[Bob Cole]

I like Smartsound for the customization.

If you want something totally fresh, cutting-edge, just explore the Internet for small indie bands and composers. You can probably strike a deal for wonderful, original music, and help bring their work to a wider audience.

Good luck.

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

[John Kingman] “New York teens tend to get real annoying when they see a video camera, but not what looks like a regular SLR.”

What’s really really annoying is when they decide they want their own camera – – specifically, YOUR camera. Given your subject matter and time of day (night) shooting, I’d buy a 7d and invest the savings in a big scary assistant.

Less to lose, always nice to have some crew, and safer for you.

You can get some fast primes for the 7d.

Good luck!

[Bob Cole]

Thanks Rafael. I’m also told, by friend Weiss, that I do have QT Pro, only it is labeled QT Player.

[Richard Gardner] “BTW capturing without deck control, and having time-code breaks in the first place, becomes a nightmare if you ever have to reimport the footage. You will regret it one day.”

I’ve long had your view. But the reality of HDV has forced me to reconsider. If I use deck control, the M25 deck shuttles endlessly on fugitive timecode breaks – bad for the deck, the tape, and for the missed footage. I use the HD Connect to capture via HDMI/SDI(AJA) from the HDV tape, then treat the capture as the “new negative,” backing it up to LTO-3 tape (stored offsite forever) as well as RAID-5 (in the studio, for duration of project and about six months of “afterlife”).

I capture the first few seconds of each tape with tc, then the whole tape continuously without it, then match the actual tc on the continuous-run tape. I don’t care whether the timecode at the tail of the file is the precise actual tc on the tape. Given the alternatives with HDV tc capture, I vastly prefer this method – it’s faster, gives me access to all the material that was shot, and is easier on the deck and tape. If I actually had to recapture the footage from the original tape, I could do it the same way and probably come close enough to the first “new negative’s” timecode.

I appreciate your concern, and I take your point.

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

Thanks. I can’t seem to locate Quicktime Pro – is that something that I should automatically have in FC Studio?

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

Thanks Mark. Great post, terrific insights.

question for all: my impression is that the Internet could change the VNR somewhat. It would make sense to have a web page with little thumbnails of each shot that the editor could download a la carte. Sort of emulates the nice bin of image thumbnails/clips in your NLE. Maybe only works for people with a T1 line.

Somehow I got the idea that stations don’t like or use VNRs as much as they used to. Wrong? Or, could the stations be getting more receptive in what we fondly call “This Economy?”

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

Thank you!

Physical delivery question: data DVDs acceptable? Last thing I want is for people to try to put them in their DVD player and go nuts because the files don’t play.

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

[Bob Zelin] “says “$8000″. And they get it.”

Oddly, clients sometimes seem to treat the gougers with more respect.

Bob

[Bob Cole]

Hi Ryan,

Reminds me of a story many years old now about photographers in NYC. Halliburton (?) cases were popular – these are the silvery aluminum things that looked tremendously high tech and expensive.

Then, photographers noticed that a slight problem for location shooting: the moment they set a case on the sidewalk and turned their back to pull out case #2, case #1 was GONE.

So they all trooped to the local Goodwills, bought nice beat-up but sturdy suitcases, lined them with foam, and put their (replacement) camera gear inside.

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

[Peter Corbett] “CS4 was a disaster but this time Adobe have truly produced something great.”

Peter, by “CS5” do you mean specifically Premiere? If you endorse it, I might give it a try. Are you saying “PP CS5 yes, PP CS4 no?”

As for the questions about plug-ins and their compatibility with the latest releases, I view Andy’s post with mixed feelings. Over on the FCP forum, some of the most respected experts advocated NOT upgrading to the latest FC Studio for a considerable time – let everybody else iron out the kinks. My own frustration: because I use a lot of 3rd party software (mainly for After Effects), keeping track of compatibility issues is very time-consuming. (Will the new upgrade on Filter X cause problems, because I am/am not on CS5?)

I think Andy’s decision to cool his jets on the upgrade is wise. I am waiting to upgrade to CS5, not just to make sure CS5 works, but that everything else works as well. I am willing to wait. But I wish that Trapcode, Boris, etc. would all work on automation, the same way that Windows or OSX will periodically suggest installing an update.

My non-scientific impression is that Boris and other vendors have improved the update/upgrade process significantly, and I would ALWAYS definitely prefer that a company wait to release software only when it is ready for prime time, i.e. ME.

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

Not really a FCP issue. You probably could get responses to this question on either the Canon Camera or DSLR forums.

Have you checked to make sure the menu settings weren’t tweaked in some severe way? And, doesn’t the 5d generate a histogram? Wouldn’t that get you in the ballpark, exposure-wise? (btw, there is an interesting test of the 5d’s histogram here: https://www.brisk.org.uk/photog/histo7.html – author claims the 5d histogram is based on a downsized version of the image, and is not very accurate.)

Bob C