Post Production 911

I came across this article that made me a little sad. Kodachrome is my favorite film of all time.

Kirk

Here’s the article by Scott:

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By Scott Simmons of Studio Daily

Real film lovers of the world probably shed a tear today as Kodak announced the retirement of KODACHROME film. From a moving image standpoint Kodak discontinued Kodachrome Super 8mm stock back in 2005 which wasn’t a real surprise. Super 8 is only shot these days for that specific look and feel and for those film people who really want to be nostalgic. I bought a Super 8 camera from a yard sale a few years ago that was in very good shape. I never shot a frame since the cost to buy, process and transfer the stuff properly just wasn’t worth the $$. The film-lover in my soul sank as I proceeded to shoot on DV and apply lots of film-like flashes and edge fog.

One paragraph that stuck out to me in the Kodak press release was this:

While Kodak now derives about 70% of its revenues from commercial and consumer digital businesses, it is the global leader in the film business.

It’s amazing to think how a global leader in the film market could see such a shift in their core business. I guess it goes to show that no matter how much better film really is, be it still or motion picture, the added cost really isn’t worth the benefit for many most.

But film as an acquisition medium for motion pictures is not dead yet. There will always be the those who insist on shooting it as long as Kodak and Fuji make it. And it will always be gorgeous with a dynamic range that digital has yet to reproduce. A Kodak rep was recently in the office talking about 2-perf (as in 2-perforation) 35mm film as a new format to nearly cut the cost of shooting film in half. At least in half from shooting 4-perf. Not a bad idea but 2-perf isn’t new, it’s been around for many years. I guess it’s just a matter of Kodak beginning to push it more and more as film is shot less and less. Here’s some 2-perf discussion if you are interested: Is 2-Perf the new 3-Perf?, Panavision Proposes 2-Perf Film System for Indie Filmmaking, Film at Half the Price, 2Perf – the film format for the digital chain (pdf link). You can’t just shoot 2-perf on any film camera as they have to be modified but some are available.

But I digress … goodbye Kodachrome (I will not insert a Paul Simon pun). My dad shot a whole lot of stills on you over the years. For reflection here’s a nice little 4 minute You Tube video about the “end of Super 8 Kodachrome film processing.”

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Silly as this subject may seem, a good cup of coffee, can keep an editor focused, motivated, and creative in late night sessions. When you are getting tired in a late night edit session, the best thing to do is work out. Do some isometrics or go out side for 5 minutes per hour and do pushups and jumping jacks. But if you’re like me,  you might be a little more on the lazy side once the sun goes down. So I rely on the stimulant that has been proven in battle (and on truck routes) for the ages: a good ol’ cup o’ joe. Of course, don’t forget to lay off the sugary foods or you will be crashing hard by the time you load your next tape to digitize.

A great cup of coffee is way more effective at keeping the editor happy than a crappy cup of coffee. So here’s my recipe for a great cup of coffee:

1) Make really fresh coffee!! I mean, fresh, so that when you pour it into the cup, it has only been brewed less than 2 minutes.

2) Superheat your mug prior to pouring the coffee. This is best done by having the cup sit with boiling water in it during the time the coffee is brewing.  The cup has to be super hot so that the coffee will stay hot and fresh longer, making it take longer to drink. This also has the effect of spreading out the caffeine intake over a longer period of time … which has the effect of a gradual boost in alertness and an equally gradual coming down period hours later. Plus, the pure delight of a piping cup of great coffee lasts longer and makes you a happier editor.

3) Don’t put too much crap in your coffee. Only use milk or half and half. No artificial creamers. Coffee has an amazing property of the flavor being changed by chemical reaction upon contact with the milk molecules. In other words, a cup of coffee with a mere teaspoon of cream tastes 100 percent different than black coffee. Too much dairy will counter act the caffeine effectiveness.  Also, make sure the milk/cream is pre-heated before putting it into the fresh coffee. How do you preheat it? Be your normal resourceful editor self.

4) Never use those plug-in coffee warmers that you set your mug on like a coaster. Those things continue to keep the coffee artificially warm which is tantamount to leaving it cooking at the coffee maker. After 5 minutes of heating cooked coffee, it turns disgusting.

And that’s it. Sometimes the small things are just as important as the cut. Because let’s face it, what kind of creativity can you bring to a project when it’s late at night and you are feeling like a zombie?

I know, I know, this is a blog about post production problems, not necessarily about a film’s content. But content is king and I have seen more than a few times when bad judgment on content bleeds into the post sessions to wreck a film and unnecessarily break the budget.

Many times, I see indie filmmakers(of both shorts) and features fall into the trap of being so in love with their footage in the cutting room, that they just HAVE to put all the outtakes in the end credits. Ok, this is a bad, bad, bad, idea… unless your film is of the Will Farrell variety.

Here’s an example. I recently worked on this extremely powerful project about a woman’s struggle to tell authorities about being raped. It was a well-written and smart drama that had all the elements of a successful film festival hit. Cool.

But the director just could not bear the idea of leaving out the “hilarious” out-takes during the credit sequence.  Yeah, fucking hilarious. This huge drama unfolds on screen and we are thinking the film is brilliant and moving… until the credits roll and we see all the gaffs and f-words that were supposed to be left on the proverbial cutting room floor (actually, these days there is no “cutting room floor”, just a delete button.)

Why would this director ruin my experience by making me sit through the absolute cliché of cliché bloopers. Everybody knows these bloopers and even if it’s Tom Cruise falling on a banana peel or Gweneth Paltrow having trouble yielding her whip in the dominatrix scene from Iron Man 2, it really isn’t funny or cute.

But after a filmmaker works so hard to achieve a certain tone, why torpedo it with a lame bit of outtakes that ruin the whole mood that was masterfully created by the film?

Whenever I see those bullshit outtakes, I see amateurs at work. People, outtakes are not funny. But what is funny is how the director’s credit card was declined for the EXACT amount of hours that were billed for making these hilarious outtakes. No joke. We spent about 4.5 hours making the most “knee-slappingly funny” credit sequence, using all kinds of software like After Effects and Photoshop. And when the bill was totaled, her card was past its limit for that exact amount. We held the master until she called in for reinforcements to help fund the genius credit sequence.

I’m only this bitter because I was really enjoying the movie. But I felt like an idiot for liking it once the underbelly of outtakes ripped the film out from under me.

And looking back, it is always the first time filmmakers and amateurs who love these bloopers. Like I said, if you are going for a Will Farrell tone for the whole movie, then knock yourself out in the credits with some crazy fart outtakes. Otherwise, rape just isn’t that funny.

