The Adobe Ones Got Me!
Recently, I was visited in my office by a disembodied floating camera. If you haven't seen the AdobeTV show "Ask the Adobe Ones" yet, go check it out. Kush Amerisinghe, asks me some questions regarding the AVCHD format.
June 11, 2008
May 27, 2008
Soundbooth Beta now up on Labs!
Today, a new Beta version of the next edition of Soundbooth was put up on labs.adobe.com for anyone to download and try out. Two of the hot new features are:
* 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!
April 06, 2008
More on Cineform
I recently had the opportunity to spend time with the team from Cineform. Many of you probably know Cineform for their high-quality intermediary codec, and their HDV workflow add on for Premiere Pro.
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.
February 15, 2008
Manipulating Time...
I've gotten some questions lately about how to do Time Lapse shots with Adobe tools. There's actually a fantastic way of recording Time Lapse directly off your DV/DVCPRO/HDV camera using a laptop computer and OnLocation.
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.