We recently had the technical guy at a photography studio give us a call. Their primary business is doing greenscreen photography for clients and they use Primatte for it. He called to complain that they had recently upgraded to Primatte 5.0 and that he gets an error message when he tries to run it on all his machines.

All of Digital Anarchy’s software looks for other instances of the plugin running on a network and shuts down if it sees a copy with the same serial number. This studio, which makes their living doing greenscreen, had one serial number. In his words “We have Primatte 3 installed on all our machines and never had a problem, but now it looks like we’ll have to buy more licenses. Why?”.

Well, because we’re nice people and you want to make sure we can eat. And if that doesn’t move you, then consider that we need to answer phone calls from people like you that make their living using our software. If we can’t eat, we can’t answer support calls/emails. This would be unfortunate all the way around.

We get emails and phone calls all the time from customers dealing with one emergency or another. They’ve got an event on a Saturday night, just bought a new machine, and email us ON Saturday in a panic because they can’t find their serial number. Or they run into some problem on a deadline and need an answer yesterday. Such is life around here.

But we need our customers to support us if they expect to be supported. That means actually buying the correct number of licenses to run on the number of machines you’re using. We try to be flexible. We offer hefty discounts on multi-seat licenses. We understand that many people have a work machine and home machine (or a laptop). You can use the software just fine in such a case. But for studios with multiple machines, please support the people that support you making your living. It helps ensure bug fixes are done promptly, that we answer phone calls (on Saturday), and otherwise support the products… which you rely on.

All this is just to point out that there are real folks behind the software. Most plugin companies are pretty small affairs, Digital Anarchy is just four people (plus two cats and an alien), so we’re similar in size to most of the studios we sell to. We do our best to support our customers and hope that they do likewise.

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But along with FCP X, we got some info about FxPlug 2.0. Luckily for us, Beauty Box Video is a relatively new product written from the ground up to be 64-bit. So we’re in pretty good shape to port this over to FCP X/Motion 5. It is very possible that we’ll have a new version done by August or sooner. It may be free or there may be a small charge for the upgrade. Just depends on how much work it takes to port. But we’re optimistic that we can get something going in the very near future.

One thing to note… it looks like if you want to use third party plugins you’ll need Motion. FxPlug 2.0 works with Motion and then Final Cut links to Motion. This is my understanding at the moment, but that info may change. Look for updates here and on our Facebook page.

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The main benefit of DNG is that it’s an open format in the sense that the specification is publicly available. So even if Adobe were to fail, it’d still be possible for other software developers to read the format. With so many RAW file formats out there (every camera has a slightly different file format), the possibility that the RAW files won’t be accessible sometime in the future is very possible. Still, such a problem is a ways off. So what are the immediate benefits?

The big immediate benefit is that the thumbnail and metadata is built into the format. No more sidecar files that are easy to lose or not copy over when moving your photos around. This benefit alone was enough to convert me to DNG. While I don’t care about the thumbnail files, I’ve definitely had to redo my RAW settings due to not copying over an .xmp file. Stupid mistake, sure, but something that should be avoidable in the first place by a well thought out file format.

The DNG files are also smaller by about 25-33%. So that makes them easier to backup and transport around. The reason for this, as explained by Tom, is that when you’re shooting the camera is just concerned about getting the images on your card. So the compression is fast, but not as robust as it could be. When you’re creating the DNG file on your regular computer, time isn’t such an issue so a better but slightly slower compression algorithm can be used. All the data is the same.

So I’m a fan and I recommend you take a look at it. It really does seem to solve some very real problems.

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Why do I think that?

I was talking to a friend who had recently been to a wedding. Apparently the total cost of the thing was about $80,000 including about $10K for the photography. At first I thought, ‘well, ok, they must be pretty well off’, but not so. Apparently they took a home equity loan out to finance part of the thing. Never underestimate the need for social validation that comes about by spending money. Sometimes people WANT to spend money.

This is also borne out by stories I hear from my sister who runs a florist in Los Angeles that, among other things, does high-end weddings. (shameless plug: her company is LA Botanicals) There doesn’t seem to be a dearth of people willing to spend $10-15,ooo on flowers. Granted, that’s LA, but it does seem like folks are willing to spend money on weddings, recession or no. And that includes photography. So I think a lot of the fears that any family member with a Canon Rebel is going to displace real photographers is a bit overblown. I think most people understand that if they want memories of this expensive event to last a lifetime, a pro photographer is important.