So I’m eagerly awaiting the delivery of these “ultra important” HDV tapes that are supposed to becoming for transfer. And right on time, the FedEx guy shows up with a box. I open the tapes, pop one in the deck and… it’s an interview with a high profile celebrity. The sound is perfect. The color is rich… but wait… what the…. OH NO! They shot the celebrity with the auto-exposure turned on. Say it ain’t so!

The tape looks wonderful, but every time the guy leans toward the camera or leans back (which seems to be about every five seconds because the guy is pretty animated) the exposure changes. He’s wearing a light shirt and the background is pretty dark. So when he leans forward, the entire image darkens by about 1/4 stop. Now, that may not seem like much, but 1/4 stop in HDV is like someone fired up an extra 2K softlight in the room. Then the guy leans back and everything goes back to “normal.”

The thing is, there is no way they are ever going to re-shoot this footage, so the only thing to do is fix it. Enter Kirk. A lot of you may have all kinds of ideas about how to solve this problem, but here’s the way I did it:

First I marked each transition where the picture density changed. It turned out to be 83 times across 4 tapes. (Most of the footage was of the brighter variety.) Then I measured the length of each transition. They ranged from about 2-14 frames.

Then I duplicated the sequence.

In sequence number one, I dissolved to black (actually it was emptiness) at each “bright” transition, then dissolved back up at the next transition. So I was left with a whole sequence of nothing but the “normal” footage in the timeline that kept dipping to nothingness (alpha channel).

In sequence two, I did the exact opposite, ending up with all the bright footage, dipping down to nothing at the transitions

Then, I took the “normal only” sequence and played with the density until it matched the look of the bright one.

Next, in After Effects, I composited the two sequences on top of each other, making it look like one long sequence of “bright” footage. I flattened it by nesting it in a new composition. Then I played with the density and contrast until the “bright” footage looked as normal as I could get it.

Then I laid it all back to HDV tapes to have a clean archive master of the adjusted dailies.

How did it look? By my eye, I could see the changes at each transistion. But that could have been because I was looking for and anticipating each change. The client was more than pleased with the adjusted footage. And in the end, when it was all cut together in an EPK, it was downconverted to digibeta and looked amazing. Nobody would ever be able to tell. The biggest shock about the adjusted footage was the producer’s face when I handed him the bill. But it was certainly cheaper than the alternative of not having the footage.

Today’s lesson: NEVER EVER shoot with auto-exposure on unless you are doing run and gun paparazzi work … or home videos.

I came across this helpful image of video pixel dimensions. It”’’s kind of cool to see the resolutions in a simple contrasting image.

There are a million reasons to want to record the audio off of your Mac when it doesn’t want you to do so. For example, sometimes I want to burn a CD of a podcast to listen to in my car that only has a CD player (and certainly doesn’t have an iPod jack). Audio books are also nice to burn for the same reason. There are countless times when iTunes gives me the error message “can not burn because you have reached my burn limit for that song.” But it doesn’t take into account that my last burns were mistakenly made from the wrong playlist. Sometimes I want to burn live streams to a file or CD, but Mac doesn’t make it easy.

And for years, I was able to easily burn any audio my computer was “hearing” using a freeware called WireTap. But that was in OS9. My Wiretap doesn’t work right anymore. There are lots of other applications that allow you to capture the audio from your Mac, but many of them cost money or are ultra buggy.

So I say, go old school. That’s right. Use the oldest, most analog trick in the book. Simply use the wire that goes from your computer to your speakers and stick the RCA (red and white) plugs into some kind of recording device. I like to use my MiniDV deck, but even a VHS deck has great audio quality and will do the job.  But with the MiniDV deck, I can easily recapture the audio to my Mac via firewire.

Then re-import the audio into your Mac and you will get a file that has no copy protection and no metadata issues. It’s a clean, unrestricted audio file that you use to your “fair use” clause’s delight.

Yeah, it may take real time to create the real file, but the quality sounds great. Don’t poo poo analog audio too quickly. For more than a hundred years, analog audio was fantastic for recording the greatest stars of stage, and screen. In fact, the only recordings we have of such legendary talent as Caruso, were recorded in analog.  The freakin’ Beatles recorded every single song in analog!

And now for the audiophile test.

1) Play a CD in your computer

2) Take the audio out of your speaker wires and plug them into a MiniDV recorder.

3) Digitize the resulting MiniDV videotape back into your Mac via firewire.

4) Now, in a blind test of your friends, play the MiniDV file using Quicktime player and then… compare it to the live CD playing on the same computer.

Nobody will be able to tell you which is which.  And even if, they are aurally gifted with uber hearing powers, they will say that both sources sound perfectly acceptable for feeling the mood of the music and for transporting you from the worries of your day.

Analog, baby. It’s the forgotten tool of yore!

OLD, REALLY OLD VHS Tapes that don’t play

Here’s one that just happened to me. A client came with a batch of really oldVHS tapes from the early 80’s They were shot on one of those big honkin’ 1st generation VHS camcorders, before VHS C - the smaller cassettes, were invented. Remember those camcorders? Most people shot their wedding or kids birth, then the cameras died and that was it. Or in some cases, those cameras lasted long enough to shoot the kid’s first day of kindergarten. But after that, it was clear that Hi-8 was the way to go.

Those tapes of precious memories went on the shelf and came out to be played every couple of years whenever their was a large family reunion. Someone would either pay for editing or they would hook up two VCRs together and make clones for their grandma’s present. Cool.

As the years rolled by, and finally the decades, the tape would be played on fewer and fewer occasions because new tapes were being shot of new babies in the family. The original stars of the VHS days have now lost their luster… kind of like when the talkies ruined plenty of giant silent stars’ careers. William S. Hart may have been a cowboy celebrity, but when sound came, he was forced to get out of Dodge.

Not to get too morbid here, but as life would have it, Uncle Frank’s health is rapidly deteriorating. As a birthday present, someone wants to make a tape of his late wife. But all the shots of her are on those old VHS tapes.

So the tapes came to me to be transferred to a Quicktime movie for editing in Final Cut Pro. I handled each tape like a Faberge egg, carefully tensioning the reels before putting them in the deck, dusting off all the edges, peeling off the half raised labels where the ancient adhesive had failed about 5 years back.  Then I rewound the tapes by hand to insure the least amount of tape wear on the heads and spindles. I got everything patched to Final Cut Pro and started capturing long before starting the tape, because there often isn’t a second chance to capture the footage once the tape deteriorates with a horrific sound in the machine.

