We mentioned CasparCG earlier this year, it’s a free broadcast play-out server that offers a mature and stable featureset rivaling commercial packages costing many thousands of dollars. Recently they also posted a short case study on how CasparCG was used to play live World Cup graphics, and they even made those templates freely available for testing on your own CasparCG server. Very cool, and a great way to test out the tech.

As we’re not always very “broadcast focused” here at FreshDV, we wanted to talk with one of the guys behind CasparCG and get a deeper understanding of this free playout solution and what features it offers. So we did a short Q&A with Jonas Hummelstrand, which you can read below.

Q1: What is a broadcast play out server?

There are mainly two types of standard broadcast graphics; the pre-rendered videos and the real-time dynamic graphics. Videos need to support embedded alpha channel and audio, and should be able to be called up and played instantly without pre-loading. You also want to be able to play several videos at the same time (”loop this clip in the background and put the spinning logo on top”) and have them output as one composite, and do transitions between them.

The harder part is the dynamic graphics as in “Fetch the latest stock prices and display them as an animated chart.” Thanks to Moore’s law we no longer need water-cooled SGI workstations to play real-time graphics — a pretty cheap PC can output HD resolutions. The same paradigm shift is now happening on the software side — you no longer need specialist software to create dynamic content!

Q2: CasparCG has been being freely available for some time now…but as I do not work in the live broadcast industry, I have no real perspective on this. What would a typical play out server solution cost?

No broadcast company has a price list, but you can expect to pay between $10,000 and $80,000 for a single HD system with hardware licenses, and then you might just get either video playback or only dynamic graphics without pre-rendered video capabilities.

Q3: What is the key advantage of CasparCG being Flash based? That seems like an odd tech to build on.

CasparCG currently uses Flash as the authoring tool for the real-time graphics, as it’s a proven platform with millions of skilled users that also freely share their knowledge and templates. Instead of staring at a blank document, you can use the wealth of the Internet as a stepping stone to get you started, and if you get stuck there’s always someone to ask.

Another cool feature is the power that comes from having logic in the renderer. Normally you have a controller that just tells the renderer what to do next, but with the ability to script the renderer you can create graphics that adapt itself to the other items. Let’s say you have a score board at the bottom of the screen, and you decide to show a name sign. Instead of manually removing the scoreboard before you show the name sign, you can easily create logic that tells the score board to automatically move out of the way or hide as long as the other sign is visible.

Q4: How does CasparCG’s approach compare to other proprietary playout server solutions currently on the market?

We play a large number of video codecs and resolutions to a large number of output video cards. The dynamic graphics is created in an ever-evolving platform where millions of users (rather than 200 clients in graphics departments in TV stations) fuel development and innovation. By using standard components for both software and hardware, we get to ride along the speeding train of development, rather than being left at the mercy of a single vendor’s schedule.

Q5: If CasparCG is so good, then why are you releasing it free and opening up the source? Do you intend to keep developing and bug-squashing on the source?

We are a license-funded broadcaster that developed CasparCG in-house to meet our needs. We broadcast over 70 hours of television per day, and each hour of programming is using CasparCG graphics in everything from the station logos and channel branding to lower-thirds and game show graphics. We will continue to develop the CasparCG system so it fits our productions, but we are excited to see what the community can bring in terms of new features that we haven’t even thought of!

Q6: Is CasparCG a turnkey type install, or will users need to dig into the code to make it work? Are there hardware limitations, or is it fairly hardware agnostic?

All you need to get started in 5 minutes are available on www.casparcg.com. It’s important to me as a designer that installers, templates and examples quickly give you a glimpse of what you can do. You shouldn’t have to read a wiki or (oh, the horror) have to compile something to see the potential of CasparCG! The source code is there if you have the skills to modify CasparCG, but if C++ isn’t your thing you can just use the installers and don’t bother with the low-level stuff.

We currently support output to computer monitor (either windowed or fullscreen with OpenGL scaling) and to all the SDI, HD-SDI and HDMI cards from Bluefish Technologies and BlackMagic Design (DeckLink,) starting at $199.

Q7: You state in your FAQ that CasparCG’s capabilities are largely dependent on hardware power. Are there rules of thumb when spec’ing out hardware for a CasparCG system, and do you provide recommendations for users based on a certain framerate or resolution baseline requirement?

We still use machines that we built for the first version of CasparCG back in 2005, and they play and transition between PAL SD videos just fine, so we try to encourage people to try it on older systems! However, our newer systems are all Dell R5400 with 8 processors, 8 GB of RAM and a really fast disk array, coupled with one or several Bluefish Epoch HD cards. The support for the DeckLink cards was just released, so we don’t have any systems like that yet (even though we’re looking forward to test if we can build a stand-alone HD broadcast graphics server in a laptop with their UltraStudio Pro card!)

