Special feed for Dennis...

you wanted drones...

NAB 2013 -- Monday

Rain? In Las Vegas? Really? yes. and on the 23rd floor, snow flurries were seen. yes, really. the concierge will back me up on that.

It's not often one steps off of the shuttle bus into the convention center and sees something noteworthy, let alone cool.

but... first thing at the Sony booth was just that something.

it was a video switcher that used "4K" imaging to cover a sporting event.

basically, the cameras are shooting a picture that is 3840 pixels × 2160 pixels (8.3 mega pixel in a 16:9 aspect ratio) which is larger than what we currently use for HD video (1920pixels : 1080pixels). since the image is bigger than the screen, you can then digitally "zoom in" on the video to get a close up look. (think of the pinch motion on an iPhone to zoom in on that vacation picture you're showing Uncle Harriet.) 

The upper part of the screen, the "panoramic image" is shot by two stationary 4K cameras sitting right next to each other, and then stitched together at the half court line. 

 the switcher then "crops" the image, in real time, to make the tight shot you want (the two lower images).

in this picture, you can see the two blue-ish bounding boxes which outline the tighter shots.

 the cool thing is that then the entire court is recorded.  then, when it's time for a replay, the cameras have captured everything that is happening. you then can crop down on the action.
the picture looked really good to about a full body shot of a person, then it was zoomed in too far and the quality dropped off.

of course, after seeing this, i couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a "4K imaging solution," making this the 3D-TV of 2013. (in other words, the thing that is neat, but really doesn't have a practical application to us).

Suddenly... there was free cake from the 100th birthday of the American Cancer Society.

while coming back from a meeting with our MyNetwork TV Representative, this small group of union picketers/strikers were walking down the street towards the convention center, and giving cabbies a right tongue-lashing.

in asking them what was going on, one of them explained to me they were angry about being fired for not following routes as set up by their cab company... basically saying that they as cabbies are forced to take a longer route to inflate fares or "long hauling." about 90 mins later, the group on the corner had really swelled and was getting their point across.


interesting day indeed.

pfft pfft... is this thing on?

ok.  i've been away a while.  what'd i miss?

when i ripped this off...

when i ripped this off of velogogo, his caption was "i almost cried."

L'EROICA (english version) from Edouardi Sepulchro on Vimeo.

i did.

NAB 2011, with the right app...

and an over-priced harness, what can't the iPad do?

NAB 2011, MobileTV gets a buzz word podium finish

so, prolly the most "in your face" idea this year was 3D-video (i can imagine the voice over now... "this is News 3-D in H-D at Noon").

rrriiiiiiigt.

the second biggest buzz & the one that has a greater chance of having an effect on us is Mobile-TV. the idea is that over the air broadcast stations take some of their bandwidth and broadcast a signal that can be more readily decoded by "mobile devices" with the right "app." basically, the ability to watch our severe weather coverage live on your iPad or the Masters from the first tee box on your samsung galaxy.

it's basically a response by broadcasters to make more compelling arguments to keep more of our FCC allocated airspace, rather than having it taken away & given to wireless internet/cell phone providers.

Mobile-TV broadcasts are currently happening in a few markets around the country.

this well intended idea is in such a weird place right now... because there are so many forces at work:

• first off, people can't even agree on what to call it... Mobile-TV (for some "TV" has a negative context meaning old, traditional, one-way over-the-air communication) or call it Mobile-Video (oh, so pictures but no audio then?)
• mobile device manufacturers need to build phones & tablets with the right hardware to receive the signal
• programmers need to write applications that can display the content
• speaking of content, what is the programming? just a re-transmission of what we already do (IE: CBS or TVW) or a custom programmed channel? ya think CBS might want a little more coin for that re-transmission?
• oh, and don't forget we would need to buy a bunch of ATSC-M/H transmission hardware to broadcast that new signal
• is this free for viewers, or do they subscribe to this?

in the Morgan Murphy Media group meeting, Brian Burns (who just happens to be a member of the OMVC and the Mobile500 Alliance) said that re-transmitting what we're doing now is the way to begin, then see where it leads from there.

the trick that would make Jane Consumer want this (and therefore lead to an actual business model) is to have it mimic the two-way communication that the internet provides. instead of programing that just magically falls from the sky, have some way to let the consumer select what they can watch on their device, too. the answer to that is a DVR function on the device, which you could record a show onto your iPad. there also may be ways to request a show or segment via the cellular provider, then deliver it to the device's DVR (still a little foggy on how it gets to the DVR... over the cellular/wifi provider or over the air from our transmitter).

of course, all of this centers around the viability of an actual business model... the ability to make money from it. really, that's easy part: just come up with an idiot-proof hand-held device & application that anyone can use then broadcast can't-look-away local programming on it. no problem, right?

