AE: Inverse Kinematic Character Animation : Adobe After Effects Tutorial

AE: Inverse Kinematic Character Animation : Adobe After Effects Tutorial:
Standard character animation in After Effects uses a process called 'Forward Kinematics' in that we animate down a linked chain - for example, upper arm linked to forearm linked to hand. To get animation we need to move the items down the chain one at a time. Inverse Kinematics creates a link back up the chain such that moving the hand would also move the forearm and the upper arm without breaking that link. This is a simpler and easier to control form of animation often used in 3D programs such as C4D and 3ds max etc. and allows us to control the animation for the complete chain through a single controller.

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Newton 2 Is An Incredible Physics Engine for After Effects

Newton 2 Is An Incredible Physics Engine for After Effects | Premiumbeat.com:
Motion Boutique has released Newton 2, a physics engine for creating realistic motion and animations in After Effects.

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מהפכני הפלאגאין הזה. Newton בשילוב עם Element3D יכול לחסוך הון בעבודה בתוכנת תלת מימד.

מדהים!

RED Epic versus Blackmagic Cinema Camera - workflow, footage quality and more!

RED Epic versus Blackmagic Cinema Camera - workflow, footage quality and more!: Andrew Reid posted a great comparison of the Blacmagic Cinema Camera and the RED Epic. A really interesting and informative material especially that many filmmakers wonder how the BMCC compares to a film industry standard. The RED Epic is obviously great, but isn't cheap, it also shoots 5K. Nevertheless the Blackmagic Cinema Camera is also pretty great. Andrew did many tests and he found out, that the BMCC can perform amazingly good - he found the low light performance astounding for such a small sensor.

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Super-Easy EDL Workflow in SpeedGrade

Super-Easy EDL Workflow in SpeedGrade:
We’ve written about how to get content into SpeedGrade, and have described the EDL Conform process in previous posts, but SpeedGrade has one more EDL trick up its sleeve that I think many of you will love. This one is about as easy as it gets.

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Make it Beautiful: The Workflow of a Professional Film and Video Colorist

Make it Beautiful: The Workflow of a Professional Film and Video Colorist - Power To Create TV:
Our recent guest Robbie Carman of Amigo Media shared a lot of insight into the world of professional film and video. He also wanted to give you an idea of what his work environment looks like.“Well I like gear! In reality my gear is separated into several categories,” said Carman. “A decade ago, the color correction systems that were in use were between half a million to a million dollars.”

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Media Composer 6.5.2 ‒ Consolidate QuickTime ProRes

Media Composer 6.5.2 ‒ Consolidate QuickTime ProRes - Media Composer Family:
QuickTime ProRes can now be consolidated like any other native codec, and has an increased playback performance of up to 4 streams in real-time at full quality. If your workflows involve AMA linking to ProRes media you can now consolidate them into an MXF wrapped file for quickly checking into Interplay or to become Avid native managed media. With the performance fixes, the consolidation process is very quick, as if you were copying the media. Also whether you are AMA linking or having native ProRes media, the playback performance has also been fixed to get up to 4 streams of playback depending on your storage performance.

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How To: Do ArriRAW Properly Part One

How To: Do ArriRAW Properly Part One: Skyfall used ArriRAW to set it’s look.After the release of Gambit last November, written by the Coen brothers and directed by Michael Hoffman, 4K London look at the ArriRAW workflow they used and how to gain the best results from this film-esque digital format.  In Part Two 4K London look more at the Post route of ArriRAW.

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CacheIO, Quantum, MTI Film Team to Demonstrate 4K Streaming at HPA Technology Retreat

CacheIO, Quantum, MTI Film Team to Demonstrate 4K Streaming at HPA Technology Retreat:
CacheIO, the Flash storage technology company, has teamed with Quantum, provider of StorNext shared file system software, and MTI Film, a Hollywood-based postproduction services provider and software developer. This alliance will demonstrate its joint system for uncompressed 4K streaming at the Hollywood Post Alliance Technology Retreat taking place Monday through Friday. The HPA demo will highlight the capabilities of MTI Film’s new dailies workflow, Cortex::Control Dailies.

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Diary of an Avid Switcher - Part 1 - Humble Beginnings

Diary of an Avid Switcher - Part 1 - Humble Beginnings | Jonny Elwyn - Film Editor:
I bought Avid over Christmas, making the most of Videoguys crossgrade deal, and finally installed Avid Media Composer 6.5.2 in the new year. The download and install process from the Avid site was very easy. I had scoured the net to see if anyone else had installed AMC 6.5 on Snow Leopard (10.6.8) and so far I’ve not had any problems, so that’s my first tip.

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Canon Cinema RAW Development Software

Canon Cinema RAW Development Software | CineTechnica:
Canon has released their very easy to use Cinema RAW Development software for Mac OS Lion and Mountain Lion, which allows you to ingest, play, and export Canon RAW files. The user interface is very intuitive; just click on a clip and it immediately shows up in the Preview window. You can play it straight, scrub, go through it frame by frame, and set in and out points. The Preview window also includes some basic look controls, such as viewing gammas, sharpness, white balance, and brightness controls. There is also the ability to view frame and clip information. You can also use the software to play your footage out to an external monitor using an expansion card with SDI output.

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Pitch Perfect takes advantage of P3 Colorspace

Pitch Perfect takes advantage of P3 Colorspace:
Targeting the DCI-P3 color spec, which is the native colorspace for digital cinema projection, allows for a much wider contrast and color gamut than a traditional film-targeted workflow, and we took full advantage of that for this film.  The highlights of the film take place on a colorful stage with moving lights and flashy performances.  With all the saturated blues and reds, film prints can’t always handle that kind of rich color detail.

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An introduction to LTFS for digital media

An introduction to LTFS for digital media | Archive Management content from Broadcast Engineering:
LTO tape is already firmly established in the media production environment. For production, LTFS efficiently supports several important requirements such as camera media resuse, backup, transport, direct access to data and archiving.

