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Yesterday Final Cut Pro X was previewed. You can read about some of the facts in this post by Larry Jordan. I will not go into the facts, but I wanted to write down some of my thoughts and wonderings about this new upcoming release.First and foremost I must say, that I started my career as a film editor with Final Cut Pro. It was easy to learn and quite fun to work with. A couple of years later I realized the flaws in Final Cut Pro. Moreover I started working with Avid (since that is mostly used in commercial film productions here in Germany).By no means do I believe that Avid is flawless and perfect, but it feels more solid in my opinion. At least in the "classic" post-production workflow. I would say that FCP is like a swiss army knife that can do a lot of things, but Avid acts like a real tool. And I rather build a house with the proper tool than a swiss army knife.The new Final Cut Pro X does look promising at first glance. I can understand that just reading about the new features, can make this new release pretty exciting. But I can't help but wonder if the mayor gripes that at least I do have with all the versions up to now are resolved. I always hate FCP for the way it deals with render files. For instance: Why do I have to re-render a sequence just because I just switched the visibility of a video track on and off? I did not change anything, just find the old render files!Another thing about the recent FCP is the gamma shift problem. Exporting files always ends with having slightly brighter files. I read that this has something to do with the way FCP handles RGB and 601 color spaces, although I'm not quite sure if that is the real reason. File handling and moving files is also a little cumbersome in my opinion. If you move the files from one place to another (Backup reasons), sometimes during relink process I get error messages like "file X has different Timecodes. Can't relink!" I still don't have any clue why FCP does have such problems, but in Avid you just (because of the proprietary filesystem) copy the Mediafolder and it's more or less done. Ok with the introduction of the AMA file system, you could run into the same problems, but up to now I've been able to stay clear of that new feature.These are just a couple of things that make me choose Avid over Final Cut Pro, nevertheless I am looking forward to see what Final Cut Pro X has to offer and how the pricetag of $299.- will change the game. By the way the pricetag leaves me skeptical about how mature the new release will be, but on the other hand FCP Studio was always quite affordable.
I would love to hear what others have to say about the new FCP X or what you think about my thoughts. Comment below...
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Give me the tinfoil-hat. A new gadget for my IphoneMy Iphone 4 gives me certain headaches during calls. Or to be more specific: I get a stinging headache exactly on my ear. My chin begins to heat up as well. That worried me quiet a bit.It turned out that I had a minor ear infection or rather inflammation in both ears, therefore my ears were a little sensitive. Nevertheless it is a fact (at least in my case) that the iphone 4 does have some stronger radiation than my former cellphones. Do I want to change my phone again? Actually no. I am quiet happy with the phone, although the battery seems to have less power after only two months of use.So how do I solve my headache problem. First of all my ears needed to cure, but that doesn't help the fact that the phone actually does emit some radiation which does affect my body in some kind of way.I know that there are no scientific facts (yet) that prove any health issues regarding cellphone radiation, but I do "feel" an effect. Even when my ears are healed the phone still heats up my chin in a minor way.That's why I bought the Moshi Moshi handset from Native Union. It's a handset that is styled like the handset of an old phone. It comes in different styles and in about six different colors. Main reason for buying this handset was of course the health issue described above, but other than that it is way more comfortable to hold the phone during calls. Of course a normal in ear headset is more comfortable, but I didn't like all the fiddling around with the little in ear solution.Overall the built quality is excellent. Sound quality was at first a little soft but then it gets louder. I am not sure yet if it needs to warm up or something. I have to observe that for a while. The Moshi Moshi Handset definitely gets my recommendation!
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I recently got an email concerning the DVL Project. I thought it might be interesting to post an excerpt of the email and my reply."So, I noticed you said you film your interviews yourself. I'm actually planning a 'similar' project. So since I'll be more or less filming and editing the interviews myself (even though as of right now i have NO idea how to edit) I was wondering if you could offer me a little guidance!1. What lighting did you use for your interviews?2. how many cameras did you use?3. How'd you capture the audio?4. I know this one may not make much sense, but, how hard is it to edit these interviews? The style you use is EXACTLY what I want mine to look like."
