Why not?

The Old Interlaced Man

2010-06-21T05:24:00.000-07:00

Something disturbed me horribly at work today. A fairly empty shop this morning aside from a two nice customers and one... idiot.

Ignorance I can tolerate, but when someone believes information they acquired from "the guys down the pub" so blindly that when reality stares them in the face they righteously trot away like a religious fanatic being shooed from a front garden, that is stupidity, which I cannot tolerate. I quote:

"Good morning Sir, how might I help you?"

"I'm looking for a really good camcorder, where is that camcorder shop on Byres road?"

"It's actually just down on Great Western road, all the way to the end of Byres and turn right. Would you be interested in any Panasonic camcorders? How about the SD700?"

"I don't want any of this 1080p rubbish. I want 1080i."

"Why's that Sir?"

"Allow me to enlighten you. The 'i' stands for interlaced, and the 'p' for progressive. You can make a progressive picture from an interlaced one but you can't get an interlaced picture from a progressive one."

He begins to open the door to leave

"But Sir! This camera shoots 50p!"

He's gone

If this were a film (rather than real life) I would then state "FML" before continuing in my mopping of the floor.

So yeah. The SD700 shoots 1920x1080 @ 50 progressive frames a second. Hence you could lose every second frame to get 1080p25 (standard progressive). Or use even lines of first frame, odd of second and interlace those fields to get 1080i50 (standard interlaced).

But he obviously knows best since he's old.

That pissed me off, glad to get it off my shoulders... or back even... chest? insert expression here

Greenscreen test videos

2010-04-02T16:07:00.000-07:00

I was trying to compare professional software with open source stuff. Since I'm a very basic programmer it's not that fair. But the pro software makes life so much easier. Takes longer to render though.

OpenCV attempt - here
This seg faults after 10 seconds... I don't know why. So it's shorter.

Pro Software (trail version) attempt - here
Comments would be appreciated - on the greenscreening that is. I tried to correct for the whitebalance shift 5 seconds in. Stupid handycam.

28K Epic Win

2010-02-14T15:58:00.000-08:00

Cheers to Omnimorphic for the graphic

This RED digital cinema dream camera nightmare format is something which could be the next IMAX fills-your-whole-peripheral-vision-and-make-you-violently-ill winathon format.

You've gotta love this company.

Now for some cool numbers:

A still image in 28k RGB format would be 261,352,000 pixels, or ~261 Mega-pixels.
So @12bits per channel that's 9,408,672,000 bits per frame, or ~1.2 Giga-bytes per frame.

Hence @24p the data rate would be 225,808,128,000 bits per second, or ~28.2 Gigabytes per second.
Which means that on a Tera-byte (1000 Giga-byte) hard drive you could fit just under 35 seconds of raw 28k footage. With the same space, you could store 9.3 hours of raw PAL.

Even if mpeg2 encoding was used to the same degree as is used for DVDs, you could only fit ~3 mins on to it. Instead of 247 hours of PAL.

This is the true Red Epic. This thing is going to be incredible.

I can't wait.

Epic Food

2010-01-25T15:17:00.000-08:00

Post gym fill-me-up just filled-me-up.

Ingredients:

Spicy smoked sausage (1)
Beans (1 can)
Chicken nuggets (12)
Teriyaki marinade (scoop)
Grated cheese (three)
love (a whole lotta)

Kung Fu Filming

2009-12-05T13:26:00.000-08:00

Here are some shots from the up and coming comedy kung fu short film "The Triad".

Hmm...

2009-11-02T13:32:00.000-08:00

Hallowe'en was good.

Work the next day was even better.

I made a few sales, one of which was handed to me on a platter. The gentleman walked in, said he wanted the 250GB HDD Bluray recorder, and so I got it, filled in the invoice and hey presto! Also sold a 37X10, the smallest plasma in Panasonic's current range I'll have you know, for a nifty price... although I didn't do the invoice there since it was a monthly pay fiasco I'd never dealt with before.

Aside from selling those things the "work" consisted of watching WallE and an F1 race that was on. All in all, fun times.

Kung Fu Fitness was good today, got some sparring in as well as clinching, which ripped my neck but was awesome fun. Sore hips though. SAD TIMES Apparently Aldrich isn't getting enough business (to do with his degree, not Kung Fu lessons) and so will be moving to London at the end of November, :C not cool. He is a legend and shall be missed greatly. Cheers Shifu Sawbwa.

