Gear:
Canon T2i – with Light Illusions Gamma Curves corrector picture profile
Zeiss 50mm
Adobe Premiere Pro
Cineform First Light
Free Music Archive

• Si-2K/Cineform workflow was really easy. The network connection freaked a couple times to the Cinedeck so the clip didn’t close out properly, but SI has a utility to fix that so no issues
• You need a really good lens for the SI. Nobody’d really tried what I was doing so there was no information on the EF mount for it. I took a risk and it didn’t work out so in a pinch I used primarily the Sigma 10-20…it was all I could get my hands on. It wasn’t good…obviously.
• The Ziess 50mm is really soft. I ran it F/1.8 but it didn’t sharpen up until around 2.2 or so. Back focus issue? I don’t know anything about that. The images weren’t as sharp as I wanted.
• The SI/Cinedeck Extreme color was dead on accurate to reality.
• The T2i color, even with the profile set way down was harsh, forced and well, colored improperly.
• 10 bit is the way to go. I don’t care how awesome your 8 bit camera is; 8 bit sucks balls in post. Not to mention you have banding and absolutely no gradients (comparatively speaking). Budget might keep you at 8 bit though and that’s understandable.
• I’m really bummed I don’t own the SI2K/Cinedeck combo. Financially it doesn’t make sense right now although I’d use it for absolutely everything.

…and speaking of color. Here’s a selection of before/afters on the first Cairo short:

This was shot over a two day period in June with the Si-2K Mini tethered to a Cinedeck Extreme and a Canon T2i. The following lenses were used: Canon 17-55mm f/2.8; Zeiss 50mm f/1.4; Canon 70-200mm f/2.8; Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5.

Post was done in three days. Edited in Premiere Pro CS5, visual post in After Effects CS5 using Color Finesse, Optical Flares, and Twitch. The final Cineform master was given a looks pass in First Light before distribution copies were made. Audio post in Nuendo 4. Music from the Free Music Archive.

Making it Happen

When I was NAB, I’d made it a point to put relationships over exhibits I wanted to see or workshops I wanted to attend. That’s hard to do with all that gear candy. But I maintained that commitment and came away with a few simple thoughts: there are people I met or knew a little bit online that I would call and trust with my budget, vision and project. There are others that are a level deeper and will remain friends for life. Then there is the sector of people who I will never work with; I was disregarded, blown off, and otherwise ignored.

The best part of it? Those that are cool, I WANT to work with them. And even if their work isn’t as great as the other guy’s work, because they’re cool, invested in people more than product, and fun to be around; I’ll hire ‘em.

Take away? You never know what kind of vibe your sending. That vibe speaks way louder than the level or amount of work you have.

Getting it Watched

I believe relationships are at the core of the non-fiction stuff I do. If an audience can connect not just with the story, but with the character in the story then it’s accomplished. If they can walk away feeling connected to the character they’ll feel connected to the story. More often than not, the what IS the who. The story, the location, the cuts, the color, the sound; all just tools to help you reveal who the character is and keep the pacing going. But the relationship between the audience and your subject is where the connection with the content really happens.

Take Away: Connection is people to people- that’s always gonna sell more than pretty shots.

I’m VERY excited to say that it works! I had a 5 minute nested project that I edited in its native HDV .M2T form. I exported the project to an FCP XML then using the instructions on Cineform’s site, imported the XML into ReMaster.

What does this mean?

The currently accepted professional format for VFX (so I’ve read) is .DPX. This is also the preferred format for Davinci’s upcoming Resolve (so they told me at NAB). This now means you can edit in FCP, Avid, and Premiere and conform your files directly from your timeline to Cineform .DPX files for use in your VFX application or Resolve. A side benefit is being able to utilize First Light to adjust any bad white balances or lighting issues and during the process apply any looks as desired.

It also means you have Cineform’s damn good telecine and pulldown removal for your multi-format/frame rate files. Those nasty little projects you take on that make you pull your hair out. I’ve talked with many editors that have said, “yeah, I can edit this 60 stuff in my 24 timeline. But now what?” Well, this is your answer.

It also means you’ll save transcoding time of ALL clips prior to onlining by allowing only the files used only in the edit to be conformed and also saves time by being able to edit natively in your NLE (take note Premiere DSLR users).

