Back in the day, before I started all this filmmaking malarkey, I worked in marketing. For two and a half years I worked in a consultancy, and I got to read a lot of business books like Malcolm Gladwell‘s The Tipping Point and Seth Godin‘s Permission Marketing. Marketing chaps like to coin clever neologisms to validate their thinking and make it more punchy, more quotable and, of course, more appealing to the buyer. I hate those clever words, like ‘Staycation‘ or ‘Glocal‘ because they trivialise things that are actually quite important, reducing them to a single pithy ‘bite’ that bumps the mark-up on their consultancy fees. However, in the last month or so I’ve found myself increasingly interested by a trend in the creative industries, one which affects us all, and, as you can see from the title of this blog post, I’ve given it a catchy marketing-speak (or marlingo) name. If I’d described what this actually is in the title you’d have never read it. So, I have become a practitioner of biz-speak, and, handily, this cuts to the core of why I’m bothering to write this in the first place. I have become an Artrepreneur, and probably a bit of a knob into the bargain.

So, what is an Artpreneur? Good question. Over the last year I’ve noticed a lot of what we like to call artists –  filmmakers, fine artists, writers, musicians starting to exert more and more control over the business side of their lives. In the supply chain we have traditionally been the producers completely at the mercy of those whose job it is to distribute and sell our product. Not so anymore. These artists are ripping down the old infrastructure and redefining a new one for themselves, predicated on terms they dictate. I see Seth Godin (yes, he of the Permission Marketing book) is cutting out the publisher and going direct to his audience… interesting. I see Jamie Oliver is interested in DSLRs… interesting. Lily Allen and the Arctic Monkeys launched themselves on MySpace, but back then that was the exception and not the rule. I read that Ryan Koo, an award-winning filmmaker, and the brains behind Nofilmschool.com is studying business books, not the works of his favourite directors and my ears prick up. Then there’s my own distinctly schizophrenic existence of late, juggling editing, directing, shooting, with exhaustive research into new models of funding and distribution, trawling the internet for the very latest cutting edge thinking, whilst boning up on books like Roger Corman‘s ‘How I made a hundred movies in Hollywood and never lost a dime’. What’s going on? These people are wising up to the fact that they are the value creators. not the distribution chains, and that the true value of their work gets lost in all the add-on faff of getting it to market. Cut out that faff and you get to control how and where your consumer finds your product, and you control the exact value proposition through direct dialogue with your end user. Of course, that can go horribly wrong and there’s a big case to be made for tried and tested methods. But the fractal consumer (Wendy Gordon) doesn’t think the way we want him to anymore, and social media have given us a proximity to the value creators that has never existed before. Why not cut out the middle man, improve the value proposition, create that dialogue, react faster, make better products, cheaper, the way you want to? What would you do, and what does it take to accomplish it?

Get... er... smart?

Well, I know what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to get smart. I set up a production company at 23 with no experience at all, nothing. That wasn’t very smart. But I succeeded and fought tooth and nail, with my two business partners, to get a foothold and to grow the company. We enjoyed a lot of success but we all suffered from one key problem. We believed, if we built it they would come. And, guess what, they didn’t. After eight years of hammering myself into the ground to do the best job possible we just weren’t getting the breaks and we weren’t that fresh and interesting anymore and I started to coast. We gained a monumental amount of experience in a devastatingly short space of time and it nearly killed us but by the time I’d started to coast I really wasn’t being challenged anymore and I’d lost the hunger to fight for it because we just weren’t moving up. Unfortunately we just weren’t very good at promoting ourselves. We were a damn good production company and produced some phenomenal work but no-one ever saw it. I had to leave and I turned my back on the company we’d fought so hard to build to go freelance. I vowed that I was going to get smart, get my work out there, connect with people and start fighting to show people how good I can be. Sadly, that’s not really enough anymore. The film industry is crumbling all around us and just being visible doesn’t cut it. Fortunately those gaping cracks are letting in a whole lot of light and if you know what you’re looking for you’ll see some incredible opportunities illuminated and waiting to be snatched up. I look at how my career would have panned out in the old model, making a short, scraping some funds together to make a feature film that probably had no chance and then hoping it did well enough in festivals to get me another shot. What a load of complete cack that sounds, honestly. I just think there has to be a better way. So, rather than cry into my soup that struggling artists receive no support, I’m going to do exactly what I did when I set up my production company all those years ago, I’m going to stick a nicely extended chubby middle digit right in the face of the status quo and go and do it my own way. Fuck em.

Robert Rodriguez, the artrepreneur's artepreneur

I’m an independent filmmaker and I like doing things on my own, in my own way. However, that does mean getting smart, understanding the changing market, understanding social networking, understanding new business models and generally understanding how to market yourself with no money at all. Right now I see a pretty horrifying over-saturation of content out there, with an ever-increasing raft of filmmakers to compete against. Many many many times I’ve heard the phrase ‘Content is King’ and I weep inwardly because it just isn’t true. It’s the phrase we use as a comfort blanket, justifying the hours and hours we pour into our projects, only to see them completely overshadowed by a baby eating another baby’s finger (226,354,853 views and counting… wtf?). You have to stop treating the quality of your work as the grand differentiator. Content isn’t king. Audience is king. Get your head round that and you’ll begin to understand how to showcase your work. I’m not going to tell you how to do it because that’s your challenge as an Artrepreneur and I’ve got too much invested in my own strategies to share them right now. However, what I will say is this… create a hook, something easy (like a kitten on stilts) and bundle the content you really care about alongside it. I guarantee that half the people who look at the kitten will look at what else is there.

