jasonhenley

Intro to Quicktime

Like any man oozing with sex appeal I've had video codecs on my mind for the past few weeks. Having finally taken the full plunge into HD video, I've had  to interact more often with various video formats which I think can be damn confusing. So today I thought I'd talk a moment about how Quicktime works.

Think about your home theater setup and all the various devices you hook up to it. There's DVD, Blu-ray, DVR, game consoles, CD players, MP3 players, etc. All of these devices function differently and all have their own specific uses. Media is created with a specific format in mind. If you were a musician, you wouldn't create your music album as a video game or a Blu-ray disc, that wouldn't make any sense, you'd create a CD or MP3. People who make music, movies, video games, TV all have their own very specific technological needs. The unifying factor within this popuri of devices is the TV and speakers. No matter what video will always show up on your TV and audio always plays through your speakers. This collection of audio/video equipment is collectively dubbed "The Home Theater."

Since imaginary equipment is so much fun, Imagine stripping down all the physical components from a home theater, you would be left with just software from the equi and data-only version of the home theater. Quicktime is the software only version of the home theater. The software's interface acts like a TV and speakers and its codecs act as unique devices, all you need to add is the media.

Pretend I want to play a Blu-ray disc at your house but you don't have a Blu-ray player. To play that media you are required to go out to a store and purchase a new device to make your home theater compatible with my media. In the purely digital world of Quicktime, physical devices are irrelevant, and acquiring updated technology is only a matter of a quick download and not and expensive purchase (sometimes). If you aquire media files but lack the software to handle them, you simply download those software instructions or codecs. The term codec refers to code/decode which basically means how audio/video is created assembled from data.

All Quicktime files carry the file extension .mov. Don't be confused into thinking that all .mov files are the same. All .mov means is that this particular file belongs in the digital home theater, it does not say anything about what kind of media it is. There is an obscenely large number of codecs for Quicktime and I still only understand a small handful of them, but for some reason I find this interesting.

Fun DVD facts to impress girls with

The first incarnation of DVD held 1.46GB on a single layered disc (referred to as DVD-1)  Over time the spec improved all the way up to the current 4.7GB (now referred to as DVD-5). Dual layered discs are an improvement of DVD-5 technology by allowing 8.54GB of space which has been achieved by the addition of a transparent layer of data (this is known as DVD-9). If you want to get crazy and who wouldn't, there are also a few DVD formats above DVD-9 which are basically double sided discs: 2 single layers (DVD-10), 1 single and 1 dual layer (DVD-14), or 2 dual layer (DVD-19).

Blu-ray also supports dual layers, there's a 25GB single layer disc version and a 50GB dual layer version.

HD DVD was supposed to offer a third layer but they lose. 

Cobra Crane I Plus

Ashley and I bought a Cobra Crane for our upcoming project. I'm so excited about this thing, I haven't got the appropriate speed down just yet, but here are some tests I did with it in our back yard.

Apple Color

In my high school video class a common question was, "Why do movies look so different then TV?" Usually the answer included stuff about the different frame rates, or aspect ratios, leaving out the one of the most unsung tasks, color grading. In my opinion, the major difference between the quality of movies and TV is color.

Ever since I started using non linear editing systems such as Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, or Avid, I've gone way overboard in messing around with color correction filters. I had great fun, but I wasn't very good at it. I basically knew that I just wanted my video to look different, never mind what that different was. Often people flesh tones would glow radio active red, or the sky would turn green - hey I was trying.

Eventually, I came to understand the 3-way color corrector filter in Final Cut Pro and my color effects started looking better.

Recently, Ashley and I upgraded to Final Cut Pro 7 in preparation for an upcoming project. In case you didn't read the title of this entry, Final Cut Studio now comes with Color. Color is professional color grading program which works seamlessly with Final Cut Pro. Color is not a filter, it's a full blown high end color grading software with stupidly awesome flexibility. Here are a few test shots I worked on.

 

Back when I was in college I was required to have my thesis film be professionally color corrected. For about $2000.00, my group and I sat in and watched as our colorist moved around the $900,000.00 suite to make our movie look cool (yea we asked how much the equipment cost). For only $1000.00 (or $300 for an upgrade) and some learning time, you can do yourself what we once paid so much for someone else to do.

Do you need it? If you only need to tweak color balance issues, maybe not. Like any new software, it takes effort to learn, and to start out I was really frustrated. I've spent several days watching online tutorials and today was the first I that really dove in and was happy with what I got.

For me the Final Cut Pro 3-way color corrector is a hard filter to let go of. However, if you dare move on, what's waiting for you inside of color is the freedom to make your shots look not just better but frighteningly good.  Here are some more of my test shots:

 

 

 

Not too happy with that washed out sky, why not change it to a bright blue? or fiery red? or maybe purple.... there's nothing stopping you!

For some reason the interface doesn't match anything else within Final Cut Studio. Personally I think it was an effort to make the program look more professional, because for some reason in this business, the more complex the program is, the more people are impressed by it and thus trust it. I think Apple is tired of people knocking on Final Cut's friendly looking interface so they sold out and put out a scary looking one.

Another strange tid-bit about the interface is that there are no sliders. When you want to change the values of something, you either have to enter it numerically, or hover the mouse over the tool and use the scroll wheel. At first I was really annoyed by this, but I've gotten into it. It kinda feels like your handling a physical knob or dial which makes it okay.

I have this short little two minute test project which I used to test Color. Upon finishing I had so much fun, that I completely started coloring it over again. If you're familiar with color correction, and are patient enough to give it a try, Color could really be a good move.

