For the sound effect junkies, here’s an extensive archive of animal noises and sounds.

Due to feedback from the FreshDV faithful over the past few months, we have been making gradual improvements to our RSS feed and audio/video podcast feed. There have been enough changes to warrant an update post, so I’ll try to cover all the improvements here.

*Our RSS news feed now includes the full text of articles and posts so you can view it in your newsreader of choice. The address is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/freshdv
*You can subscribe to our RSS news feed via e-mail to be notified of new posts and updates. Do that here.
*You can still automagically subscribe to our audio/video podcasts in iTunes (and your iPod if so equipped). Clicky clicky.
*There is now a audio/video podcast feed created specifically for third party podcast tools and software like Miro. Use this address: http://feeds.feedburner.com/freshdv/podcast

As always, “subscribing” to any of our feeds won’t cost you a dime. If you are unsure how to use feeds and podcasts, here is a quick primer that may be helpful. Thanks for reading, watching, and listening. Your comments and feedback are greatly appreciated.

Here’s another fantastic Creative Cow video tutorial, this one on Simple Object Removal. You’ll need Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, and ObviousFX free CopyImage plugin (for both Mac and PC users).

Earlier this year, Redrock Micro announced that they were working on an affordable mattebox and wireless lens focus control. The two products are coming along nicely, you may have seen a later revision of the mattebox at CineGear Expo. In fact, they are now accepting reservations online with no cost up front. So if you are even just mildly interested in either product, you might consider grabbing a place in line. As a bonus, after you register you’ll be treated to a short film shot by Amilcar Machado using the HVR-Z1U camcorder with the Redrock M2 adapter.

Watching the development of these two products closely, it has been interesting to see the design and feature set slowly morph over time. For instance, the mattebox now offers three rotating filter stages in the base config. What’s more, they are stackable and additional stages can be added on later. Filters between 4×4 and 6×6 are supported, and the design is now a swing-away (very handy indeed for quick lens changes). Those that worried about the build quality of the plastic prototype shown a few months ago will be happy to note that the mattebox is almost an entirely metal design. I also have it on good authority that the design now accommodates those huge diameter cinema ultra-prime lenses. Target price? Still $500. Here are the latest full specs on both products as well as a FreshDV exclusive microMatteBox prototype image…
Continue reading ‘Redrock Micro Mattebox and Remote Updates’

I noticed the following Apple Color article via the excellent AE Portal blog. Oliver Peters has a nice writeup for DV Magazine on Apple’s grading application, you can read it online here. Here are a few snippets that I found informative.

“…Color is a pleasure, but it isn’t the only Final Cut grading solution you’ll ever use. There are still plenty of reasons to use the three-way corrector or plug-ins like Magic Bullet Colorista to correct or enhance a handful of shots inside FCP. To get the most out of Apple Color, it’s worth it to plan a color-grading pass into your routine…

“…2-minute 1080i clip—with several layers of grading and an added Color FX Film Grain filter—took between 14 and 17 minutes to render on a Mac Pro (two dual-core Xeons) with 8GB RAM and the ATI X1900 XT graphics card. A similar DV clip took about 11 minutes…”

“…you can’t slave audio with the picture. Final Cut’s three-way color settings translate but don’t really match in Color. Overall, the quality is superb, but I was disappointed with the blur effects. You can’t add a soft-focus effect from the vignettes in the Secondaries. Doing so requires a Color FX filter, and I thought these looked crunchy on highly compressed media such as XDCAM HD and DVCPRO HD. At least one handy feature—adding notes to shots in the list view—doesn’t work yet. And, finally, there is only one undo.”

For more Color-related articles and info, check out AE Portal’s short list of links.

John August, the screenwriter behind Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory made his own film recently. He has been kind enough to share some intimate details on the workflow and creative process over at HD For Indies. It’s a very interesting post to read, they cover everything from location scouting, to shooting (and why film was chosen), to post workflow. Great post.

Splice has a solid set of useful tips to consider when configuring your Mac editing boxen for use with FCP Studio. Suggestions like changing conflicting Dashboard and Exposé shortcuts, turning off the Sleep energy saver on your scratch disks, and performing Software Update checks manually rather than automatically. (For HDD Sleep mode, check out Spindownfix) For what it’s worth, I personally would disagree with the Software Update suggestion…I tend to forget to run things like that on a regular basis. But as the article suggests, I often will postpone auto update installation until I’m between editing projects and others have worked out the new Apple software kinks. Anyway, a good set of tips for FCP editors, check it out.

One irritation of embedded Quicktime video clips is the lack of runtime display, ala Youtube videos. But if you don’t mind a little javascript and html hacking, here’s a way to get around that limitation of the QT browser plugin and display the current play time for your embedded clips.

Filmmaker Josh Oakhurst created a few stop-motion commercials recently using a Nikon D80 DSLR still camera to capture his 1080/24p images. They are quite nicely done, in my opinion. He’s been getting a lot of questions and comments on the compelling spots (myself included), so he took some time to answer production questions publicly in a blog post.

Here’s a quick Final Cut Pro tip, how to Solo a clip for playback without the surrounding video tracks.

I’ve really been enjoying Stefan Sargent’s Production Diaries in DV Magazine, his style of writing is engaging and enjoyable. This one on Helicopter Production was no exception.

Mike Curtis is a vocal proponent of careful pre-production and workflow planning, and it’s no surprise given the horror stories he has related on the subject. Mike’s wisdom is a Good Thing and will help you avoid common pitfalls. And his latest roundup of suggestions for Indie Filmmakers is no exception…Top Ten Things Every Indie Filmmaker Should Know Before They Start. Check it out.

Audioholics has a nice in-depth article on the origins of the HDMI cabling standard (and how the designers screwed it up so badly). Despite it’s issues, the standard is rapidly becoming widely adopted, so it’s important to know the limitations. In particular, HDMI can’t be run for very long distances, and is sensitive to couplers, switches and adapters along the way. Happily, Belden has been working on a special “bonded pair” cable technology that addresses the issue of running high bitrates through twisted pairs. This new cable design has been shown in the lab to push HDMI signals to 150+ feet, and is supposed to be available this summer. Check out the article for other best practices for HDMI cabling, and how to get the most out of the conflicted standard.

Moody is a free Mac OSX application that works in concert with iTunes to intelligently tag your library of music based on mood. It uses a floating window with color-coded mood scale, so you can quickly tag songs as you listen. This enables you to find certain moods easier, and create more intelligent playlists. This is handy for me as an editor, because I can find sound effects and background music much more intelligently (once I have tagged the library). Additionally, there are those that use iTunes as the repository and organization tool for audio in a editing project (Shane Ross has a DVD tutorial on that topic in fact), and this could be used to further organize that media in iTunes. Handy tool.

Bill O’Neil has a detailed article up at Creative Cow on creating a 3D Arena environment in After Effects, something that is normally done using more traditional 3D modeling applications. He breaks down all the virtual elements of the world, how performances were captured on greenscreen, and dishes out some handy tips and tricks along the way. A very informative and useful tutorial.