Category: Video Technology

Cameras, recorders and other video devices

Categories
Apple Pro Apps Item of Interest Video Technology

Why did Blackmagic Design buy daVinci?

Of course, I don’t have any direct link into the mind of Grant Petty, founder of Blackmagic Design and don’t know more about the purchase of daVinci other than what Grant posted, but it’s such an interesting purchase that I can’t help but comment and guess.

Like so many of the industry’s giants of old, daVinci was losing money in the face of lower priced competition (Apple Color) and a reliance on mostly-obsolete 2K-limited hardware. On the other hand, Resolve is software only and resolution independent running on a cluster of Linux machines connected with Infiniband high speed data interconnect. daVinci also have Revival, although I don’t know anything about what advantages it brings.

Clearly, Grant thinks that the company has not been making the most of its opportunities and more focus on marketing and product development will once-again bring the daVinci brand to prominance. (Assuming it ever lost it.)

However, I don’t expect we’ll see Blackmagic Design suddenly want to start competing with Apple Color. I don’t think that’s the market and Grant himself seems to rule out that direction:

DaVinci Resolve is unique because it uses multiple linux computers linked together with InfiniBand connections and multiple GPU cards so you get the real time performance advantage it has. I donʼt think that can be lowered in price much, however over the next few years as technology advances this might happen a little. However, DaVinci is different to a DeckLink card because itʼs a high performance computing based tool. Our focus will really be on adding more features. Thatʼs what we want, and I guess others would too.

Possibly, some time in the future, a network of multiple Linux machines might be replaced by optimized code on some future 8+core Mac with awesome graphics card and an application written with Grand Central Dispatch and  OpenCL in mind. But don’t hold your breath! Combined CPU+GPU power has to increase a lot to replace multiple machines and the market is not that big.

I think the move will allow daVinci to continue developing their modern products and repositioning the company (to be operated independently of BMD) for the mid-size post house: those that have become dissatisfied with Apple Color but who would not have purchased a full daVinci hardware/software package. If the price could be, say $60K instead of $300K (or more) then that has a really good chance of reviving the brand and – in that inevitable trend – make higher quality available at lower price. That has always been Grant Petty’s goal, so it seems this is consistent.

Categories
The Business of Production Video Technology

Why might large post houses be heading for the elephant graveyard?

My friend James Gardiner wrote an interesting post “Are large Post Houses a sunset industry?” and it set me thinking. Now James is writing from an Australian perspective and “large post house” and “boutique” post house have quite different expectations of size than the Australian context. (For example, Alpha Dogs in Burbank bill themselves as a “boutique” post house but in Sydney or Melbourne they’d be one of the larger post houses.)

In general principle he’s right. The economics of the large post facilities (really factories) of the size of IVC, FotoKem, Ascent Media’s various facilities are changing. They probably always have been. And certainly there are signs that the very large post-focused facility in New York and Los Angeles are threatened. Long-term post Burbank post factory Matchframe sold a majority stake for just $300,000 (mostly because of long term debt it is presumed). The costs of maintaining the “heavy iron” of a big post facility can be millions a year.

In general principle I agree with James: these large facilities are probably a sunset industry. But he identified one point that I wanted to expand on.

What a big post house bring to the table is more then just services, they bring know how and knowledge.  You KNOW it is going to work.

That alone is the reason that there will (almost certainly) be facilities like these big post factories: at least in LA and NY. These facilities are large enough to be able to experiment and invest in discovering the best workflows (as, indeed, do the people at Alpha Dogs et. al.) and technologies.

But knowledge gets shared. This is one of the absolutely best things about the current Internet Era: knowledge is freely shared in ways it never could be before.

Look at RED workflows. The RED Digital Cinema camera is a big step forward in performance-for-price and a new class of digital cinema camera. When it was first released the tools and workflow where completely unexplored. None of the major NLE companies had native support for the new wavelet codec and working between NLE and color correction caused nightmares.

Two years on and there are established “best practice” workflows across Final Cut Pro, Media Composer and Premiere Pro. Pretty much anyone who does a little research can find a workflow that’s tested. Where did the posts you find when you do that Internet search come from? People who have solved a problem, sharing the solution with other who have the same problem.

