Category Archives: Workflow

There is a thrust for acquisition to take on some of the aspects of post. We are way to conservative for something fancy like that. But, we'll let you modern people talk about it.

Workflow

Must Read Hugo/Legato/Creative Cow

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“He was also the first multi-talented auteur who wrote the movie, painted the sets, acted, and was his own editor and VFX supervisor. He did everything. When you study the work, you see what a genius and forward thinker he was, all the way back to his first films in 1896. There was no such thing as movie trickery before him.

“The first meeting I had with with Hugo Director Martin Scorsese, we talked about the scene where Hugo fixes a mechanical toy mouse that he presents to Méliès, having made it work better than originally designed. Marty said, “What if we did this stop motion?” My response was, “Well, it’ll look like stop motion. We don’t need to do it that way unless you want it to specifically look that way.” Then he said, “That’s exactly what I want it to look like.”

And on it goes, describing 3D dailies, getting the gravity of flying coal cars right and how they handled color timing long distance.

Hugo and The Joy of Filmmaking – Creative COW

Workflow

Marvin Data System

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MARVIN layoutA lot of nice touches from a film maker who has had find the solutions to his own problems. This system backs up data in the field, puts the data out to LTO and whatever other format, the cleverly interfaces with the post projects EDL/XML.

Version 2.0 gets introduced at NAB in the Cintel booth. We aren’t told what the changes are from Version 1, but it all should be interesting. See: Meet MARVIN

Workflow

Ten Ways The iPad Could Enhance The Film Scoring Process

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[Editor’s Note: Mark Northam at FilmMusic Magazine has written the only interesting article that I’ve seen about the iPad. In reference to this 3rd idea, porting something like the Lemur or Dexter App to the iPad would be very cool.]

TrackPad – … laying at roughly the same angle as your computer keyboard does now and functioning as a huge trackpad …

DemoPad – Imagine sitting down with a director and playing a demo of your latest cues on your iPad, …

ScorePad – Imagine a world where recording musicians brought their iPads to the session and their parts were downloaded electronically to the iPads, or maybe even …

SpotPad – One of the most important events in the creation of a film score is the spotting meeting the composer has with the director …

PracticePad / TunePad – Imagine the ability … “monitor” the player’s practicing. …

SpeechPad – … Imagine “telling” your sequencer to “stretch the time in bars 48 through 52 so that bar 53 begins art 01:20:35:15, or to “change the g sharp in bar 80 to a d”…

NotePad – …During a film scoring project, a composer will receive a great deal of feedback, notes and other information, and recording those notes into an iPad …

[Editor note: One thing that I would add is an easy to use GPG encryption and/or watermarking tool. The nature of sending scores back and forth via mail and wireless is going to be a big temptation for letting something ‘cool’ onto the intertubz.]

Read the entire article at:

Ten Ways The iPad Could Enhance The Film Scoring Process
by Mark Northam

Workflow

Conference for Visual Media Production – London/12-13 Nov

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“CVMP offered a good mix of research people in graphics and vision as well as industry experts in production and post-production. Surprisingly for such a smaller conference, papers, speeches and posters were continuously of good quality. The time I spent in London was a good investment.”
Jurgen Stauder, Technical Advisor, Thomson Corporate Research

Who should attend?

• Chief Technical Officers
• Technical Directors
• Pipeline Architects
• Engineers
• Academic Researchers in Signal / Image / Video Processing, Graphics and Computer Vision

CVMP

What can I expect?

Submitted papers determine a substantial part of the line up. Have a look at them here, and our confirmed keynote speakers include:

Peter Hillman, R&D Software Engineer at Weta Digital
Prof. Marc Pollefeys, ETH Zurich
Dr. Toni Mateos, Barcelona Media Come and join the discussion.

Special Sessions this year are:
1. Advanced Technology in post production
2. Capturing 3D Worlds

How can I contribute?

CVMP is reliant on paper submissions. We need to know what you’ve been up to. See our Call for papers.

The Best papers from CVMP 2009 will be published in a special issue of JVRB. All proceedings will be published by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers).

When is CVMP?

CVMP takes place over two days. November 12th and 13th.
Don’t miss out, Register now

Contact us…

Workflow

Mac ZFS is dead – Storage Mojo

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Editor’s notes: The computer evolves and the operating system of your computer needs to evolve with it. One of the parts that hasn’t evolved is the file system. This would only matter if file sizes were getting larger and hard disk sizes were growing.

So two years ago when Apple announced that it was putting in engineering time on a system that Sun had worked on and made open source, there was great interest. That file system is ZFS…or was. This article explains some of the why for its departure.

For the entire article:

Mac ZFS is dead – by Robin Harris on Tuesday, 27 October, 2009

=-=-=-=

Indemnification?
Sun is being sued by NetApp claiming that ZFS infringes on NetApp patents. If NetApp won, Apple would find itself in a tough position unless Sun shouldered the financial damage. That’s indemnification.

