the "film look". Specifically 35mm film. The same size film used on most feature length movies, episodic television series and high-end national commercials. HD cameras are of course now being used in these areas as well but, at the highest quality level many still consider film the king. Until now. The emperor is wearing new clothes and they are RED.

Oh how we want that depth of field, selective focus, beautiful uncompressed image, multiple levels of shadow detail and stops of latitude, and temporal motion only shooting film can deliver. Over the years we've rented 35 mm film cameras and at one point owned a nice Arri 16 mm film camera yet the cost associated with film production (rental fees, insurance, shipping, film processing, film-to-tape transfer, etc.) eclipsed the budgets of many of our customers.

RED camera tests. Click thumbnails for 2K images (compressed a bit)

We also had some success with film look software and 24p video cameras but those never really were as good as something that was truly captured on film. The culprits with current affordable video technology being data compression, small CCD imagers, and the lenses that typically come with nearly all mainstream SD and HD video cameras.

When the RED ONE was first announced it seemed too good to be true. Some thought it was a hoax, vaporware they claimed. An affordable camera that shoots and records both 2K and 4K data with all of the characteristics of film at a attractive price-point. With a resolution of 4096x1260, that's about 4x the pixels of 1920x1080 HD - roughly 8.8 million pixels for 4K vs. 2 million for 1080.

4K is the same digital intermediate size that recent high-end movies like the Spiderman series use for scanning the film for special effects work. The HD cameras used to shoot the new Star Wars episodes are 1080 HD, slightly less than 2K.

As a small facility owner I am thinking hey, if it's good enough for Peter Parker and better than Darth Vader, count me in because there's a new force swinging through the industry called RED.

Yeah I know, that was corny.

Preparing the clients
We were one of the early customers (#271 out of nearly 3000) to plop down a deposit many months ago. As the deposit was completely refundable it seemed like a safe bet, so I started prepping my clients.

One of the first questions they have for me is why do you need a 4K camera when all our spots end up on a small 4x3 SD dub for local broadcast?

I explain that it's much like shooting film for a national spot, or even a high-end local spot. The higher quality you start out with, the better it looks as it progresses through the production pipe line. With a 4K image we have tons more pixels to work with, tons more resolution and tons more color information.

I continue: if I can provide that initial huge boost in image acquisition quality I can provide you a noticeably better looking commercial, all without the high cost or concerns of shooting and processing film. Plus production ready, 4 megapixel stills can be pulled from the footage. So if you need one frame or more for a print piece, no problem.

The numbers
Besides the super-duper high resolution what other features make this camera so great my clients asked. Well how about a CMOS sensor bigger than super 35 mm. Our current HDV camera that makes nice images uses tiny 1/3" chips, our old SD camera used 2/3" chips, still small in comparison.

Best of all the big sensor or imager allows the direct use of PL mount 35mm cine prime and zoom lenses without any cumbersome adaptor. High end lenses from Zeiss and Cooke designed and built for real film cameras mount right up and RED has some great lenses of their own at breakthrough prices. The sensor size and film lenses contribute heavily to that dreamy, film style depth of field and selective focus capability we all desire.

RAW workflow
Also on the notable list is RAW data capture, just like high-end Canon and Nikon SLR still cameras. This enables a remarkable level of color fidelity and post manipulation. The RED viewfinder or LCD provides an adjustable creative look for preview on location but behind the scenes the camera is recording a RAW, unaltered image direct from the sensor.

Through RED software called RED ALERT and REDCINE running on a Mac or PC you can color grade the image until you are blue in the face, without affecting the original image.

Want a different white balance, click, done. Different exposure, click, done. Warmer, cooler, more contrast, darker, brighter, click, done.

Want it to look like Miami CSI, sure.

How about a Saving Private Ryan look, no problem.

All without degrading the image through processing. Once color graded, export it as your favorite flavor codec, HD or SD size, import in to your NLE and edit away. That's very simplified but it's the basic workflow.

Just like film, the camera shoots at 24 frames per second (it also does good old 29.97 fps too). And It can also run over cranked or under cranked allowing slow and fast motion recording, as well as time lapse.

RED ONE uses no tape. No moving parts means less wear and tear, no chance of tape drop-outs, etc. At the time we got ours the only media available was 8 gb compact flash cards at about $200 a pop. They hold approximately 5 minutes of 4K data and 20 minutes of 2K.

Like most things silicon, prices are expected to go down as sizes go up. In January 2008 the RED DRIVE started shipping. This is a 320 gb hard drive that slides in to a receiver on the battery cradle that attaches to the back of the camera on rails. Do the math to get storage times.

Bearing RED, not wearing it
Wow! This thing sounds great my customers exclaim. They are pumped, my small staff is pumped. This RED thing is going to be amazing but when will it be here?

Just a few days after Christmas 2007 our bet walked through the doors in the arms of our friendly FedEx man, strangely, not wearing Bill Blass.

Three good sized boxes containing our RED camera body, 18-50mm zoom lens, LCD, CF cards, batteries and charger and miscellaneous connectors, handles, and hardware. Our first tests in our studio were simple but the immediate observation was, look at that depth of field and color! We set up some car models and ironically a yellow Kodak film box for color as seen in the enclosed pics.

Click image for captured test image at 2K

It's worth noting that like many things with RED things are always changing and evolving, this includes the manual. While somewhat detailed and informative the manual is a .pdf work in progress as camera firmware and user software is tweaked, modified and updated.

The camera menu instructions in the version at the time we got the camera failed to mention early on that the menu joystick can be rotated to select options. It took a bit of re-reading and head scratching to figure it out. Once we did it became very clear how the menu structure is laid out. It's no more difficult than the menus on many current professional HD and HDV cameras.

RED at work
This is not a garden variety camera you pull out of a bag, turn on, white balance and quickly shoot with. It is very much a film style operation. For instance there are no built in neutral density filters like the filter wheel on a ENG/EFP camera; you need a matte box and a assortment of filters. You better know more about exposure than just hitting the auto button because this one doesn't have auto anything. It's all manual. In fact a good old light meter will come in very handy.

Because it's so high resolution, focus is extremely critical. Most EFP and ENG shooters have always focused their own cameras. The film method is to have the director of photography (DP) compose shots and run the camera while a assistant stands by actually focusing the lens based on focus marks on the lens barrel and estimating distance of subject matter and talent.

This certainly is not to say a focus puller is mandatory -- many of our jobs will be one and two man crews. The key is practice, practice, practice. The camera does have a handy 2X zoom for checking focus and it works very well. However, if you've got a big job with a lot on the line, hiring a camera assistant will be good insurance.

Our first paying job was a :30 spot for a local hospital. Kind of a slice of life.

(The images below are thumbnails. Click to enlarge.)

Now this was on a cold, very overcast day for the exteriors. Two person run-and-gun crew. Me shooting and pulling focus and my wonderful assistant Tabitha gripping. The 2X zoom in feature for checking focus worked great.

We decided to shoot 2K because being our first job we wanted to ensure we had enough media to last. Turns out we only used one 8 gb card out of five we have. It was on and off shooting from 8 am to about 1:30 pm and one battery was all we used.

The only noticeable change on location was the weight of the RED. Once loaded up with a battery, lcd, support rails, etc. it's a pretty hefty piece of equipment. I will say it appears to be built like a tank.

The wonderful thing about shooting RAW is the true power you have in post. The overcast conditions helped diffuse shadows but did nothing for color. Using RED ALERT I pulled the clips in to my MacBook Pro. Wow, how cool it was to add some color and life to a otherwise overcast day. Shots at a local park and beautiful Pensacola Beach just popped after some tweaking. All without degrading the image.

Since this was my first post session I experimented with work-flow. I found it easiest to export 2K tiffs or dpx files out of RED ALERT.

Brought those in to Adobe After Effects. Interpreted the clips as 23.976. Popped them in to a D1 720x486 23.976 comp. Scaled the clip to 38% to give me a nice letter box effect. Added 3:2 pulldown on the render out.

Imported in to a 720x486 8-bit SD Final Cut Pro timeline with our Kona card and edited away.

Yes, a few extra steps but nothing out of the ordinary. And the resulting images, even at SD really impressed the agency producer and the client.

True costs
From a cost stand point this set up is a bit more than the advertised price of $17,500 for the camera body. Once you factor in a RED lens or two, power, viewfinder, storage, etc. the cost quickly goes to around $30k or more. Now this is about the same amount we paid for a high-end SD camera a few years ago for far less technology and a fraction of the resolution.

There are some financial short cuts you can take. For example RED and 3rd parties have adaptors to use 35 mm still lenses you may already have. Or perhaps you have a set of film lenses available. Regardless this will be a bit more costly than the current crop of small HDV camcorders but, it will pay off big in far superior quality and marketability.

In regards to anything else at the higher end of the camera spectrum it's a no-brainer. Newer high-end HD camcorders from name manufacturers once fully loaded can cost well over $100k. And for that you get far less resolution than RED.

Interestingly when we opened in the mid 1980's we used to finance cameras and depreciate them on a 3-5 year schedule. As the desktop revolution and inexpensive HDV cameras came along we were buying a new camera to keep up with technology almost every 18 months. The less expensive cameras helped to mitigate the return on investment.

The future
RED being more costly at first seems daunting financially. However, this camera has some anti-obsolescence features built in. One is the resolution. It will be a while before we will need to regularly hand out HD dubs for our broadcast work in our area. It will be a very long time if ever before we hand over 2k or 4k files for a broadcast spot. So this super resolution ability future proofs premature camera replacement, enabling us to plan a longer life for it based on current technology.

RED has promised that as technology evolves it will be possible to send in your camera body to have the sensor or imager swapped out for the latest whiz-bang ultra sensor. It reminds me of older film cameras that were built like tanks and lasted 30 years. Every so often you would send them in for service, get them back and keep working with them.

Our work is mostly local and regional spots and a fair amount of corporate and business-to-business production. The office and edit suites are often hectic but there is always more and new exciting work over the horizon. The RED ONE camera gives us an edge to bring in more high-end business while providing our current customer base with quality we only dreamed of a few years ago.

For us RED has become not only a fashionable choice, but a necessary one enabling professional and creative growth

Shooting with RED: Testing, testing...

2009-12-18T15:55:00.001+05:30

As a RED forum leader here on the Cow, I bit my tongue and waited until I had actually had real hands on playtime with this, one of the most revolutionary tools that a modern filmmaker has at their disposal, before I added my commentary to the mix.

First let me say that this is not just a camera. It is more like an advanced imaging system and a prerequisite high-end workflow that is not for everyone. It is not an HVX200 killer by any stretch of the imagination and woe be to anyone still thinking that at this stage of the camera’s development. This is truly a professional production tool, designed to take digital moviemaking out of the stone age to the next level (or two) of digital production.

For a test like this, done during the first couple of weeks of the new year, I had access to about 50 or so #5mm caliber lenses, all with the ability to cover the 4520 pixel wide imager found on the RED camera, plus an additional 100 or so that could cover the image area defined for 2K (2048 pixels wide) with the RED branded PL to B4 lens mount adapter. (PL stands for "positive lock" - more about that in just a bit.)

Talk about a kid in a candy store! Choosing between the best of the best when it comes to 35mm PL mount glass, whether it be Arri Master Primes, Zeiss Digi-Primes and a full set of Cooke S4/i's or one of the 8 or 9 Optimo zooms that were available, was somewhat akin to deciding the best between your mistress or your girlfriend. I know a good many of the people at Cooke- including current president Les Vallen, so I decided to take their newest glass out for a test drive, and with every lens in the product line available to me, a simple choice was still difficult, since there is nothing like having over a million dollars of lenses to pick and choose from.

RED TERMS

QuickTime Proxy – an alias or symbolic link to the original file (and file format)

(QuickTime) Wrapper- a shell or wrapping around a incompatible file type to make it look and act like another video file type. (MXF and QuickTime Reference movies are the best example people know)

Debayer – the process of converting the CMOS image data from the RAW data state to something that can be read and handled as imagery

CF cards- Compact Flash media – most common for DSLRs, Red has adapted this format for their default internal acquisition medium.

DPX- digital picture exchange – still file format developed to handle film resolution files and the associated metadata (ie: TC, frames, reels etc). Tiff and Targa are other formats used to handle frame based file workflows.

2K – originally considered 2048 x 1566 pixels (anamorphic) or 2048x1152 as spherically corrected (normal to the eye) - RED uses the 2048 x1152 frame size for their 2K format. A 2K DPX conversion is approximately 11MB per frame

3K – a uniquely RED format it is 3072 pixels wide and is used to allow for higher frame rates with lesser loss of quality than working in RED 2K does.

4K – while there are a number of frame sizes I will stick to the RED 4520 x 2540 for the frame size. The 4K DPX file is approximately 36MB per frame

4:4:4 – an RGB file format for working with the highest quality files, the highest quality is delivered when using the RGB Log format.

Dual Link HDSDI- 2 bonded channels of HDSDI that are needed to deliver the high bandwidth of a 4:4:4 or RGB based workflow. By its nature the DL workflow is currently limited to mostly VFX and film production as it is too expensive for monitoring and requires too much storage for most common types of productions.

Getting set up

One thing to start, I have to admit it is incredibly well machined and put together. Assembly of the parts and the simplicity of its design make the camera feel like this is finely crafted tool that one should expect. While a tad heavier than I might expect, it is lighter than an F23, D20 or similar cameras. Basic setup and assembly are simple for someone familiar with this type of pro gear to do without reading the instructions.

Red's interface and controls are as straightforward as the camera itself is. I would recommend reading the manual for first time users so that you understand the basics of this camera’ operations and functions.

Being as much computer as camera, certain rules apply- first of which is understanding that the recording media (compact flash - called a CF card) needs to be ejected prior to removal, not unlike Panasonic's P2 and Sony’s SxS recording media. Second would also be that so far every upgrade to the camera has added or changed some of the functionality or working parameters.

Display

The camera's rear mounted internal display offers a simple way to navigate through the camera menus; in all honesty it is the only thing about the camera that does not scream elegance, in spite of the simplicity and usability -- it still needs an on off switch for the display's backlight.

The RED external viewfinder had not been delivered at the time I am writing this (March 2008). However, the external RED LCD was a suitable substitute for the time being. That screen gives the user a vast amount of information for menus, frame rate, frame size, battery usage, storage available and even a histogram is viewable if needed.

