Century Stand or C-stands are a must have on a set of any size they are invaluable as a way to hang lights, hold flags, bounce cards, emergency mic stand and much, much more. For the independent filmmaker on a cheap or low budget the fact that a good C-stand can cost upward of $175 each can be a bit of a downer. Well for those do-it-yourself filmmakers here is a great little solution for around $30 + a little elbow grease and some time you can build your own C-stands. Listed below is a brief overview of the pros and cons of this solution, read through it and if your up for a little fun check out the full set of instructions here. Continue reading ‘DIY C-Stand Tutorial’

Okay guys for everyone interested in recieving full e-mail feed updates, you may now subscribe. If you e-mail subscribed via feedburner earlier you may have only been recieving notification of new podcasts and not all the articles on the site. Matt has updated and corrected the problem but it will require that you re-subscribe to ensure that it works correctly. You may use the normal RSS site feed link on the top left or subscribe to e-mail updates here. If you have been recieving full feeds with no issues we subscribe heavily to the old adage, “If ain’t broke don’t fix it.” In other words leave it alone :)

As some of you may know, the FreshDV team gathered in Chicago this last week to put some filmmaking gear by top manufacturers under scrutiny. After 5 long days of extensive testing we managed to find some very interesting results. Lighting kits, follow focus units, matte boxes, and much much more. We will be posting extensive written reviews as well as complete video coverage via our FreshDV Podcast. Just a quick shoutout to some sponsors who provided us with some much needed support gear even though we didn’t directly test their gear. Special thanks to our friend Bruce Allen for providing us with his light meter. Special thanks to Fletcher Chicago for providing us with a Zeiss 85mm PL lens to test our gear on. Zeiss also helped us by providing us with a set of their ZF primes to test gear on as well. Below are some pics from the week. Thanks to the following manufacturers who provided us with gear: Continue reading ‘A Very Tired FreshDV Team :)’

Panasonic announced today that 16 GB P2 cards are now shipping, with a 32 GB option to be available by the year’s end. The 16GB cards are listed at $900 from Panasonic. The 32GB card MSRP will be $1,800.

(Via Camcorderinfo)

UPDATE:
According to Panasonic Dealer Specialized Communications there has been a delay, go figure, and the 16GB cards will not be shipped until sometime in middle July. Once again Panasonic proves to be working from behind the schedule on their P2 development. For one I would like to see them bring technology to market at a promised date.

Raylight recently announced support for OS X. Among the features listed:

” Raylight for Mac puts MXF files from the P2 Card straight into Final Cut Pro!

• It allows instant, direct editing of MXF files in FCP, or any video application on the Mac.
• It turns the Quicktime Player into a P2 Card Viewer.*
• It supports ALL HVX200 modes and frame rates for both Euro and US model cameras.*
• It will run on G5, G4 or Intel Macs.” (VIA DVfilm.com)

Raylight for OS X is currently available for the price of $95 from DVfilm.com Currently timecode and metadata are unsupported in version 1.0 but DVfilm says that will be remedied in version 1.1 along with support for some additional pulldown conversions. According to DVfilm 1.1 will be offered as a free upgrade to verion 1.0 users. Any FreshDV readers who have any experience with this software feel free to drop some feedback on it.

Killer Camera Rigs (The Complete DIY Guide)
By Kendal Miller
FreshDV.com

$39.95
Dan Selakovich
www.dvcamerarigs.com

This review is for all those out there like myself who take great joy in saving a few bucks and creating and customizing your own rigs. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the book “Killer Camera Rigs,” now might be a good time to do so. This book is distributed as an e-book which while you may print it and take it out to your workshop, might be easier to use if it were actually in print. The guide assumes you have some degree of competence with basic hand tools and power tools…and if you don’t, chances are that this may be over your head.
Continue reading ‘Killer Camera Rigs (The Complete DIY Guide)’

MOTU announced their new all in one V3hd Firewire Input/Output interface for video and audio today, and at first glance it looks very impressive! This realtime hardware device offers a staggering number of input and output options on the box, which also connects to your editing workstation via a single firewire cable. All functions can be controlled via software on a PC or Mac (FCP and Premiere Pro support) and also via a multi-use rotary knob on the front of the unit. In fact, the V3HD can be used completely as a standalone converter box with no computer connection required. That same control knob can be used to tweak volume monitoring AND output levels if necessary. There is a physical timecode display on the unit, and programmable metering. The software offers control via a intuitive graphical display showing the HD and SD signal path. Click the thumbnails to see all the input/output ports and options in detail, as well as a software screenshot.

