So if you enjoyed that little look back at the past, lets look at the future in this software demo which I think will pretty much blow you away. DuctTake  is a way of compositing images thats unlike anything you've seen. It patches peices of images together in the same shot across time. To really understand what it does watch the video.

As much as we think we are on the cutting edge of things lets go take a look back nearly 50 years to what is the first interactive graphics / drawing app. Its worth watching because it does some stuff we STILL don't have in apps like AE. Also consider that the cmputer running this was probably in the range of 1-4MHZ of processing speed on a big mainframe. Your smart phone would of been the world's faster super computer back then ! There are a couple of videos to check out from back then too.

In part 2, 3D !

5D shooting RAW video ? Internet buzz is flying about installing a current build of Magic Lantern onto your 5D mkIII or t3i and shoot RAW. I dig it, I have huge respect for the people working on ML because this is an upgrade worth paying for. Now its still .1 in terms of its limitations like not being a full 1920X1080, its uncompressed so it requires the very fastest and most expensive CF cards, and its still limited to 4gb file size recording.... for the moment. If they are using a hardware h.264 encoder ( like almost for sure ) its HIGHLY unlikely that you'll get some high quality flavor of compressed video. Remember, HDCAM SR is based on h.264 too ! Its a very broad spec with deep color support and high data rates.

However also lets put this in perspective, Canon's Effing us big time ! There is no other way to put it. While Canon dribbles out the clean HDMI feed years late to the game, these guys are fully unlocking the hardware's real potential. Of course this raises the bigger question, what about the C series ? I'll almost put money down those cameras can do the same. What's Canon sitting on ? well besides getting you to pay up a lot more money for the same hardware in a fancier body ?

They unexpectedly launched the DSLR revolution but lets face it, some other camera maker would of done it sooner or later. Canon just got lucky in being first out the door with a margin. They rode the wave of success selling lots more product than they expected, but then got both greedy and conservative. Neither is good for running a business long term because companies like BMD will come along and flip  you upside down if you don't stay a leader. In fact I just watched a 5D MkIII vs BMD camera shooting side by side. BMD camera is sharper, hands down. Both cameras show very good lattitude. However the BMD can shoot to ProRes which makes file sizes and media requirements manageable for most average productions.  Shooting uncompressed RAW requires huge amounts of storage, even if you process that materail up front into ProRes with a base grading pass to get all the image detail out.

Part 2 of my tests on the new GoPro Hero 3. Low light had always been the enemy of the Hero 1 so lets see how well the Hero3 does. Some surprising results.

There are some online forums where people are just going nuts over Adobe offering only Creative Cloud software as basically a rental. I see there point about wanting access to be able to change their work. However maybe they should close their mouths and open their eyes a little for other options, that is while Adobe figures out a solution that will hopefully keep everyone happy. Here is a PhotoShop clone with a nice UI running in your web browser. The funny part ? it uses flash ! it runs fine and does all the BASIC photoshop things you'd want for picture retouching and basic graphics work. Its an option to consider....

Interested in SpeedGrade CC but can't stand waiting until its officially release ? Adobe has posted some new tutorials today

Robbie Carman shows how to use the new SpeedGrade CC Look Manager http://adobe.ly/17JynOt

Color grading with masks in the redesigned SpeedGrade CC UI http://adobe.ly/15mOmEU

Discover the amazing new Shot Matcher in SpeedGrade CC http://adobe.ly/ZDShVS

Working with the new Snapshot Browser in SpeedGrade CC http://adobe.ly/YrWMWc

New Luma Waveform gives you even greater precision in SpeedGrade CC http://adobe.ly/12amWNO

Color grading Premiere Pro CC sequences in SpeedGrade CC http://adobe.ly/ZN3lDP
 

Lots of changes are coming. Creative Suite Apps are now Creative Cloud available June 17th.

