At my current gig, I sometimes need to use videos generated by Snapz Pro. We recently ran into a problem where previously-working FCP timelines wouldn’t render and would generate the mysterious message “Codec not found. You may be using a compression type without the corresponding hardware card.” I had already found that capturing videos at 30fps in Snapz generally led to FCP reporting the frame rate as 10fps and resulting in generally unreliable editing. I could never be sure the in-point I chose in the viewer would actually be the in-point in the timeline. It’s important to run Snapz videos through Cinema Tools to conform them to 29.97 or whatever frame rate you’re working at. But the new problem seems to be related to resolution. With Snapz I invariably capture some bizarre resolution with the plan of re-framing it in FCP. These days there has to be a good reason for me to work in a codec other than ProRes, so I’ve been saving the Snapz videos as ProRes. Unfortunately, It seems that although Snapz can save the videos to ProRes, if it’s a weird enough resolution, FCP and Compressor are unable to generate new video. Compressor says “Processing service request error: Codec not installed.” I didn’t have this problem in the summer, so I suspect it’s related to a QuickTime update. Between this summer and now, the computers we’re working with were upgraded to QuickTime 7.6.4. The solution I’ve settled on is saving the Snapz videos in the Animation codec. The Animation codec doesn’t seem to have any resolution restrictions, and it seems well suited to screen captures anyway.
Look, I’m just going to admit this. I don’t use my Blu Ray player very often. Most titles that are available on Blu Ray are large, new releases, and if I wanted to see them I saw them in the theater. I watch a ton of HD TV on my DVR. The indie films that frankly I hardly ever see in theaters anymore (sorry, business I work in, but my TV is awesome and your theaters are a pain in the ass) are almost exclusively available on DVD. I pay the extra money for Netflix to send me Blu Rays, but I only have a handful of Blu Rays in my queue.
But like a lot of Netflix subscribers, I’m getting more and more accustomed to the instant gratification of “Watch Instantly.” The selection is growing, and it’s a wonderful rogues gallery of films nobody wanted enough to tie up with restrictive licenses. We even get movies that have been out of print for years. Hal Hartley’s Trust is only available in the U.S. through Watch Instantly. Unfortunately I don’t have an XBOX 360 or a Roku, but I do have an Internet-enabled TV, and of course the “let’s hope someone comes up with some interesting way to use this” feature BD-Live on my Blu Ray player. So far both the TV and Blu Ray player haven’t gotten much use from their Internet connections. I’ve been hooking up my Macbook Pro to my TV via DVI-HDMI cable and an optical audio cable, but that requires all kinds of plugging and unplugging and doesn’t allow HD streaming through Watch Instantly. Both my TV and Blu Ray player are Panasonic, and neither of them has partnered with Netflix to allow streaming on their devices. And I don’t want to buy another device right now.
Today I learned that Netflix will be sending out special discs to PS3 owners that will enable them to use Watch Instantly through BD Live. Now the obvious question here is: why not my Blu Ray player too? What does that supercomputer PS3 have that my Blu Ray player doesn’t? Well, obviously the large hard drive and massive processing capabilities, but neither of those seem particularly necessary. I have a small amount of storage space available for BD Live material, and my Blu Ray player can obviously handle the processing necessary to play back HD video. Is there a technical limitation here, or is it a business limitation?
Previously Netflix had an exclusive relationship with XBOX 360, so opening it up to the PS3 is a big step. But opening it up to every Blu Ray player would be huge. It would paradoxically create a larger market for Blu Ray players while simultaneously reducing the market for the overpriced discs. Anything that makes it easier to get movies in the hands of consumers (for a fair price) is a good thing.
I was looking for a particular Hal Hartley clip on YouTube and I came across an interesting video.
I vaguely remember this happening while we were working on Fay Grim. A bunch of CalArts students made their own titles for the movie as an exercise. I don’t think I ever saw any of them. In this one (heavily influenced by the opening titles for Seven) I somehow end up credited as the editor and Carlos Brooks as writer/director, although Carlos directed Quid Pro Quo, another HDNet Films movie I made the credits for.
