Excellent Security Articles for iPhone/iPad users:
iOpener – How safe is your iPhone data? – The H Security: News and Features
Three iPhone and iPad security tips – The H Security: News and Features
Excellent iPad/iPhone Network Management Article:
Manage heterogenous systems with your iPad | ITworld
In addition to being the last expert in the post-production chain, the projectionist also is the last person in the chain that starts with the security experts who literally keep the keys to the safe.
No less urgent is the organization of the presentation, which begins with the negotiations between the studios and distribution and advertising groups and involve the exhibition management. Soon this will include the added duty of presenting more and better closed and open caption presentations for an audience who have been largely left out of the mainstream cinema theater culture, the deaf, hard of hearing and visually impaired audience.
Add to that the mixing in of various forms of alternative content, which means satellite feeds and interface boxes with very nuanced choices (neither the NOC nor the cinema manager is going to change from side to side from sequential or make certain the encryption code is set right for a particular show.) Bluray means audio changes, and last years inexpensive cable boxes won’t work soon in the cinema. [Unmentioned: a truly professional satellite presentation always has backup everything – dish, electronics, test gear. The kit is incredibly cheap, especially compared to returning the cost of premium tickets. Of course, this should never be brought up since we don’t want to scare the cinema owner who already has made a 4X investment in dcinema gear compared to the film equipment it is replacing. (“We are solving a problem that didn’t exist”, as one studio exec said.)]
In the rapidly disappearing days of film presentation, the projectionist assembled the film from multiple cans, put it onto the mechanical film chain, and made certain that the focus was correct. In the best of cases they made certain that the gates and pull-downs and pulleys weren’t physically harming the film, although there wasn’t much that could be done to prevent the enormous amounts of heat from bringing the plastic to its melting point, with its two harmful effects: desaturating the colors from the film, and creating a dust magnet from the electrostatic condition of all that heat and change that melts the dust into the cooling film. Except for keeping the bulb fresh and the voltage up, there wasn’t much more that a person could do for the picture. [We are, but we shouldn’t be, avoiding the audio topics of dcinema in this document.]
With digital projectors, all of the parameters of the color and luminance are available to perfect. There is no reason for a properly sized system to be anything less than up to SMPTE/ISO specifications. According to some manufacturers, today’s xenon bulbs don’t really even gain much more time or use less electricity by tweaking them down.
The recent kerflufle brought on by the Boston Globe article points to other issues that a projectionist should be solving. 3D alone is an issue that involved color shifts and brightness issues that should be controlled between each movie. When cinemas play 2D and 3D on the same screen, it isn’t surprising that something will suffer. It shouldn’t be the audience, but that is what is happening.
Then there is the system itself. Not the media player (SMS)/projection/audio/satellite feed/bluray player system at every port hole, but the IT system that holds all the SMS systems to one theater management system – with all the projectors filtering data back as required for keeping logs and ‘state of health’ info to network operation centers (NOCs). The projectionist is the person who has to respond quickly and well to the experts at the other end. For all the hype about what can be monitored at a NOC, it is hundreds of times better if there is a person to communicate with at the other end who is versed in perceiving the extant situation.
Perhaps there are people who have been around banks of computers that work flawlessly for days and months and years. But more common is the reality that computers always need some attention from someone on-site.
[The unwritten topic concerns the issue of how well D-Cinema systems are defended in this age when nothing seems sacred. There are weekly reports about corporations with elaborate staff and technology, who still have secure information exposed. So far, dcinema has been flying under the radar, but with ugly habits. The US military took two years to clean up vital systems after an infected (probably targeted) USB stick put secret data into criminals control. See: Infected USB caused biggest US military breach ever.]
Point being, a trained projectionist in the digital age is a Solution to many a Why.
Yet when asked, two large cinema chains acknowledged that they didn’t have an updated job description for Projectionist. Booth Monitor was one recently seen posting.
What is a projectionist in the digital age? What are the responsibilities? Is it reasonable that these responsibilities will get fewer as the technology evolves?
Here is the story from IT Pro: Kaspersky warns of “indestructible” TDL-4 botnet.
The Vulkano Flow gives consumers the freedom to watch their TV anywhere in the world using smartphones, tablets and computers. Vulkano users can now instantly begin recording their favorite television programming so they never miss historic news or memorable sporting moments.
