When I’m working I’m always in a constant state of awareness about how I can change my keyboard mapping to make my workflow faster and more efficient. The keyboard manifesto argues that changing Final Cut Pro’s default keyboard mappings can make your editing faster and more efficient. But it’s also important to be aware of changes that you might make. I never would have expected a couple of keyboard changes to cause me an hour of confusion and rebuilding a timeline but that’s what this FCP bug did.

Markham, Ontario: Digital Rapids—the leading provider of tools and solutions for bringing television, film and web content to wider audiences—announced today that the StreamZHD multi-format, live and on-demand encoding system has won a 2009 Streaming Media Readers’ Choice Award as the top high definition (HD) hardware encoder. The award was presented this week at a special reception during the Streaming Media West conference and exhibition in San Jose.

Final Frame, a New York City based post production service provider announced today that it has expanded their services for the Digital Cinema post production market.  Final Frame’s new DCP (Digital Cinema Package) services provide a complete solution for the encoding, secure key embedding, encryption, storing, decoding, viewing, and packaging of digital cinema content for delivery to digital cinemas and digital festivals / screenings.

At the dawn of affordable professional HD video camcorders, JVC first offered recording only to 720p, Sony first offered only 1080i recording, and Panasonic offered recording to either of the above (even though its original sensors had a native resolution of 960x540, so any HD recording was interpolated). Nowadays, many of the latest offerings from the pro divisions of JVC, Panasonic, and Sony embrace the option of recording 720p, 1080i, or 1080p in a single camera. However, because the maximum framerate available with 1080p in these affordable professional HD video camcorders has been limited to 29.97p, those producers who favor progressive production have faced a tradeoff: either favor spatial resolution (1920x1080 at a maximum of 29.97p, for ultra sharpness and less smoothness) or favor temporal resolution (1280x720 at a maximum of 59.94p, for ultra smoothness and less HD sharpness). Many of our readers have already read that debate in my When 25p beats 24p article. For many, the idea of actually recording 1920x1080 and ±60 progressive frames per second has required a camera like Sony’s F23 camera, whose official price is US$150,000 without a lens or other accessories, and has been amply covered by Art Adams and Adam Wilt here in ProVideo Coalition magazine. (The RED ONE camera also offers 59.94p at 3K windowed mode for US$17,500 plus lens and accessories, although many RED ONE shooters prefer to shoot 4K to retain a familiar focal length, where they don’t get 59.94p.) Now Sanyo has changed that with a few of its consumer HD camcorders, of which the most interesting is the US$599.95 VPC-HD2000A.

proDAD GmbH, a world-class maker of video effects products, today announced the latest addition to its popular Adorage product line – Adorage Effects Package 11 – HD Global Travel & Flags FX.  As its name suggests, Adorage Effects Package 11 includes 5,000 global travel themed effects and transitions, including flags of the world, continents, images of countries, and combination images – all in stunning HD resolution.  The effects and transitions contained in Adorage Effects Package 11 are an easy way to bring local and international travel themes into video projects.  Editors working with SD footage can still take full advantage of the effects contained in Adorage Effects Package 11.  Rendering of the effects is up to 40% faster than other solutions, thanks to proDAD-designed codecs. 

JVC Professional Products, a division of JVC U.S.A., announced today that the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) is using JVC GD-463D10U 46-inch 3D HD LCD monitors as part of its next immersive visualization system. Short for new micropolarized panel-based cave automatic virtual environment, NexCAVE was prototyped in June at the University of California, San Diego, and the first full-scale version was recently installed at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia.

The first in the new line of dedicated Waves Post Production tools, the Waves WNS Noise Suppressor, is a real-time multiband processor for fast and effective broadband noise suppression on dialog tracks. Suitable for both indoor and location dialog recordings containing constant or modulating environment noise, WNS delivers superior sound quality with minimal artifacts.

The final cover story I wrote for the late, lamented Millimeter magazine in September examined the ongoing transition of hour-long episodic TV production out of the film acquisition realm and into the digital universe—a transition resulting from a profound convergence of technological, business, and labor issues. (You can find the article here.) Following the last year’s slowdown in broadcast production, there are finally hints that things might speed up again in 2010, but broadcast production probably won’t return to its traditional levels for some time, if ever. Still, however fast or slow the production ball moves, there is no question the majority of hour-long episodic TV shows will be acquired using digital cameras going forward. Thus, as I launch From the Trenches, it seems like a logical time to inquire how this paradigm shift is impacting various sectors of the industry, including camera sales and rental companies since it is largely through them that industry professionals get their hands on, and wrap their mind around, these new tools. Therefore, I recently dialed up a couple of industry veterans for a chat about the situation. This column, we start with input from Michael Bravin, the longtime Chief Technology Officer and HD guru at Band Pro Film & Digital in Burbank.

Michael Goldman here. Some of you might remember me, or at least my work covering the production and post-production worlds from my perch at venerable old Millimeter magazine, where I served as Senior Editor for the last 11 years. Despite its film-centric, but well respected, name, I’m proud to say Millimeter led the way in the trade journal space during the time I was there covering the film, broadcast, and so-called new media markets as they shifted from so-called old media into the world of high-end digital production—from acquisition to editing to visual effects and post and finishing work. Sadly, in a sign of how much my own industry, journalism, has changed during this same period, the print edition of Millimeter has ceased to be. The action is now, obviously, here—online. So what’s a nice journalist like me doing on a site like this?

The History Channel’s WW2 in HD series has created a firestorm of debate over archival methods. If you read the AMIA listserve, the Cinematographer’s Mailing List, or the Telecine Internet Group or TKColorist Internet Group listserve, chances are you saw the huge debate over how the huge amount of rare color footage from World War II was transferred. Many people thought that historical records were being destroyed by careless film transfers. Several web stories – that were actually created by publicists – supported this controversy, but turned out to be mis-information. The true story of the making of the series turns out to be far more interesting than the fiction, as so often is the case. I interviewed the series’ director, Frederic Lumiere on the phone in the midst of the controversy and discovered a man passionate about his project and for the care and cataloging of the materials he oversaw. Any misquotes can be attributed to my transcription. I recorded the entire interview and did the transcription word for word, but phonetic transcription is contextual and between Mr. Lumiere’s mild French accent and the quality of the phone line audio, I may have made minor mistakes. My intent was to be honest and portray the events correctly.