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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

TOIA's NAB / DAY 2 / The stand outs.

Mark Toia

Mark Toia

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Ok.. Ill keep this one quick and to the point. This blogging thing is not my game.

Not much to report.. but here goes.

It was a hard hard slog today. Was really looking deep into the corners and back rooms of NAB.
Sometimes you can find some amazing stuff that some little vender has made and has no clew how to market them selves. I call these guys "SLEEPERS" or soon to be broke!

Slider rigs... OMG... If I see another slider rig released, I'll choke. NAB this year is quite literally SLIDER RIG or SHOULDER MOUNT Alley !!! competition in the area is so huge now. ZUCATO.. like had a bracket for everything...
The Digital stills/video camera gadjet world has gone absolutely nuts. Anyone who's anyone are making brackets, gadgets, nick nacs by the thousands... you name it, it's out there. To me most of the shoulder mounts out there are just straight rubbish. Thin, cheap junk. But hey! They probably still work. Then you get a the occasional well thought out shoulder mount... like WOODEN Cameras, $1495.. model. Then there are the top shelf models.... and to be honest. RED's clutch is still the king of the kids after looking through them all today.... for the EPIC/SCALET crowd that is.

Back to slider rigs... actually NO! To many to talk about. One day I will need one... and Ill probably rent it... Its such a fad right now. moving on.

LED lights...
Massive amounts of lights dealers... blinding you at every turn. This year was much of the same. Pretty much everyone had a rip off of LITEPANEL... cheaper, some brighter...
Rosco for me have the best idea with there 5 mm think panels, but not really bright enough compare to the rest... but awesome to be able to tape to things.. light! very very light in weight. They get my nod.
http://www.rosco.com/us/video/litepad_ho.cfm

The best & brightest (single colour only) LED lights were some Korean built things... Yes!!!! seriously beautiful soft light. Actually the best light from any of them. Everyone else had bare bulb LED.. yes you could put a trace frame over them.. but still the type of soft light falling from these things was just stunning... looked so nice on skin... just gorgeous. In studio conditions shooting beauty / food / art / product... Clear winners for me. But I'm a fussy fussy lighting guy. They had a 3 foot x 1.5 foot panel in a solid box. 12kg. Touch heavy, but had a good solid build to it. In studio conditions shooting beauty / food / art.... These were the stand outs for me if you want pure beauty light.
You could do wonders with 2 or 3 of these....
http://www.auroralitebank.com/

Monitors...
Well.. it's getting tough now.. Monitors are looking fantastic everywhere.. new tech, people lifting there game everywhere.
SONY still have the gong this year with the OLED... Even though I thing the blacks are to black... (yes silly as it sounds) But as a deep rich image is asked for... it certainly wins.

TV logic, JVC and PANASONIC had some great 4k monitors coming out.... Very impressive indeed.

But to be honest. I walked past a both that had a SAMSUNG LED 8000 domestic monitor in it... playing next to a pro monitor worth almost 10x more... and the SAMSUNG LED just kicked arse. It was so sharp, crisp ans colourful I thought it was 4k for a moment. I would really think of the SAMSUNG as being used as a pro monitor for client previews.

There was a silent buzz going around the NAB camps that APPLE are about to release 4k/5k led 27 inch for under 3k. (Thunderbolt). Using the same tech as the new IPAD3.... How true this I do not know... I do know of somebody that has seen this monitor in the flesh last year. but !!!!... APPLE are shockingly quite these days. Who the hell knows that they are doing...
So knowing that this miracle monitor is (possibly) coming out from APPLE... is it wise to buy a PRO Monitor as yet.... Apple LEDS are amazing, there is know one disputing that. a 4/5k version. WOW...

Ok... ADOBE... Here me now! Some of the guys demoing your creative suites are useless... (nice people though) They amount of times I asked questions to the reply of .... uuuuuummmm... Im not sure if it can do that. Or I'm not sure how to do it... Der!!! Was starting to drive me nuts.

That said... I'm not worried. Ive seen it working with my own eyes... I've seen R3D's paying out live.. THATS SOLD FOR ME!!! 1/2 res playback is still better than 2k res. I can deal with that. SPEED-GRADE is good... BUT I NEED SOMEONE GOOD THERE TO SHOW ME IT PROPERLY !!!!!!!

Premier.. sweet. I asked the ADOBE to to give me 5 minutes to tinker... and I did everything FCP did and more... I just have to fund out were all there buttons hide. I think about 1 week it will take and I will be fluent with it.
MAC laptop... with PREMIER.. SSD drives! MAX out the RAM... There is know skimping on horse power. R3D's are still heavy.
MAC TOWER work... CUDA CARD! speed the money on the big one.. There is know skimping on horse power... For pretty much realtime everything.

AUTODESK SMOKE. Gave it one more chance today... Bombed out... Just to heavy, to clunky.. rendering just drive me nuts. 2k max.. laptop.. forget it unless your working in HD prores or some form of soft data.
But that keyer!!! is so fricken good.

Ok, Im just repeating itself now...

Tomorrow is all about Microphones... that plug into the EPIC and just work!!!!

