Auscam October 2011 by Australian Videocamera

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The Video Magazine for Broadcast, Film, Professional, Enthusiast and Beginner

Full Field Test: Sony HXR-NX70P

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October 2011 Issue #37 $7.95

After Effects guru James Whiffen

BENQ M23, Kaiser Baas Sport Camera Sony MoviEZ HD, Corel Video Studio, Final Draft Plus... Microsoft Flight Sim and video,Livescribe Smartpen, Rotolight, Windows 8 and more write | light | shoot | edit | distribute

Heavyweights of Lightweights!

AG-AC130EN • 3 x 1/3” Full-HD U.L.T MOS Sensors • Powerful 22x HD Zoom Lens • Full-HD (1920x1080) Professional PH Mode AVCHD Recording to SD Memory Cards AG-AF102EN • Large Format 4/3 MOS Sensor • Interchangeable Lens Mount* • Full-HD (1920x1080) Professional PH Mode AVCHD Recording to SD Memory Cards

AG-AC160EN

• HD-SDI Out

• 3 x 1/3” Full-HD U.L.T MOS Sensors • Powerful 22x HD Zoom Lens • Full-HD (1920x1080) Professional PH Mode AVCHD Recording to SD Memory Cards AG-HPX250EN

• HD-SDI Out

• 3 x 1/3” Full-HD U.L.T MOS Sensors • Powerful 22x HD Zoom Lens • Full-HD (1920x1080) 10-bit, 4:2:2 AVC-Intra Recording to P2 Memory Cards • HD-SDI Out and Gen-lock In

Panasonic’s exceptional new range of powerful handheld cameras are feature-heavy…with the advantage of being lightweight and flexible. Employing Full-HD (1920x1080) recording, built in ND filters, either high-powered 22x HD zoom lens or interchangeable M43 lens mount and professional XLR microphone inputs, these diversely capable cameras let you deal with the every-day, while still being able to step up and take on the challenges of the most demanding shoot.

For more information go to www.panasonic-broadcast.com.au Panasonic Australia. Phone: (02) 9491 7400 Email: broadcastsales@panasonic.com.au *Lens shown is sold separately

Insider/ Insider/ Hardware/

From the Editor_____________________________________________________ 2 Buddy’s Bits & Pieces________________________________________________ 4 Kaiser Baas Sports Camera__________________________________________ 7

Sony HXR-NX70P Hardware/ Feature/ Software/ Software/

Smartsound’s Sonic Fire Pro – Express Track Edition____________________24 Windows 8 Preview________________________________________________26 Rotolight Creative Colour Kit_________________________________________28 Sony MoviEZ HD __________________________________________________31 Classic Scene _____________________________________________________32 Livescribe Echo ___________________________________________________34 Viewsonic VP2365wb ______________________________________________36 Microsoft Media Center and Codecs __________________________________37 Business as usual _________________________________________________38 Small is good______________________________________________________40

Into the Lens Insider/ Insider/ It’s a Wrap/

Benq M23________________________________________________________12 James Whiffin, VFX Whiz____________________________________________14 Corel VideoStudio Pro X4___________________________________________16 Final Draft 8_______________________________________________________18

Helicopter flying in Far North Queensland: real versus virtual Software/ Software/ Hardware/ Software/ Feature/ Hardware/ Hardware/ Playback/ Feature/ Hardware/

2011

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Training Materials__________________________________________________42 Book Reviews_____________________________________________________43 Going Solo________________________________________________________44

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2011

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esterday while driving home from dropping Budweiser the Dog off for his bath (a special one to get rid of a nasty skin disease he inherited from a dead fox I am told), I had what these days is a rarity, a blowout. The front right hand tyre decided it had had enough, and suddenly spawned a 3 inch rip in the inside sidewall. Thankfully it was only in an 80 k/h zone and around 200 metres from The Shed. No damage was done, although this is an expensive exercise, tyre costs being what they are. At 110 k/h it might have been a little more nasty, and if on gravel, nastier still. I have my best mate in the business (Gliddon’s Tyrepower in Bennett St East Perth if you need tyres), but in this case a) the saving I would make by driving 300Km to get a new one is not worth it for one tyre and b) as the Monaro comes with a dreaded space saver spare, I have no desire to travel that distance at a speed below 80 k/h. So I have to buy one locally. There are two tyre dealers within the area. The first is mainly truck and farm machinery oriented and the second, when I went there said he couldn’t help. No offer to get one in, no suggestions nothing. When I suggested I may have to go to the next town (40Km away), he replied with the statement that I’d find one there! Why do I bring this up? Totally coincidentally in our Business section this edition I have a piece on customer service and what we expect. Of course it is related to the video industry, but as this experience proves, it is not the only one that suffers from bad service or more so in this case, a missed opportunity. Why? Becuase soon I’ll need another three tyres, balancing, fitting and aligning – a tidy sale of well over $1000. Add to this that the cause of the blowout has been determined to be a bent rim, you can add to that a set of new wheels! The trouble is it will not be a salutary lesson learnt by this dealer (unless I tell him). We have plenty of other stuff of course too. Camcorder reviews from “sports” models to Sony’s latest broadcast unit for ENG and outside work and the most basic of editing software to an interview with an expert of arguably the most complex (After Effects). Throw in some flight simulation, a review of Windows 8, using Windows Media Center*, making audio with Smartsound, shooting video with an iPhone and scriptwriting so there is a monstrous cross section of material. Finally, we have been a tad lax in promoting our DVD training material to help you get more from your software, camcorder, accessories or skills. We are now in the process of adding excerpts to our website from the DVDs, so if you are thinking of getting some training, but not sure you want to spend the money, this should give you some more confidence in buying exactly what you need. As always, thanks for all your support, and if you have any ideas, queries, suggestions or brickbats/complaints, feel free to contact me by email at david@auscamonline.com David and the Auscam Team. *Yes I KNOW ‘Center’ should be spelt ‘Centre’, but in this case it is a trademark!

Publisher & Managing Editor David Hague Contributors Dr Frank McLeod, Steve Turner, Ben Longden, Chris Oaten, Adam Turner, Anthony Caruana, Juanita Grayson, Dr David Smith, Andrew Ferguson, Drew Turney Design & Layout Drew Turney psipublishinganddesign.com Photography Ross Gibb rossgibbphotos.com.au Advertising David Hague david@auscamonline.com Ph: 0413 632 286 Auscam is published by VBtheDog Productions Pty Ltd (ACN 128 231 247) PO Box 609 Bridgetown WA 6255 Tel: 08 9467 5922/0413 632286 Web: www.auscamonline.com Email: info@auscamonline.com Printed in Australia The data in this publication has been compiled from information supplied by various manufacturers and distributors. As such, Auscam, its writers, editors, contributors and employees cannot be held liable for any errors therein with regard, but not limited to, specifications or prices.As with any purchase, please check all details before continuing with the transaction.

Budweiser The Dog 2

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Buddy’s Bits & Pieces

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Budweiser the Dog’s monthly round-up of all the latest news and developments you need to know from the world of film, video and AV.

Sony XDCAM HD chosen for Seven News Sony Australia has completed the roll out of a multi-million dollar deal with the Seven Network for the supply of Sony XDCAM cameras for the network’s electronic news gathering (ENG) operations across Australia. The Seven partnership with Sony is part of a replacement program that encompasses all ENG cameras for the network. The deal includes a total of 60+ PDW-700 XDCAM HD422 disc camcorders, two PMW-500 XDCAM HD422 memory camcorders for the network’s LA bureau, and a large quantity of supporting PDW-F1600 decks, PDW-U1 drives and PDW-HR1 field stations. Sony says the new XDCAM camera systems will allow speedy transfer of footage from remote news locations back to the station – enabling high quality news coverage to get to air in less time.

Panasonic Australia announces the new AV-HS410 live switcher

Panasonic Australia has announced a new live switcher for professional broadcast use, the AV-HS410. Like its predecessor, the AV-HS400A, the new AV-HS410 is a compact, all-inone 19” type rack-size 1 ME live switcher that is only around 48 centimetres (19-inches) wide but provides in its standard configuration nine signal inputs, expandable with option boards to a maximum of 13 signal inputs (HD/ SD switchable). The AV-HS410 will be available in late November. The 7-inch colour LCD panel displays

settings in an easy-to-read format, and ease-of-use is further enhanced by the new memory preview function, an improved multi-view function and a simple key layout optimised for live broadcasts. Excellent expandability is provided by optional board slots enabling support for a variety of input signals, including 3D cameras, and by the provision of a Software Development Kit (SDK) that makes it possible to add software-based functions.

RØDE celebrates ‘15 years of classic sound’ with limited edition classic ii To commemorate the Classic and Classic II tube microphones, RØDE has announced a custom edition of its Classic II, exclusively limited to an edition of 500 worldwide. The release of this microphone coincides with RØDE’s decision to retire the RØDE Classic lineage, following a celebrated 15 years as the Australian microphone manufacturer’s flagship model. At the heart of the microphones’ ‘classic sound’ is the 6072 twin triode valve, as found in most of history’s most revered transducers. The transformer, custom designed by Jensen to perfectly match the 6072, pairs with the valve to provide the signature classic warmth. Both the Classic and Classic II capsules are hand assembled dual pressure gradient transducers, sputtered with pure gold. The microphone body is machined from solid brass and polished by hand before coating with stain nickel. continued page 6

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Welcome to the most exciting way to create television programming... Live! Introducing the world’s most advanced live production switcher! ATEM switchers include advanced technology and powerful features, all built into a familiar M/E design that’s fast and easy to use! With an advanced broadcast SDI based design, ATEM also includes HDMI connections for connecting HDMI consumer cameras or computers! The new ATEM has been totally redesigned with Blackmagic Design technology and quality. Live switching multiple cameras is the lowest cost and fastest video production possible! Live Creative Power Get the most creative solution for live switching, with cut, mix, wipe, dip, DVE, graphic wipe and stinger transitions! Load clips into the 2 built in media players for exciting custom animated stinger transitions! ATEM includes a built in DVE with 3D borders, light source and drop shadow! You can even use the DVE for transitions!

More Connections ATEM includes loads of SDI and HDMI connections for professional SDI cameras or HDMI consumer cameras! All inputs feature re-sync so you can plug in anything! You get 6 program outputs in SDI/HD-SDI, HDMI, HD component and USB 3.0, plus down converted SD-SDI and composite video. The multi view includes SDI and HDMI, plus you get 3 aux outputs. Built to Perform ATEM uses a familiar M/E style of operation so you get an instantly familiar workflow that’s fast and easy to use. ATEM includes a software based control panel for Mac and Windows! If you need a hardware control panel then simply add the ATEM 1 M/E Broadcast Panel for a true broadcast grade solution. ATEM even uses an FAA certified operating system for a high reliability broadcast grade design.

Incredible Features Only ATEM includes 4 upstream keyers, each with independent chroma, pattern, shaped and linear keying, 2 downstream keyers, graphic wipes, stinger transitions, 2 built in media players, DVE transitions and more! The built in multi view allows all cameras, preview and program to be viewed on a single SDI or HDMI monitor, so ATEM is perfect for portable location use! Now you can cover any live event, anywhere!

ATEM 1 M/E Production Switcher

Full 2 RU ATEM switcher chassis includes Mac and Windows control software.

ATEM 1 M/E Broadcast Panel

Traditional M/E style broadcast quality hardware control panel.

2,525 $5,035

Learn more today at www.blackmagic-design.com/atem

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2011

This new limited edition Classic II microphone is the most exclusive offering that RØDE has ever presented –– only 500 microphones will be crafted, and then the RØDE Classic badge will be retired into audio history. For the very first time the RØDE Classic is finished in a lustrous matte black, with the ‘15 Years of Classic Sound’ logo proudly etched onto the microphone’s brass body to signify the microphone’s esteemed status as one of the most revered tube microphones of the last 30 years. A second of the extremely rare 6072 twin triode tubes is supplied in a custom made, etched aluminium storage cylinder to ensure that this microphone’s classic sound will last for many years to come. A leather bound

embossed collector’s coffee table book documents the history of RØDE’s flagship microphone. See rodemic.com for more details

New versions of Adobe Premiere/ Photoshop Elements

AUD$145.76 in GST • Adobe Premiere Elements 10 for an estimated street price of AUD$145.76 in GST See adobe.com.au for more details.

Epson’s affordable Wireless HD 3D home theatre projectors Epson has released two affordable ranges of active 3D 1080p home theatre projectors, the first aimed at family home viewing and the second for custom installers, each range including a model equipped with WirelessHD connectivity to eliminate the need for cable connections to Blu-ray players, game consoles or set top boxes. The family home viewing range includes the EH-TW5900 (RRP $2199), EH-TW6000 (RRP $2499), and the EH-TW6000W (RRP $2799) with WirelessHD connectivity enabling the wireless transfer of digital signals from Blu-ray players, game consoles or set top boxes without compression or deterioration, giving high quality images every time. This range has light output up to 2200 lumens and contrast ratios up

to 40,000:1. All three projectors have two 10W speakers to deliver immediate sound from all sources, horizontal and vertical keystone correction up to 30 degrees with a horizontal slide keystone correction allowing the projector to be offset from centre so players can stand in front of the screen when playing console games, two HDMI ports, and the EH-TW6000 and EH-TW6000W come with two pairs of 3D glasses. The custom install range includes the EH-TW8000 and EH-TW9000W both with light output of 2400 lumens and contrast ratio of 200,000:1. See epson.com.au for more details.

