In this PVC article, video guru Mike Curtis dissects Red’s native Redcode codec, and provides a massive amount of info on the variability in bitrate, storage needs for various modes and situations, and details on framerate. It’s a highly technical treatise on the codec, and a must read for new Red shooters.

I rail against DRM on a fairly regular basis here at FreshDV, and it’s sparked some interesting discussions with readers from time to time. It’s not that I advocate piracy, it’s that I am adamantly opposed to restrictions being placed on what has been lawfully bought and paid for by the consumer. Furthermore, I’ve always maintained that anything that restricts the consumer will only further foster piracy on some level. The answer is not draconian control policies, the answer is easily accessible content available at a reasonable price point.

On this topic, I just read the news over at Ars Technica that Yahoo Music was going under. Not a huge surprise, what with Amazon, iTunes, and of course the Zune marketplace, it’s tough competition out there. Unfortunately in the case of Yahoo Music, they will be taking their DRM licensing servers offline with them. What this means is that customers who have lawfully purchased music tracks from Yahoo Music will be unable to move those tracks to new computers. The tracks are DRM’d, and since there is no way to authorized the move once those servers go offline, you are just out of luck. Thanks for your business, sorry for ya! That plain sucks. And if you’re keeping score, Microsoft announced the same sort of thing earlier this year when they discontinued MSN Music (on a positive note, they backed off a bit and will keep auth servers up till 2011). Here’s an excerpt from Ars:

“Once the Yahoo store goes down and the key servers go offline, existing tracks cannot be authorized to play on new computers. Instead, Yahoo recommends the old, lame, and lossy workaround of burning the files to CD, then reripping them onto the computer. Sure, you’ll lose a bunch of blank CDs, sound quality, and all the metadata, but that’s a small price to pay for the privilege of being able to listen to that music you lawfully acquired. Good thing you didn’t download it illegally or just buy it on CD!”

“Ars has been one of only many groups banging the anti-DRM drum for years. We’re not pro-piracy, we’re just not dumb as rocks. DRM makes things harder for legal users; it creates hassles that illegal users won’t deal with; it (often) prevents cross-platform compatibility and movement between devices. In what possible world was that a good strategy for building up the nascent digital download market?”

Just another example of why DRM is anti-consumer rights. Here’s hoping that DRM-free services like Amazon’s music store will continue to flourish in the coming months and spread to other forms of media distribution, like moving pictures.

UPDATE: It looks as though Yahoo may now be offering it’s stranded users a refund for music purchases, and is researching the possibility of giving them a DRM-free MP3 version of their music. That’s more like it…

Encoding gurus have long known that to get optimal results from a codec it is best to choose a frame size that divisible by at least 4 or 8. This is because codecs often use use 4×4, 8×8 and sometimes 16×16 “blocks” to form an image. If your image dimensions are evenly divisible, no extra blocks are wasted and the codec can be most efficient with respect to image quality. In the case of On2 VP6 and Sorenson Spark codecs, both use 16×16 blocks. So to assist with choosing an optimal frame resolution, Adobe has shared a table of 4:3 and 16:9 encoding frame sizes that are useful for Flash video encoding. The table breaks down which frame resolutions are Good, Better, and Best (or, those that are divisible by 4, 8, or 16, respectively). They also have a handy Flash Bitrate Calculator that can help with other encoding and bitrate choices.

(Via askmrvideo)

For those new to the XDCAM EX workflow, here are a few guides from Sony that will help you get all your non-linear editing ducks in a row. They have PDF workflow guides available for Apple Final Cut Pro, Avid NewsCutter, Thomson Grass Valley EDIUS and Sony Vegas 8.

Oliver Peters has written out a thoughtful Ten Tips For A Better Final Cut Pro Experience that run the gamut from editing shortcuts and tricks to getting a handle on media management. Definitely worth the read.

The word on the street is that Matrox’s MXO2 release has been delayed for a short period of time as they iron out final hardware details, so if you are looking for true HD monitoring for FCP the original MXO looks to be one of the few affordable options out there. Ken Stone has written an extensive and detailed review of the MXO. It’s very informative, both as a review and a setup guide. I highly recommend the read.

The Matrox MXO is available from B&H for under $1000 (currently there are a few refurb units listed as low as $850). The MXO2 is backordered for the time being, you can get your place in line when it ships for $1595. All purchases made via those links help support FreshDV at no additional cost to you.

FreshDV interviewed the MXO2 Product Manager at NAB 2008, you can view that segment here.

UPDATE: Videoguys has posted a detailed FAQ on the Matrox MXO2 that covers basically any question regarding capabilities, configuration, and system requirements. They also compare the featureset to the AJA IoHD, Kona3, Kona LHe, Blackmagic DeckLink HD Extreme, Multibridge Pro, Multbridge Eclipse, and the Motu V4HD.

Users of the Canon XH-A1 may be excited to learn that the filmmakers making Crank 2: High Voltage are leaning heavily on the $3300 XHA1 and another affordable Canon offering, the sub-$1000 HF10. They chose these two camcorders for their image quality, compactness, and affordability. The first Crank film was shot on Sony’s HDCAM SR format using three Sony F-950 HD cameras.