Here's the official word  from Adobe on the details. Summary : perpetual licenses are gone. You can still purchase CS6 and there is at least short term commitment for bug fixes and presumably OS updates. No statement on how far out this will run. My guess is that it depends on how much they sell, but I wouldn't count on more than 2 years. For some apps CS6 may work for quite some time like PS or IL. Other apps like Premiere Pro which has far higher demands may not last as long. Then again FCP 7 still runs on 10.8, 2 full OS revs since its last update. We'll see how long it lasts. 

It would be silly for me to list everything thats available on Adobe's site already, and in their MAX conference opening video. So let me give you one tidbit : Premiere Pro is now the leading NLE for seats installed and sales. Apple gave Adobe this and I'm sure Avid is quietly crying as they were once #1.

The other thing that I really enjoyed from the MAX video was how Adobe has basically put Flash out to the curb very quietly and finally has some good HTML5 tools. I've played with Edge Animate and like it. Its produced fluid animating output, page size is small and self contained ( assuming you didn't pull in external bits ) and it works on everything. Combined with Edge ReFlow delivering video to multiple platforms from phones to tablets to computer screens just got a lot easier.... if it all works as slick as the demo's showed. What I did see with ReFlow is that it seemed to address some problems I'd had in trying to do the same in DW a year ago. It all looks pretty good.

Creative Cloud itself is also set to ease collaboration between people in different locations. It has a lot of maturity and depth. It can trace its roots thru several Adobe products that didn't quite do very well like Version Cue which became Adobe Drive ( never messed with this one ) which is now the Cloud Drive. The big thing I saw was that they could collect all the assets in at least graphics projects and get them all into one place. Looks easier than FTP and all the hassles associated with that. However, for video we know its not practical, at least until we all have gigabit fiber net connections. 

Exciting times !

What do you do when you have a GoPro Hero 1, Hero 2 and brand new  GoPro HERO3: Black Edition ? Have a camera shoot out of course ! I'm still working my way through this but here is the first quick test. We took Josiah Winteroff's blue BMW M3 out for a spin with all three cameras mounted side by side on the roof. Tried to aim them all the same but the Hero1 was a bit off. Eitherway it still worked out ok.

The WiFi control and monitoring app for the Hero3 and Wifi back equiped H1 and H2 is great. It makes changing camera settings so much easier and faster. Monitoring itself though has an easy 4-5 sec lag which is fustrating. It means make an adjustment... wait... wait... there it is. Good ? not quite, fiddle around, wait... wait... Ok got it. Its way better than nothing but for setting cameras up you just might want to consider having a small monitor with HDMI in. That said, the Wifi app is still great and I'm happy to have it for everything else including starting and stopping cameras. The other thing I'll add is that setting up the Wifi on the units is a bit tedious. You really have to RTFM the first time or two until you have the drill down. Using the GoPro aka Cinestudio computer app is part of the deal. Once you make it thru the setup, connecting is normally pretty reliable and takes 5 to 10 secs for camera to iPhone to connect. This is a great app to justify you next iPad purchase !

Yesterday Aaton filed for bankruptcy protection. Quite surprising considering its a company thats been around for a very long time. However, they were late to the game with digital camera. Even ARRI got into the game several years back. I'm also sure that their creation and production of the A-minima was a real distraction to this process and really a dead end product, however nice a camera it is. 

I've shot with LTR-54's and 35 III's. The 35 series is a very nice small compact camera thats great for commercial work and shooting where the 400' mags aren't a problem.  We'd often get spots done with 4 rolls / 16min of raw material with good camera control and simply not rolling all the time between takes eating film up for nothing. Another technique was to roll sound first, let them call speed, THEN roll the camera for the slate. This saves and easy 15 secs of film for every take which adds up to a lot when doing short takes. Oh well, we aren't shooting on film very much these days are we ?

The sad part is that Aaton has done some very cool and actually innovative things with their 1/4 pixel shift of the sensor itself between frames and and their slotted spinning ND disc to cut exposure. My guess : ARRI buys them, hopefully not RED or the VITEC group. We'll probably see the digital Penelope Delta camera live and their Cantar audio recorder live under another vendor. As for service on your Aaton there are dealers who can still do that, parts who knows, some dealer may buy the lot out... but then again you're problably not using that camera very much anymore.