In our latest technology purchase, our shop has bought a Blackmagic Intensity Pro card for our MacPro. We’re hoping to capture off our DVR and use news footage for our shows. After deboxing the B&H shipping box, I discovered the product in a box that seemed to be way to small! I knew the PCI-Express card was small, but man, it was much smaller than expected. Inside, you will find the card, a CD and a small tri-fold quick install guide. The full 35 page manual is on the CD (way to be green!).

After carefully reading the install instruction and reading up on PCI slot choices, I popped open the MacPro and dropped the card into slot #2. Blackmagic’s site mentions that you may be prompted to adjust performance to the slots, but after powering up, I wasn’t prompted. Granted this is the only other card in the machine besides our ATI (ehh) video card.

After installing the software there wasn’t a noticeable difference in the performance of the computer, heck there wasn’t even any outward difference in starting FCP, Color or any of the other apps. However, FCP now has more easy setups, and more options under external video monitoring. I connected our 9″ Sony production monitor via the component out (NTSC out) of the card. Instantly, after setting the Video Output in FCP to Intensity NTSC, the monitor showed video. Amazing! Beyond FCP, I then became interested in if Color would also broadcast to this monitor in the same way. I fired up color, and bam! I had an external monitor for color correcting in Color! Sweet! At $350, this card was becoming a GREAT investment.

We currently don’t have a HDMI monitor in the shop, but I’m pulling for a low end small HDMI TV (about $500). Stay tuned as I will be testing the capture capabilities of this card. But if its as easy as setting up an external monitor, I’ll be highly recommending this product to anyone with a MacPro.

Share This

Check out this article on communicating with a colorist.

Share This

Over the past couple of weeks I have been working tirelessly on export settings for a new web show that will be using a flash encode on a huge 800px wide player. Not many sites out there are running video at 800px wide for obvious reasons. But it will be attempted if not done. The show is looking to advance how people see web video and the quality they see it at. Not an easy feat when you want to run it as big as they do.

Unfortunately, I’m not able to say what the show is called, what its about, who is working on it or anything else surrounding it. However, the interest here is on the player and the video. Blip.tv is a major supplier of web video all over the web. Many people use Blip to distribute their content to their site, iTunes and other venues across the net. Wallstrip.com uses blip and embeds Blip’s player in their site. The concept is similar for the new show.

When you submit video to Blip, they reencode your video at their (less the great) Flash setting, rendering even the cleanest of source files, looking very “YouTubey.” After many conversations with Blip, Wallstrip’s web producer told me that if you submit your own Flash file to them, they will not reencode it. Amazing! This means that you can get a file looking the way you want it, and Blip will post it as they get it.

Excellent, right? Well, almost. In the tests I have run, I found several issues with Flash files that you may not expect if you have been working with QuickTime files. Flash encoded files are more processor intensive than other files, therefore the “max bandwidth” setting can’t be as high as it could with other files. I usually encode *.mov files for the web around 1200 or 1500 kbps which results in a good looking QT files that is playable everywhere. The Flash files we were working on here (800 x 450px) on the other hand bog down even the newest of macs at 1000 kbps. Now you may have a sweet looking file, but 1/2 your viewers will not be able to watch it.

Our solution, lower the bandwidth (about 800kpbs), up the key framing (7), and make the audio mono at 64kbps. This resulted in a (not as good but still) great looking file that didn’t kill every machine we tested it on. It took us about a week and 40 to 50 files to finally find the right combination. As a general rule, do a lot of tests - it will take time, but once you find what you are looking for, it will be well worth it. Also, save every setting you use on a file - name the file the same as you name the saved setting so you can pair them up again later.

As we all know, web video is fun, fresh and exciting to work on, but doing it well, and producing a quality product is the challenge. Happy encoding.

Share This

Saving time when you are editing can create some more opportunities for you later on in a post workflow. Now I know this is news to everyone out there, but its true. I’m going to briefly provide 7 tips I find useful getting through a cut in FCP. You may be aware of some of these – maybe I can shed some light on them.

1) Get Organized – From the moment you import, ingest, digitize… bring any footage in to FCP, log it. Give each clip a unique filename and log note. Filenames could be as simple as the name of the project and a series of numbers following it. Then I like to use the log note to be more specific about the clip. Writing exactly what might appear in the clip. There are many other fields to take advantage of in the log and capture/transfer window. I will say, logging P2 media from a P2 card or a fire store is quite time consuming… I like to import all the footage I need, as is, with the weird filenames give to each clip by the camera. I have built and Automator Action to batch rename all the clips I ingested. After doing that, you will have to re-import them into FCP. Once the footage is back in, then go through your footage and place log notes with the clips. Now this may seem like a lot to go through, but until Apple provides us a better way of batch ingesting media, this is the solution I have developed.

2) Button Bars – Button bars are relatively new to FCP, but they are powerful little buttons nevertheless. You may know where they are, but not know how to modify or use them. From the “Tools” menu, choose “Button Bar.” From here you can search for may keyboard shortcuts, menu commands, filters and other operations. Drag the commands/buttons into the bars above the browser, viewer, and timeline. Each of those places you can load up buttons that are specific for that window. This personally is one of my favorite tips to share with users. You can save button layouts by right clicking the button bar are choosing Save. Load them the same way.

(more…)

Share This

Check out this article from the COW. While I haven’t had the experience to work with either of these companies or these systems, I have heard a lot about each. And the new system that was just announced appears to be promising!

“The combination of the da Vinci 2K Plus® front-end coupled with the dual stream-capable Sledgehammer back-end has reinvented the way we color grade our clients’ projects,” said Terry Lockhart, chief engineer at Finish. “As we were evaluating the direction we wanted to take, it was clear that the 2K was our key investment, delivering the best and most complete toolset possible. Now that the 2K is integrated with the dual stream Sledgehammer, our clients have a fully non-linear, uncompressed, and in-context experience in the suite and they’ve never been happier.”

Read more

Share This