As I noted in my previous blog, the iMacs are fast becoming my machine of choice and the newest models are even more impressive than the two we have running.    At this time, barring any major announcement from Apple that changes my mind, my plan is to replace the remaining 3 Mac Pros in Edits 1, 3 and 4 with 27″ iMacs and AJA T-Taps.   Once our original series hits, well I’ll need 8 of them for that series alone.  I’m looking at the 3.4 Ghz model though I’m not totally sold on the Fusion drive since it’s brand new.  Kind of disappointed I can’t do the SSD Drive + SATA drive like before.   I may very well go with the 3TB SATA and wait on a Fusion drive until second generation.  For RAM, I’ll go back to Other World Computing where 32GB is only $195 vs. $600 via Apple upgrade.   I’ll definitely step up to the nVidia GeForce 680MX and I’ll swap out the wireless keyboard for the full sized keyboard with the number pad.  Only looking at $2717 from Apple (including AppleCare) +$200 from Other World computing.   Absolutely incredible for all that power plus the beautiful 27″ screen.

We’ve had at least one iMac in production for over 6 months now and they are fast machines.   The only place you’ll notice them to be a bit slower than the absolute fastest machine is when you go to render.   Depending on what you’re rendering out, it might take a bit or a lot longer than a 12 – 16 core machine.   So we’re keeping our two 12 core Mac Pros and simply using those to do heavy lifting renders.  When a project is done on the iMac, we can simply open it up on the 12 core and render away.   But for news stories and even our documentaries, those are being rendered directly on the iMacs.

I know some folks out there look down on the iMacs because they ARE less powerful than a desktop and they are less configurable.   I’ve seen articles of late showing all you all the technical reasons why you really need to consider more than just processor speed and RAM for maximum performance and that’s correct.  If you need ONE machine, and you only work with ONE machine in your operation, you probably want a desktop.  Something beefy with dual graphics cards, 12-16 cores and gobs of RAM so you can get your work done and rendered as quickly as possible.

In my case, our facility is set up for 9 edit suites (5 currently running) and the potential for some new series coming in the door.   For that, I need the best performance vs. cost not only to upgrade all the suites, but also maintain competitive rates vs. other post facilities in the area.   I need a bunch of machines that can cut fast and are reliable no matter how much data we throw at them.  So far, the iMac is proving more than capable of that and most of all, the clients have not noticed any change in the day to day operation of our shop.   Premiere Pro, After Effects and Photoshop all work efficiently on the iMacs and that’s about 90% of our work right there.

Adobe Premiere Pro Workflow

Somebody asked me recently to update y’all on our workflow with Adobe Premiere Pro.    As I have mentioned in the past, we started right off the bat with An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro and the media management section of that book is THE most important section for any editor to read.  That section really set the basis for how we manage the workflow of all the projects.

My biggest concern going into Premiere Pro was the fact that there was no primary codec to work with, it’s sort of a free-for-all.  Adobe’s biggest selling point is “Just worry about creating, we’ll handle anything you throw at us natively.”  And on that they are pretty much accurate.   We’ve only run into one specific codec / computer combination that really threw Premiere Pro for a loop and that was XDCAM Quicktime files on Windows.   There’s no native XDCAM QT codec for playback on Windows so you need to purchase a plug-in from Calibrated Software to make that work.   But even with the plug-in, our Windows machine just chugged when we had to use XDCAM QTs that were delivered to us from shooters in the field.   Beyond that single codec / computer combination, it really IS anything goes with Adobe Premiere Pro.

After coming to terms with the fact that Adobe really can handle anything natively, we decided to roll with it.   So we will bring all elements into a project natively unless there is a good reason not to.   Keep in mind we are an independent Post Production Facility so that means we have zero control over the footage our clients bring us.   Adobe Premiere Pro has greatly improved our efficiency in having to deal with whatever the shooters send us and allowing us to get right to work.

The general workflow for a typical project for us, which is usually a news / documentary / episodic is as follows:

All media is first checked by our Media Management Specialist.  Kelly manages our media database and organizes all the materials for and upcoming project, including pulling any archived materials we may have including tapes and digital media.

Kelly will then load up all the raw media organized as described in that Editor’s Guide book I mentioned earlier.  We use a modified version of the folder structure they show in that book but essentially we keep everything organized by how it came in.   If a shooter shot three P2 cards, those cards are loaded into the project in their original folder structure since Adobe can read them natively.   If we have tapes captured, they are put into their own folder and so on.     As much as possible, we try to have Kelly put everything onto the SAN prior to the edit so the editors can start right off by setting up the Project instead of having to pull all the media as well.

The editor will then usually create a Bin for each element in the Project.   So those three P2 Cards will come into three Bins with the same names as the P2 cards.  Generally the Producers are going to come to us and tell us “Card 2, Shot 2X24Os” so it makes sense to keep the bins organized the same way the Producer logs them.    We never re-name the clips, though we may put descriptive information in the metadata or at the very least the Description field.    We often color code the clips too for easy timeline identification of what various elements are.

The Editor will also ensure to select “Put Media Cache Files in same location as Media Files” (or something like that) as we run on a SAN.   These are the Peak Files that you will see Premiere Pro generate when you import your footage.   By putting them with the media files, you can open the project on multiple machines and not have to re-generate the peak files each time.   If you have a small project, it’s no big deal to regenerate the peak files, but a documentary with 20 – 200 hours of material, well that can take hours.

For the offline editing, we will generally use either a 720p/59.94 or a 1080i/29.97 timeline using the AVC-Intra 100 preset in Premiere Pro.   These are two great base timelines to use for high quality editing to output.   We’ll leave the Video Previews set to MPEG I-Frame for the offline as well.    During this phase, the editor will literally edit with everything native, as is with no conversions made.   720, 1080i, 525, 625, 24, 30, 60, 25, 50, MPEG, H264,Internet downloads, etc…..   whatever the raw material is, we just throw it into the timeline and edit.   This is the biggest strength of Premiere Pro that we simply get the materials into the system and start editing.    There’s no sense in converting everything if you don’t even know what will be in the final cut.   BUT we do generally color code things in such a way so that we can identify things that we definitely will want to do conversion on before the final cut, makes it easy to pick those shots out later.