Avid users I suspect will skip the pre-Resolve conform step as Resolve will more than likely take the .MXF files straight from Avid. But there are a whole crop or Premiere and FCP users that can really benefit from this. The caveat is that you need at least Neo4K for .DPX output. But I can do it for you as well And even grade it if you want.

Now, I’m surmising this will work based on how Cineform files already interact with every application and how Resolve specs out. Once I get a copy, I’ll test forthwith.

Part of that process was project management and organization. Boring I know, which is why I want something that’s painless to use, does the job well and efficiently and is actually enjoyable to look at and move around in. It’s a necessary part of the production job if, like me you do everything or most of everything and don’t simply edit or motion or something. So I’m going lay out quickly two tools and how I use them. Both currently are free.

Adobe Workflow

The first of which is Adobe Workflow- available in Adobe Labs. It runs on Adobe Air. It’s attractive, straight forward and fun to use. I use it as my central hub for my projects. It’s not the most detailed or all-encompassing program, but it functions really well for me.

Here’s why you should take a look at it:

You can break down a given project into steps: storyboarding/pre-vis, filming, editing, graphics etc. You can break it down as fine as you want and set how many hours or days you think each step will take- good for estimating bids keeping a tally on your time. You can’t track progress I process like full-blown management tool, but hey, this is free- and for each step in the workflow, you can add notes, additional documents, resources and links.

The links are my favorite part really- and why it’s the “hub” of my work. You can add, local and internet links. So as I create new documents for each project like work files, schedules, reports, release forms, requests, whatever; I add a link to the project. You’ll notice I added a separate block for Project Links- these are my global project files. I can still add separate project files if needed at different points in my workflow.

This acts as my one-stop when finding all my files. I’m not like “where did I put that?” because I added it at the time of creation. I’ll typically have a global project folder on my HDD for each project but between master Premiere, AE project files or spreadsheets, scripts etc, it keeps me from having to click a billion different folders to find all my stuff.

Adobe Story

I’ve been using Adobe Story off and on for the last year unlike Workflow which I’ve used solid for the last year and half. It’s a script-writing program through and through. The new version packaged with CS Live adds a bit more than the previous version I’ve been using. This is also my one complaint- although it comes with a desktop app, it’s built around internet connectivity. I’ve been working on it all day in the car though so that’s not too much of a bother.

Here’s why you should look at it:

The obvious is script options. You can see in the above photo. You have both the 2-column A/V/Doc script and the film script. They give you a few other categories as well, like character, synopsis, general. I like these because when I’m writing, I’ll typically have a scratch doc somewhere that’s my free-flow thoughts, worked-out ideas, or whatever, that’ll work into a form an structure. This let’s me do that but in a more structured way.

It’s again, a one-stop interface for my scripts and film projects. I’m currently working on 4 different projects, 2 of which have 3 shorts for each. I can flit back and forth as I need to based on thought process and don’t have to open up a ton of different windows again to find my stuff.

Finally, it’s collaborative (which is how they’re pitching the product) via online project sharing and you can export to text, word, .pdf, and Final Draft. All good things. Oh, and again, it’s free for at least the first year. Nothing else in the CS Live package, I’m interested in right now so we’ll see what happens when they try and bill be for it I suspect, I’ll have enough projects invested in it that I’ll keep it…unless it’s like thousands of dollars a year or something.

So two free tools that make my life a little bit easier. Check ‘em out if you feel curious and try them yourself. My two wishes: I could open the applications from the resource panel in Workflow and both applications interfaced stronger with the rest of the Adobe suite.

I decided to use CS5’s multicam function on it. I wasn’t impressed with the performance (or lack thereof) on CS4. I’m very pleased to say that CS5 is outperforming my expectations! It’s solid, fast and does an auto-resolution during playback to make sure things stay real-time. And it’s fast, wicked fast. I’m doing a real-time playback grabbing shots then going through once more to tweak each edit with my roller.