I still haven’t shot a roll of 16mm on my Bolex Stereo system, but halfway through the (excellent) Toy Story 3D double feature yesterday I realized that I could retrofit my animation project for 3D. I spent today rendering left and right eye versions of the episode that I made almost a year ago. Unfortunately there’s no good way to distribute 3D video online, so we’re stuck with the old anaglyph nightmare. Back when I bought my linear-polarizing glasses for the Bolex Stereo system, I was sent a pair of Dr. Jacoby-style Red/Blue glasses by accident, which has come in handy today. If you happen to have some red/blue glasses, check out Time Travellin’ Episode 1: Robot Overlords (3D version) on YouTube. I recommend using the “Red/Cyan Glasses: Optimized (Dubois)” setting rather than the full color version. It makes things a little easier on the eyes.
So it appears that T-Mobile has lost all the Sidekick personal data stored on Microsoft/Danger servers. This is bad news for the Cloud. I always assume that my data is safer in the hands of professionals. But apparently the Sidekick data wasn’t backed up? It got me a little nervous about the status of my 5 years of Gmail data, which I’ve always been content to leave up on the massive Google server system. I imagined my Gmail data existing in multiple locations in massive data centers all over the world, and it could never be lost. But I’m in a backing up mood anyway, so last night I used Gmail Backup to download all my messages.
I was watching SNL (typical of this season so far, it was almost entirely bad) so I wanted to stay in the living room. But I wanted to download the data to the desktop computer in my office. I decided to use the Screen Sharing built in to OS X. I logged in to my desktop computer using my laptop. Everything worked perfectly right out of the gate. Nice work Apple!
Despite once having three hard drives fail within a month, I’ve never been much for worrying about backups. Sure, when I edit a movie I generally back up the FCP project every day. I used to burn CD-Rs (I know, so quaint!) now I usually put it on a thumb drive, or just zip it up (very important! you save a lot of space) and email it to myself. That way Google keeps a copy forever. Even in that instance of multiple hard drive failures, I managed to avoid actually losing any data because I got everything off the drives before they failed permanently. So I haven’t run into that terrible situation where you suddenly realize you’ve lost days or weeks or years worth of work.
But I am getting older, and I realize I’m not going to live forever. Maybe that recognition of my own mortality is leading me towards some concrete backup plans. That, and the incredible dropping prices of hard drives. My first step was to buy a 1TB USB/eSATA external hard drive. I picked up a copy of SmartBackup, which lets me chose exactly what I want to back up, and does incremental backups from then on. It also allows me to browse through the backed-up files in Finder, which is important. I had multiple projects on multiple drives, and it was a simple operation to pick the folders I wanted and send them all onto the new drive.
I’ve been doing this for a few months now, but the drive’s physical proximity to the other drives is making me feel less secure than I’d like to. If there were a fire or electrical disturbance that caused one of the drives to fail, they could all go. And if anyone set off a giant pinch as part of a scheme to rob a casino, I wouldn’t be very happy. Although, that last one is unlikely, because there aren’t any casinos close Brooklyn. I looked into so-called “fireproof” safes, which generally only protect paper from burning. In order to really protect hard drives, you need to spend a lot more money than I was willing to spend. I considered online backup, but a quick calculation informed me that with my slow DSL upload speed, it would take around 6 months to upload everything I wanted to back up.
The simplest solution, of course, is a sneakernet. I’m going to buy another $100 drive, back up my backup drive and physically move it to another location. Problem solved.
I saw A Serious Man last night, and I can’t say I liked it as much as some of the Coens’ other films, but it certainly is a funny and discussion-provoking movie. I’ve seen some reviewers describe the film as Nihilistic, which is a philosophy I believe the Coens explicitly rejected in The Big Lebowski. The Nihilists in that movie are ridiculous crybabies. Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, at least it’s an ethos. I’m not an expert in the philosophic arts, but I think a much more accurate description of the movie—and a term that I don’t see discussed very often these days—is Absurdist. Nihilism rejects the possibility of meaning in the Universe. Absurdism finds it highly unlikely. It’s hard to find humor or drama in an absolute certainty in the meaninglessness of life. In an Absurdist world, the search for meaning behind events is considered absurd, because a person is highly unlikely to find it. That perfectly describes A Serious Man, and pretty much the entire Coen catalog.