Click the link, to read my reply...
And here the excerpt of my reply:
"Ok let me start with answering your questions point by point:
1) I am using a three point lighting set. Actually those lights are the modeling lights on my three Bowens studio flashes. I "misuse" those flashes as studio video lights, because they give me the ability to use the bowens lightmodifiers like the bowens Beauty Dish or softboxes. To be exact I use the Beauty Dish as a main light with a fill card just below the interviewee, a strip light as a rimlight and the third light is for the background.
2) I use two cameras. I own the Nikon D5000 and the second camera is just any camera I can borrow at the moment. For the last six interviews I had a Panasonic HD Handy Cam available. For the next interviews I will borrow a Canon 550d. One reason for using two cameras was of course being able to edit, but another reason was the limited recordingtimes of the DSLR cameras. The Nikon only allows a recording time of 5 minutes and the Canon will give you 12 minutes. So you need to look out when one camera runs out, so that you don't end up with a part where no camera is rolling.
3) I capture the audio seperately with the M-Audio Microtrack 2 and a Sennheiser Shotgun Mic that a friend kindly borrowed me. The M-Audio isn't certainly the best, but it was the most affordable without sacrificing to much usability. I sync audio and both cameras in the editing programm.
4) Well, the question itself is unfortunately hard to answer. Editing is my job, and of course it became a second nature of me, but I wouldn't dare to say that editing is easy because there is always a lot to learn and a lot you can do wrong. Especially with interviews it can be quite difficult, because you are actually editing the words and emotions of someone else. Ok, I just realized that that wasn't exactly your question. Technically speaking: Getting the material into the editing programm, editing and then output to web became quite easy nowadays, but there are a lot of things you can get wrong.
Sorry the last answer probably didn't help you that much, but I will try to answer your future question as good as possible ;-)
Greets from Germany.
Bo"
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Ok, I love the OLD Avid Logickeyboards, but these new chiclette style keyboards made by apple are just ridiculous. The tactical feedback and the height of the keys themselves is just too low. Since I always edit almost 80% just with my keyboard my hands are most of the time resting on the keyboard. Now I need to hover above the keys or I will accidently push a button.I guess for alot of people love these keyboards, and that is just fine. But why do they have to discontinue the old keyboards. I'm going to buy another "old" keyboard just in case. Anyone know where to get them at a good price?
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Fuck! I think my Macbook Pro just turned into a giant paperweight!!!
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Well I guess my Macbook Pro is getting old. A week ago it started crashing at random moments. But not like the spinning ball of death or something, it just plain stops: Mouse stops, harddrive stops, fan might stop, but the screen is still visible - Just freeze.I just realized that it still works when I take out the battery and work with the cable attached. Or rather it just crashes once or twice a day. Other than that I calibrated the display (I installed everything new of course in order to exclude a software error) and I found out how far of the colors are suddenly. The calibration didn't help at all.I will try to use it as long as I can still switch it on, I work mostly on my Mac Pro anyway. But for a portable replacement I am actually thinking of a 13" Macbook Pro. I just like the weight of it, but editing could be a pain in the ass on it. I know that the 13" Macbook Pro isn't intented for the kind of work I usually do, but maybe someone has some insights and experiences in that field that he would like to share...
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I did some productshots of cocktails for the bar 3 Freunde in Hamburg. I will post the shots tomorrow. This shot was actually taken with my new Iphone and the app Hipstatic. Quite amazed by the camera and the apps that are out. I know I posted a while back, that I wouldn't use a gadget with too many features cramped into it, but I must admit that up to now (one week) I am quite impressed by the feature set and the reliabilty of that phone. And even using it as a phone works.
