Technology Park – Page 3

Summertime Tools for the Creative Professional

Summer is here and for most of us, it’s the best season of the year. Although, summer has its temptations. The temptations of 3-day weekends, clocking out early and even cases of impromptu hooky. And who can blame us? Summer is only 13 weeks long! You can’t let summer pass you by without getting outside. This month in Tech Edge, we are going to go over some of the best Apps and tools for the creative professional when you are on the go. These Apps may help you out when you out of the office and enjoying the weather. These Apps and tools hopefully won’t only help you as a creative professional, but as someone trying to make the most of summer.

Waze

It is often said that 90% of success is just showing up. Waze can help you show up, and much more. Waze is a GPS App that allows users to report traffic conditions to other Waze users in real time. So imagine if your GPS had real time updates from all the other drivers on the road. This technology was so impressive to Google, that last year, they purchased Waze for nearly a billion dollars. What makes Waze so special is someone 10 miles ahead of you can report traffic to your map. Waze will take that traffic information and re-calculate your route based on this new information. If there is a more time efficient route instead of the one Waze originally put you on, you will be offered an alternative route. In other words, Waze will adapt to the changing conditions on the road.

Waze users (or “Wazers” as they are known) can report road debris, vicious pot-holes, disabled vehicles and even speed traps. Waze calculates its routes for you with traffic factored into travel time. Perfect for avoiding traffic altogether. There have been many times where I have been in traffic on the highway, and Waze would offer a route that takes me off the highway and brings me back on after the traffic is cleared. It’s an amazing App and if you don’t have it, get it. It’s free, and it will make your summer excursions much more organized.

LogMeIn

LogMeIn can help you in so many aspects of your life. What LogMeIn does is offer remote desktop support to your computer. So what does that mean? Imagine if you are away for the weekend and you were diligent enough to bring your laptop, but your client needs a file stored somewhere on a computer back at the office. They want you to email that one teeny, tiny file…..but its back at the office. Do you go all the way back? Not if you are using LogMeIn. If your computer in the office is online, and you can get online where ever you are vacationing, you can simply log into the computer remotely and use it as simply as if you were in front of it. You can access that file and email it.

LogMeIn can enable to you help someone without getting up and leaving the office. Do you have a technologically challenged relative that always leans on you for tech support, but they live an hour away? Set them up on LogMeIn and you can fix them at a moment’s notice. Conversely, if you are the technologically challenged relative, you can get people to help you with much less resistance if you offer to let them remote into your computer. With more and more software companies leaning toward remote desktop support, you may find yourself already a recipient of remote desktop support. But it’s out there for your use as well, and in non-commercial situations, it’s often free.

There are many alternatives out there for remote desktop Apps and software and why LogMeIn is more impressive is it keeps a database of your computers and you can jump on any one of them at any time, and it also will enable you to log in after a reboot. There are other Apps and tools out there that will let you log in remotely, but many do not enable you to log right back in easily after a reboot.

ColorStrokes

ColorStrokes is a photo editing App that is usually under $5 on the App store. With it being on the App store for not much money, do not expect something as in depth as Photoshop. Can what you can expect is a fun, breezy, easy to use photo editor that gives you some beautiful results without much effort.

ColorStrokes makes things like secondary color correction easy. When you import your photo into ColorStrokes, it brings it in black and white and you re-touch the color from there. You can easily re-apply any color or change the color, apply masks and correct around those masks. Its slick and simple user interface is really the selling point. Missing though are the abilities to edit multiple photos at once. You have to work on one photo at a time. This is likely due to the social media aspect of this App. There are hopes of that being added but that functionality is not there. But currently there is also functionality to send to more advanced photo editing software. And for photo file formats, they cover JPEG, TIFF, RAW, and PNG.

Once you have edited your image, you can email it out or share it with all the usual suspects in social media or even send it out to get printed. Perfect for the creative professional who is trying to maintain their creative credibility with stunning photos, while keeping the family up to date on how their vacation is going.

Steve McGrath is a Broadcast Sales Engineer for HB Communications. He has worked with NBC, ABC, CBS, NESN, NECN, Fox, ESPN, Pentagon, Powderhouse and many others. You can reach him at Steve.McGrath@HBCommunications.com. Learn more, visit www.HBCommunications.com.

