Our camera person for Solar Odyssey, BT Corwin, isn’t able to join us until June 5, while we set sail May 27, so there’s about nine days where we’ll be one person down.
Category: Technology
Well that’s interesting. We noticed that in Final Cut Pro X’s Import from Camera window that, not only was the built-in camera always visible (it’s a MacBook Pro) even with external devices mounted, so Greg hypothesized that it would ingest from multiple sources at the same time. This, of course, would be highly desirable on The Solar Odyssey, so I decided to test it.
Categories
7toX for Final Cut Pro 1.0.7
The latest release of 7toX for Final Cut Pro includes:
• Bug fix for AV clips where only the audio is used
• Bug fix for still images and PDFs importing as black in a sequence
• Bug fix for an extra gap clip added to the end of the primary storyline using XML from Premiere Pro
• Bug fix for incorrect sequence duration using XML from Premiere Pro
That is the third different fix for Premiere Pro XML! Â Looking forward to the Automatic Duck influence in future releases!
At one level, we could almost do without traditional lighting, particularly if I outfit the cabin with sufficiently soft light sources (like these LED strips that could line the ceiling and high walls), but I’m not sure I’d be satisfied. My first job was as Head Technician and lighting designer at the Newcastle Civic Theater, but for the five years before that I’d already (from age 16) run my own theater lighting business. (A small business, I should point out.)
So, I’m a little fussy about the way things look. Hence, lighting. And logically LED, and therefore LitePanels. A mixture of Micro Pros, Mini Pros and a 1×1 for when I need a heavy fill or to light up a bigger area.
There are a number of reasons why we need continuous (or as continuous as possible) Internet during the Solar Odyssey:
- Research on surrounding attractions and contact details
- Our multi-user logging app will be on a remote server (most likely) or connected via the public internet to the server on Ra (unlikely). It needs this topography to make the multi-user aspect work.
- Upload daily video blogs, pictures, and blog posts for SolarOdyssey.com and PhilipHodgetts.com
We have need for connectivity on Ra for research and posting purposes, but also while off the boat for the logging app.
The Terence and Philip Show Episode 44: The HPA Retreat – technology’s leading edge. http://t.co/mikrdyRD
Terence attended this year’s Hollywood Post Alliance retreat with the theme “Snowflake Workflows” and talks about the technologies that were previewed.
The things that stood out for Terry in the demo room: Sony’s Blu-ray archive solution to compete with LTO and $25,000 4K home projector;
There’s a side discussion how disruptive technologies often come out of the consumer divisions of the large conglomerates rather than their professional product division.
Terry then a panel where Disney discussed automating the diversity of outputs from master file (up to thousands of variations).
How does the combination of RAW and Lytro camera affect production? How much moves from production to post?
Terry also talks about the trends in production and consumption revealed at the HPA Retreat.
One of the challenges for the Solar Odyssey is that Ra is a solar powered boat. No sail, no diesel, just solar. This raises two primary issues: how do we power equipment without native 110v; and how much extra power do we need to generate to run production, above and beyond what’s needed by life on the boat and – most significantly – the motors? Neither have simple answers.
Having acquired some pictures and sound, hopefully of high quality, how are we going to edit given no Mac Pro on board (too big and too much power required) and definitely no Fiber Channel drives (again too big and too much power required).
Since Final Cut Pro X runs so very well on MacBook Pros, primary editing will be done on two mid 2011 Quad Core i7 MacBook Pros with 8 GB RAM each. Even better there are readily available 12v native power supplies for these computers and an older Core2Duo (December 2009 vintage). While this isn’t an ideal machine for Final Cut Pro X, it has other advantages and uses, as we’ll see.
Continuing the haiku that is Solar Odyssey production with the audio question. Audio has never been my strongest point although I’ve always had the good sense to hire someone for whom it was a strong point!
No such luck here. There’s simply not room in the crew for a dedicated audio person.
There are also two audio problems to solve: on Ra (our boat) and off Ra.
All television starts with a camera. In 2012, it’s impossible to buy a new camera that doesn’t produce good images, from tiny 1/4″ sensors up to 35mm size and beyond. So what to choose?
For me, it has to have a large sensor. Large sensor video cameras just produce nicer images (particularly if you know how to focus!).