Red FCP-Color workflow

I got this tip from the Indie4k blog

Its a simple workflow for editing Red camera shot material in FCP and grading-finishing in Apple Color. Or using Apple Color to make DPX or CIN files for finishing on other systems like Smoke/eQ etc

For this you need the following...

An Apple FCP 6 system with the entire Final Cut Studio installed.
The system needs to be an Intel Mac - MacPro or iMac, or MacBook Pro
The latest version of Red software - Redrushes, RedAlert, RedCine
All correctly installed.
A free software called Clipfinder

A word on Clipfinder. Its made by a German scientist called Hans-Georg Daun and it free. But there's a PayPal button on his site. If the software works for you, I urge you to donate generously. Remember, this software can do what others do for no less than US$ 150, so donate accordingly. Link at end.

You start by making Quicktimes of the Red files using RedRushes or Clipfinder itself.
You can make Quicktimes of any resolution even 720p and set the resolution to Quarter.
These settings can give you even real-time exports out of a new MacPro.

These Quicktimes will carry timecode from the R3D. Provide you set it that way.
You then edit them in FCP.
Make an XML out of FCP.

Run Clipfinder and point it to where the Red files are located.
Clipfinder makes a new XML now referring to the R3D files. Actually referring to the _H files which are 2048x1152.

You then send this sequence to Color
In Color you can grade to your heart's content
Then come back to FCP for further editing etc.

Or from Color you export to DPX or CIN
Set handles as you wish
Take the DPX to Resolve eQ, smoke/Flame Lustre etc

Some things to look out for

The XML that Clipfinder makes after re-linking to _H files, creates a sequence in FCP that has the same name as the original sequence. So quickly rename it to avoid confusion.
DPX files out of Color work fine in Shake, Resolve and iQ/eQ. But some versions of smoke/flame/lustre can't open them. For these systems better to use Cineon.
Color does only a half-res De-Bayer so if your needs are 4k and or full-res De-Bayer film then this workflow may not be for you.
If the Red files are on a FAT32 or other non-Mac drive, Clipfinder may not work for making a new XML. Copy files to a MacOSX HFS drive and it will work fine.

How about editing on Avid? Can we have more details on FCP XML or Color settings? Can you do this for us? Or, we tried and ran into serious problems. Or even, our Red workflow was a disaster, we eventually rendered out Red files to Digibeta, captured them and worked like a normal video. Red camera has been a nightmare for us.

etc etc.

Hey, nothing's easy. and nothing's free. Press that yellow 'Donate' button on the right and I'm brimming with answers and help. Especially if you're in Mumbai, India.

The origin of this tip is the Indie4k blog archive. An excellent resource for simple common-sense answers to India film-making problems. the original link is here.
I am grateful to those bloggers and give them full credit for this excellent idea. I've only amplified it a bit.

Clipfinder can be found here

LaCie hard disks - the worst data backup device

In a post house with hundreds of clients walking in and out every day - editing, finishing, DI, VFX CGI - hard disks are as common as tapes. And clients bring their media and take delivery on hard disks as a matter of course.

But by far the commonest drive that comes to us is LaCie. So by the law of averages, LaCie is the drive that fails the most as far as I've observed. And amongst Lacies the commonest and most catastrophic failures are in their RAIDs - 2-drive RAIDs.

LaCie Big Disk Extreme+ very bad choice for data backup

LaCie Big disk Extreme+ This is the latest one that has failed on me. It came with a client who needed a DVD from an HD Quicktime for her entire feature. We encoded off the drive and it worked without complaint for 14 hours. Air-conditioning was good so no temperature problems.

Yet, a day later, the drive failed to mount. Checked and swapped cables, power supplies. Still no luck. Disk Utility and Disk Warrior don't see a drive. Apple System Profiler sees a Big disk Extreme + on Firewire but no drive. When I start up, I hear just one click-n-whirr. Where a two-drive LaCie (I have another working one) normally emits two click-n-whirr sounds. So I guess one of the two drives is history. And since all LaCie two drive drives are RAID 0 so is the data.

The sad thing is that client had, along with Quicktimes of her feature, ProTools sessions for her entire two hour long feature. And she was on a tight budget. Very very sad. I haven't even bothered informing LaCie support. They have a no-reply policy for India in force, as far as I have encountered.

I even have two LaCie Biggest F800 which have failed. First the Firewire 800 ports failed in both. One in the warranty period. Filling out support forms as well as sending mails to LaCie got no responses. Even the dealer put his hands up and said he could do nothing about it. So I resigned myself to running it off USB 2.0.

LaCie Biggest F800 - abysmal security at very high price.

Recently one of the drives in this Biggest F800 failed. The LCD display on the drive said "Disk 1 fail". It was RAID 5 so I thought no problem, data was safe. I proceeded to copy out all the data to another drive. No luck. Some of the data couldn't be read. I thought I could replace the failed drive with a new one. It was IDE 250 Gb, so I had some of those.

After replacing the drive, the RAID was supposed to be rebuilt. That's what the documentation (and the dealer) said. But surprise. Now it said the replaced drive was fine and some other drive had failed. "Disk 2 fail". So now I had no data. Replaced the drive back with the old one. And now, all was fine. Still I thought I should copy it all to another. And then. Back to "Disk 1 fail".

Bottom line. If you have data on your system's drive and want to back it up to an external drive. the absolute LAST choice should be a LaCie. And definitely not a LaCie two-drive RAID. Even a LaCie RAID 5 is not a good idea. It costs the Earth and more, and it offers no real protection against drive failure.

My choice is a Western Digital single drive. And if you're paranoid, get a Seagate FreeAgent as well. Have both of the same capacity. And make them both single-drive drives. NO RAIDs. And then use a backup software like Time Machine or Silverkeeper to backup to both. Should any one drive fail, get a new one and copy data over on it. Then send the failed drive to Seagate or Western Digital for replacement. Both of them have a great replacement policy. Even in India.

My first choice is definitely Western Digital. Not that they haven't failed. But at least they are prompt with replacements. And both talk to you on support. Reply e-mails as well. The only good thing about LaCie is Silverkeeper.

The Power of One - in Democracy and Piracy

I Voted

India - the world's largest 'real' democracy went to the polls. And nearly a billion people would vote. I was one of them. While standing in the queue, I thought of the publicity in the run up to the elections. Leading persons from various walks of life told us how important voting was. The Times of India ran a special front page telling us about the power of one.

While I stood waiting my turn to vote, I thought about this 'power of one' idea. Its definitely important in democracy. It also applies to piracy. Movie piracy and software piracy. The power of one. Referring to anyone who shadily makes a copy of something he and she's not paid for. They knows its wrong, but do it nevertheless, just because 'everyone does it'. And because he or she won't get caught for it.

Its even more amusing when the film industry - actors, directors, producers - tell us about how bad piracy it. It is bad all right, but some of them do it too. With computer software, if not other people's movies.

The power of one, here too. "So what if I don't pay for MS-Office, I'm only one, Microsoft makes enough money right?" Can be easily rephrased as "So what if I download and watch Ghajini, I'm only one, the producer made 200 crores right?" So here too, 'one' makes a difference because everyone thinks they are 'one'. Just like in voting.

I just checked, Microsoft in India sells MS-Office for as less as Rs 3050. Look here. So all those film producers who moan and whine about piracy while running MS-Office on their laptops and office PCs can now show the power of one, by buying it. Rs 3050 is about what my family blows when we see a movie - just one movie - in a multiplex over the weekend.

For every one producer who uses one copy of MS-office without paying for it, my family watches one movie by downloading it, I think we'll be square. The power of one. Just like in a democracy.

Besides, I get to pay for movie tickets, and I get to pay for computer software, because I care about piracy. Some producers and actors on the other hand, get passes for movie premieres. So they watch movies for free and, (if they don't buy it), get computer software for free too. What are they cribbing about?

The Planetarium in a Science book

Many years ago I wrote an article for a magazine called Science Today. I don't think this publication exists any more. But Orient Blackswan has published a text book called

English for Students of Science
By Roy, & Sharma, P.L., (eds)

Link here...
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=E4vTvr43TngC

In this book, they've published the entire article.
pages 161-162

I have no copy of that article and have even forgotten I wrote it. But if anyone wants to know how the planetarium machine works, this is a quick explanation. I'm not sure I can make a copy and put it here.