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NAB: New England’s Surprising Three

Another NAB has come and gone and with it the cavalcade of new product announcements. Last month in Tech Edge, we covered three of the biggest New England companies at the NAB show. This month in Tech Edge, we are going to cover the three most surprising representatives from New England. These are the people who held their cards close to their chest and came out of NAB winners.

Glidecam

Glidecam is a Massachusetts based camera stabilization and accessories company. Founded by Martin and David Stevens in 1992, Glidecam has twenty plus years of experience in their field. Martin Stevens, filmmaker himself, was looking for more affordable alternatives to camera stabilization systems. Glidecam is now in industry leader in camera stabilization offering hand mounted units, body mounted units, remote heads, cranes and sliders. The results are buttery smooth and stable camera panning at very, very reasonable prices.

The products I found most impressive at this NAB were the Remote Heads which enable you to put your camera on a crane and remotely pan and tilt your camera. The hand held stabilizers I used were very smooth and I was astonished by the light weight of their entire product line. The offer stabilizers that can house your typical shoulder mounted broadcast cameras down to your compact DSLR camera that fits in your hand. No matter what you have for a camera, Glidecam has something that can help you. Their hardware is very robust, resilient, and reliable.

For a great example of the results of Glidecam click on the hyperlink below (or search YouTube for the video below) or visit their website at Glidecam.com

Devin Graham (SuperTramp) Ice Castles Video – You Tube

EditShare

Also based in Massachusetts, EditShare’s specialty is shared storage and tapeless workflow. They started only making storage but have expanded into a myriad of other products including video playout and ingest, media backup software, media asset management as well as non-liner video editing software. On top off all this, EditShare has its own number of “firsts.” They were the first 3rd party to offer bin sharing in Media Composer, project sharing in Final Cut Pro, and the first to offer shared storage for field based operations. Their international client list is long and prestigious and includes NASCAR, Wimbledon, the Chicago Blackhawks (NHL) and the Pittsburg Penguins (NHL) as well the recent Grammy award winning Led Zeppelin’s “Celebration Day”

This year at NAB, EditShare dazzled spectators with EditShare Storage version 7. Version 7 offers support for every major video editing software in the market. Other new features include bandwidth reservations, project profiles what will remember what workspaces are needed for each of your projects, and support for Final Cut Pro X.

EditShare Flow version 3 offers new features such as “Airflow” which offers web-based review of your assets on EditShare storage. Also new, “Flow Automation” will also augment your workflow with simple transcoding profiles to specific formats you may need. “Flow Automation” can also help you move media or updating the metadata associated with your assets. They also now support non video assets such as images and audio files.

EditShare Field 2 was also announced at NAB. The updated shared storage solution now supports solid state drives which offer you much better performance and much more quiet performance. The Field 2 also offers you Flow which was covered earlier. The best part about Field 2 is its rugged chassis meets airline regulations making traveling with Field 2 a breeze.

The last new announcement from EditShare was with Geevs Studio MC. This offers you the capability to do a live multicam edit and then export it as a group clip just about any non-linear editor where your editing application of choice and further work on the sequence. You can also just play the ISO cameras instead. This gives you complete creative control to change the program edit or to correct any mistakes made live.

For more information on EditShare, please visit their website at www.editshare.com

MOTU

MOTU is a company that has been around in the MIDI and audio space for a long time, but they are just becoming seasoned in the video space. Based in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, MOTU (formerly Mark of the Unicorn) got their start in 1980 as a MIDI program for audiophiles. A few years back, they entered the video space and immediately became a force to be reckoned with.

This year at NAB, MOTU was showing off their HDX line which enables video capture on Windows and Mac OS. They are compatible with Final Cut Pro, Avid and Adobe as well as their flagship software Digital Performer. They introduced Thunderbolt IO support for the HDX line a year or so back, and it has been one of the biggest sellers for Thunderbolt IO.

Some of the other features that make this a compelling choice are simple plug and play compatibility, 16 channels of audio(in about any format), gunlock, legacy SD IO, and it a great choice for both the field and in studio. The hardware is durable but light enough to travel easily. For more info on MOTU products, visit their website at www.motu.com

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New England’s Technology at NAB 2014

Again this year, New England will have good representation at the NAB Show, April 5 – 10th, held in the Las Vegas Convention Center. It is the world’s largest electronic media show covering filmed entertainment and the development, management and delivery of content across all mediums. With more than 93,000 attendees from 156 countries and 1,550+ Exhibitors, NAB Show is the ultimate marketplace for digital media and entertainment. From creation to consumption, across multiple platforms and countless nationalities, NAB Show is home to the solutions that transcend traditional broadcasting and embrace content delivery to new devices in new ways.

