So our Final Share SAN has been rock solid but something about our newest Mac Pro 2.93 just doesn’t agree with it. We’ve seen a recurring issue develop whereby the SAN will disconnect from this Mac Pro almost on a daily basis, usually after the first boot up of the day and it seems to have something to do with Final Cut Pro 7.

Start up the system and connect to the Server and all is well. I can leave the SAN mounted on the desktop all day and it will be fine until I launch Final Cut Pro 7. Then there is a pretty good chance the SAN will disconnect within the first 5 minutes of FCP running. If it does disconnect, generally running Repair Disc Permission and a reboot clear up the issue and I’m good for the rest of the day.

We’ve also had this happen on a few occassions on one of our iMacs also running Final Cut Pro 7, but only a few times. The Mac Pro gets it on a daily basis, and today it’s already happened twice in a matter of 10 minutes. I do know that FCP 7 changed some of the “behind the scenes” media management so I’m not sure if that has anything to do with it or what, but it’s definitely getting to the frustrating stage now as this nagging issue has definitely slowed down productivity.

The guys at Small Tree have been awesome trying to figure this one out and hopefully we’ll get a resolution soon. I can see that my system has now re-booted and is ready to go for some more editing. The good news is that generally after a bad disconnect, that’s it for the day so I should be good for another stable day of editing now.

Dan Desmet stopped by the shop today to show me some of the new features in the latest updates of the Flanders Scientific firmware for their monitors and to show off their latest addition. The FSI 1770W which features LED backlights instead of fluorescent backlights.

First the updates and this one is big for us Mac users!! Once you install the latest 0.9.16 update, your monitors will now be updatable from ANY computer. Mac, Windows, Linux, those little netbooks, and most anything that has a USB port and internet connection. And they made it brilliantly simple. Instead of writing new code for every operating system and computer system out there, the monitor is now programmed to appear on any computer system as a USB Mass Storage device. Yep, plug it into a USB port and it just shows up as if it’s a drive. Download the firmware update from FSI’s website, drag it from your computer to the monitor, disconnect the monitor, go to “Display Alignment” Menu and tell it to Update Firmware.

That’s it. Easy as pie. Or cookies, or maybe even some really good biscuits. I’ll post full instructions on this shortly and I’m sure FSI will have full instructions on their site. And yes, you will need a PC for the actual 0.9.16 update, but that’s the last time!! After that, us Mac users can rock and roll with firmware updates directly from our computers.

One of my favorite additions in the 0.9.16 update is true 4:3 Title Safe in an HD Frame. Yay! We pretty much have to protect all our HD shows with 4:3 safe graphics. We’ve been using those small tic marks in FCP 7’s Canvas and I also have some photoshop templates we can overlay when needed. But to be able to simply turn it on the monitor with the click of a switch is so much nicer.

Another cool update is they changed the first three Function Buttons to default to Scopes Profiles. Now we can have multiple Scope profiles so if you want to switch from the Waveform to the Vectorscope, you don’t need to go back to the Menu and reset the Scopes. You can have both the Waveform and Vector assigned to two different function buttons so all you have to do is click to switch back and forth. Very cool.

Ok, the 1770W. It’s only a hair over 7 lbs, 3 pounds lighter than the 1760W. So for you folks putting together fly packs, travel packs and such, it just got a lot lighter. In fact I can’t believe it’s 7 pounds. Felt like 2 pounds when I picked it up, can’t believe it’s that light. Power consumption is greatly reduced so battery life in the field just got extended too.

But I don’t travel and I don’t use my monitors in the field, I use them in the edit suite. There’s two reasons why you might want this in your edit suite. One, it looks exactly the same as the 1760W. I had them both on, side by side today. The picture was identical except for the 2nd reason. To me, the 1770W has a wider viewing angle than the 1760W. Not by a huge amount, but enough that I noticed it right away. Dan explained that if you can get the light source closer to the panel, the viewing angle will increase. The 1770W is noticeably thinner than the 1760W, hence, the wider viewing angle, at least in my opinion. So if you have a lot of client / editor side by side viewing, the 1770W might be more desirable.

