We just completed work on a new little documentary titled “Raptors”.
Corio Raptor Care and Rehabilitation is a centre specialising in the care and rehabilitation of birds of prey, or raptors. The center is run by Nick and Anji Henderson, who provided us with access to the birds they look after, and to talk about the work they do.
This is a really – and I mean really insightful video of a talk given by a filmmaker going by the name of M dot Strange.
He talks at length about how he created a feature-length animation on his own terms. He learned the skills from scratch, funded it himself, and built up a community of inclusive audience members. He got accepted at Sundance, turned down movie deals (the contracts he delves into are shocking) and is now funding his next film entirely through self-distribution of his work.
This is a really inspiring talk, and really opened my eyes to the possibilities which are emerging for the independent filmmaker.
I love Nattress Film Effects. I bought this set of Final Cut plugins last year for use on a kookie little DV film project, and they created a really great film look for footage which as shot on a rally cheap Canon camera.
What’s so super-duper about them? Well, there are ways to create a filmic look using some simple de-interlacing and messing around with saturation and contrast filters, but it can be difficult getting the right look. I’m also not convinced that Final Cut does a very good job of de-interlacing. There are some kludges you can use to split the field order of interlaced footage, adding a bit of blur for good measure, but it’s a black art and mileage may vary depending on how keen your eye is, and the type of footage you’re working with.
Film Effects just takes the pain out of it and gives you a wide range of presets which you can tweak to your hearts content. Admittedly, there is a $100 price tag (around £50 in real money), so I guess you need to weigh up whether you’re willing to pay up for it.
Now, the basic effects were designed for DV footage, primarily to give DV the look of 24p, along with some bleaching and contrast adjustments (there are a whole host of settings and parameters you can tweak, but essentially that’s the main focus of what they do). So I’ve never really considered their use for HDV footage. Until now that is.
I’m putting the finishing touches to a documentary right now which will really benefit from a filmic look. Ordinarily, I’d just put the master footage through a de-interlace filter when downconverting for DVD in Compressor – since the footage is being scaled down, the effect of the de-interlace (the removal of one set of the fields) isn’t really noticeable, so it’s a quick fix. But it’s a bit of a cheat, and I’m not sure it’s creating the best results.
Turns out the Nattress filters will work just as well for HDV as they will for DV. The only consideration is that you have to keep an eye on the field order (HDV uses the upper field first, whereas DV uses the lower field first), but essentially it’s just doing the same thing: resampling two fields into one, albeit on a larger scale.
Rendering takes a little longer than usual, but the resulting footage is looking very lush.
I’ve never used Qmaster before. I’d never gotten around to poking around to see how it worked, and what benefits it might bring. And after the last installation I had on a G5 refused to function under Leopard, I just left well alone.
Qmaster is, quite simply, a way to create a cluster for video rendering. Rendering is just a whole load of number crunching; it’s processor intensive – just squillions of calculations going on to process and render frames of a moving image. If you’ve got multiple processors in your machine, they get used, but on the basis of whenever they’re needed By allocating a cluster, Compressor can allocate these calculations more efficiently, treating each processor as a separate entity.
I like to think of it a bit like counting votes in an election. If you were to put all of the ballot papers in one big pile, and allow the counters to grab whatever they wanted, then go off an count, it wouldn’t be a very efficient use of resources – time would be wasted to-ing and fro-ing, some people might be counting more ballots than others, and there’d probably just be pandemonium and confusion. By allocating everyone ballots to count, and topping them up when they’re done, you save a lot of time and resources are allocated efficiently.
You can also make clusters available to other machines, so that you can allocate rendering tasks across a network, spreading the load and using processors on other machines which might just be sitting idle (I’ve yet to investigate whether you can include multiple machines in a cluster – haven’t delved that far yet).
Creating a cluster turns out to be relatively simple, and is done through System Preferences. Here’s a step-by-step example on how to set your machine up with a cluster for your own use (note I’m using OS X Leopard with Final Cut Studio 2 installed):
1. Open System Preferences.
2. Under “Other”, click on “Apple Qmaster”.
3. The first thing you’ll see is a series of options for “Share this computer as…”. You want to make sure you select “QuickCluster with services”.
4. Next, you’ll see a list of “Services”. Make sure that “Compressor” is checked, and highlighted.
5. Below the list of Services, hit the button labelled “Options for selected service…”. A little sheet will pop out at the top of the window with an option to select “Number of instances”. This is the number of processors you want to assign to the cluster (the language Apple use here isn’t very clear). Ideally, you want to select as many as you can – I have two processors in my machine, so I select “2″. The more processors you make available, the more efficient your cluster will be.
6. Click “OK”.
7. Under “Quickcluster”, you can assign it a name, so that you can easily identify the cluster when it comes to the point of using it.
8. That’s pretty much it. If you click on “Start Sharing” your cluster will spring into life! (sounds more dramatic than it is – it won’t “spring” at all, it’ll just meander in the background, out of sight).
