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The Wal-Martization of Video Production
There are a number of companies that purport to “produce” very low-cost business videos by using inexperienced producers who audition their talents on the Internet and only deal with the business client after a contract has been made. Some of those companies include:
http://www.studionow.com
http://www.turnhere.com/
http://www.geobeats.com/
http://www.lightswitch.com/
Not surprisingly, the videos are pretty lightweight. GeoBeats videos seem to be made entirely of still photos edited into videos with stock music and weak narration. Some are better than others, but it’s obvious that these types of videos are produced very quickly and by-the-numbers.
For a couple hundred dollars, it’s an easy sell to businesses. They may be thinking they are ahead of the game, but I like to look at the number of views a video has had. If only 50 people have seen it in six months, it’s pretty much worthless. And that kind of number is not uncommon in these cheapie videos.
At least they are not (yet) trying to outsource the production to China. These videos are shot at the business owner’s location so they require a local videographer. Young and inexperienced videographers get experience from this work and very small paychecks, but this makes it harder for real production companies to compete. That’s how business works many will say.
Wal-Mart does have positives: Great efficiency in buying and low prices, more choices for the consumer, employment for poor people who want to work. But don’t forget the negatives. Many Mom & Pop stores are forced out of business. Wal-Mart wages and benefits are very low. No one knows your name when you walk into the store. The charm and sense of community of small-town businesses is lost. Economists says that overall Wal-Mart helps the national economy, but I’m not sure it’s worth the cost. Wal-Mart is one of the largest private employers in the world.
What’s your opinion of this type of video production company?
Canon Rebel T4i Designed for Video
At first glance the specs of the Canon Rebel T4i look nearly the same as its predecessor the Canon EOS Rebel T3i
While it records 1080p30 with stereo sound using internal or external microphones, the real news is the Continuous AutoFocus in movie mode. It is both silent and fast when using one of the new Canon linear stepper motors (STM.) These lenses can continuously track and keep focus on a moving subject in movie mode. The Canon 18-135 (f3.5 – 5.6) STM is one of the kit lenses. It also features image stabilization. Another new lens is the 40mm f2.8 STM pancake lens.
The Canon Rebel t4i is the first DSLR to include a touchscreen that works like those found in smartphones. You can pinch to zoom. But unlike some touchscreens, you have the choice to control the camera using the normal controls or use the touchscreen.
The sensitivity has been increased to ISO 12,800 and to record video, you need fewer steps so it is more direct on this camera than on the T3i.
The camera is available now for pre-order with delivery later in June. The camera body only is $849 through Amazon. Read the full specs at the Amazon link below
11 inch HD Monitor for DSLRs for $85
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| The Motorola Lapdock is intended as a screen and keyboard for a Motorola ATRIX 4G smartphone. Of course you can surf the Internet using your phone, but now you can view it using a much larger screen. The real news is that if you add a female HDMI adapter, you can use it as a DSLR monitor. The screen is 720p and over 11 inches. It’s very thin and lightweight and has an internal rechargeable battery good for up to eight hours, but the price is a spectacular $85! |
A Smart Tripod That Can Follow You
Ready for a smart tripod that can follow you? Hint. if you like programming, you’ll love this.
Arthur Wait created the The Smart Tripod from readily available components with his own programming skills. His creation recently won the Microsoft Robotics @ Home competition and a $10,000 prize.
Four essential elements of this project are:
1. Eddie Robot Platform (starting at $1249) http://www.parallax.com/eddie
2. Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio free at http://www.microsoft.com/robotics/
3. Kinect ($225) http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/kinectforwindows/ which is a motion sensing input device by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 video game console and Windows 7 PCs using skeletal-tracking, and other sensor technologies.
4. Your laptop
Beware that this is not a consumer project. It is for programmers. The Amazon user reviews of Kinect make this very clear.
REVIEW: Litepanel’s Micro LED light
The compact Micro from Litepanels.
I had the opportunity to try out the Litepanels Micro on top of a Panansonic prosumer HD camcorder. After using budget LED lights from Amazon for some time, I was looking forward to how well the Litepanels LED light would “step up my game” by being a well, thought out professional tool, and not an LED light selected solely on price from Amazon or Ebay.