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Digital Cinematography vs Film: Tides are Turning

Digital Cinematography vs Film: Tides are Turning:
As I embark on a long creative, exciting journey on Need for Speed with DreamWorks, I wanted to share some of my most recent findings from a five day camera test that pushed every camera to its breaking point. Our final choice was a three camera collaborative for the look and feel of this film.

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Log vs. Raw: The Simple Version by Art Adams

Log vs. Raw: The Simple Version by Art Adams:
Raw is all the rage, but should it be? Log gives us 99% of the benefit of a raw file in a grade but with much smaller files.

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Avid Whitepaper: Digital Cinema Camera Workflows

Videoguys Blog - Avid Whitepaper: Digital Cinema Camera Workflows:
With the ability to track multiple sources and timecodes, combined with AMA and open standards such as MXF, AAF, and DNxHD, Media Composer and Symphony give you the most flexibility in the post-production pipeline. Finishing and mastering can all be done directly within Avid products, or easily transported to third-party systems—or a hybrid between the two. The editorial process may seem complicated at first when dealing with high-resolution formats, but careful planning heads off any of the issues that may arise. Consult with all parties involved in both the production and post-production process for picture and sound to ensure that everyone is on the same page before the cameras roll or, in the file-based world, before the production capture process begins.

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Log Gamma Vs. Linear Gamma: A Primer

Log Gamma Vs. Linear Gamma: A Primer:
With the Sony F5 and F55 coming down the pipeline, cinematographer Art Adams, on behalf of Pro Video Coalition, decided to revisit the differences between log gamma and linear gamma in a simple and informative way.
While Sony’s cameras may use S-Log and S-Log2, you’ll run into log encoding in other formats like DPX/Cineon. It’s important to get a grip on why log encoding out of the camera is useful and why we need viewing LUTs for the footage to look normal on a Rec. 709 monitor.


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A Guide to Common Video Formats: Containers, Compression, and Codecs

A Guide to Common Video Formats: Containers, Compression, and Codecs:
MOV, H.264, AVCHD, MP4, AVI, the list goes on and on with so many letters of the alphabet. What video format should I use? What codec do I need? These questions come up all the time online and in conversation. This guide will demystify some of the most common formats and codecs used in the film industry while ignoring the formats that are uncommon, academic curiosities, or telecom based.

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Adobe SpeedGrade CS6 – Can Color Grading Go Mainstream?

Adobe SpeedGrade CS6 – Can Color Grading Go Mainstream? » NYC Production & Post News:
For years the Production Premium version of Creative Suite gave you what you needed to author a complete video production. While it didn’t offer a specialized tool that could craft color with as much finesse as Photoshop, many were happy with what Premiere Pro offered in terms of basic color correction. As Adobe pointed out in their tutorials, to finish your Premiere project you could get pretty respectable results simply using that app’s Fast Color Corrector and RGB Curves.

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Saving Autosaves Into Individually Compressed Archives

Saving Autosaves Into Individually Compressed Archives:
It's not too hard to just right click on the whole Autosave Vault folder and compress it into a .zip archive. On my drive here my Autosave Vault folder is about 4GBs, compressed though it's 291MBs. That's a huge amount of space saved. But it's also messy if you want to just get at one particular project's autosave (.fcp) folder.

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Over 6 Hours of Free Colour Grading & VFX Training

Over 6 Hours of Free Colour Grading & VFX Training:
If you want over 6 hours of free training on professional color grading and compositing techniques and generally how to make the most Assimilate Scratch’s finishing capabilities then these tutorials from Mike Burton and cmiVFX will do just the trick.

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How To Share Projects Between Multiple Smoke Systems

How To Share Projects Between Multiple Smoke Systems | Premiumbeat.com:
There is a concept in the 2013 releases of Smoke and the 2013 Extension 2 release of Flame Premium of WORKSPACES. Workspaces allows 2 or more different Smoke or Flame systems to access and work on the same project at the same time, using the same clips.  In the Project hierarchy, a Workspace will fall in-between the Project and the Media Library.  Each Smoke or Flame system connected to the same project at the same time, will create it’s own workspace.

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DaVinci Resolve Workflows

DaVinci Resolve Workflows:
Blackmagic Design’s purchase of DaVinci Systems put a world class color grading solution into the hands of every video professional. With Resolve 9, DaVinci sports a better user interface that makes it easy to run, regardless of whether you are an editor, colorist or DIT working on set. 

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How to create .tar files for all folders under a directory

How to create .tar files for all folders under a directory:
I have hundreds of project directories under one folder. Now I want to create .tar files for these projects. Is is fairly easy to tar multiple directories to one .tar file:

tar cvf /myStorage/allProjects.tar project1 project2 project3 project4

But I needed one .tar file per project. To keep .tar files seperate. So I needed to have:

/myStorage/project1.tar
/myStorage/project2.tar
/myStorage/project3.tar
/myStorage/project4.tar

To accomplish this, I needed to write a bash script:

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The New Low-Bandwidth HEVC/H.265 Video Coding Standard

The New Low-Bandwidth HEVC/H.265 Video Coding Standard:

New Technology Is Said to Require Half the Bit Rate of H.264 at Same Quality Levels

The ITU has approved the new High Efficiency Video Coding standard (HEVC) for high-quality, low-bandwidth video. The new standard, also known as H.265, will require about half the bit rate of its predecessor, H.264/AVC, the ITU said.

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Case Study: After Effects Rigging with a Segmented Puppet

Case Study: After Effects Rigging with a Segmented Puppet | Premiumbeat.com:
Interested in creating animations in After Effects?  This video tutorial shows you a real-world case study of a complex character rig in AE.  Learn how to modify elements and create realistic motion.

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Is the end of compression in sight?

Is the end of compression in sight?:

Compression is, as every schoolchild knows, bad. Even so, there are more reasons than the obvious why it can be a questionable idea to involve a lot of mathematics in the storage of images.

