Last year we decided to switch from SD DV to HDV. (How much do I regret that decision?)
I have already blogged about the issues we had with just playing the material in QuickTime outside of Final Cut. In view of the problems we had we decided to switch back. We recycled the tapes and even took the precaution of pre striping them in SD DV. Then we sent the teams out to shoot. When they returned, we started the capture and logging. that's when the timecode issues started. OK, its one of the 3 Sony Z1's. Nope they all had the same problems. Its due to the deck we striped with being faulty. Possibly but unlikely. We guess its the original HDV timecode. Wouldn't you assume that recording over timecode would have erased the previous?
The advantages of HDV over Standard Definition 16:9 video are clearly outweighed because of the disadvantages. In fact if the time spent trying to get the stuff into the edit then out of the machines were spent on planning, shooting and editing the quality of the film would be more significantly benefited. ( Have I calmed down yet?) Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Showing posts with label FCP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FCP. Show all posts
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
The Art of Blogging 2.2
This post carries on from part 1 and details the practical aspects of writing your blog. I also cover assessing reflective writing and list some blogs you might like to subscribe to.
How do you blog (using Blogger.com)?
Here is a quick introduction from Blogger.
You might prefer to use WordPress.com. Here's this post using that blogging engine.
Layout. The great thing about about Blogs is that they allow you to present your ideas and writing without worrying about the HTML code that underlies the blog - which is really a website. But you still need to think about how you make the limited number of choices about layout. Its easy to post your first blog and then experiment with different styles and looks - called templates. These will alter the form but not the content of the blog. Make sure your blog is readable. Grey text against black is not a good idea. Some of your selections can affect how they read when the blog is accessed by a Reader. Check! Here are some ideas, from the web usability expert Jake Nielson, about positioning pictures and information - the F-shaped pattern.
Widgets. These can add great content to your blog and are quite easy to set up. Add, check and remove if they detract. See cliches below!
About you. Include some information about yourself - who you are, why you are blogging, what you hope to achieve, what someone might learn from your blog. You are more likely to get people subscribing if they have these information.
(Post) Title. This is what as known in web design as 'microcontent'. Choose the title for your post very carefully. It needs to be simple and informative. Again Readers display the title. Subscribers might scan just the titles while deciding what to read. Then mark as read anything that doesn't appeal - missing your beautifully crafted post.
Structure. The opening paragraph needs to summarise the post, but in a way to raise interest. I often write this last - before publishing online. Its easier once you can see what you have said, to craft the introduction. There is a difference between academic writing and writing for the web. The structure is closer to the journalistic 'inverted pyramid'.
Links. Without any links the posting has no context. In an academic essay you are required to include quotes that support the ideas you are discussing. Then at the end of the essay there is a bibliography that relates to the reference. The idea being that interested parties can trace the reference back to the original source. How much easier is it to do this on a blog! If you find a useful site and use it, link to it. If there is more information that relates to your post, link again. Be aware that if you want to link to a blog post make sure you use that postings url (permalink) and not the blog's home page. (Whats displayed on the homepage will change.)
Multimedia. Not using images, video and audio is to criminally under use the blogging medium. As they say a picture can say a 1000 words. Not only that but this is a media course. So include media, both yours and others (its about context again). You can upload video and images to Blogger. They get stored on your account - Picasa. You can download Picasa as an application and use it instead of iPhoto (I think its better). The free storage for Picasa is actually quite modest.
You are better uploading to your YouTube or Vimeo account and embedding the video into the blog. Still images could be embedded from Flickr or Photobucket. (Keep track of your accounts and passwords). There are uploaders for iPhoto that will help you manage uploads. iPhoto will upload to Facebook and Picasa. Videonic will upload from your mac to Youtube.
Here are 13 blog cliches from Jeff Atwood's blog that are worth thinking about.
Writing. Just because its not an essay doesn't mean that you don't have to spell, capitalise, punctuate, and paragraph. I expect to see all of these displayed to degree level. There's a spellchecker in Blogger. Use it , then check it - its US English. We require UK English! Its normal to have 2 spaces at the end of a sentence - it makes the piece easier to read. Use one space after a comma. If you cut and paste from WORD you will get problems with your blog. Use a plan text editor instead, like TextEdit on the Mac, NotePad on a PC.
Organisation. Labelling (or tagging). You have the option to tag/label your posts. This is basic metatagging. It makes your blog easier to navigate. It makes sense for you, your readers and its good media practice. Things need to be organised so that you can store, search and find things. The labels allow you to catagorise your posts. If you are interested in the ideas of organisation - and they are relevant to you and your studies, watch this presentation by David Weinberger (or read his book - its an easy read!)
