More on buying decisions

In addition to looking for a new camera, I'm also looking into a computer upgrade to handle the increased demands of editing full HD (or greater) footage.

Here's a great site for helping to decide whether it's time to get a new Mac system:

http://guides.macrumors.com/Buyer%27s_Guide_%28time-ordered%29

The conclusion I've come to on both camera and computer is to wait a bit. Apparently, the Mac Pro is due for a major update in March, and it will be probably about that long before test footage from the fixed-lens RED Scarlet comes out.

DSLRs vs Prosumer Video Cameras vs RED

So, I'm in the beginning stages of a documentary, and the camera I have for shooting HD (A Sony HDR-HC7 HDV-based handycam) is looking pretty low quality compared to what's out there right now.

I have essentially three options within the budget we're looking at:

1) Prosumer video camera - The Panasonic HMC-150 is the closest form factor to my old DVX100, is around $3500, and uses SDHC cards, which are cheap. However, it also has a fixed lens, so shooting something from a distance is going to be a pain in the ass. There is also some chromatic aberration in the lens that becomes especially visible around dark objects in front of a very bright light source (like, say, tree trunks against the sky). The compression also has trouble with lots of random movement, such as turbulent streams up close.

I could go with a better HDV camera, which would give me the advantage of using cheap tapes instead of expensive memory cards, not needing a laptop or field recorder, etc. The image quality difference is fairly large at this point, though, and many TV stations today will simply not accept shows shot using HDV.

There are better prosumer cameras, such as the Sony EX3, but they are about twice as expensive, use much more expensive media, and still have highly compressed video (unless you buy/rent an expensive external recording device like the Nanoflash).

2) DSLR - The Canon 5D Mark II and 7D have created a whole new category in indie production by integrating HD video into high quality still cameras. The advantages they bring are lenses that are sharper, have much shallower depth of field (Which looks much more like film), and a very reasonable price (Around $1800 for the 7D, $3500 for the 5D Mark II, both with a zoom lens). Oh, and with lens adapters, you can use a wide variety of lenses (including cinema lenses). On paper and in some of the video clips shown around the internet, this would seem ideal. However, there are a few issues:

• The cameras have crappy on-board audio recording. You can plug in an external mic, but in order to get decent audio, you need an external mic preamp box which requires additional power; plus an unofficial firmware hack to disable the cameras automatic level adjustments. A much simpler (although possibly more expensive) way of dealing with this is to record audio with a portable audio recorder and use a clapper slate (or clapping your hands in front of the lens) to sync up with the image and/or crappy on-camera audio in post-production. Either way, a hassle.
• The video recorded is not the same size as the image sensor, and the process of squishing the image down to video size in the camera creates some problems, namely aliasing, which can get downright ugly. Aliasing is most visible with distinct lines next to each other, say in a truck's front grill or a striped t-shirt.
• The video is recorded in a highly compressed format that will lose a lot of detail in really dark areas, and can create some fairly visible compression artifacts if you're not careful.
• Due to either format limitations or EU regulations regarding a tax on video cameras, DSLRs do not record video clips larger than 4GB or longer than 10-11 mins, whichever comes first. This makes using a DSLR a lot like using a film camera, but sucks for documentaries where you could easily end up stopping the camera in the middle of a perfect moment that you cannot recreate.
• Speaking of documentaries, DSLRs are very difficult to get a stable image from while being hand-held, which means you need to get additional accessories (a shoulder mount, basically) in order to do proper handheld work... which costs an extra $800 at least.
• Each time a frame of video is recorded, it's not drawn all at once. Each line of the frame is recorded top to bottom in sequence. For relatively still images, this is fine, but when something moves rapidly through the frame (say, a car), it looks slanted. This is the "rolling shutter issue" or "jello", and if you ask me, it's fugly.
• The 5D Mark II, while having a larger sensor area and better low-light performance than the 7D, shoots in a non-standard framerate. There's supposedly a firmware update that fixes this - in 4-6 months.

Basically, these cameras were originally designed for photojournalists who wanted to also shoot some video, but in the same style that they shoot pictures - short, silent (or with unmixed audio) and not edited to a significant degree. If you can control what you're shooting, you can get gorgeous images. If not, you get image problems. Oh, did I mention the rolling shutter issue? Anyway, you get the idea...

