Braintrust Digital Production Blog

Contest entry video for Bobby McCoy

2012-04-06T20:12:00.002-04:00

Last week, I was asked to create a two minute video for one of the assistant pastors of our church. He is a quadriplegic who uses an accessible van with special hand controls to get around. His van and specialty equipment is badly in need of replacement, and this month is National Mobility Awareness Month. The National Mobility Equipment Dealer's Association (NMEDA) is sponsoring a contest that will award three "local heroes" a new accessible van. A friend of Bobby's asked me to a take his essay, convert it to a script, and shoot an accompanying video.

My friend, David McCauley graciously allowed me to borrow his Canon 60D so I could shoot everything in 1080P. This was my first real-world shoot with a DSLR, and I loved it. The image quality was gorgeous, and the form factor was not a challenge to get used to. I shot everything on tripod, so it didn't feel awkward. The 60D's swivel LCD made it very easy to not feel tied to the viewfinder. I could stand next to the camera for interviews and still see the image on screen. Overall, I was pleased with how it turned out, but it sure is sad having to take a 1080P masterpiece and compress it to YouTube quality.

I've embedded the video below. Please take the time to vote for Bobby also. You can vote once a day per person or device until May 13.

VOTE HERE!

AirTurn BT-105 review

2011-12-30T12:00:00.000-05:00

The AirTurn BT-105 hands-free page turning system

Earlier this year, I posted a review of AirTurn’s first hands-free page turning system, the AT-104. The 104 operated on RF technology to “turn” digital pages on a connected computer or tablet. AirTurn has now released the BT-105 which uses Bluetooth technology as the model name suggests. The company has taken an already inconspicuous and useful product and shrunk it down to make it even more appealing. You’ll find my review of the AT-104 at this link, and I’ll refer to that article for much of the duplicate information. Continue reading to find out how the BT-105 differs from its predecessor.

Hardware

The BT-105’s profile could hardly be any more svelte. Since your chosen device, be it tablet, laptop, or desktop, already has a Bluetooth radio transceiver inside, there is no need for the USB dongle required by the AT-104. The BT includes two custom-built pedals and the BT transmitter/battery assembly. I was skeptical of the custom pedals when I received the unit in the mail, but was quickly impressed by the build quality and performance. The pedals are made of an extremely durable plastic or resin material, which makes them light and flexible. They are flexible enough to bend and press under your foot, but strong enough to not crack. I can only imagine it would take an elephant with a tuba to damage these during normal use.

The brain of the unit, which includes a non-removable, rechargeable battery, is smaller than the pedals and fits between them. It is mounted securely to the pedals’ base with Velcro. There is a tri-color LED indicator light, two 3.5mm ports for pedal input, a mini USB port for charging, and a small multifunction button. The button acts as power, BT profile change, and pairing toggle all in one.

Function

The BT-105 simply works. It is as responsive and accurate as its predecessor, so there’s really no reason to elaborate on how it performs. The pedals are broad and extremely easy to depress. Finding them with your foot without having them in view is no problem. What’s changed with this model is more on the software and interface end than anything else.

Interface

Since the BT-105 does not have any software included like the AT-104 did, the software side is dependent on whatever application you use on your interfacing device. For my review I used an Apple iPad 2, which is AirTurn’s suggested device. I chose a supported app from the App Store, where there are many compatible options to choose from. After powering on both the iPad’s Bluetooth and the AirTurn device, I was paired and connected within seconds. The app that I downloaded included some public domain music files, so I was up and running with minimal setup.

The only trouble that I had with operating the BT was interpreting the LED indicator. As I said before, there are three colors, amber, red, and green. This makes the possible combinations of indications high. And the BT-105 uses quite a few of them. The manual lists several light patterns, but correlating them to the code that it gives you is every bit as difficult as you might imagine. One example is changing the Bluetooth profile. The BT-105 comes setup for iPad use, but it must be changed to one of the other three profiles to be used with alternate devices. I tried changing it from iPad to PC/Mac mode. The process is described in the manual this way:

“To change to the PC or MAC profile (Profile 1), turn off the BT-105. Then, holding down the foot switch plugged into Port 1-2 (the port closest to the red power switch), turn on the BT-105. Release the foot switch as soon as you see the LED blink. The LED will then blink red, then green, then red, indicating that the profile has been set.”

The process worked as described when I attempted it, but many musicians that aren’t so tech savvy may be intimidated by this process. If you are one that may frequently change devices, this could indeed become very tedious.

Battery

Another advantage that the BT-105 has over the AT-104 is the inclusion of a rechargeable lithium polymer battery. This allows for longer use time and reduces the maintenance cost of the device by not having to endlessly replace alkaline batteries. Despite my initial delight over the battery type, I was alarmed when I first read the following in the operating manual:

“Note: If you fail to charge your battery when it is blinking red, you risk running it down completely which will require a factory replacement.”

Several AirTurn representatives reassured me that this is a warning to users who may neglect to charge the unit even when the LED indicator tells them the battery is almost dead. I was also told that most regular users charge their units weekly and have no trouble. They claim that 99% of units with dead batteries are recoverable when plugged into a wall socket to recharge, but the possibility of totally killing the battery is there.

Summary

With the introduction of the BT-105, AirTurn has delivered another powerful product that will help thrust music performance into the future. All of a musician’s digital sheet music can now be quickly accessed with the swipe of a finger, and it can be effortlessly played through with light taps of the feet. Being made in America, it is great to see a quality product that delivers as advertised while still maintaining a reasonable cost and excellent customer care.

Also posted here.

Extron Institute for Emerging Technology

2011-12-22T21:09:00.000-05:00

My partner Tim and I just came back from last month's class on Emerging Technology from the Extron Institute in Anaheim, CA. The class was divided up into six categories taught over three days:

· Streaming Technologies
· Configurable Control
· Digital Systems
· Fiber Optic Design
· Multi-Image Processing
· Power Amps & Pro DSP

I learned a lot of new information, got up to speed on how things have changed over recent months, and was able to get refreshed on some topics that I had gotten rusty on.

Streaming

If there’s any topic dear to the hearts of Tim and I, it’s streaming media technology. We were not disappointed during Wednesday’s discussion. The course instructor gave a succinct overview of historical and current streaming tech also taking time to explain the ins and outs of some of the engineering behind it. Significant time was spent on comparisons between the ubiquitous H.264 and Extron’s proprietary codec called Pure3. The Pure3 codec is intended for use in mission-critical application environments where lossless image re-creation and minimal buffering and latency are required. The side-by-side comparison of Pure3 and H.264 was very interesting.

Pure3 provides a 4:4:4 color space allowing the highest quality imaging to be streamed. H.264 has a limit of 4:2:0. Pure3 utilizes Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) compression while H.264 uses Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). DWT looks at 32x32 pixel blocks and allows for a more efficient compression over DCT. Pure3 also uses a technique called Error Concealment to compensate for lost packets. This causes discreet portions of the image to be temporarily shifted out of place. Packet loss with other error correction generally results in macro blocking. Satellite television subscribers see this kind of artifacting frequently during heavy rainstorms. The final difference between Pure3 and H.264 is that Pure3 does not utilize GOPs. Each frame is individually processed much like a still image compression like JPEG. This results in higher quality streams and lower bandwidth usage when still frames or images with static backgrounds are present.

HDCP

High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection. You may not know the term, but you probably have it in your home. HDCP is the tech that attempts to prevent things like Blu-Ray disks from being copied. HDCP utilizes a set number of “keys.” Whenever HDCP-compliant devices are connected, the devices communicate the presence of these keys among each other to determine if and how the content will be displayed. There was some discussion of the so-called HDCP “master key” that was leaked out several months ago. Just last month, several researchers in Germany were able to use that master key to easily bypass HDCP using less than $300 worth of electronics. This anti-piracy technology has its place, but it is causing headaches for AV professionals. Allow me to elaborate.

Since each device has a set maximum number of keys allowed (no more than 127), HDCP-compliant devices are limited to that many devices that they can interface with. Also the number of keys that a given device may have is not always spelled out. If a project requires more keys than a device can send, the additional displays will be stuck showing a green screen with no content. Since large-scale installations, such as universities, hospitals, and airports, can often have more than 127 displays, this limits the types of devices that may be used in those situations. The newer Ultra-Violet encryption technology was not discussed in the course, but it presents an even more foreboding and Draconian future for AV professionals if it takes hold on the market.

Any Extron Institute class presents a fire hose of information, but this three-day class was paced well and peppered with some enlightening discussions among the attendees. There were some sharp men in that room that really knew their stuff and weren’t afraid to take the instructors to task if they thought they were off on something. However, I don’t recall him being proved wrong on any major point. As always, we were treated and fed like royalty, even getting a tour of their main office building and manufacturing process. Extron is one of an elite group of electronics manufacturers that still makes most of their products in America. They have an automated facility in Anaheim that solders the boards while assembly personnel put together larger components and prepare packaging for shipments. Clearly this hasn’t hurt the company as they are building an additional six-story headquarters building in Anaheim for their new West US headquarters. Their US East HQ is constructing a nearly identical building in Raleigh to house their operations as well. My hat is tipped to Extron for helping to keep more jobs on US soil when they’re needed more than ever and for having the quality customer care to invite us out for their world-class training.

Adobe Elements 10 Review

2011-11-28T12:00:00.000-05:00

The Adobe Elements 10 Organizer interface

Adobe Elements 10 is now available for Mac and PC. With this tenth release comes a bevy of new features for hobbyist photographers and digi-scrappers to enjoy. Having used and reviewed the Elements software since version six, I have an easy time telling whether a new version provides significant improvements over its successor or not. During the Elements 10 preview that Adobe presented, there were some definite “wow” moments. With loads of new features to explore, I’ll allow you, the user, to experiment and find which ones are best for you. Following are some of my top features.

