We are a studio. We have gear. Gear breaks.

I’m all for sending pro gear back to the manufacturer to be serviced, but in this economy, I also like to save where I can. When one of the four ballast boards on my Kino Ve 4Bank Ballast took a permanent nap, I decided to fix it myself.

With a quick search on the Kino site, I was able to identify the part number I needed. It took a few days to get the board (Kino made me order it from Samy’s) but once it came in, it only took about 5 minutes to swap.

I took some pictures…

Here’s the main ballast unit…

That had a dead ballast board, as evidenced by the non-op tube…

Start by removing 10 screws from the case cover. 3 on each side and 4 on top.

Here’s what is looks like inside. You can see in this picture (and the next) that I have already removed the white connectors on either end and the smaller red connector at one side on the second board up from the bottom.

To remove the board, just undo the three hex nuts. Two are on one side of the board (I’m pointing to one of them) and one is one the opposite end. DO NOT remove the small phillips head screw - it’s part of the board.

That’s all. Now, back to making movies…

- Mike

A few months ago a friend came to DotLot asking for some help in producing a PSA for an organization he was involved with called Know Newspapers. His goal was to produce a short spot that he could put up on the website of his organization whose primary goal is to save newspapers and prevent the downfall of the printed word. 

According to Newspaper Death Watch, no fewer than 11 newspapers have failed in the past two years, and I have heard several stories of other papers in Chicago and San Francisco that are faltering, too. 

Then, today, the crisis hit our industry, too. In a lengthy email from Studio/Monthly’s Beth Marchant titled “Last Letter From The Editor”, it was announced that Studio/Monthly will no longer be publishing a paper copy of it’s monthly film and video industry trade mag. As a director and as someone who runs a stage rental facility, this is big news to me. Our little production niche has been hit hard over the past year by a faltering economy and reduced client budgets. Those people who I work with frequently all tell the same story - “We’re holding on, but it’s tough.”

I’m glad that Studio/Monthly will continue to publish its online version, and from the info in Beth’s email, it sounds like they might even be expanding their coverage. But as any grip who has ever spent six hours in a dimly-lit green room knows, it’s still nice to have a few magazines laying around. 

Here’s the full text of Beth’s email…

“Dear Readers,

Maybe it was prophetic that the coverline on Studio/monthly’s June issue included the words “to Web.” I wrote that coverline long before the decision was made to end the magazine’s four-and-a-half year run as a standalone print and digital publication. But the Web is where The Studio Group is strongest and where we’ll continue to grow. Studio/monthly will deliver the same award-winning content at www.studiomonthly.com. The magazine online will do what it’s done from the start: provide practical, well-edited product reviews, in-depth tutorials, first-person advice and analysis of emerging trends at Studiomonthly.com and through our portal, Studiodaily.com. You’ll see the site evolve, however, as we refresh it more often with the kind of dynamic content that a monthly magazine could simply not deliver.

The flow of the magazine-its visual impact, its organization and the way each article was designed and edited-was thoughtfully constructed with you, the reader, in mind. I’m proud of what we built. And I know from my conversations with many of you that Studio/monthly, when it was launched in 2005, gave you exactly what you needed: practical advice that helped you improve your kit, your skill set or your business. One special word of thanks to those who wrote to tell me over the years how much you valued the magazine in its initial print form for giving you the chance, however briefly, to step away from the computer without leaving your work entirely. You read it on set, on the train, on a plane, in a facility lobby, or even far away from the dark cave of your edit suite under a shady tree. I had hoped you’d be able to do that for years to come on a Kindle. We’ll certainly be thinking about ways to curate selections of our content for viewing devices like the Kindle.

Due to the end of the print/digital editions, the position of managing editor has also been eliminated. I’d like to thank Jessica Clegg for her talent and dedication to developing the magazine, Web site and spin-off e-newsletters into valuable components of The Studio Group’s broad and deep network of production and post-related content.

Stay in touch and come back often.

Regards,

Beth Marchant
Editor-in-Chief
Studio/monthly”

Recently I’ve been exploring and learning about Twitter. More specifically, how can Twitter benefit me. Like most people, I had signed up several months ago and I’ve done nothing with it.  What’s it purpose and why should I spend anymore of my valuable time when I have email, a smart cell phone and FaceBook?

So I started by learning a little more about it in plain English. Thanks to CommonCraft,  I got a simple and clear understanding of Twitter’s function and uses.

I love the action hands with the cutout pictures. It makes the message so clear as it’s not distracted with typical heavy graphics and digital sprinkles of eye candy. From this video I started to understand its basic uses. I began to follow people of interest from a variety of areas: video production, social media, friends & family (of course), public servants, and come celebrities, why not?

