In LA

I’m pleased with the look of the footage. The edit was just a quick bit of fun. Mostly this was about testing my DSLR video workflow, with a secondary goal of cracking my sister up.

If you set HD to ‘on’ and go fullscreen, or click through to the video’s vimeo.com page and find the download link low in the right column, you can see this one at 1080p resolution. If the embedded video doesn’t play smoothly, try pausing it and waiting for it to finish loading before hitting play, or toggle HD to off.

pizza and the dream of not being filmed from ZachFine on Vimeo.

A little video of an evening of pizza-making and camera-dodging.

Shot and uploaded at 1080p resolution, so feel free to toggle HD to on and play this one back fullscreen.

Video shot with Canon Digital REBEL T2i DSLR set to the “superflat” picture style. Canon 50mm f1.8 lens.
Converted to Apple Prores, edited in Final Cut Pro 7.0.2, graded in Apple Color.

Exported to the QuickTime H264 at 1080p24, restricted to 8000kbps, audio 44.1Khz 16-bit AAC 128kbps.

Music: the first third of “free space incesticide” by Eight Frozen Modules.

Coming soon, the results of my test shoot of several of the most popular “flat” color styles people have been using in their attempts to preserve the maximum amount of picture information in the H264 files recorded by Canon DSLRs.

I shot the same setup with 5 different color style settings, and will be looking at all of them in Apple Color in order to determine which setting I prefer.

I’m well aware that tradition holds that no camera test is complete without a photo of a beautiful lady holding a redundant umbrella and smiling at the photographer, but I decided plastic grapes would just as ably serve that function¹.

1. And the grapes had to stand-in, as no people were around when I shot these tests [↩]

I know a lot of editors who like to leave Final Cut Pro’s “Browser” in large icon mode so that they can see a visual representation of each clip. I happen to think that the Browser’s list view is more compact and displays more useful information for each clip. But that layout is a hard sell for visual thinkers.

Enter the Browser’s Thumbnail column:

To enable this column, just right-click any column header, and select “Show Thumbnail” from the contextual popup menu:

Just as in icon view, you can click on each thumbnail and drag left and right to scan through the clip’s contents. If you press the “control” key any time while scanning through the clip and keep it held down as you release the mouse button, you’ll change the “poster frame” displayed in the thumbnail for that clip to the last frame displayed.

It’s worth noting that the thumbnails, at least in the case of the 16:9 clips I used for these screen captures, are not displayed at the proper aspect ratio. It is also worth noting that the thumbnail doesn’t change size if the user widens the Browser’s Thumbnail column. I’m sure these small issues will be fixed in some future version of FCP (wink wink nudge nudge Apple ;) .

What do you get for the dictator who has everything? If Uranium Ore’s your game, Amazon’s got you covered.

I’m intrigued by the difference in price between a new can of Uranium at $29.95, and “1 used from $2,499.00″. Does “used” in Amazon-speak mean “enriched”?

In case you’re curious, yes that is an “Amazon associates” link at right. There’s undoubtedly a growing market for Uranium, and I want my cut.

The product’s page at Amazon is home to some very funny reviews. A sample:

Hat tip to the Fatwallet Hot Deals Forum for the original post.

For those who’d like to buy a Canon Rebel T2i without the kit lens, it looks as though Amazon’s now taking preorders for the T2i body:

Canon EOS Rebel T2i (Body Only) – $799.99

I’d expect the fact that they’re taking preorders means they have a shipment coming to their distribution centers from Canon. Just a guess.

When I bought my T2i, it seemed only the kits with lens were available for purchase. I decided I didn’t mind having the extra lens, as then I could loan my Rebel XT to people with a decent lens that I didn’t care too much about. But maybe that was just rationalization and if the body-only version of the T2i were available I’d have gone for it.

My previous post, on how to get a discounted price on a Canon T2i, might still apply (if you want to buy the camera on eBay).

For those wondering why I’m so excited about this camera; It’s because the T2i is a way to shoot decent HD video with a relatively large sensor and great lenses for under $1000. Such tools for good-looking budget filmmaking are hitting the streets and will change the nature of online video, if not also segments of television and theatrical film.

The house is set to vote on a big healthcare bill on Sunday, and I haven’t really been keeping up on the massive changes that the plan has gone through on its way to the vote, so I did some poking around on the net today. Maybe these links will be of use to others as well.

• Here’s a quick summary of what the bill puts forth (from The New York Times):

  The bills would expand coverage by making more lower-income people eligible for Medicaid, and by offering subsidies to help moderate-income people buy insurance. They would forbid insurance companies from denying coverage of pre-existing conditions, and would create insurance exchanges — new government-regulated marketplaces where individuals and small businesses could come together to buy coverage. The 160 million Americans who get their coverage through their employer would stay with that insurance. Nearly everyone would be required to get insurance or face a penalty, and businesses would be required to provide coverage or contribute to its cost.

• It looks like there’s a decent breakdown of the healthcare bill on a CNN blog.
• A slightly more detailed summary is here at CNN
• The white house’s sales pitch for the plan

One of the more rational-sounding objections I often hear about the Obama administration’s focus on healthcare reform (which should be called “health insurance reform”) is that, with the economy in a sorry state, this is the wrong time to be focusing on health care costs. To my mind this argument is a non-starter and a false dichotomy. There’s no reason to believe that healthcare reform is unrelated to, and can’t be considered at the same time as pressing economic repairs. In a system in which most people have health insurance tied to employment; A rise in unemployment leads to a rise in under or uninsured people.

The question that matters to me is how this plan will affect the economic and social well-being of this country. Will it drive up the deficit? (the CBO says it’ll do the opposite, I’m sure I’ll find plenty of voices that disagree). Will it drive up insurance costs? (The proposed market for people and companies to shop for insurance sounds like an interesting way to lower costs using market forces). What is a “cadillac” insurance plan? I’ll be poking around those links and others to try and figure out what I can today to decide whether to call my representative to offer a word of encouragement.

I was surprised to see this item at its position in Amazon’s bestsellers in Electronics, so I tweeted about it. I added this image, which went straight to posterous, which autoposted here. I’ve changed the date to push this post into the past so that it doesn’t show up on the front page of my blog. Even I set limits for how uninteresting a post I’ll leave sitting on the front page.