June 9th, 2010 Meeting

What a fantastic 2nd anniversary celebration! We had Peter Crithary here from Sony who shared with us a presentation on HDCAM SR as well as a sneak peak of what’s to come.

HDCAM SR is the master quality standard for production and deliverables. With 12 channels of uncompressed digital audio, visually lossless quality recording and playback up to 4:4:4 RGB at 440Mbps and 880Mbps, with Real time 3D, double speed capability, uncompressed 4K DPX and much more. The HDCAM SR platform is evolving with upcoming support of real time 2K and the ability to go file based at 440Mbps, 880Mbps and with the newly introduced 220Mbps codec support. He also detailed new changes with the Version 2 of the format including 96K audio support, and a file based use of the SR codec.  The tapes can be used as data holders as well as a high-def playback format with a simple ethernet for round tripping to a computer.  Pretty cool stuff!

http://www.sony.com/Professional– The main product information site.

http://www.sony.com/Production – The production site is intended as a learning resource with forums so people can engage each other and engage with Sony people who can answer questions directly. In addition, they have a blog that is updated regularly with timely information. The site is continuing to build and they will be adding white papers and other technical information as well.

http://www.sony.com/VideON – This is Sony’s site that hosts and showcases content shot with Sony technology. Anyone can submit their work for posting. There is a selection process for posting content. Upon being selected,  biographical information from the content creator will be included. The ability to embed the video’s on any website so they become portable showreels so to speak is key.

http://www.twitter.com/CineAltanews  – This is Sony’s Production Twitter account. Tweets include latest breaking information, general Sony technology information, news and events. Definitely something to monitor!

After Peter’s presentation we had our giveaway of over $3300 worth of products. Then we sang a round of “Happy Birthday”, shared a ton of cake and enjoyed lots of time to network.

April 21st, 2010 Meeting

Dan Green presented a platform for video content producers called MediaSilo. He talked about how this program has tools to help productions work more efficiently by speeding up workflow to save time and money. He discussed how to use MediaSilo for managing videos, creating and sharing reels, as well as auditioning talent via video, and even for transcribing footage. He also explained how this program can be accessed from anyplace there is Internet connections to store, share, review, or get approvals easily. He demonstrated how to use the program to track what others on the system are doing using a simple Admin widget. There was also mention of a FileMaker Pro server and how that is being integrated. We learned this system works on a PC as well as a Mac and it seemed that for those using an FTP site or spending big bucks on digital asset management software, this was really worth checking out!  Their basic “Home” account is FREE! We were all pleasantly surprised and excited to learn this fact! This gives you up to two users and 1GB of storage. The rest of the packages add features and storage space and are reasonably priced.  It definitely got a lot of our members thinking about how something like MediaSilo could help manage a more efficient and effective workflow.

http://www.mediasilo.com/

The CEO of LIGHTIRON Digital, Michael Cioni, paid us a visit and discussed working with file-based media. His amazing presentation (via his iPad) illustrated the history of media as well as the file-based direction media is moving. He also discussed several cameras and filetypes and included an overview of the new MX sensor for the RED camera system as well as a discussion as to how file-based capture should be treated in preparation for today’s existing offline infrastructure (often tape-based) as well as for digital intermediate mastering. We also were treated to a screening of Michael’s amazing demo reel including some never seen before new RED MX ultra-low light footage! Boy did we get lucky!

http://www.lightirondigital.com

LAPPG Member Tag Lyons was the lucky winner of the NewBluFX/LAPPG Survey! He gets to choose $1000 worth of NewBlueFX plugins!