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard is the story of Don Ready (played by Jeremy Piven), the car-salesman-mercenary. When car dealerships have trouble selling cars, they hire Don Ready and his team to help makes sales. Sound funny? You're right, it doesn't! This movie was absolute garbage. 

The likable/funny villain Paxton Harding was played by Ed Helms (the guy who plays Andy on The Office). Paxton Harding sings in an up and coming "Man-Band" called Big Ups which according to him is the grown up version of a "Boy-Band." Paxton wishes to convert this failing car dealership into a practice space for his Man-Band, which according to me makes absolutely NO SENSE! I don't see why a car dealership makes for a good practice space.

One might think that a Man-Band could offer the movie some good moments, maybe a funny music video? Maybe some funny antics on stage? Big Ups never really gets used in the movie. They are present in one short scene and are only used as a plot device to motivate the selling of cars.

There were so many good opportunitys for this movie to be funny. It seemed as though the creators had a quirky idea, and a cast of hopefuls, but no real control of anything, none of these actors or senerios were really taken advantage of.  Nothing ever paid itself off, there was no comic timing, the movie was absolute poo, unfunny and expensive poo.

They had a token black guy, a token Asian guy, a token old guy, none of it mattered. 

After an hour or more of unfunnines you reach the climax. It's a cameo by Will Farrell! Finally, some hope. He wasn't funny either.

 

If you're looking for a stupid movie with a few good laughs, stay away from this one! Its sparce laughs are not worth the money. Rotten Tomatos and IMDB were way too lenient this time.

District 9

I'm sincerely so satisfied with District 9. Don't worry I won't give anything important away, this movie's more of an experience in which to enjoy anyway. To me the movie was an bizarre cross between Independence Day and Schindler's List and The Office (when you watch it you'll see).

As audiences become more sophisticated, the ability to extend disbelief becomes more difficult. In the case of District 9, the documentaryesque style completely forced me into a state of belief. What's better then seeing amazing visual effects on beautiful film, its experiencing the authenticity of seeing them on really crappy low res video.

Before District 9, I've never before been as emotionally invested in an sci-fi/action movie. Despite the stupidly awesome effects, and crazy-good-times violence, I really had a tough time getting on the testosterone roller coaster, I was too worried about the characters.

District 9 is thought provoking, bothersome, and really entertaining. With a two hour running time, it's far less of a time commitment then other Peter Jackson joints. Go see it.

Paper Heart

Last night Ashley and I went to see Paper Heart at the Bethesda Row Cinemas. This mockumentary is about main character Charlyne Yi's quest to make a documentary about the true nature of love (in case you don't know Charlyne Yi was the Asian girl in Knocked up.) I'm going to spoil it, she finds love with her real life on and off again better half Michael Cera (best known for Juno and this year's mega-ulra-super-mind blowing hit Year One). This movie is very cute and of course very quirky. If you're into Michael Cera, Charlyne Yi is the Asian-female version of him. 

When watching, I felt this movie had 2 different parts: Sometimes they are making what feels like a real documentary: interviews of non-famous people talking about love, which comes across very sweet. The other part is the actual love story between the two main characters (Yi conveniently happens to fall in love during production of this documentary so they are forced to add her into the story.) 

In an attempt to maintain authenticity the movie made several efforts to remind the audience that the two main characters were being filmed as part of a documentary. I understand this kind of thing is needed, but I felt a little beaten over the head with this reminder. My other gripe was that during the love story portions the production value was unrealistically high. Yes the entire movie was shot handheld documentaryesque, but there seemed to be an awfully large number of cameras on set to document just two people eating at a diner, not a deal breaker, but it distracted me a little.

Maybe it's my bias towards documentaries, but I think this movie would have been better for me, had they followed through and made this mockumentary a real documentary. Maybe not, maybe stick with their mockumentary format and add more documentary and make the fake love story a little more subtle. Overall, I laughed, I was entertained, it was cute, really good for a date, I won't buy it on video, but I don't regret spending the money on it.

Funny People

Last night I took Ashley to see Funny People, we really enjoyed it. It's the story of a jaded comedian (Adam Sandler) who hires a starry-eyed aspiring comic (Seth Rogen) to help in his return to stand-up comedy all while suffering from a deadly blood disease... and hilarity ensues. 

Other dramatic Adam Sandler movies such as Punch Drunk Love and Spanglish follow right along with this one in its emo-ocity, however they all lack the funniness that Funny People has. This movie was about fifty percent funny and fifty percent kill yourself depressing.

As one would expect from a Judd Apatow movie, the penis jokes, excuse me "cock jokes" were definitely in plenty. The cast included just about all of the standard issue Judd actors, see if you can't find them all. 

If you divide the movie into 4 acts, all were very good, however act 3 belongs in an entirely different movie. All of a sudden secondary characters suddenly morph into main characters all at once, only to then dissolve back into secondary characters at the end of the act. This threw me off however, the inconsistent act 3 is the only beef I had with this movie, and I still even enjoyed that.

If you told me this movie was a biographical story about Adam Sandler I'd buy it. Frequently you see video of him from yesteryear which gave such a feeling of authenticity. Adding to that was an abundance of cameos from very popular comedians (who also have unfortunately aged right along with Adam Sandler) again see how many you can find.  

I must also mention Jason Schwartsman. Ashley's all about him and his music, but typically I can't stand Jason Schwartzman, I find him pretentious and just not funny, however this time I will issue a pass. He plays the obnoxiously proud actor of a terrible....terrible TV show called "Yo Teach." I really love characters that are ultimate failures but don't realize it, it's a good joke. I issue my stamp of approval upon him as well as this movie. Go see it, support your local cinema, support those suffering from deadly blood diseases, and get excited for District 9.