The upcoming eSeminar classes are listed here. I'll be covering the ones on creating and burning Blu-Ray discs on the 22nd, and one on adding Production Premium to your Final Cut Workflow on July 29th.

Spending the week in Paris conducting training. First time in the city!

For those who have never been to San Jose, the offices are BIG. Adobe's headquarters take up most of a city block, with 3 towers around 18 stories tall. In the very center, between the towers, there's a basketball court.

I realized today that my family has never seen the corporate headquarters. I've got to take the family down here and give 'em the tour. :)

Ask The Adobe Ones

1. P2 (Added in October 2007)
2. XDCAM-EX (Added in April 2008)
3. AVCHD (Not added...yet..)

So, while we can't say for certain what the future holds, it has been historically one of the top formats users have requested.

And, yes, I've been obsessed with various types of sequencing gear. :) Still playing with the preset patterns in the EMX-1, since they sound so good. :)

* MULTITRACKING!!! Yep, Soundbooth will support multitracking in this beta, with an exciting new way to save out multitrack projects.

* Auto Volume Leveling. Now, with a simple click, volume levels in multiple clips can be automatically adjusted to sound like the same level. This is different from just normalizing, because it also affects the noise shelf to help smooth out the sound of each of the clips.

The beta will run for 2 days for anyone, and those of you who have a license for Soundbooth CS3 can run the beta indefinitely. Go check it out!

At HD Expo this past month, I got to meet David Newman and some of the other Cineform people, and I got to see Prospect 4K in action for the first time, and it completely blew me away.

Before I can go through and explain exactly what Prospect 4K is, I first need to explain a little bit about the concept of RAW. It's been in the digital photography space for quite a while, but this is the first example I've seen of a video RAW workflow on a desktop editing platform.

What does this mean to video? Well, imagine the same thing, except at 60 frames per second! The white balance (and other painting done in the camera's menus) are stored in a data file, and the video file stores the raw camera sensor data.

This idea is still relatively new, and there are only a handful of camcorders that can record to RAW files, but the transition to tapeless acquisition should accelerate this. Right now, the RED camera is probably the most prominent camera to record RAW, and that's a (roughly) $18000 - $36000 camera.

What Cineform has developed is an engine that replaces the playback engine in Premiere Pro. They've also developed a version of their Cineform codec called Cineform RAW, which enables realtime playback of RAW files. I've seen both 2K and 4K RAW files playing back real time on a (beefy) desktop PC.

The beauty of RAW is that all color correction can be done by manipulating the data file for each clip, and that manipulation happens with NO RENDERING. That's right - no red bar on the timeline. This can help two ways in a high-end workflow - first, it enables the editor to see what the DP's vision was during shooting, but it can be turned off when it's time to create a Digital Intermediate for coloring. Second, depending on your budget, it can eliminate the need for a DI entirely. For under $10,000 (that's including a really beefy PC, Production Premium, and Prospect 4K from Cineform) you can have a full 4K ONLINE editing system.

Be sure to check out Cineform at NAB, especially if you are interested in the RED camera, and are looking for different workflows.

Here's a quick list of where I was in March:

LA for HD Expo, hanging out with the Cineform team. Cineform has some really exciting stuff that adds to Premiere Pro's capabilities, including working with RAW files originating from the DALSA and RED cameras. Need an online 2K or 4K worflow with RAW image manipulation in real time? Check out Premiere Pro with the Cineform Prospect 4k Add-on. Simply amazing! I hope to blog further about it in the upcoming weeks.

I was also in LA for CLASSIFIED where we were shooting for CLASSIFIED. It was a terrific experience, and I have to thank CLASSIFIED and CLASSIFIED for all the work they did!

On a similar note, I spent a couple weeks now in the Bay Area working on CLASSIFIED for the CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED.

Well, I hope that clears up how I spent my March! Here's to a busy April! Next week, I'll be presenting for the AIGA in Providence, RI chapter, and then it's off to NAB for a week of exciting Vegas action. I'm especially looking forward to CLASSIFIED when I'm in Vegas!