“The Vulkano line of devices has been created to offer consumers the ultimate flexibility in entertainment and we are proud to be the first to offer direct recording and DVR for mobile devices,” said Colin Stiles, EVP Sales and Marketing at Monsoon. “Consumers are making smartphones and tablets an essential part of their every day lives and are expecting to view and browse the TV content that they pay for at their leisure, no matter where they are in the world.”
Summary of Direct to Mobile Recording and DVR features on Vulkano Devices:
Pricing and Availability
The Vulkano Flow ($99.99) is now available at Fry’s Electronics, Amazon, MicroCenter, other leading retailers and etailers as well as at www.myvulkano.com. Android, tablet and additional smartphone applications can be purchased for $12.99 each in their respective app stores.
About Monsoon Multimedia
Monsoon Multimedia provides advanced, standards-based multimedia products and convergence technologies for the PC, Mac, iPad and major smartphones. Founded by the founders of Dazzle and Emuzed, the company has offices in California,India, Russia and Singapore. For more information, please visit www.monsoonmultimedia.com.
Steve says:
“Final Cut Pro X is here. The speculation, the rumors, the misinformation and the hand-wringing can now mercifully stop. The hype machine is now inert and we can all get back to work. As is my custom each time a new version of Final Cut Pro is released I set about writing an article for Ken explaining what the new features mean to the rank and file editor who will be cutting with it in their day to day operation. Therefore, this article’s primary focus will be to address how FCP X’s new editing paradigms are most likely to impact your workflow.”
Ken says:
I have also created an iPad ePub version for those of you who would like to take it with you. The link to the iPad version is at the article.
Creative Cow says:
Gary Adcock has been using Final Cut from the very beginning and he’s been a fierce FCP advocate for just as long. So, when Apple pulled back a bit of the secrecy surrounding FCP X, Gary Adcock was the perfect member of the COW to dig deep into the workings of FCP X. Want proof? He has years of experience as a deadline-driven editor dealing with massive amounts of footage and was one of the first editors to master tapeless workflows, so much so that he began teaching and training tapeless production for Local 600, as well as assisting Dave Stump A.S.C on the Camera and Metadata subcommittees of the ASC’s Technology committee. Gary has also been the Tech Chair for NAB’s Director of Photography Conference. From this background, Gary seems the perfect guy to dig into an app that aspires to meet the needs and demands of the highest-end pros.
Or does it? What if Apple told you that FCP X wasn’t meant for you?
Gary goes beyond his own knee-jerk reaction to this latest release of Final Cut, to get under the hood of FCP X, and he likes a lot of what he sees.
Larry Jordan says:
“
With this release, Apple made four significant changes in direction:
* For the first time, two different versions of FCP can coexist on the same system. I’ve been running FCP 7 and FCP X on the same system for months.
* Maxing out performance to take full advantage of current hardware
* Almost exclusive support for tapeless workflows
* Distribution via the App Store
FINAL CUT PRO 7 IS NOT DEAD
To me, this is one of the highlights!”
David Roth Weiss goes the extra mile to explain how to glide into two big transitions at the same time. Detailing a “cool multi-boot” setup, it shows how in graphics, text and a video.
The document speaks to the technology but make no mention of what people thought after seeing the demonstration. Generally speaking it seemed very clear that the benefits of 48 frames to the eye was easily seen. Motion judder was eliminated. The picture looked more natural.
When 60 frames to the eye was shown, not only was the judder removed but the foreground ‘resolution’ popped out. In a sense, this is unnatural since when one is focused on a distant object the foreground objects are not focused. On the other hand, directing with focus is a tool that directors use. If the director doesn’t want to limit focus, it is nice that this resolution becomes available.
Unlike the hard-and-fast contracts that divvy up ticket revenue, most negotiations between distribs and exhibs are done on the fly. With the constant haggling over how a film plays out, a better relationship can impact whether it’s given the proper time and treatment to find an audience.
According to NATO president John Fithian, those relationships have been in freefall since the March surprise at CinemaCon, when exhibitors learned of the shortened PVOD window in Variety.
