Multimedia Musings

I own the multimedia playing device called the WDTV from Western Digital. I love this thing. I first bought it for the Cowtown Film Series (in 2009) because I hate playing things off an optical disc at a screening in the movie theater. DVD’s and even Blu Rays have inherent flaws in that the videos are greatly compressed to fit on a disc. So you lose color, sharpness, and basic picture information before you blow it up on a giant movie screen. This seemed counter intuitive. So I found this little box that plays the video in full 1080P HD glory off of a hard drive and if needs be, even in surround sound.

Many people are musing about the future of optical discs because standard definition DVD is definitely on the natural decline. Sales in 2010 are down over 20% from 2008 at the same time. Blu Ray has not taken off as it was intended, mostly because of the economy being stressed, which is not a great time to launch a new format, especially under Sony’s guidance which means way more expensive without dropping in price. Another factor is that the saturation of HD TV’s into the home is merely catching up to the Blu Ray market, and even then the importance of picture quality is not weighing well against the idea of re-buying DVD collections.



The other factor oft-theorized as to why Blu Ray has not expanded is digital downloads and file-based distribution of movies. Netflix’s ever expanding Video On Demand service indicates that the market is going for this hard. Between 6PM and 8PM nightly, internet traffic heavily takes a beating from Netflix On Demand, which now includes HD content. Does their “HD” on demand look anywhere near as good as a Blu Ray? Hell No, but as has always been the case, convenience wins out often over quality.

Back to the media devices… The WDTV models now have YouTube and Netflix compatibility, meaning even without a Blu Ray player, you can access the Internet and watch movies and videos like this on your TV via a media player box. There is the APPLE TV for mac lovers and various other similar devices from so many manufacturers.




One of the things people claim prevent the demise of DVD and BLU RAY are the EXTRAS, bonus features, and behind the scenes clips. On this point, I agreed… until this past week. As my recent blog entry told, I loved this film called MONSTER. On the YouTubes, I found a bunch of videos in 720 and 1080 HD definition that could be downloaded via Mozilla Firefox to the MP4 file format, which my HDTV can play flawlessly. I can see it in full high definition on my TV, which means in an entirely file based world; I can have a movie and all the extras.

My prediction for the future is that everything will go file based because at the rapidity of change in file formats, image sizes, and standards, being more computer based will pave the way to handle those better than physical discs that are locked into one size and format. As for “extras”, those will be given away freely online with sites like YouTube or any site where they can be obtained for anyone who does want them, and keep the files on their own hard drive or ported to media players for TV. These bonus features also serve as perpetual EPK’s (Electronic Press Kits), promoting the movie as much as “added value”.

I find I’m moving my WDTV around from my bedroom to my screening room (the man-cave basement) to work. I find that looking at HD content on the computer to the 42” TV versus playing it to the same 42” with the WDTV I can say with a large margin the picture quality of video is substantially better from the media player box. The added surround sound output means that this is the best way to view file based videos.

This is the future. I like discs and I love the “collection” feel, but in 20 years no one will know what a disc is, much like high school kids may not know what a “video tape” is now.

Post Production Hold Up

This blog will be very technical and very few people will enjoy the minutiae of computer and video editing detail, so I apologize in advance for boring the pants off of several readers.

I just finished a shoot for my next feature and we shot on the RED ONE camera, a video camera that shoots incredibly film like images. It has a 35mm sensor, so the depth of field and lenses are exactly the same are shooting on 35mm film. Combine that with the frames being 4096x2160 at 24 frames per second, and we have a diverse camera.



Greg Sabo owns a RED camera now and wanted to have some more freedom than the TV spots are affording him, and I traded some website work for the chance to use it on my project. He shot some test footage over a month ago so I could test the most basic workflow for how I would edit footage from the camera.

I tested this pipeline on my basic PC at home. Luckily Adobe had a link to a 47 minute instructional video on how to use CS4 and the RED because it showed several cool tricks. The coolest of these was how to turn the source and timeline monitor resolutions down to ½, ¼, or 1/8 resolution so that editing was manageable, even on this computer.



I am on a PC and I use Adobe Premiere Pro and the Creative Suite (CS) packages. I’m on CS3, but in order to edit RED, I needed to upgrade to CS4 and Premiere Pro CS4. I hadn’t wanted to spend the $$$ on that yet, but it was a necessity. Now the RED plug in for Premiere Pro CS4 requires a 4.1 upgrade, and they are on version 1.7 of the RED plug in.

At work, I have a much faster, better computer with the Matrox RTx2 video editing card in it. This allows me to monitor my timelines, including 1280x720 HD and 1920x1080 HD, on a TV or an HD monitor. We just got a 32” HDTV here at work, but it’s a 720P, so I can’t view 1920x1080 timelines on it.

I’ve made the decision to downres the 4K footage to both 1920x1080 HD and 1280x720 HD. I will edit with the 720P files so I can see them on the 32” monitor. I learned a lesson on my earlier short RELATIONSHIP CARD that seeing things on a high resolution monitor makes a significant difference if people will see it that way. Being able to see and correct mistakes, or details that you want to affect, the bigger the better, and that means resolution too.



I do want to have a full 1080P version of this project too. So I have 2 folders, one for the 720P Matrox AVI files and another for the 1080P. All of the files names exactly match the R3D files in the other folder. This will allow me to later conform the 4K files to match the HD edit I do. I can create the EDL (Edit Decision List) and just change the *.avi to *.R3d and I’ll have my exact edit done in the original RED raw files.

As we’ve started to export the HD files, I discovered that it takes a really long time. About 45 minutes per 1 minute of RED. That means the first 3rd of my raw footage will take approximately 36 hours to render. I setup a sequence as a 4K RED sequence, then export to the Matrox HD files.

The hypothesis I’m working with is that the RED color correction I’m using is adding to this render time. Right now, I’m still waiting on this first 3rd, all the exterior shots with no sync sound, to finish rendering before using any of the interior footage and sound and exporting those already synched.



Because the images from the RED camera are “raw”, as in it’s the raw data straight off the chip; you have a much more broad range of control over the image (like a film negative in the telecine). This also means you pretty much HAVE to affect the images a little to get a balanced look. For the exteriors, shot at high noon on a sunny August day, I had to bring the levels down since they appeared blown out, but really weren’t. I changed it from the RED COLOR SPACE/CONTRAST to the REC.709 and that seemed to match what we were seeing on the monitor during the shoot pretty close by itself.

Adobe Premiere has a plug in with the RED software that acts the same as the REDCINE software that is separate. This acts as a filter within Premiere. Once you affect the colors using this, it treats the file everywhere in Premiere as if it is natively that color/contrast without affecting the source file or creating a temporary file or needing rendering.



Something's funky in that I have a message that clearly states "No Matrox Acceleration", which means the extra GPU chip on the Matrox card is NOT being used at all, when it should/could.

As soon as this next file finishes rendering, I'm going to upgrade the drivers for my video card and the Matrox (with a slight 4.0.1 to 4.1 version upgrade) that may solve a lot of the render time issues.

I solved the long time render issues. If I make the timeline a Matrox 720 or 1080, then scale the footage down in Premiere BEFORE the render, instead of IN the render, it went from a 45 minute render down to 3.75 minutes. And it will still BATCH process. The only difference is I have to make 2 separate timelines, one for 1080 and one for 720P, which is only a few seconds longer to cut & paste with 2 clicks of Ye Olde Mouse.

All this techie talk means is that I can edit as early as Saturday instead of next Wednesday...The Rossman is happy.