Have a nice day all...

OH... Jarred. Thanks for not punching me in the face today. I was ready for ya... I had my tazer charged up. :)))) Kidding. Nice meeting you today.

Cheers all.
PS excuse spelling / gramma.. know time to go back over this.., Heading to an ELVIS show and dinner :)))
 
The Rosco light pads are amazing. I bought the gaffer kit a few years ago and they are fantastic for car interiors and small places. Great computer monitor light. Can run on a bunch of them off AA batteries.

The only problem with the old ones was a slight green tint. Maybe they've fixed that.
 
thank you for your report- saved me about 8 hrs research online!

Did you see anything New for Greenscreen that would work particularly well for Epic/Scarlet?

I agree with you on Smoke, great intro price but Autodesk has track record of dropping price to get people in the door,
then only offering key updates at enormous cost in suites or upstream products. I expect they'll get you at the transition to 4K...
Ex: Maya Complete $5K / Unlimited $10K, to next year
PRICE DROP: Maya for $3495 (sounds good, but... next year
then Maya Entertainment Creation Suite for $5995, but... next year
then Maya Entertainment Creation Suite Premium $too much

Cheers!
 
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Mark,
There is a session in Post World at 2:00-3:30pm tomorrow that covers Speedgrade. I'll be there.

But . . . correct me if I'm wrong:
Speedgrade requires transcoding before you can grade with it.
MB Colorista works within PP on a raw R3D metadata level.

That's true then the choice for me with CS6 is easy:
RCX = Primary basic grade / Trim - Export R3D Trims
PP = Work with full rez R3D's - grade/tweek with MB Colorista, Looks, AE and others on a Layers style approach
Export out of PP in whatever format for deliverable

That way you're rendering once and stay R3D until final output
 
again...THANK YOU from Alaska...
appreciate the time and links - and of course those unbiased Ozzy Opinions!

Stu Aull
Alaska
 
Thanks for the roundup Mark. I appreciate your comments and opinions. And moreso now that I'm not at NAB myself.
 
Great to a overview for us still sitting at home.

A few things Mark.

Autdesk keyer is great, but the fact is those demo cuts they use are magic. tap on blue or green and the image just falls trough... They got them in their tutorials and I never seen such good green screen material in my 17 years as a compositor. So they definitely selected those clips with care...


looking forward to you microphone review... small nubs that can be left on the epic for 2 scratch tracks, one low and one high, at all times..

and we want pictures, even of boring sliders :)
 
Mark Toia said:
AUTODESK SMOKE. Gave it one more chance today... Bombed out... Just to heavy, to clunky.. rendering just drive me nuts. 2k max.. laptop.. forget it unless your working in HD prores or some form of soft data.
But that keyer!!! is so fricken good.
Click to expand...
Mark.
How about a little perspective? You did notice, that all Smokes in the booth were running on an iMacs, right? Lousy GPU, no CUDA. No RedRocket too... That was the whole point of showing, that now Smoke dramatically reduced hardware requirements, allowing it to run on a Macbook, if needed. With expansion Thunderbolt enclosure you can connect RR, if so desired. That all wasn't possible before. So, how can you expect any type of performance on an iMac in 4K? Adobe, of coarse, running their stuff on a fully tricked out towers with RR. If that is what you're after, get a tower and Smoke runs, just like you'd expect it to run on a top notch hardware. People keep insisting on editing in 4k, why? Do all your editing in Prores or DnxHD, tell Smoke to reconnect to R3D and finish in 4k, if that is what you're after. Isn't that easier?:smiley:
 
Björn Benckert said:
Great to a overview for us still sitting at home.

A few things Mark.

Autdesk keyer is great, but the fact is those demo cuts they use are magic. tap on blue or green and the image just falls trough... They got them in their tutorials and I never seen such good green screen material in my 17 years as a compositor. So they definitely selected those clips with care...


looking forward to you microphone review... small nubs that can be left on the epic for 2 scratch tracks, one low and one high, at all times..

and we want pictures, even of boring sliders :)
Click to expand...
No trickery required. Master keyer is that good. Modular keyer is insane! With it you can use any or all of 9 Smoke keyers, plus pixel spread. Anyone, who had to deal with bad edges will never use keyer without pixel spread ever again.
 
Discreet/Autodesk have always had the best keyers. So happy to see Smoke have this functionality. If you don't need any compositing Smoke may not be for you. Luckily Smoke is really good at importing XML from Premier or FCP. The lighting FX and 3D Axis in Smoke are killer.
 
Josh Beadle said:
But . . . correct me if I'm wrong:
Speedgrade requires transcoding before you can grade with it.
Click to expand...

At this point, if you use "send to Speedgrade" Speedgrade will transcode timeline to DPX. If you use EDL, then you can use R3D's for grading.
 
Thanks Mark! We were shooting yesterday and you saved us a heap of time. In any case, we look forward to anything from Toiaworld!
 
you cant compare pp with smoke ...smoke is a high end colorcorrection tool pp not at the moment..we all wait for the day adobe will intergrate ae or even photoshop in premiere:)
 
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