The Video Road

Watch a bigger version here: http://tv.adobe.com/#vi+f15625v1001

Posted by Karl Soule at 02:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Overall, I've had a FANTASTIC weekend in Prague. This is the first time visiting the city, and even though it's really cold, I've enjoyed everything - the food, the people, just the overall atmosphere. It's such a beautiful city.

Today, I've been sequestered in my hotel room prepping some custom content for this week's road tour through Bratislava (on Tuesday) Prague (on Wednesday) and Warsaw (on Thursday). I'll be covering a little of everything Production Premium related each day over a 5 hour period. If you are in the area, definitely stop in and say hi.

For those who follow me on Twitter (KarlSoule) you'll know that I've had some issues with my hotel room chair. Something I've never been able to understand is why hotel chairs are most often chosen for style over comfort. Case in point:

I've been sitting on this piece of lucite for the past 6 hours, off and on, and I officially declare it is the MOST UNCOMFORTABLE CHAIR EVER!! :)

With that rant done, I'm back to work. See you later in the week.

Posted by Karl Soule at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This past week, I had someone at Broadcast Video ask me why we have a product like OnLocation, since the capture utility in most NLE's can capture live video from a FireWire port. Oh, let me count the ways:

1. Monitoring Tools. OnLocation is much more than a direct-to-disk capture program - it also helps set up shots, detects potential problems in shots, and can make you a better shooter overall.

2. Calibrated Field Monitor. By running a short calibration routine in the Field Monitor, what you are looking at is accurate. Compare this to the average LCD display on a camera, which doesn't display accurate brightness, color, or contrast, and on many cameras, cuts off 10% of the picture.

3. RAM Buffering. Adobe OnLocation uses some great under-the-hood coding to ensure that it won't drop frames. As the video comes in, it's buffered into RAM first before going to the hard drive. Unlike the capture or log & transfer function in your NLE, OnLocation is an application that was designed as a field recorder first and foremost.

4. Live Waveform and Vectorscope monitors. These scopes and monitors are VITAL for seeing problems that may not be noticeable to the eye. If you don't know how to read these scopes, you NEED TO LEARN. They are very easy to read once you understand what you're looking at. It only takes about 10 minutes, and the benefits are huge. Go to the OnLocation Help to find out, or keep checking here for some upcoming examples.

5. Quick Back-and-Forth between record and playback. OnLocation is designed as a field recorder, so it's very easy to review shots, then keep shooting. Instantly review what you just shot. You'll stop shooting "one more for safety," and you'll leave sets with the confidence you get what you came for.

6. Continuity checking. OnLocation has a Split Screen feature that can help match recorded shots with a live camera, making it very easy to dial in the camera to match.

7. Adding Metadata. OnLocation makes it easier to add metadata into your recorded footage during acquisition. The sooner you get metadata into your assets, the more you'll benefit. Using the Shot List placeholders, you can have metadata in OnLocation before you even shoot, so you won't have to type it in later.

See what I mean? Once you start using OnLocation for shoots, you won't want to go back. It's included with Premiere Pro, Production Premium, and Master Collection for BOTH Mac and Windows, so go check it out!

Posted by Karl Soule at 09:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Thanks to everyone this week for all the love at Broadcast Video Expo! Our Adobe theatre was absolutely PACKED the entire show, with lots of interest in CS4. Even in the Panasonic booth, as soon as I began demoing our P2 workflow, the theatre was left with standing room only. Just a phenomenal show. I'm still waiting to see final attendance numbers, but this show had the floor traffic of shows of yore - people packed in the aisles.

I'll leave you with one pic of the Adobe Theatre, showing my friend Angie Taylor in mid-demo. Again, every seat full, people sitting on the floor, and standing 4-deep in the aisles:

Headed to Prague as I type this - really looking forward to my first visit in Eastern Europe!

Posted by Karl Soule at 09:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There's a new series on AdobeTv to be aware of called Everyday Timesavers, featuring Rufus Deuchler, Julianne Kost, Greg Rewis, Paul Burnett, Jason Levine, and myself. Over the next few weeks, you'll see short videos covering just a few of the ways that CS4 can save you time in everyday tasks. Jason is leading off the Production Premium videos, showing how the new Speech Search works, and can save TONS of time finding the clip you're looking for. Check it out!

Posted by Karl Soule at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm safely in my hotel room on the West side of London. I'll be at Earl's Court 2 this Tuesday - Thursday doing a variety of presentations. If you're in the area, please say hi.