When I pulled it out of the box, I was surprised at the small size of the unit. Just about 3″ wide, 1.5″ thick and a little more than 3″ tall, not including the shoe mount adapter. It’s also only 4 oz until you put the batteries in. These batteries gave me a couple hours of use, and it was pretty heavy use as I was doing live IMAG on the high school prom floor, so it was on pretty much the whole time. Then it started to noticeably dim and I had to swap out for a fresh set of 4 AA batteries which finished the night.
Just 4 AA's power the Litepanels Micro
I was a little disappointed by the cold shoe adapter, which has been reworked in the current model, as I found it not able to really be locked into place. As tight as I could make it, a slight bump with my arm pushed the light askew.
The light weight cold shoe mount.
But during normal use, the light would stay where I put it. Turning or tipping the camera did not movie the light so if I didn’t bump it, the light was fine. This mount was just enough to hold the LED light.
The 48 LED array on the front.
The Micro features 48 LEDs with a cool 5600k color balance. This means that outdoor use is correct and indoor use requires a filter. The Micro kit comes with two different tungsten filters to correct for indoor light, which I have in place here. The filters are thin pieces of stiff gel that you bend into place and then they fit into tiny slots on the face of the light and are held flat against the plastic surface over the LEDs. This works well in practice, but changing gels takes a bit of time. Adding & subtracting the frosted gel to try and widen the beam spread was too annoying to repeat, so I left it in place.
Speaking of the beam spread, let’s just say that the Litepanels Micro should be considered a “spot” light.
The "spot" beam spread of the Litepanels Micro LED light
Even with the mostly ineffectual frost in front of the LED light, the beam spread was only for the center of my image when the lens was wide. If I zoomed in half way, then the beam spread of the LED filled the frame. Good for more distant work, but not good for wide, close work, or widescreen HD cameras with more space to the sides. I was very disappointed that it wasn’t more even, and that the frosted gel didn’t have a more dramatic effect on the spread of the light.
Small and compact does the job.
On the camera, the light’s small size and light weight were bonuses. I hardly felt the extra weight when using the camera, and it didn’t stick up that high. The dimmer on top allowed me to dim down the camera when people were getting very close, but also, considering the event, the camera’s auto iris also closed down, dropped the gain and the extra light was actually beneficial to the image.
At a distance, the Micro does the job.
At a distance, the Litepanels Micro does the job, illuminating the subject in the center of the frame and providing a well lit image. If you need a wider spread, you’ll need to augment your filter package with more diffusion.
As for the price, it currently runs for about $275. This is about 4x more than my cheap LED light, which I actually like better. So do you get what you pay for when stepping up to a “name” brand in professional lights? In my humble opinion, not in this case. For $275, you get a small, and light fixture, but one that dies in a couple hours. For under $100, my budget LED runs off a camcorder battery for longer, has more LEDs, a wider natural beam spread, and more effective filters with magnets that let me pop them on and off with ease.
More on this budget light in my next review.
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Ditch Final Cut Pro, But Keep QuickTime Pro
When I decided to make the move away from Final Cut Studio (and Final Cut Pro) I also took that time to completely upgrade my existing laptop with a Solid State Disk (SSD) and perform a clean install of the OS (from an optical disk no less!) and a clean install of Adobe Creative Suite 5. (CS5). Everything became quite snappy on this “new” laptop and I quickly became busy learning the ropes in Premiere. I upgraded an existing machine, but this also applies if you are making the jump to a new machine.
But, of course, I still have clients who need existing projects worked on, updated, tweaked, etc. For one client, I was in the midst of putting their finished video on YouTube for rental. I needed to grab 30 seconds of this video from the finished, stand-alone, rendered movie and make a new clip which I would upload separately and then link it as the preview file for the rental.
I went to my default tool, QuickTime Player and was flumoxed by the fact that I couldn’t set an in and out point to copy a portion of the clip. And then I realized what the problem was: the “Pro” part of QuickTime Player requires a separate $20 purchase from Apple to be activated. Using FCP for over 10 years meant that I never needed to buy QuickTime Pro separately. But now, leaving FCP behind, those QuickTime Pro features were no longer available to me. I needed to find another way to make excerpts quickly.
Selecting an excerpt in QuickTime Player Pro
In Premiere, I imported the source clip. Opened it in the viewer. Set my in and out points and couldn’t figure out how to export the clip from the viewer. So I dragged the whole thing into the timeline and then cut it down. Time to export. I really just wanted to copy what I had into a new file. No transcoding or anything. Then, I faced Premiere’s daunting Export module and was immediately flumoxed by the fact that I didn’t see “use current settings” anywhere. It wanted me to either pick one of the presets or create a new setting from scratch. This was getting much more complicated than I wanted to deal with.
