[TaoColorist] Sunday Morning Reading (Avid Gets Some Love)

Published: Sun, 09/18/11

Trouble reading this newsletter? Click here to read it online.

The Tao Colorist

Curated links of news, reviews, thoughts, career advice, and humor 
for professional Video / Film Colorists & Finishers. Delivered Sunday.
Issue LXII                                                            Brought to you by: Tao of Color.com

Editor's Note: Are you sure you're awake? (careful with that volume...)

The Tools

  • Round-Up: AJA, BlackMagic, Matrox Thunderbolt Interfaces - Announced at IBC 2011. (NoFilmSchool.com)
  • Apple Color: Premiere Pro Export 'Gotcha' - If you're exporting interlaced material out of Premiere into Apple Color then you'll want to read this blog post about how to do this properly, or risk mangling your images... (BiscardiCreative.com via @KarlSoule)
  • Avid Media Composer:  Round-tripping Into Apple Color - Moving from Avid Media Composer to Apple Color while dealing with mixed frame rates and codecs... and then going back to Avid. (lfhd.net)
  • [Video] Avid Media Composer: Avid & Blackmagic - On the IBC 2011 showfloor about these two companies finding some love. DNxHD & AAF love, that is. (YouTube.com)
  • Avid Media Composer: Preparing for a Nucoda Grade - It's nice to see a string of Avid-related color grading stories this week, eh? The title is pretty self explanatory. (JackJoneColorist.com)
  • Avid Media Composer: Crossgrade Promotion Extended - The current $999 crossgrade will end at the end of September. But Avid will start on ongoing promotion in October for $1499 for current FCP Legacy and FCP-x owners. (DefinitionMagazine.com)
  • Baselight Plug-Ins - The plug-in packages available for Baselight. (ToolFarm.com)
  • [Video] DaVinic Resolve: Shape Mask vs Shape Matte - What's the diff? I tend to call the Shape Mask a 'Hold Back Mask'. Warren Eagles gives a simple but effective demonstration of the difference. (Vimeo.com)
  • Final Cut Pro Legacy: Digital Cinema Pack (DCP) Plug-in - If nothing else, you can keep using FCP 7 to create HD, 2K, and 4K non-encrypted DCP packages directly from FCP. (DoremiLabs.com via PeterSalvia.Wordpress.com)
  • FCPx: Color Isolation Effect - How to do it. There's another video on animating the color isolation effect. (Vimeo.com)
  • [Video] LaCIE: Thunderbolt Drive - Playing 4K from a MacBook Pro in Real Time with full DeBayer. Using a Thunderbolt Sonnet expansion chassis to house the Red Rocket Card and a LaCIE Thunderbolt Hard Drive. Starts at 1min 30sec. (Area.Autodesk.com via @tparish)
  • [Video] iPad App: 'Image Control' - Fully featured on-set test and color grading iPad app. From Gamma and Density and compatible with their 3cP product. (3cp.GammaAndDensity.com via @mozhenko)
  • Mistika: Info and Experiences - Thread on the Telecine Internet Group (TIG) about this color grading / online / stereoscopic tool being used on The Hobbit. Press the 'Next Message" link to step through the conversation. (tig.colorist.org)
  • RED Cine-X Professional (Beta) - The free app that killed Foundry's 'Storm'. (Red.com)
  • IBC Rewind: AbelCine - The AbelCine Blog has a series of articles wrapping up last week's IBC announcements. Here are the links for: AJA, Arri, BlackMagic Design, Panasonic, and Sony. Well summarized.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Flanders Scientific Broadcast Monitors

The LM-2461W is an affordable 24" color critical reference monitor featuring 10bit color depth, 3G/HD/SD-SDI Inputs, 12 onboard scopes, and DCI P3 support. All standard and all for just $4,995.

Learn More About the LM-2461W

The Business

  • What's Your Specialty? Career Advice To Keep You Earning - This Tao Of Color blog post was inspired by an email I got earlier this week. The sender is worried about the future of specialties like color grading. I gave him the only advice I have to offer... (TaoOfColor.com)
  • What Is the Future of the Big Color Grading Systems? (BTLNews.com)
  • ColorCorrection.com: Billing By The Minute - Of footage, that is. (StudioDaily.com)
  • Adobe's Iridias SpeedGrade Acquisition: What Adobe Users Are Wishing - Quite a bit of back and forth in the comments on the Adobe blog announcement of this acquisition. Some of it more informed than others. Interesting, nonetheless. (blogs.adobe.com)
  • iPad Goes Hollywood - How executives and decision makers are using the iPad to get things done (and look good doing it). (NetworkWorld.com via @tparish)
  • Who Killed 3D? - Interesting article with lots of numbers and graphs on the decline of 3D-generated revenue. And what accounts for its fading life-signs? (Slate.com via @Filmbot) 

Edumacate Yer'Self

  • Cubix Expander Training - According their blog, Class On Demand will be offering training on working with the Cubix products. The training is to be released in conjunction with upcoming Resolve 8 training. (CubixGPU.com)
  • DaVinci Resolve Training - More live demos in Atlanta and Folsom, CA. In addition to the previously announced San Francisco demo and the one I'll be doing in Montreal. You can find the full listing and sign-up pages in the link. (EventBrite.org) 

Outside 'The Box'

  • The Reading List - Some interesting books here, especially in the field of audio post-production. (spliceVine.com)



Current Colorist Control Surface Drivers
 JL Cooper Eclipse Avid Artist Color Tangent Wave

Software: v2.1.6

 Mac: v2.6.1

Software: v3.8

Color Plug-in: v 1.0.5
 PC: v2.6.1
Firmware: v1.9

Updated:
March 7

 Updated: August 9 Updated: Jan. 28(ish)

