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Uncompressed HD via Ethernet? It just might be!

By on April 18th, 2010

Most of you know that we’re running an ethernet based SAN here at BCM.  It’s the Maxx Digital Final Share SAN which runs a combination of their drive arrays with Small Tree ethernet wizardry and some stout Atto Host Bus Adapters.   We generally get around 100 – 120MB/s to the 7 workstations that are connected to the SAN.  More than enough speed to cut using Apple’s ProRes codec all day long.

At the moment we’re cutting two feature documentaries (over 300 hours of material), 3 PBS series and a multitude of other projects all on the SAN simultaneously.  It’s been a very stout performer and when we need to do Uncompressed or 2k work, we have two local 8TB RAIDs directly connected to two workstations giving us 500 to 650MB/s.  So for our needs, we’ve got everything set up to handle whatever comes in the door and need to allocate the uncompressed workstations as necessary.

Well at NAB 2010, Bob Zelin brought me over to the Maxx Digital Booth to show me 350MB/s coming off a single 8TB RAID connected via ethernet. Now we’re getting into Uncompressed HD territory.  Albeit a single stream of Uncompressed HD, but that’s perfectly fine for color grading or sound mixing and even editing.   Not to mention serious multi-stream ProRes capabilities.  Via Ethernet!

I knew this technology was going to get better as we moved along but I didn’t expect a 250MB/s jump in just one year.  In fact, the system could go faster but we need to wait for the drive manufacturers to catch up!  Can you say Multi-stream Uncompressed HD and 2k via Ethernet on the horizon?  All I can say is Wow.

Really looking forward to working with these new speeds once everything is ready for shipping.  I’ll update you all as details become available.

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NAB and the Trade Show: Making a Resurgence?

By on April 18th, 2010

In 2006, the National Association of Broadcasters Convention had over 108,000 attendees in Las Vegas.  That dropped to 82,600 by 2009 amid cries that the big trade show is rendered useless in today’s internet connected world.  All you ever need to know about your business and “what to buy” and “how to do” can be found on the internet without all the hassles and expense of traveling.   In 2010 attendance crept back up to 88,044 for one of the most dynamic shows I have ever experienced.

I have to say, I’ve missed the last three shows myself.  The first one by choice, the other two due to the work schedule.   This year I made a decision that my schedule would be cleared for the event, particularly with the buzz around 3D.  The decision was made even easier when we saw the lowest hotel rates in Vegas we’ve ever seen!

But back to the show.  A 6,000 person increase is a modest jump when you consider the size and scope of this event and quite honestly, I was of the mindset that with resources like CreativeCow.net there really was NOT much of a need to get out and attend the show.  It’s four (or more) days of a lot of walking, coffee, standing, talking, coffee, more walking, listening, coffee, walking, coffee and coffee.   What can I say, there’s Starbucks all over in there and I’m drawn like a moth to flame.

I was reminded this year of just WHY these trade shows truly are still relevant and important to all of us in the production industry. There really is no other way to see everything you want to see, in person, operating at one time.  What makes Avid unique from Adobe?  What’s the difference between the new Panasonic and Sony small cameras?  What kind of microphone can go underwater and still keep working?  Are LED lights really any good or do I still need HMI?   Why is the Grass Valley booth bathed in green light?  (never got the answer to that one)

You’re spending money on equipment, software and you need answers on what will work for you in your budget.  You have questions on how to do certain workflows, there are literally thousands of experts in one location.  The internet is sweet and it certainly has empowered many of us to make decisions we could not otherwise have made from glossy brochures and sales pitches.  But nothing beats the ability to literally compare two, three, ten similar products in the space of a few hours.  Watch demo, use the product, ask questions, get answers and then have the ability to go back and ask more questions.

