I’ve discovered something about AJA’s Ki Pro Mini that perhaps even AJA might not be aware of. If you have the device hooked up to the PMW EX1R or the PMW EX3 via SDI and have these cameras set to TIME OF DAY time code generation the device will not start or stop recording unless you do it yourself by pressing the REC button on the unit. These cameras must be generating regular TC in order for the RP188 protocol to be sent down the SDI pipe from the camera. Other cameras may or may not be affected by this, but since I only have the 2 EX cameras I cannot validate any others.

- Don

One of the best video formats available today for all kinds of applications is H.264. Even though it’s primarily a delivery codec there are cameras such as Canon’s DSLR line that uses it for acquisition. Why? Because it’s a great lightweight (small file size) codec with superior quality. H.264’s most common use is for the web. I’m getting increasing requests from clients for deliverables based on H.264 with an MP4 wrapper to put on their web sites.

Not too long ago web-based video file sizes had to be really small so they would stream properly on dial up modems. Remember that? But now there’s much more bandwidth with ISDN and cable etc. and the focus now is all about quality and not so much about small file sizes. This makes the process of converting your masterpiece for the web much easier than it used to be. Now with web-based video hosting sites such as YouTube and Vimeo the streaming data rates can be larger than if your own web site was hosting.

The following workflow can be done right within Final Cut Pro using the “Export Using Quicktime Conversion” command but might I suggest an alternative: Quicktime Player. Using QT Player as a stand-alone allows you to continue editing in FCP while QT Player does the encoding in the background. Both ways use the same setup windows so if you’re used to doing it within FCP the QT Player windows will be the same.

If you’re shooting for the web do yourself a big favour and shoot progressive. Computer monitors are not interlaced and most cameras these days have a progressive setting. Use it. Now your first compression task is done because now you don’t have to de-interlace your footage before compressing it. You can de-interlace of course, but the result always takes a quality hit and makes your video look softer.

Export your self-contained movie from FCP and then open it up in QT Player. Choose “Export”. You’ll be presented with the primary export window.

On the lower left choose “Movie to MP4” from the drop down Export list then click on “Quality” to the right of the list. You’ll get this window:

In File Format at the top choose MP4 (not MP4 ISMA).

Select H.264 as the video format.

Data Rate is dependent upon your frame size. Notice my choice for the frame size of 1280x720.

Leave keyframes on Auto

If your frame size is anamorphic then you might want to check the “preserve aspect ratio” and choose “letterbox.” The particular frame size I’m using in this example is square pixels o I don’t have to worry about the aspect ratio not proportioned correctly.

Now click on “Video Options” and you’ll see this:

Choose Best Quality Multi-Pass for (you guessed it) the best quality bang for your file size buck.

Click OK then OK again to leave the Quality Window and then choose a destination for your MP4 file. Click “Save” in the main export Window. Now while QT Player is exporting you can get back to work editing.

- Don

Here’s an interesting bit of information: did you know that since Apple brought out their newest iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch operating system IOS v.4 there is now a file on your device that logs in detail everywhere you’ve been? Apple says it uses the information to better tailor your “user experience” by targeting you with advertising based on the places you frequent. The information gets transferred to your home computer every time you sync your device, which in turn “may or may not” be sent to Apple. Okay, so that’s fine as long as Apple doesn’t sell your information to other companies. However, the big issue people are talking about is that this info on your iPhone or iPad is not encrypted in any way. If you lose your device or it’s stolen it’s very easy for your personal information to be harvested. I don’t need to tell you how the information might be used that doesn’t have your best interests at heart.

There are ways to delete this info before it gets sent anywhere but you have to have some knowledge of IOS v.4 in order to do it. In the meantime there is this handy little open-source desktop app. that you can use to see on a regular map where you’ve been lately. Thanks to Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden who wrote the iPhone Tracker. You can download the software here and while you’re there read up on why it’s important to know these things about your device.

- Don

AJA now has a great PDF on the various ways to mount the Ki Pro Mini with different cameras using mounting hardware from different manufacturers. You can find the document here:

http://www.aja.com/pdf/Ki_Pro_Mini_Mounting_Options.pdf

- Don

Lately I’ve been asked by videographers and editors how to get a good standard definition version from a high definition master. This task continues to frustrate a lot of people to the point that they would rather avoid the problem entirely by shooting and delivering in SD. This is fine if you never want to re-purpose your footage for future use in a high def. project. This attitude is somewhat myopic in my opinion because one day in the future you’ll hear yourself say “Damn I wish I had shot that in HD.” Sound familiar?

