Resources For the Indie Film-maker
Archive for December, 2009
Windows 7 – Do it now!
Dec 21st
For those people out there who are dragging their feet on the Windows 7 update, what are you waiting for? I’ve been using Windows 7 Professional 64bit for over two months now and this is my experience.
First of all, the whole idea of updating from Windows XP Pro to Vista never crossed my mind. Vista was widely known to be the lemon of all Windows OS’s in existence. I just don’t get what was going through Microsoft’s head when they released the mother of all bloatware onto unsuspecting people that often required a whole new computer upgrade to enjoy the useless graphical features.
Fast forward to Windows 7 and the story has completely changed. Windows 7 is widely acclaimed as the best Windows ever and I wholeheartedly agree. I’m still using my old and trusty Q6600 quad core but have upgraded my ram to 8GB to take advantage of the 64bit goodness. Everything appears snappier and well thought out. You get the “aero” look without needing a new graphics card. In fact, I installed the pre-release Windows 7 on a friends slow netbook with an onboard graphics card and it handled all the eyecandy without breaking a sweat.
The new taskbar is highly efficient and allows me work with less clutter on the screen. I can see a little bit of Apple in this new taskbar with the way you can pin programs to the taskbar only that I actually prefer the Windows 7 implementation of it. Hovering the mouse over a program’s taskbar icon gives you a thumbnail of that program and if you have multiple windows open in one app, it shows them all side by side.
The sidebar from Vista makes an appearance here only now there is no sidebar, you can place the gadgets anywhere on the desktop.
Now on to how the Adobe family of apps works with Windows 7. In one word, smooth. Now I can have Premiere Pro and After Effects open at the same time and I never get that massive lag that I use to get with Windows XP. It helps that even though these are 32bit programs, they’ve been “optimised” for 64bit computing. That brings me on to another thing, if you are afraid all your 32bit programs won’t work with a 64bit OS then don’t, all the programs that I used in XP work fine in Win 7 64.
If you’re going to upgrade, do yourself a favour and install the 64bit version. Get at least 8GB of ram and you’ll be laughing too. Especially once Adobe CS5 hits which will only be 64bit supported. I personally can’t wait to get a Nvidia GTX 285 graphics card and enjoy render free editing once Premiere CS5 hits us next year.
I can see a not too distant future where rendering will be the thing of the past in After Effects, when 16 core computers will be considered low end and where everything graphics and video related will be processed by the awesome power of gaming graphics cards in realtime.
Ikan v5600 with the H600 Hoodman and ebay battery.
Dec 18th
Here’s another quick run-down of how the Ikan v5600 monitor has performed in the field. This time I’ve attached a couple of things to it to make it production ready for almost any situation. This will be tested early next year as I will be co-producing a feature length film which will be shot on our SGblade rig along with a 5D MKII and a 7D. How exciting! Anyway, after a little audition shoot outdoors in the park, the Ikan v5600 along with the extras makes for one happy camera man.
Well the first thing a monitor needs when it is being used outdoors is a sun-hood. This is to block out the glare from the sun which will overpower the monitors back-light and render the thing useless. It also cuts out any reflections which is a big issue even with matte finished screens.
The hood I chose for my Ikan v5600 is the for a number of reasons. One, I’ve already owned a smaller hoodman in the past and quite like its build quality. Two is it’s reasonable priced.
After receiving the Hoodman I noticed it doesn’t come with elastic straps to fix it to the LCD screen. After a lot of expletives I realised there were little white strips stuck to the inside of it. These turned out to be adhesive velcro strips that you attach permanently to your monitor which the hoodman then uses to attach itself to the screen. I was cool with that, it offers a quick way to mount and unmount the hood. The only thing is you have to let these things sit on your monitor for a little while for it to set in. I eagerly attached the hood straight away which was stupid as when I removed it, it peeled the strips off with it. The velcro is industrial stuff that sticks very well!
After reapplying the strips with extra force, I was good to go. The hood works great and unless the sun is directly behind you, it blocks out extraneous light very well. I purchased mine .
Another thing I bought off ebay (which if you didn’t know by now is where I get all my cheap 2nd hand and new equipment, especially now as our dollar is doing so well) is a . I learnt about this particular battery on the cinema5d forums, alot of people there are using it to power their monitors. The good thing about this particular battery is it’s capacity of 9800mah. I’ve run my Ikan v5600 off it for over 4 hours before I gave up and turned it off. I reckon it could go non-stop for around 5 hours or more. I will test this out but so far it kills every other battery option out there especially at the price of only $35 or so US dollars.
I attached my battery on the back of my monitor with velcro which holds it good enough. The particular battery I bought is from . There are other sellers selling the same looking battery but that’s the particular one I got. Sure it may look quite dodgy but trust me, its works very well. One thing to point out with this battery is you need to switch it on when you put it on charge which is strange.
Update 25/04/2010: DO NOT BUY THIS BATTERY! It stopped working after it totally discharged one night I left it attached to the Ikan v5600 monitor. Now it no longer charges and someone somewhere else has also had a little problem with it. I forgot where it was posted but their problem was in the battery exploding and catching on fire! They even had pics to prove it. I’ll post it if I find it.
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 will kick some serious ass!
Dec 12th
Apple and Avid should take note, Adobe have hit this one out of the ballpark. The new Mercury Playback Engine tech that will be released within the next release of Premiere Pro will be gods gifts to editors around the world.
Imagine being able to edit without having to render, even when you are editing 4k Red footage with color correction effects and multi-layer composites and dissolves.
Imagine being able to edit and handle your 7D or 5DMKII footage without having to transcode it overnight.
And all you’ll need to take advantage of all this power is a 64bit multicore machine and at least a Nvidia GTX 285 video card. Something that will cost basically nothing by the time CS5 comes out.
I’ve found an example video of this new technology on the Adobe site here:
Shouldn’t be too long now.