Asked to provide content to target the Arabic speaking gaming market, the Dubai based gaming and esports agency PLG implements a Virtual Studio Solution with Blackmagic Design.

The leading gaming and esports agency in the Middle East and North Africa. PLG (which stands for Power League Gaming) works with global consumer brands across fashion, food and retail that are looking to target youth audiences through branded content to evolve community engagement. As Virtual Production becomes more common and continues to reveal how workflows can be optimized with all the new technology made available, PLG wanted to build a virtual studio adapted to its needs now and in the future, and Blackmagic Design had the solution they wanted.

“We’ve seen a huge increase in content creation, with brands turning to us to target the Arabic speaking gaming market in particular through game launches and activations, talk shows and sponsored competitions,” explains Arnor Jonsson, product and production director, PLG. “Content for these channels has to be fresh and engaging, so we required an agile solution that could support our growing client roster and their production needs.”

The studio’s audio, video and graphics solution, which was delivered with the support of systems integrator UBMS, which also provided product training and workflow consultancy, is designed around the Blackmagic URSA Broadcast G2 camera and ATEM Constellation 8K live production switcher. PLG’s 10,000 square meter facility houses a flexible virtual studio with multiple green screen and presenter stages, which allows an incredibly quick turnaround between productions.

Environments created with Unreal Engine

Action in the studio is captured on multiple URSA Broadcast G2s, each equipped with a Blackmagic URSA Studio Viewfinder, and the live signals are fed over SDI into virtual environments created with Unreal Engine. “It’s imperative that live and virtual content are stitched together seamlessly in these content packages; both the brands and the gamers watching expect the highest production values,” Jonsson continues.

“For a recent competition we designed a dynamic environment based on the game that players were battling in and placed our presenters and the commentary desk into the heart of the event, all in real time,” he adds. “Footage from the studio had to be crisp, with plenty of detail to maintain the authenticity of the presenting team’s segments within the game.”

The ATEM Constellation 8K with ATEM 2 M/E Advanced Panel form the hub of the production gallery, allowing the PLG team to handle sources in multiple formats, as well as delivering multilayered live mixes which incorporate gameplay, statistics, studio content and remote feeds from players across the region. The team also relies upon the switcher’s multiple M/Es to reduce latency while the inbuilt chroma keyer is used to further blend the studio elements into the virtual environment.

Virtual studio allows for an incredible work rate

“In order to create exciting shows that give audiences the full gameplay experience we rely on features such as SuperSource, which helps us bring lots of elements onto the screen simultaneously,” Jonsson explains. “Blackmagic’s DeckLink I/O cards are also a huge element in our content design, providing the foundation for overlays and bespoke brand components for our clients.”

Since its launch, the studio has been in almost constant use, with Jonsson revealing that its flexibility in both the live and virtual components has facilitated an incredible work rate.

“The solution’s modular nature has dramatically simplified how we transition from one production to the next, making it easy to reset studio acquisition for the next show, and then we can quickly upload the graphics and backdrops needed,” he concludes. “Major brands already know that the future for their marketing lies in online and gaming platform content, and our facility gives us a huge advantage, not only in terms of speed but also in broadcast grade production values.”

Evercoast’s portable volumetric video system captured Zelenksy’s address in Kyiv in 3D for a mobile augmented reality experience, to address the global tech community.

We’ve seen 3D volumetric video systems being used for many things and here is a new one, especially useful in these dire times: even amidst the devastation of war, Zelensky said, during the recent presentation, that Ukraine continues to develop and pledged to make digital transformation central to his nation’s rebuild. President Zelensky’s 3D volumetric video represents that commitment. In his speech, President Zelensky encourages the world’s most influential innovators to donate financial and technological resources to begin rebuilding Ukraine.

“Ukraine is a chance for a global digital revolution,” he said; “a chance for every technology company and a chance for every visionary to show their value, skills, technologies and ambitions.”

The volumetric video with President Volodymyr Zelensky debuted recently during Founders Forum London in an effort to compel the region’s most influential innovators to donate financial and technological resources to begin rebuilding Ukraine. Evercoast’s industry-leading, portable volumetric video system captured Zelenksy’s address in Kyiv in 3D for a mobile augmented reality experience, available through the QR codes available here: https://ff.evercoast.com

If your smartphone is capable of displaying Augmented Reality content, you can view the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky address simply by accessing the website mentioned above. The image on your smartphone’s screen can be placed anywhere you want, rotated and resized, as shown here, on the screen of a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra.

A hologram of Zelensky’s speech

Evercoast’s 3D volumetric video debuted alongside a hologram of Zelensky’s speech at four of Europe’s largest tech festivals: Stockholm’s Brilliant Minds, London’s Founders Forum, Amsterdam’s The Next Web and Paris’ Vivatech. His holographic telepresence, produced by Talesmith, was also live-streamed to Dublin Tech Summit, The AI Summit at London Tech Week and SuperReturn Berlin, expanding the reach of his address to 200,000 leaders across every vertical of the tech industry.

“Evercoast had the extraordinary opportunity to produce and deliver a seminal moment in volumetric video with a holographic capture of President Zelensky from Kyiv. This is an incredibly important message from a leader whose country is under siege, and Evercoast is honored to have been a part of this,” said Ben Nunez, Co-founder and CEO at Evercoast.

Volumetric capture hardware donated to Ukrainian

Evercoast’s volumetric capture hardware used for the project is being donated to the Ukrainian government, to enable continued communications in extended reality formats. The production was made on location in Kyiv and at Garden Studios in London. The project was created by Martin Williams (Talesmith) and Thomas Hoegh (Garden Studios), directed by Martin Williams, and produced by Mark Wright (Talesmith) and Thomas Hoegh.

Evercoast enables a new age of content and communication in the form of 3D digital humans. They provide industry-leading capture, rendering, and streaming of high-quality, cost-effective 3D volumetric video for use in virtual production, mobile augmented reality, virtual reality, and the growing metaverse. Evercoast’s cloud software platform powers real-time telepresence and recorded 3D digital humans for clients like Verizon, Comcast, WarnerMedia, AbbVie, NYU, Providence Health, and others.

This situation reminds me of the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. Here are a few examples: Zoom.us is 25 fps exclusive, no matter what you feed it, as I covered about a year ago. On the other hand, Riverside.fm exclusively uses exact 24 fps unless you have an Enterprise plan with Riverside. If you are not Captain Kirk or Captain Picard, you may not be able to afford an Enterprise plan. If you send either of the services video at any different rate, it will either add or subtract frames every second to stick to its own standard, which messes up your cadence, as well as wasting bandwidth in the case of adding extra frames. Fortunately, YouTube accepts and respects all framerates for on demand videos (including 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97 and more), but for live streaming only offers VFR 29.97, VFR 59.94 or VFR 60. So if you send YouTube Live anything else (like 23.976, 24, 25 or 50) YouTube Live will unfortunately insert extra frames to reach the closest supported live framerate, even though the on-demand will fortunately retain the original rate and cadence. What can you do if you are going to simulcast live and also want to retain compatibility with traditional broadcast television? Ahead I’ll recap standard and non-standard rates, the differences between VFR & CFR and more. I’ll also give you suggestions to help improve and expand our options.

In this article

• Review of standard and non-standard rates
• Recap of VFR and CFR rates
• Examples of platforms and tools
• How much does this matter anyway?
• Best practices, long and short term
• Image credit

Review of standard and non-standard rates

• 23.976 fps (sometimes rounded to “23.98”) is the broadcast-television rate which closely matches exact 24. It fits properly in NTSC and ex-NTSC broadcast TV stations. 23.976 also works for DVD, Blu-Ray and the web (at least for on-demand video on the web).
• Exact 24 fps (sometimes written as 24.00 or 24.00) is the one used in traditional film production. It is the standard rate for Riverside.fm and for DCI digital film theaters. The exact 24 rate is also used for the minority of Blu-ray discs and on the web (at least for on-demand video on the web).
• 25 fps is the framerate derived from the PAL broadcast television system, where variants were (or may be still are in rare cases) used in different parts of Europe, Argentina, Australia, mainland China, Hong Kong, Paraguay, Ireland, the UK and Uruguay. It is also the original rate used by SECAM (i.e. France and other countries). 25 fps is also the standard chosen by Zoom.us as covered in this article. Back in the days of the videotape formats called DV and HDV, 25 fps was an alternative to producers who wanted to deliver 23.976 fps to their clients, since HDV camcorders were incapable of recording 23.976 fps directly. Instead, those camcorders offered 23.976 with a pulldown over 59.94. Rather than going through the cumbersome process of extracting the original 23.976 frames (while sacrificing the original timecode), some producers chose to shoot at 25 fps, edit at 25 fps and then adjust the speed and audio pitch of the master while delivering 23.976 fps to their clients. At that time, one of the most popular deliverable format was a DVD with native 23,976 fps.
• Since 1953. 29.97 fps has been the substituted rate for the now obsolete 30 fps rate which was used before color was added to the previous grayscale/monochrome system in regions that adopted the NTSC system.
• 50 fps (ake 50p) is ideal for certain Argentine, Australian, European, Paraguayan and Uruguayan broadcasters, especially 720p sports channels in those regions or for the web, as long as your viewers’ devices can play 50 Hz. 50 fps can also be used with higher spatial resolution (i.e. 1080p or higher) on the web as long as there is enough bandwidth available.
• 59.94 fps (aka 59.94p) is ideal for 720p sports channels like ESPN and other 720p channels as I covered here or for the web, as long as your viewers’ devices can play 59.94 Hz. 50 fps can also be used with higher spatial resolution (i.e. 1080p or higher) on the web as long as there is enough bandwidth available.
• Exact 60 fps (aka 60p) is popular among gamers. I suspect it was born after some developer read the specs of some device that operated at 59.94 fps but was sadly rounded to “60”. I believe it was born out of an unnecessary misunderstanding.

Recap of VFR and CFR rates

I have covered the topic of VFR and CFR in many past articles. Here is a recap:

CFR stands for Constant Frame Rate. VFR stands for Variable Frame Rate. Most recordings made on smartphones (whether with the stock recording app or a professional one like FiLMIC Pro) record video with VFR for efficiency. This material can later be conformed to become CFR with most modern software based non-linear video editors by manually setting the project rate before inserting the first clip.

CAUTION: Please know that VFR/CFR is not the same as VBR/CBR (variable bit rate/constant bit rate).

In addition to smartphone recordings, VFR is also used in many video streaming software and platforms.

Examples of platforms and tools

How much does this matter anyway?

If you are mainly dealing with talking heads, this matters much less, except if/when the individual speaking moves her/his hands for any reason. If you are dealing with content with more movement, it matters more and you’ll likely prefer to use 29.97 or perhaps even 59.94 if your sure that most of your audience is viewing with a device which can display at least 59.94 Hz and has enough bandwidth to do so.

Suggestions

If you are a customer of Riverside.fm Standard or Pro, politely request the option of 25 fps in addition to exact 24 fps. That way, you can have matching rates with Zoom.us and even with Sony cameras under US$5k which don’t offer exact 24 (even though they lie in the menus by rounding 23.976 to “24”). See my recent article Sony framerate policy in 2022: still restrictive & deceiving (illustrated below).

Fortunately, many same under US$5k Sony cameras which lie about “24” fps in the menu can indeed offer 25 fps, although you must first change the region/clock in another menu.