The show attracts New England’s huge industry leading companies as well as new companies who are new to the NAB show floor. This month in Tech Edge, we are going to explore the biggest and best of New England and preview what they will be up to at NAB 2014.

Avid Technology

Avid Technology is one of the biggest providers of post-production and broadcast tools. Their flagship products include Media Composer, Symphony, NewsCutter, ISIS, Interplay and Airspeed. These products can help you edit video, store, remotely upload and manage your video as well as sending it out to air for broadcast. Avid will likely be touting their recent successes with the Academy Awards nominees using their products and another successful Olympics season.

Historically speaking, Avid has had some of the largest and loudest booths at NAB. Every year, they have a myriad of A-list editors, producers and content creators speaking in their booth. Past speakers in the Avid booth have included Morgan Spurlock and Kevin Smith. They have also had people who edit the best of the best television (Game of Thrones, True Blood, Community and Frontline), film (XMEN. ARGO, ZERO DARK THIRY) and sports (St. Louis Cardinals, San Francisco Giants). Although at this time Avid has not announced whom is speaking this year, you should expect exciting and informative guest speakers.

As for new product announcements, Avid always keeps their cards close to their chest. I would expect new versions of all the flagship products as well as announcements on compatibility on the new Mac Pro computers. They also tend to surprise people with new hardware offerings and 2014 shouldn’t be any different.

You can find them at Avid NAB at booth number SU902 and get NAB updates at www.avid.com.

Broadcast Pix

Broadcast Pix is a front-running company in the live production tools workspace. They have products that will enable you to a live video production. Their flagship products are Flint, Mica, Slate and Granite. Those products are live production switchers and each model has its own unique features. Broadcast Pix has also come out with a bunch of new offerings as well. The newest member of their hardware family is called ReVue which gives you HD slow motion capabilities that you can use alongside one of their live production switchers.

One of the products they make that is truly unique is called Vox. Vox helps people doing visual radio. What the product does is switch cameras based on detecting if there is audio present. So if your favorite radio show has an online stream of the video of the radio show, they could use Vox to eliminate the need for a technical director. When each host talks, the audio is detected and Vox will switch the camera to the talent speaking at that time. It is truly a one of a kind product and is just a small piece of what Broadcast Pix can do as a company.

Broadcast Pix has also just released version 2 of their iPixPanel which enables users of Flint, Mica, Slate and Granite to control live production switching from your IPad. The iPixPanel app will allow you to not only switch cameras, but to also add keys. It can control video on your clip server.

Broadcast Pix, not only has a great national presence, but their international presence is huge as well. Their customer base touches all over the world to people who cannot afford to compromise with quality or product reliability. With the amount of new products Broadcast Pix has recently released, it will be surprising to see even more new products in their NAB booth, but they have been known to surprise before and could do it again. Their current offerings are great, they do incredible demonstrations and you can visit them at NAB in booth SL6325 and get your NAB updates at www.broadcastpix.com.

Facilis Technology

Facilis has emerged as one of the leading storage companies in the post industry. Founded in 2003, they quickly became one of the more prominent media storage companies. Their flagship product, TerraBlock, is one of the most diverse and flexible storage systems on the market. They support every major editing software, on every major operating system, using every major raiding type, from every major connection type. Facilis takes pride in their in-house end to end integration of every system they sell. Their client list is deep and prestigious and includes just about every major broadcasting network.

Coming into NAB, Facilis is riding high off a great release for TerraBlock 6.0. TerraBlock is one of the only shared storage options that offers 4K, uncompressed HD, as well as all the other usual formats you would expect such as DNx and ProRez. The user interface to their TerraBlock got a complete overhaul and looks spectacular. They also added LTO6 support with their SyncBlock product which enables TerraBlock users to back up their TerraBlock media to a cost efficient LTO6 archive. They have also added LDAP sync support which will make administering users much easier and features like that always keep your IT department happy.