Nor is there any other place where you can stumble on to products and ideas you’ve never heard of.   I’m starting two original television series here and I’m interested in some new Panasonic cameras and Canon Lenses.    On the way there, I found a whole series of LED lighting setups.  Lower power consumption, bright lights and potential HMI replacements.  Prices ranged from $250 to thousands of dollars.  What’s the difference in the brands?  From what I could tell it was really the ruggedness of the frames, the rigs and the electronics.  Some felt flimsy and fragile while one brand they literally slammed the lights on the desk to show they’re almost unbreakable.

We might be producing a new fishing series as well and I found a microphone company that was dunking one their products in water and the mic was functioning perfectly AND it was much less than the mics I had been looking at online.  They pointed me to another company that had a reasonably priced waterproof transmitter.  I never would have found either if I wasn’t walking the show floor.  Yes I could have asked about this on the internet and would have gotten some really good advice from pros in the field.  But this was nice to see, hear and touch.

So with this uptick in interest in 3D particularly, it seems to be that the Trade Show might be even more relevant in today’s internet world than ever before.  We can make reasonably informed decisions based on the information we get from the internet.  We can make completely informed decisions based on a combination of information from the internet AND first hand experience at a Trade Show.   If I did not attend the show this year I would not have believed that, but it’s just true.   Also, I can’t tell you how many people would tell me, “Did you see such and such?  No?  You have to go check this out in Booth….”   We see this all the time with internet forums where one question leads to advice to look at an alternative.  At a show like NAB you can not only look at the alternative but make a reasonable decision very quickly whether it’s a good alternative or not.

If you looked at Twitter, CreativeCow.net and many other sites during the 4 day run of NAB this year, those sites were just completely flooded with requests for more information, please test this out, please look at this, is this really as good as they say it is, etc….  People were begging for information that was on display right there on the show floor.   Does it cost money to go to a Trade Show?  Yes.  Is it money well spent?   Again I have to say Yes.   With the incredible changes our industry is going through, you simply can’t afford NOT to attend these events at least every other year.

If you did not make NAB this year, plan to come out in 2011 as 3D should be in full swing.  If you are in Europe, plan to attend IBC and check out what is on the horizon.  At the very least, try to attend one of these Road Shows from the various manufacturers, though I do find them somewhat of a waste of time.  You only get the one perspective from those, you really can’t compare and contrast what you’re seeing in the road show vs. another manufacturer.

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The Three A’s, Apple, Adobe & Avid

By on April 18th, 2010

The 2010 National Association of Broadcasters convention had the Post Production world buzzing about the Three A’s of the industry.  Apple, Adobe and Avid.   Well, really more Adobe and Avid since they were actually at the show and had something to demonstrate.

Adobe brought their CS5 creative suite to the show with some incredible announcements.  Not the least of which to me is the ease of integration with other NLEs like Final Cut Pro and Avid.  Adobe has decided to “play nice” with with their competitors to make it easier for Post Houses like mine to get projects into and out of After Effects for one.  Right now this requires plug-ins like the Automatic Duck Importer for AE (which is totally awesome by the way), but with CS5, we could essentially take an FCP timeline, send it to Premiere and then send it over to AE.  Ok, the Duck plug-in is around $500 and Premiere is $799 so it’s a bit silly to even consider Premiere just for this functionality.   But……

Premiere has taken a huge step forward with their 64bit enabled Mercury Engine.  Much more realtime functionality and you can see in their online demos 4k and 2k material scrubbing and playing back in the same timeline.  You will have to install CS5 in a 64 bit system to run and run an Adobe Certified graphics board in order to take full advantage of the Mercury Engine functionality.  But the functionality of Premiere is very much on par to what Final Cut Pro based facility are used to and the real-time functionality of the CS5 package simply blows FCP out of the water.

Avid brought us Media Composer 5 and what really got the show buzzing was their support of Quicktime.  More specifically, Apple’s ProRes codec.  So now there is the very real possibility of Avid working right alongside Final Cut Pro in the same facility or for sharing projects across facilities.