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If you’re going to use the cloud, it doesn’t matter if you’re FourSquare or just an editor storing some old video… you need to have a backup plan. Technology just isn’t perfect and never will be. For all those people dismissing the cloud because of the Amazon failure, I’ll remind you of the RackSpace failure a couple years ago. Click here for more info on that… but hosting companies, even high-end, We-promise-you-10000%-uptime-and-you’re-going-to-pay-for-it, hosting companies like RackSpace suffer data center wide outages. So the cloud isn’t perfect. Neither is anything else. Sometimes it’s good to remember that as we decide what to do with our critical data.

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Brilliant spot for Subura. So simple, but shows the power of a great script and good acting. Completely gets the message across and pulls the emotional strings as well.

Beautifully done CG world of paint chips. I actually saw a slightly different one (couldn’t find it online), but they are all really well done.

Hopefully the first clip inspires you to make sure you have a great story. And the other clips offer some technical inspiration.

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Originally posted by Mark Raudonis.  Mark  is a former intern now working in Hollywood.

1. You are here for a short time… make every minute count.
2. If you find yourself stuck doing Xeroxing, it’s your own fault. Be proactive about
your time, your schedule, and what you want to learn.
3. Nobody is going to “hand you” an experience, you create it yourself.
4. You’re onstage here. You may be watching us, but we’re watching you. Make a good impression.
5. Watching someone edit is like watching paint dry. It’s boring! Ask questions. Engage in the creative process. “Outthink” the editor to the next shot.
6. You’re future career DEPENDS on your colleagues. Get to know them. They will be your best source of information for your next job.
7. There are plenty of editors here. Learn something different for each of them.
8. We’re in the communication business. Start by learning to communicate with the team.
Know, understand, and practice communication… and I don’t mean texting!
9. Technology is NOT your enemy. Learn enough about what we use to become confident in using the tools of our trade.
10. Organization is the key to creativity. If you can’t find something, you can’t even begin to be creative. Learn how we organize our projects, our SAN, our servers.

Finally, have fun! I was an intern once. It was one of the best experiences of my career.

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I’ve written about this before… when Digital Railroad failed a couple years ago and gave photographers 24 hours to download their photos, it should have been a big wake up call for photographers that these services can’t be trusted as archives (at least, not without offline backups as well). Now, maybe they can’t even be trusted as temporary storage. With tech companies it’s all good… until it’s not. Then the CEO announces everyone is laid off and the servers are shut down. I’ve been part of startups where this has happened. As Jason Perlow points out in an excellent blog post ‘Flickr: Too big to fail?’, Flickr is not too big to fail.

AND even if it doesn’t fail, that doesn’t mean your account won’t be accidentally deleted and since Flickr doesn’t have backups of your data, there goes all your photos. Which means all the links on your blog or web site that point to Flickr (or Vimeo or…) get broken requiring a lot of time and aggravation fixing your site. Assuming you have all those photos backup in a single place and you don’t have to go rooting around for the particular photos/videos you uploaded… which would involve even more time.

I’ll point out that I think these sites are great usually. I use them, particularly vimeo. However, it’s important to know what will happen if things go wrong and to know what you’re in for.

Anyways, give Jason’s blog a read… it brings up some good questions and concerns.

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The DVD has a lot of amazing photos of the Humpbacks, but very little actual video. This is due to the fact that the 5D doesn’t work well for wildlife videography. Now, some of you might have expected that, knowing about rolling shutter, aliasing, and some of the other issues that DSLRs have. However, when I started the project, I was blissfully unaware of most of those issues. Even though we shot with the 5D on a Stedicam Merlin most of the footage was unusable. Between the motion of the boat, the rolling shutter, and fast moving wildlife the 5D proved not to be the camera we hoped it was. (it was everything we expected for the tripod shots, so that came out well. But when we were actually on the boat… not so much.) There are some Final Cut Pro plugins to help out with these problems, but when dealing with a boat and wildlife it was just too much for the camera.

