The Genesis Project

Call me the atypical Adobe employee...While I am a techno geek and absolutely love to play with technology, I either choose or (personal finances permitting) can't get all of the lovely toys exactly when I want to. 

In my case, I chose not to run out and get a Blu-ray player right away - even though Encore is still the only cross-platform affordable Blu-ray authoring tool available.

I chose not to, for a couple of reasons.  First, even though I had a lot of information that indicated Blu-ray would eventually win, I chose not to be an early adopter with the possible chance that my bet was wrong.  Even though I was a kid, I remember the choice between VHS and Betamax. Ugh.

My second reason is even simpler - I already have a game system and didn't need a Sony Playstation 3 to go along with my Nintendo Wii. And in case you want to argue for the PS3 over the Wii, I already know all the arguments and completely agree that the graphics and power of the PS3 is superior to the Wii, but hey - I'm old school! ;-)

Anyway, this weekend, I plunked down the $400 and picked up a PS3 to act as my primary DVD player.  I chose this for three reasons

1. It's one of the cheapest if not the cheapest ways to get a Blu-ray player.
2. It upconverts standard DVDs to make them look better
3. It's a PS3 - I like games! (see above)

So, after setting up the basics of the system, I fired up Ocean's 11 in full screen SD and took a look.  Looked fine, but nothing fantastic and the audio was LCR and not a true 5.1.  But still, the same or slightly better than a standard DVD

Second, I hunted my collection for something that would have wild audio and I picked the first Lord of the Rings deluxe standard DVD. Audio - WOW!  The PS3 sounded like the bomb - better than my original DVD player even with the same digital output.  Don't know why, but I'll take it!

Third, popped in the included Spiderman 3 Blu-ray DVD and skimmed several minutes of several scenes.  Looks terrific, definite difference and detail.  DETAIL!

For purposes of comparison, I then put in the standard-def version of Spiderman 3 with the PS3's upconversion.  Have to admit, that I was surprised at how good the SD version was. It definitely wasn't like going from VHS to DVD which was noticable to everyone immediately.  Still, the acid test is if my wife noticed the difference and she did.  This is a good sign for tech hungry men everywhere!

The big difference for me, was the detail of the overall scene.  You could make out a lot of stuff in the scene that might just be blurry on the SD version.  Yes, there was definitely a difference on the picture itself, but the big thing for me was the little detail and overall clarity of the entire picture.

So, is it time for you to purchase a Blu-ray?  I don't know, but I will say that I'm glad that I did and now I feel safe in my purchase.

One last note, under one of the Sony 'about' panels, I saw that they had licensed the Flash player for their system. Great to see both the PS3 and the Wii have it installed in their OS.

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

FIrst off, was the meeting with the Motion Pictures Editors Guild, not to be confused with the other MPEG: Motion Pictures Expert Group.  The former is all about the art and craft of filmmaking from the student all the way to the blockbuster.  The latter is about defining ways to make video and film easier via things like MPEG2 and MPEG4.

So, I got to present for about 40 minutes to potentially discuss all nine products of Production Premium.  That's never a good idea and so, I boiled it down to the quintessential basics for making video/film - an NLE, some eye candy or vfx, and audio.

I presented Premiere Pro and talked about the emerging importance of metadata and tapeless workflows.  It was interesting to note that only one person was currently using a tapeless workflow (P2) but the entire audience was getting into it.  They realized the possibilities, timesavings and potential workflow benefits of divesting themselves of tape in the future. 

We had some great questions about can Premiere Pro do "ABC?" and the answer was usually yes. My presentation in this case revolved around integration to products that are used in every film workflow - Photoshop and After Effects, but expanded to talk about how you more broadcasters and film makers are using Premiere Pro to create.  The other thoughts that resonated last night and still for me this morning were:

• launching Photoshop to create a title from within Premiere Pro
• my perennial favorite - fixing audio in Soundbooth from Premiere Pro
• my newly discovered favorite - After Effects - Premiere workflows: you can not only use Dynamic Link, but import Premiere Pro sequences or projects into After Effects and export Premiere Pro projects from After Effects. 

The last one to me bodes well for more edits being done by Premiere Pro - it strikes me as a very compelling workflow.

...

Moving on to Blu-ray, there are reports coming out about sales of Blu-ray players will dramatically increase now that Toshiba and company have thrown in the towel on HD-DVD.

I think this makes a ton of sense because now there is something that the consumers can feel confident about buying if they're looking for a HD experience from a DVD. As a consumer who was probably better informed than most because of Adobe, I still didn't run out to purchase a blu-ray, because I didn't want to invest in something that could lose, even if I didn't think it would.  Now that this is over, I'm thinking seriously of going out and getting a Sony PlayStation 3 to go along with my Wii simply because it will play Blu-ray discs.

...