Not only that, Avid’s H.264 native editing support refutes everything we’ve been saying about that codec and Final Cut Pro for the past few years. Whenever someone said they could not get H.264 to edit well in FCP (such as from a DSLR), we would inform them that it was not a proper editing codec, it was a finishing / delivery codec.  Transcode it to something else like ProRes.  Avid (and Adobe for that matter) is now showing that assumption to be false.  Take the H.264 and start editing right away in realtime.

And like Adobe, Avid has a much more seamless P2 / tapeless workflow that does not require transcoding, wrapping to be able to edit with this material.  Simply bring it in and start working pretty much instantaneously.

Now the one thing Avid has NOT really done is open up the platform to third party hardware.  Right now you can use the Matrox MXO2 Mini for display only.  So you can watch your project on a monitor and do a crash record to a VTR or DVD Recorder but that’s pretty much it.   No support for the AJA Kona Boards or the BlackMagic boards at this time and Avid was very vague on whether that would come in the future.  “The MXO2 Mini is the first step” is what I was told during a meeting, but that was all they said.   What I would ideally like to do in our situation is install the Avid Media Composer 5 software to work on our AJA Kona 3 based systems.  This would allow me to hire any freelancer whether they want to work with FCP or Avid and we could work in one universal codec, ProRes so any system could access the media.  This is going to be a wait and see with Avid to see how willing they are to really open up the software to third parties.  Short term I might install one copy of the software with the Mini so an editor could use Avid in our shop and we would lay back to tape using a Final Cut Pro workstation utilizing Automatic Duck to move the project over.  Right now to really use the Media Composer software fully, you still need the Mojo hardware and I’m not going to spring for that.

So that leaves us with Apple. (sigh) Apple’s lone appearance was at the Supermeet.  Note I said Supermeet and not FCPUG Supermeet.  That’s because the FCPUG part of it was dropped and in this case, for good reason.  Apple sent up Steve Bayes, Sr. Product Manager for Final Cut Studio to give a presentation.  Mind you, this followed the two jaw dropping presentations from Adobe and Avid.  Steve starts off with “I’ve got a secret” and proceeds to tell us really nothing at all about Final Cut Pro.  There was no secret, just more marketing buzzwords about how wonderful Studio is and how many production partners are using Studio or something along those lines.  See I can’t even remember much about what he said because it was basically meaningless.

Your two strongest competitors take the stage in what used to be the Final Cut Pro Users Group Supermeet, completely knock it out of the park, and all you can do is whiff?  I would like to say we heard crickets in the room, but that would be a disservice to the Rio Hotel so it was more or less silence that greeted this earth shattering “secret” from Apple.

When Final Cut Pro came out, the industry laughed at it.  Here’s a cheap little NLE knock-off that will never get traction.  Apple proved that wrong by offering a very low-cost, yet powerful editing tool that can truly work in all manner of film and television post production.  Apple worked its way to the top of the heap in terms of users worldwide, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.3 to 1.5 million registered users (and who knows how many more “non-registered” users).  Nobody could match the suite of tools, particularly with the addition of Color, for just $999.

Well, now we’re all kind of laughing again.  Apple’s notorious silence allowed Avid and Adobe to completely leapfrog all discussion about Final Cut Studio and leaves the post-production community wondering whether Apple can keep up.  When your competitors can work with your very own codec (H.264) better than your own product, that’s a problem.  When your competitors can work with tapeless workflow better than your own product, that’s a problem.  When your competitors can work with more realtime functionality using your very own hardware, that’s a problem.   Basically Apple sent up Steve as a sacrificial lamb and really should not even have bothered.

The integration of the entire Adobe Suite has been much tighter than the Final Cut Studio suite for a few years now, but there really wasn’t anything to get me to even consider dumping FCP for Premiere.  In fact, despite the fact that many of us like to defend Final Cut Pro vs. pretty much any NLE out there by saying it’s the artist that makes the difference, not the tool, I never really considered Premiere as a viable alternative for editing.  It just never felt like a “professional editing tool” for whatever reason.  Probably just a personal bias and I just don’t hear of very many “pro users” that base their facilities around Premiere.