And, my earlier post on 'Editing HDCamSR 24p in an Avid Media Composer Mojo' has been linked on another blog here.

Amazing how the 'word' travels.

Neil Sadwelkar

Wide-angle adapters for prosumer camcorders

One of the big problems with small HDV, DV and XDCamEx camcorders is that their stock lenses aren't wide enough. They let you go very close with tele, but in tight spaces, its hard to cover everything if you don't have room to back up from the subject.

Something like 35mm to 40mm is the widest many camcorders go down to.

For those who need wider lenses with little or no optical defects, Schneider a well known lens maker, makes wide-angle adapters for many prosumer camcorders

The Sony Z-7, S270, Canon HV20/HV30, XHA1 and many others.

Here's the link for the SonyS270/Z7

The S270 stock lens is 32 to 384 mm (35mm eqvt) with the .75x adapter it becomes 24-300 mm.
For 'only' US$ 1235.00. And you can zoom with the adapter attached.

Many other cameras are listed too check the dropdown.
There are adapters for the XH-A1 and HV30 as well.

A bit pricey, though.

Editing HDCamSR 24p in an Avid Media Composer Mojo

A colleague came up with an interesting situation. A client of ours is proposing to shoot a film on HDCamSR at 1080p24, meaning real 24 fps. The final output will be 35mm film also real 24fps.

Being from a PAL country we see no utility on doing the 23.976 > 29.97 NTSC workflow. In fact, when I researched this on the 'net and specifically the Avid Community forum, I came up with mostly NTSC based workflows. Even the Avid MC manual doesn't have any explanation on this. Not surprising, editing system manuals seldom address the PAL 24-25 workflow.

I've found that in the non-PAL post world, people mostly work in 23.976 fps. For shooting HD, telecine to tape whatever. No 24fps. Or in variants of 23.98 like 59.94.

Incidentally, on FCP this would be easy. All our FCP systems have Blackmagic HD capable cards. And in FCP one can capture the HD as ProRes or DVCProHD and save space. Either way we would be capturing 24fps and editing true 24fps HD.

We can then make out an EDL and recapture selects for conform and grading in our normal film grading systems - like Quantel iQ or Resolve. Even Autodesk Smoke or a Quantel eQ could be used for the recapture. We then export as DPX for further processing. All of this is at 24fps. Tried and tested. Works.

But on an Avid there is a problem. All our Avids are Mojo SDI Avids that cannot capture HD. So we need to output from the HDCamSR VTR as SD PAL video. And an HDCamSR VTR, when outputting an HDCamSR tape as SD PAL video does so with a speed change. Meaning 24p HD plays out, not at 24fps, but at 25fps. 4% faster.

Of course, Avid can capture 25fps PAL material in a film project and make it play at 24fps. But in this process of making it 25fps in the HD VTR and converting to 24fps in the Avid one loses the original HD timecode. So no EDLs, no recaptures.

So I did some trials to find a fix. I've tried on a small test clip and sequence, so please do try it out and check if it works. Here it is.

First set the HD VTR to do a burn-in TC (also called window burn or TC super). Make it show the original 24fps TC and the 'derived' 25fps TC. It looks like this.






TCR is the 25fps 'derived' timecode that Avid will get when capturing, and 'ORG' is the original 24fps timecode.

Next, open a film project in Avid Media Composer (this applies to MC MojoSDI ver 2.6 upwards). Capture the HD with deck control normally as you would.

After capture set the bin headings like this.


Basically you need to be able to see 'Start' and 'TC 24'. Initially, the TC24 column will be blank in the bin.

Now open each clip from the bin to the source window and park at the first frame. In the bin enter the timecode you see in your rushes as 'ORG' in the 'TC 24' column. So now, you've 'assigned' a 24fps timecode to each captured clip. Avid will now track both the 'derived' 25fps timecode as well as the original 24fps timecode through your edits.

Now you can edit normally. In the 'Film and 24p' settings you can set the edit play rate as 24fps so that the sequence clips will sync with audio if any was recorded separately on location.

After the edit is complete, you can export the EDL using EDL manager. But with two small changes. In the EDL manager main window (not settings window), set the 'Source TC' to 24 and 'Record TC' to 24. Now open the seq you've edited and make an EDL. And save it.


If your finishing system needs a reference cut, export the sequence as a Quicktime movie. Make sure the Quicktime movie is 24fps. Mind that Avid , when doing a fast export from a 24fps timeline, makes a movie as 23.98 fps. If you have an FCP system handy you can convert this movie to DV-PAL and then use CinemaTools to conform it to 24fps. Else just do a custom export from avid as DV-PAL at 24fps. Quantel iQ and the new Smoke and Resolve accept these as reference movies.

This reference movie will match clips recaptured from the original HDCamSR tapes at 24fps using the EDL we just made.

Please mind that I've tried this for a few clips and an EDL. You should test this thoroughly with your source material before committing to this workflow. And as I said before, if you have the option to work in an FCP system, none of this TC wrangling is necessary. Or, if you haven't got a Avid system yet and have to work in Avid, then get a MojoDX. This allows HD capture. And no TC wrangling.

If this method has saved you some labour or made you some money, then consider pressing that yellow button in the margin that says 'Donate'.

More still cameras shoot HD video

Still cameras could shoot video clips for about as long as they've been around. They shot small sized very compressed videos. Maxing out at 640x480. But now there's a range of cameras that can shoot high quality HD video. Some can even be called 'broadcast-worthy'. Not to be confused with broadcast quality, though.

I went on a holiday some days ago with a bunch of colleagues who all had DSLRs. Really good cameras. Reminded me of times, some years ago when I too went everywhere with my film SLR. Eventually, I gave up on my SLR with its range of lenses, flash, motor-drive etc. I bought a really small Canon IXUS70 which is hitched to my belt in a small pouch. I now shoot stills and movies anywhere anytime.

These small point and shoot cameras also have a surprising amount of control over picture taking. Not in the same league as aperture or shutter priority of the DSLRs or bracketing or anything like that. But still, useful, if you know how.

What is quite amazing is how good the video looks with small still cameras. So, while on this holiday, my colleagues came out with stunning pictures, I had videos. Of some things that simply couldn't be conveyed in a still. Like riding a battle tank, or shooting with a real machine gun. Or the incoherent babble of my friend's year old son.

Before this still camera, I shot video with my DV camcorder for some years. After my SLR days I tagged that DV camcorder wherever I went. But its bulky, shoots tape, and needs a camcorder to show people your videos. And the videos need editing (which is what I do for a living anyway). Somewhat cumbersome. Also, video camcorders shoot really abysmal quality stills so I still needed to tag along a still camera.

My next acquisition will definitely be a still camera with HD video shooting capability. Best of both worlds. But I'll forgo the Canon 5D MkII, or Nikon D90 class and go for one that is small.

I came accross, this list of still cameras that can do HD video...
http://www.digitalcamera-hq.com/digital-cameras/hd-video_ratings.html

The Nikon D90 and Canon 5D MkII were the cameras that started this trend. But these are both expensive DSLRs. In the Rs 60,000 to 1.2 lakh range. Also, they are bulky, which for casual photography, is a no no. And both have interchangeable lenses. So you'll eventually end up with a collection of lenses which you'll always tag along.


Amongst small cameras, that do HD video there is the Canon SX 1 IS. This shoots 1080p video but at 30fps.

So, In India we'll need a creative way of converting 30fps to 24fps or 25fps. If I can get my hands on this camera, I could figure a preset in Apple Compressor to make a smooth conversion.

A good review of this camera is up at Cameralabs here...

http://www.cameralabs.com/reviews/Canon_PowerShot_SX1_IS/

The SX1 IS is probably the only of the non-DSLRs to shoot 1080p video.

The rest of the small cameras mostly shoot 720p movies. All at 30fps. The Canon SX200 IS is one such. It shoots 720p video again at 30fps.

This camera has only an LCD for a viewfinder. No 'regular' viewfinder. I find that a problem sometimes. Too used to shooting with one eye peering through a small hole.

