As it turns out, the internet is a great way to restart communications when it seems to be all but broken down. 

Less than 24 hours after my “Boycott G-Tech” post on SuiteTake.com, I received several calls from executives at both G-Technology as well as Hitachi. The calls came in while I was editing so they went to voice mail, but when I had a chance to finally call one of them back I was pleasantly surprised that the tone of the conversation was very constructive and apologetic.

At this point I’ve had a few phone calls with Todd Etherton, who is the Director of World Wide Customer Support at Hitachi. The very first thing he said was that they were very sorry for the experience that I had with their tech support team, and that they agreed that something needed to be changed. We talked for about 10 minutes and then I asked him to call me back when they had a plan actually in place so that I could talk about it on the blog (instead of speculate about what they might do). 

The next morning (still less than 48 hours since my post hit) I get another call (again while I’m editing) and I call him back in the evening on my way home. Todd tells me that in response to my blog post, they have made a few significant changes that will alleviate a repeat experience like the one that I had. 

First, everyone at G-Tech that is in the position of receiving a tech support or customer support call is being brought up to speed on the proper way to handle out of warranty big box units, like the G-Speed XL. Clearly there was not much of a plan before, so people really were not sure what the policy was. That’s no longer the case (or will not be in the very near future). He also agreed that instead of a customer support tech parsing out information one little thing at a time, more information should be offered by the tech right up front, knowing that I still need to get my unit fixed. This would have cut the exchanges down to only a couple of emails and saved both of us a lot of time. 

The second (and more major) change is that G-Technology is contracting with another company to make all necessary parts for the G-Speed and G-Speed XL units available for purchase to customers directly who are out of warranty. 

The way it will work in the near future is like this:

Let’s say you have a bad power supply, or a fan that stops working. You call G-Tech and find out that your unit is out of warranty, so they can’t cover the repair under the warranty agreement. However, they will give you the contact information of the company that will sell you the parts you need directly (this info will also be available on their website). They are close to having a final agreement with a partner that will help them facilitate this, and already have a tentative agreement with the parts manufacturer to allow them to sell the parts for G-Tech products directly to this other vendor. While I personally would prefer to deal just with G-Tech directly and not have to get another company involved, at least it’s a solution that works. I am no longer left stranded with a broken unit. 

As you might imagine, this sort of thing can not happen over night. It involves contract details to be worked out and I’m sure legal approval from many parties. So in the mean time, G-Tech has changed its “out of warranty” policy and has an updated statement on their website. 

Basically, if you have a problem – give them a call and chances are very good they are going to take care of you. They plan to do this until they have finished executing their plan to have a 3^rd party company help out. 

So, all is all that ends well? 

It’s too early to say. I will admit I was very impressed with how Todd handled the conversation and the problem, and was very open and honest with not only what they were doing, but the challenges involved. But I could tell that he and the company were both surprised and embarrassed about the experience that I had, and they did not want anybody else to have the same issue. They took it very seriously and were moving fast to make whatever changes needed to be made. I got the impression from Todd as well as others that had left voice mail messages, that they were as surprised as I was. 

In the longer term, time will tell if this was a one-time issue or a sign of things to come. I always have to balance the fact that G-Tech of today is not the exact same G-Tech as before, given then have been purchased twice, and now that Western Digital is purchasing Hitachi, it will be the third time. That’s 3x removed from the original company and management structure, and I know from having lived through that type of experience that things can get very messy, and often do.  

I will give them the benefit of the doubt for now, and let the chips fall where they may over the next several years. 

In my continuing effort to find a solid, reliable and affordable solution for long term archival of our editing projects, I have spent the last 12 months testing and creating a workflow for yet another product solution. Unlike when I reviewed the Cache~a a few years back (the positive review since removed from the site), I decided to spend a lot more time really running it through the paces. I learned my lesson the hard way with the Prime Cache and made changes to my review process.

The product that I’m reviewing this time is the “Edit Bay Production Desktop” software and hardware package from the Tolis Group. It has turned out to be quite the winner, and I’m excited to share our experience with it. While they do offer several different solutions of hardware/software or software only solutions (you provide the hardware), I’m going to focus on this one all in one package. It’s my feeling that this is the best fit for the small to medium sized post house with 1-5 workstations. To see some of their offerings, check out their website.

http://www.tolisgroup.com

What’s Included – Installation

What I liked about the “Edit Bay Production Desktop” package right from the onset was that it was a complete solution for your Mac. You provide a G5 tower, Xserve or MacPro computer with a open PCIe slot (must be a 8x slot), and they provide you with everything else.

In your open PCIe slot you will install a SAS host bus adaptor. The card they provide is the ATTO ExpressSAS H680, and it was as easy to install as a video card. It’s as simple as removing the side panel of your tower and adding the card to your open slot.

(Above is the Expansion Slot Utility that is on most, but not all Power Macs. Because the system we have the card installed on (a quad G5) does not support this utility, I took this snap from a different computer in the office just to show the utility. So don’t be surprised that in this shot the ATTO card is not listed. This utility allows you to configure the speed of your slots by dividing up the bandwidth in whichever way best suits your setup)

Once booted up, you install a driver for the ATTO card from the included CD, reboot again and the card is ready for use.

After that, turn the machine off and attach the LTO drive. Depending on the package that you choose, you will receive either a LTO-4 or LTO-5 drive. Both are HP drives in a external case. We have the LTO-5 drive.

With the LTO drive attached and the machine booted up, install the BRU Producer Edition software (from here on referred to as BRU PE) . This is really the heart of the product and is written for OSX specifically. Installation is as easy as mounting the included CD ROM or downloaded .dmg disk image and running the installer. Now you’re ready to start.

Hardware Details

As mentioned, the LTO drive is a Hewlett Packard unit inside of a external case, and has a single SAS connector. The case is nothing special, and if anything is a bit on the ugly side. In this case, form did not follow function, it just never showed up to the party. It’s not a big deal given that the unit will be located out of sight in most instances, but it’s still worth noting.

But there is one thing I really dislike about the case. It is noisy. I don’t have any sound measuring equipment, but being the nerd that I am I can tell you this unit is LOUD when it’s on. Too loud if you ask me. And I’m not talking about when the tape is shuttling all over the place (it’s even louder then), I’m saying just when you flip on the power button. I don’t think any attempt was made what so ever to make this thing quite, and it is far too loud to have in a edit suite while you’re working. Even if you’re not doing sound editing, it will drive you insane after awhile. We DO have it in a edit suite, but only run the backups after hours because of the noise it creates. When I return in the morning and open the edit suite door, it sounds like I’m entering a machine room that’s full of all kinds of hardware fans.

I asked Tollis about this, and they said they didn’t consider this to be a noisy unit. I disagree, especially when you’re selling it as a “Edit Bay” product. There’s nothing physically wrong with the unit, it’s not as if a fan is broken, so it’s just the way it was designed. We plan to relocate ours into a machine room soon with all of the other noisy gear.

Our Setup

It’s important to note that all of our backups are done over gigabit ethernet. What that means is that we can keep the LTO-5 software and hardware on a central machine, but still access every machine in the office to do backups. In our case, we only have 2 places that the editing projects and media are stored, but neither of those are on the local machine running BRU PE.

As shown in the diagram, we have multiple machines accessing 2 main media drives, and a G5 that we use exclusively for BRU PE.

Software Overview

Having used a few different backup programs over the years, I can tell you that backup software (regardless of backup media type) falls into two categories. There is the really full featured software that was well thought out and does virtually everything you need, but is somewhat complicated to learn and use. And in the other camp you have the software that’s very easy and intuitive to use, but falls short of doing anything beyond the most basic tasks and usually lacks some critical features. I think this is the first time I’ve used a piece of backup software that straddle both camps nicely.

If there’s one thing that hits you when you first start using BRU PE, it’s that it’s so simple it’s almost disturbingly easy to use. I kept thinking I must be missing something, or maybe I was doing something wrong and just didn’t know it yet. But that was not the case.

Here are the general steps to creating a backup in its most basic form.

1. Launch the program.
2. Drag and drop full volumes, folders or individual files from direct attached or network mounted machines into the main window
3. Click on the “Create Archive” button.
4. Go have lunch and see a movie.

Seriously, it’s THAT EASY. That’s not to say that there are not more options that you could choose, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. This in itself is proof that just as their promotional information points out, you can train the most junior level of your staff to do this in just a few seconds. Even after using the Cache~a product (the Prime Cache) for nearly 2 years, I never felt like I had a good handle on how it worked or even what a good workflow was. Who knew that well thought out, well designed and properly executed software could be both powerful and easy to use!?

If you do nothing more than click on the “create archive” button, here is what will happen.

First, the software will scan the files that you dragged to the window and display a estimated size of the final archive. This is handy to make sure your final archive is not larger than the media you are putting it on (although you can span tapes, so that in itself is not a big deal).

If you do nothing, this dialog will go away after 30 seconds and it will start the archiving process. Obviously, how long it takes has everything to do with the amount of data you’re backing up, but generally speaking it’s very fast. There is a very nice, good looking progress window that provides all kind of useful information.

Once the archive has been created, the software will then automatically verify the archive. This is the process of comparing the data on the hard drive to the data on the tape and making sure everything matches perfectly. What’s interesting is that this is done a a 2k level, checking and comparing at 2k intervals. While this adds a bit more to the final archive size, what you get in trade is a much more robust ability to catch errors during the backup and recover from them later should you have any on the tape.

After the verify is done, a summary is displayed with several reporting options.

In addition to doing full backups, BRU PE also handles both differential and incremental backups, giving you flexibility on how you want to handle your archives. This comes in most handy if you’re doing regular scheduled backups of full systems and don’t want to backup everything all the time.

That’s the very simple overview of how it works. In a later section I’ll go into more detail of how we use the unit and what our post-production work flow is.

TAR vs BRU Format

It’s probably a good idea to compare the BRU archive format to what many would consider the long standard of tape backup, TAR.

The majority of tape backup systems are based on the long standing TAR format. TAR has been around for many years and is a cross platform standard for tape backups. I’m generally in favor of open standards vs closed standards (but don’t try to take any of my iOS devices from me!). There is comfort in knowing a technology does not reside with a single company. But that’s not the whole picture to consider, or even the most important when it comes to creating backups.

As The Tolis Group tells the story, the BRU format was created because of the shortcomings of the very old unix based TAR format (TApe Archive). While the TAR format has been around for many years and is widely used and accepted, that doesn’t come without flaws. Just a few of the shortcomings include lack of Checksum-based Verification, Recognition of Media Errors During Backup and the ability to recover from corrupted media. The BRU format was designed to fill in the gaps of TAR and to provide new modern features that make backups more robust and reliable.

While this review is of the Mac version of BRU PE, the fact is that if you create a backup tape on a Mac system, you can later restore it on any other supported system, using any other version of the BRU software. For example, you can take your OSX created archive and with the proper software and the catalog file, restore it using BRU Server for Windows or BRU Workstation on Oracle/Sun Solaris.

One thing that BRU handles very well, is metadata on your files. Unlike so many other backup systems we’ve tried (especially the Cache~a device) all of the important metadata is included as part of your backup and restore process. For example, file attributes such as ownership, permissions, creation and modification dates are all retained through the backup and restore process. Even hard and symbolic links are reproduced with all of their attributes intact.

If you’re interested in knowing more, BRU has a great white paper on their website that explains the significant differences.

Our Workflow

One of the most important parts of any backup plan is having a good workflow. You need a way to communicate when a project is done, when it’s prepped and ready to be archived, when the archive is complete and verified and when it’s OK to delete the media and free up drive space. It’s also a good idea to keep track of what’s on each tape as well with a cataloging system. After many revisions and improvements to our workflow, we finally have what I would consider a solid plan in place. That’s what I will describe here. While the details I describe here are very specific to our setup, you should easily be able to adapt it to your operation, even if you’re not using BRU or a LTO backup system.

Finder Organization

A good foundation starts in the finder. Our projects are either ACTIVE projects, or COMPLETED projects. By default, if a project is not complete it keeps the ACTIVE project status until it is complete. This can be anywhere from a few months to over a year in some cases (although that’s rare).

At Edit Creations we have 3 main edit suites, and they share two different Fibre RAID systems. We have what I have always called a semi-poor mans shared drive system. The two MacPros we have are attached directly to their own dedicated RAID systems over 4-gig fiber. But those dedicated drives are shared over Gigabit Ethernet with each other, and a MacBook Pro laptop edit system. Overall, it works out great. It allows us to open and edit with any project, in any of the 3 rooms, and have access to everything – even the render files. The MacBook Pro has no projects stored locally, and instead uses both of the RAID drives from the two MacPro Systems. This works out great because we can use a small SSD drive in the Laptop to speed it up while using the RAID drives for all of the heavy storage.

On each of the RAID drives, we have a series of folders.

Active projects are stored in a single folder, and are organized by job number. We follow a rigid folder structure that’s the same starting point for every job.

If a project is complete, it’s moved to the “Project Archive” on the same RAID drive that it’s currently located. There are 3 different phases of a project that is considered complete.

1) Needs Media Managing

2) Ready to Archive

3) Ready to Delete

Here’s how each of those stages are handled.

Needs Media Managing

About once a month I look over all of the projects listed in the “Active Projects” folder, and I have each editor do the same thing. While multiple editors may work on the same project, there’s almost always one person that’s considered the lead editor on a job and is ultimately responsible for the job.

As the projects are reviewed, projects that are considered complete are highlighted in the finder using the YELLOW label. Once done reviewing the active projects folder, all of the projects marked in YELLOW are moved to the stage 1 folder of the project archive folder – Needs Media Managing.

Each of the projects located in this folder now need the final sequences in the edit folder media managed so that all of the media used in the final edited sequences is included inside of the project folder. The main goal at this point is to create an archived project that can be opened at a later date and edited if needed. All of this media needs to be consolidated into the project folder, not the capture scratch folder.

Again, since we use a template driven work flow, there is always a bin in every FCP project called “Edit”. During the process of archiving, everything inside of the edit bin is media managed and consolidated into the project folder, so that everything needed to open that job is in a single location.

In the example shown here, there were several sequences for this single project (I shutter to think how I would have to handle this in FCPx). There were many versions of this final video for different regions, and in different languages. I want to have each and every final sequence in a form that allows me to easily make revisions should I need to in the future.

With the “Edit” bin selected, I select Media Manager and am presented with a window of options that help me decide how I want to handle the media for these sequences. Because I don’t want to save absolutely everything, I need to optimize the settings here.

I choose to COPY the media from these sequences, but also choose to discard any media that was not used in the final sequences. This alone saves a ton of space on most projects. While you can add handles that will give you some wiggle room on each shot, I almost always choose not to do this. I rarely need it, and over time it’s just wasted space on the backup tape unless you really need it.

The location of the archived media is set to the “Project Archive” folder inside of the current project folder, and the new FCP project file that it creates is saved in the FCP Project folder with the exact same name, but with “PA” appended to the end (we always use “PA” to represent Project Archive”.

Once this process is complete, the folder is then turned orange in the finder and moved into the second folder labeled “Ready to Archive”.

Ready to Archive

Once enough projects are moved to the “Ready To Archive” folder, they are organized into subfolders. Each of the subfolders is named with the name of the LTO tape it will be going on, and projects are added and subtracted until the folder size is around 1.2 TB. This is the approximate size that we know will fill a LTO-5 tape, but still leave a bit or breathing space. While we could avoid the subfolder process and do all of the organization inside of the BRU PE software, we have found over time that it’s just more flexible to work it all out in advance, and then just copy that single “pre weighed” folder to the LTO tape.

With the folder organized and the proper size, we’re ready to archive it.

Using BRU

Creating an archive is so simple, you have to wonder how other companies like Cache~a have missed the mark by so much. At its most basic, it’s a drag and drop function. At its most complex, you have some additional options and navigation, but it’s still stupid simple. Let’s take a look at the easy option first – what BRU calls QuickArchive View.

QuickArchive View

When you first launch BRU PE you are asked for an administrator password for that machine. This is not for security purposes or access control, but instead to allow BRU PE to properly restore files with the correct permissions/metadata, and to the location of your choosing. As the notice on the screen says, you can still operate the software without it, but you may have read/write issues later.

Once open, you’re presented with a very simple mac like interface. In fact, the only way to get files loaded into the window is by doing a drag and drop. As mentioned earlier, we pre-prep our folders with the jobs we need to archive, and make sure that folder will fit onto the tape that we have. This is especially helpful if we’re trying to top off a tape.

Please note that this review was written on and off over several months, so as a result some of the continuing action screen shots will not match up. For example, the folder we prepared was for Archive 85, but the one I’m showing in this example is Archive 88.

As you can see, there are only a few checkboxes, and most are self explanatory. At this point it’s as simple as dragging our folder onto the file window and releasing the mouse.

While it has defaulted to “Append Archive”, which will continue to add to a previous archive tape that still has room on it, in this case I’m going to be using a new tape, so it will actually end up being a overwrite.

