Perhaps this should go on the other blog too, but what the heck.
I’m making available the source for the QTInfo project which does a lot of the heavy lifting on the backend of Media Mill. This was my solution to break down the wall between PHP and Quicktime. It’s a RealBasic project (rb2006r3) and makes use of the MonkeyBread plugins.
I wanted to note a few things which make the project interesting. Follow the jump for extreme geek content.
The Smoking Gun has an interesting writeup on the movie budgets of M. Night Shyamalan’s productions, up to the current “Lady in the Water.” Perhaps of most note to this audience is the complete rundown of the budget for The Village, which really helps show the details of what goes in to a major production.
AVCHD was announced a while back, but today saw the release of the first (to the best of my knowledge) shipping camera using that format.
So, just when you were thinking that HDV, HDCam, DVCProHD, XDCamHD and the rest weren’t confusing enough, here’s a new format.
The cameras that have been announced are the Sony HDR-UX1 and HDR-SR1 (thanks Engadget) . The UX1 records to DVD, whereas the SR1 records to a built in disc. Surprise Surprise, the DVDs that you record will be playable in BluRay players, along with a computer (with special software).
As you might guess from the name, AVCHD uses MPEG-4 (AVC/H.264) to record your HD content. So, if you thought HDV was a pain to edit, get ready for a new load of fun.
To be fair, these cameras are very squarely aimed at the soccer-mom set – folks who want HD content to watch on their 50″ plasmas when the family comes over for a visit. But frankly, I have nothing good to say about these cameras. Internal disks are the wrong way to go, in my opinion, as you’ve now got a fairly fragile, non-expandable bit that you’re tied to for recording. Similarly, recording to a DVD format, especially in a proprietary DVD format, is rather disappointing.
Of course, I don’t play soccer.
Minor story, but worth noting that JVC has announced the HD110U HDV camera. As best as I can tell, it’s not much more than a software update for the existing HD100U. I really hope that’s not the case, or else there are sure to be some annoyed HD100U owners out there.
I know there’s not much incentive for manufacturers to add features to hardware they’ve already sold, but it does bug me when something that could be delivered as a firmware update becomes a whole new product. I’m rather suspicious that this was largely the case with the DVX-100/A/B, and plenty of other cameras. I hope that mentality changes as the Camera/Computer wall continues to collapse.
Anyone who’s into compositing should check out Conduit, a new plugin for Motion from dvGarage (which is essentially the PixelCorps). It adds nodal compositing to Motion, so that you can do Shake-style node trees to build your composite, but take advantage of Motion’s realtime playback. The interface is well done, if not entirely HIG-complient.
In any case, if you’re at all interested in high-end compositing, this is a great way to jump in. While the cost is less of an issue now that Shake is only $499, the interface of Conduit is much less overwhelming, so you can focus on wrapping your brain around nodal composites instead of learning an antiquated interface.
One imagines that whatever product succeeds Shake will be very similar to this.
Today Avid announced the shipment of Xpress Pro 5.5 for the Mac, providing HDV/DVCProHD support, along with various other feature updates.
Hoorah?
This is really an addendum to the last post.
The ProApps update did add 1080p24 HDV support to Quicktime. This means that you can now capture with VirtualDVHS and use MpegStreamclip to convert those files to 24p HDV files. Then, edit your sequence preset to look like this:
Hit ok, double click the sequence in your bin, and bathe in the warm glow of native 24p HDV editing.
Next to test: footage off a Firestore, and whether the timing is actually right.
[Edit] Timing does seem to be right [/Edit]
[Edit2] 24F footage captured to a firestore and converted with MPEGStreamclip seems to work too [/Edit]
The ProApps update does not allow FCP to capture 24F off an XL-H1. Boo.
Tonight Apple shipped an update to ProApps (sort of the underlying glue for Final Cut Studio and Shake) which adds some sort of support for 24p HDV. The release docs talk about support for XDCamHD in 24p, but XDCamHD is just 24p on an optical disc. I’ll have to give capturing from an XL-H1 tomorrow, but at least it’s one step closer. Now if we could just get some news out of Focus…
Just in case anyone missed it, Shake has gone Universal, and the price has gone from $2999 to $499 – $249 if you’re academic.
In connection with that, they’ve also announced that Shake 4.1 will be the last major release of the product, with a future high-end compositor in the works to replace it. The buzz is that it’ll be something akin to “Motion Pro,” though one would hope that it would retain node-base editing.