We were deeply troubled to read this week in the LA Times of significant legal challenges to the First Amendment rights of a documentary filmmaker.

Joe Berlinger made a documentary about Aguinda v. Chevron, a class action lawsuit filed in 1993 against Chevron’s oil operation in Ecuador. Chevron is demanding all Joe’s outtakes — more than 600 hours of video material — as part of their legal defense. Is this an issue of First Amendment rights, trying to uncover the truth, or a large corporations acting as a bully? One judge in a lower court has already ruled in favor of Chevron requiring Berlinger to surrender his footage. On Wednesday, July 14, U.S. Court of Appeals heard oral arguments. And the impact for filmmakers could not be more significant.

This case raises issues of: Who is a journalist? What constitutes free speech in documentary filmmaking? What rights, if any, does a corporation have to media shot by someone that is not a corporate employee.

This week’s Digital Production Buzz featured Jonathan Handel, Of Counsel, Troy/Gould, talking about the First Amendment implications and ramifications of Chevron Oil’s case against documentary filmmaker, Joe Berlinger.

This is an interview that everyone interested in documentary film production needs to hear. Because if the wrong side wins, the effect could be chilling.

It took the Appeals Court exactly a day to reach a preliminary decision. Listen to learn more.

Click here to listen to the interview.

Click here to listen to the entire program.

Click here to read the original LA Times article.

And click here to read the followup article on the Court’s ruling.

Please tell your friends about this interview – because the results affect all of us.

Thanks,

Larry

P.S. Click here to learn more about the Digital Production Buzz.

Last week, on the Digital Production Buzz, we interviewed Evelyn McLellan, a professional archivist for Artefactual Systems.

(You can hear her interview here — 14 minutes, MP3 file.)

I found the interview to be an excellent orientation to getting our files prepped for permanent storage. We didn’t talk about archive hardware at all, just what we need to do with our media.

Well, after the show, John Mozzer and Evelyn McLellan had an email conversation that I want to share with you, as it is relevant to all of us. (And thanks to both John and Evelyn for allowing me to share this with you.)

John Mozzer asks:

I’m pretty confused by the Digital Production Buzz interview with Evelyn McLellan, Systems Archivist for Artefactual Systems.

I think I understand sustainability factors when choosing media file formats (adoption, non-proprietary, etc.), and the benefits of storing the media on a server (the software tools, etc).

But I don’t understand the reason for converting video to MPEG-2 with Intra-coded frames, even though it is high quality.  To what extent does this involve re-encoding the original video?  If it involves re-encoding, why do it?

I can understand needing to uncompress and re-compress Digital Betacam, for example, in order to store that video on a server.  (Am I right about that?)  But, for example, what about all the legacy standard definition video on tape in the DV format, which can be captured bit-for-bit?

Evelyn McLellan responds:

The purpose of re-encoding the video is to reduce a multitude of incoming formats, many with proprietary codecs, into a few device-independents format for long-term preservation. Since different formats and codecs are likely to become obsolete at different times, it becomes very difficult, if not impossible, to monitor which video files are at risk at any given time. MPEG-2 is a non-proprietary, openly-specified codec and many heritage institutions are using it.

This means that, for a long time into the future, there will almost certainly be tools and support for MPEG-2 – in other words, we won’t have to re-format for a long time, if ever. The idea is to reformat only once if possible. So there may be some (imperceptible) data loss with the initial reformatting, but the alternative is to fail to reformat proprietary and/or obsolete formats until it is too late and thus lose the ability to render the video. Of course, as I mentioned during the interview, we keep all the orginal formats as well, in case a better preservation strategy comes along that we aren’t able to predict right now.

Generally we deal with device-independent end-state formats. My understanding of DV is that in order to render it device-independent you need to place it in some kind of wrapper (such as AVI, QuickTime or MXF) or store it as raw video (DV-DIF). The Library of Congress is investigating wrapper formats for DV, particularly MXF (which is the wrapper we use for our video files), since AVI and QuickTime are proprietary. Actually, Library of Congress is an excellent source of information on this subject – please see
http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/content/video.shtml.

Apologies if this is insufficient detail – I’m an archivist, not a video expert, and video files are just one of the types of digital objects we’re trying to preserve (the others are office documents, e-mail, audio files, raster and vector images, web sites, databases, etc.). However, similar principles apply across the board when it comes to digital preservation – accept or convert to a small number of non-proprietary, openly-specified, device-independent and widely used formats, and use redundant storage to allow for replacement of any damaged objects.