Canon has provided a the SX200 IS with a 12x zoom and the SX1 IS with a generous 20x zoom.

In 35mm terms, the SX200 is 28-336mm while the SX1IS is 28-560mm So both are very wide angle lenses that can zoom to very telephoto. In fact, in the SX1 IS you can digitally double this to 56-1120mm. Great for wildlife too. And it goes down to 0 cm (yes zero cm) in macro mode. So leaf patterns, small insects, serious close-ups, here we come.

For half the price of the SX200 but with a shorter zoom is the Samsung TL34HD. If you absolutely must have a still camera that also does HD video, then this is your pick. But the zoom is 3.6x in this camera.

Detailed reviews are linked on the page I've linked above. So read it and make your choice. I'm not partial to Canon, just that I've always had a Canon, so they caught my eye first.

The Panasonic FZ28 is also a capable camera, much lighter than the SX1 IS and according to one review, better at correcting colour fringes.

Detailed review, also at Cameralabs, here...
http://www.cameralabs.com/reviews/Panasonic_Lumix_DMC_FZ28/



One thing that may come to the mind of fellow video shooters is this.

If video shooting is what one wants to do, can't one just get a HD camcorder? Camcorders do still too.

Not quite. Cost is one consideration. Even the most basic HD capable video camcorder is at least Rs 60,000.

Way over the cost of the basic still camera that does HD video. These still cameras start at Rs 10,000. Besides, still cameras that do HD video take great pictures too. So you need to take your pick between spending a large chunk of money on a video camera that shoots average stills or a fraction of that cost on a still camera that shoots gorgeous stills but average movies.

Added 16 March 2009

At the PMA 2009 show, Panasonic added a new camera the DMC-GH1. This is a micro four thirds camera with interchangeable lenses. What makes this camera special is the long zoom and HD movies at 1080p24. Yes 24fps. It saves movies as AVCHD at 17Mbps.

And in this camera, the auto focus works while you are shooting video. Yes. strange as it may seem as a feature, most still cameras that do HD video don't function like true video cameras in these respects.

I believe this camera's movie making capability will be stellar. Panasonic are the guys who gave the world great looking HD in the form of DVCProHD.



The camera will be available by June 2009 so maybe by then some specs might change.
Till, then, a review here...
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0903/09030316lumixgh1handson.asp






This year, HD video will definitely get into most homes which have a HD capable LCD TV. As movies shot on a HD capable still camera.

If you're looking at places to buy these in India check with. Simply safely and with home delivery, do check out
www.autsun.com

Apple Color for film DI... gets closer

The top reasons why I had not been able to make Apple Color work in a film DI assignment, in a post house with millions of DPX files available from a SAN were...

1. Color cannot read DPX sequences which don't have alphabets at the beginning of their names.
2. Color cannot read DPX sequences which have numbers less than 7 digits as their names.
3. Color really crawled when asked to open a 20,000 plus, DPX frame sequence - over GigE.

Because # 1 and 2 was true of Color 1, 1.0.1, and 1.0.2, I had stopped trying. Color could not read a SINGLE DPX file that was scanned with a Northlight or Spirit. Both Northlight and Spirit scan to DPX sequences that have numbers for names. With 5 digits, or at times 6, never 7. Renaming the approximately 200,000 DPX files spread over 150 folders Ifor just one feature) just so Color could see them was never an option.

Color 1.0.4 came along, and, although not documented (I haven't come across any such) these things seem to be fixed. Color can now read 'normal' DI DPX files. Whew!

#3 also seems sorted out to some extent and its now possible to scrub through a large DPX sequence without a beach ball. But, if I had a FC card and a licence to my SAN then I would be able to even play 2k - probably.

I also have to check out if Color 1.0.4 can conform an EDL to DPX files of 5 digits and only numbers. And I have to figure out a fix for Color defaulting to 720x486 as resolution when you quit and relaunch. Even if you select 720x576 PAL as your resolution. This is a minor irritant but one can manage.

More as I research it. But now I can get people interested because we can work with log DPX files, which is the currency of DI. And I've got an old Tangent CP-100 to work with my Apple Color station too. But that's another story.

Is Movie piracy in India wrong enough?

Movie piracy, or selling illegal copies of Indian movies on CDs and DVDs is pretty common in India. These copies sell on the streets of nearly every major street in India. Its helped by the fact that street selling is perfectly legal in this country. As long as the stuff you sell is legal.

Within clear line of sight of the Versova Police Station there's a small bazaar with hawkers selling vegetables and fruit on the street. One hawker has a handcart full of CDs and DVDs. You can get many of the latest Hindi and English movies there. Could the same hawker have been selling marijuana, or other stolen merchandise, so brazenly? I think not.

So obviously movie piracy is not illegal enough in this society.

A leading columnist wrote in a column today that they 'got impatient' and saw Slumdog Millionaire on a pirated DVD. I'm certain that many Hindi film producers and probably even distributors, have already watched this movie. Either on a pirated DVD or downloaded on a torrent. It has to be, the movie hasn't been released here yet. (its 11 Jan 09, SM releases 23 Jan 09 in India)

So obviously, for many people, even Hindi movie producers, movie piracy is not wrong enough. As long as its someone else's movie.

Movies get released here everyday, some become successful, some don't. Successful movie producers and distributors are a wealthy lot. The piracy of one of their movies will result in lesser revenues, or lesser profits for them personally. But I find it hard to believe that they will get poor because of movie pirates.

On the other hand, a Hindi movie that's going to flop (or fail at the box office) is not going to flop just because of piracy. No one I know is seeking out the DVD or VCD of any of the flops of the past few months. Nor even downloading those movies. Even those selling pirated movies have operating costs and even they won't lose money selling a flop.

And how about computer software piracy? Walk into any Hindi movie producer's or distributor's office and you see people working on computers - PCs mostly. None of these are stolen, of course. But the software on them almost certainly is. Ask any Hindi movie producers or distributor if he has as many licences of all software as he has PCs running Windows.

If a successful Hindi movie producers or distributor has 5 PCs running Windows and MS Office, he should have spent about Rs 2.5 lakhs (US$ 5,000) on software alone. If he hasn't, then he doesn't believe software piracy is illegal. Pirating such people's movies is like stealing from a thief. Illegal perhaps, but not harmful.

So, obviously movie piracy is not even harmful enough, because even the victims practice it.

The real answer to piracy is not to try to prevent it. You cannot. Pirates are very smart. Any DVD can be ripped, any movie will be shot off the screen somewhere, and people will watch even that fuzzy copy.

Instead, they who have a problem with piracy need to understand that like every crime piracy has to have two things - motive and opportunity.

With piracy, you can't do much about opportunity. But you could fix the motive.

Everyone wants to watch movies. And, they go to theatres in droves to watch them. India has 13,000 theatres, and the number of movie watchers in theatres in a year is equal to the population of the whole world!

No one really likes watching VCDs or DVDs. But for a family of 4,one trip to the multiplex to watch a movie, costs between Rs 1000-2000 (US$ 20-40). Maybe more, on weekends. At this rate this is the costliest outing for the common man. And the drivers that most movie producers employ for their fleet of cars take home a wage of Rs 3000-10000 (US$ 60-200 per month)

Why do cinema multiplexes charge so much money for tickets? And, after that, why are water, chips, and other goods with a printed MRP (retail price), charged over the MRP? Can this movie watching experience be made economical? Or, can Hindi film producers and probably even distributors subsidize this experience? Free popcorn, free soft drink, or even T-shirts and other merchandise giveaways. Something. There's got to be a way. There are, after all low cost airlines aren't there?

The bottom line is this. Movie piracy is wrong, but not wrong enough in India. Those that are affected by it, also indulge in it themselves.

There have been protests by people about the high cost of tickets, and food and goods sold inside a theatre. Can't movie producers and distributors get together and examine this? Induce theatres to eliminate this crazy practice?

And, make its possible for the common man to watch a movie in a theatre for under Rs 100 per head. If they can, then, I believe, there will be one less motive for piracy left.