If you had the “provide job metadata information” box checked, this screen will appear allowing you to add other details about the archive. In general, we don’t actually use this feature since we have a very rich index of everything we archive though CDFinder (covered shortly).

One nice feature that I like is the preview mode. Before it starts writing to a tape, it gives you an estimate as to how much space you will need on the tape. This will help you catch problems prior to spending hours of backup time, only to find out you were 500 megs short of space on the tape. If you don’t respond to the estimate, it will continue with the archive after 30 seconds automatically.

Now that the archive is running, you’re presented with a very satisfying information screen that shows the progress, what file it’s currently working on and a time estimate. I say satisfying because watching how fast some of the files are getting backed up gives me a nice warm feeling inside.

Once the operation is complete, you’re presented with the final screen that gives you a few different options. This is one of the best features of the software.

First, you can create what BRU PE calls a “BRUsetta Stone CD”, that contains the tape catalog, metadata and a copy of the BRU PE software. This is great if you need to restore that tape using another machine, because it includes everything you will need to get the job done.

The second option is to export the catalog file for backup, or to move the tape to another system for restore (assuming that other system already has the software installed).

The third option (the one that we use) is to print the details of the job, including every file that was backed up, error messages (if any) and backup and verification information. We don’t print it out to paper, we just print to a PDF and keep it stored on the server for reference should we ever need it. A typical backup job for us creates a report that’s often over 100 pages long, so if you really do send it to a printer, make sure to have a few extra reams of paper standing by.

The one thing that we always verify in the report is that there were no errors during backup or verification. As long as both of those numbers are “0”, the backup is considered solid and we pop the tape and add it to the shelf.

We also setup the BRU PE software to send a email to all the editors on staff when it’s complete, because that too includes a more boiled down summary of the job, and if it was completed successfully.

Advanced View

For most people, the QuickArchive View is going to get the job done. What I really like about it is that it’s hard to get confused over something so simple. But if you are feeling like you don’t want the dumbed down interface, take a look at the advanced view. At anytime, you can switch between them just by clicking the icon in the upper right corner.

In the advanced view, the 2 main options that are added are the ability to navigate to specific areas using the shortcut icons, and the ability to schedule regular backups using the scheduling function. You can drag and drop files in this mode, but you can also navigate around the hard drive and add files and folders by double clicking on them. This brings me to one of my complaints about the software.

When you’re navigating around the file system on OSX, in the finder or in most programs, double clicking on a folder is how you open it to expose its contents. Not so when using BRU. To get the same result inside of BRU PE you’re forced to click on the little disclosure triangle for the directory, which will open it up to expose the contents (which also works in the finder). However, if you by instinct double click on a folder to open it, it will not actually open it but instead add it to the list of items to be archived. This is extremely counter intuitive, and hard to overcome even once you know it because it’s so second nature to use this action when opening folders. It certainly flies in the face of the Apple Interface Guidelines. If you’re not careful, you can easily end up adding additional files and directories that you had no intention of backing up. This really surprises me given how mac-like the software is otherwise. This is probably one of the reasons that I prefer the QuickArchive View.

Operation otherwise is the same. You can get into saving job definitions, which is like a backup set but I’m not going to cover that since it’s not applicable to the type of archives we’re talking about here.

Tape Doubler

While this review covers the single drive setup that’s best for the edit bay, it’s worth noting that if you had 2 drives attached, BRU PE has a nice feature called “Doubler Mode”. This allows you to backup the same data to two different tapes, without having to run the same archive process twice. If you’re in the habit of making one copy for on-site storage, and one for off-site storage, this could be a big time saver. We only have a single drive, so we were not able to test this feature ourselves.

Archive Library

There’s no point of going through all this work if you can’t find what you need later. We have a pretty simple library system that was easy to put into place. While BRU PE does have its own internal library system (covered later), we find our solution to be better for our workflow.

Once we have a 1-1 duplicate of a archive folder to LTO tape, and we have verified that the contents of both are the same (using the verify function as part of the BRU PE software), we scan and catalog the folder that was the source for that particular tape. By doing so, we have a complete listing of what is on the tape that we can search anytime from any computer in the office, while the tapes are sitting on the shelf. The program we use to do this is called “CD Finder” from West-Forest-Systems.

CDFinder

Don’t let the name throw you. CDFinder is a cataloging/indexing program that works with everything from removable media to full hard drives. I’m actually surprised that they have not rebranded the program yet given how dated the software sounds just based on the name itself. I would guess they even miss out on sales because people see the “CD” and think “I don’t even use CD’s”.

But unlike many programs I’ve tried in the past, CDFinder does the job perfectly, is a light-weight program that launches fast and indexes almost as fast, and finding that needle in the haystack is as simple is typing in a search term and hitting return. I also appreciate that the programmer (Norbert M. Doerner) keeps the program up to date and is always adding new useful features. Only a few weeks after Lion was released they released a Lion version of their program. When a big OS update like Lion comes out, you really find out which developers are dedicated to their programs and which are not.

I’m not going to do a full review of the CDFinder program, you can do that yourself or watch some of their video tutorials on-line. What I will do is give you the basics of how we use it.

Because over time we’ve had different series of archives (hard drives, then LTO, and some client specific) we created a few folders inside of CDFinder to organize our catalog files.

Inside of each of those folders is a list of the different media that was cataloged, and what is on each of them.

Creating new catalog is as easy is clicking on the “new” button, and selecting the folder, removable media or hard drive you want a catalog of, and hitting OK. The drive is scanned and a new catalog file is added to the library.

If you really want to get crazy, you can even have CDFinder create thumbnails of images as part of the catalog so when you’re browsing later you can get a sense of the images you’re looking at. Here’s a look at just some of the cataloging options you’re given in CDFinder.

Finding what you want is just as easy. Open the find window, choose the criteria you would like to search by, and hit find. A list of results will appear, and clicking on any of those results in the window with all the info that you need to reload that file or directory.

If I have one gripe about the CDFinder program, it’s that they require that you purchase a “business license” to store the catalog file on a network share. It’s like Microsoft saying you can’t save a word document on your NAS drive because you didn’t buy a business license. I think where I choose to save my file is up to me, and I should’t have to pay extra to add back in a feature that every other program on the planet already includes. You may be wondering why this matters. It matters because if you want to use multiple computers to access the data that you’ve cataloged, you need to put the catalog file in a central location, and then point them all to it. But on the “Private” license (for $39) you are required to save the catalog file locally on the computer the software is installed on. That’s fine if you have one computer, but we can’t get by with just that. So instead, you have to pay $149 for the 2-user business license. That’s right, for more than $100 extra, you get the privilege to save your file on the network, and share it with ONE other user. There are no other additional features in the business licensed program. This is just bad business in my opinion, and does not reflect well on the company.

My gripe aside, I like the program, think that it’s well written and it’s very actively maintained. I’ll step down from my soap box now.

Ready To Delete

Now that everything is on the LTO tapes, cataloged and we’re confident that there are no errors, it’s time to move the projects to the 3^rd and final finder folder, “Ready To Delete”.

This is one of the most important steps in our workflow, and I prefer to save this final step for myself and only myself. The reason being, when it comes to deleting projects from the edit systems – I want to be sure if a mistake is made, it’s on me. I can handle being pissed at myself and I can’t be fired. It also serves as a nice check/balance. I’m able to verify that all of the proper steps were followed before this undoable step.

This is where having such a unique job numbering system comes in extremely handy, and helps keep you from deleting files that you may not want to delete. The goal at this stage is not only to remove the project files that we just backed up to the LTO tape, but to remove ALL files associated with this project, and only this project. That includes the capture scratch and all audio and video render files. And they need to be removed from both RAID drives, since it’s not unusual for projects to be edited in multiple rooms. The way we handle this is with a program called Path Finder. It’s a very full featured Finder replacement, but I only use it for this one purpose – its ability to search multiple local and remote locations at the same time and return all files in a single window.

Path Finder

Path Finder allows you to search your entire computer or specific folders just like the Finder, but unlike version 10.5 or later of the Finder (including Lion) you can not set multiple custom locations. In our case, we limit the search to just the two RAID drives. By doing this, any search that we do on the job number will find every file and folder associated with that job, and nothing more.

And instead of relying on the index file of Spotlight, we have it do a raw search of the drive, ignoring any spotlight information. When searching on remote drives, Spotlight can be hit or miss in our experience and tends to be slower.

Now that we have our search locations setup properly, we’re ready to search and destroy (delete) our projects and all associated media. With the find window open, fill in the full job number. Actually, just to make sure to avoid any errors, I keep two windows open. One with the “Ready to Delete” folder and the other is the find window and results. With both open, I can copy and paste the job number into the name field. I also make sure “Starts With” is selected, because anything I need to delete should start with the job number. This prevents any other documents that might reference this number from being removed.

Click search and almost instantly the lower part of the search window is populated with all of the files and locations that you need to remove. As a habit, I always review the find results and make sure nothing looks unusual. Again, I’m just making sure everything in the window is in fact part of the job that I’m getting ready to remove. Once satisfied, I do a “select all” inside the results portion of the find window and hit Command-Delete to remove all of the files. Local files are moved to the trash can, but remote volume files are deleted immediately – so be careful. So with one stroke of the keyboard, all of your files, from all locations local or otherwise, are removed.

Now I just move down the list of jobs in the “ready to delete” folder and repeat the same steps for each of the job numbers. After that, empty the trash on the local computer and do the happy dance. You’re done and have new free space on your drives.

Restoring Data

While backing up data is very solid using BRU PE, restoring is a bit less intuitive. It’s fine, and it gets the job done, it’s just not quite as smooth.

When you click on the Restore icon in the toolbar, you’re presented with a list of catalog files for each tape that you’ve ever backed up on that particular machine. If there was more than one backup session to on a tape, there will be a number added to the icon as some of the ones here have.

If you select a catalog file, the contents of that will be shown on the right pane. However, this is again one of those minor annoyances. By default it will just show you the root level, and then you will need to click on each and every disclosure triangle just to get to the folder with the data you backed up. And sometimes clicking on the disclosure triangle seems to be sluggish. You may find yourself clicking more than once to get it to open. But OK fine, it does work eventually.

But when you’re ready to find those files, what you’ll really be doing is a search of the catalog. You can click on a single catalog (if you know what tape the file is on), or you can search the entire library all at once.

In this example, I’m choosing to search for just a single job, and I know what the job number is. But what I find amazing in this day and age of things being infinitely searchable, is that you can only search on a single criteria. Normally if I was doing a search like this, I would choose to search using the job number, but then also add another criteria stating that I only want results returned that are folders with that name (because ultimately what I’m looking for is the project folder with that number). This is a big miss with the BRU PE software.

When we use CD-Finder to search for files we need to restore, it can search every archive we’ve ever created (totaling over 100 when you count the HD archives we made in the past and client specific backups) and it can do it in a matter of seconds. Most searches, even complex ones only take about 2-5 seconds. But just performing the simple search I’m showing you here on less than 20 archives took over 3 minutes. And because I couldn’t confine the results to only folders, the results I was returned still left me too much to have to sift through.

This just makes another case for using CDFinder to keep catalogs of all of your archives. Our process is to do a search inside of CD-Finder, find out what tape it’s on, and then just go directly to that tape in BRU PE, find the files or directory and restore them. The whole process is so much faster, not to mention you can do many complex searches with CD-Finder in the time it takes to do just one with BRU.

This is what the search window and restore results (for the same job) look like using CD-Finder.

And this is the results that were returned. Infinitely more usable and user friendly.

But let’s continue down the line of just using the BRU software and how you would restore your files.

Once you have your search results and you’ve parsed out what it is you actually want to restore, you click the check boxes by the files or directories that you want, or you can choose to check all of them using the “add all” check box. You then click on the “Add Checked” button and close the window. You will now be returned to the main window with your selected items added to the window.

The last option to decide on before you start the restore is where these files are going. By default files are restored to their original location from where they were backed up. I guess this can be a good thing for some workflows, but for us this would just cause issues. It means that files would be returned to the “ready to delete” folder, which could cause some confusion. To avoid this problem, check the box that allows you to “Restore to an Alternate location”, and then navigate to any local or network mounted volume.

Now with everything ready to go, insert the tape you are pulling the files off of and click on the restore button. If you have the wrong tape in or the drive is empty, you will be prompted for the correct tape to insert.

When you consider how much data a LTO-5 tape can hold, it’s pretty amazing how fast it can find the files it needs are restores them. Like I mentioned, everything we do is over gigabit ethernet and the speed is still lightning fast.

Once your restore is complete a dialog box will appear letting you know that all was restored well. If what you’ve chosen to restore is on more than one tape, you will be prompted each time a new tape is needed. This is where a library system that can automatically load tapes comes in handy.

Library/Catalog Backup

One problem we did run into during our test period is that at one point we launched the BRU PE program and the library of tapes that we had created (usually listed on the restore screen) were gone. While in practice we don’t use those files to locate files that we’re looking for (as previously mentioned, we use CDFinder and a external catalog file), the BRU PE software does need these files to understand what tapes have been created and what is on each tape. It’s what enables you to quickly restore your files from such a massive tape.

With the help of tech support we were able to restore/rebuild the tapes that we needed by re-inserting each tape and having the catalog files rebuilt, but from that point on we decided that we should have a regular backup of that information. Even on the Tolis website they recommend that you do this.

All of the important files that you need to backup are located at the following location.

/private/var/lib/bru

You may be looking at that “location” and be wondering how the heck you get to it. After all, to most people (other than developers) this is not a familiar location, not to mention it’s hidden from view in the finder. The best way to get to this location is to use the “Go to Folder” command in the finder. While in the finder, click on the drop down menu under “Go” and then select the “Go To Folder” option.

In the next dial box that opens, type in the string outlined above and click GO.

The next finder window that opens will be the folder that you need to keep a backup copy of.

To make sure this always happens on it’s own, we use the program Déjà Vu that keeps this folder synced to our NAS on a daily basis. I would strongly recommend that you implement something alone the same lines to save you possible frustration later.

User Manual

Being a bit of a manual geek, I can tell you that the BRU PE user manual is one of the better manuals I’ve read. It’s written in a way that’s easy to understand and gets right to the point. It covers every aspect of the software in much more detail than I’m doing here and even makes some recommendations on the topic of workflow. I also enjoyed the landscape format, which made it comfortable to read on my iPad.

While the manual is 186 pages long, probably around a third of it is terminal commands. If you’re really feeling like the BRU PE GUI is just too easy to use, launch the Terminal app and try your hand at typing it all in by hand. Personally, I have zero interest in this, but there must be enough people out there to justify the detail they put into the manual in covering this topic.

Future Proof Archives?

So now you have a solid backup of your projects, and maybe you even made a second copy to keep off site at home or in a safe deposit box. But what if the worst happens and the Tolis Group suddenly goes out of business or stops selling/supporting the product? After all, because they’re using their own proprietary archive format you actually do need BRU in order to recover your tape contents.

Well not to fear. There are two very good pieces of insurance that will let you sleep better at night.

First (as discussed earlier), every time that you create a new archive tape, at the end you are presented with a dialog that lets you create a CD or DVD that includes the catalog file for that tape (basically a list of it’s contents and location on the tape), all metadata, and a copy of the BRU PE Software that you just used to create the tape. They disk also includes installation and restore instructions. So aside from the hardware needed to do a restore, you have everything that you need between the LTO tape and the CD/DVD that you create. They call this disk a BRUsetta Stone CD.

But if the worst happens and the Tollis group goes out of business, they are committed to put the most recent copy of the BRU software in Escrow with the NARAS, and if you’re a member of NARAS you can retrieve a copy if you need it. So it’s not as if you’re going to no longer have access to your data.

Here is my personal take. The Tolis Group has been around since 1985 and has a great history of making great products. I see no reason to worry about them going out of business anytime soon, and even if they did I am left with the tools that I need (through the BRUsetta Stone CD) to restore any tapes I have made over the years. True, I would probably want to start looking for something new to create new archives, but I would not be locked out of my old archives.

The fact is that technology changes so fast that my guess is 5-10 years from now I may not even be using LTO in favor of some newer and greater technology. When that comes along, I’ll move forward as well. And over time, the archives I’m making will have less and less value anyway. While the tapes are rated to last for 30 years, I would be happy if they lasted for half that. No client has ever come back to me for something older than 5-6 years, and that is very rare. My point is, I don’t need to keep these backups until the end of time. And if 30 years from now I had better not be still browsing my LTO-5 tapes and restoring jobs for clients. If I am, my life has taken a very bad turn somewhere along the line.

Go Beyound with BRU Server

While the focus of this review has been on backing up your edit projects, if you’re looking for something more comprehensive that will backup multiple computers in your office, BRU Server might be something worth looking at. It adds the ability to do client to server automated backups over your network so that entire machines are regularly backed up. The price point is obviously much higher and instead of a single tape drive you would usually use a library system that would hold 12-24 tapes.