Adimex to include free Ikan V5600 monitor with AJA’s new FS2 Adimex has announced a limited time special offer for Australian and New Zealand customers who would like to purchase AJA?s FS2. Introduced at NAB this year, the AJA FS2 delivers a whole world of possibilities for anyone that needs to convert video and audio from one format to another. Dual Independent 3G/HD/SD Up/ Down/Cross Video Frame Synchronizers, along with Dual 16 Channel Audio Processors, means that the AJA FS2 is the master of solving a myriad of signal conversion problems making it ideally suited for broadcast facilities, production trucks and other multi-format production environments. n

Adobe has announced the launch of Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 and Adobe Premiere Elements 10 – the newest versions of Adobe’s consumer photo- and video-editing software. Products being announced include: • Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 & Adobe Premiere Elements 10 bundle for an estimated street price of AUD$218 inc GST • Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 for an estimated street price of 6

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David Hague explains the rise and rise of the action camcorder and in particular the latest from Kaiser Baas.

he introduction of the incar cameras in motor sport particularly pioneered by the ABC in Australia has caused a whole new genre of video photography. Kaiser Baas has chosen to call this the Sports Camera sector and just released a new micro camera-cum-camcorder they call – ta da! – the Sports Camera! In the past, footage from such cameras would not be touched with a barge pole by the TV networks; even footage from a MiniDV camcorder was not deemed

them embedded in kerbs, under wheel arches, bolted to sub-frames, inside helmets and in headlight mounts. And what used to cost tens of thousands is, in the case of the Kaiser Baas flavour, only $149.95 (although admittedly there is no radio transmitter attached). But for your money you do get a 5 megapixel still and video camera (HD no less), that also has motion detection, is waterproof to 20m, has an infra-red LED for low light capture, runs for 3 hours off a USB charge and weighs 75 grams.

is quite good. It’s not as good as my Canon HV 20 bolted to my Hague (no relation) seat headrest mount,

acceptable. I had one rejected, and had to convert it to BetacamSP so the stations would air it! (TV savvy people will know how stupid that is). Strangely, it was the Iraq war and 9/11 that screwed all that as footage from cameras other than full blooded TV shoulder mount beasties was needed; the public was clammering for shots that had never been seen before unless taken by “amateurs” and the stations were fighting each other to be first with the latest “new angle” of a story. No longer was a race car video from the grandstand OK when someone else could shoot it from inside the car with driver commentary! The first I recall was in Peter Williamson’s Toyota Celica at Bathurst, and whilst not exactly a micro camera, it gave us a view of the race and the circuit never before seen. Later, Peter Brock gave us a running commentary and even said “Bev, take a memo…” referring to his then wife, just before his car expired on Mountain Straight at Bathurst. Cleverly he used the camera to allow the mechanics back at the pits to diagnose the problem! Of course, as technology marched, these cameras became smaller and smaller, and now in 2011, we have

Storage is to a MicroSD card (up to 32Gb) and you can set the recording option to be continuous to 10 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes or 10 minutes. The capture angle is 120 degrees. Maximum storage is 3 hours/charge. The Sports Camera comes with a “handlebar” mount affair, which can limit its use somewhat; there’s no way any of the plethoras of mounts available with standard mounts as used for flashes, mics etc can be used. I am sure some adaption can be made to compensate but standardising would be better. An elastic strap is supplied with the camera, but again I am not sure this would afford enough stability to get really serious high action footage without the jitters. Having said that, the image quality

nor my Sony TRV10E attached to my windscreen mount as used in Top Gear. Both of these are tape based as against the memory based storage of the Sports Camera, but the trade-off is size and weight and flexibility versus quality. In a commercial shoot, would the public notice? Yes. But for action freaks out there who are drivers, bikers, divers, hunters, swimmers, climbers and so on, as long as a suitable mount can be found to give the stability needed, at this price, the Sports Camera is a bargain. Footage can be loaded into an editor via USB or played back directly on a TV via the supplied A/V cable. A small manual is supplied that covers the operations and is adequate for the purpose. n

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Kaiser Baas Sports Camera

Auscam Rating Performance

We Liked

Documentation

Size, waterproof, convenience, value for money

Features

Disliked

Setup

Non standard mount

Value for money

Help Functions

Price

$149.95

Contact

Kaiser Baas kaiserbaas.com or 1800 657 601 7

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hardware

Sony HXR-NX70P The Amazing Race crew could use one and probably David Attenborough’s crew too. Steve Turner plays with the new weather proof offering from Sony – the HXR-NX70P.

Heart of darkness: Nice in low light!

iche marketing can be a tricky business. Canon did well with the HV10 a few years back by targeting the mountain climbing, parachuting, jungle trekking market and now Sony has found a more innovative way into the same jungle. By simply making this camera seriously weather proof it stands out from the crowded market it’s playing in. The NX70P has the internationally recognised weather proof rating of IPx4 for water and IPx5 for dust. There’s only one higher rating for dust and four for water. The dust rating gets you serious protection from dust damaging the cameras operations but is not totally dust proof. I’m guessing though that you’d have to be in such a serious dust hazard that it’s you that stops functioning first and not the camera! The water rating means it’s good

for rain showers stopping short of direct force against the camera’ and again you’d think it’s the shooter that will fall first due to the weather. The higher ratings for water cover increasing amount of force (hoses etc) and seriously, when are you going to out in weather that bad? (OK, maybe Hurricane chasers need to take care). It’s also not an underwater camera so don’t get any ideas there! The real point here is that it takes away the stab of worry I always get as soon as my camera gets even slightly moist or I get engulfed in dust (following a car along a dirt road or shooting 4WD action for instance). I don’t think it’ll make me complacent as protecting the camera has become second nature but it does relieve the stress that difficult shoots can bring. I borrowed an NX70P from Adelaide’s ProAV and headed off for a leisurely weekend of skiing at Mt Buller.

Given that I still spend a great deal of time looking up at the sky instead of gliding down the slopes I didn’t risk skiing with the camera. It does not have an idiot rating high enough to protect it from me and my wayward technique. What I did do is take it out at night when it was seriously cold and damp. It got very wet and covered in snow and ice. I would normally have freaked out about this. Actually I simply would not have gone out shooting come to think of it and that sums up the change – you will think of new shoots you can achieve that were pretty much closed off before. continued page 10

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Go Behind The Scenes To Discover The RØDE Difference

ØDE Microphones is proud to announce the launch of ‘The RØDE Difference’ (therodedifference.com), a new web site and online campaign that goes behind the scenes of the Australian microphone manufacturer, publicly sharing for the very first time the secrets and techniques behind how they produce their world-class microphones. For over 20 years RØDE has designed and manufactured professional microphones and accessories from its headquarters in Sydney, Australia. Bucking the trend and maintaining its manufacturing outside of the current low cost labour regions, RØDE relies on passionate and innovative product design, combined with precision automation and state-of-the-art manufacturing

tolerance of thousandths of a millimetre and you demand ultimate accuracy and consistency – it’s really a bit of a joke. Somewhat like suggesting you would purchase a laptop computer someone had ‘handmade’ with hobby shop parts and a soldering iron.”

techniques to bring its products to market at prices that defy conventional logic. This passion and ideology is encapsulated in The RØDE Difference. It represents an ethos that sets RØDE apart amongst its pro audio peers. “In the early 1990s RØDE was one of a handful of companies that changed the status quo.” commented Peter Freedman, Founder and President of RØDE. “We knew the time was right to produce world class recording equipment that was accessible to everyone.” “It wasn’t easy. Lots of hard work, but history has proven that we made the right decision to invest in precision Australian design and manufacturing. Now almost 20 years later there are close to a million musicians, artists, filmmakers and engineers worldwide that have and continue to benefit from The RØDE Difference.” Visitors to therodedifference.com will get to join Mr Freedman as he personally guides them on an intimate tour, sharing and explaining the company’s innovative manufacturing techniques and processes that were once closely guarded trade secrets. Mr Freedman considers it an appropriate time to open the doors to the audio community and allow them to discover the extent of RØDE’s commitment to creating the very finest microphones. “There are some companies that like to tout the romantic notion of ‘handmade’ microphones – visions of the greyhaired engineer in a pristine white lab coat spending days meticulously assembling a single transducer. But this isn’t what handmade means to microphones. You cannot produce products equal to the quality and consistency of RØDE in this way, when you are dealing in

those used by Swiss watch makers and high-end European and Japanese auto makers. Along with this RØDE designs and manufactures custom machines made in the RØDE engineering shop. “The RØDE facility and engineering expertise is actually unique in the world of microphone manufacturing.” continued Mr Freedman. “Even the largest and most prestigious names subcontract infrequently-used test and analysis devices, as well as some complex machining processes. Some of the companies that supply our equipment have even asked us to show them how we are able to achieve the results we do. As an engineer and manufacturer, that makes me exceptionally proud.” RØDE invites you to discover The RØDE Difference at therodedifference.com n

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RØDE’s manufacturing and product design methodologies are shared by only a handful of large and well established European and US based microphone manufacturers, but a key aspect to The RØDE Difference is that all the design, testing, manufacturing and technical expertise is owned and controlled in-house by RØDE. The CNC machines RØDE have invested in are the same as

RØDE

A special advertising feature from RØDE Microphones.

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hardware

The Tech Stuff Viewfinder

3.5 inch LCD

Exmor R CMOS chip

1/2.88inch (nearly1/3inch)

Lens

Sony G lens : F1.8-F3.4 : 10x optical zoom : 26.3 at the wide end.

Records to

Internal 98gig drive or memory Stick/SD cards.

Shutter Speed Range 1/6 – 1/10000 (Manual Shutter Speed Control) Audio input

XLR 3-pin (female) (x 2), LINE/MIC/MIC +48 V selectable

Still Picture Storage Dimensions

4672 x 2628 at 12.3 megapixels

To sum up the weather proofing issue though, it’s not the soft c**ks like me who stay in nice chalets that Sony are targeting but the hard arsed adventurers who need solid weather proof reliability in seriously adverse conditions. One note of caution though. The weatherproofing does not cover the attachable handle that has all the pro audio gear on it so if it gets nasty detach and put that safely away.

Looking down the barrel The NX70P is a small camera but that will suit the market it’s playing to. People who want this unit are not in the market where size will matter. It’s the classic “it’s not how big it is but what you do with it” scenario. It’s slightly bigger than the Canon XF100 which is one of its nearest rivals and with the handle attached is easy to use. Unusually, the battery is inside the LCD door and inside another sealed door. Another effective way of weather proofing the unit. There’s a very good multi-function front ring and as I nearly always say, my choice would be to set this for focus and leave it. The back end has the card slot and I like the generously comfortable eyecup. The 3.5inch LCD screen is crystal clear and good even in bright daylight and the menus are simple, intuitive, and easy to get around. As is the case these days, most are set and forget leaving you to get on with creating your images. 10

Picture this Seriously, is there a bad camera in this market? No is the simple answer and this one is very good. Considering it sports a modest 1/2.88inch (let’s call that 1/3inch shall we?) CMOS chip I was really impressed with the sharpness and colour that this little camera pumps out. It has a powerful motor cranking 28mbps flat out. You can slow it down to as low as 9 but once again, why would you? With some clever engineering this camera boasts fantastic low light capability. The sensor is the Exmor R that Sony designed for smaller cameras and they claim it has twice the sensitivity of most CMOS chips. I didn’t measure it but I was impressed with the lack of noise in the low light images I shot. The lens is a respectable F1.8 to F3.4 so will be sharp. With the inbuilt whopper of a flash drive (98gigs!) and the card slot, that accepts either Memory Sticks or SD cards, you’ll have to try hard to run out of storage. Curiously one of the selling points for the camera is the ability to drop images directly to an external USB drive. At first I thought this a cool option for when you’re way out in the middle of nowhere and you can even play the files back from the external drive into the camera’s screen to check all is well. Here comes the but! You have to have external power available for the USB drive and the camera to do this.

If you’re really out there somewhere, a wall socket may not be easy to find. Most crews will take a laptop and drives to dump to on the run so although a clever idea I can’t see it being used much. I may well be wrong!

A stable Platform Like picture quality, good stabilisers are pretty much a given these days. Nearly all are very good and essential for run and gun field work. What are new are the powered stabilisers that give extra traction and “grip” the picture. The only issue I’ve seen with this new generation of stabiliser is that you need to be cautious about moving the camera as there can be a lag as the sensor realises you have moved. The NX70 has an active system that provides brilliant stability when shooting hand held. Given something solid to lean on you should be able to shoot fully zoomed in with the cameras modest 10x zoom. There is the usual 120million times digital zoom but please don’t get me started... I understand the mass domestic market likes them but professionals won’t touch a long digital zoom with a very long barge pole. The lens is a very nice 26.3 at the wide

Cool water: Sony’s new fish, the NX70P

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2011

The sound department In keeping with this being a small but proper professional camera it comes with a detachable handle. On board are the usual array of XLR sockets and phantom power. The default positions are neatly highlighted in green for fast accurate switching in difficult conditions. Clever thinking that. The supplied shotgun is very capable and fine for most needs. As mentioned, just remember to put the handle away when the weather threatens to go ugly.