One odd note about the display output here in camera firmware build 13 - since the LCD and EVF both have different aspect ratios than the current HD preview output, it not currently possible to see the aforementioned navigation controls situated at the bottom of the screens when viewing via the HDSDI preview.

It was also not possible to have both the LCD and the HDSDI preview on at the same time. Annoying, but it is all but certain to be fixed within the next couple of builds of the camera software. That being said, everything about this camera is breaking the mold of what people can and should expect from the next generation of digital acquisition tools.

Connections

One of the most interesting things about the camera is the use of Mini BNC and Mini XLRs for the onboard connections. Originally designed for use internally on decks, telecine, scanners and other high-end devices, the mini connectors are not nearly as fragile as some people assume. Their use on the camera has allowed RED to keep the form factor and weight to a bare minimum and the included adapters for the mini connectors allow you to work with all existing BNC and XLR devices, such as monitors, scopes, LCDs etc. that are on the market.

RED users with no film camera experience are in for a surprise, as the default configuration of the camera currently allows for lenses to be mounted with the industry standard PL mount, same mount that is found on the vast majority of 16mm and 35mm film cameras. (PL refers to the “Positive Lock” mounting system standard Arri introduced, and now found on virtually all-modern film cameras, except those owned by Panavision).

While conventional SD, b-4 mount HD and still camera lenses can traditionally only be mounted one specific way, the PL mount allows the user to mount the lens at 90* increments, so that the lens and markings can be viewed at usable viewing angles by the assistant cameraman or focus puller normally used in productions using such top of the line camera gear.

Weight

The other thing that may surprise many users is the sheer weight, with the body only at somewhere about 15lb (6Kg). By the time you add mounting plates, rails, matte box, LCD and mounting arm, S35 lens, battery with bracket, and cabling to the external display, you are quickly well over 40 lbs. That requires a considerably heavier tripod/ fluid head combo or stronger back than many people are used to working with, but certainly close to normal for this class of camera. Funny how the people that think that this a such a “great buy” at $17.5 forget that a fully equipped camera will easily need support that costs in excess of the camera’s purchase price.

Shooting with RED

I did not have a RED drive for my initial testing, so I used the standard RED branded 8GB CF (compact flash) cards that allowed for approximately 4.5 minutes of recording time per card. New cards or those with the contents removed for archiving take about 15 secs to format in camera, and the camera automatically offers to format new media when it is inserted into the card slot.

In my initial testing only a couple of cards were used, and only once did that cause issues. Reformatting the cards in-camera did slow me down on one shot and that alone is enough of a reason to have more than a minimum number of cards on a shoot at any one time. I would base that number on 3 more than the number of cards you think you need for a days worth of shooting on your project.

Estimated Data Rates for the most commonly used Uncompressed HD formats

720p24 HD needs about 65 Megabytes per second
1080 24psf HD needs about 150 megabytes per second
1080i 29.97 HD needs about 175 megabytes per second
1080 4:4:4 @ 24fps needs about 220 Megabytes per second
2K (DPX @ 24fps) needs about 275 Megabytes per second
4K (DPX @ 24fps) needs about 1250 Megabytes per second

Production at this level can be very costly and any downtime waiting for transfers or formatting of a card needs to be done during breaks or set changes, not when you start to shoot. I would not go out and shoot with less than 10- 8 gig cards or a RED Drive.

This is one of the areas that the camera needs something now being found on many newer sets – a digital support person -- so I would recommend a data wrangler or DAS (data acquisition specialist) a new title suggested by the ASC.

While 4 minutes per card is rather short for many video shooters, film guys are accustomed to this length of “load,", ie: a100ft film magazine of 35mm film only lasts about that long. People whining about needing to record hours and hours at a time really need to understand that, with this camera, that kind of philosophy could create dangerous, suicidal problems when you get to post. Something that all of the “keep shooting, it’s only tape” people should take to heart.

At 4K resolution you can shoot at 23.98, 24 and 25 fps. The 2K format offers a little more flexibility, allowing you to shoot all of those frame rates from 1 to 76 fps for over and under cranking as well, thus allowing the user to alter the timebase of images being captured to speed up or slow down the intended motion – just as with a film camera. The aspect ratio settings on the camera itself leave little to argue about, you can shoot in 4K, 4K @2:1, 2K, and 2K at 2:1 aspect ratio.

Focus was the most critical thing I ran into working with RED #211. Even with experience with high-end cameras, my working knowledge of limitations using true S35 frame size became quickly apparent. Working at f4 with a150mm S4/i Cooke prime my depth of field was measured in scant millimeters, not inches, even when the subject was more than 12 feet away.

My second test shoot using a 50mm prime at f5.6 did finally give me something close to a 1” DoF when the subject was a scant meter from the front of the lens. The combo of my bifocals glasses and trying to focus on the LCD has created issues for many people, myself included; so video only shooters that are used to working on a flip out LCD beware. Lenses on cameras at this level have incredibly fine focus adjustment controls due to that limited DoF. Maintaining focus requires your continuous diligence, just as it would be in 35mm. This tool really wants and needs a real film-style crew to support a shoot.

Think full time focus puller whenever possible.

Techno sidebar: Cooke lenses

RED and Cooke teamed together on some ground breaking technology that is quietly taking hold in the VFX community as part of the tapeless / filmless revolution.

We are used to seeing image data with the current tapeless capture, but what is captured is limited. The Cooke S4/i lenses I chose for this test allow for the transfer of a mind-numbing amount of data to be recorded to your media: the RED - S4/i combo can add to the mix aperture, lens settings, serial number for tracking, DoF info, multiple programmed focus points, camera settings, gamma or output settings and any other number of other settings.

Having all of this data when the files are passed to the effects house can greatly ease the workload when compositing, since all of the necessary data has already been recorded on set. Cooke S4/i lenses can already do this with certain film cameras, recording this info every time the camera is triggered to capture.

Image processing

The preview images are stunning in spite of (or because of) their size. Images from the camera have a characteristic look, almost as if they came from a high-end digital still camera, but can be easily modified to take on any look you prefer. Use either the RED Alert software shot by shot on your Mac; the much more versatile and cross platform RED Cine software allows a greater range of tools, include bulk transcoding the native R3D camera files to NLE formats, more easily than anything but Assimilate’s (PC-only) Scratch.

Exposure with RED is actually straightforward when you take a couple of basic ideas into account. The REDCODE format is not accessible by the user, and anything you do in the camera when shooting is stored as data, and that is modifiable when you are heading to post. With ASA/ ISO settings from 50 – 2000 and a recommended setting of 320, the camera is prepared for a lot.

My experience was that I liked my exposures a little darker than others I was working with. Being the film shooter I started in this business as, I wanted to expose for the highlights and process for the shadows. It made a lot of sense to me once I got a good look at the REDCODE RAW files in their native state. Note too that you really do not gain from variations in the ISO rating of RED as you do with other cameras, as there is no appreciable decrease in overall noise when lowering that rating below 320.

As a filmmaking tool, the RED camera is worthy of the hype; it is without a doubt one of the most revolutionary tools that has beset digital filmmaking. While it is not the Swiss army knife of cameras that everyone assumed at its introduction, It is without a doubt one of the finest crated digital film replacement systems available.

With a little more effort in the development of the “beta” post production workflow I believe that RED will create a market that few of the “old line” camera companies could have ever imagined, especially since the big 3 camera companies were focusing on smaller and smaller imagers in conjunction with higher and higher levels of compression.

Red Digital Cinema should be thanked by every person in the HD and Digital market that strives for the highest quality in his or her production, since without them many, if not most filmmakers would never understand the true meaning of true quality in the image, or the nature of what tapeless acquisition is really all about.

Red Post Production (or, How do I get myself out of this 4K mess?)

While Red is a incredibly innovative product, the fact of the matter is that in 2007 less than a dozen films had any part of its post production workflow finished in 4K, While that number will easily quadruple in 2008, the post production workflow is the only part of the process that RED cannot control.

The movies we talk about at 4K had specific reasons. Spiderman 3 used 4K for effects shots. Black Dahlia used 4K for color correction and final image quality. While called “4K “, it is often joking referred to as “$K” , as much for the increased costs for working in something so specialized that even its use in Hollywood to this point in time is pretty rare.

I will continue the options for the RED Post workflow and discussion of the current camera and updates in the second half of this article, coming soon.

Exposing the RED: Perfect Exposure, Every Time

2009-12-18T15:50:00.000+05:30

TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW

The RED camera system uses a proprietary single chip 4K CMOS sensor called the MYSTERIUM. This sensor is the same size as 35mm film so it allows for use of 35mm lenses (PL, NIKON, CANON or IMS mount systems). It is similar to the sensors that are found in Digital SLR still cameras except that it captures at 24 or 30 frames per second, and when cropped to 2K windowed mode, can capture up to 120 frames per second.

The camera records to either RED DRIVE (320 gig proprietary raid drive) or to Compact Flash card (currently 16 or 8 GB). The RED records 4K raw data to these drives using a wavelet based compression scheme.

The big advantages of shooting RED?

35mm depth of field to your image.
A 4K (4096 pixel wide) image is recorded. (4 times the size of a 2k film scan)
The image is stored in a RAW format so as extraction algorithms improve, so does your footage.
Your looks are not “baked in” to the RAW files. They remain separate and may be changed at any point,

WHAT TO CONSIDER

RED is not HD. Nor is it film. It might be best described as a SUPER HIGH Definition digital cinema camera. I like to call it a portable 4K telecine machine myself. All the basic principles of photography apply to RED but I wanted to share some of what I have found, along with what others (who have really put the camera through its paces) have discovered in their testing.

One thing is for sure. It seems to be a blend of using what you know, seeing how it responds and coming up with the correct strategies for exposure.

Jack Mosor of PS production services Toronto recently technically supervised the five camera shoot of cinematographer Jon Leonetti’s, latest film, HYBRID, with six RED cameras on location in Saskatchewan, Canada. Jack has done extensive testing and response of the RED sensor under variable, lighting conditions, frame rates, lenses and multi camera shoots. His company embraced the RED, seeing it as a leap forward over HD and a bridge into the future of digital cinema.

The one thing Jack has noticed is the how well the RED emulates the film cameras they have in house. Actually feels it represents two camera’s”

“The RED is a full blown 24P film style camera, but the really nice thing is that it also shoots speed up to 120 FPS. That means on set it can double as your high speed camera and it records faster frame rates at 2K 3K and 4K resolutions. Everything with RED is film centric, so it was easy for us to bridge to digital. We were excited that we could use all of our existing glass with the RED and that the sensor could capture so much detail and latitude over the early HD camera’s.”

Because RED is digital, many of the digital rules apply. There is a hard floor for black and a hard ceiling for white and the sensor records linear data, unlike film, which records logarithmic data. That is why it's important to preserve highlights when shooting RED (if you want to see them) or you will “hard clip."

(Cow author and film compositor Pete O'Connell gives a great look at the differences between linear and logarithmic exposure in film and video, in an article here in the Cow library. He's speaking in the context of Cineon files, but the information applies to any kind of digital format as well.)

This is where RED differs from film. Film recorders capture data in a logarithmic color space, which creates a softer curve from the deep blacks through the midrange to the brightest highlights. The RED sensor captures linier data so a curve needs to be applied to have it mimic the response of film. How you expose will effect how “filimic” your image looks.

So, there are some differences. What we want to do in this article is help you understand how to get the most out of your RED sensor. We’ll talk about a few shooting situations and help guide you through the reasons you might expose the way you do. I’ve enlisted the help of a few DP’s Dylan Mcleod CSC, Gregor Hagey, Macgregor and RED’s Ted Schilowitz to help navigate this for you.

UPDATES

RED has recently introduced Build 16 of the camera firmware. This is significant because this build makes some firmware improvement to the camera’s imager and also introduced the REDspace color space. Many of the principles discussed in this article apply to Build 15 and Build 16 but some things are improved in BUILD 16.

It is important to note that RED has not changed the rating of the sensor. This remains constant at 320 ASA. It is also important to know that the RED camera’s sensor is also DAYLIGHT balanced at 5000 Kelvin. This is significant because it means that the camera prefers daylight sources, and will yield the sharpest images with daylight balanced sources like LED and daylight balanced fluorescent sources.

This is not to say that you can not shoot with RED in tungsten light, but you should always add some blue to at least one of your light sources to activate the blue channel in the sensor. This will help to reduce the overall noise of the image. For example you might use a quarter blue on the backlight and keep the key at a warmer color temperature.

Generally, I have found that all cameras with CCD chips perform better (slightly sharper images) under daylight lighting conditions. The RED is no exception.

In my own tests I have found that lighting with a mixture gives a nice feel of warmth and sharpness. I consistently rate 3200 Kelvin sources at about 3900 to 4300 Kelvin to warm up the image and reduce the amount of blue channel noise being recorded. This is a strategy I devised to have nice looking QuickTimes that could easily be adjusted or tweaked in a straight to video color correction session in order to maximize the quality out of a straight to video image. .

That is only one strategy being adapted, but there are some other tips that you might be interested in. Dylan Mcleod is a CSC DP who put the RED through it’s paces earlier this year while on a documentary that traversed the world and put him in many different shooting situations.

“I have noticed that RED has greater latitude than HD but not quite as much as film. I also find that highlights tend to clip in a more pleasing way with the RED. In HD it can really look bad! Of course film has a unique way of rolling of the shoulder that can’t quite be matched by HD or RED. However with RED it is possible to tweak your RAW images so you can get close by simulating a shoulder roll off with curves in either REDCINE or REDALERT.”

This is indeed one of the great advantages of shooting RED. The metadata is not baked in and you have the opportunity to extract the most out the image at the finishing stage. But it is still very important to preserve the highlights with RED. Many DPs therefore rate the camera at 400 500 or 640 ASA. This makes for a pleasant QT image, but also helps you to underexpose a bit (to help prevent clipping of the sensor).

RED’s Ted Schilowitz can confirm what DPs are finding, the RED is getting much more data that HD but is still about 2 stops less than film. Ted explains it this way.

“RED has a slightly different exposure index than today’s negatives that is weighted more into the shadows and the mid tones. So where as with today’s negatives, if you poll a bunch of DP’s and they are shooting primarily to go to telecine or some sort of digital output with their film neg, they tend to overexpose a little bit by their nature, their instinct is to have what we call a thick negative. They are going to open their stop a ¼, ½ or full stop OVER.

