Yasir passed these URLs for your reading pleasure:
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/
http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/

He showed us a video of the founders of YouTube discussing copyright:

This is a six minute portion of an hour long interview found here: http://fora.tv/2007/05/23/Chad_Hurley_and_Steven_Chen

Ned showed us his new PMWEX3. Sony’s latest XDCAM model has a similar small form factor as the EX1, with a few noticeable upgrades.  The viewfinder on the EX3 uses the camera’s flip out LCD - with a eye cup/lens system to allow you to look at the LCD through a viewfinder. The camera is a little larger and most impressive - it has replaceable lenses.

Changing Lens On Sony EX-3 from Ned Soltz on Vimeo.

Ned showed us how “easy” it is to replace the lens. It was Ned’s first time - and it took a few minutes to walk us through it - but a very simple process. He replaced the standard lens with a longer Fujinon lens.

Don recorded the process so we could demo the editing and workflow process. Ned loaded the Sony SXS card in his MBP. Ned again showed us ShotPutExpress - an app used to copy the media from the Sony SXS card to multiple locations. He then opened Final Cut and opened “Log and Transfer”, renamed the clips and imported them into Final Cut. (He noted that it is good to change your sequence settings to use the Apple ProRes 422 Codec for rending. (this is not XDCAM specific -just a tip from Ned)

Ned also showed the DVRig Jr for easing your day if you plan on holding your EX1 all day.

We took a few user questions about Quicktime files not loading in FCP and an issue with burning an HD DVD - where the output video looses resolution and clarity.

As I’ve written about previously our department is undergoing a massive re-encode, about 1600 files. We were previously using Sorenson Squeeze 4.5.7. It’s main problem revolved around the time it took to transcode a Quicktime movie into a .mp4. To create one mp4 took about three hours. And for each Quicktime file we need to output two mp4’s and one mp3. Now 6+ hours to get through one file is just rediculous.

It became important to take advantage of our multi-core machines, which Squeeze 4.5.7 wasn’t doing. We decided to take the plunge and upgrade to Squeeze 5 because of it’s claims to utilizing multiple cores. Come to find out that it does and it doesn’t. It does utilize multi-core machines, but only in certain instances. For example, if you important files manually it can use all the cores you have. If, however, you use a watch folder to encode files you only get one core of fun. Now that seems pretty short sighted. Watch folders, in a multi editor studio is of the utmost importance. Since everything we do is in a networked envirnoment watch folders make the encoding process much simplier.

For those who may be unaware of what or how a watch folder works, let me explain. A watch folder is a designated folder that is “watched” by the encoding software. Whenever a file of an appropriate type, say a Quicktime .mov, is placed into the folder the encoding software will transcode the file into whatever settings are specified. So from one watch folder you may have five different output formats. In other words, one .mov goes in and out comes a mp3, mp4, wmv, flv, and mpeg-2. This makes repetative tasks easily managable. And it makes repetitative taks that come from multiple editors easily mangable through one piece of software.

The upside to Squeeze 5 is when it does take advantage of your multiple cores it allows you to rock ‘n roll. Instead of doing 5 files in a 24 hour period, my 8 core machine was cranking through 26 files in the same time. Now that’s a serious time saver! My recommendation to Sorenson is to tweak their programming so that multi-core encodes happen whether you import manually or setup watch folders. The software has an extremely intuitive interface with simple, easy-to-use plugins. For the price point and its feature set, not much can touch it. Overall, I give squeeze a 7 out of 10.

So now that I’m utilizing all my cores I’ll keep ya posted on how long it takes to transcode 1600 files! Maybe one day we’ll have a faster solution to these kinds of tasks….but until then….

www.DallasFCPUG.org : Wayne Walker gave us an introduction to our new website. We are going to start using a new discussion forum for communication. Please everyone - sign in and give us feedback. Thanks to Jønny ReVøl†! for design ideas!

Color : Ryan Holmes gave us a real world workflow example using Color to correct and grade poorly shot video. Ryan showed how to take media from Final Cut - to Color, grade it, render it, and send it back to Final Cut. Check our Ryan’s video podcast (Studio006) for color training - as well as other production applications.

Viewzi - Steve DeVoll introduced us to a new way to graphically view web search results. Steve was one of the founding members of our FCPUG and is now the CTO of a great new company. Viewzi takes the best of web search results (Google, MSN, Yahoo, Ask and others) and delivers those results in a radically new way. You’ve never seen your search results look so good. Who though web searches could be fun again?

