Archive for April 22nd, 2006

In a Post Production World session he affectionately referred to as “Spot’s Toybox,” Douglas Spotted Eagle trotted out a table full of useful, often essential, production gear. Much of it was related to audio capture—an oft-overlooked task in video production—and much of it was quite affordable. After a parade of different types of mics, audio recording devices, boom poles, and more, Spot trotted out a fairly large camera rig. If you mentally removed all the accessories, you realized it was actually a small-format HD camcorder - the Sony HVR-Z1, to be precise. (read our review of the HVR-Z1 here)

Spot mentioned that the exact rig, which he dubbed the “Uber Camera,” had been used to shoot the TV series 24. So what all was attached to the small camcorder? Two Hoodman viewfinder accessories. A Bebob Twisty Tap that powers a wireless mic. A Chrosziel Matte box with french flag and side bars. A battery, and a 20W Coco light. more

Dylan Tichenor, editor of Brokeback Mountain, participated in a discussion with Ken McGorry of Post for the keynote of NAB Post Production World 2006. Tichenor began as an apprentice, and then assistant and associate, editor for Robert Altman films in the early ’90s. Back then, as an apprentice editor, he worked on a KEM flatbed. The editor would cut frames off a reel of film, and hand them to Tichenor for him to tag and file. Often these would be requested for retrieval later - with both successful and unsuccessful outcomes.

“Editors today in the nonlinear world, for all its advantages, consciously have to let assistants into their process,” Tichenor says. “Because they’re in another room with their own computers and their telephones.” They wouldn’t come into his suite unless he invited them, which makes it more difficult to pass on the art and craft of editing. Another blessing and curse of the nonlinear process is that editors “can try 100 times as many things” as they could before. Of course, “Sometimes it’s better to have a little more time than the computer requires” in order to reconsider a cut. more

Before Tichenor’s keynote, Chas Smith, general manager of Avid Video, gave a brief presentation on his company’s take on the evolution toward HD. (HD is present in about 12 percent of American homes, he reported.) His points were quite simple: Traditional I-frame-only 1080i video contains about 6X the pixels as NTSC. That means 6X the required storage for 1080i compared to 480i. HDV, which is compressed to allay that challenge (among others), presents problems for postproduction.

The long-GOP structure of HDV means that in the editing processing, a lot of cuts will begin on an incomplete non-I-frame. This requires re-encoding around the edit to create a new legalized GOP around that cut. This essentially introduces a second generation of the media. Also, rendering for output after, say, color correction requires another re-encode. Finally, horizontal sub-sampling (1440 pixels across vs. 1920) that’s common to HDV camcorders requires compression and decompression cycles during monitoring and compositing. more

Well, I made it. I’m here at NAB 2006 and I’m attending Post Production World sessions all day. Co-produced by Future Media Concepts and NAB, PPW offers a wealth of classes in a whole bunch of disciplines related to professional video production. Some of the “tracks” available to Post Production World attendees are Digital Video Production, Audio for Video, and specific tracks for specific production tools (Adobe, Apple, and Avid).

New this year is the Podcasting track. Art Morrison led a session this morning entitled “Advanced Podcasting Production Techniques.” I have to admit, as audio is not my strong suit, a lot of it was over my head. It was heartening to learn, however, that due to the compressed nature of audio that’s delivered over the Internet (i.e., any podcast), many advanced audio concepts become somewhat moot, such as EQing. Essentially, though, producing professional podcasts is like producing audio for broadcast: it’s gotta be good. Morrison and his panelists discussed concepts necessary for achieving professional-sounding results, such as multi-band compression, dynamic range, and attack (the rate at which a compressor/limiter expands the sound). more