(Image: Mayor Bloomberg presents a proclamation to the cast and executive producers of “Gossip Girl.” Photo credit: The Mayor’s Office.)

This past year “broke all records for television production in New York City” said Mayor Bloomberg during a presentation on the set of “Gossip Girl”, which shoots on the Silvercup Studios stages.

Bloomberg and Media & Entertainment Commissioner Katherine Oliver were on hand to drop a proclamation on the cast and executive producers of the CW Network show which will soon celebrate its 100th episode. (Gossip Girl is a production of Fake Empire and Alloy Entertainment in association with Warner Bros. Television and CBS Television Studios.)

While Bloomberg and Oliver have touted the increase in production in the city before, it’s interesting to hear the numbers in relation to a specific show. According to a news release by the Mayor’s Office, “Gossip Girl” spent $200 million on local development and used more than 500 vendors for paint, lumber, office supplies and other services, and over the past season hired more than 120 principal actors, 180 crew members and more than 7,000 background actors.

You can find a few additional details here from Bloomberg’s old haunt, Bloomberg News.

This is as good a time as any to mention a Craigslist item that just might help you break into the industry, or at least some aspect of it: Brooklyn Workforce Innovations is offering a Television & Film Office Training position. This free four-week training program offers training and placement to New Yorkers hoping to break into various parts of the TV and film industries. There’s a January 31st application deadline.

(Marcel Bozzuffi, right, in William Friedkin’s “French Connection,” from 1971. Image credit: 20th Century Fox)

The MTA has posted a new version of one of its evergreen articles on filming in the subways.

Not much new info if you’re up-to-date on their process—although you might be interested in learning that some 28 productions made use of the system over the past year with shooting schedules that went from one day to 40 (no mention of who took more than a month to shoot subterranean).

If you’re not familiar with what’s involved in such shoots, you’d be right to imagine that it can get a bit complicated. Any agency involved in moving five million of us around each day needs to stick to very specific procedures. For example, if you’re shooting anywhere on the ‘roadbed’, it’s mandatory for principal crew to take an eight-hour safety course, the same one that MTA employees attend. Your production will also need to post $2 million of insurance for each cast and crew member on location.

For a bit more detailed look at what steps you need to take, check out this page in an earlier article, “The Art of Making Movies in the New York City Subway”. You’ll also find links on that page for the exact steps you need to take, as well as mention of some of the notable films that feature the underground, including two classics, The French Connection and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.

Here’s the MTA’s basic info page on shooting in the subway.

$200m Funding Deal" />

(Image: Peter James Elias in Nagendra Karri’s “Where are You Sophia?” Photo credit: Eternal Mind Productions)

Eternal Mind Productions LLC says it has signed a three year production deal with investors from Dubai, U.A.E to the tune of some US $200 million. Headed by CEO Nagendra Karri and actor/producer Peter James Elias, the New York-based company had been in contract talks with the AL MUHAYMIN Film Fund, according to a press release. Karri writes, produces and directs for the company, which has offices on lower Broadway and in New Jersey.

Karri wrote, produced, and directed his first feature Where are You Sophia? in 2009. Shot in the rural New Jersey town of Highlands, this “psychological thriller” was budgeted at an estimated $2,000,000. The director, a native of India, has also said he wants to “showcase India” to the international film industry.

According to earlier reports, Karri plans to expand distribution of his low-cost films, including the upcoming Gate 21 and Mobster, to “untapped markets” in Eastern Europe and Asia. Information on the AL MUHAYMIN Film Fund, said to be Dubai-based, wasn’t available at the time of this posting.

One of the most full-featured 3D applications around, MAXON’s CINEMA 4D contains all the necessary ingredients to create cutting edge 3D graphics and animations. Designers and motion graphics artists alike enjoy features such as Mograph (the simple, speedy Cloner toolset), and appreciate its many other attributes such as the robust physics and dynamics simulator, subdivision surfaces, straight-forward user interface and its collection of useful deformers.

CINEMA 4D is very popular here in the New York scene where you can see it at work in design boutiques, post-production companies and ad agencies. If you haven’t read my review of the the previous release of CINEMA 4D (R12), you can do so here.

Previous versions of CINEMA 4D contained many tools for character animation (such as joints, IK, and pose morphing). However, R13 makes giant strides in this area with the addition of the character object, an innovative new tool which promises to make the whole complex proposition of character animation radically easier.

I’ll talk more about the character object, as well as some of R13′s other new features later, but first we’ll begin with CINEMA 4D’s new rendering engine.

Let’s get Physical

While CINEMA 4D’s old standard renderer is still available and can be invoked to render your scenes, there is an important new and enhanced rendering engine in this latest version of CINEMA 4D known as the physical renderer. The name of this new renderer is an important clue to understanding what it does. It recreates true photo-realistic physical effects based on real camera properties such as motion blur, depth of field and lens distortion.

These physical camera effects are controlled with authentic, real-world camera parameters, which become available once the physical renderer is selected such as f-stop, focal length, shutter speed, and ISO — features you would expect to find on a physical camera.

Here’s what I like about this new capability: Rather than just dialing in arbitrary numbers to control things like motion blur and focal length, those with experience operating real cameras in the real world can now draw upon and apply their considerable knowledge within CINEMA 4D.

That means that CINEMA 4D artists and animators who are knowledgeable with how directors and DPs talk can take their comments and apply it to this latter stage of production, making for a more integrated workflow.

Working in the physical renderer, the artist will inherently know that different combinations of shutter speed (how long a frame is exposed to light) and f-stop (how much light is allowed to enter the frame) affect how much motion blur is apparent in a scene as well as what objects are in sharp focus or blurred out (otherwise known as depth of field). CINEMA 4D’s physical renderer enables users to think in terms of a “physical camera,” a concept more easily understandable to a producer, director or just about anyone else involved in production.

Motion blur is an important factor in creating convincing looking animation and is also key when merging live action and CGI. In past versions of CINEMA 4D, before the physical renderer, there were two ways to achieve natural looking motion blur. The first was to use scene motion blur (renamed Sub-Frame Motion Blur in version 13) which looks good, but is very costly in terms of render time. Another option is to use a technique called vector motion blur, or VMB, which is fast and offers decent results, but less realistic. VMB is often used in conjunction with After Effects and the ReelSmart Motion Blur plug-in from RE:Vision Effects.

The new physical renderer, however, now offers up accurate, motion blur in considerably less time than scene motion blur. In addition, shadows cast from moving objects appear naturally blurred, which was not possible with VMB. Below is a simple test that I set up of a physical camera rendered with a shutter angle of 180 degrees and subsequently with a shutter angle of 360 degrees. Notice the effect that the different shutter angles have on the resultant motion blur.

