The DIT Spot – Page 2

Published June 29, 2012 by John Burkhart

Sony FS700 Test Footage

The Sony reps came by yesterday to let us check out the new FS700 NXCAM, and another local vendor came with a new set of Leica Summilux-C Cinema lenses, so it seemed like a great opportunity to grab some test footage!

First of all, this is not a review, as we only were able to have the camera in house for a few hours, but more of a first impressions of the Sony NEX FS700. It’s a bit larger than the FS100, but has the same basic form factor. The main handling differences are the large ring with the built in ND filters at the front, and the re-positioning of the XLR inputs to the side. The big news is of course that it is 4K “ready” and does some pretty impressive slow-motion.

Blog Production Video Cameras

fs700 NEX Sony

Published June 25, 2012 by John Burkhart

Final Cut Pro 7 Revisited, Holding Up One Year Later?

It’s been a year since the release of Final Cut Pro X, and there are several retrospectives being posted around the post production blogosphere.

However, I decided to go in a different direction for this post to take a look at Final Cut Pro 7, one year later, and see how well it still holds up.

When Apple effectively killed Final Cut Pro 7 (and all it’s companion apps) last year, I immediately stopped working with it. I finished up what projects I had, and any new projects immediately went into Avid. Having been in this business long enough to become proficient in several obsolete pieces of software (see my Editor’s Wake series), I knew that any additional work in polishing my FCP skills would be time wasted. It would benefit me more to learn how to optimize my other editing tools for what I had used FCP for, rather than hang on to an obsolete skill set. Now, that wasn’t to say I wasn’t miffed about having 10 years of FCP knowledge suddenly become useless overnight, but hey, life is change.

Apple Blog Final Cut Pro Post

fcp fcp x final cut pro final cut pro x

Published June 21, 2012 by John Burkhart

Broadcast Asia 2012

I just came back from Broadcast Asia 2012, and had a great time. Like I alluded to in my last post, because of it’s intimate nature, I was able to walk right up and have a demo of the new Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera, get a one on one with Avid, attend the Zacuto 2012 shootout, try out an F65, and cap it off with a nice dinner from Cine-Equipment. I also saw the latest gear from Canon, Panasonic, Sony, Sound Devices, Go-Pro, Assimilate, etc., all in the same day.

The state of the film and video tech industry in 2012? Book it. Done. And my feet didn’t even get sore. I wish more trade shows were like this.

Avid Blog DaVinci Resolve Industry Post Production Southeast Asia Video Cameras

avid blackmagic broadcast asia

Published June 19, 2012 by John Burkhart

Archiving Issues

I attended a great talk last night hosted by the Asian Film Archive. They brought up Ray Edmondsun from Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive to give a Q&A session about archiving, preservation and ethical issues in film restoration.

Some of the more interesting topics discussed were of course the film vs. digital debate. Of course film is still by far the best archival medium we have. Properly stored, it can last over 100 years, and the technology to read it is easy to reconstruct all you have to do is simply shine a light through it.

So my question was, if film is the best archival method, what is the second best for digital assets? The answer was there wasn’t one. Things get trickier when you move into the digital format. Tape or Hard Disk? Will that tape or disk format even be readable in 30 years even if the media survives? What file format to store it on? Essentially while film is a long term archival solution, digital requires a constant migration from format to format throughout its life. The downside of this is that it’s very likely that somewhere along the way, someone won’t migrate it fast enough and the data will be lost. The upside is that digital distribution means that it’s easy to propagate many copies around the world rather than striking film prints. Archiving digitally is a moving target.

Blog Industry Post Southeast Asia

archive archiving asian film archive

Published June 18, 2012 by John Burkhart

Broadcast Asia Starts this Week

I know that as far as industry trade shows go NAB and IBC usually get all the press, but I really like Broadcast Asia. First of all, it’s much smaller. I don’t know how many kilometers I’ve racked up walking the halls of the LVCC in my life, but there’s something relieving for a trade show veteran to the concentrated physical area that the show’s held in.

Secondly, its much more intimate. It’s very easy to walk up to anyone and get a demo, or arrange an appointment, and actually talk to company reps rather than temp booth-staffers. Broadcast Asia gives you the luxury of time and personal contact that the other shows lack.