Okay so let’s get to it. It’s ‘falling down easy’ to get great looking SD from an HD master as long as you understand the basic principles behind the workflow. Point number one: there is much more detail in an HD picture than there is in an SD picture. If you down convert from HD to SD without preparing the HD version first the result will look terrible. You’ll see twitter on fine lines such as the edges of things that have lots of contrast, even worse when there’s camera movement like panning, etc. Some also refer to this as ‘line buzzing’. Telephone and power lines are the worst. You get the idea. Recording HD and SD is so different that modern cameras that can shoot both will have completely different picture profiles for each format. Dialing in lots of edge detail in your HD picture profile make it extra problematic.

Point number two: Just because your client wants a web movie doesn’t mean you don’t need to shoot in HD. These days with You Tube and Vimeo going HD there’s every advantage to delivering an HD version because of the increased resolution on the end user’s computer screens. Even web sites that host their own movies will benefit from a version that was originally HD. And don’t let anyone tell you that that a project that was originally shot in SD would look the same or better than an HD down convert. They’ve arrived at that decision because they’ve authored a crappy looking SD version from their HD master. A properly converted SD from HD will always be higher in quality because there’s more picture information to draw from in the first place. For the web it goes without saying that you should be shooting progressive, not interlaced.

Point number three: the real issue is trying to cram all that HD detail into a smaller picture. Think about it: if the edge of a piece of furniture is 10 pixels wide in the HD version and the SD version has only 2 or 3 pixels allocated to the same edge it ain’t gonna work. You need to get rid of some of that detail first. To do that add a 4 pixel wide blur filter to the SD version before you render and export your movie. In Final Cut Pro the easiest way to do this is to apply the Flicker Filter (set on maximum) to all the clips in your timeline.

Point number four: if you’re authoring a DVD don’t ask your compression program to down convert to SD and encode to MPEG2 at the same time. It won’t look as good as if you did these two tasks as separate steps. So here is the itemized workflow:

1. Take your HD timeline, copy and paste it into an SD timeline. Remember, it’s still HD footage until you render.

2. After your edit is complete add a gausian 4 pixel blur or a flicker filter to everything video.

3. render and export. Now you have an SD version of your movie to make an MPEG2 for your DVD.

Welcome to the world of great SD from HD projects. Also keep in mind that if you’ve shot your HD project in interlaced you have to reverse the field order when you convert to the DV colour space.

Hope this helps.

- Don

Some stuff you never wanted to know about XDCAM EX anachronisms but I’ll tell you anyway:

1. Why is recorded video inside a folder on the memory cards called a BPAV folder? Here’s the answer from Sony Canada:

“In regards to your question on BPAV, I have had it explained to me that the BP stands for Broadcast and Professional (the name of the design group) and AV stands for Audio and Video files. BPAV identifies a Pro user folder for AV content… I don’t have anything “official” from the factory on this but this is what marketing is telling me….”

This information is courtesy of Brian Young, Sony Canada’s marketing manager for acquisition products.

2. What do the two “S” letters in Sony SxS Pro memory cards mean?

It’s supposed to be pronounced “S by S” and it’s generally accepted that it stands for “Sony by Sandisk”.

- Don

So you start up your EX camera and you see a flickering/pulsing in your picture (it even happens outside) but then it goes away within 30 seconds or so. What is it, you may ask. Is there something wrong with my camera? Probably not, but what is happening is that the flicker reduce setting in your menu is most likely on AUTO. Turn it off. If the pulsing or flicker in your picture continues (with inside lighting) then you have the flicker reduce set to MANUAL but your shutter speed is not in sync with the lighting frequency.

In the Americas the electrical AC is 60Hz (NTSC) so your shutter speed needs to be set to multiples or fractions of that frequency to avoid a mismatch: 1/30th, 1/60th, 1/120 etc.

In Europe the electrical mains is 50Hz (PAL) so the shutter speed match is 1/25th. 1/50, 1/100 etc.