3) RED Scarlet - Speaking of 4-6 month out, this camera seems on paper to be the answer to my concerns. Based around the same tech as the über-successful RED One, the Scarlet uses a vastly superior codec with much higher resolution, significantly more dynamic range, an next to no compression artifacts. The image captured is not downsampled like on the DSLR (at least, not by default), so aliasing is very little to none, and (if it's like the RED One) the rolling shutter issue is much less noticeable than on a DSLR. So what's the problem?

• You can get the Scarlet for $4750, but that's a fixed-lens design, so you can't swap the lens out like on a DSLR. Even if the built-in zoom lens is great, the sort of wildlife photography I'll likely be doing on this documentary will require a very long telephoto lens.
• The interchangeable-lens model is $2750, plus $950 per prime lens (or you can use DSLR lenses by using an adapter for $500 [either Canon or Nikon]), but you also have to buy the audio interface, batteries, etc. Oh, and if you want a proper viewfinder instead of a back-of-camera LCD display? $3200. Side handle for proper handheld shooting? $950.
• There has been exactly one 15-second clip of Scarlet footage shown so far (a close-up of an iguana on a soundstage), so it's impossible to judge what the final image quality will be like...yet.
• RED cameras are often back-ordered into the stone age, and pre-orders have yet to even start for the Scarlet, so good luck getting one this year.
• The image captured by the RED cameras is totally unprocessed (in terms of color and brightness adjustments, not compression), which gives you more options, but also makes it more work to deal with in post.
• RED cameras are not "shoot anything and it will look beautiful" cameras like mid-to-upper-end video cameras. For better or for worse, the RED needs a significant understanding of how images will look in post in order to shoot good-looking footage. When you have control over what you're shooting, this is fine. When you don't, you run a greater risk than other cameras of getting bland footage that no amount of post-processing can fix.

So, basically each of these options have significant drawbacks, and at least two of them are likely to be replaced with vastly superior models within a year. I will continue to do research, of course, but in the meantime it's a really tough decision.

On Ubuntu and DOSBox

Okay, I've had enough. After a third virus/malware scare in less than two years, I'm switching to Ubuntu Linux for my web browsing and general work. I still have an XP partition around for video /sound editing, but that is only connected to the internet for updates. I can now run my email, web browsing, and Skype needs out of Linux, without having to worry about Windows viruses/malware/keyloggers/etc. Ubuntu 9.04 is also by far the most polished and accessible Linux I've ever used, which helps quite a bit. It's still not "grandma" material, as you do have to put up with a lot of configuration wackiness, especially if you have hardware that's a little unusual, like me having two sound cards and a webcam.

On the plus side, almost everything in the whole world of Linux can be done on Ubuntu, and usually a simple Google search will not only tell you how to do it, but give you the command-line commands to do it, which you simple copy, then paste in an open terminal window. For someone like me who's grow up around computers, this is an acceptable compromise.

I don't have a lot of hard drive space allocated to Ubuntu, but thankfully, I like to play classic games. To this end, I use the fabulous open-source DOS emulator, DOSBox.

For those of you who would like to try this as well, I looked at the following forum posts:

Tutorial: dosbox with Glide under Linux and DOSBox 0.72 and MIDI Support

And here is my condensed summary (Note: I'll mark the general-midi portions of the setup in green, so that if you don't want to mess with your system sound settings, you don't have to):

Note: This is for Ubuntu 9.04 and DOSBox 0.73. If you try this with a different version of either, your mileage may vary.

Update: On Ubuntu 9.10, DOSBox 0.73 can be installed from the Ubuntu Software Center, so you can skip the compilation steps below. You may want to change (in your dosbox.conf or dosbox-0.73.conf) the mixer settings to "rate=44100" and the "prebuffer=50" to avoid stuttering sound. I haven't tried setting up General MIDI to work with it yet, but I'll post here if I do.