Most of the tapes worked great. Once captured, I never rewound them.

But on one particular tape, when I hit “play” the thing showed no image except various screwy raster. Crap. That was the main tape of Aunt Barbara.  I carefully stopped the tape and ejected it.

It has been my experience that every VCR has different tensions and tolerances, especially old once. So I knew suspected another deck might yield a better playback.

I tried the same careful tape playing routine in another VCR. The results were more encouraging. The picture looked fair, but it only popped on in 10-15 second chunks, with the strange raster in between. At least I knew there was still something on the tape and that the oxide hadn’t all disintegrated off the tape.

I tried a 3rd VCR and had variations of the same results. But I was still encouraged because different images were popping up.  But I was out of VCRs. My next door neighbor had long since given their up for DVD.

Since it was Saturday, I decided to hit a couple garage sales and see if I could find a VCR that would play the tape. I know it sounds goofy, but hey… I also found a wetsuit hat I needed.  After about 20 minutes, I came back with a stack of 5 VCRs that cost… get this…a total of 11 dollars!!

When I got back to my Final Cut Studio, I was pretty deflated when decks one, two, and three, were a bomb. But on number 4… Bingo!   It was beautiful. I almost wept when I saw a healthy and …ahem… sexy Aunt Barbara from back in the day.

The tape was a winner all the way through. I captured her and still had one VCR to spare. Now I can have my own garage sale and get my $2 back.

The moral of the story is that old, very old tapes are as fickle as the old machines that are supposed to play them. So before freaking out and grieving over the loss of a certain old tape, be sure to try a few playback decks first.

So if your tape won’t play, the best technical advice I could give you is to hit the flea market for a new, old VCR. But you might not want to tell the client.

Greetings,

We have a lot of people out there who are shooting a short format project (commercial, short film, wrap-arounds, interstitials, etc.) and decide to go to the set without a firm storyboard because they supposedly have it all mapped out in their head. Cool. But even if you think  you have it all mapped out, PLEASE use tape on the floor for the actors’ marks. I just came off of a short film project where everything on the set was perfect: amazing locations, superlative actors, very strong script, good production value all around. But the crew forgot one little thing… to mark the actors’ places on the floor with tape. Of course, that seems like a trivial issue, but it is kind of like saying the O-rings on the solid rocket booster of the space shuttle are just little rubber things that don’t need to be thoroughly tested or inspected. Does the Challenger ring any bells?

If it weren’t for the magic of post production and lots and lots of coffee, this short film would have been the film version of the Challenger accident.

Now, why is it so important to mark the actors’ spots with tape?

Let’s say you’re at the end of the shooting day and the script supervisor points out that some critical lines weren’t covered and  you have to go back to an earlier set up to pick up the lines again.

As smart and self-assured as everyone is on the set, there is always a discussion about where the actor was actually standing and exactly what was in the background. Also, and most importantly, which way was the actor looking in relation to the camera? In the case of the short film I was working on, they argued on the set for a while about where the actress was looking and then committed to shooting it… the wrong way!!  On all the crucial pick up shots, the actress was looking the wrong way in relation to the camera. In other words, it looked like she had “crossed the line” of screen direction and appeared to be speaking to the back of the other character’s head. Crap.  So after hours and hours of elaborate compositing and flopping backgrounds, i was able to make it look somewhat passable. This was a totally unnecessary problem.

So in the future here are a couple steps to take to avoid driving your post team absolutely insane:

1) Mark each actor’s spot with tape.

2) Write an identifiying number on the tape that has a corresponding number in a log book. Then write all the scene numbers and takes that were shot at that mark.

2) Mark the camera locations and do the same logging system.

or

3) Avoid the first two steps and shoot everything the camera sees with a still camera.

In short, save an editor. Use actor marks.

Alright. I was working on a job at Universal Studios and asked for After Effects to be installed on my iMac work station so I could do some animation moves. But the IT guy (name withheld) tried to tell me that the After Effects won’t run on an iMac and he tried to get our show to upgrade to a Mac Intel 8-core!

WHAT THE… !!!?? So I told him that I sit on my couch at home 2 nights a week with my macbook G4 laptop  (the white one) and run After Effects all evening long while my wife watches reruns of Nip/Tuck from Netflix. Then I render my movies at bedtime and in the morning, dump the resulting files to a flash drive and bring my work in to impress the director and producer. The stuff looks amazing. Well, the files look perfect. But maybe the director isn’t always over-the-moon with my ideas. Never-the-less, After Effects works great on my little G4 laptop.

But the Universal IT guy says it’s impossible and it could never work. So I go deeper into exactly what I do with After Effects and he finally gets it… I’m only using it in “draft” mode for previewing and working with the content. Then I render it out in full HD.  The IT guy’s eyes finally light up: “Ohhhh, I get it.”

See, he was thinking I wanted to actually watch HD real-time rendering on my little macbook.  But if I didn’t speak up, our show would have had a kick-butt new 8-core mac… and the price tag to go with it. Then I would look like a bad line item in our budget and they would undoubtedly hire someone “cheaper” next time.

Cut to another day. We wanted to upgrade our offline Avids from (believe it or not) OS9!  So in the process of figuring out the requirements, the Avid vendor dude said we need Nitrus DX for $14,000. I said, “thanks, buddy, but we are only going to offline and the $3000 Mojo SDI (the pro-sumer version of the Nitrus) would be more than sufficient.  But no matter what I told him about our workflow and how we only want to OFFLINE, he would never get it! He kept saying that we would eventually, maybe down the road, want to online and we should make the right purchase the first time. Okay, so the guy is  a salesman. And some people might fall for that. But the fact is, if we are only offlining, then pro-sumer is more than fine, even for a big movie studio like Universal. 

I guess my point is… gadgets are really cool and fun to play with, but when money is an issue, there is absolutely no point in overkill.  Sure, there are times when I need a screaming, blazing, rocket ship piece of hardware…  and that’s the time when I should pay for it. At that point, it’s just the cost of doing business.

Here’s an important tip about playing back very old videotapes, be they BetaSP, BetaMax, 3/4″ U-Matic, digibeta, BetaSX, DVCAM, etc.

For whatever reason, some people don’t rewind their master tapes after working with them. Perhaps they are worried about additional tape wear. Or maybe they just got distracted or… are just plain lazy. If you are worried about tape wear, then at least fast-forward the videotape to the very end so that it is spooled tightly on the take-up reel in side the cassette shell.

If a tape has slack and is set on a shelf for 5-10 years,  the loose part of the tape will harden and become brittle in the air. Then then next time it is played, the tape will snap in two upon insert into the video deck. People often come to us with this problem.