You don’t need to apply Global Illumination (or GI) separately to your render options when using the physical renderer since it’s built in — light gets bounced around indirectly in your scene automatically. Incidentally, you may still wish to use the standard renderer if you don’t need it since it can be faster in certain cases.

Getting into Character

R13′s innovative new character tools are very powerful. As a result, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot more character animation created with CINEMA 4D in the near future. The most important of these character animation innovations — and one can argue perhaps the most important of all the enhancements to R13 itself, is the new character object.

Traditionally, before one could even think about animating a character, it was necessary to first construct a skeletal rig, bind it to your model and carefully weight the points of the mesh to the different joints in the rig.

This was no easy task, unless you’re highly skilled. A rig is a highly complex and detailed construction that is comprised of many hierarchies of joints, nulls, targets, expressions and controls. Skeletal rigs often implement an advanced technique called inverse kinematics (or IK) which allows you to do things like move a hand around and have the rest of the joints in the arm follow automatically. This spares you the need to animate each bone separately while also having the advantage of making the motion look natural.

Building a good character rig is an art unto itself and a properly designed rig should hide its complexity from the animator. It’s no surprise, therefore, that means building a complete rig from scratch can take a lot of time. Days, if not weeks, of careful planning and hard work are often needed, not to speak of the time it takes to fully understand all the intricate concepts involved in its construction. Of course this assumes that you have already gained a proper understanding of the mechanics of human anatomy and locomotion and have already cleared the considerable hurdles involved in learning how to model.

To help simplify the difficulties of rigging, MAXON has created the character object, which allows you to automatically add an expertly crafted skeletal rig to your model simply by drawing upon predefined templates for components such as spines, arms, legs, hands and fingers. In just a few clicks, voila! You’ve got yourself a fully built and articulated rig that would have taken a very long time to build yourself.

After creating the rig, you use handles to customize and adjust it to fit the proportions of your model. During this process, any adjustments made to the rig will automatically be reflected symmetrically on the other side with the ability to turn it off. To bind the mesh to the rig, you simply drag the icon of the mesh into the binding area of the rig — CINEMA 4D will apply intelligent auto-weighting to the points on the mesh (which you are free to customize later). Once done, you will be off and animating in a fraction of the time it would have taken you traditionally.

Bipedal rigs often share similar characteristics, differing mostly in where the joints are placed. However, as you might expect, significant differences exist between bipeds, quadrupeds or millipedes. Therefore, the character object contains templates for many different kinds of creatures such as bipeds, quadrupeds, fish, insects, birds and reptiles. You can create your own rig templates for others to use. Additional templates are being created that will be implemented in the future by MAXON and others. Components can be combined as well, so if you’re working on a model of the winged horse Pegasus, you can add the wings component to a quadruped rig.

There are also rigs in CINEMA 4D, which are compatible with common motion capture and animation interchange formats such as BVH, FBX and Mixamo.

Once a character rig is set up, you may want to make use of the exciting new CMotion object. CMotion is great to create walk cycles and, in fact, many different kinds of cyclical motion. With CMotion you can create a customized walk cycle for your character by adding hubs and targets. Once you finish, you can apply that motion to the character and make it follow a spline path through your scene. This is all done without having to worry about the massive amounts of keyframes and f-curves that are ordinarily necessary when doing this kind of work.

There’s also a new muscle system in R13: muscle objects can be placed in your model and anchored to its rig. The muscles are used to deform the mesh or skin of the character and by default, they are set to render. Their visibility can easily be turned off since, most likely, you will only use them to affect the mesh. Here’s an example of how to use muscles: You can place one where the bicep should be and tell it to grow when the forearm curls while lifting a heavy object. In this way, you can simulate the effect of that part of an arm enlarging as the muscle flexes under the skin. An effective example of using muscles in R13 can be seen on this render of a walking dinosaur.

Sub Surface Scattering

CINEMA 4D R13 now includes an advanced Sub-Surface Scattering (or SSS) shader. SSS is useful in accurately rendering surfaces that absorb and diffuse light within their interior. Did you ever put your hand over a flashlight? With a powerful enough flashlight, you’ll notice that the light is absorbed to some extent by your flesh such that your hand seems to almost glow with the light. Why’s that? Since some of the light penetrates the surface of your skin, it is then diffused or scattered within your hand. That is an example of what SSS achieves enhanced realism; it can be seen on many surfaces including plants, marble, milk and thin-skinned aliens.

XRefs

R13 has made considerable improvements to XRefs (external references) which are very useful, especially when working in a collaborative environment on large-scale projects. Imagine the project is a science fiction movie that takes place on a space station. You might have someone working on the furniture while another artist creates a robot that moves around in the scene. Still another person might be working on the instrument panels and so on.

But exactly how would you work concurrently on a project with a tight deadline? Well, you could pass the files around to all the team members so everybody could do their part, but as you can imagine, that would be an extremely inefficient way to do it. Merging various projects into one is also time-consuming with the added potential to backfire if the wrong files are mistakenly incorporated.

As you might have guessed, XRefs are the way to go. Simply put, XRefs are references to other Cinema 4D projects that are embedded inside of a “master project”. (Other design programs use the same term.) For example, the person building the robot can make his file be an XRef inside of the master space station project. In this way, he can continue working on the robot, even as the rest of the project is completed. Inside the master project, it will be constantly updated whenever the XRef is changed or saved.

You can work with an XRef just as you would any other object, by animating its components, adding materials to it or applying expressions to it. Similarly, the furniture, instrumentation and even the lighting rigs and textured objects can all be XRefs, all coming together in one grand file where one could check out how the scene is coming together just by opening it.

When importing an XRef from an outside source, you can decide whether you want to import its animation or materials. For instance, suppose the robot has a little antenna that twirls around on the top of its head. The person who created the XRef could set this up externally, but you may decide to ignore it, as well as any materials that were applied to it, and choose to import a stripped down, untextured version of the XRef instead. You can also decide whether any changes made to the XRef inside the master project will affect the reference or remain only inside the master project.

When Objects Collide

R13 also includes a new Collision Deformer which, when applied to an object, will deform its mesh accordingly when it collides with another object. This can be useful when making things like mattresses and cushions. For example if something heavy is set down on a bed, such as a bowling ball or a character’s rear end, the collision deformer will cause the mattress to interact with the collider and its mesh will be deformed accordingly. Within the collision deformer’s parameters, there are options to make an object bounce back to its original shape after a collision (as it would in the case of a mattress), or maintain the new deformed shape — useful in making things like footsteps or tire tracks in the snow.

