Archive for the ‘DropBox’ Category

Mobile Video Editing Hardware: Thoughts, Ideas & Dreams (continued)

Friday, January 13th, 2012

Following-on from my earlier post, Mobile Video Editing Hardware: Thoughts, Ideas & Dreams, where I considered an eventual migration from my laptop to a luggable PC, my thoughts veered (possibly having spotted cash-icebergs among them) towards an alternative solution:

  • Use the laptop for lightweight editing & compositing.
  • Use the desktop as a number-crunching RADI-attached server.

The two could be linked by:

  • Remote access / remote sessions (some of which via smartphone)
  • DropBox, e.g. have an active folder where I can drop Adobe Premiere XML and have it processed remotely by Adobe apps installed there.

Some links:

  • http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/11/virtualisation_at_home_part_2/
    • (There’s no equivalent “_part_1” page.  I guess it’s just “Part 2” of that guy’s story).
    • DIY virtual machines: Rigging up at home, by Trevor Pott, 11th January 2012 14:33 GMT
    • Personal Virtual Machine (PVM) (in use) for about seven years with retail boxed version of Windows XP.
    • VM has been moved from virtualization platform to virtualization platform over the years … the most recent incarnation … inside Hyper-V.
    • …nothing beats Windows Server 2008 R2. It comes with a top-notch virtualisation platform (Hyper-V), and added RemoteFX support with Service Pack 1. You can still use the desktop operating system for all your HTPC needs, and a single Server 2008 R2 Standard license allows you to run both a host copy and a single virtual instance of Server 2008 R2.
    • In my case, the host instance does little more than play movies on the projector via VLC. The virtual instance of Server runs my Plex media server, and aggregates my many storage devices into a single share using DFS.
  • Shuttle Inc (Taiwan)

DropBox Tips for Video Production

Thursday, December 1st, 2011

Tips from Stu Maschwitz (Magic Bullet, DV Rebel’s Guide,…)

Cineform FirstLight: Explanatory & Instructional Links

Saturday, August 20th, 2011

Conclusions:

  • The main principle is great – the decoder part of the Cineform Neo codec has to do levels-mapping work etc. anyway as part of its normal function, and so getting it to do the grading at the same time just means altering its scaling factors etc., which in principle means using less CPU as compared to the grading being done in the NLE (post-decode).   Also fewer successive quantizations (hence better overall visual quality).  You can specify different sets of factors (hence grades) for different video files. There are also some “Movie Looks” presets.
  • Additionally it gives the ability to split the grading process off to another person (as the tutorial videos show) – a great extra bonus. By using DropBox (say) the two (or more) of you can work in parallel at remote locations, grading-updates appear automatically on the remote NLE. Essentially only a tiny shared grading project file is saved in DropBox, no need to exchange actual video files.

I’m currently trying it out on a client project (non-critical) in Sony Vegas.  I will post my experiences from this separately.

Cineform – Tutorials, Information & Tips

Thursday, August 11th, 2011

Discovered:

  • Best quality level to use for grading is FilmScan1.
    • The next one down, High, is only for final product, as intermediate totranscode from.
    • The next level up, FilmScan2, is “overkill”.
  • Tech Blog (many subjects)
  • HDLink
  • Firstlight
    • Does more than I imagined!
      • Has translation/projection adjustments (e.g. frame, zoom, pan)
      • It has “looks” (via LUT’s) e.g. “Bleach Bypass”.  Can scroll through them (e.g. via up/down arrow keys)
      • Can be keyframed hence dynamically changing (e.g. a pan to follow a moving object or adjust level/hue as sun sinks).
      • Can copy & paste attributes between different clips (select-all>Paste to make all clips have the same style)
      • Can “branch” projects to provide a dropdown-selectable menu of alternative grades/looks.
      • Great suggestions for incorporation in workflow:
        • While one person is editing, another can be grading.
        • Tip: store FirstLight projectsin DropBox folders, then everyonbe sees same instant-updates (e.g. extra alternative styles).
    • http://community.avid.com/forums/t/98416.aspx
      • Possible there exists a problem when used with Avid Media Composer 5.5.2 (at least).
      • Conjecture: (if) First Light … is OpenGL accelerated when dealing with Cineform media (then) when it is handed to to other applications, the playback and processing of the LUT (metadata) is all CPU, thus causing a performance discrepency.
  • Vimeo: Cineform Examples & Tutorials & Groups:

DropBox – Initial Reactions

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

You register and get 2GB free storage area, visible in Windows Explorer as “dropbox”, alongside the existing “downloads”.  There, you can drag files (from elsewhere) to some place such as the eisting Public folder or you can create a new folder and make it personal or sharable.  If you make it sharable, you get prompted for an email address of the sharer.  Dropbox then auto-sends an email to that address.  The email includes a probably-unique secure (https) link (incorporating a big pseudorandom number) for them to click on.   OK so it’s not just public.  Great!