Once we have a “locked cut” (parenthesis because as we all know there never really seems to be a locked cut any more) then we will start cleaning up the materials that need it.   We’ll use our AJA Kona and IoXTs for example for most of our format conversions.   Say we’re editing in a 720p/59.94 timeline, we’ll take all the 1080i / 29.97 material and run it through the AJA products to make them all 720p/59.94 via hardware.   Generally we do this the easy route by just throwing all the 1080i / 29.97 material into a single timeline and just making a single pass rather than do each shot individually.   We can always refer back to the original media via a previous cut of the project so it’s no big deal to simply have a file called “1080i Converted” in the main timeline.   Same goes for SD that has to be upconverted to HD.   AJA hardware does a much better job that just Adobe software.  Although we are awaiting delivery of a Blackmagic Teranex 2D unit which adds line doubling with SD to HD upconverts so those will be even cleaner.   That will also give us PAL-NTSC or vice versa conversion as well.

We do these conversions one of two ways.   Play out the timeline from one edit system to another or play out the timeline from one edit system to our AJA Ki Pro which is how we usually do it.   Love, love, LOVE the KiPro since it automatically makes a ProRes file for us.   If we want a DNxHD file, we can use the KiPro Mini.

At the “locked cut” phase we also switch the Video Previews over to ProRes or DNxHD as these result in far superior renders than the MPEG I-Frame, particularly with fast moving video and graphics.

For sound mixing, we do one of two things currently.   For most documentary and all broadcast projects, we’ll output an OMF for our ProTools sound designer along with an H264 reference quicktime file.   He’ll then create a Stereo Mix or a Stereo Mix plus split tracks depending on the broadcast requirements.

Or the editor will simply mix in Adobe Premiere Pro if it’s a project that doesn’t require or have the budget for full sound design.   Right now that’s a bit clunky since we can’t use the audio mixer for the mix.   Well, we COULD if it truly WAS a locked cut.  But the Audio Mixer in Premiere Pro is a TRACK based audio mixer, so all keyframes created by the audio mixer are created by track position.  Not by clip.   So when our client inevitably comes back to us with a “minor change” that results in changing out 5 clips, trimming another and adding a sound bite, well our mix would be completely screwed.   All the keyframes would NOT move with the changes, they simply stay locked into place on the track.   So it’s a bit of a painstaking process at first, but you learn to pick up the speed as you do it more, but we mix the timelines per clip.   Fortunately, you can make Gain and Volume adjustments across multiple clips so it’s not as bad as it sounds.

The biggest pain in general is that for whatever reason when using a Wacom Tablet, Premiere Pro does not accurately read the input from the tablet so the keyframes and any other paramaters you try to set in the timeline will jump up/down/left/right as if snapping is always enabled.   This doesn’t happen with a mouse thankfully so we’ll use a mouse when we have to do a long mix.

For color grading we still export a self contained QT from Premiere Pro, either ProRes or DNxHD, to Resolve.  I’m going to finally use Resolve 9 this coming week on a short project to test it out.  In Resolve I simply use Scene Detect to cut up the file and grade away.   From Resolve it’s a rendered QT, either ProRes or DNxHD again, to send back into Premiere Pro.

For file output we’ll use Adobe Media Endoder as it works really well and can output multiple files easily.

For tape output, we use our one system that has a BlackMagic Extreme 3D card in it that can lay to tape frame accurately each time.   MUST ensure that the Premiere Pro interface is on a single screen or there will be dropped frames.  Simple go to the Windows > Workspace and choose “Editing.”   That brings the entire interface to a single screen.

Premiere Pro caveats

Tape Capturing is still completely useless in the software so we still break out FCP 7 pretty much exclusively for that operation.   We do a lot documentary and news style work so we’re always pulling materials from tape.  It’s still an essential part of our workflow so instead of trying to force Premiere Pro to do something it really can’t, we just switch to a tool that can.  Works well as we usually have Kelly do the capturing on a dedicated system so the edit suites aren’t tied up capturing.

The biggest issue we’ve run into are project that files that come up as corrupted or missing elements and cannot be opened.   Seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why this happens.  Projects from 9 months ago, 6 months ago, last week.  They just suddenly won’t open on any of our systems.   With the work we do and the clients we work with, we’re constantly opening projects from as far back as 5 years ago to revise, repurpose, and pull elements from.    We can go back into our FCP projects from 10 years ago and open pretty much all of them without a problem.   This is something I’ve been VERY vocal to Adobe about and I have every confidence they are addressing this very important issue.   Fortunately there is a very easy workaround.  Simply create  New Project and import the “corrupted” project into that.  Continue working.

Premiere Pro moving forward

The tool has become the workhorse at our facility.  It’s a great storytelling tool and I’m finding that my rough cuts are going so much faster than with FCP.   The hoverscrub in the bins is so fast for auditioning shots and while I’m still using the FCP keyboard presets, one of my editors has switched completely over to the Adobe presets because once you get used to them, you can fly even faster.  I definitely need to get up to speed on all the keyboard editing / trimming.   That’s what folks love Avid so much for, but PPro has made major gains with these controls in 6.0 and I’m sure it’s just going to get better moving forward.

So right now, I’m very happy with where Premiere Pro is today and where it’s poised to move going forward.   It’s not perfect, but it’s a solid tool and a great storytelling device.   The tight integration of the entire Adobe Suite also makes life really easy when we get to the finishing process of any project.

Final Cut Pro X

I’ve had a lot of folks asking me if I’m considering re-introducing FCP based on the most recent updates from Apple.   Here’s the way I look at X today.

If you’re using FCPX right now, you should be really happy with what Apple’s doing.  You’re getting more features back into the tool and they should be making your day to day work more efficient.

For me, I see no reason to switch back to FCP.   It’s amusing to see Apple touting the “new features” such as Drop Shadow and the Dual display.   In my mind, those are simply corrections and an admission from Apple that X was released before it was ready for prime time.   In the interim, we’ve switched off to other NLE platforms and in my mind, both Adobe Premiere Pro and Avid are superior to what FCP X is today and certainly superior to what FCP 7 was back in the day.    There are certainly some good concepts in X but as a whole package, it falls short of my needs today.

I never say never, and if a client were to come in tomorrow and demand we use X for a project, we’ll use it, we have it in the shop.    But as far as the tool of choice, there’s nothing in X today that makes me remotely consider swapping out Premiere Pro for X as our primary or even secondary tool.   There’s also something to be said for looking at companies whose main source of profit comes from really good professional software vs. consumer hardware.   When software is a loss leader or a minor portion of your profit margin, you can do more what you want to do vs. what the market is asking for.

Adobe, Avid and Autodesk are all actively reaching out to the professional editing community to make their products better and more accessible.  I appreciate that.

And with that, the end of this installment.  Hope it’s helpful and thanks for all your support through the years!