Still life The NX70 is no slouch in the stills department. Snapping a respectable 12.3 megapixels giving a picture size of 4672 x 2628 should do it for most of us! It can capture stills at the same time as video in most but not all modes. I still shy away from using a video camera as a dSLR substitute but if you’re

Cool as: The NX70P covered in ice!

in the field and the moments there then most new cameras are capable enough. I’ve even used my iPhone to grab a shot when I’ve needed too.

Never get lost For the truly serious adventurer this camera sports geo-tagging. It can record the exact location that each image is taken in. Ummmm, again I’m at a bit at of a loss where I might need this as I usually know where I am (except after a big night perhaps). It could be useful for tagging locations you may want to return to but then so can my phone. I guess it will get used by some snappers and I’d be interested to know where and why. I tend to think it’s possibly more about the overall “adventure” package the camera is aiming for.

The jury’s back

hardware

end meaning no wide adapter will be needed. I’d like to see a longer optical zoom – I think 15-20x is good but I’m not quibbling. It can extend to 14x easily and that will do for most needs.

This is a fine camera and will sit very nicely in the market that Sony has aimed for but also will appeal to the wider market who will also be attracted to its dependable and solid durability. In November I’m going on exercise with the Army Reserve Brigade that I do media affairs for (I’m a Captain in the Reserve) and I’m taking an NX70 with me into the field. This will be a full on combat scenario and I’ll be keen to see how well this camera performs in the chaos and running around that the exercise will bring. More on that later in the year! n Thanks to Daniel and the crew at ProAV Adelaide for supplying the camera

Auscam Rating

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Performance

We Liked

Documentation

The weather proofing, Multi-function front ring, Image quality, Value for money.

Features

Disliked

Setup

Needs a longer optical zoom.

Value for money

Help Functions

Price

Around $3,000

Contact

Sony Australia sony.com.au 11

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2011

Benq M23

hardware

Benq seems to have decided the bottom end of the camcorder market is all its own, David Hague thinks.

he new Benq M23 is small, light and said to have excellent low light capability. David Hague set out to see if this was true. With the M23, simplicity seems to be the main aim – even the manual only has six pages in English and physical controls are very minimal, limited to a recording, zoom, playback, menu, light and mode button. This makes the M23 ideal for beginners to the world of camcorders, or for those that say are backpackers, who want to travel

retailing for a lowly $179.95 – the camcorder does come with an HDMI cable so the highres images can be played back on an HD TV. Also a bonus, and enhancing the low light claims, is the inclusion of a LED light –

as light as possible and are not fussed about messing about with settings too much. The M23 weighs in at only 170g (sans battery) and can easily sit in the palm of your hand. It does feel a tad flimsy I’d have to say, and I don’t think I’d like to drop it onto any hard surface; a good reason to add the supplied wrist strap as soon as possible. On a side note, I have had a camcorder stolen from my hands by an opportunist crook grabbing the wrist strap while skate boarding past at a million miles an hour. As a consequence, I now have a habit of wrapping the strap in a double loop around my wrist. One thing that other manufacturers could learn from is that even at this level – and remember, the Benq M23 is

or torch as Benq calls it. I also like the larger than average LCD screen which also rotates. As is common these days, it is of course touch screen based and simple enough to “drive” without the manual (which is just as well seeing as the manual doesn’t explain any of the menu workings, these instead being on the supplied CD along with the Arcsoft editing software). While the available options are relatively basic (resolution, white balance, effects, metering, backlight, night mode, motion detection, EV compensation and EIS), let’s face it, they are far in advanced of even the best smartphone based camera, and at this price, if this is what you are after, then you would be hard pressed to go wrong with the M23.

Auscam Rating 7

We Liked

Documentation

Price, Ease of use, Supplied HDMI cable, LED “torch”

Features

Disliked

Setup

Possible fragility, No paper manual

Value for money

Help Functions

Price

$179.95

Contact

Benq benq.com.au

(there is no viewfinder) and being very narrow, means a good sold grip can be maintained with the right hand curled underneath the body. The 5x zoom is equivalent to around 190mm in 35mm terms and is neither too much nor too little. As we are fond of saying, if you need longer than 5x, get closer to the subject. There is no macro and the closest I could get to an object was around 6 centimetres and still keep it in focus. The HDMI and USB ports are situated under a reasonable rubber seal on the rear of the body of the camera while the SD card slot is located underneath in the same compartment area as the battery. The USB port triples (?) up as a charging port, a data out port AND an AV port (cable supplied) thus maximising real estate on the body of the camera. The M23 is designed for a specific market. It is not for the serious shooter, or even as a backup camera for said enthusiast (although it could I suppose stay in the glove box for emergency use). It is a beginner camera in its DNA and/or a camera for someone without the big bucks but wants more than their smartphone can give them. n David Hague

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SO11502/AUS

Performance

Balance in the hand is pretty good too, with only a little tendency to tip to the left with the LCD screen open

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2011

Always dreamt of making movies? Then our new digital Super 35mm is for you.

Sony’s NEX-FS100 ... a dream come true. Introducing the world’s first really affordable digital Super 35mm interchangeable-lens camcorder. Delivering the control over focus that you need and employing Sony’s Exmor Super 35 CMOS sensor for outstanding exposure latitude and sensitivity, the feature-packed NEX-FS100 lets your creative vision shine through.

The new Super 35mm NEX-FS100 camcorder. SO11502/AUS

sony.com.au/professional/nexfs100

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“SONY” and “make.believe” are trademarks of Sony Corporation.

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2011

James Whiffin – VFX Whiz

feature

After Effects is a Big Black Hole of mystique to many people. Frank McLeod found someone right here in Australia that helped get him up to speed.

hile struggling to come to terms with the most basic of Adobe’s After Effects abilities, I had used the usual resources, books, DVDs from various teaching ‘houses’ and the internet. Anyone who does this for any time will come across VideoCopilot.com and the legendary (and young) Andrew Kramer. This site boasts more than 100 free & very smooth tutorials covering a wide range of subjects. It is a source that many other amateur or fledgling After Effects

apparently enjoyed the experience, describing it as ‘a lot of fun’. Since then he has started up his own freelance visual effects and motion graphics business which he hopes will expand as his name becomes better known. He now splits his time between income producing activities as well as doing volunteer VFX work for community projects in need of this type of specialist assistance. And of course, James is well versed in making use of the ‘thousands of hours’ of online training available in

artists quote when giving credit for a lot of their own work. But then, I came across ae.tutsplus.com, another online source of online video tutorials where a presenter – one James Whiffin – spoke with an Australian accent. The tutorial was authoritative, clear and concise so I just had to chase this up. This is what I discovered.James Whiffin is a 19 year old from Brisbane, Queensland, who is at the beginning of what he hopes will be a lifelong career as a visual effects artist. James started dabbling with visual effects at the age of 14. Initially he was restricted to Macromedia Flash being somewhat hampered by limited income, hardly uncommon at that age. Thus his early efforts were handicapped to an extent by his lack of resources and so a good deal of his work was done by digitally hand painting cartoon effects such as blood splatters and muzzle flashes, onto the source footage. However at about 15 he ‘discovered’ Adobe’s After Effects. James enrolled in 2010 at the Queensland University of Technology in Film, TV and New Media but found after one year that the course did not meet his needs as it didn’t appear to have much to do with post-production, his primary interest. However, James

visual effects on the ‘net. Working behind the camera does not really attract him, even more so since he met a range of people while at University who are more interested in this aspect of the craft and happy to work with him. He does actually own a video camera – a Canon HV40 HDV camera – which he quite likes, but acknowledges the nuisance of needing to capture from tape. However, as his friends are all using Canon dSLR 7D’s, he no longer uses it much. In fact recently James and his friends shot a 3D stereo movie with the 7D’s tied together ‘with one upside down to get them closer together’ which he said ‘came out pretty well. However it is obviously difficult to publically display this given the limitations of online video hosting sites. If and when he does do any video editing, James use Adobe’s Premiere Pro, being attracted to it for its tight integration with After Effects. (Adobe in its video software suites has a function called Dynamic Link which allows unrendered projects to be exchanged between Premiere Pro, After Effects and Encore, thus saving a lot of time in the process.) However James admits to not being w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

particularly interested in editing per se, preferring rather to restrict his postproduction activities to VFX. He came to this conclusion after doing the editing and VFX for a 20 minute historical documentary on a Queensland poet. The whole project took the best part

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of a year, gave him more than his fill of straight editing and made him realise that this side of things was not for him. Apart from After Effects, for visual effects James is presently learning Autodesk Maya as well as Nuke from ‘The Foundry’. He is also dabbling with Avid’s Media Composer. (I got the distinct impression that he doesn’t do a lot of sitting around staring into space.) Although he has been publishing online tutorials for After Effects for two years on the internet, he does not receive any support or sponsorship from Adobe. I gathered from hearing him speak about this, that he would not be resistant to any offers Adobe might make in this regard. Apparently he has some ideas for some more tutorials in the near future, which should be worth seeing when they finally grace the

this would impose a greater load on the CPU of his computer, something of a retrograde step as things stand at the moment. James has his own website, obviously aimed at promoting his own work. It is certainly worth a look – vfxbyjames.info – as it contains not only a ‘show reel’ but also links to other short examples of the level of sophistication he has reached. In the long term, James hopes to be full time employed in the visual effects industry, preferably using Adobe’s After Effects and/or the Foundry’s ‘Nuke’. He quite definitely states that he is more comfortable in front of the computer as opposed to being on the set in an executive or directorial role. While occasionally he still does direct short films with his friends, due

bandwidth. When questioned on hardware, I found that James uses a PC based around an i5 Intel CPU with a modest 8GB of RAM. While he likes the idea of having an iMac, (‘I can’t afford one at the moment.’) he sees a restriction with going down the Mac path currently in that he would be limited to graphic cards from the ATI stable. Since Adobe professional products make use of a Mercury Graphic Engine optimised for a restricted number of CUDA- enabled nVidia graphics card,

to the ‘weird and crazy’ nature of these productions, he has no great expectations of them other than as a source of experience and learning. However he is, at the moment, the visual effects director for a feature length fan movie in the Star Wars genre which has just completed filming. Who knows? Maybe this could be the launching vehicle for yet another young Australian into the expanding world of visual effects. Here’s hoping for increasing future success for James Whiffin, Visual Effects Artist. n

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2011

Corel VideoStudio Pro X4

software

The latest offering from Corel has some great features and an easy to use interface finds David Hague

n Australia at least, Corel has had a chequered history with its applications, from Corel Draw (where it all started) to WordPerfect, the darling of typists everywhere before Windows and Word came along, and lately with the purchase of ULead and its wildly swinging range of graphics applications. ULead products have been known to be “here today, gone tomorrow” but there has been some stability since Corel came along thankfully, and a lot of the very niche products have been slashed and burned (a digital scrapbooking system springs to mind!) The latest offering is VideoStudio Pro X4, (VSP4) and is aimed at the users of the mid-level of video editing titles such as Sony Vegas Movie Studio, Adobe Premiere Elements and Avid Studio.

The User Interface The user interface of VideoStudio is based around three main areas; Capture, Edit and Share. Before you start though, you may want to check out the preferences to change or set such things as Capture Folder locations, UI Layout and so on. This makes life much easier down the track trust me. The Capture module is very comprehensive, allowing you to pull data from DV (tape) based camcorders as well as miniDVD, on-board memory or SD/Memory Stick card based units. On my system, VideoStudio also picked up I have an HD Homerun (no I have no idea why it’s called that either) external network based TV tuner attached as well. Digital data can also be pulled

from file based sources, mobile devices and even stop motion projects can be setup. DVDs can be ripped as well. I didn’t try it, but I suspect with a bit of cable tweaking, VHS tapes could be captured, but don’t quote me on that. Once you have captured your footage from whatever device(s) you have – and of course a project can contain image information from a multitude of the available sources – you’ll flick to the Edit screen to assemble it all together. Here you see a familiar timeline setup showing a main video track, overlay track, title track, voice track and music track. Unlike other packages that have enormous numbers of tracks available for media to be dropped onto, VSP4, has a set number of tracks; one video, six overlay, two title, one voice and three w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

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music. These can be turned on or off in the Track Manager pop up as you wish. In real use, I don’t see this as a restriction, and in a sense, is a good idea as it forces a discipline regimen on you when compiling the edits meaning you won’t have stray clips or audio all over the place. You can switch between the standard timeline view and a storyboard view. Some people love storyboarding, especially in longer projects, and I would recommend beginners use it so that the story they are telling has a proper flow to it. Also possible via the Edit mode are options to add and mix music and Smartsound (as reviewed elsewhere in Auscam) is supported. Any updates available are checked automatically. A bunch of sample tracks are supplied and to add to the timeline, one is simply dragged onto one of the music tracks you have opened. Because these are Smartsound based, there are a number of options you can tweak before dragging to add variation. Transitioning from one audio clip to another (as you would do for video clips) is achieved by overlapping clips. Indeed, video clips have a lot more options available such as transition types, clip speed variations, multitrimming of clips, colour correction, reversing a clip and more. You can scrub clips to see changes precisely, and using the zoom tool, you can zoom in on a section for fine tuning. I found out by accident that my Contour Shuttle

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Auscam Rating Performance

We Liked

Documentation

Fully featured, lotis of input/output options, supports Smartsound

Features

Disliked

Value for money

Help files only online

Price

$129.00 (as tested. Upgrade $89.00)

Contact

Corel 222 corel.com.au

Pro worked immediately as well. Right clicking a transition lets you choose from a selection of transition types including dissolves, crossfades and “side”. In short, VSP4 gives you pretty much all of the features you’ll need, without throwing in any wobblies that a “pro” may use that while adding to a package’s flexibility, are probably never going to be used by the market it is aimed for.