NAB 2011, SHOW DOWN: BTi responds

BTi vs Leader

had a lovely chat with the BTi guys. they're the ones that do our school closings & sports ticker. they showed me their election software. each page can use online or input results; either one during the same election day. it just airs whichever vote numbers are larger. pre-race set up is done by them (Dennis i'm going to repeat that... they program the thing) then we would select from the templates we told them to create. yes, it can do candidate pictures, winner, incumbent, democrat, republican logos. it's got a screen that can be used for talent. it's server based, and one instance can control multiple chyrons (un ike now where leader needs a unique instance to control full screens and the lower thirds. there is no hardware to buy, you can run as many client versions as you like with no additional licenses (so Craig could have one open and the vote tally section could have five open, there could be 4 open on the set for the talent screens with no prob. all in all, it does what leader does, just a little differently two talent screen, will talk to a chyron, to sum it up, it seems to do everything that avid's Leader does, AND it runs on windows7.

they also had a twitter ticker (a "twititker" (i just love making up my own language)). the neat thing about that was that general tweets went into a producer screen for screening purposes, but if you knew thehashtag and password, your tweet could go directly to air. so, basically tweets from a trusted source, say David Douglas out in the field can get to air more quicklier than ones from me.

en sa mémoire: tres enchiladas, tres Tecates & one laptop battery gave their lives to provide you with this day's posts.

NAB 2011, Look Alive Urban, this one is for you

saw a bunch of small camera (under 10lbs) cradles/shoulder harnesses)

the key is to have a weight for all you're gonna put on the mount (camera, lens, nat sound mic, battery, spotlight, squids, etc), then select the model from there. after that mounts could be divided into two groups, mechanical and just handles.

to me, the gimbled mechanical models seemed to be the ones to have. with the weight of the cameras we're dealing with (Cannon 5dm2), this would give the sexiest results.

the first one i saw i pretty much like the best, it's the Glidecam HD-1000:

it $599, it has a reasonable price.

the next most impressive was the merlin model by steadi-cam. sure, it started with just a handle and gimble, but the price was actually on par with the first one at $899. from there, you can add on the full steadicam vest and arm, (to the tune of like $2,500 however).

two more had more sort of spring-loaded arms that hooked to a belt to stabilze the mount.

this is one from varizoom.

you could just buy the mount and handles, then add the shoulder harness, then the belt and spring loaded pole, or buy as a kit.

of course, dude had run out of the color brochures.

pretty much the same thing from a company called ________:

the others were passive, "just handles" models, like these from Genus.

like anything, one can spend as much as you want, but not as little as you would like.

NAB 2011, wave guide PϴrN

NAB 2011, Hint: it wasn't 04:50:42

one guess as to what time this picture was taken

bonus round, what does the manufacturer make?

NAB 2011, Look Alive Mike Evans, this is for you

LOOK ALIVE MIKE EVANS, THIS IS FOR YOU:

sat through the Maxon Cinema 4D 3d object creation software demo. the thing that stuck out (and the thing they wanted you to remember) is that it really plays nice with adobe after effects.

you can create a scene with lights and a camera move in C4D, then render it. that timeline can then go into after effects and the camera and lights come into the AE timeline too. chyron can also accept that kind of timeline into lyric too, so that might actually be handy on a couple of different levels.

ALSO, what was neat-o was that while cinema 4D was rendering the file, the guy was still able to put it on the after effects timeline & start to mess with it. as more rendered, more appeared on the AE timeline. i could definitely see this as a time saver, especially for my ADHD @ss.

the guy in the demo used an illustrator file and a plug in (which he just happened to develop imagine the coincidence) so it was difficult to sense how easy/hard it was to create your own 3D objects, but all in all this seemed pretty neat-o.

also, in the mevans file, a quick chat with the Flip-Factory kids revealed nothing, or everything, depending upon some testing. on the frame skipping issue, Josh McMahon said:

mpeg's are Upper first

mov's are lower first.

he also gave no "recommended render settings" because Flip-Factory should theoretically handle anything

NAB Day Two: Really, was that day two that just went by?

I ran into the Kevin Smith talk at the avid booth quite by accident, but glad i did.

Make no mistake, it was a commercial for Avid, but an effective one.