With CS5, the Adobe suite suddenly looks very promising as an alternative. Even more so since it runs with all of our existing infrastructure we have in place for Studio.  The only change would be to replace our ATI graphics cards with the proper nVidia cards to support the Mercury engine.    If Avid opens up their software to all third party hardware, especially the AJA Kona boards, well then that certainly becomes a very viable alternative as well.

That’s one of the beauties of what Apple has actually created.   A very strong third party hardware market that is software agnostic.  By concentrating on just the software and computer hardware, Apple opened up the Audio / video hardware to multiple independent companies like AJA and BlackMagic who designed their products to work with multiple NLEs out there.  And as we all know, FCP / Premiere / Avid all work essentially the same way so if you know one, you can switch to another one pretty darn quickly.

Will I make the switch? I’m not doing anything immediately though I will upgrade all our systems to CS5 when that is released.  We run CS4 on all of our systems currently as we’re very heavy After Effects and Photoshop users so we have the Production Premium suite.  When the CS5 bundle gets here you better believe I’ll be poking around in Premiere to see how it operates and just how well it “plays with Final Cut Pro” and how it compares to working with Final Cut Pro.

No I’m going to wait to see what Apple has to show us, whenever that is.  They have to not only hit a home run, but knock it completely out of the park.  I want to see a realtime alternative to Adobe’s Mercury Engine.  I want to see the ease of use of H.264 and other tapeless formats that don’t require Log and Transfer with a re-wrapping.  I want to see very tight integration between the apps in the suite like CS5.  And I would really like to see Apple open up an “ease of use” path for working back and forth with Premiere and Avid systems.

So right now, my feeling and what I heard very often on the show floor, at the Supermeet and my various meetings with people is it’s time for Apple to put up or shut up.   They set the bar high for a full featured non-linear editing system at a very low price.  Adobe and Avid just blew right by them using the same hardware that is available to FCP facilities.   Is Apple going to move the Studio suite forward and really improve the workflow for professional editors as the other A’s have done, or are they simply going to maintain the status quo with a few updates to just continue to sell Mac hardware?   At the moment, Apple’s silence is deafening.   I’m reminded of the NFL Playoffs commercial campaign a few years ago, “Show Me Something.”  Anything…..    Once I can see what Apple has to show us, then we’ll make the decision on where we go from there.  We’re about to grow from 4 to 9 edit suites in the next few months so what we see revealed from Apple will make the decision on where our company goes from here.  I’m hoping they hit it out of the park so we don’t have to change anything, but it’s easy enough to make the switch if that’s better for our company.

Of course the one thing Apple still has going for it is Color.  Adobe and Avid still don’t have anything to match that.   Oh that’s right, DaVinci took care of that for them, but that’s another blog entry…..

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Great to meet so many of you at NAB

By on April 16th, 2010

Well another NAB has come and gone and it was so great to meet so many of you at the show!  Always love putting a face with the names I see up on the forums and around the Twitterverse.   I’ll be preparing a series of reports over the next few days on what I saw out there and my thoughts on how things will impact our Post Production world.

According to what I’ve read attendance was up over 20,000 for this show and it was definitely a great show to attend with all sorts of new announcements impacting how we do what we do.  So again, great to see so many of you and watch the blog over the next week for my series of reports.

Walter

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New BCM Facility: Update 2

By on April 7th, 2010

Moving along in our new building process, the surveyor has done his work out on the site.  Makes no sense to me whatsoever, just a bunch of orange ribbons attached to stakes and trees out there.  Still waiting to see his drawing, but he’s satisfied with the land and our idea for the location of the building and the parking lot.