The leaders on the tape at the head and tail are made of a sturdier plastic that can stand up to air, gravity, and the distress of time. But the actual oxide-covered videotape is much more sensitive and can deteriorate rapidly in the wrong conditions.

So if you do come upon an old tape, NEVER pop it right into the machine. Instead, first hand-wind the tape all the way to the end, even if it takes you forever and you have to sit down to watch the big game with the cassette in your hand.  (Just don’t eat Doritos until you’re done because salt and grease from your hands isn’t the best for the tape either.)  Once the tape is rewound, pop it in the deck and DON’T HIT PLAY. Instead, shuttle the tape all the way to the end using fast-forward and then rewind it to the very top. Now eject the tape and reinsert it so it gets a fresh spooling in the system.

Now, you’re all set to play the tape for duplication, digitizing or plain old entertainment.

Following is an actual email thread from one of our contacts who is mac-based.

Dear Kirk at BetaSPtoDVDcom,

Does final cut pro or final cut studio output to flash format for the web?

I have a client who wants a promo video to do double duty--display on the
web AND to play on DVD at trade shows and such.

But since I have yet to get the software, I thought you may know--maybe even
point me to pro vs. studio--vice versa--or even another video editing
solution.

I'm simply not happy with the image quality of iMovie.  I'm guessing the
slicker programs will produce TV-quality images.

Also, is it possible to grab footage from DVD movies and use them in Final
Cut?  Y'know--grab some war footage from Saving Private Ryan, or something?
Or a full moon shot from a Werewolf movie?

S'all fer now.  Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Joe

___________

Hi Joe,
First of all, iMovie is TOTALLY broadcast quality. If you are not
getting great quality, then you either have low resolution source
footage, have an old version of iMovie, or have are using some incorrect
settings. In fact, iMovie even supports HD!!! So I wouldn't spend the
money for Final Cut solely based on the broadcast quality issue.

Final Cut can make .FLC files, but it is not great at it and the files
are usually bigger than they should be. For making Flash files, I sometimes use a
program called Sorensen Squeeze and it works pretty well.

As for ripping footage from a copy protected DVD, you are going to need
a DEMUXING program. Then you are going to need
a DVD ripping program like Cinamatize.
Cinematize is a great tool and we use it all the time. It can rip any DVD that is
not copy protected. If the DVD is copy protected, then you have to start
with the aforementioned demuxing application.

The other way is to do it analog style. Just patch cables from the dvd
player though a professional video deck or TBC (timebase corrector).
Those will strip off the copy protection in real time.

One word of caution though... we do not advocate using any copy-protected material unless you are legally allowed to do so!!

On the issue of Final Cut Studio vs. Final Cut Express, I would go Final
Cut Express.  The Final Cut Studio has tons of stuff you will never use
like heavy-duty motion graphics and pro sound editing. The learning curve
on those tools is huge.

Anyway,  hope I helped a little.

Kirk

I don’t know what it is about the universe, but somehow, we have been getting a lot of questions about Mini-DVDs these days. Perhaps the camcorders that made them have died and there is a desperation to save the material on these discs before their material is lost forever to the dreaded “incompatible format” message.

So what do you do with those little discs and how the hell do you get the material off of them safely?

Alright. It’s not as hard as it seems. There are two ways to do it…and one way to definitely NOT do it.

First of all, if you have a side-loading iMac, do not insert the mini-DVD into the CD slot or your computer (errr… and your life) will be seriously hosed. Instead, you’re going to need an external DVD drive that sits flat on the desk. Also, that drive must have the Mini-DVD imprint cut out in the tray to accommodate the small disc.

Then, stick the disc in the external drive. Once it loads, copy the entire disc to a folder on your computer. Eject the disc.

Next, open your burning software and burn all the contents of the folder to a new disc as a data dvd, not a playable DVD. This will include the VOB files. Burn the disc and you’re all done. Even the menus are copied and the disc will play perfectly on any DVD player if you use DVD-R media.

The second way to transfer the mini-disc to a standard DVD-R is to play the disc in a DVD player or camcorder that accommodates the format. Take the analog wires from the DVD player “Out” connectors and send it to a DVD-R recorder. Make sure to set your source DVD player as “play continuously through chapter stops,” or something that sounds like that. Then hit record on your DVD recorder and the video will copy. The only problem is, the menus won’t copy, but at least the video content will be preserved.

Finally, don’t buy into newfangled technology that is unproven in the marketplace for less than a year and a half. Seriously! People clamored for those adorable little mini DVDs the second they hit the shelves in stores without thinking of the fact that the format is inferior, holds insufficient amounts of video, overly compresses the footage, is next to impossible to playback on any other video or computer machine, and easily scratches and jams.

By the way, those discs are a freaking blast for teenagers to have “frisbee” fights with!

HDCAM SR leaves Pamela Anderson’s sex tape in the dust.

Just like the great format wars, Beta vs. VHS and Blu-Ray vs.  HD DVD, another video format has finally pushed its last pixel. Yes, the popular professional tape format D5 has finally been relegated to the digital wasteland of yore like its brethren, the Jazz Drive, Digital 8, and of course, its dark father, D2.

The giant studios like Universal and Disney have onlined many a show on the robust digital format of D5. But now, the majors have fallen in love with HDCAM SR, sexy young digital powerhouse of a tape format. This baby has 4K of the richest digital picture imaginable, and delivers full 4:4:4 at 440 Mbps. Yeah, this baby knows she’s hot.

Supporting 23.98/24/25/29.97/ 30PsF, 1080/50i/59.94/60i, and 720/59.94P, HDCAM SR was created to meet all common worldwide delivery requirements. It’s support the gamut of HD frame/line rates in both 4:4:4 and 4:2:2 formats using the highly efficient MPEG-4 Studio Profile compression scheme. The format supports 10 bit Log or linear, at 2.7:1 compression ratio in 4:2:2, and 4.2:1 compression ratio for 4:4:4. It can also run 12 channels of audio at 24-bit per sample resolution.  So yeah, this baby is about as sexy as they come.

But nobody said it’s cheap.  In fact, it’s painfully expensive and the studios are going to let years of  television disappear into the past without being archived on the HDCAM SR format because it is cost prohibitive unless the show was a hit.

So if you still have a couple  favorite shows on VHS tapes you recorded back in the day via your rabbit ears (also a relic of the past), you better transfer them to DVD yourself because that’s the best quality you will likely ever see again. But boy, that HDCAM SR is pretty damn sexy.