Easy type on paths

Typing on paths is super-simple in Elements 10.

Calling this “type on path” does not do justice to what you can do with text in Elements 10. Drawing any shape or path can quickly be typed on by simply using the new text tool options available. You can draw a custom shape, selection, or path. Any of these can then be “committed” onto your document and immediately typed on. Didn’t get it right the first time? No problem. Simply use the appropriate tool again and adjust the points to just what you want.

Visual search

Adobe has answered a request that many people have been asking for to be able to easily locate images that contain more than just people. The solutions are called“object search” and “visual similarity search.” The names aren’t necessarily exciting, but the power behind them is. Object search can be used to find anything included in images such as animals or visual landmarks like houses or monuments. Once you select the object to be found, Adobe will rapidly search your library and bring up best matches for the item selected.

Setting up to do an "object search"

The object search results

Visual similarity search results

Visual similarity search can be used to locate images with similar colors or shapes. A slider appears that you can adjust towards either color or shape depending on the subject matter. For example, if you’re looking for sunset images to use for a background on a family Christmas letter, move the slider towards color to find those rich golden hues in other images.

Special effects

As usual, Adobe has added a few new special effects to their guided edits in the Elements editor. Picture Stack makes a popular effect easy by turning one image into a 4,8, or 12 image collage. The pictures are given borders and canted and rotated to create a three-dimensional“stack” of photos.

Along the lines of the Lomo effect introduced in Elements 9,the Orton effect is now easy to apply. Michael Orton is known for his distinct style of photography involving three things: overexposure, soft focus, and camera motion. The Orton effect quickly allows you to apply these filters to your image and tweak the results.

Bugs

As with any new release, there are some problems to contend with. I’ve had one issue with images imported from my DSLR not showing up in the Organizer library. I had a screen-sharing session withAdobe reps in California and India where I replicated the issue for them. They were not aware of this issue, but are saying that it stems from the fact that my startup disk partition is different from the partition that I installed Elements on.

The other issue caused the Organizer to create out-of-date folders for images taken on the same day. The second issue is already acknowledged by Adobe, and a fix is in the works. With time, hopefully Adobe will squash the bugs.

Version 10 of Photoshop Elements provides some very compelling reasons for users to upgrade or buy in for the first time. If you’re using the software that came with your camera to edit and organizer your images, do yourself and favor and invest in this product. The new features introduced are helpful especially for those looking to add a little more spice or distinction to their images. As always, Elements provides easy paths for users to make their images look better than ever.

Adobe Carousel (Revel) Review (UPDATE: 1/12/12)

2011-11-22T12:00:00.000-05:00

Memorophilia: the love of memories

Every once in a while a bit of ones and zeros come together to make a piece of software that strikes an unforgettable chord with a user. Sometimes it makes a lasting impression that a person will look back on for the rest of his or her life. One of those moments for me was the first time I played Super Mario Bros. I was at my cousin’s house, and everyone else remembers how I was so into the game that I would actually lift my arms spastically whenever I wanted Mario to jump. I just remember the empowering experience of holding a plastic controller in my hand and causing the image of a man on a screen to do whatever I told him to do. While Adobe Carousel doesn’t quite meetup to the high standard set by good ol’ Mario, it certainly has made a lasting impression and brings up quite a few questions as to what the future of photo storage and sharing will look like. Tech bloggers have long been heralding the demise of everything from the mouse to the desktop computer, but few have dared to become the literary harbinger of the death of the physical photo album. Carousel may just be the shot heard ‘round the world in that story.

First off, a little background. If you are not familiar with Carousel, let me summarize it for you. Carousel is an app currently available for iOS and Mac OSX Lion. It allows a subscriber to store an unlimited number of photos on Adobe’s cloud for in-app access on any of these platforms. Users can create different Carousels(which are like albums),that allow them to share those photo groups with other Carousel users. The length and breadth of Carousel’s feature set has already been documented here, so take a few minutes to review that article before continuing. Now for a small disclaimer - the first hands-on time that I got with Carousel was on the iPad 2. Coincidentally, this was the first time I’ve used any iPad or iOS device for that matter. I tried to look beyond that to give an objective view of how the app stands alone, but sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between what is a plus or minus because of the app or the OS. That being said, my review of Carousel is an attempt to look only at the app’s performance and is not meant to reflect in any way on the performance of iOS. Since Carousel is also a desktop app, I ran it on my 15” Core i7 MacBook Pro.

You're first presented with this screen when you run Carousel on the iPad or OSX.

Carousel for all current platforms (Windows and Android support are on the slate for early 2012) is available only in the Apple App Stores for iOS and OSX. Installation is simple and painless, removing the extra step of saving aDMG file and running the installer. If you have an Adobe ID like you would use for Photoshop.com or Photoshop Elements, you simply sign in with those credentials to get started. Setting up a new account is as easy as getting a Gmail account. You can choose to either start a 30 day trial or go ahead and pay for a subscription upfront.

iOS

Starting with the iPad, I activated my Carousel account 30-day trial with my existing Adobe ID. Aside from a few screenshots with basic instructions, there isn’t any detailed “getting started” guide offered. There isn’t a need for one. You are automatically setup with one Carousel. From there, just start adding images. I installed Dropbox on the iPad and starting bringing some photos that I had stored there into the iPad’s photo library. After that, Carousel could import them in bulk. At the bottom left corner, there’s a indicator light telling you if Carousel is online or offline and in sync or synchronizing. You can tap a “view status” button to see details on the activity currently in progress.

Getting the images uploaded is almost imperceptible. The pictures are either there or not. There’s no waiting for spinning icons or staring at fuzzy lo-res thumbnails telling you that the image isn’t actually there yet. If you can see it in Carousel, it’s there, and you can start manipulating it.

Image Editing

Looking at "looks" on the iPad.

While Carousel is no Photoshop, it does share some similarities while still distinguishing itself from its older, more feature-rich brother. Image modification is broken down into three basic categories: Looks, Adjustments,and Crop & Rotate. “Looks”gives you a variety of predetermined filters and effects to choose from. Selecting one gives your entire photo a quick overhaul. Vignettes, color balance, and sharpness are a few of many different parameters shuffled around when you browse through the various buttons.

“Adjustments” is where the real magic happens, but here is where I find my first beef with Carousel. Under the adjustments panel, you’re presented with white balance,exposure, and contrast. Unless you know to click the double arrows on each, you won’t realize that each of these three sliders also has three more adjustments underlying. The icon should probably be traded out for something more familiar like a drop-down arrow.

In the style of consumer-oriented photo editors, there are obvious “auto” buttons that will allow the algorithms take the place of your eyes to try and figure out the best tweaks for your photograph. Adjusting the sliders manually gives a very fast preview of how your image is affected. With the iPad 2’s dual core chip, it was difficult to notice even the slightest lag in response. There’s also a handy “compare” button always available north of the adjustments,which allows you to quickly A/B between your original and the new version. Once you’re happy with the results,click “apply” to save the changes and be sent back to your Carousel.

The "adjustments" screen on the Mac.

Sharing with Lion

After I was comfortable with the iOS version of Carousel, I installed the application on my laptop to compare. Signing in with my Adobe ID on Lion immediately displayed my Carousel images. Adobe has some sort of pixie dust working behind the scenes, because once you’re logged in, there is virtually no delay until you can start viewing and editing your images. It seems that the images are fully stored in the cloud, but they can, almost like video, be immediately streamed to the device once an image is requested. It’s hard to explain, but it works really well in practice.

My wife and I then sat side-by-side on the same wi-fi connection. I wielded the iPad while she handled the MacBook. The first thing that we noticed was that all of my edits were visible on her interface, including photos I had starred as favorites. She opened an image that I had modified and found that the adjustment sliders were in the same positions that I had set them to. She could then manipulate the image further and save those changes. The updated image showed up on my side within seconds. The beauty of always remembering the slider positions is that you never have to choose between saving a new version or overwriting your original. You can simply reset the sliders to zero and undo any other changes very easily. A button allowing all changes to be reset to zero would be very handy. If you do want to keep different versions of a photo, you can choose to duplicate your image and try another look. My wife and I went back and forth for awhile in a game of photo manipulation pinball until we finally caused Carousel to blink.

Sample of my Carousels on the Mac.

I made a cropping adjustment to a particular photo, and it would not refresh on her end. I even tried cropping it again with no result. Then I tried editing other images and they refreshed as expected. That one image stubbornly refused to update. Finally, she opened it and made her own cropping change. Then it updated my iPad version to look like hers. We then pushed it even further by trying to edit the same image at once. I was told in a pre-release briefing by Adobe that if this happened, the users would be presented with a choice. They would be shown both edited images and be asked to choose which one they wanted to go with. We couldn’t get this feature to work,so it seems that whoever hits the “apply” button last wins. This could be a real thorn in the side for large groups that are working within the same Carousel at once.

Unification

For the most part, the iOS version and OSX version are very similar. There were only two significant differences I noticed. One was that some buttons are arranged a little differently between the two versions. The other was the icon for entering the adjustment mode. The iOS version says “develop,” while the OSX version has an“adjustment” icon similar to Adobe’s other products: a plus and minus with a triangle on it. Still, I’ll give them an A for keeping the two versions extremely similar in look, feel, and function.

