Colorist Jean-Luc Gason has an interesting blog post concerning shooting and color grading 4:4:4 10 bit log footage from the Viper camera. (A summary by Mike Curtis touches on all the major points and was a bit easier for me to read. Thanks, Mike.) Jean-Luc makes some great points. One paragraph that caught my eye:

“…4:4:4 won’t transform your image into something wonderful. In fact, simply looking at 2 images, I wouldn’t be able to tell which one is 4:4:4 and which one is 4:2:2… 4:4:4 will only gives you more room to grade your images, you’ll see less problems coming when pushing gain, gamma or so in your image, you’ll have better half tints, smoother tint gradients… But it won’t transform your HD video into 35mm scope. HD is HD. Point.”

He also makes the statement that the quality of HD footage “is at its VERY BEST 16mm”. Definately a must read.

Digital Content Producer is reporting that Media 100 has shipped version 11.5 of it’s venerable editing software. The latest update adds some features that were potential dealbreakers, things like P2 and HDV support. They also note that Media 100 will support the new Intel Mac hardware in early 2007.

Key features:
*Support for FireWire I/O
*Support for Panasonic P2 import
*Support for HDV acquisition

In The MPAA Surrenders in War Against Piracy, PCMag commentator Mark Hachman takes the Motion Picture Association of America to task for the blind eye they have seemingly turned towards Usenet giant GUBA. If you aren’t familiar with GUBA, they have recently partnered with major movie studios to sell downloadable films, and offer some free user-submitted content, ala YouTube. They have a program for smaller content distributors as well, with an ad-sharing model. But here is the kicker…they are also a company that stores and sells access to Usenet archives, in fact that is how they got started. Interestingly, nearly two terabytes of binary data is added everyday to Usenet, according to a recent report:

Here is what Guba does with that material:
* Crawls Usenet for multimedia content, indexing over 300,000 files a day (currently only videos and images).
* Automatically indexes the content via metadata tags, so it can be easily viewed, sorted, filtered and searched.
* Universal playback - converts video content from any format so that users can immediately play the video, eliminating the need for different players/Codecs.

Access to the archives is subscription based, with “tens of thousands of customers” each paying $15 a month. It is widely known that Usenet “content” is larely comprised of copyrighted and pirated material, but GUBA claims they are just a search engine and are not responsible for what is actually archived.

From GUBA’s About page:

“In compliance with the DMCA, GUBA accepts user-generated video in all common formats and indexes content from areas of the Internet that major search engines do not search.

Major Hollywood studios, distributors and independent film makers alike use GUBA to seamlessly reach one of the fastest growing audiences on the Internet. GUBA protects content owners using the latest DRM solutions and a proprietary, MPAA-approved filtering technology named ‘Johnny.’”

And according to PCMag’s Mark Hachman, “Johnny” doesn’t seem to be doing his job. So Mark made some calls to MPAA representatives, the response was suprisingly nonchalant from an agency with a reputation for ruthlessness:

“It’s our understanding that Guba.com is committed to using ‘Johnny’ to filter MPAA movies on their network,” the spokeswoman said. “They’ve been working with us in good faith, and they’ll continue to do so. We have a relationship with Guba, and they have a commitment into making sure that they don’t offer copyrighted content. We’ll continue to monitor the situation, and if for some reason it doesn’t happen we will talk to them.”

Hachman’s point is that the by ignoring the fact that GUBA provides access to these pirated and illegal files, they are undermining the very position they have taken in suits and actions agains P2P and Torrent-indexing sites.

“…here’s the rub: in February, the MPAA filed suit against sites including TorrentSpy and BTHub, arguing that even links to copyrighted content encourage people to download illegally. Meanwhile, Guba happily provides copyrighted content to the public. And the MPAA has utterly lost the moral high ground, if it hadn’t already.

The only conclusion I can draw from this is that the Guba archive is an MPAA-sanctioned supply of copyrighted content…Seriously, if a site provides downloadable content using an MPAA-approved filtering algorithm to weed out copyrighted content, isn’t that a safe argument that downloaders should be free from liability?”

These sound like reasoned arguments to me. How can the MPAA ignore the very arguments it used against the plethora of sites it has already shut down, sites that were only providing links to content? Does this hypocrisy extend only to those that also shill for the studios? What do you think?

“There was no room for failure, at all. There was one take for everything.”

