So curiosity took me through Ars Technica’s look at the Romney campaign’s technology – Romney campaign got its IT from Best Buy, Staples, and friends- and got down to the heading Picking a few things up at the Apple Store and see that Apple picked up a decent customer in the campaign. (more…)

Good editing, they say, should be invisible. Great audio not only enhances the picture but a well designed soundscape takes the project to a whole other level. Similarly, we never notice the work of the “finisher”, or colorist (although at the most basic level) – or even the editor – who makes sure that all shots are balanced, and consistent.

It’s not something you notice, until a show comes along so bad that it affects the enjoyment of the show. These two shots are just one of the many, many, examples from the same show where shots are gray and washed out, or overly contrasty. Even when they are purportedly the same set up.

With just one shot between them, this is typical of the jarring jump in levels. They’re on green screen with the backgrounds matted in – very obvious when the hair line just gets blurred because, well, doing a decent key was too hard?

I know budgets are tight, but seriously, the rarely-great-but-never-this-bad color match feature from FCP X would be better than this!

These are stills extracted from a digital file, not screen shots. What was seen on the screen had slightly different gamma (not surprisingly) but otherwise was just as jarring.

At StreamingMedia.com  Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen wrote:

It came as no surprise to anyone working in our industry that MPEG DASH and HEVC were the talk of this year’s IBC in Amsterdam — at least in the Connected World area of the show in Hall 14, in which IBC cordons off those of us whose interest in the synergy between broadcast and online comes firmly from the online angle.

What was a bit surprising, however, was the degree to which both the DASH delivery scheme and the HEVC codec (also known as H.265) were discussed as faits accomplis and debated as either “it’s about time” standards or a combined one-two punch that would be the death knell of innovation in the online video technology space.

I’ve discussed HEVC (High Efficiency Video codec) a.k.a H.265 before. MPEG-DASH is a new streaming media format. Given that a large percentage of delivery has moved to a real-time delivery over HTTP then a consistent real time delivery format is desirable as a standard. MPEG continues to refer to the standards body – the Motion Picture Expert Group – while DASH referrs to Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP. This is very similar to what Apple and others are using now for HLS (HTTP LIve Streaming, which is also adaptive).

So we’re looking at an evolution into the next generation of MPEG codec with a newly standardized real time delivery format. I like standards, particularly when there aren’t too many! This one feels very real:

But the combination of MPEG DASH and HEVC created a perfect storm in which it was quite clear that for every vendor in our space who feels that any sort of standard is anathema to the advance of both technological invention and capitalist progress, there are just as many who feel like agreeing upon a standard delivery system and corresponding codec will actually enable greater innovation to occur on different fronts. The fact that word came out just prior to IBC that the French government had “mandated” the use of MPEG DASH in all connected televisions gave ammunition to the anti-standards contingent — which, of course, includes a subset that also happens to be anti-European, or at least Francophobic. (As Siglin also reported, the reality is quite a bit more nuanced — the requirement applies only to France’s TNT 2.0 HbbTV connected TV scheme.)

Streaming Media are putting on a special MPEG-DASH mixer at the Streaming Media West Show in two weeks.

One thing that fascinates me are numbers: not for their own sake, but for what they reveal. While re-reading John Buck’s excellent Timelines2 (recommended reading for anyone who is interested in the history of the NLE, volume 2 takes us just past the release of Final Cut Pro 1) I came across some interesting numbers, particularly juxtaposed with a Beat.tv post titled Adobe Claims “Industry Leadership” in Video Editing with 2.5 Million Users. Remembering that Apple have claimed 2 million “seats” of Final Cut Pro (1-7). And I’m pretty sure Avid have sold a few copies of Media Composer, Sony copies of Vegas, and Grass Valley aren’t in the Edius business for giggles. So, somewhat more than 2 million NLE users in our modern world. (more…)

Australian news website ITwire, has an article up about the MPEG’s announcement of the draft standard of their next generation of video codec, due to replace H.264 over time. Hopefully now that we’ve mostly settled on H.264 as the “one codec to rule them all” it will be a comfortable transition to the next generation. (more…)

Episode 45: The Post NAB Show http://t.co/j0vkytfp A new episode of The Terence and Philip Show

We went way, way over time so it’s a long show. If there was more time it would be edited down for content, so hit that fast forward button. We cover everything we can remember from NAB 2012.

In no particular order, the three technology advances that make the Solar Odyssey production even feasible are: Large sensors, Syncing double system production by audio waveforms, and the recognition of the importance of metadata. Alternate camera and lighting mounts, along with LED lighting and laptop computers powerful enough for primary production also play an important role. (more…)

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. (more…)

We’re very pleased to announce Sync-N-Link X, a completely rethought version of our popular and powerful batch synchronizing application for dual system (separate audio and video) workflows.

When we considered what was needed for this workflow we realized we weren’t facing a simple rewrite, but like Final Cut Pro X itself, a complete rethink. Even better we’ve been able to make it much more affordable, reducing the price from $495 down to $199.99.  Here’s the press release: (more…)