Blog Industry Southeast Asia

broadcast asia trade show

Published June 14, 2012 by John Burkhart

Arri Look Creator: Bringing Color Correction into the Alexa

Arri Look Creator for the Arri Alexa, is a really useful little piece of software that I didn’t really get into until recently. It’s still in it’s 1.0 beta, but the idea is that you capture a still .dpx image in LogC from the Alexa. You take the SD card out of the Alexa and bring the .dpx file into your Mac with the Arri Look Creator on it. You can make fairly detailed color decisions with the tools and create a “look” with the DP or director right there on set.

Alexa Blog Post Production

Alexa Arri look creator LUT generator

Published June 13, 2012 by John Burkhart

Smoke for Mac 2013 Trial Available Now

Autodesk has released the trial version of Smoke 2013 for Mac today. You can download the free trial from their website, and they’ve also kindly put up several demo videos showing of its new features and interface.

The how to videos are a must, as it’s been a long time since I’ve fired up the old SGI Octane and run Smoke, and the interface has completely changed with this release. I remember back in 1999 when I was working for Warner Brothers and our promo department bought a smoke* (somewhere along the way they lost the asterisk and gained a capital letter) from discreet logic. It ran on a maxed out SGI Octane, required customized fibre channel storage called “stone” that had 18 hard disks in it, and cost around $300,000. It’s blend of effects compositing and video editing pretty much rocked my world, and there was nothing else like it at the time.

Smoke for Mac 2013, runs on an iMac, using an external hard drive, costs $3,000 (not including the computer), and it’s blend of effects compositing and video editing still rocks my world, and I’ll be damned if there’s still nothing else like it now.

Blog Computers Post Smoke

autodesk discreet mac smoke

Published June 12, 2012 by John Burkhart

Mac becoming less and less “Pro” it seems.

Among the several announcements made at the 2012 WWDC today, only one was related to the professional Mac user. The release of the new MacBook Pro and it’s Retina Display varient.

What actually spoke volumes was the silence about the other changes to the Pro Mac line-up that happened.

The End of the 17″ MacBook Pro

Apple quietly removed the 17″ MacBook Pro from it’s web site today. The last remnant of a once proud portable workstation class of computers is no more. Evidently Apple believes that professionals no longer need either 1) portability, or 2) a workstation class computer.

Apple Blog Computers

apple mac pro macbook pro

Editor’s Wake – Fast Video Machine

Published June 11, 2012 by John Burkhart

Editor’s Wake – Fast Video Machine

The year was 1994 when Fast Multimedia AG (Munich Germany) announced the Fast Video Machine. The Fast Video Machine was a hybrid editor, which is a product category that’s now all but disappeared to the filmmaking world.

Linear Editing was the standard, two or more video tape recorders (VTR’s) connected to a device that allowed you to record video linearly in real time from deck to deck. The new wave, of course, was Non-Linear Editing, which was the full digitization of your video assets which allowed you to cut entirely within the computer. For 1994 though, Non-Linear Editing was impossibly out of reach for most editors, besides the quality of the digitized video was not all that great, and you needed to go back to tape for the online edit. Hybrid-Editing was a crazy marriage of linear deck control, and the select digitization of certain parts of video (such as transitions), which allowed you to use the actual video tape signal for high quality, and married it with the digital transitions for flexibility. It actually worked remarkably well.

Blog Editor's Wake

editor's wake Fast Fast Multimedia Fast Video Machine

Published July 27, 2011 by John Burkhart

Leaving FCP and Moving Forward with Avid

Add us to the list of people boned by FCPX.

At the NYU Grad Film department at Tisch Asia, we used to teach FCP the first year, and Avid the second year. The third year students were allowed to use either program. We felt that knowing both programs was essential to getting hired in the feature film and broadcast industry.

It’s not necessarily an easy job, being in charge of a film school. Especially in a field that is changing as rapidly as video post-production. It’s hard enough right now to figure out which direction the industry is headed in, but we have to figure out where the industry is going to be three years from now and prepare our students to have those skills when they graduate.

I can tell you one thing, in three years, no one will be using FCP 7. Apple has stopped development of FCP Studio, in favor of FCPX, and in a field that changes this fast, if you stop, you’re dead.

Avid Blog Final Cut Pro Industry Post

avid final cut pro

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