The digital revolution is trying to take a serious shape. I was watching this brand new TV cop show “The unusuals” and I was thinking that it looked “different”. There is almost no shallow depth of field in it. I kept thinking that they used a cheap(er) camera, and they did: the $10,000 Sony EX3, with its 1/2.0″ sensor. They also use the much more expensive F23 sometimes, but the EX3 seems to be the camera used mostly. The CC and lighting is minimal and that makes the show look cheap, but I guess this is part of the idea behind the show to make it look like a documentary. Still, it’s cool to see a digital camera used for a TV show, because on most of the rest of the primetime shows, they use film.

High frame rates and 3D video are in our near future. Many times I have cheered for 60p over 24p, but I think this won’t be accepted by many directors until 3D becomes a reality. 3D just looks better in high frame rate, and so this might be the catalyst for the move to higher frame rates. Even James Cameron said so.

In the last year, 3D filmmaking has seen a strong comeback as new digital cameras help out with the complicated workflow. Even the TIME magazine did a special article recently about the 3D comeback. However, the true revolution won’t be here for another 10 years, when TVs will display 3D objects without the need for glasses. The current monitors/TVs that do no-glasses 3D are still not very good, so there’s at least a 10 year maturation period in that technology.

I have thought out the traditional 3D process, and I might give it a shot if I get a second HV20 or HV30. All I need to shoot in 3D is a second HV camera, a clapper for synchronization, and this tripod accessory. Then, the workflow to edit in anaglyph 3D on Vegas is pretty straightforward. Sure, there’s some extra work involved, but it’s not unachievable. Maybe one day Vegas adds 3D editing capabilities by automatically packing two or more different clips into a single track (and I am not talking about the “takes” feature here).

I have already exported a small 2D clip I had around as pseudo-3D anaglyph (by misaligning the two stacked copies of the clip in the timeline by 2-3 frames), and even that worked great when using the red-cyan 3D glasses! Download the Vegas Pro .veg file here to see how I did it (use a clip of yours, and pay attention in the track’s plugins, compositing settings and misalignment of the two clips by a few frames). The pseudo-3D trick with the Vegas Movie Studio versions requires a somewhat different workflow, follow it here.

The whole 3D craze started for me a few weeks ago when I saw the above 3D music video by Golden. I even wrote a review for the band’s album too, should be published soon at the local Bay Area OWL Magazine that I occasionally contribute at. Video requires red-cyan 3D glasses, best watched full screen. Download the original HD file for best 3D results.

This is such an unprecedented record for any consumer camera ever, and surely for many prosumer cameras too! There are out there over 250 official music videos shot with the HV20/30 cameras (update: they are over 320 now!!). It really shows how easy it has become to attain high quality output from a $500 camera and how people jump on the opportunity to take advantage of this great deal!

Here’s a recent music video by the Outsider, shot with an HV20 and a JVC camera, I love the song. Can’t wait to get released on iTunes soon!

The only thing that’s mind boggling and shows how slow and stupid big corporations are, is Canon not taking advantage of the huge HV20/30 success and fanatical community in the last 2 years. They do nothing with this unique opportunity, apart from slightly refreshing the brand with the upcoming HV40 model (which was basically a cheap throw in to shut us up). But when I am saying that they should do something about it is not about creating new HV models (their time is passed, people don’t want tape cameras anymore). What I am saying is, heck, where are the official HV20 t-shirts I could buy? Where are the paid firmware upgrades that could make thousands of us flock to pay that 50 bucks per year in order to get full manual control, or native 24p.

The problem is that Canon believes that the way to cater to these needs is to release a new camera. Like these new super-noisy and non-stabilized HF-S10/S100 models. Erm, no thanks. Canon fails to realize that a good percentage of enthusiasts like us don’t move to another product so easily. We are here for the long run. Users who already own the legendary HV20/30 won’t rush to upgrade as easily as someone who upgrades from a Sony HD camera, or from a plain DV camera. Reason being, we already have a “good enough” camera.

Canon needs to wake up and smell the money they are losing for not appreciating this thing called ‘community’. They see their buyers in a flat way, but unfortunately for them, the HV20/30 enthusiasts are not your average customers. And there are thousands of us. Not to mention the whole marketing game that they don’t take advantage of, as many HV videos are very popular and potential new customers keep asking over and over what camera was used.

Yesterday an event took place that I wanted to participate in. I wanted it too much, it was all I could think of for weeks. But it was not going to happen to me for several reasons, and surely it didn’t. Knowing that, I was depressed for the week before (JBQ can attest to the validity of this as he was the recipient of my angry/sad face for a week).

This morning, I dreamt about the event. I was there, and I came face to face of what I wanted to see there. It felt so real. My dream did not exaggerate and it did not give me more than the absolutely minimum that was required. It felt like an objective, realistic dream. And just before I pressed the shutter button on my iPhone to capture the moment, I woke up.