Finally, I think the Photoshop Express product is a great start on a whole new world of creating and sharing content.  While I'm enormously proud of what Photoshop is and its impact on this world, I am also aware that it is not for everyone.  To be able to open up the basics of Photoshop and make it available to anyone for FREE is just awesome.  I think that grandparents and young technophobes can take a look at what this offers and embrace it.  My hunch is that it's only the beginning too, which bodes well for our customers around the world.  If you haven't given Photoshop a looksee yet, then click on here: Photoshop Express

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 8:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

That resource was a new Photoshop one from a blogger who has a few very nice looks.  Fabio Sasso is a Brazillian designer who was 'abducted' by design and thus a partial reasoning of the name of his blog and website.  He has some terrific looks and takes the time to show you how to do them.  Take a look at his site and his work.

Abduzeedo

The other resource for today is an old friend that I did NOT stumble over or upon. ;-)  Dean Velez has been mentioned several times here and he periodically sends me an email with something that is new on his site. His latest is an AE curriculum that he published and so I paste the link here for you to peruse and use.

Dean's curriculum

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The idea of this project is that you can make one little composition and then duplicate it to make simple changes to text to create a larger commercial.  This project also shows about nesting compositions - taking one composition and putting it in another.  This is a simple yet powerful concept that people often don't think about.  There is also some track matting, and layerstyle work that is part of this comp.  I will try to write up the step-by-step directions, but until then, here are the project files for you to download and take a look at.  The download is about 2MB.

Update: I've now posted the step-by-step instructions for you to download.

Verizon Fios Project Tutorial instructions

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If you're in the local New York area, I will be doing an evening seminar at TekServe on April 7th beginning at 6PM. The event will be focusing on Adobe's P2 implementation as well as how to take that to Adobe's Encore for burning a Blu-ray disc. Of course, since I am at TekServe, I'll be demoing on a Mac, but we always get a bunch of PC people there as well, because hey - Adobe is cross platform!

Click on the image to take you to the register page - I hope to see you there!

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Adobe was there and talking up the complete story from capture to delivery - i.e from OnLocation to Flash Media Server.  Additionally, Steve Whatley, myself and others did a total of seven educational sessions that was availble to attendees.  We did everything from a Production Premium overview to a semi-deep dive on the spectral tools of Audition to panel discussions that talked about delivering content in the age of the YouTube generation.

One of the big takeaways that I got from the show is that ministries are savvy about getting content out in a variety of ways.  Some are taking to the airwaves on public access.  Others like edgy Rockspots.tv are doing video on the internet and appealing to viewers who want to get bits quickly.  Still others are focusing on radio (there is a big cross section of radio broadcasters at NRB) as a means of communication.  It's no different than big boys like NBC and Disney, except the content is different.

This continues to support the idea of the democratization of content and I think bodes well for everyone.  As more people get online to contribute something to the web, there will become a greater specialization in what people watch.  Someone at Adobe once spoke to me of the idea of a knitting channel.  Who wants to watch a knitting channel on primetime on ABC?  Not enough, that's for sure.  What about cable TV?  Well, we have seen the success of things like sports (ESPN) and news (CNN) but knitting? Hmm, maybe a stretch.  However, there are a lot of people interested in knitting and there is video content out there.  Wouldn't it be cool to have an internet channel on knitting?  Enter Adobe Media Player

...Sorry - And now back to our regularly intended (scheduled) blog entry...

Another thing I enjoyed about NRB is the people - they are just so refreshing, polite and eager for information. Sometimes you do a show and while you're excited to talk to customers and help people, you walk away at the end of the day just exausted.  At NRB, I actually came away refreshed, perhaps in part because so many people (seriously, it was a lot) just came up to myself or someone else at the booth to thank us for showing up and helping them.  Wow, that's not something that we hear a lot of and it sure felt good! ;-)

At the show, I talked about non profit pricing.  If you are a registered 501c3 (meaning nonprofit) entity, you should know that there is nonprofit pricing for you.  You can visit Adobe's nonprofit site. Frankly, not too many people know about this and we need to do a better job of letting people know.  So check it out and spread the word.

In years past, I've created a bunch of custom content for the NRB show to reflect the kind of stuff they do.  This year, I created some that I didn't teach because our topics changed.  I created a poster ad to simulate a Christian rock concert.  I've changed some of it and brought the size way down - the original file was over 300MB at 11x17 and 300dpi.  If you're looking to get dive into a Photoshop file as a means of discovery, then you might take a look at this. Let me warn you - even the small file is big, about 55MB so if you're really interested, you can download here via the Adobe Share technology.

Here's the image

In closing, I left the show enthused about not only the variety of media and messages going on at NRB but at the quality and how Adobe is helping empower people to spread the news

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This isn't necessarily new to anyone, but MOTU has finally released their Windows drivers for their V3HD product.  The box offers a bevvy of I/O and a DVC Pro HD chip that handles all of the internal processing.  Click on the picture to take you to the website.