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I had the whole weekend to test out the medium format camera with an incredible 52 megapixel digital back. Actually I am "against" a lot of megapixels, but I definitely admire bigger sensors. For those who wonder what the hell I am talking about: Most common consumer DSLR cameras do have a sensor of the size of approximately a stamp. Other DSLR cameras have a 35mm sensor, you might remember that size from your analog days ;-) And well a medium format camera is approx. 1,7 times bigger than a 35mm sensor.In theory this means that the image quality is supposed to be better. Skin graduation, color, resolution, details etc. Other than that some say it does plain look better. I have no way to scientifical prove any of those claims, but after seeing the files I do have to admit it does look very good, and working with them is definitely different.Allright, there is of course a catch: You have to work tethered. You can work with a compact flash card of course, but the files a rather big. Therefore the cards will fill up quite fast. Other than that, the displays (at least on the Leaf) are terrible. You can not verify sharpness or exposure at all on that display.And the biggest catch is the price. I probably will never be able to afford a digital back, at least not in the near future. A decent digital back actually starts at approx. €7000.- That's where you wonder if the image quality difference compared to 35mm is really worth it. Especially if you mainly publish for web.Bottom line: I love the results and if money wasn't the issue, I would go and buy one.
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Got a good deal on Ebay for a Mamiya 645 AFD with an 80mm 2.8 and a film back.Going to rent a digital back pretty soon. Let's see how that's going to look.
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As a Filmeditor and Photographer it's inevitable that hard drive space is reaching it's limits pretty fast. I fill up the gigabytes pretty quick. So what do I use and what's my storage workflow?Disclaimer: You've probably read a bunch of blogpost like this, therefore there a thousands of approaches to this topic. And this is why this is "just my approach", it has flaws and isn't the best, just mine ;-)Click on the link to read the rest of the blog post...Let's start with the hardware. I use Lacie Firewire drives and a Drobo 2nd Generation with Western Digital Black Caviar 1 TB drives. I have Lacie D2s, Porsche drives and the rugged. Despite some remarks on the net, that they aren't reliable, I have to say that I just had one crash. And I blame myself for that: That drive was almost seven years old and was more or less just lying around as a backup. I didn't let it spin regularly as I should have I believe.
The rugged drives are of course my travel drives, the Lacie D2 drives are usually used to edit on, but with my current setup not anymore (more on that later), the Porsche USB drives are backup drives, and the Drobo is actually one of my main working drives.
Allright now to the workflow. As I said, the Drobo became my main drive. The MacPro has two internal drives, while one is the system drive the other serves as a scratch drive for editing. On the Drobo I put all the Raw Files, Video Files, final Renders / VideoFiles and more. They all go into a folderstructure based on Photo or Video / Project-type / Date / Client and Projectname. For instance:
Photo/Beauty/2010/100806_Name_Project
Within that folder there are again three folders: RAW-Unedited, SLX-Edit and Final-Tiffs.
Afterwards I backup everything to one of the Lacie drives. There is a dedicated drive for a different backup purpose, i.e. photo backup, video backup, data backup etc.
For the backups I use a programm called Synk. I really like that programm because it is quite customizable. I never tried Timemachine, because it somehow felt too much like a all-in-one solution without the possibility to adjust certain processes.
Well at the end I have all my data on the Drobo raid and a backup on the Lacie Harddrives, so far I am safe...but with one heavy flaw: They are all in one place. That data isn't secure to a fire or theft. But for that I do have another backup at a secure location.
As you see I am quite cautious with my backup workflow. Especially since I just heard a story where a electric blackout in an apartment caused a short circuit and made a backup completely unusable. I'm just too scared about my data. So keep multiple backups and backup often.
But I am quite curious: How are your backup strategies? Or did you already happen to have a serious hard drive crash? Write me a comment below...