And if you REALLY have money to burn, go for their Backup Appliance called bruAPP. This is a standalone device that includes both the BRU Server technology and OS, combined with a tape library system. It’s everything in a single box, and can be configured to hold upwards of 144 TB of storage. It also includes internal disk storage that allows you to “stage” your files for backup so that your local network is not impacted during large backups. If I had the money I would LOVE to have this as part of my office backup strategy.

LTFS

I’ve talked a lot about the BRU format as well as TAR, and some may be wondering about the newer format called LTFS (Linear Tape File System), which has been brought to light by IBM to address some of the shortcomings of the TAR format. This format promises the use of LTO tapes directly on the desktop, allowing you to mount them to your desktop and use them more like you would use a mounted hard drive. One of the significant advantages of this format is that the catalog is included on the tape, so in theory if you have the proper software installed you could mount a tape on any machine just by popping it into the drive.

On the surface this sounds pretty awesome. We all know how to interact with hard drives and to see a tape mounted on the desktop that you can just drag and drop files to/from sounds like the holy grail. That is, until you get into the details of it. I’ve looked into it and talked to a few engineers about their opinions and here’s the short answer of what you need to know.

The LTFS file system has issues with slow access to files, no knowledge of an unmounted tape, single user access and limited file type compatibility. In addition, cross platform file exchanges are problematic because different software and drivers need to be written specifically for each platform, and may not be able to read tapes or files created on other systems. In short, in the current incarnation of the format it falls short of being a solid backup format and almost borders on being expermintal. While it’s possible that down the road this will change that remains to be seen. And after all, we’re talking about what is possible right now, not in the future.

So while I was initially very excited about what the LTFS file format might provide, as usual the sales pitch is better than the actual facts behind it. At the time of this writing the BRU folks have no plans of supporting the format as it now stands, and I think that’s a good thing. Just adopting a new format because it’s the latest and “greatest” thing is not always the best thing. I think it says a lot about their engineering team that they have investigated it and decided it was not up to par for their products.

If you would like to read more about the format yourself, you can find a pretty detailed entry on Wikipedia here.

Cost of Ownership

While the software can be purchased as a standalone product for $499, in most cases you’re going to want to buy the hardware bundle unless you already own a tape drive that you want to use. As part of the whole package, the software is cheaper with the bundled price. With all of their bundles you get a license for the BRU PE software and 1 year of support. Support includes help using the software, but also includes any upgrades to the software beyond bug fixes that are released during your 1 year period.

If you let the 1 year support contract lapse, you can still use the software but will not be eligible for upgrades to the software. I’m not sure that’s a big deal, because generally speaking if it’s working, it’s working. It does everything I need it to, so I’m not sure what features might be added that had me wanting to upgrade.

If you do decide to continue your support contract, it will cost you $199 per year and you would get all major updates (say version 2 to version 3) included in that price. If you don’t have it, and the same software is released you can still purchase the software for $249.

Overhead or Money Maker?

One of the big misses that many editors make in my opinion is passing on their ability to turn this process into a service that they sell to their clients. The big complaint that I hear is that buying software and hardware like this can be expensive, and it really can. But not prohibitively so. The fact is, people do need archives of their projects and in many cases they are willing to pay you to take care of it for them, and to keep track of everything. On top of backing up editing projects, another big room for growth has been backup camera originals from tapeless media, which is all we shoot anymore.

I can only speak from our own experience and tell that in far less than a year we were turning a profit on doing backups over what we had paid on both the hardware/software and the tapes we purchased to do the backups. We charge a flat fee per project, and in most cases can fit more than a single project on a tape. So a single 1.5 TB LTO-5 tape can generate anywhere between $500 and $1,500 in revenue depending on the size of the projects. It’s pretty easy to do the math and see how this is not much of a risk in the long run. The fact is, you are offering a very valuable and necessary service.

Here’s how we approached it. I ask every client this question. “As part of doing this project, would you like me to back it up to a long term storage tape for future access, or do you want me to just delete everything when I’m done?” What would you say to that question?

While we charge a flat fee for creating an archive of each project, we don’t charge anything for restoring files. So the client can recall those files as much as needed and know that they will not be billed for it.

It’s seriously something to consider when you’re looking at creating your archiving system, your workflow and a library system. While it might be a lot to get pulled together in the beginning, it’s well worth it in the long run on many fronts.

The SuiteTake

While not without a few minor annoyances, I’m very pleased with the BRU software and hardware bundle. For the first time in a very long time I feel like I have a very solid and robust workflow and backup system. That’s a big deal, because if you don’t have something you have faith in, it can add a lot of stress to your life (at least it has for me in the past).

We have now used this solution for over a year and feel very comfortable saying it’s a nice solid and affordable package, even for a small boutique post house like Edit Creations. I look forward to your comments and your own shared experiences.

My Experience With Keying

While I wouldn’t necessarily refer to myself is a “Green Screen Guru”, I have my share of experience with pulling color based keys. For me is started on a Grass Valley 200 switcher in the late 80’s with the little spinning knobs you used to select and finesse the color. I remember that little chirping sound it would make as you went from one limit to the other. Just thinking about that switcher really takes me back.

In later years I worked with a Ultimatte 45 external hardware box that allowed you to pull great keys using a component signal. At the time it was a $35k box and the place I was working at would only rent it when we had a project that required it. Sometimes I would run it as part of a studio shoot to check keys as we went, but most of the time it was setup in the online suite I was in.

The difficult part about using this box was that the first few times I used it I only had a few short hours to actually learn the box. As soon as it showed up I would pull out the manual and start reading so that I could at least appear to the client that I knew what I was doing!

Years later we have tools that are so much more powerful right on our computers, and they cost a small fraction of what the original Ultimatte did, or in some cases come free with editing and compositing software. FCP Studio has some ok keyers included, but Primatte inside of Motion is actually pretty good. And AfterEffects has KeyLight, which I find to be the best blue/green screen keyer out there for what I do. It’s rare that I can’t get a good key out of keylight regardless what I throw at it.

Why I Decided To Read It

So with my years of experience you might think that I’m great at pulling keys of all kinds without issue. In fact you may say the same thing about yourself.  While I can hold my own for sure, I have always felt there were holes in my knowledge. I learned on the job, and only learned about the things that were thrown at me, as opposed to any kind of formal training or even keying basics. We have a reoccurring job at Edit Creations that always seems to be more difficult than it should be. While the keys in the end come out pretty good, they’re not perfect. And while there are times that maybe you decided it’s “good enough” what you’re doing, I want to know that I can in fact pull that perfect key every time, no matter what.

So it was with great pleasure that I found Jeff Fosters new book, The Green Screen Handbook. The book’s only focus is green screen, and it’s a modern book that’s based on technology that’s available today, not from 10 years ago.

What The Book Is NOT

If you’re hoping that this book has tons of difficult keying examples with step-by-step detailed instructions on how to get great results, it is not. It does not get into what slider bar to adjust or which keyed is the best for which situation. This is what I was hoping it was. While I was disappointed initially, as I kept reading I realized it was much more comprehensive and covered the entire process, not just the post production part.

What Is Covered

The book starts out with a history of how we got to where we are today with travel matts, and what it was like in the early days. I actually found this part of the book fascinating and really enjoyed it. It gave me a good appreciation for what we have today and I couldn’t help thinking that the originators of the technology would really be amazed with what can be done now with relative ease.

Jeff goes on to explain the difference between blue and green screen (and when to use one over the other as well as when to use both at the same time), and hardware vs. plug-in based tools.

What I really ended up liking about this book is the way he covered everything from pre-production through post, as well as different budget levels. In other words, no matter where you are in the spectrum, if you do green screen work you’ll find something that applies to your part of the world.

One of the most important things I learned from reading the book was that the reason that some of my keys are difficult to pull, is that there are some issues related to the way they are shot. First, there would be a great benefit to using green bulbs to light the green wall (I didn’t even know you could do that). There are specific bulbs made just for this purpose. Second, and the biggest problem we’re having is the video we’re recording, while in HD and the P2 format, has too many compression artifacts, thus we are getting very noisy source footage to start with. There are some adjustments that can be made in the camera, but we are also considering recording uncompressed right out of the camera to ProRes 4444 on a Ki Pro. Our next shoot is coming up in a few months, and I look forward to implementing some of the new ideas.

There is a section of the book called “How the Pros Do it” that make my little head shot keys look like child’s play. It’s interesting to see some of the high end work with explanations on how they accomplished the scene.

Other topics covered include the importance of pre-production and storyboarding, testing shots as well as your workflow, having your talent interact with background elements and how to retain natural shadows from your subjects.

Overall I was very impressed with the work that went into this book and feel like I will be a better green screen artists having read it. It reminded me of when I took a motorcycle riding class years ago. Going into the class I thought I knew it all (or at least a lot). But once I was done with the class I realized how little I really knew, and was a much more confident rider.

Included DVD

There is a DVD that comes with the book (unless you buy the Kindle version, more on that later) that includes tons of goodies organized into folders that match the chapter numbers. You’ll find movie clips PS files and AE files that let you see first hand how some of the examples in the book were created.

Don’t Buy The Kindle Version

I love my iPad and the Kindle App, so when I realized I could buy the book and have it instantly I didn’t hesitate. However, a book like this probably would have been better in print. Here’s why.

Formatting on Kindle books is great, if you have a simple text layout with few images that can be shown in-line. Because this book is about visuals as much as the printed content, the formatting was just terrible. This is not the fault of the author, but of the Kindle book format itself. It just does not allow for free flowing organic looking layouts. I could have gotten by with this and still been happy with the Kindle version. The big problem was that you get no DVD with the kindle version, and that is a deal breaker for me. I was able to get a copy after making a few phone calls, but this was the exception. No physical book, no DVD.

Applying What I Learned

There are 3 main things I’m going to change in our reoccurring project based on what I learned in this book.

1) Shoot with green bulbs. This is covered in great detail in the book.

2) Record uncompressed out of the camera into a codec that is more “keyer friendly”, or at least to one of the higher bandwidth ProRes codecs. 

3) Try some slightly modified techniques in keylight to see if a different approach will yield different results this time around. Another takeaway from the book was that there is no one single technique that works in every situation, and I picked up a few new ones from the book.

The SuiteTake

I love learning. I love feeling like I have a challenge, I overcome it and have a new set of skills that I didn’t have before. This book really delivered that experience for me.

In my opinion if you are a video professional that either shoots or edits green screen scenes, this book is a must read to take you to the next level. I can’t think of anybody that I know that wouldn’t learn something from this book and improve their craft.

Another great resource is Alex Lindsay of Pixel Corps fame. He’s done some great web posting on the work that he does, with some real world examples. I’ve been really impressed with not only his process and what he has learned over time, but his openness to share what he knows to help others. We all improve when we help each other. Thanks Alex!

You can find some of his posts here.

]]> http://js-kit.com/rss/www.suitetake.com/p=4110 4 http://www.suitetake.com/2010/07/15/zaxwerks_3d_plugin/ http://www.suitetake.com/2010/07/15/zaxwerks_3d_plugin/#comments Thu, 15 Jul 2010 16:05:51 +0000 Jeff Carrion http://www.suitetake.com/?p=4098

In this After Effects tutorial I’ll show you how to make a fluttering 3D leaf effect using Zaxwerks 3D Warps plug-in. I’ll show you several tips to speed up your workflow and quicken rendering and previews with the 3D Warps plug-in. I use particles and other built-in AE effects to create a realistic scene from a still image. And I also take a look at refining motion paths with After Effects graph editor to create smooth organic motion. All this, and more in this action packed tutorial!

They are held at various locations around the globe, but for the first time you can attend one of these meetings in Boston, and it’s not too late to get in for free (details below). What can you expect when you attend a SuperMeet?

Aside from seeing demonstrations from some serious talent and on occasion some product debuts, it’s a great place to socialize with creatives from around the country and build new relationships. I had planned to travel to Boston for this meeting until I was booked on a travel job that starts tomorrow.

To find out more about the Boston Meeting agenda, visit the official site.

For your free admission tickets, follow the instructions below.

1. Go to: http://supermeetbos10.eventbrite.com/

2. Click on the ENTER DISCOUNT CODE link.

3. Enter discount code: suitetakevip

4. Fill out registration with legitimate email and address for EACH name.

Last night I was a guest on the Digital Production Buzz with Larry Jordan and Michael Horton. We discussed my last blog post on growing your business.

If you don’t regularly listen to the Buzz it’s a great resource for post production professionals, and keeps you up to date on the latest news and what others are doing in the business.

Click here for the Interview Excerpt

Click here for the Full Show

When the economy tanked in late 2008, I was forced to look at my business and figure out how to best combat the severe downturn in revenue. We have primarily offered post production services since opening in 2004, but what happens when there’s not enough post work to keep the rooms busy? Aside from the obvious solution of trying to increase the client base, there is also the option of adding other services so that you get a bigger piece of the overall project pie. Think of it like being in the stock market. All of my “stock” has been invested in doing post work. That’s great during the good times, but being more diversified will help when things are slow.

So throughout 2009 we’ve added a few new services to help us retain a larger chunk of every project we do.

Production

The first thing added was production services by way of purchasing a Sony EX-1 camera package and lighting kit. This helped by landing a few new jobs that we would have normally only done the post on, but we now had the whole job start to finish. What made this possible was having an editor on staff that is also a great videographer with years of experience shooting. It was a natural addition, and the camera package has already paid for itself.

Motion Graphics

Next we decided to raise the bar on the kinds of graphics that we can offer. Most editors can create graphics using Motion, AE or the like, but I’m not sure I would call all of these editors Motion Graphics Artists. I know many great editors that are not very good at the graphic side of things. Our goal was to bring some of the work back in house that has typically been farmed out.The first step toward this goal was to block out time to focus on new training, tutorials and some very specific goals/milestones.

One of the big challenges for any editor today is the expectation that you need to learn MANY things, not just editing. As a result,  focus can be a bit scattershot  when you’re trying to build a skill. You may spend time in AE one day, Flash another and Photoshop the next, and  no single area shows any significant benefit.

To help remedy this, I officially declared 2009 “The Year of AfterEffects” and asked that any and all tutorials being done on company time be focused on AfterEffects and only AfterEffects. Period. The results were immediately evident in the work being done, and clients noticed. Within a few months we took on 2 new jobs in house that we would have previously lost to an outside artist.

3D Graphics

Building on that, we decided to start down the road of offering 3D Graphics. This is not as easy as sharpening your AE skills, since the learning curve and time investment can be quite large. But nonetheless we spent the last year training a staff member on 3D. While he’s not quite far enough along to do paying jobs, he’s getting closer every week now. He’s also done a great job on some internal projects and has really impressed me with the speed at which he has picked things up. I have some 3D experience in my past (dating back to the golden days of Electric Image) so I know what a challenge it can be. My estimate is that this effort will start to pay dividends later this year and be in full swing in 2011.

Live Production Services

Finally, starting this year we now offer Live Netcasting of corporate events, conventions and the like. This is a natural fit into our already popular travel editing packages. For example, this week I’m in Nashville to do onsite editing for the IGA 2010 Global Rally. It’s the usual job with events being shot, edited and played back onsite. But in addition, we are going to be live streaming the awards night banquet live to the web as it happens. This will allow people around the world who were unable to attend the conference to tune into it and even chat about it as it happens via live chat. The client can choose to charge for this access or to make it free to the viewer.

What makes this attractive to the client is that we offer it as a total turnkey solution. We bring all of the Netcast cameras and studio gear needed to  do a live switch with multiple cameras,  roll in pieces and lower thirds, and send it up to the web in high quality, even HD. We provide the hosting, web page design, and if needed handle the sales and access to the broadcast.  The added benefit is that sometimes there will be extra editing needed before the event to create extra roll in pieces or graphics as part of the show.

So this will be a very busy week for me, having both on-site editing and on-stie production of the net event. The schedule worked out that I could do both, but in most cases I would have somebody dedicated to take care of the netcast alone.

BTS Production Photography

One other thing that I started to offer clients, more out of my personal interest than for the sake of increased revenue, is doing production stills on jobs. This is a pretty easy up sell when I’m already on the job to edit. For example, this summer I’m booked to do a editing job in Sydney Australia. The client on that job asked if I could come out a few days early and take some production stills for a shoot that she’s doing in New Zealand. So I get to travel out a few days early and provide her with some great behind the scenes photos that she can use to update her professional blog as well as her website. And for me I’ll get some extra travel to a great location and have fun taking the photos.

The SuiteTake

If you find that you don’t have enough post work to keep yourself or your staff busy, it may be time to take a look at what other offerings you might be able to present to your clients. Ask yourself what else you might be good at, or what else you’re interested in doing. Do you have a passion that is untapped?  I would not recommend offering a service that you’re not interested in or not  very good at.  That would do nothing but hurt you in the long run and possibly degrade a good relationship. But most of us have diverse interests and skills, and could probably find at least one other thing that we would enjoy doing (and enjoy billing for).

Take the time to evaluate your interest and skills, and you may find a new revenue stream for yourself or your company.

It is with great excitement that I am finally able to make an announcement that has been eating at me for nearly a year now. In June of 2009 when the iPhone 3GS was released I had a flash of what the future could hold for editing, and it’s that moment of inspiration that gave birth to the product I’m announcing today.