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Simian Debuts New State-of-the-Art Video Player and Enhanced Presentations

Simian Debuts New State-of-the-Art Video Player and Enhanced Presentations:
Simian, the global leader in creative workflow and media management solutions, takes video sharing to the next level with the latest update to its groundbreaking media sharing platform, which includes a state-of-the art HTML5 video player. Along with a sleeker, more user friendly design, the latest enhancements to Simian’s Reel Presentation module make it possible.

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Camera Formats And Media Trends, What Do They Mean To You?

Camera Formats And Media Trends, What Do They Mean To You?:
We book hundreds of shoots every month for clients all over the world. We gather all the data about the specs of the shoot and plug it into our database. At the end of a 30 day period we run the report and publish it in our newsletter for your benefit. Are you taking advantage of this? Well, here is how you can benefit from our data...





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Taking a look at Amazon Elastic Transcoder | Blog | GridVid.Me

Taking a look at Amazon Elastic Transcoder | Blog | GridVid.Me:
There is a lot of buzz today in the online video community about Amazon’s recent entry into the cloud video transcoding space. Of course, this is nothing entirely new for Amazon Web Services; popular cloud encoding services have run on Amazon EC2 infrastructure for years now. With Elastic Transcode, Amazon takes a step up the cloud stack, offering a Software-as-a-Service that competes directly with GridVid.me, Zencoder, and other popular cloud video encoding services.

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Apple to Stop Mac Pro Sales in Europe March 1st

Apple to Stop Mac Pro Sales in Europe March 1st:
According to multiple sources, Apple has issued a statement saying that it is stoping the sale of Mac Pros in Europe and select countries beginning on March 1st, 2013.

As of March 1, 2013, Apple will no longer sell Mac Pro in EU, EU candidate and EFTA countries because these systems are not compliant with Amendment 1 of regulation IEC 60950-1, Second Edition which becomes effective on this date. Apple resellers can continue to sell any remaining inventory of Mac Pro after March 1. Apple will take final orders for Mac Pro from resellers up until February 18th for shipment before March 1 2013. Countries outside of the EU are not impacted and Mac Pro will continue to be available in those areas.

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Useful Tools for Editors: Welcome Back Home edition

 Useful Tools for Editors: Welcome Back Home edition:
One of my favorite blog categories / columns has always been the ongoing Useful Tools for Editors topic that has been a part of my coverage of our little industry since I began the Editblog many, many years ago. It was a part of my original site and then I moved it over to Studio Daily for a number of years. I'm no longer blogging for Studio Daily on a regular basis so it is time to once again move the Useful Tools for Editors column and bring it back home to the Editblog on PVC. There's so many useful tools these days I'll try to do a semi-regular round-up of them ... that is unless one comes along that is so cool it can't wait. Do you have a useful tool for editors? Then contact me and tell me about it.

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The Foundry Launches Hieroplayer

The Foundry Launches Hieroplayer | AWN | Animation World Network:
HIEROPLAYER is a VFX review and playback tool built for artists. It gives NUKE users the power to playback every shot on the VFX timeline in context on their own workstation. This cost-effective tool is priced at £200 including one year’s maintenance.

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Which harddrive should I buy for video editing?

Which harddrive should I buy for video editing? | Jonny Elwyn - Film Editor:
I often get asked by producers which harddrive they should buy for the projects I work on for them. I thought I’d write up a quick blog post that explains which harddrives are best for video editing and why, and some of my preferred drives to use for different tasks.

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Download Free DaVinci Resolve Film Print Emulation LUTs

Download Free DaVinci Resolve Film Print Emulation LUTs:
If you’re looking to give your DaVinci Resolve grade a ‘film look’ then these free film print emulation LUTS from Juan Melara will add some real finesse to your project.

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Another step in the Commodity Hardware Revolution

Another step in the Commodity Hardware Revolution:
Not too long ago, I was asked to write up my predictions on storage and networking technology for the coming year. One of those predictions was the rise of new, combined file system/logical volume managers like ZFS and BtrFS.

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Understanding Color Gamuts, Working with ACES in Resolve & More...

Understanding Color Gamuts, Working with ACES in Resolve & More... | Jonny Elwyn - Film Editor:
In this ten minute video tutorial, colorist Jesse Borkowski explains what ACES color space is, how to work in it and how to set up a DaVinci Resolve project to correctly work in that color space with CinemaDNG footage.

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Dave’s Monster Video Editing Computer Build

Dave’s Monster Video Editing Computer Build:
OK, I have never done a computer build before, so many of you wrote in that I have to try it, it is easy they say, well let’s see how easy it is. If you are watching this to know how it is done you might turn this video off now, I have never done this before.

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Editing with the New iMacs

Editing with the New iMacs:
OK. I’m impressed!
Last November, the day they went on sale, I ordered a 27″ iMac to replace my main editing system. (Click here to read about the system I ordered.)
It arrived the end of December and, as these things tend to work out, as soon as I unpacked it, I needed to give it to our talented production assistant to do some web database work for the last two weeks. (First, its a tribute to the admiration I hold her in that she was even able to TOUCH this system and, second, I felt like she was using a Ferrari to ferry kids to and from school.)
Finally, she went back to school. Now it was my turn. While I haven’t done a ton of work with it – yet – I want to share what I’ve learned.

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Avid Media Composer: Batch Importing

Avid Media Composer: Batch Importing : AVID Tutorial:
This tutorial for Avid Media Composer/Symphony covers the basics of batch importing in Avid, and includes replacing a file with another file so it will auto-update across sequences, renaming clips in your bin then finding the original imported file name, batch importing with an alpha channel, importing a file with audio then replacing only the video portion, caveats to batch importing (the importance of file duration), and batching importing groups of clips that have moved from their original location.