“Mark: I won’t have back problems because, you know, they’re very light. And they’re really inexpensive so it doesn’t hurt my pocketbook, but no really, we can put these cameras in places that people haven’t and we can put 10 of them in places where people haven’t. And one of the things it allows us to do is…we’re doing this moving bullet time camera rig where we take 8 HF-10’s and we put it on a light weight piece of speed rail and I can roller blade and skate around Jason Statham as he’s blasting down the street with a weapon and capture just rad images.

Brian: I mean, this is an ADD movie so we should have ADD cameras, so you know the idea of like moving the camera in outrageous ways and being able to destroy cameras without blinking an eye is more important to us than, you know, sort of having this filmic image.”

I can find no references to capturing footage tethered (nor does the A1 have HD-SDI out, that is only available on the XH-G1), so it seems at least possible that they are recording HDV to tape. See the above image of the XHA1 on a handheld Fig Rig, it appears to have no tether. However they do mention the ability to shoot “full HD” 1920 x 1080, which neither Canon camera can do (HDV is 1440×1080, not full raster). Has anyone spotted other images or references of a capture device in use?

They also said that they are shooting with an aggressive in-camera look, and doing very little in post…which is an interesting approach. The Crank team showed a lot of excitement in the past about the Red camera, shot “Game” with it already, and they mention that in this article as well.

“Mark: We just want to move faster. We’re using these little cameras because, you know, red is a beautiful image. We love red cameras, we’re going to shoot with them again, but it’s like shooting a 35mm film and you need a ton of AC’s and it takes a lot of time for set up. With the cameras we’re using we literally can point and shoot and we have the same image quality that we had on “Crank 1”. You know full HD, 1920 x 1080 res—it’s great.”

It will be interesting to see how this film turns out, both in the way the camera is used cinematically, and the final image quality. Here’s hoping it turns out rad.

You can purchase the Canon XH-A1 and Canon HF-10 at B&H for $3299 and $819, respectively. Purchases made via those links help support FreshDV at no additional cost to you.

LifeDev has a thoughtful list of ways the filmmakers behind Batman: Dark Knight thought outside the proverbial box and broke the mold of standard comic book movies. And based on the records being set by the film’s box office performance, those risks are being rewarded. As the article asks, how are YOU thinking outside the box?

Ken Stone’s tutorial site has another great addition, this one a Mark Spencer video tutorial on how to 3D animate a layered photoshop file using Apple Motion. Looks like a nice quick and dirty way to creat an intro or bumper for your next project. You can find it in the list here, or via this direct mov link.

 Redrock Experts Panel on Indie Filmmaking [15:00m]: Download

One of the excellent Super Sessions at NAB 2008 was a panel discussion that featured filmmakers Stu Maschwitz, Taylor Wigton, Dave Basulto, and Alex Lindsay. The panel was organized and sponsored by Redrock Micro, with Brian Valente helping moderate the discussion. Following the presentation and Q&A, the panel shot a short summary presentation and Q&A with FreshDV. We believe that this fifteen-minute discussion will be of great interest to independent and low-budget filmmakers, the professionals on the panel dispense a lot of wisdom and realistic advice that you can put to immediate use. You can watch the video embedded below, via our podcast feed, or at FreshTV.

Oliver Peters has a good post up on the merits of good ‘ole offline editing, even in today’s world of full-resolution HD editing and finishing.

Avid codec engineer Justin Kwan has written up an in depth article regarding working with QuickTime files and the RGB and 601/709 import settings. Anyone who creates or works with QuickTime movies on the Avid Media Composer or Symphony should definitely check it out.

Jan Ozer of DCN takes a look at the Panasonic AG-HMC70, a budget shoulder-mount solid-state recording AVCHD camcorder with a niche target market. The obvious competitor to the HMC70 would be Sony’s HVR-HD1000U, which we have posted about before (here’s one such post on the 1000U that sparked a very lively comment discussion).

Here’s some background info on Radiohead’s music video for the song House of Cards. No cameras or lighting were used in the production of the video. Rather, an experimental realtime 3D acquisition system called Geometric Informatics was used to capture the performances. For large-scale landscapes and background plates, a Velodyne LIDAR system was used. Here is a behind the scenes video.

You can watch the finished video below.

Finally, here are some links at Ticklebooth if you want to know more about the process used.

Here’s a neat hat-trick you can perform with your iPhone, 3G model not required. Using remote control software VNSea or TouchPad, you can perform basic key-driven editing operations on the Final Cut Pro timeline from across the room.

“Once you’re all set up and are connected, launch Final Cut Pro, and set the Video Playback to Digital Cinema Preview Main. Hit CMD- F12 to turn on All Frames. The video should be full screen. Now, bring up the keyboard on your iPhone in the VNC program, and go to town. J,K,L keys are good for playback. Set markers with M. Also useful will be I and O for setting the in and out points. Key combinations with shift also seem to work.”

I can’t see why this isn’t also possible for Avid users as well. Along the same lines, here is Scott Simmon’s wishlist for iPhone apps for filmmakers.