It’s been another exciting year in our industry, with lots of evolutionary and revolutionary changes. Many of the trends we’ve seen coming for the past several years came to fruition in 2011, leaving some to wonder what comes next. Let’s take a look back and see if it can help inform us a bit on what’s to come in 2012.

So…is film dead now?

Pundits have been predicting the end to film as a production medium for decades, but now it seems that the writing is on the wall. Digital Cinema camera technology has advanced to the point that nearly all production for television has moved to electronic acquisition. Currently the majority of high-end features are still produced on 35mm film, but it appears only a matter of time before this completely transitions as well. Most lower- to medium-budget productions are already being shot digitally, and numerous notable high-end productions are as well. In particular, shooting digitally for 3D productions is significantly more advantageous compared to film. This has also spurred the rollout of digital projection, as this is again far easier to accomplish for 3D presentation. The final nail may be the financial advantage to studios distributing movies digitally rather than with film prints. Fox has already notified theater chains that it plans to eliminate film prints sometime next year. Without the steady income stream of film prints, plus TV and commercial production, the economic model supporting film stock producers and processing labs will eventually no longer function. We may look back on 2011 as the last year film had a significant, dominant position in the industry, before becoming relegated to “niche” productions.

…continue reading A Look Back From Behind The Lens

Recently, we have seen a wide variety of recorders being released that write video directly to Solid State Hard Drives (SSDs). These recorders include the Sound Devices PIX240, CineDeck, Atomos Samurai, the BlackMagic Hyperdeck Shuttle, and the Convergent Design Gemini 4:4:4. SSDs can be very fast and have become very price competitive compared to other memory cards. The high-speed Sandisk Extreme Pro Compact Flash cards that are required for ProRes recording cost around $7 per gigabyte, versus a comparable SSD that can be purchased for less than $2 per gigabyte. However, these drives were built to be used in computers, and it can be a bit confusing to choose the right drive for a video recorder.

In order to find a drive that works, you should first calculate the data rate requirements for the compression format you are recording. SSDs are usually rated in terms of maximum read speeds in megabytes per second (MB/s), however most compression is described in megabits per second (Mb/s). To converts bits to bytes, just divide by 8. For instance, ProRes HQ is a 220 Mb/s compression; divided by 8, it is 27.5 MB/s. Most drives, however, only list their maximum data rate for reading or writing; for video, we need a drive that can maintain a consistent data rate. That’s why determining the average sustained read/write speed is so important.

…continue reading Choosing a Solid State Drive for Video Recording

Earlier this week, I visited Createasphere 2011 and I spent some time checking out gear that our friends from Assimilate, Litepanels, and Sony had on display.

Litepanels demoed their new Croma dual-color, on-camera light for me, as well as their Sola 4 and Hilio lights. I took a look at Sony’s PMW-TD300 fixed lens 3D camera, which features slow and quick motion recording in 3D, a first for a shoulder mounted camera. Finally, I got a tour of a new, compact DIT Station that offers Scratch 6 and is compatible with RED and ALEXA, as well as Panasonic and Sony cameras.

Watch my video above for details on all these products.

Sound Devices is known for their high-quality and robust sound recorders and mixers, so we were all surprised to see them announce a video recorder. However, after receiving our first demo units, we were not surprised to see how well made they are. Like all Sound Devices products the PIX 240 is very durable and solid. If you haven’t read about it yet, the PIX 240 records in ProRes or DNxHD formats onto SSDs or Compact Flash cards. It has both HD-SDI and HDMI inputs, as well as timecode and sync connections. And, it also works as a nice small monitor; the built-in LCD has a 800×480 resolution and wide viewing angle. Watch my video above to learn more about the PIX240 and all of its different options.

We received some exciting news from Sonnet this week. They will be releasing the ECHO-E34, an ExpressCard34 to Thunderbolt adapter. If you are not familiar with the term, ExpressCard34 is an interface used to connect peripheral devices to computers. If you have seen an AJA Io Express, Matrox MXO 2, or even a Sony SxS card, then you have seen an ExpressCard34 connecting device. Typically only seen on laptops, ExpressCard34 is a faster connection alternative compared to USB 2.0 or FireWire 800. Apple has removed the ExpressCard slot from the 13″ and 15″ MacBook Pros, but have added Thunderbolt to most of their new computers, so you will now be able to connect directly with these devices.

This is huge news for many reasons. Thunderbolt offers transfer speeds up to 10Gb/s, so this device will work as a fast way to download SxS cards. Anyone using a Sony XDCAM EX camera or ARRI ALEXA will love this new option, especially since most SxS card readers are USB 2.0 based. Additionally, Sonnet makes many adapters that will work with the device including a CF Card reader, SDHC card reader, SATA adaptor, USB 3.0 adapter, and a Gigabyte Ethernet adapter, allowing it to fit into a wide variety of workflows. USB 3.0 is going to start showing up on many card readers and other devices found in our business, such as the new Panasonic AJ-PCD30 P2 card reader. With the io Express or MXO2, the adapter will enable full HD input and output. So I can see many applications for the ECHO-E34 which will be available in October for $150 (you will also need to purchase a Thunderbolt cable from Apple). See a full list of Sonnet adapters and some of the other devices that it will work with here.

This is an old topic of discussion, but it always seems to come up again and again. Some cameras, such as Sony’s FS100, will record in 1080 24p, but output only 1080 60i over HDMI. The FS100 does this to make its output compatible with monitors and other devices. The internal video recording is true 24p, but the output has gone through a 2:3 pull down process, whereby the 24p is converted into 60i. Because 24 frames do not evenly split into 60 interlaced fields, this process stretches 24p into 60i which does result in some obvious interlacing artifacts. Here is a quick illustration showing how four frames (from 24p) split into interlaced fields.

For anyone wishing to record the HDMI signal coming out of the FS100, this can be a major headache. Recorders such as the Ki Pro Mini or the HyperDeck Shuttle can easily record the video coming out, but unfortunately they cannot remove the 2:3 pull down to convert the video back into 24p. Here are a couple quick examples of how to remove the pull down and get good results.

…continue reading Simple Workflow for Removing 2:3 Pull Down

There’s no denying that Canon HDSLRs have made a big impact on our industry, and while proving to be an amazing tool for cinematographers, some of their limitations become apparent in post-production. While the native HDSLR image is often lauded its for high contrast and saturation, this can also prove challenging to color correct and grade.

To solve some of these issues, Technicolor and Canon have teamed up to release a custom Picture Style designed to increase the dynamic range of the images produced by the Canon HDSLRs. Loading the Technicolor CineStyle profile replaces the standard REC709 profile with a log color space for maximum latitude.

When you load the Picture Style with Canon’s EOS utility software, you can see that it adds the “CineStyle” profile to the standard drop down list.

I’ve included some sample images of the Canon “Standard” and “Neutral” styles compared to the Technicolor CineStyle.

Canon Standard

Canon Neutral

Technicolor CineStyle

While the Technicolor CineStyle appears flat and washed out, the low contrast image provides a true, neutral starting point for your colorist.

Technicolor has also released an S-curve LUT (Look Up Table) for Apple Color and Magic Bullet LUT Buddy. Both the Picture Style and S-curve LUT are available from Technicolor’s website here.