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Import RED media into Avid Media Composer using ALE files

Import RED media into Avid Media Composer using ALE files:
There are a few ways of importing RED media into the Avid depending on your workflow and if the DIT is providing transcoded media.
RED source files contain a lot of metadata which is useful during certain phases of post production. Because AAF and MXF media don’t retain this information once transcoded, an Avid Log Exchange (ALE) file is created during the transcode process.
Importing the ALE in addition to AAF and MXF files will provide all of the camera metadata.

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Plugin Manager

Plugin Manager:
Jared Glass, a TD with Triggerfish Animation Studios in South Africa (the studio behind Zambezia), has released into the wild a plugin manager for Nuke called, well, Plugin Manager.
For those who use Nukepedia and other sites to download Gizmos and Plugins only to find out that there’s little for them to do with the stuff if they don’t know code, this is the tool for them.

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DCI Converter

DCI Converter:

My goal was to match the conversion done in After Effects when using the "DCDM X'Y'Z'(Gamma 2.6) 5900K (by Adobe)" profile, but other programs seem to perform this conversion differently. Rather than debate whether I was doing it right or wrong, I decided the best thing to do was make my code visible and open for commentary and include a document describing the steps I was taking. You can see it here on GitHub.

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SSDs vs. hard drives vs. hybrids: Which storage tech is right for you?

SSDs vs. hard drives vs. hybrids: Which storage tech is right for you? | PCWorld:
In times past, choosing the best PC storage option required merely selecting the highest-capacity hard drive one could afford. If only life were still so simple! The fairly recent rise of solid-state drives and hybrid drives (which mix standard hard drives with solid-state memory) have significantly altered the storage landscape, creating a cornucopia of confusing options for the everyday consumer.

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7 Recommended No-Budget Post-Production Tools

7 Recommended No-Budget Post-Production Tools | Filmmaker Magazine:
Being an independent filmmaker means we are often times working with very little money but still making our projects happen. We use any tools and tricks we can get our hands on to help us finish or enhance our films. Of course these have to fit within our budgetary constraints. Here is a list of post production tools that are affordable for the no budget filmmaker.

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ShotOnWhat?

ShotOnWhat?:
Our goal at ShotOnWhat? is to create the largest collection of technical information that exists for Film & Television productions. If it has been seen on TV or shown in a theater, we would like to gather as much technical information as possible about the cameras, gear, post, sound, VFX and any other associated elements or processes, notes and trivia from the production. We are making the information searchable, cross referencing it a bit, and creating some trending to observe long term shifts in technology.

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After Effects and the state of GPU computing

RedShark News - After Effects and the state of GPU computing:
As we saw back in December in Eyeon's informative video, GPU computing is a very powerful technique that, during the last year or two, has begun to break out of a niche. The original application of graphics cards was, obviously, video games. 3D rendering software such as Max and Lightwave have been using games-oriented graphics hardware to produce approximate previews of the scene for some time. More recently, the world's most popular operating system learned how to draw its user interface using more features on the graphics card, saving the CPU from spending its valuable time working out which window is on top.

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Preference Manager for Windows Beta 2 released

Preference Manager for Windows Beta 2 released:
We've just released the second beta of Preference Manager for Windows. This is a Windows port of our popular tool for managing preferences and settings for your editing system.
We've listened to your feedback and this version contains fixes for several issues including improved Windows 8 compatibility.





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Offline to online with 4K

Offline to online with 4K « digitalfilms:

The 4K buzz  seems to be steam-rolling the industry just like stereo3D before it. It’s too early to tell whether it will be an immediate issue for editors or not, since 4K delivery requirements are few and far between. Nevertheless, camera and TV-set manufacturers  are building important parts of the pipeline. RED Digital Cinema is leading the way with a post workflow that’s both proven and relatively accessible on any budget. A number of NLEs support editing and effects in 4K, including Avid DS, Autodesk Smoke, Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro X, Grass Valley EDIUS and Sony Vegas Pro.

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How to Create Dailies in DaVinci Resolve 9

How to Create Dailies in DaVinci Resolve 9 | www.creativeplanetnetwork.com:
Andy Shipsides of AbelCine goes over how to create dailies in DaVinci Resolve 9 in the two-part tutorial found below. The first part focuses on syncing audio both manually and automatically, while the second part explains how to add a LUT, change raw settings, add burn-ins and create an output format.

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Still Waiting on a New Mac Pro? 2012 iMac Beats Mac Pro in DaVinci Resolve and Premiere

Still Waiting on a New Mac Pro? 2012 iMac Beats Mac Pro in DaVinci Resolve and Premiere - NoFilmSchool:
Oh where, oh where is Apple’s “Pro” line of products going? Okay, I admit the words don’t work as well with the song as the actual lyrics, but it’s still a fair enough question to ask.

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פתרון לקידוד פורמט ProRes על מערכות ווינדוז

מערכות פוסט מבוססות מאק נהפכו לאפילו פחות נחוצות. אם עד עכשיו היתה סיבה להחזיק מאק בסטודיו רק כדי לקודד קבצי Apple ProRes אז עכשיו גם המשימה ה(עד עכשיו אקסקלוסיבית) הזו גם נלקחה מהם.

