[Fred Jodry]

Some, like the Intensity Pro or Intensity (regular) have red, green, blue, audio, and other outputs that you can run to your live mixing (remixing etc) board, your display etc. during capture and edit, it appears. It would be very convenient if it could be made to run main audio and video too from the time of tossing the drivers CD into the computer. A single thread approach to production.

[Fred Jodry]

George, the others have covered things well but I thought I`d put in a few comments of my own, guesses or otherwise.

Why are you de- interlacing a 30 frames per second (60 fields) interlace camera feed? Either leave the video in this original form or graduate to a camera that can give you 60 frames per second so you can make (both) 60 frames, fields non- interlaced, or 30 frames, 60 fields low noise as whichever your market needs. Of course, this allows you to turn off “de- interlace filter fast …. line averaging” (or any version of this) and it`s always resultant trash.

I see, antialias setting- 100, detail level setting- 100, and automatic gamma correction- on, at the same time. Likely, it`s a good idea to always run, 0 and 0, and be experimental on the gamma corrector as follows: If the scene doesn`t matter, like you`re just importing titles leave it on. For most other stuff see if maybe pushing slightly more light in with the settings, 0, 0, off, then rendering for better gamma in Photoshop software should give quite a leap over what Canon provides. In the same area of quality and cause, is your camera using auto iris and auto focus? See if your model will handle manual lenses, preferrably with prime (that`s usually 3- element Cooke) lenses next to the zoom.

Spatial and temporal quality adjustments, just be experimental but note:
My recent experience with Canon comes not from a video camera but from a photographic scanner. I would put my friend`s positive picture in the camera and start adjusting on the computer then hit print. The moment I hit print, the Canon software would turn all my gamma and a few other adjustments grey, and output an unusable picture to the Hewlett Packard color printer. If you are using any Canon software for the camera next to your (Apple Final Cut?) software, next try see if you can do without it installed at all.

A ProRes 4:4:4 camera and workflow certainly describes quality you deserve even for bump- downs, but be sure to get something with both fast editing workflow and real live pickoffs so that the camera you choose isn`t a burden.

You can e- mail me on a relatively low priced set of cameras and accessories that I can`t afford, at this time. educationalbroadcasting aaat hotmail.com

[Fred Jodry]

Richard, since you are taking multiple moving images off a color TV camera (as vignettes and sections) and recombining them as simultaneous, you are the only one doing this with television in modern times. It really hasn`t been practical to do this with an all- television approach until now but it does have resembling predecessors.

Using a camera and partially silvered mirrors to make one tv camera into multiple cameras was all some TV stations could do in the old days for the money. One thing it gave them that you don`t have is different camera angles. It has even been tried with a splitting arrangement that put a zoom lens as one field lens, and a prime lens as the other, however putting lenses far away from the pickup tube, which is what happens when there is a splitter in-between, forces a camera to be telescopic. This was, a splitter right in front of the pickup tube, or tubes if color, 2 or more lenses, and sets of mirrors in the field side, literally field mirrors.

In the comic strip, Gasoline Alley, the artist used to sometimes draw the character, Skeezix, or others, walking from one frame into another of the quadrant four, where the next story scene was awaiting. The lines were purposeless.

Of course, rolling back a film cameras`s negative and making all sorts of dissolves and vignettes has been used endlessly in old film and film for television.

Still, I look at Cameramen- Producers with Arri Alexas making nothing but butt- edited scenes and shooting fruit on a table or underlit street corners, and wonder how television technique has fell back so far. -Fred Jodry (So Richard, I hope you make more).

Richard Schiller I have invented a new way of making television – I think
by Richard Schiller on Apr 24, 2011 at 3:52:18 am

This might be something that everyone else has been doing for years but I have not found any reference to this technique anywhere and would be interested in people’s comments.

I was asked to record a chat show. Before anyone gets any grand vision; I am an ameteur and this was really a favour. Anyway the chat show was a live event on a stage with one interviewer and three guests. The lighting was surprisingly good as was the performances making the whole event more professional than you might think. So; I took my one camcorder and mounted it locked-off on a tripod facing direct on to the stage. The video looks fine but boring because it is one single shot for the whole 30 minutes or so. However the need was for some low-resolution web video. So, I thought, why not take the shot and cut out low resolution vignetes then cut between them in a kind of imitation multi-camera look.

Here is what I did. As I had shot in 1080p I could cut the video down to one ninth of its original size. I made one version of the original which was the whole scene but downconverted while the other two shots were of the interviewer (taking the right side of the scene) and the interviewees (taking the left).

OK; so the video is less perfect than using the whole image and this all only works because I am acquiring HD but broadcasting low resolution video for the web. Being progressive this is a lot better than you might expect – I think this would be impossible with interlaced acquisition. The game changer is the availability of progressive HD cameras. The main thing I notice is the chromatic aberations from the lens but to be honest this is a cheap camera and I know what I am looking for so I would not say this was intrusive or could not be improved. Having said all that though the finished piece is in my humble view remarkable. One thing that surprised me was how good it looked even though all the camera angles were identical – it is only the framing that varies. I don’t think this is very noticeable it has a lot of the look of a proper multi-camera shoot.

I am interested in your views.