Must remember to get him a present, for all the things he taught me. Could save my life one day.

Hmm...

Bonus day of filming - extra special win.

2009-10-20T10:27:00.000-07:00

This was my view for the majority of the day. Standing next to David McKenzie, the Director and just being around the higher up crew, like DOP and grips and gaffers and fpuller and not making an ass of myself in front of the locatioins manager like I did last week... and occasionally checking out the shot from the cinedisplay:

It was awesome! The way the kids were directed was hilarious (we were filming a classroom) and watching the camera tracking and the focus puller remotely focusing was so cool I almost passed out with happiness. You know when you get that rush of blood to your head and start to black out? But in a good way.

It was just Ally and I that were running, because it was all indoor shoots so no crowd control was necessary. Only down side was that the 1st AD. Barrie (McCulloch ?) was ill and so wasn't there, which is bad because he's awesome. However, on the up side Zoe the 3rd got to act as 1st and call the shots for the day, which I'm sure she enjoyed. OO and I got to use a covert radio for the first time. It was really awkward and really hard to keep in your ear without it falling out once in a while. It felt like I was an agent :D.

At one point I was being called on radio at the same time my mobile was ringing at the same time I was determining whether to stay on the minibus or not. It was terribly confusing and difficult, but became fairly easy as I realised that they were all trying to tell me the same thing and that had I just ignored radio I would have been fine. I finally got phone signal and Chris sorted me out.

All was well as teas, coffees and cakes were made abundantly available by Chris' handiwork, and I got to steal some credit by holding the box until wrap.

After being swooped over to film city (sigmaville) on the south side, Ally and I got paid and decided to walk back home. Or in my case, run to Kung Fu Fitness arriving 2 hours late, soon realising that my kit bag (which I packed in the morning, and was lovingly delivered to the GUST office by my one and only Laurpy) was void of any actual kit bar my trainers and hoody. FAIL. However, I still managed to learn some awesome new single handed blocks which would kung-fwin against any particularly boisterous hoodlums on the way home that night.

This morning I woke up (thankfully) and I've just remembered my dream. I actually dreamt about touching a Sony F900, and it wasn't inappropriate because someone else wanted to do so and I just joined in. Strange dream.

Good good times. Now for some programming. Good bye :D

You have to be joking...

2009-10-13T07:00:00.000-07:00

This is probably the coolest thing I have seen since discovering Red Digital Cinema. Click the title of this post to visit their web page. That's just insane. XD

Dream Theater

2009-10-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

We missed the first band... which is no doubt a good thing. However, the second band involved Jesus Christ simultaneously playing two keyboards placed either side of him whilst screaming into the microphone. It wasn't particularly nice to listen to, but it was hilarious.

Even more hilarious, if somewhat annoying, was the drunk ratty fellow headbanging like an idiot who occasionally ruined everyone's hour by choosing to stand near them before buggering off for another pint. Poor Innes got the worst of the lashings, as the hair spun round the guy's head like a mace. Mitch and I quickly learnt to adopt the steady elbow technique to allow the nutter to injure himself if he got too close. Unfortunately his girlfriend hadn't figured that one out yet and got a nasty clock on the head half way through the third band.

Anyway...

Thankfully we managed to get a people buffer in time for the real deal. Innes did point out that the drum kit wasn't big enough for it to be Mike's... and he was right. This huge curtain was dropped after the building classical music and they were revealed in their full awesomeness. It felt like the intro to "Kung Fu Panda" - I was blinded by pure awesomeness. I can't remember which song they started with. But it was from their new album. The one that goes "Den dundun den dun dun den dun dun duen dun." Stragengerai or something.

Petrucci played some PHace melters that's for sure.He sounded just like Santana during one with slow expressive notes. Beautiful playing. The guy's a chunk too, I've never noticed before. Jordan Rudess was equally mind blowing with his wizardry on the iphone continuum and wizard hat/realtime midi controlled animation. Mike's stuff was lazily perfect and rhythmic to the extent that I wanted to dance round a fire shouting out like a tribesman. Bass-man was ripping it to shreads. At one point he pulled this note that left the whole place vibrating at some resonance frequency, my chest nearly disintegrated. I loved it. But hang on...