Since we’re going to be laying down a fairly large parking lot, around 24 parking spaces, my contractor and I are going to look for a good spot on the site to lay out a regulation half basketball court for outside.   Since he has to bring in all that asphalt equipment anyway, might as well lay down a nice basketball court at the same time!   I used to play and Adrienne played back in high school so she’s excited about this too.  We’ll definitely have to mark off the 3 point arc.  So I’m seeing some good 2 on 2 or 3 on 3 basketball in our lunchtime future……

Part of the fun of starting from scratch.  We need to bring out a bunch of heavy equipment anyway, so try to figure out “little things” you can do cheaply while the equipment is there.

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Original Pilot in production

By on April 5th, 2010

We’re pleased to announce our first original Pilot goes into production this week.  The new travel series starring Bobby Rivers and Widdi Turner will be in Atlanta and areas south of the city this week highlighting some great areas to explore.  Bobby is a pop culture icon who is best known from VH-1 and “Top 5 with Bobby Rivers” on Food Network.  Widdi is well known to the fans of “Good Eats” on the Food Network playing a multitude of memorable characters with host Alton Brown.

Executive Producers Walter Biscardi, Jr. and Cheryl Collins head up the production team.  Cheryl created the original concept and together with Walter, worked out the final design for the series.   Marsha Walton is the Supervising Producer and the camera operators will be Chris Palmer and Brian Gaffner, both veterans of productions with BCM.   Production Coordinator extraordinaire is Jeanna Thomas, without whom our lives would be much more difficult!

This will be a very fun show, full of pop culture references and most likely destined for PBS distribution in the States.  More details as they become available and watch for announcements on the new website here.

This series represents the first phase of a new division of Biscardi Creative Media focused on bringing original programming to television and independent film projects to theatrical release.   We’ll have a full announcement on the new division in the coming weeks.  Needless to say, we’re really REALLY excited about this new phase of the company.

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BCM Website is Re-Launched!

By on April 2nd, 2010

It took a few years longer than expected, but we finally have a new website up and running.  It’s still a bit of a work in progress, but we decided to go ahead and take it live.  We’ll modify it a bit over the next few weeks.

You can probably tell we had a LOT of fun taking the Team thumbnail photos.  We’re all having fun with Guitar Hero and Rock Band over here so it was only natural that we’d break out the guitars for the team photos.  And Molly the Wonder Dog decided to do a crazy spring happy dance giving me some really great opportunities to catch the true spirit of this one of a kind dog.

A brand new feature is our Articles Page which will include feature articles by myself and other team members along with Tutorials on all things Final Cut Pro, Apple Color and editing in general.

So enjoy the new digs and be sure to stop by often.  We’re going to be doing lots of updates and changes to it over the next few weeks and months.   In fact, we’re planning to start a new video gallery of fun projects created, well just for the fun of it!

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New BCM Facility: Update 1

By on April 1st, 2010

Well here we go.   Ever wanted to build your own facility from the ground up?   I’m going to walk you through the process as it happens.  From this land, a new facility shall rise!

Yep, just raw land at the moment.  Almost 2 acres of it, though we can only build on a small portion of it due to the topography.  But you should see Molly the Wonder Dog’s eyes light up at all those trees and wide open spaces!    This piece of land is about as close to the ideal land as I could find.   Our current location has woods out back and a yard for Molly to run so it’s a pretty quiet and peaceful location.   It’s been tough to find something like that on a larger scale.

But thanks to the hard work of our real estate agent, Gary Allen, he found this great lot with nothing but woods behind it, in a quite area.  So when we walk out the back door, this is pretty much the view we’ll see each and every day.  I’m planning to landscape some of this but leave the majority of it pretty wild with as much fenced in as possible to allow Molly plenty of room to explore and chase tennis balls.  I’ve found it’s really important to our clients to have a place to just step outside to take in some fresh air and not just go stand in a parking lot.   We’ll have a pretty nice outdoor area when we’re all said and done if everything goes according to plan.