Another suggestion for Riverside.fm users: If you can afford it, consider upgrading to an Riverside.fm Enterprise plan so you can stream live at 29.97 both via Riverside.fm and YouTube.

If you are a live YouTube streamer and you love the bandwidth benefits of 23.976 fps, 24 fps or 25 fps compared with 29.97 fps (especially if you are mainly a talking head), politely request that YouTube Live add the missing rates for live streaming: 23.976 fps, 24 fps and 25 fps. This will make YouTube Live work better with Riverside.fm Standard and Pro (as they exist today) and Zoom.us.

Image credit

Original Tower of Babel work by Pieter Brueghel the Elder – bAGKOdJfvfAhYQ at Google Arts & Culture, Public Domain, modified by Allan Tépper to add framerates.

The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K G2 is introduced as a next generation 6K digital film camera model with adjustable screen, larger battery and optional viewfinder!

Available immediately from Blackmagic Design for US$1,995 (excluding local duties and taxes), the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K G2 includes an adjustable touchscreen screen for easier framing of shots, a larger battery for longer shooting without needing to charge or change batteries, as well as support for an optional electronic viewfinder. The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K G2 has the latest Blackmagic generation 5 color science and retains the popular cinematic Super 35 HDR image sensor with 13 stops of dynamic range, dual native ISO and EF lens mount from the previous model.

“Since the release of the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro, customers have been asking for some of the features to be added to the 6K model,” said Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO. “We’ve been able to achieve even greater manufacturing efficiencies which means that we are now able to release this new 6K model which adds an adjustable LCD touchscreen, larger longer battery life, support for the OLED viewfinder and improved on screen menus. We are excited to be offering these additional features that have been so popular with customers!”

13 stops of dynamic range

Here is some more information about the new camera, as shared by Blackmagic Design:

The elegant design of the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera packs an incredible number of high end digital film features into a miniaturized, handheld design. Made from lightweight carbon fiber polycarbonate composite, the camera features a multifunction handgrip with all controls for recording, ISO, WB and shutter angle right at customers’ fingertips. Because it’s an advanced digital film camera, the sensor is designed to reduce thermal noise allowing cleaner shadows and higher ISO. Plus the large 5 inch LCD makes it possible to get perfect focus at 4K and 6K resolutions.

Featuring a larger 6144 x 3456 Super 35 sensor and EF lens mount, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K G2 lets customers use larger EF photographic lenses to create cinematic images with shallower depth of field, allowing creative defocussed backgrounds and gorgeous bokeh effects.

With the advanced Blackmagic OS, customers get an intuitive and user friendly camera operating system based on the latest technology. The interface uses simple tap and swipe gestures to adjust settings, add metadata and view recording status. Customers also get full control over advanced camera features such as on screen focus and exposure tools, 3D LUTs, HDR, metadata entry, timecode, Blackmagic RAW settings and more.

Whether users are shooting in bright sunlight or in almost no light at all, the 13 stops of dynamic range with dual native ISO up to 25,600 provide stunning low noise images in all lighting conditions. Plus the 6K models feature a larger Super 35 sensor that allows shooting with a shallow depth of field and anamorphic lenses. All models let customers shoot up to 60 fps or 120 fps windowed. An amazing sensor combined with Blackmagic color science means customers get the same imaging technology as the most expensive digital film cameras.

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera features a large, bright 5 inch touchscreen that makes it easy for customers to frame shots and accurately focus. On screen overlays show status and record parameters, histogram, focus peaking indicators, levels, frame guides and more. The Pocket Cinema Camera 6K G2 LCD monitor is a more advanced display that can be tilted up and down so it’s easy to monitor a shot from any position.

Featuring the same generation 5 color science as the high end URSA Mini Pro 12K, the new Pocket Cinema Camera 6K G2 delivers an even greater advancement in image quality with stunning, accurate skin tones and faithful color in every shot. Customers get a new dynamic 12-bit gamma curve designed to capture more color data in the highlights and shadows, for better looking images. The color science also handles some of the complex Blackmagic RAW image processing, so color and dynamic range data from the sensor is preserved via metadata which customers can use in post production.

The Pocket Cinema Camera 6K models support an optional viewfinder to make outdoors and handheld shooting accurate and easy. Customers get an integrated high quality 1280 x 960 color OLED display with built in proximity sensor, 4 element glass diopter for incredible accuracy with a wide -4 to +4 focus adjustment. A built in digital focus chart ensures customers get perfect viewfinder focus setup. Customers can also view critical status information such as frame guides. The Pocket Cinema Camera Pro EVF connects quickly via a single connector. The viewfinder has a 70 degree swivel range and comes with 4 different types of eyecups for both left and right eyes.

The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K models both now use larger NP-F570 batteries for longer shooting times without needing to change or charge batteries. A locking DC power connector is used so customers won’t have to worry about losing power during a shoot. Plus the included AC plug pack can power the camera and charge the battery simultaneously. Even the USB-C expansion port can trickle charge the battery, so customers can use portable battery packs, mobile phone chargers or laptops. The optional battery grip lets customers add extra batteries to dramatically extend the power of the camera so customers can keep shooting all day.

All Pocket Cinema Camera models include a full version of DaVinci Resolve Studio, which is the same software used in Hollywood for creating high end feature films, episodic television shows, commercials and more. DaVinci Resolve features the new cut page with intelligent editing tools and innovative new features designed to help customers quickly find the footage customers want, edit it together and output it fast. In addition to the new cut page, customers also get DaVinci’s legendary professional editing, advanced color correction, audio post and visual effects tools, all in a single software application.

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K G2 features

• Designed from carbon fiber polycarbonate composite.
• 6144 x 3456 sensor with 13 stops and dual native ISO up to 25,600.
• Compatible with a wide range of popular EF lenses.
• Up to 25,600 ISO for incredible low light performance.
• Standard open file formats compatible with popular software.
• Adjustable LCD screen.
• Includes Blackmagic Generation 5 Color Science.
• Optional Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera Pro EVF.
• Professional mini XLR inputs with 48 volt phantom power.
• Larger NP-F570 battery, optional Blackmagic Pocket Camera Battery Pro Grip.
• Includes full DaVinci Resolve Studio for post production.

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K G2 is available now for US$1,995, excluding local duties and taxes, from Blackmagic Design resellers worldwide.

Adobe has released their latest update to Premiere Pro, the June 2022 release (version 22.5). This release adds:

• Essentials workspace & Vertical Video workspace
• Proxy improvements:
  • Proxy badges in the Project panel and Timeline
  • Burn-in option for watermarking proxies
• Gradients for strokes and shadows
• Improved H264/HEVC Encoding on Apple M1 systems
• GPU acceleration for the following effects: Magnify, Replicate, Spherize, and Warp Wave
• Notification on Encoding or Queue Completion
• Support for RED V-RAPTOR

They also detail Known issues and Fixed issues.

Adobe provided video intros to Proxy Improvements and New Workspaces in Premiere Pro. New Proxy Badges make it easier to distinguish between proxy files and source media and give editors the option to burn-in watermarks, so everyone working on the project can see which media is being used.

New workspaces allows users working on a laptop to streamline their screen real estate by putting the core functions, such as giving you the option to toggle through your control panels (effects, color, graphics, and audio) more efficiently. Users putting out a lot of social content, will appreciate the new Vertical Video workspace that helps you deliver video footage just as quickly as horizontal.

The Premiere team has really been chipping away at updates lately, with 4 in the last 5 months — enough to take a breather and review their updates, here and in May 2022, April 2022, and February 2022. Here are a few additional recent resources.

There’s an AEP summary of Adobe Video updates at NAB 2022.

Scott Simmons had a deeper NAB rundown in his Adobe announces an updated Premiere Pro and After Effects.

Premiere Gal posted videos on What’s new in Adobe Premiere Pro v22 (“Spring”) & v22.4.

The iodyne Pro Data is quite a beast when it comes to fast data storage for editing and post-production. It isn’t just a fast RAID or a fast SSD: it is a very fast SSD RAID (using NVMe storage) but a bit more than that. Now, SSD RAIDs aren’t anything new. We’ve reviewed SSD RAIDs here on ProVideo Coalition over the years and they have always been fast. But the iodyne Pro Data is taking things a bit to the next level.

The Pro Data isn’t just a few SSD RAID’d together. It’s 12 NVMe SSDs RAIDed together in one enclosure for a high-speed storage device unlike any other. You can connect one Thunderbolt cable for very fast direct-attached storage. But there is also an option called multi-pathing where you can connect two Thunderbolt cables to two different Thunderbolt busses on your Mac for even more performance. It’s a unique option that I’ve never seen before. There are a number of ways to use a Pro Data and iodyne has set up some “blueprints” to help understand this unique device.

The Pro Data is small enough to be portable as it’s a bit bigger than a large laptop. It’s also considerably heavier than a laptop but I’ve carried this test unit around in a backpack multiple times so it is doable. Currently, it’s Mac-only but iodyne says Windows and Linux are coming. You can create multiple partitions (or containers as they are called), up to 15 per unit for workflow flexibility. You can connect up to 4 Macs at once with a single connection per Mac.

But look at the ports and you can get an idea of how that multi-path thing works:

Connect one Thunderbolt 3 Mac with two cables to two of your Mac’s Thunderbolt ports (running on different Thunderbolt busses) into two different ports on the Pro Data pairs and you have Multi-pathing for increased speed. The busses thing is important to note as older Macs might share a bus between ports. On the newer M1 Macs each Thunderbolt port is its own bus. The second Thunderbolt port in a pair (meaning those ports inside the paraenthesis) would be considered a “downstream” port and could be used for daisy-chaining.

This could be a place where the Mac Studio M1 Ultra could be worth the extra cash as you have more Thunderbolt ports than the M1 Max with the addition of two on the front. When you are multi-pathing those Thunderbolt ports can fill up quickly. Heck, when you’re video editing those ports can fill up quickly!

When it came to testing the Pro Data for this review, I threw it right into some real production though I was only able to use it by myself as I never had an opportunity to connect other working Macs to it (other than on my own just to see how multiple connections worked). I used it on a couple of branded content jobs and then stuffed it full for a reality show. I also did a 6 camera edit off of the Pro Data and that was smooth as butter but since the source media was ProRes I didn’t expect any issues. I don’t use a bunch of benchmarking tools when I do this kind of thing so I would encourage you to read this article from Storage Review if you’re thinking about spending the money on a Pro Data to get another opinion on this unique (and expensive) device.

The unit isn’t cheap. Storage capacity can range from 12 TBs (at $3,950) to 24 TBs (at $7,500) with a 48 TB coming later this year. Those are some high prices but this is a high-level device that won’t fit everyone’s needs. But those that need this kind of speed and connectivity need it as the upcoming 48 TB version is the result of customer requests. A custom option could take your Pro Data (and the price) to another level.

Pro Data setup

I don’t know exactly how iodyne is doing their thing but there is a piece of software and a system extension that runs on your Mac to manage.

Of note, when installing the iodyne drivers on an M1 Mac with the T2 security chips you have to disable the secure boot option to make the iodyne system extensions run. This is important and not unique to the Pro Data. Things that require system access like some RAID software or utilities like LucidLink require the same thing so it’s just a fact of life on newer Macs.

Once the system drivers are installed you then have to set up the partitions for the Pro Data.

Of note, you can get the Pro Data in dark space gray, silver and purple. The color is the brace around the unit. I kinda like the purple myself and I’m sure the Avid editors out there would go for it first!