So the DVD was made with a little video footage of the whales and a lot of great photos. It came out fine, but looking to the future we want to shoot videos of the whales. What to do?

Buy an inexpensive HD Camcorder! In my case, I choose the Panasonic TM700 (Canon also has some great ones, but they’re more expensive and nothing I read indicated they were worth the extra money). $750 and it shoots 1080/60p in high quality AVCHD format. The other nice thing, at least for wildlife, is the touchscreen focusing. You can tap the screen on the object you want the camera to focus on. This is incredibly useful because one of the main problems with shooting wildlife is keeping it in focus. And when you’re on a moving boat trying to focus on a fast moving whale you really don’t have the time to manually focus.  It’s extremely difficult and unless you’re a real pro at it, you’re usually going to miss the shot while you’re futzing around with the focus ring.

The image stabilization seems to have a noticable effect on the TM700 (perhaps because it’s designed for video). On the 5D (24-105 lens), the image stabilization doesn’t seem to make a difference. Of course, the real solution is not to shoot handheld and use something like the Steadicam Merlin. But nothing I shot handheld with the 5D was usuable (and very little of the 5D on a steadicam was either), whereas the TM700 produced relatively nice footage. It’s going to be fun to put it on the Merlin.

Here’s the first test with the TM700. This was basically just taking it out of the box and shooting. There are a number of things that I need to set up, which I think will improve the video even further. But right out of the box it trumps the 5D hands down for for this situation. For interviews and other situations where you have more control over what you’re shooting and how it’s being shot, the 5D is an amazing video camera. For scenics it’s beautiful and for wildlife where you can sit in the bushes with a tripod it works well. But if you’re moving and your subject is moving it starts to present a lot of challenges.

http://vimeo.com/18688733

Vimeo, in this case, darkened the footage, so the original footage is nicer than what you see on vimeo. I’m still working out the best way to get the .mts files through FCP and into Vimeo. But still, good footage from a $750 camera!

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We’ve been developing plugins for After Effects and Final Cut Pro for a long time and we’ve never received the response to a plugin that we have with Beauty Box Video. The Videomaker award goes next to our award from TV Technology magazine for one of the top 10 products at NAB 2010.

It’s really nice to get some recognition for putting out good After Effects and FCP plugins that really solve problems that people are having. It was definitely an early Anarchismas present! ;-) We’ve got some big plans for Beauty Box in 2011, so there’ll be no resting on our laurels. Expect to see some really cool stuff in the first quarter of next year.

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What’s not cool is paying ridiculous amounts of money to a design school while you figure it out. If her parents were paying for it, then sweet. Party on. But she’s paying for it, or more correctly, going massively into debt for it and struggling to make ends meet… because she can’t work due to the 18 units/semester she has to take to get everything done in 3 yrs. Being potentially burnt out and in debt is not a good way to figure out what you want to do for a career.

Most of these schools (for profit design schools) will make all sorts of promises about what happens after you graduate. But they know that a good portion of students will drop out (without a degree and in debt usually). Yes, they do have better career counseling than state schools, but in truth, that requires you to make it all the way through, be good, and be motivated. If you’re good and motivated you’ll get a job. Which is why state schools always seem like a bargin to me. Design is design. If you’re motivated, you’re usually going to get just as good of an education at state school (or even a community college) as you will at a dedicated design school. Which you’ll discover, because you’ll be making the same entry level wages as the guy working next to you that graduated from SFSU.

Which is not to say their aren’t some advantages to design schools. They may have wider range of art type classes and better equipment you can experiment around with. However, these are slight advantages and not worth going massively in debt for.  In the end, it’s your portfolio that matters. Not the school you went to.

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An interesting aspect to Beauty Box Video is that it’s difficult to get people to admit they are using it. A LOT of production companies have bought and loved the software but they’re a little shy about singing its praises publicly. Their actor and actress clients aren’t too keen about wanting fans to know they used software to make them (more) beautiful.

This wasn’t a problem for the subjects of Aaron’s production for the Kings. It’s a behind the scenes video of the photo shoot of the LA King’s Ice Girls calendar! Some very beautiful girls who you wouldn’t think would need much retouching.

(Click on the image above to be taken to the King’s site and see the video.)

However, no situation is perfect.