1. Get DOSBox (the "source" version, as this is frequently the most current).
2. Extract the package into your /home/yournamehere directory.
3. Open a terminal window and copy/paste the following command in and run it:

   sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2-dev libsdl-sound1.2-dev libsdl-net1.2-dev libpcap-dev build-essential cvs

4. When that's done, "cd" into the folder you extracted earlier , for example "cd /home/yournamehere/dosbox-0.73".
5. copy/paste, run the following commands (one at a time, in order):

   ./configure
   
   make
   
   sudo make install

6. Then, get the following packages (you can just paste this in the command-line, like before):
   

   sudo apt-get install dosbox timidity fluid-soundfont-gm fluid-soundfont-gs

7. Type "dosbox".
8. This should automatically make a dosbox.conf (or dosbox-version.conf) file. You can check by opening your /home/yournamehere directory, turning on "Show Hidden Files" in the "View" menu, then scrolling down and opening the ".dosboxrc" folder. If you don't see the file there, go back to dosbox and type:
   

   config -writeconf dosbox.conf

9. When you see the file in the directory, close DOSBox, and open up the dosbox.conf file by double-clicking it.
10. Scroll down until you see a line that starts with "mp401=", then make sure it looks like this:
    

    mpu401=intelligent
    mididevice=alsa
    midiconfig=128:0

11. Save the file and exit it.
12. In the terminal window, type (or paste) the following command:
    

    sudo gedit /etc/timidity/timidity.cfg

13. Scroll down, put a "#" in front of the line that reads "source /etc/timidity/freepats.cfg", then paste this on the next line:
    

    soundfont /usr/share/sounds/sf2/FluidR3_GM.sf2

14. Save and close. In the terminal, type (or paste) the following command:
    

    sudo /etc/init.d/timidity restart

15. DOSBox should now be configured for General MIDI sound.
16. Now, you'll need to create a folder for DOSBox to use to store and run programs. I call mine "dosdisk", but you can name it anything you want, and I'd recommend creating it in your "home/yournamehere" folder.
17. Open up the dosbox.conf, scroll down to the very bottom of the file. Under "[autoexec]
    # Lines in this section will be run at startup", type the following (change folder names as appropriate):
    

    #Hard drives:
    mount c /home/yournamehere/dosdisk
    #CD-ROMs:
    mount d /media/cdrom0 -t cdrom
    c:

18. Save and quit. Open a terminal window and run dosbox. It should mount your folder and DVD-ROM drive as c: and d: respectively. If it gives you an error, quit out, go back to dosbox.conf, and check your autoexec section at the bottom is pointing at the right folders/drives.
    
19. Now, you can either take zip files of classic games and extract them to the "dosdisk" folder directly, or put a game cd in your drive, start DOSBox, and install it just as you would on a real DOS machine. DOSBox works exactly like real DOS, except you don't usually have to mess with all that memory management crap.
    
20. If you have any further questions, message me, or check out either the DOSBox or Ubuntu forums (search for dosbox in the latter).
21. Have fun!

On DVDs and a film festival

When a film festival shows DVDs, they have a couple of issues:

• Inserting the sponsor logos and festival trailer to right before the start of the movie
• Different, possible dodgy DVD+/-Rs from filmmakers
• European DVDs in PAL format

In addition, if they do a short films program, they may have to do several disc swaps between two or more DVD players over the course of the program.

Or they can try to consolidate.

Over the past few days, I got to be the "consolidator" for the shorts programs at the Sausalito Film Festival, where I learned some new things about DVDs and how Macs can handle them.

Prior to showing up, I did a little online research, and came up with the following workflow:

• Rip DVDs using MacTheRipper to rip the encrypted DVDs
• Use MPEG Streamclip to rip the unencrypted DVDs
• Import into DVD Studio Pro
• Profit!

Well, having grabbed some alternate programs just in case, I went in and started ripping away. As it turns out, DVD Studio Pro (Like Encore on the PC) needs a particular set of files to import into a new DVD project. As far as I can understand it, .VOB files describe some file formatting info as well as the raw media content, and DVD Studio Pro does not have the means to strip that info away.

So, new plan:

• Rip the encrypted DVDs using MacTheRipper
• Import the .VOB files or unencypted DVD into MPEG Streamclip
• Export out .m2v and .ac3 (or .aiff for PCM audio) from said program
• Import those files into DVD Studio Pro
• Profit! (Okay, I'll stop using that now)

Well, all of this went fine, until I had to rip a film with subtitles. As luck would have it, there were several films like that, and they were all in PAL (of course).

So, my next idea was to transcode all the discs into ProRes using Streamclip and show them off a MacBook Pro. I started to mess around with that a bit, before I realized a tiny flaw in my plan:

MPEG Streamclip couldn't extract the subtitles.

I checked MacTheRipper, and it had no subtitle ripping options either. None of the programs I had could do it. To make a long story short, I found that the process of ripping and overlaying subtitles was going to be time consuming, and crappy quality to boot.