Using the utility you can partition the Pro Data as a RAID–0 or RAID–6. In a RAID–6 configuration 12 TBs is 10TBs of space with redundancy.

Setting the Pro Data up is called provisioning a new container.

It’s nice as you can specify a side or a percentage of the available space.

Password protection is also an option so security is strong. This setup is also where you choose your RAID level.

Honestly, with this kind of tool and the speed it can provide for video editing I don’t know why you’d want to partition it with any RAID–6 redundancy. You’re almost assuredly going to have backups easily accessible. I don’t know the failure rate of NVME SSD drives but I’d hope they are way lower than spinning drives in traditional RAIDs. The Pro Data is built around a philosophy of user repairability so if something does go wrong you can often repair it yourself which is great for a device at this cost level.

One thing that you can’t do is change and adjust the partitions and sizes once they are created. This might be different from what you’re used to if you use more traditional shared storage where you can create shared folders that mount like a hard drive.

Using the iodyne Pro Data

But once containers are created and mounted they mount on your desktop just like any other disk because they are just like any other disk.

Above I have the Pro Data with two containers taking up 100% of the available space. You can see them mounted on the desktop.

As expected, Hedge was able to copy media to the Pro Data from field drives just like any other drive.

Your NLE will see the Pro Data just like any other drive. Once again, because it is a drive! Just a very, very fast drive that we’ll talk about in a bit.

Hovering over the container map will give you an idea of the size. Compare this to the image below and you can see the difference as I didn’t fully container out all of the space into mountable drives upon my initial setup (seen in the below image) of the Pro Data. In the image below, there are still 5 TBs of free space wanting to be containerized. (I made that word up). You will need to be sure you know what kind of space you might need in a container before you begin since you can’t dynamically adjust the containers once they’ve been created.

As mentioned I have used the Pro Data on a few different jobs. One is some branded content with limited media and the other is an unscripted show with tons of media.

I ran into a containering (I made that word up too) math issue when I transitioned from the branded content job to the unscripted show. I wasn’t sure how much raw footage the show would produce but as it kept coming in I had to add space.

I ended up just moving the branded content (pilot) into its own small container that was just big enough for the raw footage and creating a show container (get rich) that took up 100% of the rest of the free space.

When the branded content job was done I couldn’t just add the new empty space from the Pilot2 container to the Get Rich container so I just piled get rich footage into Pilot2. I’m guessing the inability to dynamically change container sizes might be an operating system limitation but it would be nice to somehow dynamically adjust the containers and their size.

Shared storage but not like you might be thinking

One important thing to note is that the iodyne Pro Data is not shared storage in the sense of a NAS or a SAN. You cannot have multiple people connected to the same container/partition and working off of the same media at the same time. But you can have multiple editors connected to the same Pro Data unit at the same time, they just have to work off of different partitions/containers. Forgive me if I keep calling them a partition.

You can see above one container mounted on my iMac Pro and another mounted to my Macbook Pro.

Checking the status tab gives you even more detail. You can see the configuration of the SSDs inside the unit as well as which Thunderbolt ports are in use and the machine the port is connected to.

When thinking about the Pro Data as not being traditional shared storage you have to look at what it does when it comes to collaboration. The approach is that you can hand off a particular partition to another editor or they can request access when they need it. This is a very important thing to understand so it fits in within the desired workflow if you’re going to spend many thousands of dollars on it.

If you want to move a container from one user to another you can do a handoff via the iodyne utility.

Need a container to work off of? Request a handoff from the system that needs the container.

The request pops up on the other system that has that container mounted. From there it’s a simple allow or deny. If you deny the requesting machine gets a message that there was a denial.

And that’s it really as far as the sharing goes. Pretty simple. iodyne has created a series of blueprints for how you might connect and use a Pro Data so if you’re in the market I would highly consider reading them. The Pro Data could be very useful for a group of editors sitting around a table working on different parts of a job. I think of this review I did years ago for the Jellyfish and it could have replaced that with a much smaller and more portable shared storage device. But that’s only if we have been careful and put each editor’s media on a different partition. Using the Pro Data as shared storage means you have to be very purposeful about who is using what media and who has the access to that.

There’s a bit of different hard drive mount terminology that might pop up when using the Pro Data. When attaching different systems you might not always get the desired container to mount of the first try and be asked if you want to force attach that container.

The first thing that went through my mind when I saw this was the “force eject” message you might get on a Mac and how I’m always a bit wary of force ejecting a drive. I think it’s that word force that throws me. But force attaching a Pro Data container is fine and it’s related to how the container is visible to a host system. Once a container is visible you have an OS-level option to eject and mount the container just like any drive. That way you can, for example, shut down a system and it should automatically mount the next day.

What about the speed?

The Pro Data is fast. As mentioned above I don’t have any in-depth geeky tools to measure drive speed so I’m going to rely on two of post-production’s favorites but these tools might not do the multi-pathing justice as they can’t properly measure the multipath connection in the way that some deeper benchmarking tools maybe can.

To maximize the multipath connection you have to be sure you connect the Pro Data properly. That’s two different Thunderbolt busses on your Mac and connected to different port groups on the Pro Data.

This image can help understand the connections.

So here is one connection of the Pro Data for correct multipathing.

If you’ve successfully connected the Pro Data for multipathing the iodyne utility will show that connection.

This connection reflects the picture up above with the iMac Pro connected with the gaffers taped cables on the right two ports and the MacBook Pro connection via the port on the left. I wanted to test this initial speed configuration on the iMac Pro since it only has two Thunderbolt buses but has four ports. And because that’s the system I had at home when I was testing!

Here are the single-path and multipath connections back-to-back (I’ve labeled the multipath connections).

The usual disk speed tests with an iMac Pro

First up: This is the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test writing a 1 GB file to a container/partition with 332 GBs of free space … it’s getting pretty full.

Single Path connection:

Multi-path connection:

I like that multipath speed boost.

One thing that the Pro Data goes well is to sustain its speed over longer read/write operations so it’s worth trying this on a larger file.

Single path 5 GB test file:

Multi-path 5 GB test file:

I like that speed boost even more.

Second up: The AJA System Test. This test was writing to the other container/partition that only had 190 or so GBs of free space.

Single path:

Multi-path:

That is a really nice speed bump with the multipath connection. I don’t know the different ways in which the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test measures vs. the AJA System Test but I wanted to try both for comparison.

Single path 16 GB file:

Multi-path 16 GB file:

More speed is better than less speed.

By comparison, here’s a popular Samsung T7 USB 3 SSD running that same speed test.

And also a G-Tech G-RAID G-Studio which is an 8-bay RAID6. This thing below is a workhorse but looking at speed and we can see the old spinning RAIDs are really starting to age in an SSD world!

The Samsung result is a big difference and should be slower as it’s a single SSD in a small enclosure with a slower USB-3 connection but I see forum posts where a lot of editors are running quite large jobs with all their media on an attached USB-C SSD drive.

I want to point out that this article from iodyne that looks at this exact issue of speed tests:

MULTIPATH, PERFORMANCE – Rethinking Benchmarks

Our traditional post-production disk speed test apparently can’t accurately measure what is going on here. The speed test chart from the article above shows a pretty staggering difference between a single path and a multipath connection. The disk speed tests don’t necessarily show that much of an increase from single path to multipath but I did see a speed improvement.

And another test using the reliable PugetBench tool compares the Pro Data to internal storage on an M1 Pro Apple machine.

Anything that can keep up with an internal M1 Mac SSD is great as they are very fast. But as mentioned above, you’re not going to keep TBs and TBs of raw camera media on your internal SSD.

Reading over the Rethinking Benchmarks article you can download something called the Flexible I/O Tester but when I saw Linux and terminal mentioned I moved on from trying it.

I also ran the Adobe Premiere Pro Puget Benchmark with both the single path and multipath connections but didn’t see much difference but that test is much more dependent on your system hardware and not just the attached storage where the Puget Benchmark reads the media from. The single path and the multipath results weren’t that different.

A few tests with the Mac Studio

Since the iMac Pro has two Thunderbolt buses (and you have to be sure and connect properly to make sure you’re using both buses) and the Mac Studio technically has six (all Thunderbolt ports on Apple M1 chips are on their own bus) I decided to run a couple of those tests with the Pro Data connected to the Mac Studio.

I’m not sure why the write time went down with that multipath connection but I’ll take that faster read any day.

Ahh yes but what about disk performance tests beyond the BMD and AJA utilities?

It was pointed out to me after I ran the more traditional post-production disk speed tests that there are a couple of free apps on the Mac App Store that can run some deeper, nerdier, disk speed tests. So I downloaded the ATTO Disk Benchmark and AmorphousDiskMark and ran those as well on the Mac Studio.

I have no idea how to read these and what to make of them so they are presented here without comment.

As mentioned, I don’t exactly know how to read those two above tests so if you have some opinion on them, feel free to comment below.

I asked the folks at iodyne about the slower write speeds with the Pro Data. Mind you they aren’t that slow but they are slower than the read speeds and this was their reply:

In all SSDs, write speeds are slower than read speeds for sustained writes (as opposed to small bursts cached in DRAM) because in NAND Flash, the time-to-program is at least 10x the time-to-read.  This is because a NAND program operation consists of small voltage pulses followed by reads to calibrate whether the voltage level has reached the desired target.  Then at a broader system level, when RAID is involved, writes are slower than reads because writes must write data plus parity, whereas reads only need to access parity when a drive has failed.  So these two “laws of physics” make sustained writes slower than reads for any SSD + RAID storage system, unless reads are somehow artificially limited by some other system design factor.

If you’re working with a single path connection and happen to have a Thunderbolt port free up and want to establish a multipath connection I did notice that you may to have to restart the Mac. Just plugging in the second Thunderbolt connection didn’t always show a multipath connection being made in the iodyne utility. Even after detaching and reattaching the storage still only showed a single path. I had to restart the Mac to get the multipath connection established. That was on the iMac Pro but then I tried this a second time and the second port did show up without a reattach or restart on the Mac Studio.

Ok, but how did editing with it “feel?”

I tried to test this multipath vs. single path in a bit of a different way, by setting up one of those multi-stream picture-in-picture timelines in a job I was working in Adobe Premiere Pro. It was a 10-stream stack of mostly 4K ProRes HQ as well as some GoPro H264 that was all scaled down to fit, a Lumetri color correction applied. The Pro Data was able to easily keep up with this multi-stream test on the Mac Studio M1 Ultra. Did I see much difference in performance between a single Thunderbolt connection vs a multipath connection? Honestly not really but it was able to keep up well on either. Even after nesting and duplicating the 10-stream nest multiple times it was still able to keep up. It only started to drop frames after off-setting some of the clips so the duplicated clips weren’t playing back the same frames which was interesting in its own right. I don’t think that was an iodyne but a multi-stream playback thing in general. I see these kinds of tests a lot but they aren’t real-world work for the most part.

By far the biggest job I did with the Pro Data was the reality show pilot. While most of the media were 4K ProRes we did have some drone footage and some GoPro footage that was H.264. Most of the ProRes 4K was shot with two cameras so I would guess that 75% of the show was 2-camera multicam. The Pro Data never missed a beat, and never dropped a frame between the Mac Studio, iMac Pro and an older Intel MacBook Pro laptop.

The editing “feel” on every job I did with the iodyne Pro Data was buttery smooth and that’s the best compliment I can make about any video editing media storage.

Wrap-up

Here’s a question: Who is the iodyne Pro Data for?