I’ve come to see the little messages leads to interesting and hard to find information. For instance, @mashable Reading: “10 Golden Rules of Social Media” - http://bit.ly/4by3vD. Or other entertaining pages: “Three Wolf Moon!”, fun Amazon reviews : http://bit.ly/s8gVL.

So now the question is, how can I use this tool as an advantage for DotLot and me? One way I’ve begun is to search the chatter on Twitter about what other production companies are talking about or sharing.  Ex: @nilsbreckoff: Cranking up for another fine day of video production, or @Xcelus: We are putting two new marketing scripts into video production. A JR Golf video and ecommerce video.

Lastly I’ve found little nuggets of information that is very useful that has been right under my nose. For instance check out the Speech Search from Adobe.

Moving forward I can see myself using Twitter to research companies we’re doing business with or are targeting. This little bit of information will give me more insight to the target audience, the users and the advocates, and see what messaging is getting a good response and what’s not working. Our as job media professionals is to help our clients connect with their audience is the best way possible.

I’ve leave you with this last bit I found on Twitter from @carloguillot. I think all media production people can relate to this video:

You can find me @NBHaus.

We recently received a project to capture past webinars and create FLVs so the company could play them on the web. Our first thought was to just bring the presentation into an NLE system for editing and encoding. However, in looking at the data delivered, we found these webinars had all sorts of programming that made it pretty impossible for NLE’s to capture straight out of the box

Ideas were shared on the best ways to gather the data into a format that was malleable for encoding.  One thought was to have one of the in-house programmers sort through the code and export the audio and images into a video codec we could use. However in looking through the code our programmer gave me the angry look that translated a “No Go”.

Our second thought was to do a screen capture of the material. Well, we’ve used a couple different screen recording software packages before. All of them have been ok in their own ways.  We decided to re-try an old go-to software everyone has used in one project or another, Camtasia Studio from TechSmith. This software has done some growing up in the past several years. Now you can screen record you presentation and export it to many more presets than I remember; blog, CD, DVD-ready, iPhone, iPod, Web and YouTube, or if you prefer formats: WMV, MOV, AVI, M4V, MP3, RM, GIF (animated file). So yeah … there is quite a lot of versatility with this program.

The recording of the screen is pretty straight forward with a simple interface. Hey, even an intern could do it, right Rob? Moving on … you set your window to record and hit the red button. Nothing’s going to blow up but for the most part that is all you need to do. Do check your audio levels however.

Once the recording is finished, you then get the option to edit the piece. Again with a simple, iMovie-ish user interface, cutting the piece is just a shortcut “S” away. Trim, save your project and “Produce video as” – ah … this part is up to you. Your end delivery is moments away.

The process is very time consuming and there needs to be a lot attention to the details. One miss steps could cause you time and the potential to recapture the entire project. Watch your settings and capture area very closely. Remember we’re all professionals.

Overall, I’ve come to appreciate Camtasia for what it is – a really inexpensive screen recording software that can get the job done. Now, there are many other functions I didn’t go into that this particular software can do (i.e. 3D tilt effect) so go and revisit this old friend and maybe it can help you out again someday.

What do you use to screen record?

I’m not an engineer.

I don’t have a degree in electrical engineering, or any other form of engineering. I’ve never sat on an ISO, IEEE or any other standards panel. I’m not a computer genius. Everything I know about cameras, color space and NLEs I either picked up in film school or learned on the job along the way. I do, however, work with cameras and post-production workflows on a daily basis. I do a lot of shooting, editing and keying and I’m always trying to grasp the concept of different color spaces across the SD and HD spectrum. 

If you’re reading this post, then that probably closely describes you, too.

What is 4:2:0 HDV color space? How does 4:2:0 color space work? 

As I have done research over the years, the one thing I have learned is that color space is a deep, complicated topic. To make things worse, there doesn’t seem to be a single, easy-to-understand post on the web that breaks the concepts of color space down into layman’s terms. This post won’t be all-encompassing, but I do aim to share with you the concept of 4:2:0 color space in clear english to the best of my ability.

I highly encourage conversation on this topic. If you read this post and think I’ve gotten something wrong, please post a comment. If you can help to further clarify a point, please join in. As I continue my research and learn more about color space I’ll write about it in future posts.

Okay… here are the oversimplified basics of color space…

4:X:X refers to the number of pixels being sampled for each component of a three color image. “4″ is the maximum number and “1″ is technically the minimum number. 

