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In case you are wondering why I suddenly write so much – I was waiting for the friendly TNT guy to finally deliver my new MacBook Pro. Well, he just came, which means that soon I will be able to process R3D footage, and probably no further posts from me today 
Oh, and the Birger Mount that was supposed to arrive at the beginning of the week… it hasn’t even been shipped yet. I should have known better…
On a current job the client wants the videofiles on an external harddisk in FAT32. One of the problems with FAT32 is of course that it doesn’t allow for file sizes of 4GB or bigger, which translates to roughly 20min of DV material, and less on better codecs.
One way would of course be to use Final Cut, iMovie or QT Pro to mark each 15 minute segment, and export that to the external harddisk. This means a lot of button pushing, when there are hours of material to be transferred.
Doing a longer search on Macupdate did not come up with any easy solutions. So here is a step by step guide for non-geeks. Those who know their way around UNIX will probably know of a quicker solution…
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finderdefaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
killall Finder This restarts the Finders and hides the system files again.Now you are done with the installation part. Now, if you want to split a video file, simply enter the following code into the Terminal: splitmovie /volumes/sourcedisk/original.mov -duration 10:00 -self-contained -o /volumes/targetdisk/split.mov Sourcedisk is the name of the disk that contains your source footage, target is the name of the targetdisk and duration is the length of each segment (in this case 10:00 minutes). Afterwards you can drag and drop the split files from the finder.
If you need to split AVI files, you can have a look at Explicit.
by Banksy
It is easy to lose track as to which version of Final Cut should go with the plethora of Quicktime and Mac OS versions. But help is at hand.
Jon Chapell at the Digital Rebellion has put together a nice recommendation of which Final Cut Studio/Final Cut Pro versions go best with which QT and Mac OS versions:
Final Cut Pro Version Mac OS Version QuickTime Version 6.0.3 10.4.11 / 10.5.2 7.4.5 6.0.2 10.4.11 / 10.5.1 7.3.1 5.1.4 10.4.9 7.1.6 5.0.4 10.4.9 7.1.6 4.5 10.3.9 6.5 3.0.4 10.2.8 Update 2 6.2 3.0 10.2.8 Update 2 5.0.6 2.0.2 9.2.2 5.0.1 1.2.5 9.2.2 4.1.3 1.2.1 8.6 4.1.1 1.0.1 8.6 4.0.3 1.0 8.6 4b16
2 weeks ago I ordered a MacBook Air for my lovely wife. The estimated time before shipping was quoted as “1 – 2 weeks”. Having ordered from Apple before, I knew that the first figure can be safely ignored.
So yesterday, exactly 2 weeks after ordering it, the MacBook Air was shipped. But the surprise came when I checked the tracking number — the estimated arrival time is in 2 weeks!
What sort of transport mode is Apple using? By foot? Mule carriage? Do they ship it from China to the US, to the Netherlands, to Ireland and only then to Norway? In any case, such shipping time is plainly unacceptable. I’ve ordered from the other side of the globe and got it delivered 4 days later.
I know that in the US, shopping with Mac is a pleasure. But why does it have to be such a pain here in Norway?
As a follow up on my last post on the costs of licensing Blu-Ray, I sent a little e-mail to Larry Jordan to confirm that small production runs of Blu-Ray discs are prohibitively expensive. Larry replied that it seems indeed that Sony does not want independent producers to embrace this delivery format.
So, most likely you will not see any lower budget productions on Blu-Ray.
On another front it is not sure whether Blu-Ray will beat the simplicity of downloadable movies. They for sure have a number of advantages: virtually immedeate availability. Scratch resistance (great for kiddies films). No loose DVDs flying around the TV set.
And then looms the question of the logevity of the HD 720p / 1080i format, with professional cameras already moving up towards 2k, 3k and even 4k.
Just came across this Stanford speech by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. At times full of insight, at others surprizingly personal.
(via Ouriel)
Just came across a one-page site by Jan E. Schotsman which offers a couple of video tools for the Mac, and at zero cost.
The JES Deinterlacer does a fine de-interlacing job, but despite its name, it does more. It lets you slow down the frame rate, interpolating the in-between frames. Click here for a comparison between iMovie and the JES Deinterlacer. Feature list:
- Deinterlace movies (half height/normal height/double frame rate/blend,adaptive/simple).
- Change field dominance (for PAL films with fake interlace).
- Reinterlace from one or two movies.
- Standards conversion (PAL<->NTSC or custom).
- Inverse telecine.
- Trim, shift, simple color correction, noise reduction.
- Change encoding (RGB gamma, video range/full range).
- Fix jagged edges.
- Pitch preserving sound track for half speed.
- Change movie speed, reverse movie.
- Interlaced in/out, progressive in/out.
- Includes utility to view and edit image description extensions and movie and track geometry
If you have noisy video, the JES Video Cleaner may be the quick tool for you. It also allows for removal of logos. I imagine this must be great for cleaning up consumer camcorder footage with a burned in date.
- General noise reduction (adaptive)
- Remove logo
- Average two movies
- Remove cross-luma
- Remove periodic brightness variation
If you still run OS9, he has a helper program that allows for transfers > 2GB.
And if you have an old Power Mac, he offers a program for uncompressed capture of SD video.
Finally, Jan has a little app to fix the blue cast on a monitor under Mac OS 10.4.
Does success have to lead to corruption?
Both Google and Apple, which I hold in high esteem, have recently moved in the wrong direction. Google is forcing bloggers to stop using non-Google advertisers, and Apple seems to collect information about iPhone and iPod Touch users.
Looks like 2008 will be an exciting year for many reasons. It will be the year where more than 50% of households will have a 16:9 screen. In Norway they will start switching off the analogue TV distribution. Laptop sales will overtake desktop systems. Apple will likely start selling films in their iTunes store. Red will pump out the de-bugged Red One cameras in numbers. On NAB they will announce a small form factor 4k camera, code-named Scarlet. And I would imagine that the traditional video camera producers will come with their alternatives to the Red. There are also rumors that Red might introduce a 4k projector, making beyond-HD resolution an affordable possibility for the advanced hometheatre enthusiast.
Apple is said to introduce a thin and small palm sized laptop in less than two weeks. Featuring no movable parts, it is rumored to have amazing long battery times, and virtually no boot-up time.
When DV arrived, it was an exciting time, as it enabled capable film makers to own production equipment that would produce broadcast quality output. The internet made it possible to distribute these programs for little cost.
Cameras such as the Scarlet, affordable high-speed disks and solid state memory are about to enable capable film makers to own their own production equipment than can produce a technical quality good enough for the big screen.
Technology, if used right, can be awesome. Happy MMIIX to all of you!
What are your educated guesses of what 2008 will bring?