An FCP system for Uncompressed HD

I was at a TV station a few days ago with a requirement to capture uncompressed HD at 4:4:4 dual link out of a telecine. The captures had to be a jumbo reel at a time which works out to about 22 mins in one go. Telecine was a Cintel with Stereo or Dolby audio coming from a Sondor sound follower in sync.

The system was configured as a Dual Quad MacPro with 8 GB RAM. A Kona 3 card with a AJA embedder to embed analog audio into the HD-SDI stream. And disks were internal. Yes internal disks. I was skeptical.

The disks were SAS disks RAIDed together as RAID 0 with the Apple internal RAID card. SAS drives are wicked fast. But the signal was HD 1080p24 at 4:4:4. I checked the AJA Control Panel to be sure. And I was still skeptical.

I first ran the AJA disk test and it showed sufficient Read and Write speed. But only just. I've forgotten the actual numbers as we did a few combinations of cache on and off.

So we threaded the film. And the sound film. Played pack to check sync and inputs. The colourist fussed over the colours a bit and was ready to go. He ran the film and I hit capture now. The 'Abort capture on dropped frames' warning was on.

We went over the whole reel and the capture went through. The RAID drive wasn't empty, but wasn't full either. About 20% full from previous captures. The capture went off fine. Not a singe dropped frame. Just to be sure we did it one more time. And that went through as well.

I'm not entirely sure this is going to work if the drives get full like about 80% full. And I have no way to check. A colleague will be running further tests over the next week or so. Maybe he'll fill up the drive and we'll find out that this works up to a point.

Also, these drives are striped as RAID 0, so its not a secure RAID and one drive failure will result in total data loss. The whole telecine will then need to be repeated. But then, I guess their workflow will have to be to encode these to whatever their target format is and take it off the drives as soon as possible, so maybe that may not be such a problem. And SAS drives are seriously reliable.

Finally, just to make sure that the same setup performed fine for compressed HD capture as well, I did one reel captured to Apple ProResHQ. The data rate of ProResHQ even at 1080p24 4:2:2 is well within the capabilities of even a single SATA drive so the SAS RAID wasn't going to sweat much over ProRes. But I wanted to be sure if the combination of an HD input and the extra processing that ProRes takes, would be handled by this configuration. It did.

So, here it is. a simple system to capture HD Uncompressed all within one box. I went over to the Apple store to spec it out and check what it would cost. Here is the complete spec...

# Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
# 8GB (4x2GB)
# Mac Pro RAID Card
# 320GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
# 300GB 15,000-rpm SAS
# 300GB 15,000-rpm SAS
# 300GB 15,000-rpm SAS
# ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB
# One 16x SuperDrive
# Apple Cinema HD Display (30" flat panel)
# Apple Mighty Mouse
# Apple Keyboard + User's Guide
# AppleCare Protection Plan for Mac Pro (w/or w/o Display) - Auto-enroll

And here's the cost. (US$, Customs duty extra)
$ 9097 for the system - spec above
$ 1300 for Final Cut Studio 2
$ 2300 for the AJA Kona3

With Indian Customs duty you're looking at About Rs 8 lakhs.

The only saving I can see anyone making is to get a Blackmagic Multibrdge Pro in place of the Kona3 which can save you $ 700. But I haven't tested the Multibridge with this setup so can't say. But I've used a Multibridge extensively and found it to work fine even with uncompressed HD.

Either ways, the ability to capture and work in HD, as uncompressed 4:4:4 is now within reach. 8 lakhs may seem a bit much, if you're in the market for a cheap DV only system. But if online quality video and even 2k is what you're getting into, then this is it.

With an AJA Kona 3 you're going to get video quality indistinguishable from a Smoke/Flame or eQ for a fraction of the price. By the way, the new Smoke/Flame systems ship with an AJA Xena card whcih sources at Aja have told me is the same as the Kona in quality terms.

Besides with Final cut Studio, you get Motion, Color, SoundTrack, LiveType. Add Shake, a 3D CG software, Adobe Video bundle, some DPX tools, Apple Color and a really imaginative editor, and you've got a mean system that can make you some big bucks.

And, if you want to go further, add two iMacs, GigE network them, snag two enthu cutlets who can assist with capture and graphics and you've got some real great human throughput that one online machine just can't deliver.

Its OVER!

Its Over!

Two days of mayhem. When ten, maybe more individuals who seemed to have planned rather well, and had access to some high power weapons. And then, with a bit of guts, and a city that wasn't prepared, and they managed to hold up life.

As did those individuals who had a few stones, no plans, and only broke some taxi windshields. Yes, even they held up life in Mumbai not too long ago.

A lot of people are asking why the Government couldn't prevent this, or why security forces were so unprepared? I think the same terrorism strategy used here over the past days, could have been used in just about any city in the world. No security force in the world can prepare for this. Or prevent it. Anywhere.

But on 11/26, while the security forces excelled at their job, the news channels disappointed. None of them had access to technology that's so easy to get. None of their reporters had helmets or bullet-proof vests - costing a few hundred dollars.
Or some other technology that could have differentiated their coverage. Like...

High resolution cameras. HD is quite easily accessible and can produce detailed images. Even the transmission was so compressed in parts that one got the impression one was watching YouTube.

Long lenses. In cricket matches, the camera is in the stands but can take tight close ups of batsmen and fielders. These kid of cameras can take viewers closer to the action, but yet no news channel seems to have one. Surely they could have hired one. After all, there was a ODI series under way, so many such cameras were around.

Buffered recording. In terrorism situations, events can happen without warning, and one almost always rolls the camera late. But there are cameras that are always rolling in 'round-robin' fashion and when you actually start recording, the last 1-5 minutes are kept.

High angle views. Camera cranes that rise up to 50 feet in the air, are easy to hire and deploy. There are many in Mumbai. and these would have afforded safe and high angle views, which could even have helped security forces.

Rover and Helicopter cams. Remote controlled rovers running off rechargeable batteries can crawl close to the action without endangering the camera crew. These can even give security forces a close look without having to actually send a man there.

Remote controlled mini copters too can rise many hundreds of feet and get close to the action in a high rise building. These are small and silent and hard to shoot back at. Both the helicopter and the rover can be fitted with night-vision cameras.

Glass shields. Camera crew standing even hundreds of metres away could easily have been hit by stray bullets from terrorists or even the security forces. Glass shields standing on tripods placed in front of the camera offer protection from bullets and flying shards and shrapnel.

Mini-boom cameras. Mini cameras, even HD cameras that are fitted inside stumps or race cars, can easily be boom mounted so the camera crew don't need to stand on a platform for a high angle. These can even be used in hard to reach interview situations, or to 'peek around the corner' in a bullets-flying situation.

Boom-mikes. Why do TV reporters have to hand carry mikes and thrust them in the speaker's face. The entire movie industry records sound with boom mikes. They get you close and produce great sound.

Solar generators. News channels had vans running of mini generators. When parked together this makes a huge roar. In a sun-blessed country like ours, can't they use silent power like solar? There might even be a situation in the future when security forces order the generators off just so they can hear better.

At the end of the day, this whole thing was converted into a long reality show by news channels. Great for TRPs. A new spectator sport. So I say, if its just that why not equip yourself well to give the viewer a better view of the action.

Horrific it is all right. Some may even say it glorifies crime and makes us insensitive. Does that stop anyone from airing it? I think these kind of events if televised correctly actually help in generating public opinion. Maybe that's what we need to fight this war.

Browse hard disks like floppies or USB drive

Anyone who's a tinkerer has many hard drives sitting on their shelves from older systems. 120 G gets replaced by 250 which gets replaced by 500 and so on. And one doesn't really throw away old drives. At the same time, connecting a SATA drive inside a case or even inside your PC/Mac is cumbersome. Screws, connectors case lids - too much hassle.

So, I checked out a USB to SATA/IDE adapter some time ago. A friend, sent me a link. I bought mine on eBay. Rs 800 and very innovative.

It works fine, but can be a bit cumbersome. Too many connections to make just to connect a drive. And the SATA connectors come loose any time. So the experience is only marginally bettter than connecting a bare drive to a computer or external case.

Then last month while in London, I bought this a USB drive dock. From Maplin at Tottenham Road. This is really terrific.