I would expect that Facilis is going to be showing off some surprises this year. Facilis will be at NAB at booth SL7610, be sure to check them out. You can also get all their NAB updates at www.facilis.com

NAB is the best time of year for people in the technical side of our industry. I’m sure there will be some surprises and in the next issue of Imagine, Tech Edge will explore some of the surprising news and announcements from the show floor. Hopefully, we will see you out there!

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Demystifying Codecs and Containers

Knowing the technical aspects of the video you are working with can be the difference between an easy typical day, or a mind-numbing day with unsolvable mysteries that has your work shut down. Here are some examples… You get sent a QuickTime .mov file and it plays back as just a white screen. Someone sends you an .avi file and you are a Mac user and you have no way to open the video file. Someone sends you a ProRez file and you are a Windows user and now you are stuck too. These are all common problems. Every day, video professionals work with different codecs, containers and formats and don’t really know much about them. The differences can seem unsubstantial, confusing and frustrating. Having a clearer understanding of how codecs and containers work can not only make troubleshooting easier, but help you avoid trouble all together.

There are four aspects of a video file. They are the audio, video, metadata and container. The audio and video are easy to understand, it is the images you see and the sounds you hear when playing a file. The metadata is information about the audio and the video. Some examples of basic metadata info are the name of the file, creation date, audio and video codecs used, frame rate, sample rate of audio, number of channels of audio, etc. The container is the file you click on your computer to present all of this info. So although you are clicking on something like “name-of-file.mov”, you are actually accessing all four aspects of the video file by clicking on the container file.

Let’s take a look at container files for a minute. What is a container file? A container file is something like an .avi, .mov, .mxf, .wmv, AVCHD or .mp4. It is a file you click on and play audio and/or video. Each container type has its pros and cons on usability. For example, the .mov is geared toward Macs where the .wmv is more geared toward Microsoft and Windows. AVCHD (developed by Sony and Panasonic) is pretty robust as a container, but unlike any other container file, it has a very specific folder structure that cannot be altered. This leaves .mp4 as the most widely compatible and easy to use container file, and because of this, it also makes it currently the most popular. The .mp4 container can be played on all operating systems, most mobile devices such as tablets and smart phones, and other places such as YouTube.

Think of the container file as a pizza chain that puts their name on their pizza box. In our example, we have a .MOV pizza. We know that .MOV Pizza has a wide menu and who knows what is in that pizza box. Its a pizza for sure, but we don’t know much more than that.
The codec is what determines how that pizza inside the box looks. The codec is a like a small computer program that creates the file. For our example, he can be the pizza chef. We know there is a pizza inside of a pizza box, but how was it prepared? Does it have toppings? Thin or thick crust? The codec/pizza chef will determine all that. There are too many codecs to mention in this article, but some of the common ones are .mp3, .aac, .mpeg2. ,mepg4, .h264 and soon coming .h265. In our example, our container (pizza chain) was .mov and our pizza chef and all the ingredients, crust and preparation were .h264 for video and .mp3 for audio.

Codec is short for compress/decompress. A codec is used to take huge uncompressed HD video and make it manageable to be stored and edited affordably. It does this by compressing the video and throwing away information to make it play back. There are two ways that this can be done. It can be done using an intra-frame codec or an inter frame codec. Intra-frame codecs are codecs such as ProRez and DNxHD. Inter frame codes are H264, H265, and Mpeg.

Despite the close pronunciation and spelling of these codec types, they are drastically different. In intra-frame codec will take individual each frame of video and compress each of them individually. In intra-frame codec will take a frame every few seconds and calculates the differences between the frames. Those frames are known as “I-frames”. Between two I-frames, the intra-frame codec will throw out any redundant pixels that are the same from frame to frame. The best use of intra-frame codecs are with talking head videos. The never-changing background of a talking head video is a great place to find redundant pixels. This makes intra-frame much more efficient with disk space, but the image quality will suffer for the image information you are throwing away to compress the file. This is also why editing .mp4 video can be so laggy and difficult. When you make a cut or edit in your video, if you don’t cut exactly in I-frame, the editing software needs to recalculate the intra-frame video and that’s what makes it so much less responsive. This is why editing software companies will persuade you into their codec. It’s because they use inter-frame codecs and aren’t using I-frames.

Hopefully understanding some of these differences will help you in troubleshooting in the future. There are a myriad of affordable applications out there that will pull all the video, audio and metadata info from your container files. Seek one out and see what you can find. It will save you time somewhere down the line.