“Essentially everyone was emailing and texting me to try to find out what the hell was happening,” Fithian said, recalling the day the news broke. “The real problem was that the studios going forward with this plan never said anything about it and then haven’t communicated at all since … so this marks a real breakdown of trust between exhibitors and distributors.”
Read the entire Variety article at: Premium VOD: Will exhibs play favorites? – Entertainment News, Film News, Media – Variety
AppleInsider has new shots, including Motion: AppleInsider | Images claim to show Apple’s Motion 5, Final Cut Pro X
Richard Taylor has an excellent new rundown on Ken Stone’s site: Final Cut Pro X Rundown
FCP X, the next version of Final Cut Pro will be released in June. It was shown at the SuperMeet during NAB. But the version was the same that was shown 6 weeks previous to a limited set of experts.
The following links speak to a number of issues that are interesting and provocative to other experts: What is coming and will it really be the next great thing…or will it be iMovie Plus. (Apple asserts that it will be the next great thing for post-produciton. The big news is that it is 64 bit, 4k media, background rendering, will use all the cores you can throw at it, gets rid of QuickTime as the base code – substituting AVFoundation – and $299.)
Digital Content Producer: FCPX: What It Might Mean
The Sound of 1,700 Jaws Dropping: Larry’s Blog
Terence & Philip Show: Episode 25: NAB and Final Cut Pro X
Phillip Hodgetts: What are my thoughts on Final Cut Pro X? – FilmmakingWebinars.com
Larry Jordan & Michael Kammes on FCPX | 2011 NAB SHOW BUZZ
NAB11 FCP X Sneak Peek at FreshDV
AppleInsider | Apple previews new $299 64-bit Final Cut Pro X to arrive in June
PhotographBay: Final Cut Pro User Group Supermeet – LiveBlog (Updated: Final Cut Pro X Officially Unveiled)
Apple announces Final Cut Pro X | Apple Talk – CNET News
For those of you that missed the FCP X Intro at the SuperMeet | LinkedIn
Bonus: Digital Content Producer: Encoding for the Apple iPad, Part 1
To map your requirements to individual product capabilities and features, a VPN features guide can help. For example, see SP 800-113 Guide to SSL VPNs, published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Those seeking VPN appliances that also speak IPsec should also consult the older SP 800-77 Guide to IPsec VPNs. Below is a summary of the VPN features you’ll find covered in these guides.
These are just some of the many features and capabilities found in contemporary remote access VPN appliances. Vendors in this market include Cisco Systems, Citrix Systems, Check Point, F5 Networks, Juniper Networks, and SonicWall (to name just a few).
To more fully illustrate this category, EnterpriseNetworkingPlanet will profile several remote access VPN lines, including SonicWall’s Aventail E-Class SRA appliances, Cisco’s ASA 5500 Series appliances, and Juniper’s MAG Series JunOS Pulse Gateways. Stay tuned …
Lisa Phifer owns Core Competence, a consulting firm focused on business use of emerging network and security technologies. With over 25 years in the network industry, Lisa has reviewed, deployed and tested network security products for nearly a decade.
“Our biggest goal in IOS now is to have parity between IPv4 and IPv6,” Faraz Aladin, Director, Marketing Cloud Switching and Services at Cisco told InternetNews.com. “Whatever you can do in IPv4, you should be able to do with IPv6.”
From an article at: Cisco Upgrades IOS for IPv6 – www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com
While Cisco has been providing support for IPv6 for nearly 12 years on its network equipment, IPv6 isn’t just about basic packet forwarding. Joel Conover, Director Marketing, Borderless Networks at Cisco toldInternetNews.com that getting IOS ready for IPv6 is a big job that includes a lot of incremental bits.
“When you look at the massive size of IOS, with over 2,500 features, if every single one needs to be re-written to support IPv6, that takes time,” Conover said.
One feature that has taken time to land in IOS involves time itself. The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is now available in IPv6. Conover noted that it was previously not supported by IPv6 and needed to be re-written.
Security is also now being improved in Cisco IOS for IPv6 with a technology called first hop security. Aladin explained that a possible risk that had existed with IPv6 before was that another device could have been sitting on a network, spoofing a user’s address. First hop security provides a degree of authentication, to ensure that the address server is authentic and the user can trust the IPv6 address information.