Sharing and caring The share section, as the name suggests, allows you to take your completely edited project and create a medium for distribution. All options are covered such as video file, DVD, export to mobile device, HDV (Blu-ray) and uploading to the web. This is one area a bit of knowledge, or trial and error, is useful for the best results. There are presets for all the usual suspects such as Vimeo, DVD etc, but in many cases the quality can be bettered by tweaking of bit rates and

so on. Many will not have to, or even bother, but it’s nice to know the option is there. VSP4 does have some wizards too if you simply want to bang out something like a DVD in a hurry. The Help section is a bit different to the norm in that it contains a heap of tutorial videos that cover Intro, Audio, Time Lapse, Stop Motion and much more. There is also a decent manual, but all help files (text based) are online and I feel this is a limitation (and done purely to save costs although on the upside, they can be updated by Corel quickly as needed). I played with the “Ultimate” version of Corel VideoStudio Pro X4 and as well as the base package you also get the proDAD Mercalli SE shake removal system, Boris Graffiti 5.3 titling and graphics application and an option to turn your movies into 3D. They even have a pair of 3D glasses in the box. At a retail price of $129, Corel VideoStudio Pro X4 is extremely good value and deserves to do well. n

| October

2011

Final Draft 8

n the surface, Final Draft 8 seems simple enough; it is a word processor specifically designed to create scripts for films, plays, TV shows and so on. But under the somewhat bland exterior lies a powerhouse application indeed. It’s no wonder it is the industry leader by a long shot. The concept is pretty straight forward in that a script is broken down into scenes using one of the many templates supplied with the program eg: BBC Screenplay for TV, Broadway Musical, Smallville, South Park or even Days of Our Lives (if you must). The screen shot shows an old favourite (at least for me) being a template from The Bill. Notice the Navigator and Scene Properties windows. The real power of Final Draft though is in the facilities and features available that take it way, way beyond that of a niche target word processor. The most obvious is that of Index cards (as shown). The index cards are ‘double sided’ – you can view additional information and then drag and drop to organise scenes. A similar thing is possible with Scene View, which gives you a list of scenes plus any information you’ve added. You can also split the screen to view notes and the script side by side. Similar to a good word processor, revisioning (making corrections and

D w t

showing the results as well as the coorection) catered for, but also is versioning allowing you to keep track of different versions of a script for later comparison. Collaboration is also catered for, with ‘live’ sessions using networking part of the feature letting other writers/ collaborators log in and join a session. Colour coding is used extensively throughout Final Draft allowing you to easily keep track of associated elements. One very nice feature is the Final Draft Names databases giving you access to over 90,000 names for characters

Auscam Rating

Performance

We Liked

Documentation

Fabulous feature set, good pricing, Mac and Windows versions available

Features

Disliked

Value for money

Rather dated interface

Price

US$249

Contact

finaldraft.com

in your script. Once a character name is placed in a script, Final Draft ‘remembers’ this and will auto complete the name whenever you start typing it. Many different reports are available such as Scene, Character, Location, Cost and Statistics. As I said, this is no average word processor. Final Draft8 is available as a download or you can get a boxed version – both are USD$249 – from finaldraft.com Educational versions are available, and there is a regular emailed newsletter called Script Magazine. There is a demo version on their website that can be downloaded as can extra templates. If you are a serious screenwriter, I would heartily recommend Final Draft. It may take a little time to wean you away from you standard word processor way of doing things, but you’ll never regret it. Having said that, even screenplay ‘dabblers’ will enjoy the program. n David Hague w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

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2011

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Photo: Ralf Brauner

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2011

feature

Helicopter flying in Far North Queensland: real versus virtual

olidaying recently in Far North Queensland My wife Maureen and I shouted our good friend Joanne her first ever flight in a helicopter. The chopper, operated by SkySafari, was a little Robinson R44, bright yellow and with seats for four passengers. We flew from the sugar cane town of Mossman right along the Mossman River and up into the Gorge itself. The tropical rainforest is lush and dense, and from the air looks like so many bunches of broccoli. Joanne loved it – in fact we all did! The day was unusually clear and the cloud that frequently obscures the summit was absent so we were able to get great photos of the rugged granite cliffs. Easing over the ridge we headed out across the patchwork quilt of sugar cane fields,

many, many years and have written many articles for Computer Pilot Magazine, some discussing how to capture videos from the screen. It’s timely to revisit this process because the new 2nd generation Intel processors, coupled with the extra RAM available in 64-bit systems has truly revolutionised the Flight Sim experience.

Setting up for Flight Sim recording The computer system I set up has a Windows 7 64-bit operating system and 8GB of RAM. The processor is an i7 2600 running at 3.7GHz with an ASUS EAH4850HD graphics card with 1GB DDR3 video RAM. It’s a blisteringly fast system and is utterly brilliant for video editing. It’s also a great platform

all being actively harvested and burned and filling the air with an acrid, sweet, vinegar-like aroma. Heading east we then flew low across the ocean towards the beautiful Low Isles, a fishing and snorkelling paradise with nothing more than a weather station, lighthouse and marine research facility run by the University of Queensland. The area includes about 55 hectares of coral reef as well as a protected lagoon where boats can anchor overnight. With World Heritage rainforest extending right to the coast and tropical islands close to shore, Far North Queensland is stunningly beautiful and a photographer’s paradise and the chopper’s- eye view is unbeatable. This was a holiday and I had deliberately left my video cameras at home, but I did take my trusty Pentax kit including my prized Sigma 10-20mm ultra-wide lens. This lens is brilliant for rainforest scenes and also for aerials. We asked Andrew the pilot to remove the doors so we had a truly breathtaking view throughout the flight. I was very torn at not having a video record of the beautiful flight – may have to go back again? – but then I thought, why not recreate the flight in Flight Simulator? I have been a flight sim fanatic for Two worlds: The canefields of Mossman, far north Queensland, in reality and virtuality 20

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for Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX) and can easily run the software at ULTRA HIGH display settings. I’ve found that I get the best frame rates by selecting UNLIMITED in the FSX display settings. This gives frame rates in excess of 40 fps, occasionally skipping up towards 100 fps. The result is a totally fluid experience which makes the delicate business of virtual helicopter flying a delight. To record a flight I use a program called FRAPS which can record at up to 100 frames per second at resolutions of up to 2880x1600 or 3840x1200 pixels. I work at the native resolution of my HD system, namely 1920x 1080 at25 fps. The resulting video is then imported directly into Vegas Pro 10.0e within a 1920x1080 project. The FRAPS files are very large and finely detailed but playback in Vegas Pro was smooth and locked at 25 fps. I re-flew the flight several times to get cockpit and external views for editing. FSX has an internal recorder for replaying flights but it wasn’t working reliably so I simply took the other option of recording each flight separately. It is possible to record video directly with your camera from an LCD screen. There is no flickering at all and the quality is good, but FRAPS gives the best possible result.

Australian scenery In Australia we are blessed to have scenery developed by John Venema and his team of geniuses at Orbx Simulation Systems in Melbourne. John recognised years ago that the colour palette, textures and vegetation supplied with Microsoft Flight Simulator simply didn’t reflect the true nature of Australia’s various regions. The result was a freeware project called VOZ – for virtual Oz – which represented a revolution in

2011

how Australian terrain was represented in Flight Sim. Now a commercial product, Full Terrain Xperience, or FTX, covers the whole of Australia in remarkable detail and gives the virtual pilot an uncannily real flying experience. The final trick is to load a high density terrain mesh developed for Orbx by Holger Sandmann. Holgermesh provides 76-metre elevation data for the whole of Australia and results in far better terrain sculpting, making mountains and especially cliff faces and peaks look realistically steep. Ideal for Mossman Gorge! I loaded up FTX (SP3) from the DVD, downloaded and installed SP4 and selected Orbx Australian trees as well. Then I was keen to see how the scenery in Far North Queensland would look.

The Robinson R44 helicopter FSX comes with a Robinson R22 chopper – the fourcylinder version of the R44 we used in real life. Fortunately I was able to download a beautifully modelled JustFlight R44 from PC Aviator for just AUD $16.00. This model even has

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floats like the real one and the rotors, when tied down, move gently in the breeze! I used the included repaint software to paint the little chopper bight canary yellow to match the real one. Being a bit of a detail masochist, I then decided to add the SkySafari logo to the fuselage and also remove the R44 numbers from the fuselage. Finally I wanted to add the correct tail boom number, VH-ZAH to replace the European designation on the JustFlight model. Repainting FSX aircraft requires you to delve into the dark arts of nVidia textures and transparencies and this makes

Digital world building : The DXTBmp interface used to create the chopper.

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| October

Down the rabbit hole: David’s virtual Robinson R44 over Cairns airport.

learning AfterEffects look like Playschool! I eventually figured out, with great help from Martin King on the FTX Forum, how to add and remove tail numbers and logos. It’s complex stuff because ’transparency’ in the world of Direct Show and .dds files actually alters reflectiveness and you need special programs to convert between multi-layered Photoshop .psd files and functional .dds files needed by FSX to paint the aircraft. I used DXTBmp by Martin Wright, AeroSelectX supplied with the JustFlight helicopter, and FS Repaint 2 by Abacus Software. MANY days later... I had a working R44 in correct SkySafari livery all ready for the trip. The only component I couldn’t change was the four virtual blokes in the chopper – the software didn’t give me the option of modelling Maureen and Jo as females – although it does allow you to model your own face from a photo so you can be the pilot. So with the computer, simulator, scenery and chopper all locked and loaded, I was set to recreate the flight in the photo-realistic world that is today’s desktop flight simulation. For comparison, I’ve included some stills I took on the flight. The short video of the virtual flight will be available free from the Auscam website by the time this article appears in print. 22

Too hard to choose: The real and the simulated Port Douglas

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Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Far North Queensland is a beautiful place and a photographer’s paradise. The approach to scenery modelling taken by the FTX team is astonishing. Simple tricks like having rows of trees and shrubs along roads, with patchworks of different crops leading the eye to forested foothills all add to the impression of being in the real world. Being able to make a video or take stills from the simulation offer the possibility of having some real fun with your holiday experiences, just as I did here. It’s possible to take this approach to a professional level, as I did with the simulated wartime flying sequences in the documentary Return to Anjo (available for sale from the Auscam website). Projects such as these bring together computing, video editing and artistic skills at a level of realism that seriously approaches the real thing. Sure, you don’t get to smell the avgas or feel the turbulence in your home office, but then again, simulated flight is an immersive experience and costs a tiny fraction of buying or renting a helicopter, not to mention the cost of learning to fly and maintain your helicopter pilot’s license. n David Smith

Special thanks to Andrew, our helicopter pilot from Skysafari Australia (skysafari.com.au) for a great flight and for SkySafari for their enthusiastic support for my virtual flight project. Robinson R44 helicopter modelled by JustFlight from PC Aviator (pcaviator. com.au). Grateful thanks to Martin King and others on the FTX Forum for guidance with repainting tips and tricks. Full Terrain Experience (FTX) Australian scenery by Orbx Simulation Systems was used with generous permission of CEO John Venema (fullterrain.com/).

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| | October

Simulacrum: The chopper approaches Mossman Gorge in pixels and binary, above, and real life, below.

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2011

Smartsound’s Sonic Fire Pro – Express Track Edition

software

For the non-musically minded, Smartsound is a boon. Here is the first in a series by enthusiast Frank McLeod on using Smartsound.

any of the entry level editing programs nowadays come with SmartSound Quicktracks, a very clever addition for editing royalty free music. Along with the free provision of a number of music tracks, this provides the user with the ability to set the length of a SmartSound track specifically to a particular clip, providing a polished and completed end of the musical piece, as opposed to simply a fade out. However, if you choose to purchase additional music

the level of intensity, tempo (beats per minute) and style. You can even use your mouse to tap a rhythm and Express Tracks will present you with a number of tracks that fit that beat. It is very simple to switch views between what you own and what’s available for purchase so confusion is easily defeated in this way. One real surprise is that you can search for music using many different search terms, including emotional keywords. First, select ‘Keywords’ in the right hand menu of the two adjacent

from SmartSound, then you open up the world of more sophisticated music tailoring with more controls. In this first of a two part series, let’s look at the first step-up – Express Tracks. Express Track software is a freebie either when you first buy an album of music or if you download the software for a demo run. In this latter case, it will arrive with a full licence along with five tracks so you can give it a good try-out. Express Tracks is also an integral part of the more complex Sonic Fire Pro, but that is a story for another time. Express Track gives you access not only to any SmartSound music you may own, including that which came with your editor, but also all the music as well as sound effects in the SmartSound library. The software previews are regularly updated, assuming you don’t block that option, so that if you don’t have music suitable to the occasion, you can browse the whole SS library and choose any other album, or single track, you might like to purchase to add more flair to your ‘magnum opus’. The tracks displayed in Express Tracks can be sorted in a variety of ways – by name of track or album, by

to the Search window then just type in words such as horror, romance, children, wedding or similar terms and Express Track will come up with a range of music that may well address your needs. In fact, you can widely change the parameters of your search by using various combinations of the items listed under those two menus alongside the Search window. In addition, under the Sensory Search option, you can ask the software to find you something slower, faster or more or less intense than the one you are examining. You can even request music that is more or less like your sample or uses different instruments as you prefer. The variations really are numerous and very flexible. SmartSound music tracks come in two forms – single layered or multilayered. With single layer, the user has the choice of a number of available arrangements as well as the usual control of length. With the multilayered track, you have the added and very sophisticated option of altering both the audible instruments and their respective volume throughout the track. (While this is marvellous stuff, it falls far short of what you can do with the Scoring Edition, to be covered next issue.)