Our new groundbreaking product, Final Cut Pro Mobile, is now available on the iPhone 3GS. It will also be available on the iPad later this year. You heard me right – the full suite of FCPS apps have been ported to the iPhone 3GS, and in some cases, we’ve been able to add additional features not found in the current offerings from Apple.

Much of our inspiration at SuiteTake.com to create this mobile suite was inspired by the growing interest in editing projects outside of the office. While the edit suite has been the traditional place to get your project done, technology no longer limits us to just a single location. And it was with that vision in mind that we marched forward with the project. Here is a quick overview of what the new suite includes.

Final Cut Pro M

Starting with the current version of Final Cut Pro 7 from 2009, we included all of the same new features as well as the under the hood improvements from Apple. But we’ve also added some features that are only possible on the iPhone.

For example, with a single swipe of your finger – you can save your project, duplicate it, or permanently delete it – all with the same gesture. Swiping at different speeds determines which of the functions is selected. Now that’s efficient!

Need a quick rough cut of the footage you’ve imported? Just shake your phone up and down 3 times and the built-in accelerometer will create a rough cut using the current ins and outs of each clip. The phone will use our patented Content Detection™ algorithm to analyze dialog, body language and facial expressions. It will then systematically assemble the clips in the most pleasing and logical way.

Motion M

Complete with Open GL acceleration, 3D shadows and real-time playback, you can create graphics at uncompressed 4K or HD resolution while browsing the iTunes store, surfing the web or taking a call from your client. And all of this while you’re outside of the standard ball-and-chain edit suite. Be inspired – be Mobile!

While the standard motion templates that you’re used to are included, we’ve also added the ability to buy templates through the App Store, right inside of Motion M. Using your iTunes account and 3G networking you can download the latest templates where you want, when you want.

Soundtrack Pro M

Using your iPhone earbuds you can mix your latest soundtrack while listening to your favorite iPod playlist, checking your messages with  Google Voice and browsing SFX from the SoundTrack library.  All while walking through the busy city traffic to catch your bus to the beach.

But it’s not just about multi-tasking. SoundTrack Pro M can mix up to 256 tracks of audio in real time, has new MIDI functions available through the dock connector and now includes a cool iTunes-like screen saver to help you  see your audio as you mix. This is part of our new SeeHearMix™ technology.

Color M

Who says you need a $10K monitor to color grade your latest film? Don’t let the monitor industry make a fool out of you any longer! Using the precision color LCD touch screen on the iPhone you can grade like a pro using just your fingertips.

What’s that? You don’t have time to do the grading yourself? Again we tied into the Apple App Store and you can now purchase and download preset looks based on the type of project you’re grading. Some of the categories include Corporate Training Video, Broadcast Reality Show, Broadcast Sitcom, Over Produced Documentary, Low Budget Film, B-Movie, Direct to DVD, Flip Cam to Film Look and Barely Good Enough For YouTube. Each preset will optimize the look and feel of your video based on your target audience.

DVD Studio Pro M

Apple may not have updated DVD Studio Pro, but we sure did.

Need a DVD and need it while on the go? No problem! Plug in your favorite DVD burner and create a Standard Def or Blu-ray DVD on the spot right from your iPhone using our patented USB-BlazeBurn™ technology.

Don’t have a DVD burner? That’s OK too. Master directly to our new SuiteTake.com Print-On-Demand DVD service. Most DVDs will upload over 3G in just 2-3 weeks, and you’ll receive your DVD copies within one calendar year. Let’s face it, you didn’t really need it that fast anyway.

iChat Theater M

Using the iPhone 3GS camera,  you can now chat with your client live while watching your latest cut. You can even conference in up to three other members of the “creative team” to watch and comment on the playback of your sequence while referencing a live timecode window. Getting unwanted needless feedback has never been so easy.

And Finally, Compressor M

Compressor is more then a compression engine – it’s a publishing factory. Set up automated processes that will convert your final video to the proper format and upload it to iTunes, YouTube, Vimeo, FaceBook or just a standard FTP site.

As an exclusive to the Mobile FCP Suite, you can even export directly to another iPhone no matter where they are in the world. And all of this over 3G. Take that AT&T!

Need more speed while compressing? Using iPhone QMaster integration you can cluster up to 50 iPhone 3GSs together to cut compression times by up to 8.9%. (Estimated, actual savings can vary. In some cases render times can actually increase up to 75% due to some unknown reason that we’re still baffled by. Due to the increased radiation output of the phones during the render process, women who are pregnant or are hoping to ever become pregnant should limit their exposure to FCPm Qmaster. Do not taunt Qmaster under any circumstances.)

And with our new Social Media plugin architecture, you can send custom notifications to Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace and even the Creative Cow Forums. Now all of your fellow editors will know just how frustrated you are by that request to make “one more small change”. Partner deals with Gowalla, FourSquare and DropBox are in the works for late 2010.

I am proud to say that I think we’ve really hit this one out of the park. And we’re just getting started. Since I started using FCP Mobile I’ve realized that having a full size computer is a thing of the past. I used to say I would never give up my Mac Pro. Now I’m starting to ask myself if it even makes sense to have an office. Since I started using FCPm I have barely bothered to show up to work at all.

Still not convinced?

Check out the cover story in the next issue of MacWorld magazine for a full hands on review or read our Press Release.

Can’t wait?

Head over to the App Store and download it now. We hope you’re as excited about it as we are.

I’ve been very fortunate in business. Since I first started Edit Creations in my basement in 2003 I’ve been blessed with having multiple clients follow me into business based on our work history together and friendships. And over those years, word of mouth has filled in the rest of the time. Within the first 5 years business grew from me working in my basement to having a 2000 sqft office with multiple edit rooms, vo booth, graphics, travel gear and 4 employees. Things were going great. Then, the fall of 2008 hit.

At the end of 2008 work dried up and 2009 was the most difficult year since the business was started. During this time a few things happened that changed the way I looked at my company.

First, I didn’t lose any clients. I still had the same clients that I’ve been working with for years, in some cases close to 15 years. The problem was that those clients were no longer getting the jobs they used to. Projects were being scaled back, rescheduled or flat our cancelled. In one case a job that was normally 4 weeks of editing in 2 suites (a job that we received every December running into January) just went away and has not yet returned.

Second, for the first time in my career I was faced with having to find new clients. Two years ago I would have said you were crazy if you told me to go out and find new clients. I was already working 10+ hours a day and the thought of looking for more work seemed like self abuse.

Third, I realized that you can’t count on jobs that are promised to you, even if you have a long standing relationship with those clients. For example, in 2009 there were no less then 3 major jobs (one a broadcast TV series) that were promised to us. In one case actually scheduled for the last half of 2009. “Great!” I thought, the year is covered! The pressure is off! And then, one by one the projects just went away, in large part due to the economy. So I was left with open edit suites and very little work to fill them, but the same overhead as if it was business as usual.

As this all started to unfold, the reality that I needed to go out and sell the business hit me, and hit me hard. But what also hit me was that I didn’t know where to start. I’m an editor, I’m a tech guy, I’m a creative and a Mac addict but not a salesman. That’s not to say I couldn’t sell, it’s just that I have never had to and don’t really have the knowhow. Yet.

Late in 2009 I was invited to attend a local business leaders meeting at a new store in Naperville IL. I thought this would be a good opportunity to meet other business owners and possibly make new connections with people that were in need of editorial and creative services. Hell, any reason to go to the Apple Store is a good one in my book!

So I went to the event that was scheduled before normal business hours, and there were about 30-40 other business professionals there, snacking on donuts and drinking free coffee. I very quickly realized that I had a problem. I was, at least in this setting, a social misfit. Instead of walking up to people and striking up a conversation, I found myself avoiding all eye contact and just taking interest in the machines on display. I was nervous and genuinely uncomfortable. Was it really this hard to talk to people? It’s not like I don’t have years of practice working with clients, meeting new people at the office and giving tours of the facility (both Edit Creations and previously at a much larger facility). Driving back to the office that morning it hit me. How was I going to meet new people and convince new clients to do business with me, if I couldn’t talk to people?  This is a problem, and I had a knot in my stomach just thinking about it. I could no longer rely on business just walking in the door, I had to go get it. Yet, I didn’t have the most basic skills needed to do so.

Over the next several weeks I did some deep soul searching and came to the following conclusion. I needed to develop my social skills, and in a big way. My goal, I decided, was to get to the point that I could walk into a room of strangers (business people or otherwise) and not only feel comfortable, but be able to approach people and have a meaningful conversation. As if that wasn’t enough, I wanted to improve my public speaking/presentation skills.

If you’re already good at all of these things you’re probably wondering what the big deal is. But if you’re not, you know what a tall order this is. Just the though of taking this on scared me deeply. But at the same time I thought if not now, then when?

What really got me over the hump was thinking about the hours and hours of training I do every year to improve my editing and graphics skills. I will easily dedicate myself to doing whatever is necessary to learn a new software program or take my skill set to a new level. I’ll read manuals, 3rd party books, PDF files on my iPhone and do tutorials on Lynda.com until I fall asleep on my laptop. But over all of these years, what have I actually done to improve my personal skills? My interactions with the people around me have not been “upgraded” for years. When I started to look at it from this angle it became clear that this was something I had to do.

In my opinion the best way to find new clients is to first create new relationships, without pushing any type of business angle. Sure you want people to know what you do and what you could offer them, but that should be secondary to developing a genuine relationship and interest in the person. What’s key in what I just said is creating a genuine relationship, not a superficial one. Look at it like this. If you were a producer and needed a editor for your project, would you rather call up somebody out of the creative directory, run an ad to interview new people, or call the person you’ve already developed a trusting relationship with and that you enjoy being around? People like to work with people they like. If you’re going to spend several weeks working on a job, don’t you want to like the person you’re working with? Dare I say, even have fun on the job?

So, it starts with creating relationships, which is one thing I need help with. At least when it’s from a cold start. So I started doing research on-line and after a few weeks there was a clear winner. The Dale Carnegie course. The overall objectives of the course are as follows.

• Build greater self-confidence
• Strengthen people skills
• Enhance communication skills
• Develop leadership skills
• Reduce stress and improve our attitude

It’s everything I was looking for in a single course. The class meets once per week for 4 hours in the evening, and the class I’m in has about 20 people in it.

If you have not read the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” I highly recommend it. I’ve read it twice over the years and this course builds on those basics. Here is a list of the 9 principals they teach in reference to building better relationships.

• Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
• Give honest, sincere appreciation.
• Arouse in the other person an eager want.
• Become genuinely interested in other people.
• Smile.
• Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
• Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
• Talk in terms of the other person’s interest.
• Make the other person feel important, and do it sincerely.

While the thought of taking this class scared the hell out of me, that’s the idea of the course. They want to push you beyond your comfort zone and have you face your fears, but in a nurturing and positive environment.

While I have already started the class, I had to miss the first one due a petrie dish of disease at my house (aka 2 year old twins). So my first class (class 2) included me having to do a 2 minute speech. Nothing like jumping right in! While I was nervous all day before heading to the class, by the time the class was over I was feeling a lot more comfortable and could already see a difference after only 4 hours.

The idea behind the 8 week course is that they teach you certain skills and give you new tools every week, and then you have a week to implement what you’ve learned in your work environment. This allows you to really practice what you learn before moving onto other lessons. In fact, part of each class is reviewing how everybody did with their past week.

This week (class 3) includes having to do 2 speeches. One that’s 2 minutes, talking about how you used one of the 9 principals in the work place to change or influence a situation, and a 1 minute one explaining how to do something that’s related to your job that others in the class might be interested in. It’s an exercise in breaking things down in a very concise manner to quickly communicate your core message. So for my 1 minute speech, I’m going to teach the class how to create a 30 minute HD video in FCP using the Log and Transfer Window, standard transitions, 3rd party plugins, color correction with Color, audio mixing with Soundtrack, 3D graphics in Motion and how to repurpose the final edit for everything from BluRay DVD to YouTube. I’m just hoping I can fill the full 60 seconds.

The SuiteTake

My main idea behind doing this post was to get others thinking about their social skills, and to ask themselves if there was room for improvement. Some people are naturals at this kind of thing and could probably teach the class, but many of us are challenged in certain areas. A class like this can really give you an edge and create new opportunites for your business.

Over the upcoming weeks I’ll post an update or two and tell you how it’s going. At the very least I’ll do a post once the class is over to give you my full review.

Whether or not this ends up being any kind of major player in the editing world is still in question, but I was blown away at the potential capabilities of the system, yet completely shocked in general that they are even deciding to make this. I’ve loved Nintendo for years, dating all the way back to NES, and I think it’s crazy that they would try and make this jump into post-production. I guess they wanted to make the case that video editing should be fun and universal, and shouldn’t be left alone to the technical folk.

Shigeru Miyamoto, the brains behind Nintendo, made the announcement at the Kyoko Electronic Convention in Japan last night.

“Konichiwa! This all began when I had shot a video of my daughter’s birthday party, then I realized that I had too much footage, and it needed to be cut down to a reasonable length. I don’t own any personal editing software. Then I noticed most of my daughter’s friends playing with the Wii, and there were several girls sitting on the futon watching, with nothing to do. Well, what if these 8-year-old girls could not only edit this video for me, but have the same level of fun editing as the the other children playing the Wii?”

That sounds pretty insane to me that editing could be as much fun to an 8-year-old girl as playing the Wii, but he goes on to elaborate how this could potentially work.

“The only way to make editing fun for children and the elderly is to make it universally appealing. Normally you would have to go through school, or at least read the manual to an editing program to learn how to use it, but not with the Nintedit System! Through a series of new innovative gadgets and extremely fun mini games, literally anyone can edit.”

I was extremely curious as to what kind of gadgets and mini-games could possibly be involved with editing. And also how this whole thing works to begin with:

“To import the footage you shot on virtually any camera, you must go through a series of fun, beach-related mini-games to see how much of the footage you get to use. For instance, the better you do at playing Nintedit Import Volleyball, the more of the footage that you shot you get to use! It’s a very intuitive game though, so most people will get most, if not all, of their footage. It is a plastic, full sized volleyball that is tethered to your arm with a cable, it has 112 groundbreaking motion sensors built inside of it, so you can play it anywhere you have room to play it, but within 10 feet of your Nintedit system, of course. But chances are the first few times you play, you will fail, and only get to use a small fragment of your footage. That unused footage will be immediately deleted from the hard drive, and will encourage you to get better at the game for future edits. Nintediting is not only fun, it is a learning experience!”

A press release after the convention also stated that these other “importing games” will be available on launch day, with more to follow in the months after release (all sold separately):

Nintedit Import Surfing
Nintedit Import Dune Buggy
Nintedit Import Hacky Sack
Nintedit Import Flag Football
Super Import Brothers
Donkey Kong’s DVCAM Adventure
Metroid P2
The Legend of Zelda: The VHS of Time

But what of the gadgets, and how does editing actually work?

“Basically it works like this, depending on how many clips you have earned in any of the fun Import Series games, that is how many rounds you will go through in order to edit your video. For instance, if you have won 78 of your video clips, you will have to play a challenging, yet addictive, mini-game for each and every one of your 78 clips, in order to see how, and if, your clip makes it in the final sequence. On average, in testing, we found that Nintediters were getting a little over 100 clips in each of their Nintediting experiences, so in order to make sure it doesn’t get tedious, we have created for the Ninteditor a slew of 7 mini-games to challenge them. This will ensure that no person has to play the same one game over and over again. Instead they have seven to choose from!”

He went on to break down the seven mini-games:

Nintedit Bowling:

“We did a study, and found that literally every single person on the planet enjoys Wii Bowling, excluding a few rogue individuals who we declared insane and had committed to Nintendo work camps. Do to the fact that we are using graphics technology for our system that is only as good as the Nintendo 64, you cannot use Wiimotes, as a complete lack of backwards compatibility is in play. So we have invented a new device, which works much like the nicotine patches my mother-in-law uses. It is a disposable electronic patch, that you can place on any real bowling ball. It is full of tiny motion sensors, and you must also attach them to a set of real bowling pins. Then you can set up your own personal bowling alley in your living room! The amount of pins you knock over determines how many seconds the video clip will play in the Nintedit timeline. We have taken virtual bowling to a level more real then you can imagine! $7.99 for a pack of 3 bowling patches. Bowling ball and pins are not included with the Nintedit System.”

Scissor Harvest:

“In order to reduce the size of a video clip, you must use the wireless, external Nintendo Virtua Scissors, which are basically real scissors, with a motion sensor built in. On the screen, harvest vines will fly at you, and you are wearing 3D glasses by the way I forgot to mention, sold separately, and you will literally run around the room frantically cutting at the virtual harvest vines with the Virtua Scissors. Each vine you cut reduces your clip by one frame. In order to achieve the most realism, the scissor blades are actually real, but of course we have added removable plastic covers to ensure small children and the elderly don’t stab themselves accidentally (laughs).”