In summary, the broadcast business is so used to only having expensive and proprietary systems to choose from, that it’s hard to get people to think there are any alternatives to the established players. It’s really a question of just adding 2 and 2 together; you can play fullscreen video and dynamic graphics on any computer nowadays, coupled with really cheap SDI and HDMI output cards. All that is needed is a way of controlling the play out and you’ve got yourself a broadcast graphics solution! CasparCG is that affordable solution.

Thanks to Jonas for making the time for this Q&A. You can learn more about CasparCG at www.casparcg.com

Who will Get The Cheese? It’s an odd question, and I’ll offer an explanation in just a moment. First, some history…

In the last year and a half, our industry has seen an amazing revolution. Many videographers, filmmakers, and indies have pushed aside their technically superior, properly-designed HD camcorders for a deeply flawed, imperfect tool: the DSLR that shoots video. They have done this for many good reasons, but there is no questioning that DSLRs were not designed to shoot video.

We DSLR video shooters love that these imperfect tools give us amazing things we’ve never had access to in this price range; massive, production-quality image sensors that can practically see in the dark and offer filmic depth-of-field and incredible dynamic range; a seemingly endless array of high-quality interchangeable lens options; solid-state recording on affordable, industry-standard media; and finally a tiny form factor that enables us to do things and shoot places we’ve never shot before.

We put up with all the flaws, the aliasing, the highly-compressed acquisition codec, short record times, the non-standard form-factor, all these negatives we put up with, because the positives are so compelling. Does that mean these are perfect cameras? Not by a long shot. It means they are Good Enough that we’ll deal with all the crap that comes with it. To be fair, many users won’t deal with it…there are lots of applications where DSLRs simply don’t work. But the whole time that so many users have embraced this flawed tech which offers us so much, we’ve been wondering when someone will finally get it right and put all this tech into a proper camcorder body with proper professional camera features. Who will be the first to recognize that this is what users want?

This is not to say that the camcorder market has not already been shifting…it has. Just a few years ago, it was standard practice to deliver new solid-state cameras with a proprietary media solution. Panasonic’s P2 media and Sony’s SxS are very expensive formats. Unnecessarily expensive…as we all learned, when E-Films released a SxS adapter dubbed MxR that accepted standard el-cheapo SDHC media. Now it’s hard to find a Sony EX1 or EX3 shooter who doesn’t have these cheap SD card adapters and uses them regularly. As a result, now cameras are coming to market with CF card and SDHC media. This year Canon announced a pro-level camcorder that offers a 50 Mbit MPEG2 recording format that can be edited directly off the card without re-wrapping on ingest. It’s an incremental step, but a solid one. Manufacturers have realized that the market is shifting, and if they don’t start delivering what consumers demand, they will be left behind.

The next revolution (that is happening right now) is affordable interchangeable lenses. Not a handful of expensive HD lens options that you can swap on your XLH1, I’m talking a veritable shit-ton of lens options that are affordable and you can buy almost anywhere. A mount that can be adapted to handle myriad existing and new lens options. Users want choice, and they want those options to be high-quality…and manufacturers are responding. And hot on the tail of the DSLR video explosion (HDSLR or VDSLR as they are sometimes called) manufacturers are slowly responding with options. This year at NAB, Panasonic announced an interchangeable micro 4/3 mount camcorder. The AG-AF100 is a proper camcorder, with proper camcorder functions. There is a growing market for micro 4/3 mount glass, but with cheap adapter rings this camera will accept existing Nikon, Canon, PL glass, you name it. Finally, choice! They nailed it on the lens end of things, but they fell way short with their codec; AVCHD. It’s usable yes. It will do amazing things, yes. But it’s just a step short of what users want. Still, we are making progress. So bravo, Panasonic!

Just today Sony announced that they too are working on an interchangeable lens camcorder line. It starts with the NEX-3 and NEX-5 models, in a small DSLR form factor with interchangeable lenses. Those cameras are coming soon. They are basing it on something called an “E-mount” that can be adapted to their Alpha lens line. It is my understanding that Sony Alpha DSLRs can also be adapted to popular existing options like Nikon and others, so it follows that there is some way to use other lenses on this camcorder line. This of course continues the trend of user options. Sony also showed a preview of small, handheld, consumer-level camcorders that accept interchangeable lenses. These supposedly have autofocus capability via the new E-mount. And based on how Sony tends to operate, that likely means the AVCHD codec (to be clear, this is my speculation, but I think it’s a good guess that will likely hold to be true). They appear to be delivering a solid sensor, and the lens mount looks good (particularly when adapted to Alpha and others). But damn that AVCHD codec. So once again, very close. Bravo, Sony! Progress, but we aren’t there yet, folks.