Come to your senses: Interface showing Sensory Search menu w for music with similar characteristics

Search for the truth: Pull down menu with further Search options

Each track shown in Express Track has an icon indicating whether it is single or multi-layered. Double clicking on any track will immediately place it in the Preview section of the interface and start it playing. Its waveform as well as the VU meter will be shown. It is in this area that you can modify the w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

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2011

software

Edition

sory Search menu which searches

On track: The full Express Track Window showing the Track, Properties/Info, VU meter, Search and Preview windows. Note the Mood and Variation pulldowns in the preview area

ther Search options under broad headings

The right sort: This menu is a duplicate of the one above but coming in the next window, thus allowing sorting or searching using a subcategory

arrangement of the final output. With both single and multilayer tracks, you can alter the arrangements using a list of variations with names that evoke the feeling of that version of the music. In addition, with multilayer tracks, you can also alter the mood by changing the instruments used in the output. While w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

this is excellent, it is a pale shadow of what can be done with SonicFire Pro Scoring Edition – but you’ll have to wait until next time to read about that. Once you have found the music you want – and you WILL be able to find the music you want somewhere in the 3500 tracks available – set the length

of time you need, choose the Variation +/- Mood and alter the tempo to suit. Then you’re pretty much done. It is a simple matter to export the file in your preferred format and then import it into your editing suite. Give it a go. I reckon you will love it. n

| October

2011

Windows 8 Preview

software

Anthony Caruana was one of the first to explore the pre-beta release of Windows 8. Here are his findings.

hether you love or loathe Microsoft, you have to hand it to them. They never give up. When they released Vista in late 2006 it seemed that the core of their earning potential and engineering expertise was about to implode. Vista was a bloated, slow and poorly received release. It was almost their alternate universe Windows 95. Instead of people queuing to buy the software, it was ignored by most that could choose to. In fact, it was so derided that

systems with multi-touch capacitive screens have become common through the iPad and the various Android tablets on the market. Apple and Google leapfrogged Windows 7 with their ability to bring rich, vibrant user interfaces that work well with touchscreens. On the contrary, using Windows 7 on a touchscreen device is an exercise in frustration. The onscreen keyboard is too small and most of the applications are designed for the precision of a small mouse pointer and not a fat finger.

access to Microsoft’s software store, provides access to the store and a count of applications that require updating. Typically, your contact list is simply a flat-file system of names, addresses, phone numbers, email and other information. If you provide Windows 8 with your log-in details for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networking services, it will pull all that information together into a single repository. The tile for your contact list will be active, with changing images

Microsoft ended up issuing downgrades to Windows XP. Windows 7 undid most of the illwill surrounding Vista. It introduced touchscreen capability as an integrated part of the operating system and was able to build on the foundation of stability of Windows XP, learn the lessons of Vista and become Microsoft’s best operating system. That makes it a very tough act to follow. Since Windows 7 was released,

Windows 8 changes that. The new user interface that Microsoft has shown in the Developer Preview of Windows 8 takes a lot of cues from Windows Phone 7. By default, the usual desktop with the Start button in the bottom right corner has been abandoned. It’s been replaced by an array of large tiles. Each tile is like a window into the application or collection of information it represents. For example, the Windows Store tile, which provides

and information that reflects what’s happening with the people you know. This new style of application has been dubbed “Metro” by Microsoft. The reason for such a massive overhaul of the Windows interface is simple and can be summarised in just one word — touch. For last few years, manufacturers such as HP, Asus, Acer and others have been selling all-in-one systems with large, capacitive touchscreens.

w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

Windows 7, despite having integrated support for touchscreens, was never designed for fingers. We installed the developer preview of Windows 8 to an Acer W500 tablet. This device has a detachable screen so that it can be used as a keyboard-less slate or as a small, albeit heavy, notebook. From what we’ve seen, manufacturers still have some work to do in reducing the weight of these systems. But like all engineering problems, this will be solved as time and money are applied to the problem. Unlike previous versions, Windows 8 isn’t limited by the number of pixels your display can show. You can have tiles arranged over an area that spans several desktops. When you’re on the left-most section of the desktop, you can see part of the next desktop to the right. At first, it looks like the screen has been designed incorrectly. However, it’s a visual indication that there’s more to see on the next screen. If you’ve used a Windows Phone 7 device you’d be accustomed to this. Windows 8 will work on systems without a touchscreen. You can slide across the desktop using the mouse but swiping on the screen or with a touchpad feels much more natural. This might not appeal to those who have grown up using menus, mice and windows but the next generation of computer users is accustomed to touching the screen. Thankfully, Microsoft has made the w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

onscreen keyboard usable. On the W500’s 10.1” display, the keyboard was large enough to type easily. With Windows 7, the keyboard was small but the next iteration has keyboard that spans the full width of the display. Clearly, despite some of the derisory comments made by Steve Ballmer when the iPad was first released, the teams in Redmond have paid close attention to the developers in Cupertino. One of the great new features that will be welcomed by those that use multiple computers is the ability to sync applications across machines. Assuming you have a Windows Live account – practically a must if you plan to use Windows 8 – Metro style apps will synch across up to five machines that you associate with your Windows Live account. Another great feature for mobile users is the ability to create a bootable USB version of Windows 8 with your applications and data. Simply walk up to a computer, plug your USB stick

2011

in and boot the system from the USB stick. You can then work with your apps and data, save and shut down. And better, Windows 8 will work EXACTLY the same on all portable devices it is ported to; phones, tablets, tablets, PCs whatever. And data can be seamlessly connected and transported across all of these. No conversion, no translation, just connect! It’s worth remembering that Microsoft has released this as a Developer Preview – it’s not even a beta yet. We’d strongly recommend you don’t load this onto a machine you rely on. Performance was sluggish and the feature set is clearly incomplete. Microsoft’s purpose is releasing the software at this early stage is to ensure that developers are ready for the shift in application design that Metro brings

software

| | October

and to help users transition to the new look and feel. Windows 8 will run on the same hardware as Windows Vista and 7 with support for ARM, as well as Intel processors, expected. You can download the Developer Preview from microsoft.com So where will Windows 8 fit into your plans? As always, we recommend caution when it’s first released next year. Although the Developer Preview gives software makers time to get ready, commercial-grade video and audio editing software can be quite finicky when it comes to operating system updates and drivers. We’d suggest planning for a test system so you can try it out before committing to moving your production work to Windows 8. n

| October

2011

Rotolight Creative Colour Kit

hardware

Painting with light is the name of the game and the raison d’etre of the Rotolight kit says David Smith

very aspect of stills photography and videography benefits from good lighting. Lighting can dramatically the mood of an image by the creative use of shadowing, backlighting and colour. But getting light onto your subject can present interesting challenges. In a studio setting you’ll have access to mains power – in the field you’ll have to rely on batteries or generators to power up sufficient light to beat the ultimate light source, the sun. Until

Some years back I bought a Sony HVL-LBP on-camera light for use with my Sony Z1 video camera. I normally recommend against using an on-camera light but sometimes it’s a very useful solution. It’s also great as a supplementary light giving that important dot of light reflected in the subject’s eyes which is crucial in bringing the eyes to life. This light was portable, dimmable, and featured an array of ten LEDs. It was powered by the same batteries as the Z1 and

3200K and to attach it any video or stills camera via a shoe mount. Fantasy? It might have been, but it’s not now. Rotolight has changed the game. Recognising the need for just such a portable, powerful light source, engineers at the renowned Pinewood Film Studios have produced the Rotolight. The Rotolight RL48-B ‘Stealth Edition’ is elegantly and cleverly designed with portability clearly a high priority. It’s essentially a rubber coated weather-

recently, almost all lighting systems were power-hungry: 800 Watt Redheads drain batteries rapidly and generate as much heat as a one-bar radiator; portable on-camera lights similarly drain camera batteries fairly fast. This means you have to carry a suitable means of recharging batteries as fast as possible, whether by car charger or by mains back at the motel in the evening. Flash lights are great for stills work but they create their own issues including red-eye and the notorious startled blink. Despite this, portable lights are an essential part of any serious photographer’s kit. Over the past decade there’s been a quiet revolution happening in the lighting world and it’s all down to that nowubiquitous invention, the light emitting diode, or LED. Once LED technology was freed from the constraint of being limited to red or green, new possibilities emerged for producing highly powerefficient lighting systems for all branches of photography.

featured a clever arrangement of barn doors, diffuser and spot lenses that made it very versatile. It was, however, expensive – retailing at around $700 – and it churned through batteries at a rate of knots. These batteries, although brilliant for the Z1, are expensive and when they’re all being flattened by the little spotlight, you either have to shell out heaps to have enough spares in your kit, or else be fanatical in your recharging ritual (this reminds me of the days when Betacam batteries lasted 20 minutes on a good day...).

proof disc which presents an annulus of 48 LEDs behind a transparent polycarbonate cover. The back swivels off to reveal slots for three AA size batteries as well as space for the supplied filters, also annulus-shaped, ie a disc with a central disc cut out. You simply choose a filter – or a combination of several, as required – remove the transparent cover and place the filters inside. It’s a very simple system to use and changing filters takes less than half a minute. Recall that CTO refers to Colour Temperature Orange which means a filter that converts daylight to tungsten. The fractions indicate the strength of the filter required to achieve the desired colour temperature, so a ? CTO is half the strength of a full CTO and so on.

Enter the Rotolight Imagine a light that contains 48 highpower LEDs, weighs less than 300 grams, is powered by three AA batteries (alkaline, Li-Ion or rechargeable) and has a non-stop shooting life of 4 hours. Add to that the ability to dim by up to 1.5 stops using the supplied filters, to change colour temperature accurately through 6300K, 5600K, 4300K and

Supplied Custom Lee Filters 6-piece ring-filter Calibration Gel Set

Colour Temperature

Filter # printed on filter

3200K

Tungsten 3200

5/16ths CTO

4300K

Mixed 205

1/2 CTO

5600K

Indirect Daylight 5600

1/16th CTO

No Filter

Direct Daylight 6300K

No filter

The Rotolight in use The Rotolight was very simple to set up. Insert the three batteries and whichever filter/s you need and close the unit. Press the red spindle into the central hole and attach the stand by pressing it onto the pins at the back of the spindle. The stand has a standard ?”20 pitch tripod mount and an accessory shoe adapter is also supplied for attaching the light to any camera – w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

| | October

threaded socket, maybe it would have been better to build the accessory shoe in permanently. That way it couldn’t ever work loose. I found a simple workaround which is to wind a little Teflon plumber’s tape around the thread. This tightens the attachment so it doesn’t tend to come loose. The second issue I had was with the red anodised aluminium spool that clips to the stand. The clips are just not secure enough, so any attempt to straighten or reposition the light usually results in the stand coming apart, with the risk of dropping the light unit. I dropped the spool on the floor several times while fitting the unit to my dSLR camera. I would recommend a redesign of the stand with a bolt being fitted to the inside of the red spool and a knurled nut being provided to screw down over the handle once it’s clipped in place. Since I purchased the review unit, I decided that, since I will probably never attach the light to my shotgun mic, I would simply glue the stand to the light unit so there would be no chance of a mishap. I plan to contact Pinewood Studios to discuss this issue. The light is switched on with a large button on the front face. It’s a very

w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

bright light, so point it away from your eyes when you switch it on! The basic filters are all studio calibrated and so can be relied upon

to provide light of the correct intensity and colour temperature. The creative filters represent an excellent selection of the most popular Lee Lighting colour

hardware

video or stills – with a cold accessory mount. The light can also be attached by sliding it onto the windshield of a shotgun microphone, although I personally wouldn’t do it this way for fear of getting unwanted wind noise problems. But it’s an option and would almost certainly work well indoors. The Rotolight Stand and accessory shoe adapter I found the Rotolight stand mount and cold shoe adaptor a little clumsy to use. There are two issues. The upper lock nut had to be tightened very firmly to prevent the light coming loose and twisting. It’s a minor quibble but I wonder if there might have been a better way of implementing the accessory shoe. For example, since the accessory shoe already contains a