There's still a lot of work for these guys to do - like support both Mac and PC with Premiere Pro, support WYSIWYG output on After Effects, Photoshop and Encore and if I'm dreaming, add the ability to use OnLocation because it should be native DVC Pro HD.  Customers drive their development and since they're new to video editing space, I recommend that you let them know what you want!

This isn't to take away from what they've done.  Lets face it, you have an HD edit hardware without the need for a PCI express card and its feasible you can use this on a laptop, making this a more affordable answer to AJA's IO on the Mac.

I've been promised a unit and once I have it, I will definitely put it through its paces and give you a report.  Until then, click on the link and check it out.

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The title is provocative, interesting or imflamatory depending on your perspective.  What fun!

One of the things that users everywhere like is interoperability.  Of course, I believe Adobe is the best at interoperability between our own apps (INTEGRATION, INTEGRATION, INTEGRATION!) but obviously, I'd be living in a cave if I didn't recognize that there are a lot of products out there including Apple's Final Cut.

So, how do you get from Final Cut to Premiere Pro?  The answer is via a plugin(s) from Automatic Duck.  Wes Plate was kind enough to provide me with copies of FCP export and AE import from Automatic Duck and over the weekend, I gave them a quick spin.

First off, I watched a video from DMN about FCP to Premiere Pro from Dave Basulto. I like Dave's tutorial because he really understands the value of Production Premium to a Final Cut workflow.  The fact that he gives some great props to Premiere Pro is just a bonus! ;-)

Dave's FCP to Premiere Pro tutorial

David's website

One thing that puzzled me was that Dave used Dynamic Link to bring the timeline into Premiere Pro which is fine well and good.  However, I wondered if you could export to a Premiere Pro project from Adobe After Effects.

Experiment #1: I took four raw clips stuck them on the timeline in Final Cut, exported with Automatic Duck and brought them into AE.  Exported as a Premiere Pro project and opened it up in Premiere Pro.  Looks good.  Right order of clips.

Experiment #2: Trim the clips up a bit.  Same as before - looks good

Experiment #3: Add some dissolves.  Here, when I brought it into Premiere Pro, I had four video tracks and the dissolves translated into opacity controls on each clip.  If I had 50 or 500 clips, this would be a problem. 

Experiment #4: Remove the dissolves and take one of the clips and throw it above the other tracks to see if it would track multiple tracks. Again, it worked like a charm.

I haven't had time to fiddle with it to see if I can preserve the timeline structure of FCP to Premiere Pro with dissolves through AE but I'll let you know if I can make it work.  Still it's good news for most people that you can move FCP projects over to Premiere Pro either via Dynamic Link or through After Effects>Premiere Pro.  If you needed to online, finish or move a project to Premiere Pro, it would initially seem that your worst scenario would be a cuts only timeline, which is what most editing is anyway.

Hopefully, this is useful for some as we continue to demand more connectivity and integration between all of the apps at your (my) disposal. Just knowing that I can move something from A to B without much loss of data is a great thing in this day and age.

Wes emailed me this morning to also mention that there is another way to move from FCP to Premiere Pro (Windows) which is via AAF export from FCP to AAF import on Premiere Pro.

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Adobe events,New York City,After Effects,Production Premium

Both of them are on Thursday, March 27th.

First up is an event at Adorama from 3-5PM.  You can get the link to register here. There is a $25 registration fee that I'm not thrilled about, but you get it back in the form of a coupon.  I guess they're saying that if you sign up then you should show up.  Adorama does have a new showroom floor and it should be fun.  I'll be there to answer questions and

Right after that, we'll have our next After Effects New York meeting which I think is still going to be at the Pratt Institute.  You can get the details at AENY.org. The event is from 7-9PM but if you want pizza, you'll have to show up early as we have some voracious hungry artists there!

As for NAB, most of us arrive on the Saturday before and I have an event on Sunday morning.  If you're interested, give it a look here. What's nice about this is that it is end-to-end; from content creation (me) to content delivery via FMS.

Hope to meet you soon.

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe Blogs,Genesis Project Tutorials,Production Premium,After Effects,Photoshop,Premiere Pro

Hi all - I've been doing a ton of client meetings as well as internal Adobe meetings, so my posting has flagged a bit lately.  However, I wanted to give a couple of pointers for you as you continue looking at the blogosphere and Adobe and Genesis Project blogs in particular.

I clicked on the tutorials button on the right side of the Genesis Project blog to review my humble tutorials and articles that point you to significant lessons on the web.  I was somewhat surprised to count almost 50 tutorials created by me within a year.  That's a simultaneous 'woo hoo' and 'are you kidding me' kind of moment. A way to go thought followed by a 'you're crazy.'  So....click on Tutorials to get a feel for all of the content that is there - you might find something interesting.

I've got a few March events in New York city towards the end of March - one at Adorama and another at MPEG.  Of course, we'll have the AENY meeting there as well.

The Genesis Project has received some more comments and along with that some ideas for future articles or tutorials. I will be trying to get some of these done before NAB.  In the meantime, please keep the comments coming.

Gotta go!

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 8:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)