In the RED world you have to take that logic and sort of SKEW it a bit because it is a digital sensor. With every digital sensor the danger is that you blow out the highlights quicker than you do with film. If you learn to expose the camera properly it means exposing for what we call the sweet spot for the image. So you are exposing for your mid range and you are protecting your highlights.”

Gregor Hagey owns RED number 98 and has been shooting features and several tests on it for almost a year. The short film he DP’d -- “feel my pain”-- was one of the first in Canada to be printed to film.

“With Red and its' RAW image format the DSLR still photographer's approach is best. The most effective way to get the best picture when shooting a RAW image is to expose to the right. This means no matter what your final image will look like expose the shot so it's as close as comfortable to the right edge of the histogram. This gives the most detail and texture and least amount of noise to the picture no matter how dark the final image is.

The reason for this is that the RAW image is linear (as opposed to film, which is logarithmic). This means that for Red, out of 4096 brightness values available, the brightest stop has 2048 values, the 2nd brightest stop has 1024 brightness values, the 3rd brightest stop has 512 brightness values, the 4th brightest stop has 256 brightness values, the 5th brightest stop has 128 brightness values and so on.

As you can see most of the brightness values are in the top 2 stops, so the more information you can capture there will give you the most detail and least amount of noise in your picture.”

That means the best way to get the most useful pixels out of the RED sensor is to not let those pixel blow out to white, unless that is the look you are looking for. Traditionally in film you could “blow out the highlights” and recover them later. When you do this in a digital sensor you never get it back, those pixels are forever white. Ted confirms this.

“When you blow out the pixels on a digital sensor, you can’t get the image back, it’s just white and it is going to be white.”

Don’t freak out to much about over exposure. There is a lot of latitude in a RED image and there is plenty of room for recovery. You don’t really have to panic too much about blowing out pixels. This one of Dylan’s Mcleod’s experiences after his complete set of filters went missing.

“There were some situations where I would normally control the windows of an interior by putting a grad over them. Without my filters I had no choice but to let them blow – like right off the map – probably six or seven stops over. Only the best film stock would allow recovery of that kind of overexposure.

In hindsight, they look totally fine and natural blown out like that. I have learned not to be such a control freak over highlights.”

ONBOARD TOOLS

Dylan Mcleod used a combination of the RED’s onboard tools and in front of the lens filtration to control the hot spots that he go faced with in some tough situations.

“I found MacGregor’s idea that the camera should be rated at 500 ISO when you are worried about highlights and 100 ISO when you are worried about noisy blacks to be excellent advice.

“At the beginning of the shoot I was really careful about clipped highlights, but after viewing footage in REDCINE and playing with the ISO after the fact to see how much information could actually be pulled back from those highlights, I became less worried.

I generally would watch the stoplights and when all three channels were just clipping, I knew I would be okay.”

But there were some instances when Dylan had the time to really take control of the image too. During a RED seminar I was giving a DP asked me about using his set of chocolate filters with the RED. My response was that if you were looking for the color cast of that filter, it would be useful and it would definitely affect the way the camera is seeing color information. Perhaps a more useful approach would be the amount of ND that the filter is giving you. Even with the amount you can manipulate the image in post, it never hurts to have the favorite old tools at the ready.

“Aside from camera controls I also make extensive use of various types of graduated filters. From straight ND’s to “ovals,” I really like to stack them up to keep the image nicely controlled.”

The RED offers many digital tools to help you nail exposure. There are several assists build into the camera to help you along with your light meter. I still use an old dial-up light meter and it is a great tool, but I like to combine it with some of the tools built into the RED.

The image histogram is a great tool for anyone who is really comfortable with DSLR imaging, to help you understand where your exposure is. You generally want a nice wide histogram when you are exposing because this gives you the most amount of room to maneuver in post.

RGB Histogram at bottom, center.. Click image for larger.

Starving the sensor will result in having to push the image a fair bit and, unless that is the specific look you are going for, maybe not the optimum way to expose a digital sensor.

I use the histogram in conjunction with the RED stop lights, an RGB representation of which color channels are clipping. The highlight focus assist is also a great tool, because it gives you a monochrome image which is a really nice way to see the latitude of the scene.

Highlight Focus. Click image for larger.

Ted likes to use the SPOT meter along with the histogram. RED’s spot meter is always rated at 320 ASA (the sensor’s rating) and it gives a reading from one to 100 IRE anywhere in the frame. This is a nice way to check for the amount of latitude you are getting in the image.

Spot meter. Note IRE at bottom of frame. Click image for larger.

Dylan likes to use false color. When activated, this mode looks like you are looking through the eyes of The Predator from the Predator movie. It’s a zone color system superimposed over the image. If you are in the pink, you are overexposing the sensor.

“Now I find I approach things as I would with Build 15, but if I need to “open up” a bit for shadow detail I have a really easy way of quickly checking (via RAW VIEW and false color) how far I can go before the highlights are “really” gone.

“Make sure you understand what each of the various monitoring tools are showing you and you are well on your way to supreme exposure control.”

AESTHETICS

But what about image aesthetics? This is a very important point. We all have used various terms to describe motion picture images, perhaps the favorite being “filmic.” For ages we hated or loved the “video look”, but where does RED fit in? It’s a digital sensor, which technically makes it “video”, but with the compression schemes and good lighting techniques the RED images can be very filmic.

I have noticed that the RED rolls of the highlights more the way a film stock does. In REDSpace, the dark to shadow or highlight detail is more like film in how it blows out. The sensor itself captures linier data but it might be the wavelet compression that helps “draw” an image that feels right.

People have made the RED look like a tack sharp regular old video camera as well, so what is the trick to getting that “film look” with RED? Gregor Hagey:

“I don't know if there is a particular aesthetic to Red. It looks most like 35mm film, but not identical. It's a digital format that has a very organic look to it.”

Dylan Mcleod agrees that RED is its own thing:

“RED has its own unique look. Unlike film, it is grain less. And unlike HD, the ability to finely control depth of field really makes RED stand out. I love the high resolution images and regardless of the end format I will always want to shoot at the highest resolution available.”

But Ted gives some practical tips to get a more film looking image.

“Don’t be so worried about getting stuff in eighties and nineties (IRE) for the subject matter, get your flesh tones and your faces in the 40’s and 50’s, get you shadows in the 20’s and 30’s and get your highlights in the 70’s and eighties if you want them to be nice highlights. Use the tool as a creative tool. Know the where the range and know where the limitations are of the system and then use it to your best benefit.”

Perhaps the most important thing to do with the RED when you first get your hands on it is TEST. I can say that I did not take the RED out on any shoots without going over it with a fine-toothed comb. The menus are deep and the combination of settings and the language can be mesmerizing. RED has made a tool that is very customizable with access to ALL LEVELS of menu. There is no “safe mode” so how things are configured is very important. This is what makes testing so important. While it can be configured to be “run and gun,” the RED is a sophisticated tool, with many film-style dialogs. If you are not a DP who is used to this, it can be daunting.

Gregor Hagey does have some great advice for DPs test things out.

“Testing is extremely important. RED is only a year old. There is still much to discover about the format. The camera is also evolving every month with new firmware updates. The Red camera from October 2007 is not the same Red as today.”

One thing is for sure. The RED is not vaporware. It’s a professional filmmaking tool. For you video guys out there, embrace it. For you film guys, treat it like a new 320 ASA film stock. The RED marks a true beginning to the affordable digital cinema camera and I think anyone from Indies to seasoned filmmakers can find that exciting!

High Definition for the Road

2009-12-18T15:28:00.000+05:30

Article Focus:
Thanks to formats like DVCPro HD and HDV, High Definition can now be edited pretty much anywhere on just about any computer. Yeah, this is cool and you can really make your friends jealous just cutting away with your super slick laptop. But you know what’s really slick? Editing Uncompressed High Definition anywhere. How about an Uncompressed editing workstation in a 25” square box? No way? Way! Read on to find out about Wally’s Traveling Box of Mystery and Intrigue…..

Why Wally, why?

It all started during a discussion with a D.P. about how nice it would be to be able to capture footage from a Varicam via the HD-SDI output whenever shooting green screen material. For those who don’t know, the Varicam records in the compressed DVCPro HD codec, but the HD-SDI feed out of the camera is pristine, uncompressed 720p footage. So by recording direct from the camera and bypassing tape, you don’t get any compression, thus a perfectly clean key. Yes, you could rent a D5 deck to do the same, but have you seen the rental prices on those lately?

Well to test the theory I packed up my Medea Fibrechannel Array into its box and the G5 into its box and the Kona 2 Kbox into its box and the monitor into its box and then some cables into a bag and the computer accessories into another bag and….. well you get the picture. It was a lot of boxes and “stuff” which barely fit into the back of my vehicle. So I pondered a bit…… And then I thought a while…….. and then I watched my Bruce Springsteen concert DVD and it hit me. “I need a Road Case!”

You know, those big black road cases you see at every concert. Pop one open and presto, a 200 channel mixer appears ready to rock in a matter of minutes. What if I could do the same for high definition editing? Just pop open a case at any location and I’m editing in 10 minutes or less.

Plan once, uh, build twice.

I had the perfect plan, now I just had to execute it. The primary equipment in this system would be the Apple PowerMac G5, the Medea FCR2X Fibre Channel Array and the Kona 2 K-Box. For those who don’t know, the Apple G5 is too tall to mount horizontally so you’re pretty much stuck standing the thing up. The computer is approx. 21” tall so I’m thinking a nice 36” box which can flip open with some shelving and I’m good to go. I have a Honda CR-V so I figure the box should fit in there nicely.

I head on down to my local Guitar Center and find the perfect solution. A slant mixer rack from Odyssey that’s about 38” tall with a big flip open top that’s big enough to hold a computer monitor. Big door panels front and back to give easy access to the computer and drives inside. I purchase it and my father in-law and I flip it on its back and slide it into the truck. Did you get that? I said I flipped the case on its back to get it into my truck because it was too tall to fit standing up. My spidey senses should have been tingling at that point saying “danger danger” but I drove away blissfully happy.

On the way home we stopped off at a new Fry’s Electronics store. I was curious to see if they had a small LCD HDTV that might be a good field monitor. Certainly not something for critical color, but something that could be used for editing in the field and then all coloring would be done back in the main suites. What I found was the Sony MFM-HT75W. This multiformat monitor has 2 inputs for computer feeds (RGB & DVI) along with Component HD and Composite S-Video & Composite inputs. Very slick little monitor at a great price so my plan was to use the DVI input for the computer and the Component HD feed for the HD signal from the Kona 2.

Two weeks later I had modified the box into the perfect field editing workstation. It was all set up in the office, I took pictures of it and was ready to roll. So I called my wife down and said “Honey, help me put this into the truck, would ya?” Piece of cake, right? I mean, just roll it to the back of the truck and then flip it on its back and push. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It would be very inappropriate for me to divulge the words that came out of my mouth as we attempted to do this very simple task. See flipping over an EMPTY case was easy, but now add a heavy computer and very very heavy hard-drives along with shelves, a battery backup and more….. well let’s just say it was a very painful and ugly experience. The Odyssey case is currently occupying it’s own space in my garage. If anyone would like to purchase it, let me know. It was only used once…. really!

But I digress.

Round Two

So the first box looked cool, but there was no way I was going to manage this thing in a single case. I needed to break down the system into smaller units that I could lift myself into the truck and then simply stack up on location. So I headed back to Guitar Center to see my buddy Raz in the Pro Audio Department and we set to work putting together a modular rack system. First we found the Road Ready RRM8U slant mixer rack on the floor. Only 26” tall so it would fit vertically into my CR-V.

Next we looked for a rolling base but there wasn’t one on the floor that I liked. Then we found the ultimate base on the website. The Road Ready RR6WD rolling base unit with storage drawer. Oh yeah! It stands 17” tall bringing the overall height of the workstation to about 43” which is perfect for standing. And the best part? It has a pull out storage drawer that’s about 6” deep with plenty of room to hold the cables, keyboards, tape stock and computer accessories. At to that a third Road Ready Case for the Sony 17” monitor and I had three cases that would easily fit into the back of my vehicle which should be easier to lift. For good measure I added two wing shelves to hold the keyboard and monitor.

First off, the RRM8U is a slant mixer rack which has rack rails both up the front and across the top with the rails across the top slanted at an angle to make it easier for the operator to run the audio mixer. My plan (as with the first case) was to install the Fibrechannel array hanging down vertically in the back of the box with the Kona 2 K-Box right next to it. You do not want hard-drives hanging on an angle, so my first step was to remove the slanted top rails and modify them so they were perfectly flat across the top.

Kona 2 K-box (foreground) and Medea FCR2X FibreChannel Array mounted in the rear of the RRM8U. The Sony MFM-HT75W sits on the shelf at the top of the photo.

This worked out beautifully and gave me plenty of room in front of the drives to set the monitor shelf.

What am I doing?

With a box this small, the only way to fit the G5 in there was to mount it horizontally. There’s only one way to do that…. hacksaw. I found Marathon Computers on the internet as the only company selling a horizontal G5 rack mount and they had very good instructions on how to cut the handles off the machine. It all sounded so simple, have a good sharp blade, face the teeth backwards, cut on the backstroke and file off the edges nice and clean. Unfortunately when the unit arrived, I realized it was too deep for the travel case, it’s designed for a full size stand up rack unit. But I already had the hacksaw, file and instructions so……

Click on the graphic below to view larger image

G5 Dual 2.0 prepped and ready for cosmetic surgery.

The instructions from Marathon are quite good and I love their tongue-in-cheek suggestion for the “ultimate” tool to remove the handles, a chainsaw. They do request a video from the person who attempts this, but as this was going to be a working computer, I decided to stick with a standard hacksaw. I considered a powered jig-saw but I was afraid that vibration from the tool could damage some internal parts. Obviously, you need to cover all the vents and have a vacuum with one of those crevice attachments handy.

As I made the first pull with the hacksaw I have to admit, my first thought was “What the heck am I doing! This is a very expensive computer and I’m cutting it with a hacksaw!” It was pretty scary at that point. But then I remembered a particular crash during a long render that caused me to work late into the night. The second cut felt a bit better. Then I remembered more crashes over the past four years with various PowerMacs and suddenly it became fun to cut away at the machine.

