If you look down under the “Categories” listing on the left side of this blog you’ll see the “Useful Tools” category. This is a category that I have long used to post links to interesting software/hardware/products that look like they would be handy in the editor’s toolkit. The tools are usually software, sometimes hardware. On occasion it might be a website or web tool that might make our lives easier. Today’s link isn’t just to a piece of hardware but rather to a link on how best to use it, which I found on the Videoguys site via Twitter.
I’ve had one of these units on loan from Matrox for a couple of months to test out its usability and usefulness. I had planned to use it mainly as a monitoring solution for Avid Media Composer, which had blessed the MXO2 Mini as the only certified non-Avid monitoring option with version 5. But after reading the blurb at the Videoguys site, I considered another option. If you have to edit across all of the big three “A” nonlinear editors, the MXO2 Mini really is your only option. It’s not for everyone; it doesn’t offer all of the tape-based I/O options on Media Composer and lacks some of the connections that more expensive video capture cards have. But if all you need to do is monitor your FCP, Avid or Adobe Premiere Pro timelines on an external client monitor, this is the choice. I’m often amazed at how many editors don’t have a client monitor in their edit suite and only view their edit on the computer screen in the NLE’s Canvas/Record Monitor. That’s a mistake; you have to view your edits on a proper client monitor to ensure they have been posted properly. It’s also a mistake to color correct without a proper monitor.
The MXO2 Mini is also quite an affordable option under $500 and includes both HDMI and Component outputs. Add the MAX option for another $400 and you’ve got hardware accelerated H.264 encoding that literally screams when used with Apple Compressor. Because the Matrox MXO2 Mini can support Avid Media Composer, Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro—the only one I personally haven’t seen in action—and gives editors an external reference monitor for editing, all for under $500, it might be one of the most Useful Tools for Editors that I’ve come across yet.
S3D Technologies, an R&D company based in Barcelona that focuses on 3D stereoscopic production tools, has just released a software-based calculator to find all the parameters required for shooting 3D. The company–which was founded by Carolina Barco, whose background is in film/TV production–is showing the calculator and the new model of the S3D Beam Splitter Rig (with axes motorized) at IBC in Amsterdam.
Carina Portillo, head of the Los Angeles office of S3D Technologies, describes the S3D Calculator. “The calculator works for stereographers and for cinematographers,” she says. “It gives a reference point according to your goals of how to set the camera in the rig, and the user can always put a creative touch on it and change the parameters.” The user enters the zero parallax distance, the lens in use and a few other set parameters, and the S3D Calculator will do the math for interaxial and convergence settings for both cameras.
If you’re one of the many thinking about the upcoming DaVinci Resolve for Mac as a possible tool to add to your workflow, then you’ll probably be interested in the recently released DaVinci Resolve for Mac Configuration Guide (pdf link). It’s 20 pages of detailed information that should answer any lingering questions about exactly what is required in the way of Mac hardware (CPU, graphics cards, video capture cards, storage) to run DaVinci for Mac at optimal capacity to get the most realtime performance. The recommended system won’t be as simple as installing it on any MacPro sitting around — Blackmagic is recommending two graphics cards, a fast RAID, and DeckLink HD Extreme. Of course, one shouldn’t expect to be able to achieve real-time grading of HD material on a run-of-the-mill laptop. That said, one supported system is a 17-inch MacBook Pro, though it is marked “suitable for SD and SD/HD shot preview.”
Chances are you’ll be able to get some kind of performance out of an unsupported system. Walter Biscardi mentioned on his blog just today that he’ll only be running a single graphics card (the nVidia 4800 Quadro for Mac), saying, “I was told by BMD that the 4800 will fully support Resolve by itself. I’ll just be sacrificing some realtime functionality. For testing out and learning the software, that’s no biggie.” I like the idea that Resolve for Mac might run well enough on an unsupported system that editors and colorists can learn the interface and get up to speed on this new tool as it begins to ship. There’s also the full Resolve manual available for download at the DaVinci support website. I guess the question now is: will there be a demo or trial version of Resolve for Mac once it begins shipping?
Hollywood post facility Chainsaw creatives won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Picture Editing for a Special (Single or Multi-Camera) for the 4-hour HBO special The 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert.