Each Day:

10:15am - See an overview of CS4 Production Premium at the Dreamtek booth.

1:45pm - 2:30pm - See P2 Workflow with CS4 Production Premium in the Panasonic booth.

4:15pm - See an overview of CS4 Production Premium at the Dreamtek booth. (Not happening Thursday - show closes early.)

Wednesday:

11:30am - The CinemaDNG Initiative: Find out about Adobe's mission to bring RAW workflows into the video space.

For the Production Premium sessions, I do take requests, if there's something specific you'd like to see. :)

Posted by Karl Soule at 04:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's time. The perfect storm has finally come together to move to 64-bit Windows computing. For a long time, people have asked about 64-bit Windows XP, and I've never given it the thumbs-up. There were too many driver issues with it, and it was never widely adopted. Microsoft used Vista as the official crossover point from 32-bit to 64-bit, and it shows in the amount of drivers that are available for it.

You may not be aware of it, but there have been several changes made to After Effects and Premiere Pro CS4 that make switching to 64-bit Windows a really good idea. Both applications can definitely take advantage of more RAM, and the only way to use more than 4**GB is to switch to 64-bit. For example, Premiere Pro CS4 will automatically use the additional RAM in a 64-bit system by making copies of itself in memory for every 4GB your timeline needs. With RAM as cheap as it is, getting 16GB or even more is an easy way of boosting performance in Premiere Pro. But you have to be running 64-bit to do it.

Now, before you get started upgrading, make sure your system has 64-bit drivers available for it. The one disadvantage of 64-bit Windows is finding drivers. Specific Vista 64-bit drivers are necessary in order to run your hardware - the regular 32-bit drivers won't work. My home system uses an ASUS motherboard, and a quick check of the ASUS support site shows a full set of 64-bit drivers for my motherboard.

Also, make sure your copy of Vista has SP1 installed. Service Pack 1 is required for CS4, and you really don't want to be running Vista without it. Most of the posts out there complaining about Vista instability were written prior to SP1, so keep that in mind.

Once you have everything in place - 64-bit Vista running, drivers installed, CS4 installed, here are some tips to maximize performance:

* For Premiere Pro, you don't have to do much of anything. Just make sure you've upgraded to 4.01, since some of these changes were added in the free incremental update. Premiere Pro will now utilize more than 4GB of RAM in the system by making multiple instances of itself each time 4GB has been used.

* For After Effects, you'll want to go into the Preferences - Memory & Multiprocessing panel, and adjust the amount of memory per core. AE will also instance itself, but it does this per CPU core, and each core can utilize 4GB.

Here are a couple of good resources for understanding how AE uses RAM:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WS9F936D13-E76A-41e4-BF8F-577132AB4723a.html

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WSDD65B476-971A-48e9-A5FD-D90E9A2B996E.html

(Thanks, Todd, for the links!)

For those Mac users still reading, both of these features are in the Mac version, so you don't need to do anything special to use more than 4GB of RAM.

**4GB is the theoretical maximum under 32-bit Windows, but many applications won't be able to use all 4GB of RAM due to OS overhead. For example, After Effects can usually only access 2GB of RAM in 32-bit Windows. There's a hack to enable up to 3GB, but that's the maximum. (Hack info is in the links above, if anyone needs it.)

Posted by Karl Soule at 09:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm currently gearing up for my next big road trip - I'll be:

* In London for Broadcast Video Expo from Feb 17-19th.

* In Prague Feb 20-23, meeting with video customers.

* In Bratislava Feb 24th for a CS4 Production Premium day seminar - details to be posted later.

* Back in Prague for another Day Seminar on Feb 25th.

* In Warsaw on Feb 26th to wrap up the CS4 Production Premium tour.

This is my first overseas trip since December, so I'm really looking forward to it. However, I've been in an exercise routine during my home stay, and the one thing that blows up any regular exercising for me is a road trip. Inevitably, due to jetlag or long work hours, I don't get the exercise that I need. I try to use the hotel gym if available, or go out walking, but I don't always have the time. Any tips from other world travelers?

Posted by Karl Soule at 06:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've already talked about the benefits of adding Premiere Pro to your arsenal of video production. Here, I'm going to give you an example of why using Premiere Pro with your FCP project can save you a LOT of time.

Here's an example of a Final Cut project with some green screen footage. I want to composite that footage in After Effects.

