Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Why digital film looks so milky

A job of a 'Digital Image Technician' is to set and decide workflow to avoid conflicts when dealing with mixed formats from different digital cameras and take secure backups and transcode for the editor to do offline edit before the Digital Intermediate process takes place so that EDL's, XML and the VFX sequences and sound match with the offline edits during the post production process till your content is distributed through Digital Cinema Package (DCP).


A 'Digital Image Technician' is generally from post production background who is a editor who understands the process of pre production to post production and various other aspects of film making which comes handy to guide different departments of a film unit to achieve best from their art and times breaking new grounds which creates a feeling of 'Awe' in the minds of the audience.

The ARRI Alexa camera is a digital tape less camera which records digitally on cards with images up to 3k size which is higher than 1920X1080 pixels HD resolution recorded on Sony F3 and Sony F35 on tapes but latest *Sony F65 is tape less (updated).

On my seventh day as a DIT on location I was asked "Why the SXS Apple Pro Res QuickTime 444 clips looks milky" for which I had no proper answer. I just knew that a LUT (Look Up Table) has to be added to the Apple Pro Res 4444 QT's to make it look like the live video feed from calibrated monitors on set in the post stage while trans-coding as decided with the team.

The older ARRI Alexa camera gives two outputs one in SXS cards in Apple Quick Time 444HQ format with roll numbers as a clip name and .ARI Codex in Gemini card which records .ARI file in folders or in the Codex recorder as a raw proprietary extension like the .dpx sequence is given in form of .ari you can switch on and off the Rec709 looks set by the cinematography department while trancoding a process to makes high res footage for editing to save disk space and easy data management .

The camera records on 24 fps (Also on 25 fps and other fps). The ARRI Alexa camera shows you the live feed REC 709 look that you see on the monitor with no milky image but you can see a milky image in the ARRI Alexa Apple Pro Res 4444 QT MOV on XT or 444 HQ on the SXS cards. Its because the image has additional gamma (brightness) to give more control of colors while doing the color correction so its only the meta data same goes for Red epic (5K) and Red Dragon (6K) (Updated). Its just representation of looks via meta data.

You have to add custom LUT's to make it look like raw live feed on the camera .ARI file sequences while trans-coding with Davici Resolve lite or any other software which accepts LUT's to make the C-log/S-log/red-color look like the way you recorded on ARRI Alexa/Red/F-65/Black Magic Pocket Camera (Updated).

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN INDIAN CINEMA


I spent some time researching the essential innovation that led to today's Indian Film industry into modern age. This was poster is made by Utsab Bandopadhyay. The vector graphics used under fair usage from tabakool/brusheezy.com

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Happy 124th birthday the silent tramp who always makes us laugh

Sir Charles Spencer  Chaplin singing the "Nonsense" song from the movie "Modern Times"


"The Great Dictator" speaks (The music has been added but it says a lot)

Google Doodles 160th Anniversary - India's First Passenger Train 16 April 1853

Google Doodle

160th Anniversary - India's First Passenger Train 16 April 1853 (Mumbai to Thane)


Monday, April 15, 2013

Pay with a tweet


http://www.paywithatweet.com/

Enjoy "Pay with a tweet" options on twitter or Facebook for promoting a product via tweet or a FB post to avail some cool applications,fonts,games or music downloads for a freebie by simply promoting it. This is a awesome business model to promote brands, arts, products on social media in exchange for a tweet which redirects you to a freebie download page or exclusive new look of your favorite stars.

Advantage to the promoters:
You can set a limit to share so that you can serve first come first basis limited serve to your target audiences with a expiry date.

Disadvantage to the promoters:
Once the product is downloaded or viewed for example a trailer watched in exchange for a share on twitter or Facebook the user can delete the post which reduces the target audiences for a limited period shared on the timeline or twitter feed.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Adobe premiere pro cs6 missing presets sequence fix on mac

Adobe Premiere Pro CS 6 trial version dialog box screen shot
Now a days film and tape based recording formats is being replaced by tape less camera in form of meta data in cameras like Red, Arri Alexa and Canon DSLR's. Even adapting to new formats takes times that's the place I come in resolve frame rate mi-match issues, mixing different formats, XML and EDL offline to online matching during the process of digital intermediate, DVD authoring with multiple language subtitling, DCP (Digital Cinema Package) creation for digital movie projectors. Trust me I am good at it most of the time but sometimes it becomes also a learning process on the job. Actually its more fun than a job. As a editor I enjoy editing films but really hate the rush to complete films but I have to be practical since the producer has paid huge money laying on the film. The film has to be released soon for the movie to earn profits. Its your speed,skills and know how on line to finish the project on time. As a student I trained on Apple Final Cut Pro 7 in film school and learned Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 during my school summer vacations.