Incidentally, the collision deformer is not based on soft body dynamics, but rather on geometry. This means that its effect does not require you to set up physics simulations.

There’s More

There is a lot more that is new in CINEMA 4D R13. Here are some other features that I think are key improvements.

There are numerous stereoscopic enhancements, so if you’re doing 3D you’ll definitely want to upgrade. These include the ability to convert any camera to a parallel, on-axis, off-axis or radial stereoscopic camera. Stereo images can also be previewed directly in the 3D editor and can be rendered as merged stereoscopic images or separate images for each camera. The picture viewer now also supports the playing of stereo renders.

New Anti-Aliasing filters now allow you to achieve higher quality results by using the advanced Mitchell and Gauss algorithms.

Already known for its intuitive user interface, R13 includes a number of improvements. New cursor-based navigation uses the position you click as the point of interest when zooming and rotating about your model. In the past, the viewport would pivot around what was selected and if this happened to be far from what you were viewing, navigating around the portion of the model you were looking at could be difficult and confusing. So far, I think this cursor-based navigation is good way to go and much easier to use.

Python and COFFEE scripting language integration has also been improved. Scripting languages offer users immense power in customizing and extending the capabilities of Cinema 4D so that savvy programmers and developers can create customizable solutions for specific tasks and implement them into their pipelines. Notably, Python plug-ins and scripts now appear alongside those created using C++ and COFFEE APIs.

CINEMA 4D was already adept at exchanging data with After Effects. Past versions of the program allowed you to output entire AE compositions complete with 3D camera motion, lights, object buffers as well as 3D coordinates of planes that can be swapped out for After Effects layers. Version 13 adds to this by adding support for CINEMA 4D’s stage object, time marker export and support for 29.97 frame rates.

Conclusion

CINEMA 4D has become a mature and capable product that steadily adds improvements. The new features such as the physical renderer, character object, CMotion, SSS, XRefs are all innovations that are useful, important and will save you time.

Depending on the work you do, you can choose from several flavors of CINEMA 4D. Prime has the basics to get you started. Then there’s Broadcast and Visualize and finally the Mother of all CINEMA 4D packages, Studio, which has everything the other packages include and more, such as the character tools. If you are thinking about doing character animation, you should get Studio.

For those thinking of doing motion graphics and broadcast design, however, CINEMA 4D Broadcast should cover all the bases. It retails for $1,695. Upgrades from CINEMA 4D Broadcast Version 12 are $695. Studio sells for $3,695 and the upgrade from Version 12 is $995.

You should consider getting the Annual Licensing option, or MSA. It’s basically a yearly subscription, which entitles you to all upgrades. It costs $650 for Studio, so you end up saving around $350 on the normal upgrade price.

No matter what version you get, CINEMA 4D has certainly earned its place among the most respectable 3D software suites out there. In fact, it has recently been named a recipient of the Computer Graphics World SIGGRAPH 2011 Silver Edge Award.

It’s also a lot of fun to use.

This review was conducted on HP’s powerful Z800 Workstation (2 six-core Xeons, Quadro 5000 GPU and 25GB RAM) and ZR30w high performance display. See our review of this potent workhorse here.

(Image: Presenting his new film ‘Twixt’, Francis Ford Coppola tries on an Edgar Allan Poe mask that contains 3D glasses.)

The Past Week(s) in Review: For August 22 and August 29, 2011

This edition of TPWR covers the past two weeks of news.

We search for the more interesting and provocative news and views of the past week…just so you don’t have to.

This week we share the good news about local production, learn about a filter that can save you from DSLR headaches, and find out that an older, established filmmaker is more experimental than ever.

Mayor Bloomberg on the set of Pan Am with Media & Entertainment Commissioner Oliver and other officials. Photo credit: The Mayor’s Office.

Upbeat about Production

More good news on the growing number of prime time TV shows filming throughout the five boroughs. According to a recent press conference held by Mayor Bloomberg, we have some 23 shows now shooting regularly; eight of them were selected from 20 pilots shot in the city earlier this year.

Bloomberg made the announcement from the Steiner Studios stages of Sony Pictures Television’s “Pan Am”, set to debut on ABC this fall. Steiner, based in the Brooklyn Navy Yards, is now expanding to double its size. It is already the largest soundstage production facility on the East Coast, with the expansion adding some 2000 jobs to the 2200 jobs at throughout the Yard.

In a release, Steiner Studios Chairman Douglas C. Steiner thanked the Bloomberg administration for its continued support of the entertainment industry. “This onslaught of film and television production is a direct result of the mayor and other elected officials working together to make New York City competitive and hassle-free,” he said. This was taken from an article in The Hollywood Reporter, which you can read here.

Variety credits recently enacted long-term tax incentives granted by the state. An improvement over the previous year-by-year incentive extensions, the five year term offers a more stable environment for the studios for budgeting and other planning. The Variety article says that business boosters, including local studio heads, have learned to be “savvy in lobbying for production incentives at the state capital.”

QR Talk

Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, won the director the fest’s Directing Award. Major prize talk continues to build for Durkin as well as actors Elizabeth Olsen and John Hawkes well in advance of the film’s October 21st release. But there also seems to be a good bit of interest in Fox Searchlight’s use of QR (quick response) codes on early posters to trigger the trailers.

The gimmick here is that the previews aren’t available any other way online–you really do have to use your smartphone to scan the QR codes on posters you might find on the streets of Manhattan, Brooklyn, or Los Angeles–to get to these specific trailers. Entertainment Weekly’s Inside Movies claims to have had the scoop on the first use of these smart-phone-only posters.

Photo credit: MGM
Kubrick Invents the iPad, Personal TV Follows

Seems that it’s not the monolith from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey that garners interest these days but the “iPad like” TV notepads two of the astronauts on the Jupiter probe use. Samsung indeed cites these objects in the movie–they’re the size of a notepad and feature a functional video screen–as an example of prior art in its court case against Apple, who claims the Korean manufacturer has infringed its patented iPad design. You can read further details on Foss Patent’s blog here.

Following the lead of personal media, John Clancy, CEO at Azuki Systems, writes on Mashable that the future TV is “all about personalization.” We all knew that, and Clancy’s company makes platforms for mobile phones enabling cable companies and others to offer a good video experience on the go.

The basic argument isn’t new either: Since viewers no longer make plans to sit down and view specific content on a regular basis–we all want content whenever and wherever we happen to be–cable companies and channels like HBO want to offer video service alternatives that keeps up with their viewer’s habits.