I COULD do this the old way - **TAKES DEEP BREATH** export the clip, create a new AE Project, Create a new comp, take time Cmd-tabbing between programs to get the settings of the new comp to match the FCP project, import the footage into AE, begin compositing, render a test shot, import the test shot into FCP, compare it to my other clips, Cmd-tab back to AE, make changes, render another clip, import new clip into FCP....**WHEW!!**

Here's the easier way using Production Premium CS4, including Premiere Pro CS4.01:

Start by exporting your project from FCP using the File-Export-XMP command. This will save an XMP version of your project.

Open up Premiere Pro. Create a new Premiere Pro project. Premiere will ask to create a new timeline sequence - don't worry about the settings. We aren't going to use the empty timeline for anything. Just use the default settings and name.

In Premiere Pro, double-click on the empty space in the Project bin. This will open up an Import window. Find and double-click on the XML file you created in the previous step. This will import your FCP timeline sequence, and all necessary media.

To activate a Dynamic Link to After Effects, right-click (or Option-Click) on the green screen clip in the timeline, and choose Send to AE Composition. After Effects will automatically open, create a new composition matching the settings of the clip, and get you ready to start keying.

When you want to see your comp in action inside your timeline, simply switch back to Premiere Pro, and scrub the timeline. Thanks to Dynamic Link, you don't need to go to the render queue first and create a file - it's ready to scrub inside Premiere Pro. To make changes, go back to AE, make changes, and jump back to Premiere Pro. Your changes update instantly.

Posted by Karl Soule at 05:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At the end of January, I asked for your feedback on the AdobeTV show that Jason Levine and I co-host, Short & Suite. Thanks for your feedback so far - I'm working on some interesting ideas for episodes. I'd still love to hear more ideas, so feel free to comment.

Now, Rufus Deuchler, my friend and Design Evangelist on our team, has announced the name of his new AdobeTV show, and he too is looking for feedback on what to cover. If you have design topics you'd like to see covered, check out Rufus's blog, and give him some feedback.

Posted by Karl Soule at 05:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My buddy Mark Mapes, who works on the OnLocation team, made a comment about a recent blog of mine. He pointed out that last week's blog on the Split Screen feature failed to point out the keyboard shortcut available for the Opacity setting. Using the value in the Monitor Settings panel is sort of limiting, because you cannot adjust the area of the split while adjusting the opacity value.

The way to fix this is by assigning and using the keyboard shortcuts. Go to Edit-Keyboard Shortcuts, and scroll down in the list to the Field Monitor settings. There are a couple of unassigned keyboard shortcuts for the Split Screen Opacity.

Set these values to whatever works for you, and you can adjust the opacity of the Split area without having to open up the Monitor Settings panel each time. Thanks, Mark!

Posted by Karl Soule at 01:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Welcome to one of those blog posts where you get to hear a little bit of non-work related info about me. I hope to dazzle you with facts that very few are aware of in the halls of Adobe. Here we go:

1. I am an authentic hippie lovechild. Mom met my father working at a book store at 1800 Haight Street in 1969. I spent the first few years of my life at various communes in Northern California and Oregon before Mom settled down in the Sacramento region. In fact, my birth name (changed when I was 3) was Rashied Karl Delaney. Go figure.

2. My music tastes are all over the board, shifting from techno/ambient/trance to folk music in the blink of an eye. I grew up listening to a lot of 60's/70's classic rock, but when I hit my late teens, I had a huge penchant for punk that kicked in - Pistols, Dead Kennedys, Ramones, Black Flag. I really loved the musicianship of the early Police mixed with some punk energy - songs like "Next to You" and "Dead-End Job" are all-time favorites. Right now, I'm listening to a lot of Nickel Creek and Kings of Leon, with some Bowie thrown into the mix for good measure.

3. I would never consider myself a musician, although I try. I bought my first bass guitar when I was 17. This past year, I bought a mandolin, and, while still very much a beginner, I'm seeing progress made. I used to keep the mando handy during rendering of clips, but sadly, with CS4, I'm doing a whole lot less rendering. :)

4. I still love traveling, even after all these years on the road. Getting to travel internationally for Adobe fulfills one of my life-long goals of seeing the world. Seeing new places is always a thrill - I'll be in Eastern Europe and Moscow in the next few months - but I'm always looking forward to returning to places I've been before.

5. I'm attempting to learn Mandarin Chinese. Wo bu shuo hao Hanyu.

6. The biggest creative weakness I'd love to overcome is the ability to draw. My skills of an artist are woefully lacking, and it hampers my creativity sometimes.