2011

There are three versions of the Rotolight system Rotolight kit version

Kit includes

RL48-B Stealth Edition

Single Ringlight unit with 6-filter Calibration Set

RL48 Creative Colour Kit

Single Ringlight unit with 6-filter Calibration Set Creative Colour Kit featuring two cosmetic filters plus eight Colour FX filters Rotolight Stand Mount Accessory Belt Pouch

RL48 Interview Kit

Two Ringlight units, with stands, Creative Colour Kit, Accessory Belt Pouch 29

| October

2011

hardware

Accessory Filters Type

Filter # printed on filter

Diffusion Screen

216

Neutral Density – (0.5 stop)

298

Neutral Density – (1 stop)

209

FX filters. These will find all sorts of imaginative uses as sidelights, backfills,

lights can be arranged more creatively using one as a soft front-side fill and

kickers and so on and they include two beautiful cosmetic filters, 791 Moroccan Frost and 184 Cosmetic Peach. According to the hilarious online promo video Click here these filters can effectively replace an hour of makeup time in the Max Factor Suite. I doubt that, but they are delicious filters. The others range through blues and greens to strong amber and red. Used with discretion they have the potential to create some really stunning lighting effects. When you’re finished the whole kit packs up neatly into the supplied Accessory Belt Pouch which has compartments for the Ringlight, stand and Creative Filter Kit. It also has slots for six AA batteries, a mobile phone and a metal hook for your keys.

the other as a back fill. The backfill can be coloured if required to give a

The Interview Kit This kit includes two Ringlights plus the Creative filters and Accessory Pouch. The idea here is that a news camera operator could use one Ringlight mounted on the camera and have a second light rigged from a stand or hand held to provide back- or side-light. Taking this further, the two

special highlight to the hair. Using one of the Cosmetic Filters will add a very flattering complexion to the subject’s face. In practise, we would normally use our Dedo lights (to be discussed in a separate article) as the primary lights and the Rotolight as a softly coloured sidelight. The possibilities are pretty much limitless.

dSLR lighting The Rotolight has enormous potential

Auscam Rating Ease of use

We Liked

Features

The whole idea, including thoughtful design, build quality and supplied filters

Build Quality

Disliked

Value for money

The stand is unreliable and needs a redesign

Price

Rotolight RL48-B $169 Rotolight Creative Kit V2 $249 Rotolight Interview Kit V2 $399

Contact

in the dSLR field. It is bright, subtle, effectively ‘shadowless’ and completely avoids problems of red-eye and reflexive blink. Being able to mount it on a stand or clamp means you can easily add subtle but effective highlights with a minimum of fuss and the ability to preview as you go. It’s lighter than a standard pro flash unit and dead simple to use. There are also numerous other possible applications including use as a

ring light in macro photography in both stills and video applications. This would be great for botanical studies and for small objects such as coins. The Rotolight Creative Colour Kit is a well engineered professional product. It offers a great deal and delivers the lot in an elegant and thoughtfully designed package. The supplied filters allow good basic control of colour temperature and light intensity and the creative filters make interesting effects easily possible. The Accessory Belt Pouch is likewise well designed and sturdily constructed. My only concern is that the Rotolight Stand wasn’t secure enough and needs a redesign. The Rotolight offers great creative potential for both stills and video photographers. I have already purchased the kit supplied for review – it’s that good! n

New Magic Australia Pty Ltd newmagic.com.au w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

| | October

2011

t one of the end spectrum you have applications such as Sony Vegas Pro that allow everything under the sun for the full on video editing professional. Others of the same ilk are Adobe Premiere Pro, Edius Grass Valley, Final Cut Pro (pre version 10 anyway), AVID suites and other high end packages. To grab the mid-level market, many of these companies have also released ‘lite’ versions of their flagships that while having superb functionality have lesser ‘capacity’ if that is the right word. A bit like a 10 tonne tipper versus a Toyota HiLux if you like. The bottom end, the one-click-andmake-a-movie-if-you-are-lucky stuff has mostly been left to those who supply the freebie apps that come in the box with the camcorder when you buy it. And usually they are not very good. Pricing has been set at a low $59 and really there is nothing on the market at this pricing. But does it work?

The Interface Simplicity is the name of the game here as you can see. Whilst it may not be a 3 clicker to make a movie, certainly it is done in only four steps – 1. Add photos and video, 2. Choose a style, 3. Add music, and 4. View your movie. Visual content can be added from

your computer, a camera or ‘device’, a camcorder (tape) or from an AVCHD camcorder (memory or SD card). This is a simple point and click or drag method to populate the screen area and once content is added, depending on its type, a single click will open a menu allowing some action on that object. For example, clicking on a still lets you rotate it, define how long it is shown for, add a caption to it or even add motion control. Video footage allows all of this plus has an option to split into clips (note the trial version will not let you use any footage with Dolby audio in it). Adding a style is the next step; this simply means selecting one of the supplied styles and changing any parameters you want that apply to that style (see the screen shot for “Cube Twist” settings) and that’s it. While some of these are a tad cheesy, the ironic thing is that to make many of these styles in ‘standard’ editing software is actually time consuming and difficult!

Auscam Rating Performance

We Liked

Documentation

Easy to use, inexpensive

Features

Disliked

Value for money

As we are against music piracy, we won’t say restriction of recorded music use

Price

$59

Contact

Sony Media Software/New Magic newmagic.com.au

w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

Finally, you can add music. Anything that has digital rights management is stopped from being added by the way, so if you are thinking of throwing “Wind Beneath My Wings” under that wedding video, forget it. If you are angry about this, don’t be too harsh on Sony as after all, they are a music publishing company! Music added to a movie can be trimmed to fit to length. Of course, doing all this ends up in a “canned” looking presentation so there are options to personalise it with animation, titling, font settings, adding a background (colour or image) or including a logo. Motion effects can be tweaked, images cropped, slow motion or speeded up video added and cross fades between clips are there for good measure. You can even add a voice over. For many, this will appear as a basic package that doesn’t cut the mustard. But look at it for what it is, a quick editor for the masses that gives good results, still allows a little creativity, is easy to use and inexpensive to boot. I’d suggest you could actually put together a decent wedding video using MoviEZ – restricted music options besides. And in many cases, that is all

software

Sony MoviEZ HD

people want. n David Hague

| October

2011

Classic Scene

dissect

Horror make-up effects so impressive they invented an Oscar for it – Drew Turney remembers how An American Werewolf came to London.

here’s never been a werewolf movie as good as John Landis’ 1981 horror comedy An American Werewolf in London before or since. It seemed that following the days of Lon Chaney in The Wolf Man, filmmakers were content with cheap-looking cross fades between the actor and cheesy rubber masks covered in yak hair. Since then (with the exception of Neil Marshall’s 2002 breakout hit Dog Soldiers), most directors opted for CGI transformation sequences that end up looking even cheaper than the old time greats. With make-up maestro Rick Baker, director Landis knew he had to show a real man changing into a real wolf to have the audience believe in what they were seeing.

with Naughton holding his hand up to look at in terror, which we then change to watch over his shoulder. After the cut it’s an animatronic hand sticking up into the shot, the fingers stretching away from the palm as he looks on in horror. In the next shot he’s wearing it as a fake prosthetic, and hair’s already been stuck all over him one strand at a time with aerosol glue. In each subsequent cut there’s a little more on his skin. When his back starts to reform, we see Naughton from above and behind with inflatable rubber appliances stuck to him, muscles bulging out and his spine surging upwards with a horrible crunching sound. He flips over and – along with yet more hair and facial

And no worried looks, furrowed brows or fading between still images either – your skeleton and musculature shifting from that of a biped primate to a quadruped canine is going to hurt. Before a single rubber appliance has even been stuck on, David (David Naughton) throws himself to the floor of his girlfriend Alex’s (Jenny Agutter) flat howling in agony. He tears his clothes off, screaming about ‘burning up’ already sweaty from the exertion. The transformation starts

appliances to give him a more canine nose – Naughton now has a dog’s body with rounded ribcage and slender abdomen. He actually spent four or five hours with his chest, arms, neck and head sticking up through the floor attached to an lower body appendage that moved thanks to more animatronics. Every time the crew took a break during filming he had to stay there, stuck through a floor and attached to a rubber dog’s body.

David’s (Naughton) hand grows into a paw thanks to an animatronic held from off-camera.

Latex make-up appliances are stuck to Naughton’s face as he stands below the floor, attached to a rubber lower body. w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

2011

length of the animal’s body, David having almost completely changed from a young man into the most frightening werewolf committed to celluloid to this day. The entire sequence took six full days to shoot (including several 4 and 5am starts), Naughton talks on the DVD commentary track about imagining the day when it would all be over. It was worth the effort for all concerned, not just because of a result that’s still instantly recognisable 30 years later but because few among the cast or crew would ever reach such heights again. Only Rick Baker’s star continued to rise as one of Hollywood’s preeminent make-up artists, and in 1982 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science created the Make-Up Effects award, his work in American Werewolf in London making him the first winner. n

In each subsequent shot, the rubber appliances on Naughton’s face become more pronounced to show the advance of the transformation. But before long we cut to Baker’s piece de resistance, the sequence that gave the film its iconic marketing image. When the mouth grows, it’s a fully articulated movable puppet head with a dog-like nose and thick animal hair. Motors in the jaw open and close the mouth as others stretch the rubber skin and jawbones outward to show a wolf’s snout growing out of the human face. The final shot in the sequence is a long, sinister pan along the

The actor’s job done, filming switches to a puppet head controlled electronically, more hair added between shots. w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

dissect

| | October

Articulated mechanics cause the jaw and cheeks to protrude, stretching the latex rubber skin as they go. Bigger teeth in each shot complete the illusion. 33

| S Oecpt ot ebm e rb e2 0r 1210 1 1

Livescribe echo

hardware

Not just a smartpen, but a VERY Smartpen indeed finds David Hague

f all the devices we use on a daily basis, the most basic is possibly the humble pencil or biro. Apart from a match, a staple or a pin, I cannot think of too much more a one use “thing”. But now I have to say that after 6 months use, the humble pen has changed the way I work; but this is no ordinary pen, oh no, this is the Livescribe Echo. Many journalists use the Livescribe as a recorder for taking notes doing

Or you can jump to bookmarks you have set. You can even speed up or slow down playback speed. Other clever tricks included in the programming of the pen’s intelligence are calculator commands, special characters (as well as a full keyboard) time and date, battery status and many more. The use of “pencasts” is also growing – sharing information made up of notes and conversations between collaborating people. If there is one criticism of the Livescribe

recipient at the time of taking the note. Similarly, scribblings, doodles, back of napkin style diagrams etc can be sent to OneNote for later modification, and notes, phone numbers etc sent to Evernote. To date there are more than 126 applications for the Livescribe pen in the Livescribe Store and the list is growing. They range from being free to on average $2-3 so not exactly about to break the bank! The Echo Smartpen itself is not

launches and press conferences, with its ability to record audio as well as using the special paper ‘notebooks’ to turn scribblings into images is legendary. But the party tricks of the Livescribe go much, much deeper than that. For starters, there is a third party application to take those images (downloaded from the pen via a USB connection to the Livescribe Desktop software) into text that can be edited in Word or other word processor. Further, the audio recorded by the pen is sync’d to the image,. so say for example you have written the word “Livescribe” among a pile of other notes on a page, while simultaneously recording a conversation, by using special tap points on the page of the notebook, you can play back the audio from that point (the word “Livescribe”).

product, in my opinion anyway, it is that the usage of these commands is not adequately explained and shown. For mine though, by far the best use is when the Livescribe pen is linked to 3rd party applications. New ones are appearing all the time, but I now use my Livescribe with Outlook, Evernote and OneNote on a regular basis. How does this work? If I have written a note in my Livescribe notebook, by drawing a horizontal line left to right and back again, and then printing the word “OUTLOOK”, what I select is then sent to Outlook next time the Livescribe pen is docked to the PC containing the Livescribe software and add-in. You can also add up to 200 email names and addresses to the memory of the pen so have the ability to choose the

that inexpensive at $219 for the 4GB version, plus you must buy the special books to allow recording (or you can create your own with a colour laser printer), but in terms of productivity gains, this is quickly paid back. I have used my Livescribe Echo 4GB innumerable times for recording interviews or at product launches, and the combination of note taking and audio is unbeatable for accuracy as against having separate notes and a mini recorder. The additional functionality, that is growing all the time, but admittedly has to be explored to be made obvious and then learnt to be taken advantage off, is the icing on the cake. n

Auscam Rating

Ease of use

We Liked

Features

Elegant idea, add on applications, scores of uses

Build quality

Disliked

Value for money

Bit pricey, inadequate documentation, accessories can be hard to find

Price

$219 for 4GB version. $299 for 8GB

Contact

Livescribe livescribe.com (available from Officeworks) w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

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We all love a good UFO video; was it REALLY a UFO or a clever hoax? Now’s your chance to fool (or try to fool) your fellow Auscam’ers by sending us a UFO video you have created.

It can be as fake or as real as you like – a spinning plate, a Frisbee, perhaps a real Star Wars model – and as short as 10 seconds. Simply post it to Vimeo or YouTube and send us the details, or email or post on an SD card the footage to us and we’ll host it on our Auscam channel for you.