While the Lion version of Carousel is supposed to support it’s all-important multi-touch gestures, I could get none of them to work in my testing. The iOS version supports pinch-to-zoom as well as any other program, but the desktop version simply would not respond. It seems that three-finger rotation is not supported in either version.

The future’s gonna cost

With Adobe being first to market with software that accomplishes all of these features, they have the advantage of getting first crack at trying to set a trend for how the business model will work. A 30-day trial is offered to anyone who wants to give Carousel a spin before committing. However, after January 31, 2012, those same users and any new arrivals will be forking over $99.99 for each year that they want their photos stored on Carousel’s servers. Perspective compels us to remember that the cost doesn’t just pay for cloud storage of a photo library. It’s also including the software used to edit and share the images. Plus, each Carousel can be shared with up to five others. In reality,that $100 per year can get you a lot of functionality and allows you to even consider sharing the financial load with other family members that may want to participate in your Carousels. While $8.25 per month isn’t a bank-breaker for most, it’s also not an amount that would fall within many people’s “mad money” expenditure. The challenge will be whether Adobe can get consumers to see this convenience as a necessity and not just a luxury.

Conclusion

During pre-release screenings and hands-on testing, Carousel has left an indelible impact on me several times. The speed and invisibility of the sync process evoked some audible “wows” from me. Adobe has combined their powerful algorithm arsenal with their ability to simplify image editing, creating another piece of technology that can entice a broad audience of consumers. The warning signs that stand out to me have to do mostly with dilution of their brand. Adobe was wise to leave the name“Photoshop” out of Carousel completely. With multiple versions of Photoshop already available for desktops,mobile phones, and tablets, another namesake would probably have caused overload for people looking for the right software solution. The question remains, though, how people that already use Photoshop.com for cloud storage in Elements will accept to this new and familiar challenger.

My prediction is that by this time next year, we’ll see Adobe clearly favoring one of these solutions or the other based on the successor failure of Carousel. I love the idea of having my entire photo library accessible anywhere at anytime, provided have my device of choice with me, but it may be worth the wait to see who challenges Adobe’s pole position and starts the pricing war.

UPDATE

Adobe announced yesterday that they are renaming Carousel to Adobe Revel. I'm still a bit on the fence with the new name, but to me it describes the product even less than the original name. Either way, Revel is here to stay.

Adobe Carousel First Look

2011-09-07T13:30:00.044-04:00


Adobe Carousel Icon

Today, at their annual Photoshop World conference in Las Vegas, Adobe is announcing a new consumer-facing software product called Carousel. Carousel, a photo library management app, is one part cloud storage, one part photo sharing, and one part photo editor. Read on to find out what it does and what sets it apart.

Adobe Carousel will launch near the end of 2011 on iOS and Mac OS X Lion only. Plans for Windows and Android clients show a projected release of early 2012. The Carousel app will allow a subscriber to have their entire JPG image library seamlessly and effortlessly synchronized among an unlimited number of devices. For demonstration purposes, Adobe showcased using Carousel on an iPad, iPhone, and Mac desktop computer. Whenever an image is added, deleted, or modified, the changes will be immediately pushed to all devices linked to that Carousel account. This works similarly to the way Dropbox keeps files and folders synchronized to connected devices and accounts.

Cloud storage

Carousel will only launch with JPG image support for now. This makes sense, as it is a consumer-oriented product, JPG being the file type of choice for most casual photographers. There is no limit to the amount of storage; neither are there any limits on individual file size or image resolution. A feature we can expect to see at release or in future updates is the ability to auto-upload. This will prove especially efficient, allowing the photographer to shoot on smartphone or tablet without having to remember to add the images to Carousel each time.

Photo sharing

Sharing options available in Carousel

Social network integration for Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and email is built-in with version one, but users can also choose to share entire albums with others directly in Carousel. An annual subscription to Carousel ($59.99) gives users access to five different Carousels (similar to albums), and each of these Carousels can be shared with up to five other users. When a user is given access to a Carousel, they are able to use Adobe Carousel as if they were a regular subscriber. The original sharing user’s subscription license will cover the shared individual’s access to the app as long as the license is kept current.

Photo editor

Some innovative and creative looks are available in Carousel

If there’s one thing Adobe does well, it’s photo editing, and Carousel doesn’t disappoint. In addition to basic editing functions like crop, brightness, and contrast, there are several “looks” that can be used to quickly apply general effects to an entire image. While many of these are cliché (black and white, sepia, solarize), there are several looks that turn run-of-the-mill photos into eye-catchers. Popular mobile apps like Retro Camera probably influenced the decision to put serious effort into these looks. Once changes are made and applied to an image, the new image appears across all linked Carousel accounts. Another user can decide to modify these images again utilizing the same controls that can be found in the exact positions as the original editor left them.

At a penny under $60 per year to subscribe, Carousel will need to deliver a compelling and useful product that consumers will find absolutely unique. This same process can already be accomplished using a myriad of other services (many of which are free), but Adobe seeks to streamline the process by simplifying the setup and use, integrating their trusted and award-winning photo editing software and algorithms, and giving users a (soon-to-be) cross platform/cross device library management solution. By this time next year, Carousel may just be the app to beat in the mobile imaging space.

Grado SR125i headphones review

2011-05-17T22:22:00.000-04:00

Grado SR125i in the box

If you looked at the photo of the Grado SR125s on the left and thought, “Who in their right mind would buy those ugly things?!” you’re not alone. And if you looked at the photo and thought, “Those headphones look like they’re from the 1960s,” you’re not far from the truth. When I first spotted a set of Grado cans online, those were thoughts that went through my head. The first ones that I laid eyes on were the PS1000s which retail for somewhere north of $1,500. I don’t know about you, but when I see a product that has little or no visual appeal or heavy marketing, yet commands a steep price, I take notice. After I began researching Grado Labs, I quickly learned why they are priced the way they are.

First off, let me say that if you’re only into using earbuds for listening to your MP3 player while working out, Grado headphones are not for you. If you’re into trendy, stylish headphones such as Skull Candy, these headphones are not for you. Finally, if you’re looking for headphones that you can keep for a few years and replace when you get tired of looking at them, these headphones are not for you. Grados are built to last and built to perform. It’s not necessarily that they don’t look very good. It’s more like they look like something you wouldn’t want to be seen in alive…or dead. That may be a bit too harsh, as I can appreciate the retro styling that has been prevalent in Grado cans since their conception over 50 years ago. I am no audiophile, but people like myself that buy Grado audio components are buying them for how they sound and not how they look.

A little background
Joseph Grado founded Grado Labs in 1955 in Brooklyn, NY. Throughout the company’s history, they have always manufactured their products by hand in their Brooklyn factory with the exception of one low-end product called the iGrado. Being made in America, one can expect a higher price point, but I found for the quality the Grados are as good or better than their overseas competition. When you look over a Grado product, you can see the homespun elements in little things like weld and solder joints. It’s clear that no product leaves their production line without many skilled hands, eyes, and ears signing off on the craftsmanship.

My choice
After researching the Grado product line for a while, I had pretty much settled for the 225 model of circumaurul headphones. My headphone use consists mostly of video editing where I need to listen critically to audio for the purpose of both clean up and effecting tracks. I also enjoy really listening to music occasionally to hear the nuances that are normally missed when listening in a car or on a home stereo. Since Grados are not sold in “big box” stores, I had to locate my local dealer, which is Statement Media and Design in Knoxville. I drove over to their store with my old Sony MDR-V600s in tow. Once there, I was able to compare the Grados with my Sonys in a side-by-side situation. There wasn’t a jaw-dropping difference between the two sets, but the difference was there. I decided on the Grados right there, but the next question was which model. Statement Media also carried the 125s, which were 25% cheaper than the 225 model. I then compared those two sets and found that there wasn’t a $50 difference between them. I walked out with the 125s and haven’t regretted my choice.

Comfort
There’s one consistent theme that runs through peoples’ review of Grado headphones: uncomfortable. This negative point concerned me greatly in my decision to purchase, so it was imperative that I be able to try them on before I decided. My Sonys have been very comfortable over the years, but their weakness was their bulk and their tendency to give me sweaty ears. I found the Grados to be surprisingly lightweight, and in the month that I’ve used them, I have not found them the least bit uncomfortable. The worst thing that happened was that the area between the backs of my ears and my scalp got a little sweaty once after wearing them for about three hours straight. The ear cups are adequately padded to not wear on my ears, and the vinyl covered metal strap balances well between distributing the pressure and not messing up my coif too much.

My old Sony cord below with the larger Grado cord above

Sound
As I said, I’m not an audiophile, so I won’t bore you by quoting spec sheets on the Grado SR125s. You can easily read that on Grado’s site if you need to know. The important thing is how they work for your individual situation. For me, they just work. I wasn’t familiar with the open-back design before deciding on these cans, and it’s not a design for everyone. Since these sit mainly on your ear and not around them, they won’t block peripheral sound as effectively. You can also count on others around you being able to hear what you’re listening to loud and clear. However, the trade-off in how the audio sounds is more than worthwhile. With my old Sonys (and with any around-the-ear design) the audio sounds very contained. It’s as if you are listening in a box. The Grados deliver a high-resolution sound without the echo or muffling of the closed ear style.

Conclusion
Whether you’re coming from the earbuds that come with your iPod, or you’ve been using a decent set of circumauruls for several years like me, you’ll find that Grados will make you re-examine your music. In a quality piano recording, I could hear the soft action of the sustain pedal lifting. If you are borderline obsessive about audio quality in your personal listening sessions, I would suggest you look into the Grado brand to see if there’s a model that meets your budget and needs. You can find a complete listing of their full product line and local dealers at www.gradolabs.com.

