Brett Noe Productions

Editor Dylan Reeve has posted some tips that shooters might find useful for getting their footage edited more quickly and easily.

Numbers 1 and 4 are my favorites.

Recently, Brett Noe Productions was an exhibitor at The Phoenix Bridal Show. The show came upon us rather abruptly so we only had a couple of days to prepare.

We needed some way to loop video for display at the show and decided to use the iPad. After a bit of searching, we found a couple of apps made by Shinichi HISAMATSU called LoopVideoPlayer and LoopVideoInstant. The main difference between the two apps is that LoopVideoPlayer gives you more controls. LoopVideoInstant starts playing automatically and only stops when you press the home button to exit the app. We used this for this show but decided we needed a larger display for next time. We liked using the iPad but wanted to use a larger display.

The iPad can connect to HDTV at 576p and 480p with Apple Component AV Cable; 576i and 480i with Apple Composite AV Cable. This is not really optimal. It also can connect to devices with the VGA adapter to a TV or projector with a VGA input. VGA output is at native resolution of 1024×768, which is the standard resolution of many projectors. It is also 4:3 aspect ratio. The problem lies with HDTVs having 16:9 widescreen resolutions of either 1920×1080 or 1280×720. If you set your HDTV to 4:3, your image has both letterbox and pillarbox so you have a small but correct 16:9 aspect image. It looks like this:

There’s a lot of real estate wasted. On my 40″ HDTV it’s as if I’m watching on a 27″ screen. If you set the TV to 16:9, images are stretched horizontally without being scaled properly in the vertical direction. It looks like this:

Notice the shape of his head and the knob on the cabinet. Neither solution is ideal but what can you do to fix it?

The choice I made was to modify the video so it would display correctly with my TV when set to 16:9 aspect. This way we would use all of our available screen real estate. What you need to do is export your 16:9 video at the 4:3 aspect so that it properly fills the screen vertically. This makes the video look like this on the iPad:

Then when you set you TV to 16:9 the video stretches horizontally and displays correctly. It looks like this:

Now the video is completely filling your screen and presenting your footage as intended.

It’s a bit of a process but is mostly automated. Here’s what you do:

With 16:9 video save it at 4:3. For example, if your video is 1280×720 then save it at 1280×960 or 1024×768. If your video is 2.35:1 aspect, save it at 16:9. For example, if your video is 1280×540 then save it at 1280×720 or 1024×576.

This will make the video look stretched vertically on the iPad but will look correct on a 16:9 device that works the way mine does.

I hope this helps a few people.

Matt Jeppsen from Fresh DV has a great article here on why the Panasonic AG-AF100 sensor is just fine and everyone is comparing to the wrong thing.

I agree and here is why.

The problem is that everyone is comparing to the Canon 5D MkII. The sensor size in it is 36mm x 24mm. This is full frame for stills and VistaVision for films. It’s huge, it’s beautiful and it’s not what most people are using.

At this point, the Canon 7D and the Canon Rebel T2i are closer in size to the current standard with a sensor that is 22.3mm x 12.5mm.

The current “standard” as of now is Super35; generally cropped to 1.85:1 aspect ratio. This is a “sensor” size of 24mm x 12.97mm. Many modern films are shot with Super35.

Another frequently used film size is Super16. when Cropped to 1.85:1 aspect ratio the “sensor” size is 11.76mm by 6.37mm. The Hurt Locker and Black Swan were shot with this.

By comparison The AF100 sensor is 17.8mm x 10mm. Larger than Super16, smaller than Super35. Perfect for shooting films.

It also has many of the pro video features that shooters want; pro audio inputs, interchangeable lenses, etc. There are also adapters for cinema lenses.

For more comparison info check out the AbelCineTech – Field of View Calculator and also this post and this post by Stu Maschwitz at his ProLost blog.

My friend Chad Udell wrote a post for Float Mobile Learning entitled Android Will Show Us Why 2011 Won’t Be Like “1984” It’s a well written, thoughtful argument on the subject.

One that I think is totally wrong.

To explain; choice is a wonderful thing. Too many choices is chaos. For example, with computers there are really only two main choices; Windows and Mac OS. Linux is a fringe choice and not really embraced by the general public.

With the Mac OS you have one vendor for your hardware and OS.

With Windows PCs you have Microsoft making the OS and Dell, HP, Acer and several dozen small off-brand vendors producing complete hardware. We’ll leave out the home-built machines for now.

All of these vendors make up approximately 90% of the computer market.
Windows PCs are a commodity and everyone is fighting for a slice of the very small margin pie.

Then there’s Apple. Selling 10% of the product and keeping over a third of the profit. Why?

I defer to Merlin Mann aka @hotdogsladies on Twitter for this

My biggest problem with Android is the market fragmentation. Take a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Android_devices

Just in Smartphones there were 98 devices listed, made by 28 manufacturers, using 4 different versions of the OS. Only 21 were using version 2.2. Only 1 is going to use 2.3 in the next couple of months. Many are still using 1.5 or 1.6. It’s a nightmare for consumers and developers.

Apple has 3 currently supported phones, 1 version of the OS.

So, instead of 1984, we’re going to see why 2011 is like The Road Warrior.

There might be compelling reasons for some people to go the Android route but I’m not seeing them. It just looks to me like we’re going to have a lot of devices running a variety of OS versions and that’s a shame.

For someone else.

Me I’m sticking with a device that does what I want it to; let me do my stuff and gets out of my way.

I put this together for Bloom’s weekend challenge 4. I did have to cheat a bit. Since I did sort of a retrospective of 2010, my first year with my wife, I pulled from photos from the whole year. So even though I didn’t shoot every frame just for this piece, I did have to cull through all my pictures and video for 2010!

Anyway, it’s a little sappy and sweet but it made my wife cry. I suppose that makes it a success!

Enjoy and please comment/Tweet.