ShotPut Express - Ned Soltz gave us a demo of this utility used to copy media from your Sony SxS card (from the Sony EX1 XDCam) to an external Firewire, a usb drive, or your internal drive. After you shoot - you need a quick way to empty the card so you can keep rolling.

Matrox - A rep from Matrox came to visit us and gave us a demo of the MXO and MXO2. He led a fun discussion of these two products. The MXO is an output device - that enables you to output from your computer - in the correct color space to a standard DVI LCD monitor (or SDI, Component, or composite). The MXO2 is an IO box. It is not codec dependent. You can use it to import and export over SDI, Component, Composite, SVideo, or HDMI. It can be powered by a 12 volt source, and lists for $1595.
It used your express34 slot - thus will only work with Intel based macs. Very lightweight and compact. It competes with the AJA IO HD.

Thanks guys - I’m sure discussion will kick up quickly in the forum. Please remember to leave us feedback about the site. What do you want to see her?

~Wayne

What Apple has just created will probably be the most popular media device ever. With a beautiful screen and fast 3G internet access, it will be in the pockets of millions. Those iPhone owners are exactly the people that we are trying to reach. I know fourteen year olds with nothing better to do than to spend their parents money on an iPhone. I also know a sixty five year old iPhone owner who loves the device.

So what does this mean to you? You need to know the device - and how to deliver your media in the correct format so that it can be viewed on the iPhone. Does this mean that you are changing your delivery for one particular device? Sure it does - but the target audience of millions of iPhone owners is worth the effort. The format is not obscure - it is a widely accepted codec that will also allow your content to be shown in any web browser and can be downloaded for an ipod. From Apple’s website:

iPod and iPhone can play the following video formats:
* H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 x 480, 30 frames per sec., Low-Complexity version of the Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats
* H.264 video, up to 768 kbps, 320 x 240, 30 frames per sec., Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats
* MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 x 480, 30 frames per sec., Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file format

How do you get your video in that format? Final Cut (using Compressor) or Quicktime already has built in settings for iPod video. Remember, the iPhone is still an iPod. Just choose one of those presets and try it out.

So once you have the video in the right format - to place it on your website you have to use the correct code. Just any code won’t do. Here it is:

<embed src="sample.mov" width="320" height="256"></embed>

Now there are a ton of extra pieces you can put in the code to make it do really cool stuff - but sometimes easy is better.

Remember - try it out before you make it live for the world to see. Use your own iPhone - it’s less than $200 and you can always blame the “I’ve gotta have it to test our video” excuse, or ask a friend to hit your website. We just started using a new process for encoding our videos - only to find out that the new encode won’t load on the iPhone. Test, test and retest before you look silly to your audience - or they can’t see it at all.

Check out this video with your iPhone. See.. it actually works!
Have fun with your new iPhone audience.

Last week I posted how we were in the midst of searching for a way to adequately encode almost 2000 files using the h.264 codec into some sort of wrapper. The problem was deciding what type of wrapper to use. Should we use .mp4, .mov, or .m4a?

The problem centered around how long it took Sorenson Squeeze (our transcoding software) to create a mp4 from our full quality mov. What I failed to consider was how much unnecessary work Squeeze was doing. For instance, we exported from Final Cut Pro a DV25 720×480 interlaced timeline. Squeeze had to resize the file down to our output resolution of 640×480, deinterlace the footage because we were delivering via web (and you don’t put interlaced material on a progressive display like a LCD or Plasma), and then create a new mp4 file. So Squeeze took anywhere from 4-6 hours just to do 1 file. That just isn’t going to work. I’ve seen mud move faster. Hence our dilemma.

We looked at Compressor as a solution, but it didn’t offer a mp4 file using the h.264 codec. If we want h.264 it either meant wrapping it as a m4v or as a mov. The solution: stick with Squeeze but take some work off the programs shoulders, force FCP to do much of the grunt work upfront. So when we batch export from FCP our sequences were manipulated from FCP into our target resolution (640×480) and deinterlaced. Encoding a file that Squeeze no longer has to resize and deinterlace took the transcoding time down to 1-2 hours. Much better. Still not light speed, but not as slow as molasses either.

What we learned: sometimes its easier to let FCP do the grunt work, like resizing or deinterlacing, and then let a secondary software, like Squeeze, do what it’s made to do, namely, transcode.

Could the wizards of Apple come up with another magical tool to make all of our lives better? It seems as if they have tried.