Dan also pointed out there is no heat generated by the LED backlight, which of course fluorescents do throw out some heat. Not enough for me to really notice in the suites but it is there. Oh, yeah one more thing, the LED doesn’t have to warm up, it was fully accurate color from the moment we turned it on. The 1760W had already warmed up for about an hour or so before we brought in the 1770W and the new monitor matched the old immediately. Pretty cool!

So now you have two choices for what I think are the best 17″ monitors on the market period. The 1760W fluorescent LCD display and the 1770W LED LCD display. Price difference? $200. As we are getting ready to expand to a new facility I’ve already advised Dan to place one 1770W (at least) on order for one of the new suites……

I understand there will be more details about the 1770W on the FSI website shortly. Awesome work and I’m really REALLY happy for these guys. Good folks and a great product at a really really reasonable price. And we get free firmware updates with new features…. for free! Can you tell I love recommending these guys?

The edit for the first of three feature documentaries is coming along now and today we took the website live for Foul Water, Fiery Serpent.

Editor Kim O’Neill did a killer job on the primary edit for the trailer. I cleaned it up, added a new open and did the color grade. Really pushing myself in Color now and learned some neat skip bleach looks from a buddy of mine who’s an amazing colorist.

We’re on track to have the feature done by the end of the year AND we’ll have some really exciting news about our narrator soon. Man we are SO excited about this one!

So it’s only been about three or four months since we finished the new Machine Room, but already we’re stretched to the limits with the amount of production coming down the pike. So stay tuned as we are actively seeking out 3,600 to 5,000 square feet of new office space to re-locate the company. All sorts of exciting news coming over the next 12 months.

So Color 1.5 added the ability to bring in Slo-Mos from Final Cut Pro without the need to bake them. This does work just fine, until you try to apply a Vignette to a shot in a Secondary. When you switch to the Preview Tab in the Secondary, the what you see in the shot changes making it near impossible to properly place a vignette using that tab. Here’s an example.

This is a shot I graded as it appears when the playhead is parked on the shot.

Ok, now switch to a Secondary and click on the “Previews” tab so I can move the vignette.

Notice how the shot is completely different now? His head is in a different position but I have not moved the playhead. In fact, if I scroll the playhead while in the Preview tab, I do not see the correct shot at all as it was edited. So I can’t accurately place or keyframe a vignette using the Preview tab at all because the shot is in a completely different place. What I have to do is simply set the vignette roughly where I think it needs to be…..

Switch out of Preview by going to any other tab, in this case Hue Curve….

Ah, the shot is still being displayed wrong, so I have to move the playhead one frame…..

Now I see the correct shot and from here I will adjust the Vignette using the numeric controls and middle click on my Wacom pen.

Definitely not as quick and easy as using the Preview Tab, but it does work. Of course this is minor hassle compared to the baking process that we used to have to do with Color 1.0 and slo-mo’s. So if you’re aware of this issue, you can easily work around it.

Yes I know, I know, my website is somewhat dated at the moment with both the information and the overall look. It’s one of those things where I’ve been slowly re-designing a new website and generally have too many other things going on outside of work to really spend the necessary time to create it. Slowly but surely it’s coming together and I’m hoping in the next few weeks to get the whole new look up and running. Believe it or not, I’m playing with iWeb from Apple and it’s really a lot of fun and quite simple.

With any luck we’ll have something up by Halloween!

Tangent is sending a Wave Panel for Apple’s Color for evaluation. We’ll have it for a while and plan to color grade our Guinea Worm Documentary with the product.

Full review and evaluation will be posted probably in November, though I’ll certainly post updates as we play with it.

So we’re working on this documentary and the producer tells me one day that he has some 3/4″ tape stock we’ll need to transfer for the project. 3/4″! I haven’t used 3/4 since the late 1990’s in college. In fact, my Edit Assist had no idea what I was talking about when I said 3/4″ tape. Yep, it’s old but it’s 1980’s State of the Art Broadcast Television Equipment!