I don’t know what this is about, but when I watch 16:9 videos on YouTube, I have 50 pixels of black on either side of the video. You get the right aspect ratio if you switch to a smaller player by clicking on the –><– button on the upper right, but then the video is too small. I haven’t seen any announcement from YouTube about it, and only a few people around the Interwebs seem to be complaining. I would like to put my complaints out there. Widescreen was a good idea. Pillarboxing is not. It’s even worse with 4:3 videos, although to be fair, pillarboxing on 4:3 videos is expected and not a big deal for me)
My mother bought me this $60 used purple foam desk chair my freshman year of college, and I kept it for 10 years. It was quite comfortable, but the springs were so worn out that it was almost impossible to keep it level. So I recently went on a quest to find a replacement that wouldn’t break the bank. Since most of you reading this are sitting on office chairs, I thought I would share some of the things I learned.
I started at the top. I’ve sat on my share of fancy chairs in fancy offices over the years, and I know how comfortable those Herman Miller chairs are. The Aeron is nice, but I spent this spring sitting in one of their newer and less expensive Celle chairs. Rather than a soft mesh they have an unusual network of plastic circles. Despite the harder look of it, it’s really quite lovely to sit in all day. I prefer it to the Aeron. I went to Design Within Reach in Brooklyn Heights to check out the other fancy chairs available. The Humanscale Liberty won Slate’s desk chair round-up a few years ago, and I can tell you it is quite comfortable as well. But at $1000 it was well out of my price range. Nothing at Design Within Reach was what I would consider “Within Reach” so I headed downscale.
I spent some time sitting on chairs at my local Staples, but nothing really felt sturdy and comfortable. It was also impossible to get a salesperson to help me out. I spent a lot of time online, and wasted a lot of energy trying to find an inexpensive all-mesh chair because I was sure that was the best option. I ended up ordering a Super Mesh Office Chair from Bizchair that was extremely solid, and well-constructed, but the metal frame around the mesh seat dug into the back of my legs because I was too short for it, and the mesh seat was surprisingly hard on the butt. The armrests also felt flimsy. They’re adjustable in a way that never really locks in place and they always jiggled a little when I used them to move the chair.
So rather than disassemble it and pay for the round-trip shipping, I sold it on Craigslist to a much taller man, for a slight loss.
At that point I realized that it is in fact necessary to sit in a chair before you buy it. So I headed over to Office Furniture Heaven on 19th St. in Manhattan. I spent about an hour moving from chair to chair, experimenting with every combination of mesh, foam, and mesh-foam. There was an inexpensive all-mesh Raynor Apollo chair with a plastic frame that appealed to me, but even though it had an adjustable-depth back, the frame on the seat still dug into my legs a little. It seems like cheap mesh seats are not a good idea. I could imagine what it would be like in 10 years. I suspected it would not hold up as well as the old Purple Beast did.
Although by that time I had settled on a $400 price cap, I did spend a lot of time sitting in a Raynor Ergohuman mesh chair. It is highly adjustable, comfortable, stylish, and feels like it will hold up well under lots of sitting. MSRP is over $1000, but you can get it online for less than $500. I probably would have bought the Ergohuman if Raynor didn’t also make an Apollo chair with a foam seat. It combined a surprising amount of adjustment with a comfortable seat and a $215 price-tag. In addition to the usual seat-height adjustments, there are very simple back-height, back-depth, and seat-tilt adjustments. The seat even tilts forward if you like that sort of thing. I’ve had it for about a month now and I’m very happy with it.
3 commentsOctober 2nd, 2009 at 12:17 pmFiled under: News
Traditionally, film editing has 3 distinct phases. You cut the picture. Then you cut & mix the sound. Then you “finish” by cutting the negative or doing an online edit. These days a lot of that work is combined. Sometimes your edit is actually at full resolution, so an online isn’t strictly necessary. Sometimes your sound editing can be done with the same software you edited picture in, and by the same person.
