Bill Davis
Forum Replies Created
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[Andrew Kimery] “That I could totally see happening. From what I’ve heard the show is so popular in Germany that even the actors with smaller, recurring roles get mobbed at public appearances too.”
Wouldn’t you just LOVE to see the stats on what WB makes on the most successful of their movies, verses what they rake in over the same period on something like this?
It’s definitely a very different global media landscape out there today.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Tony West] “Apple doesn’t tell anybody anything because they know folks will just copy their stuff. That’s just how it is with them. Always has been.”
Wait, Tony… are you telling me that other companies watch Apple just to COPY ideas –
Naw, that will NEVER happen. Nobody EVER copies from Apple….
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Shane Ross] “Where did they talk about these tests? Forum or in a presentation? I’d like do know how they captured directly into FCX.”
Patrick did this.
We had a LONG thread somewhere a year or two back when I was looking for info on digitizing some old VHS and Hi-8 content. Basically anything stored as 640×480 or even 720×480 non square into ANY digital medium.
We had people who pushed back, but IIRC, Chuck Braverman who produced the OJ Speaks project for A&E had them test various transcoding chains – and in the end – they rolled the SD stuff off DIRECTLY into FCP X via either S-Video or even Composite cables – or maybe what I use to do – directly into a basic DV deck like a DSR-20.
A straight dub rolloff always did fine for me, and the only issue was that you could’nt do timecode preroll control of the source deck directly into X. So you just hooked it up – put X in Record mode – rolled the tape – and you got a surprisingly good transfer.
When we were talking about it, I had a conversation with Adam Wilt about the engineering stuff behind the decision – and he said that when you start with that course a raster – there’s simply not enough originating signal resolution to stress the encoding. So a Terranex wouldn’t have enough pixels to mathematically improve to do much good. Basically, it’s like taking a higher rez photo of a 65 line newspaper screen. You can interpolate to add lines, but the original course image stays course. Just a higher rez version of course.
Chuck is overseas right now teaching a class in producing somewhere. So I’ll check and see if Patrick can help unravel what they discovered about SD transfers.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Andrew Kimery] “1. Supernatural isn’t just for girls, Bill. ???? “
Didn’t mean to diss Supernatural it at all. I spent hours surrounded by it’s dedicated fans – and I have to say I really enjoyed the time spent with them. ComiCon tends to be it’s own “tribal” thing – and at least around us, the Supernatural tribe was significantly female and mostly women under 25 who had started with the show when they were younger – but there were CERTAINLY older women and plenty of men present who are big fans of the show as well.
That said, when the two young male stars hit the stage – the it felt a bit like the Beatles in 1963 in the Ed Sulivan Theater. They definitely have a LOYAL fan base.
And Warner Brothers did them all proud with a MASSIVE presentation.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Walter Soyka] “Unfortunately, the people who sign the checks usually sit in the front row, while the best seats in the house are sometimes as far as halfway back.”
My original posted shot was taken with a 360 degree camera held over my head at the show.
Here’s a better look at the show from a panorama shot I took. (This is for artistic critique featuring a tiny shot out if a long presentation with no financial motive, so I feel Titie 17 “fair use” is defensible – but if WB calls, by all means, take it down.)
(Note the camera op for scale)
Those 5 screens basically covered an almost 180 field of view. (The blown out center screen is the stage area where Kansas was playing.)
Walter is totally correct in that anyone in the first 50 rows only got a fraction of the experience unless they turned themself into a human swivel/bobble head during the show.
And unlike most “super-super wise screen” presentations – all the screens had unique (although completely coordinated) content being displayed. They could virtually drive “Baby” – the car character around the walls at will – or show unique composites of characters in different quadrants.
This 10 minute “intro video” (introducing the show stars before their on-stage interviews for all the fans) – clearly took $$$$$$ to produce and show.
As befits a major media corporate cash cow of 10+ years duration.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
You may enjoy Sven’s series particularly, since it’s a complete series of episodes tracking a “whole movie” workflow start to finish with his commentary about why he’s making the choices he does to address every issue he encounters – as he encounters them.