So to cut it short.

Apple released Final cut Pro X (Version 10) in the market with new state of the art editing pipeline with interesting new features. Most of them liked it some compared "FCP X" to "I-movie" on steroids catered to armature market. Most of them shifted to Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro. But I personally don't think software matters much its the skills I have even edited big projects on Sony Vegas Pro, Windows Movie Maker and even on Nero Vision and got handsomely rewarded. In the end, the editing suite of your choice is just a tool of the profession. Its the picture that matters to the audience.

I too use Final Cut Pro 7 and use Adobe software's like After effects for movie titling and Photoshop. Recently I started using Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 for editing web programs at CND on Apple Macintosh computer and discovered small bugs which got resolved with the Adobe Premiere Pro CS 6.2 update.

After few days I accidentally uninstalled Premiere Pro CS6 from my mac book Pro but I reinstalled the software again to my shock I realized that all the sequence presets went missing in the preset window in Adobe Premiere Pro CS 6.2. So I looked on the net and found about the problem on the mac system so temporary solution was to "drag and drop" the premiere project file on premiere to continue editing since I had deadline. Luckily it worked and I was able to drop it to my clients on time.

Later on I went to the internet and I found out that its a licensing problem for which I have to deactivate my Premiere Pro license but it didn't work even after reinstalling and downloading the newer version of premiere from the internet. Meanwhile, I continued working with this problem and later on I left my job and went independent so I had to return the license to my client.

After a while, I gave up finding answers to why all the default presets sequence went missing on my mac version of Adobe Premiere Pro CS 6 and nothing seemed to work and I did a massive system clean up to solve the problem and tired with a trial version of Adobe Premiere Pro and it worked.

This is the solution which worked for me:

Note: Do it at your own risk. This is a step to clean Adobe program data to fix missing sequence presets to reappear so do not ask for illegal hacks,cracks or keys. You need to have adobe ID.

1. Uninstall Adobe Premiere Pro or the Master Collection.

2. Download 'Adobe Creative Suite Cleaner tool' from the Adobe website.

3. Go to User (or Name) - Documents and delete the folder called "Adobe"
(Its OK if the folder is not there move on to the next step)

4 . Go to 'Application support' and delete "Adobe" folder

5. Again Go to User (or Name) - Library - delete the folder called "Adobe" go inside the folder called Preference Pane inside it delete all com.adobe file also check for com.adobe file in the cache folder.
(Note be careful do not delete any other com. files or folders)

6. Re-install Adobe Premiere Pro. 
Set your serial numbers and preferred language and activate with Adobe.

ALSO TRY: (Updated)
I would recommend you to go to the mac desktop click on any where on the screen. You see finder on top of the apple menu icon on the white bar then press option (alt) -> go to library. Its a hidden folder in the go menu and delete any adobe products. But you do need to have a legal version to get the full adobe premiere cs6 features on your mac.

Hope it works for you :)

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Searching the Aliens our eyes on the sky

The progress in the field of scientific research and few accidental discoveries has shaped the human kind to leap forward in predicting the future. Well we are not yet perfect but we are still evolving as the atomic clock ticks in the universe. Its been human beings quest to search species alike humans on the planet "Earth" and beyond the corners of the planetary system. The closest to us finding aliens is single cellular organisms living in unfavorable conditions where we never thought there will be life existing. We don't know if the neighbors in outer space are hostile or friendly but the curiosity to know if we are alone in this universe or not motivates us to put different kinds of telescopes and receivers all around the world towards the sky.

This is a free software application which helps you in contributing the search of life in outer space to listen to the voice of space from the Aliens.

BOINC is a program that lets you donate your idle computer time to science projects like SETI@home, Climateprediction.net, Rosetta@home, World Community Grid, and many others.

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

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