The key to doing this step well is to really take your time in both the prep and the cutting. About every 10 cuts I used the vacuum to clean up the shavings. Approx. 1 hour after I started prepping the machine, I had a handle free G5 ready for horizontal installation.

Click on the graphic below to view larger image

Look ma, no handles!

The Final Touches.

Now like I mentioned earlier, the Marathon rack mount unit was too deep for this particular installation, but I found that the G5 fit snugly inside the case and really could not move in any direction once it was sitting in there. But obviously you don’t want a computer sitting right on the floor of a case because it could get rattled pretty good when rolling the case on location. So I went down to my local hardware store and picked up four large round doorstops. They’re about 2” across with a large heavy duty rubber ring that perfectly hold up the G5 in the case and provide shock absorption. They also raised the G5 to the perfect height to allow the DVD drive to open cleanly.

There’s another huge advantage to the G5 simply resting in the case rather than being actually rack mounted. Remember the whole weight thing from my first case? Well, the G5 and the Medea FCR2X in the box together still require that two people be present to lift the case. But if I find myself alone, I simply slide the G5 out of the case, lift the case into the truck, then slide the G5 back into the case. Then I reverse the process on location if need be. So I can truly move this system to a location by myself.

All cables, the keyboard & mouse, and even raw tape stock fit neatly into the rolling base for ease of transport. Since the Sony accepts RCA inputs and the Kona 2 has standard BNC connections, I ordered a set of cables with BNC on one end and RCA on the other end. This way I never have to worry about having adapters on location, it’s all built into the cables. The K-Box does have RCA audio outputs so those connect direct to the monitor. Going with Fibrechannel means that I have two very thin cables to connect between the G5 and the FCR2X which is a lot nicer than dealing with thick SCSI cables. A second shelf wing out front holds the keyboard and mouse.

All in all, it’s about 10 minutes from the time I get the cases into position until the system is fired up and ready to edit.

Click on the graphics below to view larger images


Finished system ready for editing.

Click on the graphics below to view larger images


The Road Ready RR6WD rolling base offers a nice hidden storage compartment.

On the Road, Not in the Air.

Now before you go out and try to build this thing yourself, know that this is a road traveling case only. I would never put this on a plane or ship it using a commercial carrier. With the rough treatment of a commercial shipping companies or air service, the components would be destroyed. There are specific air travel cases that feature a ton of shock absorption that should protect the components, but even then, I’m not sure I would ever actually ship something like this. No, this system was specifically built to travel in a personal vehicle and preferably with me driving.

Though originally designed with green screen work in mind, the system will most likely also head out to film locations, corporate conventions and even to live broadcast locations. DV to 10bit HD in a box. Now that’s pretty cool!

Taking Sony's HDV Camera to the Outer Limits of Performance

2009-12-18T15:23:00.001+05:30

Article Focus:
Sony has made a big splash in the video world with the release of their HDV camcorder the HVR-Z1U. By itself, it is capable of images that will amaze even the most jaded video professional. But as with all things, there's always room for improvement. By not having a microphone or wide angle supplied, you can choose better components that will enhance the performance of an already incredible camera. In this article, CreativeCOW.net contributing editor Jim Harvey walks CreativeCOW members through what they need to build the Ultimate Z1U set up.

Taking Sony's HDV camera to the outer limits of performance.

Sony has made a big splash in the video world with the release of their HDV camcorder the HVR-Z1U. By itself, it is capable of images that will amaze even the most jaded video professional. But as with all things, there's always room for improvement. Sony's list price of $5995.00 (street price about a thousand less) necessitated the omission of a few items that might have been available had it been a higher priced ticket.

Notably, the Z1U comes with dual XLR inputs but no microphone other than the built-in onboard. Owners of PD-150/170 cameras scratched their heads wondering what Sony was thinking. Additionally, Sony chose to make a wide angle lens an option rather than including it with the camera package ala PD170's. At first blush, this might seem like a dumb move on Sony's part (okay, maybe not dumb, but certainly cheap), but ultimately, it may be a blessing in disguise.

By not having a microphone or wide angle supplied, you can choose better components that will enhance the performance of an already incredible camera. You're not locked in to the Sony glass or audio, which is a good thing. The beauty of the modular approach is that you can assemble your accessories in such a way as to maximize your investment while keeping your costs at a reasonable level. We're going to show you how to do just that.

While the camera is ready to make mind blowing images out of the box, we can trick it out to the point that one would be hard pressed to tell the difference between the Z1U images and those from cameras costing 10 to 20 times as much. Think I'm all soft in the head? Read on my friends as we construct the Ultimate Z1U.

Support your local camera

Before we add any accessories we have to give ourselves a stable platform from which to create our fabulous images. While we may from time to time do the handheld shuffle, our most demanding images are going to need the support of a tripod. Not just any tripod mind you, we want the best stability and the smoothest fluid head that we can find. We also don't want to spend a fortune to get our rock solid mount.

Rushing to our rescue is MILLER with their DS10 fluid head and Solo Carbon Fiber legs. This setup is right out of your dreams. Silky smooth pans and tilts, a variable counterbalance system that allow you to set the head for the exact balance required regardless of what you hang off the camera, be it Matte Boxes, Onboard lights, Microphones or other accessories, the Miller DS10 will handle it all without a whimper.

Fig. 1: Miller's DS10 Head coupled with their Solo Tripod is a rock solid performer.

This is one of, if not THE coolest tripods that I've ever worked with. It reminds me of my beloved old Gitzo, only at about a 3rd of the weight. You can see from the photos, that not only can we get up and above the crowd, we can also dispense with the need for a Hi-Hat for our low shots. This tripod system gets down!

Fig. 2: Low or High, the Miller SOLO has you covered

Miller has tricked this head out so that even the most picky of us can be satisfied that we have the stability that we need with an ease of use that makes it all just come together wonderfully.

A 75MM bowl is beefy enough to handle any DV camera that you might be using. (If you are shooting with a full size DV camera the DS10 / DS20 will most likely be the way you want to go). For our HDV Sony, the DS10 / DS20 is more than adequate to support all of our kit.

The legs are carbon fiber with locking rings and a very clever leg lock system. (See illustration). Setup is a breeze and the whole setup weighs in at less than 10 lbs. Just looking at the DS10 / DS20 gives you the confidence that this is a robust unit that isn't playing any games. No posers here. This is the real deal.

Miller Solo with DS10 / DS20 Head: Suggested List $1299.00

I Can't Hear You!

Fig. 3: Sennheiser Evolution Series Wireless mics deliver excellent audio at affordable prices.

Your video is only as good as your audio (at least that's what the audio guys say). Sure if you shoot great video and lousy audio you can always do the Audio Dub in post with a soundtrack from somewhere else. But that won't fly if you're doing an interview or the sound is directly connected to what's happening on screen. The onboard mic will get audio onto the tape, but it clearly won't be the kind of audio that you'd want your mother to hear. An XLR mic is going to be your salvation. Whether you mount it in the onboard camera holder or hang it on a boom pole, a high quality External Mic is going to make your audio sound the way you want it to.

Our pick for your XLR Mic is the Sennheiser ME66/K6. The mic has the ability to take advantage of the Phantom power that the Z1U delivers. Its performance is legendary and professional audio guys swear by it (not at it). Equally at home on the end of a boom pole this mic is just a solid choice for your audio needs. For a significantly smaller amount of money, the Beyerdynamic MCE 86II delivers very nice audio for about half the price of the Sennheiser. You need to listen to each and make your decision based on your ears (or the ears of someone you trust like your sound person).

Sennheiser ME66/K6 $450.00

Look MA! No Wires!

For wireless audio we can fairly well rely on the excellence of Lectrosonics which will set you back a decent amount of lunch money. There are, however, some other alternatives that will deliver excellent audio at a more affordable price. My personal favorite is the Sennheiser Evolution series of wireless. Here are the EW100's that I use from Professional Sound Inc. in New York. These Sennheisers are extremely versatile and allow you to scan for available frequencies. They have a range that has to be seen/heard to be believed and they have never failed me on a job. Transmitter and Receiver with a Lav and a mike unit for a handheld will run you right around $500.00. For the audio that this system delivers, it's well worth the investment. If you don't need the handheld transmitter, you can get the bodypack units with lave for around $350.00, which is a great deal, anyway you look at it.

Fig. 4: The Evolution Wireless system offers flexibility in a compact package

We're looking to build the ultimate Z1U, which does not necessarily mean the most expensive Z1U. Another nice alternative is the compact AIRLINE series of wireless mics from Samson. The AIRLINE series weighs in at just under 4ozs. and transmits extremely clean audio. They claim a range of 35 feet, but I've successfully used them outdoors line of sight to over 150'. While they aren't in the same league as the Senn's or Lectro's, at under $400.00 with a handheld module, they are a real bargain.

Fig. 5: Samson Airline Wireless system is a capable no frills unit.

Now that we have all this great audio capability, we need a way to monitor it. Coming back with audio that's too hot, clipped or distorted isn't an option for us. A good set of headphones is a must. If we're using a soundman, the audio is their department, but again, most people are wearing two hats when they shoot. So for our article, we're going to need the phones. Sony gets the nod here with a great pair of phones MDR-V700. These are full size phones with great noise rejection.

Can you see me?

Fig. 7: .7X Wide-angle Lens from 16x9 Inc. gives 30% wider coverage than the stock Sony Lens.

The Carl Zeiss Vario Sonnar lens that Sony has stuck to the front of the Z1U is an awesome piece of glass for its niche. It's a tad too short on the wide side, but that's why they put threads on the front of it. All of the hand held cameras have some type of add-on wide-angle lens. Some cameras come with one, while others need to have a wide angle purchased. The Z1U falls into the latter category, which is a good thing for you, the new owner.

The Stock Sony Wide Angle lens is only a .8X, which is barely perceptible when you screw it on the front of the Camera. It's hard to justify the added expense for so little gain. However, a company by the name of 16x9 Inc. has introduced a wide-angle lens for the Z1U that will deliver .7X with crystal clarity that also gives you the ability to zoom through. That's a 30% increase in area with no image degradation. They have cleverly made the rear 72mm screw in so that it will attach directly to the front of the Z1U while the front of the lens also has threads so that you can attach filters, stone guards etc. With the proper adapter, you can also use this wide angle with the Chrosziel Matte box.

16X9 .7X wide angle Lens $707.00 (Street Price around $650.00)

Fig.8: The 16x9 Wide Angle shows 30% more area than the standard lens.

The Hoover Dam is an amazing piece of human engineering. What better place to test another marvelous piece of Human Engineering the Sony Z1U. Everything at Hoover dam is immense. Hard to get it all in with the standard Zeiss Lens. However, by using the wide-angle lens from 16x9, I managed to capture a sense of just how enormous the whole facility really is.

Eyaah! My Eyes!

Fig. 9: Bebob's Lux light is a lightweight onboard light source with a lot of nice features.

HDV is light demanding. You need good light to bring out all the potential of this new format. While we'd all like to have a full professional light kit at our disposal, for the most part, “Run and Gunners” don't usually have that luxury. A capable on-camera light is something that needs to be addressed. While there are old school standards out there, a camera as advanced and ground breaking as the Z1U really deserves something a little more 21st century.

The Bebob Lux is our choice for onboard lumens. It's light, sturdy, and can be powered with an external battery so that you don't eat up your camera's power supply. (Switronix Inc. makes a great NP1 adapter) Drop a 20W bulb into it and some good diffusion with a set of barndoors and you have a very usable light setup that will help to bring out the beauty of the HDV image. Keep the light on wide rather than spot to avoid that “Nightly News Head Burn” look. You want your subject to appear natural and pleasingly lit rather than looking as if they are under investigation. The Lux is very light, being made from a composite material and doesn't add any significant weight to the camera. It can also be used directly with the COCO system (see below) for a completely modular solution to your lighting needs.

Onboard lighting has always been a sore spot for me. I dislike using on-boards for the simple reason that they are either too much or too little. While using the Lux, I found it added just the right amount of light for those situations where ambient wasn't enough. It was light enough that I never noticed it, and it's built in dichroic filters made matching light a snap.

The Heart of the System

Fig. 10: Chrosziel's Matte box enables you to control your light while also allowing
the use of wide-angle lenses.

To make those beautiful HDV images we've mentioned that you need light. Now at the other end of the scale, you can have too much light, light in the wrong place, or stray light that will conspire to ruin your footage or make it look like it came from a cheapo camera. That's almost a mortal sin with a camera this good. If you can't control your light, you're just spinning your wheels and you'll deliver mediocre footage that will make you question your purchase. As we all know, there is nothing worse than thinking you've made a horrible mistake.

Again, we look to 16X9 Inc. for help. They are the supplier for Chrosziel products, manufacturers of possibly the finest matte boxes and sunshades on the planet. Chrosziel stepped up to the plate with a mattebox design specifically for the Z1U. By taking advantage of the flexibility of this mattebox, you will be able to completely control the light that the camera sees. If you control the light, you control the image and that after all is what great looking video is all about. 16x9's Chrosziel Mattebox controls the light entering and striking the lens more efficiently than the stock lens hood.

The French Flag (the light shield above the lens) can be adjusted in order to block out stray or unwanted light. Adding Side wings completes the mattebox and gives the operator total control over the light striking the CCD. It also allows the use of professional quality filters. One filter stage rotates allowing the use of special effect filters and the second filter stage is stationary for use with conventional filters or grads. The mattebox also comes with a true 16x9 mask that again controls perfectly, the light that is allowed into the lens. With a Mattebox, you determine how the image is created, not chance or mother nature.

Shooting with no filtration.

Shooting with a 4x4 Coral filter

No filter

Altering the mood

Unfortunately, I was unable to get a larger variety of 4x4 / 4 x 5.6 filters to shoot some comparisons. Using the matte box makes filter changes a simple matter of pulling out one holder and inserting the next one. Corals, Grads, Neutral Density, (great for reducing light and altering your depth of field) No unscrewing filters and juggling around. The ease with which you can add filtration when you're using a matte box is another strong reason to add one to your kit.

IT'S ALL A BLUR TO ME

Fig. 11: A follow focus will enable you to maintain the precise focus that HDV demands.

Shooting with a camera that has 4.5 times the resolution of anything in its class is a real eye opener. It can also be a real eyestrain if you don't get your focus right on the money. With Regular DV tiny focus aberrations can be tolerated with little consequence. Not so with HDV. If you're not right on the money, everyone is going to know about it. While the auto focus on the Z1U is one of the best in the business, most professional shooters opt for manual focus. The manual focus ring on the Z1U is a perpetual ring (it doesn't have stops, it just keeps rotating round and round). It's not a TRUE manual focus either. The ring is connected to a servo system that moves the elements.