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Did you say Free? Part Two

One of my first articles for Tech Edge featured some free tools that are out there to help people in the television and post industry get things done at the best priceºfree! Since the article, many more great free tools have come out and there are some that weren’t covered. This month we will reprise the article and feature new free tools that can help you be creative and get your job done.

Magic Lantern

Magic Lantern is a free utility that runs on the memory card of your camera. The application is specific to Canon cameras but runs on most Canon DSLR cameras. It adds tools that don’t come stocked with your Camera DSLR camera.
Some of the features are zebra, histogram, waveforms, spot meter, vectorscope, audio metering, selectable audio sources, audio monitoring via A/C cable, contrast and saturation adjustments, video bit-rate control, adding the ability to zoom while recording video, rack, follow focus, rack focus, power saving capabilities. This is just a fraction of what Magic Lantern can do. Your Canon DSLR is not complete without Magic Lantern.

Installation is pretty simple, they have a very intuitive guide right on their website that includes screengrabs of what installation looks like. And if you don’t like what Magic Lantern adds for you, uninstallation is just as easy. In my experience the only reason people have wanted to uninstall Magic Lantern is that it does so much that it can a bit overwhelming.

Although the software is free, there is still support via the user forums right on the website. For a list of supported Canon cameras and to download Magic Lantern visit www.magiclantern.fm

Handbreak

Handbrake is free tool that will convert just about any video file you encounter. It runs on Mac, PC and Ubuntu. It will take most video files and it will rip from a DVD or Blu-ray that does not have copy protection on it.
What Handbrake will do is take your obscure video format and convert it to a very edit-friendly MPEG 2/H264 codec. What it also does is the ability to take PAL and change to NTSC (and vice-versa), change frame rates, frame size changing, device format presets for Apple devices and Android OS, de-interlace, noise reduction, queued transcodes, adding chapters for DVD authoring. And like Magic Lantern, Handbrake has user forums for people to converse with one another about any issues that arise. To download Handbrake, go to http://handbrake.fr/

Storyboardthat.com

StoryBoardThat.com is a website where you can create free storyboards to pitch your ideas. The interface is very, very easy to use. Using your web browser, you can simply drag and drop any scene, character and text. This is great for business meetings or in the classroom. It is also good for people simply looking to create comics as well. You can see a screen grab of a comic I quickly created to show some of the different scenes and characters that you can use. On top of being a really useful tool, StoryBoardThat.com is really, really fun to use.

To start creating your own storyboards for free, just go to http://www.storyboardthat.com/

Gimp

If you are looking for a quick way to edit your photos for free, there is a great program called Gimp. Gimp stands for ™GNU Image Manipulation Program.∫ Gimp is also supported on all major operating systems, so if you are Mac, PC or Linux you can use Gimp.

What features does Gimp have? Well it will take in just about any image file that you have, even ones created in Photoshop with a .psd extension. Gimp will open as many images as your computer’s hardware can handle, it has full alpha channel support, support for layers and channels, multiple layers of undo and redo, editable layered text, full transformation tools set, selection tools, foreground extractions, path tools to do Bezier and polygon sections, quick masks, scripting support, and full plug-in support that already has 100 plugging readily available.

Gimp also gets software updates very frequently and bug fixes are commonly addressed. You can download Gimp here http://www.gimp.org/

Coursera.org

It’s New Years, the time of year where people always want to improve themselves. Whether it’s losing some weight, quitting a habit or learning something new. Coursera.org will help you with learning something new. Coursera.org offers classes in things that help in post-production like computer networking, film studies, music studies, music theory and a bunch of other topics that have nothing to do with post-production. The courses are real courses where they stream lectures, so there are set times were you attend your classes as if you were in a classroom. The classes are also a few weeks long as well, so it is not a one-time course. These are genuine college courses. To sign up for a course of just browse their offerings, visit https://www.coursera.org/

Steve McGrath is a Broadcast Sales Engineer for HB Communications. He has worked with NBC, ABC, CBS, NESN, NECN, Fox, ESPN, Pentagon, Powderhouse and many others. You can reach him at
Steve.McGrath@HBCommunications.com.

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A Conversation with Cramer’s Paula Dufresne

This month in Tech Edge, we are going to have a conversation with Paula Dufresne. Paula is the Media Services Coordinator for Cramer. Cramer is a digital marketing and event solution agency, which leads the industry in live events. What they do, they do with excellence, as we could do an article alone on their client credentials and awards won. Their work is on the radio and television daily. If you have eyes or ears, you have witnessed their work.