Peace!

I had the opportunity last week to work with Robert McDaniels, a member of the Education team here at Adobe. We covered 2 different events, one in Birmingham, and one in Tampa. The events were sponsored by the AIGA, which is one of the oldest and largest organizations for design professionals. In both cities, it was a very enthusiastic and knowledgeable crowd.

Robert and I covered a lot in the 3+ hours, including web, print, and video workflows. I found it interesting that the attendees came from all 3 parts of design, and almost all of them now have to work outside of their core area of expertise - print people jumping into video, web people creating PDF's for print, etc. We really are seeing the age of the "renaissance designer" that has to move between disciplines when necessary.

Out of my video workflow demonstration, I think seeing video in Photoshop was a big hit among the print crowd. Using a tool they already know and love to manipulate video is really exciting. The Puppet Tool in After Effects also gets high marks from both the web and print crowd because of the ease-of-use factor.

I'm looking forward to later this week - I'm doing a Blu-Ray authoring class tomorrow night in San Francisco. Blu-Ray is a very hot topic now that the format war is officially done with, and we have a nice solution for early adopters.

Start by launching OnLocation, and connect your camera to your laptop via FireWire. If your camera isn't automatically recognized, right-click anywhere in OnLocation, choose Devices, and choose your camcorder from the list.

Starting a timelapse clip is easy - just push the red record button that has a clock face on it, found here:

By default, the time lapse option will record 1 frame per second, but you can customize that rate very easily. Click the Menu button on the Field Monitor, and look for a value called TmLps Frequency, shown here:

Altering this number will do different things depending on the native frame rate of the signal you are working with. The number refers to the amount of frames to skip before recording another frame. So, for example, this will mean different record rates if you are working with a 30fps video signal vs a 60fps video signal. The best way to determine the rate is to use the charts found in the Help menu, which I've replicated here:

Use the above chart if you are working with DV or DVCPROHD signals to determine frame rates. So for example, if I was working with an NTSC signal being recorded at 30fps, and I wanted to record a frame every 15 seconds, I'd set the value to 450. To record 1 frame a minute, I'd set it for 1800.

With HDV, there are slightly fewer choices because of the long-GOP nature of HDV. Here's the chart for HDV:

In most circumstances, OnLocation only records the I-Frames from the HDV signal, resulting in a slightly larger file size than a typical HDV file of the same duration.

Normally, OnLocation will keep recording time-lapse footage as long as there's hard drive space. However, it's possible to set a recording limit in the menu. If the TmLpse Net Frames setting is set to a value other than 0, OnLocation will record frames up to the Net Frames value and stop. For example, if I set the Net Frames value to 360, it will record 360 frames, and stop automatically.

The Adobe booth had 2 different theatres, and I had 5 45-minute sessions in Theatre 1. 2 sets of classes were back-to-back, with the first covering Production Premium CS3, and the other covering Premiere Pro CS3 in-depth.

Now, I'm pretty OS-agnostic these days, and feel comfortable in both MacOS and Windows, so demoing is always a conundrum. I love showing off Production Premium on the MacOS since it is new to the platform, yet I also like showing OnLocation (which is one of only 2 utility programs that have to run under Windows.) This show schedule worked beautifully, with back-to-back classes. I started in MacOS, showing how great the workflow is between the applications. Then, at the 5-minute break, I jumped over into Windows, and started my Premiere Pro class there. It gave people an opportunity to see Premiere Pro in both operating systems, and see how well it performs in either.

The theatres stayed packed with people, even on the last day of the show, and there were LOTS of questions, especially from the Mac community. I think the flexibility of Premiere Pro, and the interoperability between Pr and Ae is really turning heads in the Mac community.

I also got an opportunity to hang out a bit with my friend Angie Taylor." Angie runs a site called www.creativeaftereffects.com and has a book out by the same name. I'm forever learning new tips and tricks on Ae thanks to her. Check out her site - it's a great resource.

All will be revealed soon...