jasonhenley

Become the King you really are.

 

After a long several days away on the Henley Christmas Family Tour it was once again time to return to our best friend, the TiVo. The Christmas season seems to be discouraging new episodes of almost every show. Our choices were to dip back into the ever-plentiful Seinfeld folder or we could finish watching NBC's: The Sing Off, we chose the latter. 

   

In case you don't know, The Sing Off is NBC's response to FOX's American Idol and Glee. It's a good show, but it's two damn hours long! You'll see the groups practicing, performing, being critiqued, and eliminated. One invests a lot of time to watch a series composed of two hour shows.... but not if you're a king. The TiVo has given us something that the non-DVR crowd doesn't get to enjoy, the credentials matching those of a king. If someone starts spewing diarrhea from the mouth, you wave your magic wand and "Bloup-bloup" they vanish. When that skinny girl from the Pussycat Dolls starting babbling, we wave our magic wand and "Bloup-bloup" she is gone. When the contestants are in rehearsal trying to demonstrate to the camera how sincere their musical aspirations are, "Bloup-bloup" gone! 

To all the other kings out there, I write to you all urging you, do not limit your powers only to commercial breaks, wave your magic at all of the unworthy peasants!

Demo Reel

After avoiding doing my demo reel for months, I have finally finished it. Check it out!

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. 

Glee

So my wife and I have been watching the new Fox show Glee. This is a show about McKinley high school's Glee Club and it's zany members, ...and of course hilarity ensues. Each week you can expect a glitzy and over the top musical number wrapped around a high school student's woes. I believe we are about four episodes in and so far I can't say that the show's doing too well. Not surprisingly, all the main characters are some flavor of misfit:

Token nerdy girl (she doesn't know that she's hot),

Token nice jock (very Chris Klein),

Token mean jock (notice the mohawk, it means he is mean),

Token cool Asian (notice the cool blue hair tips),

Token voluptuous black girl (comes with a matching token voluptuous black girl voice),

Token gay (almost an offensive amount of gay),

Token wheelchair guy (overcoming diversity).

I think the cast comes off as satirical. It reminds me of those annoying corporate stock photos showing diverse businessmen. 

So kudos on whoever crafted a show which pokes fun at intentionally diverse groups of people.

I signed myself on to watch this show cause I'm as gay as a heterosexual man can be. I love singing and dancing, and I even own my own copy of Mamma Mia on blu-ray so I know what I'm talking about. I watch this particular show for the musical segments. Each episode the show takes a song from popular culture and cheeses it up and adds some flashy choreography.

Almost all of the singing from this show is pre-recorded. I find this rather frustrating because the audio for the narrative portions of the show sounds completely different then the audio during musical portions. It's like once someone opens their mouth to sing, a switch is flipped. Their voices become ridiculously loud and clear, it takes me out it a bit. This isn't  a deal breaker, but it's annoying.

Typically each episode has about two and a half minutes of musical grandeur mixed with about fourty two minutes of barely adequate comedy and drama. The show is just not that funny. With the most stereotypical cast ever complied together for TV, one might expect some more solid laughs. The storylines are often bizarre, confusing and without focus, I find myself pausing the show often to ask the wife to explain what's going on to me. I don't appreciate a show about singing making me feel narratively incompetent.  I think to myself, "Enough is enough already, isn't it time for that pretty girl to sing again?"

I re-watched the Glee trailer and I was reminded of why I really want this show to be good. It's seems like an extremely ambitious project but sadly so far the actual show hasn't matched the nostalgia, grandeur, and heart that the trailer promised.

However, despite all the annoying lip-syncing, lack of laughs, and bizarre plots, I'm going to keep watching. I want it to be a better show, I hope someday will be. Until then, I'll just deal with it.

Doesn't Billie Joe Armstrong look like Mr. Tumnus?

Doesn't Billie Joe Armstrong looking a little bit like the fawn from Narnia.

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.

Darlene the Sewing All Star

The Porta Brace case AR-PDMD660 (for our digital field recorder) just came in. When we opened it up we found a business card that let us know that out particular case was created by the "All Star Sewer" Darlene!

Darlene even signed it!

The good people at Porta Brace let us know about Darlene's favorite dish, her favorite thing about Vermont, and her favorite Porta Brace case.

Here's Darlene's favorite Porta Brace case.

We need more "All Stars" in this world.

Fake Stuff Friday (Fake TV)

Best or nothing

Every trade has its spectrum of tools from highest quality ones all the way down to crap. If you're into cooking, you could be utilitarian and use the $5.00 butchers knife you bought at Ikea, or  you're the connoisseur who uses the $1200.00 one you bought at a high end cooking store. If you cut hair you could buy $2.00 scissors at CVS or the $2000.00 pair from a beauty store. Either way you have a tool to use.

If given the choice I think anyone would chose high end, what drives me crazy is the all or nothing mentality when it comes to the super high end. I work in broadcast TV and this concept shows up when dealing with surround sound. Some shows have surround sound, and some shows do not. Not getting to use all of your speakers is a real downer, so TV folks came up with an economy version, or a "fake" version so no speaker is left out.  It won't sound like a movie's audio mix, but you'll get sound out of all 6 speakers, everyone's happy right, wrong!

TV snobs get all weepy when a mix isn't "real surround sound." In fact they get their panties in a bunch so badly that they advocate to take away the "fake surround sound" cause it's not perfect, "Oh there's audio bleeding", "It's cheap", "I'm too cool for faked 5.1." Again, the choice between simulated surround sound and the real thing is an obvious one, but if simulated is all there is, stop crying about it and pony up. Rolls Royce is probably a pretty sweet ride, but since I can't afford that, I'm not too good to drive my Accord.