Magic Lantern - how the revolutionary firmware for Canon's DSLRs really works?

Magic Lantern - how the revolutionary firmware for Canon's DSLRs really works? - motionVFX Blog:
Magic Lantern is a great software and this amazing add-on completely changed the video quality and the possibilities of many Canon's DSLR cameras. If you wonder how Magic Lantern works, you should really watch this video. It features Georg Hofstetter and Michael Zoller who talk about the firmware and presents a live demonstration of Magic Lantern, showing some of its unique functionalities and covers the hardware and software internals of Canon’s camera operating system DryOS. From the video you will also learn that programming your Canon camera is quite similar to programming any embedded ARM device in plain C. If you make the decision to mod your camera you should be aware of some legal aspects, but this topic is also discussed in the video.

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DNA Evolution v3.0 Speeds Nearline & Archive LTO Storage

DNA Evolution v3.0 Speeds Nearline & Archive LTO Storage | Storage:
This new version of DNA Evolution can be used to set up various automated conforms from LTO tape, as restore mechanisms. For example, clips identified via search, preview or browse can be selected for restore directly from the Web interface. Restores of sequences can be also performed with AAF/XML/EDL files, which DNA Evolution uses to find the hi-res media files on LTO. This type of automation can save considerable time compared to manual restoration.

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Blackmagic ships first 6G-SDI products to simplify 4K cabling by Allan Tépper

Blackmagic ships first 6G-SDI products to simplify 4K cabling by Allan Tépper:
Up until recently, if you wanted to connect a 4K video signal from one device to another, you required four SDI cables per source. At NAB 2013, Blackmagic showed and began to ship its first 6G-SDI products, which include ATEM Production Studio 4K live production studio, ATEM Studio Converter 2, Blackmagic’s 4K Production Camera, the HyperDeck Studio Pro recorder, and the company’s new Audio Monitor. But is 6G-SDI a SMPTE standard, and should you be concerned?

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See How Much You Can Do in Adobe Premiere Pro with a Multi-GPU Setup by Jeremiah Karpowicz

See How Much You Can Do in Adobe Premiere Pro with a Multi-GPU Setup by Jeremiah Karpowicz: Dave Helmly from Adobe was over in the AMD booth at SIGGRAPH 2013, and he took the time to show us some of the work they've been doing with AMD to allow users to do many different tasks at the same time and even open and use multiple programs.  He takes us though a few examples that showcase what the system can handle.

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Fletcher’s 2013 Camera Comparison

Fletcher’s 2013 Camera Comparison | Blog Central | Crews Control:
Fletcher Camera and Lenses have released their annual camera comparison chart. Fletcher Camera & Lenses collects information from their large network of industry professionals, colleagues and manufacturers in order to compile the information provided on this chart. This list is intended to help producers make more informed decisions when it comes to selecting camera and format for their next shoot.

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Sony & Panasonic Jointly Developing 300GB Optical Disc Recording:

Sony & Panasonic Jointly Developing 300GB Optical Disc Recording:
Sony and Panasonic have announced that they have signed a basic agreement with the objective of jointly developing a next-generation standard for professional-use optical discs, with the objective of expanding their archive business for long-term digital data storage. Both companies aim to improve their development efficiency based on the technologies held by each respective company, and will target the development of an optical disc with recording capacity of at least 300GB by the end of 2015. Going forward, Sony and Panasonic will continue to hold discussions regarding the specifications and other items relating to the development of this new standard.

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x265: Open-Source H.265/HEVC Video Encoder

[Phoronix] x265: Open-Source H.265/HEVC Video Encoder:
There's x264 for H.264 video encoding, but now an "x265" project has been started to ship an open-source library for H.265/HEVC video encoding.

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NVIDIA Quadro K6000 Rendering Benchmarks

BOXX Blogs: NVIDIA Quadro K6000 Rendering Benchmarks:
The latest Quadro card from NVIDIA has been announced and BOXX was able to get its hands on a couple of the new Quadro K6000s for testing. In the video above we'll show you some visual performance comparisons demonstrating how the new card stacks up against NVIDIA's other high-end GPUs. The tests gauge the performance of interactive rendering using Octane Render.