Content. Your content needs to be legal, fair and decent. You must avoid libel, slander and deformation of character. Your blog is public not private.
As students this is where the bulk of the marks will be given. It would help to start by thinking about what use blogs actually serve. Whom are they aimed at? Here are some broad descriptions:
Description. What of what happened,what didn't happen, and what were the consequences etc.
Reflection. Detail the logic of decisions and choices. You should comment on alternatives you might have taken and whether that might have been better/worse for whatever reasons.
Context. You also need to contextualise your work and thoughts - that is relate them to other examples, current practice etc. A lot of student writing tends to cover descriptive writing quite well and be less effective in reflecting on and contextualising their work.
Lessons learnt. You should also comment on what you feel you learnt, what you feel you need to learn, illustrating it by explaining how you might perform the task/exercise if you were to do it again.
How do we judge 'reflective writing'? Broadly we might define reflective writing like this:
Phil Bloom Freelance Director of Photography and exponent of cinematic style video shooting. (Often on DSLRs).
Powertothepixel Great site that attempts to gather news and information about transmedia developments.
Wired magazine UK based version of the US techie site. Good for tech news with UK slant.
Readwrite More tech news this time based in the States, but very comprehensive and up to date.
Smashing Magazine Highlights design issues. Often something of interest.
Stu Maschwitz Stu wrote the DV rebel handbook and is a post production guru. Interesting and thought provoking. Some of his stuff on colour grading etc is very informative. (His books worth a read too. Check out the library.)
The Guardian (Media section) classic resource on the Media (Monday's paper issue - but there's more online)
Good luck with your blogging. If this has helped you, or you think it can be improved - leave a comment. That's also very much part of the art of blogging.
Mike J
How do you blog (using Blogger.com)?
Here is a quick introduction from Blogger.
You might prefer to use WordPress.com. Here's this post using that blogging engine.
Layout. The great thing about about Blogs is that they allow you to present your ideas and writing without worrying about the HTML code that underlies the blog - which is really a website. But you still need to think about how you make the limited number of choices about layout. Its easy to post your first blog and then experiment with different styles and looks - called templates. These will alter the form but not the content of the blog. Make sure your blog is readable. Grey text against black is not a good idea. Some of your selections can affect how they read when the blog is accessed by a Reader. Check! Here are some ideas, from the web usability expert Jake Nielson, about positioning pictures and information - the F-shaped pattern.
Widgets. These can add great content to your blog and are quite easy to set up. Add, check and remove if they detract. See cliches below!
About you. Include some information about yourself - who you are, why you are blogging, what you hope to achieve, what someone might learn from your blog. You are more likely to get people subscribing if they have these information.
(Post) Title. This is what as known in web design as 'microcontent'. Choose the title for your post very carefully. It needs to be simple and informative. Again Readers display the title. Subscribers might scan just the titles while deciding what to read. Then mark as read anything that doesn't appeal - missing your beautifully crafted post.
Structure. The opening paragraph needs to summarise the post, but in a way to raise interest. I often write this last - before publishing online. Its easier once you can see what you have said, to craft the introduction. There is a difference between academic writing and writing for the web. The structure is closer to the journalistic 'inverted pyramid'.
Links. Without any links the posting has no context. In an academic essay you are required to include quotes that support the ideas you are discussing. Then at the end of the essay there is a bibliography that relates to the reference. The idea being that interested parties can trace the reference back to the original source. How much easier is it to do this on a blog! If you find a useful site and use it, link to it. If there is more information that relates to your post, link again. Be aware that if you want to link to a blog post make sure you use that postings url (permalink) and not the blog's home page. (Whats displayed on the homepage will change.)
Multimedia. Not using images, video and audio is to criminally under use the blogging medium. As they say a picture can say a 1000 words. Not only that but this is a media course. So include media, both yours and others (its about context again). You can upload video and images to Blogger. They get stored on your account - Picasa. You can download Picasa as an application and use it instead of iPhoto (I think its better). The free storage for Picasa is actually quite modest.
You are better uploading to your YouTube or Vimeo account and embedding the video into the blog. Still images could be embedded from Flickr or Photobucket. (Keep track of your accounts and passwords). There are uploaders for iPhoto that will help you manage uploads. iPhoto will upload to Facebook and Picasa. Videonic will upload from your mac to Youtube.
Here are 13 blog cliches from Jeff Atwood's blog that are worth thinking about.
Writing. Just because its not an essay doesn't mean that you don't have to spell, capitalise, punctuate, and paragraph. I expect to see all of these displayed to degree level. There's a spellchecker in Blogger. Use it , then check it - its US English. We require UK English! Its normal to have 2 spaces at the end of a sentence - it makes the piece easier to read. Use one space after a comma. If you cut and paste from WORD you will get problems with your blog. Use a plan text editor instead, like TextEdit on the Mac, NotePad on a PC.