But other times you need the special expertise of a sound editor, and the special tools that only specialized audio software like Pro Tools can offer. So today I’m going to talk very specifically about the steps you should go through to prepare a film for hand-off to a sound editor.
Talk to your sound editor.Ask him what he wants. Don’t be afraid to ask stupid questions. Maybe there’s even a checklist he can provide you. Talk before, during, and after preparation of these materials.
Lock your goddamn picture! I can’t stress this enough. You must have enough time in your schedule to finish editing the picture before you give it to the sound department. Peter Jackson can afford to do endless conforms, including editing the picture during the mix, but if you’re reading this I can assure you that you can’t. It might seem so simple to just make a few changes, but those little changes that are so easy to make in your picture editing software ripple out into multiple hours of work for everyone down the line. Consider how many days of sound editing you’ve budgeted for and ask yourself if you’d rather have your sound editor spend that time (which is already too little, you know) working on the sound or working on implementing the picture changes you’ve made. Also sound editors don’t like conforms. You’re probably not paying these people enough as it is. Keep them happy.
Break up your movie into reels. I’ll be honest with you. This one is dying out. There are a lot of times where this just isn’t necessary, but I’m going to talk about it anyway. Some of you might not remember this, but movies used to be shot on giant strands of plastic, and shown in theaters that way too. It turned out that putting a whole movie on one giant spool made it hard to move around, so they were broken down into 2000 foot reels (about 22 min). While your job no longer includes renting a truck in order to deliver all your editorial materials, you can still benefit from the wisdom of the ancients. If for some reason your film is shown on film, you’ll be setup for it from the beginning, but there are actually some good technical reasons to work in reels. If you happen to do color correction in Apple’s Color program, it has trouble with projects that have too many cuts. It will also help you get around the pesky OMF file size limits. And I find that it helps psychologically to be able to say during the mix “Reel 1 is finished” rather than “We’re 20 minutes into this 120 minute movie and we’re already in overtime.”
A few tips for breaking down into reels: Keep it under 22 minutes. Don’t try to squeeze it right up to 22 either. Nothing wrong with going under 20. Often the first reel has to be shorter (1600 feet, 17 min 46 sec) to accommodate things like trailers. Try to avoid having black at the head or tail of the reel (except for the head of the first or tail of the last) because projectionists might cut off the black bits if they’re not paying close attention. I once got an email from a projectionist at Sundance who just wanted to make sure we did it on purpose. Other projectionists won’t have your email address. The best place to end a reel is at the end of a scene that has quiet audio. If loud sounds carry over between the reels, there might be a problem. Probably a bit of a pop or click. Certainly don’t let any music cross over the change. But these days pretty much anything goes, since the reel change during projection will be frame accurate.
Each reel starts at a different timecode. There are two different ways to do it. The more “filmy” convention is to start the first reel at 01:00:00:00, the second reel at 02:00:00:00, etc. The more videoish way is to start the first reel at 00:59:52:00, which puts the First Frame of Action after the 8-second countdown (see below) at 01:00:00:00. Reel 2 would start at 01:59:52:00, etc. Either way is fine as long as everyone is on the same page.
Countdown with 2-beep at the head of each reel. Final Cut Pro actually comes with a great countdown. It’s on the install disk in the Extras/Head Leaders for Cinema Tools folder. You can use the already-generated ones or open up the project and adjust it to your particular frame rate and resolution. I also recommend turning off the stupid flicker. The countdown includes 2 seconds of black after the “2.” Depending on the timecode style you’re using that means your First Frame of Action is at 01:00:08:00 or 01:00:00:00. The key thing here is that there is a one-frame beep at the “2.” Put this beep on every single audio track in your timeline. That way when your sound editor imports all of the files you generate, he or she can tell right away that they are in sync because the beep happens on the same frame as the 2. If that doesn’t happen, you know you have a problem. Of course timecode makes this less necessary than it used to be, but it’s a nice simple way that a human can tell things are working the way they should.
It’s an optional step for most workflows, but I also like to put a beep at the end of the reel. In the old days you would actually use a hole-punch on the frame exactly 2 seconds after the Last Frame of Action, along with a one-frame beep on every track of audio. I put in a virtual hole punch by making a one-frame white circle. This lets you know if any tracks have drifted out of sync for some reason. It’s unlikely to happen these days, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.