[Fred Jodry]

Andreas, there is a Business And Marketting title in our forums- but I would think that it is a much better question why these businesses exist in the first place. For one thing, these businesses have in some cases been continuously in operation for more than a hundred years, while the newer or new ones just squeeze in to an often existing market without ruffling each other`s feathers whether the oppportunities are crowded or not. Most businesses use their own money not even the banks` money to start or roll whether they are poor or rich. If you are studying the job of Business Manager you would be better off studying the job of Business Controller/ Comptroller (same name) as it is a much more hands on version of the job. See, one of the problems about aiming towards the typical job of Business Manager is that really everything, almost everything, is often rather lacking and has to be made fresh from scratch in order to exist. There`s no market, it has to be made. There are no product or products, they have to be made. For example, when one of my old Engineering jobs aimed me into making some sales time on the telephone, one morning I found myself talking to another TV and industrial Engineer who had a really great product he had on the market for about 4 years. ¨Would you send us our first one to sample and sell?¨, I questioned. ¨Sure.¨, he said. When I got the package in the mail from the middle of the country a few days later openning it produced an unexpected disappointment. The Inventor- Engineer had mailed me his original invention because no made units had ever sold in the distraction that is the real marketplace. Try reading the Art Of The Edit topic. The tales of woe and practical advice are relatively plentiful there. Don`t even worry about new or old technology as long as there`s a market. You can copy or make piano rolls for a living, or for $100,000 more you can use a servo mirrors set on an Alexa to make 3D originals that fill nickelodeon trays with replacement prints, a technological mix, or you can use one of these new cameras to make originals that burn theatre film prints. Make your business, make your choice, make your job. Don`t worry too much about making yourself a name. Famous or not, you were already born with one. Congratulations on studying from the beginning of a topic, it shows how the topic was made.

Hello,
Even if this discussion is now a little bit older i would like to participate. I’m student doing a research for a case study to get to know some details of the cinema camera business.

Maybe you can help me here. I would like to know if there are any informations about market shares in forums/news sites special for film industry or any other numbers about this topic?
Im interested in ARRI, RED and Panavision.
I hope you could help me or even redirect me to a different forum or webpage where i can found more detailed information.

Help is highly appreciated 😀
Thanks
Andi

[Fred Jodry]

Another reason for using the mixer board and often pre-amp between the microphone and Kona besides audio gain and signal to noise ratio is that the tone quality of the microphone often needs to be adjusted. Perking up treble is common although in all fairness I`ve occasionally run across audio situations where treble is not behind and the gain too. Although what is so much more common is to find that the microphone sounds dull from too little treble, even if I pull the foam cap sometimes found on them off, and besides, when I am testing microphones I often find that the electrical impedance that each microphone fires into needs to be adjusted for otherwise the tone quality will be crude ringing. I sometimes already have XLR sockets waiting on my mixer board with the tested non- standard impedance but it is also possible to run adapter barrels or cords in between with the resistors inside them so I don`t have to do odd soldering inside the mixer board. Using the internal microphone on your camcorder usually (not always) results in some non professional quality audio in your production. Wireless mics don`t need pre-amplifiers but do need mixer boards.

[Fred Jodry]

I assume that you are setting up a work RAID drives set after the plain Windows XP boot hard drive is working and in place. Temporarily disconnecting the Windows drive is sometimes a way to let the bios do its detecting and set up easier. Close your server book. Zero out the data of each Hitachi drive before retrying. Bioses sometimes have funny reading where they call SATA hard drives IDE/ATAPI drives when you start setting them up for RAID, and so on. Concentrate on the procedure in your ASUS bios. You may get it after a couple of tries. You set up one drive. Then when you plug in the other drive the RAID controller starts building, mirroring the first drive invisibly (What a thing to make you nervous!) and slowly, taking maybe a day for this. You will soon have your machine in use. By the way, reading only the first and last sentences of your blue screen is usually practical but it probably says the above.

[Fred Jodry]

It sounds like you are running through a reasonably large amount of material. While adding up the sum for your RAID drives needs also consider a tape backup unit. 15 years from now you could have an awful lot of data in your safe. I know I am not being too specific at the moment but I would recommend that you get a RAID about as good as David Weiss uses so your work drives do not make you spend your life in front of your editing computer. Aim for very fast RAID without huge storage on your hard drives. That is what the backup, restore is for. Your 3 firewire drives as sombre storage will not be much of a problem for now.

[Fred Jodry]

Correct, that is, no problem that would not be easily re- detected and set up in a boot or two. You have found a nuisance customer. If the customer starts co-operating again, bring the obvious repair parts and include a fresh cmos/clock battery in the list so that hardware detection does not go sour for want of this. Hang on to your wallet.

[Fred Jodry]

At the time of rebuilding the array you have the option of taking out each drive and running it through utilities in another computer for the best testing that is available by software, if time permits. You also might be able to do the same by leaving the signal cables on all drives but leaving on only the power plug on the drive in test on your RAID box and let the controller see a single drive as a single drive. (Some hook ups make this electromechanically hard). Then there is what we could do with old type hard drives not too easily and modern ones with much difficulty, which is, to put new bought hard drives on their backs and go over them when they are running an interleave test, with the probe of practically a DuMont of an oscilloscope and solder on tiny brass loop electrodes wherever we find playback signals after the pre-amplifiers and servos. (If we cross out a connection accidentally we have to buy a new hard drive but at least we have not lost any data). Of course, this is something every magnetic maedia drive manufacturer from floppy and tape drive makers on up should already have provided us along side of a circuit diagram; but let`s face it, the computer crowd are the fast boys and not watching if the manufacturers pull the wool over their eyes. The manufacturers have not taken the time to offer this integrity as a sales pitch of quality either. Leo Laporte on, ¨This Week In Amateur Radio Incorporated¨ sometimes mentions his favorite hard drive testing software but I don`t remember its name.

[Fred Jodry]

That`s alright Hop, just give me an email if someone parades by some unwanted good parts like Vistacons and Leddicons. I`m not caught up. Fred Jodry
educationalbroadcasting@hotmail.com