I've found that while manual focusing this camera, I tend to occasionally bump the ring with a finger when hand holding. It's a problem that can be overcome by consciously being aware of where your hands are at all times. On a tripod, that's not too much of a problem. But to really get all the benefit of manual focus, you should be equipped with a professional follow focus or focus controller. Once again, 16X9 Inc. has the solution for you. Their focus control integrates perfectly with the Chrosziel Mattebox system. Mounted on the support rods that hold the Mattebox in place, the focus control is connected to the servo ring of the camera with a gear arrangement. There is just the right amount of resistance in the control knob to make your image focus more accurate.

Used in conjunction with the expanded focus button on the camera (pressing expanded focus enlarges the image 2X momentarily so that you can pull the exact focus that you need), you can be completely precise and always have perfectly focused shots. Another plus of using a focus control is the ability to mark focus points on the white plastic ring with a grease pencil. This is the way focusing is done on a film camera and it translates perfectly to the Z1U. Focus your first shot and mark the ring. Move to shot two, mark the ring again and so on. You can have several focus points marked on the ring at any time which gives you the latitude for multiple focus pulls. (Some DP's like to mark the ring in different colors so that no one gets confused, Red is shot 1, blue shot 2 black shot 3 etc.).

The Z1U has a built in “shot box” but it needs to be programmed and can only be used for one shot at a time. Using a Focus Controller allows more versatility and will prevent those unexpected bumps of the servo ring at the least opportune moment.

Fig.12: The Follow Focus is a “Must Have” for serious work with this camera.

Power to the People

Fig. 13: Bebob's Coco attachment moves the battery outboard and give the user two power taps.

An interesting accessory that is currently available is the Bebob Coco battery adapter and light package. The Coco mounts the regular Sony battery in an offset manner, which allows for the inclusion of a power tap to run a small onboard light (See the section on the Lux Light above). This is a nice system when coupled with the Bebob Lux onboard light.

There are some questions as to battery life with this setup as you are taking a 7.2V battery and bumping it to 12V. This naturally is going to effect runtimes and some people feel that this puts an undue strain on the battery itself. In my working with the unit, I did find that run times were diminished fairly dramatically. A FP960 battery will easily run the Z1U for over 4 hours. When used with the Coco, the run time was reduced to about 65 - 75 minutes depending on the battery type (960/970).

However, the convenience of having that extremely lightweight light onboard outweighs the disadvantage of diminished run times. Switronix also has a battery/light solution that will be available for the Z1U camera. Contact the manufacturer for more details (at the end of the article).

Building a Modern Professional Editing Room

2009-12-18T15:15:00.000+05:30

Boy, things sure have changed. Back in the Stone Age, we had linear edit suites that cost anywhere from $250,000 to $1,000,000 - yes, one million dollars (and more) - to build one of these rooms. When the AVID came along, it cost a "measly" $80,000. The response? All those linear editors said "What a piece of junk!" Those same linear editors have either adapted to nonlinear editing systems, or have become unemployed.

It's easy to see that prices have come down since then but, if you're going to build a truly professional modern edit suite, maybe not as far as you think.

Pick your editing system, any system. You will still need "all the stuff" to make an editing system really work - well, if you want to be a professional, anyway.

This is one of the fallacies of the infamous Apple Computer ad for Final Cut Pro. Yeah, the one where they said that "The $50,000 editing system, now just $995." As we all know, $995 got you a CD with Final Cut Pro software on it – and you need one hell of a lot more to build a professional editing room than a box of software.

STORAGE

Choosing the right storage is very important in building a professional editing system/suite. I'm always amazed when I see people going out and buying one of these modern editing systems, thinking that they can record their HD video images right on the internal hard drive of their computer. Not!

If you think you are going to store it on your computer's internal hard drive, you're kidding yourself. You need disk drives - and lots of them! You have lots of video to edit and store, and that media has to go somewhere. And it needs to go there fast!

There are lots of choices out there today – Fibre Channel, SCSI, Firewire 800, Firewire 400, and SATA drives. Lots of companies make this stuff. It can become very confusing to decide which disk drives are the right ones for you.

If you are working with little DV cameras, then inexpensive Firewire 400 drives may work just fine for you. But if you are working in Hi Def, you may need the "big mama" drives, with terabytes of storage.

Products like the Apple Xserve RAID were one of the early "big mama" disk drives. It's a fibre channel solution – it's terrific, but it's really expensive. Recently, new technology from companies like Hitachi and Seagate have allowed for low-cost SATA drives that let us capture even Hi Def video right to these drives at very inexpensive prices.

Companies like CalDigit, GTech and Sonnet make SATA arrays that allow us to digitize almost anything (ok, no almost about it - they'll handle anything) - without breaking the bank.

This is not to say that SCSI and Fibre Channel products from companies like HUGE Systems (now Ciprico), Medea and Apple are not fantastic – they certainly are – they just cost more money.

MONITORS

If you think storage is a controversial subject, just ask someone's opinion about video monitoring.

Recently, many manufacturers have decided to stop manufacturing CRT (glass) TV monitors, leaving us with LCD and plasma displays to choose from. Many people hate plasma and LCD screens, and cry for their old CRT monitors. Purists like me still miss the days of CRT monitors, where standard-def signals would look just as good as HD signals.

Some of those who still own glass CRT monitors are hanging onto them for dear life, and others are scrambling to find good condition used ones on eBay. Still others, who demand only the best, are buying the last of Sony's BVM series inventory, at a measly $35,000 each.

Some companies, like Sony and Panasonic, are making LCD monitors specifically for the professional video market. They have features that allow us to put analog composite, component, and serial digital, as well as Hi Def signals into these TV monitors.

Other computer companies, like Hewlett Packard, Apple, and Dell, are making terrific computer monitors that can be adapted to accept professional video signals. Both AJA and Blackmagic Design make converters that will convert a SDI or HD-SDI video signal to DVI - the standard used by these computer monitors - so that we can observe the video signal on an inexpensive computer monitor.

There are other companies that make competing products, such as Convergent Design, Gefen and Doremi. They also make wonderful HD-SDI to DVI converter boxes.

It would be great if Final Cut, AVID and others had good quality waveform monitors and vectorscopes built-in - They don't. they suck, really suck...

HEREIN LIES THE RUB...

Here's where it gets really controversial. Back in the Stone Age - you know, last year - we would discuss putting up bars for our CRT monitors, using PLUGE to adjust brightness, switch to blue-only to adjust phase and hue. We might have even discussed adjusting the bias on the guns.

But the world has changed!

There isn't any blue-only on Apple Cinema displays or HP 2335, and calibration software is virtually non-existent. Today, you take the LCD monitor out of the box, and plug it in, and you will probably get a picture - but with no adjustments.

Now, this will change as companies like Teranex start to promote their $8000 Clear View monitor. Maybe others.

This is one area where, if you spend right the first time, you won't need much extra stuff. Spend right.

SCOPES

The last section says that if you have a really good monitor, you can edit with it, color correct, whatever. While you work. That's not talking about getting your work ready for output. For that, you need scopes.

Boy, it would be great if Final Cut Pro, AVID and the others had good quality waveform monitors and vectorscopes built right into their software - but they don't. They suck. They really suck.

So you either do the best you can, or you spend a lot of money buying external waveform monitors and vectorscopes to check your levels. There are lots of choices out there from Tektronix, Leader, Harris (Videotek), Astro Systems, and Hamlet, but they all have one thing in common - they are all expensive - especially if you want SDI or HDSDI monitoring.

One day, someone will come out with an inexpensive software scope, and we'll look back on this and laugh. Unfortunately, this is not that day. Until then, if you want to accurately check your levels for broadcast standards, you're going to spend a lot of money for a scope. And if you're a pro, you do want to accurately check your levels, so don't even think about skipping this.

AUDIO

OK, you need a set of speakers. And guess what – you ain't gonna be using the 2" speaker inside your MAC. PC users, those Creative Labs thingies ain't gonna work either. Your audio will be out of sync, and you can't tell what is going on, and it's gonna sound like crap.

NO, you can't just go out and get a set of powered speakers and plug it into the Audio Output mini jack on the back of your PC or MAC. You must must must monitor the audio from the output of your AVID electronics, or FCP or Premiere Pro electronics (from AJA, Blackmagic, Matrox or whomever).

MIXING UP SOME CONTROVERSY

Now, for some more of the "controversial" part...

You need a mixer.

Many reading this are saying "No way! I don't need no stinking mixer!" Well, this can become a long drawn out topic - but after it's all said and done - you need some way of selecting what you want to monitor, and you need some way to adjust your volume.

If you are using analog audio sources, you need some way of raising and lowering these levels Even if you use embedded digital audio, you need to raise and lower your volume, and if you need to dump out to a dreaded VHS machine, you need to attenuate (lower) those levels, or you will get distortion.

With the advent of Chinese manufacturing, great mixers can be purchased for between $100 and $300 dollars, so there is no financial excuse not to get one. And for the truly stubborn, audio selectors with a volume knob, like the Mackie Big Knob, is a great substitute for a mixer. Psssst – it's really a mixer in disguise.

BLACK BURST GENERATOR

It's funny how the least expensive part of the system is the one item that many editors simply refuse to purchase, because they don't understand its purpose.

Professional video equipment, especially professional VTRs, are designed to operate with a "sync signal" run into them. But countless editors refuse to buy the little black burst generators that makes these machines run properly.

Some modern VTRs can reference to the incoming digital video signal, but this is not always the case. With the low cost of color black generators, it's just nuts not to buy one for a professional video editing system.

HOW THE BLACK BURST GENERATOR WORKS...

From the early days of professional video, sync generators have been required to synchronize separate pieces of equipment, so they all run locked together at exactly the same frame rate.

In the United States, a modern sync generator uses a color black signal, which runs at 29.97 frames per second. You take this color black signal out of your sync generator (or black burst generator, it's the same thing) and stick these signals into the sync inputs, reference inputs, or genlock inputs of your equipment. Various manufacturers use different names but they all indicate the same thing.

With this reference signal, everything locks up just fine and dandy. You don't get drifting, you don't get lines running through your picture, and you don't have lots of lights flashing on your VTRs.

BUT WAIT! - THERE'S MORE!

Oh my! This is getting really expensive - first buying a PC and a piece of software, and now there is all this other stuff. But wait! There's more!

ROUTING & PATCH BAYS

You are lucky if you have one tape machine and it's all you need. You plug your cables into your capture card, and away you go. But this is not common for most editors.

You have Beta VTR, a DV VTR, a VHS machine for quick dubs, a DVD Recorder, and now an HDV VTR, an XDCAM HD VTR, a DVCProHD VTR, - and more is on its way.

How on earth do you get all this stuff into a single set of inputs on your video capture card in your edit system?

VIDEO PATCH BAYS

The least expensive way to do this is with a video patch bay. A patch bay allows you to hook up all the inputs and outputs of your equipment, so when you want to go out of machine A, into machine B, you just stick a patch cord in the patch bay - like an old fashioned telephone switchboard - and it's done!

So when it's time to choose the DV VTR instead of the Beta VTR, a few patch cords is all it takes - instead of crawling around on the floor with a flashlight, reconnecting cables to the different machines.

Isn't there an easier way? Sure there is.

ROUTING SWITCHERS

Routing switchers can be expensive. People see ads for routers that cost $1500, and say "I am just going to push a button, instead of doing all this stupid patching." They soon realize that modern video systems require more than composite video. Modern systems required different signal paths, for analog composite, analog component, Serial Digital, and HD Serial Digital.

You need different routers, or expensive multi-level routers, to switch and route all of these signals around. This stuff winds up costing more than the tape machines, and people get discouraged when they discover this.

Your audio can go to an audio patch bay, but one of the wonderful uses of an audio mixer, is that it too can route analog signals around from one machine to another - simply by raising the faders on the mixer. So even if you hate mixers for adjusting levels, it is an inexpensive way to route audio signals around your edit room.

Modern digital tape machines that use SDI or HD-SDI use embedded audio, so the audio will travel along with the video signal. If you use a video patch bay, or a SDI or HD-SDI router, the digital audio will travel along with the video signal.

POWER

Maybe you need a UPS (uninterruptible power supply)? Do you need a surge suppressor? Do you need something like a line conditioner to clean up the "dirty" power coming into your building that's causing all kind of power spikes, brown outs, and complete loss of power?

Everyone, including me, always says "No." Until the first disaster, when your computer blows up, or you lose all the information on your disk drives. Now I say "Yes, you need a UPS."

Companies like APC, Tripp Lite, and PowerWare make wonderful UPS systems that protect against blackouts, brown-outs, and power surges, so you don't have any disasters. Living in Florida - the lightning capital of the world - I would never consider running a system without a big UPS, these days.

Many people say "modern power supplies have surge suppression built into them." Like I said, it's not until your first disaster that people really pay attention to this stuff. How badly do you want to find out how bad it can be?

CABLES

Cable is expensive. In these days of $179 audio mixers, $249 capture cards, and $750 Hi-Def DVI monitors, it can be very discouraging to find out that buying all the cables to hook up your system costs more than much of the critical equipment that you are buying.

High-end cable manufacturers like Belden and Gepco say it's because of the rising costs of copper, but one thing is for sure: the days of "I'll just go to Radio Shack to pick up some cheap cables" is over. Even Radio Shack is expensive today.

Buying professional cable made with Canare or Belden cable, and Kings, Switchcraft or Neutrik connectors is very expensive. But when you use cheap cable, your signal path will suffer, and you will get horrible pictures and weak or dirty audio. After all your hard work, do you really want this?

ANDMOREAGAIN

I could go on for hours more about this stuff but that's probably beyond the scope of this article. Racks for your equipment, rack shelves, desks with rack rail so you can mount your equipment properly. Sound isolation cabinets to keep those computers quiet. Special lighting for your room. Wall mounts for your speakers. Large plasma screens.

As I often say to my clients: "It never ends, and the spending is never over." This is an expensive craft, made more expensive by the fact that - except for those racks I briefly mentioned above - all of this equipment becomes obsolete again after a few years.

The nice thing is that it does cost a lot less to do this today than it did 10 years ago, or even earlier this year.