So we call around for over a week trying to locate a machine to play back the material. Could not find one. Then I found one on a used broadcast equipment website and was about to purchase it when my lovely PA Jenny finally located a rental house here in Atlanta willing to rent it for the whopping price of $50 per day. Deal!

Ah, we can smell the ozone as we patch the BVU into our systems. We patched it directly to our Sony UVW-1800 BetaSP recorder.

So after starting in March with over 80 hours of material and working essentially as a one-man band on the Guinea Worm Documentary project since then, we’re finally nearing the home stretch. The addition of Adrienne Latham as my edit assist a month ago has been a huge help to the project. After spending 3 weeks just digitizing most of the remaining materials, she is now stringing together segments to help the project move along a bit faster. We switched positions now so she’s now cutting on the iMac while I cut on the Mac Pro system. I just seem lucky to keep hiring storyteller editors and it makes me feel good for the future because it seems the majority of editors I meet are more concerned with how to use filters, special effects and such instead of being concerned with telling a good story first. Effects are easy, teaching someone to tell a story, not so easy.

For the most part, we’ve been working with general outlines for each chapter from Producer Gary Strieker who then fills in any needed gaps with narration. I spent weeks creating a spreadsheet of all the interviews to assist in finding necessary sound as obviously we want to let the participants tell the story as much as possible. At times the story just naturally tells itself and then there are other times where it’s a real struggle to pull together the right words and images to convey this incredible story. One of the really neat things Gary arranged was to have a local African artist record four songs for us which have formed the primary music backbone of the feature. In addition to that, the crews recorded a wealth of on location singing, chanting and other music. Africa is just full of incredible sounds and song that go a long way towards telling their story.

As of right now we have 6 of the 10 chapters roughed in with a running time of about 56 minutes. Final will probably come in around 90 minutes. Once we get these last four chapters roughed in we’ll have a local screening with some of the team who worked on the project and then it’s on to final tweaks, revisions and off for sound mix and I get busy with color enhancement. More updates as we move along and the trailer will be online in the next few weeks. AWESOME trailer cut by Kim O’Neill.

Oh and what is Guinea Worm you ask? I could explain it, but the Carter Center Guinea Worm Eradication Program explains it so much better. This is the program we’re following in the documentary.

Tools we’re using in the documentary: Apple Mac Pro 2.93, Apple iMac 20″, Apple Final Cut Pro, AJA Kona 3, Maxx Digital Final Share (16 TB), Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, Apple Compressor, Apple Color, Nattress Color Plug-Ins, Apple Numbers, Apple Pages, Apple Logic, DigiDesign ProTools, Panasonic AJ-HD1400, Sony M15U, Wacom Intuos 3, FSI 2450W monitor, WeibeTech RTX200. Cameras used were the Panasonic Varicam and HVX-900 primarily; some material via the Sony Z1U and even some archive material shot with a Sony BetaSX camera. This week we’re getting in some 3/4″ archival material….. can’t wait.

Some of the folks who are making this documentary happen: Producer, Gary Strieker; Videographer, Rhett Turner; Videographer, Tyrone Edwards; Videographer, Ron Borden; Videographer, Roger Herr; Field Sound / Camera, Greg Pope; Editor / Colorist, Me; Edit Assist, Adrienne Latham; Graphics / Animation, Brian Little; Sound Design, Patrick Belden; Voice Talent, Widdi Turner; Production Assistants, Chris Skeene, Michelle Melton and Jenny Reese. I might bring in Colorist Ron Anderson to work on final color depending on how things are going near the end.

So I’ve been running SL for a week or so now on the laptop and I notice that my airport keeps dropping off the Wi-Fi all day long. Yeah it’s fun that they have animated the “searching for network” deal now, but it’s doing it way too often.

This morning it dropped off and could not even find the network again. The network was up, the airport wasn’t have anything to do with it. So I had to restart the laptop to get that working again. Then Safari just locked up and even after re-launching the app a few times, could not get the internet working.

Another reboot of the laptop got that working again.

Dunno, the more they “improve” the operating system, the more Apple seems to break the little stuff that drives us crazy.