This review also posted at: http://pianoanimato.com/2011/05/17/grado-sr125i-headphones-review/

Oak Ridge Baptist Church spring outreach videos

2011-03-12T20:35:00.001-05:00

Today, I finished up a DVD invitation for my home church. The main video is an invite to upcoming special meetings meant for adults in our community. I did all of the production and post with some help from the church's assistant pastor, Jon Kopp. We've been making these videos every spring for the last 4 years, and this is the best one so far. Hope you enjoy watching them!

http://vimeo.com/20959260

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Review

2010-12-14T20:18:00.001-05:00

Photoshop Elements

Adobe began shipping Photoshop and Premiere Elements 9 in September of this year for both Mac and PC, and Amazon is running a great deal on it through the Christmas holiday.

What’s new on the Mac side of things? For one, the addition of the Elements Organizer.

For those unfamiliar with Photoshop Elements, there have been two components to the PC version: the Elements Editor and the Elements Organizer. The editor handles the obvious “Photoshop” capabilities expected in a product by that name, while the Organizer handles the importing, cataloguing, and sorting of the user’s library. If you’re thinking, “That sounds like iPhoto,” then you’re getting very warm.

The Editor has been given some nice new features, primarily in the area of special effects. Two standout new features are the “Lomo camera” effect and “Out of Bounds.” The Lomo feature allows you to recreate the look of the iconic Lomo cameras. Wikipedia has this to say about “Lomography”: “Lomography emphasizes casual, snapshot photography. Characteristics such as over-saturated colors, off-kilter exposure, blurring, ‘happy accidents,’ and alternative film processing are often considered part of the ‘Lomographic Technique.” In the tradition of this photography style, you can add cross-processing to the color and a darkened vignette to the corners.

The “Out of Bounds” effect allows you to select a portion of the image and make it pop out of the frame. Some careful selecting and creative perspective can give your average image a 3D look. You can see my two samples of these features below. Greater layer effect control, matching photo styles across multiple images, and easy optimizing for and uploading to Facebook are also new additions to PSE 9. The power and versatility of Photoshop Elements continues to amaze and surprise me, even as a long-time user of the full version of Photoshop. Its resourcefulness constantly makes me question who, outside of professional power users, really needs Photoshop when Elements has so many of the same capabilities at a fraction of the cost.

The Lomo effect is displayed in the image on the right.

The "Out of Bounds" effect gives your 2D images a 3D look.

The real splash that Elements 9 makes is the addition of the Organizer to OS X. Previously, Mac users were left out in the cold of iPhoto for their photo organization and tagging. Several years ago I transitioned from PC to Mac. One of my top three missed programs in moving to OS X was the Elements Organizer. You can see my review of Elements 8 Organizer for PC here. To say that I was happy to hear about Adobe adding the Organizer to the Mac version of Elements this year would be a gross understatement. For years I’ve been plagued by the woeful inadequacy of iPhoto in almost every area. Face tagging is terribly inaccurate, painfully slow, and the most quintessential element of the software, organization, is severely lacking.

Upon receiving PSE 9, I immediately installed it and used a very straightforward “import iPhoto library” option in the menu. It worked flawlessly and quickly, maintaining my keywords, face tags, and converting iPhoto “events” into Elements “albums.” I then let Elements have a go at finding faces, and found that the redesigned face-finding portion is even quicker and easier than before. The biggest fault in most face-finding algorithms is that they struggle with infants and young children. No matter how cute and unique your kid looks, chances are a mathematical formula can’t really tell the difference between yours and your sister’s kid. I’ve faced this problem with both Elements and iPhoto and expected to see the same issue in this version. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see noticeable improvements in this area. It did a remarkable job discerning our 18-month old’s photos from our 3-year old’s baby pictures. In the past, I’ve found that young faces seemed to get mixed in together very easily. Now we can only hope that Adobe works on an algorithm for family pet faces.

I have few complaints about the Organizer’s functionality on the Mac. Diehard Apple fans will still have a hard time pulling away from iPhoto for their digital photography editing and organization. The integration and synchronizing with iOS devices is hard to beat, but Adobe’s Photoshop.com can allow mobile users to enjoy their cloud-stored photos and videos on a range of devices via mobiles apps for Android and iOS. Other device users can gain the same access via their web browser. Each purchase of Elements comes with 2GB of free storage on Photoshop.com, and “plus members” can purchase 20GB of storage for $49.99/yr.

Other complaints would include the fact that scrolling through the library and enlarging photos to full-screen is not as smooth as I expected. I also had a problem importing images from my camera. The images were downloaded and put into folders on the hard drive, but failed to show up in the library even after closing and re-opening the program. I eventually had success by manually importing them from the folders on the hard drive. This is an issue that should be resolved in software updates. The slideshows are also a bit clunky, but I’m not a big fan or user of slideshows anyway.

Mac users, rejoice! The bonds of iPhoto have been torn asunder! There is a new choice for you to organize and tag photos in OS X. Since iLife ships with all Mac purchases, Adobe’s Elements requires a greater financial investment than iPhoto, but the features included in the software make the $99.99 investment well worth it. PC users have quite a few new features to look forward to even if they’re only running version 8 as version 9 offers lots of improvements and additional features to appeal. Any way you slice it, Photoshop Elements 9 truly is a great upgrade.

AirTurn AT-104 hands-free page turner review

2010-08-17T21:34:00.006-04:00

AirTurn AT-104

Boulder, Colorado based AirTurn, Inc. has introduced a USB powered hands-free page-turning device especially for musicians who wish to use digital sheet music. The AT-104 is a two-part hardware system that enables you to move forward and backward in an electronic document one page at a time. Part one is the USB transmitter, which is connected to a pair of pedals of your choice. Part two is a simple USB dongle that acts as the receiver when connected

The AT-104 receiver

to your computer. AirTurn’s “Professional package” which sells for $198.95 comes with the AirTurn transmission hardware, the MusicReader and MusicConverter software, as well as a pair of BOSS FS-5U pedals.

Hardware

The AT-104 hardware is small and inconspicuous - as it should be for a musician wanting to use it for performances. The USB receiver is about the size of a typical flash memory stick, and the transmitter is only about as big as your palm. Glossy black plastic shells help to conceal the hardware even more. I tested the AT-104 with my both my home piano and the one I play at church. I found that the only reason people noticed the pedals and transmitter was because they observed the computer sitting atop the piano and wondered what I was doing.

The BOSS FS-5U pedals and AirTurn's transmitter

Although AirTurn does not manufacture the BOSS pedals, they are the brand included in their “Pro pack” and deserve mention. The FS-5U pedals are second to none. An attractive and rugged all-metal construction and rubberized bottom to prevent sliding make for an impressive product. The sides of each pedal are “tongue and groove” enabling you to lock together an unlimited number. The pedal mechanism gives a good, strong resistance. As good as these pedals are, I would still like to see a broader surface area to keep from missing the pedal.

Function

The technology behind the AT-104 is relatively simple. Whenever a pedal is depressed, the transmitter sends either a “page up” or “page down” command to the receiver. Of course, this command will then display the next or previous screen in your document. The kit did everything it was supposed to do when I set it up. The USB receiver was plug and play on my MacBook Pro and in Windows XP. I also opened up some Microsoft Word documents and PDF files to see how the pedals moved pages in different software. These programs were able to understand the commands as well and would perform a “next screen” type of “page up/down” action. In other words, they would not necessarily skip to the next whole page but would rather show the next screen of type wherever the bottom of the monitor had cut off the text.

Using the AT-104 takes some getting used to. It’s a bit disconcerting to have the music instantly change pages when you’re used to naturally compensating for the delay and motion of a page turn. I also found it a little confusing during certain measures trying to operate the piano pedals and tapping the BOSS pedal together. After practicing for about fifteen minutes, I noticed improvement, so I’m sure it wouldn’t take long to re-train my technique.

I did not experiment with how far the transmitter and the receiver could communicate, but I was able to operate it from across a room. That’s probably far enough for most applications. The response is very quick with no noticeable lag. There is a delay adjustment in the MusicReader software that you can tweak to prevent double page turns when the pedals are depressed more than once in quick succession.

Software

If there is a weak link in AirTurn’s AT-104, it is the MusicReader software. Since AirTurn doesn’t develop the software themselves, I can’t fault them directly for many of the complaints I have. The interface is probably best described as “clunky.” It appears almost identical in Windows and OS X, and seemed pretty “buggy” when I used it. I initially tried using the software in a limited user account on OS X, but it gave me errors wherever I turned. It seemed to run fine under an administrator account, but I opted to try Windows XP instead. Even in Windows, it crashed several times and failed to convert files properly and consistently.

The MusicReader software interface

MusicReader uses a MRS file extension, which requires using the included MusicConverter software to turn PDFs, JPEGs, or other files into the MRS format. According to Hugh Sung of AirTurn, there are several reasons for the proprietary format’s use. There are some image filters applied to documents, algorithms recognize white space between staves to help intelligently determine resizing and half-pages, and it adds an annotation layer to mark on. Still, since PDF is such a broad standard, being able to use PDFs in MusicReader without conversion would be welcomed. One PDF that I tried to convert in multiple ways was simply refused. I ended up having to export JPEGs of each page and convert them individually with MusicConverter. I then had to piece the music back together to export as a MRS. Not exactly intuitive or user-friendly.