The interesting part is that when I want to avoid the ‘rolling screen’ effect with an NTSC powered computer monitor I’ve found that a shutter speed of 1/50th sec. works great, depending on what type of lighting fixtures you’re working with. Florescent lighting seems to be the worst. Take the time to check stuff like this before hitting the record button.

- Don

Did you know that there is a setting in your camera’s many picture profile adjustments that deals exclusively with shooting under office-type florescent lighting? Oh yes. Take heart, fellow shooters.

Picture Profile > Set > Matrix > FL Light.

Remember to turn on the actual setting at the top of the screen before you leave. Then make sure your picture profile is also active. When it is you’ll see ‘PP’ (and the profile number) in the lower left of your viewfinder. The FL Light setting removes the excessive green given off by the florescent lights and gives the shot a warmer (as in life-like) look. But make sure you still do a manual white balance.

- Don

If you thought getting to the maintenance menu for the EX1 was a pain, check out the following procedure needed for the EX1R. This is what to do if your back focus is off:

LCD must be in the closed position

LCD back light switch (under top handle) must be in the OFF position

Gain switch must be set to H (high)

Press and hold Cancel + Jog Wheel, then + Menu

Maintenance, RPN and Information Menu items will be added to bottom of Menu below “Others” menu

Flangeback auto adjustment (also called back focus) is under Maintenance, shown as Auto FB Adjust

Procedure for actually carrying out the adjustment is the same as the EX1–

An 8″ or larger Seimens star chart is ideal. Siemens star — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It should be mounted on a plain wall, wide enough to cover most of the frame at full zoom.

Don’t have anything else on the wall that will be in the frame on full wide. High contrast objects within this field of view may effect the calibration

Mount the camera on a tripod, about 10′ away from the high contrast back focus target

Zoom all the way in to the target and center it in the viewfinder

Set lens to Auto Focus, Focus Ring pushed forward, Auto Iris, Macro Off

Select Auto FB Adjust in the Maintenance menu

Select Execute

Don’t touch the camera until the procedure is complete.

Many thanks to the various posters at DVinfo.net for the instructions. Oh yeah, you can find some great free test charts here in PDF format. Happy flange back adjusting.

- Don

Recently I’ve been hearing a lot of people in the video production industry talking about the relationship between audio and video and their affect on one another. How many of us think about audio as being secondary to video in our productions and projects? Do we think that audio is:

• less important
• equally impoartant
• more important
• don’t know

Your opinions may differ (and that’s okay) but I concluded a while ago that audio is actually more important than the video where both are present in a finished production. Why do I think this way? Well, my observations of different viewers have shown me that a short video glitch, such as those that happen literally in the blink of an eye, for the most part go unnoticed. It seems that our brains pass it off as unimportant enough that it sometimes doesn’t even seem to register as an actual issue. Now I’m talking a short video glitch. Anything longer than about 5 or so video frames will be obvious to everyone. Audio seems to be different. Even a very short dropout will get noticed. Our hearing acuity seems to be much more important to our brains than our eyes are. This is probably the result of evolution eons ago when we had to depend on our hearing for avoiding predators as well as for hunting.

I invite you to do your own test. Watch peoples’ reactions to a short video issue and then an audio dropout or other anomaly like an audio click or buzz. You’ll see everyone’s head turn, trying to decide whether they heard an audio issue or not. The fact that they noticed something at all isn’t good because then they’re not concentrating on your show.

Before final output make sure your audio levels are consistent throughout the presentation and that the sound isn’t too soft or too loud. The last thing you need is to have your viewer changing the volume constantly because you didn’t take the time to apply at least a limiter to your soundtrack. Be vigilant and take the time to fix the little things in your audio because it will put you in the ‘good’ category instead of everyone else’s ‘good enough.’

- Don

For those of you following along with my trials and tribulations concerning the Ki Pro Mini I’ve assembled my shopping list of parts to enable mounting the assembly behind the camera. I use a Sony EX1R and an EX3 and I want the capability of using the Ki Pro Mini behind both. You can treat the various parts below much like a recipe that you can modify to suit your own particular setup.

First off, of course you will need a Ki Pro Mini. If you want to use rod support on one side of the Mini and hang a battery on the other you’ll need two (2) Ki Pro Mini mounting bracket kits, part #103567–00. Im pretty sure that number is a part number and not a serial number. So, two of those and another AJA exclusive part that was originally made for the larger Ki Pro exoskeleton. It’s officially called a Ki Pro rod end plate and the part number is: “AJA SKU#*KIMINIRDNPLT-RO” without the quotes. That’s it for the AJA parts.

