Biscardi Creative Blog

Well today I was working on a new TV series that we’re hoping to pitch very shortly. Got a great friend who is well connected in the industry. We decided in lieu of a full pilot, we would put together a pitch reel highlighting our hosts. My good friend Cynthia Evans is one of the hosts. She was my lead actress on our short film “The Rough Cut” and she’s a natural fit for this new show.

What’s the show? Well I can’t tell you that yet, but soon enough I’ll be able to spill the beans. Needless to say it’s pretty rewarding and VERY scary to be creating my own idea. Looking forward to getting this series started!

Well I finally gave up on Apple’s Compressor as it has just gotten flakier and flakier as time goes on. Not sure what Apple did to the software but even after a clean install, the thing went south in two weeks on a brand new, fully updated Octo Core.

I’ve been looking at Telestream’s Episode for a while as some other shops I work with use it and love it. Well after one more aggravating failure from Compressor, I pulled the trigger today and added Episode Pro. Geez, what in the heck was I waiting for?! This thing is simple and has more options than Compressor ever did. AND I don’t have to set up that stupid “Q Master” virtual cluster deal that never seems to work correctly. Episode just automatically works off all cores on the Mac Pros.

The biggest thing I now have is Flash encoding right in the same application so I don’t necessarily have to use Adobe’s Media Encoder (and it’s flaky behavior). So now in one batch I can pretty much compress my original Quicktimes to whatever the heck the client wants.

The big difference between Episode and Episode Pro are the ability to batch more than 25 items at a time (Pro) and some additional higher end codecs (Pro). If you don’t need those extra features, just go with Episode. I gotta say, I’m done with Compressor after just one day using Episode.

Run, don’t walk, to Telestream’s site and download the trial version now to see for yourself.

http://www.telestream.net/episode/overview.htm

Sony and Samsung announce a wireless HD signal that would send HD signals to multiple TV’s in your home from a single box. But Sony is also involved in another effort to achieve the same goal. Wonder if the signals will ever been good enough for smaller Post houses like mine to send signals wirelessly to our production monitors. that would be pretty cool actually!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25805359/

Well, we’ve got our HP workstation up and running with DoStudio’s Trial Version now installed. The Trial version is the complete application with only the commercial replication features turned off.

First impressions are this thing is definitely NOT DVD Studio Pro or Encore. This is a very serious tool along the lines of Apple’s Color compared to the 3 Way Color Correction filter in Final Cut Pro. There is a learning curve as a lot of programming is manually done rather than simple drag and drop type of operations. This feels more like a professional authoring tool and less like a toy. Don’t get me wrong, I love DVDSP and it’s simple drag and drop functionality, but it’s nice to essentially have almost endless possibilities open to us and forcing us to actually learn what we’re doing. Anybody can drag and drop, but it’s nice to be able to get your “hands dirty” and go under the hood to see how to really operate authoring software.

In just one day, we’ve been able to get a nice main menu and chapter selection pop-up menu already underway. A little snag on the pop-up where we can get it to pop-up but it’s not going to the various chapters like we programmed. NetBlender’s support has been great to work with so far and we’ve uploaded the project file for them to poke around and see where we went wrong. I’m sure it’s operator error as we’ve been using the software all of about 6 hours.

One big thing that is missing as of right now is an “Undo.” This is reminiscent of Final Touch before Apple purchased it and turned in to Color. Final Touch did not have any sort of Undo so you had to be very careful of what you were doing. NetBlender tells me that Undo is a feature that will be added on this fall with an update and we’re already looking forward to it! :-)

The big adjustment is that we have to essentially “forget” the DVD mentality. There are so many different possibilities in authoring BluRay that you have to design the menus and even the overall flow differently. Still wrapping our heads around this, but using this software definitely calls for more planning and thought than just hurry up and get it done.

More soon!

So many of you have read of our failings with Adobe Encore trying to create BluRay discs. Today we start a new chapter in BluRay authoring by transferring all our needs to NetBlender’s “DoStudio.”

NetBlender has instituted a really neat month to month licensing option that’s approx. $250 per month to use the software. This is truly a month to month deal. So I can activate it for September for $250 and then sign up again in December. There’s no extra fees, nothing. They have several plans for 6 months, 12 months or you can outright purchase the software if you want. But in my case, we plan to produce maybe 10 BluRays all of 2009. Probably in batches of 3 or 4, so I might spend $1,000 total next year in the licensing fees, which is significantly less than $8,000 for the permanent license. So to start out, I can just go $250 per month which is easily charged back to the client per job.

The only caveat to this software is that it requires a Window machine, and we’re a full blown Mac shop here. So I did what I swore I would never do….. purchased an HP Workstation loaded with Vista. Of course, the sad thing for me is this is a fully loaded workstation for less than $1,700 and I know that if I created a fully loaded Mac Pro it’d be around $5,000 or more. So that’s one good thing, I guess!

One really neat little gadget I added on is a 160GB “pocket drive” that slips into the bottom of the HP machine. We’ll use this to transfer the large MPEG-2 files and graphics files from our Macs to the HP. Neat idea to essentially put a portable drive that slips in like a USB stick.

So that’s Step 1 - get an HP Workstation! I went by NetBlender’s recommendations and picked up the following machine:

- HP Pavilion Slimline s3500t PC
- Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (32-bit)
- Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Quad processor Q9300
- 3GB DDR2-800MHz dual channel SDRAM (1×2048,1×1024)
- 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9500GS, DVI-I, HDMI, VGA adapter
- 1TB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive
- 802.11 a/b/g/n Wireless LAN card
- Blu-ray DVD writer/player & Lightscribe SuperMulti DVD burner
- 15-in-1 memory card reader, 2 USB, headphone port
- No TV Tuner w/remote control
- None (Integrated 5.1 capable sound w/ front audio ports)
- Microsoft(R) Works 9.0
- No additional security software
- HP keyboard and HP optical mouse
- 160 GB 5400rpm HP Pocket Media Drive

- HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope

I’ll give you folks regular updates as we move forward with this new BluRay authoring tool!