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How to Import Different Codecs and File Formats into Avid Media Composer

How to Import Different Codecs and File Formats into Avid Media Composer | wolfcrow:
In Part One and Part Two we looked at the basic structure, scope and workflow of Avid Media Composer. In Part Three we looked at how to optimize computer and project settings for best results.
In this part we’ll look at how Avid Media Composer deals with different codecs, and how you can import them.

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Codex Inrtroduces Codex Backbone and Production Server

Codex Inrtroduces Codex Backbone and Production Server by PVC News Staff:
The Codex Backbone is a hybrid system with productions taking advantage of local appliances – Codex Production Server - along with the distributed hardware of the Cloud through the Codex Backbone. Based on the proven technology of the Codex Vault, the Codex Production Server is a repository for all digital files and metadata generated during principal photography.

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What is a LUT (Look-Up Table)?

What is a LUT (Look-Up Table)? | wolfcrow:
Ever seen a multiplication table in school? They wanted you to memorize the whole thing, but didn’t you wish you had the table with you whenever you were confronted with math?
It’s easy to remember 2 x 2 = 4, but try 196 x 314 or 457432 x 938483. What if you had a table that would let you find the answer instead of calculating it yourself?

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Multi-machine rendering in Adobe After Effects

Multi-machine rendering in Adobe After Effects - video tutorial by James Whiffin! - motionVFX Blog:
James Whiffin is a freelance motion designer who lives in Australia and he spends most of his time creating visual effects and motion graphics for his clients and personal projects. He works in After Effects and Nuke for compositing and uses Maya and Mental Ray for 3D. He also shares his knowledge in many video tutorials and here's one of them. In this video he explains in detail how to setup a network for rendering in After Effects on multiple machines and shares some tips on how you can speed-up this process. Some cool and useful stuff!

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Sonnet Releases USB 3.0-to-Gigabit Ethernet Adapter

Sonnet Releases USB 3.0-to-Gigabit Ethernet Adapter | Post Production Engineer | Broadcast Engineer | Video Engineer | Studio Engineer:
Sonnet has introduced the compact Presto™ Gigabit USB 3.0, a USB 3.0-to-Gigabit Ethernet adapter. The Presto adapter provides users with a simple way to add Gigabit Ethernet-wired networking connectivity to Mac® and Windows® computers with USB 3.0 ports, exploiting the 5 Gb/sec SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface to deliver full Gigabit speed performance with suitably equipped computers. This Sonnet adapter is also backward-compatible with USB 2.0.

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Render Taxes

The Genesis Project : Render Taxes:
Today, I’d like to talk about a popular subject… I’d like to talk to about taxes.  Or more specifically “render taxes” as it relates to non-linear editors.  It’s been said that everyone pays taxes.  In the case of video editing workflows, everyone has to render their media at some point, which takes time (tax = time) and hence the concept of a ‘render tax’.

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FFmpeg 2.0 Released With OpenCL, Many Changes

[Phoronix] FFmpeg 2.0 Released With OpenCL, Many Changes:
Among the changes for FFmpeg 2.0 over the current 1.2 release include new filters, support for Monkey Audio (versions 3.93+), audio filtering support for ffplay, 10% faster AAC encoding for x86/MIPS, WebP demuxing/decoding support, OpenCL support, new demuxers, new decoders, FTP protocol support, V4L2 ouput device support, X-Video output device support, and much more.

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Hamburg Pro Media Releases Free MXF4mac Player

Hamburg Pro Media Releases Free MXF4mac Player | Digital Production BuZZ:
Hamburg Pro Media, a leading provider of software-solutions for broadcasters and post-production profesionals is pleased to release a major update to their MXF4mac free Player. Despite a complete redesign and a lot of new features like a complete new GUI or Sony´s XAVC support, the new version gives access to the new Plug-In Store, where you can browse and purchase Plug-Ins and Add-ons.