At the current price point, it’s going to favor a narrow, high-end sliver of the post-production market. As mentioned above, if you’re in the market for that kind of speed then the price isn’t going to matter nearly as much. And editor, visual effects artists, colorist or finishing artist will be able to plug in and go to work on most any media tossed onto the Pro Data. That’s a big plus.

On the other hand, it’s marketed partly for its connectivity to multiple systems but since it’s not traditional shared storage with multiple systems mounted and reading the same partition that might be a limiting factor when spending that kind of money on storage.

I was wondering about SSD RAID speeds in general and a search back through the PVC archives revealed some slower SSD RAIDs back in the infancy of the concept of SSD RAIDs. Heck, even some 6 and 8 disk spinning hard drive RAIDs struggle to meet 1000 MB/s. But the more spinning disks the better but they are still huge, loud, hot spinning beasts. That said, you might be able to get near the Pro Data speeds in the NVMe world depending on cost and capacity.

All 3500+ plus words above about the iodyne Pro Data and who is in the market for such fast, yet expensive shared storage can really be summed up in one gif. If this is you and your post-production workflow and what you need at all costs then the Pro Data might be it.

via GIPHY

iodyne Pro Data: from $3,950 for 12 TBs to $7,500 for 24 TBs. Custom options are available. Browse the tech specs for more information about performance, connectivity, power, dimensions and warranty.

Pros

• It’s fast. There aren’t a lot of RAID storage units that will be that much faster. The internal drive of a new Mac Studio is faster but you’re not going to put 20 TBs of media on the internal system drive, leave it there for weeks or months and maybe share that with other editors. That’s why you need proper media storage for editing and post-production.
• Setup and operation are simple.
• It’s meant for user repairability so you can probably service the thing yourself if need be.
• Did I mention it’s fast?

Cons

• It’s expensive but like an exotic car if you are worried about the price then you probably aren’t in the market for it anyway.
• You can’t dynamically adjust the size of the containers/partitions once they have been created.
• There is no power switch so you have to unplug it to power completely down.

Cautions

• When multi-pathing make sure you’re connected to different Thunderbolt buses on an Intel Mac.
• While you can connect multiple systems to one Pro Data it isn’t traditional NAS/SAN shared storage so plan accordingly.
• The supplied Thunderbolt cables are short, almost too short at just over 2 feet. And you’ll need two of them to take real advantage of the Pro Data. iodyne does sell longer Thunderbolt cables including a 50-meter version for $475. The 6-foot cable for $60 might be the sweet spot.
• While the unit is surprisingly portable (think of it as a big 17-inch laptop) with few moving parts inside I would still be very careful with it since it ain’t cheap. iodyne is creating some custom Pelican cases to keep your Pro Data safe.

Featuring a unique 16:18 aspect ratio, the LG DualUp monitor promises to free your desk, while the Samsung ViewFinity S8 is the world’s first UL verified glare free ‘Matte Display’.

Two things the new LG and Samsung monitors have in common: both are designed with content creators and professionals in mind, and both where on display at CES 2022. With its unique 16:18 aspect ratio, the LG DualUp monitor is a CES 2022 Innovation Award Honoree,  and so is the Samsung World’s First UL verified Glare Free ‘Matte Display’. One third thing in common: both are available from June, although exact launch schedules may vary by region.

LG Electronics USA recently announced pricing and availability of the new 28-inch LG DualUp Monitor (28MQ780), a first-of-its-kind display within the monitor market. It features a Nano IPS display with a unique 16:18 aspect ratio that frees up one’s desk without giving up the screen space of a double monitor. LG’s DualUp monitor is available for purchase now at LG.com and select LG-authorized dealers for a retail price of $699.

The LG DualUp monitor is a product that revolutionizes the way creators and developers work, combining stacked dual monitors to create a single one. LG says that “the innovative Square Double QHD (2,560 x 2,880) resolution monitor offers the same screen real estate as two 21.5-inch displays and has a vertical split view function that lets users see more in one glance, making it a multitasking powerhouse. It offers peerless picture quality, powerful performance, customizability, and most of all convenience.”

DualUp with Ergo Stand

LG notes that “the monitor’s Nano IPS panel also enhances the visual experience for work and entertainment by making color expressions more accurate and richer. Users can enjoy HDR content on this monitor with the DCI-P3 98% color gamut that delivers detailed, accurate, and vibrant color expression. HDR delivers a more dramatic, dynamic, and immersive visual experience.”

LG’s ultra-adjustable Ergo stand, which saves space as it clamps securely to most desks and tables, helps to elevate user comfort and boost productivity, when using the LG DualUp monitor. The Ergo Stand has evolved from the previous stand and includes enhanced tilting, swiveling, and extracting features. The wide range of positions it provides allows users to customize the height, angle, and depth of the monitor to the most ergonomic position for their body.

The DualUp supports USB Type-C with up to 90W power delivery, allowing users to seamlessly connect to external devices, charge a laptop and more. Additionally, through its multiport for HDMI, DisplayPort and USB 3.0, users can connect multiple devices at once. LG claims that “the DualUp monitor supports 7Wx2ch stereo speakers with Waves MaxxAudio, delivering realistic sound effects and powerful audio. The speaker delivers massive bass that can boost the quality of what users watch, play, and create, and can maximize space usability for creators and developers.”

World’s first Glare Free monitor

The other monitor that comes from CES 2022 to the market this June is from Samsung’s ViewFinity S8, a high resolution monitor specialized for creative professionals including content creators, graphic designers and more. ViewFinity, a portmanteau of “View” and “Infinity” is the new name for Samsung’s high resolution monitor lineup, meaning ‘The Value of Infinite Viewing Experience’, and showcases Samsung’s ambition to establish a new benchmark for high resolution monitors.

The Samsung ViewFinity S8 is introduced as the world’s first UL verified Glare Free monitor. LG says that “Matte Display is applied on the top of the panel, reducing light reflection even when not using a monitor hood to provide a distraction-free working environment.” The effect is enhanced by the wide viewing angle allowing users to see images clearly from any angle. The ViewFinity S8 earned the CES 2022 Innovation Award Honoree in the Computer Peripherals & Accessories category in recognition of Samsung’s ongoing efforts to deliver considerable benefits to its customers. For those curious about the “glare free” certification, UL, LLC is a global safety certification company operating the standards for safety, security, sustainability.

The ViewFinity S8 is also an ecological monitor, as Samsung has developed and applied a new material, made with repurposed ocean-bound plastics, to reduce marine waste and minimize the environmental footprint while using more recycled plastics to produce its display products than it did in 2021. Samsung’s Eco Savings Plus technology also reduces pixel brightness in sections of an image with black pixels for up to a 10% reduction in power consumption. In fact, ViewFinity S8 is TCO Certified for its product design based on specific social and environmental responsibility requirements, as its product lifecycle also contributes to the circular economy.

An all-in-one dock for home and office

The ViewFinity S8 only needs a single USB Type-C cable to enable display signals, 10Gbps data transfers, fast internet speeds via an Ethernet connection and fast charging with up to 90W power. It can be used as an all-in-one dock for desktops or laptops for simplified workstations at home or the office. The VESA-compatible design maximizes space efficiency, allowing users to adjust, tilt, swivel and pivot the monitor into the perfect ergonomic position. Furthermore, the ViewFinity S8 offers certification from TÜV Rheinland for Intelligent Eye Care, Adaptive Picture for optimized quality in any viewing environment, Eye Saver Mode and Flicker Free technology.

The ViewFinity monitors include the newly released models and nine other products with QHD or higher resolution — 2022 models (S80PB, S61B) and 2021 models (S95UA, S80UA, S80A, S70A, S65UA, S60UA, S60A). Samsung’s new high resolution monitor, ViewFinity S8, will be available globally from the end of June, with launch schedules varying by region.

A couple of days editing on LumaFusion, the iOS NLE from LumaTouch and it truly is a remarkable achievement when it comes to iOS software.  With that said, this little review has been a long time coming. As is often the case when I begin making notes for a product review, it grows into a behemoth and ends up not getting finished. With that in mind, I wanted to write a review of the quite amazing and very capable iOS non-linear editing application LumaFusion about a year ago. I didn’t get it done back then but today I forced myself to at least do a mini-review and give credit where credit is due. While the iPad and iOS has a number of video editing applications available these days none are as capable as LumaTouch’s LumaFusion. If you’re wanting to edit video on an iOS device with a lot of the capabilities of what you’re used from your desktop NLE, LumaFusion is it. Full stop.

I mean just look at this thing:

Doesn’t that look like a real NLE?

I had a chat with the folks at Lumatouch back in 2020 during our PVC NAB AT Home coverage.

I had been very curious to use it more before and after that chat and LumaFusion has come a long way since we had that chat. It was a year later when I had a chance to use it on an actual job. When writing up this article I came across this tweet from myself last year when I was working on this music video.

You can’t save presets with attributes from the different tools but that’s a great idea! Would you send us a feature request? Please send to support@luma-touch.com. In the meantime, there is a workaround. Copy from a clip and then paste multiple attributes to other clips.

— LumaTouch (@LumaTouch) June 2, 2021

I had planned to keep a note with some feature requests but honestly, I don’t think I made that many notes. That’s how full-featured LumaFusion is.  When you consider you’re doing this on an iPad, it’s quite remarkable.

The backstory on how I came to edit a music video with LumaFusion

Last year my talented singer, songwriter wife, and mom was involved in a lullaby project with another talented singer, songwriter wife, and mom that consisted of both a record and a children’s book. If anyone knows anything about music and book publishing you know it can take a while to produce a physical thing, especially in the age of Covid. Adventures in Sleepland is finally being released, both the music and the children’s book.

About a year ago as they were working on the project one of the first tracks from the record was done and they wanted to release it in time for Father’s Day 2021. I was asked to put together a little music video for the track, created entirely in LumaFusion and edited on an iPad Pro.

This was the result.

We were sourcing footage for the little dad-focused video from random friends, and family (and some strangers) to use in the cut. A Google Drive folder was set up where folks could upload their dad clips. As the clips started coming in I was looking at how and where to download to get the footage to the desktop and then it dawned on me: I have an M1 iPad Pro, I have LumaFusion and I have a lot of footage in a Google Drive folder that can connect to LumaFusion.

Why not just edit this video with LumaFusion right on the iPad!

I thought, the worst-case scenario I can assemble the footage into a rough cut and send the rough to Final Cut Pro for finishing.

But …

Who needs to move to another NLE when you can do it all in LumaFusion?

I knew little about LumaFusion more than just having played around in it here and there.

Traditional “desktop editors” using LumaFusion will feel comfortable with a familiar track-based layout.

Above you can see an early stage in the video. The track header panel on the left (I don’t know if they call it a track header panel or not ) should make any incoming editor comfortable unless they are a trackless Final Cut Pro editor then, well, you gotta deal. You have track-based locking, audio meters, audio levels, and visibility. Some real desktop-level control.

The little yellow downward pointing arrow with the main purple video track would be kind of the equivalent to source patching in desktop NLEs but not really. You can choose whether to insert or overwrite depending on how the arrow is pointing but only into that main track. When pointing forward it’s an insert to the main track while the downward pointing arrow above is an overwrite.

But when it comes to working with other tracks there isn’t traditional “source patching” (you may hear me use the word traditional a lot here) even though there are tracks. Instead, you can choose to edit a source clip and Place on Secondary.