Very interesting to hear the description of watching Clerks be edited on a traditional 6 plate film editor (gosh, i remember those). then just a couple years later, seeing a friend of his edit another of his films on an avid. it was akin to watching someone play a video game; he basically pushed the guy out of the way and started cutting the film himself.

it also gave him the instant gratification of taking a day's shoot, editing it together that night, returning to the set the next morning and showing the cast & crew "this is what I'm thinking..."

also, in the same vein, how he can edit the final film again and again. his view was that once a film hits home video release, that's the final, final can't make anymore changes cut.

He talked about how the critics always say "his films play to his audience." To which he says, "well, duh." that's a statement you make when you've learned what you can do, what you can't, and are comfortable with the answer.

It was cool to hear him talk. To me, he's more relate-able than Mary Hart (NAB hall of fame lunch). but then again, one prolly relates more to people that you could/want to be (a potty-mouthed niche film director) rather than someone you are not (a female anchor).

gotta go, my monorail pass runs out in 33 minutes, and it's a 20 minute walk to the tram station.

NAB 2011, Day One

spent about 90 minutes at the sprawling Avid/iNews booth, basically playing good iNews / bad iNews:

YAY! iNews has an iPad app:

BOO!: it's read only. you can't write or edit a script only read it. it seems the ongoing clash between Flash vs Apple iPhone/iPad is standing in the way. but, apparently, the Windows

tablet and blackberry versions are read/write, as Flash & Windows play nicely together.

YAY!: iNews is promising to "revitalize" the Leader software, which they haven't touched in three years. Innovations will start with making it windows 7 compatible.
BOO!: it will not be any easier or more intuitive to set up & program. (sorry Mr. Moran, more confusing & complicated programming scripts to write).

YAY!: a new version of iNews, featuring more rundown color codes. also, more robust searching & organizing tools and the ability to put active email or html links into stories. so, like Rick can cut and paste a google map link into an assignment script.
BOO!: it still can't effectively display scrips in a preview/program kind of mode, which could be used by directors to work more effectively work from an iNews computer & not need to print scripts. (the trees, think of the poor trees).

The new whiz-bang application they were really trying to hook us with is the Avid Interplay Central, which is basically a more mobile version of Assist.

This thing runs off of a server at our house, so in the field you'd be on a notebook PC, editing proxy video from our Interplay. the real deal video would be created upon "Send" by our local servers and saved to our playback server. still sounds like you'd need quite a nice strong, juicy wifi connection to run this:

oh, and a bunch of expensive licenses & another server, too. did i mention the set up and training?

====

interesting discussion at a Mobile Digital Television seminar (i actually asked a question of the panel... he he he, little ole me), but that and other adventures will just have to wait for another time.

ciao

p.s.: Johan VanSummeren... really?

NAB 2011, Day Zero: the search for subtlety

the sunday before the monday of NAB is always fraught with excitement; what will this year's"complementary" bag bring? with this one, some only see an " 'owl' (brand) deluxe back pack made with 100% post consumer recycled materials... (except for some things like zippers and grommets, but [they're] working on it) and a bunch of hand-bills (printed on pre-consumer paper):
i choose to see nuance.

first off, the items in the orange ovals are for Mike Evans' benefit. WHEN YOU ARE RIGHT, MIKE, YOU ARE RIGHT! KNOW WHAT I MEAN?!

the avid logo in the orange square is noteworthy for its journey. you see in 2008 when i was here, avid was not... well at least officially. they boycotted the official NAB exhibitor floor (as evidenced in this post) claiming it was too expensive to justify the cost of coming. fast forward to 2011 & now they are official ID badge lanyard sponsor. i wonder how much of the money we spent with the new COMMAND, ISIS/INTERPLAY/NEWSCUTTER/AIR SPEED systems we purchased from them went to printing lanyards.

if day zero was this exciting, i just know you can't wait for day one.

NAB 2011...

i'm planning on resuming my bloggular duties during a visit to the National Association of Broadcasters convention.
until then...

hockey game timelapse with faux tilt shift from al b on Vimeo.

winter bike is finally done & ready to ride

so, the "Margo Renee" rides again, this time as a winter bike. aluminum cyclocross frame. ideal for this application.

the idea was to build this back up as a commuter, using only parts on hand in the garage.

the two exceptions:

> had to replace the bottom bracket; the bearings were really crunchy
> had to replace the inner chainring; teeth were just too scary

no front derailleur, as i only had one bar end shifter. maybe i'll break the rules & buy one if i come across one later.

6 speed suntour freewheel & mavic MA40 rear wheel

campagnolo nuovo record rear derailleur

went with the "aero" brake levers. it was kind of a toss up between those and the Modolo levers with the cables flapping in the breeze. guess i was feeling 1988 instead of 1958.



of course, i was too impatient to put on the fenders before riding it... and guess what? it snowed after i got to work.