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We’ve found one little achilles heel using the PC vs. the Mac.  One client delivers all their raw footage to us in XDCAM Quicktime files.   This is pretty much the one file format the PC will not read natively with Adobe Premiere Pro.   So we purchased the Calibrated Software XD Decode software.   It sort of works, but the PC really chugs once we start using the footage with that plug-in.

Talking to some other folks, they seem to have this plug-in on an ingest machine to convert the footage over to something else before editing.   We don’t really want to do that because the footage was shot XDCAM MXF by the client and converted once to the QT versions for their offline edits.   So we don’t want to convert the footage again before we start the final edit.    Our solution has been to move the XDCAM QT projects over to one of our Macs since it doesn’t slow them down at all.

Now the editor who was cutting on the PC every day, has cut for the past two weeks on that brand new 27″ iMac we’ve been running in Edit 2 since he had a bunch of XDCAM QTs in his project.   He let me know in no uncertain terms that he LOVES the iMac and if we got another one, he wouldn’t mind putting that in place of his PC.   He was truly amazed at the speed of it, despite the fact that it has less RAM and less processor power than the PC.

Well, that second iMac is on order and we’re going to re-designate the Edit 5 PC as our Davinci Resolve color grading system.   The 12 Core Mac Pro that is currently designated as the Resolve will move into another edit suite that needs its Mac Pro updated.   That PC has dual nVidia cards, 48GB of RAM and plenty of processing power so it will fit well into its new home.

So while we have not cooled on the PC necessarily, we’re finding that with our workflow, the Mac is still a better choice for the moment.   I would really love to get away from Quicktime altogether and go fully MXF native for everything, including the ability to work in Avid DNxHD MXF within Premiere Pro.   That would solve a lot of cross platform issues.   But being an independent post house, we do not control the formats that come in the door.    We must simply respond to the client delivered materials and ensure that we have a system capable of reliably editing their footage.   At the moment, the Mac still gives more codec flexibility than PC to respond to their needs, but the PC is not going anywhere.   It works brilliantly with the codecs it can handle and that’s why it’s moving into the Resolve suite.

Today AJA Video Systems released new drivers for Adobe Premiere Pro 6.0.2 that will hopefully allow us to finally start laying to tape from our AJA based edit systems.   We’ve yet to try this but will in the next week or so for sure and I’ll report back here.

Overall Adobe Premiere Pro CS 6 has performed amazingly well under both documentary and episodic editorial production.  We’ve been at it for quite some time now and the editors have really grown quite fond of the tool and while Avid seems to have made some nice improvements in v6.5, we’re not in any hurry to update our Symphonies just yet.   Premiere Pro has its quirks to be sure, but we’re finding out how to deal with them just as we had to deal with a lot of quirks in FCP 7.

Such as a huge dropped frame issue that was plaguing all of our systems.  We knew it wasn’t the SAN because that same SAN had zero issues with FCP 7 and Avid 6.0.  But Premiere Pro CS 6.0 could not play any of our timelines without dropping frames.   And not just a couple of frames, but several hundred over 5 minutes.   That’s one of the beauties of PPro vs. FCP 7.  It will play through dropped frames and then give you a counter when you stop of how many frames were dropped.

The solution to the dropped frames was ridiculously simple, but took an accident to find it.  We work in dual screens in our all our edit suites.  To get smooth playback with no dropped frames, we have to bring the PPro interface onto a single screen.   This is true of Mac, PC, ATI, nVidia, Dual nVidia, 8 Core, 12 core, etc……  in our shop.

At my wits end, I said to one of our editors, “for the heck of it what if we just put the interface on one screen?  Stupid I know, but let’s try it.”   So I went up to Windows > Workspace > Editing which brings the entire interface to a single window on a single screen.   Voíla.   Smooth playback.   On every system.    Silly solution but it solves the problem and we move on.

Every system has its quirks and WTF? moments, but you learn, adapt and move on.   As I said recently on Twitter, we’re missing what we had in FCP less and less and enjoying what we now have in PPro more and more.   Everything is a tool and this particularly tool suits our workflow quite well.

I will update y’all on our AJA Tape Layback tests after we have a chance to run them.

BISCARDI CREATIVE MEDIA is a full service digital media production company near Atlanta, Georgia with services that include Video Production, Sound Production, Sound Mixing, Graphic Design, Animation, Post Production, Video Editing, Color Grading, Finishing, Digital Asset Transfer, Digitizing and Archiving. Quite simply we’re the people who make video and media production easy for you.   No technobabble.  Just clear, concise and creative content delivered where and how you need it, on time and on budget.  Office and production space is also available for short and long term projects.  www.biscardicreative.com | 770-271-3427

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It’s kind of like an oversized lunchbox, not all that large at all.   Inside this box is the computer, the ethernet switch (four ports) and four hard drive slots where you can put the drives of your choice in there.  With 4TB drives now available you can have up to 16TB of storage inside this box with up to 4 computers sharing the media, in realtime.   No complicated software to install, just connect the computers, set up a few settings and start editing.

Ok, this shot is sideways but you can see the four ethernet ports on the back of the machine, that’s where you connect your four computers.  Laptops, desktops, Macs, PCs, whatever, this is exactly like the full sized system we use in our shop, except it’s fully contained inside one box.

This is not only an AWESOME step up not only for remote field production but even for small to mid sized companies.  How many of you home-based editors have at least two computers you use daily?  Most of you have a desktop and a laptop in use.  Well, now connect both of those computers to your media array as you need and be more efficient.

Corporate / Church production divisions that have up to 4 workstations, here’s your shared storage solution in a box.  Just run Cat 6 Ethernet cable from your computer to the box and go.

Steve Modica and the entire team at Small Tree should really be proud of this one.  If I could have designed a portable shared storage system, it would not be this good.

And here’s the best part.  The 8TB version is UNDER $7,500.   Keep in mind this is the computer, the ethernet switch and the media IN ONE BOX.  So you’re getting the computer to manage the system, the ethernet switch for four clients and the media storage for that price.   That’s less than me purchasing a Mac Pro right now plus an 8TB RAID and the Ethernet Switch as stand alone items.

I honestly have to say, Small Tree has hit an absolute, out of the park, home run with this concept.  I cannot wait till we get a test unit in the shop to start hammering on.

Oh and it’s not vaporware, it’s available right now, today.   Read all about it on Small Tree’s website.

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Native as much as possible

Gone is the “log and transfer” requirement of FCP and it does take some time to get used to the fact that you can literally jump right in without the need to do anything to your media.  As much as we can, we just leave everything raw and native as it came in.  Saves a lot of time initially and with some very fast “big iron” systems, we have cut our back end render times down to essentially “real time.”   Our 27 minute shows render in about 28 minutes.