It’s as realistic and comprehensive a look at how a working editor might think at ALL stages of the process as anything I’ve ever seen.
Other editors would make other choices, obviously – but the level of switching between global issues and tiny details in the craft of editing has seldom been better shown, IMO.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Just point out that “corporate video” today can go well beyond standard TV and Theatrical in terms of production sophistication and scope.
Exhibit A for me was the show at ComiCon I saw some months back.
I have a dear friend who’s a huge Dr. Who fan, so since it was her first ComiCon, I joined her to snag coveted Hall H seats early.
Before that morning, I didn’t have the TV show Supernatural in my radar at all – it apparently has been incredibly popular with teen and post teen young women for a decade.
Point is, this was essentially a one-off “corporate video” presentation by Warner Brothers to promote their property.
Not only was the projection and staging equal to anything I’ve seen before (outside, maybe Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon show I saw in the 1970s when this level of WOW was completely and utterly unexpected!) – I understand the car that the main characters drive in is a “character” in the show – as is the pop music they play on its Radio – so of course after the show opening smoke cleared – there was Kansas, live on stage, to launch into “Dust in the Wind.” providing sync sound to their “corporate video” on steroids.
Basically, today, thinking what appears in a local cinema – or on your TV – or anywhere else represents a “superior level” of the production arts – is an increasingly suspect position to hold, IMO.
We are ALL now in the same game.
That “Event Video” practitioner servicing the upper end is probably shooting RED and doing the same “cinematic grading” you are.
That Hall H show was the size of 5 full size movie screens easily.
Somewhere there’s a “Promotion” going on today that has a budget that likely dwarfs any of our current projects.
These tools are no longer the exclusive province of one “Class” of producer.
Everybody’s using them for everything. Across all industries and enterprise types.
All that matters is the budget.
FWIW.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Oliver Peters] “So what’s the fascination with 8K anyway? “
Without 8k as a transitional phase, can’t get to the point where you justify all that CSI dialog… “Zoom in on his eyeball – now enhance – enhance – enhance?”
????Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Shane Ross] “Note, this is something FCX cannot do…capture and upconvert via hardware, even through a Terranex. “
Hey wait a second.
I thought that on the OJ Speaks project Patrick worked on for Chuck Braverman they tested the beejesus out of the Terrenex verses just doing direct digitizations into FCP X -letting it do the scaling internally – without any intervening transcode boxes AT ALL – and came to the conclusion that the results were indistinguishable.
Are you saying a Terrenex workflow is measurbly superior?
Can you check on that?
I’ll ping Chuck on Monday and ask him as well.
This stuff is worth knowing cuz eliminating a processing stage in any device chain is worth doing – if the results are functionally identical.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Herb Sevush] “Except they did just that when in reaction to the furor, weeks after the release, they published a white paper outlining their plans for future development of X over the following year, which in marketing terms is called “closing the barn door after the horses got out.””
Why “furor” at all. What was that about, actually?
A few weeks after the release, I, and everyone else I was starting to chat with was still virtually clueless about how X worked. Remember, there was little to no institutional expertise extant in how X worked outside some Ripple Training and Larry Jordan early stuff – that I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts no “Professional” editor would have even imagined needing that stuff. (I’m a pro – I can surely figure this out for myself – wait – that doesn’t work! Why are these clips jumping around! I can’t even drag a damn clip diwn a couple of seconds without it FIGHTING me!!!- This thing is consumer crap. Where’s my AVID…)
Right? I thought the big hit from guys like YOU was X was crap because Apple had gone all “Consumer-ish” – as a video company.
Well, what kinda “consumer” reads freaking “white papers?”
Still you’re admitting within “weeks” they had taken steps with that very white paper to communicate their thinking to interested professionals.
So might the ACTUAL issue in play have been that you and others had hardened their internal feelings of being “disrespected” so much in those early days that you were totally unwilling to listen to Apple AT ALL. No matter WHAT the new program was actually capable of?
Apple simply had hurt your feelings, too much.
Sorry about that, I guess.
You know, I got MY choice of preferred NLE EOLed too.
Same as everyone else.
At the same time.
I just moved on faster to a happier place.And so it … went.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.