While content creators and service providers are “making a mad dash to get screen time on mobile and other connected devices”, these new delivery options are stumbling because experience is not seamless when using the various devices. Azuki, of course, provides the one item Clancy says is lacking–the “key ingredient for success — personalization.” Metadata behind the video is used to split longer shows into smaller chunks so that viewers can catch clips on the go. Worth a read if just to learn how much control can be exerted over your distributed video.

Photo credit: metaio
Siggraph Notes, AR, & ARRI

Over at Studio Daily, editor Beth Marchant offers a quick take on SIGGRAPH 2011. Top tech presentations at the show in Vancouver, says Marchant, included Nvidia’s Project Maximus (a graphics technology that allows users to access and scale different parts of the GPU as needed) and Amazon’s “Cluster GPU Instance for its EC2″ –this service allows smaller facilities to rent processing power to render scenes. Meanwhile, BlackSky Computing ups the ante on cloud computing schemes like Amazon’s EC2 cloud by claiming it isn’t very effective beyond the capability of working with short sequences. BlackSky may enter the market for high-performance processing and rendering with its own competing service.

Augmented reality may offer a whole new way to use smartphones, or it could just be a gimmick for gamers. With that conclusion still up for grabs, you might take a look at an intriguing video “Roadmap of AR and the Vision of an Augmented City” to get a better idea of what the latest developments offer. Created by the Media Processing Division of chipmaker ARM and the R&D department of German-based AR company metaio, the video shows how more powerful smartphones capable of realtime 3D motion tracking will provide real-time contextual, digital information overlaying urban scenes.

You have to wonder why they haven’t offered this already since the Munich-based company has been around for much of the history of cinema, but ARRI CSC has launched its own Expendables Online Shop. Found at arricscstore.com, the store offers all the items you’ll need for handling camera, lighting, and grip work.

Photo credit: Kevin Brown
Wormholes, CDN Woes, & Bird Talk

In an area within MIT’s student cafeteria, you can find a Plexiglas dome that sits over a video screen. You can find the exact similar setup in Stanford University’s cafeteria. What is it? First, consider that there is an always on, high-speed link between the two conversation areas. (The plexi dome acts as a chamber to funnel audio while not disturbing others nearby.) Meant to make realtime long-distance interactions casual and arbitrary, the designers of the system act all science-fictioney by calling the link a wormhole. See if it heralds the future of long distance interactive communication by reading the the rest of the article on the Boston Globe’s site.

Over on the GigaOM site, reporter Stacey Higginbotham offers us an inside look at content delivery specialist Akamai and the “scary future of streaming video.” Seems that within two to five years, the throughput requirement for certain single video events will reach some 50 to 100 terabits per second. That is about the equivalent bandwidth of what it takes to distribute a TV quality stream to a large prime time audience today. Problem is that this is an “order of magnitude” beyond the largest online video events held today, according to Higginbotham, and that’s without adding all of bells & whistles of interactivity, which many claim we desperately want. See what you think by reading the article here.

The LA Times interviews Pixar’s Brad Bird for an article entitled “Hollywood isn’t Brave Enough to Copy Pixar’s Process”. While Pixar has become “the gold standard among popcorn films”, Bird opines, Hollywood studios are doing everything to copy the famed animation studio except actually taking the time and effort to really, truly develop a good story first. A good storyline is a central tenet of the vaunted Pixar process. Read more about Bird’s thoughts on current trends in animation by clicking here.

Photo credit: Mosaic Engineering
DSLR’s Savior, Flash & Jobs

In short review/article on his site, DSLR enthusiast Philip Bloom claims a new anti-aliasing and moire filter from Mosaic Engineering solves the two most serious problems–aliasing and moire generation–you will face when shooting with Canon’s 5DmkII. It seems the filter removes the interference patterns on details that are generated by the camera’s line skipping. Is this a simple cure for what Bloom calls the “bane of shooting with DSLRs and the single biggest problem”? Read it here and decide.

Fast and efficient Flash memory rules in the world of consumer computing (i.e. iPads, smartphones, digital cameras). Except in limited cases, the price of solid-state storage has remained too high to allow it to move into the world of large-scale computing like data centers. Now, Pure Storage, a new start up, says that it can use consumer level flash storage along with its software to pull the price of Flash storage down to less than that of hard drives. That’s a mighty achievement if true. Read more here in Steve Lohr’s article in the Times’ Bits blog.

There have been plenty of testimonials to Steve Jobs on his resignation from Apple. At least read one of them from someone who has something to do with our industry: Here’s a note from George Lucas, who sold Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division to Jobs, a sale which famously created Pixar Animation Studios. But of course that only came after a number of years of development and many millions invested in the new operation. Read more of Nick Wingfield’s article in the reporter’s Wall Street Journal blog by clicking here.

Elle Fanning & Coppola on the set of ‘Twixt’
Still Going Strong

Francis Ford Coppola brought Val Kilmer and the composer of his latest film Twixt to the recent Comic Con convention for a talk. What made that panel more than just the usual dog and pony, says reporter Jason Adams on JoBlo.com, is that this original horror tale-said to be inspired by one of Coppola’s own dreams–will be presented as a live performance. That’s right–Coppola claims to be returning to the early days of cinema when things weren’t so locked down to present some of the “magic and spontaneity of live performance art”.

Coppola, working with electronic musician and soundtrack composer Dan Deacon will “change the experience to suit the audience” in real time. Read more about the ever experimenting FFC and his new idea for presentation by clicking here. Twixt premieres at next month’s Toronto International Film Festival.

As an aside: If you would be curious to see how an earlier, eager Coppola marked up a page from “The Godfather”–and a heavily marked up page it is with “Hit hard and bloody!!” among the exhortations he made to himself–then click here.

Raul Ruiz
Memories of a Cine Magician

Raul Ruiz, the little heralded filmmaker (at least in the U.S.), passed away recently. (If you haven’t had a chance to see one of his many intriguing works, check out his transfixing Mysteries of Lisbon, which is still showing at Lincoln Center’s Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center.)

Producer James Schamus posted a touching remembrance on Scott Macauley’s IndieWIRE blog, calling the director/author “one of the truly great, idiosyncratic and visionary voices of world cinema.” Both Schamus and Macauley—along with a raft of downtown notables of the time including Christine Vachon, Michael Kirby, John Zorn, Kathy Acker, and Jim Jarmusch—worked or acted in Ruiz’s 1987 film The Golden Boat, a goof on the New York art scene at the time.