The next revolution will be the sensor size; we’re going to see better light sensitivity on a larger sensor, and better dynamic range. And it’s going to happen in concert with a shift to more high-quality, less-compressed codecs. The larger sensor revolution has already happened in DSLRs, and we’re probably not going to see a Vistavision-sized sensor like the 5D MKII in any camcorders any time soon. But APS-C sized sensors will begin to make inroads in the “proper-camcorder” market, and as they do we are going to see more and more codec options that offer less and less compression. If RED can ever ship that Scarlet camera they’ve been tantalizing us with for nearly 3 years, I think that will hasten the codec revolution. If it was going to be as affordable as they initially announced, it would put even more pressure on the market…but it appears that RED has decided DSLRs are killing the low-end market for them, and they’ve priced their line somewhere in between DSLRs and RED Epic. To be fair, I think that the RED One has already put some pressure on the market to shift to better codec options, if only by increasing users awareness of codecs and the RAW workflow.

So back to my original point about dairy products. There’s an old saying that goes something like this:

The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

To me, Canon got the worm. They somehow stumbled into this DSLR video thing, gurgling and flailing their arms like a newborn, and then belatedly realized that this was an untapped way to move cameras and lenses. It really was like evolution…somehow, the right combination of RNA combined in the primordial ooze that is their R&D dept, and the 5D MKII emerged. But then they took over and did something very intelligent. They bucked the ivory-tower trend and listened to users, quickly adding manual controls in the firmware update a year ago, and now 24p. Nikon would have had a larger chunk of the proverbial worm if they had made a better codec choice than MJPEG. Still arm-flailing, apparently. There’s still time to change it, but big ships turn slowly and I’m afraid Nikon won’t shift in time. Panasonic’s GH1 is a compelling option, but is ultimately hobbled by a low-bitrate implementation of AVCHD. Whether by design or sheer luck, Canon’s H.264 codec was Good Enough and the revolution took off.

The question is, who will be the second mouse that gets the cheese? Who will be the company that swoops in and captures this market after the clunky, flawed DSLRs have paved the way, proven the tech, and stoked consumer’s fires? Will it be Panasonic, with their AF100? Will it be Sony, with this new E-mount line? It’s all speculation now, but we’ll see this fall when they ship. My feeling is that these two announcements are just the beginning of the real shift in camcorders.

It’s not rocket surgery, folks. We want these four simple things; Sensor, Lens, Codec, and Form Factor. Why is this so much to ask? I realize that these are not trivial requests, but understand that quality options for each already exist seperately in the market. If we could somehow cross-breed cameras, we’d have these tools already.

So who is going to get the cheese? It’s only a feeling right now, call it a gut impulse, but my money is on Sony.

FreshDV recently had the chance to meet with a group of Los Angeles-based filmmakers that are at the forefront of the DSLR filmmaking revolution. In collaboration with Bandito Brothers (the creative group behind the amazing doc “Dust to Glory”), seasoned cinematographer Shane Hurlbut has been breaking new ground in DSLR filmmaking for some time now. Bandito is currently in post-production on the Navy Seals feature film that Shane lensed, shot largely on Canon DSLR cameras and due for release in late 2010.

We sat down at Bandito Brothers beautiful Culver City, CA facility to talk about their experience as filmmakers, working with DSLRs, and in particular the work they did on the Navy Seals feature, currently entitled “Act of Valor.”

In these two 20-minute videos, Cinematographer Shane Hurlbut, Bandito’s Jacob Rosenberg, and Hesh Rephun of Raging Artists candidly open up about the filmmaking process. It’s a fascinating and informative discussion, and we hope you enjoy it. Watch below.

Conversations with Filmmakers: Shane Hurlbut / Jacob Rosenberg / Hesh Rephun, Part I
Conversations - Bandito / Hurlbut 01

Conversations with Filmmakers: Shane Hurlbut / Jacob Rosenberg / Hesh Rephun, Part II
Conversations - Bandito / Hurlbut 02

If you enjoyed these videos, please tell a friend or give us a shout out on Twitter. You can watch Mouse McCoy’s BMW M3 spec “Living in the Lights” that is referenced in this interview here. There’s a nice behind the scenes article on the production of that video over at Raging Artists. I should also mention that Bandito’s Mike McCarthy maintains a blog on HD editing for the PC at www.hd4pc.com.

