Best Monday Ever

I’m not at NAB this year, because Las Vegas murders my soul and trade shows stomp on the remains—but there are some cool things happening at and around the show already.

First a small but important thing: Red Giant Software is having a big sale between now and April 18. 30% off everything. More details here.

Adobe announced Creative Suite 5, which includes new versions of After Effects and Premiere Pro. Both and standout releases, and I extend a hearty congratulations to the product teams. The After Effects feature that has everyone flipping out is Roto Brush, which uses, presumably, some sort of alien technology discovered beneath the Great Pyramids to semi-automate complex rotoscoping tasks. Like the Content-Aware Fill technology in Photoshop CS5, it has the potential to save you tons of time, which you can repurpose for more important things like staring at your computers screen muttering “How the hell do they do that?” Read more about what’s new in After Effects CS5 at the blog of After Effects Product Manager Michael Coleman.

The CS5 tools we care about are now 64-bit applications, which means many good things, but also means that all your third-party plug-ins need to be re-engineered for compatibility. Red Giant Software’s announcement about this is here.

Redrock Micro has teased some images of new products to be announced later today, including one that apparently eats your iPhone and turns it into Pure Awesome:

microTape Range FinderiPhone/iPod Touch advanced automation

Storm

The Foundry has released details on Storm, the end-to-end filmmaking tool tool they’ve been teasing us about. As expected, fxguide has thorough coverage.

Panasonic AG-AF100Panasonic has somehow found the stash of Obvious Pills that have eluded every other video camera manufacturer who also makes the still cameras masquerading as video cameras that have captured all the attention of digital filmmakers. Yesterday they announced the AF100, a “professional” video camera based on the 4/3” sensor from the GH1. Rumored price is to be in the $6,000 range, and although the internal codec is the much-maligned (and, by definition, non-professional) AVCHD, it’s maxed-out 24mbps AVCHD, so it should do better than the GH1. It also will have uncompressed HD out (which your could capture with, say, an AJA Ki-PRO), bypassing the ACVD codec entirely. I hope it also has some buttons.

UPDATE: Oh look, it does:

Jan Crittenden, Product Manager at Panasonic, had this to say about the camera on DVXuser: “There will not be aliasing as we actually have a clue about what causes that.” Nice.

Update on Monday, April 12, 2010 at 12:25PM by Stu

The press release is up now—Blackmagic Design announced today a software-only version of the DaVinci Resolve color grading system, starting at $995. If you think Apple’s Color is immensely powerful and nearly impossible to use, wait until you see Resolve’s user interface. Still, this is pretty much the coolest thing anyone could have imagined doing after acquiring DaVinci last year.

Update on Monday, April 12, 2010 at 8:48PM by Stu

Sony getting in on the game, with a direct dig at RED. 

Sony - New Prototype Digital Cinema Camera from camera department on Vimeo.

Update on Monday, April 12, 2010 at 9:11PM by Stu

Let’s round out the Best Monday Ever with something super cool: Magic Bullet Looks as a plug-in Module for RedCine-X:

Converting 30p to 24p

As the long-awaited 24p firmware update for the Canon 5D Mark II draws near, I joined Mike Seymour on episode 57 of the Red Centre podcast to talk about how excited I am that it marks the end of painful workarounds for the 5D’s no-man’s-land frame rate of 30.0 frames per second.

For as long as I’ve had my 5D Mark II, I’ve avoided using it for any projects that I could not shoot 30-for-24, i.e. slowing down the footage to 23.976 fps, using every frame. My 5D has been a gentle overcrank-only camera. There are plenty of occasions to shoot 30 frames for 24 frame playback—we do it all the time in commercials to give things a little “float,” or to “take the edge off” some motion. I still do this often with my 7D. Whatever frame rate I shoot—24, 30, 50 or 60, I play it back at 24. Just like film.

Folks ask me about 30p conversions often. Twixtor from RE:Vision Effects is a popular tool for this, as is Apple’s Compressor. Adobe After Effects has The Foundry’s well-regarded Kronos retiming technology built-in. All of these solutions are variations on optical flow algorithms, which track areas within the frame, try to identify segments of the image that are traveling discretely (you and I would call these “objects”), and interpolate new frames based on estimating the motion that happened between the existing ones.

This sounds impressive, and it is. Both The Foundry and RE:Vision Effects deservedly won Technical Achievement Academy Awards for their efforts in this area in 2007. And yet, as Mike and I discuss, this science is imperfect.

In August of 2009 I wrote:

I’m not saying that you won’t occasionally see results from 30-to-24p conversions that look good. The technology is amazing. But while it can work often, it will fail often. And that’s not a workflow. It’s finger-crossing.