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Understanding Linear Workflow and Gamma

Understanding Linear Workflow and Gamma:
Linear Workflow is a term that tells something about how the gamma works. To understand this term, you need to know what gamma is, why it exists and how to take control over it. I’m getting back to that. Let’s see some examples first.

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How to Automate Media Management in Avid with Dynamic Media Folders

How to Automate Media Management in Avid with Dynamic Media Folders:
Although Media Composer’s AMA plug-in architecture allows virtually any file-based source media to be played in real time without first transcoding to Avid’s native DNxHD codec, many times editors will want to transcode anyway to take advantage of the maximum playback performance DNxHD offers. New in Media Composer 7 is the ability to process both transcoding and consolidation operations in the background, freeing you to continue editing both AMA and native Avid media without interruption.

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8 Bit Color vs. 32 Bit Color in Video Color Grading

8 Bit Color vs. 32 Bit Color in Video Color Grading | Premiumbeat.com:
Bit depth has a major effect on color correction adjustments. Know the difference between 8 Bit and 32 Bit!

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MPEG-DASH: Making Tracks Toward Widespread Adoption

MPEG-DASH: Making Tracks Toward Widespread Adoption - Streaming Media Magazine:
The need to reach multiple platforms and consumer electronics devices has long presented a technical and business headache, not to mention a cost for service providers looking to deliver online video. the holy grail of a common file format that would rule them all always seemed a quest too far.

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Avid Codec Guide

Avid Codec Guide:
Avid Media Composer and Symphony ship with a wide range of old and modern codecs. They can also be downloaded free of charge for systems without Avid products installed.

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Adobe Encore Reaches End-Of-Life

Adobe Encore Reaches End-Of-Life:
Some potential bad news for DVD and Blu-Ray creators using Adobe products. Adobe has announced that Encore, their DVD / Blu-Ray creation software, has reached End-of-Life status. This means there will be no Encore CC.

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The Adobe Premiere Pro to Autodesk Smoke Guide

The Adobe Premiere Pro to Autodesk Smoke Guide | wolfcrow:
There are few scenarios where one might want to move from Adobe Premiere Pro to Autodesk Smoke, and the strongest reason might be to take advantage of the native editing ability of Premiere Pro and the node-based compositing ability of Smoke.

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HJSplit: free file splitting software for Windows, Linux and other platforms

HJSplit: free file splitting software for Windows, Linux and other platforms:
HJSplit is a popular freeware program to split and recombine files. The program is available on Windows, Linux and a variety of other platforms.

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Adobe Anywhere for Video Now Available

Adobe Anywhere for Video Now Available | Creative Cloud User:
Adobe Anywhere is a powerful collaborative solution for broadcasters and large enterprises that enables users to work together using centralized media and assets across virtually any network. Anywhere allows teams to efficiently shoot, log, edit, share and finish video productions on standard systems without heavy file transfers and duplicate media. Adobe Anywhere supports the latest versions of Adobe Premiere Pro CC and Adobe Prelude CC, available as part of Adobe Creative Cloud. Adobe Anywhere support for Adobe After Effects is expected later in 2013.

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Increased support for Open Source software from EBU

EBU Technology & Innovation - News - Increased support for Open Source software from EBU:
The EBU is gearing up to better help its Members learn about Open Source software to use in their operations. That was a key message presented at the Libre Software Meeting 2013, where the EBU organized a media-focused programme.

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Amazing leap in real time motion tracking technology

RedShark News - Amazing leap in real time motion tracking technology:
This is an astonishing technology demonstration: A camera tracking a bouncing ball in real time, keeping it in the centre of the video image.

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Holographic TV might be closer than you think

Holographic TV might be closer than you think | DVICE:
Researchers at MIT’s Media Lab are reporting a new approach to generating holograms that could lead to color holographic-video displays that cost less to produce than existing monochromatic technology. Finally.