Our biggest struggle is getting field cameramen to STOP converting the native files to quicktime files.   QT files actually slow down Premiere Pro as they’re 32 bit files.   They’re slowly catching on but it’s kind of maddening when we get the QTs.

The other beauty is that Premiere Pro can read native cards even when information is missing, like those LASTCLIP.txt files that come along with P2 material.  I can’t tell you how many times that file was missing and FCP would not do anything with the camera data.  Premiere Pro can read the data just fine so that’s been a huge help.

Capture Scratch

As you know the “Capture Scratch” for Adobe CS6 is a bit different than in FCP.   You have to set up the Capture Scratch yourself and we use the strategy laid out in “An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro” as our guide to set up the folders correctly.

We create a single Project Folder at the root level of our SAN for each project.  This makes it very easy for Archiving at the end of the process as we just simply drag that folder to an Archive Drive.  We have to be very vigilant and ensure that all of the media is put into the correct location BEFORE we import anything to our Project.  All of our native media and captured video go directly into the Captured Video folder while all audio goes into the Captured Audio folder.     We then add additional folders as necessary for Graphics, Exports, Color Grading, etc….

At the moment, if we need to capture from video tape, we still use FCP 7 as we’ve not had reliable VTR control from our primary edit systems.   We will be testing out tape capture via our Resolve system that has the Decklink Extreme 3D in it shortly.   We’re also receiving an UltraStudio 3D Thunderbolt box to test with our new iMac 27″ machine.

Sequences

This particular project is cut at 1080i / 29.97 and we’ve found that AVC Intra 1080i / 60 Sequence Preset gives us a perfect starting point for our Sequences in this project.  In fact, we use the AVC Intra Sequence settings as the starting point for just about all of our projects.

Most of our systems are set up with the AJA Kona boards for output to our Flanders Scientific monitors and KRK Rokit 5 audio monitors.   For the editing process, it’s basically the same as FCP though must faster since we’re cutting all native as much as we can.

Sound Design

At the end of the process, an AAF is prepared along with a quicktime reference movie for our Sound Designer who mixes the show in ProTools.    He sends us back a Stereo AIFF file for the Master timeline.

We prepare the reference quicktime file on our 12 Core Mac Pro for maximum render speed.

Color Grading

Davinci Resolve is our color grading tool of choice and at the moment, it does not support all the native resolutions we can use in Premiere Pro CS6.  So a flattened ProRes Quicktime file is created from the final timeline to be sent to Resolve.    Again, this file is created on our 12 Core Mac Pro.

Typically we can use an EDL to pre-conform that file to add all the cuts and dissolves back to the edit, but for whatever reason the EDLs being generated by our CS6 systems contain a lot of errors that are causing Resolve to crash.   So I just use Resolve’s “Scene Detect” tool which is just stupid powerful and generally it takes me between 10 and 15 minutes to prep a 30 minutes show for color grade.

At the end of the color grade process, I render out a flattened ProRes file to go back to the editor.

(Note: SpeedGrade does not support our AJA or BMD I/O devices so that’s not an option for us at this time.)

Graphics

Lower Thirds and most on screen graphics are created in Photoshop.   Full screen animated graphics are created in After Effects but without dynamic linking, I just render the self contained movies as they’re short and easy to do.

Final Output

First off, we move the Project File to one of our 12 Core Mac Pros for final render.   This is our Resolve system that also features dual nVidia graphics cards.   Renders are a little faster than realtime.

For this particular series, we need to lay out to HD tape for mastering.   Layback to tape is handled by our BlackMagic Decklink Extreme 3D card inside the Resolve system.  Before starting the tape layback, we have to ensure that our Video In Point is the very first frame in the Sequence.   For whatever reason, the BMD VTR controls don’t respect an In Point in the Sequence.   So we just have to ensure that the very beginning of the Sequence is the In Point for the Edit.

The we simply choose File > Export > Tape and it brings up the BMD VTR controls.   Enter in the In Point for the VTR itself and then click “Ok” and tape layback begins.  Unlike FCP we don’t see any sort of video playback on the computer screens, we just see it via the VTR output.

That’s pretty much it.  From there we ship out our tape.   The use of FCP 7 to capture when necessary and the flattening of the file for Resolve convolute the workflow a little bit.  Those are small tradeoffs for the tremendous time savings just editing the entire show natively.  Editors can start working on stories in minutes compared to hours when we had to Log and Transfer everything.

The Caveats

You didn’t think this was all roses, did you?

We have a nagging issue with “Media Pending” slates that interfere with the video output both in the software Program monitor and the AJA / BMD outputs.  Whenever you launch a Premiere Pro project you invariably see the yellow “Media Pending” slate appear as the software loads your media.   As the media loads up, the Media Pending slate should disappear.

For lack of a better term, it’s “sticking” across most of our systems.   Even after all of the media is loaded and Premiere Pro has finished re-linking, the yellow slates stay up on the screens preventing us from outputting video.  Play the timeline, we can hear the audio, we can see the thumbnails of the clips in the timeline, but we can’t actually see the video play out.  We are talking to both Adobe and Small Tree Communications to see where the culprit may be.

We have also experienced unexplained instability with CS6.   Systems that work perfectly for months suddenly come up with the “I’m sorry, your system has experienced a fatal error” message from the software before it quits.  No rhyme or reason.

So the move from FCP 7 is progressing very nicely but not without a few bumps here and there.   Come to think of it, you can say that about pretty much all software out there these days.

The post Continuing Tales of an FCP Switcher – CS6 workflow, for now appeared first on WalterBiscardi.com.

A continuation on my “Cautionary Tales of an FCP Switcher.”

Getting Caught Up on our Series

As mentioned at the end of the original article, we moved our PBS series over the Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 with the reasoning that if we had to flatten a file at the end of the editing process, we’d might as well use the NLE that offers the most native format support.   So far, that has absolutely proven to be true and I’m proud to say that my editing team has caught up on our production schedule.   Primarily because the software is just so doggone fast our guys are able to jump right into the edit.

Now the emphasis is on our editors to manage all the data, the software really doesn’t do any sort of media management.   We stringently follow the guidelines set in “An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro” for managing the data.  Essentially we put all the media in place on our SAN before it’s imported to the project.   Once a project is completed, we literally have one folder to archive that contains everything needed to bring the project back.

So as far as the editing is concerned, the team is very happy with how Premiere Pro is performing, even our main Avid editor is loving the new CS6 interface and trim tools.   We’re also finding significant improvements in render time of CS6 compared to CS5.5.

