Wary of The Foundry’s recent purchase of the Nuke compositing app developed by Digital Domain, Autodesk has terminated the company’s membership in Autodesk’s Authorized Developer Network (ADN) program that gives it access to beta software, source code, and other potentially sensitive information. So if you’re an Autodesk jockey who’s been thinking about beefing up your repertoire with some of the plug-ins available from The Foundry, now may be a good time to buy — the company is offering deep discounts on its Autodesk products at least until the end of January. The catch is that the future of the products is in doubt.
“At the moment, we don’t have any access to Autodesk software — we’ve had to delete our copies of Flame and the like — so we can’t actually support our customers,” Foundry CEO Bill Collis told StudioDaily. “They don’t want to help a competitor, which isn’t an unreasonable stance to take. But there are ways to solve the problem that don’t give us sensitive information.”
Collis said he received word at the beginning of December that The Foundry was going to lose its authorized-developer status, but said his company has been in discussions with Autodesk since then, trying to find a solution that works for both companies. “We’re hopeful that they come up with something, and we’re waiting to hear back from them,” Collis said.
An Autodesk spokesperson confirmed that the two companies are still trying to work out a mutually agreeable solution, and made it clear that Autodesk isn’t trying to keep The Foundry from developing plug-ins based on their access to published software. But it’s difficult, Autodesk says, to justify more intimate relations with a developer that is selling a competing product.
Collis said that although the Autodesk plugins have historically been very important to The Foundry, representing “some of the best, brightest, and most creative customers,” today they generate only “a tiny percentage” of the company’s overall revenues. So The Foundry doesn’t appear to be in any financial danger from this situation.
It will be a shame, for both companies as well as (more importantly!) the users, if the products go away completely. But if you’ve been dragging your feet on picking them up, and you’re fairly confident you won’t be reliant on tech support or long-term compatibility to get your money’s worth, node-locked licenses for Furnace GUI (retiming, degraining, match-grading, wire removal) and Tinder GUI (blurs, flares) have been reduced to a mere $1000, and Keylight GUI (a blue-screen and green-screen keyer) is just $500.
Movie fans will get a chance to check out the state of the art in old-school 3D during the Super Bowl, when DreamWorks will spend the big bucks on a promotion for its tentpole animated feature Monsters vs. Aliens. Current home stereo viewing technology being what it is, the experience won’t hold a candle to getting out to the theater for a digital-3D screening, but DreamWorks Animation honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg told reporters the spot will be broadcast using Intel InTru 3D and ColorCode 3-D, two new technologies that refine the long-standing anaglyphic system for viewing 3D movies.
According to ColorCode, the difference between the two views in a ColorCode-encoded image is represented by “minute variations” in the colors. To a viewer without glasses, this should translate to a slightly higher-contrast image with faint golden and bluish haloes around sharp-edged objects, the company says. That sounds like a step in the right direction from the near-hallucinogenic red-and-blue double vision that’s induced when someone tries to watch a traditional anaglyphic broadcast without glasses.
Apparently ColorCode uses amber and blue filters, rather than red and blue, with the left-eye and right-eye images separated using “complex spectral curves” — read more about the technology here, then tune in on February 1 to see if this really improves on old-style 3D. DreamWorks certainly hopes it will be impressive — Katzenberg said the company is spending “tens of millions of dollars” to distribute some 150 million 3D glasses in a co-promotion with Pepsi/SoBe Life Water, which will offer the gear at displays in 28,000 retail locations across the U.S. And don’t throw them away — NBC will be airing a 3D episode of Chuck on February 2, the Associated Press reports. Could there be more to come?