Audio reference files. The QT you output will include a stereo reference track of the audio work you’ve done so far. Sometimes the sound editor will want the mix broken up into separate dialogue, effects, and music files. Just turn off the tracks you don’t want, and export the ones you do. Preparing these files can also help you organize your tracks better than the mess you’ve made during picture editing.
All original audio files. Usually the sound editor will want these. If you shot double system you already have them ready to go, but if your audio came in with the video files, you’ll have an issue. The simplest way to generate this stuff is to select all your clips in a bin and do an audio-only batch export.
Export OMFs. This is pretty easy. FCP & Avid both have simple methods of generating OMFs. You’ll have the option of setting handle lengths. This is the amount of audio media you want to include in the OMF before and after each cut. It gives you flexibility in the sound editing to extend audio to cover up seams, or to find bits of room tone to fill in holes, or any number of little tricks that will make life easier. Make the handles big. A minute is good. More if you can stand it. One thing that’s going to limit you is the archaic OMF standard which restricts the file size to 2GB; a number so large that people in the 90s couldn’t even count that high. In FCP you can only export OMFs with embedded audio, so if you have 24-bit audio, big handles, and a lot of tracks, you’re probably going to bump into this one, even if you’re only working in 20 minute chunks. The easy way around this is to simply turn off a number of the tracks (using the green dot next to each track) until you get the file size below 2GB. Rename the exported OMF so that it indicates which tracks are in the file, then turn off those tracks and turn on the ones you had turned off and repeat. You might have to do more than two OMFs. I recently had to export three or four OMFs per reel for a movie I was editing. If you’re working on Avid you have more options. You can actually export an OMF that only references the media, so the file size limitation doesn’t really come into play. Make sure you check with your sound editors before you do that though. They might want embedded audio. Also, in Avid if you’re working with certain media types you can only export AAFs. It’s pretty much the same deal, but without any file size limitations. Once again, check with your sound editor to make sure you’re generating the right kind of file.
Generate QuickTime reference files. You may be working in 9K with 7:7:7 92-bit log color, but your sound editor won’t be impressed by that. Your sound editor is getting by fine on a G4 and a 500GB hard drive. As always, deliver what is requested, but what is usually requested is an NTSC DV QuickTime file. You can probably get away with 23.98 if you’re cutting with that framerate. There are a few things you can do to make things easier for everyone. Add a visual timecode track with the timeline’s timecode. Don’t make it too huge, and put it in a letterboxed area if you have the option. In FCP you should get Andy’s Timecode Generator, which lets you add a generator to a video track rather than applying it as a filter to a nested sequence. It’s definitely easier that way. Avid has that functionality built-in. If your footage doesn’t already have source timecode burned in, you might want to apply a Timecode Reader filter in FCP to all your clips. Double-click it, set the size and location, select all, and then drag it onto the clips. This can be useful if your video TC matches your audio TC and you’re looking for a particular piece of audio. It’s not always necessary.
Export in the format requested, and include audio in the file.
Audio EDLs. You may or may not need to make EDLs. Sometimes the sound department needs to replace the junky low-quality audio you were working with, although as always, this sort of offline/online workflow is less common now than it was a few years ago. It depends on your workflow. As always, ask, ask, ask. FCP can export EDLs. With Avid, use EDL Manager.
Ok, now you’re done. Put all this stuff on an external hard drive and get it to your sound editor. And remember that if you make any changes to the picture you’re going to have to do most of this all over again.
Look, I’m just going to admit this. I don’t use my Blu Ray player very often. Most titles that are available on Blu Ray are large, new releases, and if I wanted to see them I saw them in the theater. I watch a ton of HD TV on my DVR. The indie films that frankly I hardly ever see in theaters anymore (sorry, business I work in, but my TV is awesome and your theaters are a pain in the ass) are almost exclusively available on DVD. I pay the extra money for Netflix to send me Blu Rays, but I only have a handful of Blu Rays in my queue.