You may also be interested in a short film Shane recently shot at Bandito’s facility entitled “The Last 3 Minutes.” They’ve also posted The Making of “The Last 3 Minutes” and The Making of The Janitor Sequence From “The Last 3 Minutes”. Excellent resources for filmmakers!

Conversations with Filmmakers Production Credits: Camera - Daniel Boswell / Editor: Matt Jeppsen

 Conversations - Shane Hurlbut and Bandito Bros on DSLR Filmmaking (1 of 2) [23:01m]: Download
 Conversations - Shane Hurlbut and Bandito Bros on DSLR Filmmaking (2 of 2) [19:47m]: Download

So after a week after we arrived in Las Vegas to cover NAB 2010, Kendal and I sat down to discuss what we’d seen at the show. It’s a candid and open discussion that we hope will provide some of our perspective on the announcements and tools shown in our NAB coverage. This is our last video segment from NAB 2010. Watch below.

Wrapup

As we ask towards the end, feel free to drop us feedback or comments either here or on Twitter.

 NAB 2010 FreshDV Final Wrapup Discussion [15:53m]: Download

G-RAID Review
G-Technology
www.g-technology.com

Introduction
Monday April 12, 2010 marks the beginning of FreshDV’s fourth year broadcasting daily video coverage from the National Association of Broadcasters tradeshow. The week of NAB is always a busy one for the FreshDV crew; we run camera crews all day on the tradeshow floor, meanwhile editors ingest, edit, and output video segments for broadcast here at FreshDV and also via syndication partners. It’s nearly-live coverage from this incredibly large tradeshow, and the pace is frenetic.

For the last two years we’ve shot and edited the show in HD, downrezzing for the web on output. NAB 2009 was the year we went solid-state, shooting on the Sony EX1 platform and running media cards back and forth to the edit suite. When we transitioned to HD acquisition, we also adopted a new storage strategy. For the last two years, we’ve been using G-Tech G-RAID 2 hard drive systems for storage and editing. They are reliable, fast, and durable enough to hold up to the rigors of our crazy production schedule. Since we started using these hard drives, G-Tech has released a new version, the G-RAID 3 with even larger max capacity space and a few other options like the addition of an eSATA port (and removal of the FW400 option, except via a FW800-to-400 cable). Beyond that, it appears that the overall design and has not changed. For the purposes of this review, we’ll be talking specifically about the G-RAID 2 systems.

Design and Construction
The G-RAID 2 is a two-drive RAID system, configured in a RAID-0 striped volume array for speed. In my testing, these units deliver upwards of 65MB/s read and write speeds, so they are plenty fast for our compressed EX1 footage and ProRes 422 sources (the latter which is used for our sponsor bumpers and supporting footage/b-roll). While the beautiful aluminum exterior matches the look of Apple’s pro line of desktop towers, it’s not all about looks. The aluminum case acts as a heat sink, and is built like a tank…they are rock solid. These are solid drive systems that can literally take the heat of production.

One of the things I most appreciate about the G-RAID 2 is the multiple interface options. These drives come equipped with Firewire 800, Firewire 400, and USB 2 ports for connecting to your computer system. What’s great is the fact that there are two FW800 and FW400 ports, and the drive acts as a hub. So if you are working from a laptop system that is only equipped with a single Firewire port, you can daisy-chain multiple firewire devices via the GRAID. I can’t tell you how many times this has come in handy when working on the road. Obviously the first drive in the chain needs to be powered up to pass through connections to other devices. What’s interesting is that you can chain a single or multiple G-RAID drives to one another via FW800, and add a FW400 to the end of the chain. Very helpful.

Setup and Configuration
The G-RAID 2 comes with all the necessary cables and power cords you need to connect to your computer with Firewire 800. If you want to connect via USB 2 (why?), you’ll need one of those USB cables with the squarish end for the drive port. The first thing you’ll likely notice upon unpacking the drive is the large power brick. That is one of the minor annoyances of the G-RAID, as the power brick is nearly half the size of the drive. The other think you’ll probably notice upon connecting and powering up your drive system is the G-RAID’s internal fan. Heat is the mortal enemy of hard drives, so G-Tech includes a small fan in their enclosures. This adds a bit to the noise level of the drive system, and I suppose is a necessary evil. I’ll trade a little ambient noise for increased reliability any day. Setup is quick and simple, as G-Tech ships drives pre-configured to work with Mac OSX. Windows users will want to reformat the hard drive before use. Beyond that, there’s not much else to report. Setup is simple.