- Kirk

There are so many codecs for digital movies out there that is becomes really confusing when you are trying to make a small file to place on Youtube, an ftp site or to email to everyone in your address book.  By the way, a codec is the formula used to compress and decompress a digital movie.  For example, you can compress your video clip using H263, H264, Animation, Sorensen, Cinepak, Animated GIF, DV, DV  Stream, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, M4V, FLC, SWF, and on and on.

You could literally test and play with settings and parameters for days and you will eventually drive yourself crazy trying to get the perfect file that is small enough to email but vivid and snappy enough to get you the recognition and accolades you deserve.

Here’s a fool proof, easy way to do it…

Buy Apple’s Quicktime Pro application for  around $40 bucks. Then open your big, uncompressed monster of a movie file, then say “EXPORT” in Quicktime Pro and choose “FOR iPOD.”

That’s it. Your file will be tiny and look amazing. Even though you ended up with merely an .M4V file that you could have done that yourself, you would never be able to compete with the genius eggheads at Apple who have spent hundreds of hours in R&D to have the perfect codec settings!

This is also a great file to upload to YouTube. Their upload robot LOVES this file. However, if you want to make it absolutely perfect for YouTube, you should create your original big file at 400×300 pixels, because otherwise YouTube will scale your file and cause it to lose some resolution. I understand that 400×300 is a non-standard aspect ration in computer land, but that’s what YouTube is, so you might as well create your original file that size. Be sure to make the file with those dimensions PRIOR to crunching down with the “EXPORT TO iPOD.”

-Kirk

Macrovision is a piracy protection system that darkens the video image if it is copied from a standard DVD player.

First off, this is NOT a subversive message to coax anyone to break the law. However, there are plenty of times when it is vital to a project to use “copyrighted” material ripped from a commercially sold DVD. Some examples of when this is important are:

1)    You acted or were crew in a particular film and wish to present a clip of your scene in a montage of  your demo reel.

2)    You are making a “rip-o-matic.”  That’s when, as a filmmaker, you create a fictitious preview trailer using clips and footage from a variety of different movies, since your film is not shot yet. This is useful to use as presentation tool to potential investors. Of course you can never broadcast, sell, or otherwise exploit the original material. The rip-o-matic is also useful for creating a living storyboard from which you can plan shots for your own movie in the style of the original.

3)    You want to use footage in a montage at a wedding or other family occasion. For example, you may want to have famous love scenes (Casablanca, etc.) edited together with your own voices dubbed in for a spoof at your wedding reception.

4)    You may want to digitize the footage into your own edit system so you can practice graphics and editing.

There are probably hundreds of other non-commercial uses where you may need to rip a commercial DVD. Of course, I’m not a lawyer and do not advocate breaking any laws whatsoever, but if you really want that footage without the Macrovision (and if it is legal), all ya gotta do is run it through a time-base corrector. Don’t have one? Many professional video decks have built-in TBCs. Just play your DVD and run the signal through a pro deck or TBC and you’re off to the races.

-Kirk

Yeah, this is something that comes up once in a while with us. Producers or editors send us a hard drive to which we are to transfer their master videotapes as Quicktime movies.

But when we ship back the drive with the new Quicktimes (.MOV files), they can’t open it on their PC. Then the dialogue goes like this:

____

BETASP TO DVD.COM

But you told us you wanted to use the files on a mac for Final Cut Pro?

PRODUCER

Right, but we also need the files to work on a PC so our client can use them.

BETASP TO DVD.COM

Oh, in that case… You’re screwed sucka! Just kiddin’ ya. Let’s say you have a 25 GB file that you want to put on a hard drive for cross-platform viewing.  There is no easy and free way to do that unless you by software called MacDrive to install on your PC.

PRODUCER

But…. But… But…

BETASP TO DVD.COM

No buts. Let me break it down for you:

Hard drives need to be formatted as either Mac OS Extended, FAT32, or NTFS.

OS Extended holds unlimited file sizes on Mac, so that’s cool if you want to use the files on an Apple machine.

FAT32 works on both platforms perfectly. But guess what? FAT32 has a file size limit of 4 GBs!  Jeeze. That’s not even big enough to hold an hour of video. Ridiculous!! Further more, FAT32 has a maximum partition size of 32 GBs.

PRODUCER

What??!! Are you kidding me?!

BETASP TO DVD.COM

Yeah, that’s pretty damn lame, considering your iPod can hold more than that! 32 GBs is so 1994!

NTFS formatted discs, on the other hand, are capable of holding terabytes of info in one folder. But watch out, that format only works for PCs.

PRODUCER

So what am I supposed to do with big files that need to play on both PC and MAC?

BETASP TO DVD.COM

Okay. Here are the solutions to choose from:]

1)    Break your files into small junks of only 4 GBs or less and use the FAT32 format.

OR

2) Buy software such as MacDrive for your PC

OR

3) Transfer your large files onto one disc formatted with MAC OS Extended, and another disc formatted with NTFS.

OR

4) Scrap the whole idea and go surfing here.

- Kirk

Okay, so you spend three months onlining and color correcting your film. It looks stunning and projects like a Technicolor masterpiece.  Excited to show your friends and reach a wider audience, you decide to stick the project or its trailer on Youtube. And of course, it instantly looks like dog meat: blocky, faded, desaturated and worst of all, it actually skips frames and looks out of sync. Dang it! 

So you in the Youtube film requirements. But when you upload it again, it still looks barfy.

And it will always look barfy because Youtube RECOMPRESSES every single film using very loose setting for Flash video. It needs to make it look cruddy because they need small files that take up small bandwidth since so many people upload shots of their cat looking out the window.

Bottom line: If your content ROCKS, then it will be giant on Youtube. If your content is dependent on pristine color correction and the ideal image, then I’m afraid your film is going to look like dog meat and nothing more.

Shoot for content and story and the world is your oyster.

- kirk

Here’s something we encounter all the time, a major client with an insane deadline sends us a precious file of their motion picture to be laid off to BetaSP or Digibeta for use in a critical film festival screening where the audience includes top studio scouts and distributors.

At the screening, the lights dim, the projector fires up, and the film hits the silver screen with all its glory and charm. The distribution execs are cracking up at every joke and displaying the perfect body posture for the dramatic parts. The screening is going to be a hit… until… OH MY GOD! THERE’S SCRATCH DIALOGUE COMING FROM THE CHARACTERS’ MOUTHS! AND, WHERE DID THE MUSIC GO IN THAT SCENE? AAAAAK! A TEMP TITLE CARD THAT SAYS “SCENE MISSING”!