Spotty EDLs

As noted in the original article, Premiere Pro does not have any way to perform a Consolidate / Transcode function taking all of the native material and conforming all the footage to a single codec.  The workflow of sending a flattened Quicktime File to Resolve along with an EDL has resulted in spotty performance from Premiere Pro CS6.  Sometimes the EDL imports as expected and the file Pre-Conforms in Resolve and other times Resolve crashes when we try to access the EDL.   Conferring with BlackMagic Design, they have discovered errors in the EDLs that are causing the crashes.   I’ve sent the troubled EDLs to Adobe for review and we’ll see what they find.

Fortunately, Resolve has an amazing Scene Detect Tool so even without the EDL I can prepare a 30 minute episode for color grade in about 15 minutes or so.   And just to remind you, EDLs are the only tool we can use with a flattened QT file into Resolve 8.2, XMLs and AAFs are for timelines.

VTR Frustrations

The one area that’s frustrated us the most is the incredibly poor VTR controls of Premiere Pro.  Yes, tape is a large part of our workflow today and for the foreseeable future, particularly as we do a lot of Post on documentaries and long form projects which have a lot of archive materials.   We’ve digitized 3/4”, DVCPro HD, HDCAM, BetaSP, BetaSX, DigiBeta, DV, DVCAM, HDV and even VHS in the past year alone.  Over the next two months we’ll be digitizing over 400 tapes for three projects.   With CS 5.5 VTR control was completely useless for us.   We had hoped CS 6 would offer improvements with VTR performance, but so far, it’s been very inconsistent.

This past Friday we spent the entire day with AJA and Adobe trying to layback a show to a Panasonic AJ-HD1400 VTR.   One of our edit systems could actually control the deck and start the recording frame accurately, but it was dropping frames for unknown reasons so we couldn’t use it for mastering.   We narrowed the problem to something on the Mac HD but could not fully determine what it was.

A second edit suite with a faster computer was able to play without dropping frames, but the audio was 5 – 8 seconds ahead of video during mastering.   After a full day of testing, we were no closer to laying back to tape than when we started.

So the workflow for now is to export a self contained quicktime movie and lay back to tape using either Avid Symphony or FCP 7.     We’ll use FCP 7 for all digitizing since Premiere Pro cannot read Avid MXF files.  The good news is both AJA and Adobe are committed to making VTR control work so we’ll be ready to test again when they are.   But I am frustrated that Adobe has a professional NLE that can’t control a professional VTR reliably today.

Enter Smoke 2013

The public beta of Autodesk Smoke 2013 is upon us and I’ll be honest that I’ve not had a whole lot of time to even get started with the application.  Production deadlines and getting our Post workflow back on track after our initial problems has taken up a lot of our time.  My staff has not touched the application at all yet as they are concentrating solely on picking up speed on Premiere Pro.

Where my initial testing will be is color grading actually.   Smoke 2013 can handle all of the native formats we’re working with on our current series and it can read an AAF from Premiere Pro.   So when the time becomes available in the next few weeks, our first tests will be send episodes of our PBS series to Smoke to how the timelines get into the application and then how the Color Warper will suit our grading needs.   If we can avoid the flattening necessary to get the shows from Premiere Pro to Resolve, that will save us a few hours per episode.

Of course, I’ll be doing the testing with practice episodes after they are delivered, we’re not going to put Smoke into actual production until the workflow has been tested, tested and tested again.   It also won’t go into actual production until after the actual public release and all of the features have been finalized.

Workstations

As I’ve noted in previous blogs, I have a plan to replace our 5 primary edit workstations with 27” iMacs and lean on a few “big iron” workstations to handle all the rendering and output.   A big reason for sticking with the iMacs is Smoke 2013 and the idea that we might run it as a primary editing tool in our edit suites at some point after the the public release.    I just took delivery of our first 27” iMac and added the 32GB RAM kit from OWC and it will go right into documentary production this coming week as a test before we move forward with 5 of them.

While I originally wasn’t a fan of thunderbolt external boxes, now I’m really starting to see the advantages, particularly with software like Resolve allowing us to simply switch output devices with ease rather than having to pull cards out of a machine.   I’ve been an AJA fan for a long time, but of course, AJA products don’t work with Resolve, probably never will.  But now we can have AJA IoXTs, T-Taps for editing and a BMD thunderbolt I/O device for using Resolve.  When it’s time for color grading, just disconnect one device and connect the other.   I’m liking that concept and depending on how the iMac tests out, we might go ahed and add the other iMacs and ship out the Mac Pros.

But….. I have to say, I’m seriously rethinking the iMac plan after seeing just how flippin’ fast PC workstations are with both Adobe and Avid software.   I just might put lower cost PCs in the edit suites and just have a couple of 12 core Mac Pros for Smoke.   I’ve used Macs professionally since 1996 but it’s clear that if I want maximum performance with our current software packages, Windows is the way to go.   We can put together a pretty cheap PC with a lot of RAM and a nice nVidia card to get awesome performance from our software.  I can also re-purpose all of our AJA Kona boards since they work cross platform.

As I’ve reported recently we’re successfully using a Dell Precision PC workstation with Adobe software and I just completed a review of the ProMAX ONE Hero machine which is easily the fastest workstation I’ve ever tested.   Needless to say, I have a lot to consider in terms of workstations right now.

Avid update

My conversations with Avid are continuing and so far they do seem committed to looking at our concerns and those of other FCP editors in opening the back-end workflow if possible.   We’re going to have some folks coming in to visit the shop to better understand our workflow and where the breakdowns are happening trying to get the projects out to third party software.

I’ve also been told they’re working directly with BlackMagic Design to improve the workflow between Avid and Resolve.   Good to see Avid taking the initiative to work directly with BMD to make the workflow better for all of us.

The Tales continue…..

Our testing continues and I’ll report back soon as our Tales roll on…..

UPDATE 6/25 – VTR Success!

A few folks commented to me that BlackMagic Design cards were working good with Premiere Pro CS6 so this morning I loaded up the CS6 Trial on our Resolve workstation.  12 Core Mac Pro, BMD Decklink Extreme 3D card and voila, we had full tape control.  It wasn’t perfect by any means, it locked up a few times, audio was out of sync one time, but we were able to successfully lay back an episode of our series to tape.   It was frame accurate 8 out of 10 tries so that’s progress.

The only annoyance is that the BMD VTR controls don’t respect the Timeline In Point.  In our case we always set up the timelines to start at 00:58:00:02 with Bars at 00:59:00:02 and show start at 01:00:00:00.   Generally we set our In Point on the timeline to either 00:58:40:00 or 00:59:00:02 depending on how much black we’ve laid down on our master tape.