On a more subtle note, I don’t think it’s acceptable that every frame of a film should be a computer’s best guess. The magic of filmmaking comes in part from capturing and revealing a narrow, selective slice of something resonant that happened in front of the lens. When you use these motion-interpolated frame rate conversions, you invite a clever computer algorithm to replace your artfully crafted sliver of reality with a best-guess. This artificiality accumulates to create a feeling of unphotographic plasticness.

Of course, it’s often much worse than a subtle sense that something’s not right. Quite often, stuff happens in between frames that no algorithm could ever guess. Here’s a sequence of consecutive 30p frames:

Right-click and select View Image to see full-resNothing fancy, just a guy running up some stairs. But his hand is moving fast enough that it looks quite different from one frame to the next.

Here’s that same motion, converted to 24p using The Foundry’s Kronos:

Right-click and select View Image to see full-resBlech.

Again, don’t get me wrong—these technologies are great, and can be extremely useful (seriously, how amazing is it that the rest of the frame looks as good as it does?). But they work best with a lot of hand-holding and artistry, rather than as unattended conversion processes.

(And they can take their sweet time to render too.)

I’m so glad we’re getting the real thing.

For the Record Canon

I’ll take one of these:

This 50mm f/1.2 cappuccino cup is in response to the fabulous coffee mug that looks like a 70–200mm lens, which Canon was giving out at the Winter Olympics to people who had better watch their back when I’m around.

By the way, there’s a new version of the popular zoom lens that I want almost more than I want another cappuccino. Pre-order it now and I get a little closer. To the cappuccino.

Canon 70–200mm f/2.8L IS EF II USM lens available for pre-order at Amazon.

Update on Friday, March 5, 2010 at 2:09PM by Stu

What’s new about the 70–200 II? It is said to be sharper, faster to focus, and have improved IS over the original. That said, the original is a terrific lens. Here’s a shot I made with one.

Update on Friday, March 5, 2010 at 3:06PM by Stu

More info on the mug that started all this here.

Update on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 10:53AM by Stu

Thanks to ProLost reader Alex Turner for the heads up: The Mug is now available for pre-order from Vistek.

Numerous folks have also pointed out the 24–105 “ice cream cup” (is that a way of saying that it will melt and give you cancer if you put hot liquid in it?) is available on eBay.

Personally, I like my mugs f/2.8 or faster, so I’m going with the 70–200.

Update on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 9:13PM by Stu

B&H has the 70–200 Mark II in stock now.

Canon adds 24p to the 5D Mark II and I Blame You

Readers of ProLost, pat yourself on the back.

In the 18 months since Canon announced the Canon 5D Mark II, you’ve written, you’ve called, you’ve left comments here and on Vincent Laforet’s blog. You politely but firmly harrassed Canon personel at trade shows. Perhaps most significantly, you put your money where your mouth is and bought 7Ds, showing Canon that 24p is even better than Bokake.

It delights me to no end to read these words in a Canon press release:

Developed following feedback from photographers and cinematographers, Firmware 2.0.3 further enhances the EOS 5D Mark II’s excellent video performance. The addition of new frame rates expands the camera’s video potential, providing filmmakers with the ability to shoot 1080p Full HD footage at 24fps (actual 23.976fps)—the optimum frame rate for cinematic video. 25fps support at both 1920x1080 and 640x480 resolutions will allow users to film at the frame rate required for the PAL broadcast standard, while the new firmware will also change the 30fps option to the NTSC video standard of 29.97fps.

I underlined a couple bits in there. Do they sound familiar? The wording is almost directly lifted from ProLost posts and my other communications with Canon.

Does it seem like I’m patting myself on the back? Well I am. But you should too. I know that, at best, I played maybe a tiny role in this. But this is a very cool thing that has happened here—we spoke, and Canon listened.

Read the full press release at dpreview.com.

Take a trip down memory lane and view all ProLost posts tagged Canon 5D Mark II.

And heck, buy a 5D Mark II from Amazon and support this site. I love mine, and I’m about to love it even more.

Update on Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 11:17AM by Stu

Looking back at the 24p for 5D campaign waged here on ProLost, something I never felt I needed to do was explain why 24p was so important, beyond simple technical compatibility. If you’re interested in an artistic discussion of the role 24 progressive frames per second plays in the look and feel of movies, check out part two of my interview by Rick Young of MacVideo. Rick asks one question—“why 24p”—and I talk for about ten minutes. Oops.

Part one of the interview is here.