I wanted my QuickTime Player Pro back.
I asked fellow professionals for help, and of course I was told that Premiere can do anything, that Vegas could handle this. Edius has no problem… but most of them missed the point. I wanted something fast and simple. On a Mac, especially one now with a speedy SSD in it, QuickTime Player opens and plays a clip in under a second. Creating an excerpt takes just 7 keystrokes:
- Double click the file, click spacebar to play,
- Type “i“, type “o“, Copy, New, Paste, Save, type a name, Enter
- Wait a moment, then Quit.
QuickTime Player defaults to saving the file as a “self-contained movie.” Doing this copies only the data between the In and Out points of your source movie into a new file. In the Finder, it literally does just COPY the footage from one file to the other. No transcoding. No export settings. It’s nearly as simple as selecting “Duplicate” in the Finder, except QuickTime Player Pro enables me to pick what portion of the source file to duplicate. This is why QuickTime Player Pro had become essential to an expedient workflow on my computer.
But how do I get QuickTime Pro back?
The answer lies in the registration file for Final Cut Studio that QuickTime Player checks to activate the Pro features of the app. This registration is nestled on the hard drive in a logical place, and just needs to be copied from the old hard drive to the same place on the new one.
This is where you find the ProApps folder. Or where you put it if you need to make one.
Starting from the root level of the drive > Library > Application Support > ProApps Look for the “Final Cut Studio System ID.” That’s what you need to copy. On your new hard drive, go to the same place, and create the ProApps folder if you need to. Drag “Final Cut Studio System ID” from the old ProApps folder to the new one. Done.
Copy this one file from your old system to keep QuickTime Player Pro features.
The next time you launch QuickTime Player, you’ll have full access to every feature it has.
Don’t be confused by the Final Cut Express files I have in my new ProApps folder. I have a client who requires that we swap project files back and forth so I am still using Final Cut Express for them. But installing Final Cut Express actually does NOT enable QuickTime Pro. So, I still needed to install QuickTime Pro separately.
If you aren’t cleaning out your System and Library folders, or using an application to remove all vestiges of Final Cut Studio (which spreads itself out into many different locations) then you probably will end up keeping the ProApps folder and QuickTime Player will continue to see your registration. But should you ever need to upgrade your hard drive, or move to a new Mac, and you’re not going to reinstall the old Final Cut Studio… you’ll want that one little file to keep the QuickTime Pro you’ve become accustomed to using.
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Live Events with the New iPad 3
Apple’s New iPad 3 is making quite a splash. Several key features really play out to the benefit of media producers for whom ultra-fast turnaround is paramount. With the latest processing horsepower and the latest version of iOS iMovie I think a lot of computers are going to be left collecting dust with this.
The new lens touts many advancements for stellar images.
The New iPad (they’re not calling it iPad 3, for no fathomable reason) is all around better. Better lens. Lots more megapixels. Image stabilized HD video. Faster A5X chip. So it’ll be able to handle shooting video with ease, “zooming” with your feet (by walking closer) of course.
Massive resolution in a small 10" screen.
Then you can look at your video with the massively increased resolution of the new “Retina” display. Now it’s well over full HD resolution. So get some bifocals or reading glasses and get closer to the action because there’s tons of resolution in this little 10″ screen.
iMovie Editing with themes for quick, polished looking and sounding videos.
Then we get to the new iMovie for The New iPad and you can use themes to “wrap” your video and provide “a cinematic soundtrack” to go from raw clips to a polished presentation much faster and easier than ever before. The increased processing horsepower of the iPad will again come into play here for any effects you add to your video- and there are lots of effects in the new imovie so you can make it look quite different than what you started with.
The new iMovie is also available for iPod Touch and iPhone, so those users can get in on the act here as well.
Te AppleTV enables wireless playback of your videos for everyone to see.
Lastly, the AppleTV, which is still just a stand-alone product, now operates more like a wireless playback accessory for the iPad. You can connect this to any projector or TV at the event and wirelessly send your finished video from the iPad (or other iOS device) to the AppleTV and deliver it to your customers without ever having to move it from the camera.