This article is just an overview of what's out there, and what's involved in putting together a truly professional modern editing room. Some will say: "What about this, and what about that - don't I need one of those little converter boxes so I can use this device?" Maybe you do. Maybe not. Finding out is what Creative COW is all about. Visit the forums. It's about getting all those little details worked out, getting your personal editing system just the way you want it, just the way it needs to be for working pros.

Broadcast Quality at Bargain Prices

2009-12-18T15:12:00.001+05:30

At this point in early 2009 news of the economic slump seems everywhere. So it was of some interest when I heard that sales of "Certified Pre-Owned" Mercedes are running nearly 90% ahead of the same period last year. What this news is basically saying is that large numbers of consumers are still attracted to a top quality product, we're just looking for a smarter, more cost-effective way to obtain it. This is an obvious parallel to a new line of broadcast-quality LCD monitors and their early success in the marketplace.

Last fall the father & son team of Dan and Bram Desmet formed FSI, Flanders Scientific, Inc., a new US-based company, with US-based support and parts which, in their words, "Specializes primarily in visualization equipment for broadcast -- creating, displaying and measuring an image." The company's products are test signal generators, spectral radiometers, color analyzers and probably of the most widespread interest, an entirely new line of LCD displays.

Hardly new to the broadcast world, the Desmets had just concluded a three year relationship as TVLogic's Master Distributor for the Americas. Dan, the senior of the Desmets, began his television career in the early eighties with Barco, where he spent nearly 20 years, later moving to Tandberg Television. With a specialized degree in Color Television, Dan has been involved with SMPTE at many different levels in his 25+ years in television. The company cites his experience and depth of knowledge as part of what gives FSI both its practical and theoretical foundation upon which they have designed their products.

"This time around, instead of distributing for others, we decided to develop and brand our own products," explains Dan Desmet. "While we have no manufacturing capabilities, we have third party engineering and manufacturing companies making products to our specific designs. Given the work that we'd done over the years with other brands of monitors we realized that we had a lot of ideas that we'd never seen implemented. We thought we could create something better. "

In the fall of 2008 China's Zunzheng Digital Video Technology Company, Ltd. was selected to handle FSI's manufacturing. Already an established broadcast monitor supplier to the Chinese domestic market, Zunzheng was able to quickly adapt to FSI's requirements, and bring the four models of FSI monitors to market quickly. Desmet stresses that, although made by Zunzheng, the monitors branded with the FSI name contain technology unique to FSI and differ from those sold directly by Zunzheng.

"In Flanders Scientific products you'll find a number of new ideas and frankly, what we feel are better approaches to how things should be done." - Dan Desmet

"We don't cut corners on quality," Continued Dan Desmet. "Monitors are really seen as a commodity item so reliability and good service are essential to long term success. Performing to certain specs and meeting the expectations of professionals are our first priorities. So, in Flanders Scientific products you'll find a number of new ideas and frankly, what we feel are better approaches to how things should be done."

A demonstration of the current line of four monitors was conducted last month at Biscardi Creative Media. On hand for the presentation was Ron Anderson, Senior Colorist and Telecine Manager for Atlanta's CineFilm; Walter Biscardi, Jr., Editor and author of the COW DVD “Stop Staring and Start Color Grading" and me, a shooter/editor working primarily in industrial and corporate video.

Dan Desmet brought each of Flanders Scientific's current four models: the 17" LM-1760W, grade 1 monitor; the 21" LM-2130W and 24" LM-2430W, grade 2 monitors and their top of the line 24" LM-2450W, grade 1 monitor. So what's a "grade 1" versus a "grade 2" monitor? Desmet explained that the most visible difference is at the corners where, in dark scenes, light leakage can be noticed. In part this difference comes from the grade 2 units having four backlights illuminating the LCD versus six for the grade 1 monitors. The price difference between their 24" grade 2 and 24" grade 1 monitor is $1,500 so obviously FSI considers the difference to be significant.

For the test Walter brought up several of his own shows with which he was extremely familiar. They ranged from high key and highly saturated material to dark and moody material. Some was in 720p and some in 1080i. For comparison purposes we were able to see the same thing on each of the FSI monitors as well as on Walt's Sony PVM-L5-20/1 CRT reference monitor.

"The FSI panels handled motion well and what impressed me the most was the consistency across the product line." -Walter Biscardi, Jr.

Ron, Walter and I noted the high degree of consistency across the product line. As the room where the majority of Biscardi Creative Media's color grading is done, Walt was most critical in his viewing. "I was expecting decent but wasn't expecting them to be better than the TVLogic monitors," he stated. "The FSI panels handled motion well and what impressed me the most was the consistency across the product line -- all four of the FSI monitors looked the same... especially black reproduction and accuracy of colors. That consistency is a key consideration on whether we could put them into all three of our suites because we have jobs that move between rooms and we have to be able to see the same thing from room to room."

Desmet explained that his company's depth of theoretical and practical knowledge," comes from selling for many other monitor companies. Yet we never found all of our ideas put into a single product," He continued, "And given the present economy, we knew that pricing was going to be important, so we came up with ways of making our monitors less expensive without compromising quality. For example, most high-end monitors use a third party de-interlacing and scaling chip. We looked at this and, while there are advantages of going with existing products, they (this third party chip) give us, as the monitor manufacturer, a limited number of things that we can do and adjustments we can make. So to change basic things like color LUTs (Look Up Tables), scaling and de-interlacing, our engineers designed a huge FPGA." (FPGA is shorthand for a Field Programable Gate Array, a complex logic circuit just short of being a computer).

"Our FPGA is where everything is done: things like vectorscope, waveform, the de-interlace and the scaling, the automatic alignments. One example of why our way is smarter and better for the end user is how we are able to handle automatic alignment. Most monitors that do automatic alignment use some kind of external PC. We say why should you have to do that? We sell, as well as rent, color probes that you connect directly to the monitor," explained Desmet, citing how rather than needing a PC, the monitor's internal logic circuit is used to perform critical calibration.

"I'm looking for a more cost-effective solution, some sort of LCD or plasma." - Ron Anderson

As the most sophisticated end user in the demo, Colorist Ron Anderson's observations formed much of the early part of the meeting's direction. Ron expressed his interest in looking for alternatives to the aging and nearly extinct CRT monitors he's been using for his 28 years in the color end of the business. "We're simply not going to spend $40,000 on a monitor, " explained Ron. "I'm looking for a more cost-effective solution, some sort of LCD or plasma. Plasma seems to look better but there's the issue of their relatively short life span, again a cost-effectiveness issue."

From his high-end perspective Ron Anderson mentioned a few key issues which would determine whether or not a monitor could become his primary reference for color work. Ease of set-up and use was mentioned initially but the ability to maintain calibration and not drift is certainly critical. He also cited viewing angle as a factor. "Usually my concern is what I see, sitting directly in front of the monitor, but on supervised sessions off-axis fall off can be a major concern." Both the 17" and 24" grade 1 FSI monitors list their viewing angle at 178° horizontal and vertical. The grade 2 monitors list 170° horizontal and 160° vertical.

Having a minimal amount of artifacts was also offered by Anderson as a concern. In answer to this Walt brought up the AJA card's Ramp display, a gradation of full black on the left going to 100% white on the right. Dan Desmet smiled proudly as all of us were impressed by the smoothness of each of the FSI monitors and apparent lack of any artifacts.

At this point Desmet volunteered that the LUTs for the 24" grade 1 monitor were not yet finished and that, while what we were seeing was likely good for many uses, it was not yet up to the standard his company would offer as worthy of being the primary monitor in a high end color room. He discussed that the final touches were being made to the 3D LUT for this monitor and these were expected to be ready in time for the NAB show.

"A 3D LUT allows two dissimilar color spaces to be made to appear similar, or look the way they are supposed to." - Bram Desmet

Being the low man on the technology totem pole I sought an explanation of exactly what a 3D Look Up Table was and how it would affect the monitor's user. FSI President Bram Desmet simplified it for me, explaining, "It's all about accuracy and how color information is handled and interpreted. A 3D LUT allows two dissimilar color spaces to be made to appear similar, or look the way they are supposed to. It's the most accurate conversion from the feed being received to what the monitor can reproduce. On a monitor like our (model) 2450 with its huge, wide color space, the LUT makes sure that colors don't become neon or take on an over-saturated 'cartoon look.' This is especially important in how skin tones are handled."

"OK, that's something I can understand," I said, feeling as if I'd just dipped my toe into "High End Broadcast Monitors for Dummies."

Back at the demo Dan Desmet explained the rear input panel of the FSI monitors. "On video we have connections for DVI-Integrated, both analog as well as digital; SD and HD SDI, Composite and Component signals." Of course each monitor is auto-sensing between PAL and NTSC and 24P is also supported. 3Gbps SDI is available as an option both at purchase and as a later upgrade. Desmet also offered up, "We also can bring in the computer formats SVGA, XGA and SXGA. We have RJ-45 network connections and RS-232 and 485 inputs. There's nothing you can throw at our monitors that we can't show... except SVHS,” said Dan laughing, “We decided to skip SVHS.”

An SD input can be viewed actual size, taking a small amount of screen real estate, or up-converted so that each pixel becomes four.

Walter and I discussed briefly that in both of our businesses we occasionally have to fall back into the SD world and how this would be handled was a concern when looking at any new monitor. I had recently been reminded of this by a videographer who mentioned that frequently when he brought his HD field monitor on SD shoots the clients would complain that the image looked "soft." Flanders Scientific appears to have recognized this as an issue and addressed it head on. An SD input can be viewed actual size, taking a small amount of screen real estate, or up-converted so that each pixel becomes four and the screen is filled vertically. Unlike SD signals which I have viewed on other brands of HD monitors, the FSI is perfectly crisp. In fact, almost too crisp in showing SD shortcomings like grain and pixelization. Walter also noted that, unlike his PVM CRT monitors, the FSI panels do not need to be re-calibrated when switching between SD and HD signals.

When discussing FSI's different approach than that of competing monitors the inclusion of scopes came up. Bram Desmet pointed out to me that having the on-screen scopes function work on all inputs is fairly unique. "In fact," he stated, "Many monitors don’t come with built in scopes at all. Others only offer scopes on SDI inputs. A very few brands offer it on both analog (composite/component) and SDI inputs, but I don't know of anyone besides FSI that has built in scopes that work on all analog and SDI inputs as well as DVI-I Inputs. Further, FSI doesn't charge for the waveform / vector scope feature and on many brands it is an add on item or only available on their higher end units."

In addition to the expected luminance waveform the FSI scopes function also offers RGB Parade and YRGB peak modes and a standard vector scope. Desmet also contends, "If you ask anyone familiar with the built in waveforms on our competitors' monitors they will tell you that our scopes are much more detailed and have a more usable scale. And, by the way, this scale on the waveform monitor can be switched between Voltage, IRE, or digital levels, which is also pretty unique for built-in scopes."

By the end of our demo Walter and I were sold and Ron had agreed to re-visit the FSI LM-2450W once the new LUTs were finished. Walt bought two 2450's for his two main edit rooms and a LM-1760W for his small suite. "Three identical looking monitors, of this quality, for under $16,000 made this the the year to go LCD,” concluded Biscardi.

As an industrial shooter/editor I opted for the LM-1760W with the plan that it could do double duty as a field monitor for shoots and reference monitor back in the edit bay. After a month of putting it through its paces I couldn't be happier.

Each of the monitors has a 4 pin XLR DC power input on the back in addition to the standard AC input. On the two grade 2 monitors the DC in is what one would expect, 12 volts. What I found odd on the 17 and 24 inch grade 1 monitors was that the DC requirement had jumped to 24 volts, presumably because of the additional two backlights.

US-based support and US-based service and parts is a reality.

Here is where the strength and agility of a small entrepreneurial company comes into play. I mentioned to FSI President, Bram Desmet, "What's with 24 volts of DC? Using conventional video gear where am I supposed to get 24 volts from?" Within a couple of days Bram came up with a DC converter which takes a 12 volt battery up to the needed 24 volts. Voila! I now have a field monitor which can operate off battery power. This immediate solution to my problem also establishes that the company's idea of having US-based support and US-based service and parts is a reality.

Now about the practicalities of DC power for such a serious monitor. There is no good substitute when you need to work off a battery. But my testing of the 17" FSI monitor proved that this is, at best, a short term solution and not something for an all day shoot unless one has a surplus of otherwise un-needed batteries. A relatively new and fully charged Anton-Bauer style "brick" powered the 17" monitor for slightly less than two hours, forty five minutes. I understand that this is longer than can be obtained from the equivalent Panasonic 17" monitor, so I guess it's not so bad. But, as stated earlier, not likely to be an all day solution.

Going forward FSI will announce a 7" high definition field monitor monitor at the 2009 NAB show, with a 9" expected later this year. Flanders Scientific is off to a great start and, so far, seems likely to thrive in an environment where buyers still want a top quality product, just at a bargain price.

Creating a Sunset View (After Effects)

2009-12-18T15:05:00.000+05:30

We will learn how to create :

sun
sky
river
buildings

now just do the following steps

create new compositing with following properties

River Layer

create new solid layer with comp size and black color name it : river and make it 3D layer

show position, scale and orientation and change to the following values :

Now go to Effects menu and chose Noise & Grain then chose Fractal Noise Now change the following properties only :

At the end of timeline

Now add the fx CC Toner with these properties :

Now add CC Glass fx with these properties :

Buildings Layer

add the solid layer again and name it Buildings just draw buildings by using masks like this :

You should end up with something like this:

And change the Mask Feather of each mask to : 2.5

Buildings – Reflection Layer

To make reflection of buildings layer just do the following :

duplicate the buildings layer
change the following properties
add Linear Wipe fx with following properties :
add Wave Warp fx with the following properties :

Sky Layer

Add the black solid layer again and name it : sky

add Ramp fx to Sky layer with no changes in properties
add CC Toner with change color like this

Now move the Sky layer to the end of layers in the timeline

Sun Layer

Add the black solid layer again and name it : Sun

Draw the sun by using mask ( just draw circle )

Then change the Feather of the mask to : 10

Add Fill fx to fill the sun with white color

Put the Sun layer over the Sky layer

Now you've got this nice view :

Creating an Ocean with After Effects

2009-12-18T15:01:00.000+05:30

Creating an Ocean

1-Create new composition with the following properties:

2- Add black solid layer with comp size

3-Name it water and add make it 3D, then change the following properties (scale, orientation)

4-Add fractal noise fx with the following properties. We're not changing anything from the default except the Evolution. Set a keyframe at the beginning.