Frankly, this information sharing is what made my reputation. As a very early adopter of NLE (specifically a very early adopter of Media 100) I ran into problems earlier than those who purchased later. I also discovered email groups in early 1997 and benefited from the shared experience of the Media 100 Email List of fellow travelers dealing with NLE in the mid 1990’s. (All digital for more than a decade now.)

I don’t know what form the future post-house/factory will be, but what will survive are the “centers of knowledge” because ultimately that’s more important than expensive, but infrequent access to high-priced technology.  The latter will continually get cheaper and people will find smarter, faster ways to do things, that ultimately become best practice and the “norm” again.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out two of our own tools that can give a FCP facility and edge: Sync-N-Link synchronizes dual system video and audio in minutes rather than hours, or if you’re working with an edited Sequence replacing camera audio with multi-track in hours instead of weeks. Sync-N-Link is already being used across a lot of Network and Cable series.

Producers have been printing out EDLs and trying to match them to a spreadsheet to report clip usage or music usage: a tedious task for sure, but one that can be automated with Sequence Clip Reporter, which just takes the pain out of creating a video, audio or combined report, including a reel-by-reel report if that’s what you need.

Categories
Apple Interesting Technology Video Technology

What is QuickTime X?

With the release of Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) this week, we finally get to see QuickTime X.

Simply put, QuickTime X is, as predicted, a simplified media player and simplified architecture optimized for playback of linear video streams. Most of what made QuickTime interesting to interactive authorers back a few years, is not present in QuickTime X.

We gain some new features: 2.2 gamma, screen capture and easily publish to major online video sharing sites. Screen capture is a nice addition and easy sharing probably would have been predictable if we’d seen Final Cut Pro 7 earlier.

The 2.2 gamma will no doubt take some time to get full adoption but at least it provides a way for us to add or change a color profile. Files with color profiles automatically adjust display to look correct on all screen. (At least, that’s the theory.) Within the Final Cut Studio it seems that correct gamma will be maintained *if* conversions are done with Compressor and not QuickTime 7’s Pro Player.

Chapter display has changed from a pop-up text list to thumbnail images. Better for consumer focused movies; less good for professionals.

Fortunately, it’s not an either/or. You can choose to install QuickTime 7.6 in addition to QuickTime X. If you try and access a movie that requires QT 7 features, users will be prompted to install QT 7 (aka “the real QuickTime!). If you want to make sure it’s installed, Apple have instructions on installing it.

So that’s the story of QuickTime X – a simple, consumer-focused player with a modern-looking interface, just as I predicted a little over a year ago.

Added 8/31 Just got this off a QT Apple email list. It’s not an official word from Apple but I think it sums it up well:

Quicktime X at this time isn’t a replacement to Quicktime 7, just allows faster multi-threaded playback of some of the older codecs.

Added 9/1 Ars Technica has a deep article on the difference between QT X and QT 7 and how QTkit negotiates between them,  that confirms I got my “educated guesses” right and provides more depth in how Apple achieves this.

Categories
Apple Pro Apps Video Technology

What about Final Cut Pro 7?

I was prepared for a “small” release this time round, as I assumed that the Pro Apps Team would be working hard to convert to Cocoa and would have to release a smaller “interim” release, but Final Cut Pro 7 is definitely more than I was expecting.

Having iChat Theater built-in means no more workaround with remote collaboration using two Macs! It also suggests the Pro Apps folk “get” that remote collaboration is booming and they know they need to adapt to that world.

Likewise the new publishing palette is going to be great for a lot of editors who need to routinely provide progress updates and deliver them on the web. That it runs in the background while you continue working is even better. You could have saved a reference movie and sent that to Compressor and added an upload action to the preset, but this is just so much simpler, and gives direct access to the most popular sharing sites, and Mobile Me!  MobileMe might be the best choice for many editors – files can be private and certainly not as public as YouTube!