Cisco is now also leveraging the Location/ID Separation Protocol (LISP) to help network administrators deploy IPv6 with IPv6 over IPv4 tunnels. LISP is an emerging standard for routing Internet traffic.
With the exhaustion of the free pool of IPv4 address space, the need for IPv6 is now well understood. According to a Cisco survey of 101 U.S IT leaders, 78 percent are currently planning for an IPv6 transition.
Security is the top concern in IPv6 transition efforts with 92 percent of survey respondents noting that their IT organization’s security department is part of the IPv6 migration.
As organizations move to IPv6 though, they still expect certain things to work that did in the IPv4 world.
“When we talk to customers — they tell us they want to implement IPv6, but here is a list of things that I can do with IPv4, and unless I can do them in IPv6 I can’t make the transition,” Aladin said.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.
Educate > Money => Hobby = No Tax Write Off
US Tax Court Judge Diane Kroupa has decided that a documentary film maker is participating in a hobby, not a money making enterprise that doesn’t deserve tax write-offs for expenses. See: If You’re a Documentary Filmmaker, You Could Owe the IRS a Whole Lot of Money – indieWIRE
There are many problems with 3D presentations, especially those with the supposedly high-gain, polarizing-friendly ‘silver screens.
(See:
23 degrees…half the light. 3D What?
Scotopic Issues with 3D,
Silver ScreensRealD and Polaroid — Possible Promise PR).
But at first glance through the breathy-for-scandle article, it seems like there is un-required hyperbole that makes one want to wait for Sony’s and RealD’s response.
This also amplifies the need for professional projectionists constantly in the projection booth, and a method for maintaining consistent quality control. If it takes a grass roots effort because of articles like this, perhaps it is OK.
But the real solution is probably to have the same “Constant Vigilance” policy for post-installation quality control as there is for security – an effort that has to come from studios, distributors, and exhibition management. In a sense, those exhibitors who signed VPF deals with studios have signed that they will make their exhibitions according to the SMPTE specification. Perhaps if the grass root effort wore t-shirts that said “48 Candelas or not at all”.
Here are a couple of shots of the lens and the projector, one with the RealD polarizers over the lenses. One suspects that this is sometimes the problem that is being talked about.
There are other shorter articles with a little more data at the links below. Sometimes the comments are the most interesting part, though a lot of them are just steam…though steam that the industry should be aware of.
Are 3D-capable theaters delivering dim 2D movies? – Digital Trends
Report: 3-D Lenses and Lazy Theaters Dim 2-D Projection by Up to 85 Percent | Movieline
Cinema chains dimming movies “up to 85%” on digital projectors – Boing Boing
Finally, the graphic from the article: Just looking at the curve of the bulb life and the description of the Polarizing is enough to make me wonder about the truthiness of the entire article.
Asserted to be a Sony Press Release – 1 June 2011
The projectionist that Boston.com spoke with clearly has little to no understanding of how the systems work and is likely a manager that also works in the booth to start shows, the projectionists of yore are long gone in most cases. While the 3D lenses in the Sony are polarized, the images do not alternate, they are projected at the same time and split through a prism system in the lens, but really that’s besides the point. All of the 3D systems we have installed have been selected based on a number of variables such as screen size and auditorium length. Based on that information we can determine if the Sony projector will be able to light the screen to SMPTE spec. The SMPTE specifications on light are very clear and the DCI specification for digital equipment follows in line with that. Basically 2D digital projection should have 14 footlamberts (a measurement of reflected light) at the center of the screen, in comparison 35mm spec is 16fl of light through an open gate (meaning no film and no shutter movement) if a projector is installed to meet that spec the light output of the digital will be seen to exceed that of film. in any house where we cannot make the required light we use a bigger system, most recently these have been made by Barco.
In addition to the light levels the digital projectors are color corrected to within ±.005 of the DCI color spec. This means that when we correct with the polarizers in place on the Sony system for 2D movies that the color will be virtually identical to that seen on a DLP projector without a polarizer in the light path.
