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Adobe Premiere Pro CS 5.5 for the Mac

Well it’s a whole new world… FCP is, well, X’d… Like many others I’ve been clinging to my FCP 7 but with the announcement of Apple shutting down any future support or development for Color and many of the short comings of FCP X I am looking to other NLE possabilities.

After looking into many options I decided I wanted to find a “bundled” package similar to Final Cut Studio – Enter Adobe’s Production Premium Bundle: Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator and the list goes on and on. I had been waffling because I didn’t want to spend the $1500 full street price and just then Adobe dropped the crossover price to $850 – Yeah!!! So I downloaded the 30 day free trial. (If you do this, make the time to give it a real good try. I was put off the first afternoon because I didn’t give it enough time to set in to my way of thinking.) I can officially say that after 3 weeks of testing and learning I have made leap and bought the bundle.

The cool things for me are round tripping with After Effects, Photoshop and Audition. Also the importability with many different CODECs and formats. I just dropped a bunch of footage from my EX3 in after choosing the right sequence settings and there it was in realtime – pretty nice.

I’m using mine on an older MacPro (2006) tower 2.66 Quad Core with a Black Magic Design Intensity Pro video output card. I just upgraded the driver to 8.2.1 and it seems to work fine. I’m going to upgrade the CPU soon and add an NVIDIA FX4800 GPU card to activate the Mercury Engine features of the package. I hope to have more info on that soon. For the mean time I am putting it up against my FCP 7 package and working through the similarities and differences. So far so good.

Until next time, good shooting or editing

TDTrey.com

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Sony PMW-F3 and Non PL Lenses

OK. So we have the 3 SONY primes 35, 50 and 85mm T3’ish — very nice. Also we have the RED 18-50 T3 PL zoom – handy. When they were offering the pair, 18-50 and 50-150 from Optimo, it was a great range and deal… But now it’s a different pricing structure… So we have steered ourselves down the NIKON road for a little while =)

Ken Rockwell.com and eBay are your friends. We went through Ken’s sight and double checked our lenses for reviews, tips and tricks and finally general pricing considerations. We decided on covering a range from 28mm to 200mm with a 28-70 ƒ2.8 ED and a 80-200 ƒ2.8 ED. Really rugged, well built and clean.

The 80-200 came in a week ago and we were able to take it to Duclos Lenses in Conoga Park last week. REALLY nice guys Paul and Matthew. Boy do they know their stuff. As it turned out they were doing a run of Cinemods on 80-200 Nikkor lenses that week and just added our parts to the run. We dropped off the lens in the morning and went to lunch and it was done by the time we got back an hour later. Awesome!!!

To add to our collection we also got the 28-70 this week. We’ll test it out on a commercial shoot this coming week. We’ll have it modded probably later this week or next. The mod is great – they remove the “click-stops” in the aperture ring and add a focus gear. If you like they will upgrade to front flange to 80mm for consistency.

The look seems very nice from these lenses. Bokeh is pretty smooth. Don’t see that much vignetting in the way we use the lenses. All in all I think a good decision.

While we were at Duclos we checked out their 11-16 lens – very cool. Again – rugged!! Worked really well with the F3. Gives you a great wide look. They are so popular for the RED and EPIC and F3 that there is a fair sized waiting list – well worth the wait and the money.

More to follow as we put the lenses through some real world testing…

Until next time, good shooting

TDTrey.com

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Enter the ScarLETUS

No, this is not the next installment of the Godfather and it’s not the newest alternative music on SiriusXM. I think it’s the next step in the quest for a great camera package. The RED Scarlet meets LETUS shallow depth of field adapters at a price that runs in the pack with an FS-100 and AF-100. Lets look at the possibilities…

  1. According to Ted Schilowitz from RED the Scarlet is supposed to ring in at around $6000 – not too bad.It will have (every thing is subject to change =) 3K < 2K, 120fps, SSD, HDRx, 28mm to 240mm @ ƒ2.4 fixed lens, RED raw and other goodies.All of these features are terrific and highly sought after by shooters in all categories.The only hitch(s) – everyone seems to be hung up on the fact this camera has a 2/3” senor and a fixed lens.


  2. Philip Bloom first introduced us to the adapter craze with the SONY EX1 and LETUS Extreme. Also P+S Technik and RedRock Micro have been doing adapters for a while. With the LETUS, it has the image “right side up”, looses only a ½ stop of light and was packed into an elegant little enclosure that simply screwed onto your camera lens – no tools required. These adapters made “Film Look” cinematography/videography attainable at a reasonable price point. Add to this cameras that were now shooting in the 400 to 800 ISO range and you were almost all the way home.