Text Shoot ‘Em Up

“Using the brand new Nintendo Sniper Rifle, in combination with the Nintedit Alphabet Display Device, the ADD we call it, you shoot motion sensor bullet rounds at the motion sensor ADD, trying to hit the letters you desire. But you only have a limited time to shoot what you need! The letters you hit appear in that order in your video. Can you say on-screen text anyone? (audience claps) The faster and more accurate you do it, the cooler the transition of the word will be onto the screen. If you are an advanced Nintedit marksman, you can set the ADD across the street, or on a moving swing set at the local playground for some extreme challenges, or if you are a beginner, you can just have your brother or sister hold it for you a few feet away. With motion sensors, anything is possible!”

Nintedit Hero

“You basically play Guitar Hero, and if you beat the song, you get to use it for the video clip you are playing for. Getting note streaks in a row enables the song to be played over multiple clips at once. We are still in the licensing process for the music, but we have a certified 6 songs to be guaranteed available at launch day:

“The Stroke” by Billy Squier
“Happy Birthday” by Patty and Mildred Hill
“Poker Face (DJ Dirty Dave Slow Jazz Remix #3)” by Lady Gaga
“A Very Slash Christmas” by Slash
“Bitches Ain’t Shit” by Dr. Dre
“The Laverne and Shirley Theme Song” by Cyndi Grecco

We are very excited to have such wonderful artists contributing to our Nintedit experience.”

Body Motion Challenge:

“We here at Nintendo have come to the realization that Americans are horribly, horribly fat people. If you want to speed up or slow down your clip, you must strap on the Nintedit Power Belt, which is loaded with motion sensors and electric shocks, and you must run for 1 mile in order to slow your clip down by 10%, 2 miles for 20% reduced speed, and so forth. Do you want slow-motion action scenes in your video? Then you better get outside and start losing 40 lbs!”

Cruisin’ Volume Racer USA:

“In order to change the volume levels of your dialog and music for each of your video clips, you take the Nintedit Super Kart Meter Measuring Device and wire it to the engine of your car. If you are a woman, you may need the help of a mechanic (women in audience start booing). I KID, I KID! (winks, men in audience laugh) We use one of our most powerful motion sensors we have for this mini-game. You type in the Kart Meter how long your clip is going to be, and it gives you a countdown to begin driving. Our groundbreaking motion sensors will detect when you are accelerating and when you are hitting the breaks. The faster you go, THE LOUDER THE VIDEO WILL BE! And vice versa. Experiment by hitting the brakes and speeding up at random on the highway to see the cool effects it will have on your audio! Race against your friends, see who can get the loudest clip! I can’t stress enough, though, if you are a small child, please do not play Cruisin’ Volume Racer USA without the help of a parent, or slightly older child.”

Nintedit Dating:

“We here in Japan have a plethora of video game dating simulators. They are good and all, some are pretty erotic, but we here at Nintendo wanted to give you, the Ninteditor, the most realistic dating experience ever known to a home console system. Basically, you put in a motion sensor chip into your brain, which can be implanted by a Nintendo-trained doctor through either ear canal, and then you go on an actual date with a woman or a man. At the time we are only offering heterosexual encounters, as our computers are having difficulty measuring motion sensors amongst same sex relationships… If you can’t get a date, Nintendo will provide you with a Nintendate for a small fee. No promises they will be attractive, though (laughs). The motion sensors measure how good you are doing on your date by your brain activity, and how much you are nervously shaking. It also has speech recognition to determine if you are saying the right thing. The better you do, the better the special effects graphics will be in your video! Let’s just say if you do REALLY good (winks, starts making subtle humping motions while quietly chuckling) your video will look like Avatar! And if you strike out, your video will look as pathetic as your Friday night. So when you see your friend with a terrible looking video, you’ll know his date with Megumi last weekend didn’t go so hot! (laughs) (audience laughs)”

Well I don’t know, I’m actually kind of sold on this. This seems like it might actually be a really cool and innovative way of editing. I’m excited, I’m definitely going to wait overnight at Target again to get this on launch day!

Oh, here is Miyamoto with his final thoughts:

“Video editing is no longer for the technical. It never was supposed to be. Do you know where the best, most creative ideas come from? They come from your 5-year-old sister. They come from your 95-year-old grandmother. THESE are the people that should be editing. Nintendo wants to take editing out of the hands of the people who have loyally devoted themselves to it for decades, and put it in the hands OF EVERYONE ELSE (audience cheers). Edit with your family. Edit with your friends. Edit with your dog. Edit passionately with your lover. Editing is a universal experience. Just look at this video that my 8-year-old daughter Nintedited about her summer at Nintendo Work Camp B, in a mere 17 hours of playing time.

And this power can now be in the hands of everybody, and anybody, and they can do it with ease. For only $699. Sayonara…” (audience starts rioting uncontrollably, 39 dead, 102 injured).

With so many software programs and hardware only supported by the Intel based Mac computers, you might find that having that old Dual/Quad G5 around is becoming more and more problematic. And that may be true, especially as a production machine. More and more of the Apple and Adobe apps only support the newer processor, so upgrading starts to become difficult. Even Snow Leopard is only supported by Intel machines, so your G5 kind of gets stuck in time.

But I’m going to give you a few options to still make use of that older machine, and it will end up having more value to you than the few bucks you can fetch by selling it on eBay. Currently a Quad G5 (the last and fastest G5 made) is going for about $600, and that’s if you throw in a bunch of extra software/upgrades. And who wants to deal with shipping the beast anyway. My vote would be to keep the machine around and put it to work.

FileServer

One of the best things you can do is add more storage to the machine and have it as a file server. For example, in our office we have 3 main edit rooms, but there are many files that we use on jobs that are shared. We have a music library, stock footage, stock effects, some Editor Toolkit graphics, SFX, Custom Compressor Settings and many template items that we’ve created in house. We used to have all of these items installed on every computer in the office. Not a big deal, except when you make an update you have to make sure that every machine is updated with the same items or you quickly get out of sync. Having just one place to store it all is much more manageable.

Backup Server

Another option would be to add extra storage and make it a backup server that monitors the computers in your office and backups new files on a daily or weekly basis. You can do this using the new Retrospect 8 for the mac, or ChronoSync and Chrono Agent. Both packages work the same way, having a small client app running on your workstation, and the server software running on the backup machine. You select what you want to backup, when you want to back it up and where to. The nice part is that once it’s setup properly, you don’t have to keep remembering to back things up before you leave every night.

WIKI Server

Finally, you can install OSX Server (10.5) software and use it for workgroup management, contact files, file server and even a WIKI. We have a WIKI that we use for ECU (Edit Creations University) where we have all training materials, tips and tricks, job specific information, client FedEx numbers and even the employee manual. It’s all accessible to all employees whenever they need to reference anything, and any employee that has permission can add their own posts or revise posts that are there with new information. It becomes a very centralized location to store information, files, and video tutorials.

Creative Samples Database

Over the past 10 years I have slowly collected still images, QuickTime movies, DVD’s,  tv commercials, show opens, movie trailers and so on, of things that I found inspirational or creative. The main reason was that I wanted to have something to spark my creative juices when I was just dead in the water looking for a new idea. I don’t like to steal an idea directly, but there’s plenty you can take from any given example and than make it your own. Often just seeing something will spark an idea of your own.

I have so many samples now that I created a database called Creative Spark. Everything is processed into a friendly format and imported into the database. Once in there, it’s tagged for any number of attributes, from the type of video it is to what types of things is shows examples of (camera work, effects, text, graphics, etc.). This is the kind of thing that works great in a shared environment and it’s now accessible to any of the editors or producers in the office.

It also comes in handy when you’re trying to describe an effect or look to a client. It’s much more effective if you actually have the example right there to play for them.

TimeMachine Volume

Most people hook up an external drive for use with Apple’s TimeMachine. But by adding up to 6TB of internal space, you can do the same thing and take up no extra counter space. We have a TimeMachine volume on each edit computer that runs twice daily* to backup the active projects (and only the active projects). We’ve found this to be a very solid part of our overall backup strategy.

Whatever you decide to do with that G5, more storage is probably going to help. Today’s post will walk you through how to install more storage than you ever imagined in your aging G5 so that it’s up to snuff for you’re data needs.  Of the ideas I outlined above, all could be implemented on a single machine and play nicely, and in that case you would absolutely want to add more storage.

What You Will Need

A G5 Tower of any vintage (the photos here are from a Quad G5).

A Swift Data Kit for your model of G5. The kit includes…

Internal SATA card (you can purchase this with the kit as an add on option)

Up to 3 extra SATA drives (in addition to the 2 that your G5 normally holds)

One (1) open PCI, PCIX or PCI Express slot

Getting Started

Start by laying all of your parts out and making sure you have everything. I say this not only because it’s a good idea, but because I didn’t do this the first time and didn’t realize I was missing the SATA card until the machine was already stripped down. I was pretty bummed. TAKE 2!

Lay the mac on it’s side and take the side door off of your mac and remove the side cover and clear plastic internal cover.

Next, remove the fan assembly toward the front of the machine. It should just pull straight up.

Once the fan is out you will see a small metal screw in the near center of the bottom plate. This screw needs to be removed. Don’t worry, it’s not really holding anything in that you need to worry about.

Set the screw aside for now.

Next, it’s time to attach the brackets to your hard drives. In our case we went with 1TB Green Drives from Western Digital, but you can use larger 1.5 or 2TB drives if you wish.

The green drives are preferred for their lower power use, and it should be noted that Seagate drives are not supported, and I’ve personally had issues with Hitachi drives. To be safe, stick with WD greens. In my case I couldn’t get the computer to boot because the Hitachi drives were drawing too much power. With the WD drives this was not a issue.

Pay attention to how you connect the bracket. Your instinct may be to put the bracket on so that the bottom lip curls under the drive. However, the drive needs to curl away from the drive.

Repeat these steps until all 3 drives are brackets securely attached.

With all 3 drives mounted to brackets, it’s time to attach each of the drives to the base mount. As shown in the photos, attach each drive to the base using the supplied screws from the kit. It’s important that the drives are oriented as shown.

It seems like an odd way to mount the drives, but it’s actually very solid and the parts are well machined.

Next it’s time to insert the SATA card. We chose the Tempo Sata E4i which is recommend for our G5 model.

Take the card out of the packaging and attach the bight red cables to each of the ports. Be sure to plug the FLAT ends of the cables into the card, not the L shaped ones.

With all of the cables attached, gently insert the card into your open slot and secure it with a screw into the back of the machine.

Just leave the cables hanging out of the side of the box for now.

Next you need to hook up the power cable harness. At one in there is a Y type adaptor. What you need to do is pull the power from one of the current machine drives, and plug that power into one end of the Y adaptor. The other end of the Y adaptor goes back into that drive and you route the cable down the back of the machine. It’s basically a way to split off the power supply and share it with the drives you’re adding.

Again, leave the power cable hanging out the side of the box, but only after routing it down below the top shelf of the machine.

Now the fun part. It’s time to slide the drive assembly in. With the drive assembly right next to the computer, work from back to front hooking up both the power and SATA connections. Don’t worry about the cables being a mess, we’ll fix that later.

With everything hooked up, slowly and carefully slide the drives into the machine as shown, with the lip/screw hole part of the base facing the back of the machine.

Once you get the drives part way in, start to route the cables up and above the fan assembly and above where the cards go.

Once you have the drives in the machine, push the assembly toward the front and line up the plate so that the screw holes are aligned. Once aligned, use the longer screw that came with your kit and secure the plate to the base of the machine.

Reinset the fan assembly, close up the case and you’re good to go!

It’s snug, but it’s a perfect fit.

Time to Power Up

With a little luck, if you did everything correctly and used the recommended drives the machine will power up. Let the machine boot and use Disk Utilites to format the new drives however you would like. They can be added as 3 separate drives if you prefer, or you can raid them together. We created a raid 0 strip of the 3 to add a single 3TB volume.

If the machine turns on and off right away, chances are the power supply is overloaded. Make sure you used the correct drives. In some cases, you can try a few times in a row and it will finally start, but then you’re living on the edge a bit. Try to disconnect the power from one of the drives and see if it will start up then. If so, you may need to stick with only a 2-drive upgrade.

Why Is There An Airplane In My Room?!

Now that you’ve done all of this, there is one little down side that we noticed. Aside from it obviously sucking more power to drive all of the new storage, the fans in the machine run a LOT more. If you have this computer in a back room as a server this might not matter, but if it’s your main edit machine it might start to annoy you. We did this upgrade on 2 machines, one is a server in the back room with a bunch of other equipment, and one was to a Quad G5 that we still edit on (the upgrade shown in this example), so that we could do local TimeMachine backups once daily. The edit machine fans are audibly running a lot more and a lot louder than before. This is no real surprise when you think about all of the extra heat that’s being generated, but you should be aware of it.

Otherwise, it’s a very sold upgrade. We didn’t do any official benchmarks on the drives but the speed is much faster than any single internal drive, and more than adequate for a TimeMachine volume, file server or even video capture for all but the most high end formats.

The SuiteTake

Before you get rid of that old G5 tower, ask yourself if there’s anyway it can make your life easier by automating something for you, acting as a server or just being a internal FTP or file server. There are many tasks that don’t really need Quad-Octo-Pecto-IntelAMD-SuperHyper-Threading chips, and will run just fine on a G5. The value that can be provided by keeping the machine can far exceed any small amount of cash you might get from selling it on eBay.

This week I have the good fortune of getting out of the cold Chicago weather and editing in sunny California. I’m was brought out to do some on-site editing for Fender at the NAMM convention in Anaheim.

Like every travel job that I do, there are unique needs that needed to be addressed. No two jobs are exactly the same.  The needs of this job resulted in me having the most sophicated travel setup I’ve had to date. Here are the details of the job.

NAMM is a convention that showcases manufactures of musical instruments and gear. It’s kind of the NAB of the music industry. Fender has one whole floor of the convention center, and my job is specific to what they’re doing here. There are 3 main areas of their venue. The Stage, where there will be live performances, both planned and as people walk up and just want to jam. There is the exhibit area where booths are setup for all of the separate companies that are under the Fender umbrella. And then there’s the “floor”, where people are just socializing and moving from one place to the other. All of these are being covered by video, and as quickly as possible edited down and posted to the web on the Fender website as well as many social media sites.

The stage area is being covered by another editor who is recording the line feed and 3 iso cameras to AJA KI recorders.

He then takes specific performances (just single songs), cuts them down, adds bumpers on both sides and compresses it for the web. He then hands it off to one of the 3 web guys that take care of the online distribution.

As for my job, I’m handling the show floor and the booths, which is being covered by 2 roaming cameras shooting DVCPro50 widescreen on P2 cards. There is an assistant that will be running cards to and from the cameras whenever they think they got something special to post. That might be a good interview, a really kick ass performance by somebody jamming out, or an unexpected moment with a real rock star. It’s rumored that Eddie Van Halen may be showing up at some point.

So, my job started out sounding pretty simple, but the more we talked it through in the pre-production meeting we realized that the big issue is going to be time. Time to get the cards, time to download and wipe them, time to edit, and especially, time to compress the final video to flash so it can be uploaded. While this can easily all be done on a single machine, it didn’t seem like the best idea. So what we ended up with was a multiple station setup, all being run by a single operator (me).

So from left to right, here’s what I have setup.

P2 Ingest Station

This machine is a MacBookPro laptop with Final Cut Pro doing nothing other then logging and importing p2 footage. The client provided the p2 reader, which is way overkill for what we’re doing. But it does hold multiple cards and connects via USB. It’s really designed to do a lot more then just read cards, but hey… it looks pretty awesome as part of my setup.

The footage is all ingested over the network to the edit station, where I continue editing as the footage comes in (everything is networked via Gigabit Ethernet and a small 5 port switch. This also keeps me from having to copy footage from one machine to the other. All of the machines are using the same drive. It’s local to one machine, and remote to the other 2.

Edit Station

The edit station is another MacBookPro running FCP. On this machine I have a small Raid 0 strip of 2 G-Raid drives, giving me 1 TB of raided space and connected via FW800. I also have a 2TB Western Digital “My Book” drive that I’m using to mirror all of my work and captured footage on-site. I’m a big believer of having a duplicate or triplicate of everything when editing on the road.

As I bring in the footage I’m first sorting it into different sequences (as opposed to bins), one for each of the companies. At some point the producer will come in and quickly tell me what footage goes up and what does not.  I will then edit down the clips with clean ins and outs, add the company logo bumper on the in and out and export it into a compression watch folder.

Compression Station

The final stage is a MacPro Tower running Episode Pro. I customized it just for this job, and it is also using the same raid drive that both the P2 ingest machine and edit machine are using. So as soon as a file shows up in the watch folder, it starts compressing it using the preset that was already created and tested with the client. The output folder is a shared folder that the web crew has access to on their end of the network (upstream of my 5-port switch).

Pulling It All Together

While it would not be too difficult to slide my chair from machine to machine, I had an idea as I was testing the system. Why not use Apple Remote Desktop to control all 3 machines from the one 23″ monitor!