IMHO Sun has a good case that NetApp’s patents will be invalidated by prior art. But with all their other problems and the Oracle purchase it was a headache they, Oracle and Apple didn’t need.

Where does Apple go from here?
Apple has hired some smart file system engineers and wants to hire more to work on “state-of-the-art file system technologies for Mac OS X.”

I’m not convinced: it sounds like standard HR boilerplate and a snare for the unwary. But hey! it could happen.

But writing new file systems isn’t easy. It takes 5-7 years for a new file system to achieve the maturity needed to support large-scale deployment. Even replacing QuickTime is non-trivial.

 

The article continues to tell of different possible futures…

Workflow

ASSIMILATE announces ROCKET FUEL

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See the entire release, with slide detailing the different bundles at:
fxguide quick takes » ASSIMILATE announces ROCKET FUEL Filed under: fxNewswire by Jeff Heusser @ 12:31 pm on October 15, 2009

ASSIMILATE PRESS RELEASE:

October 15, 2009, REDucation, Los Angles, CA – Today at the REDucation Community Day in Los Angeles, CA (Los Angles Center Studios), ASSIMILATE™ announced its new, ROCKET FUEL bundle that includes the needed tools for real-time ingest, conform, delivery and output of RED ONE™ 4K digital camera material. Created specifically for cost-sensitive indies, filmmakers, and post-production facilities, and priced aggressively at $10,999 USD, ASSIMILATE’s ROCKET FUEL includes an Nvidia Quadro FX3800 SDI board, RED’s RED Rocket card, and ASSIMILATE’s SCRATCH® CINE 4K post workflow.

The first integrated product solution to support RED ROCKET, and offered exclusively by ASSIMILATE, the ROCKET FUEL bundle, along with a PC-based workstation, gives anyone working with RED 4K material the following workflow functionality:
• Tape dailies to a variety of formats, from NTSC and PAL, up to dual-link 2048X1080
• Screening in virtually all formats
• Accelerated data output to Quicktime and file sequences
• Quality check (QC) for on-set and for post dailies
• R3D conform from editorial EDLs
• Pan/Scan and Output in real time, with animated curves
• Set-up for SCRATCH FINISH – a low-cost method of getting timelines set-up for migrating to FINISH for final mastering and delivery
• Set-up and transcode for DI – a low cost method of getting timelines set-up and rendered for migrating to other DI systems.

All this functionality, and more, is from full-resolution, uncompressed, fully debayered and demosaiced 4K. Fully tested, SCRATCH CINE v5.0 is a native 64-bit application with Win7 x 64 as the operating system.

“The big news here is that with ROCKET FUEL, we’ve created a highly affordable option for boosting the performance of 4K that didn’t exist until today. Aggressively priced – at half the cost of SCRATCH CINE alone – it’s the first product bundle for RED ROCKET that meets the needs of the PC user,” says Jeff Edson, CEO at ASSIMILATE. “When considering the overall cost of a 4K workflow, this is a huge win for all filmmakers and post houses who can now afford the essential tools to push the performance of their 4K tools to the outer limits and achieve high quality output comparable to 35mm.”

As RED’s first partner for a 4K post workflow, ASSIMILATE set the post-production standard with SCRATCH for the needed real-time 4K post workflows – simplified ingest of native REDCODE files, streamlined end-to-end workflow, conform, color grading, finishing and mastering. “We’ve earned our stripes as the go-to vendor for 4K post workflows,” says Lucas Wilson, ASSIMILATE Director of Business Development. “We’re ‘out in the field’ every day, working side by side or over-the-phone with users to ensure their 4K workflows are optimized and running smoothly. If they’re not yet working in 4K, the ROCKET FUEL bundle is a nice incentive to move to a powerful 4K workflow, create amazing imagery, and stay competitive in the marketplace.”

Price and Availability
Available in late October, ASSIMILATE’s ROCKET FUEL is priced at $10,999 USD. The ROCKET FUEL bundle includes SCRATCH CINE, an Nvidia Quadro FX3800 SDI board, and RED Digital Camera’s RED ROCKET card. To purchase ROCKET FUEL, contact ASSIMILATE or your local SCRATCH reseller. To learn more about ROCKET FUEL, SCRATCH CINE, and reseller contact details, see www.assimilateinc.com

Workflow

Hollywood places biggest 3-D bet yet on ‘Avatar’

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From an

SAN DIEGO — When James Cameron directed his first 3-D film, “Terminator 2: 3-D,” for Universal Studios theme parks more than a decade ago, the bulky camera equipment made some shots awkward or impossible.

The 450-pound contraption — which had two film cameras mounted on a metal frame — was so heavy that producers had to jury-rig construction equipment to lift it off the ground for shots from above. The cameras, slightly set apart, had to be mechanically pointed together at the subject, then locked into place like an unwieldy set of eyes to help create the 3-D effect.

At $60 million, the 12-minute film was the most expensive frame-for-frame production ever.

Now, five months from its release, Cameron’s “Avatar,” the first feature film he has directed since “Titanic” (1997), promises to take 3-D cinematography to an unrivaled level, using a more nimble 3-D camera system that he helped invent.