Thanks for your questions & I hope this helps.

Larry adds: Thanks for allowing me to share this!

This Wednesday, July 14 at 7:00 PM, I am presenting at the LAPPG (Los Angeles Post-Production Group).  This is a great user group, if you haven’t had a chance to attend a meeting, check out their website – www.lappg.com.

This month, I want to showcase some Final Cut Studio plug-ins that can make your life a lot easier.  Plus, some of these are just plain fun!

Here’s a quick guide to what I will be covering:

Plus, there’ll be time for answering your questions, as well.

The group requests a small donation at the door, but the cookies alone are worth it. Plus, you get to meet lots of great folks, discover stuff you didn’t know, and get your questions answered.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Larry

“When I first got started in this editing business,” he said creaking back and forth in his rocking chair, “editing video took a minimum of two quarter-million dollar videotape recorders – plus a control room – a lot of patience and some blind luck.”

Today just blew the doors off what we used to consider “editing systems.”   Let me start with an email I got this evening from Tony Liuzzi:

I have been using LogMeIn.com for at least six months. It works great. With that as background, here’s my story.

I was flying from New York to San Francisco recently, and said, “why not try using LogMeIn  from an airplane at 35,000 feet and see how it behaves?”  I had purchased an internet connection on my flight — the cost was discounted since I was a first-time user.

I checked my email and read that my client had a revision to be made on a current Final Cut Pro project. So, I said, what the heck? Let’s see.

I logged into my edit system and discovered I had great response/control from the flight. As good as I had when I am connected on land. I was amazed!

I made the changes to the project and exported the file.  It went from Final Cut Pro to Squeeze, all controlled from my flight. Then, I opened up Transmit to send the newly compressed file to their FTP site for approval.

Now, here is where the story gets even funnier.  I sent an email to the client telling her I was making the changes right now — but NOT that I was on a plane.  She reviewed and approved the changes — all before I landed.

It was a VERY cool moment. And I thought you’d enjoy the story.

Larry replies: This whole idea of remote computer control totally changes what we consider an editing system.  Is it the computer doing the editing or the computer CONTROLLING the computer doing the editing.

These lines got even more blurred this morning, when Steve Jobs showcased the new iPhone 4 running iMOVIE!

Sheesh!

What made this even funnier for me was that Tom Tomchak ran an April Fools Day press release talking about porting Final Cut Pro to the iPhone.  At the time, it made for very funny reading. Who knew that he was actually able to see the future?  He wasn’t being preposterous, he was being prescient!

The editing community is already starting to take sides on this new $4.99 software.  But I think some of the discussion misses the point.

Tens of millions of people will have access to simple equipment to shoot 720p30 HD video. Using the latest version of iMovie for the iPhone, they can edit it in their phone. Then, imagine that when they connect their phone to the computer, that iMovie file transfers over in a format that’s readable by iMovie on the Mac.

At which point, it is only a mouse-click to send that edited file via XML to Final Cut Pro for final polish.

The mind reels — I was blown away when I realized a few years ago that I had more editing power in my laptop than I did in a multi-million dollar post-production suite 20 years ago.

Now, that power is migrating to cell phones!

The key for us is not to run away from this new technology, but to realize that there are about to be millions of new customers than can use our expertise and experience to make their movies look even better. At the end of the day, it isn’t the tools, but the people using the tools that make the difference.

As another email today emphasized: “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”  (Actually, I’m beginning to think we aren’t even on the same planet.)

Strange times, indeed!

Larry

In a recent newsletter, I invited readers to send in their favorite iPhone apps for production or post. I thought you might be interested in some of their replies:

Ian Hart

I find Movie*Slate very handy as I often need a clapper to sync multi-cams and/or digital audio recorded on my Zoom. I work on my own or with a very small team and I can operate Movie*Slate with one hand (shake to iPhone to cause the slate to clap).

I bought Storyboard (Cinemek) with which you use the iPhone camera to construct a storyboard, then perform pans, tilts, zooms etc, rearrange your shots, add dialogue (as subtitles) etc, play in "real time" and then export to a PDF document. Very impressive app, but until now it’s been more like a party trick than a serious part of my workflow.

Voice Memos is a really convenient tool for research. With a 30GB iPhone you can do very many hours of recording.