Indeed. Sony’s latest ad for it’s Bravia television line was a tremendous undertaking, a project involving hundreds of people for months of pre-production and 10 days principle shooting time. The cleanup alone occupied 60 people for 5 straight days!

Filmed at Queen’s Court estate in Glasgow, Scotland, the ambitious commercial features rainbows of paint exploding all over a campus of buildings in a sort of beautiful kaleidoscope of organized chaos. In one shot, color bursts sequentially from each floor of a tall building to create a multi-colored spectrum, like a strange reverse demolition. The latest ad follows in the footsteps of the Bravia advert that started it all, an equally ambitious project that involved 250,000 bouncy balls pouring down the streets of San Francisco.

Stripped down concept advertisements like these are refreshing in this age of computer graphics and slick post-production. The agency behind the “Colour like no other” ads is Fallon. “Paint” was directed by Jonathan Glazer and edited by Paul Watts of The Quarry. MPC handled post-production tasks, keeping 6 people busy for 4 straight months. I think you’ll agree that all the hard work paid off. Check both spots out below.

Bravia “Paint”

“Paint” high-quality version and the making of.

Bravia “Balls”

“Balls” high-quality version and the making Of.
José González acoustic track “Heartbeats” that was used in the first ad is available at iTunes.

Some statistics on the Glasgow “Paint” project:
*70,000 liters of environmentally friendly paint
*330 meters of steel pipe (for launch tubes)
*57 kilometers of copper wire
*622 bottle bombs
*1700 detonators
*455 mortars

(Via HD For Indies)

CreativeCow’s Andrew Kramer has posted an Adobe After Effects tutorial on how to duplicate the color streaking used in Apple’s latest iPod Nano commercials. It’s a hot effect, and Kramer’s tutorial makes it fairly simple to accomplish. Note that he uses Trapcode’s Particular plugin to accomplish the effect.

As a bonus, you get to hear Andrew sing. “Listen, listen to the music, yeah…” (The track Apple uses is The Audience Is Listening Theme Song by Cut Chemist, available at iTunes)

Brad Hunt, Motion Picture Association of America executive vice president and chief technology officer at the Digital Home Developers Conference:

“I understand that if we frustrate the consumer, they will simply pirate the content.� He also acknowledged the fact that many consumers are already frustrated because they’re having to buy multiple copies of an album or movie to play on different devices. For example, a song you buy on the iTunes Store won’t play on your Nokia cellphone. And a song you buy on MSN Music or the Zune Marketplace won’t play on your iPod.

Lest you think that the MPAA has suddenly gone soft on Digital Rights Management issues, realize that they are just acknowledging technical issues with DRM, and attempting to make content protection mechanisms more cross-platform and interoperable.

Great idea, though I seriously doubt a organization so incredibly mired in outdated thinking will be the one to bring a unified solution to market. What do you think? Any chance there will be a reasonably unified DRM standard in the near future?

Silicon Color, the makers of the realtime color-correction application Final Touch HD, has been bought by Apple. HD For Indies article on the topic has a lot of conjecture and comments on what this might mean.

Personally, I predict we’ll see two things stemming from this acquisition:

1. I expect Apple to integrate some of the realtime color correction features of Final Touch into Final Cut Pro. Not making a color finishing app out of it mind you, just better tools to get a leg up on the other NLE vendors. And with cameras like what RED is coming out with, FCP will need help handling realtime streams of 2K and 4K media. Realtime color processing is what Silicon Color is all about, and Apple needs that tech.

2. Apple will roll the high end features of Final Touch into it’s new SuperCompositingAndColorApp (iComp?), which will also be built using the capabilities of Shake, all wrapped up in an Apple-ly interface that makes sense in context with the rest of the Pro Apps. Any chance we’ll see this app announced or hinted about at NAB 2007?

Andrew Balis has posted a list of new features and effects filters shipping with the Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 upgrade over at Ken Stone’s fine site. How else would you know that you can now use Shift+Command+[ to toggle through open sequence tabs? Exactly, so go read the article already!

There is also a great overview of all the effect filters included (a lot) and IU’m pretty stoked about the “Preferred” toggle option.

If you’re in search of a more geeky rundown on all the format and professional features added, Mike Curtis has just the thing. He’s also got an excellent document with 15 FCP 5.1.x tips and “gotchas”.

Adobe Design Center has 3 free After Effects tutorials excerpted from the After Effects 7.0 Classroom in a Book training. You can download all the project files you’ll need to complete the lesson, they are included with the PDF lesson in ZIP files.