So, that’s what I’m doing. From the edit station, which has a large LCD hooked up, I have access to both of the other stations, and switching is very fast and easy since it’s all the same mouse and keyboard. What an awesome way to work!

Ready to Rock n’ Roll

So at this point, I’m pretty much playing the waiting game. I’m set up, I’ve tested, retested and tested again and everything is working as expected. It all gets put to the test tomorrow.

Today I join the extremely rare air of millions of internet folk. Today I do something that everyone from Roger Ebert to CindyCinema.com to your Aunt Rebecca does. Today I will list my favorite movies from 2009, to the excessively high amount of 25. Why 25? Because I go to the theater almost every weekend, I’ve seen about 60 movies from this year, so listing only 10 would inhibit my urge to talk about what movies I’ve seen. Plus everybody loves a list!

So let’s get right into it. I’ll be SPOILER-FREE. Here are picks for my favorite movies from the Year 1 A.D…K. (After Dark Knight)…

*** It should be noted that at the time of writing this post I have NOT yet seen Avatar, Crazy Heart, The Lovely Bones, A Simple Man, Sherlock Holmes, or The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. All of those may or may not have had potential to make this list…

25. Paranormal Activity

After first seeing the trailer several months before its release, this was on my radar as one of my most anticipated movies for the year. After seeing the movie itself, I was slightly underwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was good, but I was hoping that maybe, especially with the ending, that it would be 10x crazier. But in between countless (sometimes funny, sometimes pointless) dialog scenes, there are some actual genuinely creepy moments. My advice is that if you’ve never heard of this movie, rent it when it comes out on DVD this month, and watch it without knowing anything about it, and you’ll have an incredibly fun time. Whatever you do, DO NOT watch the trailer for this movie, they mind-blowingly ruin the final scene of the movie in it! I’m not joking!

24. Watchmen

I consider Watchmen to be one of my favorite books of all time, so I was definitely excited for the movie, as opposed to being skeptical from the beginning that there’s no way they could pull it off. In the end, this satisfied me. And for the most part (I think) it satisfied fans of the graphic novel. From what I read from reviews, the main problem was that people who didn’t know the source material wouldn’t know what the hell is going on. I can’t certify this claim, but I can understand that happening. Plus it’s very long. That being said, I finally plan on checking out the 3 and 1/2 hour Ultimate Cut over the holidays.

23. The Road

This might beat out Precious as the “feel-bad” movie of the year. While Precious had glimmers of hope scattered throughout, this movie is just one long depressing journey down a road to nowhere. And at no point did Precious ever have the threat of being cannibalized by rednecks. This film about a father and son trudging along a road in a post-apocalyptic wasteland did get draggy at times, but it stuck with me for a while after I left the theater. Let me just say that despite its flaws, the good parts are great, and the tense parts are intense.

22. Drag Me to Hell

Ah, this movie brings us all back to when Sam Raimi made awesome, hilarious, and fun horror movies. Not to take anything away from the Spiderman movies, but I’ll take a chainsaw on an arm over web slinging any day of the week. And his return to horror with Drag Me to Hell proved to be almost as fun as his old stuff (almost). The only things that may have potentially hurt this movie are the lack of Bruce Campbell, and the PG-13 rating. Regardless, it’s a horror movie that doesn’t try and be scary so much (except for a dozen or so “jump scares”) as it does to be funny, gross, and entertaining.

21. Bruno

You either like what Sasha Baron Cohen does, or you don’t. That is probably what determines who will like this movie as well. I happen to find him hilarious. Bruno isn’t as funny as Borat, and neither of them are as funny as Da Ali G Show. While I hate to be in awkward situations and confrontations myself, I love watching it happen to other people. Because that’s basically what this movie is, just an 80-minute awkward confrontation. And as how it was with Borat, the deleted/extended scenes on the Blu-ray are often as good or better than what actually made the movie.

20. Extract

Mike Judge is 3-for-3 with his live-action films in my opinion. Office Space is a classic, and Idiocracy is a vastly underseen comedic masterpiece. Now with Extract, he returns closer to Office Space, while at the same time staying original. It’s about a guy who owns an extract company that employs about a dozen very stupid people. Mike Judge might very well be the best writer of “stupid people dialog” out there nowadays. Plus I enjoyed seeing Jason Bateman and Kristen Wiig get high profile roles, even if it’s in a movie that (like Idiocracy) was not seen by enough people.

19. The House of the Devil

If you knew nothing about this movie, and I showed it to you and told you it was released in 1982, you would have no choice but to believe me. That’s how great of an homage to late 70s/ early 80s horror movies this is. And that’s exactly who this will appeal to, fans of that era of horror films. It’s pretty cool. Hell, they even shot it on 16mm!

18. District 9

This movie was a nice little surprise this year, no one really knew what to expect of it. It played out as both a great sci-fi movie and an intriguing social commentary. For what it cost to make, the special effects were phenomenal and the aliens blended in seamlessly into the South African slums. I’m sure Invictus will get all the awards buzz and this will receive none, but to be honest I’ve seen Invictus, and the best movie about South Africa this year was District 9. And it won people over without a likable main character!

17. I Love You, Man

Despite coining the regrettable term “bromance”, this movie was consistently funny, and continued the trend of R-rated comedies being significantly better than PG-13 ones. If you’ve ever looked at Paul Rudd’s imdb page, you’ll notice that he is in a large amount of crappy romantic comedies and other garbage that no one really sees, and then he’s also in a small handful of good movies. This happens to be one of the good ones.

16. Moon

With shades of Kubrickian (if that’s a word) isolation and style, Sam Rockwell lives alone in a mining farm on the moon, just doing his job until his contract runs out. He’s been up there by himself for several years, his only friend is a robot voiced by Kevin Spacey. What I thought was going to be a movie about the descent into madness turned into one of the surprisingly cooler plots of the year. Like 2007′s Sunshine though, this movie may lose a little of it’s magic your TV as opposed to the big theater screen.

15. Trick ‘r Treat

I’m telling you, this movie is this generation’s Creepshow, if that means anything to you. I (like many other people who saw it) will be blown away at the fact this never got theatrical release (while garbage like Saw VI gets wide release). This mishmash of well made short stories blended into a moderately intertwined whole is probably the greatest straight-to-DVD movie I’ve ever seen. (also, some might consider this a 2008 release, but it didn’t get put out to the public until well into 2009, so it makes the list!)

14. 500 Days of Summer

I’m not a big fan of romantic-type movies all that much, but occasionally every few years one comes along that is actually a meaningful, well-intentioned, well-made film. This movie about heartache and the recovery process relates to me on many levels. And it’s easily the most cleverly constructed and edited movie about relationships since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

13. The Hurt Locker

I liked this film a lot, I wanted to like it more, but it seemed like it should have been even better for some reason. It’s almost like Generation Kill: The Movie. I could have assumed a movie about a bomb squad in the Iraq war would be an extremely tense movie, but damn! This movie got me cold-sweating a little bit in the movie theater. This is the definition of an “edge of your seat thriller”.

12. Where the Wild Things Are

I normally go to the movies on Saturday afternoons, because I don’t like crowded movie theaters, but I knew if I did that for this movie there would be a bunch of annoying kids in the theater, as I see them wandering about in droves when I go in the afternoon (but I see non-children’s movies so I don’t care). So I went at night to see this hoping that maybe the amount of children would be greatly reduced, and it was, but ironically the theater was crowded and I ended up sitting three seats away from some annoying kid. And this kid, I swear to god, fell asleep during the last 20 minutes of the movie and started snoring…! The parent didn’t wake the kid up! How rude! That kid must have been dumb anyway, because he was missing a fantastic movie. But seriously, theater etiquette people!

11. The Hangover

It’s surprising that the most universally accepted comedy of the year was also really good, it normally doesn’t work out that way. And it’s nice to see Mike Tyson getting work again.

10. Observe and Report

I can’t stress how much I love this movie. It was probably 2009′s most “love it or hate it” film, but I was blown away by how much I ended up loving it. I read a review that called it a comedic version of Taxi Driver, and I couldn’t agree more. I’ve made pretty much all of my friends watch it since it’s come out on Blu-ray. It’s easily the darkest comedy of the year, probably Seth Rogan’s best role ever, and it saddens me that the most widely recognized movie about mall cops is still Paul Blart.

9. Adventureland

I can’t tell if this is actually a good movie, or I just love it for some odd reason. I personally don’t know anyone else who has seen it, so I can’t ask them. But I just clicked with this movie to an insane degree. Maybe I just related to it because it was similar to my life right after college. Regardless, it’s the best place to enjoy Kristen Stewart without having to endure Twilight.

8. UP

For some reason I never expect much out of these computer animated movies, then I watch them, and they blow me away 100% of the time (I just saw Kung Fu Panda the other day and the same thing happened as well…). In comparison to Where the Wild Things Are, this movie had adult themes but was more adaptable to children, while Wild Things apparently makes children fall asleep. My only regret here was that I didn’t see it in 3D when I had the chance.

7. Funny People

Judd Apatow will probably forever have a free pass from me to do whatever he wants for making Freaks and Geeks, but this is my favorite of his three movies. I don’t know why people are claiming it wasn’t actually funny, it was very funny, and it was also very serious as well, I think that’s the genius of it. All of the actors fit in perfectly with the roles they were given, and it’s disappointing that people didn’t like this movie more. I’d say give it another chance. I would also like to note that the special features on the Blu-ray collector’s edition are as amazing as they are plentiful. Hours of good extra stuff, especially the Raaaaaaaandy documentary.

6. Zombieland

Is it surprising that a zombie movie is likely the most fun movie of the year? It shouldn’t be, zombie movies rule! Woody Harrelson is in top comedic form, and I’ll need to see it again before I make a statement as bold as it’s better than Shaun of the Dead, but it’s pretty close. And I won’t ruin it, but there is a big surprise cameo that does not disappoint. I’m hoping for some sequels.

5. Fantastic Mr. Fox

Wes Anderson hasn’t let me down yet. I was pretty excited when I heard he was going to be making this movie, because I knew he would do great things with it. It’s probably his most accessible film to date, I could see just about anyone enjoying it, but at the same time it’s still vintage Anderson and fits right in with his auteur style. It’s still in theaters right now, so get the cuss out there and cussing see it!

4. Star Trek

This might be the perfect blend of nerdiness and coolness. This is a Star Trek movie! Should it be this cool??? This JJ Abrams character might actually know what he’s doing. I’m not a fan of the Star Trek series, and I was able to jump right in and understand what’s going on. This looked great in theaters, and the Blu-ray looks pretty spectacular as well.

3. Up in the Air

I didn’t really know what to expect when I went to the theater to see this other than it was super ultra mega critically acclaimed. What I ended up seeing was an incredibly simple movie, that was equal parts powerful. This is perhaps the most moving film of the year, and it does it without ever being hokey. In fact, the whole thing seems very realistic. This goes to show that you don’t always need a big spectacle of a story to make an amazing movie. I’m sure this will end up winning every award known to man come awards time.

2. Inglourious Basterds

This has everything you’d expect from a Tarantino movie; witty dialog, extreme violence, stolen ideas turned original somehow. I’m sorry, I’m something of a Tarantino fanboy, I can’t help it, I eat this stuff up! I even love his segment in Four Rooms! As he himself has recently stated, this may be his masterpiece. I may agree. Wait, Pulp Fiction is probably still better, but Basterds is quite amazing. I just watched it again this week on Blu-ray, it just reinforced my love of it. I really wanted to make this my #1, but I had to go with my gut…

1. Black Dynamite

No movie this year made me laugh as much as this did. I was laughing out loud in the theater from the first scene all the way to the absolutely insane ending. I saw the trailer for it earlier this year, and was excited to see it, hoping it would be kinda funny. It ended up being ridiculously funny. I drove 45 minutes away to see it during it’s one week theatrical run, and I almost feel special for being one of the undoubtedly few people who have seen it. All eight of us in the theater sort of bonded that day, we all walked out the theater looking at each other and chuckling with stupid smiles on our faces, eight strangers. Did we then go out for drinks afterwards and regale in hilarious banter? No, of course not, I don’t talk to strangers. But in all honesty, this is the definition of a cult classic (if you can call it that this soon, I’m doing it anyway), and when it comes out on Blu-ray in February I suggest you check it out, though, it may not be for all tastes. If you find the trailer funny, then you will probably agree that this is one of the greatest things you’ll ever see. Maybe I’m just crazy, who knows?

For your possible enjoyment, here’s two other quick mini-lists:

JUST MISSED THE CUT:

35. Orphan
34. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
33. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
32. Coraline
31. 2012
30. The Informant!
29. A Serious Man
28. Invictus
27. Precious
26. The Blind Side

The WORST films of 2009 (that I saw, I mean Old Dogs and Twilight New Moon are probably worse, but I didn’t bother subjecting myself to that torture):

10. The Final Destination
9. Whatever Works
8. My Bloody Valentine 3D
7. X-Men Origins Wolverine
6. Surrogates
5. The Men Who Stare at Goats
4. Friday the 13th
3. Year One
2. Ninja Assassin
1. Jennifer’s Body (not worth it even for Megan Fox or the lesbian kiss)

2009 was a good year overall for movies, and here’s hoping for a great 2010!

Happy holidays!

What’s this? Production gear reviews on a post-production blog? Yup, that’s right. We’re not all just codecs and compression here at SuiteTake; we do actually put on our shoes and socks and get to shoot too. In fact, there’s nothing better to appreciate parking your rear in a comfy edit chair all day long then luggin’ production gear around on an old fashioned shoot now and then.

So yes, we do shoot here too and have come across a few nifty little production gadgets that have proved very helpful in the field: The Lite Panels Micro Pro and Chimera’s Color Correction Screens for their softboxes.

Lite Panels Micro Pro Review

First the Lite Panel Micro Pro. We had a shoot come up where we were going to need to shoot close ups of a persons foot walking across a floor in a day-for-night situation. Looking at our standard Arri lighting kit there was nothing in there that would really do the trick for casting the small pool of light we would need to illuminate the foot as it walked across the floor. All of our instruments were just too big for the task, the smallest of our lights being a 300. We looked and found the Lite Panels Micro Pro and thought it would be the perfect fit.

The Lite Panel Micro Pro in its box

First, the construction. The Lite Panel Micro Pro right out of the box feels cheep, and at around $450 from B&H, it isn’t exactly cheep. The body is all plastic, but the not the good solid and refined plastic that you’d find in a Toyota or on an iPod, the cheep brittle plastic more akin to a carnival toy. It has 96 LEDs in a grid, is powered by 6 AAs or DC in (power source sold separately, but certainly something you could get at Radio Shack), has a power control dimming knob on top and standard screw-in shoe mount on the bottom. In the box is the Micro Pro, a flimsy shoe mount with ball head a CTO filter, warming filter, and diffusion filter.

The Lite Panel Micro Pro

While the Lite Panel Micro Pro feels and looks cheep in performance it is not, it has held up well to our production demands so far (which are rather light by comparison to more rigorous demands). I suspect that a drop or good whack to a c-stand could crack the casing, however, it should be noted that an LED won’t be damaged by an impact in the same way a tungsten bulb would. The shoe mount is the real weak link in the kit. It is flimsy and poorly made. When  you tighten down the stop on the ball head it causes the positioning of the panel to change significantly due to the pressure applied to the ball and socket making it futile to position the panel and then lock it down. What I have ended up doing is to tighten down the ball head to a mid-range of tightness and then just force adjust the panel to where I want it.

The included shoe mount plain sucks

The Lite Panel Micro Pro is balanced for daylight out of the box and the filters it comes with do a fine job of correcting to incandescent. They fit onto the front of the panel via slots on either side of the casing and hold in place well. There are also slots on the back of the panel to hold the filters when not in use, although our particular unit’s rear slots are too narrowly spaced to accommodate the filters so they are bowed when placed there. Not a big deal because they do stay put but it is annoying enough to me that I usually don’t keep them there. Battery life is excellent and the Lite Panel Micro Pro simply does not heat up one bit.

The rear of the Micro Pro

We were attracted to the Lite Panel because we thought it would be able to cast an even pool of light without the usual hot spots associated with traditional on-camera lights. In performance the Lite Panel Micro Pro was capable of both. The best thing about it is the adjustable power knob on the top of the unit. There are no stops, marks, or clicks in the knob, it’s just a smooth pot all around with a solid click to turn completely off. I like this because you can dial the intensity of the light to a virtually unlimited range. And that is really how this light needs to be used.

The power knob

The Lite Panel Micro Pro is not a key light. It should not be used as a main source of light in just about any situation. If you buy this light to act as a main source of light for quick head shots or interviews you’ll likely be disappointed. Rather it excels at being that little extra, that little kicker you need to add a little splash to the details of your scene. In our case we need a little punch down on the floor and it did an excellent job at that. I’ve found that I always use the panel at about 50-65% of its max power and have never used it at full power. When potted up to full power it just becomes a big raunchy hot spot like any other on-camera light. The key to using the Lite Panel Micro Pro is to pot it to 50-65% just to add a little bit of punch or kick to your scene, and we love it for that. We have found a use for it in just about every setup we’ve done.