So I got a funny email from Adobe last night. It goes something like this…

“Sorry we haven’t responded to any of your Encore / Blu-Ray issues since July, but we wanted to let you know that we used all your feedback on the issues you have with Encore in CS3 and that all of your problems have been fixed in CS4.”

That’s nice, so if I want to pay the upgrade price, I can finally get my return on investment for the $1,200 I spent 12 months ago. Nothing about the almost $12,000 in billable hours that we lost trying to get Encore to build simple menus in BluRay on the Mac.

I actually almost started laughing. This email was directly from the Adobe Product Manager like it was some great thing he was sending me. “We fixed everything that’s wrong, now for four easy payment of $99.99 you can have software that actually works!”

I have to honestly say I’ve never gotten an email quite like that. Usually when I’m dealing directly with Product Managers or the Product Design Team, they feed us beta builds so we can get our projects done or test our products. Or they get on the phone with us with our project open in front of them and we work together to solve the issue.

Like in the case of NetBlender. We’re having to learn an entirely new workflow and way of thinking to create BluRay discs using their software as it’s a much more intense and powerful tool than Encore. After spending a day building something, we could not quite get our project to work correctly. So we uploaded the project to NetBlender, they corrected the project and we still can’t quite get it working. So they are going to get on the phone with us today and we’re going to walk through the entire project to see where we are tripping up and if we need a workaround, we’re going to solve it immediately, on the phone. And we haven’t even paid for the software yet, we’re using the Trial Version and they want to make sure we can properly build Not via email communication that goes on for over a year with absolutely zero fixes to our issues.

For for y’all rushing out there to purchase CS4 for the new and improved Encore, hopefully our troubles have made it a better application on the Mac. But for us, Thanks but No Thanks. We’re done with Encore.

After almost 12 months of struggling with Adobe’s Encore software for BluRay production, we’ve decided to switch over to NetBlender’s DoStudio authoring software. This was a HUGE decision for me as the software requires a Windows workstation and we are a complete Mac workshop. I bit the bullet and we now have a new HP Slimline top of the line workstation with BluRay burner.

We’re installing the software this coming week and I’ll keep a running update on the blog on our progress. The big reason we switched to DoStudio is because we can create BD-J commercial titles. Encore can’t even create a nice BD-R disc. All we could do was create a “Play” button. So we’re moving forward with the intent of creating really nice commercial quality BluRay discs.

We’re working on a corporate documentary type of project that involves teenagers who lived through Hurricane Katrina. The project is all shot in high definition and of course, the producer was in the market for some news footage of the hurricane and its aftermath to help craft the story.

Looking around the web we found buyoutfootage.com with the most reasonably priced footage, about $450 for 19 minutes of the aftermath rescues and such. The description of the reel describes pretty much exactly what we were looking for with military personnel helping people, flooded streets, the mayor walking around, etc…. It’s available on BetaSP so we naturally assumed it would all be clean, good quality footage. Being on a quick turnaround schedule, we simply ordered the master without getting the sample DVD.

That was a bad decision. When we received the tape, a lot of the footage looked like it had been captured at a very low resolution or it had been through about 5 or 6 generations of dubs. Most of it is very soft, again, like bad transfers along the way.

So I called buyoutfootage.com and it was explained to me that all of the footage is from the Department of Defense and it was all dubbed from the original sources at an Air Force Base.As there’s no way to know what types of cameras the various folks were shooting with, the quality varies from very good to really really poor. That fact is not mentioned in the synopsis.

Synopsis: The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a category 3 storm, which made landfall on the morning of August 29, 2005. Aerial views of the flooding in New Orleans and helicopter rescue of people trapped by the floodwaters.
Scenes of people being removed from a freeway overpass by helicopter, and aerial view of the Super Dome. People waiting at the airport. Short scene of President Bush and Mayor Ray Nagin walking toward camera. Shows devastation of homes along the Gulf Coast.

In fact I was told I was the first one to complain about the quality of the footage and that there are “DV folks” and then there are “video connoisseurs.” I guess I fall into the later and the DV folks don’t know the difference in quality? Regardless, approx. 80% of the footage is far below what I could consider full quality video and really should be sold to anyone without an explicit note in the description along the lines of “This footage was shot by Department of Defense personnel using consumer and professional cameras. Video quality varies widely.”

The person on the phone told me I really should have ordered the DVD Sample disc (for $35) before ordering the footage. Yes, we will definitely do that in the future. To be absolutely fair here, the folks at buyout footage were very pleasant to speak to the phone and they did do a makegood offer so that we will have enough images to make this project work.

So for those of you seeking out royalty free and low cost footage, especially of major events, be sure to:

1 - Ask how the footage was obtained.

2 - Ask what the quality of the footage is. (Is it first generation? What cameras / format was it shot on?)

3 - Order the preview DVD where available.

June 2008

Biscardi Creative Media delivered “Staying Active in Gwinnett” for the Gwinnett County Communications Department. Editor Kim O’Neill worked closely with Producer Trent Baumgardner to create a showcase of the many ways senior citizens can stay active in Gwinnett County, Georgia.

The project is currently airing on TV23 and on the Gwinnett County website.