Despite its shortcomings, the bundled software basically does what it’s supposed to do. It moves the pages forward and backward on command. There are some nice features that help me overlook some of its quirks. The ability to annotate on the music is especially nice. This essentially gives you text, drawing, and highlighting capabilities for making notes or marks on the music. It’s non-destructive, so the marks that you make stay in MusicReader and don’t affect your original file. MusicConverter also enables you to setup repeat points in a piece. This keeps you from having to rapidly tap your foot to get back to a previous page. You can simply re-arrange or duplicate pages needed for the repeat in a piece to allow you to keep tapping forward through the music.

Summary

While the AirTurn AT-104 fills a gap for today’s music performers, there are certainly some improvements to be made for future revisions. Native support for PDF and possibly Finale’s MUS format would be very helpful. However, for those musicians with a vast digital music library, being able to use their music without having to print everything on paper is invaluable. Like many things, sheet music is moving increasingly into the digital realm and being purchased online, making devices like the AT-104 more vital than ever.

AirTurn has promised a Bluetooth version around the end of the year. This will enable support for more devices such as the Apple iPad and other tablets that lack USB ports. Hopefully that version will bring with it a simplified and cleaner app that will appear more at home on modern operating systems and make it easier for musicians to adopt a new technology over a very old technique.

For more information on AirTurn, go to www.airturn.com.

Adobe CS5 new feature walk through video

2010-06-27T17:36:00.000-04:00

Want to see some of Creative Suite 5's new features in action? Watch this video to see how Rotobrush, RED support, and camera lens correction works.

Adobe CS5 First Look

2010-04-12T00:05:00.026-04:00

CS5

Today, Adobe is announcing a refresh to its Creative Suite products, putting the software package at number five. CS5 offers significant improvements to performance through a variety of updates, not the least of which is a new engine called “Mercury.” Tim and I have been working with the beta version of the Master Collection suite for several weeks, giving us time to explore the new features and functionality of the programs included. For our purposes, we’ve constrained our comments to the Production Premium package.

“The need for speed”

CS5 is a milestone update for Adobe because the company has now optimized the suite for 64-bit. The complete departure from 32-bit for Premiere Pro and After Effects will leave users with older operating systems out in the cold, but will provide noticeable performance gains and more compact file sizes to adopters. Mac users won’t experience so many woes as Apple’s OS has been 64-bit for some time. Adobe recommends Windows 7 64-bit as the ideal PC operating system for CS5. Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere Pro, and InDesign have all been tweaked to take special advantage of the 64-bit architecture. Preliminary informal tests have shown that renders in Premiere Pro and encodes in Media Encoder are noticeably faster, however specific benchmarks have not been performed due to the beta status of our software.

Adobe has also developed a playback engine for Premiere Pro and After Effects called “Mercury” which leverages the 64-bit architecture and GPU for especially efficient and powerful. In a pre-release demo, Adobe demonstrated Premiere Pro playing back seven simultaneous HD streams with live effects without GPU support. Nine or more were possible with the GPU.

Although Photoshop has been 64-bit since CS4, even it seems to have gotten a little bit of grease in the joints. There is now a preferences pane for GPU settings, allowing you to tweak the preferences to your desire. Alternatively, you can use a GPU auto-calibration, which runs a number of tests on a pair of images to determine which settings work best for your system. I was particularly impressed by a new zoom option called “Scrubby Zoom.” When this feature is enabled for the zoom tool, moving the mouse left or right while holding down the left mouse button causes the image to zoom in or out rapidly. This may not sound very exciting, but it is wild to watch. Not only does the image zoom as quickly as you move, but the resolution auto-scales in real time as well. The result is going from 50% zoom to 1,200% zoom keeps the image sharp from start to finish. No more waiting for the software to redraw the screen when zooming in large steps.

Pre-production and production

In the fall of 2009, Adobe introduced a new online/offline application called Story. Story is a collaborative screenwriting tool that can be used as a web app or offline through their Air run-time. You can read our review of it here. During a pre-release tele-conference, Adobe reps claimed that they are not trying to break into the screenwriting software game, but that they are simply trying to fill a niche market and round out their software package. The biggest advantage to Story, which is included with the Production Premium suite, is its ability to integrate with other programs within CS5.

OnLocation, which is largely unchanged from CS4, can import a shot list from a Story script, making recording with OnLocation a bit simpler. The transcription feature that was introduced in CS4 can also now reference the Story script to better analyze the speech contained in clips. We found this new feature to be lacking greatly in our review of CS4, so this modification will hopefully greatly improve the accuracy of transcriptions.

Post-production

Premiere Pro got a very mild interface update. The “tools” panel has been moved from the bottom right “vertical” version to a “horizontal” version at the top left. This was a welcome change to me as I generally find myself only selecting tools by keyboard shortcut anyhow, negating the need to have the tools readily clickable. The move also affords more valuable real estate where it’s needed next to the sequence panel.

The file-based editing templates have been updated. Native support for the RED camera’s R3D raw file format has been added and performs adequately. Although RED users are not normally using the R3D files to edit with, that capability is now included. We tested this feature with some 4k footage generously provided by Matthew Rogers of Macville Productions. The screenshots provided are taken from a short film called “Larry vs. the Aliens.”

After Effects maintains its spot as the top motion graphics editor with a new tool called the “Rotobrush.” This paintbrush works similarly to some of the smart tools found in Adobe Elements software. You select the foreground for rotoscoping with a standard left click and use the option click to select the background. A quick swipe over the areas gives After Effects enough information to guess what part of the image you want to select. You can then zoom in to fine-tune your selection. Once again, smart algorithms may help save motion picture effects artists from retinal failure related to long-term pixel-level editing.

Soundbooth and Media Encoder both offer minor updates. Adobe now offers loads of scores for free direct download through the Resource Central panel in the program. Media Encoder now has an option in the preferences pane that allows for auto-start of encoding queues. The default time is two minutes after a file has been added to the queue, but the countdown can be tailored to the user’s taste. This helps to eliminate the time spent waiting for large Premiere Pro sequences to load in the queue just to click “start.”

Adobe says that shipping versions of CS5 should be available in the US in about a month. Once we get our hands on release versions of the software, we’ll be posting a more in-depth hands-on review with at least one real-world project.

Here's Adobe's press release about the Production Premium suite.

Galkin meeting intro and DVD menu

2010-03-28T15:52:00.000-04:00

Each spring Oak Ridge Baptist Church hosts a week of special outreach meetings. In years past, they’ve used the DVD format as a substitute for paper flyers or brochures as an invitation. Last year, Braintrust produced and edited the entire DVD. This year, we helped again, but we were involved only on the shooting and DVD creation side of things. With some help from our friend Jeremy Dooley, we used two Canon digital still cameras to shoot time lapse from two angles. From this we created an image sequence, showing the church auditorium filling up before a morning service. This intro that plays when you first insert the DVD transitions to a “Welcome” from the church worship leader and then to the menu itself. The menu contains footage that Paul shot during a service showing the viewer a montage of the activities that occur during the worship at ORBC. You can view the introduction and menu below.

Timelapse intro

Extron Institute School of Engineered System Technologies: Day 2

2010-02-27T06:12:00.000-05:00

Day two at the Extron Institute in Raleigh brought more overwhelming but highly beneficial information. Today's topics included multi-image processing, AV Resource management, and commissioning hybrid video systems. The day finished with a feedback session that allowed the class participants the time to share concerns and wishes directly with Extron senior engineers and product managers. This gave the everyone an invitation to speak directly to the manufacturer's representatives providing us a prime opportunity to tell them what we saw in their products: likes, dislikes, and desirable features.

Multi-image processing explored the depths of switcher/scalers: the difficulties they help overcome and the challenges presented by mixed resolutions and aspect ratios. According to a chart in the presentation material, there are currently 22 accepted resolutions spreading over 5 different aspect ratios. These variants can cause some difficulty when dealing with a few inputs to only a few outputs. When dealing with video wall or high-volume output situations, the complexity level will rise exponentially. Extron also showed off their new annotation graphics processor, which allows real time on-screen drawing and typing. This can be used with a third party touch screen interface or a more traditional mouse/keyboard combo.

We also got a chance to play with one of Extron's newest control products, the TouchLink line of touch screen configurable controllers. These seven-inch displays come in either a tabletop or wall mount configuration. They're easily customized with their proprietary GUI Configurator software, allowing system designers to tailor their interface design to the client's needs and requirements.

The commissioning discussion covered optimizing mixed analog and digital video systems using test patterns and representative images. Choosing notoriously troublesome images to help find flaws in image setup. This instruction was followed by some examples where we examined the weaknesses of some given systems.

We ended the day with a great steak dinner at Fleming's. I look forward to seeing further innovations, such as increased distance over twisted pair transmitters, from Extron in the coming years as digital systems (hopefully) become more standardized.

Extron Institute School of Engineered System Technologies: Day 1

2010-02-25T22:24:00.000-05:00

Today was the first of a two-day class in Raleigh, NC that I am participating in. Extron electronics invited me (as well as about 40 other consultants) here to attend this training to inform us of their newest product offerings as well as new trends and changes in the world of AV design and integration.

Trying to absorb the information given today for 8 hours was akin to the proverbial "drinking from the fire hose." Even so, I left with a greater understanding of several technologies that I was largely unfamiliar with before. Though the topics ranged from energy star rated amplifiers to twisted pair range extenders, I was most informed and intrigued by the sessions on digital signal transmission and fiber optic transmission.

