The Editblog

As I mentioned in the first test footage to come out of my HV20 with Greg Tay’s GT35pro 35mm lens adapter, I was going to take it with me over the holidays up in Canada. I did so and got some pretty good footage. I’ve written up a full article on the test as well as the footage on Vimeo over at the Editblog’s new home at the Pro Video Coalition. I hope you’ll click over and check it out!

It is with great pleasure that I can announce the Editblog is going to be moving over the ProVideo Coalition! (I just discovered the sticky feature in WordPress so I’ve moved this to the top of the front page so new visitors to the Editblog can easily get to the Editblog on PVC.)

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The annoucnement has been made for the nominatons for the 81st Academy Awards. Here’s the nominees for Achievement in Film Editing:

• “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (Paramount and Warner Bros.), Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall
• “The Dark Knight” (Warner Bros.), Lee Smith
• “Frost/Nixon” (Universal), Mike Hill and Dan Hanley
• “Milk” (Focus Features), Elliot Graham
• “Slumdog Millionaire” (Fox Searchlight), Chris Dickens

My money (and hope) is on Slumdog!

Here’s a great find by John August: 10 Sundance Shorts on iTunes. And the best part is that these 10 shorts are FREE (until January 25). Click this iTunes link and grab them all. What a great way to let us that couldn’t make it to the festival get a look at some of the short films that are screening. It would be nice if they would put them all up for download. The official Sundace site also has a section devoted entirely to short films. That page has links to many of the Sundance shorts on iTunes as well as Netflix and the Xbox. More short film distribution opportunities is a great thing. Keep them coming.

The nominees for the 59th annual ACE Eddie awards are out!

Shane Ross writes Oh For Pete’s Sake. It’s a rather simple list for shooters to keep in mind to capture the best footage for the edit. If you are a shooter passing footage to an editor then please, PLEASE read this article and take it to heart.

There is actually some great integration between Livetype and/or Motion and Avid Media Composer. Who’d a thunk it.

How To Use Video Mode on the Canon 5D MK II.

Avid has posted a survey about its e-Learning offerings.

So with 5000+ RED cameras out in the wild now is there an impending crash in the rental market?

Flippant News linked to two great articles about David Fincher’s latest.

The Final Cut Pro has published a Final Cut Pro dictionary.

Do you often forget you can edit audio to the subframe in Final Cut Pro? If so Bruce reminds us.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that young people watch less tv.

A free vignette filter! Score.

Tweetree is an alternative Twitter web interface that attempts to thread conversations and show links and pics within a tweet. Tweetvisor is another.

Links from Twitter:

tparish posts How To Survive in Tomorrow’s Online Entertainment Industry.

jfrobinson links to MultiVisionnaire, “representing original films by rising filmmakers worldwide.”

askmrvideo points to a shootout between the Flip Mino HD and Kodak Zi6 pockets cameras.

From PromoMotion: Daily Color Scheme chooses a color scheme for you. Daily.

thedvshow found a website that will do the work and make tilt-shift photos for you.

jasondiamond found a gadget that integrates with Gmail for Twitter updates.

Off topic:

Looks like the music industry is going to stop suing everyone!

http://www.booleansplit.com/ is a great new photography site that I recently discovered.

All the economic problems the country is having and Congress couldn’t see fit to suspend their automatic pay raise this year. They just get more worthless as the days go by.

I haven’t taken any of the fxphd courses but I have seen a couple of them and heard many praises for the classes and quality of instruction they provide. The new term has just begun and you can view the different courses offered as well as check out the preview video. One particular course of interest to Editblog readers is the course Avid for Indie Film and Commercials. Final Cut Pro classes seem to be a dime a dozen these days so a good Avid course is worth noting. The class is taught by friend of the Editblog John Flowers from LIfeZero, That Media Show and That Post Show. John has been working (more) exclusively on Avid of late and will be a great teacher. From the fxphd website:

In this course, we cover the new Avid Media Composer 3 software, available on both Mac and Windows platforms, with a focus on Independent filmmaking and new media projects. In the first few courses, we take you from Final Cut – the standard tool for most Independent Filmmakers – into Avid – the standard in Hollywood. We will focus on the similarities and differences, with many, many examples.

Click on over and read the 10 class synopsis and then sign up and get started learning Avid for the first time or studying more in-depth Avid techniques.

This is a bit off topic but it’s a great example of the round-a-bout nature of the Internet. This tweet popped up from Frank Capria on Sunday evening about a story that was broadcast on 60 Minutes:

I expressed (via Twitter) that I would like to catch it on the Internet. Moments later ciaochowe sent the link to me:

Tonight I was able to watch the story on the CBS News website. It made me angry so I decided to write my representatives in government as well as post it here via an embed (it’s 13 minutes with a :30 second pre-roll ad):

And as a final call to action I can provide this third party link to find out where to write your Congress men and women to express outrage that speculators and Wall Street can manipulate the market like they do while the middle-class taxpayer foots the bill. Did we learn nothing from Enron?

