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I recompiled my Podcast upTimer tool. It’s now a Universal Binary. Also, I made a few aesthetic changes to the UI, and added a Concept pane that specifies a bit of general information.

If you are familiar with the new timecode HUD included in Soundtrack Pro 2, you will notice the timer’s color scheme is similar. This is intentional. I like the look and I think it’s probably a good idea to maintain a bit of aesthetic consistency.

In the future I plan to experiment with user defined opacity adjustments incorporating a solid interface and selectable font colors. My guess is that once I get my hands on the new developer tools that will be bundled with Max OSX Leopard, UI design and feature enhancements shouldn’t be too difficult. This may be wishful thinking on my part due to my lack of experience developing software. I’ll see how it goes …

Download upTimer 2.0 for OSX [PPC/Intel]

MXL/Marshall just announced the Mic Mate. This is an external XLR to USB mic preamp/converter with a balanced input and three position gain switch. The device provides 48v phantom power for condenser mics, and incorporates a 16-bit D/A converter [Delta Sigma] with support for 48kHz and 44.1kHz sample rates. Simply plug in your favorite pro mic and record your audio using the software application of choice via USB.

Looks like a cool device, especially for traveling and on-site show production. The Mic Mate will retail for $79.99 US. As of yet no specifics in reference to availability.

It’s been a week since I tracked down the Fedex truck and met the driver on the road just before he entered New Jersey. Confused?

I was expecting the new system to be delivered Thursday of the previous week. That day came and went and there was no delivery. Not a big deal. I checked status late that evening and much to my surprise the driver made an attempt to deliver the box. The site log stated “Delivery Exception.” I was here all day. Needless to say I became suspicious.

The following day at 5 PM EST, according to Mike the doorman – three Fedex trucks made stops here at my high-rise complex. No delivery. At 5:15 EST I checked status. “Delivery Exception” for the second day in a row. I immediately got on the phone, or should I say iPhone, and called Fedex. The representative logged all the necessary information and pledged to call back ASAP. I would be lying if I stated here that I believed her. Much to my surprise, within ten minutes I was back on the phone with Fedex.

I’ll spare you the details as to why the driver could not find my building. In any case, the Fedex agent instructed me to get in my car and track down the Fedex truck that was about to finish up its daily route and eventually head back to New Jersey. Luckily the New Jersey border is only a few miles form my building. If I was unsuccessful, the box would have most likely been reprocessed or sent back to California. Why this entire Fedex transaction originated from a New Jersey depot is beyond me.

This saga did in fact have a happy ending. I was able to flag down the driver who was alerted by the helpful Fedex agent. A short distance from the expressway service road, the driver placed the 60 pound box in my car and I was on my way …

Besides the obvious enhancements in processing performance, two issues have been solved: limited internal storage and sluggishness with graphic intensive applications like Apple Motion and Color. More on Color in a moment …

The MacPro replaced a Powermac G5 [dual 2.0 Ghz] with 3 gigs of ram and the ATI 9800 Radeon SE [128 meg] graphics card. The G5 was a rock solid performer for just about three years. However I was never able to work comfortably in Apple Motion. I sort of came to terms with the lack luster performance and simply made the best of it. When it came time to run Motion 3, now bundled with Final Cut Studio 2 – forget it. Performance was extremely poor. The new system has the ATI X1900 XT 512 meg video card installed. This upgrade along with 4 gigs of system ram presents me with an entirely new experience when running Motion. The application is now extremely snappy. RT effects creation and compositing is no longer an arduous task.

Hard disc expansion support is quite an experience with these new Macs. The stock drive occupies one of four internal bays that offer trouble free integration of additional hard drives. You simply remove an available slot bracket, screw the hard drive on to it, and slide it back into the slot. No cables required.

One of the most incredible additions to Final Cut Studio is Color. This is a professional color grading and color correction utility that was formally known as FinalTouch, distributed by SiliconColor, and recently acquired by Apple.

You may find this hard to believe – depending on specifications, Final Touch previously checked in at prices ranging from $7000 to $20,000. The fact that Apple decided to bundle Color in Final Cut Studio at no additional cost solidifies my assertion that Final Cut Studio is the deal of the century within the professional production community. The caveat is that like Motion, it’s extremely taxing on a system. The new MacPro handles it well, and performance is excellent. At this point I’m not quite savvy with it due to lack of previous exposure. I’ll be integrating a wonderful set of filters created by my good friend Graeme Nattress, and working to develop a comfortable level of proficiency.