Bare drive can be just slid in 'browsed' and slid out. Push a button and the drive pops out like toast. No screws no connectors. Just keep the dock permanently connected to your Mac or PC. Even MacBook Pro. My dock sits on my table permanently connected via USB to my MacPro at work. And a drawer full of drives, now working like floppies.
It even works with laptop sized 2.5 in. drives.

I even got another through a friend who went there last week. A USB/SATA drive dock with a card reader and hub. Also from Maplin but at Wembley. I could get used to this place.

This has a SATA port. And a card reader and USB hub.



And to connect it to my MacBook Pro via eSATA I have a Sonnet TempoExpressCard SATA adapter.

This drive dock thing comes in many variants (and colours)

From GeekStuff
or ThinkGeek
and some others here.

It gets even better. If you want Firewire and can spend a bit more, Vantec makes one with Firewire.



And like me, if you're worried that the drive is exposed from the back check out the one with a case.




And a final twist, one with a fan.





Bear in mind that these things are a bit heavy. They have weights in them, else when the drive spins they'd fly. As a curious experiment try this. Connect the drive, and let it mount on your Mac. Then browse through folders, open and close a file or two. Then, unmount the drive, after its gone, switch off the dock and pop out the drive and hold it in your hand.

The drive is now spinning down from 7200 rpm to stop. The sheer torque it generates twists your hand like an unseen force.

There's even a 'Please note...' at one web site which seems to be translated by a machine into English. It reads...

"Note: In order to keep still, the docking station has added weight this preventing the docking station to move when you are plugging in or out your HDD. This added weight is unfortunately increasing the shipping cost… We are very sorry for this inconvenient but there is nothing we can do on this matter. Thank you for your understanding."

The English is quaint, but this thing works. Recommended. If you can afford it get the version with Firewire and cases for your drives.

Post for a feature length film on a Red camera

Shooting a feature length Indian film with a Red camera is now a possibility. Cameras are coming in, and hiring them is getting easier. Some have already done it. And many more are testing the waters and mulling it before taking the leap.

Apart from all the other arguments and discussions on the aesthetic of Red vs. film, the post workflow is a different. And if the Red saves you money from not having to shoot hundreds of cans of film negative (each costing about Rs. 10,000), it also needs you to be responsible with the storage of this data. And have a good plan on how to finish the film.

So, for all those who are considering shooting on Red, here's a check-list of gear you must own or have access to. For doing the post of a film shot with the Red camera.

On location
MacBook Pro
Firewire CF Card readers - two at least.
Portable RAID 1 drive. Like the Sonnet Fusion F2
You'll also need a SATA adapter like the Sonnet Tempo SATA ExpressCard/34
A good utility like ShotPut Red for copying and backing up these files.

At your place
Desktop MacPro - 4 core or more
2GB RAM per CPU, so an eight-core needs 16 GB RAM
Safe RAID - Sonnet Fusion, CalDigit, anything running RAID 5 or RAID 6 for which you can get failed drives replaced in India easily. And with 5 drives or more.
Licenced software - FCP, Crimson, GlueTools, Pomfort.
Red software - RedAlert, RedCine, RedRushes. The latest versions tried and figured out.
Large monitor - Apple or some other 30". Small monitors are a disaster.
Capture card - BlackMagic or Kona
Broadcast monitor - or good LCD TV.

All Software - Buy, Buy, Buy. Don't look for cracks, don't pirate.

All this can go between Rs 7-10 lakhs.

If you don't want to sink in that kind of money figure out rentals with a post house. Or installments with a bank. But do NOT skimp on any of these.

Red shoots data. On CF cards. Your rushes are data. As long as your data is safe you have a film. If your data is lost, only a re-shoot can get it back. And till you re-shoot, you don't have a film. With Red data, a drive failure can make you lose 20 hours of rushes in a fraction of a second. Especially with cracked software.

Now is Rs 10 lakhs too expensive?

So develop a paranoid, maniacal reverence to data and obtain a obsessive compulsive disorder of continuously making backups and triple-checking them. Once per hour.

Next, get a good post crew. Identify an editor. Have him or her improve their reading on digital formats and get familiar with the Red workflow. And all the products listed above. Avid or FCP doesn't matter as long as the editor has a good plan. If the editor is Red-skeptic, get another editor. Repeat this process till you find one who believes.

Make sure your editor's plan is in sync with the people at the post house that is doing the final film grade and output. Again, both the editor and the post house need to believe in this whole thing. If they are skeptical, or in a Red-bashing, or FCP-bashing, or Avid-bashing or general digital-bashing mood, let them go.

The editor's age doesn't matter as long as his thoughts and beliefs are from this century. Yes, even twenty-somethings can be really old school when it comes to the Digital Film process.

Finally, identify all the deliverables - film print, promos, trailers, HD tapes, DigiBeta tapes, DVD, maybe Blu-ray. - and ensure the editor and post people have heard of all these and have a plan on starting with Red and ending up with all these. Actually your post plan also depends on the final deliverables.

If your post team don't have a plan, find a consultant (hint, hint) who can sell you a plan. Yes, sell as in pay money and get something in return. The goods you're buying is advice. Don't expect free advice. Most consultants treat free and paid advice with different degrees of seriousness. So if you have the intent (to pay), make it known up front.

Making a film and completing it so that people can buy tickets and watch it, all this starting with a film camera and film, is easy. If you and your crew know how to, can follow instructions, and have a plan.
The same applies to starting out with a Red camera and CF cards. Except that the instructions are different, as is the plan.

Canon EOS 5D MkII

Some musings on this trend of still cameras doing high quality high res video.



Canon announced and will ship very soon, a new DSLR. The EOS 5D MkII. This is a DSLR like many before it. It has many more megapixels that the cameras before it. It does higher ISO that cameras before it. Which is normal too.

But what sets it apart is that it can shoot movies at high resolution as well. In fact it can shoot 25fps (maybe even 24fps and 30fps) movies at 1920x1080 pixels. Which is the definition of HD. And which is sufficient for making a film. Even if finally for 35mm movie film.

But Canon was not the first camera maker to make such a camera. Nikon recently released the D90 which too can do HD movies. But 1280x720. And the Nikon uses (old) M-JPEG compression. Compared to H.264 that Canon uses. There's also another model that can do HD movies. The Canon SX1 IS too does HD movies and also at H.264.


Many web sites have described these machines. Some have downloadable results from these cameras. Some have compared the EOS 5D MkII to the Red One and even to the unreleased Red Scarlet. And some have even called this a 'game changer'.

I think this is a bit over the top. The EOS 5D MkII is basically a still camera. And as good as a camera Canon makes. That it can do HD movies is an additional functionality. But it can't challenge a camera made for doing movies.

Some of the limitations of shooting a proper movie with the EOX 5D Mk II as with any other such still camera is lack of some crucial features.

Like.
1. You can't adjust focus while 'rolling'.
2. You can't adjust aperture while 'rolling'.
3. It has a still camera grip which isn't exactly comfortable for filming.
4. You can only shoot a few minutes at a time.
5. The movies are highly compressed H.264.
6. Sound may not be as good and there are no professional inputs.
7. The movies are 1080p30 even at Canon's UK site.

But to be fair, this is a rather economical HD camera. At $ 2700 the price can't be beat. Lenses are super sharp, still camera, 21 megapixel capable lenses, that can rival film camera lenses. Film camera lenses cost more not necessarily because they are better than still camera lenses. There is volume economics to it as well.

Which brings us to the interesting question - why did Nikon and Canon do it? That is, make a still camera that can do high quality movies. And why didn't they just come out with a digital movie camera like the Red, which shoots to hard disk or memory card? Sort of like a successor to the XL-H1?

I'm sure both companies have some good reasons, but one of them could be economics. I don't have exact figures, but at between $2000 to $3000, DSLRs probably sell more numbers than movie making cameras. So the cost of developing, and improving on the quality of, and marketing HD-size movie capable imaging chips - CCD or CMOS - gets spread over much larger numbers.

And, a large body of discerning eyes - still photographers - take stills and contribute with valuable feedback. So the product gets market tested well. Had this feature of shooting HD movies with a full frame chip been provided in a 'handycam type' camcorder, it would have been wasted in shaky vacation movies.