Aaron and crew were shooting a photo shoot, which was set up to be ideal for photos, not necessarily for video. Most of the footage was shot with a Canon XL H1S, but a Canon DSLR was used for interviews, and a GoPro HD camera was used for underwater shots. All these cameras produce great footage, but it’s all HD. If makeup and lighting aren’t set up for video, HD is not always kind to the talent’s skin texture. This is why Beauty Box has been so popular and why Aaron really needed it on this shoot. He was nice enough to answer a few questions about the production:

AnarchyJim: Beautiful models, professional photo shoot, makeup… you wouldn’t expect a lot of  retouching would be necessary. How did Beauty Box help you out?

Aaron Brenner: The girls looked beautiful, but the lighting conditions and overall shoot were geared toward the still photographs for the calendar. Beauty Box helped us clean up some of the shadows and skin tones as well as minor blemishes here and there. In the past, we had taken our footage, separated the highlights from the rest of the image and applied a diffusion filter to affect just the skin tones. Beauty Box cut our post-production time in half.

AnarchyJim: What were some of the challenges you ran into shooting it?

AB: Overall, we shot 8 hours worth of footage, using 3 different cameras and resolutions. The second you’re working with multiple cameras, formats and resolutions, you’re going to face challenges. Mixing 720 60p footage with 1080 60i and HDV is a huge challenge. We worked in Apple’s ProRes codec and Beauty Box didn’t slow down for any shot.

AnarchyJim: How hard was it to get good results from Beauty Box?

AB: Click. Click. Boom. Manually set the skin tone to match, or auto analyze the frame, then let her render. It’s pretty impressive. We also ran almost every shot through the 3-way color corrector built into FCP. So Beauty Box fit into our workflow nicely.

AnarchyJim: Where is the video being shown?

AB: Our finished product is shown on our telecast, on our website at lakings.com/calendar and in our arena on our brand new HD scoreboard. Overall, we are producing 15 3-minute videos. The first video is the behind-the-scenes feature you saw. The next 14 videos are profiles on each girl. Those are all currently being edited.

AnarchyJim: What other kind of work are you doing for the Kings?

AB: For the Kings, we handle everything from post-game interviews, behind the scenes features and bikini calendar photo shoots. We work around the clock to deliver up-to-the-minute Kings video to our fans on our telecast, in arena and online.

AnarchyJim: So far the Kings are doing pretty well. Any plans to ‘beautify’ the hockey players if they make it to the Stanley Cup?

AB: We don’t have any plans… yet.

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I read a report earlier this year that pointed out that TV is still a very social screen.

Families still watch together, groups of friends watch together, housemates, etc., etc. The TV is still, in many ways, our electronic campfire. This may be somewhat obvious, but it’s in contrast to a computer which is usually a one viewer situation. So the use case for a TV, generally speaking, is very different from a computer screen.

To folks developing applications for iOS and Android this is a significant difference. I don’t think most people will use the TV as just another computer screen. It will still be a more passive experience and one where the group of people watching it will have to agree on any apps or widgets that are viewable on the screen. Many apps will probably be info strips (think ESPN scores running along the bottom of your screen) or pop-up boxes, more than full fledged apps taking over the entire screen. Although, I’m sure games will be significant as they are everywhere.

For content creators, I think it matters a little less. However, if you’re creating content for the web it’ll make a difference if you think it’s likely to be viewed on a TV. That file that looks ok on a 17″ laptop screen may not look so hot on a 52″ TV. Is it a 60 second skit meant for youtube or a 10 minute episode of a regular program on blip.tv? The 10 minute episode is probably more likely to make it to a TV, and you’ll want to encode accordingly.

Does this mean you need to re-encode and re-upload all your content? Well, if InterwebTV was here, right now, then yes you would. But it’s not. At least, not in any meaningful way. If your audience is technology geeks, then that day is probably not too far off. Tech people will probably have  Google TV or some such thing sooner than everyone else. But if you’ve got a wider audience, you can’t listen to early adoptin’ tech folks. You’ll know TV via the net (or Over The Top TV) has arrived when your parents have it. This was my gauge for broadband and I think it’s more or less applicable here as well.