For a battery system I went Anton Bauer. Yes, it’s expensive but it’s also the most reliable, the most durable and will keep the Mini running far longer than anything else out there. The Anton Bauer mounting plate I’m using is the QRC Gold Mount series that’s smaller than the regular one and has the part number DP 800. It’s made for mounting to smaller devices but doesn’t lose any features to the larger version. Then the Tandem 70 inline charger and a Dionic 90 battery. There are no part numbers for the battery and charger. My broadcast supplier modified the battery cable and changed the XLR end to a right-angled one.

For mounting everything behind the camera I’ve decided to go with Zakuto pieces, specifically their universal base plate and 15mm lightweight 12″ rods that come with the base plate. I’ve also decided to buy two rod extensions that thread neatly into the ends of the 12″ rods. These extensions come in various lengths and I’ve settled on the 4.5″ extentions. Since the 12″ rods that come with the universal base plate have female threaded ends make sure that any extensions you buy have at least one threaded male end.

That’s about it. In the picture below you’ll see lines pointing to the various parts I’ve mentioned with the exception of the Anton Bauer battery plate which, in this picture is actually an Ikan Universal AB plate.

- Don

If you combine this:     with this:   you might be

losing up to 36.7% of your monitor’s picture resolution and not even realize it. Fortunately you can get your monitor to use most of its pixels again by following a few simple guidelines.

First off, the image sensor in Canon cameras like the 5D and T2i have an aspect ratio of 3:2. The trouble comes when you connect a 4:3 or 16:9 field monitor to the DSLR via the HDMI cable. The camera sends a 1920 x 1080i signal through HDMI but in reality what you’re actually seeing in the monitor is only 1620 x 1080, or a 3:2 aspect ratio (same as the sensor) imbedded in the 16:9 HDMI stream. In order to appear as a widescreen shape the camera will pillarbox the 3:2 image to fit the 4:3 or 16:9 monitor screen shape. Then the monitor will letterbox that frame so you can see all of it. Are you confused yet? Not to worry. And if you don’t have a DSLR you can skip to the last paragraph. It’s okay. Really.

The better field monitors on the market today will have two important features to manipulate the image coming down the HDMI cable. They are zoom and scale. Zooming into the 3:2 image to fill more of your monitor’s screen will not soften the image. On the contrary, because there are more pixels on the camera’s sensor than there are on your monitor’s screen the image will actually sharpen up because you’re giving the picture on your monitor more resolution.

My field monitor has a screen aspect ratio of 16:10 as do many other field monitors. If I have a Canon 5D attached to my monitor the picture will initially be letterboxed and pillarboxed, reducing the picture size by a large amount. By zooming in I’ll get rid of the black borders on the sides but there will still be a bit of letterboxing on the top and bottom because I’m viewing the camera’s HDMI 16:9 picture on a native 16:10 monitor. The same thing happens when I have a widescreen video camera signal on my 16:10 monitor. But you don’t want to keep zooming in until the letterboxing is gone from your monitor’s picture because now you’ve hidden the sides of the frame. You want to see all of the pixels coming from the sensor in case there’s something in the frame you don’t want, such as a mic boom, lighting stands, etc.

The other feature you want on your field monitor is called underscan, or scaling of the picture. As I’ve already said, seeing all the pixels transmitted by your camera’s sensor(s) is critical to avoid things in the frame you don’t want. If there’s the tip of a mic boom in your shot but you can’t see it in the monitor you’ll carry on with the shot and won’t know that it’s ruined until you get home and see every pixel of that shot on your computer screen. Fortunately the picture on most good monitors can be scaled. On my particular monitor I can actually move the picture around on the screen, squish or expand it until I see the edges of the camera’s actual sensors. When I see a green horizontal or vertical line I know that’s the edge of the frame. Field monitors such as the Small HD DP6 even have presets for different video and DSLR cameras, including the Canon 5D, 7D, T2i etc.

And if you think that your camera’s stock viewfinder is showing you all the picture elements (pixels) of your camera’s sensor(s), well.…..it isn’t. To learn more about today’s modern field monitors there’s a number of great video tutorials here.

- Don