Lesson 1: Getting to Know the Workflow
Get to know the basic After Effects workflow.

Lesson 2: Creating a Basic Animation Using Effects and Presets
Hit the ground running with a variety of effects and preset animations.

Lesson 12: Rendering and Outputting
Create time-saving templates and render a final composition in a variety of formats and resolutions.

(Via Steve Kilisky)

Art Lebedev Studio has announced on it’s blog that they will soon be releasing the Optimus Upravlator input device.

“Upravlator is a completely new kind of input device. We’re going to annouce it next week. It will be plugged into your second monitor port. It will be as fast as LCD display may be. It will be a single best friend of any music engineer or video editor. Graphic designers should be happy as well.”

Based on a mysterious-looking foam mockup image they’ve posted on the blog, the Upravlator appears to be a 3×3 or perhaps 3×4 grid of OLED keys, which one can assume can be programmed to perform application-specific functions and tasks, while providing feedback via individual OLED key displays. All speculation, of course.

Art Lebedev Studio has been developing the Optimus line of input devices for quite some time now. Over a year ago the Russian design firm debuted the Optimus OLED keyboard concept, a computer input device featuring OLED keys capable of displaying individual images that could change dynamically via software. Think about it…endless keyboard layout options. It would be a boon for gamers, video editors and graphic designers alike. At first classified as vaporware, it now seems that the first Optimus full-size keyboard models will be available in December 2006. It’s a lot easier to believe that to be true, as the design studio recently shipped a 3-key input device called the Optimus Mini Three. Mini-Three reviews have been mixed, but with a price tag of $160 for a 3-key device, sharp criticism is warranted! The good news is that Lebedev shipped the device with both Mac and Windows drivers, and it follows that future Optimus devices will also offer cross-platform support. Stay tuned.

Rian Johnson, writer and director of the critically acclaimed film “Brick“, is freely offering the 100+ page shooting script on his website. No charge, no strings attached. It’s stating the obvious, but anyone with an interest in screenwriting, directing or acting should take a gander at the PDF. You can buy Brick on DVD at Amazon.

Home Theater Mag tested 61 High Definition TV sets (2006 model year) and determined that the large majority of them couldn’t even pass basic competency and capability tests. 54% failed a basic deinterlacing test, 80% were unable to properly detect 3:2 cadence, and all but one of the sets tested had attenuated the bandwidth of the signal to some extent.

But what does all this mean?
Deinterlacing:

“Some TVs take every one of the 1,080 interlaced lines and convert them to a progressive signal. This process is known as deinterlacing. It compensates for any motion in the image and sends it to the screen at its native resolution. Other HDTVs may take a cheaper shortcut and simply upconvert each single 540-line field. The latter process can result in a loss of up to 50 percent of the image’s resolution (for a 1080p display).”

3:2 Cadence Detection:

“Many scripted television and all film-based movies that telecast in 1080i HD are recorded at 24 frames per second. For broadcast, this is converted from film or 1080p/24 video to 1080i/30 using a telecine conversion. A good internal processor should use a method called HD inverse telecine to recognize like frames and reconstruct them for a 60-frame-per-second display using a 3:2 cadence.”

“Without HD inverse telecine, the television’s processor may discard up to half of the image resolution (prior to conversion in 720p displays) during horizontal pans.”

Read on for full charts with all the results.
(Via HD4NDS)

Creative Workflow Hacks offers a handy tip on scrubbing thumbnails of your media in Final Cut Pro’s Browser window. Having edited a short last weekend that utilized a large number of similarly named clips, I see this as an excellent tip. Hopefully it will make your life easier as well.

Paul Harrill of Self-Reliant Filmmaking outlines some of his frustrations with screenwriting software Final Draft and Celtx.

High Definition Stock Footage source MotionZoneHD is running a contest for the month of October. The shooter/animator with the most accepted uploads for the month will recieve their choice from 6 different Music 2 Hues Theme Packs (worth $150).

Theme Packs are collections of similar styles of music, and come on 5 audio CD’s as well as a DVD-ROM that contains MP3 and WAV file versions.

This contest is open to all registered MotionZoneHD shooters and animators (they are looking for more users and content so sign up!). Requirements are pretty basic…upload your best High Def clips ensuring they are at least 15 seconds long. Label the clips with your name, description and keywords. More info at MotionZoneHD.com.

I understand that next month there will be another contest with a specific theme for submissions (and they’ll be awarding a nice piece of production equipment), so get registered and stay tuned.