  3. Now lets combine the two. It’s very similar to working with the Sony EX1 or Panasonic HVX200. The Scarlet (according to the forums) has a 77mm filter thread.The ISO can go up to 12,000.The form factor is smaller than the EX1 or HVX200. And it’s Cool!!!
So, the run down:
  • Small light weight camera 2K resolution
    so I can scale during post for HD delivery
  • HDRx for those office window I just can’t GEL
  • RED raw – no baked in look
  • SSD storage for in-expensive client hand offs
  • Cool 120fps rate
  • Full Frame image plane to maximize my current lens kit
  • DoF on par with my 5Dmk2
  • 10 bit Pro connection options
  • Great transitional entre into RED cameras and workflow
I’ll be honest, if I could afford an Epic and my current client list warranted it I would go for it but it doesn’t and I can’t. I’m holding out hope for the Epic-S but wanted to start looking at alternatives. I’m coming from a predominately Sony infrastructure and will have to do some work with myself and my clients to introduce the RED workflow as seamlessly as possible. We (my clients and I) love the look of DSLRs and the ease of the EX3 and F3 but I still need the additional things the Scarlet and Epic offer to move my camera work to the next level. Since I have the LETUS Extreme already and love it, I’m willing to try a “ScarLETUS” configuration to get there =)


I would love to hear thoughts from other DPs, RED users, camera operators and film makers. Please comment =)

Until next time, good shooting

TDTrey.com

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Oops… I might have been wrong… FCPX??

OK, so I might have been a little off in my speculation about Apple buying Adobe – or not – just backwards. What if instead of Apple trying to buy Adobe, Apple is thinking about selling it’s Pro Application Division? I didn’t come up with this – it’s been rumored on the web about Apple maybe wanting to sell it’s Pro App division. This would make sense then about the current state of FCPX.

Lets just suppose Adobe were the intended buyer… FCP and Premier Pro are almost even on the playing field – you can’t have a company with two stellar editing platforms – one needs to be elevated and the other brought down a few pegs. Does Adobe have a prosumer editing package anymore? So now there would be iMovie Pro for the consumer / prosumer and Premier Pro for the full time editor. Audition to replace STP and After Effects for Motion. Color could stay around as a stand alone grading tool and compressor would / could get absorbed by Adobe Media Encoder. All at 64 bit.

At least this would make more sense than the idea that Apple just didn’t follow though on the re-development of Final Cut at this stage. The re-design took a long time and they had input from industry professionals. There has to be another reason… Then again this is just all speculation. However, I am taking another look at Premier Pro CS 5.5… Could be fun.

Just another thought

TDTrey.com

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Apple…Brain Fart??? FCP X ???

OK. So I have to ask the same question that every other editor is asking – WTF???

A quote from a director friend of mine:

“It looks like the Amiga Toaster Flyer mated with iMovie and gave birth to Vegas Prosumer.“
–JL

Not to be rude – Apple has always been a mile ahead of the rest of the world and maybe it is so this time as well… but, really. At first blush FCPX seems a little FCP’d Up. Too harsh… Sorry, I’ll tone it down.

So, like everyone else, I have seen the footage from the “SuperMeet” at NAB and the speculation sites and finally the pieces starting to float up on the web by new owners. I have to say it looks very attractive at first but then you start to look at the list of missing features… These are things that everyday editors use – regularly… I just read another report of how Apple is working hard to add these features back into the next update — but I would ask, why weren’t they in there in the first place?

As I said a minute ago, Apple is always ahead of the curve. So once the missing features get added back in this could be a pretty stomping app — but it looks a lot like “iMovie on steroids” right now.

Lets keep our fingers crossed =) Go Apple

—————ADD ON——————–

OK, so I have to ask… Is Apple planning to buy Adobe?

I’ve spent all morning reading various posts about a definite migration from FCP to either AVID or Premiere CS5.5. It started to dawn on me that one possible reason Apple would gut FCP so badly and call it “professional” is to create a stampead to another NLE — Premiere, their closest competitor. With a very similar history in development and timeline it would make since. When Premiere left MAC it was still clunky. Now after it’s return and apparent growth spurt it seems to be the new “BIG kid on the block”. I’m wondering if Apple realized it would take far too long to re-invent FCP 64bit from the ground up as a professional application and that it made more since to stake a claim in another company… So, Apple creates “iMovie Pro”, calls it FCPX for a legacy tie in. Then buys Adobe later in the year. Adopts CS5.5 as the new FCP studio collection. Adds Color and Sound Track Pro / Logic into the collection to round out the total production environment and poof… SMOKE for under $3000 bucks…

Just a thought…

TDTrey.com

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CineGear-Los Angeles 2011

Went to the 2011 CineGear Expo yesterday – Wow!!! Lots and lots of cool new stuff. Got there about 4:30 and stayed until almost closing. We were able to just stroll and take our time – very nice. We were joined by Mark Schweickart from Porta-Jib later in the day and got to get an equipment manufacturer’s point of view of the show. Informative.