At the end of timeline, change the Evolution to 1.5 (depending on your project time)

5- Add CC toner fx with the following properties:

If you want the exact color, here is what I have: red 50, green 100, blue 175

6- Add CC Glass fx with the following properties:

7-Add the black solid again and name it Sky and add make it 3D, then change the following properties (scale, orientation)

8- Add fractal noise fx. Leave it at the default settings for all except the Evolution. Set a keyframe at the beginning of the timeline.

At the end of timeline change the Evolution to 0.5 (depending on your project time)

9- Add CC toner fx with the following properties:

Now you've got this nice view:

Creating a Foggy Scene in 3D Studio MAX using "Fog" and "Volume Fog"

2009-03-31T14:30:00.000+05:30

This tutorial will teach you how to create a foggy scene in 3D Studio Max. I applied this effect to the ending result of my previous tutorial about Texturing (Using UVW and Unwrap UVW). We will create our scene using two atmospheric filters: "Fog" and "Volume Fog". It is possible to create a foggy scene using one of these alone, you shall be able to experiment with these on your own once you are done with this tutorial. We are using this model (MAX File) in our tutorial, please download it to follow this tutorial.

It is necessary to explain the difference between our two effects. Fog is the more generic effect which applies to the whole scene in a constant level, you have a relatively less amount of control over this effect. On the other hand, "Volume Fog" generates an inconsistent flow of clouds through out the given 3D space. "Volume Fog" requires a container to which we apply it to, this sort of container is called Gizmo.

Adding the "Fog" atmospheric effect

Applying the standard "Fog" effect is straightforward using the Environment and Effects window. Open up this window by hitting 8 on your keyboard. Scroll down to the Atmosphere rollout from where you can click on Add to find the required effect.

You can simply apply the effect using the preset configurations, however, I did make some changes to the parameters as could be seen in the image below, you can use these instead of the presets and then experiment with these on your own to get your personally desired result.

You may render your scene at this point to acquire a scene similar to the one below.

Scene rendered with "fog" effects only. Click to enlarge.

Adding the "Volume Fog" effect

Unlike the Fog effect, Volume Fog generates a less synthetic looking environment by having an inconstant density volume of fog. Adding "Volume Fog" requires having a container, or as 3DS calls it, "Gizmo". To create a Gizmo go to Create>Helps>Atmospherics>Box Gizmo. You will then have to draw your Gizmo in the place where you want to have your Volume Fog, we want to have it all around the house in our tutorial. Enlarge the image below to see how I did it.

"Gizmo Box" placed it around the house. Click to enlarge.

We will now fill our container with our Volume Fog, access the Environment and Effects window, you can press 8 on your keyboard to open it if you closed it. Scroll down to the Atmosphere rollout and click on Add, select Volume Fog from there. Now, this will have to be assigned to our Gizmo. Look for the Volume Fog parameters rollout, click on the Pick Gizmo button that you'll find there and simply select the Gizmo from the scene.

Assign "Volume Fog" to "Gizmo Box". Click to enlarge.

The Volume Fog default parameters are not too bad, you may want to play around with them though to have it look in your own way, you can use the same values that I used as seen in the image below.

This should do the trick, but before you render your scene I suggest that you deactivate the previous effect so that you can clearly see how different it is from the normal Fog effect. You can deactivate the first effect by accessing the Environment and Effects window once again, and this time simply unchecking the Active checkbox to hide your effect. Hide the first effect that we created, Fog. Render your scene afterwards.

Once you are happy with setting of the both fogs setting, hit render and see you awesome fog effect on your scene. But make sure you activate them first.

This concludes our tutorial, you can activate both effects and render the scene once more. You should play around with the parameters to see what values work best for your work. I hope that you learnt something new by reading this tutorial. If you need any more help feel free to drop at Oman3D Forum.

Show Your Love with Semitransparent Amorous Text Effect

2009-03-10T19:11:00.000+05:30

I’m going to write for you a tutorial on how to make semitransparent amorous text effect by using some layer styles.

Ok, let’s start by making a new document in Photoshop. I created a new document sized 1000×500 px. Now time to bring some background to our canvas. For this you can use some abstract or whatever! A good place to start is Google Images. Also you can use my picture.

This is the easy part; all you have to do is write out your desired text on the canvas. Get out your Horizontal Type Tool (just the usual one) and write out your text in whatever color you want.

In the above image I’ve used Arial Black (220 pt, Smooth) as my font of choice. Do not forget to leave more space between letters. We will add the heart there later. Now I would like to add some pattern to our pattern gallery before we will start creating our text effect. Open this pattern or find another one using Google Images. Use Edit > Define Pattern to save it as pattern. After that go back to our main document, set fill opacity to 0% up for the text layer, after that apply the Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow, Outer Glow, Inner Glow, Bevel and Emboss, Contour, Texture, Satin, Pattern Overlay, Stroke layer styles to get the next result:

Now time to add shape to our text. Get out the Custom Shape Tool and select the next shape from the gallery

and write out your text in whatever color you want.

Now set fill opacity to 0% up for this layer, then select the text layer and copy it: right click the Layer Thumbnail in the Layers Palette and select Copy Layer Style:

After that go back to shape layer and apply copied layer style to it: right click the Layer Thumbnail in the Layers Palette and select Paste Layer Style:

You can see the result below:

Looks pretty good as for me! Now I would like to change color for our shape to make it different from the text. Add the Color Overlay layer style to this layer:

Pretty much the final thing we need to do is add glowing star to our heart to make it actually look good. Create a new layer, then select the Rectangular Marquee Tool and make selection like mine and fill it with white color:

Remove the selection with Ctrl+D and apply Filter > Blur > Motion Blur with similar settings to these:

See the difference:

Duplicate this layer with Ctrl+J and rotate the copy with Edit > Transform > Rotate 90 CW:

Select the Elliptical Marquee Tool to make selection as on picture below, after that create a new layer and fill it with white color.

Remove selection with Ctrl+D and apply Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur with next presets:

See the result below:

Ok, now merge three of those layers in one and apply Outer Glow layer style to the new composed layer:

After that rotate the star with Ctrl+T. And now our picture should look like this:

Well, we’re pretty much finished for this tutorial, thanks for taking the time to read it!

Creating Taxi Text Effect

2009-03-10T18:53:00.000+05:30

This is simply but very useful tutorial about how to create text effect like using cabs.

Alright, you can start by first creating a new document, as usual; I used a document size of 1000×500 pixels. Then fill it with linear gradient using colors of #ffc255 and #d26845.

Ok, now apply Filter > Artistic > Sponge to this layer:

Now we have a texture like this:

Ok, the next step what we need to do is to add taxi pattern to our canvas. Start with creating a new layer, then get out the Rectangular Marque Tool and make a square selection as on picture below and fill it with black color.

Remove the selection with Ctrl+D, then duplicate layer with Ctrl+J and move it a little bit down:

Apply Color Overlay layer style to this layer:

See the result:

Make the same things a couple of times to get taxi pattern.

Now mess with the layer mode & opacity/fill. I tried Color Burn with an opacity of 17%.

This is the easy part; all you have to do is write out your desired text on the canvas. Get out the Horizontal Type Tool and write out your text, for example ‘TAXI’ in whatever color you want, for example, white.

In the above image I’ve used a font called Arial Black (300 pt, Sharp), which is commercial free. Ok, now let’s start with creating taxi text effect. First of all we need to add some pattern to Photoshop patterns palette to use it for creating text effect later. Create a new document with size of 16×16 pixels and draw a square dots by using Pencil Tool as on picture below.

Now use Edit > Define Pattern to save this picture as pattern.
Go back to our main canvas and apply Drop Shadow, Bevel and Emboss, Contour, Gradient Overlay, Pattern Overlay and Stroke layer styles to this text layer:

Now we have elegant taxi text effect don’t you think?

That is it for now! Thanks for reading the tutorial, everyone!

How to - Photographing HDR

2009-03-05T22:03:00.000+05:30

HDR How to - Photographing

The first part of this tutorial discusses photography gear. According to my knowledge it isn't possible to capture HDR photos with any of today's digital consumer cameras. Therefore the HDR image must be created by merging several normal photos. The idea is to take the same photo several times with varying exposures and merge them all to form one HDR photo. So in theory, the photos can be taken with any camera that allows manual shutter speed adjustment. The exposure between shots must be changed with shutter speed because changing the aperture would change depth of field.

Many modern cameras (point and shoot, bridge, slr) have several features that make it easier to photograph for an HDR image:

* Manual settings
* Exposure bracketing (EB)
* Continuous shooting
* Timer

Manual Settings

Photos taken for an HDR image should be similar apart from exposure. The following camera settings should be fixed in each shot:

* White balance
* ISO sensitivity (perhaps not necessary but highly recommended)
* Aperture
* Focus
* Possible digital image processing operations that camera might execute (for example color correction or sharpening)

The possibility to turn automatism off and adjust these settings manually is good for HDR photography.

Exposure Bracketing (EB)

Exposure bracketing is a technique of taking several photos with varying exposures. A digital camera can change exposure in several ways. When it comes to HDR photography, its essential that exposure is controlled by shutter speed while keeping aperture and ISO sensitivity fixed. Other things to notice in camera's EB functionality are the amount of bracketed shots and the exposure interval. Many cameras only allow three shots with 1 EV interval. In my opinion that isn't enough for HDR photography. It's better if there is a possibility to bracket more shots or at least a possibility to increase the exposure interval. (Personally I take bracketed shots with Nikon D300 which is an ideal camera for this kind of work. Nikon D300 allows 2 to 9 shots with 1/3, 1/2, 2/3 or 1 EV intervals. I always bracket 9 shots with 1EV interval to make sure I capture the scene as well as possible.)

Continuous Shooting
Continuous shooting means that the camera takes photos continuously while the shutter release button is held. Continuous shooting makes it possible to take bracketed shots automatically which makes HDR photography a little simpler. The faster the continuous shooting, the better the results. (Continuous shooting speed depends on the camera, storage and file format)

Timed Continuous Shooting

Timed continuous shooting makes it possible to take the bracketed shots automatically and by using timer. Timed shooting removes camera shake and makes the whole process easier.

To sum up, an ideal camera can use timer to automatically take many bracketed shots with adjustable exposure interval. This kind of functionality (like in Nikon D300) makes HDR photography pretty simple. Unfortunately there are only handful of digital cameras available that offer this good functionality for HDR photography. In an ideal camera, the user could define any exposure interval and any number of bracketed shots. Michael Reichmann (The Luminous Landscape) made a wish for this kind of functionality already in 2005.

Along with the camera, one should have a sturdy tripod and a lens hood to be well equipped for an HDR photography. Sturdy tripod makes sure the camera stays still while taking the bracketed shots. A tripod makes things easier but its possible, in bright conditions, to shoot even hand held. Photoshop is able to align the photos correctly even with some camera movement between the shots. If there is a lot of camera movement, the final HDR image must be cropped considerably and therefore good amount of resolution is lost.

HDR photography is well suited for high contrast scenes. High contrast scenes often include very bright areas such as light sources or reflections that might cause lens reflections. Its recommended to use lens hood to avoid as many lens reflections as possible.

Taking the photos in Practice

The second part of this tutorial describes the process of photographing for an HDR image. Some might feel that HDR photography is complicated and time consuming. However, I feel that if you have the right camera, the hardest part is setting up a tripod and the rest is simple and fast.

I used the following gear with all example shots in this tutorial:

* Nikon D300
* Nikon Nikkor AF-S DX VR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G
* Lens Hood
* Manfrotto 190PROB tripod
* Manfrotto 460MG camera head

Choosing the Scene

It's relevant to choose a scene with high dynamic range (high contrast). Low contrast photography doesn't really benefit from HDR technique because digital camera is able to capture the whole dynamic range with one shot. Besides the dynamic range, one should look for scenes without moving subjects. Many times moving subjects can be avoided by waiting. For example If you photograph nature, wait for the strong wind to calm down.

Preparing for the Photography

Picture 3. HDR photo made from 9 exposure with 1EV intervals.

Attach the lens hood
Compose the scene
Setup the tripod
Adjust camera settings (aperture, shutter speed, ISO sensitivity, white balance, focusing mode, exposure bracketing, continuous shooting, timed shooting)

It's important to understand that HDR technique isn't a magic that makes photos look good. In fact, HDR photo without digital image processing looks ugly. I'd like to emphasize that even though in HDR photography you must give a lot of thought to the technique and equipment, don't forget image composition!

Finally, fine tune your composition on tripod:

Check the scene for lens reflections
Check the scene for other distracting elements (especially on the edges of the scene)
Check that the horizon is straight (assuming that's what you are going for)

Taking the Photos

If your camera has exposure bracketing, you adjust the exposure just like you would with one photo. Finally the series of photos are taken by using the timer or by pressing the shutter release button.

Even though your camera would be missing the EB function, you can still do HDR photography. The series of photos can be taken manually by adjusting shutter speed after each shot. I think that about 1EV-1.5EV difference between exposures is good. The benefit of the manual photography is the possibility to take as many shots as you like. The downsides are possible camera shake and slower photography. If the series of photos is taken too slowly, even slow movement such as clouds, might cause problems.

What is the HDR Photo

2009-03-05T21:59:00.000+05:30

The acronym HDR comes from the words High Dynamic Range. In a photo, dynamic range means the difference between the lightest and the darkest color value. In other words, dynamic range means the contrast of a photo. HDR photo means a photo which has larger dynamic range than an ordinary photo. HDR photos have larger dynamic range than today's digital consumer cameras are able to capture.

I would still like to clarify what isn't an HDR photo, because the term HDR photo is often used wrongly especially in the Internet. In the Internet, you often see a photo which is said to be an HDR photo. That is misleading because almost always the photo in question is an ordinary photo which is created from an HDR photo. The photo might look really special or unreal and its probably an appropriate result of an HDR technique, but its not exactly an HDR photo. The actual HDR photo is something that you only rarely found in the Internet and something that browsers can't even display. It seems that usually when people talk about HDR photos in the Internet they actually mean a normal photo (LDR) which is created from an HDR photo. Still, I think its important to understand the real and literal meaning of the term HDR photo.