To understand why this was so unexpected to me, you have to realize I'm a PC guy. And on the PC, there's a program called DVD Shrink. Shrink will let you re-author a DVD from a disc, folders with .VOB files in them (VIDEO_TS folders extracted from a DVD), or both. It will let you select what audio tracks to include, what video to use (by title, which actually could span several .VOB files), and most importantly, what subtitles to carry over, even allowing you to force them to display. Other for-pay DVD prosumer programs can do this, but Shrink does it for free.

No free program for the Mac will let you do all this. In hindsight, I probably should have asked to get a copy of Toast. But that still wouldn't have solved the problem of mixing PAL and NTSC material on the same disc without reencoding anything.

I ended up having to punt on the PAL discs, as time was running out, so the festival used a universal player for those discs, and I compiled the NTSC shorts together into a DVD per short program. It worked well in the end, but the process was really dissapointing for me.

One of the reasons all of this matters is that the festival had to use a video switcher, which introduced minor audio latency (delay), since it didn't switch the audio as well.

One possible solution for next year (if the program is still mostly DVD-based) is to get the films together early, then dump all the discs into Final Cut Pro via an HDMI connection from a really good upconverting DVD player (probably one NTSC and one PAL player, actually) to 720p HD ProRes 422 HQ (or 1080p if the projector is high-res enough). Then, you could edit in the sponsor info and festival trailer at the beginning of each segment, and play back all the material via Front Row from a Macbook Pro with an HDMI-equipped video outboard unit (Such as the AJA iO). This way, you could go directly into the projector and sound system without using the latency-inducing switcher, and you could also pre-tweak the volume in Final Cut Pro to maintain consistant levels over the course of the program. You would also never have to change aspect ratios or any other settings on the projection equiptment.

You would probably still have to rip the encrypted DVDs so you could copy via the HDMI cable, and check for issues switching between video files in Front Row, but basically, I think it could be done.

Oh well, next year.

Also, the festival was a blast both to work for and attend, so I would reccomend anyone in the Bay Area next year should check it out.

Wonder why people like the Red One so much?

This is why. (click the picture to enlarge it)

And this is from an HDTV (1920x1080) downconversion. The original file is at 2k resolution (and it can shoot at up to 4k resolution).

The only thing I've noticed is that medium to light pastel blues tend to pop out unnaturally, but some of that can be minimized in post-production color correction.

This short was shot using a set of fairly expensive Zeiss prime lenses. While the RED-branded prime lenses appear to work quite well (and I would consider shooting with them for some projects), good quality film lenses like the Zeiss and Cooke primes handle the shape and depth of the image in different ways. They aren't necessarily as "accurate" as the RED lenses, but they give a more classic film "feel", which personally I think helps to sell it to those filmmakers who are going to use it in place of film, since their end product will conform more to what audiences expect to see (at least subconciously). As an exercise, note how the focus falls off in the image above, then go look at this Red Prime lens test. A more extreme example is if you look at films shot using anamorphic (film) lenses, which can really distort the image around the edges, yet still remain pleasing to the eye (check out Road Warrior for a good example). Car commercials in the last few years have taken to computer-generating the distinctive lens flares from anamorphic lenses because they like them so much.

I'll try to get up a clip of the short this still is from in the near future so I can make a better comparison.

More Post-Production Woes

Well, the documentary was finished back in February, but I'm still trying to figure out where the fault lies in my editing system. Even after a full reinstall of Windows XP, I'm still having capturing issues and write-speed dips that I can't account for.

The only thing I can say is that the problems are not XP-specific. I've been running the Windows 7 Beta (and later, the Release Candidate) in dual-boot form for the last few months, and the same capture issues show up there.

One additional thing i've noticed, though, is how my M-Audio sound card (Delta 1010LT) now adds a fair amount of static to recordings. It was somewhat an issue before, but it's become much worse, to the point of me having to resort to recording audio via my DVX-100 over firewire (as a DV signal). From reading around online, other people having this issue are saying it's an IRQ conflict. That makes some sense given the amount of stuff I've crammed into this computer, but it's really dissapointing given that if I have the room to add two expansion cards, I would figure that would mean I could actually use them without them tripping and stumbling over each other's toes.

I really hate to say it, but at this point, I'm ready for a Mac (or Macbook) Pro. Having recently done some basic editing using Final Cut Pro on a friend's Macbook Pro, and having them not having to save their project for a day and a half before worrying about crashing, I think it's safe to say they've worked out some stability issues. Oh, and that's editing using 2K footage.