Though transmitting digital video signals is not cutting edge, the growing use of High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) digital rights management is adding an enormous layer of complication to commercial AV system applications. Consumers are used to seeing this and dealing with it in such applications such as downloaded audio and video files, but the limits that HDCP and its close cousins Advanced Access Content Protection (AACP) and DisplayPort Content Protection (DPCP) enforce create a veritable nightmare for designers and integrators trying to create extensive commercial systems.

To understand the difficulties provided by HDCP, one must have the "keys." HDCP compliant devices use keys to ensure that everything in the signal flow is following the rules set forth under the DRM specifications. Let's look at one example of a Blu-Ray player outputting a signal to a receiver, which in turn outputs to a monitor. All of these components are HDCP compliant. The Blu-Ray disk begins to play, and a key is sent to the receiver. The receiver sends back a message to the player saying that it is compliant with the HDCP specs. It can then send the key on down the line to the monitor, which also sends a confirming message back to the Blu-Ray player. Once this relationship is established, the disk will play as designed. As long as every item in that signal flow is compliant and says so, the viewing experience will not be interrupted.

If however, the rules are broken in any way, the HDCP police will shut down the image. There are several ways for this to happen. One scenario is if one component in the signal flow is not HDCP compliant, like an analog device. This device is not capable of sending and receiving the key information, so it causes an interruption in the flow. For commercial applications, this can potentially cause great difficulty. In general, a Blu-Ray player will have somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 keys that it can distribute. If you have 16 devices in that signal flow, everything is gravy. When you get over 16, one of your devices in the chain will get left out in the cold due to HDCP. Resolving this issue with DRM is one of many to be overcome as content encryption becomes more widespread in the coming years.

Fiber optics is another area that captivated me with the potential. Although a type of fiber optic technology was researched way back in 1877 by John Tyndall, it has only recently begun to be seen as a more feasible transmission method for AV applications. The theoretical capacity of fiber (a mighty 100 Gbs) alone is enough to make it a serious contender for future data transmission. With a possible point-to-point application of about 100 miles, it puts the icing on the cake. Two factors seem to be standing in the way of it rapidly becoming the de facto standard for data transmission. These are cost and complication.

As a few examples of the cost of fiber, the test and installation equipment needed costs tens of thousands of dollars. One example video matrix system that Extron provides can easily near the $750,000 mark. Still as the need for fiber's capabilities approaches, associated costs will inevitably drop.

Today's sessions focused on efficiently and effectively getting the signal where it needs to go, while tomorrow will focus on processing and control of those signals. I'll give a summary of Friday's findings in the evening.

Adobe Elements 8 Organizer Review

2009-10-27T18:17:00.001-04:00

On September 23 Adobe announced the debut of Elements 8. Tim and I posted a pre-release review that highlighted the new features that Adobe incorporated into the “hobbyist” level Premiere/Photoshop combo. You can find that article here. I’ve had some time to work with the Organizer and Premiere on my PC and to see how well the new features worked. Tim will follow up with a hands-on review of Photoshop on the Mac, which incorporates Bridge CS4 as an organizer.

Photoshop.com

One cannot use Elements 8 without noticing the pervasive presence of Adobe’s Photoshop.com. The software is heavily integrated with web components. Each purchase of Elements 8 comes with a free 2 GB of storage with the option to purchase a “Plus” account with 20 gigs. The welcome screen that launches when you run either Photoshop or Premiere prompts you to log in with your credentials to display some of your account info and helpful tips from the web as seen here.

Auto-Analyzer

The new Auto-Analyzer that’s been introduced in Elements 8 pretty much does what one would expect it to do. It can be set up to automatically run whenever new media is imported in the Organizer. It utilizes the files’ embedded metadata along with algorithms to determine Smart Tags to apply to each photo, document, or video. Common examples are high contrast, blurred, shaky, and motion. I imported almost 500 photos and videos into Organizer and let the Auto-Analyzer run on all of the files. It performed quite well, but there were a few understandable hiccups. One photo was a close up of a hand on the end of a guitar fret. It was taken with a long telephoto lens, and there was a lot of background in the image that was out of focus due to the depth of field. The analyzer tagged this as blurred even though the subject was sharp as a tack.

Facial Recognition

Mac users that are familiar with iPhoto will be interested in Adobe’s attempt at face recognition. Functioning similarly to its Apple competitor, Organizer endeavors to locate people’s faces in images and videos. The user must go through the images, name the individuals, and delete any extraneous face boxes that the Auto-Analyzer mistakes for people. As people are named, the software builds a database of characteristics present in the faces. After it “learns” what someone looks like, it will automatically suggest and fill in names of people that it thinks it knows. This sounds great in theory, but in practice it falls short of perfection.

“Portrait” style photos where the subjects are looking towards the camera are easy for the face finder. It didn’t have any trouble finding all of the individuals in my photos. If faces were not upright in the frame, the analyzer didn’t seem to recognize them as a face at all. It also had trouble with people not looking directly at or near the lens. Faces that were partially obscured due to looking different directions were sometimes discovered and sometimes not. There were a few photos that tricked the analyzer into putting faces where there were none. For some reason, it seemed to single out several hands in different photos, thinking they were faces.

Whenever the software finds a “face” that isn’t really a face, you need simply to click the “x” on the box to remove it. However when you click the “x” it always asks for confirmation to remove it saying that, “this person will be excluded from people recognition.” This wouldn’t be so bad if you could disable this dialog screen, but for now you can’t. This can really slow down your progress when the algorithm finds lots of “non-faces” in some of your images. Having to click twice each time you want to remove a box is very frustrating.

The “learning” of individuals worked fairly well. It recognized most of my family members quickly and began suggesting their names with their faces within three or four photos. It even found the face of my son in a portrait hanging on a wall.

Tagging and Editing made easy

Keyword and face tagging as well as performing basic photo enhancements have been taken to a new level of efficiency in the new Organizer. When browsing your library in full screen mode, you are faced with several panels around the screen. At the bottom is a pop-up panel with the main controls. Here you can toggle the other panels, move up and down throughout your library, and exit the full screen mode. On the left are two panels: one for making quick edits of your images, the other for keyword tagging. At the right is an optional filmstrip view allowing you to quickly jump to any photo or video in your library.

The quick edits are everything you would find in the regular quick edit portion of Organizer, but using these commands in this display allows you to view your changes at maximum size, letting you better scrutinize your changes. You’re also given the ability to mark for printing and to rate a photo.

The tagging panel shows a familiar “cloud” display popular on many websites and blogs. All of the available keywords are displayed with the most popular being larger in size. Not only does this make it easy to spot your most used keywords in the list, but it simply makes it easier to click on them since they become larger “icons.” The tagging panel also displays any albums that you’ve created and allows you to add images to those as well.

In my opinion, the Organizer portion of Elements is what makes it stand above the competitive products available, even more than the editor and Premiere. Most of the editing functions of Photoshop and Premiere can be had in software from other manufacturers, and some can even be found in freeware applications such as Gimp and Picasa. Although Adobe specializes in making these very “amateur-friendly,” they’re not offering a completely unique product. When it comes to a day-in, day-out piece of software like Elements, I look for something that will make the mundane task of importing, repairing, and organizing my personal photos and videos as easy and straightforward as possible. The Elements Organizer has always met my expectations, and version 8 raises the bar in ease of use making it worthy of your consideration.

Adobe Elements 8

2009-09-23T21:44:00.001-04:00

ADOBE ELEMENTS 8
Adobe today announced the availability of its Adobe Elements 8 packages, both Photoshop Elements 8 and Premiere Elements 8. Windows versions are available for both Elements, while Mac users will have to settle for the Photoshop Element only.

Adobe says the products fit in the "hobbyist" area of Adobe's mass-market push, the opposite end of a continuum that includes Photoshop CS4 on the high end and Elements at the low end. Still, with previous versions of Elements that we've reviewed, the hobbyist versions hold their own on basic tasks.

During a pre-release conference call, an Adobe spokesperson mentioned that Elements is, essentially, a balance of ease of use with power or "headroom."

"We continuously hear from focus groups that they want software that's straightforward and easy to use," he said, "but they don't want us to limit the software in case the user wants to do more complex edits."

We'll highlight a few key features in each program, demonstrated during the pre-release conference call, and then we'll follow up with a hands-on review. There's also an online component, which we won't address here, other than to note that online albums support video now, as well as photos.

ORGANIZER
Adobe has spent quite a bit of time updating Elements Organizer, its "Ultimate Media Management Hub." Organizer has been part of Photoshop Elements since version 3, but the company is now shipping Organizer with Premiere Elements 8 for Windows, or as part of the bundle of both Elements.

Adobe's rationale for expanding Organizer is that user capture devices are capturing both photos and videos. This blurring of the lines between photo and video capture devices means management of those two types in the same place is important.

Auto Analyzer
Organizer has an auto-analyzer tool that tags shots and videos for quality and interest, as well as other key tagging examples Adobe gleaned from user focus groups.

Smart Tags will filter down to particular types of content (one face, two faces, small group, etc) and auto-classify the content. Additionally, in terms of quality, the auto-analyze function can find images that are too dark or too bright or other quality characteristics. Scores based on high or low quality, such as blurriness, contrast, provide a subjective quality basis so that images can be rapidly filtered or eliminated.

This analysis also includes "people recognition" as a way to eliminate the need to manually add tags when a person appears within a video scene or a still image. This
people finder works on the principle of finding a face, then prompting for name of person. As the name is entered, Organizer begins to build up information about the person, offering an auto-complete function for names, then moving on to giving suggestions from a list of names.