With the BlackMagic VTR control, it always starts the timeline at the head.   So I just had to chop off everything at the head making the start of the timeline 00:59:00:02 and made the edit on the VTR at the same point.   Worked perfectly 8 out of the 10 times.

I’ve reported our results back to AJA and Adobe so maybe they can figure out where the problems lie with the Kona boards.   We’re still awaiting our IoXT to do the same test on the iMac.

Workstation Update!

The new 27″ iMac was in production all day today and the editor reported it was outstanding all day.  VERY fast compared to the Quad Core she had been editing with for a week, no crashes, no hiccups, no anything.   Just a very fast workstation.   First day on the job was a good one!

The post Continuing Tales of an FCP Switcher appeared first on WalterBiscardi.com.

Software has gotten to the point where pretty much any NLE tool on the market is now accessible and the Return On Investment can be had in a single job.   So while I wouldn’t call the software “disposable” I would certainly call it affordable and wise to load up the toolbox while the gettin’ is good.

We’re fortunate to be in a position where we’ve been able to test both Adobe and Avid products for a while now.   Adobe has made tremendous strides forward with CS6 but there are still areas that we would like to see addressed, particularly under the hood and some core edit functions, so I’m looking ahead to 2013 for a potential more widespread rollout of Premiere Pro in our workflow.   Of course, we had no idea Autodesk was going to drop this new, more edit friendly, version of Smoke on us and I’m already giving them feedback on where I’d like that product to go in the next 12 months.   Depending on where they go, I can also see a more widespread rollout of Smoke in our workflow in 2013.

But this is 2012 and I’m not going to stand still on Final Cut Pro 7 and just wait to see where both products are next year.    That’s just another year of using an old, increasingly slower edit workflow and right now, Final Cut Pro X doesn’t work for us.  Right now, today, Avid works for our broadcast editorial needs and so right now, that’s the tool I invested in and our editors are quite happy with the Symphony packages that have been installed across the facility this week.  At $999 each they will pay for themselves in one episode of our current series.  They were supposed to be Media Composers, but I saved $2500 across the 5 licenses buying Symphonies instead with that incredible cross-grade offer.   When we need more licenses of the product this year, they will be Media Composers moving forward because they won’t be cross-grades any longer.

So stop agonizing and trying to pick “that perfect NLE” that will serve you today and for the next three years because quite honestly things are changing quite rapidly.   In fact you shouldn’t even have just one NLE on your system.   At the very least every single editor should have Premiere Pro and Avid on your systems so you can work with anyone out there.   You’re also going to find that each tool is better suited for some tasks.   Premiere Pro’s core strength is the “any format native editing” and the interchange with its entire suite.    Avid’s core strength is the tremendous media management for large products and fast keyboard based editing.  Your skill set will translate quite nicely between Avid and Premiere Pro so you should be able to move pretty easily between the two apps.   Smoke 2013 was designed to be used by Avid and Premiere Pro editors so that should be fairly easy as well.

Heck keep in mind you might not even be on the same hardware platform next year.   So many traditional Apple hardware users are discovering that PC workstations are as good as and oftentimes better than their Mac counterparts.

So look at your needs today, right now.   What tool(s) do you need, or want,  to get your work done for the next 12 months?  Plan for that.   Next year if something else comes along and meets your needs better, don’t gripe that your current tool isn’t as good, hasn’t kept up, blah blah blah.   Just get the new tool added to your toolbox and keep on keepin’ on.

In the long run, a suite of tools and expanding your toolset knowledge is going to benefit you better than just hanging onto something familiar because it’s something you’ve used for a year.  Or longer.     My two cents.

The post Forget the Future, Plan for Now. appeared first on WalterBiscardi.com.

Well NAB 2012 definitely validated that idea.   iMacs dominated the show floor in South Hall running just about every software imagineable.   Autodesk made the iMac the center of their Smoke 2013 roll-out with the software running incredibly fast on that system.   With the advent of super fast RAIDs via Thunderbolt connections, there’s not a whole lot you can’t edit on an iMac.

Then AJA delivered literally what I asked for a few weeks ago.  A simple Thunderbolt to SDI adapter to allow quality video reference to our Flanders Scientific monitors.   The T-Tap gives us both SDI and HDMI output so I can feed the Flanders and Plasma Screen simultaneously.

This is awesome because I don’t need an I/O device for all of my iMacs at all times.   In my case, I’ll start out with 5 iMacs and what I’ll do is pick up two AJA IoXT’s and three T-Taps.   They both run off the same drivers so we can literally just swap the devices around so if you need input, you take the IoXT and hand off the T-Tap.

Word is that Windows machines will start rolling out with Thunderbolt anytime now so these devices will be able to swap right around between all the machines.

This is just so remarkable where we’ve gone in just one year.   Last year I was pining for Apple to hurry up and get some really nice new Mac Pros out.   Now I’m on the cusp of selling off 5 of our Mac Pros and replacing them with iMacs to run Avid Symphony through Autodesk Smoke 2013.

This really HAS been a long strange year…..   But I like it!

The post iMacs to replace desktops, moving closer. appeared first on WalterBiscardi.com.

Opening Bell Winner

In South Hall it appears that BlackMagic Design kicked off the day in high frenzy thanks to the announcement of their Digital Cinema Camera, a 2.5k camera that retails for $2995 and includes Davinci Resolve and the UltraScope.   As one person as the Media Motion Ball commented tonight, “Why would you buy Resolve?   Just buy the camera for a little more and get Resolve included.”  Honestly not a bad idea.

Speaking of Resolve, that rolled out with a new 9.0 interface that got rave reviews from all those I talked to.   Around 1pm I got the opportunity to have my annual chat with BMD’s founder Grant Petty.   Our annual chat is actually one of the high points for me each year at NAB and I’m really thankful we had the opportunity today with all the madness around that camera.

Of course I had to ask, “why in the world would you want to enter the camera market when it’s so saturated?”  As a Post Production artist, I’m honestly getting sick and tired of 20 new cameras with 15 new formats each year and then we have to figure out how to make those codecs work in Post.  That’s precisely what Grant was thinking too when he made this thing.   See he was thinking backwards designing a low cost, high quality image camera that would be friendly on the Post side.      Literally by thinking of the codecs first (ProRes / DNxHD) that are ready to edit, then working on a happy medium between high quality image and price point.   He settled on 2.5k image size because that scales down to standard HD beautifully.    The idea is really to push the camera manufacturers off the idea that a high quality image always has to cost high dollar and always has to include some sort of codec that easier for the camera manufacturers than the Post process.   I have to say, that’s a very clever idea.   The camera itself also has a cool retro feel to it, reminding me of an classic Polaroid camera from the outside. I liked it.