This bit from AP’s obit sums up his career neatly: “A favorite of cinephiles, Ruiz rebelled against the conventions of moviemaking in an extensive, varied body of work that didn’t result in a widely-known masterpiece, but left behind a vast, labyrinthine collection of experiments, curiosities and innovations.”

A Great Combo for Adobe Premiere" />

If you are a media production professional, you’ll want to take a good look at the HP Z800 workstation. When paired with a NVIDIA Quadro GPU accelerated video card we’re talking about a system that achieves an outstanding level of performance. Whether you are an editor of motion pictures, a compositor, visual effects artist or create high-end 3D animation, the HP Z800 workstation has a design that’s ideal for the special needs of production and post-production professionals who are searching for the utmost in power and flexibility. As we’ll be discussing throughout this article, this should be especially relevant to video editors who may be looking for new directions in light of recent developments in that field.

Editing’s Changing Tides

Before we go over the machine, let’s elaborate on recent news that has recently made the Z800 much more compelling to a segment of our community, namely film and video editors, who may have overlooked it before. It should come as no surprise that Apple’s recent release of Final Cut Pro X has thrown this group into a frenzy, since the new app throws out many of the pro features and third party plug-ins developed over the years. One company’s NLE is suddenly benefiting greatly from this unease, specifically Adobe Premiere Pro, and interest in this cost-effective professional solution continues to grow as a result. (Read Walter Biscardi’s rather bitter farewell to Apple’s FCP X NLE solution to get an idea of what’s involved in this issue).

Due to the early success of a few key software packages, Windows-based machines have basically become the standard in 3D animation production. The leading computer manufacturer for both Windows and Linux — HP — exemplifies this, as it has built a longstanding relationship with DreamWorks Animation.

However, due the development of Final Cut Pro over the past 12 some years since its introduction, including a number of third party plug-ins that solved crucial issues, many professional video and film editors moved to Macs for their work. (Meanwhile 2D compositing is done on both platforms). The most common editing program used on the Mac, outside of the consumer-oriented iMovie, has been Final Cut Pro; it has been used extensively here in New York at production companies, ad agencies, design boutiques and by indie filmmakers. In the meantime, Avid Media Composer, the long time leader for feature film and television, had been losing seats to FCP.

Now, unless you’ve been hiking through the Himalayas for the last couple of months, you’ve probably heard something about the controversy surrounding the new version of Final Cut Pro. For those who might have missed it, let’s just say that many FCP users are less than thrilled about the new release (and by the way, welcome back from the Himalayas).

Some have said that the new version of Final Cut doesn’t live up to the standards of a professional editing application, having more having more in common with a consumer-grade product (such as iMovie). It also doesn’t open older versions of Final Cut projects and no longer supports some pro features like multi-cam editing and XML export. To many, these are serious shortcomings that have led some to question the level of commitment Apple has to the professional market. There have been some improvements to the software, and some of the objections that have been raised might be addressed in future versions. Yet many editors remain discontent and have been casting their glance towards software that suddenly seems like it is much better suited to the needs of professional editors: Adobe Premiere Pro, which really shines, for reasons we’re about to explore, on an HP Z800 workstation.

In fact, over the past couple of years we’ve already noticed a steady rise in the popularity and capabilities of Premiere Pro. This can be attributed to several factors, many of which were described during the recent Adobe Roadshow for Production Premium CS 5.5 in New York where Adobe, in explicit detail, explained to an appreciative audience many of its exciting new features. Incidentally, at the Roadshow, Adobe used a Z800 during the demonstrations, but we’ll be talking much more about the special relationship that has blossomed between Adobe and HP later.

Some of Premiere’s benefits include better support for native tapeless file-based camera formats (such as HD H.264 editing directly in the timeline), generated by popular cameras such as the Canon 5D Mark II. More support for native camera formats means less time wasting time transcoding. You can just drop a file directly from the camera’s memory card into the timeline and start editing without extra fussing. Then there is Adobe Dynamic Linking, a feature that eliminates intermediate rendering between the different programs in the Creative Suite.

Ironically, Premiere was one of the first video editing apps commercially available, but for whatever reasons it ended up taking a back seat to Final Cut. As Adobe’s other software programs such as After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash emerged as industry standards, Premiere lagged behind. Far from abandoning it, however, Adobe steadily continued to improve it. The question is in light of the recent developments, has Premiere’s day finally and suddenly arrived?

If you have come to that conclusion yourself, then you may wish to consider getting an HP Z800 since it may very well be the best choice to build an ultimate high-end editing system based upon Premiere Pro.

Thanks to the CPU/chip set’s 64-bit capability, the Z800’s 12 DIMM slots can support an unprecedented 192GB of DDR3 1333 MHz triple channel RAM. The machine we used to conduct this review was running Windows 7 Professional 64 bit, had 24GBs of memory, dual six-core Xeons, a Quadro 5000 GPU, SSD (solid-state drive) to hold the OS and apps while dual terabyte hard drives were configured into a 2TB RAID. HP, which provided and configured the rig, also included a USB 3.0 card.

Born to Run, Built to Last

Upon first glance, the Z800 is impressive looking with a sleek industrial design. No surprise since the looks come courtesy BMW Designworks. The computer is handsomely appointed on both sides with sturdy brushed aluminum side panels. These panels not only look good but provide heavy duty protection against the elements. Simple touches show the thought of the design, such as the sturdy handles built into the top, which makes it a cinch to move around. The remarkable design of the machine isn’t just skin deep, however, and this becomes immediately apparent when looking inside the minitower.

Look Ma, No Tools!

Opening the Z800 is easy in just the way it should be: you just grab a handle and pull off one of the side panels. No time wasted unfastening bolts or screws. Once opened, an impressively sleek and modular design, rather than a confusing mess of cluttered wires, ribbons and cables, greets you. The intelligently architected interior provides easy access to all of the internal components, each neatly covered by easily removable panels that snap into place.

The principle of tool-less serviceability and upgrading has been consciously applied to the Z800. This is something that HP has been perfecting over a while and now the whole process has become slick and effortless. It is perhaps best exemplified by the power supply which sits at the top of the unit. If anything should ever go wrong with it, you simply slide it out and slide in a new one. It’s really that simple and completely cable-less with no tricky screws or bolts to remove. Replacing a typical power supply can be a complicated and tricky proposition as you tug at tight fitting plugs in snug quarters. Not in the HP Z800.