So, it’s not enough to be an artist anymore, you need to have business smarts as well. This is nothing new, Robert Rodriguez is an Artpreneur, Roger Corman is one of the very greatest ones in the film biz and there are tons and tons of them around. It’s just that, right now, there seem to be a great deal more artists getting their freakonomics on than there ever used to be. With that being the case, can you afford not to be?

To be an Artrepreneur:

Encourage the inner nerd. Read, read, read, research, acquire some business books, stay up to speed with the very latest developments in online technology, social networking models and react quickly when something new appears (i.e. Apple Ping… surely there’s something for the filmmakers there?).

Be amazing. Then be more amazing. Be damn good at what you do, no be the absolute bloody best you can be, see what others are doing, then do it better. When DSLRs first started shooting video I’d go on Vimeo and watch everything shot on them, and I watched some rancid crap. It was all amazing back then, but then we realised it wasn’t and more amazing stuff came along. If you get lazy and settle for where you’re at then you’re screwed. Once again, engage your inner nerd, never stop learning, watch Korean movies, watch Swedish movies, watch French movies, then buy books and educate yourself. You cannot afford to stand on your laurels anymore. No-one cares how many festivals you’ve been in.

Don’t you dare try and do it on your own. When I worked in marketing I did a lot of research into trends and I discovered something that’s pretty obvious. For every trend there’s an equal and opposite trend. I.e. the more complicated something becomes the simpler we demand that it be – example: the iPhone. As our budgets become squeezed we’re forced to do more and more of the work ourselves, developing a one-man band approach. This denies us the collaborative experience that is so crucial to the filmmaking process. Do yourself a favour and reach out to other filmmakers, asking their advice, asking them for help, collaborating, learning. You never need to even meet them, just use them as a resource. For me, one thing that would really inspire creativity is a healthy competitive environment. I’m experimenting with this and a group of young filmmakers I’m mentoring at the moment and I want these guys to be in competition with each other as I know they’re produce better work. Collaborate and improve. Check out these guys if you have time.

Be a punk. I don’t care what anyone tells you now, the rules are what you make them. If you want to distribute videos of you saying the same three words in every language on the planet in every country on the planet then you go do that, you’ll probably make money out of it. The rules have gone out the window and it’s up to you to decide where to push. But when you do push, open your mouth big and wide, and make a bloody great noise.

Finally, be smart. It’s easy to say that, when no-one really looks at themselves in the mirror and kindly asks ‘You’re a bit thick really, aren’t you?’. Recognise your mistakes, analyse old work, read periodicals, blogs, everything you can, and look for the gaps where you can be smart. My most read blogs are the ones where I’ve reacted fastest to a hot topic and then publicised the entry all over the forums. Don’t fanny about. Here’s a great project where a filmmaker thought outside the box and came up with something that really worked, even though, on the face of it, it seems completely counter-intuitive. Sita sings the blues…

The new face of El Skid

So those are my thoughts on being an Artpreneur, I’m sure people will disagree violently with a lot of this but I don’t really care. I’ve done my homework and am about to embark on one traditional project and one absolute mutha Artrepreneurial one. The proof’s in the pudding, and if I succeed, then great, but if I don’t then I’ve always got the trad world to fall back on, eh? Like I said, turning into a bit of a knob.

Technorati Tags: Artrepreneur, future thinking, independent film, Malcolm Gladwell, Ryan Koo, Seth Godin

Fiddly to balance?

Just came across this puppy: the Hague DSLR Motion-Cam Stabilizer. It’s a very cheap handheld stabilizer and… well that’s it. It works with a polished ball/socket type of gimble. From the look of it the weight seems to sit over the hand which means it’s probably easier on the wrists than the Glidecam which will destroy your arm in no time at all. Having worked with these stabilizers a lot I know the key thing is how quick you can get balanced, and, to be honest, this just looks like a pile of gash. The Glidecam is a pain to adjust and this looks like it’s going to be even worse, but then you can purchase it for £127.62 ex vat, which is pretty damn interesting. Stabilizers are, I think, an absolutely essential piece of kit in your DSLR armoury so if you can’t afford the Glidecam then this might provide you with a chance to get to know how they work, for a tasty price. My instincts tell me that this will probably be rubbish, but I thought the Glidecam would be and it wasn’t. Cheap. Cheap. Cheap. Haven’t found any video shot on this little puppy yet but there are some pretty wretched efforts shot on other Hague products on youtube if you want to see them.

PS Hague really need to do something about their website, wowee that’s bad design.

Blessed are the geeks, for they shall inherit the internet.

Both Ryan Koo and Jerome Stern have done ace tests of their own on this software for Adobe and Apple platforms and since both are very much more rigorous at that kind of work than I am I’d highly recommend going and having a look. For what it’s worth I’m incredibly lazy, I like nice, neat, easy solutions that get me working fast and get my work out the door as quickly as possible. I think most of us would settle for ‘good enough’ if it’s simple and fast but thanks to these guys hopefully we can develop a ‘best practice’ model that will work when we have more time.