Poooof. There goes the distribution deal. There goes my life!! Anyone need a bartender out there?

But how could this have happened? The file was proofed and re-proofed and watched by several people. The film was perfect back in the online bay. And the file that was transferred for the screening was called “LOST IN PARADISE NEW FINAL VERSION REVISED”.

And therein lies the problem: The file name. The wrong file was used to make the transfer.

This is a dramatic illustration of the consequences of naming files without the use of a clear emnaming convention.

I don’t understand why so many actual professionals name there files things like:

My_Film_New_Master.mov
My_Film_New_New_Master.mov
My_Film_New_New_Final_Master.mov
My_Film_New_New_Final_Master_for_Sundance.mov
My_Film_New_New_Final_Master_for_Sundance2.mov
My_Film_New_New_Final_Master_for_Sundance2_Revised.mov
My_Film_New_New_Final_Master_for_Sundance2_Revised2.mov
My_Film_New_New_Final_Master_for_Sundance2_Corrected.mov
My_Film_New_New_Final_Master_for_Sundance2_Corrected_Final.mov

Now when there are a bunch of discs floating around the office with various versions of these “FINAL” masters, it is really easy to see how things could go terribly wrong at the dub house when the incorrect file shows up for transfer.

For that matter, with everyone working from servers and hard drives all over the world, it’s super easy to see that a mis-named file in a folder could be mistaken for the correct one. In fact, people accidentally delete critical files all the time on their very own computer for this exact same reason.

So the trick is, ALWAYS NAME EVERY SINGLE FILE WITH A VALID NAME. Here are some excellent ideas to include in your name:

1) The date the file was made. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL! If there is no other info in the file name, you must use a DATE. With the real date in the file name, it is almost impossible to grab the wrong one since an actual date is so easily cross-referenced by invoices, production schedules, and other records of processes. Also, make the date read in reverse European-style syntax: YEAR/MONTH/DAY/TIME (military). That way, the date will always sort in perfect order and it will be crystal clear which file is the latest one.

Example: 2008_12_31_1325

2) The project name or abbreviation. “Lost in Paradise” becomes ”LIP”.

3) The status of the project, such as “RuffCut_No_Music” or “ColorCorrected_Master”

So your wonderful new, final, final, really truly master corrected revised file will end up looking like this:

2008_12_31_1325_LIP_FOR_SLAMDANCE.mov

Ain’t it a a beautiful thing? And if that file name is too long for a given purpose, you can still get by with:

2008_12_31_LIP.mov

God, that’s clean. MMMMMmmm. It’s delicious to behold and to archive. Oh, and by the way, you will be able to actually keep your job if you name files like this.

Kirk

We transferred some footage recently from Hi-8. Actually, I’m guessing the “master” was actually a sub-master from another Hi-8… or worse… (please don’t say it) a VHS master! The footage was absolutely loaded with blurry video noise. It was really important footage for an educational project and the footage was in really bad shape.

Then the thought dawned on me that our culture is losing so many valuable tapes everyday due to video disintegration and poor storage.

Back in 1980’s, movie film ended it’s century long reign as the archiving/mastering format of choice. Producers and studio vice presidents decided that video was here to stay (not to mention 10 times cheaper) and hundreds of thousands of television programs were mastered on 1″ reel-to-reel tape. Often times, the original film negatives were literally tossed in the trash to make room on the vault shelves for the shiny new videotape masters. Giant post houses across Hollywood were churning out telecine film transfers to tape at a break-neck pace.  And the footage actually looked amazing. Plus it was so fun and easy to manipulate, adding color saturation and playing with contrast and compositing all with a couple keystrokes on a computer.

Cut to 25 years later. Every time we transfer one of those 1″ masters to a current format, it makes me almost want to cry because the image has become so soft and noisy.  People worked so hard to make the original program, and much of this footage is valuable to our cultural history and entertainment. But the beautiful 1″ tapes just didn’t hold up to the test of time. It’s like a kind of extinction, the extinction of a whole era of visual gems.

So maybe I wasn’t so surprised to see the hi-8 footage also looking so badly after all these years.  But it makes me wonder if we are on the right course with all this digital media and everything on hard drives. Consider an event like Hurricane Katrina. If your masters were there on a hard drive and flooded with water, that would be that. However, if it were backed up on film, it could be salvageable.

The loss of this part of our culture really strikes a sad chord with me.  One of my favorite documentaries of all time “One Foot”, a 1979 PBS program produced by San Francisco’s KQED is gone forever. Nobody can every see it. That’s that.

Moral of the story… it makes a lot of sense to have redundant masters in different formats and locations. In other words, store a set of important masters in your mom’s attic and another entirely different format in your own closet.

These days it’s easy to get your films shown to millions thanks to YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Atom Films, and all the other social networking sites out there. But if you want a distributor and want to actually make money from your films, that is an entirely different matter.  Now it’s time to take control of your project’s destiny and self-distribute. If you believe in your show and feel that it has a potential paying audience, you owe it to yourself and your beloved project to post it online as a downloadable quicktime movie or iPod-ready film.  Just compress it down using Quicktime Pro, Final Cut Pro, Compressor, or whatever.  Next build a website to market your film. Finally, post the file at e-junkie.com and let them handle the shopping cart and all the download security for a few bucks a month. It’s an amazing service. You keep your own website and just stick a button on there that says “Purchase Download Now” and e-Junkie handles the rest. You don’t need a major $75/month shopping cart to handle your digital downloads. E-Junkie works perfectly and is affordable enough for a student to use.  You can even put any other digital file on there for sale such as .mp3’s, PDFs, etc.  For that matter, just sell your Grandma’s recipes on there to finance your next movie. Kirk 

Yikes! We’re getting more and more of these crazy PAL dailies! It’s perfectly fine to shoot in PAL and convert to NTSC. No biggie. But PLEASE DON’T DO IT WITH YOUR DAILIES.

Just shoot in the format you intend on finishing in. Really! The cost and headaches of making a primo standards conversion are extremely  high, so doing it with ALL the footage of the dailies (sometimes a 30 to 1 ratio) is about as fun as hitting yourself with a sledge hammer.

The best choice is to finish your film in the original format, THEN do the standards conversion with the final cut material.  That way, every shot can look its best and real attention can be given to the problem areas. Producers will appreciate saving major budget money on only converting shots that will actually end up in the picture.