As an added bonus, the new 4G LTE lets you also push it to online video services with record speed, so everyone attending can watch it again, or share your video with others. And in this age of social media, being shared is very good business indeed.
Do this a couple times and the hardware has literally paid for itself.
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Affordable Digital Bolex Camera Captures Raw
Affordable Digital Bolex Captures RAW
They call the Digital Bolex a “digital cinema camera.” This means it shoots RAW images also called Digital Negatives rather than the compressed video we all use today. Unlike the expensive digital cinema cameras like the Sony CineAlta, RED ONE, Arriflex D-20, Panavision Genesis, and others used on big budget films, the Digital Bolex is designed for consumers as well as pros. It’s inexpensive, compact, and easy to use just like its namesake, the wonderful film Bolex. This was one of the film cameras I owned and occasionally used on freelance jobs. I had the 16mm version, but there was also an 8mm version.
The Bolex H16 built by clock makers.
But Look At This New Wonder
The Digital Bolex Specs:
- Resolution 2048 x 1152 (Super 16mm mode) 1920 x 1080 pixels (16mm mode)
- Format Adobe CinemaDNG, TIFF, JPEG image sequences
- Color depth 12 bit 4:4:4
- File size 2 to 3 MB per frame in RAW
- Sensor Kodak CCD 12.85 mm (H) x 9.64 mm (V)
- Pixel Size 5.5 micron
- Frame rate up to 32 fps at 2K, 60fps at 720p, 90 fps at 480p
- Sound Balanced, 2 channel 16 bit, 48 kHz via XLR
- Viewfinder: 320×240, 2.4” diagonal, with Focus Assist
- Video out 640 x 480 B&W via 1/8” video jack (HD-SDI available in separate unit)
- Ports 1/8” video, headphone, USB 3.0, Audio XLR (2), 4-PIN XLR
- Data Storage Dual CF card slots, SSD (buffer drive)
- Power Internal battery, 12V External via 4 pin XLR port
- Body Milled steel and hard plastic
- Size (body) Approximately 5”H (without pistol grip) by 4”W by 8”D
- Size (grip) 5”H by 2”W by 5”D
- Lens mount C-mount comes standard, PL, EF, B4, are available
- Weight 5lbs
- ISO Options 100, 200, 400
- Also in the box pistol grip, USB 3.0 cable, internal battery, 4 pin XLR Battery cable, video cable, transcoder/raw conversion software
Joe Rubinstein set out to raise money on Kickstarter to manufacture the first 100 Digital Bolexes.
So far they’ve raised $287,759. They’ve sold out of the 100. You could have bought one for a donation of $2500. The cameras is expected to become available to the general public in late Summer/Fall 2012. The estimated retail price for the D16 and its accessories is $3299
BTW, did you know that Kickstarter will probably raise more than The National Endowment of the Arts this year? Yancey Strickler, one of Kickstarters three co-founders, says they are expecting to distribute over $150 million which will fund users projects in 2012. The entire 2012 budget for the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) is $146 million. Things are changing fast.
PS. If you pick up a film Bolex on eBay or in a pawn shop, You can learn how to use it with the Virtual Bolex Tutorial.
Encouraging the “Unplugged Event”
A notice at a recent event. Photo by Jodi Miller Photography
Do you take this woman to be your… WHO LET THE DOGS OUT, RUFF, RUFF.
Cell phones, cameras and other devices can absolutely ruin a wedding ceremony. So the policy that all phones, cameras are other devices must be turned off for the wedding ceremony is a growing trend. The only ones who are exempt are those who are hired to record the event.
In all my years of video taping Jewish events in the Temple, I never saw the same usage of still cameras as I see in churches, or in ceremonies held outside of religious houses. Temples have very clear rules about the use of electronics and it really keeps everyone (okay, maybe not the 13 year old kids so much) focussed on the ceremony and the family. This is good.
I agree with the sentiment of Unplugged Weddings, especially after being forced to set up my camera gear at the rear of a church because of a “no photography” policy. A policy that all the attendees completely ignored during the service. They even went so far as to walk up around the alter area to take pictures with their (then) cruddy camera flip phones. This was long before the amazing capability of today’s technology.