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Now, I realize that going into a camera store and stealing a $1000 lens is difficult and stealing a $500 software program is relatively easy. But just because it’s easy to steal software doesn’t make it any less wrong. If you can afford to buy a $1000 lens, you can afford to help support the people that make the software you use to organize, enhance, manipulate, and print your photos. We’re all real folks trying to make a living and, even though piracy is given with software, sometimes it hurts when it’s thrown in your face as my friend did (unintentionally, sure, but here’s someone that’s relatively well paid just casually throwing out she wants to steal Photoshop.).

I usually don’t lose much sleep over piracy. Much of it is done by people that would never buy the program. They  download the software, use it once or twice, and then don’t use it again. But for artists that use something like Photoshop every day, it does dismay me a little about how common piracy is. Some photographers and artists that would be up in arms if their work was copied and used for an ad without being paid, think nothing of copying software from a friend. Yet, it’s the same principle.

I don’t care if you download a pirated copy of our plugins to try out. But if you find it useful, please… support those of us that work our asses off to bring you cool, useful software.

Yes, there are real people behind all this software… Jim, Garrick, Debbie, and Maggie (see above). And we all greatly appreciate all of you who do find our software useful and help us continue to do something we love… allowing us to create cool software that hopefully makes your jobs easier!

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In the first article, The 10 Most Common Mistakes Web Designers Make, the Author talks about, “with a little diligence, poor design can be easily avoided.” My favorite one, which is #1, talks about busy, crowded pages. There’s nothing worse then going to a website and not being able to find what you are looking for.

The second article, 20 Virtual Techniques & Best Practices For Effective Web Design, refers to “twenty excellent techniques and design elements you can incorporate into your designs to create a beautiful, polished website.” I found #20 interesting as it talks about adding a cartoon element. The Author says, “cartoon characters and other design elements keep your site looking fresher and younger.” So if you want to add a cartoon element to your web page, why not use our Photoshop plugin, Toonit! Photo? Toonit! Photo is an easy way to give your photos that sought-after cartoon look. Want to try the free demo? Click here.

To end this post off, here is a  funny footnote for a bad design article: The Ultimate Ugly Showcase of Current Government Websites. Go ahead knock yourselves out!

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I mean seriously. Geek evil is sort of like ‘pinky and the brain’ evil. Yeah, they might take over the world, but that’s what they plan every night. And even if they succeed, all they’ll end up doing is having chair jumping contests and all night Star Trek marathons (how else do you explain much of Microsoft’s software?)

Marketers, like Steve, are different.

Much more machiavellian (or Heather-esque, if you will) If Apple doesn’t like you or doesn’t like what you’re doing you’re not in the club. So, of course, Apple won’t let developers use the tool of their choice (Flash, .Net, Java, etc.), denies apps that show political satire, and now Apple is having the police raid journalist’s homes for talking about their products in ways Apple doesn’t approve of. It’s getting a bit ridiculous and it’s not slightly ironic that this is the same Apple that used the 1984 ad to announce the Macintosh. Who knew Steve Jobs was the man on the 1984 screen?

Jim Tierney

President

Digital Anarchy

(Although, to be fair, in this photo from 2000, Steve looks like Brain. What does it all mean?!?)

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Many people I know are freaked out about this. One person was shocked that her photos and blog posts were found. Seriously. There’s a lot of folks out there who are unclear on how all these cookies, logging, networking, and whatever else works.

Privacy Law Needs To Be Updated. Support dotrights.org

Notwithstanding obvious things like blogs, that we put up so other people can see, our privacy is being eroded fast.

For example, a recent Wall Street Journal article discussed how Ebay served ads to friends of the people that were buying things on Ebay. They used a separate company, one like Spokeo, to identify friends of the buyers and targeted ads at them. The assumption was that your friends probably like the same things you do. However, they did it without the knowledge of the buyers.

This should be illegal.

Not because targeting ads should be illegal, but because of other crazy shit companies or the government might do and are doing. Google’s Buzz service, when it was launched, let anyone viewing your social networking page see who you most frequently emailed with… again, without your permission. I wonder how many marriages or business deals were wrecked because of that?