Prize Pool RØDE Microphone 1 x Blimp with additional Universal Blimp Mount, 1 x Boompole, 1 x VideoMic Sony Software Complete version of Sony Vegas Pro Edius Grass Valley Complete version of Edius 6 Boris FX One free Boris Continuum Unit of your choice Livescribe One Livescribe Echo Smartpen and accessories Velbon DV-7000 Tripod Blackmagic HyperDeck Shuttle Total value to date is over $3000. Check back at the website at auscamonline.com to see more prizes as they are added! * * See rodemic.com, sonycreativesoftware.com/vegaspro, grassvalley.com/products/edius_6, borisfx.com/units, livescribe.com/smartpen/echo for more information

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write | light | shoot | edit | distribute

| October

2011

hardware

Viewsonic VP2365wb Whether you’re editing video or photos or watching movies, Drew Turney finds Viewsonic’s new model a good option.

ronically given the size (this is not by any stretch a small piece of machinery) the Viewsonic VP2365wb could be at home in a large variety of environments and desktop set-ups. The reason is in the impressive viewing angle afforded by the tilt, pivot rotate and height adjustments. The vertical angle is pretty good, moving through about 40 degrees, and the height adjustment gives you a fair range depending on where it sits in relation to your eyes. Even the capability to swing it between portrait and landscape modes is a bonus if you want to orient your onscreen workspace in such a way, giving you both a long, tall area for long written documents and the wide landscape angle for finer detail on your editing or animating timeline. But we liked the rotation best. How many times do you have to show a colleague something and they end up nearly in your lap having to sit so close? The horizontal rotation in the pedestal lets you to move it through an almost 360 degree plane. It makes sharing easy or puts a much bigger potential work area in front of you.

each cell of the LCD so the electric field runs horizontally through the material. This approach keeps the liquid crystals parallel to the front of the panel, and as you might have guessed it improves both the viewing angle and colour reproduction of older technologies like TN (Twisted Nemetic). It’s very arcane science but the proof’s in the pudding – from a viewing angle of nearly 90 degrees away from the front the picture on the VP2365wb is as bright as when it’s head on. When it comes to the colour angle, our test model performed every task you’d expect of a modern multimedia computer monitor including playing Hollywood blockbusters across the full width, precise colour matching of stills in image software and laying out the magazine you’re holding in your hands right now. While your other Auscam writers know a lot more about precise colour reproduction in video and broadcasting hardware, it more than met the challenges a graphic designer and movie buff threw at it. For hardcore colour nerds, it has

The technology behind the VP2365wb is called In Plane Switching (IPS), which places pairs of electrodes at the sides of

16.7 million (6-bit + A-FRC) colour depth and a 72 percent

The Tech Stuff Size

23”

Aspect Ratio

16:9

Resolution

1920x1080

Response Time

14ms ISO

Brightness

300 cd/m2

NTSC colour gamut. There are two USB in and two USB out ports and a Type 2 port like you see on a desktop printer. You can connect it with a DVI or VGA port and both cables are in the package. The ports are neatly tucked up into the back of the device so they’re out of the way but Viewsonic has sacrificed some degree of accessibility. It’s much harder than the constant attaching and detaching of USB devices like you’d do with a laptop because it’s just too fiddly to climb behind and reach the ports. We had the VP2365wb attached as a second monitor to a Mac laptop and a handful of times it displayed only snow when it was reattached, but switching it off and back on at the front power button fixed that. After struggling upside down for awhile to get the cables all connected it recognised the Mac with no problem (and vice versa) without any need for drivers or other software, and it’s going to be hard to say goodbye to. n

Auscam Rating

Performance

We Liked

Documentation

Screen orientation options

Features

Disliked

Setup

USB ports a little hard to reach

Price

$449

Contact

Viewsonic Australia viewsonic.com.au w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

| | October

2011

Microsoft Media Center and Codecs

indows Media Center is designed to turn your computer into a home entertainment device which can be easily controlled from the couch using a remote control. You can use it to play DVDs and video files, as well as watch and record free-to-air television if you add a TV tuner card or USB dongle. The media centre interface is built into Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate. It was first introduced with the Media Centre

MCE’s Movie Library doesn’t always display your ripped DVDs by default, but you can fix this by editing the registry (support.microsoft.com/kb/930526). You can also install plug-ins such as My Movies for Windows Media Center (mymovies.dk) to download cover art and other metadata. If you’re downloading files from the internet, you’ll soon discover that MCE doesn’t play formats such as MKV. Third-party media players such as VLC are Swiss army knife media players, but

for your set-up. If you’re using the the Media Centre Decoder utility, you’ll want to revert to your default settings before installing Shark007’s Codec Pack. Most people shouldn’t need to tweak the default settings, although if you’re running a 64-bit version of Windows you should install Shark007’s x64 Components Add-on after you install the Codec Pack. If you’re uninstalling, ensure you remove the x64 Components Addon before you remove the Codec Pack. Shark007’s Codec Packs also contain

Edition of Windows XP and is still generally referred to as MCE. To play music and video, your computer needs a “codec” to decode the file. An MPEG-2 codec is preinstalled with MCE versions of Windows 7 and Vista so, unlike Windows XP, you don’t need to install separate DVD playback software to watch DVDs and free-to-air TV. You’ll find that different MPEG-2 codecs offer different results depending on your graphics card and other variables. If you want to experiment with other MPEG-2 codecs, such as those from NVIDIA and PowerDVD, the Media Centre Decoder utility (whittakermoore.com/mcdu.exe) makes it easy to switch between them. MCE is also a handy media player for people who prefer to rip their DVDs to the hard drive, using software such as AnyDVD (slysoft.com), and then put the original disc away for safe keeping. MCE treats the ripped DVD files like a physical disc, allowing you to navigate the menus. Keep in mind that Australian law still doesn’t permit format-shifting commercial DVD and Blu-ray movies to your hard drive, only audio CDs. You can add the folder containing your ripped DVDs to MCE by dipping into Settings, Media Libraries and Movies.

they’re not as easy to control from the couch. As such many people opt to install an all-in-one codec pack which extends the capabilities of MCE. Shark007’s Codec Packs (shark007. net) are considered some of the best one-stop-shop codec packs for MCE, with versions available for Windows 7 and Vista/XP. Format support includes DivX, Xvid, MKV, QuickTime, RealMedia and MPEG-2 as well as DirectVobSub for handling subtitles and AC3Filter for playing AC3 and DTS soundtracks. Shark007’s Codec Packs come with a settings application that makes it easy to specify different splitters and decoders for specific file types -- letting you experiment until you find which is best

the codec for playing m2ts files ripped from Blu-ray movie discs. Unfortunately the Codec Pack doesn’t handle the encryption on Blu-ray movies, so it can’t play them directly from the disc. It only lets you play Blu-ray movies which have been unencrypted and ripped to your hard drive (using software such as AnyDVD HD). You’ll need to play these via MCE’s Video Library rather than the Movie Library. Most Blu-ray drives come bundled with Blu-ray playback software, some of which offer MCE integration, although once again you’ll want to experiment with different options. You might get better results using standalone Blu-ray playback software. n

w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

playback

Microsoft’s Windows Media Center makes for a handy media player, but it doesn’t come with everything you need out of the box, says Adam Turner.

| October

2011

Business as Usual

feature

He learnt many years ago that if a customer walks out of a shop without buying, it’s highly unlikely they’ll come back. So shouldn’t we put forward the very best face, asks David Hague?

ne of the biggest complaints we hear at House of Auscam is the lack of service at camera/camcorder vendors, quickly followed by the lack of knowledge of their staff.

w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

| | October

2011

ecently, due to necessity rather than a specific project, I had need to find a particular thing while on a trip to Perth (for those unaware, I am based 300 Km SE of Perth in the small town of Bridgetown, locally called Fridgetown with good reason. As such, if I need a special cable, or some exotic gadget, it’s not exactly a trip to the corner shop!) This was not a difficult item I was after; a leather cover for my Samsung Galaxy tablet, no big deal you would have thought. That is where I was wrong. And in the process of learning I was wrong, I also learnt quite a few other things too, most of them shameful, having come from a background of tech sales with a Tandy retail store, and more importantly, in the overall scheme of things, as a Tandy Computer Centre manager for quite a few years. I’ve also been involved in PR and supply chains and distribution for my sins. The first was attitude. In every store I entered, bar one (more on that later), I was treated indifferently, almost contemptuously, usually by a be-jeaned, tee short wearing, gum chewing 20yo-or-less-something who I had apparently interrupted from doing something far more important.

waste money on “in store training?” As an employer, if I had staff that was not interested in learning their craft and product line to better themselves and their results, I wouldn’t keep them. Being the best at Donkey’s Revenge 3D or able to reload a BFG while simulatneously rolling a cigarette and cutting off an alien’s tentacles don’t count as “product knowledge”. For vendors/retailers reading this, I have more mail than I can jump over from people complaining that the level of service or chance that accepting that a potential customer may have a modicum of knowledge is almost zero. Especially to the ladies out there and the more senior of us shall we say? Have you ever considered THIS is one reason are buying from overseas. In truth, people do like shopping; Saturday mornings and Thursday late night trading in a Tandy store was like Christmas each week as the male of the species in particular managed to extricate himself from the Woolies/ Coles trolley for 30 minutes or so and get lost in gadget nerdvana. More recently, an eye opener for me was shopping in a giant camera store in Osaka in Japan. It made Harvey Norman look

And myself not being a be-jeaned, tee short wearing, gum chewing 20yo-or-less-something, I obviously had no idea what I was talking about, was not about to buy an XBOX360, PS3 or iPhone and therefore was of little consequence to their day. Now I don’t expect a person in JB HiFi, Harvey Norman or Dick Smith for example to understand the bit transfer rates to a Sony NX70 HD camcorder or the frequency range of a Rode Videomic, but I do expect them to understand the basics of the products they sell, or if they don’t sell it, some friendly advice as to where I might find it. After all, next time I come in, I MAY be buying a new laptop, XBOX360 or PS3. (Don’t hold your breath on an iPhone though). What I didn’t expect was to be told “Doncha know Samsung don’t make tablets anymore?” or “Mate, better off with an iPad”, or from a gentlemen I could hardly understand “Blackberry. Blackberry. Only Blackberry” . Dick Smith was the only one to get a tick with “Sorry, we don’t carry them. Try JB HiFi over the road”. Now what I find a little disturbing about this is that I have lost track over the years of the number of times I have been told by vendors that they have “no advertising budget as we are concentrating on in-store promotion and training”. Just a minute. Two things leap out here; one if I buy/ have a copy of Auscam or subscribe (even better), then as an advertiser in this genre, I would be getting my message directly to those that count and more importantly, buy. And two, a display in JB or HN or wherever is just another glitzy

like a doll’s house. Everything was neat, tidy and the levels of service, product available to play with and knowledge were staggering – even if they didn’t speak English, the staff still tried their hardest to help or find someone that could. I am all for buying in Australia where we can. In fact my own publishing venture via Auscam depends on it through local advertising and magazine sales. But I urge buyers who get short shrift in the shops to walk away, let their management know via email, letter or phone call and then look elsewhere. And the one shop I was treated courteously, with care by someone who went beyond the expected to find my Samsung case? One of those little booths you find in shopping centre thoroughfares – in this case, Allphones in Innaloo Shopping Centre in Perth. I have since done more business with them, and that staff member in particular, by email and credit card. And for the record, the other shops I tried were (not in any order) Harvey Norman, JB HiFi, Telstra Shop(s) Optus Shop(s) Vodafone Shop(s), Dick Smith, Good Guys and Retravision. n

display among dozens of non-related glitzy displays seemingly manned by those that sell what is easiest, cheapest, has the biggest commission or SPIFF (vendor kickback). So why

w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

Buyers’ Biggest Gripes • Treated indifferently • Assumed to have no knowledge • Get little or bad advice • Alternatives not suggested • Find minimal product knowledge • Forced to wait • No demonstration stock

| October

2011

Small is good; but better with support

hardware

A cheap and handy tripod, a free app, and a callout to readers, by Chris Oaten

s I sit here tapping out these words for you, there are within arm’s length a Flip Mino HD, Canon HV20, my trusty Canon 5D MkII, a Sony NEX-FS100FP and my iPhone. But you know what? There’s only one camera in that bunch that is always with me. My iPhone. Of course, by “with me” I mean always within arm’s reach, usually in a shirt pocket or resting in a car console or otherwise close by. I often have other cameras with me while driving

I’m just guessing you could make it work. Also, the history of documentary and photojournalism shows us that if there’s something happening in front of you that will make the history books, change the outcome of a court case, or simply provide a bit of an edge for an investigative report, then any camera will do. Indeed, I was speaking to a member of an Adelaide TV crew who had used an iPhone to capture a candid in-car

Gorillamobile is simply a scaled-down version of the Gorillapod, with a payload rating of 350g. It has the same articulated legs as the Gorillapod, albeit with a smaller gauge knuckle, and it mounts to the iPhone by clipping on to the edge of the “bumper” case that’s supplied with the kit. Maxwell carry the Joby brand in Australia. You can see the full range and find dealers at maxwell.com.au/joby/ index (and check out the Gorillatorch while you’re there).