The standard screw mount on the ball head adapter

It should be noted that while the shoe mount adapter is a piece of garbage it does have a standard tripod screw threading on the bottom of it so it can be directly attached to a photo ball head tripod or other light stand with a screw mount and used as an off-camera light. We do this all the time. Like I’ve said, the Lite Panel Micro Pro is a great little kicker, it’s NOT a key light. It’s small size allow it to be placed in tight spots where traditional fresnels won’t fit, and lack of heat make it safe in those small spaces as well. Yes, we are disappointed in the chincy construction but we absolutely love our Lite Panel Micro Pro.

A 3-way comparison of the Lite Panel's illumination

Chimera Color Correction Screen Review

Another cool little toy we have in our kit is a color correction screen for our Chimera soft box. Chimera makes several different flavors of color correction screens for their popular softboxes. They make 1/8, 1/4. 1/2, 3/4, and full versions of CTB and CTO for all sizes of their softboxes.

We had a shoot where we were going to need to shoot indoors with significant amounts of daylight coming through windows. Geling the windows with CTO wasn’t an option with the time and budget we had, neither was renting an HMI kit. I got to thinking that there had to be something out there to color correct Chimeras. In the past we had C-47′d CTB to the inside of our Chimera in a pinch and ended up getting marginal results and melted gels. I went looking and quickly found Chimera’s offerings. We got a 1/2 blue CTB color correction screen for our softbox.

The Chimera Color Correction Screen

The construction is excellent Chimera quality. To my surprise though, the screen is little more than a regular white front Chimera diffuser cloth with a regular CTB gel sewn to the back with velcro all around to attach it. The CTB is an actual gel! Because of this I do take a little extra care of it not to crinkle it too much and remove it when packing it away for the day. I roll it up and keep it in it’s original product box.

The light quality from it is great. It’s exactly what you’d expect from precisely positioning a CTB gel at the front of your softbox. Also as expected it does cut down the amount of light output according to the thickness of gel you are using. To compensate we sometimes remove the inner baffle from the softbox. We always remove the standard white diffuser from the front of our Chimera before attaching the color correction screen but I suppose if you wanted that extra diffusion and didn’t need the extra light output you could leave it on, there is room on the softbox’s velcro strip to accommodate both.

The front and back of the screen

We’ve used our screen in many mixed light situations (that’s primarily why we went with a 1/2 blue instead of a full blue) and it makes for a healthy white balance. It has proven to be indispensable when shooting in rooms with lots of windows. With a tool like this you can actually leave the blinds open and use that available light for a change!

The SuiteTake

The Lite Panel Micro Pro is an awesome little kicker light that has proved it worth many times over in a wide variety of shooting situations. It’s construction is sub-par and shoe mount is utter garbage but gives a great even splash of light quickly and easily right where you need it. The Lite Panel Micro Pro is very useful both on a off the camera. At almost $450 it’s priced a little on the high side, but you’ll be amazed at how often you’re able to use it in the field or the studio.

Chimera Color Correction Screens are great “poor-man’s” HMIs. At about $40 bucks a pop for the mid range sizes they are within just about anyone’s budget. With one of these slick screens say goodbye to the days of pulling all the shades and hello to using available light indoors again.

And yes, we do get off our butts now and then and do a little shooting here at SutieTake!

As a way to perhaps show how biased I may potentially be, I will say I am a full-on collector of DVDs. And not in a “yeah, I have 80 DVDs, my collection is pretty sweet…” kind of way. At the moment I’m typing this, I have 1,167 DVDs. I’m not joking.

But for the record, I’m not opposed to digital downloads. I think they are good in a certain way, but I also don’t think they are as amazing as they are said to be. I’ve even dabbled slightly in the downloading world, but in the end, I’m still a stubborn fan of the DVD. Let me state my case, and feel free to offer a rebuttal to any of my claims.

Price -

I’m not made of money. I’m in fact made of blood and organs. But I am by no means rich in any way, yet I’ve obtained somehow an enormous collection of DVDs. How? The first reason is that I haven’t had many real responsibilities to take care of over the years (family expenses/car payments/student loans), which I’ve been lucky enough to avoid (not that having a family is a bad thing…). But even so, buying everything full price still wouldn’t be possible with what I’m worth. That is perhaps the biggest factor in how I can obtain such an arrogant collection. Mainly, there is a wonderful, wonderful thing called Amazon Marketplace.

If you buy things on Amazon, you may notice under the full price there are more prices, such as “25 used from $4.76″. That is Amazon Marketplace. It’s pretty much eBay, except its all “Buy It Now” prices and they are almost always extremely cheap. For instance, why would you want to pay full price for The Dark Knight, when you can get it RIGHT NOW on Amazon Marketplace for $2.29…?

A lot of people try and claim that used DVDs are garbage, and they are all damaged blah, blah, blah. They, sir, are in fact rarely damaged. And if they are, the Amazon Marketplace seller always indicates they are scratched. They don’t want want you to be tricked, because then they have to deal with an annoying refund situation. Most of them are bulk sellers or ex-rental copies anyway, so they aren’t some creepy guy in his basement usually. And they ship faster than you think. In the (literally) hundreds of used DVDs I’ve purchased, I’ve only had ONE (yes, literally just ONE) DVD that was not as advertised and was scratched to hell. It was a 50¢ copy of American Splendor. And since I only paid 50¢ for it, I didn’t really care.

There's always one bad apple...

Which brings me to my point about downloads. The concept of “used downloads” does not exist. It never will. In a world of nothing but downloads, you will be subjected to only paying what retailers want you to pay. There won’t be any used downloads stores in strip malls where you can buy other peoples unwanted downloads for less. I went into a used DVD store recently and bought a perfectly fine used copy of In the Line of Fire for $3. It wasn’t covered in anthrax or grape jelly, it wasn’t dragged across concrete. It was just as good as a new one.

A retailer may lower the price of downloads after time for older movies and such, but they’ve been doing that with DVDs for years, so you couldn’t claim that to be a concept originated in the digital download realm. Amazon has almost daily deals for new, factory sealed DVDs for under $5 (though they are usually terrible movies, and I don’t see this being any different for the reduced download movie prices). Regardless, I don’t want BestBuy.com’s reduced Godfather download for $6.99, I want Joey Joe Bob’s perfectly fine used DVD copy for $1. People are too caught up in the concept of only wanting new things. Though, I do admittedly purchase new release Blu-ray DVDs at full price if I want to watch them the day they come out. Impatience is a key element in consumerism.

I NEEEEED to watch The Ugly Truth on release day!

Space -

Hypothetically, in the lowest possible scenario, lets say that every DVD I own is 750 MB as a digital download. At 1167 DVDs X 750 MB, I would need to obtain 875 GB of free space to store all my DVDs. That seems like a lot. And that is a vast understatement on space. That’s not accounting for increased high-definition Blu-ray sizes, full TV seasons, box sets, or countless special feature bonus discs. It’s probably actually more like 2 terabytes, who knows for sure?

Still, I know I’m on the high end of that spectrum, but I always like to think of things in terms of my parents. Having to buy computers for storage space, and the prospect of having to potentially upgrade it for space at some point, it’s a scary prospect to old people. They like having a disc tray that they can just put things in. They never have to upgrade that, regardless of how many movies they buy. I know in the industry we are in, we tend to think about these kind of computer/space issues as not that big a deal, but to my Mom, this all of the sudden becomes a big hassle. And there are more people like my parents out there, than there are tech savvy people. Think about having to explain this new concept to YOUR parents. Or even worse, try explaining it to some hillbilly! They watch movies too!

I know what your saying, “But Scott, with all your DVDs, you must have a huge space problem yourself, having to physically put them somewhere, you dolt!” Yes and no. They do take up a lot of space, but they don’t really get in the way.

Blu-Rays and Comedies on the left wall.

Horror/Documentary/Assorted on the East wall.

Several drawers like this filled with assorted.

TV shows go in the left closet.

Even more assorted in the right bottom closet drawer.

Drama and Action in the self-built DVD case. See and all of it barely takes up any floor space!

I even have a list online that I have so I can keep track of my collection. I also have it so my friends don’t have to ask me if I have “this movie” or “that movie” for them to borrow. I just send them the weekly updated list. They often refer to my place as Scottbuster Entertainment.

But I’m sure normal people don’t really have that big of a problem dealing with their DVD collection taking up a bunch of space. I mean, c’mon, everyone has a shelf somewhere.

Or if you live in a sardine can apartment, you can always buy a sleeve case to hold your DVDs. That can slide under your bed!

Theft -

It’s much easier to gank a hard drive and an Apple TV than a DVD collection. Some jerk can walk away with your whole movie collection without you realizing it, at your OWN wine mixer. You shouldn’t have invited that guy with the shifty eyes wearing the trenchcoat…

Nobody is gonna get away with stealing my DVD collection, at least not all of it, or even a 1/4 of it. That would take multiple trips in broad daylight. Plus if they robbed my house, they’d probably just grab my TV and my computer! The bastards! Besides, what are they going to do with DVDs? Whats next, are they going to steal my mid-90s AM/FM clock radio? Burglars only like shiny futuristic electronic looking things, like iPods and cameras. I think they are more interested in filling their arms with my Playstation 3 than they are with my Planet of the Apes box set.

"This kid's gonna regret leaving his copy of Legally Blonde out in the open...!"

Download Time -

Speaking of losing everything, two months ago my Playstation 3 completely broke. For no reason at all, after the warranty expired… It angered me. The relevance? Well, for one, it proves that electronics break all the time right after warranties expire. But also, I had about 60 GB of downloaded games and Rock Band songs that existed nowhere except on my broken PS3. As I assume how it is with all digital downloads, I can re-download anything I want for free in a case where my PS3 gets destroyed. I have an average internet connection (not sure of specifics, I think it’s Comcast, but it’s shared with the other people I live with), and it took me 5 straight days of almost non-stop downloading to get everything back on my new PS3. It was annoying beyond belief to get everything back, and I actually had the time to waste to download as hastily as I did, most people probably don’t.

Computers break all the time, and average people almost never back anything up. This is going to turn people off to the concept of downloading to a hard drive, because the first time Joe Schmoe has to re-download something, he may lose complete patience with the whole concept. Whereas if a DVD player breaks, he can go to the store down the street, pick up a new one, and watch whatever DVD he wants immediately upon getting home.

Another example: about 8 months ago I actually downloaded a movie off of the Playstation Network, which works exactly the same way as any digital download site will/does work. I downloaded a $4.50 rental of The Substitute in HD format.

It was over 6 GBs and took about 5-6 hours to download. I didnt even feel like watching it anymore by the time it finished downloading. I ended up watching it two days later. Average consumers dont have super fast internet speeds. Which leads me into my next topic…

Rentals –

Perhaps though, more than anything else, I may have to side with downloading for rentals. Even streaming would be fine (if you can get it on your TV somehow). Most of my argument is for long term owners. I’m more of a buyer than a renter, but even so, let’s say a family decides they want to have a movie night together on a Tuesday evening. They want to try to download a rental to watch. Then they make popcorn and snuggle up next to the fireplace, while little Johnny and little Sally are already singing the stupid Hannah Montana theme song or whatever annoying crap kids watch nowadays. And Dad then hits the “purchase download” button only to see they won’t be able to watch Miley Cyrus for another 4 and 1/2 hours… But it’s a school night! Now we have to start planning our impromptu DVD watching plans HOURS in advance…? Suddenly a 10 minute trip to Blockbuster doesn’t seem like such an outrageous idea now, does it?

3D -

In a time when a lot of talk is about the future of 3D movies, how do you obtain the 3D glasses necessary to watch a 3D download? Is everyone expected to just own several pairs of 3D glasses? Different movies use different types of 3D, so we need to obtain all these different kinds of 3D glasses? Last time I checked we don’t live in the same era as The Jetsons, so we cant download physical objects to our Cogswell-Brand Materializer. Do they come in the mail? That would seem to defeat the convenience of downloading wouldn’t it? Just wondering…

Sharing -

One thing I do very often is loan DVDs to my friends. Yes, they like to abuse their friendship with me in exchange for goods. But how am I supposed to do that with digital downloads? Can we not share movies anymore? What if I want to hang out at my friends place, and we want to watch my copy of Re-Animator over a few beers? Do I need to bring my entire hard drive, and hook it up to his TV? What about the other people in my house, do they get the shaft on all movie watching because I need to take the entire hard drive to watch one movie at my friend’s place? Can I just put the movie on a thumb drive and dump it on my friend’s computer? Is there going to be copy protection preventing me from doing that, like in the old days of iTunes? No? Then what’s to stop me from transferring my friend’s downloaded copy of Slumdog Millionaire on a thumb drive for free, to keep forever on my computer? What are the chances the government will hunt me down for this evil crime? Oh, they probably won’t look into it? Cool beans!

Wait, isn’t this what’s killing the music industry?

If you share anything illegally, Lars Ulrich will annoy the crap out of you.

The Suite Take -

In a perfect world, if I could instantly have my enormous DVD collection on a single hard drive connected to my TV with an easy, organized database, I would do it. Sure, I would do it. In a perfect world I’d also be dating Scarlett Johansson while I quarterbacked for the Miami Dolphins. But it wouldn’t be such a perfect world when that hard drive crashed. Having to re-download everything (even for no cost) would make me want to smash my head through my TV.

I’m sure you can call me a hypocrite for all of this, as I’m preaching for the average person, yet defending my abnormal collection. And I’m pretty sure most of my arguments can be voided by saying “Well, Scott, in a few years everyone will be able to download at 1 GB a second, and terabyte drives will cost $10…! There goes your argument!” Yeah, that would destroy my argument, jerk. But you can’t predict the future, and neither can I. Hey, the world is supposed to end in 2012 anyway, right?

Perhaps DVD collectors like myself will become like the new vinyl enthusiasts, constantly and annoyingly inserting ourselves into other people’s conversations at parties, insisting that DVDs are the REAL way to watch movies (besides a movie theater of course). Having a large DVD collection is not only an extremely personal thing in my life, as I watch these films/TV shows over and over again because it makes me happy, but it’s also almost an aesthetically pleasing part of my decor, in an insane and menacing kind of way. Plus, with downloaded videos, how are you going to get hold of nerdy-yet-awesome limited edition packaging???

As promised here is part 2 of creating custom buttons and a chapter index automatically with DVD Studio Pro. You can find Part 1 here.

In this video tutorial we pick up right where we left off in the last tutorial and show you how to take the custom button we made and incorporate it into a custom menu. Then, with a little bit of setup, we take that custom menu, save it as a template and then use that template to automatically create a series of chapter index menus with one simple drag and drop.

A recap from part 1…

“One of the most tedious things to author in DVDSP is creating chapter index menus with links to all the various chapters within a project. If you’ve ever had a multi-hour long video with dozens of chapters, creating chapter index menus can take hours and be extremely frustrating, especially if you make a mistake or there are changes after the fact. This 2 part video tutorial will show you how to easily create custom buttons and menus, complete with video drop zones, save them as templates, and then automatically create a chapter index menu series with one simple drag and drop.”

The SuiteTake
Creating, linking, and authoring extensive DVD titles with lengthy and complicated chapter index’s can be tedious and time consuming. Using DVD Studio Pro’s built-in functionality you can easily create, save, and author extensive DVD chapter index menus with one simple drag and drop process.

Video compression has come a long way from the days of using Cinepak on a Quadra 950 tower and the old NuBus slots. For the most part, the wars between online formats has been settled with Flash leading the way. But behind that Flash Player is often H.264 encoded video, ever since it was introduced with Flash 9 in December of 2007. Even video powerhouse YouTube is pushing out H.264 video wrapped in a flash player. If that’s not enough, one of the officially supported video formats for Blu-ray is H.264.

So from on-line video (SD or HD) to high end Blu-ray DVD’s, h.264 is a huge player. It’s all good, right? Well, mostly. Have you ever compressed an h.264 video file? It can be unbearably long. We first started running into this bottleneck when we switched from doing mpeg-1 client web approvals (something that was very fast to compress and widely compatible) to h.264. We switched mainly because we wanted to post high resolution web approvals for our clients at higher quality, and MPEG-1 just wasn’t cutting it. H.264 really filled that need. But even a shorter video, say 10-15 minutes could take 60-90 minutes to compress on a Quad Intel MacPro, and some of our videos are more in the 30 minute range. If you have the time, leaving it running overnight is no big deal, but most of the time we’re doing these web approvals close to 5 or 6pm and they needed to be posted and sent to the client that same day. Waiting around just to finish a web post feels like a waste of time (although we did minimize this to some degree using LogMeIn as covered in my previous post).

After hearing others brag about how great it was, we finally decided to try the “to good to be true” Turbo.264 USB key from Elgato (the non-HD version). I really fought it because I had a hard time believing that a little USB key could do what my huge expensive multi-processor MacPro could not. But also because it did not integrate with Compressor, which is part of our workflow. For the price though, we decided to give it a try.