Equipment highlights:

Sound Devices PIX 220 and 240 HD recorders
I just found out about these little guys last week at the AbleCine F3 workshop. I’ve been wating for someone to wrap everything into one chassis that didn’t cost $10,000. Yeah!!! the folks at Sound Devices did it. The PIX 220 and 240 are digital HD field recorders with HDMI and HD/SDI inputs and outputs. The 220 is the HDMI only version ringing in around $1800 while the 240 has both HDMI and HD/SDI along with TC IN/OUT and other cool features and zips in at just under $2600 – street. Your footage can be recorded to CF cards or SSD drives. The unit is mountable with a 1/4-20 hole on the back and the new mounts should include three 1/4-20’s on the bottom. The SSD drive uses an accessory caddy that mounts to the drive and allows the drive to then be used directly for offloading to your computer via USB 3.0, Firewire 800 or eSata. The drives are formatted by the recorder in UDF so it will work on both MAC and PC straight away – Very Cool. Should be arriving later this summer – can’t wait!!!

JVC 4K camcorder
Just got the teaser on this one a day before the show. Didn’t know what to expect. It was…cute. The camera is still in the prototype phase. Much like Canon’s “Hair Dryer” display, JVC had a working model there posed as a small camcorder poised atop a little black box. There were 4 HDMI cables coming out of the black box going over to a 60″ flat panel TV. The picture was clean. There were images of people, architecture, and general B-roll. Sharp. The rep said they plan the use 4 SD cards to record the image streams and then it will be put back together in post. Interesting.

AbleCine showing their B4 to PL adapter
This was kind of cool. They had an F3 with a Canon EFP lens on it. The MSRP is about $5500. Not bad if you still have a broadcast 2/3″ lens laying around. I wonder if it works with the FS-100?

Hurlbut Visuals booth
Shane Hurlbut had a booth right at the entrance of the event. It goes with his new camera rentals department. He was showing all of his different HDSLR configurations. I spent some time talking to one of his shooters at the booth about their findings over time with the 5D’s and 7D’s.

Steadicam – Scout
The company I do a lot of work with is selling their Hollywood Lite/ Varizoom Aviator stabilizer system and I thought I would check out the new solutions in case we want to replace it in the future. I tried the Glidecam X22 last year and wanted to try an actual STEADICAM this year. I tried the Scout – $7000 – 5 to 18 pounds. Very nice. Light weight. Simple to setup. Easy to control.

Redrock Micro
Always great stuff to see. I checked out the new FF Blue and the Wireless FF solution the microRemote with the iPhone interface. It’s really coming along. I got to drive the wireless system for a bit and it was nice. Brian Valente said that they just added a torque feature to help adjust the system’s feel and response from lens to lens.

Light Iron Live Playback in an iPad
This is a very interesting company. They were showing their on-set production and post tools. The one tool that caught my eye was a derivitive of the Teradek wireless monitoring system. Using the Teradek hardware Light Iron mapped a real nice interactive GUI over the playback software to help on-set decisions and footage review. It’s called LIVE PLAY. You can add comments and notes as needed on a clip by clip basis. These then populate through the server for all the viewers who are connected to see. Handy if the DP catches something and puts the note in before a lot of time is spent by the rest of the production group on a big discussion. All the notes and other meta data can then be compiled for the edit and final production notes. Pretty awesome…

Well that’s my quick over view of the things I liked at CineGear Expo this year. I like this show because if I can’t make it to NAB, most of the exhibitors I want to see are here and I don’t need a hotel or 3 days to see the show =)

Until next time, good shooting

TDTrey.com

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Porta-Jib Explorer

I have been following the Porta-Jib product lines for a few years now and am constantly impressed with each new creative tool they come up with. Most of my work revolves around talking head and product shoots. And usually are steeped in a long shot list with a short time frame. Creativity is generally the first casualty of the shooting day. With the Explorer system, I’m finding I can “buy back” some creativity / inspiration without much cost to the day.