For the limited screen real estate that an iPad has, even the 12.9-inch iPad Pro I was doing most of this on, I think LumaFusion makes good use of it. While you can’t customize windows you can adjust the display to several different presets.

Above is one of the more useful setups where you have a long file browser on the left. The yellow lines under the source clips on the left indicate the parts of which clips you’ve used in the edit. A handy FCP/Resolve-like feature that is very important when editing on the iPad since it’s not as easy to dig into and skim around clips because of the limited screen size.

LumaFusion uses a single viewer model so when you select a source clip it takes over the viewer so you can select your IN to OUT points. Then you can make the edit to the timeline using the stationary blue playhead as your other IN point. So you’ve got some traditional 3-point editing.

In the gif above you can see another edit in the timeline using numbered clips with all the That’s What Dads Are For media on the left. There are now yellow used media lines on the source clips as that’s a new timeline loaded to edit. When I select a source clip and insert it into the timeline everything shifts down as a good insert edit should!

LumaFusion does have a bit of a hybrid Final Cut Pro-traditional NLE feel. On the one hand, you’ve got tracks and a track header panel but on the other, you’ve got sort of a magnetic timeline and connected clips as well.

In the above gif, there are two connected clips to the 03 clip in the timeline. As I trim the 02 clip those move along with 03 because they are connected to them as indicated by the connecting lines. When I delete the 02 clip by touching the little trash can at the bottom the gap closes and everything ripples closed. Very magnety.

Effects, external media, and more in LumaFusion

It’s worth noting that LumaFusion has a lot of the traditional tools you might expect to be in a non-linear editing application just in a very LumaFusion touchy way.

This row of icons at the bottom will let you do lots of normal things like split clips, add effects, add video tracks, extract audio from clips, select from an IN to OUT, delete clips as well as create voiceovers, and titles, and apply transitions.

When you need to get deeper into working on individual clips and/or audio you can double-tap to move into a whole new part of the LumaFusion interface which is more of the clip-based editing stuff like effects, color correction, stabilization, audio and retiming.

In the image above I’m resizing the top clip to make it a bit bigger over the blurred background with the Frame & Fit controls. All the traditional resize controls are on the left.

In that image above I’m using a blur effect from the Color & Effects tools to add a blur filter. There are a lot more filters that can be added.

Audio can be processed and edited very much as you might expect in your traditional desktop NLE. Any time I can see waveforms in any video editing tool I consider it a step in the right direction.

One final thing I’ll note that is very important to note is that LumaFusion supports external hard drives connected to an iPad. This was a huge thing when the support was added. If this is a workflow you are interested in I would highly encourage you to read LumaFusion excellent documentation called External Drive Editing from USB-C to learn more. There once was a limitation that any external drive media you used had to be copied to the internal device storage before it could be used (and I thought that was still the case) but it appears that isn’t the case anymore.

And a preference in LumaFusion lets you deal with that. This is huge when it comes to “real world” editing as being able to plug in a drive and go to work without internal file storage limitations makes LumaFusion an infinitely more usable NLE IMHO.

And, as you can see above another huge thing that makes LumaFusion an infinitely more usable NLE … ProRes support if you have the right hardware. That’s the ProRes master file of a recent unscripted pilot show I edited loaded into LumaFusion off of a connected USB-C SSD drive.

Wrap up

Below was the final timeline for That’s What Dads Are For. It looks pretty normal as a small music video edit goes overall. And that is a good thing. The main spine of the edit is in the purple, main video tracks, some cutaway shots and composites are on video track two, a lot of little nat sounds are in the audio tracks below. There is a blank video track on v3 that I could delete but I don’t know how.

And full confession here … I didn’t really RTFM for any of this LumaFusion edit. I just jumped into the app for this edit last year with only a minimum amount of play time messing with the numbered clips and throwing together a couple of kids videos with iPhone footage. I could learn a lot more about how to properly used LumaFusion if I would RTFM.

Pros

• LumaFusion is an incredibly powerful and capable non-linear editing app for iOS that supports a lot of features editors might be used to on the desktop in a more desktop-familiar paradigm.
• LumaFusion really shines on the big M1 iPad Pro.
• You can use LumaFusion in both portrait and landscape mode but I never turned my iPad to portrait orientation more than once just to see if it would shift. And it did.
• External hard drive and ProRes support!!!!!!!! (on supported hardware that is)

Cons

• Exporting projects is based around the Final Cut Pro X XML format so getting a project to Adobe Premiere Pro will be jumping through a bunch of hoops and conversions.

• I wish there was a mechanism for quickly duplicating a timeline to an older version that you can keep in case you really mess something up and want to revert to an old edit. You can duplicate a timeline in the project browser thing and it gets appended with a new version number but then you have to sort through them all.

Cautions

• You’ll really want to use LumaFusion on as big a screen as possible and with iOS mouse support. While the LumaFusion team has done an admirable job bringing tried and true NLE editing tools to the iPad there are some things (like precise trimming) that don’t translate well to touch as it’s just a bit too imprecise.
• Grab an Apple Pencil if you’re doing a lot of intricate LumaFusion editing without a mouse as that’ll be a big help.
• You can install LumaFusion on an M1 Mac and even buy one of those Editors Keys keyboard covers for it if you want to do that. I guess there could be some use in that.
• You can also run LumaFusion on an iPhone but I didn’t try it more than once a long time ago. When I opened that project on my phone for this review I got an option to find the missing media. That’s nice and important to see since finding missing media is an important part of a professional NLE.

• There are a lot of preferences to go through and quite a lot to learn to use LumaFusion to its full potential but that was the case with Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer and DaVinci Resolve too now wasn’t it?

And if you want to hear some of the great music from this lullaby album give it a listen where you stream all your music.

The companion children’s book will be available soon. Just search for Adventure in Sleepland.

Now longer do photographers need to move to another app to edit video. Adobe Lightroom and Lightroom Classic now offer – much more – video support in Lightroom, on different platforms.

Adobe Lightroom has, for a while now – 2015 -, offered options to open, play and index video files, along with the photos it was designed to edit, a feature that made sense, as so many photographers also shoot video. Now, tough, Adobe announces that Lightroom take a step forward, and it’s a huge step, although the photo editor will not compete with Adobe’s NLE, Premiere.

Still, for those who shoot both photos and video and want to be able to do some light editing in Lightroom… well the good news is that the update is coming and will forever change things for the better. Yes, now the Adobe team can say that Lightroom, finally, supports video. For those afraid that the interface will change and that they will have to learn a whole new workflow, the good news is that the same edit controls that you already use to make your photography shine can now be used with your videos as well!

A new Preset Amount slider

It does not end there, though! According to Adobe, “not only can you use Lightroom’s editing capabilities to make your video clips look their best, you can also copy and paste edit settings between photos and videos, allowing you to achieve a consistent aesthetic across both your photos and videos. Presets, including Premium Presets and Lightroom’s AI-powered Recommended Presets, can also be used with videos. Lightroom also allows you to trim off the beginning or end of a video clip to highlight the part of the video that is most important.”

Tristan Zhou, Lightroom Ambassador, was one of the first to react, saying “I absolutely love the new video feature. Since I produce both video and photo content, this new feature allows me to do everything in one app instead of jumping back and forth from different apps and software. Such a game changer!”

Lightroom Presets are also getting some love, and powerful, all new preset features include a Preset Amount slider, AI-Powered Adaptive Presets, and new Premium Preset packs. The Preset Amount Slider will appear in all versions (ACR, Lightroom Classic, Lightroom Mac/Win, iOS, Android, Web), meaning you are now able to adjust the intensity of presets that you apply to your photos and videos. Do you wish that the preset was just a little stronger? Or a little more subtle? Now you can easily adjust any preset to your liking.

It’s also for smartphones

Again, Adobe requested a photographer to express his opinion, and Piyatat Primtongtrakul, Lightroom Ambassador, said “I love the preset amount slider! This is what I have been waiting for as I do a lot of batch editing, this preset slider really helps me save a lot of time for post processing.”

Adaptive Presets are also included in versions for ACR, Lightroom Classic, Lightroom Mac/Win. Adobe says that “Adaptive presets are an entirely new class of presets. Building on the powerfully advanced Artificial Intelligence capabilities of the Select Sky and Select Subject masks, it’s now possible to apply presets which automatically target a particular part of the photo. Our first two sets of Adaptive Presets include presets for making skies dramatic, and for making the subject of your photo really pop. These presets allow you to access the power of AI masking with the ease of a single click.”

So, video editing is now in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, and it extends to smartphones, so both iOS and Android users can explore the same options as those using the computer versions. Trim and edit video clips using your favorite sliders and presets — and give your photos and videos a cohesive look and feel. While others promised to offer photographers a video editing app – and have failed to do so – Adobe has taken a different path, and added some of the functionality of a NLE into its popular photo editing tool. It’s an interesting development that may open new horizons for a tool that has now been around since February 2007, that’s 15 years ago.

Recent news concerning the highly colour accurate display hardware in certain consumer electronics devices has caused some excitement. Some of this new equipment is comparatively cheap, very portable, and, best of all, you can play Cat Museum on downtime. Given the growing interest in cloud-everything, the ability to casually glance at material from the internet on an accurate display is exactly the sort of thing that gets breathlessly described, on trade-show hoardings, as “life-changing.”

The extent to which this actually changes anything is dependent on a lot of factors. The psychophysics of human sight are one, but others include much trickier, harder-to-solve issues of profit-motivated self-interest and the film industry’s equivalent of office politics. The result can be difficult phone calls about how the dailies look in a situation where the light coming out of two displays is actually very similar.

No technical solution

Sometimes, then, these are not problems we can solve with technology. We can (and absolutely should) build and maintain monitors that emit colours very accurately, but what they look like to humans is a much less consistent, messier reality. One interesting commentator on this was Edwin H. Land, who wrote in the 1960s about what he called the retinex theory of colour vision, a word chosen to emphasise that both the retina of the eye and the visual cortex of the brain have at least equal influence over what things look like.

Land was seeking to explain how humans continue to perceive coloured objects as consistently coloured even as ambient lighting conditions change, something known to science as colour constancy. It’s a complicated question for field monitoring, given monitors emit their own light which doesn’t change as the environment changes in the same way reflected light from a surface does. The whole thing raises some interesting speculation about why we assiduously white balance cameras, but we make no attempt to white balance monitors to the surrounding environment.

In practice, most people don’t seem to have too much trouble isolating their sense of colour constancy to a rectangle in their field of vision, but field monitoring has always been beset by other issues that aren’t in any sense fixable by engineers. The euphemism “on set” might mean anything from “in the DIT tent all day” to “I’ve just walked into the DIT tent from a forty-five minute lunch break in a sun-drenched parking lot.” Anyone who’s worked on a greenscreen stage will be aware how the world looks magenta for a second or so after turning away from a view that’s largely chroma green. Issues of brightness and contrast are subtler and longer-lived, and it’s well known that the ability of humans to remember precisely what colours look like over even a few seconds is never great.

The reference on this is probably Jonathan Flombaum, an associate professor in psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins, whose research interests are listed as visual attention, working memory, and cognition. A paper by Flombaum and Sarah Allred suggests that people are very bad at remembering colours when they’re not seen side by side, and, perhaps worse, have an improved ability to remember certain colours over others. What that means is, in short, we’re quite likely to assume that a yellow near our favourite yellow is miles away from our favourite yellow, even if it really isn’t. Our colour perception is perhaps distorted by experience as much as it’s improved by experience.

