Solid State, the Future of Storage

solid stateREVISION* Since the VHS ( and Beta for you Sony lovers ) back in the early eighties, recording formats have been one of the slowest forms of a growing technology in the A/V industry.  Digi-Beta and BetaCam have long been the standard for the industry but as the song goes, “the time’s, they are a changing” .From DVD’s and mini-discs all the way to hard drives, the techies have been plotting to remove tape and install a new standard, and slowly but surely over the past few years production studios have started to come on board.  Broadcast stations have been and are continuing  to make the switch to tapless media both in storage and recording formats, and industry enthusiasts seems ready to make tape a thing of the past. 
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Compositing…NLE or Third Party?

greenscreen_studio_smCompositing can be a very deep and complex subject, especially when dealing with animation, but here we’ll try and keep it fairly simple and straightforward.  There is always talk amongst those in the industry when it comes to blue/green screen and working on an edit as to whether or not one should do their composite in whatever NLE software their working with or export to a third party software to handle the task.  Unless your working with animation, the answer, like so many in post production questions is a not a simple one.  Take for instance Avid, who has excellent composite tools available in their 3.0 versions ( and up ) that can do the job relatively pain free providing the ‘screen’ is a talking head or has minimal movement.  Final Cut does a decent job too, providing your using the newly acquired Ultimatte software that was made available earlier this year.  Both are good and most editor’s may prefer to use their NLE system to avoid the hassle of exporting and re-importing footage for what may be no difference other than minor ones no one notices. 
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Using Sorenson Squeeze for Flash

sorenson squeezeHaving worked as an editor for over seven years now, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve had the opportunity to export to the majority of different formats one can.  But now days I find more and more that both clients and studios alike are asking for streaming video for the web.  It may seem simple for some, especially considering all the YouTube videos that are uploaded these days, however, uploading to YouTube and properly putting video on a company website is completely different.  Usually I find out about how improperly it was done after the fact, and usually the people involved don’t understand what they did wrong.  So here we go.

There are alot of great programs out there but I prefer using Sorenson Squeeze.  It’s an excellent program which gives the user full control over all aspects of the encoding process, which is one of the main reasons why most people who are not industry savvy find it overwhelming.  Another very notable mention regarding Sorenson Squeeze, is that it carries one of the most important plug-in’s, On2Vp6, which is specifically for the purpose of exporting Flash.  On2Vp6 is a codec that gives you incredibly good video quality at a very small file size, but it’s also important to understand all the other options in Sorenson Squeeze as well to see what exactly to set your settings too.  I’ll give you the most important three. 

1.  First off, like I mentioned set your codec to On2VP6, which you may have to pay for given the fact that it is a licened plug-in. 

2.  Next your bitrate.  Now although you can go as high as you like you have to consider the fact that this is not just your video to watch.  People have to actually stream this, so going to high may limit some’s ability to watch the video without major delays.  In order to balance quality with a reasonable load time I would say to put your video ( should it be within reasonable size, ie 360 x 240 or 480 x 360) to around 500 kbs.  This should give you great video quality without too much lag. 

3.  An overlooked aspect is the buffer.  I can’t tell you how many times I get people complaining that they did everything right yet there still getting their video pausing in the middle since the it hasn’t finished buffering ( or in other words fully loading).  Sorenson gives you full control over all the buffer options so you can experiment to see what you prefer.  If your a real stickler about your video and you want no chance of a lag since it can ruin the “flow”, you need to set you starting buffer to around the 20 second mark and adjust your other buffer sizes according ( there are two others – optimal and maximum, just look at the difference between starting and the others and adjust them up).

So that’s it.  Now you can enjoy uploading great quality video in a small size to the web that people of all web server speeds will be able to appreciate.   Since this can be a source of frustration for new users, feel free to email me if you get stuck or have any questions.

Autodesk Continues It’s Dominance

autodesk_002Those remotely familiar with graphics or animation know the name of Autodesk, the worldwide leader in software for 2D and 3D effects.  It’s Maya software gained popularity amongst amateurs through the revelation that Gollum from Lord of the Rings was created with it and spawned a younger generation to start dipping their feet into the software.  In 2009 George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic made it a standard staple of it’s post production process, incorporating Autodesk into many of it’s high profile films.

From that summer’s series of effects driven films have all used different versions of Autodesk’s software, from the popular Maya used for animation in the rebirth of Star Trek;  3D Studio Max for digital matte painting in Transformers 2 & 3 and Inferno to create extensive photo-realistic fluid simulations of fire and water in the latest Harry Potter’s.  All have been key components of these amazing displays of animation and effects that we marvel at.  For the majority of artists in this field this comes as no surprise as they have been using Autodesk’s software for many years, but what has been a recent surge, is the up-and-comers who are learning either in school or right out of school the vast selection of compositing and effects software Autodesk has to offer. 

Autodesk has been through is share of ups and downs over the last year from stock shares dropping in the first and second quarter of this year to finally stabilizing in the third, the company has recently come out of a restructuring and looks as strong as can be.  With more and more artists both new and old continuing to utilize it’s vast software, Autodesk looks like it will continue to hold the market place for years to come. I’ve included the Autodesk Siggraph show reel for 2009, as expected it’s very, very impressive and I’m sure there’s more than one spot you’ll recognize.

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