Drive Performance
In testing with AJA’s drive System Test utility, I was able to obtain 77.2MB/s read and 65.7MB/s write speeds. At the time of the test, the drive was 1/3 full. I also tested the drive when 3/4 full, and saw the read and write speeds drop slightly to 76.9MB/s and 63.2MB/s, respectively.

Reliability
G-Tech is a well-respected name in the industry, and I know a lot of production users who swear by their drives. But every good name is not without the occasional issue. In my case, about 6 months after acquiring my G-RAID system, I started noticing a clicking noise when powering up the drive. Soon thereafter, the drive would occasionally refuse to mount on my computer. After sending the drive in for replacement, I’ve been running this G-RAID 2 system for about 18 months with no other such issues. I use the drive as my editing scratch, for captures, renders, encoding and such. So it gets used on a regular basis on a variety of HD projects, mainly various ProRes flavors and some RED R3D sources. The only other issue I’ve run into recently is the fan on the enclosure is starting to get loud on occasion, and will need to be replaced. It’s my understanding that this is a user-replaceable part, and it’s simply some maintenance that I need to make time for in the near future. happily, our 2nd G-RAID 2 system has not experienced any such issues, and continues plugging away on a daily basis in heavy production use.

Summary and Conclusions
I’ve been very pleased with my G-RAID system for the past two years. With the exception of the above-noted issues, it’s been a rock-solid post-production companion, it’s white glow illuminating my steaming coffee mug on late-night editing jobs. We’ll be leaning heavily on a few G-RAID systems for our NAB 2010 coverage and post-production tasks, and I’ve gotta say that it’s nice to go into a stressful production schedule like this without having to worry about your storage solution.

Current G-RAID models are available in 1TB, 2TB, and 3TB storage capacities, and pricing starts at $229. Find them online at your favorite retailer. Happy editing!

In less than a week the FreshDV crew will arrive in Las Vegas to begin prepping for our forthcoming NAB 2010 video coverage. This will be FreshDV’s fourth year bringing you video coverage and perspectives from the NAB tradeshow floor, and we anticipate it being our best year of coverage to date. We’ve got a great production crew, incredible sponsors supporting us, and the pre-NAB buzz is great. We’re very excited to once again bring your our unique style of daily videos, and hope you’ll enjoy our extensive coverage. You can see last year’s coverage here.

So stay tuned here at FreshDV for our coverage starting on Monday, April 12th. Updates will be posted here to the blog, and there’s a convenient playlist of NAB videos at www.freshdv.com/nab. For daily update notifications, you can follow us via our RSS feed, Twitter or sign up for a daily email digest. Want to help? Drop us hot NAB 2010 tips or suggestions at nab@freshdv.com. And please spread the word!

While visiting PMA and WPPI recently, FreshDV snagged a few video segments that should be of interest to filmmakers and video creatives. We’ve posted all our coverage of PMA and WPPI over at ProPhoto Coalition, but you can watch just the video-related segments in our channel over at ProVideo Coalition.

It’s certainly an interesting commentary on the state of our industry when you can find cool video-related tools at a photography tradeshow.

The MovieMaker Magazine Winter 2010 edition is out, and in it they have their annual 50 Best Blogs for Moviemakers. We’re honored and delighted to announce that FreshDV made the list.

Thank you for watching, listening, and reading the content that we share, both here and at our ProVideo Coalition channel.

We have great new content on the way, written and video reviews and tutorials. And of course we’ll be bringing you daily video coverage from NAB and Cine Gear expo’s. This will be our fourth year covering NAB, and our third year covering Cine Gear. 2010 looks bright for FreshDV, and we thank you for your support and encouragement!

We’re also happy to see fellow ProVideoCoalition contributors The Editblog and HD For Indies on the list. Congrats, guys!

A couple weeks ago, Cinema5D posted an extensive review series of gear for DSLR video rigs. They tested various kits and accessories from eleven manufacturers in total. I was excited at first when I heard about this large review, but my excitement quickly abated when I dug into their opinions and findings. Much of what was stated in the Cinema5D review is in direct contradiction to my own experiences with the same gear. And a number of the statements made in the review aren’t just a difference of opinion, they are factually incorrect.

I cannot address every rig tested in this review, I’ll only speak about the systems that I’ve personally used. But knowing the errors and omissions in their review for the gear I have used, well, that calls into question the information they present on gear I haven’t personally used. Another concern: in the week following the review, information surfaced that indicated that when the reviewers first contacted manufacturers, a condition of submitting gear for review was that the reviewer got to keep the gear that won. Seriously? That’s akin to demanding a ransom if you want your gear reviewed. This was never stated publicly by the reviewers, until a company not participating in the review (Zacuto) outed the information.