Sunday Morning Fun(nies)

  • Orcs Must Die: YouTube Annotations At Its Best - The video referenced in this blog post is a lot of fun to 'play' thorough. The blog post itself details how much work went into making the 36 separate paths a viewer can walk through in this video game demo. I agree, nothing ground-breaking... just Orc-killing. Note: I couldn't get the annotations to work on my iOS device. (ReelSEO.com)
  • Arial IMAX Camera - One of only four such camera rigs in existence (according to the filmmaker posting this image). (Twitter.com via @PaulJFranklin)=
  • Tchaikovsky Timelapse - Timelapse video of a stop-motion animator doing his work. Pretty cool. (Vimeo.com via Kottke.org)
  • George Lucas Strikes Back - Explains why the Prequels were so bad. Released early this year but I've linked to it in honor of the new Blu-Ray versions (in which Lucas has kept Darth Vader as Luke's father). (YouTube.com)
  • Jedi Kittens Strike Back - Because it's Star Wars Blu-Ray release weekend. And because its ridiculous. (YouTube.com)
  • Vladamir Putin, Action Man - You've got to scroll down this page. All these images juxtaposed... he's an Action Hero! Or a caricature of one. The only thing missing... Moon Walk (though now that the U.S. has an extra Shuttle or two laying around...) (TheAtlantic.com)
  • Remixes of Remixes - I saw a nifty commercial the other day showing everyday products running on gas engines. It was a commercial for an electric car. Someone else also liked that commercial and then found another one almost identical to it. But for a different car, from a different ad agency. It turns out, both agencies completely ripped off an even earlier version of this spot from another car manufacturer! Check out all three versions, it's the evolution of an idea - presented in reverse order. (KenSegall.com)

Gear Heads

  • Sonnet RackMacMini XServer - Rackmount a Thuderbolt-enabled MacMini and configure it as a Shared RAID Storage or a Video Capture Rig or whatever else your noggin' might come up with. Not yet released. (SonnetTech.com via @digitalreb)
  • Apple Thunderbolt Display: Daisy-chaining Displays - Apple clarifies how many displays can be driven via Thunderbolt-enabled devices. The MacMini can drive two. Existing Mini DisplayPort screens can be used at the end of a chain but not if another display is present. Read on for more details and minutia. (AppleInsider.com via @ryanbkoo)
  • Cubix: XPander Mobile - PCI-e Expander with Thunderbolt connectivity. Expected ship date: December. Link is to Press Release. (CubixGPU.com)
  • Thunderbolt Coming To PCs - There's been concern about the lack of adoption of Thunderbolt interconnects by PC makers - which would give economies of scale that would make the technology affordable and widespread. Acer and ASUS have broken the logjam with announcements for products in 2012. (ArsTechnica.com)
  • Intel Showcases More Thunderbolt Technology - At it's Developer's Conference in San Francisco. (ArsTechnica.com)
  • Rumors Begin About the Next Gen ATI Radeon Cards (HardMac.com)
  • iPad Mounting Solutions - Because we all need to mount our iPads. (GeniusDV.com)
 
accelerate your learning curve                                       get a mentor

MasterClass: DaVinci Resolve 8

Get In on the Early Bird Discount. Now!

A Unique Color Grading Training and Mentoring System
DaVinci Resolve 8 | Colorista II | Apple Color | FCP 7
 

Being a Professional Creative

  • You've Gotten Your First Freelance Editing Client: Now What? - This article refers to editing words, not moving images. But it doesn't require much imagination to take this advice and apply it to our profession. (TomMangan.net via @mozhenko)
  • How To Get Paid By Your Clients - Just yesterday I got an email from an old record label 'client' saying, "Please pursue legal action" on a $720 bill. When we called the person who referred them to us - they got the same response on a $1500 invoice. Obviously, with this client neither of us followed the advice in this blog post. Read it, learn it, live it. (ASMP.org)

Being a Better You

  • Pull Yourself Out of a Rut - All it takes is doing one small thing. (LifeHacker.com)
  • Sitting AND Standing At Work - Cornell's Ergonomics Lab doesn't recommend using a standing desk when working. They recommend sitting but getting up and walking for 2 minutes every half-hour. Read on for their research... (ergo.human.cornell.edu)
  • Confusing Obedience With Self Control - And why are we teaching young people to be compliant? (SethGodin.typepad.com)
  • The Skill That Matters Most - "More commonly, it's called discipline, or will. Without self-control, we can't accomplish almost anything of enduring value. And we rarely pay much attention to it." (blogs.hbr.org)

The Next Step Is A Doozy

  • Google Brings Flight Search Into the Jet Age - This story is a Doozy if you happen to work for Orbitz, Expedia or Kayak. (ArsTechnica.com)

A Step Too Far

  • Stripped Down Blu-Rays Are Making Me Hate BluRay - Stu Maschwitz is dead-on about the terrible way rental BluRays are being authored... forcing you to watch promos about how much more intreactive and deep BluRay is - while locking you out from skipping promos and previews and then stripping away all that extra content because you're renting (not buying) it! I've even had a BluRay mock me with, "This special feature is only available on the retail version of this BluRay'. It's maddening. (ProLost.com)

See you next week. Happy Grading!


Over 1,450+ Stories Now Served!

FCC Disclaimer: Links in this email to Amazon.com, B&H Photo, or ToolFarm.com are Affiliate links that help support the TaoOfColor.com. FSI is a paid sponsor and BlackMagic Design is a current client. We thank you for your support.
Training   |  Colorist Interviews  |  Tao Colorist Blog   |  About The Tao    Unsubscribe to this newsletter