There have been loads of comments on the 5DtoRGB post I did this week and it seems to have struck a chord with people looking to optimise that important stage of the process. The fact is, most of us are just guessing and don’t really understand what’s going on in the weird and wonderful world of Codecs and compression algorithms (myself included). Fortunately one of you, my beloved readers, actually does have a pretty good handle on this, so I’m posting his thoughts in this entry because it’s pretty interesting. I only know him as Mark but he’s a long-established editor and veteran of the bad old days of broadcast cutting. Enjoy, and thanks Mark for taking the time…

It may be possible that MPEG Streamclip (your comparison benchmark) has errors in how it decodes the H.264 data in which case a program that has less (or no) errors would give you “better” quality. Just to be clear though, in that case 5DtoRGB is not making the data *better* than what was in the original file, just *closer* to what was in the original file. There is a mathematically optimal way to decompress the pixels and then expand the 4:2:0 color data into a larger color space. The optimal method doesn’t retrieve (or create) data that wasn’t in the original file to start with. If it does its job perfectly, the best outcome will be that it doesn’t further degrade your image quality.

Any “improvements” you perceive beyond that would be the result of the software choosing to process the data differently or to add additional post-processing. Examples of this would include doing things like applying a different mathematical weighting to the interpolation of the data as it is mapped into the larger color space. However, to the extent that any processing is done differently or in addition to the optimal algorithms, the resulting video will be a less accurate reflection of what is in the original file. While this different or additional processing may have the effect of making certain kinds of footage more visually pleasing, it isn’t more *correct*. It also is very unlikely to be more visually pleasing on all possible kinds of footage.

Most importantly, it should understood that once the file is properly decoded and correctly mapped into a larger color space, any post-processing program (like Magic Bullet) or any competent three space color corrector should be able to achieve the same (or similar) visual results with no further loss in quality versus having the transcoder add the correction or effect during the transcoding process.

The disadvantage to doing any additional (ie different than mathematically optimal) processing in the transcoding step is that the processing is now baked into the resulting video shots. The advantage of not adding any “visual flavor” to the shots in the transcoding step and instead doing this enhancing in your editor or color corrector is that the changes will be non-destructive and reversible. This is why I believe that any decoding or transcoding software should stick to the optimal algorithms which are well-documented in a variety of technical books. 5DtoRGB may well be doing exactly that, which would mean that the improvement you are seeing is actually from eliminating errors introduced by your previous transcoder (MPEG Streamclip).

Keep in mind that if the format you are re-encoding to with 5DtoRGB is not mathematically lossless, then you are adding additional degradation and artifacts at that point. The absolute highest quality approach is to use an editor that works with your camera source files in their native format with no transcoding. This will always yield a superior result versus re-encoding no matter the method. Comparing other approaches is certainly interesting but ultimately it’s an exercise in selecting one inferior approach over another more inferior approach.

I’m always amazed at how willingly editors today accept a workflow that degrades every one of their shots by default. It is perhaps a necessary evil but we shouldn’t act like transcoding and recompressing to secondary intermediate formats is *normal* or even *acceptable*. It sucks and the industry needs to get past it as soon as possible. Someday soon all professional editing workflows will work natively with source camera files.

Anyone doubting that probably wasn’t editing back in the early 90s when the newfangled standard def “DV” format was bringing our state-of-the-art 486 computers to their knees. We had to transcode that DV footage into an intermediate format just to edit it non-linearly. Interestingly I remember everyone hating doing that to our precious footage with a passion that bordered on seething rage. Today people act like transcoding is fine. I think in a couple years we will be embarrassed that we collectively wasted so much time and quality simply to work around the “bug” of our editing tools being so primitive.

I think that H.264-based codecs will be around a for quite a few years yet. Compared to everything that came before it and also its current competitors, H.264 is really, really good. And I think it’s going to continue to improve for two reasons. First, it’s a difficult codec to implement correctly and the engineers are just now getting good at squeezing the most out of the base profiles. Second, there are several tricks in the advanced levels of the standard that the hardware based capture codecs haven’t even touched yet. I think we’re going to see quality per megabit get even better than it is.

I predict that what will replace pure H.264 will actually be a variation of H.264 because I suspect that more cameras are going to start capturing raw-ish video data (meaning that they might initially only retain part of the raw data due to size ). I also think that manufacturers will start compressing that raw data with lossy but good techniques based on H.264. While not as pristine as losslessly compressed full imager raw data would be, it will still be a significant leap over what we have today. The difference between the “semi-raw” I’m describing and “pure raw” will be one way that manufacturers segment the market to preserve their ability to capture big bucks from those that have it. The $50k and up cameras will have pure raw along with higher res (4k), faster framerates (over 60 fps) and higher bitrates (100 Mb and up). 4:2:2 will become more common in the lower end and 4:4:4 will be for the high-end.

With the move to raw video there is certainly a risk that the industry will fragment into a zillion custom raw formats like still photography did. There is also hope that either our tools will find a way to deal with all those formats (as Aperture, Lightroom and Photoshop do today) or that a meta-raw container format (for example Cinema DNG) will gain momentum and be widely adopted by manufacturers.

If I’m right, NAB 2012 should be a pretty exciting.

After the barrage of comments relating to the last little 5D to RGB test I decided to get a little more rigorous and try out the different methods and see what kind of results they delivered. This has been a horribly frustrating process and I’m so blind to what the pixels are telling me that I’m not sure I’ve even managed to come to any kind of conclusion, but here are the results of all that work.  The stupid wordpress gallery plugin doesn’t display the images in the order I want them making it all very scattery which I hate! Not sure I should have bothered but I have so here you go.