Organisation. Labelling (or tagging). You have the option to tag/label your posts. This is basic metatagging. It makes your blog easier to navigate. It makes sense for you, your readers and its good media practice. Things need to be organised so that you can store, search and find things. The labels allow you to catagorise your posts. If you are interested in the ideas of organisation - and they are relevant to you and your studies, watch this presentation by David Weinberger (or read his book - its an easy read!)
Content. Your content needs to be legal, fair and decent. You must avoid libel, slander and deformation of character. Your blog is public not private.
As students this is where the bulk of the marks will be given. It would help to start by thinking about what use blogs actually serve. Whom are they aimed at? Here are some broad descriptions:
- A diary/daily journal - what you did, what you think,
- Commercial support - development and problem solving with users
- Interest groups - sharing information with like minded people on one subject, area or topic
- Personal thoughts and ideas - reflecting on topics and subject(s) that interest you
Description. What of what happened,what didn't happen, and what were the consequences etc.
Reflection. Detail the logic of decisions and choices. You should comment on alternatives you might have taken and whether that might have been better/worse for whatever reasons.
Context. You also need to contextualise your work and thoughts - that is relate them to other examples, current practice etc. A lot of student writing tends to cover descriptive writing quite well and be less effective in reflecting on and contextualising their work.
Lessons learnt. You should also comment on what you feel you learnt, what you feel you need to learn, illustrating it by explaining how you might perform the task/exercise if you were to do it again.
How do we judge 'reflective writing'? Broadly we might define reflective writing like this:
Excellent reflective writing has these qualities: Reflective language that describes, analyses and plans subsequent actions as a result of reviewing processes and events.As with all things you get better with practice, but you can also learn a lot from just reading a range of blogs. Here are some you might like to read and subscribe to in your Reader (they may also provide context for some of your studies):
Good reflective writing has these qualities: Use of vocabulary, writing style and expression indicate engagement with the reflective process. Evidence of self-evaluation and awareness of the wider context.
Poor reflective writing has these qualities: Writing style mainly descriptive but some engagement with the reflective process. Reflection largely confined to the personal, with little attempt to connect to the wider context.
Very poor reflective writing has these qualities: Use of vocabulary, writing style and expression entirely descriptive, showing very little engagement with the reflective process.
Phil Bloom Freelance Director of Photography and exponent of cinematic style video shooting. (Often on DSLRs).
Powertothepixel Great site that attempts to gather news and information about transmedia developments.
Wired magazine UK based version of the US techie site. Good for tech news with UK slant.
Readwrite More tech news this time based in the States, but very comprehensive and up to date.
Smashing Magazine Highlights design issues. Often something of interest.
Stu Maschwitz Stu wrote the DV rebel handbook and is a post production guru. Interesting and thought provoking. Some of his stuff on colour grading etc is very informative. (His books worth a read too. Check out the library.)
The Guardian (Media section) classic resource on the Media (Monday's paper issue - but there's more online)
Good luck with your blogging. If this has helped you, or you think it can be improved - leave a comment. That's also very much part of the art of blogging.
Mike J
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
transcoding to MP3
I hate it when Apple remove a function or facility from some software. We get so used to companies adding utility. I recently wanted to create some MP3 files from .aiff files. Easy, I used to use iTunes. Possibily the only thing its useful for. Except the newest version I have doesn't seem to allow you to do this anymore.
cheers, Mike J
The solution was to use a free application called 'Switch'. This worked like a dream and with much more control and features than iTunes. Great.
When working with FCP, its easiest to disarm iTunes. I hate the way it hijacks audio CDs and automatically opens them in iTunes. I turn this off, and re set the default application. (Select the file in the finder, then click command (apple) + i.)
When working with FCP, its easiest to disarm iTunes. I hate the way it hijacks audio CDs and automatically opens them in iTunes. I turn this off, and re set the default application. (Select the file in the finder, then click command (apple) + i.)
Now when I load an audio disc , I preview it in the Finder and when I open it , it opens in QuickTime. If I want to use the track in FCP then I save it to the media assets file of the project, and transcode it to 48K at the same time. No iTunes, no glitchy playback, all the assets in the right place.
The offical Apple way of bringing audio into FCP with Batch export is DAFT.
The offical Apple way of bringing audio into FCP with Batch export is DAFT.
cheers, Mike J
Friday, 1 May 2009
More issues with HDV and FCP
As we move through the production workflow with the students doing 'making a film' at BSU, more problems with FCP and HDV are emerging. There is a little trick to get FCP to recognise the capture deck that's not obvious.