Final Cut Server is Apple’s response to the industry’s cries over asset management. The press release given by apple was:

…powerful software solution for media asset management and workflow automation. A scaleable server application, Final Cut Server automatically catalogs large collections of assets, allows searching across multiple disks and SAN volumes, and enables viewing, annotation and approval of content from anywhere using a PC or Mac. “With the introduction of Final Cut Server, collaboration just got a whole lot easier for millions of editors, producers and clients who work with Final Cut Studio,” said Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of Applications Product Marketing

Anyone who works with multiple Final Cut projects deals with the management of assets. From offline files, to missing assets, red areas in your timeline - FCS tries to alleviate this by doing the work for you. It allows you to catalog and search your assets via meta data and drag resources from project to project. The interface is separate from Final Cut Studio (not really integrated) - which is a plus and a minus.

In a production workflow where number individuals might work on the same project,FCS tries to bridge the gap between editor, producer and reviewer through it’s online interface for reviewing, commenting and management.

The demo was performed at a distance. It was installed on a laptop and running on a machine that we couldn’t actually touch. The interface was shown to us on a project - we couldn’t login and play with it ourselves(like NAB - back when Apple did NAB). I don’t think that we would have actually wanted to touch it - since the Apple rep kept saying “that button is supposed to do this - but it keeps crashing on me”.

From a philosophical standpoint, it looks like a great idea. But as I look at the backend, it looks like iTunes/iPhoto library for my video assets. This isn’t a bad thing, unless you need to find the files by using finder. iTunes and iPhoto work because they use meta data. Meta data (descriptive information) is used to describe content. If I place a picture of a chicken in iPhoto - it doesn’t know it’s a picture of a chicken unless somewhere I have typed the name “chicken”. The same applied to assets in Final Cut Server. Unless someone painstakingly adds meta data descriptions to all of your assets - you will not have a clue which video is of a car and which video is of - my chicken.

Final Cut Server resolves this by its “Automatic Asset Cataloging”. This process is supposed to scour your server (or servers in our case) and import all assets that it finds. If a piece of media is associated with a final cut project and sequence - it is supposed to be able to import the meta data from your project files. All of those descriptions that you have placed on subclips and captures - will be added into your assets when they are imported into FCS. This sounds great!

The client (the application that you actually use on your computer) is built in java. It is cross-platform - so it runs on both Mac and PC. It supports drag and drop with asset and all of the index information is stored on the final cut server.

Cataloging - all assets - even files that it doesn’t understand - are supposed to be cataloged. One problem that we ran into during our demo was trying to get FCS to ackowledge non Final Cut Studio files. It will import them, but you can’t access them through the java client. We often master our audio in Apple Logic. This is one (of many) file formats that FCS does not regnize. It knows it is file - but doesn’t connect it with logic. Hence the problem - you often have to return to finder and find the files that you are working with. And if you have to spend so much time in finder - how is this helpful? We discovered during the demo that it wouldn’t recognize files from Logic, Photoshop, Apperature, After Effects and Shake. It knows they are files - but doesn’t associate it with the applications that use them. Thus - you must find those files in finder to actually work with them.

Also, if you move a file or rename it in finder or create a version2 - does this automagically show up in FCS? Or does it cause another level of “offline files”?

FCS does help with automation. You can setup watch folders like in Sorenson or Episode for encoding. Drop a file into a folder and it can automatically encode and FTP it to your server. The interface is another GUI for Automator or Applescript - but it is ran from the server level.

Some of the key features:

• Search all of your assets and projects - asset cataloging
• Project check/check out: - and moving a project off of the server to a laptop - then checking it back in to the server. (copies assets or proxies)
• Project review and approve: let a producer or client watch your project over the web and comment
• Automation: Watch for the presence of a file (watch folder) or watching the change of the meta data on a project. Once a file is moved into a watch folder, or the meta data is changed (meta data) it can fire off automated responses. (encode, status emails, move/copy assets, etc…

I know I don’t sound overly positive about it - but I was impressed. I think the transition to FCS for larger production teams - will be a painful learning curve. Would you want to drop your 20 Terabytes of assets into an application - let it rename, move and reorganize all of your files? I guess I’m gonna need that LTO backup sooner than later.

Final Cut Server looks like an early product - it looks like a beta release application. I might want to install it on a test server - maybe run a small project or two through it before I commit our entire post department to this beast.

As we migrate to newer technology, a real website, and a real discussion forum - what should this site include?

Please post your opinions in the comments of this post.