Somewhere in the shakeout following the review, previous Cinema5D supporter Cinevate was banned as a sponsor. It’s unclear to me why that came to be. Some commenters have complained that the fact the stated winner of the review (Vocas) was a Cinema5D sponsor indicates bias. I don’t think that’s a fair point to make, it’s impossible to prove there was any bias as a result of a sponsorship (and Cinevate was a sponsor too, until they were banned) so it’s really a non-sequitur as far as I’m concerned.

At FreshDV, we know full well how hard it is to present a well-researched, thoroughly-tested review. In particular, it’s VERY hard to do a proper side-by-side comparison review where a single unit or brand is declared the overall winner. It’s almost impossible to address every concern for every unique configuration…and declaring an overall winner is rarely a useful exercise for filmmakers, as needs and uses vary so widely. It is not my belief that this Cinema5D review was biased or determined by any ulterior motive. It is my observation that they simply bit off more than they could effectively chew. The scope of this review series is ambitious, and I believe that they simply did not have enough time and production experience to properly evaluate and test each system. As such, it’s my opinion that their findings, and their final star ratings in particular, are inconclusive. Regardless of any bias allegations from the community, there are a few factually incorrect issues in the review that I’d like to address below…

Shortly after the review was posted, Redrock Micro requested that their portion of the review be removed, citing specific concerns with incorrect configurations used and faulty setup of their products. Redrock’s Brian Valente wrote a detailed list of his concerns, two of the most obvious which I will quote below:

- Not the Rigs we sent:
We never submitted anything the “tripod” category. In fact, we weren’t even made aware there was such a category until after the review was published. Apparently to fill the gap, the reviewers configured their own version of a Redrock tripod rig based on parts (some of which we didn’t even provide), and then were critical of what they created. What they ended up with does not represent Redrock, and based on the pictures they showed, I wouldn’t use or recommend what they developed either. Of the two rigs we did provide, the first was modified from the configuration we sent (see below), and the second one (theEvent) wasn’t even included in the review.

- Changed rig configurations provided:
One of the concerns stated the review on the eyeSpy rig was that it didn’t sit flat when put down, due to a single handgrip configuration. The rig we sent for review included two handgrips and the handlebar (which you can see in their picture on the “first contact” page) which allows it to be balanced when set down, but for unknown reasons this was later removed for the evaluation portion. In addition, no mention was made that the Redrock eyeSpy rig is the only one that can be directly attached to a tripod using the integrated baseplate in the shoulderpad - a feature we specifically designed to allow easy setting down of the rig and fast change between shouldermount and tripod. This misrepresents our product and its capabilities.

The faulty analysis wasn’t limited to Redrock. The product reviewers slammed Cinevate gear, calling it “a lot of cheap looking plastic parts, and unfortunately, poorly manufactured gear.” There are many ways to criticize and opine on all kinds of gear, and one is certainly entitled to one’s opinions. But calling Cinevate gear in general “cheap plastic” and “poorly manufactured” simply doesn’t jive with reality. Cinevate nearly always uses CNC aluminum and stainless steel components in their gear…it’s the opposite of poor manufacturing, and certainly not cheap to produce.

As a recent example, Cinevate’s Durus follow focus is one of the strongest, toughest follow focus systems I’ve ever used. It oughta be…it’s largely constructed of CNC aluminum! There are certainly flaws in any system, but low quality and cheaply built it is not. I encourage you to watch my review of the Durus follow focus and compare that to the Cinema5D review findings.

They also took a few shots at Cinevate’s carbon-fiber rods, calling them “poorly-crafted” and suggesting they would wear out sooner than competing rod designs. This is a direct contradiction to my own findings with Cinevate’s carbon rods. I know this, as I purchased a set of Cinevate carbon rods in 2007, their original hollow carbon design. After noting a few issues with inconsistent widths along the length of the rods, I spoke with Cinevate about the issue. They went back to the drawing board and completely replaced their stock of hollow carbon with solid carbon fiber rods. I’ve been using a set of solid-carbon Cinevate rods on a regular basis since then (over 2 yrs). They’ve never even so much as shown any wear, and their design, specifications, and manufacture is of excellent quality.

There are a number of other errors and mistakes in regards to Cinevate gear in that review, so much so that Cinevate’s Dennis Wood took time to respectfully but firmly address them in a video here. I encourage you to watch the Cinevate response video and compare to the opinions stated in the Cinema5D review.

