Monitoring in the real world (Using the Blackmagic Cinema Camera as an example)

Blackmagic's cameras are bringing a raw workflow to an uprecedented number of people, and also highllighting the difference between raw and "standard" ("Rec 709) video - the stuff we've been used to up to now. If it seems complicated, it will be a little bit less so once you've read Phil Rhodes' article.

More...

Avid Media Composer 7 Review

Well, this one has been a long time coming. I have actually been working on Avid Media Composer 7 since launch. It has become my main editing platform since then. Mainly because I have been happy with Avid Media Composer since the major changes in 5.0, but even more so, since most of the edit suites I work in are Avids anyways.

More...

Autodesk unveils Maya LT - many Maya features now for a much lower price!

We usually don't write about products for games development, but this can be huge also for some small and indie visual effects studios. Autodesk introduced a new product called Autodesk Maya LT 2014. It is a new 3D modeling and animation tool tailored for independent and mobile game developers, but can be handy also in other industries and what's even better it costs much less than the full version of Maya. The tool allows for the creation of professional-grade 3D mobile, PC and web-based game assets, but of course these assets can be exported to many other tools and used for example for the creation of visual effects for videos.

More...

Media Storage Performance

Media Storage Performance
Media storage is still expensive and very specialist, with a few suppliers providing high performance network storage solutions to the industry. Specifying, selecting and configuring storage is very complex, with technical decisions having far reaching cost and performance implications.

More...

Open Source DPP creation - Open Broadcast Encoder

Open Source DPP creation - Open Broadcast Encoder:
From time to time we work on other things beyond DVB broadcast encoding where Open Source can be used to transform closed broadcast workflows. The file delivery specification from the Digital Production Partnership (DPP) is one such area. However, the AVC-Intra codec used in DPP is effectively a proprietary codec with implementation in the real world being more complex than the SMPTE RP2027 that AS-11 recommends and in a number of areas implemented incorrectly. However, we have now successfully reverse engineered AVC-Intra from available samples which allows a fully open source DPP creation workflow. Along with existing Open Source projects for manipulation and creation of mxf files, a fully compliant DPP file can be delivered to UK broadcasters.

More...

How to send Video Files to your Client (Part Three)

How to send Video Files to your Client (Part Three) | wolfcrow:
In Part One we tried to find the point when it made sense to send video files online . In Part Two we looked at the questions to ask of each service.
In this part we’ll look at the services that let you send video files online. Hopefully by the end you’ll have had a thorough overview of the landscape as it stands, and make better decisions with regards to how to send video files with your clients.

More...

USB 3.1 accelerates to 10Gbps

RedShark News - USB 3.1 accelerates to 10Gbps:
USB has become the most common connector on almost every computer and USB3 has been gaining in popularity. Now USB 3.1 allows for speeds of up to 10Gbps, the same as Thunderbolt version 1.

More...

Fujifilm and SpectraCal Join on 3D LUTs with IS-Mini & Calman

Fujifilm and SpectraCal Join on 3D LUTs with IS-Mini & Calman | Cameras:
The Fujifilm IS-mini’s monitor calibration software can currently automate tasks without needing an unusual level of technical knowledge. However, the collaboration of IS-mini and CalMAN expands the IS-mini’s operation to any type of probe that CalMAN supports and adds more detailed reporting functions.


More...

Avid and Resolve use Metadata to link to Essence

Avid and Resolve use Metadata to link to Essence:
A container, like a glass containing liquid. That glass would be the metadata and the liquid in that glass would be the essence. I want to replace low quality liquid with high quality uncompressed master resolution liquid.

More...

Color Grading Tutorial: LUTs in DaVinci Resolve

Color Grading Tutorial: LUTs in DaVinci Resolve | Premiumbeat.com:
Discover how you can quickly modify the colors and intensity values in your video footage using LUTs in DaVinci Resolve.

More...

No ROCKET Necessary: 3rd Party GPU Acceleration is Coming to REDCINE-X PRO

No ROCKET Necessary: 3rd Party GPU Acceleration is Coming to REDCINE-X PRO « nofilmschool:
While proprietary used to be the name of the game, we are entering an age where camera systems and post solutions are choosing more open source options for maximum compatibility (and a likely wider install base as a result). Look no further than the increasing use of CinemaDNG with cameras like the Ikonoskop, Blackmagic Cinema Camera, and Digital Bolex. Now it looks like RED is at least partially entering that arena with an update to REDCINE-X PRO.

More...

Should you raise Bit Depth and Color Space before Color Grading? Part Two: RAW Video

Should you raise Bit Depth and Color Space before Color Grading? Part Two: RAW Video | wolfcrow:
In Part One we looked at how we can improve results from 8-bit video, regardless of where it came from. In this part we’ll look at higher bit depth videos, namely 10-bit Rec. 709, 12-bit or 16-bit RAW.

More...