7. I am super-sensitive to caffeine. I'm not sure why, but coffee, tea, even cola can have a profound effect on me, more than the average person. however, this sensitivity doesn't last long, and I very quickly can get into a multi-espresso-per-day habit. At least once a year, I take an extended break from the caffeine just to get back to baseline.

8. I have 2 webbed toes on my left foot. Yes, I can swim like Patrick Duffy.

Posted by Karl Soule at 05:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I meant to blog about this earlier, but it slipped my mind. A couple of months ago, Dennis Radeke represented Adobe at an NLE shootout in the Boston area, where all of the top players were in attendance - Avid, Apple, Grass Valley, and Sony.

Part of the challenge was to import a BUNCH of different types of media on a timeline, create some picture-in-picture effects, animate a PSD file, import some audio clips, and make the whole thing play without rendering. needless to say, with Premiere Pro's very flexible playback engine, it accomplished the task in about 5 1/2 minutes.

Here's what Dennis had to say about the experience.

Posted by Karl Soule at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Go check it out.

Posted by Karl Soule at 05:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last year, at the IBC trade show, I had someone come up to me and say, "You know, Premiere Pro CS4 looks absolutely fantastic! Unfortunately, I'm a Final Cut Pro editor, and can't use it." I inquired further, thinking it was a training issue, and he told me that since he defines himself as an FCP editor, he won't use other NLE tools. I was left speechless.

Another story took place at an FCP user group meeting in San Francisco. A gentleman approached me after my presentation to ask how to get Encore by itself. He was a current user of Photoshop and After Effects. When I suggested Production Premium would be the way to go, he said that would be impossible, since that meant buying Premiere Pro in the package, and he couldn't do that. What?!?

Look:

1. Using an NLE does not make you married to that NLE. There's no ring on your finger, no marriage license, no "until death do us part." (at least I hope not. I haven't read all the latest EULAs.) I can see sticking with the tools you love to use, but you are not cheating on your NLE if Premiere Pro is installed on your system.

2. Use the tool that'll get the job done right, fast, & cheap. If you limit yourself to one palette of tools, you're limiting your creativity. You'll have to sacrifice quality or speed without the best tools. Practicing monogamy to your NLE won't help you get the job done faster.

Now, for the big question: WHY? Why, if I'm happy with the way I edit on FCP, why would I want to even open Premiere Pro?

I'll give you one big reason - Integration. CS4 Production Premium is much much more than a collection of programs. One of the big advantages is the integration found between those programs, and the interoperability. Import a PSD file? Premiere does it right. See After Effects compositions mixed with footage right on the same timeline? Yep, Premiere can do it as well. Import an unrendered timeline sequence into Encore for Blu-Ray authoring? Guess what to use - that's right - Premiere Pro.

Adobe just recently (in the 4.01 update) added a new Final Cut importer into Premiere Pro. Using the XML Export option found in Final Cut, you can now edit in FCP, quickly export/import your project USING THE SAME MEDIA, and then take advantage of the integration that Premiere shares with After Effects, Encore for Blu-Ray authoring, and even better use of PSD files. Premiere Pro becomes more than a competing NLE - it's your gateway to faster workflows, more capabilities, and better creativity.

In case you do need to make some editing tweaks after exporting, Premiere Pro has keyboard shortcut presets for FCP users, AND you can customize any shortcut to match what you are used to. Just go to Edit-Keyboard Customization to change to a different preset, or choose your own set of shortcuts.

Look, if you still feel like you're being unfaithful to FCP for using Premiere Pro, don't think of it as an NLE - think of it as the "Adobe Production Premium Final Cut Importer."

If you use After Effects and Photoshop already, getting Production Premium is the cheaper way to upgrade to CS4. Plus, you'll get these added benefits. If it doesn't make you more productive, FCP won't divorce you, or hit you over the head with a frying pan. It'll still be waiting there for you. :)

Posted by Karl Soule at 04:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Over the last 10 years, I've had the privilege of being on a couple of Hollywood sets. While my career has kept me (for the most part) away from big-budget Hollywood, I have a respect for the way things are done down there. A lot of lower-end productions still utilize the Hollywood method because it's tried and true.

Right now, there's an audio clip floating around that features a very-upset Christian Bale screaming out a young Director of Photography. The clip makes Bale sound like he's a monster, and coupled with other news stories, it's painting a picture of him being out of control. That's not how to interpret that clip.