On Resolve he’s quite proud of his design team for really re-working the interface to make it more accessible.   On Teranex, I can see he’s been quite hands on with making design changes to their products to make them more elegant and user friendly.  He’s been quite impressed with the entire engineering team on how quickly they are progressing on the changes.   The Teranex product line was a complete stroke of genius on his part to roll into the company.   Thunderbolt is definitely huge with a whole line of UltraStudio variations

It’s incredible to see where he’s taken the company from its humble beginnings with capture cards into a company that has inroads into almost all areas of production and post.   We actually had to laugh because all these years later, he’s still doing the same thing with the UltraStudios and such.  Still figuring out better ways to let the end user have a good I/O experience.    Definitely swing by and check out this booth as there are just too many products to mention.

Small Tree Communications

Finally got the chance to see the long awaited “Titanium” all in one shared storage solution from Small Tree as I worked in that booth all day.   This is a single box that includes the computer, the storage and ethernet ports for shared storage.  In other words, it does away with the Computer and Ethernet Switch and brings it all into a single box.  It’s available in 16 and 8 drive configurations and easily expandable.   It’s kick ass to say the least.

In addition, they were showing some nice Shared Ethernet over Thunderbolt with two thunderbolt expansion chassis.   Small Tree 10gig Ethernet cards inside expansion chassis connected to either an iMac or a MacBook Pro allowing for higher speed editing such as uncompressed HD.   Very cool.  I’ll be there again most of the day Tuesday, so come on by and say hello!

AJA 

At the Media Motion Ball AJA showed off the product I actually asked for two weeks ago and was greeted with a “we’ll consider that.”   The T-Tap thunderbolt to video output for just $249.   SDI and HDMI output via thunderbolt.   Very simply output only device for any situation where you don’t need ingest, just output.   In my case as I develop my new infrastructure around iMacs, I honestly don’t need I/O on every system all the time.   So for 5 edit suites, I’ll purchase two Io XT’s and three T-Taps.   If someone needs to ingest, just move the IoXT into that room and put the T-Tap into the other room.  So everyone is always outputting to the monitors, and I can save some money by not installing ingest products where they are not needed all the time.

Also some nice additions to the Ki Pro lineup with the Ki Pro Rack with dual record hard drives and the Ki Pro Quad which can record 4k in the field.   Definitely a booth worth seeking out.

Editing Platforms

From all accounts the Adobe, Autodesk and Avid booths were jammin’ all day.  Scores of folks came down to the Small Tree booth after watching demos of Autodesk Smoke truly blown away by what they saw.   “It lives up to the hype” “You were right” were the two comments I heard the most all day.  Biggest questions raised were whether Autodesk will port Smoke 2013 to Windows and when will they start supporting the rest of the installed 3rd party infrastructure like BlackMagic and Matrox.   Definitely hoping that’s forthcoming as that will open the product up to the entire FCP installed ecosystem.   Will be making an appearance on the Autodesk stage Tuesday at 2:30pm with Evan Schechtman.  You can watch it stream here, it should be most amusing:

Adobe was met with a lot of very positive response by many who came by.  Some had the same questions we raised during the CS6 testing, but overall, it’s a major step forward from the Adobe team.  I got a lot of folks asking if should have waited until we saw CS6 before making the decision to switch to Avid, but as we had been testing CS6 for months, our decision was based on CS6 vs. Avid MC6.   I’ll discuss in more detail next week.

Avid Symphony is my pick for “Deal of the Show.”   How can you not benefit from purchasing this for your facility at just a $999 cross-grade special?   And this is VERY limited so don’t wait too long.  I firmly believe that any editor today should have both Avid and the Adobe suite on their editing system.

The elephant in the room that in Final Cut Pro X is having mostly a negative reaction among those I spoke to both on the show floor and tonight at the Media Motion Ball.   Quite honestly most professional editors I spoke to are just “done with Apple.”   Apple released exactly the product they wanted to a year ago, with a workflow that suited them with just enough features that suited them.   One year later, the announcements today were greeted with, “that’s not a major release, just Apple trying to put back enough features to appease professional editors.”   The general sense is folks are just tired of Apple’s games.     There’s also a large segment that is tired of the “fanboys” who have the ulterior motive of needing a healthy Final Cut Pro X user base to make money for their own product lines.   Particularly from those who don’t actually edit for a living

Now I said the response has been “mostly negative.”   One set of folks said they were willing to give Apple a second chance based on what they are seeing and hearing from Apple.    I definitely plan to stay in touch with them to see how they move forward as they are a rather large installation and it’ll be interesting to see if they make it work.    And of course in our Atlanta Cutters group, we’re trying to get the folks from TNT’s “Leverage” to come in and show us their X workflow for that original series.

It’s been so interesting to watch how a product that was so dominant is now hardly mentioned while Avid, Autodesk and Adobe reap the windfall of thousands up thousands of seats switching not only over to their products, but folks like me now considering PC machines to replace existing Mac Pros.

Media Motion Ball

As usual an excellent event where I got to say hello to so many folks I know and meet so many for the first time.   Had some audio issues where the sound system was very quiet and the audience was quite loud.  Made for difficulty hearing the presenters, particularly in the early part of the event.   But as usual, the food was excellent, the company at our table was excellent and new Red Giant Films short was hilarious.

This is definitely a “family reunion” type of event for me getting to see Scott Simmons, Shane Ross, Alexis Van Hurkman, Robbie Carmen, Dan Berube, Kevin Monahan and so many others.  Then meeting fellow “Cows” like Walter Soyka and Patrick Inhofer to put the faces with the names.

Had a great time chatting with the folks from BlackMagic Design and Flanders Scientific along with the Avid folks.   Since this is a smaller event, you can really get one on one time with these folks and ask a lot of questions, or get in a good joke.

This remains my favorite event at NAB and you really should sign up early next year as it will sell out since it’s a much smaller event than the big SuperMeet.

Adobe Event

A very nice event, another “reunion of sorts” seeing folks I haven’t seen in a year and met up with some great folks from A Frame.   Cloud based workflow for television and film that’s already been used for some major projects.  I definitely intend to check them out in the North Hall to see how all of this works as this may be a great workflow for some original series and documentary projects we have coming up.   They have a very editorial driven product.

And with that, I’m going to wrap it up.  It’s almost 1am local time and I have to be up early again tomorrow to hit work the booth.   Hopefully this wasn’t too rambling…..