Here’s a video I made showing how to access the interior of the machine. It also provides other information about the system and its components:

This is a RAID

For editors, storage is one of the most important considerations. Video requires a lot of it and it must be fast. A RAID (array of drives configured to work simultaneously) setup has become the standard way to go for years. The Z800 allows you to put up to five 3.5 inch 7200 rpm SATA drives, each up to 2 TB, for a maximum of 10 TB of online storage which will allow you to store many hours of HD.

The hard drive bay is located towards the front of the machine in a neat and tidy stack of drawers. To remove a drive you simply pull it out by its handle. Adding one is a matter of pushing it in. Once again, no need to worry about complicated mounting brackets or tiny screws. The Z800’s integrated SATA 3 GBs and SAS controllers are RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 capable. With the online price of a 7200rpm 2 TB hard drive going for about 79 bucks, it’s not only a snap to install a high volume, speedy RAID — it’s also cheap.

While the solid-state memory used in SSDs is not yet cost-effective to use in building a RAID, you do have the option to go with an SSD as your boot disk for the OS and applications. You’d still use the cheaper, high capacity drives for the RAID. This is a good mix that takes advantage of a SSDs’ speed and reliability and the cost savings of older gen magnetic storage. That’s just how the machine used in this review was configured.

Thanks for the Memory

The Z800 comes with 12 DIMM (dual in-line memory module) slots that allow you to install an astounding 192 GB memory, which comes via the CPU/OS both supporting 64 bit operation. While it is unlikely you’ll endow your machine with that much memory at first, it’s reassuring to know you can down the line. The machine I tested had 24 GB of RAM which is generous enough for most users. With the ample memory and the speedy internal SSD, I was able to run multiple programs concurrently and the Z800 handled it in stride. Programs such as Premiere, Cinema 4D, After Effects, Maya, Photoshop and others sprang to life quickly and there was enough memory to go around for each to operate comfortably at the same time.

The Heart of the Matter

Two six-core Xeon processors lay at the heart of the test machine and add up to twelve cores, the maximum number available on a Z800 (you have a choice of eight different Xeon X5000 and E5000 series CPUs). Premiere Pro has long been multi-threaded and multi-core aware, and was designed to take advantage of all the power the dual Xeons can muster.

Since Creative Suite 5, Premiere will only run on 64 bit operating systems. After Effects 5.5 also requires a 64 bit OS. However, Production Premium CS 5.5 ships with a complementary version of Premiere Pro and After Effects CS4, which do run in 32 bit, so if you have an older machine, you can use them temporarily until you purchase a new one.

The Ultimate Video Card

If HP’s Z-series are the top of the shelf workstations, to many Nvidia’s Quadro line of GPUs are the ultimate video cards. Today, standard definition (SD) (720 pixels X 480 pixels) video editing is practically a memory, and editing in HD resolution (1920 X 1080) has become the norm. Relatively inexpensive HD cameras such as the Canon 5D and Sony NEX FS-100 are capable of producing excellent results and are a popular choice among independent producers and television shows. However, higher end cameras from ARRI and Sony can shoot at 2K resolution (2048 X 1152), and the RED ONE can shoot at 4K (4096 X 2304), which is over four times the resolution of HD. While most productions don’t yet use 4K capture, it’s very useful for commercials and effects heavy films, where extensive effects compositing is planned.

At the heart of Premiere Pro CS5.5 is the Adobe Mercury Playback Engine (MPE), a software technology developed by Adobe to handle the considerable demands placed on your system by this growing trend towards higher resolution workflows. MPE incorporates NVIDIA CUDA parallel processing architecture. When accelerated by a Quadro series card, you’ll get real-time previewing and editing of native, high-resolution footage.

There are three Quadro models you should consider when buying a Z800, namely the 4000, 5000 and 6000. All of them accelerate the Mercury Playback Engine. The system we tested came with a Quadro 5000, a high-end card with 2.5 GB RAM which can easily handle multiple streams of HD video but can also handle 4K editing as well. For those working very heavily in 4K, you may wish to opt for the higher end (and costlier) Quadro 6000 which has 6 GB of memory and can edit multiple streams of RED 4K video at once.

However, if your workflow is primarily HD with a dose of 4K in the mix, the Quadro 5000 will provide ample horsepower to kick the MPE into high gear. Aside from real-time editing previews, the Quadro accelerated MPE will also significantly improve the speed of the final encoding of your video — up to a claimed 13 times faster.

A Walk in the Park

For my testing of the Z800, I shot HD footage in Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park with a Canon camera and transferred it onto the 2 TB RAID. Once inside of Premiere, I set the playback resolution of the program to 100-percent at 1920 X 1080 (the highest setting possible for HD). This forced Premiere to display all of the pixels during the real time preview (by default, Premiere is set to 50-percent which degrades the image, but plays back more smoothly from the timeline).

Normally, if you are using only one monitor, editing at full size and resolution is impractical since it commands too much of your screen’s real estate without leaving enough room for Premiere’s timeline and controls. However, that was not the case for me, thanks to the test system’s enormous 30 inch HP ZR30w monitor with its 2560 X 1650 display resolution (more about the monitor later).

While I cut the shots from the park together, I added fades and cross dissolves and applied color correction as well. Although Premiere was set at the maximum resolution, it didn’t skip a beat — even when I put four streams of HD video on the screen at once. Playback was smooth and scrubbing through the timeline was fluid. To be certain, the Z800’s speedy RAID, dual Xeons, Quadro, generous amount of RAM and the Mercury Playback Engine all contributed to the snappy feel.

Adobe Dynamic Linking

Although many factors make Premiere an attractive alternative to dissatisfied Final Cut users, one of the strongest cases that can be made for it is the way it integrates with the entire Adobe Creative Suite, especially After Effects (but also Encore, Audition, Flash and the rest of the gang).

After Effects is one of the bedrocks of our industry, needless to say. It’s used heavily in New York City and is popular around the world for compositing, motion graphics, visual effects, title design, color keying, animation, and much more. It is, in fact, such as versatile program, and is put to so many different uses, that it almost defies characterization.

Within CS 5.5 Production Premium, Premiere and After Effects are able to communicate with each other by utilizing a feature called Adobe Dynamic Link, which allows you to eliminate the tedious intermediate renderings that you once needed to do between the two applications. Here’s an example: suppose you are working on editing a film and one of the shots require special effects or compositing in After Effects. Traditionally, the process has been to drop the live action backplate into a comp in After Effects, add other layers, cut masks, apply effects and set key frames. When it was ready, you would render it out to your hard drive as an intermediate movie file and import that file into Premiere.