Paula, what does a Media Services Coordinator do?

It’s really a two-part job. I deal with all media coming in and going out of house as well as book the resources that are necessary to get each job done. At Cramer, we have five full time editors, five animators and two people making auditory magic in our audio suites. We are almost exclusively working with digital media now, so all of that footage needs to be brought into AVID, backed up and archived. Once the job is complete, my work in the media lab comes back into play. We compress and deliver the content in the required format depending on how the client is broadcasting the piece.

How did you get your start in the industry?

Well, I attended New England Tech in Rhode Island starting my degree in electronics engineering. I soon realized that though I loved the work, I didn’t feel I fit in the industry. I switched majors to Video and Audio Production so my creative spirit could thrive, but I could still work with technology to fulfill my inner geek.

How do you feel women are treated in this industry?

That’s one of my favorite parts about working with creative people. Woman, man, man dressed as woman, woman dressed as manºwe are all there to entertain and the weirder the better. I don’t feel the gender gap in this industry as much as I did in the engineering or automotive industry. (I did a stint in the car fixing biz before going back to college)

People constantly wonder how different it is working in NYC as opposed to here in New England. Having been in both markets, are there any unique insights you noticed?

I would say one big difference is the amount of work in NYC. There is obviously much more going on in production. So, more people freelance there and make a career of it. The pay there is higher, but the competition is high too. ™Ya gotta know someone∫, as they say. It’s also important to be driven, independent, and ready to take initiative in NYC. I was just thrown into projects and had to sort it out on my own many times. Sit at the AVID, open the project and get to work. Obviously there are producers directing you, but in the freelance world you just have to show up and figure it out, or at least pretend to. In New England I have experienced a lot of learning opportunities with people willing to train and sit with you.

When you aren’t coordinating media services, what do you do to unwind?

In my analog world, I like to garden and sip some bourbon while planning big projects to do on our house. My wife and I bought a house in January, and I now have lots of carpentry experience under my tool belt.

Have you seen any changes in the industry in the past five years?

The most obvious change I’ve seen is the move from shooting on tape to shooting on cards. All the media I deal with now comes to me on a small card. These cards are re-used after the footage is dumped off of it. So, it is so much more important to be careful and meticulous about backing stuff up. One press of a button and your day’s shoot could be gone for good.

What do you find most rewarding about working in this industry? What do you find most challenging?

I find troubleshooting and fixing problems to be most rewarding. I like the challenge. Keeping up with ever-changing technology and video codecs is a tremendous challenge. Make an HD standard already! You can find me daily on an AVID forum seeking the answers to all my questions.

For more information about Cramer visit  www.crameronline.com.

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Ten Reasons to Leave Final Cut Pro 7

Well it has been a few years now since Apple announced that they are abruptly ceasing development on the beloved Final Cut Pro 7 (aka FCP 7). Its replacement, Final Cut Pro X, has left the FCP7 user community feeling confused and abandoned. Some FCP 7 users have adopted X, some have moved on to other editing software. A lot of FCP 7 users are still using the software, too nervous to make a change. This is because of apprehension on how they will update older projects, how they will learn the new editing software under their current deadlines, and how they can reuse their existing media. This month in Tech Edge, we will try to alleviate those fears by showing FCP 7 users that there is hope for them. Here are ten great reasons to move on from the now discontinued FCP 7º.

1. Adobe Premiere Pro can open up your old FCP 7 projects.

By exporting an XML (File/Export/XML) of your FCP 7 project. If you export using the XML format of ™Apple XML Interchange Format, Version 5∫ you can then import that XML into Adobe Premiere Pro (File/Import/select your XML from FCP 7). Keep in mind that this works best on simple sequences that are cuts only. If you send any FCP 7 video effects that Premiere does not have, then things like that won’t carry over.

2. Automatic Duck paired with Avid Media Composer can open your old FCP 7 projects too!

Media Composer can open your old FCP 7 projects with a help from a free tool. The free tool is called Automatic Duck. Automatic Duck will take your FCP 7 media and transcode it and create an AAF to open in Media Composer. Keep in mind that this product is free and should you encounter a technical issue, you have no help other than the Creative Cow user forum. To use Automatic Duck, you can get it for free at www.automaticduck.com.