How can they do this? The Electronic Privacy Act, which governs such things, was written in 1986. It is hopelessly out of date and needs to be revised. The ACLU, EFF, Google, ATT, Microsoft, and others have started a movement to get it revised. It’s called dotrights.org.

dotrights.org needs to be supported. We need strong privacy protection for all of us. There’s a lot of data out there about us and it’s pretty easy to gather and use or misuse. Governments, companies and individuals are NOT going to just ignore all this data because it’s the right thing to do. There needs to be a law with teeth that defines what can be done with this data.

Please support dotrights.org.

Your online privacy matters, and right now, you have very little control how much data is out there and how it is used.

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Summary of the four tips to take compelling corporate photos, which is almost an oxymoron:

“1. Change the angle. The easiest way to add interest to a potentially boring photo is to move your camera off-center. Try shooting from the sides, above, below, or behind—a different perspective can go a long way… [For instance] Salvo says she’s had some success taking award photos from behind the stage rather than in front.”

Ok, this isn’t a corporate photo. But it’s an interesting angle of my dog and his little friend.

“2. Incorporate objects. Another technique Ogden uses is making a relevant object part of the photograph. For example, if he’s taking photos of people who work in a lab, he will find an empty glass beaker and take the photo of the subjects through that. Similarly, taking the photograph with something out of focus in the foreground draws the eyes to the subjects in focus, while making the composition more interesting.”

“3. Capture the emotion and action. If objects aren’t interesting enough for you, try action. A Pittsburgh-based communicator who commented on a MyRagan forum said she carries a camera around with her at company events to take candid photos. “I’ve become known as the paparazzi in my office! I’ll show up to lunch-and-learns, in-office meetings and staff social events with my camera— they beat the ‘mug’ shot any day.””

“4. Take your time. Getting the emotion and action you want might entail taking the photo before or after an award is given. That will give you, the photographer, the ability to take your time to get the right shot and give the subject time to breathe, says Salvo… Ogden doesn’t have a lot of time, but he takes a few minutes to talk with each subject and make them more comfortable with him and the photo. That, he says, makes them look more natural on camera.”

all the best -Debbie

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In Post magazine — consistently a terrific source of film related news — there are two articles about how director James Cameron took motion capture into a new level of technology. The article ‘‘Avatar’ Introduces a New Era in Filmmaking‘ talks about his vision of a system that provides performance capture rather than motion capture. The article ‘Director’s Chair: James Cameron – Avator‘ goes into more detail about this new system, called the Simulcamera.

From Post: “Cameron wasn’t interested in “redefining gluing rubber on to actor’s faces.” He was interested in finding a way for non-human characters to express humanness… “We were going down the road of performance capture and computer generated character creation, and that was one of the stated goals of the film. In fact that was one of the stated goals before the story”… Years were spent developing a high-resolution performance capture system that could faithfully reproduce the fidelity and subtly of an actor’s live performance at the level that Cameron was looking for.”

Another great graphics news site, Videomaker, has an ‘exclusive’ video interview with John Landau, who was the producer of Avatar. I doubt it is really exclusive except for maybe the corner of the show hall they were standing in, but it is an interesting interview taken at Consumer Electronic Show show. The video article ‘Exclusive Interview with Avatar Producer!‘ also speaks with the CEO of Panasonic, which just released a new HD 3D Camcorder.

In the New York Times, a less traditional source for graphics reporting, there’s an interesting article called ‘You Saw What in ‘Avatar’? Pass Those Glasses!‘. This talks about the sociological undertones of the story. Well, of course. It was a simplistic story with standard analogies to the strong bullying the weak. Certainly there are parallels to American settlers bulldozing Native Americans, to white Americans bullying African Americans, capitalists strong-arming the environmentalists. (Recently a friend sent me a Facebook link about how Avatar resonates for the Jews.) I like that sci-fi and fantasy can address those topics with more ease than a live action drama.

From the NYT: “Since its release in December, James Cameron’s science-fiction epic… has also found itself under fire from a growing list of interest groups, schools of thought and entire nations that have protested its message (as they see it), its morals (as they interpret them) and its philosophy (assuming it has one)… There is, at least, consensus among “Avatar” critics that good science fiction operates on an allegorical level. In novels like “Dune,” films like “Star Wars” or television series like the recent “Battlestar Galactica,” Ms. Newitz said the fantastical elements of these works offer a place of “narrative safety” to contemplate real-life issues like environmental decay, totalitarianism and torture.”

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