Tune in this Thursday for the one-year anniversary of Midtown Video’s live show, the .video show with Jesse Miller. It will be Thursday August 19th at 6:30pm Eastern time. More info at www.jtown.tv. Among other topics, I’ll be discussing several cool new products that are emerging, leaking a little info on some unreleased tools. Tell your friends, and tune in Thursday to see my ugly mug.

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

I’ve got an upcoming commercial shoot for a client that will air on our local NBC affiliate. The station is currently standard-definition only, so the deliverable will be a 4:3 formatted SD master. Letterboxing would be an easy way out, but is undesirable to the client. Normally I would shoot this type of project on a standard definition camcorder in 4:3 mode; but this commercial script calls for some of the lens tricks possible with a DSLR, so I chose to shoot it on the 5D Mark II (currently $2399 @ B&H).

Unfortunately, the 5D offers no video guide overlays. There are only two Grid overlay options, and they don’t correspond to anything in the video world. There is a standard definition video mode in the 5DM2 (and it really does look pretty good), but I wanted to shoot this project 16:9 HD (protecting for 4:3 with guides), to future-proof the spot and give the client more options. So I was forced to find a way to make 4:3 crop marks on the display (as I don’t have a monitor with 4:3 guides either).

Magic Lantern has common crop mark overlays built in, but they don’t currently support the latest 5DM2 firmware, so that wasn’t an option for me. So here’s what I did to make my own. I locked down the camera and shot a tape measure. Then I dropped that footage into a 4:3 SD timeline in FCP. This by default displays as letterboxed 16:9 within the square frame. On the clip Motion tab I zoomed it to 50% to fill the screen (cropping the sides of the frame). Now with a full 4:3 frame of video, it was just a matter of comparing the tape measurements in the footage on the timeline to the same footage displayed on the 5D’s LCD. I stuck some clear tape on the DSLR’s LCD, and used a thin marker to draw 4:3 frame guides on the tape. As a little bonus, I placed the inside edges of the vertical tape strips roughly where the Action Safe guides fell in FCP. So now I’ve got approximate guides for the 4:3 Action Safe area of my frame as well as perfect guide lines to protect for 4:3 in my 16:9 frame. This whole process was highly annoying to have to do (and another example of the typical hoop-jumping you tend to do when shooting DSLRs), so I made some measurements that should simplify the process for anyone that might need to do the same trick. For consistency’s sake, I made these measurements from the on-screen Grid 1 marks.

Here’s how to quickly mark 4:3 frame guides for your 5D Mark II:
If you go into the menu under the Live View/Movie settings, there’s an option for Grid 1. Enable this for the moment. Now when you toggle on Live View, this will put a large hash guide of four intersecting lines on screen. Start by aiming your lens at an evenly lit bright surface. On the surface of your LCD screen, simply measure 12.5mm towards the outside edges of the LCD from the vertical guides displayed on the screen. Right around 12.5mm from those lines is where your 4:3 frame ends. Mark this on the LCD however you wish. You can use scotch tape as I did to make non-permanent marks with a Sharpie. Or you might be able to use these measurements to create a printed clear static sticker (inkjet printable static sticker blanks should be available at a decent office supply store). If I shot more 4:3 content, I’d probably make a sticker that I could quickly stick on the screen. Thankfully most of my work is 16:9 these days so I’ll probably just make do with the tape trick for now. Finally, when you are done making your 4:3 frame marks, you might want to disable the Grid 1 option to de-clutter your display.

Anyway, this solution is rather DIY and a rough hack, but it took some time to put together so I figured I’d share it here in hopes it will save some other poor soul stuck in Four By Three Land. Clearly a more professional solution would be a monitor with proper 4:3 aspect guides, or a camera that was intended to be used for video. Or both. If you’ve got any other guide or overlay tips, please let us know in the comments below. Happy shooting!

At the Cine Gear 2010 booth for Mayberry Studio Products we got a demo of an interesting multi-use mount system for camera and accessory rigging. Really interesting stuff. Watch below.

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Hoodman was exhibiting in the Redrock Micro booth at Cine Gear 2010, and they showed us their HoodCrane hard-mount system for the Hoodman line of eye loupes. It’s a unique and affordable flip-down solution for hard mounting the loupe to a DSLR camera. Watch below.

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At Azden’s Cine Gear 2010 booth we checked out their full line of shotgun microphones in all shapes, sizes, and features. Watch below.

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At Cine Gear 2010, we dropped by the LightTools booth to talk about their new directional grid systems for more efficient use of large soft light sources. It’s a really sweet solution, watch below.

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Bruce Dorn of IDC was at Cine Gear this year, showing off some coming products in his line of unique DSLR support and focus systems. Watch below.

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At 8Ball Camera Support’s Cine Gear 2010 booth we got a demo of their monster camera slider system, and also a look at the new single-rail slider they are offering for smaller HD and DSLR camera systems. Watch below.

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Pro8mm was exhibiting at Cine Gear 2010, and we dropped by to chat about what they are doing in the world of small format film. Cool stuff for Super8 fans, watch below.

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At Cine Gear 2010 we stopped by the FilmTools booth to chat with (easily-distractible) Jim about their vehicle camera mount systems and a few other interesting things. It was a fun interview, watch below.

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We stopped by the Redrock Micro booth at Cine Gear 2010 to get an update from Brian Valente on the development status of the microRemote, as well as talk about the Cinema Field rig that film and television DP’s have been using lately for various DSLR video production projects. Watch below.

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Zacuto was showing off their DSLR kits at Cine Gear 2010, and we dropped in to get an update from Jens and Steve on the DSLR cage alternative they are offering, the new DSLR baseplate, and their Z-FInder updates. Steve also dropped some coy hints about a new Z-Finder option coming in the future that would be usable with existing Z-Finders. Interesting. Watch below.

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We dropped by the Griplock Systems booth at Cine Gear 2010 to get an update on the latest array of cable fasteners and quick-adjust gizmos they are offering. It’s really handy stuff for anyone’s filmmaking toolkit, watch below.

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At Cine Gear 2010 we ran into Curt from Viewfactor in the Canon booth. He was showing off a unique circle-vision array of Canon DSLRs built around the Viewfactor powered camera cage. We talked a bit about this awesome rig for background plates, and also got the skinny on Viewfactor’s single-camera cage options, both powered and unpowered. Watch below.

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