And the camera, of course. Just about an indispensable tool these days.

Gary Wales

My current favourite iPhone App is Movie*Slate. A simple yet multifunctional digital clapperboard that allows you to export/import XML files into Final Cut. A real time-saver on a shoot and can be blue tooth synced with another iPhone for multi-cam use.

Steve Schumacher

Time calculator is great if you need to add minutes and seconds, etc. Works just like a stand alone time calculator.

For pre-production and planning of shoots, Sunrise & Set Lite is fantastic. It tells you when the sun rises and sets, not just for today’s date, but for any day you choose. Perfect for knowing in 5 months when the sun is setting.

Kit Lammers

Convert – convert any units, use for time (no time code though)

OS X Ref – Quick reminder for key commands

DipSwitch – Calculate DipSwitches

Keith Marshall

ProPrompter
This is a very cool app where I can upload/download scripts and use my iPhone as a teleprompter. If you have another iPhone/iPod available, you can use it to control the other as well.

Storyboard
This will allow you to build a storyboard, animate camera movements and export as a pdf. I was working on a project as a teaching experience to a group of teens and we used this to educate them the process of planning.

And my most favorite…

iProRecorder
I can dock my iPhone into my Alesis ProTrack and record 16/44.1k stereo or mono to my device. This acts just like a field recorder and the ProTrack allows me to plug in XLR or Phono audio source or use the built in X-Y stereo microphones

Norman Hollyn

AJA DataCalc
DVDBudget
Both of Moviola’s guides: FCP Guide and Pro Video
Diana Weynand’s iKeysTo Go is also a good alternative
And I also like NEDi (which is macPro Video’s online tutorial guide

Pat DeFilippo

P D Post has used DJay software (Mac only, $50) for years to live- and auto-mix walk-in/walk-out music at corporate events, dance music at parties, etc. Today, DJay released DJay Remote, a $5 app for iPhone/iPod Touch. You still need the full version of DJay installed on your Mac, however DJay Remote lets you completely control all of your songs with DJay’s powerful functions remotely via the same Wi-Fi network that your Mac is on!

Tore Jonssen

I use CodecCalc and AutoCue all the time, works like a charm.

John Warner

I use Focalware on each and every location shoot to accurately predict sun and moon positions globally from sunrise through sunset anytime of the year.

All interesting choices. Let me know what your’s are and I’ll add them to the list.
Larry

John Bogdanovich sent me the following note:

I just released my 10 DVD series on making concert classical guitars. The project took two years to complete and due to the tiny budget available I was only able to hire a camera crew to shoot it, therefore I had to do everything else myself or the project would not have been possible. There is a trailer on my site. To view, click here.

I was able to learn how to do almost everything (editing, animation, working with stills, color correcting, audio) by watching your tutorials on Lynda.com and by attending the three day seminar you gave in Charlotte. WIthout having this information available and presented in such a clear and concise manner this project would never have been completed. I can honestly say it was worth every penny.

Your instructional style made learning all this stuff a pleasure, and in the end I was very happy and proud of the final product.

Letters like this make me feel very proud. First, that I was able to help. But, more importantly, because the skills that we take the time to learn help us to achieve dreams that would otherwise be impossible.

Larry

Michael Cowan sent me a note earlier today that I wanted to share with you.

He was having problems sending sequences from Final Cut Pro to Soundtrack Pro (STP). Since I do this all the time with my own projects, without problems, I couldn’t figure out why he was having difficulty.

First, I suggested that he send his sequences from the Browser, rather than selecting all the clips in the Timeline. I find sending Browser files to STP to be more reliable.

That didn’t work.

Second, I suggested that he trash both his FCP and STP preference files. I have found that corrupted FCP preference files can mess with sending files to STP.

That didn’t work.

Hmmm… time to think. However, while I was thinking, Michael did some research. What he didn’t mention when we were first talking about this was that the sequence he wanted to send contained other sequences in it (what Apple calls “nesting.”) Ah-HAH! Using nests causes problems. As Michael wrote:

“Alas this issue lies with the well-documented nested sequence/XML problem that prevents “Send To” of nested sequences to Soundtrack Pro. I’ll need to change my workflow. There was some guy [Jeremy Hughes] who said he had success by Sending To Apple Color, back to FCP and then on to STP (perhaps Color generates cleaner XML), but it didn’t work for me.”