So while I'm not sure about Nikon, but I'm reasonably certain Canon will release a HD or even maybe 4k resolution camera that shoots movies using a imaging chip that's the exact size of the normal 35 mm movie frame. The EOS 5D MKII is just the beginning.

And when that happens, that will be a 'game changer'.

Added 27 Oct 08
Amongst the first movies shot with the EOS 5D MkII which was put up on the net, was taken down as it lead to some really heavy downloading that swamped the host site. The movie is now up at Vincent's blog here.

IBC 2008

IBC happened in Amsterdam from the 12th to 16th Sept. 2008

If you happen to work in film and video production, post-production, TV broadcasting and other related fields this is the place to go in September. There are loads of things to see, and I saw as many as I could in the 4 days I was there.

From notes I kept, here are just some of the things I saw in depth. My impressions.

Grading systems (alphabetically)

Baselight from FilmLight
This is a robust grading system which always shows new grading features. And plays nicely with a DVS SAN. There's also a great new direct media workflow with Avid Unity and Avid systems. One can edit on Avid at compressed HD resolutions and have Baselight access the media directly off an Avid Unity. And grade it. Yes, an external application opening and manipulating Avid media. How things change!

And after grading on a Baselight, an exported AAF links up with rendered shots with media created by Baselight. When imported back into Media Composer. Cool!.

Film Master from Digital Vision
Film Master has new grading features and a new tracker that's very impressive. Conform on the Nucoda has always been the best as is project management.

Phoenix and DVO too have evolved with great new automation features.

iQ from Quantel
iQ has evolved into version 4 with workflow enhancements. Quantel showed a new workflow with timeline transfer from FCP to Quantel. There's even a multi-track timeline in Quantel now so its even easier to understand. One needs to export an XML and let Automatic Duck do the conversion to AAF. What they don't tell you is you need to buy Automatic Duck to make this work.
Red camera files are now natively supported. I didn't get time to check out what kind of workflow is need to go from Red to FCP to Quantel. But I guess this kind of thing becomes clear when you have to do it by yourself.
And the grading panel - Neo - is ready and shipping. So no one needs to steal one. A colourist friend tried the panel found some neat features for colourists. So now with this real panel maybe many of the non-believers will sit up and take notice of iQ as a film grading system.
Genetic Engineering is also evolving into a good shared workflow solution. Now Quantel just need to open up their storage and make their systems able to operate off others'.

Lustre from Autodesk
Lustre showed 4k workflow as well with a 'Super Incinerator' which seemed to work as it always does, at trade shows. The Lustre interface still seems the same old clunky one with similar limitations with inter operability with other systems.
I didn't really spend too much time at Autodesk.

Resolve from DaVinci
Resolve now does 4k. Many models. R100, R350 and R700. But this is all new architecture so existing DaVinci Resolve systems cannot be upgraded to these.
DaVinci also have a new panel which was inside a showcase at NAB. Now its out and all the buttons and knobs and balls actually do things. But from what I saw, this new grading panel appears to be still 'work-in-progress'.

Scratch from Assimilate
Scratch has been a simple no-frills grading system at a competitive cost - and it still is. With a software-only version and a Red files only version also available. It even works with a low-cost Tangent Wave grading panel. It has great conform features, and simple yet effective grading.
For those who need a viable non-film workflow, maybe for commercials or even TV shows, a Red plus Scratch is still an unbeatable combination. You can start out as low-cost as you want, if you promise yourself that some part of the money you make from starting out cheap, would go into building up the Scratch workstation.

Systems I did not see from the grading point of view were Chroma Imaging Matrix, Avid DS (as a grading system), Apple Color (Apple did not participate).

Storage

DVS
DVS-SAN has Spycer and together they make up a reliable fast SAN with excellent CONTENT management. Spycer shows what SAN content manager should be like. It adds value to DVS-SAN by optimising space management.
Spycer also does conversions, autonomously, data movement, and access control.
And there's a SAN management tool that shows graphically the state of the SAN. And reliable stats about performance.
SpycerBox is another innovative add-on to DVS SAN or as a standalone content manager. It uses the Spycer software with internal storage and a fast connection to a SAN. And it can do cross conversion to MXF, DV and other editorial capable media.

DVS other products Clipster and their OEM cards continue to be as they always have been. Solid and dependable.

BrightClip
Bright Systems showed pretty much what they did at NAB. But there was a dramatic demonstration of the effects of fragmentation especially with systems shared between DI and VFX/CGI systems. Two working hard disks with glass tops so you can see the disk spinning and the head thrashing about looking for data.

Enter BrightClip. This enables the server and BrightClip enabled apps to intelligently 'arrange' data to guarantee best performance. So this BrightClip disk head thrashes about much less than the non enabled drive.

Ardis
Ardis is a small Dutch company that have made a simple shared storage solution at a very competitive price. Just for sharing between editing systems. FCP, Avid, whatever. And for sound studios working with ProTools/Nuendo.
They've tested it across Avid versions and FCP systems. They had a bunch of them on the stall. And it all seemed to work well.
Some configurations also sport one or more 10GigE ports so one can connect fast-track stations that do film 2k and 4k.

A 4U 12TB config supporting 8 uncompressed SD streams or 40 DV25 streams is EU 25,000, while the top of the line 30TB solution with 20 Uncompressed SD streams or 100 DV25 streams at EU 55,000.

Film devices

AatonK
No spelling mistake. Aaton announced a new LCD based film recorder - AatonK - that records a whole frame at a time. Meaning not like Arrilaser that records line by line with a laser. The AatonK isn't shipping yet but claims to deliver cleaner pictures than laser based recorders. They even had side by side comparisons.
Aaton has partnered with Filmlight to market this recorder using tight integration with the Truelight calibration within Baselight.
Being LCD based there are no moving parts and the calibration is 'self-calibration'.
The AatonK will record 3 fps at 2k and 1.4 sec/frame at 4k.

MWA Nova FlashRecord
Under the Nova name, MWA showed a real time film recorder capable of up to 30 fps. And can record from DPX, TIFF, CIN TGA etc. Just like a Cinevator which is also a real time recorder, this one too is a marriage between a HD video projector and a film camera. The Nova FlashRecord as it is called uses LED light source. It is a daylight operations recorder unlike Cinevator which needs a darkroom.
The FlashRecord is much lower priced than the Cinevator, and I suspect, aimed at a different market too.

Kinoton
Kinoton is amongst few film projector makers still standing. They showed a nice line of film projectors with configurations for small projection rooms. There are also options to remove the lens and place a video pickup to do quick QC type transfers from film to video - sort of 'poor man's telecine'.
Which also keeps the projector in use when not showing film. Now i only they could make it do film to video transfer with a rudimentary keycode reader-burner, they'd have a ready huge market in India. Dailies.

CTM
CTM showed small 16mm table top scanner transfer machines and even one for 8mm. And a simple 35mm film-video transfer system.

Spirit4k
News on the floor was that Thomson's Grass Valley division has been sold to private investors. Spirit and Bones are pretty much where they were last year. Except that this buyout might change the name - Maybe now there'll be Parter Spirit4k - assuming that's the new owner's name.

Displays

Barco
Barco finally showed a shipping unit of their LCD broadcast monitor RHDM 2301. Good picture rich colours, blacks almost CRT like this is probably the best looking LCD picture so far. And with a CRT like field handling.
Also a good feature is the continuous self calibration

Astra 4k
Doing 4k anything needs a 4k monitor. Astra 4k LCD was everywhere. It shows every pixel in a 4k frame and has reasonably good colour contrast for an LCD. Seeing true 4k visuals on the gorgeous 52 in. LCD is quite a sight. I'm not sure of the pricing For a Red camera workflow with 4k files, this would make the perfect client monitor.

Sony
Sony's displays are pretty much where they were last year. The LCD premium models are way too expensive for what they deliver, the mid range ones are average performers, and the prototypes are still prototypes.
And there's still an engineer who has a English vocabulary of about 42 words demonstrating the 4k LCD. So its hard to get any real information on this monitor.