הכירו את תוכנת AnotherGUI. אמנם האתר שלה נראה שעוצב בשנות השמונים, וגם התוכנה עצמה לא בולטת בממשק מרהיב, אבל היא עושה את העבודה. בגדול, התוכנה יודעת לעשות כל מה שFFmpeg (או האחות היותר מקצועית שלה FFmbc) יודעת לעשות.
למי שלא מכיר, FFmpeg זה רכיב תוכנה שנמצא בהרבה תוכנות המרת וניגון הקבצים המוכרות והגדולות, כמו VLC, Rhozet, Sorenson ועוד. זו ספרייה שמכילה דקודרים ואנקודרים (codecs) שיודעים לנגן ולקודד את רוב פורמטי הוידאו הנפוצים פחות או יותר, כולל את אלו שנמצאים בשוק הפוסט המקצועי - ProRes ו DNxHD. עד כאן, יתרונות התוכנה ברורים. אבל, יש לה כמה חסרונות. הראשון והבולט מכולם הוא שאין לה GUI (ממשק משתמש) העבודה עם התוכנה היא מתוך שורת פקודה (cmd, console). עוד חסרון הוא חוסר היציבות שלה. אמנם בגרסאות ישנות היא תעבוד בסדר, אבל כדי לעבוד עם הפורמטים החדשים צריך להוריד גרסאות בטא ואפילו אלפא, שבהן חוסר היציבות מאד מורגש. יחד עם FFmpeg נמצאים GStreamer, FFDshow, AVISynth, MEncoder ועוד, כספריות אודיו/וידאו שעליהם מבוססות תוכנות המרה שונות. בדרך כלל תוכנות ההמרה משתמשות בכמה ספריות במקביל, כל אחת לביצוע קידודים שונים על מערכות הפעלה שונות.
כאן נכנסת AnotherGUI לתמונה. התוכנה הזו מספקת את הממשק החסר של FFmpeg. ההבדל בין AnotherGUI לבין תוכנות ההמרה האחרות שמשתמשות בFFmpeg, הוא שלזו יש פריסטים (presets) לפורמטים מוכרים בשוק הפוסט והיא מוכוונת מערכות עריכה. לדוגמא, פרופיל ProRes נמצא בתוך משפחת קידודי FinalCut. תחת משפחת Avid נמצאים כל טעמי DNxHD.
עוד אנקדוטה מעניינת על ProRes היא שהשמועות בתעשיית התוכנה אומרות שאפל היא חברה נוראית לעבוד מולה. לחברות התוכנה נראה שאפל עושה הכל כדי למסור את רכיבי התוכנה באיחור וגם אז, זו משימה מאד מורכבת לעבוד איתם. האנשים שמאחורי FFmpeg, כולם מתנדבים שתורמים מזמנם החופשי לפרוייקט בקוד פתוח הזה, מצאו דרך לקודד לProRes למרות אפל ולא בעזרתה.
FFmbc הוא פרוייקט עצמאי לFFmpeg ותומך בכמה פורמטים נוספים מתחום הברודקאסט. FFmbc תומכת בפורמטים של שרתי שידור, מצלמות מקצועיות ופורמטים של סטרימינג מקצועי. וכן, גם היא מופצת בחינם. לסיכום. AnotherGUI היא תוכנה אטרקטיבית במיוחד בשוק הפוסט ולדעתי האישית, עוד מסמר בארון של מחשבי מאק בשוק הפוסט.
כלי זה, יחד עם כלים כמו MPEG StremClip, Handbreak ועוד, כולם חינמים ובקוד פתוח, עוזרים להפוך את המקצוע לנגיש וזמין יותר לכל.

The DIT Dilemma

FORESIGHT. / The DIT Dilemma:
The official role of a DIT is one that continues requiring discussion.  Defining the DIT is hard for anyone to “officially” quantify, though there are rules and regulations that suggest a textbook definition.  But the more one talks to DITs, the more you find they are not “consistent” in their feelings on the job.  This is not normal.  If you ask pilots what they do, they tend to agree on their role.  Same with directors or even script supervisors and DPs.  This suggests that the future is not yet written for DITs, which means they have the unique opportunity to either shape the industry going forward in their favor, or let another entity define what their role is and even make the DIT an unnecessary expense.  Going into 2013, there is significant evidence for both arguments.

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Avid Media Composer 6.5.2 adds some very nice (and needed) features

Pro Video Coalition: The Editblog on PVC by Scott Simmons:
When Avid released Media Composer 6.5 it did so with a $500 price tag and that rubbed a lot of users the wrong way as they didn't think the update was worth that price. I kicked the tires on Media Composer 6.5 and while there were a lot of nice new additions to the update we chose not to upgrade at that time. Now comes word that the 6.5.2 update is out and it looks like there's some really nice things in this update that might make it worth that $500 cost since you'll get those 6.5 features as well. To be clear I haven't used 6.5.2 yet (though I have requested an upgrade Mr. Boss) but thanks to Wim Van den Broeck we've got a good idea of what's in there.

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Editing raw video on a $900 Hackintosh (with $5000 Mac Pro levels of performance)

Editing raw video on a $900 Hackintosh (with $5000 Mac Pro levels of performance) | EOSHD.com:
Let down by both Apple and Microsoft, I researched a third solution. A Mac Pro without the unattainable price tag. As a Macbook Pro user, the install files for the latest OSX – Mountain Lion were downloadable from the App Store since I’d already purchased it. I used UniBeast to install these on my PC. The disclaimer is that this is against the EULA (End User License Agreement) of OS X so not an officially supported solution.

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Storage Buyer's Guide: Safeguarding Your Digital Creations

Storage Buyer's Guide: Safeguarding Your Digital Creations | Videomaker.com:
From camera to computer to long-term safekeeping, we'll look at everything you need to know about today's storage solutions.

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RED Announces REDRAY 4K Playback System for Under $1500 and Debuts New Distribution Network

RED Announces REDRAY 4K Playback System for Under $1500 and Debuts New Distribution Network - NoFilmSchool:
Hot of the presses, RED has just announced — as they said they would — their REDRAY 4K playback system, a 6-pound, DVD Player-sized playback device for $1,450. It has built-in 3D capabilities, offers 802.11N wireless connectivity/playback, is DCI-compliant, and debuts with it new security and file formats to make 4K distribution a reality — along with a brand new delivery network to debut at Sundance in January. The player itself is scheduled to ship in December ”early 2013.”

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LUTs Part 1: What is a LUT?

LUTs Part 1: What is a LUT?:
A LUT, or look up table, changes color from one value to another based on a list of values. For video and motion graphics, a LUT is useful for matching footage from one source to another (i.e. a 3D render to live action film), for visual effect (i.e. vintage film emulation), or for output preview (i.e. film stock, digital projection, and DVD). While color management for video is still considered the wild west, the use of LUTs have increased as hobbyists and indie filmmakers gain access to once-expensive tools like Adobe Speedgrade (formerly Iridas Speedgrade NX) and Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve.