My all-out favorite features, while a small one, is that Markers in a Sequence now move with the Sequence as clips are inserted or deleted. Colored Markers are great and I’ll use them a lot to identify a type of marker. For example, one color could mean “more work needed here” another color would be a locator just you jump quickly to part of the Sequence, and so on.

The technologist in me is very impressed with the new ProRes codecs. Those that work at the high end will love the ProRes 4444 codecs (and those that want an alpha channel will use it anyway). The Proxy version at 36 Mbit/sec parallels Avid’s own DNxHD offline codec and Apple needed something similar for HD offline. The most interesting codec is, however, the 100 Mbit LT version.

Clearly aimed at acquisition I expect we’ll see camcorders and other devices, like maybe the Ki Pro, supporting this data rate, which is co-incidentally the same as AVC-I at its highest setting. AVC-I up against ProRes 422 LT would be very, very similar in quality, both 4:2:2 and 10 bit and using similar compression strategies. It would be a perfect data rate for the Ki Pro if AJA want to support it. (I can’t help but wonder if the last-minute-delay of the Ki Pro wasn’t to wait for this announcement, but I’m just guessing.)

The Pro Apps team have thrown a “sop” at those who want Blu-ray authoring with the ability to create a Blu-ray compatible H.264/AVC file in Compressor that can be burnt to Blu-ray or standard DVD media. Nothing that Toast 10 hasn’t been able to do for some time now but nice to have it included in the lower-cost Final Cut Studio.

Many have interpreted the inclusion of this feature as an indication that Apple are going to get “more serious” about Blu-ray, but I’m not sure. I think it indicates the opposite. If there was going to be a big Blu-ray push the these features would be added to DVD SP, which received almost no update in this version. I think we’ve got Apple’s “solution” for Blu-ray in Final Cut Studio. Who know, only the future (and probably a Product Manger at Apple) will tell. (The PM won’t ever tell, that’s for sure!)

As to the loss of LiveType. It was probably inevitable as it was increasingly obvious that Motion was taking on many of the roles previously done by LiveType. By adding in the LiveType glyph animation features to Motion (adopted directly from LiveType) most of the functionality is now in Motion. My only concern is whether Motion now recolors LiveFonts correctly (i.e. the way LiveType did). I’ll test as soon as I have a copy in hand.

Finally, the price. Who can complain about Final Cut Studio being the same prices now as Final Cut Pro was alone for the first couple of generations.

Certainly, on the surface, it’s a good release.

On the timing – I notice that all Pro Apps products – Studio, Server and Logic (Pro Music) all came out together for the first time. Does it mean anything? It’s Apple, who knows and I’d rather not drive myself crazy trying to second guess them!

Categories
Video Technology

What happened to HDV (and tape)?

I have never been an HDV hater. I always thought that it was a great format, that allowed a lot of HD production to be affordable, while needing to be treated carefully for maximum quality.

From the first JVC HDV camcorder – lousy camera but showing promise – HDV was an affordable, accessible HD format that continued to improve in quality from generation to generation as the encoders improved. (MPEG-2, like DV, is constructed so that there can be considerable innovation and improvement on the encoder side, as long as a reference, or standard, decoder can decode it.) MPEG-2 is now more than four times more efficient than it was when the specifications were finalized 15 years ago.

The reason for the codec history lesson is that HDV is based on MPEG-2. (As are XDCAM HD and XDCAM EX.) Encoders improve over time so inevitably models fall behind the latest releases. For that reason I had to drop from consideration – for a new camera - Canon’s XL-H1, A1, and G1; Sony’s diminutive HVR-A1U ; and JVC’s KY-110U. These were all released in 2006 or earlier and while Canon claimed the “best” encode quality at the time, that is no longer even remotely true. JVC themselves claim that the MPEG-2 encoders in the HD200 and HD250 cameras are “100% better than the year before” (the year the 110U was released)!

While these would be excellent purchases on the second hand market, if you’re buying new you should be buying state-of-the-art, not three year old technology. That’s two whole encoder quality iterations!

Another reason why HDV didn’t make the cut this year is that most of the pro-focused camcorders are more expensive than more versatile and up-to-date options. For example, the nearly two-year-old GY-HD250 currently has a street price of $8,950 – that’s the highest street price of any camcorder on the list and more than Panasonic’s HPX300 or Sony’s EX-3.