For those that need more information, here is the link to Apple’s support site:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2155

And here’s the link to Jeremy Hughes‘ Color workflow workaround:

http://filmvideostuff.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-to-get-audio-from-nested-fcp.html

Thanks, Michael, for sharing this!

Well, Apple Insider felt there wasn’t enough stress in our lives so they published a long blog written by Prince McLean titled: “Apple Scaling Final Cut Studio to fit prosumers.”

(You can read the entire article here.)

Naturally, the entire blogosphere went ballistic.

Philip Hodgetts wrote an excellent point-by-point rebuttal of many of the key points in this article, which you can read here.

While I agree with much of Philip’s point of view – I want to provide some additional points of view.

First, it make NO sense to me that Apple would make Final Cut Pro into iMovie. They already HAVE iMovie – why create it again?

Second, Apple has long been infatuated with Hollywood. For them to burn their bridges into a market they worked YEARS to develop makes no sense.

Third, in my conversations with Apple, the ProAps group is one of the key R&D Centers for audio and video at Apple. Many of the technologies we use everyday on our iPad, iPod, and iPhone first saw the light of day in the ProAps group. These products are very valuable to Apple both for revenue and for research.

Fourth, what Apple is thinking of doing, or not doing, has absolutely no impact on my life today. Apple could be working on cold fusion with free energy for everyone but until they announce it, coupled with a ship date, there’s nothing for me to react to.

If I spend all my time reacting to rumors, I’d never get any work done.

For me, this is the key point — as editors our job is to tell stories visually. The tools we have today do a really great job of helping us put food on the table and pay the rent.

Worrying about rumors in an exercise in driving yourself nuts.

Rumor: Adobe is Buying Avid and giving Media Composer away FREE!

Rumor: New lab discovery shows dental floss to be the ideal tapeless recording medium.

Rumor: Final Cut Studio is being ported to Windows Vista and being renamed “yourMOVIE”.

What does any of this have to do with us? You can’t plan on rumors. Apple has proved this time and time and time again.

Wait for Apple to announce something — THEN panic … or celebrate .. or whatever.

For now, though, I’m going back to work.

Larry

UPDATE #1 – May 18

I got an email from a friend with some inside knowledge of Apple. I wanted to share that person’s thoughts:

1) What happened to Final Cut Express?

November 2007 was the release date of the current FCE 4 Express. For Apple retail stores this was always where they would point people that wanted more out of iMovie, but weren’t ready for a $1000 buy in. It would only make sense to me that they would focus on engineering the interface of FCE to be slightly more user friendly, but not “scale back” the program.

2) The job postings were for interface design.

Why would you hire in an area you are looking to downsize or even delete? As you and I have both seen, the FCP/FCE interface is the one that looks the least “Apple” (whatever that means!). I can imagine they are looking to tweak that look and feel. I can’t imagine after putting out the videos of the Coen brothers, and Francis Ford Coppola, Apple would just want to say, “Screw you guys!” 9/10 of the Oscar-nominated documentaries were made with FCS! That was a huge win for Apple!

3) Steve Jobs

I don’t know if you remember this: Steve Jobs in response to someone expressing concern about Pro Video. “Give us a sign you still care about pro video, and not just the iPad.”

Steve wrote: “We certainly do. Folks who left were in support, not engineering. Next release will be awesome.”

I would rather take Steve at his word, than some blogger. Steve has been known to be discreet about new products, and say that they aren’t interested in something when they are (namely eReaders, and phones), however he wouldn’t say they ARE interested when they aren’t.

Larry adds: Thanks for these thoughts. There will, I’m sure, be lots more to add as time moves forward. For now, though, ask yourself: “just how reasonable do these rumors seem?”

UPDATE #2 – May 19

In an unusual move, Apple today released a denial to CNET of the initial report in Apple Insider, saying they were fully committed to Final Cut Studio.

You can read the full report here.

Whew!

Here’s another technical question that came in recently.

Sourabh asks:

I am a huge fan of your newsletters. I see you mention in quite a few newsletters burning an AVCHD disc (on a standard DVD) using FCP 7 that will give greater quality than a SD DVD. Could you please go over the process?

Larry replies: Thanks for writing!

This is a new feature in Final Cut Studio (3). Both Compressor and Final Cut Pro 7 can now create Blu-ray Discs. This means that it is now possible to put HD content onto what looks like a traditional DVD.