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Setting up 3rd party I/O Hardware and CS6

Setting up 3rd party I/O Hardware and CS6:
Lately I’ve been getting a lot questions from Premiere Pro users about I/O cards from AJA, Matrox, Black Magic, and Blue Fish. In many cases its been more about driver version requirements matching the version of Premiere Pro CS6 that they are using. As of the writing of this article, Premiere Pro CS6 has been updated to 6.03 for Windows and 6.02 for Mac.

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A Side-by-Side Comparison of 4K Cameras and Feature Sets

A Side-by-Side Comparison of 4K Cameras and Feature Sets:
The Red One may have been the first high-res camera to take the film industry by storm but, when the history of digital cinematography is written, 2012 will be remembered as the year pictures got really big.
By 2011, Red Digital Cinema had been advocating on behalf of 4K acquisition for years, keeping its promise to ship inexpensive high-resolution cameras. Meanwhile, the Vision Research Phantom 65 crossed over from scientific and engineering markets that valued its 4K images to filmmakers who prized the look of its 65mm-sized imager. And then the floodgates opened.

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Colour Look Up Tables demystified

RedShark News - Colour Look Up Tables demystified:
As digital video cameras get better, and their users become more ambitious, LUTs are used to preserve or manipulate the images. Understanding LUTs is now key to setting up a production workflow.

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Across the Lines: Editing in the Different NLEs

Across the Lines: Editing in the Different NLEs | Strypes In Post:
In this day and age, many of us editors are starting to work on different NLEs quite frequently, so in this article, I am hoping to cross the great divide, and bridge the differences between the different NLEs, in terms of the edit keys and functions. Despite all the passionate debate surrounding the death of FCP7, using an NLE really isn't the same as supporting a soccer club. They are just tools. Tools we use to tell a story. In this article, I will give examples from Final Cut Pro 7, Avid Media Composer 6, and Adobe Premiere Pro CS6.

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Siggraph 2012 highlights

Siggraph 2012 highlights:
Buckets of inspiration, including a bunch from Adobe researchers & collaborators (HelpingHand & more):

(Now I kinda want to use the pseudonym “Laplacian Eigenfunctions.”)

Avoiding RAM Starvation: Getting Optimum Performance in Premiere Pro

The Video Road – Avoiding RAM Starvation: Getting Optimum Performance in Premiere Pro:
Something I wanted to share for all you “build-it-yourself” users. Recently, I helped a customer build out a really beefy system – 16 physical cores, plus hyperthreading, 24 GB of RAM, Quadro 5000, etc. The system wasn’t rendering well at all. Bringing up the task manager was showing each processor only hitting about 19% – 20%. My MacBook Pro was actually handling the same tasks MUCH faster. This was a classic case of Processor RAM Starvation. With Hyperthreading turned on, the system was showing 32 processors, and there wasn’t enough RAM to drive all those processors! Some processors had to wait for RAM to free up, and the processors that finished their calculations had to wait for THOSE processors to catch up. It’s a really bad state to be in. With multiple CPU’s, everything has to happen in parallel, so when some threads take longer to finish, everything comes to a screeching halt.

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Everything you ever wanted to know about HFR and The Hobbit

Everything you ever wanted to know about HFR and The Hobbit at DVInfo.net:
The Hobbit has finally been released in 2D and 3D at the traditional 24 frames per second (fps) as well as 3D High Frame Rate (HFR) at 48 fps. If the posts on social media are a fair indication, it seems that audiences have not reacted as positively to the 3D HFR version as the industry had hoped. Why not?

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Transitioning to an Adobe Workflow: From Log and Transfer to Prelude

Transitioning to an Adobe Workflow: From Log and Transfer to Prelude:
I was a FCP Editor/Trainer for 10 years. Since FCP X replaced FCP 7 I have been transitioning to an Adobe workflow. Like myself, a lot of former FCP editors are trying out Adobe’s Production Premium (equivalent to FCP Studio) or the new Creative Cloud subscription model. In this article I’ll look at using Adobe Prelude from a former FCP user’s perspective.

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Wow! Adobe & Behance are getting together

Wow! Adobe & Behance are getting together:
I’m thrilled that Adobe & Behance announced today that Behance (a million-member creative community, in case you’ve been living under a rock) is becoming part of Adobe.

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Transitioning to an Adobe Workflow: From Log and Transfer to Prelude

Transitioning to an Adobe Workflow: From Log and Transfer to Prelude:
I was a FCP Editor/Trainer for 10 years. Since FCP X replaced FCP 7 I have been transitioning to an Adobe workflow. Like myself, a lot of former FCP editors are trying out Adobe’s Production Premium (equivalent to FCP Studio) or the new Creative Cloud subscription model. In this article I’ll look at using Adobe Prelude from a former FCP user’s perspective.

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Mac vs. PC - The Dilemma of a Small, One-Man-Band Production House

Mac vs. PC - The Dilemma of a Small, One-Man-Band Production House | ScreenLight:
Let me first give you some background. I started my own production company in May 2011, with the following goal: to provide affordable, personable, and highly professional video production for medium to large businesses. To deliver a professional product to my clients, I needed to find a way to get the best editing equipment I could, but at a fraction of the cost of a huge editing suite.

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Premiere Pro, After Effects and SSD Drives

Premiere Pro, After Effects and SSD Drives:
I’ve been doing digital video for a long time and have seen a ton of gear walk through my doors during my time with Adobe and in the field in general.  There have been lots of great improvements over the course of time and I’ve been privileged to help on some of them.  CPU’s have gotten faster and seen more cores, GPU’s have exploded in power, motherboard bus speeds have increased and on and on…
But, we expect this and will continue to do so…

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Nuke 7.0 Out

Nuke 7.0 Out:

So it’s finally here. Nuke 7 was released Friday the 30th of November and what a wonderful Christmas (or Hanukah or whatever other festival of lights celebration you’re into) present it is for all of us.
They pulled all the stops at The Foundry for this release. Nuke is going to be a lot more stable, powerful, and the amount of things you’ll be able to do internally without going to an external application, just seems to grow more and more.