LaBrei (singer) gets loads of hassle from fans (including me in a gust documentary a few years ago) about how he isn't as good as the rest of em. Okay so he's not the best singer in the world. However, on hearing live I am proud to say with full confidence that I think he is bloody amazing! His stage presence just grabs you by the throat. i never thought I'd say this but... He's a freakin genius. He sang incredibly well, and didn't even seem awkward during the instrumentals, he just snuck off until his next section came in. How he can follow the timing I don't know. He is incredibly rock and incredibly metal, and it totally completes the band.

Dream Theater are, without a single doubt, the best progrock band there will ever be. I may not ever see a better set of musicians in my life.

If you have never listened to Dream Theater before, please please do so. Right now, they're on Spotify (free). Listen long enough to look past the metal image, the often silly lyrics, and their age (their average age is about 45 now but who cares!?) and you will see them for what they really are. A group of talented musicians that have come together to form the greatest band of all time.

You have been learned.

Last Days on LW

2009-10-12T02:26:00.000-07:00

That was an awesome day. Last Sunday we shot on Blythswood st. and in Kelvingrove Park and in "Stereo" on Renfield Lane.

I have finally become confident in what I'm doing there. Reasoning with pedestrians and asking them how I can help them get past, instead of bluntly telling them they can't go there. It was far less stressful and made me all warm and fuzzy inside. Another thing that made me warm inside was the coffee Chris got me. Gotta love that man. Apparently there was a coffee getting surplus and I ended up consuming David McKenzie's redundant coffee. Win.

I did get to see an SI2K, and I nearly touched it - but that would have been weird, so I didn't. I even managed to help carry stuff and talk to several members of the camera department without embarrassing myself.

Lets see if I can remember the names (list for future reference here):

Murray

Ally

Loraine

Rory

Michelle

another Michelle

Catrina

Christie

Andy

Matt (how could I forget)

Morven

Ross

Virginia

Zoe

(Suzi on first day)

Catherine

Barrie

David McKenzie

Giles

Danny/ Derreck

Wow... okay I have to go to uni now.

Dream Theater were FREAKING AWESOME.

Something SCHWEET This Way Comes...

2009-10-10T11:13:00.000-07:00

WOOOEEEW.

Tomorrow I might get my first ever look at a UHD (larger than 1080) camera. Win! Above is Silicon Imaging's SI 2K and it appears to be fairly cool. It's prog scan and even has an optical viewfinder. It also fits standard 35mm film lenses apparently, which is always a good thing.

Just to clarify:

It probably isn't better than a Red One.

However, It does shoot 2K (half Red) which is what most digital screens in cinemas project anyway as far as I'm aware. But the feature I've been doing running for has just hired one in for Sunday.. which suggests it's better than the F900 Cinealta they were using before (I think) ...at something. Perhaps better in low light conditions, although Sony have always been awesome at that. Maybe they just need it so they can crop it in post because there's gunna be like 60 extras who could potentially fail the shot for them.

So yeah - I'll try get a photo to blog up here of the actual camera.

Hmm... intriguing.

Jonathan's Laptop = Fxed

2009-09-25T15:14:00.000-07:00

Incredible. Macs aren't supposed to break. But apparently Mooseknuckle desktop destroys all.

After horribly ending it's life in Shetland - Jonathan's laptop has been revived. For all you other linux lovers out there, this is how I solved the problem:

HDD corrupt to some extent. Wont allow Read Write access even when sudo'd to. eventually I tried "sudo mount -t hfsplus -o remount,rw /dev/sda2 /media/Jfro" to remount in r/w but no cigar. Tried chmoding and chowning specific files and folders on the disk (you could see them - just not touch em) and nothing worked.

Eventually I spotted something simple on the ubuntu help forum: "sudo nautilus".

Problem solved - was able to use the GUI file manager to just copy and paste the files to back em up.

So now it's time to nuke the bastard with a reinstall. Win.

I love Chris Hall

2009-09-25T13:53:00.000-07:00

I love Chris Hall.

It's been such a busy week I haven't had time to post till now. But last Sunday I got my first ever feature film job!

