[Andrew Kimery]

Maybe I’m misunderstanding the situation but 1440×1080 HDV is designed to be displayed at 1920×1080. If you use a 1920×1080 setting on the Blackmagic card does it not display the image? I’ve used a few different BM cards with HDV w/o a problem but I don’t have hands on experience with the Intensity line.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Craig Seeman] “Ahh the shrinking of the size of the TV Broadcast/Feature Film niche compared to the overall video post industry which actually is growing faster in other areas.”

When you say that are you referring to the medium or that style of content? I agree that broadcast/cable and movie theaters as mediums of content delivery will continue to be disrupted but as far as that style of content goes I don’t see it, nor demand for it, shrinking. For example, Hulu, YouTube, Amazon, Netflix and possibly even Microsoft (for Xbox Live) are producing, or looking to produce, their own original TV shows and/or movies. People, consumers, want this style of content they just dislike the rigidity of the traditional old media delivery timetables.

[Andrew Kimery]

Another option might be Pro Res Proxy and pay to use a commercial file delivery service that offers accelerated transfers (kinda like YouSendIt but on steroids). When I was with MTV we used one (I can’t remember the name off the top of my head) and we would toss around hours of 35 Mb/s footage between SF, NYC and LA pretty easily. Of course even with the acceleration your internet connection speed does factor into how quickly the files are up/downloaded.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Craig Seeman] “People only seem to be of the “what have you done to me lately” mindset.
Avid nearly dumping Mac when it was the majority of their user base.
Adobe Premiere leaving the Mac for a time
Autodesk dropping Edit, Cleaner, CineStream, Combustion

Of course there are “excuses” for each but somehow those excuses are OK or long forgotten.
While we can’t pretend FCPX is FCP7, Apple is working fast to make it a Pro App and Thunderbolt is important to many “mobile” professionals.

Every company looks at upsetting their “apple cart” to expand their bottom line.”
One man’s “excuses” is another man’s “context”. 😉

Avid thought about dumping Mac because the whole platform had been on a downward slope for a long time and Macs were surpassed by PCs in terms of performance. But once the Mac-faithful came out w/their pitchforks Avid back pedaled (and we entered the era of their being feature disparity between PC Avids and Mac Avids).

Adobe went PC only for a time with Premiere because their Mac sales were so poor that it didn’t make sense to develop cross platform anymore. On top of that Adobe was reacting to the same hardware stagnation that Avid was. The G4 era CPUs were well beyond long in the tooth by the time the G5s came out.

With all that being said I’m in total agreement that Apple is not the only company to upset its user base. Though they are a very healthy company, with a very healthy product and a very healthy user base which makes their decision different in context than what Adobe or Avid did.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Michael Sanders] “Personally I don’t care what Philip Bloom – or for that matter Walter Murch – has to say. I don’t think he (that is PB) is much more than an ardent (and very good) self publicist. “

I like hearing what other people have to say because it may provide a perspective or a nugget of information that I hadn’t experienced and/or thought of. Ultimately how I choose to operate depends on my needs but I do enjoy reading up and/or talking with other people to see what their experiences are like compared to my own.

[Andrew Kimery]

Thunderbolt is intel’s tech and Apple paid to get a 1yr window of exclusivity on it. That window is over and PC makers have already announced products with ThB. Getting ThB products to market is slow going right now though because Apple has pre-order so many ThB controllers that other companies (including companies making ThB peripherals) are having trouble getting enough for their production runs.

Prior to Thunderbolt there were USB 3.0 options for HD-SDI capture and monitoring but they were PC only as Apple didn’t support USB 3.0.

[Andrew Kimery]

The type of fabric used in the clothing can make a difference as well.

Open the Log and Transfer tool, click on the little gear/cog near the top of the Log and Transfer window and click on preferences. That’s where you’ll adjust the codec import settings.

[Andrew Kimery]

I’m going to go out on a limb and say make sure you have adequate lighting during the shoot and that everything is properly exposed. Once the footage is recorded the damage is done and transcoding to another codec isn’t going to fix it.

I run into this problem all the time where someone lights and expose for the subjects skin tone (typically Caucasian) and lets dark colored clothing remain underexposed which means it turns into a bunch of ugly, blocky noise. One show I did the color for had this problem so I talked to production and said they either need to add more lights to the shoots (which were almost always on location) or they need to stop dressing the talent in dark colors. They opted to stop dressing talent in dark colors.

[Andrew Kimery]

I think an appropriate name could the Michael Bay effect.

[Andrew Kimery]

There certainly used to be a master/apprentice relationship in editing but those opportunities have been dwindling for years. My rule of thumb is I want to work places where I feel like I’m the dumbest guy in the room. Self-educating is easier now than ever but nothing beats working with people that are smarter and more experienced than you are. I don’t know how many times I’ve worked at places and learned how to attack problems that I didn’t even know existed the day before.

Some of my most unfulfilling gigs have come when I’ve worked at places where I felt I had mastered what the job had to offer and my work turned into a routine instead of an rewarding experience.