Now I would have liked to do this test encoding to ProresLT because as Chris Marino kindly pointed out Gary Adcock on Creative Cow a man who knows his stuff, has this to say:

“ProRes 4444 is designed to handle up 12bit files with an Alpha Channel and there are very very few cameras on the market that actually can handle the full 4096 levels of gray per channel. Yet, I do not know of one that can also produce an Alpha at the same time. So in mainstream use, the 4444 codec is designed to handle graphics and animations…. The Canon DSLR content is recorded as 4:2:0 LongGOP at 8bits and compressed for direct web delivery in Full Range SMPTE RGB as an h.264 file. The sheer compression of the original file shot by these cameras does not offer anything to gain by going to the 4444 codec. ”

Thanks Chris. Unfortunately, due to some gremlins in the system I wasn’t able to get my Cineform licence to work so I was unable to do an LT conversion in Cineform, one of the major contenders in this test. So, right now, everything has been encoded to Prores 422 SQ.

The contenders

Here are the options I looked at: Cineform Neoscene, encoding to Prores; Canon E1 plugin, Mpeg Streamclip, with various brightness corrections performed (no interlaced setting checked this time), Apple Compressor (gamma correction .6) and the two flavours of 5DtoRGB conversion. As always this is not a perfect test as all the different applications offer different ways to process your footage but I guess what we’re looking for is different solutions for different situations. Ideally we’d have a ‘very good’ setting for work where we know we need a speed/quality compromise that’s good for most occasions. We also need a super speedy option and we need a top dog, top notch quality setting which we’d look to for mastering and green screen effects work. I also ran scopes on the source media, which we must never discount as Premiere CS5 users can edit natively (as interestingly can iMovie users – Apple, you really can be such £$%%s sometimes can’t you?).

The times

I’m using exactly the same clip as last time since it offered some good challenges, running 32 secs.

CINEFORM: 1:15

5DtoRGB: 3:24

CANON E1 Plugin: 59

COMPRESSOR: 1.17

MPEG Streamclip: 33

NATIVE: 0 (duh, but worth putting it into context, live event videography wants this, and it’s huge to be able to edit straight off the camera, you can’t do that with an EX1, or an XF305).

MPEG Streamclip the clear winner here and 5DtoRGB very much the slowest, but interesting to see how Cineform compares to the E1 plugin and Compressor. I’d still like to be able to edit native H264 though.

Gamma

One of the big issues in the last test was just how different the two results were in terms of overall brightness and that annoying gamma shift people keep getting. I’m upgraded to Snow Leopard for this test as that apparently solves it. I always used to see the gamma shift in FCP if I turned the RT off, but RT would generally display the gamma correctly. In Snow Leopard I don’t seem to see any problems. I played around with all sorts of different options in transcoding to do with adjusting the gamma, mainly because the footage from the camera always seems to come out too dark, too contrasty for my liking but you should really do your own experiments into the very best setting for you to determine which one you want as it’s really a matter of taste and how detailed you are in the grade.

The transcodes

So here are the contenders in the comparison:

5DtoRGB – 2.2 (more contrast), flatten 1.8, Canon E1 plugin (default, as is), Compressor (default and gamma correction set to .6), MPEG Streamclip (interlace settings all de-checked, and progressive brightness adjustments at 0, 10, 20, 40), Cineform – in the Cineform preferences panel you can apparently change the gamma settings but when I changed these it didn’t seem to have any effect, though this is most likely a limitation on the trial version, and I would dearly love to get a fully functioning version to work with.

This is a very very dry test but it’s up to you to draw your own conclusions. I apologise for the watermark on the Cineform files, I’ve bought the licence but it just crashes my machine when I try to authorise the software. Bummer.

The results

Looking at the images that come out it’s kind of interesting to see how they compare. With a critical eye, you have to look at the noise that’s generated in the shadows as well as the detail preservation in the tricky areas like the actress’s shirt. The native file comes out very dark, and that’s nowhere near what it looked like when we shot it. The MPEG streamclip +40 is obviousy way too bright but it’s just interesting to see how far you can push it. The +20 is actually pretty good, we’re not getting much noise produced on the wall to the right whereas with the 5DtoRGB 1.8 flatten setting we are seeing a bit of noise on the wall. In the 2.2 (more contrast) it’s not quite so visible but it is still there. The 2.2 is pretty close to the E1 plugin setting and the compressor default setting basically just mimics the native H264 output. MPEG streamclip with no gamma correction does something slightly different to the colour but it’s not far off. Probably the closes to each other are the Native and the 5DtoRGB 1.8 settings in those close details… hmm.

Going into the detail shots you’d hope that we’d get to see a little more, but to be honest with you, I don’t really know what I’m looking at here. Everything looks pretty much the same as everything else although I’d have to say there’s a marginal preference for the 5DtoRGB result. This is not what I expected. I fully expected the 5DtoRGB to wipe the floor with everything else. So what conclusions can we draw from this. Well… the only thing that has changed between this result and the first test I did is that we’re working at 422 SQ prores and not at the 4444 setting I used before. Those who must be listened to decried the use of 4444 as being excessive and overkill but from what I saw that 4444 setting really delivered where this 422Sq test hasn’t given us the dramatic improvement I’d hoped. And that’s interesting because it begs the question ‘What exactly is that 5DtoRGB transcoder doing in its processing that’s creating such improved detail?’ I have no idea but what I do know is that I will certainly be putting the time in to test a clip from my future projects through 5DtoRGB at 4444 to see whether it improves them for final mastering (I suspect it probably will). I suggest you do too. As for finding a plugin that gives us a good compromise between quality and time, I’d have to plump for the E1 because it’s free and because it keeps the image pretty clean. I know some people have had problems with it, but in this test it’s probably the best all-rounder. I think my Cineform results aren’t worth anything and I still want to look at that in the future to see what I get.