We certainly have no shortage of ways to convert Canon DSLR H.264 footage into a more editable format for Final Cut Pro. There’s Compressor, MPEG Streamclip, Magic Bullet Grinder, the Canon EOS Movie Plug-in E1, and Cineform’s NeoScene. And that’s not even mentioning Final Cut Pro’s own conversion ability via Media Manager. There’s another option that’s been making the rounds of Twitter this weekend called 5DtoRGB. This useful tool comes from a company called Rarevision, and they claim to achieve a bit better conversion of your H264 media: “By using a very high quality conversion process, 5DtoRGB gets you as close as possible to the original data off the camera’s sensor while putting the brakes on any additional quality loss.”
The show-stopping cast of Fox’s Glee typically gets all the attention—and will likely get plenty more this Sunday night during the Primetime Emmy Awards—but the show’s talented sound mixers finally got their moment during last Saturday’s Creative Arts Emmys at the NOKIA Theatre in LA. Glee production mixer Phillip W. Palmer (center, above) and re-recording mixers Doug Andham and Joseph H. Earle took center stage to receive Best Sound Mixing for the show’s “Power of Madonna” episode. Later that day on his blog, Palmer once again thanked his producers, DP Christopher Baffa, the Glee crew and his wife, but he also gave a shout out to “all those boom operators who come in for our day calls.”
Glee, the most nominated show this year, is up for another 19 Emmys this Sunday night. The awards show will be broadcast live from the NOKIA Theatre at 8 pm EDT.
IBC’s Big Screen theater, a fixture of the RAI Conference Center in Amsterdam, features digital projection, 7.1 surround sound and seats 1,750 people. Not a bad place to watch a 3D film. Attendees of the IBC 2009 Awards Ceremony, held in the theater last year, got a look at an extended 16-minute excerpt from Avatar prior to its release. This year, IBC will open the theater to all attendees for two full-length screenings of Avatar and Toy Story 3. The Avatar screening on Monday, September 13, at 6:30 p.m. is actually a “Special Edition” featuring eight new minutes of previously cut content. Toy Story 3 will be shown in full Dolby Surround 7.1 on Saturday, September 11, at 6:30 pm. Both shows are open to all on a first-come-first-serve basis. If you’ll be at the show and want to attend, get in line early.
Show organizers are also planning a special set of 3D-themed conference sessions on Saturday, September 11, and Monday, September 13. Read More »
Motive describes itself as “a small shop with big intentions.” Bringing together expertise in branding, marketing, and motion design, the New York-based creative studio took honors from Studio’s Film Fest for two recent promos that were entered in its Top Spots Festival — one promoting Hitchcock movies for Chiller, another showcasing Battles BC for History Channel. With an expansion currently under way, the New York City-based creative studio will have room for ever bigger ideas. We shot Five Questions at Managing Director Chris Valentino.
There’s been a bit of chatter floating around the ‘net during the last week about the upcoming release of Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve 7.0 and Resolve for the Macintosh. The releases look like they’re getting closer to reality. Most of the new info hit last Tuesday, August 17, when two forum threads were posted at Red User and Creative Cow announcing that Resolve on Mac now supports RED Rocket, ProRes and Cineform.
If you want to follow what’s sure to be an on-going Twitter conversation about the new Resolve as it’s released then it’s been suggested that Twitter-ers use the hashtag/keyword“#resolve” to make the topic easy to search out. #resolve it is.
Question: Is Google-fu powerful enough to make a success story out of WebM, a new, open-source video format for rich-media web delivery? Answer: It’s complicated.
The popular video-sharing site Vimeo announced this week that it was revamping its playback for better compatibility with mobile devices that don’t support Flash video. Basically, that means the iPhone and the iPad. Vimeo will automatically serve a different version of the video player — Flash or HTML5 — depending on the environment it’s being viewed in. (There’s a clear explanation of how this works at the Vimeo Staff Blog.)
That’s great news for content creators who use Vimeo to distribute their video online. But publishers and web developers are finding the environment for online video delivery is far from settled. Apple claims to have plenty of good reasons not to support Flash in its iOS operating system, ranging from battery consumption on mobile devices to a reluctance to let Adobe become a middleman between Apple and its application developers.
Motive describes itself as “a small shop with big intentions.” Bringing together expertise in branding, marketing, and motion design, the New York-based creative studio took honors from Studio’s Film Fest for two recent promos that were entered in its Top Spots Festival — one 