Another product that was (in my opinion) unfairly maligned in this review was a mattebox from Genus. The reviewers called the quality and workmanship of the mattebox into question, complaining about noisy rattles, loose screws, and a french flag that would not adjust properly. Ironically enough, when this review went live, it just so happened that I was I putting the finishing touches on my own Genus mattebox review. And my findings are completely at odds with nearly every complaint they had. Notice a pattern here? I found the Genus system to be a delight to use, well-crafted, and basically everything the Cinema5D reviewers did not. It’s mindboggling how differently we see the same product. Contrary to their findings, I found the quality vs price proposition for the Genus mattebox to be perfectly balanced. I encourage you to watch my review of the Genus mattebox here, you can see me working with it, shaking things (it’s rather quiet, thanks), and decide for yourself.

I have a few other more opinion-related issues with the review in general. For instance, they lauded the ARRI MFF-1 follow focus with a lot more praise than I believe is warranted. It’s a good system, sure. But I personally find it more at home driving an HD camcorder like the EX1 than a full cine lens kit. In particular, ARRI’s arm design has (in my opinion) too many points of adjustment and can slip away from the lens. It’s not as solid as other systems I’ve used. It also requires both hands to adjust the arm, as it tends to flop around. Ironically, that’s something the Cinema5D reviewers dinged the Cinevate handheld rig grip design for, but they don’t seem to mind it on this follow focus. It’s a good example of the clear lack of consistency throughout the entire review. To me, that means this is less useful as a head-to-head, feature-to-feature comparison review, and really more of a large lump of personal opinions from a few self-professed filmmakers. Here is the Cinema5D reviewer’s curt response to criticism of his opinions and findings.

In short, and at best, it’s my opinion that the overall conclusions of this review series are inconclusive and lacking. Speaking for myself, I’ve taken the review as a whole with a larger-than-normal portion of salt. I encourage you to do the same. Opinions are fine, but reviews should be based on a consistent “yardstick” or standard measure. As users and consumers, we should demand a higher standard of gear reviews.

Editor’s note: This article was written as a response to what we believe to be an inconclusive, poorly presented review series by Cinema5D that presents information that may not be factually accurate. As FreshDV has been sponsored in the past by a few of the brands noted in this article, I think it’s important to reiterate that this article was not created as a defense for any particular sponsor or relationship. Any prior sponsor relationships had nothing to do with the impetus to write this article. Rather, my first concern is that faulty information was being presented to filmmakers. Secondly, I have a concern that reviews like this one will cast a bad light on reviewers in general. For FreshDV to be able to present gear reviews and information, we depend on manufacturers being willing to provide their gear for testing. They assume that their gear will get a fair and complete evaluation and that the facts be presented. I worry that when flawed reviews like this one are presented, it casts a bad light on reviewers in general, and I want to distance FreshDV from that. Our reputation for fairness and reasoned review analysis is very important to us. Finally, I cannot address every point I disagree with in this extensive review. So in the above article I simply refer to specific gear and products that we’ve actually used and tested first-hand in real production environments, and stick with addressing things that I know to be incorrect in the Cinema5D review.

Why do tools like the follow focus, mattebox, rods, shoulder supports, monitors, jibs, dollies, and camera stabilizers exist? There is no question that these tools are real-world solutions to common problems. But there is also another, less obvious, reason to use these tools.

A mattebox allows you to keep light flare off your lens and to quickly and easily add filtration and problem-solving filters in front of the lens (a polarizer is a great example of a problem-solving filter). A follow focus enables the operator or 1AC to efficiently and accurately pull lens focus and to set consistent marks for multiple takes of the same action. Rods, support kits, and shoulder supports are the structure that you build your camera and it’s accessories on…without a solid, configurable base, even the best accessories in the world are basically useless. Good production monitors enable you to accurately see critical focus, framing, and color information in the frame. Cranes, dollies, jibs and stabilizers were created to enable specific camera moves and smooth motion. These tools have arisen to fill a need, and in many cases they have been directly inspired or engineered by the very people on the ground who use them on a daily basis (Exhibit A: Garrett Brown).

Let me expound now on another, more controversial reason, to outfit your camera kit with accessories. And that is appearance. Before you hang me for heresy, let me explain. Or, in Paul Newman terms, “Don’t shoot, Boss. Shaking the bush.”