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Testing the “Pro” in Apple ProRes

Testing the “Pro” in Apple ProRes:
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.

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Shedding some light about Performance using the HP Z820 and NVIDIA Maximus

Shedding some light about Performance using the HP Z820 and NVIDIA Maximus:
Here’s another quick video we did showing the latest HP Z820 dual processor system paired with 4 drive internal raid , NVIDIA Quadro 5000, and a Tesla 2075. The video tries to give you an idea of how the system performs with and without the Tesla board installed. I get lots of questions on how increase performance and thought this might shed some light.


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Post Haste 2.1.4 released - import and export parameters

Post Haste 2.1.4 released - import and export parameters:
Earlier this week we released Post Haste 2.1.4 for Mac and PC.
The biggest new feature in this version is support for importing and exporting parameters, which has been much-requested by our users.

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Avoiding RAM Starvation: Getting Optimum Performance in Premiere Pro

The Video Road – Avoiding RAM Starvation: Getting Optimum Performance in Premiere Pro:
Something I wanted to share for all you “build-it-yourself” users. Recently, I helped a customer build out a really beefy system – 16 physical cores, plus hyperthreading, 24 GB of RAM, Quadro 5000, etc. The system wasn’t rendering well at all. Bringing up the task manager was showing each processor only hitting about 19% – 20%. My MacBook Pro was actually handling the same tasks MUCH faster.

More...

LUTs Part 1: What is a LUT?

LUTs Part 1: What is a LUT? | Fallen Empire:
A LUT, or look up table, changes color from one value to another based on a list of values. For video and motion graphics, a LUT is useful for matching footage from one source to another (i.e. a 3D render to live action film), for visual effect (i.e. vintage film emulation), or for output preview (i.e. film stock, digital projection, and DVD). While color management for video is still considered the wild west, the use of LUTs have increased as hobbyists and indie filmmakers gain access to once-expensive tools like Adobe Speedgrade (formerly Iridas Speedgrade NX) and Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve.

More...

3ds Max and Autodesk Maya now cheaper than ever thanks to new licenses!

3ds Max and Autodesk Maya now cheaper than ever thanks to new licenses!: Autodesk's products are not cheap and such tools as 3ds Max and Autodesk Maya cannot by afforded by many smaller companies of freelancers. It seems that the Autodesk wants to change this situation and so they kicked off a 90-day project license of Autodesk Maya and Autodesk 3ds Max 3D animation software. Thanks to this move it will be much easier for many artists to create high-end professional work for short-term projects using Maya or 3ds Max.

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Learn Media Composer Lesson 33: Advanced Exporting Part 1

Learn Media Composer Lesson 33: Advanced Exporting Part 1 : AVID Tutorial:
HD to SD Letterbox: In this lesson, Kevin P McAuliffe shows you why you don't need any third party applications to create SD Letterboxed content from your HD footage. Not only does he show you how easy it is, but also shows you a great trick to get around titling issues when downconverting.

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Stopping runaway CPU usage by mds, mdworker, and mdimport

Amit Gupta likes you! // Stopping runaway CPU usage by mds, mdworker, and mdimport:
I found that mds and mdimport were constantly running, and often taking up to 90-100% of my CPU when it was otherwise idle.

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Linear Tape File System, The Story So Far...

Linear Tape File System, The Story So Far...
LTFS (Linear Tape File System) was introduced just over two years ago and, during that time, has provoked considerable discussion within our industry. I guess the first question to ask is what was the idea behind it?

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How to Conform an EDL in SpeedGrade

How to Conform an EDL in SpeedGrade:
The Send to SpeedGrade command in Adobe Premiere Pro provides a great DPX finishing workflow with SpeedGrade. We covered that in an earlier post called Four ways to load footage in SpeedGrade CS6. The DPX route is great for short projects, or if you have lots of horsepower (and lots of storage for all those DPX frames), but for some scenarios an EDL workflow will make more sense.

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Editmote 2.0 released with gestures, landscape, extra buttons and much more

Editmote 2.0 released with gestures, landscape, extra buttons and much more:
Today we released Editmote 2.0, a major new update to our NLE remote control for iOS devices.
We've listened to your feedback and have added the following major new features.

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Red Announces Redray 4K Cinema Player, 20 Mbps File Format

Red Announces Redray 4K Cinema Player, 20 Mbps File Format | Studio Daily: "For several years a disrupter in the acquisition business, Red Digital Cinema got into distribution late Friday with the announcement of its new Redray 4K Cinema Player. The product release includes a new .RED file format that carries 4K at just 2.5 MB/sec (20 Mbps), the RRencode plug-in for RedCine-X Pro that converts footage to .RED, and the Odemax content distribution platform.

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Downloadable TV/Cine Formats – Red, XDCAM, GoPro, DSLR, Raw – “The Goldfish Test"

Downloadable TV/Cine Formats – Red, XDCAM, GoPro, DSLR, Raw – “The Goldfish Test” | Tom Guilmette – Director of Photography:
There are a bunch of formats in television/digital cinema and not too many places that post video clips straight off the memory card for NLE testing. This blog contains some of todays popular formats and a link that will allow you to download ten second clips of a swimming goldfish.

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MXF and AAF

MXF and AAF | Distribution content from Broadcast Engineering:
Many broadcasters know about MXF, and they have heard of things such as MXF for Finished Programs (AS-03) and MXF for Commercials (AS-12). But, this month, I want to focus on MXF’s bigger brother, AAF.

