A Videographer’s Guide to Hiring a Videographer
I learned some painful lessons about hiring a videographer last year for our wedding. A friend who’s getting married this year asked me about it. Here’s what I shared.
Rclone Cloud Archival Pro Tips
The previous post detailed how Rclone can reliably upload large files with their checksums to Backblaze unlike other programs. This post will outline the workflow and some gotchas to keep in mind when doing massive data loads over the internet.
Missing Checksums in NAS Cloud Archives
Backblaze B2 is an incredibly cost-effective cloud-based archival platform. I had a few TBs of large file video footage stored on a Synology NAS that I wanted to archive to B2, in case anything happened to my local array.
Lossless Trimming of XAVC-S with PlayMemories
Sometimes it’s a live gig and I’m doing multiple things, like camera and sound. Throw in some stage delays and out of a 56 minute clip, half is not needed. On a Sony AX100 shooting at 1080p XAVCS 30fps, that’s 11 out of 22 GB extra.
Conforming FiLMiC Video for NLEs
I knew that normal iPhone videos are variable frame rate. Learned that the hard way, once when I was given a concert recorded on an iPhone to sync up to mastered audio. #superfail #ididntrecordthis
Conforming Livestream Video for NLEs
I’ve recently been experimenting with realtime editing of live events. That way I can speed up turnaround times for multicam edits, especially for 2+ hour events like typical Indian classical dances and concerts.
Adjusting Date and Time on Mac Photos Exports
Maybe I’m too used to rewriting history in Git, but sometimes I modify the create date of my pictures and videos. Metadata.
Using RenderGarden to Multithread After Effects Exports
Recently, I found myself deinterlacing footage from two Blu-ray discs using some Red Giant After Effects plugins. The two compositions were HD 1080 59.94i files, 51 minutes and 94 minutes each. My jaw dropped when I saw the estimated time for just the first file start at 50 hours, and keep increase. Plenty of CPU was still available on the mach...
The Quest for Media Management
With over twenty years of Indian classical music concert footage, I’ve always dreamt of tagging each file by raga, tala, artist, audio quality, etc. to quickly pull up footage based on smart bins. Looking for Śivarañjanī? No problem. Dhrupad? Got that too. How about all files that need audio synced up? Coming right up.
Using an Apogee ONE for Livestream Audio
Earlier this year, I was livestreaming a music concert where there was no access to the soundboard’s mic output. It was a low-key, unlisted stream for family and friends, but I still wanted a find a way to improve the audio quality rather than using the camera’s built-in mic.
Resizing Video with After Effects and Instant 4K
This May, I tried something new and recorded a HD Wirecast livestream to disk as ProRes 422 @ 480p to help save on disk space/throughput.
Livestream Lessons Learned, Again
Apparently I forgot my own advice. Use fast external disks as the destination.
Persisting Finder Labels in Cloud Storage
I often use Finder labels colors to manage media, specifically colors. These can easily indicate statuses: green for complete, blue for “cold storage” projects, red for abandoned projects, etc. These labels however are not supported on many popular bucket storage, e.g. Amazon S3 and Backblaze B2.
Best Practices for Large Web Transfers
Sometimes, when collaborating on projects virtually, file storage becomes a problem. Professional studios can probably run highly performant SFTP servers or bucket storage systems, but when you’re working with other freelancers on tight budgets—who may not be as tech savvy—a 30 GB file starts becoming a big problem.
Repairing H.264 Interlaced Footage
We’ll start with a quote from Larry Jordan: X.264 and H.264 should only be used when creating files for the web. If you plan to edit the resulting file, convert it to ProRes instead. AVCHD files compressed into H.264 for editing will look just awful.
Livestreaming Lessons Learned
Last May, for Chhandayan’s All-Night Concert 2015 in NYC, I cut between two cameras in the livestream for the first time. Little did I know, there was a lot to learn.
How to Add Timecode to MP4 Files
Newer, prosumer codecs these days like Sony XAVC-S don’t seem to record video with timecode. It’s one of the chief drawbacks that knocks the otherwise brilliant Sony AX100 from solid professional use. Timecode tracks can save mountains of time when editing multicamera shots, relinking media files, trimming clips precisely and so on—which, osten...
FCP X 10.2.2 Unaffected by XMP Metadata Changes
There is quite a bit of literature on the net how Adobe applications can embed XMP metadata and modify original footage on import—wreaking havoc for other NLEs like FCP. Posts range as far back as 2011, the year FCP X was released, to even one in mid 2014. However, for those that roundtrip between FCP X and Adobe with XMP metadata, turns ou...
Renaming MP4 to M4V to open with QT7 & Compressor
For a long time, Sony’s XAVC-S codec was completely a mystery to me. It was the new format the Sony CX900 and AX100 use, and when those cameras originally shipped, the files could not be edited natively with FCP X. (Version 10.2 added that functionality.)
Reverse Engineering XAVC-S XML Files
Many new Sony video cameras (like the FDR-AX100 and HDR-CX900) record into the XAVC-S format. XAVC-S writes to MP4 containers, and alongside them sit nice little XML files with metadata. The following is what I’ve unearthed from poking around the SD card.