3. Boris’ “AAF Transfer” can also move your FCP 7 projects to Media Composer.

Boris FX has a plug-in that also helps moving projects from FCP 7 to Avid Media Composer. It’s called ™Transfer FCP.∫ It will take your FCP7 sequence and move it into Avid Media Composer via Avid’s AMA spec.

4. You will no longer fear Apple operating system updates.

If you are a FCP7 editor, you have watched Apple’s Lion (10.7) and Mountain Lion (10.8) releases with an eyebrow raised in suspicion. Each update was rumored to finally end FCP7 support. Mountain Lion required supplemental software to install FCP7. Will Apple’s upcoming Mavericks (10.9) operating system support FCP7? Apple is tight-lipped on the topic but it really looks unlikely.

5. All of FCP 7’s competition is offering you
free 30 day trials and sometimes even discounts.

Who wants to invest time and energy into editing software that isn’t the best for them to use? Avid, Adobe, Grass Valley and Autodesk are all offering you 30 day trial of their software. It’s clear that choosing editing software is a weighty decision and the manufacturers all know it. To give you the proper time to see if their product feels right to you, they are all giving you a month to test drive their software. None of them have any features removed or any watermarking. Sometimes you can even catch a sale and get a discount for switching from FCP7.

6. All of FCP 7’s competition can do more in real time than ever before.

As a Final Cut Pro 7 editor, rendering just for real time playback is nothing new to you. Avid and Adobe can play just about anything in real time and transcode in the background, Autodesk can render in the background while playing in real time. You have to think it’s a matter of time before all of them can both render and transcode in the background. Once you switch from FCP 7, one of the first things you will notice is how much less you render.

7. FCP 7 won’t have support for 4K, 8K and beyond.

With UltraHD (4K) starting to become more affordable, it is going to show up in more and more edit bays. Sony just announced a 4K camcorder for $4500 that shoots XAVC. Sounds great? But you won’t edit that footage in FCP 7 as Sony is only supporting FCPX.

8. Developer support for FCP 7 is on the decline.

We see that Sony is not offering XAVC support for FCP 7, only FCPX. XAVC is clearly the way Sony is moving for a few years to come. The Blackmagic Cinema Camera has done the same. Those were two of the exciting cameras of the past year. As the years go by, you can only see that number going up. Apple developers aren’t going to dedicate resources and time into a product not being sold any more. Plugging, IO devices and cameras are all going to be moving off of FCP 7.

9. There is tons of help out there.

Learning new editing software has never been easier. There are free online tutorials, paid book that come with practice media and projects, user forums, YouTube videos, the local video user groups (BAVUG and Boston Creative Pro), and even official certification paths at Future Media Concepts, there has never been more help out here. Most operation questions and editing procedural questions are available online.

10. Your LinkedIn profile needed an update anyways.

Has it been a few years since you updated your LinkedIn profile and resume? Maybe 2008 when the economy crashed you were desperate to beef up your resume? By learning a new skill, you become more marketable as an individual and if you own a business, your clients will appreciate that you are always striving to become more dynamic and offer more and more services to them. There is no better time than now.

Steve McGrath is a Broadcast Sales Engineer for HB Communications. He has worked with NBC, ABC, CBS, NESN, NECN, Fox, ESPN, Pentagon, Powderhouse and many others. You can reach him at

Steve.McGrath@HBCommunications.com.

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Technology Park

An Interview with Jacob Wen of Powderhouse

This month for Tech Edge, we are going to have a conversation with Jacob Wen. Jacob is the IT manager and File Asset Manager for Powderhouse Productions. Jacob is very talented and climbed up the ranks of Powderhouse incredibly fast and he is truly a person to keep an eye on in the New England post industry.

Jacob, tell Imagine readers who Powderhouse is.

We’re a television production company in Somerville, MA who focuses on mainly reality content. Some of the shows we’ve done in the past include Build it Bigger, Dogs 101, and Making Stuff for NOVA. More recently, we’ve had a few series in production such as Extreme Houseboats on the Travel Channel, Spontaneous Construction on HGTV, as well as Southie Rules on A&E.

How did you get your job at Powderhouse?