For digital images, the whole ratio is generally referred to as YCbCr, where “Y” represents luminance, “Cb” represents the blue channel (as a difference between that and the luminance channel) and “Cr” represents the red channel (also as a difference from luminance). In the analog world, “YPbPr” means basically the same thing.

The first number refers to the number of luminance pixels that are sampled for each block of 4 pixels. In almost all cases, the first number will be 4. The second number refers to the number of blue pixels that are sampled for each block of 4 pixels. The third number refers to the number of red pixels that are sampled for each block of 4 pixels. Thus, 4:4:4 color space is the best possible option, since every single pixel is sampled for luminance, blue and red information.

Enter digital video and HDV. In order to save bandwidth and bitrate during DV compression, most manufacturers made their standard def DV cameras work on a 4:1:1 system. This meant that for each block of 4 pixels, all four were sampled for luminance, 1 was sampled for blue and 1was sampled for red. This means that DV doesn’t take up much bandwidth, but it does lack a significant amount of color information, which means it’s not ideal for pulling keys.

With the 4:2:0 color space of HDV the color information issue gets just a bit better. HDV works by sampling every luminance pixel as well as 2 of every 4 blue and red pixels. But what’s that crazy “0″ all about? Apparently, when the third number is 0, it means that every other line is skipped. This means that we now have 2 blue and 2 red pixels of information out of every 4, but only on alternate scan lines. This effectively gives us 4:2:2 color space, but at half the true resolution. This is better than 4:1:1, but still not great, since it leads to issues when trying to key out fine edges, moving objects, fingers, etc.

I hope that this helps to clear up some of your basic questions about 4:2:0 color space. I’ll be updating this post and adding new ones as I learn more.

– Mike

DotLot is excited to put on an a mini-series event of fun, targeted discussions about online video and its’ uses: entertainment, new media statement, advertising, communication, etc. Some tentative topics include, top online videos and why, top V-loggers and what makes them effective, what’s viral?, and developing online genres.  Plans are being formed, material is being collected and lunches will be planned.

So stay tuned as these events are set to begin sometime in mid-April and re-occur once per month (unless demand changes). We’ll keep you posted as more information is developed. This ought to be entertaining!

Recently our DotLotDigtialStudios YouTube account was invited by ScenicVideos to become friends. In looking at their content I was delighted and surprised at what I found. They have developed a channel for meditation and relaxation with nature scenes in HD and a soothing soundtrack. What struck me at first was the simplicity of the content was actually relaxing to me. Normally, in my YouTube journeys I’m bombarded with images I sometimes can’t share with my daughter. In this case I was stopped by the majestic tranquility of the moment. And that is what this channel was created for, “to meditate and relax for stress management and a quick break during the day”.

Another interesting aspect is the invitation to download the video and music for FREE. In today’s world of hard economics and squeezing out every penny, I was happy to see the free internet is still active. All you need to do is credit him and you’ve got your content. So how do people feel about this open content and sharing of footage?

Last thought about this channel and content is that if you have your computer hooked up to your flat screen monitor you’ve got instant artwork and something to relax and ponder.

So let’s take the time. Sit back and watch Mother Nature’s art in motion. Thanks for the invite ScenicVideos!

Following the methods described by Sean Gleeson on the Swell 3D blog as well as some of the pointers given by comments left on the “Turn 2D Painting into 3D Anaglyph With Depth Map” post, I came up with this image of the Foo Fighters from a concert they did in Melbourne last year.

Grab those anaglyph glasses and have a look. I’m pleased with the results. In my next test I’ll try a smooth gradient on the crowd instead of the stair-step technique I used here.

What do you think?

Anaglyph Image

Displacement Map

– Mike

Photo Credit: http://www.foofighters.com/blackbox/pictures/2008_04_25_melbourne/images/17.jpg

We took a trip out to Vegas to visit DTS at CES where we were able to see our three commercial spots featured prominently.

Each spot was given its very own display area!

UltraPC

Broadcast

At the Broadcast display they also turned some of our animation into print materials…

Car Audio was also on display…

DTS also put together a 15-minute presentation that showed off several of their technologies, including the brand new 11.1 audio format. For their demo of UltraPC they chose to use our UltraPC spot. Each viewer had their own pair of headphones that they were able to use for the UltraPC demo. It’s an amazing technology - two speaker or headphones truly sounds like full surround sound. Here’s a group of audio professionals and journalists watching the demo.

CES is always an amazing show that features great new technologies. DotLot was proud to be part of it.

Here’s one more cool shot. The video for this Kodak display was shot entirely on the DotLot green screen stage in Irvine.

For even more on CES, see this Buddy Blog post on the conference.

– Mike