Ultimate Aspect Ratio Guide

Ultimate Aspect Ratio Guide - by Vashi Nedomansky:
The boundaries of the canvas that filmmakers use can take many forms. The Aspect Ratio of the frame size varies from The Kid’s 1.33 to Ben Hur’s 2.67 and everything between and beyond. There is the Academy Standard of 1.37, the HDTV standard of 1.78, Vistavision’s 1.85 and more. I would like to share a plethora of aspect ratios (with examples) so you, as a filmmaker, can decide which one will best serve your story. At the bottom of this post…I’m including a FREE template package that covers just about every aspect ratio ever used. Feel free to use them on your own project or share it with other filmmakers, so they too can harness the power of the frame.

More...

Testing the “Pro” in Apple ProRes

Testing the “Pro” in Apple ProRes | Stopp lab:
This test started out to check color fidelity with Apple ProRes and The Foundry products like Nuke and Hiero. We knew from earlier that results wouldn’t be ideal.
Later we expanded the test to other video applications and encoding software to see what that would give us. The outcome was quite disturbing. A format most people believe to be stable in terms of color turns out to be not so “Pro” at all.

More...

Compare 15 Digital Workflow Programs: Is Adobe Premiere the Best Bang for Your Buck?

Compare 15 Digital Workflow Programs: Is Adobe Premiere the Best Bang for Your Buck? « nofilmschool:
Your on-set digital workflow can vary wildly depending on your camera, budget, and schedule with each variable uniquely affecting the others. But, is there a flexible, multi-purpose software package that can truly cover all the bases, and at a better price than all the rest? Wolfcrow has sought to answer this question in a recent, very detailed, post. Click through for a few more details, and to see if you agree with its findings. Could Premiere & Adobe CC have the overall best value?

More...

Should you raise Bit Depth and Color Space before Color Grading? Part One: 8-bit Video

Should you raise Bit Depth and Color Space before Color Grading? Part One: 8-bit Video | wolfcrow:
This is sort of an experimental post.
First we’ll try to understand what happens when you raise the color bit depth and/or color space before color correction or grading. The goal, of course, is to find out when it’s useful to raise the bit depth and color space, and when it’s not.

More...

How to Compress a Video

How to Compress a Video | wolfcrow:
This article explains how to compress a video for the Internet, and what settings work best. It is assumed that you are after the best quality, within your limitations.

More...

How to plan production and post properly

How to plan production and post properly | Jonny Elwyn - Film Editor:
When planning the technical ins and outs of your film production and post workflow its important to actually have a plan for the whole process before you being. If you just dive in and make it up as you go along you are sure to encounter, at best, a few technical hitches along the way, slowing you down and costing you time and money, or at worst outright catastrophic disaster.

More...

Phantom Camera Control Software v2.2 Released

Phantom Camera Control Software v2.2 Released | wolfcrow:
Support for the Phantom Miro M340 and Miro M140 camera models has been added
NI (National Instruments) Data Acquisition Unit Support
Persistent Border Data at Cine Save Feature
Image Tools – Tone Curve Function
Live, Play and Save/Convert GPU Support

More...

Cache-A Simul-Copy Speeds Up LTO-Tape Video Archive

Cache-A Simul-Copy Speeds Up LTO-Tape Video Archive | Storage:
Cache-A’s new Simul-Copy LTO-tape duplication and verification can shorten the time needed to create multiple LTO-tape copies and is made to serve media and entertainment users who need to rapidly and securely archive digital video content to multiple LTO-tape copies as soon as possible after they are created.

More...

Rec. 2020, the Color Space for Ultra High HD

Rec. 2020, the Color Space for Ultra High HD | wolfcrow:
Rec. 2020 is the designated color space for ultra high definition TV, or UHDTV, in both its variants: 4K and 8K. It gets its name from the standards classification: ITU-R Recommendation BT.2020. Rec stands for ‘recommendation’.

More...

Exclusive Webinar: Find Out Everything On-set Professionals Need to Know About Color Correction

Exclusive Webinar: Find Out Everything On-set Professionals Need to Know About Color Correction by Jeremiah Karpowicz:
As working professionals, I'm sure you're all aware of how complex color correction has become. With so many different options, it can be a challenge to establish what will work best for you and your production. Luckily, Juan Carlos Ortiz-Duran and Michael Forrest know a thing or two about how to navigate this landscape. The two joined us for a live webinar where they discussed...

More...

Who's Who on a Movie Crew?

Who's Who on a Movie Crew? on Vimeo Video School on Vimeo:
Making a video can be a one person production but the more elaborate your ideas get, the more likely you'll need a crew to execute your vision. In this video, we give you a rundown of the basics of how all the work is divided up on a basic crew.

More...

Fandev CuteDCP - An After Effects DCP exporter

Fandev CuteDCP - An After Effects DCP exporter
CuteDCP is a DCP (Digital Cinema Package) creation tool for After Effects. CuteDCP is an exporting (output module) plug-in which allows users to create DCPs from any file imported into After Effects and reduces the number of steps creating a DCP to a minimum.

More...

Colour Grading Tutorials, Tips & Tales

Colour Grading Tutorials, Tips & Tales | Jonny Elwyn - Film Editor:
It has been a while since I’ve been able to do post a round up of all the best colour grading resources that have come online lately, so this might end up as quite a long post. But that just means more great stuff in one place.

