Scanlines. December 2015

Transcription

1 Scanlines BRISBANE MOVIE MAKERS INCORPORATED December 2015 We meet at: The Community Meeting Hall, at the eastern end of Josling Street, Toowong. {At the northern side of Perrin Park} Starting time:7.30pm When: First and third Thursdays On the Web: You are very welcome just drop in! Christmas Special Edition Page 2 Report Page 3 Club night with Lights Page 4/5 How to edit.catherine s muse Page 6/7 The distribution dilemma Page 8 Talking to Santa I would like to thanks everyone who has contributed to our newsletter Scanlines over the year, they have been thought provoking and entertaining and help to bridge the gap between meetings to keep everyone thinking about BMM. See two months worth of this years program of activities below. Make a note on your own calendar at home and come along for a great selection of evenings December 3rd. Annual comp show & judging. Time lapse video December 12th. Xmas dinner and end of year show. Arana Hills League club December 17th. Xmas fun night and show. 1

2 Christmas is almost with us and the hot humid days are firmly here to stay for the next 3 months or so. My computer room is what used to be our garage until I installed a carport and put the car out where it belongs, out in the elements but at least with a roof to protect it from the occasional hail storm we in Queensland have to contend with on a few afternoons a season. Now I have to have an aircon on to use in the room to keep myself and the computer cool enough to use. When the storms come around we all know it s dangerous to hang onto anything connected to the mains so it s wise to get anything backed up and sign off with the first roll of thunder. That s one of the advantages of working on a Laptop, as long as the battery is well charged, you can just unplug the mains and carry on working for another hour or so. Not so on a desk top if you are in the middle of something important and down goes the power. That life saving device for a PC is called a UPS but I suspect very few of us use one. They are a battery device with power sensing circuits that constantly monitor the mains and switch over if it either drops below a certain voltage or cuts out all together. What a delight to think all those hours of editing aren't lost just because of a summer storm. The specs of some of the new laptops with the latest CPU and chipset make them more than a match for most editing programs, even 4K as long as you don t make it too complicated.so their ability to operate during a power out makes good sense at this time of year particularly. Read up on the specs of the latest Intel series processors and you quickly realise how advanced they have become. But of course at a price as always. The old saying, Never on a Laptop has gone for ever as long as it s a new model. The above comment about 4K editing is important if you are doing multi layers of 4K data with lots of filters and then even the best of new desk top processors can t keep up,then you should consider the multi CPU Xeon boards with all the latest solid state drives to keep the data flowing through the system. If you look on the web at all tutorials on the various NLEs doing 4K editing it takes a serious lot of grunt to run properly. What this all means is that as it s Xmas time and the season for giving and all the family will be asking what you want for your present you will have plenty of advise to give them. In fact it could end up like those long lists we used to write to Santa, just tick the boxes and sit back and wait for Xmas morning for a big box under the tree. Best wishes to everyone for a happy Christmas and prosperous and healthy new year for Stewart 2

3 Club night of 19th November. Tonight was a show and tell night for our newly acquired set of 3 Led panels for club members to use on their projects. They come complete in a carry bag with lights and stands and barn doors and filters. They should be good for all occasions except in a strong outdoors windy situation and then a few bags of sand would keep them upright. This would be true even with the most expensive light sets. These are very good value for our club. Neal and Catherine talked about setting them up and got people up to try their hand before setting them up as a lighting demo with a live model and a dummy head to look at shadows and effects of different positions for the lights. Well done presenters. There was quite a lot of setting up to make a difficult presentation look easy. 3

4 How do you edit? Recently, I became involved in a discussion about practices used during editing. The range of practices used among the four people involved was quite diverse. I guess what it came down to is that there is no right way to conduct your edit, just as there is no right way to do almost anything in movie-making. Still, I found it interesting to hear about the way others approached things and it made me think a little about the way I proceed. One thing that seemed to bug everyone, is the naming of video clips. The seeming random collection of digits and letters that cameras and associated gear allocate to clips I and others, find difficult and confusing especially as the clips start to accumulate into the hundreds. It s worse if more than one camera is involved, or an additional recorder. The problem I find, is that the numbers bear little or no relation to the content of the clips. That s why I have generally adopted the practice of re-naming all the clips. Yes, a tedious afternoon s work but it is so good when it s finished! To be able to look at a clip and see heroine escapes rather than KB000053SD12 is worth the time and effort. Some people use an input screen to trim the clip to length, whereas I prefer to put the clip on the timeline and adjust it there. Some programs, such as Vegas which I use, provide a trimmer screen for the purpose, but thankfully, it can be turned off. Vegas also provides a sub-program called edit assist which allows one to store, sort, record and retrieve all manner of media in every conceivable manner. Many, I find from the forums, swear by it. I never use it and would be more inclined to swear at it. The way clips are arranged on the timeline is largely determined by your particular NLE. Most, like Vegas, offer unlimited tracks and, at times, I have used over thirty a combination of video and audio tracks. This is because I am inclined to stack multiple takes one above the other, deciding which one to use by enabling/ disabling successive tracks. Once the decisions have been made, the also-rans are cleared away to make space for a dozen or so audio tracks for the sound track build. Have a look at the above little screen-grab. This is something that was suggested to me. It helps when the number of clips rises into the hundreds and are being constantly trimmed and moved around. One member of our conference advocates this trick. It s simple, really. Lay your clips out on the time line and insert another video track above it. In this track, which is disabled, make a series of labels, which clearly describe the content of the associated clip. But how do you shift the clips around do you have to shift both the clip and the Label? No, because one makes a 4 group of each clip and label which means that when a clip is moved, the label goes too. The pro-