For what you end up paying, the Turbo.264 does a pretty good job. It is FAST for sure, and the output is not too bad, but it’s not perfect either. It gave us the speed that we wanted, but not the quality. One of the main reasons it’s able to do what it does so fast is that the very first thing that’s done is resize the video frame, and then pass it off to the USB key for processing. This is key, because the rest of the processing is done on a lower resolution frame instead of working with the original uncompressed frame. Great for speed, but not optimal for quality. But for many people, this might just do the trick depending on your needs and budget. You end up seeing compression artifacts in places that you wouldn’t when using compressor with similar settings, typically areas of fast movement, effects or dissolves. But it did take care of the time bottleneck that we were having. So we decided to sacrifice some quality for the sake of actually getting home on time but continued to look for other options.

Then I read a press release about a new product from Matrox called CompressHD, and I had a warm and fuzzy feeling all over. I contacted Matrox and asked them if it was possible to get a review unit and they were nice enough to send it out a week later. While it’s 4-5x the cost of the Turbo.264 USB key, (depending on which one you compare it to, the first SD key or the more recent HD version) it has some great benefits that make the cost worthwhile.  I’ve been using it for nearly 2 months now and it has taken the pain out of h.264 encoding.

Installation

Installation is easy, but for most editors the biggest problem may be finding an open card slot on your MacPro. We decided to sacrifice a SATA card to make way for the CompressHD card. All it needs is a PCIe slot. Once installed I started the computer and installed the software, and after a quick reboot it was good to go.

Integration with Compressor

The biggest selling point (aside from the speed)  is the seamless integration with compressor. Inside of compressor there is a new preset folder called “Matrox MAX H.264 Settings”. If you take a look at what’s inside, you’ll find that the presets are very similar to what you’re used to seeing in the Apple Settings.

If you’re used to using compressor, not much changes in your workflow for creating h.264 files. You pick one of the Matrox presets that fits your needs, apply it and submit just as you did in the past. However, much of the processing is now handed off to the CompressHD card. The only thing handled by compressor now is the decoding of the video frame, everything else is handled by the CompressHD card. The card has 2 processors that are optimized for different functions. One chip handles resizing/scaling, and the other handles the color space, compression and output. So what you end up with is this nice little video assembly line and each frame is passed from chip to chip to perform it’s designated function.

But what if you don’t want to use one of the presets included? What if you have specific needs of your own? No problem! You can create your own settings and still take advantage of that nice processing power. As an example, here is a setting that we created to use for web approvals.

What is the difference between the Apple h.264 presets and the Matrox ones? Nothing really. The Matrox folder was created for convenience and to streamline your experience. You can choose any of the Apple h.264 presets and they too will access the card.

If you want to compare performance with and without the card, there’s no need to pull the card out and then put it back in. Open up the control panel and you can turn the card on and off. This is what we did for the comparison tests. We’ve been running version 1.6 of the software, but the current version is 1.8 and is now Snow Leopard compatible. However, we’re still using Leopard and do not plan to upgrade until sometime late next summer.

Performance

Once we got this card in the machine, we just couldn’t wait to start compressing something… ANYTHING, just to try it out. It’s not that compression is all that interesting, but I really wanted to see how this baby performed. It was like dropping a new engine into a used car, we just wanted to hear the engine fire up. Here are the details on how we tested the card.

All tests were performed on a 3.o ghz Quad Core Intel MacPro with 12 gigs of RAM. We ran each compression twice. Once with the CompressHD card enabled, and once without. During these tests there were no other operations being performed on the machine, but only for the sake of making sure we were comparing apples to apples when we got the final numbers. One of the main reasons to use this card is that it handles so much of the work load, you can continue to work and even do processor intensive functions on the computer while having little or no effect on the compression times that the card puts out.

We used version 3.05 of compressor, that is part of Final Cut Studio 2. If you’re running the latest version of Final Cut Studio (we call it 3 because Apple forgot to give it a number) you will already have the ability to create Blu-ray movies within compressor. In our case, the card actually adds that ability to compressor, since this version of compressor does not directly support Blu-ray (only the now dead HD-DVD standard).

Our test video is 14:12 long and in 720p format using the ProRes 422 codec. The original file is 7.85 gigs in size, and we compressed it to 6 different formats as part of a single batch for each of the tests. We chose some of the most common presets that we might use, as well as one custom one that we use in house.

Here are the results.

As you can see, there is a significant difference with the card enabled.  There’s something very satisfying about watching it crank through the data so fast. It does however cut down on the coffee breaks and long walks on the beach.

One thing that I noticed is that the biggest benefit comes when you are changing resolution. This is where having the dedicated hardware really pays off. When you’re simply just converting from one format to another (say ProRes to h.264 with no other changes) the speed bump is less noticeable, but still there.

As an example, look at the Apple TV bar compared to the iPhone bar. Because the frame size for Apple TV does not need to be changed, the card just passes the frames through at the same resolution. But for the iPhone version it has to be scaled down a lot, something that the card does much faster and with better results then just using compressor.

*NOTE:  You might have noticed that the Blu-ray bar is the same on both passes. Because I was running Compressor 3 instead of the newer 3.5, Blu-ray is not supported natively. So on both passes, the CompressHD card was used. So kind of pointless for our purposes, but I left it in anyway.

Image Quality

The image quality is as good as anything coming out of compressor natively, but at a fraction of the time. In all of the tests that we did I couldn’t see a quality difference between using the card or not. Compared to video run through the Turbo.264 key, there was a noticeable difference. Again, I’m not totally knocking the Turbo.264 product, it does have its place. I use it all the time to convert movies/tv shows from the TiVo format to iPhone so that I can watch them while at the gym. But for trying to exceed the expectations of my clients the Turbo.264 key falls short. We’ve also had problems with it dealing with anamorphic footage properly without having weird scaling and cropping issues.

One thing to be aware of is that the CompressHD card will only do CBR compression, not VBR. Not a huge deal, but something to be aware of. This is also a limitation of the Turbo.264 usb key. VBR adds a much better quality to file size ratio then CBR, but in my experience this is not much of an issue. Disk space is abundant, the internet is fast and both SD DVD and Blu-ray can hold plenty of data. Not a huge deal.

Just to give you an idea, here are some file size differences based on the same source video.

Compatibility

One of my original concerns was that the card might interfere or conflict with other capture cards from AJA or BlackMagic, but it plays nicely. The codec’s that Matrox wrote are based on the Quicktime Component architecture built into QT, so any hardware or software that supports the implementation of QuickTime Component will work just fine.

Matrox Product Integration

It’s worth noting that you can get the CompressHD hardware (called the “MAX“) as part of some of the other Matrox products. For example, you can purchase a MXO2 and get it outfitted with the MAX card for just $400 more, saving you a $100 over buying the card separately. One of the great benefits of this is the ability to run this type of hardware on a laptop that has a Express34 slot, instead of just a tower. One of the down sides is that you can’t use both the MXO2 Max for editing/monitoring while the hardware is compressing. It’s an either/or situation. But for many that will be a small trade off for the ability to take this mobile.

The SuiteTake

At a street price of $499 the CompressHD is not exactly cheap, especially if you only occasionally need to compress to h.264, and time is not an issue for you. But if you encode as much as we do and don’t’ want to spend your whole week watching a progress bar, I would whole heartedly recommend getting the Matrox CompressHD. It’s a solid piece of hardware that integrates nicely with the FCP workflow so seamlessly you will forget it’s even there. That is, unless somebody takes it away from you.

There are a plethora of resources everywhere to teach you how to be an editor. There’s training websites like Lynda.com and Creative Cow. You can buy assorted training books at some coffeehouse-bookstore hybrid, where some homely fellow is likely playing new age music on a grand piano for Ramen noodle money. You could even go as far as to attend a terrible, terrible place called film school… But I laugh at you for doing these things. Laugh right in your pathetic face! You know why? Because I’m an elitist. I am better than you.

I eat dinner with 12 different solid gold forks. I have have different solid gold forks for different areas of the $800 steaks I eat. I only drink the first sip of a glass of $6000 wine, because I’m only satisfied with the first sip of a full glass of expensive wine. Then I throw the rest of the glass away and request a new drink just so I can take the first sip again. It typically costs me $150,000 to get drunk. What?! You’d like the rest of the glass?! How dare you! I would never allow someone who learned editing at film school to have my unused wine. I would rather destroy an entire wine field than give it to you, which is something I normally do once a month anyway, just for the sport of it.

I’d apologize to you for such a berating of your character, but my servant is currently cleaning the wheels of my Lexus with a toothbrush, and I normally have him apologize to commoners. But the reason I yell at you is because I love you, we are fellow editors, we are required to love each other by United States law. And I don’t want another tedious lawsuit on my hands. I just wanted to let you know that everything you know about editing is wrong.

I’m about to retire, so I’ll let you in on my biggest industry secret, since I have nothing to lose. There is an unimaginable resource located in the nether regions of the internet FULL of brilliant ideas by brilliant people. I take these ideas, and compile them into the greatest workable resource known to post production. So sit back and enjoy infinite knowledge! All you have to do is type in www.youtube.com.

Continuity –

How do you recreate a classic train scene from A Hard Day’s Night with just two teenage girls? No, no, no, the correct answer isn’t “why bother attempting it?”, the correct answer is to slightly juggle locations in their seats and use plenty of name-tags for clarity. I’d like you to show me one person on this entire planet who doesn’t understand what’s going on in this scene. You won’t find anyone, I guarantee it.

Filters –

Brightening techniques and color correction are essential for fine tuning your final videos. Often times people will let their videos become too dark to see what’s actually happening clearly. But with plug-ins and filters, these ghost hunters truly show us how captivating an image can be portrayed on video in it’s highest possible clarity. I didn’t know there was an FCP plug-in for finding ghouls! I’ve got the chills!

And in this next thrilling video, we take a look at how proper color correction can accurately show how your backyard is actually on the bottom of the ocean. Living under the sea is fantastic. I have several underwater mansions, but this one is pretty good. He captured the feel very well.

Sound Effects –
Being a twelve time winner of the Academy Award for Achievement in Sound Effects Editing has its benefits. Let’s just say that not one, but TWO local restaurants have named ham sandwiches after me. Well, it was two, but one of them got shut down for unsanitary conditions. And the other one burnt down mysteriously two winters ago. But still, people often ask me two things about my brilliant sound effects work;

1. “I didn’t know they gave out awards for that, how long have they been doing that?”
After I hear this I usually ask the peon what they do for a living, then purchase the company they work for and fire that person.

2. “Where did you learn how to do that, oh mighty overlord?”
Well, that answer is simple. Cat videos. Obviously.

Mind Blowing Graphics -

Did you see that??? This show must cost $50 million to produce, they just blow through intense visual effects like they are nothing, simply because they know they can! They have what appears to be a virtual ladybug crawl across the screen! I’m not 100% sure if it was fake, I’ll have to do frame-by-frame, but that was borderline brain melting! I’d like to see the render bar on that intense composition…! Weta Digital better watch their back, because these girls are only 10 years old, imagine the future potential…! I’ll have to e-mail them on which program they used because I am SO getting that. Though, it was a little hard to listen to the content because my eyes were being dazzled beyond belief, but I’m sure Jenna and Kristi had a show full of rich social commentary and thoughts on how to improve the American economy.

Here’s an even better example of blowing your mind, using the Michael Bay theory. As we all know, Michael Bay is the greatest and richest filmmaker in the world. His winning formula = Explosions. Lots and lots of explosions. Though, no one is better at explosions than the one and only DR. EXPLOSION!! He has a PhD in explosions!! From Dynamite University!!

While we’re on the subject of Dr. Explosion, he also teaches us two other great post production tips that we should always abide by no matter what;

1. Always make the credits to your video nearly three times as long as the actual story. You can never give yourself enough credit.

2. If the credits song is too lengthy for the 5 lines of text you had planned, just play the song out over black so people can keep listening to it until its over. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used the first 30 seconds of “Stairway to Heaven” for a credits sequence, then just played the remaining seven and a half minutes out over black. It just works.

Pacing –
Pacing is very important when it comes to editing. Perhaps the most important. Observe how well this patriotic spy thriller flows from scene to scene, keeping us guessing what our duster-clad hero (or villain…?) will do next. I felt this got snubbed at the Golden Globes. Behold the intensity of Subversion Interface! It hack.exe’d right into my soul.

Stunning Action Scenes –
I saw the new Star Trek film, and to be honest, I was very underwhelmed. I’m not sure, it just seemed like the overall look of the film was, what’s the right word…? Ah yes, amateurish. I laughed out loud in my private theater at some of the action scenes in that film, but that was only because I saw this much more intense video the night before:

Greenscreen Technology -
Everyone knows that green screen technology was invented sometime around 1875 (prove me wrong; historical records of that era are shotty at best), but not until recently has the technology surpassed what the human mind is actually capable of comprehending. I often find myself wondering not only how these people are able to blend in so well to their environments, but also are they even using green screens at all?? That’s how good they look!

I don’t know how they do it, they captured the mood perfectly, I mean they are dancing so intensely that they are literally disintegrating! What a stunning visual effect! They should do a tutorial on how to do this human vaporizing.

This young, female soon-to-be George Lucas did a spectacular job keying around the green blob on the right side of the screen. I would think it would be hard to key around a green blob against a green screen, but she must have spent all night on it. I bet she has an advanced copy of the next version of Keylight. I probably would have ended up just keying the green blob out, but she apparently has the skills to key around it. I know when I am bested. Kudos.

Word of advice, if you’re going to use super powers on camera like this, you should probably hide your identity with a costume, I mean you don’t want any super-villains to know who… wait, what?! This is FAKE??

Why We Post -

People often forget about the most important part about a video. The message. There is no point in doing any editing tricks at all if the overall message of the video isn’t worthwhile. The main point of putting a video out there to the public is to show the world that your video is the best. Every video that goes out there should never have the intention of wasting anyone’s time. I mean we all shoot video of our daily lives, little “ha ha” moments that occur to us, but we save those videos in our personal homes in order to watch them amongst friends and family, remembering the good times, sharing fun memories.

SURELY, no one would ever post a video on YouTube, one of the most popular websites in history, if the message of the video wasn’t important. Surely, every video doesn’t need to be uploaded for the world to watch, only the important ones. The one’s with real stories to tell. Messages to convey.

You see, now everybody knows how awesome Trevor and Sedore are. Thanks Coady! I’m sure their antics will land them an ABC Family sitcom in no time, thanks for getting their big video out there for the world to see. This won’t waste anybody’s time, as it did nothing but enrich my life.

Ah yes, Devon, have you consulted the Guinness World Record people on your amazing jump yet? I felt riveted the entire time I was watching, the element of danger was enthralling. Thank you for uploading this, it didn’t waste my time at all, it actually gave me a shot of adrenaline to the heart!

Thank you so much for uploading this for everyone to see. Now I know what true love really is. I hope the story you were trying to convey in this video poem of love, that you wanted complete strangers to see on the internet, gets you all the credit in the world for being the opposite of a waste of time.

Oh.  Oh, sorry.  That one was actually a waste of time…

The Ultimate in YouTube Video!
I’m not sure why I didn’t just show you this from the beginning. Just follow the formulas of this next video and you too can become the next Winston Randall Montgomery IV. Though I probably would have thrown a fish eye effect in there, maybe some inverted sepia color effects too, but I guess that’s what separates a super rich successful editor like myself from the 15 year old girls.

The SuiteTake -

***Author’s Note: In an effort to not sound too mean-spirited regarding this entire post, I used to make movies 5x worse than any of these back in junior high/high school. Everybody starts somewhere, and usually it sucks. I actually commend YouTube on it’s spirit. And its “When Animals Attack” videos. Those are just hilarious. So to be fair, I’ll upload a video of mine on YouTube from 7 years ago, that is as “awesome” as anything in this post (and I made it in iMovie…!).

Have you ever had a huge DVD project come across your desk that you just knew was going to be a nightmare to author? One of the most tedious things to author in DVDSP is creating chapter index menus with links to all the various chapters within a project. If you’ve ever had a multi-hour long video with dozens of chapters, creating chapter index menus can take hours and be extremely frustrating, especially if you make a mistake or there are changes after the fact.

Well, fear no more, there is actually a function built right into DVD Studio Pro that will create a chapter index for you automatically! All you need to do is either use one of DVDSP’s pre-made templates or easily create a template of your own then drag and drop; all the menus, buttons, text, and links are automatically created and set.

In this 2 part tutorial I’ll first show you how to make custom buttons, complete with video/image drop zones, that can be saved and inserted into any other menu. Part 2, coming later, will demonstrate how to incorporate those custom buttons into a custom menu, save it as a template, then create an entire 24-chapter index with one drag and drop.

The SuiteTake,
Creating, linking, and authoring extensive DVD titles with lengthy and complicated chapter index’s can be tedious and time consuming. Using DVD Studio Pro’s built-in functionality you can easily create, save, and author extensive DVD chapter index menus with one simple drag and drop process.