So after the first two days of the show, I have finally found some time to post some info here. By far, the most revolutionary new development announced at the show, is Avid’s new native support of Quicktime files via AMA in Media Composer 5, which is scheduled to be released on June 10th. This will effectively eliminate the need for a lengthy conversion process to DNXHD upon import of any Quicktime files. The primary uses I see for this capability are for native editing of Canon DSLR MOV files which are explicitely supported, even with speed changes and effects, and for live support of Cineform’s active metadata updates, to impliment non-destructive color and stereoscopic 3D workflows. It also supports native playback of Red R3D files, and hardware outputs from Matrox MXO2 devices.
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File organization has been an important aspect of media management ever since the advent of tapeless workflows. Prior to that point, any frame of footage could be identified by, and presumably recovered from, a tape name and timecode value. Once you remove the tape from that paradigm, a new organization system is needed. In the case of DSLR cameras, this problem is compounded with the removal of unique timecode from the equation as well. The following post is a detailed description of how I deal with those problems during the post process of large scale projects originating on Canon DSLRs. Many of the tips below can also be implemented in other tapeless workflows (XD, P2, EX, AVCHD, etc) if desired, but this article will be tailored to DSLR acquisition.
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This week, Canon has finally released to the public the long awaited 24p firmware update for the EOS 5D Mark II. It is available for download directly from their site. So that new development dramatically simplifies the 5D post-production workflow, but doesn’t help the fact that I now have many terabytes of 30p footage for my current project that need to be converted to 24p to intercut with film. And once we are all done, the unique process that we created to complete the project will be totally obselete. Ah, progress…Oh well, at least it will be a good movie when we are done, and the next one is going to be a heck of a lot easier to make. In the meantime, I will keep rendering.
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The Canon 5D MarkII was the first DSLR that offered HD video capture capability worth considering as a replacement for film. Its full sized sensor, full resolution 1080p recording, and high quality 40Mb AVCHD compression differentiated it from all competitors. I have experimented with many of the other DSLR options on the market, but most of the projects I have worked on for the last year have been shot with the Canon 5D, so the majority of my experience and workflow expertise has been with that particular camera, most of which I will try to share here. The workflow has improved greatly as the tools have become further developed over the course of the last year. While the most glaringly obvious issue was that the 5D only shot 30fps, that was acceptable for certain workflows, especially if the 5D was the only camera on a project.
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Recording video with DSLR cameras has been the big new trend for a few months now, and while I have been right in the thick of those developments, I have been silent about that on here until now. I have been putting off writing about my experiences with DSLR based film making for a number of reasons; besides being busy, I was working with beta hardware and software from Canon for a while, so felt obligated not to talk about it. And the projects I was working on weren’t completed, so I wasn’t sure what details I should be avoiding posting online. Most all of those developments are now public in some capacity, so I guess it is time to discuss all of the options and technical details on here.
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The Elemental Accelerator is a plugin for Adobe Media Encoder CS4 that harnesses the computing power of high end NVIDIA Quadro GPUs to encode video files faster. It currently supports output to DVD, Blu-Ray, and a variety of other MPEG2 and H.264 formats. Besides decreasing the time required to export and encode a file, it frees up the CPU for other tasks, so ideally you can continue working while your file is exported, with minimal impact on available performance. As a side benefit, the encoder includes an option to create 5.1 channel surround AC3 files for DVD and BluRay, which is not otherwise an option in Adobe Media Encoder.
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I have been experiencing some security issues on my server recently, so I updated the WordPress software that I use to publish this site for the first time ever tonight. I am still working out some of the details. Let me know if you notice anything out of place.
It has been a long time since I have posted, but more is coming soon. I spent the last few months working at a summer camp, but I am now getting back in the swing of things. NVidia sent me some more cool new things to try out, so I will be posting about that soon. Also at some point I should probably start posting about my extensive experimentation with the Canon 5DMkII.
AJA had a number of new products on display, and it seems that the new revisions fix most of the issues that I have had in the past. The Xena LH card used to prevent realtime preview in AE, at 1920×1080 due to frame caching bandwidth limits. The new Xena LHI is supposed to fix that problem, as well as add 3G SDI and HDMI 1.3 I/O. The new SDI to HDMI Mini-convertor adds 3G SDI support, full 10bit output, and now allows remapping 8 available audio channels. HDMI expects L,R,C,S,Ls,Rs while Premiere outputs L,R,Ls,Rs,C,S for surround sound, and this has led to the need for some interesting work arounds in our editing rooms. I mentioned the IO Express in my last post, and this differs from the IOHD in having a faster PCIe interface to the host system, with similar I/O connectivity, in a smaller physical unit. It is also the first AJA IO product that is PC compatible. I am hoping that this device is similar enough to the Xena series of cards, that Cineform will adopt integrated support for it, giving us 10bit compressed HD I/O on a laptop.
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So after a busy day, spent mostly in the Cineform booth on Tuesday, I finally got a chance to continue exploring today. There are a few more products that jumped out at me, mostly hardware products since they are easier to grasp in a short period of time that software, which usually requires a more extensive demonstration before its new capabilities become clear. This makes explaining Cineform’s new offerings a challenge, especially when you take into account that there are few other options with which to compare their new capabilities to.
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So after a long run of dry months, with few releases of new hardware and software, NAB has brought all sorts of new toys to the table. While I am spending most of my time as a demo artist at the Cineform booth, I did manage to take a look around at what a few other companies were showing nearby.
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