Also, Apple Prores is quite possibly the coolest editing codec I've ever worked with. If they ported it over to PC as a codec Premiere Pro could capture to, I would probably use it for everything.

I is on Xbox Live.

How to convert DVD-Video to something professional (sort of)

There are about a thousand programs out there for converting DVD-Video into something you could view on you iPod, PSP, Xbox 360 or cellphone. This works well because you're converting to a lower resolution, which helps to mask the loss in quality that comes from recompression. However, If you want to convert a DVD into an editable format that will end up being used in a higher quality format (or even back to DVD), the result are less than stellar, and worse, difficult to attain without paying for some professional program. 

You can convert the seperate .VOB files into one .MPG file or an .M2V and a .WAV file, but native MPEG-2 editing is a royal pain in the ass. You have major limitations on where you can cut without recompressing around the cut, and that's if you can get the right form of .MPG file together in the first place. If you don't understand what I just said, don't worry, i'm about to explain. If you do, skip ahead four paragraphs.

Video DVDs actually just contain a group of video files in folders, both very specifically formatted and named. The video is compressed using a codec called MPEG-2, and the audio is compressed using Dolby Digital AC3 (technically, you can also use other formats, such as uncompressed PCM audio, MPEG audio, or DTS, but the first two are not very common, and the latter is usually a secondary audio track on the DVD, and so not nessicary for this guide). The video and audio are stored in .VOB files in a folder called VIDEO_TS. For some arcane reason, you also need an AUDIO_TS folder, but I can't remember any files ever being in it. Chapter info and menu navigation data are handled in a .IFO file in VIDEO_TS.

Note: By default, many Windows installations come with file extensions hidden. If you don't see a .VOB after the filename of the DVD video files, don't panic, The files that start with VTS are what you want. You also will not see the .bat extention (shortcut that can do special things) or .WAV (audio file), but their icons will be different than the video files.

Commercial DVDs are often copy-protected via region locking (basically, the disc can only play in a DVD player sold in the same country or group of countries) Macrovision video protection (so you can't copy the DVD by plugging your player into some video recorder), and the biggie: the Content Scrambling System (so you can't just copy video files off the DVD in your computer). All of these can be circumvented via a ripping program or special driver, and no, I'm not going to tell you how (but it's pretty easy to find out).

A few years back I ran into a tutorial on how to do something similar to the the process I'm about to show you, in fact, I think it was this one. That was a tutorial for people who wanted to take a DVD and convert it to a higher compression format (smaller filesize). Since I wanted to convert to a higher quality format (lower compression), there was a bit of changing and fiddling to be done. Obviously, a higher quality format does not change the source footage, so if you have a crappy DVD, you'll still end up with crappy video, just crappy video that's easier to edit.

Disclaimer: You are hereby warned that although I have personally tested this technique, it may still do nasty things to your system (although it's unlikely). Installing any software can potentially do this; please don't sue me if this happens, I did warn you.

So, without further ado, here' s how you do this in Windows (XP, and presumably Vista, though not personally tested since I don't run Vista). Mac users, you should probably just get the MPEG-2 plugin for Quicktime Pro and MPEG Streamclip. There may be a free tool (or set of tools) available, but I haven't checked recently since I run a PC.

The best solution if you want to actually edit the video properly will still lose quality (since you have to recompress twice), but has the distinct advantage of being much easier to work with. The key here is to compress into an editable codec that is higher quality than DVD. If you have a ton of hard drive space (say 106GB/ hour or so) and a speedy enough drive, feel free to use uncompressed video. Otherwise, you'll probably want to use DV, since a whole mess of programs handle it well, and it's only 13GB/ hour.

You will need the following tools:

-If the DVD is encrypted, you will need either a ripping program or a driver that will decrypt the DVD on the fly. Unfortunately, since this is a legal grey area, I can't tell you where to get these programs, but they are very easy to find with a simple Google search.

-DVD2AVI

You'd think with a name like DVD2AVI, that this would be all you need. Alas, it is not so. DVD2AVI cannot properly handle AC3 audio.

-VFAPI Codec 1.05 (This is the english version, which is the easiest to work with unless you can read Hiragana and Kanji).