Sony's 3D LCD playing out of an HDCam-SR was amazing. You still need to wear glasses. And if they aren't clean the effect is spoilt. But when it all works, its breathtaking.

Other interesting stuff

3D
3D viewing, 3D editing, 3D finishing, 3D compositing, 3D compression. 3D was everywhere at IBC. It seems film makers in the west have completely lost faith in people visiting theatres. So 3D is that one new thing that they expect will bring people back to theatres. After HD, its 3D now.
Even though HD is still far from universal even on TV.

At IBC there was this thrilling 3D theatrical presentation of clips from upcoming movies. And even a live HD 3D interview with Jeff Kratzenberg from LA to a large 30' tall screen in the IBC theatre.

The screening of clips was full of bugs which showed that 3D is good fun if done right but is literally an 'eyesore' if goofed up. And this screening as well as the other 3D screenings all over the exhibition showed (at least to me) that there need for a certain 'grammar for 3D filming and editing.

A trend to watch though. And Quantel is at the front of this 3D thing.

Wasp 3D
A small Indian company in NOIDA makes this real time 3D graphics software for TV networks. What interested me was that it can import 3D files from 3DSMax and Maya and play them in real time - even in HD.

The output is not as great looking as a rendered 3DSMax output, but is useful for quick client previews and timing and compositing trials.

eMotion digi-crank
eMotion has been showing their speed change software for film and video. And now its better and works stably. As a by product it also does a bit of restoration and standards change. An ideal thing would be if these motion effect softwares could work with an EDL.

Apical D-Rex Image enhancement
This is a small external CD-ROM sized box that takes HD-SDI or SD-SDI inputs and alters dark areas to bring out detail, or cleans up burnt out areas. In real time.

Fraunhofer DCP
The Fraunhofer Institute continues to innovate. From an immersive all round screen to Digital Cinema Packaging as a complete solution. easyDCP is what its called. It can create complete SMPTE compliant DCPs or Interop DCPs.

Sony DPX to HDCam-SR
Sony's newest HDCam-SR VTR the SRW 5800 can be used to record 2k or 4k DPX files as data. An optional board is needed. And a simple interface permits recording and transfer of DPX files to an HDCam-SR.

At 1fps for 4k, 3 fps at 2k and 3fps at HD this is a slow DPX recorder. Even LTO3 works faster. And with the VTR costing in Rs. six figures, an HD tape in Rs. five figures, I didn't see the point. To make it worse, one 40 min HD tape holds 180 GB, and a 64 min tape about 260 GB.

Arri calibration probe
Arri showed a calibration probe for LCD monitors and projectors. It is also a LUT builder and builds LUTs for most grading systems. The probe is an XRite with their own software.

Tangent Wave
A small grading panel from the most trusted grading panel making names. This is a $1500 device that currently works with Scratch, but will soon work with Apple Color. Good for a small quick grading system where a real colourist has to work.

Arri lens for camcorders
Arr has lenses and matte boxes for the new breed of interchangeable lens HD camcorders. So that the final distinction between prosumer and professional - the lensing - just got fixed.

Matrox MXO2
Matrox finally has an I/O solution that works. This one is for a multitude of edit systems - Premiere, FCP etc - and can be used in the field. It connects via a PCIe extension so can be used with Firewire drives. It also does HD/SD up/down conversion. Very cool.

Sonnet drive and SATA
Sonnet whose RAIDs many people use for editing systems, showed a tiny 1TB RAID box that runs off laptop power and works via eSATA. This can be used in the field for direct HD recording or any other use.

Sonnet also showed small desktop RAIDs all the way to multiple HD streams. Direct attached storage for the masses.

iPhone in India - first look

The new iPhone 3G has finally been launched in India. I got an SMS from Vodafone asking me to pay Rs 10,000 (US $ 232) as an advance at any Vodafone store. In a few days I would be informed when and where to collect the iPhone.

The cost will be Rs 31,000 (US$ 720) for the 8 Gb model and Rs 36,000 (US$ 837) for the 16 Gb model. Many have complained that this is excessive and they are comparing it to the Rs. 8,600 (US$ 199) price overseas. But that's misleading.

The iPhone 3G will also be available at other stores and Apple stores in India. I want to Croma at Juhu and checked out the iPhone. Here its available for Rs.29,800 (US$ 693) for the 8Gb and Rs 34,500 (US$802) for the 16 Gb.

I stopped and took a look. I asked the the sales person about the plans and whether I would have to get a new connection. he told me I could use my existing Vodafone post-paid card with the new iPhone but I would have to take a new 'package'. But I explained I already had one. Then in that case he said I would have to get a data package.

On whether my number would remain the same he said it would. But then, what would happen to the SIM card inside the iPhone? I asked, and he had no idea. And supposing I popped in y SIM card into the iPhone would it work right away? He said sure I needed to send an SMS.

And what if I had a BPL or an Idea SIM card? He said that would work too. He sid sure it would. Very strange. If this salesman is to be believed, then Apple is officially selling an unlocked iPhone in India. No need to sign up with any particular mobile service.

I don't believe it. I think the salesman was probably living somewhere in the jungles when the iPhone was released last year and all the hoopla about locking/unlocking happened over the past year or so. So he's completely unaware.

The iPhone itself what does it feel like? I held it in my hand. Maybe I was imagining it but it seemed lighter. The back is black and plastic not silver aluminium like the old iPhone. The headphone socket is not recessed so any headphone will work. The silend button is sl=ilver and flatter. And, the sofware is slightly different than the 1.x versions. Apart from these, externally at least, the iPhone 3G is not radicaly different.

Will I rush oiut and buy one? I don't think so. This Rs 30,000 price is a bit much for me. So I'm going to pass on the iPhone 3G for the moment till 3G services start in India.

And for existing iPhone owners, what happens to their iPhone? Does it get a warranty in India now? Will Apple India service the old 'unofficial' iPhone? What happens if an American with a 'legal' iPhone comes to India and has some trouble with it. Will the Apple Authorised Service Centre in India fix it?

Lots of questions still. In the weeks to come we'll have answers, I'm sure.

There's a Red camera in Mumbai

For the past few months I've heard of someone or the other who 'has a Red' in India. But no confirmed sighting. Now there's one.

A production house in Andheri West has a Red camera. It's here. With lenses. I know this as a fact from a gentleman from Benchmark who are the resellers and support people for Red and Scratch.

I'm not sure if I should name the place that the Red camera is at, since I'm not sure they want it to be publicly known. The camera is functional and soon we will see stuff shot with this camera appearing on our TV screens maybe even in a theatre near you.

A lot of people - including those who own this camera - are keen on shooting with Red, here in India. Reasons include, 'filmic' lensing and hence depth of field, 'film look', no expense on film or even HD tapes, no time lost in processing and other such.

But before you rush out there and shoot with Red, especially if you're thinking of long-form film like a documentary, feature or even music video, there are things to consider.

Red shoots to memory cards - CF cards - or to hard disk. Either way, its all data. There's no film or tape. So it can 'vanish' in a fraction of a second if its not correctly stored and backed up. Almost everyone has a hard disk crash some time or the other.

Second, a post work flow. Red files can be natively edited in FCP, but not in Avid. They carry time code so the edit can be replicated on another system. But that another system cannot directly be smoke, flame, eQ, iQ or any such that one is used to 'doing online' or finishing on.

Some amount of conversions are needed from Red's native format to a format that these online systems can see and work on. And these converted files also need to be reconnected back to the edit. This is easy but takes some doing. the average editor who works with the comfort of EDLs that match back to tape or film will need some re-learning. And educated trial and error.

With a work flow that doesn't take into account this methodology, its entirely possible to end up with an edit that doesn't match back, has slippages and other such horrors. As usual, Its very easy to 'blame FCP' as a lot of editors are prone to doing.

You also need an 'ideal' system to work with Red. Just any old FCP system won't do. it will have
to be a new MacPro, gobs of RAM, loads of hard disk space. Correctly configured with the latest and compatible FCP, Quicktime, and MacOSX versions. Compatible RedCode, RedCine, Red Alert, RedRushes, FCP plug-ins. And time before the edit to explore these software, measure time taken for various conversions, and a strategy that's well documented.