Try harder, then cry some more

Does this all make at least something of a mockery of our rather touching attempts to show each other colour accurate pictures that we can all agree on? Well… yes, it does, at least in part. We should, obviously, aim to have correct monitoring so that any errors introduced by our inevitable human frailties are at least centred around the truth, but much bigger errors exist in human perception than a lot of people want to admit.

Experienced people can take some solace in a 2020 paper by Maryam Hasantash and Arash Afraz titled “Richer color vocabulary is associated with better color memory but not color perception.” The study discusses how the manner in which we talk about colour affects the way we remember colours, or at least how we differentiate colours. Human languages don’t all have names for the same colours. Famously, the Japanese character 青, ao, is used as part of words which mean both “blue sky” and “green traffic light,” which might explain why many Japanese traffic lights have a rather turquoise filter where we might expect a nice kelly green.

The vocabulary study suggests that people who habitually use a lot of different words for a range of similar colours are often better at remembering what hues in that region of the spectrum look like. It doesn’t really discuss whether that can be trained, per se, although it might be a reasonable suspicion. Perhaps the most worthwhile conclusion is, as so often, that these new, colour accurate consumer displays are a good and useful thing, but terminology such as “revolutionary” and “world-changing” and “epoch-making” are probably best reserved for advertising copy.

On todays episode Kenny talks with Gale Tattersall & Luke Miller, the cinematographers of “Grace & Frankie.” Enjoy!

Frame & Reference is a conversation between Cinematographers hosted by DP and PVC Contributing writer Kenny McMillan. Each episode dives into the respective DP’s current and past work, as well as what influences and inspires them. These discussions are an entertaining and informative look in to the world making films through the lens of the people who shoot them. You can listen to Frame & Reference where all the best podcasts are listened to like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts. Each episode can also be found in video form on YouTube. Follow Frame & Reference on Twitter and Instagram for more content, and check your favorite app every Thursday for new episodes.

As filmmaker Claudio Miranda, ASC, states ”this is not green screen nonsense!” showing how the team shot Top Gun: Maverick, it’s time to look at other films with fast flying aircraft and also how you can be Top Gun.

After a long wait, due to Covid-19, Top Gun: Maverick is flying to theater screens all around the world, and it’s time to review all that was said a couple of years ago, when it appeared as if launch was just a few months away. Marketing teams are exploring every aspect of the movie, while magazines rewrite stories about how this is a history-making film. In some sense, Top Gun: Maverick feels like a wine that has matured with the passage of time and feels even better now. It’s also a good time to check what others did before it, when it comes to flight sequences.

Whatever your take is on Top Gun’s “fever”, this is a fantastic action movie, even more so because, as award-winning cinematographer Claudio Miranda says on the short video now released by Fujinon, ”this is not green screen nonsense!” In a Hollywood that is now so dependent on CGI, Top Gun: Maverick shows us the real cockpit environment of a F/A-18 Hornet… with the actors sitting on the back seat, going through the excitement but also the harshness of flying. As Claudio Miranda says, “The whole thing about Top Gun is trying to get things in camera, to get people flying in the air.”

While other films have used flight sequences, long before Top Gun: Maverick, it makes sense to mention here the French movie Les Chevaliers du ciel, renamed Sky Fighters for English speaking audiences, which deserves a place as a pioneer, making the dream possible… in 2005. The aerial sequences for thaty movie were done with the cooperation of the French Air Force, and actors had a chance to fly – as passengers, as in Top Gun – in a military jet used, to experience the same sensations and forces pilots do. Although the final cockpit scenes were mainly filmed with a special built simulator cockpit, using a green screen, actors spent a lot of time on flight simulators used to train real pilots, to learn everything they needed to play the part.

Les Chevaliers du ciel, a pioneer in 2005

The filming of the flight sequences in Sky Fighters was mainly done by Eric Magnan, co-founder of Airborne Films, considered as the director with the greatest experience in aerial cinematography. He logged more than one thousand flight hours in Air to Air shoot of which 250 hours on supersonic fighter jets. Eric is also a pilot and a skydiver.

I remember writing one article about Les Chevaliers du Ciel for an aviation magazine, back in 2005, and refer that Eric Magnan directed all the aerials scenes of the movie which represents 1/3 of the whole film. Watching that now, again, as I write this new note about Top Gun, makes me remember how excited I was when the film was released, also because the French movie directed by Gérard Pirès is loosely based on a comics series which was part of my youth: Tanguy et Laverdure,  a 1959 Franco-Belgian comics series created by Jean-Michel Charlier and Albert Uderzo (of Astérix fame) about two pilots from the French Air Force, which was also the base for a TV series from 1967 to 1969.

Watching the behind the scenes for Les Chevaliers du ciel reveals how much the original Top Gun, from 1986, influenced the French film. It’s also interesting to compare what was available at the time and now, in terms of equipment. For Les Chevaliers du ciel one of the Mirage’s external fuel tanks was modified to fit multiple cameras. Tracking shots were done from a hired Lear Jet. Compare this with the gear and aircraft used for Top Gun: Maverick.

On the FUJINON video now made available Claudio Miranda mentions a list of the FUJINON lenses used in Top Gun: Maverick. It includes:

Premista 28-100mm T2.9
Premier 14.5-45mm T2.0
Premier 18-85mm T2.0
Premier 24-180mm T2.6
Premier 75-400mm T2.8-3.8
Cabrio 19-90mm T2.9
Cabrio 20-120mm T3.5
Cabrio 85-300mm T2.9-4.0
Cabrio 25-300mm T3.5-3.85

Claudio Miranda’s list of lenses

To this list I can add another one, with ALL the lenses used in Top Gun: Maverick. The list was sent to me by filmmaker Claudio Miranda on January 28, 2020, as we exchanged emails about the camera – VENICE – used to shoot the film. Here is the complete list of lenses and accessories I received from him:

MAIN UNIT

Sigma Primes (6K FF) – 14, 20, 24, 28, 35, 40, 50, 85, 105, 135

Fuji Premier Zooms (4K S35) – 18-85, 24-180, 75-300

Zeiss Master Primes (6K FF) – 50, 75, 100, 150

Zeiss Cinema Zooms (6K FF) – 15-30, 28-80, 70-200

Fuji Premista Zoom (6K FF) – 28-100

Cinemagic Revolution Snorkel Lens System (4K S35)

IBE PLx2 extenders

Zeiss Master Diopters

Schneider Diopters

EXTERIOR AND INTERIOR MOUNT LENSES

Voightlander E-Mount (6K FF) – 10, 12, 15

Zeiss Loxia E-Mount (6K FF) – 21, 25, 35, 50

AERIAL UNIT

Cinejet and Phenom – Fuji Cabrio (4K S35) – 20-120, 85-300

Helicopter – Fuji Cabrio (4K S35) – 25-300

GROUND-TO-AIR

Fuji Premier Zooms (4K S35) – 24-180, 75-400

Canon (4K S35 and 6KFF) – 150-600

Canon (4K S35 and 6KFF) – 1000

IBE PLx2 extenders

Being Maverick in Virtual Reality

One final note for all those who after watching Top Gun: Maverick and, hopefully, the pioneer Les Chevaliers du ciel, feel… the need for speed. A fully immersive Top Gun experience is possible, using two flight simulators available, DCS and Microsoft Flight Simulator. DCS, which has a study-level version of the F/A-18 Hornet has, since 2020, compatible “skins” – or textures – that transform the aircraft in Maverick’s F/A-18. Follow the link to download one of the versions. It’s a blast, especially when using a Virtual Reality headset, and you can do everything from landing on an aircraft carrier to low-level flying… or dogfight!

Microsoft Flight Simulator has also launched, to coincide with the release of Paramount’s film, it’s version of Maverick’s F/A-18 Hornet, served with some challenges, from low-level flying to aircraft carrier landings, which will appeal to those using the simulator. Although this version of Maverick’s F/A-18 Hornet is more for the masses, the fact that it also works in VR helps the immersion, with the extra bonus of Microsoft’s simulator: you can fly anywhere in the world.

Some may think that this final note has not much to do with films, but how many times have you wanted to be the hero, after watching a movie? Well, here you can, either with the much realistic DCS representation of the Hornet or the “softer” approach proposed by Microsoft, which is an official tie-in to the movie. Allowing you to not just see the film but get immersed into the action, thanks to the magic of Virtual Reality.

Incorporating a new SLING 2.0 design for improved ergonomics, built-in microphone, fill light and a powerful, inbuilt battery supporting all-day use, the ZHIYUN WEEBILL 3 is now available for USD$449.

Better ergonomics and more stable shots are promises made by ZHIYUN Tech announcing its new professional DSLR gimbal (it’s for mirrorless cameras too…), the ZHIYUN WEEBILL 3. ZHIYUN Tech, a pioneer of innovative camera gimbals and stabilizers for both professional filmmakers and personal video creators, says that its new it’s portable, high performance gimbal incorporates a new SLING 2.0 design for improved ergonomics, built-in microphone, fill light and a powerful, inbuilt battery supporting all-day use.

With the new important upgrades improved ergonomics, the company says, “the WEEBILL 3 upgrades the filmmaking and photography experience by giving a dynamic, lightweight and easy-to-use professional device, giving users the chance to abandon the stress of cumbersome equipment in order to focus on pure artistic creation.”

Built from lightweight, ultra-strong materials, the ZHIYUN WEEBILL 3 with the new SLING 2.0 system incorporates three important ergonomic upgrades: a restructured L-shape handle that’s more stable when self-standing, a new wrist rest, and a repositioned, extendable sling grip that provide over 40% more support to your wrist by shifting the weight onto your arm. The extra support reduces fatigue, allowing for extended use in comfort. By moving the sling grip to the bottom of gimbal, it provides better stability and shake-prevention when shooting at low-angles.

The grip includes thumb buttons, mini control stick for movement, plus finger trigger and wheel that can be customized according to preferences of shooting modes and action parameters, such as camera paras, movement along axes, follow focus etc.

Quick release system and built-in microphone

Here is some more information about the ZHIYUN WEEBILL 3 gimbal, as shared by ZHIYUN Tech:

Convenient Built-in Microphone & Light

The WEEBILL 3 includes a built-in Hi-Fi microphone and 1000 lumen fill light for a fast and efficient setup-to-shoot experience. These convenient, high-performance add-in accessories save filmmakers from the fuss of additional wires and the weight of extra accessories.

The microphone provides forward focused cardioid recording, with noise-cancelling functionality, while the bright fill light offers color temperature adjustment to meet the requirements of each scene.

Ecosystem of Accessories

ZHIYUN offers a comprehensive ecosystem of TransMount accessories to extend the WEEBILL 3’s functionality, dramatically increasing on location teamwork efficiency. Combining the WEEBILL 3 with TransMount Image Transmitter and MasterEye Visual Controller VC100 allows directors to monitor the shot via wireless image transmission, and apply parameter adjustment, such as focus and zoom, via remote control. Other accessories include ZHIYUN’s Follow Focus/Zoom units and its ZY Play App.

Outstanding Battery Life & PD Fast Charging Support

Compared to the previous version, the WEEBILL 3 upgrades the large 7,800mAh internal battery, which now provides up to 21-hours use for all-day filming support. With support for PD fast charging (0-100% in 2 hours) and pass-through charging of attached cameras (5V/1A), the WEEBILL 3 offers outstanding endurance with minimal downtime.