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Digital Camera Workflow Whitepaper

With the ability to track multiple sources and timecodes, combined with AMA and open standards such as MXF, AAF, and DNxHD, Media Composer and Symphony give you the most flexibility in the post-production pipeline. Finishing and mastering can all be done directly within Avid products, or easily transported to third-party systems—or a hybrid between the two. The editorial process may seem complicated at first when dealing with high-resolution formats, but careful planning heads off any of the issues that may arise. Consult with all parties involved in both the production and post-production process for picture and sound to ensure that everyone is on the same page before the cameras roll or, in the file-based world, before the production capture process begins.

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Codecs & workflow: Making the optimum choice. Part 2

Codecs & workflow: Making the optimum choice. Part 2 | Encoders content from Broadcast Engineering: "In the days of videotape, Digital Betacam was a popular delivery format for standard definition (SD) content. For high-definition programming, D5-HD was a popular choice. Now HDCAM SR is the favored format specified by broadcasters for program delivery. With 12 audio tracks, it provides flexible support for surround sound delivery.

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The Trouble with Timecode (Joel Yeaton)

The Trouble with Timecode (Joel Yeaton) « The Track Matte Moment:
In this episode of the Track Matte Moment, Joel Yeaton talks to us about the hard lesson of jumping headfirst into a new NLE and his learning experiences with DSLR, timecode, XML, and Adobe Premiere Pro.

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Adobe Premiere – Exporting Your Video, Which Way is Faster, Queue or Export?

Adobe Premiere – Exporting Your Video, Which Way is Faster, Queue or Export?:
Since Adobe Premiere CS5 was released, I noticed that when I would export my videos, I had to choice of using either Queue or Export and I noticed that one way was much faster than the other.

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Sensor Size Comparison Chart

Sensor Size Comparison Chart:

Click to enlarge
By Jon Fry, Creative Video

Is this the end of broadcasting as we know it?

Is this the end of broadcasting as we know it?:

One phrase you’ll hear a lot wherever the broadcast industry gathers is ‘disruptive technologies’, by which people typically mean that the internet is challenging all the business models and assumptions that have powered the industry for decades. With recent news that BitTorrent is now muscling in on their space, it might have to reach for a new, more apocalyptic description.

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Disk Access Denied in Avid Media Composer – simple and fast fix

Disk Access Denied in Avid Media Composer – simple and fast fix | Make Film Teach Film:
Yesterday I got a drive problem I have had before – for some reason, Avid or Windows, or a combination of the two, lock access to the Avid Media Folders. When trying to look in the folder I would get the error message DISK_ACCESS_DENIED.

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PC Motherboards start to support 4K video

PC Motherboards start to support 4K video:

Awareness of 4K video has reached motherboard manufacturers as Gigabyte announces their first motherboards that support a 4K output.

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Technicolor CineStyle Color Assist

Technicolor CineStyle Color Assist:

Technicolor - a company that has been around for over 95 years dealing with the science of film coloring – is entering the DSLR world once again.   

Their first foray into digital cinema game happened when they introduced the CineStyle Camera Profile for use with Canon HDDSLRs, and that was quite a success given how well adopted that picture style has become.  

Now they are introducing a color correction tool that I think many of you will find of interest:  CineStyle Color Assist and it’s available for an incredibly reasonable $99.00 on their new website.  Additionally CineStyle Looks packages are also available for $19.00.

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Preparing an Edit – A Simple Transcoding Tutorial for Producers/Directors

Preparing an Edit – A Simple Transcoding Tutorial for Producers/Directors: Master your video media management with this quick workflow for transcoding video footage. A great process for working 'in the field' - easy to implement for producers and directors.

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Mac vs. PC - The Dilemma of a Small, One-Man-Band Production House

Mac vs. PC - The Dilemma of a Small, One-Man-Band Production House:
We are faced with decisions daily. Pepsi or Coke? Short-sleeves or long-sleeves? Mac or PC?
But as a small production company, the answer to the last question is not as easy as it might sound.
Let me first give you some background. I started my own production company in May 2011, with the following goal: to provide affordable, personable, and highly professional video production for medium to large businesses. To deliver a professional product to my clients, I needed to find a way to get the best editing equipment I could, but at a fraction of the cost of a huge editing suite.

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Detailed Adobe Premiere & Dynamic Linking Workflow on Vimeo

Detailed Adobe Premiere & Dynamic Linking Workflow on Vimeo:
Here's a detailed Adobe CS5.5 Premiere workflow example and intro that we've been using over the past few months with solid success with both Canon HDSLR footage and RED Epic footage. It shows Dynamic linking with After Effects as well as REDCine X. Go to the 24:51 mark to see the RED workflow specifically.

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Understanding Colour: Colour Gamuts

Understanding Colour: Colour Gamuts:

Gamut is one of the stranger words in the English language. Phil Rhodes sheds some light on this often misunderstood term

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Quick Avid Tip: Display your UNC File Path in the bin!

Quick Avid Tip: Display your UNC File Path in the bin! « robgwilson.com:
Okay, just a quick tip I worked out yesterday while I was trying to organize dailies for a documentary I am working on.  The producer/directors had organized everything I needed to build out the Avid project on a hard drive: hours and hours of Quicktimes, all sorted out by subject or location.  I was going to import them in one fell swoop, but I needed some way to organize the media once it came into the Avid.  As it was, all the media arrived in one big bin.  This is where the UNC File Path comes in.

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Skyfall: Dailies & DI from London to California

Skyfall: Dailies & DI from London to California - Creative COW:
To ensure color consistency from dailies to DI for Skyfall, Company 3 London and EFILM collaborated to create an integrated pipeline, newly branded EC3. Skyfall cinematographer Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC was able to enjoy dailies graded by his long-time CO3 Santa Monica colorist working out of London, and the two facilities coordinated color science and calibration for an overall consistent look throughout the process.

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SDI Over IP

SDI Over IP: As bitrates increase and equipment prices drop, IP-based communication technologies – both fixed and wireless alike – are pushing more and more dedicated communication systems into retirement. The sheer amount of connectors currently found on professional video cameras make some of the advantages obvious that an IP/Ethernet-based solution brings.

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