In one example during the conference call, Adobe demonstrated that the manual cataloging of five shots apiece for two people was all it took before the auto-analyzer began to suggest one name from a list of possible names whenever that person appeared in a shot. The system then moves on to a more definitive suggestion, asking "is this . . . ?"

Keyword tagging for video is a bit more complex, and Adobe acknowledges that tagging isn't always based on the first frame of video.

"Tagging is based on content," the spokesperson said, "so keywords can be added at any time while watching the video. Tags are applied to on a scene-by-scene basis rather than the entire video."

Organizer also contains a full-screen preview, much like iPhoto on the Mac. Users can use full-screen to expand images to a much larger size, making the choice of images or video playback much easier in full-screen mode. To quickly edit particular images a quick edit panel pops up to deal with one-click issues such as rotation or auto-color adjustments. Video tagging can also be performed in the full-screen mode.

PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS
Photoshop Elements 8 has three primary new features: Photomerge Exposure, Recompose and Quick fix previews.

Photomerge Exposure offers the user the ability to make extensive light and dark adjustments to specific areas of an image. For example, let's say you have an image of your wife standing in front of the Eiffel Tower at night with the tower lit and fill flash on your wife. Chance are good that the either the tower is too dark, or your wife is too bright. Not that having an overly bright wife is a bad thing. The exposure tool will allow you to adjust brightness on either the tower or your wife to improve the image quality. Photomerge differs from Photoshop's HDR capabilities by only fine-tuning exposure in a single image as opposed to merging multiple copies of the same image taken at different exposures.

Recompose borrows an algorithm from Photoshop CS4 called Content Aware Scaling. This tool allows you to scale an image without distorting the content. If you have two or more people in a scene that aren't close enough together for your liking, this tool will allow you to "squeeze" them together without making them look squished. It also works vertically which can be useful for eliminating unwanted backgrounds. You can specify the areas that you want the algorithm to keep or discard by using a green or red brush and "painting" over parts of the image.

PREMIERE ELEMENTS
Premiere Elements 8 has a series of "smart" features, including Smart Fix, Smart Trim, and Smart Mix. It has also added motion tracking and newer "instant movie themes," effects, and transitions.

Smart Tools
Smart Fix in Premiere Elements performs essentially the same image adjustments to video clips as it does to still images in Photoshop Elements. It performs a quick evaluation of the video content and adjusts characteristics such as brightness and contrast to improve troublesome clips or simply to make an already good clip look even better.

Smart Trim is a particularly innovative new tool in Premiere Elements 8. This tool analyzes a video clip and identifies suggested cut points inside of the clip. One of the ways the algorithm accomplishes this is by looking for motion. Let's say you have a clip of Tiger Woods lining up a 25 foot putt. He may remain stationary for 30 seconds before he finally putts the ball. Smart Trim will look past all of the heightening drama before the putt and suggest an "in" point just before he swings his club.

Smart Mix can also be called an auto-ducking feature for audio. It will find the points in a dialogue audio track that voices are heard. It can then automatically mix the other audio tracks, such as music or sound effects, down so the dialogue stands out loud and clear.

ECONOMICAL MOTION TRACKING
This new version of Premiere Elements ships with a feature usually only found in professional level post-production software, motion tracking. In the Adobe demo that we viewed, this feature performed very accurately and quickly. The tracker can be set to follow a point of interest in a clip; then an object can be assigned to "follow" the parent. Other video clips, titles, animated clip art, or images can all be assigned to follow an object on the screen.

BONUS FEATURES
Adobe now offers additional options for output of completed videos. The ability to directly upload to YouTube is a feature included under the "Share" tab. This export option will automatically format your finished masterpiece for optimal viewing on the popular video-sharing site. Also Podbean is a new partner of Adobe allowing users to directly upload vodcasts to their account.

Any purchase of Elements 8 includes 2GB of storage on Photoshop.com. Although the Mac version does not include the Organizer, it does include Adobe Bridge CS4 which can be used in place of another organizer such as iPhoto. Photoshop and Premiere Elements 8 are available immediately as a bundle for Windows computers for $149.99. Photoshop Elements for the Mac retails for $99.99.

ORBC AV photo gallery

2009-09-10T21:29:00.001-04:00

We've posted a photo gallery of the Oak Ridge Baptist Church project here. Now you can see how the install is being used in everyday service.

Adobe CS4 Master Collection Review

2009-04-20T17:04:00.001-04:00

Written by Tim Siglin & Paul Schmutzler
April 9, 2009

Approximately a year and a half after Adobe released its Creative Suite 3 (CS3), the new Creative Suite 4 (CS4) is now available to the public in the same suites: Design Premium, Production Premium, Web Premium, and the all-in-one Master Collection.

With CS3, Adobe took its video product line several notches above the norm in quality, allowing it to elbow its way into the spotlight alongside other premium video software manufacturers such as Apple and Avid. The product introduced many features, including consistent user interfaces with brightness sliders, outstanding support for Flash video, and a new, easy-to-use audio processing program called Soundbooth. All these features allowed Adobe to catch the eye of many video professionals who previously incorporated only Photoshop in their workflows.

Each and every one of the suite’s features and technologies has been improved in CS4, some significantly. With an eye toward accelerating workflows and an initial foray into mission-critical metadata entry and retrieval, the product has some noteworthy improvements that merit attention.

Recording With OnLocation
We decided to start our tests by using OnLocation CS4, a direct-to-computer recording program that works with MiniDV and HDV cameras (see Figure 1). The first version of OnLocation, formerly DV Rack from Serious Magic, shipped with CS3 but was only available for Windows operating systems. OnLocation CS4 fixes that cross-platform oversight, as it is completely rewritten from the ground up to take advantage of both Intel-based Macs and Windows.

OnLocation CS4 is a direct-to-computer recording program that works with MiniDV and HDV cameras.

We wanted a way to test several of the features in rapid succession, so we chose to set up in a church auditorium, where we could test with both house sound and ambient sound. We could also work through a workflow that involved OnLocation, PremierePro, and Adobe Media Encoder (now a stand-alone product).

Paul set up a Canon XH A1 to record a 1080i HDV signal and connected the camera directly to the FireWire port of a MacBook Pro (2.16 Intel Core Duo, 2GB RAM, 250GB HD) with OnLocation CS4 installed. To test speech-to-text capture, an audio feed of the house sound from the sound system was connected via XLR to get the best possible audio.

OnLocation CS4, as well as several other CS4 tools, is now based on the concept of “workspaces,” where only necessary windows appear on the screen. The calibration workspace in OnLocation, for instance, provides a view of the camera image, vectorscope, waveform, and shot list all in one place. This proved to be too much for the processor on our slightly slow laptop, so turning off the camera monitor view resulted in a significant boost in performance. In short, OnLocation requires all the computer resources it can muster, so be prepared to have your most powerful workhorse on the job if you use it for a mission-critical shoot. Our laptop had significant lag in displaying the camera’s output, which would prove impractical—or at least disconcerting—in most situations. After acquiring a white balance from the projection screen behind the platform, we were ready to record, and OnLocation worked very effectively in this regard. There was no noticeable delay from the moment the record button was pressed to the time OnLocation actually began recording, and more than 1 hour was recorded with no dropped frames. While using the production workspace, there was a lag between real time and the computer display.

Having seen the same thing in similar programs such as Canon’s Console software, this is a common side effect with using a FireWire connection from a camera in order to view a real-time image. While this lag was more acceptable than that of the calibration workspace, we still recommend using a separate confidence monitor if you need real-time feedback from the camera.

OnLocation also offers the option of adding all the metadata you could dream of before you complete your shoot by allowing you to enter the data in a convenient tab on the right side of the interface.

Editing With Premiere Pro and Soundbooth
After recording, we packed up our gear and headed back to our office to import the footage into Premiere Pro. Our test editing system was a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac with 2 gigabytes of RAM and a 250-gigabyte hard drive.

Premiere Pro CS4 took about 10 minutes to index the 12- gigabyte MPEG-2 Transport (M2T) stream of multiplexed audio and video that OnLocation had created. It would be nice to see other format recording options in OnLocation, akin to the way that Focus Enhancements FireStore Direct To Edit technology handles hard-disk recording, but this would make even more processing power necessary.

Premiere Pro CS4 has a GUI that is more efficient and attractive than its predecessor.

After the footage was indexed, it was apparent that the pixel aspect ratio was incorrect when we opened the clip in the viewer. However, by simply reinterpreting the footage to the HDV standard of 1.333 widescreen, the video appeared correctly, saving us the time of reimporting content.

We weren’t able to open any of our old Premiere Pro CS3 projects because of the prerelease nature of the software, so we weren’t able to check out some of the complex edits we’d done with CS3. The release version fixed this issue. We did notice that Adobe has added a few features to Premiere that make it a little more efficient and attractive.

In the same window where you’ll find History and Effects, there is now a Media Browser option. This window provides a way to search any hard drive connected to your computer, finding any media that Premiere Pro can import. This is a timesaver, as you don’t need to keep clicking File > Import for every file needed for a project. Another new tab you can add to your workspace is called Resource Central—another part of the CS4 suite that blurs the line between offline and online usage. Within the Resource Central pane, you can access tutorials, sample files, and extensions for Premiere Pro and other video products that Adobe offers.

What used to be called the User Interface preference in CS3 is now called Appearance. In addition, it appears that the adjustable brightness introduced in CS3 was a big hit because Adobe tweaked the slider to enable users to make the interface even darker or lighter than before. You’ll also find better control over where your cache files are stored. Also metadata has a greater use and benefit in most of CS4.