We’ve all heard the phrase “dress for success.” Well guess what? There are legitimate reasons why this principle also applies to your production kit, and the current crop of compact HD cameras and HDSLRs in particular (and Red Scarlet, soon). This new breed of compact camera systems are tiny in comparison to traditional broadcast and what the public considers to be “professional” gear. In many cases, this small size is an advantage…documentary work sometimes requires a stealthy presence, so this diminutive size is a huge advantage in that field of production. But for people working in other levels of production, bigger is, at times, better for appearances.

In my recent review of the Genus mattebox system, I took a few minutes in the video review and talked about how the mattebox enhanced the professional look of my 5D MKII HDSLR camera package. This little rabbit-trail is about 6:40 into my review. For instance, if you are filming an interview with a corporate executive, they are likely used to seeing a large camera package like a Varicam. In almost every shoot with my HDSLR, I am compelled at some point to explain “yes, this is a real video camera.” It’s a fair concern from the standpoint of the client…the camera body is tiny, and it doesn’t even look like a video camera. I don’t blame them for asking. Now, when they see the footage, there are never any questions. In most cases, the client is floored. But in that critical first few moments of a shoot, you have to make a good first impression, and one way to deliver a more professional appearance is to build a camera package up with accessories. Maybe it’s not entirely necessary to shoot that two-camera sit down interview with a mattebox. But if I’ve got time, I’ll still mount that mattebox, because if the client or agency I’m dealing with isn’t worried about the camera, then they can concentrate on the interview or task at hand and deliver a better performance.

This also applies to experienced actors (perhaps moreso). There was an interesting side-note from a 2006 Showreel article from “24″ DP Rodney Charters. They were testing small HD cameras and 35mm lens adapter systems on the production set, and Keifer Sutherland made the comment that he feels that he delivers a better performance to a more professional-looking camera. I wrote about this back in 2006 in this blog post, the exact quote from Rodney was:

“I told Keifer we were testing more small cameras for drama use and he said again that he doesn’t feel he can perform as intensely in front of a small camera as when he faces a large Panaflex. So I’ll start by reiterating a point I made last time: it’s a good idea to use large matte boxes if you intend to use HDV for drama, so that the actors feel there is something of substance there they can address obviously not for taking an eyeline down the lens, but at least to act as an audience.”

I know what you are thinking, and it’s exactly what I’m thinking…these issues shouldn’t matter. The final result is what should really matter. And I agree 100%! A competent shooter with DIY gear can nearly always deliver better results than a subpar shooter with the best gear in the world. But so many times we are thrust into situations where the client or on-camera talent doesn’t have a previous relationship with the shooter, and all they have to draw on are those first impressions. It’s important in these situations to put forth the best possible image, and in some cases, if you’ll pardon the euphemism, that means having the biggest rig in the room.

 Genus Matte Box Review [9:52m]: Download

About two years ago, FreshDV started an in-depth matte box video review series as an extension of a review we wrote for DV Magazine. We’re updating that series today with a review of the Genus Mattebox, an affordable, lightweight design that’s at home with compact HD camcorders and DSLR rigs.

The Genus review has been posted at PVC here, and also added to our full mattebox review series here.

Kendal got a look at Fuze Movie recently, which is the successor to the software formerly known as SyncVue Pro. Check out his writeup here.

 Cinevate Durus Follow Focus Review: Download

Way back in the fall of 2007, FreshDV kicked off a follow focus review series. Our aim was to take a look at the popular units for 35mm adapter and film camera rigs, and to establish a baseline standard for performance testing.

Since then, we’ve added to the series with several new and updated units. To date, we’ve tested and reviewed ten follow focus systems and also created a short instructional video series on the role of a First Assistant Cameraman & Focus Puller.

Today’s new addition to that review list is the Cinevate Durus follow focus, an interesting single-arm design that features one of the most solid gearboxes we’ve tested to date. You can see how the Durus performs in our monster video review playlist here.

Kendal Miller has put together an awesome video over at PVC that step-by-step breaks down the evolution of a complex dolly shot during a film shoot he DP’d. The film was shot on Red and directed by Tim Zwica. In this case-study, Kendal uses overhead diagrams, pre-production materials, behind the scenes footage, stills, and also the actual footage from the Red to show how the crew overcame the challenges of location and the requirements for the scene. Definitely check this one out!

On a related side note, I’ve previously written about some of my experiences from this shoot (I was 1AC) and the challenges we ran into with the Red One camera. Read my Weary AC/On Set With Red rant here.

Over at ProVideo Coalition I’ve posted a quick tutorial for Macbook Pro users on how to enable the faster of your two internal graphics cards (if so equipped). If you weren’t aware that your model includes two cards, you’ll be happy to hear about the potential performance gains. Check it out here.