I first heard about Powderhouse in the Boston Globe, which drove me to hunt them down at an Emerson College internship fair. From there, I was lucky enough to be selected for a post-production internship where I received a lot of really great hands-on workflow experience with Avid and Apple workstations. After the internship ended, I was called back to work on a few small projects as an Assistant Editor, and worked very closely with my co-worker Steve Barker on Avid ISIS media management. That blossomed into a working knowledge of the IT components at Powderhouse, so I wound up finding my way into the more permanent position of IT Assistant. I worked very closely with the IT Manager at the time, who designed most of the tech infrastructure at Powderhouse. He took me under his wing and gave me the training I needed to succeed at this job, which I still really appreciate. After he moved on in 2011, I took up the role of IT Manager and have been keeping things running ever since.

So walk us through the day to day responsibilities of the IT Manager/File Asset Manager of arguably the largest post production facility in Massachusetts.

Two of my larger responsibilities include the stability of our shared storage systems and also our network uptime. Since our internal network handles everything from phones and internet, all the way to sharing HD media for entire seasons of shows at a time, maintaining that uptime is absolutely critical. With my co-worker Kenny Johnson, the IT department handles projects like company-wide Avid hardware and software upgrades, all the way to basic end-user support like printing. We have an interesting mix of a standard office IT outfit, which deals with things like email, security, anti-virus, etc. ± but we also have our Avid and post-production equipment on an almost separate and dedicated network with it’s own nuanced requirements and support structure. Keeping both afloat is truly a balancing act, and trying to prioritize maintenance for both can sometimes be a daunting task, but it’s also really rewarding.

What do you feel is the most rewarding part of working in the post production industry? Conversely, what is the most challenging?

It’s really cool getting to work with big names like Travel Channel, A+E, and Discovery on a regular basis, and being able to occasionally see my name in the credits of our shows is really awesome. Also, I personally enjoy being able to help people with complicated technical problems. It’s sort of weird, but it’s strangely satisfying when you finally clean up an issue that’s been bugging people for a while. I think the most challenging is when people are having a problem, having to ask them if they’ve tried turning their computer off and on again. That line of inquiry is usually met with sighs and eye rolls.

Walk readers through the process of camera acquisition all the way to on air broadcast

Traditionally, everything was tape-based, which made the process relatively simple. The field teams would mail their shoot tapes back for ingest, which would be captured in a low-resolution for the offline edit, and by the online stage, everything would be conformed to HD for final output and then delivered to the network (e.g. Discovery Channel). Now with the explosion of tapeless cameras, we have to contend with a multitude of file types, formats, compressions, and codecs, which can be a challenge. Typically, content will be shot to either optical disk or to solid state media like P2 cards, at which point it’s transferred to a hard drive and mailed back to our office. Then, after being backed up on our SAN, it will be ingested onto our Avid ISIS at a low-resolution for our offline edit. We will occasionally have multiple assistant editors working with multiple editors simultaneously to organize and finish a cut in as little as a week or two. When it’s time to conform the sequences for HD, we will re-link the file-based camera originals from our SAN to our ISIS. Once the remainder of the online process is completed, the final sequence will be laid off to tape, and then mailed to the appropriate network to get final approval and ultimately aired.

Do you feel that the industry is constantly evolving and changing? What do you think the biggest changes in past few years have been?

Without a doubt, I feel like the biggest strain for us has been the move from a tape-based workflow to a tapeless one. When Avid helped us to expand our post-production hardware and workflow, it was built from the ground up with tape in mind. Now with tapeless, we’re struggling to find a home for the countless Terabytes of raw and transcoded video files that come in from the field. Not only that, but all of these files need to be stored securely, redundantly, and accessed quickly ± and unfortunately most of that storage isn’t cheap. The solution for backup and archival storage seems to lie in the world of LTO tape media, but as we’ve found out, that’s not without it’s own set of problems. The irony of moving all of these digital files back to magnetic tape, however, is not lost on us.

Any advice for someone trying to break through in the post industry?

I would highly recommend trying to obtain as much exposure and experience from an internship as possible. I’m sure there are a number of other methods, such as apprenticeships and shadowing, but I found that through internships, you’re able to get a healthy amount of experience and also make some important connections that can lead to other work in the future. Since an internship is a learning experience, asking questions and going above and beyond to engage with co-workers really goes a long way to understanding how the industry works, and allows you to build your networking skills. This, for me, has been extremely beneficial and I’d encourage anyone trying to break into the industry to be as engaged and enthusiastic as you can during an internship.

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