If you are stuck with doing the conversion from the foreign dailies, then please pay for the editor do a rough cut assemblage in the PAL format (it could be done on a laptop at low rez) in order to make a culled down batch of footage. So instead of a 30 to 1 ratio, maybe it’s trimmed down to about 5 to 1.  Otherwise, do you really want to be paying all this money and time in order to convert the standards for shots like false starts, slates, stupid flubs, camera problems, etc.?

It’s a village. The world is now a village and videotapes and files are flying all over the place via Fedex, CD, FTP, or good old fashioned sneaker-ware (files on a hard drive that are hand-carried to another user).  Years ago, the world adopted its video standards. The world went with PAL and the United States went with NTSC (Never The Same Color). Oh, and the French, had their own standard (SECAM) which was superior to both PAL and NTSC, but has since all but evaporated in the face of it’s heavy-weight brothers. And speaking of brothers, NTSC and PAL are kind of like Abel and Kane.  But unfortunately, since we are now a global village, the two brothers have to co-exist frequently in the land of video. Here’s the deal… NTSC runs at 29.97  frames per second.  PAL runs at 25 frames per second. Many novice editors think that they can merely change the frame  rate and that’s that. Well, it’s not!Let’s say some American dude is sent a commercial from England, Great Britain, the U.K. or whatever you call that place across the pond.  Okay, the American dude (that’s “bloke” to you British) take the quicktime movie and simply changes the frame rate to make the conversion. But guess what? The result is terrible-looking video that stutters and feels jerky. Oh, and it looks a little fuzzy too. The jerkiness is due to the fact that the frames were added blindly across the entire clip.  So anytime there is fast action or panning scenes, the clip seems to stutter. See, the frame rate is only one part of the equation. The placement of the frames requires an elaborate mathematical process to figure out EXACTLY which frames need to be duplicated.  Also,  the PAL image even has different dimensions  and color  space. All that stuff needs to be translated. Basically, you need to use hardware or software that is specifically designed to make a PAL to NTSC conversion. And guess what? You are going to pay for that.  The  hardware solutions are very pricey. And software, such as Final Cut Pro or Nattress are very powerful, but outrageously and unbelievably SLOW! So, at full quality, a render of a 1 hour clip could tie up your computer for many days. Really. It can really take days and days on an ordinary consumer computer built in 2007.  My vote would be to pay for the hardware. Basically, the more you pay, the better the translation between formats. This is a case where you really get what you pay for and vice versa.  Another idea is to buy a computer that is scant on features and full of computing power (forget the built-in DVD burner and fancy video card) and make yourself a little rendering station. Then set up the render and get on with your life on your main computer.Sorry, but these two brothers are just not going to get along on their own. 

Wow! Life is good when you’re in love. And I’m really in love… with my machines, that is. Two of my Sony videotape machines are so sexy! Not only are they ultra-easy use, but they leave me awe-struck by the huge number of formats they play!! For example, our Sony J30 SDI decks are wildly diverse. The one J30 can play all these formats:

DigiBeta - Large Cassettes
DigiBeta - Small CassettesBetaCam SP - Large Cassettes

BetaCam SP - Small Cassettes

BetaCam SX - Large Cassettes
BetaCam SX - Small Cassettes

And that’s just the formats. Then it has connectors for firewire, SDI, composite, and s-video. See what I mean about “sexy.”

Now it’s way past the “honeymoon” stage and I am still completely enamored by this machine. And when I plug the deck’s firewire into my Final Cut Pro, the stars align and it’s absolutely glorious! They always say the best relationships are the ones that are easy!

But actually, I’m in love with another deck at the same time. Even though I’m not in Salt Lake City, Hollywood accepts me being in love with two machines at once.

My Sony HVRM15U Deck is another piece of perfection. That one single deck handles all these formats:

HDV - small cassettes

HDV - Large cassettes

DVCAM NTSC - small cassettes

DVCAM NTSC - Large cassettes

DVCAM PAL - small cassettes

DVCAM PAL - Large cassettes

MiniDV NTSC

MiniDV PAL

16×9 Anamorphic

LetterBox

4×3

Now that’s a lot of versatility in a single machine. Seriously, it turns out that these two machines handle more that a dozen formats between the two of them. With all these formats going in and out of fashion, it’s so wonderful to be in a stable relationship that has the versatility to cope with a lot of difficult situations.

Moral of the story: True love means having a relationship with a deck that understands your needs.

kirk

We often run into people with Resolutionitis. It’s a disease that makes filmmakers think they must have the absolute highest resolution and quality no matter what. But they forget that content is king. If you ain’t got a compelling story, you ain’t got a film worthy of resolution.

Just the other day, a client came to me asking if we should transfer his footage to HDV or HDCAM. Ummm, sorry, but you’re just wasting your money. You could transfer it to VHS from the 1980’s and it would still get just as limp of an emotional response from the audience.

When filmmakers are new to the process or overly in love with their project, Resolutionitis is almost blinding every bit of common sense they every had. The filmmaker will charge up credit cards, call in all of Daddy’s favors at once, and even mortgage a house in order to get the clearest, sharpest picture available! Nevermind that the acting really stinks… because the writing is pedestrian. Nevermind that the story is a jumbled mess and then the production was shotty (due to not paying for a professional crew).

Films on YouTube can have tens of millions of views and launch entire careers, even though the video quality looks like 1969 Moon Landing footage. Speaking of which, the moon landing was one of the most memorable television moments in all of television. Even almost 40 years later, it’s still holds up as about the most emotionally charged footage a camera has every produced. It looked like pure crap: fuzzy, contrasty, poorly lighted (fire the moon as gaffer). But it was the content that kicked all our emotional butts. Since Neil Armstrong took a giant step for television, the media has been repleat with gigantically successful, but terrible-looking, mega-hits.

Remember the “Blair Witch Project?” That film was shot on crappy Hi-8 video and it still grossed tens of millions! Content is king. The TV show COPS has become television juggernaut, using a dash-mounted consumer camera with a plastic lens and no image stabilization. But damn, is it compelling. The examples go on and on. Content is king. Don’t put your house on the auction block just because you need to see your film in its perfect state of flawless resolution.

And if you’re really in love with your film, send the rough cut to a distributor and see if they are completely blown away by your movie. If not, I wouldn’t spend a giant wad on post production. If the distributor’s socks are knocked off, then THEY will gladly pay for more resolution than the filmmaker could every afford on their own. Case in point is the film El Mariachi, which supposedly cost $8,000 until the studio went bonkers for it and threw a million dollars into the sound production in post. Good movies are good movies regardless of the resolution.