Believe it or not, this dream that came to me exactly the right time after the event happened, has healed me. And it healed me because it offered me the absolutely minimum of what could have potentially happened if I was present at the event. It gave me nothing more. It kept me in check, but without taking away the moment.

Today, I feel liberated.

* 50% of the OSNews readers (ok, it might be close to 80%) hate my guts thinking that I dislike open source (based on some old Linux distro reviews I wrote). Of course, this is misguided. What I hate is half-assed jobs, not open source as an idea. I am a perfectionist, not an OSS hater. In fact, my older software releases were usually under the BSD license, my current videos are under the liberal Creative Commons “Attribution” license too, I write tutorials, and I spend the best part of the day answering questions on a multitude of video forums. What’s driving me to do all that is because I occasionally think of myself in the death bed. And when that depressing thought appears in my head, the only question I seem to ask is “did I do enough for the world? did I give enough back? did I matter?“. My health doesn’t allow me to go out and work for Unicef or anything like that, so I try to help from the compounds of my office, in the fields that I also enjoy.

* I need to put a break on my iTunes purchases. I spent $90 this week. I don’t know if I give enough “to the world”, but I definitely give enough to Apple.

* I am floored by the Capital Lights. The whole album is really good, with “Mile away” being the best song in it, and “Work it out” being second best. I bought the album immediately after previewing it, it has very catchy tunes!

* Some other great releases: Music for Animals‘ “If Looks Could Kill” and Dizzy Ballooon’s “Raise a glass”. I also can’t wait for Drist’s third album in a few weeks. All local Bay Area bands.

* I am taking care of JBQ’s iPod, updating it and such (he doesn’t seem to bother). Of course, every song is legal in our players. We are also careful about the free songs that labels/bands have given away overtime as promotional material. I have updated the metadata of these downloaded songs to incorporate the information where they were downloaded from. With these new international laws about having to potentially justify your music ownership in an airport, it’s becoming important that freely downloaded indie songs have some sort of information in them about where they were acquired from.

* Adam Lambert is the real deal this year on “American Idol”. Amazing talent, a true rock star/actor. If this guy doesn’t win, then it’s the best example of democracy not working.

* My love for “Lost” has nearly eclipsed. Too many errors in it, and also it’s like the scripts don’t have enough detail in them for the actors to show emotion. The right words about the Lost situation are “I am not feeling it”.

Two true stories I remembered today. Not sure if I ever blogged about it before.

1. The year was 1993. It was rainy and windy outside. I was chatting with my friend about her boyfriend. “Maybe I should call him”, she said, “see how he’s doing”. So she picks up the phone, and dials his number. In its usual manner when the weather is bad, the Greek telecom called “OTE” messes up. So when she dialed his number, she was able to tap on his phone line, at a time when he was (sweetly) conversing to another woman. Apparently, her boyfriend had a second girlfriend! And she learned about it in this twist of fate that makes you wonder if there’s God.

2. Back in 1998 I was working as a web developer in London’s Kingston, UK. My boss, Ed, would often shout at me to use this or the other font. I kept telling him that they all look the same. And he kept shouting back “damn, are you font-blind?” Apparently, I was. With enough training, I learned to make out their subtle differences.

Malbec is the best band you should get to know right away. Catchy electro-pop tunes wrapped with alternative rock style vocals. I bought their whole repertoire recently and I have fallen in love with their melodies. They are stuck in my head. Heck, I still haven’t found a single track on their albums that was below par. Amazing quality and attention to detail throughout.

Also, go to their web site and download their five new “Answering Machine” EPs for free. Or download their great videos (two of them shot with an HV20)! They look great on our HDTV via our PS3. Mark Pontius is not only a great drummer, but an amazing filmmaker too!

I made the following fan video for them. Songs and pictures are used in this video after permission from the band (thanks Mark!).

A year and a half ago I wrote a tutorial about proxy editing with Vegas. There is now an automated visual solution, written by a French developer (update: ask *him* for support btw, for some reason people think that I wrote that script), that is much easier to work with. However, it requires Vegas Pro 8+. The Movie Studio versions of Vegas won’t work with it, as they don’t have scripting support, so if you are using Movie Studio, you will still have to use my own tutorial as a solution.

So, download Proxy Stream from here, unzip it, and copy the files on your Vegas’ Script Menu folder (on my PC it’s here: C:\Program Files\Sony\Vegas Pro 8.0\Script Menu\ ). Then start Vegas Pro, load the script from the Tools->Scripting->ProxyStream and tell it what kind of filetype you want to create proxy files for, and which files in which folder on your hard drive.