As it happens more often than not, however, at some point you’d probably need to make some modifications to the shot (like move around some key frames or scale something down). So you would go back to After Effects, make the necessary adjustments, render out the intermediate movie file again and replace the old one in Premiere.

With Adobe Dynamic Linking, however, it is no longer necessary to waste time on this. Instead of rendering an intermediate file, you simply open the After Effects comp in Premiere with all of its layers, keyframes, and effects intact and slip it into your timeline where it is treated as any other piece of footage. You are free to set in and out points and otherwise edit it in any way you like, and when it comes time to make a change to the shot, you simply switch back over to After Effects, make the change and switch back. No rendering or intermediate files needed and thanks to Mercury, real time previews of dynamically linked After Effect projects play back efficiently.

I have been a long time After Effects user, having worked intimately with it for fifteen years. I have also edited with Premiere for years now. However, it has only been since its inclusion in CS 5.5 that I have started using Adobe Dynamic Linking between them. If you are an After Effects or Premiere Pro user and have never experienced it before, let me tell you, it’s a game changer. The interplay between the two applications will open up a whole new perspective on the way you work.

With Dynamic Linking, I am now bouncing back and forth between both programs and feel like I am working in one unified creative environment. Changes made in After Effects are immediately reflected in the edit. This is truly an important development in the way the Creative Suite works. Once you start using it, Dynamic Linking is sure to become an important part of your workflow.

The HP Performance Advisor

Workstations are complex and highly configurable machines, and like any sophisticated instrument, they can and should be tuned in order to operate more efficiently. It’s also useful to have a straightforward way to monitor their performance. For a number of years, HP workstations have come with a useful and unique piece of software called the HP Performance Advisor which helps you easily configure the software and components in your system to work better, while providing you with detailed information in one complete area.

By viewing the HP Performance Advisor’s block diagram, you can see a visual representation of the components installed in your Z800 without having to open up the case. By clicking on the GPU, for example, you can find the model number and how much memory it has. You can also learn how busy your GPU has been and even get assistance in choosing the correct graphics driver for it without having to search all over the web. Once you find the correct driver, you can download and install it right from within the Performance Advisor.

The HP Performance Advisor also helps manage your apps by implementing the correct configuration and BIOS settings as recommended by the manufacturer. I found this to be a very useful way to learn about which system resources are utilized by each application as well as which options are turned on or off.

Other important components of the Performance Advisor are the Memory Graph and the Application Monitor. The Memory Graph provides a visual representation of the memory usage for all of the applications running on your machine at any given instant while the Application Monitor collects information about how your applications are using system resources over an extended period of time.

More about the HP Performance monitor can be seen in this HP video.

What about 3D?

Although this review has focused on the Z800 primarily as a platform for editing, I also spent time running 3D animation software on it, specifically Cinema 4D and Maya 2012. Needless to say, both programs performed outstandingly. The current crop of Nvidia Quadro cards, which do much to accelerate the Mercury Playback Engine, also feature an engineering innovation called Fermi. According to Nvidia, the Fermi architecture is a technological breakthrough that offers 5 times faster 3D performance than previously available, delivering an astounding 1.3 billion triangles per second. This performance was readily apparent.

The HP ZR30w Display

Along with the HP Z800, I had the opportunity to review the HP ZR30w high performance display. Engineered for compatibility with the Z-series of workstations, this ultra-high resolution monitor (2560 X 1600) echoes the design of the tower, being framed by brushed aluminum. It looked great sitting next to the workstation, and plugged into the Quadro 5000 via a dual-link DVI cable.

The ZR30w employs In Plane Switching (IPS) LCD technology which is considered superior to Twisted Nemetic (TN) technology, (used on cheaper, lower-quality displays). IPS allows ultra-wide viewing angles so the monitor looks good wherever you stand, while offering the ability of better color rendition.

The ZR30w displays 10 bit color (30 bits per pixel) for an amazing 1.07 billion possible different colors per pixel compared to the 16.7 million colors per pixel available on eight bit systems. For those doing compositing, this helps reduce banding artifacts, which sometimes can be a problem on displays with lower bit depths.

The ZR30w display also features HP Direct Drive Architecture. This means that the high performance IPS panel is connected to the graphics card in such a way which enables it to directly drive it at its full, native resolution without extra intervening electronics such as a scalar processor. When a display is driven in this way, it provides the best possible image quality. Other benefits of Direct Drive include less video latency, less power consumption and less heat generation. Also, digital color values take a more direct path from the graphics card to the LCD.

Solidly built, the ZR30w sits on a sturdy base and like the Z800, it looks ready to take on punishing levels of abuse. It also has a 4-port USB hub so you can handily plug in any USB devices right into the display.

Thoughts About the Industry

As noted earlier, questions have arisen in the minds of many postproduction professionals about Apple’s commitment to the pro market.

If you keep up with the regular postings on pro forums about this issue, it’s apparent that we are on the cusp of a user revolt that could well topple the current NLE market leader, Apple’s Final Cut Pro. I now edit exclusively with Adobe Premiere Pro on 64-bit Windows 7. For those who are thinking of switching but might have reservations, my opinion is that you won’t be disappointed.

With the Z800, HP has designed a workstation to the highest possible standards of performance and industrial design. Granted, there may be those who’ll hesitate to step out of their comfort zone, but for independent minded individuals looking to build a top notch system for Premiere, we think that there is currently no better choice than the HP Z800.

Let’s explain our thinking. In the late 1980s and into the next decade, both Apple and Adobe benefited symbiotically from the desktop publishing revolution. This was fueled by the liberating power of PostScript, along with innovative apps such as Photoshop and Illustrator. In the nineties, a similar thing happened with video, with low cost After Effects upsetting the domination of high-priced compositing systems.

While some of its early apps appeared first on Macintoshes, eventually all of Adobe’s software became available on the Windows platform. That made sense, since there are vastly more PCs sold than any other computing platform. Today, the best professional graphics software is available on both platforms.

This may or may not have led to a gradual falling out between Adobe and Apple, something that has become more apparent to us over the past few years. The decision by Apple not to include support for Flash on the iPhone and iPad, a decision that surprised many, may be one sign of a possible strained relationship between the two companies.

In the meantime, the bond between Adobe and HP grew. Now Adobe officially endorses HP technology and the two companies’ engineers collaborate closely in the design of their products so as to ensure maximum compatibility. As an example of this close working relationship, check out this video in which Adobe makes specific recommendations as to which HP workstations to get.