5 ponent uses white text on a black background, but I feel I would prefer to use some other combination such as the black on yellow illustrated. Or, even, a number of combinations to designate clips of a particular type. The label-track could, of course, be made much narrower in practice. I felt this approach was novel and inventive but I was not entirely blown away. The person using this does not use Vegas, but I have been using a vaguely similar system. Vegas allows markers which are numbered and can be named. I have been using these, not completely, but extensively. Like this: The markers are tied to the clips and move with them. I guess the wash-up of all this is that no matter how you approach your edit and what NLE you choose, there are ways and means to suit your individual style and make you task a little easier and to enhance the features of your NLE. Neal Reville Catherine s musings on things technical A nifty adaptor for Manfrotto tripods Have you ever noticed the little hole in the side of most Manfrotto fluid head tripods? Brandan Fisher from 4DSLR invented this nifty little tripod stud for mounting monitors, lighting or audio directly to most Manfrotto tripods or monopods with a fluid head. Brandon Fisher got his funding through Kickstarter back in 2014 where he raised $5,282 USD with 157 backers. The mount is a 1 inch rod with a width of 15mm. It fits a ¼ female threading for mounting many camera accessories and has a slot for unscrewing with a coin or flat head screwdriver. Caleb Pike from DSLR Video Shooter has done a nice little review on this mount. Also check out the review by DSLRVideoshooter on our facebook page <link> 5

6 The Great Distribution Dilemma When I got involved in video in 2003 many were still using VHS. DVD players were rare DVD recorders still less common We were recording VCD and SVCD. In the ensuing 12 years VHS vanished never to be seen or heard from again. VCD and SVCD are long gone Remarkably DVD's still persist even though HD has been a reality for 4 years and we are on the cusp of embracing 4k video. Already Blu Ray is no longer de rigueur, but DVD persists even though it is becoming harder to buy them except at specialty stores. So: Where are we headed? Probably to that big "Cloud" in the sky, but meanwhile we ageing mere mortals will probably persist with stuff we can hold in our hands. Many people of mature age are still coming to grips with DVD players, most TV programs are still broadcast in SD. Chanel 9 has recently been hammering their move to HD as if it is something new that they just thought of. I wonder if they know that people are now buying Ultra HD (4K) TV's? I think that SD will be around for a while and DVD will be the preferred distribution medium for us; but; most of us are producing in HD and then distributing in SD on DVD's Recently we have been showing our movies at the club on USB sticks in HD and that's great, but what about wider distribution? We have recently completed a documentary for the Willis L Haenke Historical Foundation about the mine disasters in the Ipswich/ Rosewood area over the last 100 or so years. They ordered 150 DVD's and then rang and asked about USB sticks. I had a look on the net for suppliers and bought 50 Wafer USB drives preloaded with the movie for about 3 times the price of a DVD with printed cover. Now that may be a deal breaker in many cases but I'm sure the price will come down. I have to say that the wafer USB cards look pretty good printed in gloss to your requirements ( see photos) 6

7 Now for the problem: The movie won't run on the TV set. It's fine on the computer but the TV's won't look at it. I had it preloaded as MP4 which I know will run on most TV sets. I think the problem is that the USB's were formatted as ex FAT which is fine because it will run on Mac and Windows as well as Linux, but won't run on probably a majority of TV sets.. Anyway I reformatted one of the USB's as NTFS and reloaded the video and it runs fine on both my TV sets. I guess the moral here is that you need to be specific when providing info about your requirements. Also it's a lesson in the non standardization of technology. Of course FAT32 will run on most if not all platforms but is limited to files of less that 4 gig. I've been looking at a file splitting program that insists that you can split the file into several files less than 4 gig and they'll run as one from the USB. I haven't been able to get it to work so it's a work in progress. The nice thing is that this medium is not limited to HD. You'll be able to put 4k vids on a USB stick so long as it has the capacity. The ones I have bought are 16 gig and 32 gig are readily available. So until we all get magic carpets and fly in the clouds, USB sticks might just fill the bill.. Rod Kay 7

8 Are you up to producing some high quality video. Then check out this web site. They will buy your production on a 50/50 basis but only if it is good enough and they certainly demand the best. All you need is a drone or chopper and perhaps the latest Arri camera or two and off you go. Scan down on the site to Stunning aerial views of France A Merry Christmas to everyone. 8

9 Contacts within the club scene BMM bmm.org.au FAMM index.html FAMM magazine magazines.html Contact for all FAMM affiliated clubs President BMM Stewart Gordon Secretary BMM Bob Adamson 9