but, they’re stuffed safely in a bag and secured so they don’t become deadly missiles in the event that my car suddenly meets an immovable object. This is true for most of us. A smartphone has become an indispensable tool for many people but especially so for freelancers and other mobile operators, enabling them to run an office from anywhere. But can it also be a useful shooter? Well, clearly, you’re unlikely to cut together a cinema feature with an iPhone or other smartphone, though I imagine somebody with the right story and screenplay could make it work.. Web video, for instance, is one area that smartphones can excel with their ability to respond immediately to a situation with camera, software and network delivery all built into the one device. Covert surveillance? You could stand within a few metres of a target and fool them into believing you’re on a phone call while in fact you’re filming them with that person whose company they shouldn’t be keeping. You know, if you’re into that kind of work. I’m not.

interview. It was a case of any-camerawill-do after their other cameras had lost all charge, yet the fly-on-the-wall vision was a good fit for the story they were doing about a shonky operator. Shakycam sensibilities aside, with 720p output in H.264 at up to 30fps, a video shot on an iPhone can look surprisingly good if you understand and work within its limitations. Low light performance is one of these limitations, along with storage space – a maximum 32GB minus everything else stored on your iPhone. Also of concern is a bit of jelly effect and shearing in low light. This means one of the best things you can do to improve iPhone video capture is, as is so often the case with any camera, get a tripod or other support. Now, you can imagine that even the most basic Miller tripod would be overkill and a smartphone of just about any make or model is small enough and light enough that you can fashion a cradle for it with a paper clip (no, really!) but there’s something more ideal – the Joby Gorillamobile. You’ve no doubt seen a Gorillapod. Photographers are fond of them for placing remote speedlites in odd places and, I might add, with good effect. The

I have to admit to not having used the iPhone 4 version of the Gorillamobile (about $35). I own the model made for the iPhone 3G and, with the suction pad mount that was supplied with the 3G kit and a bit of gaffer tape when needs be, it adapts well enough to my iPhone 4. But Joby offers something else that is very useful and free, which is always welcome: an iPhone app, and a well put together one at that. It’s primarily designed for still captures but this app brings an intervalometer to your iPhone, enabling stopmotion capture with a continuous or manual shutter, or time lapse captures of up to 1000 shots at up to one-day intervals that can of course be fed into a video timeline with good effect. There’s one thought to leave you with but, as this is the first installment in a regular page on smartphone videography, I’d be keen for some feedback on what you want to read about. Shall I stick to hardware tests with leading smartphone products? We don’t have to stick with the iPhone… there are plenty of great Android phones with good (and better) cameras. Apple and/or Android apps? I’m taking requests. Let me know via chris@auscamonline.com n w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

| | October

2011

Into the Lens

ow well do you know yourself? I have always wondered why I have been so drawn to acting. Is it the fame? No, I sincerely do not want the celebrity lifestyle. Is it the fortune? Perhaps – who doesn’t want to make quick, easy (and legitimate) money? But if it was the money, surely any highly paid profession would suffice. So that brings me back to: why acting? The only plausible explanation I have been able to come up with is that is has been about the journey itself and specifically what it has taught me about myself. Have you ever heard a recording of your own voice or seen a video of yourself? The first time that happens, most people would swear blind that wasn’t their voice when they hear it

The next time I was bullied at kindy, I growled at the little boy and he got scared and left me alone. And so I learned the old adage “attack is the best form of defence”. I have been subtly aggressive ever since. Ok, sometimes not so subtle. I didn’t know that my behaviour was any different from anyone else’s, however, until I took up the challenge of acting. In scenes of conflict where the other girls in the class would cower, I would stand my ground just that little bit longer, or have that stubbornness (or perhaps arrogance!) stamped across my face. If you want to take it to the next level, you can begin to modify your behaviour – in class and in social situations – to elicit

and they don’t identify with their own image when they see themselves. One of the crueller aspects of acting is that you have to get used to hearing yourself and seeing yourself. Not just because you’re going to be faced with that very situation in the future, but so you can grow. Didn’t know your voice was that high, or low or monotonous? Hear yourself on tape you will be surprised. Didn’t know your hair doesn’t quite suit you with a centre part or that top makes you look a bit dumpy? Watch a video of yourself (without the rose coloured glasses) and take stock. It’s not just physical things you learn about yourself either. As you begin to grow as an actor, you become more natural on screen and your own personality shines through. Seeing my genuine reactions on screen, especially compared to the other girls in the class, I learned a great deal about how I present in a social sense. For those that know me, they find it hard to believe that I was once an extremely shy child. Always very small, I practically lived on my mother’s hip. One day I came home from kindy upset and Mum questioned me until I told her that someone had been mean to me. A lateral thinker, she didn’t teach me to tell the teacher or to be mean to them in return, she taught me to growl. Yes, growl. As in: hands clenched in claw shapes, snarl on the face and a deep, rumbling, throaty growl.

a desired outcome. Acting can become a highly interesting anthropological or psychological study. By changing the way you act and react in any given circumstance, you have the ability to direct any situation to your own advantage. But first you have to know how you do present in any given circumstance. It is a well-documented fact that people that know themselves truthfully make better leaders and there are many ways to do so. Meditation, constructive criticism and therapy are just a few. I was drawn to acting. Now all I need to work out is how not to be a nervous wreck when asking the boss for a pay rise. Probably not a good time to dust off that growl… n

insider

Juanita Grayson continues her series on being and becoming an actor

Know Thyself • Do you know how you appear to others? • Try listening to a recording of your own voice. • Try watching a home video of yourself. • For the very brave: try listening to your own singing voice. w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

| October

2011

Training Materials

insider

At Auscam, we hold a large number of DVD titles for video training for camcorders, editing software, techniques and more. To order, simply go to our website and click on Store in the menu bar, or see below for more purchase options.

ABCinema

Inside HdSLR

In ABCinema there are over 80 hours of tutorials. It will appeal to the movie fan who is interested in film in general as it contains a large collection of known and lesser known flim clips from 1878 until the present day. Each exerpt is an example of new discovery, film language, editing,

HdSLR Film and video production is immensely popular, for good reason! Stunning imagery and unlimited possibilities are at your fingertips with a dSLR camcorder. Raymond Schlogel and Douglas Spotted Eagle expose all aspects of HdSLR film and video on this two

camera movement, image cutouts, sound, talkies, colour film, acting method and so on.

and one half hour training DVD. From lenses to metering, to preparation and peripherals, Douglas and Ray show you how to get the most out of dSLR film and video production.

$99.00 Making Money Making Video Making Money Making Video is the first-ever DVD that outlines how to be successful in the Video Production Industry. Kevin Hicks and Brian Balog guide you through the entire process of Making Money Making Video. Over an hour in length, this DVD covers every step of the process including: Getting Established, Negotiating, Saving Money in Pre-Production, Production, and Post-Production, and lots of Expert Tips. Watch Making Money Making Video and Increase Your Profits in all stages of your video production business

$99.00 42

$79.00 Camera Confidence Get the inside look with Douglas Spotted Eagle and Kevin Hicks as they guide you through every angle of camcorder use, regardless of the camera you own or your level of experience. All basic camera features and functions are discussed and explained in this DVD. Learn how to control light through shutter speed or aperture, and see the difference. Go in-depth on topics such as codecs and file-based workflows. Watch practical demonstrations of the 180, camera movement, frame rate and coverage. Get advanced info on 35MM adapters and tips on achieving

the elusive “film look” in your video projects. From beginners to seasoned pros, there’s something for everyone to improve on their camera knowledge and operation.

$59.00 Light ‘Em Up Light is the most important part of visual communication. Without it there can be no picture and all that you capture when you film an image is the light reflecting off of the objects in your scene. So Make sure you are doing it right with the Light ‘Em Up DVD. With over an hour of instruction, this contemporary guide to video lighting is an absolute must have for anyone who wants to take their productions to the next level visually.

$59.00 Payment As well as ordering these online, they can also be obtained by sending us a cheque with delivery details to: PO Box 609 Bridgetown WA 6255 Or call us on 08 9467 5922 or mobile 0413 632 286 Please allow up to 2 weeks for delivery just in case we are out of stock of your item(s). Or we accept payment using the following methods

w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

| | October

2011

Book Reviews

t’s fair to say I have read more in that time than in the previous 10 years, so handy is the gadget. And not just handy, but also very compulsive. It is far too easy to hear of a title by an author you like mentioned on radio or on a TV chat show for example, do a quick Kindle/Amazon search and then go click when you find it. Two minutes later, without leaving your armchair, you have it. Remember Bill Gates of Microsoft saying that 640K RAM in a PC was more than ANYONE would ever need? I fear the 1000 or so books on a basic Kindle may have the same sorry ending. Anyway, there is still a place for the humble book, and this month, Elsevier Press (elsevier.com) has sent us a couple, one of which is very topical at the moment, and the other a useful tome for beginner or expert alike to keep up to scratch with their video making skillset.

Video Production Handbook Jim Owens and Gerald Millerson (5th Edition ISBN 9780240522203) 416 pages

If you ever wondered about all the processes that go into making a video – from the initial thought processes right through to final distribution, then this book will fill in the blanks. Most of us are only involved in a very small of the overall project, and the other issues that face the money men, promoters, producers, camera, lighting and soundies, editors, make-up and other assorted disciplines usually pass us by. Video Production handbook not only explains all the nuances of these areas, but also gives lots of information and advice on how to best approach these things no matter what size budget you are playing with. Illustrating the ideas and concepts are more than 450 full colour photos, interviews with industry luminaries, and coverage of what could be called “new topics” such as 3D, shooting with HdSLR and more. Highly recommended across the board.

$49.95 w w w. a u s c a m o n l i n e . c o m

DSLR Cinema – Crafting the Film Look with Video Kurt Lancaster (ISBN 9780240815510) 286 pages

You would have to have been on holiday in Pyongyang or Guantanamo Bay not to have realised that the current buzz around video is all about using HdSLR cameras to shoot video. Whether you like the

insider

A dedicated convert to the Kindle e-book reader, David Hague looks at the latest and best in (virtual) print from the world of film and videography.

idea or not (and I admit for the type of work I do with video which is mainly sport I don’t), nonetheless this book goes a long way to describing the best techniques available to get the most from your HdSLR and how to get that “filmic” look in particular. Lancaster stresses that you have to think more like a cinematographer than a “videographer” (I detest that term) and delves into shooting for features, short fiction, documentary, video journalism or even that thing we all love – the wedding. Content includes case studies whereby films are examined in detail, exploring how each exemplifies top storytelling, visual character and pushing the limits of the HdSLR. Composition, lighting, camera movement, lenses, picture styles, audio, post production workflow and much more are also dissected in depth. If you are contemplating jumping into the HdSLR pond or just want to know what the fuss is all about, this is the book that will tell you.

$39.95 Auscam book reviews If you are a publisher and have some titles you think would be of interest to our readers, please contact us by email at david@auscamonline.com or on 08 9467 5922. We will need a copy of the book, its RRP, ISBN and a high resolution image of the cover.

| October

2011

it’s a wrap

Going Solo

Wish Steve Turner luck as he turns a new page in life...

his month marks one of life’s larger turning points for this scribbler. After a lazy thirty one years in the comfort zone known as broadcast television I’ve taken the big leap of faith into running my own race full time. This wasn’t an easy decision as anyone who’s done it will attest. It’s easier to sit back and take the dependable weekly pay and wonder if you would have been able to make it alone. So why would I? Largely because the lure of being your own boss has always been appealing. Choose the work, choose the time you work, work from home and all the other positives that are sold with the dream of self employment. If only it was that easy. In fact I’ve been partially self-employed for the last fifteen years having set up my own business as I watched the steady decline in internal television production. The heady days of the 80s and 90s are far behind us and television stations now do little more than news and current affairs. Outsourcing has become the norm; so many insiders took the plunge into freelancing either voluntarily or not! So just what are the downsides? Well for one working from home provides a whole raft of issues. The first and biggest is discipline. Being at home has so many distractions just

waiting to lure you away from the work you need to be doing. When you’re happily raking in the weekly pay from a reliable employer there will always be downtime. Time to chat to mates, head out for a smoke, grab a coffee and a million other non-productive activities. Thing is though that when you’re at home on your own there is no more downtime. Every hour is work time. If you been thinking you have a fleeting feeling you’ll take it easy then don’t even go there! The biggest issue I’ve faced in the last fifteen years is where to find the time to work well. As a father of three small girls who has a major commitment to them I find the hardest thing is to dedicate time to work and work well. That doesn’t mean burning the midnight oil either. Life is one long balancing act and being a train wreck because you’re working when you should be sleeping isn’t going to work either. The other big child related issues you’ll learn is that you cannot work when there are children at home. It isn’t fair to them and it isn’t fair to you. So I know my working days are when the kids are at school or in day care or having a day with Gran. So each week needs to be scheduled in advance. Fix the working days, attach a task to each day and get focused and get the work done. Of course there needs to be flexibility and if you’re not in parent land yet then that will be easier for you. What I’ll look for is the bread and butter work first. For me this means some freelance directing, editing or graphics work. Then I’m free to look at the more interesting stuff. One I’ve snagged recently is for True Aviators, a new vintage aircraft business. So loads of air to air action to be filmed. More on that another day. This is relevant because I was inspired by Adam and Jana’s willingness to do the same and make the big leap into flying solo. Good luck to them and now good luck to me. I’ll keep you posted... n

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