So, if you plan on shooting Red, take a moment and consider and discuss these things and make a plan. Red is not film, but its easier than film. All you need is to invest time and effort to understand how to make it work.

First TV commercial shot on Red in India

Some days ago, on the one hand there were Reds withdrawing support to a Government, and on the other, a Red that was probably ushering in a revolution in acquisition for mass entertainment.

Unless someone has completed a TV commercial in India before the 12th July, this is the first TV commercial in India shot on the Red camera. I'm not sure I can name the product, but maybe I will after its released.

Two old friends worked on this commercial - Rajesh Krishnan and Murlidharan. Actually they are both very young, 'old' friends means we go back a long time. Rajesh's company Soda Films produced it with Rajesh directing and Murli as the cinematographer.

The commercial was also simultaneously shot on 35mm with an Arri 435 camera. I had to edit the Red material while the film material was edited at Rajesh's office. Eventually we'll tally both edits so one can have a comparison.

My editing workflow...
1. Tried to do log and capture in FCP with the Red data. It was taking ages as the files were on a USB drive. I set the Log and Capture all night on a Quad core Intel MacPro, and it stopped sometime after doing 41 (out of 123 clips). This method seems completely impractical, unless one wants to mark and capture.
2. Tried Redrushes to convert the clips to Apple ProRes. I set it up to convert all clips to Apple ProRes SQ at 1920x1080. Earlier, I did small tests scaling at different sizes, and the scaling size doesn't seem to affect speed. My rush of 123 clips totalling about 23 mins, on an Intel Quad Core took 4 hours to convert from Red to Apple ProRes. Again, this method isn't very impractical.
3. So I decided to edit the _H or _M clips directly. First I tried this on my 24" Dual core iMac, (only 1 Gb RAM) but that choked and couldn't play the _H or _M clips smoothly. For some reason, even the MacPro couldn't. Somehow my MacBook pro Core2Duo managed.

Incidentally all the said machines have MacOSX 10.5.3 or above and Quicktime 7.4.5 or above. And I downloaded the latest QT codec, Redcine, RedAlert and Redrushes on all 3 machines.

So eventually the edit went like this.

I edited on a MacBook Pro. Using the the Apple ProRes clips since they played most reliably. After the edit, I made a new edit by eye matching the _M clips. So now I had two edits. I gave both EDLs to Mithun.

Guess why I had to eyematch to make an edit of the _M clips? Because FCP cannot reconnect an edit made of ProRes converts to an edit of _M clips. Because file names are different. More importantly, Redrushes when converting Red files to Quicktime, changes timecode after 22 hours to 00 hours. Not after 23 hrs. So one set of clips had wrong time code.

About the look. On a MacBook Pro screen its hard to say. The Red files when opened in Quicktime, and also FCP, look a bit dull, almost like log. When made log to lin in Shake they look better but not quite right. I did a 'send to Color' on the ProRes sequence and could muster up a decent grade. With Rajesh guiding me and Mithun looking jealously over my shoulder.

Eventually we'll grade this film's film version and the Red version, both on a Scratch system to make them look the same, colour and contrast wise. And maybe output both to film and see them in a theatre.

Conclusion. Working with Red files is not terribly different from working with 'normal' film and tape media. There is s slight lag when working with the _M or _P files. FCP appears less responsive. But apart from that its similar. An important difference is that if one is working with _M files, one is actually editing at 2k resolution. Wow!

Stability. There were no crashes throughout the edit. My MacPro was also doing other things when converting. And my MacBook Pro was doing a software update and mail checks while I edited. No crash. Not even with the client (Rajesh) present. Most machines behave well till the client arrives.

Software issues. Before one edits a film shot on Red, one should get all the latest software updates and install them. And spend a day or so, doing converts and timing stuff. On a long project, you cannot take one route and then change midway. 10 hours of Red footage can take up to two days to convert, so you better do it right.

Overall I'm positive with this Red working. Its really here now. Depending on how Benchmark manages the marketing in India, the revolution is upon us.

Initially, many editors will crib. Some won't be able to import footage, others won't be able to play it right. Timecode issues will come up. Entire edits and rushes will be lost to drive crashes. Mostly it will be human error. An entire set of folks, cinematographers and editors will trash this Red workflow and say it 'simply doesn't work'.

I've been through this many times before. When Movieolas and Steenbecks gave way to Avids, many said it would never work. Now it does. When Umatic and later Betacam tape came to TV acquisition, when FCP grew in popularity, basically whenever a large scale change in working happens.

Eventually there will be two sets of people left. Those that have successfully understood and adapted to this new digital workflow, and those that are yet to manage.

Western Digital My Passport™ Studio™ 320GB

Another great small drive from Western Digital for editors on the go. Now available at AutSun for a shade over Rs 10,000.

I had written about an earlier model Western Digital pocket drive 250 GB on my blog. I used one of those with my MacBook Pro to edit a feature on. With Final Cut Pro.

All rushes for the feature, nearly 170 GB at DV-PAL were copied on to the WD pocket drive and connected via USB to my MacBook Pro. Through many months of editing, presentations, playouts for sound, and exports for preview DVDs - the kind of stuff that goes into feature film editing - the drive held firm.

No dropped frames, no crashes.

Now this new drive has 320 GB as well as Firewire and USB interfaces. It should be even faster and even more reliable. The advantage of the USB port is that you can reliably use your Firewire bus to take on a deck/camcorder or even a Mojo if you edit on a new Avid MC. And its bus-powered so no more lugging around and connecting a power supply, cables and such.

The price at AutSun is reasonable and only marginally more than the US online price. But hey, the US online price doesn't include taxes, and shipping. So it might even be cheaper to buy from Autsun than from WD itself.

Recommended. A great buy for the mobile editor.

Red camera in Mumbai, India

Ted Schilowitz, of Red camera, the 'Leader of the Rebellion' as his card says, and like the main spokesperson for Red was in Mumbai yesterday. As was Nacho, Vice President of Scratch. They launched Red for DOPs and film-makers in India.

It was a small party The Club, Andheri West. A collection of film-makers, Cinematographers and others gathered on a rainy day. I was possibly the only editor around. No wait, Rajesh Choudhary was there too.

Among the cinematographers were very old friends Anoop, Vijay, Murli, Mahesh, Chiang, Rao saab, and lots of others. Names on the tip of my tongue but not 'coming out'.

Benchmark is their (Red and Scratch) representative in India. They have one camera now that they'll use for promotion and plan on bringing in about 50 more in maybe a few months now. So the first step for Red camera feasibility in India seems licked if even half of these many can be made available by year end.

Not many film technicians seem to have heard of Scratch. This is a Windows based DI software. Scratch can conform EDLs to scanned material, grade rather well, and then output to film or HD/SD tapes.

Assimilate is the company that makes Scratch and there are already 16 in India. If someone tells me the last Hindi movie graded totally on Scratch, I'll put it up here.

I'll write about post with Red in a bit. It starts with editing natively on FCP.

For Red finishing workflows, there's a low-cost product called Scratch Cine. This can open and conform Red R3D files, but not other formats. It can play back, at 24fps, Red files at 1k and 2k (not 4k) There's no info on how many sound tracks it can play and how good it stays in sync.

So, for now, Red has made an official entry into the Indian film production industry. Soon more and more cameras will become available. Cinematographers will start using it, Sound recordists will love it for the zero noise, but will need to get used to the connections and recording system.

Editors will have to get used to 'rushes' with cryptic alphabet-number names, folders within folders, a good storage and backup regimen, but no more keycode-timecode-telecine log grappling.

Post and DI houses and systems will need to come to terms with workflows that involves FCP, Scratch and others. And DI houses geared only to film and DPX, will have one more reason (after HD) to get real and equip themselves to handle non-film shooting for film release.

There will be many who will scoff at this whole new digital film thing. But then, it was another rainy day almost 8 years ago when Apple launched Final Cut Pro here. Many scoffed, some still do. And even before, on a not so rainy day six years before FCP, when Avid launched editing on a computer. The Steenbeck crowd laughed heartily then.

Will Red be a revolution in the way we make movies here? I doubt if we'll take 5 years to find out. Ask me around this time in 2009.