Colorist Arnold Ramm at Encore Hollywood just did the tape-to-tape color correction for Kassim the Dream, an indie documentary by director Kief Davidson (who previously directed The Devil’s Miner, about child labor in the mines of South America). With Kassim the Dream, Davidson revisits the topic of children in peril in the developing world, this time in Uganda with child soldiers. Kassim Ouma, nicknamed “The Dream,” was kidnapped by Ugandan rebels when he was six and forced to spend 12 years fighting in the country’s brutal civil war. He later defected to the United States and began a rise to glory in the boxing ring. But his choices have had heavy penalties for the family he left behind, and the film climaxes with Kassim traveling home to Uganda to confront the demons of his past.
Director Davidson worked with cinematographer Tony Molina to capture the story, much of it under difficult and dangerous conditions in Uganda. According to Molina, most of the film was shot with a Canon XL-H1, a small camera that permitted the run-and-gun style of a documentary. But the HDV output of the Canon XL-H1 was supplemented by other formats: HD beauty vignettes and landscapes–some of it slo-mo–shot with a Panasonic VariCam and Super 16mm used for a handful of introspective moments in the boxing ring. There was also a small amount of archival footage, in both SD and HD formats.
There’s two great types of utilities that no editor should be without. An editor will often have to keep thousands of files across multiple removable hard drives so these two useful tools come in handy an awful lot. I’m not saying you have to have these specific tools but at least have something that serves these functions. One should be an application that can catalog the contents of a hard drives and then allow the user to browse those drives when they are not mounted. Second is something to sync the contents of different folders or hard drives. These are the ones I use.
At BandPro Film & Digital’s annual open house and holiday get-together in Burbank, dubbed One World on HD, vendors showcased products; clients mingled, and the festivities included Mexican food, margaritas and drawings for prizes.
Chris Pfaff, photographer
On the show floor, three companies showed new products. Media Distributors debuted a mobie archive and edit system, which production company was Yates & Parks Consulting used in Kona, Hawaii for the Ironman Triathlon on Oct. 10 through 12. “It all folds up into two cases,” explained senior account executive Nathan Adams, who reports the program aired on NBC. “In addition to Final Cut Pro, the system includes an AJA card that ingests the material, both SD and HD, and Facilis 12-terabyte SAN that enables file sharing.” NBC had four Media Distributors’ mobile systems, all connected by the Facilis SAN. The production shot with several cameras, including the Panasonic AJ-SDX900 and AJ-HVX900.
Surprise news came down the wire this week that Apple would be making Macworld 2009 its last. And perhaps the bigger news was that Steve Jobs would not be delivering his annual keynote at the big event. In turn that means gadgets hounds all over the world will have a bit more money to put into their budgets in mid-January since there won’t be any new magical Apple toys to consider buying. The keynote will instead be presented by Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, Phil Schiller. It’s hard to imagine that anyone other than Jobs would announce a totally new product line like a tablet-based, touch-screen Macintosh or a Mac Netbook so I think expectations for this Macworld suddenly went way down. With this announcement from Apple comes another round of speculation that trade shows in general have seen their last days. I sure hope not but that’s a question that only time will answer.
This post will discuss strategies regarding preparation for audio post and turnover to an
audio post mixer or facility. Audio post requires the final edited audio tracks from the
non-linear edit timeline. Ideally this will include a flash frame of video and audio pop at
the head and tail of the movie file. This can be delivered a number of ways but most
often it is exported as an OMF file, which the majority of leading NLE’s export. The
other essential part is the final edited movie file which is an exact conform of the OMF
export. This movie file will contain the flash frames and ideally will include timecode
burned onto the file. We sound guys like to know that we are frame accurate and
timecode burn-in is an ideal way to keep things in check. The final movie file should
also contain the stereo temp mix that was prepared with final picture edit. This track will
serve as the sound editors’ guide track and is a key delivery in audio post turnover.
Many of us use Apple Compressor for much, most, all of our video compression needs. That is to say when it hasn’t crapped out and stopped working but there are tools to help fix that. As much complaining as I’ve done about Compressor in the past I do use it a lot … for making web clips, stuff for my iPod and, of course, DVDs. And while I do use it a lot I am still no expert at the art of compression. A change or two to a setting often drives up the encode time and doesn’t make the final outcome much better. That’s why CRAMCompressor is such a welcome tool.