So, now that you have a cluster set up, how do you go about using it? Really simple – assuming you’re familiar with Compressor 3, you just need to do the following:
When you come to submit a job to the queue, by clicking “Submit…”, you get presented with a popup, containing three options: “Name”, “Cluster” and “Priority”. Just select the cluster you’ve just set up and hit “Submit”.
A few things to note:
Using a cluster works best when you have render which will benefit from multi-processing – by that I mean jobs which it will be possible to split to assign to each process of the cluster. For example, rendering a multi-pass DVD file will split the job into several parts and then merge again at the end. Quicktime movies which are reference movies also work well, as there are lots of referenced files which can be assigned to different processes. If all that sounds a little confusing, it’s probably worth doing a little research and reading up on what happens behind the scenes when you render video files.
Also, I’ve yet to toy around with the “unmanaged services on other computers” options – so that might have to be the subject of a future post.
Things got so busy recently that it became time to expand the number of workstations in the office. The G5 Mac I’ve been running for the past few years has been chugging along reliably, but it was causing a bottleneck in our workflow as the only machine which could handle any serious rendering jobs. Plus, since we’ve moved to a HDV workflow, things were really starting to feel the strain.
So, it was time to say goodbye to the G5 (it’s now relocated to the other side of the office and has had a fresh reinstall ready to jump into action as a second editing workstation), and hello to a shiny new MacBook Pro. We decided to plump for a refurbished notebook, which saves a little money (every little helps). This is the second time I’ve splashed out on a refurbished machine and it’s something I’d recommend to anyone looking to purchase a new Mac. Apple’s refurbished products are usually either returns (people get them, open the box, decide they don’t want/need them) or dead-on-arrival (something was broken coming out of the factory. Might sound scary buying something which might have once been broken, but they get a full refurb, are thoroughly tested, and you get a full warranty, just like if you were buying a freshly-boxed machine.
With a 1TB firewire drive hooked up, this new Intel machine rips along at an impressive speed. And since we’ve been angling towards recording to Compact Flash cards, it was also time to upgrade to Final Cut Pro 6, so that we can benefit from importing clips using a card reader, rather than capturing from tape. The benefits of this are going to be brilliant – transferring files from the card reader will take about a quarter of the time it takes to capture in real-time from tape, making for a much more pleasant editing life.
I’ve yet to use this workflow to any great extent (other than a few tests), but now that it’s tried-and-tested, we’re going to start using this approach as standard – just as soon as I source the cheapest and most reliable Compact Flash cards.
With the upgrade to Final Cut Studio 2, I’ve also had a chance to play around a little with Motion 3, which has some great whizz-bang 3D tools built into it. I’m really impressed with what I’ve managed to get from it so far, and can see some great possibilities for creative work further down the line – especially compositing stuff in 3D space.
A while back I wrote about the woes of trying to downconvert HDV footage to standard definition for use in DVD Studio – it was one hell of a hack, and felt really clunky. When you consider how far NLE software has come in recent years, it seems odd that it becomes a really painful process when you want to publish your work to various formats. Also, I’d completely abandoned trying to use Compressor, since it didn’t seem to be compatible with PowerPC chipsets on OS X Leopard anymore (that was a painful lesson to learn after upgrading to version 10.5 of the OS). Instead, I’d resorted to using VisualHub – it has a really impressive feature-set, runs fast, but is not a very pretty application. That just added to the feeling of a clunky workflow, and made the whole process of rendering anything feel like a chore, rather than just a simple task.
It would appear that with the latest release of FCP and Compressor 3, all of this kludging is no longer necessary. Hooray! Creating M2V files for import into DVD Studio is now a very simple process – no need for converting to an intermediate codec and clicking on mystical settings in the depths of Final Cut’s option panes. It’s still not the fastest of processes, even with QMaster running, but at least I know I can choose the options, hit Submit and know that the file I’m after will pop out the other end when it’s done; no more worrying about whether I’ve forgotten to check a certain checkbox, or change a certain setting; no more sitting at 2am, waiting for a freshly rendered DVD, which is the product of a 4 hour rendering process, hoping to any god that might be listening that it is interlaced properly so that I don’t have to start the whole process again.
There’s a lot to be said for having a reliable, easy-to-use workflow. Not only does it help to prevent things from going wrong, it allows me to apply more effort and brainpower to the creative task at hand. A good creative tool should help you to achieve a creative vision in the most unobtrusive way possible, so that it is almost synergistic with your thoughts and ideas. It shouldn’t be a hindrance, nor should it be an overriding influence. Final Cut Studio 2 is getting there – especially the way you interact with Motion – and the improvements in rendering workflows are making me very happy (well, as happy as one can be about rendering workflows).
I’ve just finished putting the finishing touches to 8 minutes and 43 seconds of documentary goodness, which has the working (and possibly final) title of “Raptors”.
It was shot at the start of the Summer, and was intended as an entry to a Channel 4 “3 Minute Wonder” competition. Plans for that were slightly scuppered though, due to the cheeky monkeys bringing the deadline forward at the last minute.