I’d certainly still consider an Canon HV40 as a personal camera or a crash camera – at only $850 it’s hard to go wrong. The main reason it would still stay in play as a personal camcorder is price and native workflows in most NLEs. At least well-proven workflows in all NLEs. But even here the upcoming Canon Vixia Canon HF S11 and HF 21 AVCHD will likely give better quality – unless you want 24P, which is an HV20/30/40 exclusive in the price range.

This year we have a plethora of great choices for camcorders: none of them HDV in my opinion. If you’re not editing with Final Cut Pro – where the JVC HD100 and HD700 are less attractive – then you might consider a Sony V1U (released 2007, so only one generation of technology old) but for the million and a quarter Final Cut Studio users the native QuickTime workflow with the quality of the 35 Mbit/sec XDCAM HD codec makes a lot more sense at the same price (V1U vs HM100).

This year’s great choices are all non-tape cameras: HPX-300, EX-1, EX-3, HPX170, HM700, HM100, and HMC150 write to proprietary solid state media (P2, SxS) or to inexpensive and ubiquitous SDHC  cards. Solid state media at tape-like pricing that you can simply record and keep as well as keeping a digital backup. (Now that’s appealing.)

So, it seems that HDV was the last new tape-based format, ever. And I think we’re over it. As we’ve started to work out issues of long-term storage of non-tape media, the advantages of much-faster ingest – instant in some cases – and enhanced metadata support have become obvious.To different groups at different times, for sure, but we are facing a non-tape future.

And I think I’m OK with that.

The format that has really surprised me is Panasonic’s AVCCAM. I have to say my initial response to the HMC150 was “why on earth are they muddying the waters by rebranding AVCHD as AVCCAM”? I’m still not convinced the two names for the same format makes sense, but the higher data rates available on the HMC150 (and upcoming HMC40) and the AVC (a.k.a H.264) codec at the base of the format, mean that AVCCAM delivers much higher image quality: well, images that suffer less from compression-related degradation.

The disadvantage: only Premiere Pro CS4 and Sony Vegas really deal with it natively and Premiere Pro CS4 still has some issues with some variants of the format. Avid and Apple’s software re-encodes the files to the much-larger ProRes 422 or DNxHD codecs. (Typically 5-6x the storage requirements of AVCCAM/AVCHD.) But it’s a decent camera at a decent price with higher-than-HDV image quality, just with a workflow hiccup. (See comments on HV40 above.)

The HMC150 records to SDHC cards, as do the other two hot picks of the year: JVC’s HM100 and HM700. Whatever format you choose (HPX300, EX-3 or HM700) if you want a shoulder mount you’ll pay a premium. Typically, however, you get interchangeable lens capability in those same cameras, so it’s not all bad.

Finally, a word about the HPX-300. Because of the AVC-Intra support, the HPX-300 has the highest record quality (compressed image quality) of all with 50 or 100 Mbit/sec bit rates and 4:2:2 10 bit recording, there’s no real arguing that this is the quality king this year.

Except for the Ki Pro Factor. AJA’s almost-released Ki Pro is a hard drive or Compact Flash recorder that records native QuickTime files in ProRes 422 – near uncompressed 10 bit, 4:2:2 recording quality equal to the AVC-I support in the HPX-300. Every one of the recommended cameras this year can record uncompressed analog or digital output to the Ki Pro. If you’re not working with Final Cut Pro though, it’s a wash, like the JVC HM100 and HM700.

It must mean something when there are so many cameras targeting a specific postproduction NLE. The only other time I recall that happening was with a (from memory) Hitachi camera that recorded native Avid media, but I forget the details and it never reached any sort of momentum.

HDV 2004-2009 R.I.P.

Categories
Random Thought Video Technology

What other editing interface(s) can we imagine?

During a conversation last night about a new type of touch-screen display that mounts on regular glass (don’t know any more about it than that – hope to get more information shortly and share).