Next-gen Quick Release system

ZHIYUN’s latest quick release system includes a dual quick-release plate with embedded magnetic wrench. The camera requires balancing just once, then it can be repeatedly mounted and secured easily, fast and conveniently without needing to rebalance, saving time.

The ZHIYUN WEEBILL 3 professional DSLR gimbal is now available from the company’s store, with a price of USD$449, or with a combo that includes a backpack, wrist rest, and extendable sling grip for USD$529. Before buying the gimbal check the compatibility list chart from the company, which shows all the cameras that are compatible with this new model. Follow the link to download the ZHIYUN WEEBILL 3 camera compatibility list.

Day 1 at Cine Gear was a whirlwind. My friend Adam Greene and I ran around the showroom floor capturing as much as we could (after a bit of a slow start) while utilizing Frame.IO’s Camera to Cloud system. Quite simply, we carried a big wifi hotspot in a backpack and, with our borrowed Teradek Cube 655 attached to my C500mkII, sent each clip we shot near-instantaneously to Scott Simmons in Nashville to edit and post to YouTube. From me and Adam’s point of view, we just hit record and then minutes later a finished product was on the internet. Outstanding.

For day 2, however, we went the old-school route of filming, taking the footage home, and editing it myself. After I had another gig that night. Day 1’s workflow was preferable, to put it mildly. In any case, we were able to highlight some folks you may not have heard of who have some really amazing products either available now or on the horizon.

HAWK Anamorphics

Sprig Cable Management System

Ratworks Engineering

Deity Microphones

Focusbug Wireless Focus System

Tilta’s New Hydra Arm

The new ZTE Axon 40 Ultra smartphone is not different from many others just because it has a 35mm main camera, instead of a 24 or 26mm, it also has 64MP sensors on ALL the cameras. Great!

All the smartphones I’ve used up until now have different sensors for different cameras, which is a bit of a problem if you come from regular photography and are used to have the same sensor and pixel resolution for all your lenses. The two smartphones I use now for photography and video have a variety of cameras for different purposes, and while you do get used to it, it makes no sense.

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro has a main camera, 26mm, with 108MP – binned for 12MP final images – them a 8MP ultra wide-angle and finally a 5MP macro. The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, which is a versatile smartphone offering coverage from 16mm all the way up to 230mm, has a similar 26mm main camera, with 108MP – again binned for 12MP final images – a 12MP ultra wide-angle, 16mm, a 70mm telephoto with 10MP and a 230mm telephoto with the same 10MP. Yes, I know it’s confusing, it’s as if you’ve got a smartphone that thinks it is Ricoh’s GXR system, from 2009.

Ricoh’s modular system and smartphones

Yes, back in 2009 Ricoh imagined that the future would be modular and introduced its GXR camera system. Rather then following the trend, and using interchangeable lenses, Ricoh decided its new system would use sealed modules combining a lens and sensor. One initial module offered a 50mm-equivalent f2.5 macro lens coupled with an APS-C-size 12.3-megapixel CMOS, another a 24-72mm-equivalent f2.5-4.4 lens coupled with a 10-megapixel 1/1.7-inch sensor… and there was more to come. One of the key advantages of the system was, said Ricoh, that no dust would ever get to the sensor, something that had photographers VERY worried at the time.

Well, the whole idea ended gathering dust on a shelf, because what Ricoh was trying to do was reinvent the wheel, ending with a “square-wheel” that never moved the system anywhere. Smartphone cameras look a bit like Ricoh’s modular system, without having the dust problem as excuse, as everything is sealed inside the smartphone’s case. But there’s hope!

I recently wrote here at ProVideo Coalition that the Xiaomi 12 Pro smartphone, with its triple 50MP camera array, can be a sign of a new possible standard for the industry. As I noted then, “having all cameras offering the same resolution, 50MP in this case, you don’t have to think about resolution when moving from the ultrawide to the telephoto camera” meaning it’s the closest you get to a conventional camera when using a smartphone.

A trend towards triple arrays

The camera array in the Xiaomi 12 Pro is built around a cutting-edge Sony IMX707 ultra-large main sensor, with 50MP 1/1.28″ 2.44μm, with 4-in-1 Super Pixel binning for 12.5MP final images, paired with a 24mm wide-angle. The 7-element lens has a ƒ/1.9 aperture and features OIS or Optical Image Stabilization. The ultra-wide angle camera, also 50MP, is a 16mm f/2.2 which offers a 115 degrees field of view and has free focus, meaning it doesn’t have AF, while the last 50MP sensor is paired with a 48mm lens (equivalent to 35mm) opening at f/1.9, which is a humble 2x solution, more a normal lens than a telephoto, not even stabilized.

As I wrote then “the two cameras besides the wide-angle are based on the Samsung JN1 sensor and are clearly not in the same league as the Sony IMX707, but Xiaomi’s decision to create a triple array around 50MP sensors may be something to keep, even if it would be good to see a telephoto with more power – 5x is a suggestion, which would mean a 120mm telephoto.

A 35mm f/1.6 lens instead of the usual 24mm

Now, as I hoped, the industry may be moving towards this type of solution, and ZTE is back with the new and improved ZTE Axon 40 Ultra, evolved from its predecessor, the Axon 30 Ultra. While other may look at smartphones from a variety of angles, I am mostly interested in exploring what they can do as cameras, and this model is something I would like to put my hands on.

Why? Because the ZTE Axon 40 Ultra does not have a main camera… as ALL its cameras are primary. The triple camera array is built around Sony sensors, with a 64MP ultra wide-angle, a 64MP wide angle and a 64MP telephoto… meaning you get the same resolution – 16MP final images after binning – independently of the camera/lens you use. It’s almost as if we’re back to photographic normality!

Presenting the smartphone, ZTE says that “the camera is one of the largest determining factors for whether your attention is kept or not, isn’t it? Well, even if the answer is no (which it never is), this model did not skimp on the high-quality camera.” The ZTE Axon 40 Ultra has some more surprises, one of them being the use of a 35mm f/1.6 lens instead of the 24/26mm wide-angle used in most smartphones. In my opinion, this makes for a more versatile system, as the 35mm was a standard for photographers for a long time. Although wider lenses, like the 24mm – the 24-70mm f/2.8 became a key zoom lens for photojournalists – became popular, 35mm is considered a good focal length and one more reason why the ZTE Axon 40 Ultra sounds so interesting. It may be a trend setting solution.

A 91mm f/3.5 telephoto with a 64MP sensor

The ultra wide-angle lens is a 16mm f/2.4, which gives enough coverage for landscape photography and is similar to the wider focal length used in many full frame cameras. It doubles as a closeup lens with AF provided. On the other end the ZTE Axon 40 Ultra offers a 91mm f/3.5 telephoto, which while not being very powerful may be a good long lens and it’s better, at least on paper, than the 48mm on the Xiaomi 12 Pro… or the 70mm paired with a 10MP sensor on the Samsung S22 Ultra. I guess the power of the 64MP sensor and some cropping of the 16MP final image may allow users to go all the way up to the field of view of a 120mm or even beyond. That’s something I would like to test if I put my hands on the ZTE Axon 40 Ultra.

There is much more one could write about the photo and video features included in the ZTE Axon 40 Ultra, but for now I believe the information regarding the choices made by ZTE in terms of cameras, lenses and sensors is sufficient to make ProVideo Coalition readers interested in a smartphone for photo and video search for more details on this new model, which I hope to have a chance to test.

Photographically speaking, this new smartphone looks like a solution photographers and videographers should explore. ZTE says that “amongst the wealth of professional-grade photographic capabilities are features such as AI and machine learning-based computational photography and various night-time settings for those “night-before” memories” meaning the ZTE Axon 40 Ultra is “an adaptable, high-detail camera to polish your media.”

Filmmakers in every role of production can apply until June 27 to participate in the Women’s Weekend Film Challenge organized by filmmakers Katrina Medoff and Tracy Sayre.

This summer, hundreds of professional filmmakers in New York City will join forces to create six short films as part of the Women’s Weekend Film Challenge (WWFC). This will be the organization’s fifth film challenge, and the first since the pandemic forced productions across the country to shut down. To date, WWFC has held four film challenges — three in NYC and one in LA — and worked with more than 700 female filmmakers to produce 30 short films that have been screened at more than 90 film festivals.

The Women’s Weekend Film Challenge or WWFC for short is a grassroots initiative founded in 2017 by filmmakers Katrina Medoff and Tracy Sayre that aims to address the lack of women and nonbinary people behind the camera and on screen through a variety of programs, including its signature film challenge.

“We are so excited to once again be hosting the Women’s Weekend Film Challenge to provide a diverse group of talented filmmakers with the opportunity to tell their stories on screen,” Sayre said, adding that “many creative relationships have been fostered through our four previous challenges, and the results — 30 expertly crafted short films — prove there is no shortage of skilled women in every role of production.”

Everyone can apply

According to the organizers, for this Summer, women and nonbinary filmmakers will be placed on teams to write, shoot and edit a short film in just one weekend. It’s free to apply to and participate in the challenge, and the organization provides top-of-the-line equipment, workshops and more. Filmmakers Katrina Medoff and Tracy Sayre are expecting more than 1,000 applications and will select about 200 participants.

The challenge weekend will take place Aug. 11-14. Filmmakers in every role of production — from gaffers and sound mixers to writers and actors — can apply until June 27 to participate in the challenge. WWFC enlists the help of guest judges to thoroughly review each application. This year’s judges include cinematographers Nancy Schreiber, ASC, and Carmen Cabana; casting director Adrienne Stern; and filmmakers Anna Sang Park, Annie Sundberg, Danielle Eliska and Mahak Jiwani. WWFC then places accepted individuals onto crews in order to ensure that each team has the talent necessary to make a stellar short film.

It’s free to participate

Here is some more information about the Women’s Weekend Film Challenge as shared by the organizers:

Top-of-the-line equipment, software, production insurance, production stipends and film festival submission stipends are provided courtesy of WWFC and its sponsors, including Zeiss, Sony, ARRI, Cinelease, Gotham Sound, Casting Networks and Final Draft.

Participants will meet their fellow crew members for the first time during a pre-production meeting at CarStage in Long Island City in early August. The film challenge kicks off on Thursday, Aug. 11, when organizers will pick a genre out of a hat for each team and announce a prop that all films must incorporate. Teams will begin writing their scripts that evening and will have until Sunday, Aug. 14, at 11:59 p.m. to submit the completed film.

“While progress has been made to combat gender imbalance in the film industry, more work must be done to achieve equity,” Medoff said. “Participants will finish the weekend not only with a highly professional short film but also with a broad network of motivated, talented women.”

WWFC will host a premiere screening of the films in late August at Village East in Manhattan. Participants will network with each other and other industry members at an afterparty.

Experienced, NY-based filmmakers in every role of production and post-production can apply to the upcoming challenge for free by visiting womensweekendfilmchallenge.com. The deadline to apply is June 27.

About Women’s Weekend Film Challenge

Women’s Weekend Film Challenge (WWFC) works for gender equity by creating opportunities for women to bring their leadership, talents and stories to the forefront of the film industry. WWFC places professional filmmakers on teams to write, shoot and edit a short film in just one weekend, creating intensive networking opportunities while helping filmmakers to bring women’s stories to the screen. Since its first challenge in January 2018, WWFC has worked with more than 700 women to produce 30 short films, which have been accepted to more than 90 film festivals.