The world of high-end production is a very high-strung one. There's a production schedule to keep, scenes have to be completed, sets struck, new sets built; it's a pressure-cooker of an environment for everyone involved because there's just not enough hours in the day to get things done. Every job is segmented and broken down into smaller jobs so that everything can go just right. Actors are the center of it all, and if they are trying to portray an emotionally filled scene accurately, many of them feel the actual emotions of the scene.

From what I just read, the scene being shot just prior to Bale's tirade was just such a scene, and the tirade came after the DP decided to fiddle with lights during the take. Not once, but TWICE. We aren't hearing the polite, "Don't do that anymore." We are hearing an actor, having been polite before, saying enough is enough. Is it pretty? No, but I've heard plenty worse. If anything, the DP should've gone and hid instead of continuing to confront Bale - it sounds like the DP was in the wrong here.

I'm curious - how many of you have ever seen or heard a director, actor, or producer just lose it over a mistake? I can probably name about 5 times in my pro career where I've seen it happen, and not one of them was undeserved, considering the circumstances. Luckily, only one of them was ever directed at me. :)

Posted by Karl Soule at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One hassle of the production process is trying to go back and get additional shots that match older footage. Those of you who shoot interviews know what I speak of - I've had to cut together a TON of interviews over the last 10 years, and every time I've had to go back and reshoot, there's always something different about the new footage. B-roll footage can be used to cover the jump, but it's not the same. If you want to use a jump cut or quick dissolve, there's nothing more annoying than seeing the microphone move positions, or the camera framing being off, and the subject's head gains 5 kg because of a closer camera angle.

Adobe OnLocation contains a feature to combat this problem, and it's also useful for dialing in cameras in a multi-camera shoot. It's called the Split Screen Feature.

Here's a shot of me from last week's eSeminar on OnLocation. Notice the lovely garish shirt I'm wearing. For the sake of this tutorial, I'm going to try to match this scene with my live camera.

I've made things simple enough by wearing the same lovely shirt. I had to dig the shirt out of a box buried in the back of the garage this time. I need to be sure to ask the wife about why the shirt keeps disappearing like that.

To get Split Screen dialed in, click on the flyout menu on the Field Monitor, and choose Display Settings.

The opacity of the Split is set by default at 50%, but for this exercise, I'm going to crank it up to 100%. Anything less than 100% will cause an Onion Skinning effect, which can be useful, but in this case it's too much information. Using 100% makes it clear what's from the still and what's from the live camera.

Here's the tricky part - you MUST click on items in exactly this order: Double-click on the pre-recorded clip. Pause the clip on a good frame to compare. Then, click the Split button. Click the Stop button. clicking Stop should switch left side of the screen back to the live camera.

Use the on-screen controls to adjust the size and area of the split. To match up my camera angles, I'm going to use the CS4 logo hanging on the top left corner of the green screen. Adjust the camera position until everything lines up. I'll take this moment to ditch the hat, which I can see wasn't in last week's shoot.

Just from the field monitor, I can see that the brightness of my camera isn't what it was when I shot the previous footage. Be aware that the Split is also active on the Waveform Monitor as well. I need to adjust the iris/exposure of my camera to match. With the Fv at 1.8 and the Exposure cranked up to +1, I'm seeing similar brightness values in the Waveform monitor and in my Field Monitor.

The one thing this technique won't help me with is removing the new curry stain on the shirt. Fortunately, with this shirt, it's almost impossible to notice. :)

This same technique works well in Pre-production on a multi-camera shoot. Point cameras at a common object. Hook OnLocation to Camera 1. Dial in white balance, iris, exposure, etc. Then, record a reference clip. Go to camera 2, hook up OnLocation, and compare the live feed from Cam 2 with the recorded clip from Camera 1. Split, use the Waveform Monitor, and adjust Cam 2 to match. Rinse and repeat for Cam 3, 4, etc.

Posted by Karl Soule at 02:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In case you missed it, Hyundai ran some commercials during yesterday's Super Bowl for their new Genesis Coupe. There's a contest at www.edityourown.com that uses Adobe Premiere Express technology. You get to edit your own commercial for the Genesis, and post it online. Prizes ensue.

If you haven't seen Premiere Express before, it's an online editing technology based around Flash that enables putting together video clips, music, transitions, titles; basically all the pieces necessary to edit together a video. At the end of the process, you "publish" a playlist of your finished movie. There's no rendering involved - the player just loads your playlist of media and plays it in the Flash player.

If you'd like more information about Premiere Express for your website, check it out here:

http://www.adobe.com/products/premiereexpress/

Posted by Karl Soule at 02:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)