Dean Sensui
Forum Replies Created
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I’m using hot-swap SATA drives.
These are Hitachi SATA drives in a Firmtek external hot-swap SATA system. They’re quickly interchanged, as convenient as Firewire but about half the price.
For tapeless HD I “mirror” the external SATA drives for additional safety.
Dean Sensui — http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com
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Thanks for the heads-up on this.
As a general rule, I avoid any special characters in file names and folder names. It’s a holdover from the old days where you were limited to characters and numbers. It’s probably still a good practice as there’s a chance an odd character could trip up an operating system as you’ve discovered.
Dean Sensui — http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com
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Todd…
I just started experimenting with keying and this is a test I did the other weekend in my garage.
Shot with a Panasonic HVX-200 in 1080p, and composited using After Effects and Keylight.
https://hawaiigoesfishing.com/videos/comp_test_720_24h.mov
Simple lighting. One undiffused key light to simulate hard sunlight. And two lights to illuminate the green screen. Due to clutter in the garage there wasn’t much room to get much distance between the subject and the green screen.
Dean Sensui — http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com
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This could be done with After Effects or Commotion.
You’d need to put markers on the green screen background which are then tracked by software in post.
This would give your compositing software an idea of where the background was in relation to the foreground object.
After you’ve keyed your model you then use the motion tracking data to lock your background to the original green screen. Of course you’ll have to also remove the tracking markers that weren’t keyed by the keying software but that can mostly be handled with a garbage matte.
Keep in mind that the markers will give you relative motion assuming the background elements are also where the green screen actually was. So if your background plate was supposed to be a lot farther back, you’ll have to modify your tracking data to ensure that the relative motion of your background is correct.
I also saw this being done in real time at the Ultimatte booth at NAB. The background was generated in 3D in real time and composited with the foreground model. The camera was being moved at random and its movements were also being tracked and applied to all the elements in the composite. Was very impressive.
Dean Sensui — http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com
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Having come from the Media 100 world, I would strongly recommend editing in 720p, then outputting to SD via a Decklink card.
The advantage: no need to convert to M100 codec. All the speed and advantages of FCP. On-the-fly conversion from HD to SD in real time via the Decklink card. Very easy re-purposing to HD at any time as the entire project will already exist in HD, complete with audio mixdown, EQ and visual effects.
If you edit in SD on a M100 system and decide to output the program to HD in the future, you’d be struggling to generate a usable EDL out of Media 100 and have all that hard work translated into something that can be used elsewhere. Add the need to recapture or relink HD media and a nightmare soon develops.
I had a one-hour pilot edited on Media 100 and converted it to FCP. Tried to re-use the original media but that didn’t work at all. So I ended up exporting an EDL, importing that EDL into FCP, recapturing all the footage from the original DV tapes, and having to fix a myriad of things which didn’t translate in the process. Was a hassle in the truest sense of the word!
I can probably guess why you might want to finish it with M100. But trust me. In the long run you’d be much better off doing this in FCP.
Join us… Join us…
🙂
Dean Sensui — http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com
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Here’s what I have:
Two Firmtek external SATA enclosures and a 4-channel Firmtek hot-swappable PCI SATA host adapter.
Each client has their own SATA RAID pair set aside on a shelf. There are also additional SATA archive/backup drives for a total of 14 250-gigabyte drives (a total of more than 3.2 terabyte when formatted). This setup has proven to be flexible and easily expandable.
Haven’t had any problems yet, and I’ve been using them for a couple of years now. First in a standard external box, then later converting them to a hot-swappable system.
Be aware that some drives work better than others with the Firmtek cards. The Hitachi/IBM’s are supposedly the “most stable” according to Firmtek. But make sure the drives have “SSC” disabled.
Seagate Barracudas are also OK but some have problems mounting, and Firmtek is working closely with Seagate to find out why.
Firmtek’s tech support has been very helpful and informative.
Dean Sensui — http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com
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What can make a recording sound muddy is unwanted room reverb.
As mentioned in another post, creating a sound booth can help. The best material is acoustic absorbtion foam. Another option is anything that can absorb sound and minimize reflections: shipping blankets or other blankets, etc. Suspend that around and in front of the talent and that can help make a recording sound crisper.
Dean Sensui — http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com
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[william bearden] “It’s a 2 bay Firewire box that has removable drawers that lock into place. It has two Firewire connections in the back. I have used this box for the past couple of months. Everything was cool till I moved it.”
Sounds like there might be some bad connections, either with the external cables and/or something inside the box. Moving it may have disturbed them. If possible, try re-seating all connectors and make sure they’re clean. Something called DeOxyIt from Caig might help.
Dean Sensui — http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com
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I had a situation in which I had to walk away from.
It was a documentary. We shot some in-studio interviews to start off, then went on a trip to shoot some material on location. It was to be a bunch of standups and scenics to establish some of the historical places involved in this bio.
Once we got there, I found out the producer had no script. Had no map to the locations we needed to shoot. Wasn’t familiar with some of the places we were going to see. And he didn’t even call ahead to schedule interviews with some key people there. He just winged it.
And to top it all off, on a long drive to one of the locations, this guy decides he wants to have a beer. WHILE DRIVING!
That was it.
When I got back I wrote a very detailed letter explaining why I was backing out of that project, and sent copies to the producer and exec producer. We worked out a fee for the time I spent on the project and that was that. I wasn’t about to harm my reputation or myself in the process.
The producer and I are still on good terms but I’ll never work with that guy again!
Dean Sensui — http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com
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“Buying a camera I expect it to return 100 times what I paid for it.”
Hey here’s an idea — get a more expensive camera and make a killing! 🙂
If only it worked that way.
Our 60:1 shooting ratio is very high. We do a lot of multiple camera shooting and some of it’s just plain redundant, so that would need to change. Better planning and coordination in real time would help.
I’m still getting familiar with this workflow so it’ll be a while before I commit to any particular procedure. But I do know that whatever it is it will involve at least one or more backups. A backup file is like an ejection seat on a jet. It’s rarely used but when you finally do need it, it’s a lifesaver!
Dean Sensui — http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com