Do your own homework!

Technorati Tags: 5D, 5DtoRGB, 7D, Cineform, DSLR, test, Transcode

Technorati Tags: Awards, BJP, british journal of photography, DSLR, DSLR competitions

I don’t really do ‘tests’ as such because I’m not a tester first of all, and don’t have the rigour to perform the kind of analysis and comparisons you need to have any kind of authority or credibility. I also don’t think tests can really replicate the demands of production work, the time pressures, client pressures, shooting challenges you face when on a real job, you have way too much time and control. So, for me, the testing I do is always ‘live’. If I go and shoot with the Merlin in the park for an hour I’ll learn a little bit for sure, but if a client says ‘can you do this?’ and I’m forced to make it work somehow, then I’ll learn way more. And so, to the Glidecam 2000 vs the Merlin, two products many people consider when getting into the DSLR thang. Finally I’ve had a chance to work with both of them in the field and can actually write a proper and in-depth comparison of the pair. It’s a bit long, granted but you need to know what you’re getting into with these bastardos.

Even with a tache, somehow it works

Looks like a joke doesn't it?

Way back when I was a total moron with DSLRs (let’s call that yesterday, shall we?) and was looking at ways to get a bit more wow factor out of the gear I started digging around any info and videos I could find about handheld stabilisers. Please ignore the hype you read on their websites because you ain’t going to be able to get the same results as a $50,000 rig, it’s just not possible. I’ve always been a bit of a cynic when it comes to that stuff, especially when I’ve seen Z1s with matteboxes and follow focus units, or the fig rig (don’t get me started on that). There were, however, some encouraging results I found from people flying both the Glidecam 2000 and the Steadicam Merlin with DSLRs. Those really are the two viable options at the budget end of the spectrum and I know many many people struggle to make a choice between the two when they’re buying because there just aren’t enough straight comparisons from people who’ve used them in the field. Well, I’m writing this on the way back from Sheffield where I’ve been shooting building sites, shopping centres and other fun things using the Glidecam 2000. There were the usual corridor fly-bys, but also some more challenging shots involving complex moves, tracking, hitting marks and finishing on a frame, all of which are tough to achieve even with their big brothers. So, I now feel qualified to make an informed comparison of the two units and hopefully help those of you who are undecided to make a better choice.

The first thing is, are handheld stabilisers a waste of time? It’d be easy to dismiss them out of hand as probably not worth the bother but I’d urge you not to. They take time to master and you lose the ability to adjust focus and exposure as you shoot but they will add a real wow factor to productions as well as giving you options in storytelling for drama, or music videos that you cannot achieve any other way. For the money, there are few bits of kit that can make such a difference to the work you put out.

Traditional Steadicam units work by using an arm and weights to counteract movement using a vest to help support the massively increased weight of the camera when it’s levered away from the body. Handheld stabilisers dispense with the mechanical arm, using your own puny human arm instead. The weights on the rig counter-balance the weight of the camera with a slight bias towards the bottom to give you enough inertia to guide the unit. It’s pretty basic stuff but surprisingly effective. You do spend a lot of time working on the balance, adjusting the settings, nudging the rig to the optimal settings so the way you accomplish that has a massive bearing on the user experience. The other major factor in user experience is simply the ‘flight control’, how easily it lets you achieve your shots and how comfortable it is to do so.

So here are the headlines, and you’ll quickly discover these for yourselves if you dig around forums on the web. The Glidecam 2000 is cheap, half the price of the Merlin, it’s designed using very similar principles to big Steadicam rigs using a post, a weight, sled and a rotating cuff. The Merlin carries the Steadicam name, it folds away very neatly, it’s much easier to adjust and set up than the Glidecam and the weight of the camera sits directly over your wrist rotating around a gimble with a tail dropping down in an arc away from the camera. The Merlin looks like a total joke when you see it for the first time, the Glidecam looks pretty cool actually. Does that matter, not really, but it’s true!

Canon 7D with Steadicam Merlin (Tokina 11-16) (not tests) from Robin Schmidt on Vimeo.