Kertesz was the first speaker, and he focused on compositing from the cinematographer’s perspective. The first question he posed was: which is it, blue or green? “In my experience, you can get a cleaner, nicer matte off of blue, especially if the subject is blond and especially if the blond is out of a bottle,” he said. “Bottled blonds go strawberry with green screen.” If blue is so much better, why does everyone shoot green? It’s about the money, said Kertesz. “Green is a much larger component of video so it requires half the light, smaller crew, less air-conditioning,” he said. “That’s how green became the standard – not because it’s better but because it’s cheaper to shoot.”
As an aside, Kertesz noted that “Paul Newman’s remarkably blue eyes did fine on blue-screen,” but contact lenses make the eyes look like two holes. Kertesz pointed out that he composites live and therefore has no previs on set and has to rely on the waveform monitor and his eye. To avoid headaches, he made the following suggestions: Make sure the screen is lit very flatly and evenly, and do so before the subject is there. Using colored bulbs is dangerous. “There’s no light meter on earth that will read it properly,” he said. “And using colored bulbs, the screen will be overlit and you can’t read the floor. Color Kinos are good for quick and nasty and if the shot is from the waist up. But it’s a huge trade-off.” They do come in handy when lighting a big screen: on Vanilla Sky, Kertesz was faced with a 360 degree green-screen, 450 feet horizontal and 60 feet high. “The only way to light a green-screen that big was with color Kinos,” he said. “Otherwise, stick to tungsten.”
Several weeks now after Adobe updated Premiere Pro CS4 to 4.0.1, a release that added native RED support except for one important component, comes the final piece of the puzzle from RED itself:
Hard drive with 40MB/sec sustained throughput is required; RAID striped array recommended
Windows Vista 64 Service Pack 1 or Mac OS 10.5
Premiere Pro 4.0.1 update. After Effects 9.0.1 (available soon) required for RED support in After Effects
RED Importer plug-in available at www.red.com
High end notebook computers should support real time playback in Premiere Pro using 512 sequence settings
Known Issues – Adobe Premiere Pro
When importing RED R3D footage using Import Folder in Premiere Pro, be aware that QuickTime Reference files are not supported in Premiere and will cause an import failure on Vista. If this happens, the import progress dialog will appear frozen. Minimize Premiere, and find the error dialog so you can cancel to skip these unsupported files, then the source footage should finish importing correctly.
RED settings cannot be specified on a clip by clip basis. All changes made in the RED settings dialogue are applied globally.
Titles created at one sequence setting resolution are not automatically rescaled when the contents of a sequence are copied into a higher resolution sequence for final output. These will have to be resized in the higher resolution sequence.
The preview codec for 1K and 512 sequences is MPEG I-Frame, which is limited to 1K resolution sequence settings. It cannot be used for 2K and higher resolutions.
Premiere becomes unresponsive if you attempt to access the RED R3D Settings dialog while audio is conforming in the background. Please wait until audio conforming is complete. Conforming progress is visible in the Status bar at the bottom of the application window.
It says version 1.3 … don’t remember a version 1 but I havne’t looked for it in a while and, of course, it’s a beta. Premiere Pro users have been waiting a long time for this since this functionality has been touted for a few months now. It’s about time RED did their part so hop over and download their piece of the puzzle.Now the only question left is, why did RED put that old image of Adobe Premiere on their website?
Wary of The Foundry’s recent purchase of the Nuke compositing app developed by Digital Domain, Autodesk has terminated the company’s membership in Autodesk’s Authorized Developer Network (ADN) program that gives it access to beta software, source code, and other potentially sensitive information. So if you’re an Autodesk jockey who’s been thinking about beefing up your repertoire with some of the plug-ins available from The Foundry, now may be a good time to buy — the company is offering deep discounts on its Autodesk products at least until the end of January. The catch is that the future of the products is in doubt. 
documentary by director 