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The Autodesk Smoke Crash Course for Beginners (Part Five): Exporting

The Autodesk Smoke Crash Course for Beginners (Part Five): Exporting | wolfcrow:
In Part One and Part Two we looked at how to set up Autodesk Smoke for best results.
In Part Three we looked at the Smoke workspace and a typical workflow.
In Part Four we looked at the various import options in Smoke.
In this final part we’ll cover the export options in Autodesk Smoke, as well as archiving.

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The Autodesk Smoke Crash Course for Beginners (Part Four): Importing | wolfcrow

The Autodesk Smoke Crash Course for Beginners (Part Four): Importing | wolfcrow:
In Part One and Part Two we looked at how to set up Autodesk Smoke for best results.
In Part Three we looked at the Smoke workspace and a typical workflow.
In this part we’ll look at what formats can be imported, and how Smoke deals with them. We’ll also look at how projects from other applications can be brought into Smoke.

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News: eyeon Production Pipeline (EPP) – Open Source Workflow Independence

News: eyeon Production Pipeline (EPP) – Open Source Workflow Independence:
A forerunner in tools that provide a very fast, responsive, and highly-productive experience, eyeon Software introduces EPP. EPP’s benefits can deliver cost savings as the paths now live on global space that is accessible to all products. In contrast to conventions, EPP’s approach is far less error prone, taking care of specifying the paths. Artists are no longer required to learn the internals of the filesystem and can work directly with the shots and assets managed by the pipeline.

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It's AVA, Advanced Video Assistant, the Spanish video ingestion tool

It's AVA, Advanced Video Assistant, the Spanish video ingestion tool - IT Enquirer: audio visual:
IT´S AVA, your Advanced Video Assistant. No, I mean: it’s “IT’S AVA”, the beta software that wants to be the better ingestion tool for Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Pro X and Premiere Pro users. The Spanish connection? It’s a team of Spanish developers who have started IT’S AVA a year or so ago. IT’S AVA — I keep wanting to just type “AVA” as in Ava Gardner — is a productivity tool for video editors and filmmakers. It looks a bit like a mixture of the now defunct Final Cut Server and BulletProof minus the colour capabilities and the transcoding, but IT’S AVA’s developers claim there’s a bit of intelligence thrown in the mix.

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Missing Link between Canon 5D and Avid

Missing Link between Canon 5D and Avid by Steve Hullfish:
So, I’ve had my Canon 5D Mark II for a few years. I’ve used it on a few jobs that I’ve edited on Avid Media Composer or Symphony, but I never really cared whether the TOD timecode and other metadata came across from the .THM files that accompany the .MOV files that come from the 5D. I always either just used AMA to link to the .MOV files or imported them and converted them to DNxHD files (MXF) inside the application, losing all of the metadata of the .THMs.

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Avid Media Composer 7 ships. Here’s 25 new features by Scott Simmons

Avid Media Composer 7 ships. Here’s 25 new features by Scott Simmons:
Avid has officially released Media Composer 7 and it’s ready for download. Sadly I’m right in the middle of a job using once of Avid’s competitors so I haven’t been able to try this new version yet. But never fear, the power of the internet brings us a great list of the top 25 features of MC7. These come courtesy of Wim Van den Broeck. If you’re not following Wim on Twitter then do so now as he’s the Avid guy to follow. And yes anyone can embed a tweet but we are doing it with permission from Wim. Thanks for putting these together.

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How to Automate Media Management in Avid with Dynamic Media Folders

How to Automate Media Management in Avid with Dynamic Media Folders:
Although Media Composer’s AMA plug-in architecture allows virtually any file-based source media to be played in real time without first transcoding to Avid’s native DNxHD codec, many times editors will want to transcode anyway to take advantage of the maximum playback performance DNxHD offers. New in Media Composer 7 is the ability to process both transcoding and consolidation operations in the background, freeing you to continue editing both AMA and native Avid media without interruption.