Hey,

Do you have Quicktime movie clips on your website that were shot in 16×9? Guess what, you can save 1/3 of your bandwidth by excluding the (4×3) black letterbox from your Quicktime Movie. Just crop into your Quicktime Movie using After Effects, Quicktime Pro, or similar software and recompress your film without the lame black space that does nothing for your movie except choke the download speed and use up valuable hard drive space. Not only that, but a 16×9 movie looks so much more professional when it is at the right shape and doesn’t have the black bars junking up the composition. And if you think that looks cool, do the same thing with your 1.85 or Panavision Quicktime movies. Welcome to Hollywood, baby!

kirk

If you don’t know what the “A” frame is, then skip this post because it is way too esoteric.
However, if you’re an editor and trying desperately to digitize an HD tape or film transfer that has been down-converted to a digibeta, there are a couple ways to find the A-frame:

1) Digitize the footage with a particular starting timecode. Then check to see if the material looks wonky in the editing system (like an Avid). If it looks wonky, start your TC In Point one frame later and try again. Do this about 6 times and you will find the A frame.

2) Or, use the magic 9 trick. Start with any tc number you want as long as the non-drop frame TC ends in “09.” So like 01:00:12:09 would be a perfect place to start your digitizing. You will ALWAYS hit the A frame everytime. Why is that? I always stunk at math, but I just know it works like a charm.

This post may seem really lame or rudimentary, but I gotta tell ya… some people just don’t know how to trouble-shoot. Over my years in post production I’ve seen so many editors and other crafts people who can’t seem to trouble-shoot even the most basic problems.

When computer tech support facilities get a call from a consumer having a computer, the first question the tech wants to know is: “Is your computer plugged in?”

Some people are insulted by this elementary question, but 20 percent of the time, that is the ACTUAL problem!! Can you believe it?

But it’s a great illustration of how so many people don’t do even the most basic trouble-shooting.

So whether you are having computer problems, video equipment issues, or whatever, here are the big questions to ask in order to locate the trouble:

1) Has the unit ever worked before?
2) Does the unit function as a result of some other process?
3) Is that “other process” functioning?
4) If the unit is swapped out, does the replacement unit work?

Okay, now let’s take this into a practical situation.

The lamp in my living room doesn’t seem to work. Time to trouble-shoot it.

1) Has this lamp ever worked before? YES

2) Is there another lamp that is currently working and available to swap it out for a test? YES

3) When the lamp is swapped out, does the replacement work? NO

4) Ah ha! This tells us the outlet is dead, right? MAYBE

6) Are there any wall switches associate with this outlet? YES

7) When you flip the switch(s), does the replacement light work in the “bad” outlet? NO

Hmm. Must be the circuit breaker. Has the cicuit breaker been tripped? YES

9) After re-setting the circuit breaker, does the replacement light work? YES

10) Cool, now we’re getting somewhere! Now we swap back to the “bad” lamp. Does it work in that outlet now? NO

11) Okay, now we know either the lightbulb is dead or the lamp is broken. So when we switch the lightbulb over to the working lamp, does it light up? YES

12) Bingo! The original lamp must be broken. When we put the good lightbulb in the bad lamp, does it light up? YES

13) Yes?? What the heck is going on here? Both bulbs work in both lamps.

CONCLUSION… The original bulb wasn’t screwed in all the way. Good thing you didn’t throw that bulb or lamp in the trash! Good thing you didn’t call an electrician either!

kirk

We get a lot of calls from filmmakers wanting to submit their film to a tv station or film festival on BetaSP. This work-horse professional tape format is also known as Betacam SP. It’s the analogue little brother to DigiBeta.

Unfortunately, BetaSP has a maximum running time of 90 minutes. Maybe 92 if the tape has been over-spooled at the factory. But basically, most feature films won’t fit on a single BetaSP videocassette.

The solutions to the problem can be…

1) See if you can deliver on another, longer-running, more expensive tape format such as digibeta or DVCAM.

2) Split your show into two reels (old school though it may sound) and have the tv engineer or the festival projectionist tie them together. Sometimes this is done live, and so you will need to provide the exact timecode of the change-over. The projectionist will probably have two decks and slave the timecodes together for a seamless transistion. The tv station engineer will probably dump the movie to a hard drive and tie the two reels together electronically.

3) See if they’ll allow you to send a hard drive with a GIANT quicktime movie on it.

4) Make a shorter film. Trust me, I’m a professional editor and I can take a three hour movie and make it rock at 90 mins. So you can certainly cut down your 102 minute film to 90 mins. Just take the best, most killer stuff and leave the rest on the cutting room floor. You’d be amazed how little you miss that extra footage!

And by the way, not to just rant here, but I can’t stand when directors make a movie longer than 2 hours. C’mon people! It ain’t that precious. Audiences lose patience and have a limited attention span. Plus, the babysitter costs a hell of a lot more. Oh, and the parking, too. Why is it that cinematic films have always been shorter than 2 1/2 hours? “Wizard of Oz” is 101 minutes. “Citizen Kane” is 119 minutes. “Star Wars” is 121 minutes. “Jaws”, 124. So what changed everything in the 1990’s? For crying out loud, some people gotta pee.

Clever gadgets are fun to play with but not to record your important family events. In fact, just don’t use them. Seriously.

These are the type of cameras we’re talking about here:

Sony DCM-M1, Sony Handycam DCR-DVD108 DVD, Samsung SC-DC164, Canon DC-100, Canon DC-20, etc.

The problem with mini DVD camcorders:

1) The DVDs are very incompatible with many computer DVD trays.
2) A simple scratch when handling the disc and your memories are hosed forever. Look out, it’s a toddler with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!!
3) They usually only hold a miniscule 10 minutes of recording time at best quality! Ten minutes!!
4) Once finalized, the discs are done for. You can’t re-record over them like you can standard videotape.
5) The discs are expensive.
6) Special “ripping” software is usually required to edit the material on the discs.
7) There is substantial compression used on the image. If you try to project it for an audience on a big screen or do any kind of video compositing, the footage is going to have tons of really unpleasing artifacts.
They are really hard to clone for friends and relatives due to the compatibility issues.
9) People try to stick them in sideloading CD slots on computers it jams in there, resulting in repair fees and/or downtime.
10) Watch out for that toddler with the peanut butter sandwich… Oh my God!! he’s grabbing the disc off the table.

Yeah, this format wasn’t the greatest idea of gadgets. Please copy your material ASAP to a different format and dump that camcorder as fast as you can.

By the way, a good way to copy the disc to a better format is to use the factory-provided wire and connect it to a MiniDV camcorder or a standard DVD recorder.

kirk