The Meaning of High Dynamic Range Imaging in Photography

Some people might think that the purpose of HDRI is to produce unrealistically colorful, flat, or artistic photos. In my opinion the real purpose of HDR photography is to produce a photo, the quality of which is higher than that of a normal photo(LDR). The purpose of HDRI is to overcome the limitations of camera equipment. HDR photography has the following advantages when compared to normal photography:

* HDR photography captures higher dynamic range
* HDR photography can produce noise free photos

HDR Photography Captures Higher Dynamic Range

Let's imagine a situation where one photographs (without a flash) a high contrast scene where the subject is against the sky. Typically there is a problem in the result. Either the sky is too bright (over exposed), or the subject is too dark (under exposed). That doesn't equal to what was seen with eyes. Eyes can see details in both the subject and the sky clearly. Normal digital camera isn't able to see as high contrast as a human eye is. In other words a digital camera isn't able to capture as high dynamic range as a human eye is able to see.

An HDR photo can have a very high dynamic range which makes it possible to capture scenes with extremely high contrast. HDR photo can include all the details that a human eye is able to see. In photography, the goal is often to capture the view and the mood that was seen and experienced. Unfortunately, because of the limitations of digital cameras, some details are often missing in photos. In high contrast scenes, a digital camera isn't able to capture both the brightest and the darkest areas simultaneously. HDR photography offers a solution to this problem.

The high dynamic range and the way HDR photo saves image information, give new possibilities to digital image processing. One can do very strong digital image processing operations to an HDR photo without loosing any image information. Properly created HDR photo can include very large amount of image information and therefore give photographer a possibility to create exactly the kind of photo he wants.
HDR Photography Can Produce Noise Free Photos

An HDR photo is created by merging several photos that are taken with different exposures. If there are enough exposures, each part of the photo has optimal exposure in several shots. I don't know the merging algorithms of HDR programs but presumably they take best parts of the photos and / or do some averaging between the pixels in different shots and therefore noise is reduced effectively. Anyway, according to my tests HDRI makes it possible to produce photos that are noise free even in the darkest shadows.

Create a Scenic Photomanipulation (Photoshop Tutorials)

2009-03-05T21:56:00.000+05:30

Create a Scenic Photomanipulation

In this tutorial Andreea takes us through a very scenic photo manipulation. Using some provided stock images you’ll learn how to manipulate color effects using textures and contrasts, these techniques will provide a platform for creating future photo manipulations and will enhance your skills.

Finished Preview

Step 1

As always the first step to photomanipulation is finding the right stocks. I like using waterscapes backgrounds because they always give a wonderful scene when combined with a sunset sky.

I chose the followings stocks for now.

Step 2

Crop out the model from your image. You’ll need to keep her on a separante layer if you plan on blending the backgrounds together. Hide the model layer so you can work with the background. Paste the sunset image and use a soft round eraser brush to blend the waters together.

Step 3

I know it looks odd but once you will reveal the model layer it will look ok. Use curves (image>adjustments>curves) on the original image and the model layer and make them darker to match the setting. Use the dodge and burn tools to fix the lights and shadows on the model. I have dodged her left side, and burned where necessary on her back because the light source comes from up front.

Step 4

The next part is editing the hair. Short hair just isn’t something I like all that much. I am too lazy to paint at times so I take advantage of some wonderful painted hair layers I purchased at renderosity . This is the one that I choose

Then I copy/pasted it onto the model to fit it with her head. It looks odd because the tones don’t really match at this point but they can be adjusted easily.

Step 5

Use curves (image>adjustments>curves) and color balance (image>adjustments>color balance) to adjust the tones. I had to use more yellow and a bit of red to make the tones match. Then pick a soft eraser brush and blend it with the original hair. Use dodge and burn to fix the lighting, the same as done on the model.

Step 6

I like to add in a few painted strands so I picked the brush tool, small round brush and picked a natural tone from the hair with the color picker tool and started painting the lines following the natural look of the hair. Then use dodge and burn on the hair following the original highlighs and shadows parts.

Step 7

Next I will add a few texture layers for effects. A texture can change an image a lot, but it’s knowing how to use textures the right way that can give you an exquisite effect. For starters I picked this one from my personal collection;

I pasted the texture onto the image and set it to overlay. Because the effect was too strong I desaturated it and deleted the center area where the model is.

Step 8

I added this texture and set it to soft light;

I used a soft round eraser brush with a 50% opacity on the center area, mostly on the model. I also used color balance to diversify the color tones a bit (I added in a little magenta and blue).

Step 9

The image missed one essential thing. The model should have a shadow. Shadows are really easy to make. Hold the CTRL key and select from the layers menu the one with your model. This will outline the shape of the model. Go to the menu up top and go to layer>new>new layer and fill in the selection with black. It should look something like this.

Step 10

Move the layer down, below your model one, but also above the background one. Flip it vertically (edit>transform>flip vertical) then use distort to give a shape similar to what a natual shadow would look like. Change the layer’s opacity to 70% and blur out the edges of it so it doesn’t look too sharp and unnatural.

Step 11

The final step is merging all the layers together (layer>merge visible) and playing around with colors and see what looks best. I added in a bit of green and darkened the upper part of the sky because it seemed too light. When you’re done, sharpen the image so it looks crisp and clean (filter>sharpen>sharpen).

Sinhala Television movie හෙටත් අද වගේමද ?

2009-01-29T20:53:00.000+05:30

New Sinhala Television movie..

හෙටත් අද වගේමද ?

Hetat Ada Wagemada ?

ශ්‍රීලංකාවේ ඓතිහාසික මාතර පුරවරයේ ඉතා අලංකාර ප්‍රදේශයක් මුල්කොට ගනිමින්, ඉතා සංවේදී වූ කථා වස්තුවක් පාදක කොටගත් අපේ කාළයේ අපේම කථාවක්.... පවුලේ කාටත් නැරඹිය හැකි සෑම සියළු දෙනාටම ආදර්ශයක් සපයමින් නිශ්පාදනය කරන ලද, අන්තර්ජාලය මගින් නැරඹිය හැකි එකම ඒකාංගික ටෙලි වෘතාන්තය. හෙටත් අද වගේමද ? ලගදීම ඔබ වෙත....

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Download Sinhala Unicode

මෙහි පැමිණෙන ඔබ සාදරයෙන් පිළි ගනී! මෙම වෙබ් පිටුව තුලින් ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ භාවිතා වන ප්‍රධාන දේශීය භාෂා වන සිංහල හා ‍දමිළ භාෂාවන් පරිගණක සඳහා භාවිතා කළ හැකි අයුරු පිළිබඳ? තොරතුරු, උපදෙස් මෙන්ම ඒ සඳහා අවශ්‍ය වන මෘදුකාංග ද ඔබට සපයයි.

Click Here to Download Unicode For Windows Xp

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3d steel texture

2009-01-14T07:30:00.000+05:30

[1]-First of all you will press (ctrl +N) now you will see the new window is open
Click on the Geometry > Standard primitives > Plane and use the following setting
Create a Plane in the top view and set like this in the perspective view

[2]-Click on the Geometry > Standard primitives > Teapot and use the following setting
Create a Pot in the top view set like this in the front view

[3]-Open the material window
Select the Multi-layer option and you will see the Multi-layer palette is open
Select the color like this and give some shining like this in the first specular level

[4]-Now in the Second specular level give the shining like this

[5]-Open the map window and put the retrace map in the Refraction

[6]-Now click on the Background button in the material window
Now your material should like this
And assign to the selection

[7]-Click on the Omni button and use the following setting
Set like this in the top view

[8]-Select the light and right click then deselect the (Affect Diffuse) option

[9]-Select the light drag it and release you will see the clone option window is open
Then use the following setting and set the light like this in the top view

[10]-After se the light Press (F9) you will see the final image is ready
Save the file in your folder

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The Material Editor

2009-01-14T07:24:00.000+05:30

Introduction

The Material Editor provides functions to create and edit materials and maps. A material is data that you assign to the surface or faces of an object so that it appears a certain way when rendered. Materials affect the colour of objects, their glossiness, their opacity, and so on. The images or procedural effects you assign to materials are called maps. Commonly used maps for landscape work include standard bitmaps (such as .bmp, .jpg, or .tga files) and procedural (meaning they are computer generated) maps, such as Brick or Noise.You can assign maps to most of the components that make up a material. Materials that contain one or more images or procedural maps are called mapped materials

For many map types, the Renderer needs instructions telling it where the map should appear on the geometry. These instructions are called mapping coordinates and are most often handled (apart from loft mapping) by the use of map modifiers. Map coordinates can also be edited in the Material Editor acting on the material itself and most standard primitives have the option of applying map coordinates when the object is created (although these usually need modifying)

Materials create greater realism in a scene. A material describes how an object reflects or transmits light and material properties work hand-in-hand with light properties; rendering combines the two, simulating how the object would look in a real-world setting

This tutorial explores the interface and basic functionality of the Material Editor at the 'Material Level'. This is before adding extra effects with computer generated (procedural) or image maps. The extra effects added at the 'Map' level/s' will be dealt with later

Download Sample Data

In order to follow this tutorial, you may want to use the supplied files. Please read the sample data instructions before downloading.

kf404_files.zip (16kb)

module_4_maps.zip (5.2mb)

The Interface and basic functionality at the 'Material' level

Open kf404_01.max. This scene contains some pre-configured materials with which to explore the basic functionality of the Material Editor. Open the Material Editor. The image below shows the mainly used parts of the top interface:

Sample slots

Sample Type

Select a sample slot by left clicking over it. When the sample slot is current (ie you can edit the material) it shows a white border. Change the Sphere to a Box by clicking the Sample Type Button flyout and choosing the Box Type

Background

Toggle this button on or off to display a chequered background. This is useful to view how transparent a material is (a glass material for example)

Sample Slot Number

Right click over any slot to change the number of available slots

Sample Slot Border

The border to each sample slot shows the status of the materials in the editor thus:

- White border means the sample slot is current ie the material can be edited
- White triangles not filled means the material exists in the scene (assigned to an object) but no objects with that material are selected
- White triangles filled means the material in the slot is assigned to a selected object

Press Get Material. This opens the Material/Map Browser. This is where you manage material and map resources in and out of the scene

Select the Box and in the Material Editor select the Brick material sample slot. Press Assign Material to Selection. Notice in the viewport the box is assigned the brick material

Press Show Map in Viewport. This shows the brick map which is part of the Brick material in the viewport or not. Toggle this on and off and notice the bricks on the box are shown or not shown

Press Put to Library. This opens a dialog box for saving the current material to a material library. Close the box as this is explained later

Go to Parent is used when you are at the 'Map' level (accessed through pressing one of the Map buttons - explained later) to return to the next level up in the material. This is greyed out if no Maps are used in the material

TIP: You can remove a materiall completely from an object in the scene by dragging the NONE item from the Material / Map Browser over to the object

Select an empty sample slot and press Pick Material from Object. This is a quick way to select a material in the scene for editing purposes

Material Name

Type the name of the current material in this text box

Material Type

The Material Type is at the top of the hierarchy when you create or edit materials. Standard is the default material type in MAX andArchitectural is the default material in Autodesk VIZ (this has been changed to Standard for this exercise)

Press this button (in MAX) or the button displaying ‘Architectural’ (in VIZ) to open the Material/Map Browser and to pick from a selection of Material Types. The most common for landscape use are Standard (most materials including none mapped and mapped materials - procedural maps and image maps), Double Sided (contains two standard materials for the front and back of a road sign for example) and Multi > Sub-Object (for use on any objects that contain a number of elements needing different materials assigned to each element - a seat with painted legs and wood slats for example)
If you are using VIZ select Standard and press Ok as we are going to explore the use of Standard materials

The next step is to look at the shader type thus:

Shader Parameters

Select a new sample slot
Change the shader type to Anisotropic - this together with Metal are well used in landscape work. Shaders give different basic settings for materials. Explore the other shaders using the MAX/VIZ help system. The most useful settings for the Anisotropic shader are shown above
Name the material 'Practice'
Select the sphere and Assign Material to Selection. This assigns a Standard, unedited material using the Anisotropic shader

Shader Basic Parameters rollout

These settings apply to any shader

Check Wire and toggle this on and off to display the sphere in wireframe. If you change the amount of segments in the sphere the wires change as well. Uncheck this before proceeding

Checking 2-Sided forces the material to become 2-sided. This is the third (apart fronm the Viewport Configuration and Render Scene dialogs) place you can make an object 2-sided

Anisotropic Basic Parameters rollout

Click the colour swatch to the right of Diffuse to change the colour of the sphere

NOTE: The Ambient swatch changes as well as the Diffuse swatch. This can be unlocked by pressing the lock button to the left of the Diffuse and Ambient swatches. The Ambient light can then be changed independantly

Change the Specular Level to 75 and Glossiness to 50. This gives the material a look of gloss paint or plastic. You could name this 'Blue Paint' for example and save the material for use in many scenes (explained later)
Change the Diffuse colour to light yellow and the Self-illumination to 80. This simulates a lamp and will show as illuminated in a night scene. A light would be placed in the lamp. Change back to 0 before proceeding
Change Opacity to 40. This makes the sphere translucent. Used in conjunction with the other settings (especially Specular Level and Glossiness) a simple glass material can be created. Look at the settings in the Glass material for reference

As you can hopefully envisage, many materials can be created by simply using the basic shader parameters

NOTE: Assigning a material to an object removes any existing material assigned to the object and replaces it. Also, a material can be quickly assigned to an object by dragging it from the sample slot to the object in the viewport

Extended Parameters rollout

With Wire selected in Basic Shader Parameters change the size of the wire on this rollout

SuperSampling rollout

This is not covered in Key Fundamentals, but for information this allows more sampling of any images in the material at render time. It stops any 'shimmering, or distortion throughout animation sequences, and gives better quality renders for still images. Because the render time is greater a good handle of the supersampling settings is needed to obtain an optimum balance between quality and render time. Settings can be changed in both the material and on the Render Scene dialog

Maps rollout

This is where various maps can be applied to the material. In landscape work the most used maps are applied to the Diffuse Level (all landscape materials) plus perhaps Opacity (for masking buildings, signs, vegetation etc images) and > or Bump (for giving relief to walls and paving)

Press the Map Button showing 'None' to the right of any of these Map types to open the Material/Map Browser. For now, just have a look at the types of maps available