The post NAB 2012 Notes and Musings from Day One appeared first on WalterBiscardi.com.

If you want to find me to say hello, at will be in Booth SL7425 with Small Tree Communications on Monday and Tuesday. Super cool, nerdy geeky guys who make that awesome Ethernet based shared storage system we’ve been using for years.

So in no particular order, here’s some things you might find of interest at this year’s NAB Show. Word of warning, Autodesk and Adobe are right next to each other so expect huge jams of people in that area, particularly Monday / Tuesday.

Creative COW, Booth SL13317. If it were not for the Cow I would not have had the opportunity to meet so many of you through the years on the many incredible forums of creativecow.net. Stop by and say hello, or maybe a moooo to the best creative media resource on the planet.

Small Tree Communications, Booth SL7425. You’ve heard me tout their ethernet based storage for years that has allowed us to connect Mac Pros, Laptops and iMacs to the 48 TB media array. We’ve had up to 12 computers hitting the storage at one time playing back ProRes 720 and 1080 HD. This year they are rolling out Titanium which is the next step forward in the concept. This is going to be great for both remote and facility based production houses.

Autodesk, Booth SL3315. The mantra “Smoke is Changing” is absolutely correct. It’s obvious the design team has spent a lot of time and effort to create this new version that is a complete game changer. I have not been this excited about new software in a very very long time. Autodesk promises a more open and inviting booth this year too so stop by and give the new Smoke a spin.

Avid, Booth SU902. You already know that Symphony is $995 for a cross grade. If you haven’t seen Avid in a while, stop by and see why this is by far the best deal that will come out of NAB this year. I am installing multiple Symphony seats in my shop next week as we have transitions our facility to a more Avid centric workflow.

Adobe Systems, Booth SL2624. The brand new Creative Suite 6 really is a major improvement by the Adobe team. As someone that was able to test the product line, I can tell you that across the board everything has been upgraded. SpeedGrade has been brought to the product family adding the only thing that was missing from the lineup, a color finishing tool.

Flanders Scientific, Booth SL13707. Hands down THE best reference monitors I have ever used. Head to head against much more expensive monitors, I take these every time and we have 7 of them in our shop. Check out the 2461W when you go. Outstanding tech support and service after the sale. Also one of the nicest companies you will ever do business with.

AJA Video Systems. Booth SL3305. If you follow me you know I run their Kona boards throughout the shop, but am eyeing their Thunderbolt based IoXT to replace them. They are definitely a leader in video technology (i/o boards, converters, test generators, to name a few) and watch for some cool new products this year. You should also find Avid, Adobe and Autodesk products running in this booth so you can see first hand how those products interact with the AJA hardware.

BlackMagic Design, Booth SL220. If you somehow miss this gargantuan booth at the entrance to South Hall, you might want to get your eyes checked. If they follow suit from last year, they actually have one of the most accessible and easy to approach booths in the entire show and very approachable. The Resolve and those beautiful control panels are still the star of the booth for me, but BMD offers so much today for the Post and Production professional, you really need to look through this entire booth to make sure you see everything.

FilmLight, Booth SL2420. Baselight color grading plug in for Avid for under $1000. Need I say more?

Plug In Pavilion, Booth SL2024. Multiple plug in vendors including Red Giant Software and others with really cool toys for all NLEs and effects software.

AlterMedia, Booth SL7410. The makers of StudioSuite which is a great production and facility management tool that fits on top of FileMaker Pro. I get a lot of questions on how to manage the facility and this has really fit the bill for us the past few years. VERY in depth and we barely use everything that its capable of. One of the most reasonably priced options I’ve come across too.

Dell / NVidia, Booth 9215. If you follow my blog you know that I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the performance of the Dell Precision T5500 workstation running Adobe and Avid. Some Dell workstations will be on display in the NVidia Booth, so check them out for yourself along with all those NVidia products you keep reading about.

CRU Dataport, Booth SL10225. You may not know their name but they purchased WeibeTech a few years ago and those are the excellent trayless SATA drive units we use both for RAIDs and our data archiving. We run the RTX 200 and 400 in our shop.

ProMax Systems, Booth 5424. One of the most respected VARs in the country has introduced one of the most beastly editing workstations I’ve read about. The ProMax One looks like the ultimate post production box. I’ll be testing one after NAB.

Canon, Booth C4325. I’ve never wanted to purchase a camera for my company until I saw the C300. And of course they just keep announcing even more digital goodness in the lead up to NAB.

ATTO Technology, Booth SL6320. Makers of host bus adapters that connect to our high speed media arrays. Watch for thunderbolt products this year.

Cache-A Corp, Booth SL10508. Serious archive solutions to protect your data.

ArtBeats, Booth SL5620. Excellent stock footage and more. Quite honestly they keep adding so much stuff I can’t keep up with it all. Really nice folks too.

Pond 5, Booth SL7409. Another excellent source of stock footage.

Hewlett Packard, Booth N5106. Their Z800 is the machine most of my colleagues recommended to me for Post production.

CineBags, Booth C7641. Excellent production bags to protect your gear.

CineToys, Booth 4837. Cool, nerdy stuff for your camera shoots.

Da-Lite Screen Company, Booth SL4920. If you have a projector in your shop, these screens really do make a difference. We have a 7 footer in our screening room.

KB Covers, Booth SL8619. Keyboard skins with shortcuts for multiple editing platforms.

Bella Corp, Booth SL2812. Keyboards, skins and stickers for multiple editing platforms.

GoPro, Booth C3628. Mini cameras.

Contour, Booth C10045. My favorite mini cameras. They’re tube style, not boxy.

The post Things to see at NAB 2012 appeared first on WalterBiscardi.com.

I left the Dell running all Monday night and it finally downloaded the Adobe Production Premium CS 5.5 package.  Installation went fine, then installation of the AJA Kona LHi drivers and the AJA Adobe CS 5.5 plug-in went perfectly fine.

After all installations everything appeared to work just fine, we had image from the system to our Flanders Scientific monitor via the Kona LHi.  And that was about the extent of it for today.   A new television pilot is occupying my days right now so as soon as I get that done, I’ll get busy with the Dell.

However, there IS a new wrinkle to our testing.  I was approached by another company to test out a fully customized Windows system.   We’re working out the details over the next couple of weeks and once everything is finalized, I’ll update with the details.   Will be nice to have two Windows systems to compare and contrast.

That’s it for now, short update!   More testing soon!

The post It’s not a Mac – Windows Testing Part 2A appeared first on WalterBiscardi.com.