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Ok two days ago I gave some insights on the Nikon D5000. So now let's continue with a little insight on the Fuji S5 pro.Disclaimer: This isn't a scientific test or a "real" review, just my views on this camera.First and foremost: A Fuji? Thought you use Nikon? Well, the Fuji S5 pro is based on the Nikon D200. It shares the same body and therefore the same lens mount, but this is where the similarities end. Fuji designed a completely different sensor. On this sensor basicly each pixel consist of two photocells: One for really bright and one for darker exposure (that's probably a real simple explanation). This leads to the very good dynamic range and color rendition. The camera is "only" 6 megapixel, but due to it's double construction and interpolation it is featured as a 12 megapixel camera.In my experience so far this interpolation isn't bad, especially for people photography. The dynamic range and the color rendition is something that I really like with this camera. For instance, this picture was completely overexposed. I was able to recover all the detail and still make it a good picture (click "continue to read" to see the before picture). Unfortunately the file size is despite it's 12 or rather 6 megapixels quite big. 25 mb if you capture RAW files with full dynamic range, and that leads to the S5 pro's "speed".The camera is really really slow. It takes a long time to clear the buffer and to write to the card. At first I was really annoyed by this, but over the time I got used to it and it helped me to shoot less and more thoughtful, instead of shooting away and ending up with thousands of pictures that I do not need anyway.Sometimes you read on the web that the camera isn't "sharp". This is due to the antialiasing process of the camera. It seems quite strong, but since this camera is targeted for people photographers I believe this is actually a good thing. You don't need ultra sharp skin, you don't wanna see every pore or zit. I used to pixel peep and check for sharpness or some other geeky thing, BUT I lost track of the picture. I guess now I do prefer an unsharp but good picture over a sharp picture with nothing in it.Here the unedited picture. That's my brother by the way.
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My thoughts on the D5000As you might know, I do use Nikon. Or rather the Fuji S5 Pro with Nikon lenses... D200 Body bla bla.The S5 pro is my workhorse, and a couple of months ago I purchased the Nikon D5000. Mainly to use it as an inexpensive video option (some examples are the DVL videos and the upcoming Leema videos).Over the last few weeks, especially during my Barcelona trip, I really got to love this camera. It's small body makes it a very nice "take it everywhere" camera. Coupled with the Nikon 35mm 1.8 and a Blackrapid camerastrap I had it with me every time. Besides it's size I do like the swivel screen. Not because I want to use it in different angles or anything, but more because I can hide the display. I realized that I really concentrate on shooting rather than checking the display all the time. Never the less it is a consumer camera, it's small size has of course some downsides. Coming from a pro camera, I am used to have all the important functions on different buttons or wheels. But on the D5000 you have to do that within menus or via button combinations. On the other hand it really makes everything more simplistic in the way how you shoot. It's a little like shooting with the Minox...more or less.It's image quality and especially the ISO quality is very impressive. That cam is definitely always my backup camera during a shot. I do believe that the lenses and the light are more important than the camera itself, although I would love to have a camera with a bigger sensor. Wont have the money for middle format, but 35mm FX will be mine soon hopefully....
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I was cleaning my backpack, and truth to be told I'm kinda short on shots right now since I was working on the DVL Project quite a lot.Therefore I thought of a little what's in my bag post. (Be warned: Nerd post)
Swiss army knife, compass and a flashlight aren't tools I use very much, but they do come in quite handy. The flashlight is actually quite bright and can be used for some lensflares if you want to.That yellow thing is my USB-Stick of choice. An ATV 4GB USB-Stick. Get one of those. That you can wash it, freeze it or jump on it isn't the best part. What makes it (at least for me) indispensable is it's speed. For working with big videofiles or Raw files this one kills all other USB-Drives in my oppinion.When shooting I mainly work with Nikon and my Fuji S5 Pro, but since I am lazy when it gets to carrying that camera around, I do prefer to pack the Canon G9 or the Minox 35 ML. Both are great cameras.A Molskine calender, a pencil, my mobile phone, an Ipod touch and the little Jimmy wallet with my keys are the items I do carry in my pocket. I'm actually not so fond of having an Iphone. I do prefer in having a tool for every task and not one gadget for everything.I am quite a gadget freak, maybe I should start writing some reviews or something like that. Post a comment if you'd like to see what's in my camerabag.
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