Have you heard of the website Snag Films? I hadn’t either until I saw that the feature length documentary Dreams on Spec is available there to view in its entirety. What is Dreams on Spec? From the Snag Films website:

DREAMS ON SPEC takes an intimate look at how far people will go – and how much they will sacrifice – for the chance to pursue their dreams. This feature-length documentary delves into the lives of three aspiring Hollywood screenwriters as they pour their hearts into their spec scripts, pitch their ideas to anyone who will listen, go to meetings, hold table reads, and work at low-level day-jobs in the hopes of one day seeing one of their beloved creations made into a movie.

The film is 86 minutes (plus commercial breaks) which is too long for me personally to watch a film online so I’m going to try and tune it in via boxee on my Apple TV. The official Dreams on Spec website has additional information about the film as well. If you want to get the doc on disc then click on over to Amazon as they have the dvd too. I think many of us make a new years resolution to write more and for me 2009 was no exception. Maybe this documentary can help inspire a bit. Happy screenwriting in 2009!

UPDATE: The official English JVC link is up and working here.

I was intrigued  tonight (or last night if you read this on Thursday morning) about a number of Twitters coming from the San Francisco Final Cut Pro Supermeet at MacWorld. Reports were of JVC announcing the GY-HM100, the “World’s first Apple’s QuickTime file format support” camera. The tweets were saying it records directly onto SD cards, 3 pounds and less that $4,000. By having true QuickTime support, a file can go from card to edit with no transcoding or rewrapping using the XDCAM-EX codec. There was a link posted to go to pro.jvc.com/hm100 that takes you here. As of midnight central the continue to GY-HM100 product pages takes you to a password protected log-in screen. It’ll probably be fixed by morning.

In the meantime I did some poking around Google and it returned this link to a Japanese JVC site with more specs on what looks to be the camera. The specs below are from the Google translation:

Apple’s QuickTime (for Final Cut Pro) ? the world’s first file format support, SDHC card and a direct record. No image degradation by wrapping the file conversion and codec conversion. In addition, MPEG-2 ISO response to correspond to the major non-linear editing system.

HDV 720p format is used in full-HD1920 mode (60i) to respond. 1080p in 24p/30p (/ 25p) features.

Stick to high-quality HQ mode (35Mbps) and can save space for better compatibility mode SP (19Mbps/25Mbps) can be selected.

A new 1 / 4 type progressive CCD adopted. 3CCD rich color and unique 14-bit DSP system to achieve high resolution. The newly developed Fujinon (shares) in high-performance 10-times zoom lens, high-quality support HD recording.

Weight significantly reduce the burden of shooting 1.4kg lightweight, compact design. Increased mobility, dramatically expanding the field to shoot.

SDHC card slot and two with the group, about two cards can record six hours long (SDHC32GB, SP [19Mbps] recording mode).

By morning there might be a more official site up form JVC America but if you are up late and want a sneak peek then here it is from Japan. Unfortunately it looks from the translation that it is lacking a FireWire port. While the actual judgement on this workflow will wait until the camera is in hand this idea is perfect since it shoots to XDCAM and doesn’t introduce a new codec that software manufactures will have to implement. We have too many different codecs as it is. This is a really great idea to think that finally you can go from shoot to edit with absolutely no transcoding, converting or rewrapping. Just a file copy from card to media drive. The big question I have is what took these camera makers so long to do this!

Canon has just announced the HV40, successor to my little friend the HV20 and the HV30. It looks like a small evolution with “Custom Key” button on the lens barrel and a “native 24P mode” among its big new feature.

First the Custom Key (from the Canon website):

Have the same kind of creative input as the pros do! You can assign commonly used functions to one button on the camcorder for quick and easy access. Functions available to choose from include Exposure Lock (On/Off), Auto/Manual Focus, and Auto/Manual Microphone Level Control.

OK, that’s pretty handy. Having to use that little joystick to dig down into different menus sucks!

Second the  native 24p mode:

This is a feature previously found only on Canon’s professional camcorders. Native 24p Mode allows 24 frames per second, instead of the standard 60i, to be captured and recorded. It is a must for serious filmmaking work, as 24 frames per second is the frame rate of film.

Camcorderinfo.com has this quote:

Canon’s decision not to simply carry over the HV30 from the previous year was explained as tendency to refresh the lines every year, “even if it’s just to offer something new to the consumer,” explained Mitchell Glick, assistant manager of Product Marketing, Consumer Division for Canon USA. The new native 24P mode was something “a lot of filmmakers request on a unit that’s a little bit less inexpensive.”

But wait a minute you say … my HV20 has recorded 24p from day one. Well not exactly. It and the HV30 record the 24p “cinema mode” which is actually 60 interlaced frames to tape. This requires an extra step of running the captured media through some type of reverse telecine (like a pass through Compressor) to remove the extra pulldown frames. Since this new native 24p mode is still recording to tape that has to mean flagged frames onto tape so your NLE capturing application can remove those frames on the fly upon capture. Extra step eliminated. Nice.