Nowadays, nearly every cell phone can shoot decent photos, and full HD video. I’ve done events with 15 year old Cousin Billy standing next to me, shadowing my every move, and using my camera light to provide good video for his point-n-shoot still camera. You know he’s going to make a video of it and show off his good work- his lighting, his framing, his years of experience as to when to be where to get the good shot. Etc. That’s to be expected, here and there, but it’s a growing trend, more and more, every day.
From Offbeat Bride – Photo by Nora and Troy at Aurora-Photography
The photographer, Jessica Charles, includes a letter from a bride that goes on to give the reasons why, including the fact that the ceremony at the aquarium would be held in front of a floor-to-ceiling fish tank.
A nice and attentive crowd- not distracted by trying to take their own pictures or video.
We got married in front of a giant fish tank in low lighting and we knew that most people would not think and use their flash. That would cause a reflection off the tank, thus ruining the professional pictures we were paying for… even if we had picked a different venue, our decision would still be the same. For me, it was about respect for my photographers. We also chose this because because we wanted our guests to emerge from behind their electronics and be fully present in the moment with us.
So in talking about upcoming events with your clients, suggest going “Unplugged.” Even if it is corporate. The same rules apply. It certainly can’t hurt to bring it into the conversation- it costs nothing. But the benefits it can bring are great: keeping the attention of those attending, removing distractions.
For us, it removes competition- and obstacles like the nitwit who invariably stands right in front of my camera because that’s where the good shot is. But it also enables us to give our customers a better product.
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What the Canon 5DmkIII Means To Me
It’s finally here- the successor to the full-frame DSLR that sparked the entire Video-DSLR revolution (or upheaval as many called it.) On Friday, March 2nd, Canon announced the 5D MarkIII with several notable improvements. But do these make this camera another game changer, or do they just refine what the 5D is in the market?
The Full Frame 5D is back for more in "Mark III"
Truth be told, that as the vDSLR movement grew and successors to the 5D came out, the competitive advantages of the 5D became less and less. Especially in recent months with the release of Nikon’s D4 and D800 series cameras. But the 5DmkIII brings Canon right back up to the bar in terms of capability. So “Cannonites” need not start to consider trying to jump ship to Nikon.
Several key features for videographers stand out:
- New sensor with 2-more stops of light gathering. Better for low light work. Better to let you close down a lens to get a deeper depth of field and keep focus easier. Reportedly smoother images.
- New DIGIC 5+ processor. Reportedly greatly diminishes the problematic moire and aliasing that plagues the 5DmkII.
- New compression choices. Including “All-I” frame compression where each frame is compressed individually- making for much easier editing because a given frame does not have to first decode the frames around it to be seen.
- Longer recording time. Now you can record up to 30 minutes (instead of 12 minutes on the mkII) and the camera will automatically break the video into 4 GB chunks on a FAT-32 formatted card, a process called “spanning.”
- A headphone jack. Now you can monitor the actual audio the camera is recording. Coupled with this…
- Better audio control while recording. 64 levels- adjustable before and during recording. Together, these two features greatly lessen the need for an external audio recorder for many projects.
- Better LCD screen. If you want to travel light (without an outboard monitor) the improved screen will help.
- HDMI out no longer drops resolution to SD when recording.
A headphone jack and better audio controls are notable improvements.
But several caveats still remain:
- No clean HDMI out. If you don’t use an external recorder, this isn’t an issue.
- Moire & aliasing. The PR says “significantly reducing” moire and color artifacts. It doesn’t say it has eliminated them.
- The 60 fps video is only 720p, finally reaching what HD camcorders have been doing for many years. This is still less than the new AVCHD spec of 1080p60.
- Timecode capability. It’s finally there, but given that so many workarounds already exist, it’s not much needed any more.
- CMOS “jello” remains. It’s a large sensor with lots of pixels so refreshing it faster is still a very hard thing to do.
- No “crop” modes like Nikon / Panasonic Lumix. These help with using different lenses and also let one lens act as two or three.
- It’s $3,500 without glass. So, if you really need that shallow depth of field, it’s a choice, but now you are clearly approaching the same cost of real, large sensor, video cameras. If the cost is the same, choose a video camera to do a video camera’s job.
Some improvements, but not a "game changer" because the game has changed around it.
If you are already heavily set up for 5D video, then swapping out the body and getting the new benefits is a no-brainer. If you are new to vDSLR work, then strongly consider a large-sensor camcorder- purpose built for shooting video, as opposed to a vDSLR.
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