I recently used the Explorer on a car review for Kelly Blue Book and was extremely pleased. The director said “Sure. Bring it along. But I don’t want to be slowed down or have to sacrifice shots while you are fiddling with adjustments.” I’m happy to report we finished 15 minutes early and had at least 5 extra shots in the can. He loved it!!! We never came off the system. We did both JIB shots and then worked the heck out of the TROLLEY / SLIDER config.

I’ve used the system with everything from a SONY Z7 to a SONY F3. (And that includes my 5Dmk2 and EX3). The Explorer system seems right at home in any environment. I see this system as a fantastically versatile opportunity to recapture some of the excitement and creativity we all enjoyed when we were first starting out.

Thanks Mark and Scott. Great Job!!!

Check out my video review – Trey’s Gear Review: Porta-Jib Explorer

Until next time, good shooting =)

TDTrey.com

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Which Camera – more thoughts… F3??

When I attend the sneak peak of the F3 here on the west coast in November I thought it was a terrific camera – but more than what most of us regular working cameramen would be able to use day to day (at the then 16,000 price tag). I had been using a LETUS adapter on my EX3 for about 2 years and was still having trouble talking many of my regular producers into using it ( daily cost not withstanding). They either didn’t see the benefits or felt it would impact the shooting schedule to severely. Then enter the 5D… Everybody wanted “Shallow DoF” !!!!

Now the stage is set… Canon follows with the 7D, Panasonic releases the AF-100, RED is up with the Scarlet and the Epic-S, Canon is rumored to show a new interchangeable lens HD video camera…. That all being said I started looking at all these contenders and re-evaluated the F3 – and here’s the skinny:

The every day camera in these new days of DoF minded clients with fast, card based work flows that can have multiple finishing strategies will need to have the ability to convert from a super shallow film style camera to a grab and go ENG rig in less than 5 minutes and still fit into my truck with only a few cases =) I went back and looked at all the cameras again and it came down to the Sony F3 or maybe what Canon comes out with. But Canon’s offering would need to be significant as the entrenched Sony Picture Profiles are so available now and requested that it’s important to have a “Matchable” camera. Also, with many people now finishing HD you can no longer do the “shoot wide and scale in post” trick so I am often setting 2 matched cameras and getting my wide and tight at the same time (when eye line is not going to be an issue). So all that being said, for right now, it looks like the F3 is the best all around bet – especially if you have an EX1 or EX3. They can be matched pretty well using the EX as the wide and the F3 getting the glory tight shots. Both will use the same Picture Profile just fine.

Now to the specifics =) The camera is real pretty. Almost no noise (unless you try really hard) Operates just like an EX. Work flow is just like an EX. My EX cards and batteries fit. My rods and FF and mattebox fit. I’m using a Hawk-Woods power distro for my for my bricks to work with it – real nice ad on. We haven’t got the $3300 upgrade yet but are considering it. Birger Engineering will have an adapter ready in the summer (rumor has it) with full control for my EOS lenses and wireless FF features ta boot =) We are looking at the Atomos Samurai SSD/Monitor system for the near future and the Convergent Design Gemini or Cinedeck if needed later to provide our 4:4:4 10bit solution.

Operation: A little on the heavy side… not too bad, just pipey. Good on battery life. Fairly smart layout – 10 assignable buttons. 1/4-20’s everywhere ( 3 on the handle, 4 on the body and probably some I haven’t found yet) The prime lenses work very nicely. I am waiting to use my EOS “L” series zooms =) I will probably look into the Zeiss ZF.2 lens kit with an MTF Nikon to E-mount adapter for my camera. The one I reviewed is using the Sony primes and a RED 18-50mm zoom. Depends on your needs…

And finally… I have used it on some corporate work: interviews ( I’m hoping to post some frame grabs when I get cleared to do so) b-roll and static shots. My take away is this… Great camera for interviews, staged shots, controllable b-roll situations, product and EFX shots. Right now, with the current non-servo zoom lens selection, it’s not going to be that great for “Run & Gun”, candids or pop zoom fashion type work or ballroom cams. I will keep my EX3 for that for now and see what Sony is planning for their servo lenses in 2012. The F3 is the only camera ready to zoom with the rocker in place and a plan for it.

Hope you all can boil this down and extract some good info that applies to your independent needs. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

TDTrey.com

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IR filters for the Sony EX cameras

Defining the problem
If you have used the Sony EX1 or EX3 in a setting with black or gray fabrics you may have seen a magenta shift in the picture. One little catch with the new Exmore sensors is they have a big sensitivity toward the Infra Red (IR) spectrum. We did a bit of testing here and found a good workaround with some screw-on IR filters.