Soundbooth 2 shows some significant improvements over the first version, which was introduced in CS3. A feature sorely lacking in the original Soundbooth was multitrack audio production, and the new Soundbooth’s multitrack interface aims to please. The interface is simple and not at all intimidating, as it uses dashboardlike controls that pop up when the mouse hovers over a track. One click on a track will quickly switch from the multitrack production interface to the file editing screen. After making editing changes, it’s another single click right back to your multitrack layout. For our testing, we used Soundbooth only to make some minor improvements to our sound quality and to get a transcription of the narrative, so we’ll expand our assessment in a future article. After reducing our hour of footage down to a 3-minute test clip in Premiere Pro, we added fades in and out, adjusted the color, and exported the timeline to Adobe Media Encoder CS4.

Encoding With Adobe Media Encoder
Adobe Media Encoder is a stand-alone product that works in harmony with After Effects, Premiere Pro, and other Adobe tools, but it can also be used on its own, similar to the way that Apple Compressor works either with Final Cut or on its own. Put any audio or video media in the Adobe Media Encoder queue, choose your compression settings, and let it go to work. You can also choose a specific timeline within a Premiere Pro project to compress without opening Premiere, which is a timesaver for those who just need to get the compressed file out the door as quickly as possible. Adobe Media Encoder also supports watch folders that will automatically begin a preset encoding session as soon as a file is placed inside.

Adobe Media Encoder CS4 works with Premiere Pro or as a stand-alone encoder.

Having chosen H.264 Blu-ray and Dolby digital audio for our compression, we let Media Encoder load our timeline into its queue. Two hours later, our 3-minute test compression was done. In place of FLV and F4V files, which were having a few issues in our prerelease version, we exported a QuickTime streaming file at the full 1440x1080 size, which turned out to be excellent quality.

Adobe Media Encoder can also upload a completed compression to a user-identified server, a significant step in workflow enhancement. However, as Tim mentioned in an article on StreamingMedia.com, automated FTP transmissions are only available on Adobe’s more expensive Flash Media Encoder Server. There is also the option to have Media Encoder delete the original file after verifying a successful upload to a remote location.

Transcription With Premiere Pro and Soundbooth
Adobe has added an autotranscription feature to Premiere Pro and Soundbooth. In theory, you can take a video or audio clip and run it through the analyzer, which will spit out a speech-to-text metadata file that times each word to a synchronous frame of video. There are several tools that do this and do it quite well, but they range from a low-end price tag of about $18,000 to more than $100,000. Adobe licensed a set of speech-to-text libraries that are acceptable for the price range, even though they seem to lag behind other speech indexing, search, and retrieval systems we’ve used.

Adobe recommends using clean audio with minimal extraneous noise, meaning that you may want to use Soundbooth to clean up the audio before attempting the speech-to-text transcription. The program also has the ability to distinguish between more than one speaker and label each individually.

In our tests, the autotranscription feature performed very poorly. It had 95%-plus accuracy when our speaker had noticeable breaks between words, but it dropped to the 50% range when he spoke at a natural rate with few pauses. While we could suggest it was the Southern accent, this wouldn’t account for the lack of accuracy, since the South is not exactly known for fast talkers. The transcript did make for some very humorous reading, though. We tried running a few other videos through the transcriber in hopes that they would have easier-to-transcribe audio tracks, but we didn’t get any better results.

The transcript is also available as only metadata, with each word tied to a particular frame of video. So editing the transcript requires clicking on and changing every single word individually. It would be nice to see a modification that allows users to export the transcription to a text document for ease of distribution and editing, as some of the other systems on the market do, and to reimport the edited file with autoparsing (compared against the original transcription).

We like the transcription feature in concept, but we think Adobe can do better, especially with some of the systems out there having more than a decade of trial-and-error testing. Hopefully, these shortcomings will be improved as technology advances and future Adobe releases come along.

The Case for Metadata
If there’s any common thread in all of the CS4 applications thus far, it’s metadata. The dictionary definition of metadata is “a set of data that describes and gives information about other data.” Not so descriptive, especially since we were always taught never to define a word with the same word. The practical benefits of Adobe tying metadata in at every level can’t be overstated, though, so let’s look at why Adobe has incorporated metadata entry and retrieval extensively into the new product release.

Probably the most common and well-known metadata today is the infamous ID3 tags that all of our digital music files come with. These wonderful little bits of information help us keep our iPods and media player libraries neat and tidy by providing all the track and album information for our music. But this same technology is available in any computer file. Look at the properties of any file on your hard drive, and you’ll see all kinds of information that you may not have known was there, such as the software developer’s name, the version number, a URL link to the company’s homepage, and so on.

Adobe understands that having the power to edit this information about your original digital content can be extremely advantageous. The metadata that you add to your videos can, in theory, be carried into and displayed in every major media player that will be used to view your content. Not only is this metadata addiction a good marketing strategy, it also helps make the Adobe Media Player and interconnecting technologies such as Adobe’s Bridge tool more dynamic and easier to search. If you’re having trouble finding the video of the recent presidential inauguration that your intern logged and tagged for you, try searching for keywords such as historic, president, or overcrowded, and you’ll understand that we’re entering an era where search is becoming a major part of workflow acceleration.

Impressive but Imperfect
In summary, although the release of CS4 pushes Adobe’s video software further into the spotlight, it doesn’t make as large a first impression as its predecessor did. Adobe Media Encoder, OnLocation, and Soundbooth in particular have seen some real growth, but Premiere Pro’s updates are significantly more subdued unless tapeless workflows (such as native AVCHD or the RED camera) are your primary method of acquisition.

If the company can heavily optimize the speech-to-text and metadata tweaks in updates for the release version, it will make the upgrade especially attractive to content creators who do a significant amount of repurposing. More specifically, content creators who deal primarily in streaming video and who want to ensure that their content always gets distributed with credits and copyright information intact will be able to capitalize on metadata tagging for search engine optimization now that Flash files are searchable by major search engines such as Yahoo! and Google.

Orginally published here.

Pettit Promo

2009-03-02T10:35:00.002-05:00

Each spring Oak Ridge Baptist Church hosts a week of special outreach meetings. In years past, they’ve used the DVD format as a substitute for paper flyers or brochures as an invitation. Braintrust Digital was asked to shoot and edit a personal invitation to the viewer from Senior Pastor Tom Craig. This is the resulting video that was incorporated into the final DVD along with directions to the church, samples of music and sermons, and information about ORBC.

www.orbc4u.org
www.spea.org

Galkin Project Completed

2008-06-29T13:19:00.002-04:00

The Galkin DVD is now complete. The team gave final approval of all five videos, and we’ll be sending the final master off for duplication very soon. Below, you can view the introductory video that is the main video on the DVD. This video will be used to introduce church congregations to the team so they can be familiarized with the team members, their background, and the goals and focus of their ministry.

Galkin Project monologue re-shoot

2008-04-28T13:28:00.002-04:00

Our shoot on March 28 went very well. It threatened to rain all day, but we only had to stop once for about five minutes while a brief shower passed over. The overcast sky gave us even lighting, and we utilized some silver-coated foam core for a bounce light. We got started almost two hours later than scheduled because we forgot to factor in a one hour time zone change since the team was coming from Nashville. They also had some trouble with their trailers when they were leaving the church in Nashville. Will and Aaron were much more focused and clear during the takes. They had obviously really nailed down what they wanted to say and how they wanted to say it. Since they were both present for the shoot, they were also able to help each other clarify their thoughts.

We had some issues with some strong winds getting picked up in the audio. That ruined a few good takes, but we still had enough good ones to cover all of the thoughts in the script. At another location, there was a woman (apparently mentally handicapped) who decided she wanted to serenade the entire crew while we were in the middle of shooting. Will kindly encouraged her to wait until we were done shooting to continue her concert.

The editing of all of the monologues and pick-up shots that we re-shot is very close to completion. We expect to mail a DVD to the team next week for them to review again. This should be a final version, and we can expect the final delivery of all of the DVDs to be before the end of May.

Galkin Project Re-shoot Preparation

2008-03-24T13:32:00.002-04:00

Today we're in total logistics mode. We're settling all of our shooting locations, making phone calls for permissions, checking and prepping equipment, and going over everyone's outlines. Will and Aaron have sent their outlines over, and we're going to give them a little touch-up work to make sure the ideas will be communicated clearly and effectively on camera.

Tennessee SBIR Proposal Assistance Center

2008-03-10T15:35:00.002-04:00

Charles (Chuck) Shoopman wanted to launch the Tennessee SBIR Proposal Assistance Center, he talked to a variety of partners. Chuck got the SBIR Assistance Center off the ground in January 2006, in collaboration with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the NNSA Y-12 Facility, Technology 2020, the Knoxville-Oak Ridge Innovation Valley, the East Tennessee Economic Council, and Integrated Manufacturing Technology Initiative. A blog post about the University of TN SBIR Proposal Assistance Center can be found here.

Galkin Project Feedback

2008-03-10T13:34:00.002-04:00

The whole team has watched the DVD several times and given us feedback. They found a few tweaks to make that will make the whole program smoother. The major development is that they have decided that they want to re-shoot all of their monologues. After eight months of continuing to develop and refine their message, they believe that they can communicate everything much better. So we've gone from production to post-production and back to production. The whole team will be in Nashville until just after Easter and will be going to the Atlanta area after a two day break. Since Knoxville isn't too much out of the way, they will spend one day and one night here. Before shooting, we'll review their outlines and prioritize the segments that need to be reshot. We'll do all of the ones we can and see how much we can do in one day. It will be a long day of shooting, that's for sure.