-- WIN --

I got to meet so many awesome people. Michelle, who I met at an ESP office opening party, just happened to be a runner too so there was someone I knew and could talk to. Having said that, I made friends with all the other runners fairly quickly, which was great. Highlight of the day - I got to see and be near (unfortunately not touch :C - I did ask ) ...A real Sony CineAlta HDCAM (probably an F900) and I got to carry a box for the camera operator. XD YEYAH! At one point the crew were struggling to balance the big bastard camera on the cart mobilator so I awkwardly approached and asked if I could help...

cam assistant lady
"...what?"

me
"er... Can I help at all?"

cam assistant lady
"...Oh. No."

That sucked. I felt like I had offended her :( I'm sure she didn't care at all - but it was really important to me at the time to try get in with the crew and make friends and stuff so I was gunna apologise. But then I remembered all those scenes from "Extras" and thought I'd be best just shuffling away quietly to avoid any further embarrassment. FAIL

Oh well, I met the (carpenter?) set designer guy... He was wearing a "Stone of Destiny" jacket and was really nice. Pointed the DOP and Cam op and focus puller out to me.

Also got to meet E.G.'s driver who was a nice older gent, who reckoned I had a chance of being asked back (I was super polite to him you see) which was probably what caused my extended confidence in asking to help the camera crew.

The other coolest thing about the day was I got to be an extra in one of the scenes! Just last minute stuff the 1st AD picked me and another runner out (Who was strangely about 10 years older than me... but she looked really young. Am I getting old? It feels weird with all the freshers walking about uni.) Anyway... so yeah - I'm gunna be in a montage in the movie. HOW COOL is that!?

The reason I love Chris is because he is a Production Runner (I hope that's the right title?) on the film, and he emailed round and essentially got me the job. Legend.

I can't believe they paid me. I had the day of my life and they paid me to be there. Rediculous! Anyway, I hope there's more where that came from. I suppose until that day, I didn't really know what the film industry in the real world is like. I think now I can say I do know, at least location shooting, and it is exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life. I did a whole bunch of surprisingly difficult people traffic control, some odd jobs carrying boxes and traffic cones, radioed about... doesn't sound special at all: but I bloody loved it.

Driving with long exposure

2009-09-19T10:53:00.000-07:00

The psychadelic driving of Jonathan.

Shetland

2009-09-19T10:50:00.000-07:00

Shetland

2009-09-19T10:47:00.000-07:00

Visiting Jonathan in Shetland

2009-09-19T10:45:00.000-07:00

Shetland is Beautiful. I like it. It's designed for drunk people, and it came from a volcano at the equator hundreds of millions of years ago. Awesome.

Real D 144fps 3D movie problem

2009-08-29T16:43:00.000-07:00

I have come across something that I do not like about 3D movies.

The projectionists.

It has to be them, or at least one of them at Glasgow Renfrew St's Cineworld. It happens once every three films I see there. It's particularly clear during credits or when the scene involves white on black high contrast shots. There is a ghost of the image - displaced about a quarter of the screen down and right. Like this:

At first I figured it was a reflection from the glass separating the projector from the theatre. But it can't be that if the problem only occurs for some films, since they all use the same hardware as far as I'm aware. If you know, then I'd really appreciate it if you commented on this post to let me know, or at least let the guys at the Glasgow Cineworld know they fail and perhaps teach them how not to fail.

Obviously the credits aren't the main concern here. Any time I have noticed a problem with left/right ghosting (where the left image is ghosted with part of the right image) I have also noticed this aliased image offset. Perhaps they are linked by some common problem. I cannot find it under any google search. The left/right ghosting totally ruins the 3d effect for me.

It makes me sad.

- Darren

Screen Test

2009-07-31T10:01:00.000-07:00

A funny thing popped up today about an old short film "Dreams by the Clyde" that we shot about 2 years ago now. We entered it into the 2007 Screen Test Student Film Festival.

The funny thing is, I didn't even know, until today, that it was screened there in Bristol that year. Sadly it didn't win anything, but it was selected to be shown there out of hundreds of films which must've been even worse.

Super kool.

Nikon D5000 test shoot

2009-07-29T06:25:00.000-07:00

Innes and I are about to do some revision for resit exams. He's also taking his new D5000 over to do some test shoots. So I'm thinking of writing a short story to quickly shoot and put up on my Freelance Media website.

The main testing points are to see if the audio can be synced easily with 48kHz PCM from my miniDV camera. This would be freaking epic, as we'd have to shoot old school with a clapper board. That'd be great fun. It's also 720p HD - which means some lovely progressive video and at a higer res than my miniDV can put out.

In conclusion - full total win.