This is where the mojo comes in. VFAPI is a sort of a video codec like DivX or XVID, except it doesn't actually contain any video itself, it just allows your DVD files to be read like they are standard Windows video files (puts an .AVI "wrapper" around them, in technical jargon). You can't do everything you could with a regular .AVI, but it works wonders in combination with:

-Virtualdub

A Swiss Army Knife for video processing if there ever was one. This is the program you will use to finish converting the video.

-If you're going with DV, you'll need a DV video codec that shows up in Virtualdub. Because of the way Windows handles video codecs, there are some codecs that play back (decode) video, but not encode it. Others do both, but only inside certain programs (like Premiere Pro, After Effects, et cetera). You may already have a suitable DV codec installed, but if not, Cedocida is a free DV codec that works with Virtualdub (as well as just about every other program that handles video in Windows).

So, after you've gathered your tools:

1. Either copy the VIDEO_TS folder over from your (non-encrypted) DVD, or install DVD ripping software and rip your encrypted (commercial) DVD into files, not ISO images. Either way, you want to end up with a VIDEO_TS folder (you can delete the AUDIO_TS folder if you ripped it or copied it over). Make sure the video files are subsequently (or put directly) into a folder you can get to easily.
2. Extract DVD2AVI into a new folder (DVD2AVI is a good name to use). I personally put this folder into Program Files just for consistency, but you can just as easily put it on your desktop.
3. Same advice goes for VFAPI Codec. Once it's in place, double-click on "vifpset.bat". You've now installed the mojo.
4. Step 2 goes for VirtualDub as well. It's not a bad idea to run VirtualDub once extracted and placed just to make sure you don't get an initial introduction screen with a checkbox somewhere saying something to the effect of "click here to not show this again". If you do get this, check the box, click okay, close VirtualDub.
5. Open DVD2AVI. Under the File menu, click on Open. Find your VIDEO_TS folder using this open window. Open the VIDEO_TS folder in said window, select the VTS_01_1.VOB. Click the Open button. You may now see that VTS_01_2.VOB and so on have been selected automatically. This is normal (since DVDs split movies into smaller files), and in fact you may now add VTS_02_1.VOB, etc. using the helpful "Add" button if you wish. Please note, however, that sometimes these additional VOBs are for special features or alternate versions of a movie. If you're unsure, just click OK for now, since you can always add the other .VOBs later by repeating the step (which will take you straight to this window).
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
6. Once all that is sorted, the DVD2AVI window will resize to the resolution of your footage, and you'll want to make sure the following settings are set properly:
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   This last setting refers to the audio track you want to use. If you need to copy a 5.1 surround sound (6-channel) track instead of a stereo (2-channel track), you'll also need to set these options, which convert the 5.1 to a stereo track, otherwise you will have a (very) hard time getting the audio to work:
   
   
   
   
   
   
7. For the final step on our DVD2AVI tour, please go to the file menu and select "Save Project" (or you could just hit the "F4" key). It's perfectly fine to save this project file in the VIDEO_TS folder, but anywhere will work. Now DVD2AVI will go through your video footage, save some relevant information, and decode the audio into a .WAV file.
   
   
   
   
   
8. Now for the VFAPI magic. Go to where you put VFAPICodecV105en and double-click on VFAPIConvEN. Then click on "add file" (you might have to do this twice, due to some wonky design in the interface) and select the .d2v file you just created, then click "open", then "convert", then when it's done, "quit".
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
9. Okay, you've now got a file that can play your DVD files back, except it's not tied to the audio file. Being that we'll be using Virtualdub to do the final step of conversion anyway, we can address the audio there as well. Open Virtualdub. Open your new .AVI file. Select "WAV Audio" from the Audio menu and select your audio file. Click "open".
   
   
   
   
   
   Open your video file.
   
   
   
   Set the following setting:
   
   
   
   Choose your DV codec (yours may be different than mine, remember):
   
   
   
   
   
   Click OK.
   
   Under the Audio menu, choose Direct stream copy, then WAV audio.
   
   
   
   Select your .WAV file from the same directory you saved the video files to.
   
   
   
   Now save the new video file to an appropriate directory, wait for the rendering window to go away (which may take a while), and you're done.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

The funniest scam spam email yet:

I just have to wonder: how could anybody have the absolute gall to think anybody would ever, in a million years, believe this (contact info obscured with *********s). This is definitely a spammer who is taking the "more is more" approach. I was originally going to take this on line by line, but I think you should just read the whole damn thing first. Trust me.