If the gulf between Apple and Adobe may at times look like it’s widening, the bond between HP and Adobe seems to be strengthening. For editors looking to get into Premiere, whose utmost concern is engineering, the platform of choice may very well shift. Will HP become the platform best suited to demanding video professionals? We’re not sure, but if the editing crowd embraces Premiere en masse, the HP Z800 may very well emerge as the leading machine to edit with.

In reading the many postings on the web, Premiere looks like the most qualified successor for serious professionals. (Avid Media Composer, however, still reigns in high-end post for features and commercials.) In response to this recent spike in interest, Adobe has offered a 50-percent off of Production Premium for current FCP users who are considering switching.

Who can be sure if this is truly a harbinger of things to come? Apple, as usual, offers few cues as to its plans. As Final Cut still sits at the heart of many individual and pro production suites, the Cupertino-based company may suddenly decide to take measures to correct these missteps and appease the outrage of full-time editors. Or, then again, perhaps they feel their future lies in mainstream consumers of its iPhones, iPads, iPods, and iMacs, and that an app that’s been described as “iMovie on steroids” is the better way to go.

In any case, it’s safe to say that the prevailing opinion right now is that Premiere has the goods.

Adobe is in the business of making software for creative professionals and remains committed to the pro market. That’s one reason we think that Premiere Pro might just emerge as the leading video editing application in our industry.

Summary and Conclusion

For those stepping into Premiere, HPs partnership with Adobe makes the Z800 and the ZR30w display a no-brainer. In addition, the innovative industrial design, expandability and high-quality build ensures that it will stand up to both the heaviest HD or 4K workloads and any post environment around.

An innovative American company that helped spark the creation of Silicon Valley, Hewlett Packard is the world’s pre-eminent computer manufacturer. Known for esteeming its engineers’ thinking over that of the marketing and sales teams, HP continues to invest vast sums into R&D and new factories. We like that, since it shows in the well thought out products in our review.

Your final cost, of course, will vary depending on configuration. To check out your options, visit HP’s Z800 site by clicking here.

Dan Ochiva contributed to this report.

By Joe Herman and Dan Ochiva

Although “best of” lists can seem indulgent, they serve a purpose. By focussing attention on tech gear and software that you may have missed in a year’s typical new product rush, you’ll stay up to date on products that might help solve a real problem. Meanwhile, hearing about new apps for popular products like Apple’s iPad could tip you off to a good production solution you can apply today.

In any case, here’s our first of three lists of the best, most useful software and hardware from the past 12 months.

Apple iPad

While we’ve had eBook readers, tablet computers and smart phones for any number of years, this past year Apple’s iPad stormed the portable media platform category to the point that Strategy Analytics estimated that the device had gained a 95 percent share of Tablet PC sales by the end of second quarter 2010.
The iPad is said to be a hit in Hollywood, both on set for directors and for client playback during post. An app like Movie Slate– an all-in-one digital slate, clapper board, shot log, and shot notepad–shows how quickly new uses are turning up. According to DigiTimes, Apple is expected to order 35 million iPad panels from LG in 2011 for its iPad 2, rumored for release later this month.

Mudbox 2011

We recently had a chance to work with Mudbox 2011, the digital sculpting tool by Autodesk that competes with ZBrush. We’re impressed.
Tools such as Mudbox allow the artist to build highly complex and detailed models by painting on their meshes with brushes. The resulting displacement and texture maps are later applied to the models in Maya for animation and rendering. We were struck by the quality of the real time rendering and ambient occlusion while painting and sculpting. Mudbox 2011, now a 64 bit app, adds useful enhancements such as a posing toolkit, improved brushes for 3D painting and texturing, texture extraction, 2D painting of 3D maps, paint layers, and interoperability with Adobe Photoshop.

Adobe Premiere Pro CS5

Almost all of the Creative Suite 5 applications have significant new enhancements and upgrades including the old standards such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and After Effects. However, most impressive are the advancements made in Premiere Pro, which has become a highly advanced, pro editing package. Premiere Pro CS5 now runs as a 64-bit app only, pointing out how serious Adobe is targeting high-end film and video producers.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the new Premiere Pro is Adobe’s Mercury Playback Engine, which takes advantage of today’s potent GPUs to speed project opening, scrubbing through and playing back HD and even higher-res footage with effects.

USB 3.0

Not really a product but a technology, USB 3.0 brings the promise of greatly improved bandwidth of around 3.2 Gbs, some 6 times the speed of USB 2.0. Since USB has become ubiquitous throughout the computer industry, expect to see cheaper RAID arrays and other storage solutions over the coming year. Other peripherals such as scanners and audio post gear will also benefit.

Photo credit: Abel Cine

High quality high-speed shooting with a camcorder became practical with Vision Research’s introduction of its Phantom series cameras a few years ago. The company’s imaging chops have continuously improved, and innovations in solid-state storage now make it practical to take these camera systems out of carefully set up insert stages. (You might want to check out one of their Miro crash cams to see how compact the technology has become.)

Now, Abel Cine Tech, which distributes Vision Research products, will offer two levels of courses on VRI’s camera systems. A three-hour introductory course offers a good high-level overview of the basic principles of Phantom high-speed cameras in a lecture environment. Meanwhile, the Phantom Intensive Training course is a full-day, hands-on course for anyone with a specific production in mind.

The introductory course will be held this January 25th at the company’s Greenwich Street East Coast headquarters. More info here.

D.W. Leitner delivers another one of his well, enlightening, encyclopedic tours of media technology in this posting on millimeter‘s site.

Looking over the most recent developments in LED production lighting from top vendors, David knows how to put things into context, moving from Edison to CFLs in the politic environment on to the wide range of light emitting diode-based portable lighting rigs introduced at NAB 2010.

Check out his blog Leitner’s Cinematography Corner for more.

Technologist and media history raconteur Mark Schubin, a Renaissance sort-of-guy well regarded in the video industry, will offer a free 3D tutorial this Wednesday, August 4, at 9:30 am, at All-Mobile Video, 221 West 26th Street – that’s between 7th and 8th Ave. No need to register.

Mark expects his talk to last under two hours, and if you’ve never attended one of his learned, wide-ranging lectures that move from the latest R&D to the pre-history of cinema, you’ll be in for a treat.

Expect an overview of stereoscopic 3D but with an emphasis on issues faced during production. Also on tap: info on microstereopsis, which “no one else discusses.” I’ll let Mark describe that technical topic in his own words, but the gist of it is that the technical choices you make on set bake in either an in-your-face-3D of the technology’s first few decades or that of today’s growing consensus for a just-enough-reality approach, something Cameron chose for Avatar, for example.

Mark discusses some other 3D production gotchas in the most recent posting at his site Schubin Cafe.