Also what I noticed is that the cameras weren’t white balanced on the first day. You can see below the difference in the shots between days 1 and 2. Camera 3 was by far the worst. Although after the day 2 adjustment it appears cameras 1 and 2 differ from day 1 as well. It looks like I’ll be settling on a look on day two (and 3) then moving that into day 1. Going to be challenging but I already have 3 different ways I can fix it.  More on that later when I get to it.

Day 1 Original Take

Day 2 Retake

Mike McCarthy on Premiere CS5

Shane Ross on Media Composer 5

The Cinedeck was given to me by Cinedeck for use and evaluation on this latest production with nothing expected but they wanted me to say if I liked it.

The SI-2K was provided as well at no charge by Cinedeck via HD Camera Rentals in LA- there were no expectations there.

Nobody’s paying me to blog, tweet, or say anything. I’m not on anyone’s salary. I’m just a normal end-user. I have lots of great relationships I hope to continue to maintain, but that doesn’t dictate or sway what I talk about or say about a given product or technique on my various streams of communication.

And for what it’s worth, I like this new legislation. I worked in radio for over ten years and well, “payola.” I’d hate to see that happen in the world of social media.

Let’s talk workflow for a second on using this Cindeck. The entire system runs on Windows and the Cineform .MOV files record to NTFS formatted SSD drives. I work on a Mac. So here’s what I do:

Drag files from SSD to CalDigit VR Mini via e-SATA.
Plug the CalDigit into my Mac and start editing.

Yes, that easy. When I get home, I’ll transfer the files to a Mac-writable drive, but for now that’s it. I run Parallels on my machine as well so when I offload the SDHC cards from the T2i, I just pull them from my OS finder over to the appropriate folder open in Windows Explorer.

Parallels will only boot from USB, so I use FW to power the drive, and USB to boot the drive. When I’m done in Windows, I unplug the USB and the drive loads in OSX.

Now this next point is probably for all of us using this combo like, ah, me and Danny Boyle. The overheating issue I had was due to the fan dropping RPMs when I hit record (and hot stinkin’ Cairo temps mid day in the sun). The fan is controlled by the SI software and will override any existing fan control software (like Speed Fan)- at least this is what I discovered. The remedy:

The SI software includes a prefs.xml file. In there about 1/3 of the way down, you’ll find a FanSpeed preference with a value set to either 0, 1, or 2.

0 = high RPM all the time
1= high RPM when not recording, low RPM when recording
2= low RPM all the time

So simply reset the value to what you desire and save the file. Incidentally, this little snafu helped the guys at Cinedeck discover a problem with one of the inputs on the power board (there are 2 which is how I got mine working- I swapped inputs) so they’re remedying that in all models that go out from this point forward. (This is a good time to plug issue/error reporting even if you’re not on any Betas and if you are, then you should be smacked if you’re not reporting regularly).

The second problem I had was the SI software not recognizing the 2K Mini sensor when I received it. If, for some random reason, you happen to receive this set up in a way other than HD Camera Rentals and it doesn’t connect up right away, it’s your NIC settings. To fix this you’ll want to access the Binaries folder in the main SI software folder. Inside you’ll see find the EBDriverTool.exe file (or something like that). Run that and change the settings to GigE on the appropriate port. This information is also on the bottom of page 12 of the installation manual (section 2.4.2).

One final tip to controlling temps: if you carry yours in a bag or pack while using it, like I’ve been doing and it’s wicked warm out, throw in some frozen water bottles. It’ll keep the box much cooler and if it’s that hot, you can drink ‘em when they start melting away.

How do I feel about this combo? Well, the camera’s the size of a lunch pail juice box, the Cinedeck replaces 4 different things and I can stand out of the way in a hall, stick the camera through the window and grab all sorts of funky angles while monitoring without contorting myself into all sorts of painful positions. I can’t do that on even on the DLSR. This combo rocks.

How do I feel about the Cinedeck? I love it. I was running around all day in villages, rooms, stairs, buildings, hallways, around corners, inside windows, cars and churches and about everywhere else you could think of. It held up and it held up well (like it should). I would shoot an entire doc solo on this box any day- camera of choice. A studio situation would be an even greater no-brainer. The monitor, histograms, focus checks, color previews and guide overlays at the touch of a button (literally) are about as nice as it gets. All in one sweet little package.

www.cinedeck.com