From: "United Nations" *********************
----------------------------------------------------------------
Chairman Committee On Foreign
Contract And Inheritance fund Payment Notification
From United Nations And USA Government
Sir. Eric Ben.

Attn: Beneficiary,

U.S.A Government, World Bank And United Nations Organization Official Has Approved To Pay You Part Payment Of Your Inheritance Fund And Lottery/Award Winning Payment Valued Of USD8.5m.

The British Prime Minister in conjunction with U.S.A GOVERNMENT, WORLD BANK AND UNITED NATIONS ORGANIZATION do hereby give this irrevocable approval order with This Release Code: GNC/3480/02/08 In Your Favor For Your Contract Entitlement And Your Inheritance Fund Which You Have Not Received Yet, Now It Was Approved By The World Bank, That Your Contract/Inheritance Fund should be released through UNITED NATIONS ORGANIZATION. So You Are Advised To Present Any Of Your Choice Among This Two Option Of The Payment, On How You Want To Receive Your Fund, Either By WIRE TRANSFER OR IN CASH THROUGH OUR DIPLOMATIC COURIER SERVICES, AS YOUR INHERITANCE PAYMENT, So In Regards To The Transfer You Will Provide Any Of Your BANK ACCOUNT DETAILS For The Transfer Of Your Fund With Out Delay. Anyway, I Am Contacting You In Regards To The Instruction Given By United Nations, Please I Will Urge You To Try And Indicate On How You Want Your Fund To Be Released To You From The Two Options Above.

Now your new Payment, United nations Approval No; UN5685P, White House Approved No: WH44CV, Reference No.-35460021, Allocation No: 674632 Password No: 339331, Pin Code No: 55674 and your Certificate of Merit Payment No: 103, Released Code No: 0763; Immediate Citibank Telex confirmation No: -1114433; Secret Code No: XXTN013, Having received these vital payment number, therefore You are qualified now to received and confirm Your payment with the United Nation immediately within the next 72hrs.

As a matter of fact, you are required to Deal and Communicate only with MR. ROBERT BISCHOFF, HEAD OF INTERNATIONAL REMMITTANCE CITIBANK, UNITED KINGDOM, with the help of monitory team from the CITIBANK OF NEW YORK which is our official remitting bank, Committee On Foreign Payment Matters in United Nations, has look up to make sure you receive your Fund. So contact: MR ROBERT BISCHOFF on his contact information, Direct Citibank Telephone No +****************, Cell/mobile +****************** or cell/mobile +******************** Fax Number: +**********************
, Telephone Number: +*********************, Email: *********************, For immediate release of your contract/inheritance/Award Winning claim be informed that you are not allowed to correspond with any person or office anymore, you are required to send bellow information for your transfer.

1) YOUR FULL NAME:
2) ADDRESS, CITY, STATE AND COUNTRY:
3) PERSONAL CELL PHONE, FAX AND MOBILE:
4) COMPANY NAME (IF ANY) POSITION AND ADDRESS:
5) BANK NAME:
6) BANK ADDRESS:
7) ACCOUNT NUMBER:
8) ROUTING NUMBER OR SWIFT CODE NO:
9) OCCUPATION, AGE AND MARITAL STATUS:
10) COPY OF YOUR INT'L PASSPORT/DRIVERS LICENSE:

Note: Your Personal Contact/Communication Code With Citibank Is (011), You Are Advised To Send Your Full Banking Information To The Citibank London, International Remittance Director Headed By Mr. Robert Bischoff And Make Sure You Speak With Him, With Your New Payment Code For The Release Of Your Payment And Send To Him All Your Banking Information Now.

Contact Person: Mr. Robert Bischoff
Position: Head Of International Remittance Citibank Of London.
Telephone Office/Bank: *******************************
Fax Number: ***************************************
Cell/Mobile, ************************************
Email: *************@hotmail.com,

Chairman Committee On Foreign Contract And Inheritance fund Payment Notification from United Nations And USA Government.
Sir. Eric Ben.

Wow. I'm speechless.

Post-Production Woes

When I set out to build a system for HD video editing, I was limited by a few factors:

1. I needed to edit in 1080i (rather than 720p)
   
2. I needed to be able to color correct accurately
   
3. I needed to mix the sound up to broadcast standards
4. I didn't want to use any more power than I absolutely needed
5. I needed the computer parts to be no more than around $3000
   

So, like so many independent video folks do, I began my quest to build the perfect cheap HD editing system. At the price point, I couldn't afford the hardware to do uncompressed HD editing, and I wasn't about to get into the mess of natively editing HDV MPEG-2 files. This means that I would have to convert the HDV footage into some other compressed codec first before editing.