During the discussion I was reminded that in the earliest days of using NLEs (a Media 100 for me at that time) I had fantasies about being able to edit using a 3D display environment, where in this virtual world the clips would be in space or grouped together in some logical order (these days I’d say that was based on metadata groupings) and the editor could simply move clips around, stack them and build the story along a virtual timeline. Even composite by stacking clips.

Not that I ever really developed the idea beyond that trip to my imagination, it does make me wonder if some sort of surface like that being proposed for regular glass, or even maybe a 30″ Cinema Display type screen, that was a full touch-screen surface that supported gestures, etc. Microsoft’s Surface would be close to the sort of experience I’m visualizing.

In thinking about it further I realized that the sort of work we’ve been doing with metadata would tie in nicely. The metadata would be used to group and regroup clips organizationally, but also to suggest story arcs or generally assist the editor.

It’s probably time for a new editing paradigm.

If not for a future version of FCP or Media Composer, perhaps, for iMovie?

Categories
General Interesting Technology Video Technology

What we learnt from the editor/software face-off at NAB

Let’s start by saying we’re working with a very specific type of video production: trade-show style video where there is an A-roll interview and limited b-roll that goes specifically with the A-roll. These are generally shot on a trade-show booth with shots of product from the booth.

Finisher was originally conceived as the book-end to First Cuts. First Cuts will save documentarians many weeks of work getting to first cuts, with the ability to create first cuts almost instantly while you explore the stories in the footage you have. These cuts are complete with story arc and b-roll. We worked on the assumption that an editor would probably delete the b-roll while they worked on cutting the a-roll into the finished form. (Although not necessarily: I cut one piece while keeping the b-roll around to save me having to go find it again.)

Finisher was suggested by Loren Miller of Keyguides fame who wanted an “editing valet” that would take his a-roll and add b-roll and lower third back in. That suggestion became Finisher.

However, I’ve been long interested in the application to these trade-show type edits that had never been near First Cuts and had to use much simplified metadata. My gut told me that an experienced editor would be faster but the cost effectiveness of a novice with Finisher would be compelling.

I was wrong. As it turned out, I ended up being the editing contender. I was happy about that because I trust my abilities – I’m fast and effective at this type of video. Up against me was the software’s co-developer, Greg Clarke. Greg’s first FCP lessons (other than import XML, export XML, open a Sequence) were on Sunday afternoon ahead of a Tuesday afternoon shootout. To say his editing skills and FCP skills were rudimentary is a huge understatement!

Greg had his edit complete in 27 minutes from being presented with raw footage. (Both competitors saw the footage together in raw form in a new project.) This video shows the Greg + Finisher cut. It’s acceptable but could definitely use an experienced eye.

My cut took 40 minutes to add in lower third and all the b-roll. There is a third cut, which is where I took the Greg + Finisher cut and added my editorial experience to that, which took an additional 11 minutes, for a total of 38 minutes. Yep, almost exactly the same time to get to a finished result.

Until you work on the cost side of the equation. Let’s assume that an experienced editor is going to work for $45 an hour for this type of work. (That’s approximately the Editor’s Guild rate for an assistant on a low budget documentary.) Let’s also assume that we’re paying Interns $15 an hour.

Rounding to nearest quarter hours for easy math, my cut was $33.75 to the producer; the basic Finisher cut would be $7.50 and the Finisher plus novice with editor tidy-up (however you would write that elegantly) would add another $7.50 of craft editor on top of the cost of the Intern cut.

Under half price.

Scaling production

Here’s where it gets exciting (for me anyway – I am easily excited). The Digital Cinema Society and Studio Daily produced some forty videos during NAB 2009 with the talented Chris Knell editing. Let’s assume that Chris got paid the hourly rate he should have and worked 10 hour days (with breaks) to get forty videos done within the week. By rights he should have been paid in the order of $1800 for that time.

One craft editor can tidy and clean four videos an hour (five based on my numbers, but let’s say four). Each video will take an Intern about 30 minutes to prepare a video for the craft editor. We need two Interns to feed the skilled craft editor four videos an hour. (2 Interns producing two cuts with Finisher per hour). Now 10 videos can be produced in 2.5 hours instead of 10 (getting them to the audience faster).