The Motu V3HD can ingest any source and send it to the workstation over firewire in Uncompressed SD or DVCPRO, DVCPRO 50 and DVCPRO HD. Uncompressed HD is not an option, unfortunately, as it simply won’t fit over firewire. The V3HD preserves timecode on capture, so timecode-accurate HDMI or HDV captures could be transcoded to DVCPRO HD on the fly. The unit offers a host of monitoring options, basically anything you can think of. Monitor via HDMI, HD-SDI, Component, etc. Or all at once…
Continue reading ‘MOTU V3HD All-In-One Video Audio I/O FW Interface’

For those of you who haven’t had the chance to check it out yet, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates recently sat down with Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg at the D5: All Things Digital Conference to discuss their respective companies and technology in general. A fascinating and rare look into the lives of these two pioneers who have changed the landscape of technology forever. You can watch the entire full length interview via itunes here. Definitely worth the time for anyone interested in media or technology in general.

As most of you are well aware of by now Red Digital Cinema previewed their “Crossing The Line“ demo footage at NAB Expo this year, which just so happened to be shot by seasoned director Peter Jackson. FreshDV brought you the Red Video Podcast interview with “Leader of the Rebellion” Ted Schilowitz and a great little segment with DP Richard Bluck.

Red Digital Cinema has now released an article detailing a review by Peter Jackson himself as published by “ONFILM” magazine. Its an interesting evolution to have a respected member of the filmmaking community with the experience level of Peter Jackson lend his opinion to both Red and the digital cinema revolution. Check it out below.
Continue reading ‘Interview With Peter Jackson on Red Digital Cinema’

Go behind the scenes of Discovery Channel’s hit series “Planet Earth” and see how cameramen overcame the hurdles and rigors of filming in remote locations to capture their breathtaking footage. An interesting look into their rigs, gear, and production challenges. For example some footage I swear was done on a gyro-stabilized helicopter rig actually was shot off of a hot air balloon, seems as though the big budget boys can improvise with the best of them. If you enjoy those clips you may also be interested in this behind the scenes segment on how the pulled off the footage from their series “Everest and Beyond”.

Apple announced they would be partnering with YouTube through Apple TV to make You Tube content available through the Apple TV for large screen viewing.

“With Apple TV, you can watch theatrical trailers from Apple.com on your TV. And soon, you’ll be able to browse and watch YouTube videos on the big screen, too. Coming in June, you can browse and watch thousands of free YouTube videos streaming directly from the Internet. Just sit back and enjoy the show.”

Apple.com

While this is definitely an interesting phase in the continuing effort to bring Internet entertainment into the home theater realm and bridge the technologies, I wonder exactly how grand crappy You tube encoding will when scaled up to you home TV system. Currently Apple TVs encoding has been less than satisfactory for a lot of users. This is certainly interesting and deserves to be watched.

Duel Systems has just released a beta version of their drivers for their express card to PCMCIA adapter for Macbook Pro. Earlier driver releases had frustrated users who had waited a long time for the adapter to be released only to find a very klunky workaround was the only way to get the drivers to work with the unsupported 10.4.9 version of OS X. Frustration ensued as we were left with useless hardware at around $100 each. It appears that Duel Systems has announced a beta version driver that offers support for 10.4.9 I personally haven’t had the chance to download it yet but you can get it here. 

Check back in if you have a chance to check it out and let me know what you guys think.

For those of you who don’t remember, FreshDV did a tutorial on Adobe’s online flash based color theme design tool called Kuler. At the time I wondered how long it would take for Kuler to become its own application and at some point if Adobe would attempt to monetize it. In my opinion what makes Kuler work is that it is free, it gives users incentives to access it to build and share their themes thus creating a pretty extensive library. If they were to charge for this service I don’t think it would get near the response it has.

Well as of today its good news for Kuler! While not completely its own standalone software, Adobe has repackaged it in the form of a cross platform Apollo-based widget that can read themes and updates via RSS feeds. Very cool. One of the downsides for me that I found disappointing was the inability to create schemes and apply rules directly within the app. Basically the desktop app allows you to browse all the color schemes online. While that is very cool, the ability to create my own themes and apply rules to base colors etc…is where a lot of the power in Kuler is for me. The widget will save me sometime but I would find it alot more useful if I had access to the full range of creation tools through the desktop app as well. Here is to hoping V2.0 includes those tools. In the meantime you can continue to create and modify your designs via the online version of Kuler. Continue reading ‘Adobe Kuler Gets Makeover’

Mac Break has an interesting video interview with Kwesi Collisson producer for “Conversation With Other Women”. In this clip he details some of the After Effects composting the crew used to composite a shot they needed to re-shoot at a location they were unable to re-secure after principal photography wrapped. I think it is always interesting to see larger budget films using tools like After Effects, it just goes to show how mature this software has become over the last several years in my opinion. If you find this interesting there is an additional video that details some more of their production workflow, creating a film look for HD, and of course some more After Effects compositing fun!

Okay everyone this is your opportunity to help us take our next step forward in the development of FreshDV. The last few months have been a whirlwind of activities and ideas for the site. We would like your ideas on what improvements to FreshDV you would like to see, and any additional articles, tips, tutorials, or features you would like to see incorporated into the site. Let us hear what you have to say and drop me a line at Kendal@lmpstudios.com.