Then, select the format to convert to. I suggest you go with MainConcept mpeg2, but click “custom” to customize it, don’t use any of the templates offered there. So, click “custom”, and in the new dialog select “good” quality (no need for “best” that slows down encoding at this point), 640×360 resolution with square pixels, the right frame rate (NTSC or PAL or 24p), progressive field order, and no more than 640,000 bps constant video bitrate. Use 64 kbps for audio encoding. Then click “ok” to that dialog, and then “Convert” on the Proxy Stream dialog. It will take a bit of time to create the mpeg2 files, be patient.

When the conversion is done, set the project properties to the mpeg2 proxy files’ properties. Select “best” quality and “interpolation” for deinterlacing on that project properties dialog. Do your editing, save often. When all is done, load again the Proxy Stream script, select the “switch” tab, select “source files”, and then “switch”. Now all the mpg clips in the timeline have been automatically switched to the source files! Then, change the project properties again to reflect the source files’ properties (just use the “match media” icon in that dialog to set the right project properties). Then, export your high quality video using these source files.

Patrick Sheffield has developed some very interesting FCP color plugins over the years, but his “Three strip technicolor” and “Luma Toy” plugins are of interest to me, having bumping to these looks often enough in hip-hop music videos. I tried to reproduce the looks with Sony Vegas, and it was tricky, although I got close. Here are some before and after pics. The process involved the Sony “Channel Blend” & “Color Corrector” plugins, the freeware “AavColorLab” plugin (caution, it’s buggy), and in one case, multiple video tracks in compositing mode. Download the project files here to see how it’s done (Vegas Pro 8 and Vegas Platinum 8 project files included).

Original picture

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This is a public service notice: do not use iMovie and Final Cut Express if you respect yourself, and your footage. For the following two (and a half) reasons:

1. All HDV/AVCHD footage is imported using the ANCIENT, LOSSY, UGLY, DESATURATED, TERRIBLE “Apple Intermediate Codec” codec (AIC). Apple, on purpose, won’t edit the native streams of these files, and won’t use their much better, and newer technologically, intermediate codec “ProRES” that their FCP editor does. In other words, you are losing heaps of quality from the GET GO. Before you even start editing. And if that’s not enough, these editors won’t allow you to just drag’n'drop .m2t/.m2ts files on their editors, they have to be “captured” directly from the camera, otherwise Apple is treating them like pirated files or something, and refuses to import them! Apple 1, User Trust 0.

2. iMovie uses by default the UGLY, GHOSTLY “blend fields” algorithm to de-interlace interlaced footage when exporting for the web. So on top of the original loss of quality, here’s some added ghosting for you! I am not sure if FCE has a filter for “interpolation” support like FCP has, but it also uses “blend fields” by default. Personally, I never, ever, ever, export with “blend fields” because I want crystal clear, ghost-free footage even at the expense of some resolution. Of course, “blend fields” *is* a legitimate option and it has its uses, but it must be an OPTION, and not forcefully shoved down our throats.

[2.5: Despite FCE's $200 price point, it still doesn't support native 24p editing (for those who need it) even if a number of consumer cameras now shoot native 24p (e.g. the HV40 and some Panasonic ones). And of course, iMovie doesn't support native 24p either.]

So, Apple, shame on you! People spend $1000 to get an HD camera, and you fuck their footage up for them just for segmentation purposes. Oh, yeah, you can talk all day about “it’s faster to edit AIC files”, or that “most people won’t even notice”, but I DO notice. Each time I see such a video on vimeo, the first thought I have in mind is this: “Huh, here’s another iMovie export for ya!“. I don’t even have to look at metadata or ask the author if he used iMovie or not. I KNOW he did. I can SEE it. The ‘iMovie/FCE effect’ is that visible!

My suggestion to consumers who respect themselves: either buy FCP or Premiere CS4 ($1200+) for your Mac, or even cheaper, buy a $500 DELL desktop PC with 3 GBs of RAM and Vegas Platinum 9 ($80). Keep your Mac alright, but get a PC specifically for video editing. Vegas Platinum is able to edit the native files, lets you select a de-interlacing algorithm, and it is the only consumer editor that supports native 24p editing. But this is not about Vegas. And no, this is not a Mac vs PC thing either. It’s a real suggestion, that makes both financial and technical sense. Go figure.

iMovie result. Notice the ghosting and de-saturation over the native file.

Vegas result. Interpolation and native editing creates a clearer, higher quality result.

Oh, and why the hell we can’t deinterlace with Quicktime when exporting with the .mp4 container and not in .mov? And don’t let me start about their 1.5 years old bug where de-interlacing in .mov sometimes won’t work, even if the “deinterlace” checkbox is checked! Or the QT gamma h.264 playback problem that is biting everyone, including professionals. Bug reports are already in place (I personally made sure of that), Apple hasn’t fixed any of that.