Faster and cheaper: Cost per day is 2.5 x 45 = $112.50 plus 2 x 2.5 x 15 = $75 for a daily total of $187.50. For the four days the editor also gets to enjoy NAB – show or hospitality – and the total cost to the producer is $750, not $1800. The massive reduction in time means that one crew could shoot and edit without damaging their personal health.

So, what I learnt at the Face-off is that Finisher is a tool I can use as an editor (more on that shortly); it helps scale large volume production to get results out faster; and it can substantially reduce the cost of the mass production of these types of video. It was not only Studio Daily producing forty videos but FreshDV, Mac Video and  MacBreak were also producing video and could have achieved similar savings.

Analysis

Both approaches required logging the material. During the Face-off we both trimmed or subclipped our b-roll to individual shots. (Here’s a tip we both used: drop the b-roll clip or clips in a Sequence and add edits, deleting bad sections of b-roll as you go, then convert to independent clips and name something appropriate. Finisher will use the name as metadata).

We also trimmed up our A-roll adding Markers as we went. For Finisher the Markers were added to Sequence Markers and given a duration that the novice wanted to cover with b-roll. I was placing Markers into the A-roll clip – so they would move when I cut the clip – so I could locate where b-roll shots would go based on topic.

What I learnt was that, if I adopted the convention from Finisher and basically added comments to my Markers that matched clip names, I could automate the process of laying in clips to the Timeline – 2 minutes for the Finisher round trip vs 10 or so to do it manually. It’s basically an automation tool.

Plus, as an editor I’d be closer to being finished as I’d place my Markers a heck of a lot better than a novice does/did.

But it’s really in the scaling and cost reduction for mass production that came as a surprise – a pleasant one.

Categories
Video Technology

How to find a needle in a haystack

Over the weekend I got a call from a client who was having trouble capturing the P2-based media he’d shot at HD Expo last Thursday. Now direct digital ingest of DVCPRO HD off P2 media (or copies) through Log and Transfer into Final Cut Pro has been one of the simplest and straightforward workflows since Apple introduced it with FCP 4.5. Basically “it just works”, except it didn’t.

My client followed Shane Ross’ article on importing P2 media to FCP 6 over at creativecow.net and all was good up until the point where the media should show up in Log and Transfer, when nothing happened. 

P2 workflow isn’t my strongest suit, so I referred my guy to Shane. Independently the client contacted his associate at Panasonic about the problem. Both concluded that FCP needed to be re-installed, which I dutifully did, uninstalling FCP 6 first, then re-installing.

There was no change! Troubleshooting is a logical process, something that seems to elude most people. As Sherlock Holmes said:

“Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.”

We had a P2 card reader so to determine whether or not it was the media or the copies, we tried with direct-from-card import; disk images of the cards; and folder copies of the cards. (Both disk images and folder copies had carefully  maintained the file structure from the P2 cards, something that is crucially important.)

To try and eliminate FCP from the equation we tested with the demo versions of P2 Log from Imagine Products and Raylight for Mac from DV Film. Both applications crashed upon any attempt to convert and neither would show a preview. Not looking good for the media’s integrity, however the client had played back the media after shooting so there was a good reason to believe that it was fine.

Finally, the MXF4QT demo from Hamburg Pro Audio showed us that the media was fine, so what was the problem? 

Now comes the two most important tools for troubleshooting: Google.com and CreativeCow.net. While Creative COW has a fairly good search engine, I generally prefer to search via Google so that other sites are included. However, this time a search for “Can’t import P2 media Final Cut Pro” turned up a single thread that suggested there was a conflict between Noise Industry’s “FX Factory” product and the DVCPRO HD codec.

Search terms are important. I usually start with the important words of the problem and application or platform. Too few words and you’ll never find the solution in the results; too many and there will be no match. I like to think about how the answer might be structured and search for words I expect to find in the answer.

What I didn’t know until later was that the FX Factory application has an uninstall option, which would have been much cleaner than searching and deleting applications or components that don’t show up in a Spotlight search but do show up in a Find in the Finder. (Apparently Spotlight won’t show results from the Library or System folders “to protect you from yourself”!)