Cameron’s heavily hyped return also marks Hollywood’s biggest bet yet that 3-D can bolster box office returns. … budgeted $237 million for the production alone of “Avatar.”

The movie uses digital 3-D technology, which requires audience members to wear polarized glasses. …

“Avatar” also raises the bar on “performance capture” technology, …

“I’m speechless,” said Nahum Villalobos, a 19-year-old Navy recruit from Vista, Calif., …

The $237 million production is not as expensive as some 2-D fare such as “Spider-Man 3″ (2007)…

Then again, Cameron’s last film grossed $1.84 …

“If you know Jim Cameron, it’s all about pushing the envelope,” said Vince Pace, …

Cameron tweaked his cameras through two 3-D documentaries he made for IMAX theaters,…

His camera rig is now lighter — up to only 50 pounds — …

…

Cameron said he wanted to have the filmmaking techniques fade into the background as the story took over.

There is a lot more to this excellent AP/Christian Science Monitor article: Hollywood places biggest 3-D bet yet on ‘Avatar’ | csmonitor.com

Workflow

Editshare Joins Forces with Digital Vision

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The next generation EditShare XStream DI shared storage solutions have been engineered to deliver multiple concurrent streams of 2k and HD DPX as well Quicktime and MXF with codecs such as uncompressed 10 bit, Avid DNxHD and Apple ProRes . Coupled with almost limitless storage capability, EditShare XStream DI has been chosen as the shared storage for the Digital Vision Turbine processing grid at NAB, enabling real-time premium RED decode and realtime motion compensated noise reduction. EditShare XStream series provides a single point of management for the storage range, allowing an entire facility to be connected from ingest to delivery of the final cut.

The newly integrated solution will be demonstrated at NAB 2009 (April 20 to 23 in Las Vegas, NV) on the EditShare stand (SL6420). 

“With EditShare XStream, we are bringing the same great media sharing capabilities that Apple and Avid editors have enjoyed over the past years to Digital Vision artists working in Digital Intermediate environments,” comments Andy Liebman, CEO and founder, EditShare. “The flexibility of our technology accommodates both DI and other file based  workflows from the same XStream system with tremendous performance and unmatched scalability. Film Master artists will be able to grade in realtime off the XStream. The integration with Turbine ensures that throughput and processing can be scaled to any production requirement. ” 

“Digital Vision is always looking at new storage solutions that enable creatives to have more interactivity. What impressed us the most with this product is the way it could handle 20 simultaneous read and write requests from our Turbine grid processor without a single dropped frame on the main workstation,” comments company President, Simon Cuff. 

About Digital Vision Solutions

Digital Vision has been the ground breaker and driving force for high end shared storage workflows both in film and broadcast production. All Digital Vision software is delivered SAN ready and can be configured to work with multiple file systems simultaneously, including a mix of realtime and nearline volumes. Caching, proxy creation and render management can all be automated to ensure that operators are focused on creative tasks rather than data management. 

EditShare Complete Collaboration 

The Storage and XStream Series are part of the EditShare Complete Collaboration line of products which provide shared media and collaborative workflows – from ingest through production to archive. In addition to the Storage Series and XStream Series, the Complete Collaboration line includes EditShare FLOW and EditShare Ark.

Designed for the industry’s leading editing and compositing products from Adobe, Apple, Assimilate, Autodesk, Avid, Digidesign, Digital Vision, and Sony, EditShare storage servers, including the ultra-performance XStream series, allow all connected workstations to capture, access and share in real time a common pool of media files. Regardless of application or platform, source material, work in progress and finished packages are shared and instantly available to all users on the EditShare network. EditShare is also the only solution that provides full Project Sharing among both Apple and Avid editing workgroups. EditShare servers connect via Gigabit or 10 Gigabit ethernet.

FLOW Ingest captures up to four channels of media and associated metadata, storing each channel in up to three formats simultaneously and outputting a proxy for fast retrieval. No background transcoding is required and files are available immediately for editing. EditShare’s unique Universal Media File technology allows ingested media to be shared and used by editors working on both Avid and Apple editing applications.

FLOW Browse simplifies media cataloging, search and retrieval within EditShare shared storage environments. Users can quickly locate media among hundreds of thousands of clips on the EditShare media spaces. From FLOW Browse, users can update metadata, log clips, and drag and drop media to Avid and FCP bins.

FLOW Ingest and Browse are fully integrated with EditShare’s Storage Series as well as the ultra-performance XStream Series for high-volume, high-demand environments.

EditShare Ark provides a full range of very cost effective, disk-based solutions for backup, mirroring and archiving needs. While Ark systems are not generally usable for realtime editing, in a crisis situation where something has happened to a facility’s main EditShare storage, Ark Disk Based Storage can be “activated” and used to complete mission critical work while the primary storage is repaired.

 

Press Contact

Janice Dolan 

Zazil Media Group

Email [email protected]

Tel:  +1 (617) 817-6595.