Right now we’re moving through with the necessary work that needs to be done before we can actually close on the loan.   So what’s involved?  Well the bank needs a lot of financial information both from you personally and from the company.  Fortunately for us we already went through a lot of this back in December so all we need to do is update everything.

They also require drawings of what the building will look like, the budget from the contractor (licensed contractor of course!), an official survey of the land and an appraisal.   Once all of these things have been delivered and the bank is satisfied with all the numbers, we’ll be able to close the loan and finish the deal.  Timetable is generally 30 to 45 days for this work to be done.

Concurrently to all of this happening, we’re meeting with the building designers to get all the engineered drawings taken care of in advance so with any luck, we’re ready to start moving dirt the same day we sign the loan.  A while back I purchased Punch! Home Suite, a 3D home design software for the Mac.  I used it to lay out the interior of the building, to scale, which we are then giving to the designer.  This cuts down his work since all he has to do is transfer my drawing to his plans.  This is a really cool little piece of software if you plan to build or even remodel a space for your needs.  It’s one thing to sketch out some ideas, but quite another to lay it all out to exact scale.   Then you can really see how much space you have to work with.

So there you go, latest update.  As of right now, the Surveyor says “yes, your building and parking will fit.”   Final, formal survey to come next week and then we really get going with the designs.

More details and pictures as they become available!   It’s going to be a fun ride!

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Peanut Butter Cup day at BCM!

By on March 29th, 2010

This past Friday was the 2nd time our two team members, Adrienne and Jenny got busy in the kitchen to make a dessert from scratch.  Last time it was Twinkies and this week it was Peanut Butter Cups!   Hershey’s Chocolate, peanut butter, powdered sugar, yum!

So why do we do this?  We’re a professional post production facility, not a bakery, right?  Well, why not?  It’s fun, you should hear the girls laughing when they’re at it in the kitchen.  This in turn gets the the whole shop laughing.  Anything that’s good for laughter and tastes great, can’t be all bad right?   You gotta have fun in your work, and this is one way we do it.

Adrienne with the Recipe Book.

Peanut Butter mixed with Powered Sugar

Jenny prepping the Chocolate.

Setting the peanut butter onto the cooled chocolate shells

Molly trying to get to the peanut butter that mysteriously appeared on her nose.

Putting the chocolate tops onto the cups.

A happy chef with a tray full of peanut butter cups!   So how do they taste?  Extremely good!

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Contract signed for land for new BCM studios

By on March 26th, 2010

Well at long last, we have found the new home for Biscardi Creative Media.  At least we hope we have!  For the second time in just over 4 months, we have a contract in place to purchase about 1.6 Acres of land on a lot that really brings together everything we were looking for.

Room to expand in the future and a quiet area that backs up to the woods and nature.  In fact walking around the property today all you could hear were the birds chattering away back in the trees.  So Molly the Wonder Dog will have plenty of room to show off her ball chasing skills and we plan to make the back yard area an ever evolving natural environment.  It should be a nice place to simply get out of the edit sessions and relax, go read a book, enjoy the sunshine and just enjoy life.

The facility itself is going to be a 6,000 square foot building that will eventually house 8 edit suites along with a full color enhancement / 5.1 surround sound mixing suite.  That mixing room will also serve as a client theater that should hold anywhere from 12 to 20 people comfortably.   We’ll have a nicely expanded kitchen and game room area (finally!) which will be re-christened Rebecca’s Atomic Lounge.  We even have the sign ready for it and everything.  And we’re leaving a large portion of it as unfinished space where we’ll have some basketball hoops and who knows what else to blow off some steam.

So this is a great beginning of a new chapter in our company and I’m looking forward to documenting our path from now until the final board is put into place.  I have to thank one fantastic commercial real estate agent, Gary Allen, who was beyond patient to put up with me and the fact that I was looking for “a very particular situation that’s not like normal commercial buyers.”  If any of you in the Atlanta Metro area, especially north of the city need a great commercial agent, he’s the man!   You can reach him at garye (at) windstream.net