Once FX Factory was completely uninstalled, the P2 media appeared in the Log and Transfer window as expected, and presumably would also work in the P2 Log and Raylight demos, which appear to draw on the Apple DVCPRO HD codec. MXF4QT doesn’t call that codec so it was able to show the media.

I didn’t check versions of FX Factory and there could well be an update that resolves this problem. My client was more interested in getting to work editing at that point.

Categories
Interesting Technology Metadata Video Technology

What are the different types of metadata we can use in production and post production?

I’ve been thinking a lot about metadata – data about the video and audio assets – particularly since we use metadata extensively in our Intelligent Assistance software products and for media items for sale in Open TV Network. And the new “Faces” and “Places” features in iPhoto ’09 show just how useful metadata can be.

Back in the days when tape-based acquisition ruled there wasn’t much metadata available. If you were lucky there would be an identifying note on or with the tape. For linear editing that was all that was available at the source – the tape. The only other source metadata would be frame rate and frame size, and tape format and perhaps some user bits with the Timecode. With a linear system that was all you could use anyway.

With non-linear editing we moved media into the digital domain and added additional metadata: reel names; clip names, descriptions etc and with digital formats we’re getting more source metadata from the cameras.

But there are more types of metadata than just what the camera provides and what an editor or assistant enters. In fact we think there are four types of metadata: Source, Added, Derived and Inferred. But before I expand on that, let me diverge a little to talk about “Explicit” and “Implicit” metadata.

These terms have had reasonable currency on the Internet and there’s a good post on the subject at Udi’s Spot “Implicit kicks explicit’s *ss.” In this usage, explicit metadata is what people provide explicitly (like pushing a story to the top of Digg) while implicit metadata is based on the tracks that we inadvertently leave.

Actions that create explicit metadata include:

  • Rating a video on Youtube.
  • Rating a song in your music player.
  • Digging a website on Digg.

Actions that create implicit metadata include:

  • Watching a video on Youtube.
  • Buying a product on Amazon.
  • Skipping past a song in your music player as soon as it gets annoying.

We didn’t think those terms were totally useful for production and post production so instead we think there are the four types noted above.

Source

Source Metadata is stored in the file from the outset by the camera or capture software, such as in EXIF format. It is usually immutable.  Examples:

  • timecode and timebase
  • date
  • reel number
  • codec
  • file name
  • duration
  • GPS data
  • focal length, aperture, exposure
  • white balance setting

Added

Added Metadata is beyond the scope of the camera or capture software and has to come from a human. It can be added by a person on-set (e.g. Adobe OnLocation) or during the logging process. Examples:

  • keywords
  • comments
  • event name
  • person’s name
  • mark good
  • label
  • auxiliary timecode
  • transcription of speech (not done by software)

Derived

Derived Metadata is calculated using a non-human external information source. Examples:

  • speech recognition software can produce a transcription
  • a language algorithm can derive keywords from a transcription
  • locations can be derived from GPS data using mapping data (e.g. Eiffel Tower, Paris, France) or even identifying whether somewhere is in a city or the country
  • recalculation of duration when video and audio have different timebases
  • OCR of text within a shot.

Derived metadata is in its infancy but I expect to see a lot more over the next few years.

Inferred

Inferred Metadata is metadata that can be assumed from other metadata without an external information source. It may be used to help obtain Added metadata. Examples: 

  • time of day and GPS data can group files that were shot at the same location during a similar time period (if this event is given a name, it is Added metadata)
  • if time of day timecode for a series of shots is within a period over different locations, and there is a big gap until the next time of day timecode, it can be assumed that those shots were made together at a series of related events (and if they are named, this becomes Added metadata)
  • facial recognition software recognizes a person in 3 different shots (Inferred), but it needs to be told the person’s name and if its guesses are correct (Added) 

We already use inferred metadata in some of our software products. I think we will be using more in the future.

So that’s what we see as the different types of metadata that are useful for production and post production.

Categories
Distribution Video Technology

What’s the difference between a codec and a container or wrapper?