More...

Color Grading and DI on Visual Effects Heavy Movies

Color Grading and DI on Visual Effects Heavy Movies | Premiumbeat.com:
This summer’s most spectacular blockbuster spectacle Pacific Rim, from director Guillermo del Toro, featuring massive robots duking it out with giant monsters from the sea was given its final spit and polish by Maxine Gervais, colorist at Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging. Taking on a movie of this size is no easy thing.

More...

solutions for problems with QuickTime files in After Effects CC (12.0) because of conflict with DVCPROHDVideoOutput QuickTime component

solutions for problems with QuickTime files in After Effects CC (12.0) because of conflict with DVCPROHDVideoOutput QuickTime component | After Effects region of interest:
This problem occurs because QT32 Server, the process that After Effects uses to read and write QuickTime files, is crashing. One cause of QT32 Server crashing is a bad interaction with the QuickTime video out system when the Apple DVCPROHDVideoOutput QuickTime component is installed.

More...

Avid Media Composer to Assimilate Scratch Roundtrip Workflow

Avid Media Composer to Assimilate Scratch Roundtrip Workflow | Premiumbeat.com:
If you’re doing high end post production work, chances are you might be using both Avid (for editing) and Scratch (for color grading and compositing). The video tutorial below demonstrates how to bring your Avid video editing projects into Scratch for finishing.

More...

An Overview and Comparison of 16 External Video Recorders

An Overview and Comparison of 16 External Video Recorders
This article is a simple side-by-side comparison of some of the major external recorders in the market today. The goal is to provide you a birds-eye view that will make your purchasing decision a whole lot easier.

More...

Cat 8 cable nears the gate

Cat 8 cable nears the gate
While “Category 8,” the classification for the next-generation twisted-pair cabling specifications, is still in the development stage, the outlook looks quite positive that it will be specified to 2 GHz, four times today’s bandwidth of 500 MHz, promising a new copper speedway for users who need high-capacity, but shorter interconnects.

More...

Crossbar's RRAM to boast terabytes of storage, faster write speeds than NAND

Crossbar's RRAM to boast terabytes of storage, faster write speeds than NAN
Hardware makers often sing the praises of their latest and greatest flash memory, but the folks at Crossbar are ready to show them up with resistive RAM (RRAM) that they've been quietly working on. Compared to NAND, RRAM comes in at half the size and boasts 20 times faster write speeds (140MB/s), reads data at 17MB per second, guzzles 20 times less power and has 10 times more endurance. Since RRAM is non-volatile memory, it can keep data even when it's powered off, á la NAND. As if that weren't enough, 3D stacking construction allows for several terabytes of storage, endowing one 200 x 200mm 200mm2 chip with one terabyte.

More...

The Avid-Red Workflow (Part Two): Finishing from Avid Media Composer

The Avid-Red Workflow (Part Two): Finishing from Avid Media Composer
In Part One we looked at how to process R3D files in Redcine-X Pro to Avid Media Composer. In this part of the Avid-Red workflow, we’ll look at how to round-trip from Avid to Redcine-X Pro, and also how to work with the AMA workflow for Red.

More...

The Avid-Red Workflow: From Redcine-X Pro to Avid Media Composer

The Avid-Red Workflow: From Redcine-X Pro to Avid Media Composer | wolfcrow:
Red cameras shoot 4K and above (though you can shoot low-rez footage too), and the typical challenge is in dealing with R3D files in their RAW format until the last possible moment. Some applications like Adobe Premiere Pro can deal with Red files natively, and create projects that match those specifications. Avid Media Composer cannot create a project greater than 1080p.

More... 

After Effects CC Harnasses Your Network As A Render Farm

After Effects CC Harnasses Your Network As A Render Farm:
If you’ve been working on your own project and your effects are taking forever to render on your computer. You either have to go away for lunch or coffee while it renders out your sequence, or invest in a pricy render farm rentals when going to your final render.  But Adobe has created a way for independent filmmakers to harness their networks and turn them into their own custom render farm thanks to Adobe After Effects Network Rendering.

More...

Importing Premiere Pro CC DNxHD MXF Files into Avid Media Composer

Importing Premiere Pro CC DNxHD MXF Files into Avid Media Composer | Fallen Empire:
Premiere Pro CC introduced deep support for Avid’s DNxHD file format wrapped in Op1a MXF containers. To the uninitiated this may seem fine for cross-NLE workflows but there is an issue with importing these files into Avid Media Composer. Op1a MXF allow a user to wrap audio and video tracks together in one file while Avid, on the other hand, relies on OpAtom MXF which is a multi-file format that splits video from audio and connects them with metadata.

More...

The Avid Media Composer Export Guide (Part Two): Exporting Projects

The Avid Media Composer Export Guide (Part Two): Exporting Projects | wolfcrow:
In Part One we looked at how to export a sequence as a video from Avid Media Composer. In this part we’ll look at how to export project sequences as-is to third-party software for finishing.

More...