It’s worked out for the best though, as the finished film probably wouldn’t have had the charm it has if it had been jammed into a 3 minute slot. As it is, we?ve been able to allow it to breathe a little – so much of the footage looks gorgeous, and so it’s nice to allow the story to ebb along without worrying about ending up with too much on the cutting room floor (so to speak – cutting room floors don’t really house off-cuts in this digital age).
Colour correction has been a bit of a challenge, due to a slight problem with the camera during the shoot (a little too much exposure in places), but I’m grateful for having plenty of experience of doing battle with colour in Final Cut, which makes this kind of job a challenge, rather than a horrendous nightmare. Also had a few problems with it being a windy day, and some resultant rumbling on the soundtrack – but most of that has been remedied with some careful audio filtering.
The finished product will go online soon. We wanted to let the contributors have first dibs on viewing the footage before unleashing it on the world, since they’ve been so accommodating and willing to open themselves up in front of the camera.
This has been a refreshing change after the mountain of corporate work I’ve been working with lately. Although corporate edits pay the bills, they certainly lack al ittle something when it comes to satisfying my creative thirst.
On 19th May 2008, I presented a business masterclass which aimed to demystify the modern-day internet, and show how it can be easily put to use by any business – large or small.
This event was organised in association with Furness Enterprise, and the presentation is here for you to watch in it’s entirety.
On 9th May 2008, I spoke to students at Lancaster University as part of the “Insight to Creative & Media Careers” event.
The two-day event was organised by CEEC (Centre for Employability Enterprise and Careers) and included a wide range of speakers from different areas of the media industry.
As an experienced practitioner in New Media, I introduced a brief history of the industry, and then explored the 10 commandments for following a good work ethic, before concluding with some of my ideas about where the industry is heading in the future.
We filmed the presentation, and you can watch the whole thing, right here, right now.
I remember the first time I was able to experience the magic of Final Cut and real-time HDV editing. It was like a revelation; an epiphany in my editing life. I didn’t have to think about working in a different way from DV – it just worked the same: same disk usage, same real-time effects and transitions; same capture process.
Editing is a breeze, and since we set up our new company, we decided that in order to future-proof all of our work, and to attain the highest quality video footage, we’d put an HDV workflow in place. That means that we shoot in HDV, and we edit HDV. That way we can distribute HD resolution video online, and be prepared for when we’re (finally) able to produce HD resolution DVDs.
But it introduces a sticky element to our workflow, which ought to be easy to negotiate, but which can really clog up the whole process. Having all this HD resolution footage around is great, but we need to create DVDs to distribute our films, and to prepare stuff for broadcast. And Final Cut makes that really, really difficult.
In the past, I’ve used Compressor to render MPEG files ready for use in a DVD project. But there’s three snags with that:
And I’ve been forced to completely abandon the Final Cut > Compressor > DVD Studio workflow entirely since upgrading to Mac OS X Leopard, since Compressor no longer works (thanks Apple – as far as I know, this is something which Apple are aware of, but are only fixing in newer, Intel versions of Final Cut Studio).
That could have been a really nasty brick wall to have hit, and for a while I was a little lost with Compressor. I trialled a few other programs which were meant to do a similar job, but they just didn’t cut the mustard. I was ready to break stuff, until I realised that DVD Studio Pro has it’s own renderer built-in – and from what I can tell it’s much faster, and better than the one found in Compressor.
But, there’s a fly in the ointment. If you take a HDV file and throw it at Compressor, it’ll happily import it and allow you to work with it just like any other asset. But when it comes to render, there’s a serious problem with deinterlacing, where you get strange shimmers appearing in some shots, and some really ugly jitters in others. It just doesn’t work as a method for downconverting.
That’s when I stumbled across the Bonsai method. This technique is absolute genius, and gets around all the problems, with a pretty fast workflow. The theory goes:
Et voila! It sounds simple, and in essence it is. There’s just a few settings which might trip you up along the way, and I’ve had to experiment with using a few different settings to get good results.
I’ve converted the workflow so that I generate PAL footage, and here’s a brief step-by-step guide to what to do to get HDV footage onto a SD DVD.
First you need to create your sequence for the downconversion:
That’s all the tricky stuff out of the way, you can now go ahead and export a master copy:
Once your file’s rendered, just give it a check. It’ll play in Quicktime et al in 4:3, so will look all squashed – that’s just because it’s an anamorphic file – we’ll be stretching it out again in DVD Studio.
Final step is to import this footage into DVD Studio Pro:
And that, should be that! Work with your assets just like you would for any other DVD project, and when you come to build and format your discs, they ought to play back with crystal-clear clarity.
Some things to note:
So now, I’m happy because I have a full HD to SD workflow back in place, and it works much faster and with better results than the Compressor workflow I’ve used in the past. It may not be the best way to do this process, but it’s the best I’ve found so far. It’s interesting that this is a workflow which Apple shys away from discussing or documenting on their website, or in any of their documents.
I’d be interested to here any input from anyone who has suggestions on improving this process – or indeed from anyone with a quicker, easier alternative.