It’s a subject with widespread confusion often leading to only a partial understanding.

There are file containers, sometimes called wrappers, that wrap around a number of video and audio tracks. Each of those tracks will have an appropriate video or audio codec. A codec is a concatenation of “coder – decoder”. Basically it’s like using a secret code or cryptography: as long as the encoder and the decoder understand each other, we get video and audio back out at the other end.

Think of a shipping container. There’s this standard “wrapper” (the container) which tells us nothing. Inside could be a car, computer or a million wrist watches. Like the shipping container, file containers can carry many different types of content – the video and audio tracks. These tracks are encoded with some sort of codec. Most codecs compress the video to reduce file size and time to download (and to increase field recording times in production), but there are codecs that work with uncompressed video. Every track has to have a codec for video and for audio.

Common containers are QuickTime (which supports over 160 codecs at last count); AVI (which probably supports almost that many) and MPEG-4, which supports only a few codecs, but very versatile ones. Common codecs are “MPEG-4”, “Sorenson”, “H.264”, “Animation”, “Cinepac”, etc. (DivX is it’s own thing, as I’ll explain.)

Most QuickTime codecs are for production purposes. The older QT codecs that were used for .mov on the web have been “deprecated” by Apple. They no longer show up as export options in the default install of QuickTime. Nor should they. They’re way too inefficient by modern standards. The last new QT distribution codec was Sorenson Video 3 in July 2001. In codec terms that’s just a little after the Jurassic era.

AVI has been a workhorse. I refer to it as the Zombie format because Microsoft officially killed it in 1996 (when the last development was done). It is still in use in production on PCs and very popular for distribution on the Internet, with more modern codecs. Most AVI production codecs are specific to their hardware parent. A modern .avi file is likely to be a “DivX” file.

DivX is actually a hybrid of an AVI wrapper with an MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile (see later) video codec and an MP3 audio track. This is a bad hybrid of codecs and formats, such that DivX for a while had to have their own player. (MPEG-4 video should go with AAC audio.)

Most often the MPEG-4 codecs are used in the MPEG-4 container. This is a modern, standards-based container not owned by any one company. It is an official International Standards Organization standard. The basic file format was donated by Apple and is heavily based on the QuickTime container, but is NOT the same. You can’t just change the .mov to .mp4 (or reverse) and hope it’ll work. (It will in the QT player but nowhere else.)

The first codec that the Motion Picture Experts Group (a.k.a. MPEG) approved is properly called MPEG-4 Part 2 ‘Simple Profile’ or ‘Advanced Simple Profile’. This was such a great marketing name, that Apple just called it simply “MPEG-4,” thereby creating huge confusion for everyone as the distinction between codec and container was totally blurred! Thanks Apple! Not! Apple only supported Simple Profile; Sorenson and DivX used Advanced Simple Profile and there were components for QuickTime (not made by Apple) that played Advanced Simple Profile MPEG-4 as well as Simple Profile MPEG-4.

DivX uses the Advanced Simple Profile but in an AVI wrapper, as noted above.

Then just a few years ago, the MPEG association approved a new codec, to be used in the same MPEG-4 wrapper, called (in full) MPEG-4 Part 10 the Advanced Video Codec (AVC). The European ITU also supported the same codec independent of MPEG-4 (so it could be used in other wrappers) as H.264. They’re all the MPEG-4 codec that is Part 10, Advanced Video Codec or H.264.

And yes it is possible to put an AVC/H.264 video track in a QT .mov, but that’s a different container and only QT will play it. MPEG-4 is an ISO standard and there are more than 20 player implementations.

It is AVC/H.264 video with AAC audio (the MPEG audio standard) in an MPEG-4 container that is now playable in QuickTime Player, iTunes, on Apple Devices, in 20 standard players and in Flash 9 release 3 or later (9r3 was finalized in Nov 2007 and is now widely installed). Microsoft have also announced support for H.264 MPEG-4 is coming in Silverlight in 2009, and Windows 9 Media Player has support built in for those same files.

3GPP and 3GPP2 cell phone codecs are part of the MPEG-4 family fwiw.

Hope that helps and makes sense.