As you can see in the pictures the uncorrected shirts have pretty a good magenta shift. The set is lit with one Diva 400 at 3200k. We found in interview settings under either 3200k or 5600k the shift still happens. We talked to a few filter manufacturers and narrowed it down to Tiffen and Schneider. Both had nice offerings for IR filters. Tiffen has their series call Hot Mirrors and Schneider suggests the 77E IR cut (486). We found that the 77E (486) worked the best on both our EX1’s and then the EX3’s. So far we have not noticed a need for the IR filters on our Sony F3. Yay =) Originally the 486 was sold as the best filter for the RED and the Hot Mirrors were the best for the EX cameras but as we tested the opposite was true and that’s why we went with the 77E (486) for our cameras.

Care and Handeling
At first we were putting the filters on when we saw the problem and then removing them after the shoot as they are almost $300 each… After a while we realized the potential to damage the filter when adding or removing it was greater than just replacing our UV filters with the IR filters permanently.

Playing well with others
The filters seem to work well in conjunction with other filters and 4x4s in line. We have had no problems using the IR filters and screwing our Polarizers on in front of the IR.

Best of luck with your filters and lens kits.

Until next time, good shooting.

TDTrey.com

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Which camera ? Which camera ?? WHICH CAMERA!!! ???

OK, so as NAB 2011 draws near… This seems to be the year that everything is going to change — Or at least in the worlds of broadcast and cinematography…

There are so many things I hope to get out of NAB this year. Will Canon come out with their new HD FF35 camera? What’s up with the 5Dmk3? Will RED deliver the Scarlet and the EPIC-S? Will Sony have all the specs out for the FS100 and some units to play with? Where is Birger Engineering in their development on a EF to E-mount adapter for Canon lenses on the Sony PMW-F3? Ninja or Samurai? NanoFlash or AJA Ki Pro Mini?… House payment or GEAR!!!! (wait. I think I’ve gone too far =)

So here’s what’s been going through my head for the last several weeks:

What’s the best camera for the work I do and can it last me for the next 5 years? (5 years??) What it needs to have:

  • 10bit HD-SDI and/or HDMI 4:2:2 uncompressed output – Clean
  • Card based recording system that is or can be adapted to SDHC form factor cards
  • APS-C or larger sensor – S35 or FF35
  • XLR audio and proper controls with LINE and MIC input level choices
  • Timecode IN (and out)
  • Good headphone monitoring
  • Oh yeah… interchangeable lenses =)
Things that would be nice:
  • ENG / EFP Servo ZOOM lens
  • ND stages
  • Picture profiles and the ability to store them and load to other cameras
  • Edit ready format to drop right into my NLE and grading
  • Composite video output for fast attaching to Steadicams and the like
  • SSD storage options
Of course this list could go on for days. But lets look at the top contenders for under $20K
…And yes I did rate them according to their estimated MSRP =) All of the cameras should be able to be configured sub 20K but you can accessorize them to your heart’s content.

I have widdled it down like this for me:

  • I have an EX3, a LETUS extreme, a 5Dmk2 with nice lens kit and accessories.
  • I use a 17″ JVC HD-SDI monitor for my clients on-set.
  • I use a Marshall 7″ HD-SDI monitor on the camera for me.
  • Shallow DoF is starting to become more prevalent with my clients and their projects.
  • Most are editing on Final Cut Pro (FCP) but are not willing to spend a lot of time converting or syncing.
  • Apple is going to SDHC slots and cards
UPDATE: Apple is releasing FCP-X WOO HOOOO!!! To use this year’s catch phrase “Game Changer”!!! If all works as it should the new ingest (or lack of need to) path for FCP will help with a lot of these concerns. DSLRs up to the RED will supposedly work – straight in – Yeah!!!

For a brief moment I thought I had it figured out… Nope. I’m leaning towards the Sony offerings but … I don’t know. If the economy picks up a little more and the projects start coming in on a regular basis again, I think I am heavily considering the Sony F3. The S-Log feature and the familiarity is just a really good thing. WIth my EX3 as a second unit I can get away with a lot on 2 camera stacked shots that will be finishing in HD. And I have a few colleagues that have or are considering the F3 so there would be a pool of F3’s to dip into if needed.

The other factor that is starting to creep into the equation is the deliverables. Great tools like the Cinedeck, Convergent Design’s Gemini 4:4:4, AJA KI Pro and KI Pro Mini and the offerings from Atomos – Ninja and Samurai. These all allow us to extent the life of our current cameras and bring new tricks to our future projects.

Check back soon. I will have a whole new spin on this – I’m sure =)

Until next time, good shooting,

TDTrey.com