Tech With Mike First – News and analysis of emerging media and graphics technologies and products.

Data Storage for Video Projects

Mike McCarthy November 9, 2018 No Comments

This topic has come up a lot recently, so it is time for a post dedicated to the basics of data storage for video projects. Storage is the concept of storing all of the files for a particular project or workflow. They may not all be stored in the same place, because different types of data have different requirements, different storage solutions have different strengths and features. This is an exploration of those differences, and how they can be applied to various project storage needs.
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Grounds of Freedom-A Creative Cloud Workflow

Mike McCarthy November 1, 2018 No Comments

We recently released the first couple of episodes of Grounds of Freedom, an animated web series that has been in the works for over a year. Grounds of Freedom is a coffee shop, where a variety of animated mini-figures gather to discuss freedom, and its application to present day cultural issues and events. It is created with a workflow that weaves through a variety of Creative Cloud apps, by people collaborating from all over the US. I recently made a presentation about the workflow we used at Adobe MAX in LA, and wanted to share that information with my readers as well.
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Adobe MAX 2018 and New Creative Cloud Updates

Mike McCarthy October 22, 2018 No Comments

The Event Itself
Adobe MAX 2018 took place last week in Los Angeles. The huge conference takes over the LA convention center and overflows into the surrounding venues. This was the first year I have attended the event. It started off Monday morning with a two and a half hour keynote outlining the newest developments and features being released in the newest updates to Adobe’s Creative Cloud applications. This was followed by all sorts of smaller sessions and training labs for attendees to dig deeper into the new capabilities of the various tools and applications. The South Hall is filled with booths from various hardware and software partners. There is more available than any one person could possibly take in. Continue reading →

Upcoming News and Announcements

Mike McCarthy October 13, 2018 No Comments

There are all sorts of new announcements and articles coming soon! There are a number of events and product reviews that I will be writing about and sharing on here in the next few weeks. The first one is that I will be headed to Adobe MAX next week, both to report on the show, and to make a presentation in the NVidia Booth as a “Creative Expert.” At 11:30 on Wednesday, I will be showing off how I used the CUDA based GPU acceleration integrated into Adobe’s software, to create the animated series Grounds of Freedom.
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Everything You Need to Know About LTFS

Mike McCarthy September 26, 2018 No Comments

LTO stands for Linear Tape Open, and was initially developed nearly twenty years ago. It records any digital files onto half inch magnetic tapes, stored in square single reel cartridges. The capacity started at 100GB, and has increased by a factor of two nearly every generation, with the most recent LTO-8 cartridges storing 12TB of uncompressed data. The LTO Consortium is made up of HPE, IBM, and Quantum, although there are other companies that manufacture drives and tape cartridges.
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IBC 2018

Mike McCarthy September 17, 2018 No Comments

The International Broadcast Convention is taking place this week in Amsterdam, and there are a variety of new products and announcements at the show. AJA released the Kona5 with 12G SDI, among smaller products. Canon released the XF705 camcorder shooting 4K in HDR and is showing their new full frame mirrorless DSLR camera, in the form of the EOS R. Sony announced the Trimaster HX as their top end HDR Mastering Monitor, and a new optional accessory to remote the sensor on their full frame Venice camera. Blackmagic-Design released their own RAW codec, for their cameras and software. While I was somewhat supportive of the idea of ProRes RAW when it was announced earlier this year, I am less enthusiastic about yet another RAW format entering the market, especially one that is clearly so proprietary. We need to consolidate the RAW options, not add new ones.
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NVidia’s New “Turing” Architecture Announced

Mike McCarthy August 21, 2018 No Comments

Over the last week or so, NVidia has announced a number of new graphics cards, all based on their new 8th generation “Turing” GPU architecture. This replaces the previous generation of “Pascal” based products that were first introduced over two years ago. “Turing” products bring a number of new features to the table, including Tensor cores, RT cores, and VirtualLink. Tensor cores were first introduced in the Volta series of server chips, for low precision matrix calculations, utilized for pattern recognition and AI processing. RT Cores are a brand new processing pathway optimized for tracing light rays, and VirtualLink is a USB-C based single cable connection for VR headsets, integrated as an out on the qraphics cards.
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Large Format Camera Workflows

Mike McCarthy May 21, 2018 No Comments

In the last few months, we have seen the release of the Red Monstro, Sony Venice, Arri Alexa LF, and Canon C700 FF, all of which have larger, or full frame sensors. Full Frame refers to the DSLR terminology, with full frame being equivalent to the entire 35mm film area, the way that it was used horizontally in still cameras, and full frame was as opposed to smaller crop sensors in the cheaper DSLRs. All SLRs used to be full frame with 35mm film, so there was no need for the term until manufacturers started saving money on digital image sensors by making them smaller than 35mm film exposures. Super35mm motion picture cameras on the other hand ran the film vertically, resulting in a smaller exposure area per frame. But this was still much larger than most video imagers until the last decade, with 2/3rd inch chips being considered premium imagers. The options have grown a lot since then.
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PNY PrevailPro Mobile Workstation

Mike McCarthy May 17, 2018 No Comments

I have been given the opportunity to test out the new PNY PrevailPro Mobile Workstation. PNY is a company most recognized in the business workspace as the manufacturer of NVidia’s Quadro line of professional graphics cards. They make a variety of other products, mostly centered around memory and graphics cards, but the PrevailPro is their first move into offering complete systems.
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HP Dreamcolor Z31x Studio Display Review

Mike McCarthy May 7, 2018 No Comments

HP sent me their newest high-end monitor to review. The Dreamcolor Z31x Studio Display is a 31″ true 4K color critical reference monitor. It has many new features that set it apart from it’s predecessors, which I have examined and will present here in as much depth as I can. It is challenging to communicate the nuances of color quality through writing or any other form on the internet, as some things can only be truly appreciated by seeing them in person. But I will attempt to communicate the experience of using the new Dreamcolor as well as I can. First we will start with a little context:
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