Getting up and running on the Merlin was something I nearly gave up on. I raged at it for three weeks, cursing its name and playing with every weight combination under the sun because I just could not get it to work. Finally I stumbled on a cookbook setting which just worked brilliantly (four mid weights on the bottom, two in the middle, z adjustment -8 and off you go). By using that setting I suddenly understood exactly what was going on and why every adjustment worked the way it did. Once you get your head around the physics at work (and believe me, it’s not obvious) then suddenly it’s a lot easier. It’s all about drop time. You start with that, making rough adjustments to everything else to enable you to judge it properly, then tweak all the other settings to taste. My own starting settings are posted below this so you can spare yourself the torment I went through. While it may be a bastard to get setup perfectly, actually adjusting settings is really really easy. The trim rollers at the back and side of the sled are very easy to adjust, and the spar arc adjustments can be made very quickly and easily, and these are the ones that give you control over the drop time. You can also slide the doveplate forward and back on the stage of the Merlin, which has handy marks to give you a repeatable setting once you’ve got it dialled in. The Merlin’s tail is jointed so it can fold up into a very compact little unit. This is both good and bad. Practically it’s great but in terms of balancing it’s a nightmare. The hinge has a lot of give in it up and down and any time you want to balance you have to make sure you’ve pulled the tail down as far as it will go to give yourself any certainty. It can be easily knocked and every time that happens you have to retrim the balance. That’s very annoying. The Merlin’s actually designed for cameras with a locating pin hole on the base where you screw your tripod plate in but DSLRs don’t have that hole. What this means is that, even though you tighten the screw that attaches the doveplate to the camera as tight as it can go the camera often rotates around that screw and, yes, you have to rebalance. All in all though it’s very quick to get the Merlin out of the box and up and running on a shoot, less than ten minutes most times. As I already mentioned the Merlin is twitchy, but once it’s balanced properly you suddenly start to feel the whole unit become incredibly rigid, almost as if it’s set in plasticine and it’s incredibly easy to manage. There’s a very small sweet spot but once you’re in it you really know.

Merlin balance controls

That hinge is a bit annoying

The glidecam foot, no calibration marks

Getting up and running on the Glidecam was a lot lot easier I have to say. It’s almost certainly down to the fact that the design is a lot more stable than the Merlin which can be a twitchy so and so but DSLRs just seem to sit on the Glidecam a lot better. The unit is also quite a bit heavier, rated to work with heavier cameras and in this line of work, weight equals inertia equals control, so that makes a difference. The camera attaches to the sled plate using the same single screw system as the Merlin, but you can’t adjust it backwards and forwards on the stage, so once it’s on it’s on. That’s actually fine with me. Now’s where it starts to get annoying. Putting weights on the bottom is slow and annoying, but I recommend two weights front and back, that seemed to work well for me. In order to get the drop time right you need to adjust the length of the post with an annoying thumb screw that allows you to extend the foot. This is crap, plain and simple. The foot rotates and there are no calibration marks so you’re literally flying blind when you adjust it and you need to align the foot with the sled above otherwise the unit will list to one side. Adjusting the sled itself is done with screws and again you have to learn which way to turn to achieve the result you want. Nowhere near as easy as the rollers on the Merlin which are a delight. However, you really don’t need to be anywhere near as precise as you do with the Merlin which means that you can actually get there pretty quickly as long as you don’t demand perfection. Once you are balanced you have no sense of that gloopy plasticine feel of the Merlin with the Glidecam, it’s just a heavy lump and you can do what you want with it. They’re both good systems (though I actually prefer the Glidecam in that regard).

Glidecam sled

Now, operating the two units. The Merlin is treachorous and flighty and will bite your hand off if you don’t treat it right. It takes a long time to master and the subtle dance between your feet and the light touch of your fingertips on the guiding hand is something you really have to work at. However, like driving a race car, once you get the knack of it you’ll be surprised how precise you can be, and how complex your moves can be. The Glidecam is a lot easier to get along with, somehow the design just seems to make a lot more sense, and be a lot more intuitive. There’s something reassuring about the way the cuff rotates around the post and the post itself is just a nice thing to operate with. Doing walk and talks, operating on shots where you’re dealing with straight lines, like corridors I find the Glidecam to be much easier to use, but anything where it involves rotating round an object or person, tracking sideways (surprisingly one of the toughest moves to accomplish with a handheld stabiliser), the Merlin has the edge for me. I suspect this is because the Merlin sits directly over your hand, whereas the handle on the Glidecam is an inch away from the post to allow the cuff to rotate and that’s great for forward and back but seems to unsettle it going sideways.

Give it time but one day you could look as cool as this guy

That issue leads me to the big kicker when looking at these two bits of kit. I’ve shot forty five minutes to an hour with a Merlin non-stop, shooting shots as long as ten minutes no problem and been perfectly happy. These last couple of days I’ve struggled to string together takes of more than three minutes with the Glidecam because it feels like my wrist is about to break. The handle is only an inch and a half away from the post but it significantly increases the relative force of weight acting on your body and your wrist is doing so much work to control the unit that it starts to shake, very badly. That doesn’t transmit to the camera thankfully but it’s damn hard work. I think with some practice and some more time on it I could probably do six seven minute sequences on it but the thing is really uncomfortable. And that’s a shame. I love my Merlin and the reason I paid all that extra money for it was because of that handle being where it is on the Glidecam. But I’ve enjoyed using the Glidecam and it’s a great bit of a kit, especially given the price point. Incidentally you can buy an arm and vest for both of these stabilisers that would significantly improve your level of control, but who’s going to shell out for those, honestly?

So, which one do you buy? Both have pros, both have cons, but I would have to say the Merlin is the better unit. Double the price but still worth that extra money. If you can’t afford the Merlin, the Glidecam is no joke and you’ll get great results, just expect your wrist and forearm to take a proper beating.

PRICES: Glidecam 2000 £317, Steadicam Merlin £605.13

Technorati Tags: 550d, 5D, 7D, Canon, glidecam, glidecam 2000, handheld, merlin, smooth, stabiliser, stable, steadicam, T2i

Vin Treesel (la foret, geddit?)