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AMA Plugin Compatibility for Media Composer 7.0 and NewsCutter 11.0

AMA Plugin Compatibility for Media Composer 7.0 and NewsCutter 11.0:
With the release of Media Composer 7 and NewsCutter 11, new versions of AMA plugins will be qualified for use with this release.

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AMA MASTER GUIDE

AMA MASTER GUIDE.pdf:
AMA stands for Avid Media Access. This technology—featured in Media Composer, Symphony, and NewsCutter software—enables you to integrate file-based media into your editing workflow quickly and easily. Unlike tape-based projects, in which you’d capture your video from tape to bring the footage into an NLE, file-based formats don’t require you to capture material to begin editing it.

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Video Editing: Additive vs. Subtractive Color Correction

Video Editing: Additive vs. Subtractive Color Correction | Premiumbeat.com:
Not all 3-way color correctors are created equal. Use a subtractive 3-way color corrector instead of an additive one for better results.

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Adobe After Effects CS6 Render Test Quadro 4000 vs GTX 660 and GTX 660Ti

Adobe After Effects CS6 Render Test Quadro 4000 vs GTX 660 and GTX 660Ti:
In an effort to be more wise with the finances, I sought to do my own digging as to what was better for AE and PPro in terms of render times and performance.  I had just invested nearly $800 in the QUADRO 4000 GPU and owned it for a year prior to running into an excellent article written by David Knarr of Studio 1 Productions here:

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What is a Render Farm?

What is a Render Farm? | wolfcrow:
Rendering is the art of ‘drawing’ an image, which means you’re creating new pixels. If you had one pixel which is red in color, and you applied a filter to make it green, when you export it to a finished pixel, the software will have to recreate a green pixel. This is called rendering.

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Adobe CC Tutorial: Using the Lumetri Color Engine to Apply/Create Custom Looks in Premiere & Speedgrade

Adobe CC Tutorial: Using the Lumetri Color Engine to Apply/Create Custom Looks in Premiere & Speedgrade « nofilmschool:
There are some cool new features in Adobe’s revamped lineup of professional video applications. From the new tools in After Effects, to fantastic new noise reduction plugins in Audition, it’s safe to say that the Creative Suite has never been more powerful or easier to use. One of the new features that’s had me the most excited however, is the integration of Speedgrade’s Lumetri Deep Color Engine directly into Premiere Pro, thus making Premiere one of the most powerful NLE’s on the market in regards to color correction. Hit the jump for a couple of top-notch tutorials that will get you up to speed with the Lumetri Deep Color Engine and how you can use its magical powers to apply various types of looks directly inside of Premiere.

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A Comparison of On-set Ingest, Logging, Dailies, Grading and Backup Software

A Comparison of On-set Ingest, Logging, Dailies, Grading and Backup Software | wolfcrow:
This article compares 15 on-set tools in one big chart, so you can start your investigations (that’s what it is) without pouring over hundreds of pages of features that hide weaknesses. Hopefully, the chart will reduce your workload to only about 50 pages of features and a couple of manuals. No big deal.

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Why video color changes on different monitors and programs

Why video color changes on different monitors and programs:
The world could be sooo simple: I create a pretty video and send it to my client assuming they see the same wonderful colors. But instead I get a panicked call that all the images are green and purple. What happened? Or, in a different scenario, I decide to check my video project in a different program and it looks different there. Why does video look so different between programs and monitors? Well, it has to do with color space.

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Digital Cinema Package - Part 1: Overview & DCI Conversions on Vimeo

Digital Cinema Package - Part 1: Overview & DCI Conversions on Vimeo:
This is part one of our three part instructional video series about creating a Digital Cinema Package, a file format and collection of digital files for storing and conveying Digital Cinema audio, image and data streams for playback on theatrical projector systems. UCF Film Grad Student Max Rousseau provides an overview of the technology and specifications, and begins the process of creating a DCP for his feature length film Pembroke Circle.

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