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Historic fonts

Just came across some beautiful historic fonts (wild west, civil war, etc).

Burning Blu-ray on a Mac

I purchased an LG BE06 External Blu-ray burner today. It took me a long time to find a non-Lacie external burner available in Canada (even with Google), and I finally found it at Best Buy. I think Best Buy is the only place that carries the BE06, as the LG Canada website doesn't even list it.

This unit was praised for functionality, but criticized for price when it came out several months ago. They have since slashed the price, and I picked it up for $340 open box, which is a great deal. The Lacie external is still over $700, and is not as fast.

Right out of the box, I was able to successfully burn a BD-RE (Blu-ray rewritable disc) with Toast 9, which I purchased separately. No drivers necessary.

Next step is to test burn a blu-ray video disc in Toast. My clients will likely only need autoplay discs, so I won't need the menu functionality of the Adobe Production Suite.

How to fix unorganized Firestore MXF footage for P2 Log and Transfer

If your shooter has been shooting on HVX-200 with a firestore drive and has output to MXF instead of quicktime, they have to run an organize footage command before giving you the footage. If they don't do this, the files won't be structured in the proper format for FCP's log and transfer (or any other application, for that matter).

What to do?

First, if the shooter is still around, have them run that command on the firestore and give you the footage again.

If not, use this tutorial. It's very labour intensive, but will get you out of a bind.

ProRes now viewable in Quicktime for Windows

For those who work in an environment with Windows-based encoders, this is very good news. We tried it out this morning, and were able to encode ProRes on a Root6, which circumvents old work-arounds.

In other news, the Root6 can finally compress XDCAM HD quicktime files now, which has been a long-standing issue for us.

FCP Log and Transfer for RED footage

A few days ago RED quietly released a beta plug-in for the Log and Transfer tool in FCP that makes the RED workflow very similar to the P2 workflow. I tried it out yesterday, and it worked well.

Once it's installed, you can drag in a RED clip directory and it will automatically bring up that clip and all other clips in the same hierarchy, along with what you'd expect from a P2 import (thumbnail, "proxy", ability to mark in/out, etc, and a bunch more information. The Editblog has a bit of a rundown on it.

Final Cut Server is shipping as of today

Apple is actually selling Final Cut Server now. I'll likely be setting it up shortly in a mixed Apple / PC environment, and will report my findings.

How to fix Griffin iMic noise

Every once in awhile, I pull out the old Griffin iMic to record some quick voiceover. Because I do it so infrequently, I always forget how to set it up to get rid of the terrible buzz. Here's how to get a pretty quiet signal out of the iMic:

Open Quicktime Pro, and open a new audio recording. Put headphones on and turn the little volume slider on the left up so that you can hear the microphone passthrough. If you can't hear it, open system preferences, sound, select the proper input (iMic in this case), and make sure the input volume is turned up. Once you have it working, close and restart quicktime to make sure all of your input settings are being used properly.

Now, at this point I always have a fairly clear signal, but with an annoying underlying buzz.

To get rid of the buzz, I open a new Quicktime recording, and turn up the volume slider on it so I can hear the passthrough again. Then, I open the Audio Midi Setup in the Utilities folder, and mess around with the channels drop-down menu. In my case, it was set at 44.1kHz, with 2ch-16bit. Changing to 2ch-8bit produces a different, yet equally annoying noise tone. If I change to 1ch-16bit though, it's crystal clear (or at least as clear as the iMic is going to give me).

If you want to use 48kHz, you'll have to set it, then restart quicktime to test it out, as it will go silent otherwise.

I usually use a Seinheiser G2 wireless Lav Mic setup with the iMic. I don't have a sound booth, so by going wireless, I can leave the room and go into a nearby quiet room to do the recording. I use the lav because my only other choice is a shotgun, and the lav has a lot less ambient noise.

Toast Titanium 9 allows blu-ray video authoring

The release of Toast 9 is pretty great news. I'm on the verge of buying a blu-ray burner for archiving, and Toast's simple blu-ray authoring will hopefully allow for decent (and quick) HD quality corporate video screeners. I wouldn't use this for anything more involved than a screener though. I'll write about it when I have a chance to test it out.

How to capture XDCAM EX footage on a Mac Pro without a camera

The Sony XDCAM EX requires XDCAM transfer software 2.5 or greater to get the footage into FCP. I have that installed on the Mac Pro for general XDCAM HD work, but the Mac Pro doesn't have an ExpressCard Slot. What to do?

One of the editors here has a Macbook Pro, but instead of installing the software on his machine, capturing, and then copying the footage over to where it needed to be (requiring multiple steps), I did the following:

1. Connect the Macbook Pro to the Mac Pro via firewire cable (both computers are turned on).
2. Insert the XDCAM EX card into the Macbook Pro. The volume will mount on the Macbook.
3. From the Mac Pro, connect to the Macbook over the network (note: because we have them connected by firewire, the transfer speeds will be quick). When prompted to choose a volume, choose the ExpressCard.
4. In XDCAM Transfer Software, under "File", choose "Add Source..."
5. Select the remote XDCAM EX volume. The thumbnails will load and you're good to go.

Note: This is certainly not the fastest way to do things... the footage imported at 0.5x. It is, however, very hands off and a quick fix when the camera is out of the shop.

update: We have since purchased a Sony SxS external card reader, which solves all of our problems.

Blu-Ray Wins

Toshiba just announced that they're going to cease production of HD-DVD products. Looks like blu-ray has won. Now we just need a way to author video blu-ray discs on the mac. (via Daring Fireball)