Vincent Laforet, the man who opened our eyes to the DSLR video potential is something of an iconic figure to the DSLR community, alongside, of course, Shane Hurlbut and Philip Bloom. While Bloom is a man of the people, Hurlbut is a man of the film community and Vincent seems to sit in the middle as the photographer’s choice, the ultimate hybrid, using his transferrable skills to great use and enjoying serious success. He’s also a massive gearhead. Sam Morgan Moore, another of us pesky bloggers got the hump when Vincent released his recent ‘gear’ video and had a good old (not really a) rant about how Vinnie’s using ultra-expensive gear, presumably making some kind of point about him being stuck up his own arse, and obsessed with his gear to the point that he’s no longer relevant to the community that idolised him in the first place. His site’s called DSLR 4 REAL, so presumably Vin(DSLR)iesel ain’t keepin it real enough anymore or some kidney.

Everyone’s entitled to their opinion and the healthy debate between bloggerinhos is the reason I bother to get back on the computer late at night and write just one more piece when I should be in bed. A lot of the gear in the video that relates to the cameras is high-end, but not all of it, and I think Sam’s kind of missing the point a little bit. If you’re tooling up for the kind of projects that VLF is shooting then you rent this gear, you don’t buy it. What he’s given us here is an insight into the kinds of kit that makes your life easier when you’re on commercial jobs where there is no room for error and you have a high-end market to please. He has access to kit and equipment that no-one else does and it’s genuinely interesting for me to see that in action.

Sam’s point, and yes, it’s totally valid, is that you can put all that gear together for a lot less and achieve comparable results, but that’s not the point, though some might argue it’s the big draw of DSLRs that we can achieve this. On big productions you need reliable, measurable, comfortable kit, and VLF is showing you what he uses for those jobs. At no point does he say you have to run out and buy all this, and I’m Vincent and I have the cash and I own it because yeah, like I’m the man. Yes, that Zoom lens is going to be a pricey bee-hatch but like I said, it’s an option and if you want it you rent it, you don’t buy it. Vincent gets a lot of shit from people for piling so much stuff onto his camera but that’s just his way of working, and what bugs me is he gets shit for sharing that with people. Putting detailed and informative blogs together takes a ton of time, especially when you make no money from it and have to squeeze it around your day job. The reason I do it is because, as a filmmaker, I want people to see my stuff, I need an audience, and the blog has enabled me to create one. I do actually like helping people out and I get a kick out of seeing how people react to the crap I put on the site. I’m sure Vincent’s the same. The amount of work that’s gone into putting that gear list together is huge and we must never forget that this is a guy who commands big fees to come and talk about the cameras, to be a keynote speaker, to share his knowledge to a paying audience. We get it for free, so let’s have some respect shall we? Having said that, Vincent’s response to one enthusiastic blogger on twitter (I won’t repost it here, but if you saw it you know what I mean) was probably a little heavy but never mind.

That’s turned out all a bit righteous hasn’t it, not my intention at all, if I see something stupid I take a pin and pop a hole in it, but it did strike me that people were missing the point. Maybe it’s just that the community has put VLF on a pedestal and his posts get promoted everywhere… who knows! Sam actually links to VLF’s blog on his blog so he can’t hate him that much.

UPDATE: Sam got in touch, see below, and I really don’t think he realised what a ridiculous fuss was about to be made over this. Still, it shows you how connected we all are.

Canon’s been going completely bonkers, as is their wont, over the last week or so releasing details on all sorts of new stuff, and some which isn’t actually stuff, more just bonkers, like the ‘super super super duper wow oh my god what how did they what about rolling shutter then eh, er, what’s the point’ enormous CMOS sensor. Buried in all the announcements were a pair of teeny tiny, but very powerful, little camcorders, the XF100 and XF105. I tested the XF305 quite a few months back, before it was released, and it really is a very good camera, but the world has gone DSLR crazy and it doesn’t seem to hold quite the same allure as its flashier large-sensor whizzkids. So, why am I blogging about the XF105. Well, I’m embarking on my first 3D project, and need a really small, portable, smart system to shoot on that will give me the ability to shoot some properly inventive work. I read this interesting piece from Matt Zoller Seitz at Salon.com about what you might be able to do with 3D given a little creativity and I totally agree. Up till now I’ve completely discounted it, seeing it as a headache in a can, a fad, a cynical way to bump ticket prices, or create ‘added value’. I loved Up in 3D and there was no doubt Avatar was a deeply involving experience in 3D too. But I was recently given an opportunity to try something out so I thought, why not? The XF105 has a built-in assist function designed to help line up two models to work with each other. Whether we like it or not, our TVs are going to be 3D ready before we know it, and, in the same way that HD just happened, 3D will just happen too. Having humped my beastmaster (more on that in a later post, but it’s starting to get very heavy… ooh call me Vincent!). Redrock rig up and down a building site all day I quite like the idea of something neat, powerful and portable. So here, to finish are some pictures of me carrying the beast on a building site, replete with regulation YMCA helmet, raving gloves and subtle gilet accessory. Rock. And. Roll.

Technorati Tags: 3D, Canon, new tech, XF105

UPDATE: For whatever reason this seems to have touched a mahoosive point of interest across the web so I’ll be doing a much more thorough comparison on this issue once I get back from the shoot I’m on. Should be an interesting one, who knows what we’ll find!