However, although the physical shape of the disc is the same, there are actually three flavors of DVD:

1. Traditional DVD. This is the ONLY format that DVD Studio Pro creates. All DVDs created by DVD SP are standard definition (SD) video. Yes, I know that DVD SP creates HD DVDs, however, that format died in the marketplace two years ago. If you are creating a disc only for yourself, you can use this format. However, there are no players on the market today that can play this type of disc. For this reason, use DVD SP to only create SD discs.

2. Blu-ray Disc. This is the new HD video format that you see promoted in all the stores. It requires compressing your video to meet the specs of this format and, for Macintosh folks, also requires that you purchase a separate Blu-ray Disc burner for your system. No burners shipped by Apple support this format. Also, keep in mind that as of today, no Macintosh can play a Blu-ray Disc natively on their system.

3. AVCHD Disc. This is a hybrid format. It records Blu-ray compatible video on a standard DVD disc. The benefit of this is that your current DVD burner can create this disc using standard DVD media. The disadvantage to this is that because a standard DVD only holds about 4 GB of media, while a Blu-ray Disc holds at least 6 times more, you can only get about 20-30 minutes of material on a disc. Also, because AVCHD discs require a lower data rate, it could be argued that the video quality is close to Blu-ray, but not quite equal to it. Still, the benefits of using AVCHD for short projects are great. This format also requires a Blu-ray player to be able to play the disc.

There are essentially four ways to create an AVCHD disc:

1. From within Final Cut Pro.
2. From within Compressor.
3. Using Roxio Toast 10.
4. Using Adobe Encore CS4 or later, which is part of Adobe Production Premium.

Let’s look at each of these.

The benefit to using Final Cut Pro is that it is easy. Select the sequence, or clips, you want to burn to a DVD in the Browser. Choose File > Share. Then, from the pop-up menu, select Blu-ray Disc. A side menu appears allowing you to set various parameters. You can also use this approach to create an AVCHD disc – keep in mind that you are limited to a project length of 20-30 minutes.

The disadvantage to using Final Cut is that menus are only templates and it is really designed for putting one movie on a disc. You can’t author a title or design menus the way we can in DVD SP, for example.

Bruce Nazarian has told me that the compression settings Apple uses to create Blu-ray Discs are actually very good — the image quality looks excellent.

The advantage to using Compressor is that you can adjust your compression settings; for example adding watermarks or resizing your video. However, the end result is the same as Final Cut Pro – menus are templates designed more for creating review copies of projects, not a commercial-grade Disc.

Roxio Toast 10 provides more flexibility, but the menus are still templates. You can easily add more movies. You can create your own menu graphics. But, in the end, the look and feel of the Disc is driven by the templates. Branching menus, scripting, stories, and other advanced features in DVD SP are not available.

Roxio Toast is the best choice when you want to provide a variety of different movies on a disc, using a single menu. Think demo reels.

Adobe Encore is the only application currently on the Mac that provides full authoring capability for Blu-ray Discs.

Based on what I’ve learned and in talking with others, the workflow that I would suggest when using Adobe Encore is to edit your project in Final Cut Pro. Export it as a high-quality, self-contained QuickTime movie. Compress it in Compressor as a Blu-ray file. Import the compressed file into Adobe Encore and create your HD title.

As alternatives, you can edit in Premiere and compress in Encore — it all depends upon which programs you are most familiar with.

If your project is short, create an AVCHD Disc. If you have more than 30 minutes of material, create a Blu-ray Disc. In both cases, you’ll need a Blu-ray Player to view the resulting files.

I’m trying to catch up on the backlog of technical questions I get asked each month for my Final Cut Studio Newsletter. So, I’m hoping to address a number of them here in my blog. This question is typical of many:

Mitch writes:

I thought that Compressor (I have version 3.5) could transform PAL QuickTime Movie files to NTSC .mov files. I’ve gone through your compressor lessons on Lynda.com but either didn’t see or didn’t find (because it doesn’t exist) any conversion command. If Compressor can’t do the conversion could you recommend a Mac software which can? Thanks as always.

Larry replies: Mitch, Compressor CAN convert NTSC to PAL and vice versa. But it is very, very slow.

A much better utility is Graeme Nattress’ Standards Conversion (www.nattress.com). Much, much faster and better results. It is considered the best choice when using software to convert formats.