Since I needed to do accurate color correction, didn't have a $2,000+ broadcast-quality LCD monitor, and did have a professional NTSC video monitor, I opted for the Blackmagic Intensity Pro card, a $250 wonder that uses HDMI to input HD, then your captured/edited HD can be viewed over an HDMI-equipped HDTV/monitor or analog component video-equipped TV/monitor. Using the latter, it worked just fine, since my monitor can do pseudo-HD (Only 800 lines, but enough for color correction).

If you're wondering what any of that has to do with a codec, here's the catch: In order to use the video output features of the Intensity Pro, I would have to use one of the Blackmagic codecs to edit in. Two of the codecs were uncompressed (8-bit and 10-bit HD), so that left an MJPEG variant. The upside of "Online JPEG" (as they named it) was that the storage requirements (both disk space and throughput) are about 1/10th the size they would be for uncompressed 8-bit HD. The downside (I found out) is that it's a processor-intensive codec to use.

In order to get the most bang for my buck (remember, this is towards the start of 2008), I decided on an Intel Core 2 Quad 6600 CPU. All the video benchmarks I could find put it way ahead of equivalent (and even more expensive) CPUs in video encoding benchmarks. I didn't want to fork over the insane cash to get a Quad-core Xeon, or I would've used that.

To make a long story short, I use Premiere Pro CS3 to edit, and I started to notice that just playing back the footage on the editing timeline was eating up 40-60% of my total processing power. That's a little worrying, but it's nothing compared to trying to use more than one video layer unrendered. All of a sudden, attempting to play back a simple transition or still made the CPU jump to around 95% usage, which means frames were being dropped in playback. Sometimes it would crash Premiere Pro entirely. Add to this other problems, including Premiere Pro randomly refusing to render (or even pre-render) footage, and I began to realize I had a problem.

After checking out help files and forums, I upgraded the following programs/drivers (in more or less this order):

• Premiere Pro CS3
• Intensity Pro (including a new firmware)
• NVIDIA Geforce 8800GT

In the case of the first two upgrades, this seemed to help things a little bit... for a while, but only with rendering/pre-rendering. CPU usage was still ridiculously high, and so what I've had to do for the stuff I've done so far (Trailers and a rough cut) is upconvert segments of edited DV footage, and use only minimal titles and transitions. The crazy multi-layered timelines I used to do (in DV) wouldn't work here, so it's looking more and more like I'll need to do all my still usage in After Effects somehow, either by rendering out cut sequences (messy and storage-intensive) or by importing the timelines into After Effects (messier - I have to re-create all my titles, filters, and audio level work).

Update - I finally found a way to design titles and put in pictures, as well as edit DV footage natively. I recieved some XDCAM EX footage, and in the process of converting/importing it, I noticed it ran smoothly and stable (as well as using about 1/3 the processor power). Then I had an idea. I took my existing MJPEG project and imported it into a new XDCAM EX project. The source files were still MJPEG, and I can't do too much preview rendering, but I can now work unrendered with everything. Even Magic Bullet doesn't crash the system unless I have too much open. So, problem solved, but man, what a stupid work-around.

Update 2 - Turns it this didn't solve the full problem after all. During rendering a whole rough cut, Premiere Pro kept crashing on the end credits. Turns out, the titler was doing most of the crashing. The solution? The Windows XP "/3GB" switch in boot.ini, which basically allows individual programs to access more of the total system memory. Now, the titler doesn't crash, and not even the multi-layer Magic Bullet "misfire" effects crash Premiere Pro. The downside? Slower overall file access. I can live with that, though.

I also tried re-importing my XDCAM edit of the project back into an MJPEG project, but unrendered stuff still wouldn't play back well (although it didn't crash), so I;m going to continue to work with the XDCAM project until I'm ready to release the final cut.

Update 3 - Looks like either the /3GB switch causes some sort of memory leak if you try to run several programs in succession, or I have some odd other problem. If I use the computer for an extended period of time (say over 6 hours) or use other programs in the background while Premiere Pro is open, it starts to getting buggier and less responsive, until it needs a forced reboot. I'm going to look into this some more.