I’ve been keeping an eye on this one for a while, Rarevision’s free 5D to RGB Beta which claims to get you

…as close as possible to the original data off the camera’s sensor while putting the brakes on any additional quality loss. In short it’ll make your footage look just plain amazing!”

Not to blow my own trumpet but recently most of my stuff has been looking pretty amazing on its own so how much help do I actually need? Well, maybe more than I think. Now, we all know about gamma shifts (why does it happen when RT is turned off, and not when it’s turned on in Final Cut….?) and H264 codecs being crap, and transcoding being a messy and time-consuming beast (yes Adobe Premiere users, I know you can edit native, thank you). I won’t go into the whys and wherefores of color-subsampling and why you need to be working in RGB not YCbCr because you simply don’t care. And nor do I, it’s really not that important. Just know that you really do. The programme works like any other encoding solution, giving you a simple interface to change your files into something you can work easily with, but apparently this conversion process is the best currently available. Big claim. They also say this:

5DtoRGB takes a no-compromise approach to quality, ignoring any concerns about speed.

Hang on… ignoring any concerns about speed? Ah… okay. I shoot on RED a fair a bit and believe me, the process of getting your rushes to the edit is so protracted and slow it’s agonising. Well, lots of people have been talking about this programme but no-one appears to have done any tests on it yet and I wanted to know: just how slow is it, and is that speed compromise worth it in the end? Well, I ran a test on a piece of footage from Ladies and Gentlemen, not a particularly challenging shot, but nice and wide, with plenty of people in the frame, lots of light variations, and it was shot at night so I’d expect there to be those tell-tale artifacts you get when the ISO is tickled a bit. The shot is 32 seconds long, or 810 frames. I transcoded it using the following settings comparing MPEG Streamclip, the current speed king, with 5DtoRGB.

Results? MPEG Streamclip finished the job in 31 seconds. 5DtoRGB did it in 4 minutes and 13 seconds. For those of you who like percentages that means that MPEG Streamclip did it in 12% of the time of it’s illustrious counterpoint, 5DtoRGB is 8 times slower. Hmm. Do the maths. MPEG Streamclip is pretty much real-time. You shoot three hours of rushes, three hours of transcoding more or less. 5DtoRGB you’re going to be looking at 24 hours. I shoot three hours of rushes on RED and I’ll be transcoding for three days, so it’s not quite there yet but it’s not great. I’ve seen other estimates that said it was around 5 times slower but I can only go off my own machine (MacPro Quad Core 2 x 2.8 GHz, 10GB RAM) which is, after all, what I work on.

So what are we getting for our machine time? Well, firstly, a few more options, the all important Chroma smoothing which, my instinct tells me, is going to be worth it. We also get an option to set the output gamma to a contrastier or flatter setting, my grading nostrils are now twitching.

As you can see from the settings I’ve used ProRes 4444 and the flatter setting to transcode the footage so we should be seeing the very best results possible out of the software.

And?

It’s an epiphany… Holy crap, this thing is unbelievable! The first thing you notice is just how insanely smooth the footage is, it looks alive, preserved and ready to grade. In other words it is in a completely different league to the footage from MPEG streamclip. First, it’s lifted the gamma and given me a flatter image and more dynamic range. Compare the grabs below. It’s also had the unexpected benefit of fixing some (not all) of the moiré issues, in our actress’s shirt for example. You can really see it in those close details around the edge of her shirt which are so jagged in the MPEG Streamclip version, but really protected (as always, not perfect, but dramatically improved) in the 5DtoRGB. Click on the images for the full size versions.

Wide shot using MPEG Streamclip, notice the moiré

Same shot using 5DtoRGB

MPEG streamclip scopes, clipped

5DtoRGB scopes, smooth as a baby's

In the test shots the company themselves posted they were zooming in 800% on the image to illustrate the effect and, in my cynical way I thought that it would just be a case of geek’s goggles (the kind of thing the naked eye doesn’t see, but that all the geeks will tell you is absolutely vital) but not at all. I test all my footage on terrible cheap 26″ monitors because there’s nowhere to hide. The MPEG Streamclip doesn’t hold up, but the 5DtoRGB is stunning. I can’t really explain how fantastic the transcode is. But believe me, it’s phenomenal. I worry deeply about grading my footage and I have two major projects about to go to grade – now I’m satisfied that they will be absolutely fine, as long as I put aside a couple of days for the hamsters to chug through the maths.

Detail from MPEG streamclip, compare the shirt and the light

Detail from 5DtoRGB, compare the shirt and the light

I’m not sure how the Vimeo file will render the difference between the two shots but definitely worth having a look. We’ve been needing this software for so long, and yes it does take a huge amount of time to transcode, but if you’re aiming at drama or television, or perhaps a cinema release then this goes a long way to easing some concerns in my mind. Well done Rarevision, they’re post specialists and it shows. No, it’s not going to sort everything out for you but my word is it good. It also gives you the option of exporting DPX files for effects work or for final grading in a Davinci suite or similar. I love that. MPEG streamclip for speed, 5DtoRGB for quality, and right now, they’re both free. That’s outstanding.

5DtoRGB test comparison with MPEG Streamclip from Robin Schmidt on Vimeo.

Technorati Tags: 5D2RGB, Beta, DSLR, H264, postproduction, Rarevision, RGB, software, test, Transcode