When COVID-19 upended productions, WWFC established a popular virtual workshop series featuring Hollywood powerhouses, such as Elle Johnson (co-showrunner, “Self Made”), Kasi Lemmons (writer/director, “Harriet”), Catherine Hardwicke (director, “Twilight”), and Alma Har’el (director, “Honey Boy”). In 2021, WWFC launched a pilot accelerator designed both to help emerging writers advance their careers and to increase the representation of women and nonbinary people in television. The fellows received three weeks of industry training before pitching their scripts to HBO, Netflix, Comedy Central, Warner Bros., and more.

In February 2022, I published my initial review of Camo Pro, which I called “the software CCU for your phone camera” which turns it into a webcam for your macOS or Windows computer. Last week at WWDC, Apple announced its new Continuity Cam as part of the upcoming macOS version, to be called Ventura. I see some overlap between the raw Continuity Cam and Camo Pro, but I also see many differences. At first, Continuity Cam might be seen as a competitor for Camo Pro (albeit with many pros and cons), but Continuity Cam could potentially add new capabilities to a future version of Camo Pro, after macOS Ventura is released. Ahead, I’ll compare the two as if they were competitors. I’ll applaud Apple for spelling Ventura properly (after misspelling both El Capitán and Monterrey). Then I’ll speculate how a potential future version of Camo Pro could combine the best of today’s Camo Pro with the special features added by Continuity Cam as a macOS Ventura service.

Link to my initial review of Camo Pro

Initial Review: Camo Pro, the software CCU for your phone camera

Fortunately, Apple spelled Ventura correctly

After misspelling two other macOS systems: Monterrey (which should have a double R) and El Capitán (which needs an accent mark), I am thrilled to see that Apple spelled Ventura correctly for the new operating system. Whether Apple chose the name for the Dominican merengue singer Johnny Ventura (born as Juan de Dios Ventura Soriano, 1940-2021, R.I.P), for the actor/ex-wrestler/ex Governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura (born as James George Janos) or more likely for Ventura County, California, I am so glad Apple got the spelling right this time.

Comparing today’s Camo Pro and Continuity Cam (as presented at WWDC 2022)

Both Camo Pro and Apple’s Continuity Cam recognize that most built-in and many standalone webcams are terrible compared with the much higher quality rear cameras in today’s smartphones. That’s where they agree. Then the differences appear, as you’ll see in this chart I created:

The above video is courtesy of CNET and Apple’s WWDC.

How I visualize Camo Pro in the future, using Continuity Cam as a macOS Ventura service

I am only dreaming here. I would like the best functions already available from Camo Pro to gain the superpowers of the Desk View feature and perhaps the Studio LIght (both described and illustrated in the prior section).

Even though some people (who never tried it yet) may consider using the same smartphone as a webcam and as their personal telephone, after trying that, I decided to get a separate iPhone SE as a permanent webcam with Camo Pro. The main reason is because too often an unexpected phone call will dismantle the setup. I also prefer the smartphone to be wired to the host computer, both to have continuous power, better reliability of the setup and less radiation. I chose a refurbished iPhone SE because it has a very high quality rear camera (remotely controlled by Camo Pro) and the smallest footprint when mounted in front of a computer screen (not on top of it) with a transparent PlexiCam together with the optional Smartphone Holder.

Above image, courtesy of PlexiCam.

That way, better simulated eye contact can be achieved, as with a teleprompter. Even though the PlexiCam is fortunately transparent, the smartphone is not. That’s why I chose the smartphone with the smallest footprint, together with a high-quality rear camera controlled by Camo Pro. Per my research, that’s the iPhone SE.

I’ll be publishing a fuller review of Camo Pro (together with PlexiCam) as soon as Camo Pro adds the framerate option, which is scheduled to be added sometime during 2022. Be sure to be on one of my mailing lists shown below to be notified when I publish that or other articles and reviews.

In the season finale of “Crossing the 180,” Ron brings out of “mothballs,” clips for his previous critically acclaimed podcast, “Radio Film School.” In these clips, Ron speaks with seasoned film and Television producer Yolanda T. Cochran as well as “The Other 50%: Herstory” podcast host and Hollywood veteran, Julie Harris Walker. You’ll also hear soundbites from other luminaries in the worlds of Hollywood and tech. Altogether, this is a funny, provocative, and inspiring look at addressing the issue of gender disparity in Hollywood.

• Yolanda on Twitter
• Ron on Twitter

Crossing the 180 theme music “Gettin’ Paid, Part II” and end-credits music “I Don’t Think,” both by Alec’s Band (CC BY) and curated from FreeMusicArchive.org.

[Feature image by Johannes Blenke on Unsplash]

Streaming. From Set to Post. That’s how Teradek introduces its newest solution for streaming, the versatile Serv Micro. The new product was revealed at the 2022 Cine Gear Expo, in Los Angeles.

The Serv series expands with this new addition, Serv Micro, which is a mobile streaming and wireless video solution announced by Teradek during the Los Angeles edition of Cine Gear Expo. Serv Micro was first demonstrated at booth 565 in the West Hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center. The new product expands the option for the Serv family, which includes Serv 4K, the 4K HDR solution, and Serv Pro, a HD-SDI solution, all under the banner “Color-accurate. Instantly reviewable. Ultra-secure.”

Although the Serv Pro solution has been around for a while, the Serv 4K model was introduced last April, as Teradek’s 4K HDR hardware/software production-streaming solution that’s easy to set up, manage, and access. The new solution was one of the highlights at 2022 NAB Show, as the new Serv Micro was one of the key products displayed at 2022 Cine Gear Expo.

“Serv Micro is our most accessible Serv product, integrating wifi-based wireless video with off-set streaming setups for real-time collaboration, no matter the size of a production budget” said Greg Smokler, GM of Cine at Creative Solutions. “With an easy-to-use cloud workflow and simple tools for sharing and viewing, collaboration has never been simpler.”

Serv Micro: all-in-one integrated solution

Here is some more information about Serv Micro, shared by Teradek:

Serv Micro is a wifi-based wireless video transmitter system that works with or without an internet connection, a local solution that supports up to 10 local device streams and a cloud-enabled solution that manages and shares live camera feeds on unlimited devices anywhere in the world.

Up to 10 devices can stream on a local network using Teradek’s Vuer app, with iOS, Android, PC, and MacOS support. Unlimited devices can access live streaming and instant recordings via the Teradek Core cloud streaming platform. If internet connection is lost, recordings are saved to an SD card for secure upload once connection has been restored. Streams are compatible with MacOS, iOS, Android, and web browsers.

Serv Micro also comes equipped with HDMI in and loop-through, ethernet and wifi connectivity, an auxiliary audio input, USB type A connection for easy connection to cellular bonding options and a built-in L-Series battery plate.

“Serv Micro is built to deliver quality camera feeds and playback quickly and easily with intuitive tools and powerful platforms like Core and Vuer,” said Colin McDonald, Cine Product Manager at Creative Solutions. “It’s an all-in-one integrated solution giving creative stakeholders content visibility at every stage of production, wherever they are.”

The developer of high-performance dailies/transcoding systems for motion pictures, OTT, broadcast and commercials, Colorfront showcases at Cine Gear Expo 2022 (Booth #853), its Express Dailies 2022.

Packed with even more cutting-edge features, supported by super-fast processing and collaborative technology innovations, to deliver the industry’s most advanced adaptability for emerging set-to-post workflows, along with Colorfront Streaming Server Mini, which live-streams, secure, reference-quality pictures/audio with sub-second latency for remote collaborative review, Colorfront’s Express Dailies 2022 is being shown at Cine Gear Expo 2022.

Shipping in Summer 2022, Express Dailies 2022 is being shown at the event running on the new Mac Studio M1 Ultra workstation, processing SDR/HDR footage simultaneously to Apple Pro Display XDR monitors. Thanks to engineering collaborations with Apple, Express Dailies 2022 leverages extreme performance from the latest Mac Studio for a broad array of accelerated acquisition, dailies and finishing tasks.

Colorfront’s new products

Here is some more information as shared by Colorfront, a company headquartered in Budapest, Hungary, with offices in Los Angeles, plus sales partners worldwide:

Express Dailies 2022 also features support for the very latest digital cinematography camera formats, such as ARRI Alexa 35 4.6K, with its ARRI Reveal color science, ARRI Textures and 17-stops of dynamic range, plus Red V-Raptor 8K VV, Sony Venice 2 8.6K and Blackmagic Design 12K RAW.

Significantly, Colorfront has upgraded the color management capabilities of Express Dailies 2022 to embrace a new era of workflow operations, and deliver the most versatile option to help users streamline end-to-end, color-accurate workflows.

Express Dailies 2022 delivers full support for ACES 1.3, the latest Academy Color Encoding System, including ACES Metadata File (AMF), which is designed for greater flexibility when implementing ACES viewing pipelines.

AMF – a sidecar XML file carrying the metadata recipe – enables the exchange of accurate, clip-level metadata between on-set, dailies and finishing processes. It contains a detailed pipeline description with all of the various input (IDT), output (ODT), look-modification (LMT) transforms that need to be applied to a clip to recreate the “creative intent”, plus the working color space and the version of ACES being used. The transport of AMFs via Express Dailies 2022 maintains consistent end-to-end color appearance, and secures an unambiguous archive of the creative intent.

Bruno Munger, Colorfront’s Director of Business Development notes: “ACES AMF takes set-to-post workflow to another level by removing the guess-work of applying color pipeline and color decisions across multiple applications on multiple shots from different cameras. Having ACES AMF within Express Dailies 2022 gives users a supreme way to manage precise color communication between on-set and dailies, through to editorial, VFX and post-production mastering, and extends the capabilities of Express Dailies 2022 to enable new and highly-efficient workflows.”

Collaborative technology innovations with Pomfort and Blackmagic Design also further streamline end-to-end color operations. In an on-going collaboration between Colorfront and Pomfort a unique round-trip-workflow supporting Colorfront Engine has been implemented in Pomfort’s Livegrade Studio on-set color grading system, to enable the exchange of clip-level ACES AMF metadata and color descriptions in ACES viewing pipelines.

Additionally, after several months of beta-testing, Colorfront is showcasing a brand-new Colorfront Engine Plug-In for Blackmagic’s Davinci Resolve color grading/non-linear editing system. The new plug-in supports ACES AMF workflow, as well as the application of Colorfront Engine parametric looks and transforms during post-production operations, ensuring perceptually matching simultaneous SDR/HDR deliverables. LUA scripting in DaVinci Resolve can be used to apply looks to timelines containing multiple shots, while “blue fringe” problems from extremely bright/saturated objects, such as LED lights, are now properly handled with Colorfront Engine’s Perceptual Processing along with the included Academy Reference Gamut Compression algorithm.

Josh Baca, Partner/Technology at ArsenalFX Color, a high-end boutique post-production studio in Santa Monica, said: “ArsenalFX Color works closely with Colorfront on countless projects, utilizing Colorfront Engine in Express Dailies and Transkoder to manage on-set to editorial/VFX needs for look-creation and color pipeline solutions. With their support for AMF in the ACES workflow, and Colorfront Engine plug-in for DaVinci Resolve, all teams involved in a project can better maintain the integrity of the creative artistic vision throughout all the steps of capture to final process.”

Also on show at Cine Gear Expo, will be Colorfront Streaming Server Mini, the new, software-only product for Mac/PC workstations, that creative digital artists can use to securely encode and live-stream, frame/color-accurate, reference-quality, work-in-progress over the public internet to multiple production stakeholders, wherever they are around the world.