IF the last project created was anything other than HDV, and you open your HDV project and try to continue logging and capturing - you can't. The deck (device control) will not link to the Mac. After trying 2 leads, 2 decks and 2 machines I found that if I changed the easy set up to HDV and created a new project. Then closed it. I could then, on returning to the original HDV project, connect the deck and log and capture. What a pain!
The pictures look nice though.
IF the last project created was anything other than HDV, and you open your HDV project and try to continue logging and capturing - you can't. The deck (device control) will not link to the Mac. After trying 2 leads, 2 decks and 2 machines I found that if I changed the easy set up to HDV and created a new project. Then closed it. I could then, on returning to the original HDV project, connect the deck and log and capture. What a pain!
The pictures look nice though.
Tuesday, 31 March 2009
Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express
Recently I have been helping students make short films. Their first steps into filmmaking, and a steep learning curve. We try, as much as possible, to remove some of the technical complexities. Allowing the students to concentrate on the storytelling. The last two weekends have seen 14 shorts in production. They were all filmed over 2 days (a weekend). Now we're start the post production. But first the logging and capturing.
One of the decisions we had taken fro the students was to shoot in HDV rather than our usual default, anamorphic DV. We could see the advantage of the greater resolution - we might need to tweak some of the shots. We'd project in 'high def' (HD) and drop the films down to standard def (SD) for the DVDs. The data rate is, after all the same as SD, but with greater image size. Great! OK, we know that there's a slight lag from the time you press record to when the camera records. But thats a small price to pay. We thought.
If only things were as simple as they looked! Some of the tapes we issued were pre-stripped. (We were keen to avoid timecode breaks - a perennial problem with novices). Sadly these were stripped in SD DV. We subsequently had worse timecode breaks than normal as the decks we were using for capture kept requesting we change format! We worked around this problem, but there were more.
Some students, tempted by the keen pricing and educational discount, owned FCP Express and were keen to use their own machine to do their edit. Usually we get the teams to create the master folder with a master FCP project and all the rushes. Students can then copy this onto external drives or laptops to do their own individual edits. It normally works fine. On monday one keen and diligent student, having finished logging and capturing on one of the Uni's Macs, wanted help to transfer it to her own Macbook. I was pleased to help her and we transferred the data using target disc mode. We then opened the FCP Pro 6.0 project in FCP Express 4.0. Problem - all the clips had audio but failed to display the video. We investigated and discovered that there was a codec issue with FCP Express. I suggested purchasing QuickTime Pro. That'll sort it out. Nope - at a cost of $30 (approx). The next option was to delete the media and re capture from the master tapes. That seemed a pity. Why had this happened?
Its not clever but it would appear that FCP Express encodes HDV (Mpg 2) into Apple Intermediate codec. FCP Pro allows you to natively edit HDV format. To solve the problem therefore in FCP Pro we used media manager to 're-compress' the footage into the Apple format (the file size increased only slightly). This, hopefully would work in FCP Express. What a pain. Next time we might set FCP Pro to capture all the films in Apple Intermediate Codec. But I suspect that there's another gotcha lurking in there somewhere!
Tuesday, 1 April 2008
Useful FREE Apple seminars
Apple offers a range of seminars with are delivered online. Here are some that might appeal to you:
The Podcast Recipe: Producing a successful show. Find out what it takes to perform a great-sounding podcast, produce a professional show, and promote a podcast to reach as many people as possible.
Enhancing Video Podcasts with Final Cut Studio. Add chapter markers, titles, images, and URLs to your podcast and produce video and sound with Final Cut Pro, Soundtrack Pro, QuickTime Pro and Compressor.
Making Music on the Mac with GarageBand . Tune in to this free online seminar and learn how to transform your Mac into a musical instrument and record new and inspiring masterpieces.
Creating a Rich Media Podcast with Final Cut Pro . Brian Storm shows news professionals how to use Final Cut Pro to take digital storytelling to a whole new level with rich media podcasting.
The Podcast Recipe: Producing a successful show. Find out what it takes to perform a great-sounding podcast, produce a professional show, and promote a podcast to reach as many people as possible.
Enhancing Video Podcasts with Final Cut Studio. Add chapter markers, titles, images, and URLs to your podcast and produce video and sound with Final Cut Pro, Soundtrack Pro, QuickTime Pro and Compressor.
Making Music on the Mac with GarageBand . Tune in to this free online seminar and learn how to transform your Mac into a musical instrument and record new and inspiring masterpieces.
Creating a Rich Media Podcast with Final Cut Pro . Brian Storm shows news professionals how to use Final Cut Pro to take digital storytelling to a whole new level with rich media podcasting.
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