They also fail to mention some of the advantages of the way the Sony system works, such as reduced eye fatigue. DLP systems alternate images as implied in the article, they do so by electronically shifting the polarizer state for the left and right eye 3 times per frame per second. This ultimately results in the same situation you find with shutter glasses in that there is flicker that causes headaches and sometimes motion sickness, the difference is that the glasses do not actively perform this task, but close on eye while watching a 3D film ad you may see it (you may not, the system is projecting 144fps or 72 per eye, though make no mistake the content is still 24fps). The Sony system does not have this issue as it splits the 2K image across the top and bottom of the chip and then overlays them on the screen, the dual polarizers on the Sony are completely passive with not electronics involved.
To give a brief background of my knowledge base, I have been a technician for going on a decade, I have been installing digitals since the first “wide” roullout of 100 screens that Disney purchased for Chicken Little 3D. I have industry certifications through Sony, Barco and Dolby on D-Cinema equipment as well as my department’s highest level of internal certification and I am Net+ and A+ certified.
As far as why the film and digitally projected showing had such a difference, I think it’s likely one of two things, the 35mm could have been way above spec, which can happen easily due to the way the lamps are adjusted in many cases or the lamp in the digital was not adjusted properly. The biggest issue I run into is a lack of training within the theaters. I do my best to train when the systems are installed or when I am onsite for service calls, but these days so many people get rotated through the booth that should a lamp go out Friday night they just slap one in without making any of the necessary adjustments.
I’d like to know what was wrong with the management of that theater though, how do you host a premiere without making sure everything is perfect first? I myself haven’t done any due to my location within the country, but I have talked to a number of my coworkers about them and they are on site days before they happen making sure every detail is perfect. In fact many directors want to specify special color corrections for their premieres in digital or ask that sound be tweaked out of spec and so on.
I think the biggest problem digital cinema faces is that the operations departments of most chains think we can take a hands off approach to this equipment, and that is not currently the case. Proper lamp maintenance is crucial in any theater, but even more so in digital. 5-10 years from now when the laser light sources are in the field no-one will ever have need to go in the booth outside of cleaning the port glass and the maintenance calls myself and my cohorts perform.
We deal in light, they deal in light. We’ve waited 15 years for d-cinema to mature. They’ve waited billions of years for dust to become sand and sand to become computers and computers to become cameras.
The site says: “The Photopic Sky Survey is a 5,000 megapixel photograph of the entire night sky stitched together from 37,440 exposures. Large in size and scope, it portrays a world far beyond the one beneath our feet and reveals our familiar Milky Way with unfamiliar clarity.” Take a break. Check it out: Photopic Sky Survey
Notice – plural, networks of Lockheed Martin. – plural, networks of other US military contractors.
On Friday, Reuters news agency reported that unknown hackers have managed to break into the networks of arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin as well as those of other US military contractors. According to the report, the intruders exploited the information about cryptography specialist RSA’s SecurID products that was seized by hackers during an attack in March. It is currently unclear whether the intruders actually managed to obtain valuable information; however, the fact that all the systems attached to the network are likely to contain documentation relating to weapons systems which are currently in use, or are in development, doesn’t bode well.
When last reported, it was the Defense department itself, and through the Defense Department the hackers broke into military systems all over the world. See: Infected USB caused biggest US military breach ever
The article is short, so we recommend that you read it all. But the highlights are that this is a continuing escalation, using codes from the RSA recent attack.
The US Defense Department reportedly told Reuters on Saturday that it was working with Lockheed to determine the scope of the attack. Lockheedconfirmed, in a statement, that it had detected a “significant” attack on its network on 21 May and had reacted “almost immediately” to institute counter measures; it said that its “systems remain secure”. The company is currently investigating the attack but is already claiming that “no customer, program or employee personal data has been compromised”. It is still working to restore employee access to its network.
While military facilities and their suppliers were previously thought to be fully protected against cyber attacks, even their experts now concede that no protection is one hundred per cent safe. SecurID tokens which create one-time passwords (OTPs) every 60 seconds used to be quite an efficient protective mechanism. However, in addition to source code, the hackers who attacked RSA are also believed to have obtained the “seed” components. These seeds would enable hackers to generate valid OTPs for any system.
Therefore, security experts are now assuming that SecurID tokens provide less security, and that the system must be regarded as having been cracked. The only remaining protection is provided by the password that is also required. In its recommendations, RSA has therefore emphasised that users should be particularly wary of phishing attacks.