My main audio tools are operating at enhanced levels of performance. I’m speaking of Soundtrack Pro 2 and Bias Peak Pro 5 XT. This includes associated plugins like iZotope’s Ozone and various tools provided by Wave Arts. I’ve decided to say goodbye to an old favorite, Motu’s Digital Performer. I never bothered to pay for the $200 upgrade that is in fact a Universal Binary. The fact of the matter is that Soundtrack Pro 2 now supports native tracking and DP is no longer necessary. As far as Final Cut Pro, performance on the old G5 was quite good. Needless to say things have improved here as well.

In closing I’m thinking about using the G5 as a server, or possibly as a processing/encoding node. Selling it on eBay is also an option due to the exceptional level of value this particular system has managed to maintain.

I’ve spent the last few days configuring a new system, installing software, plugins, you name it. Except for one minor snafu that I corrected by repairing permissions, everything went well. During the process I had the opportunity to touch base with some old friends, mainly developers and software manufacturers regarding license transfers. One particular correspondence is worth discussing.

Three years ago a friend of mine pointed me to a free plugin called Inspector. At the time the plugin was developed and distributed by Elemental Audio Systems. The tool was [and still is] a wonderful audio analysis plugin capable of RT Spectral Analysis, Peak, RMS, and Headroom monitoring. It also included a clipping alarm system. Elemental Audio offered an advanced version of Inspector called Inspector XL, and after experimenting with the free version, I was so impressed I decided to purchase the advanced bundle. I’ve been using it ever since.

In May of 2006, Elemental Audio Systems partnered with Roger Nichols Digital. Roger himself is a famed Grammy Award recipient, recording engineer, and producer. From that point the entire group of processing tools previously offered by Elemental Audio was re-branded and made available exclusively through Roger Nichols Digital. Recently new additions were added to the catalog, including the Dynam-izer. This is a dynamics processor that in fact has been nominated for a TEC [Technical Excellence & Creativity] Award, 2007.

Guess what? Inspector [pictured above] is still available on the site as a free download. I suggest you check it out. If you feel you need advanced features, I recommend that you consider Inspector XL. XL features include: Spectral Analysis, Third Octave Analyzer, Custom Metering – including Digital PPM and K-System analog, Correlation Meter, and Stereo Imaging Meters. Vertical and Horizontal options are supported. Also, a comprehensive alarm system can be implemented to monitor Peak and RMS measurements independently. Both versions of Inspector are currently available as RTAS, AU and VST Universal Binaries.

I suggest you read into all the tools offered by Roger Nichols Digital. In fact there are a few video tutorials hosted by Roger himself. I found the support staff to be helpful and accommodating during my recent correspondence.

Impressive stuff …

Inspector XL retails for $249 US.

2007 TEC Award Nominees

If you are a Final Cut Pro or Final Cut Express user, navigate to the Export menu and have a look at the choices available for Quicktime Export. It’s important to understand the difference between export to Quicktime Movie and export Using Quicktime Conversion.

Let me explain …

Let’s consider an MP3 audio file for a moment. MP3’s are intended to be used as final distribution copies. Typically they are compressed versions of high quality AIFF or WAV source masters. I think most of us would agree that it’s not a good idea to re-encode MP3 audio files due to common imperfections that will only multiply and become much more apparent after each stage of subsequent conversion. Best case scenario is to distribute MP3’s that are the direct result of an uncompressed source master. The same holds true for Quicktime video files. Re-compressing video that was encoded using settings intended for distribution purposes will result in quality degradation.

Scenario:

You’ve logged and captured your footage in Final Cut. A new sequence was created using predetermined high quality settings, paying close attention to the codec and frame rate. Clips, transitions, and audio attributes are incorporated into the timeline in order to create a rough edit. At this point you may decide to export your project to take a preliminary visual assessment on how things are progressing. Or – you may decide to move along, finish your project, and prepare your distribution copy.

Option One:

Export the sequence using the Export to Quicktime Movie. This will result in a high quality, uncompressed native source master of the project sequence. The resulting file can be dragged on to the QT icon in your dock [or Finder], and it will playback just as any normal QT movie file. *If* you double click the file assuming that it will play as normal, it will not. In fact the file will load in Final Cut prior to playback. This file is similar in concept to an uncompressed AIFF or WAV audio file. Use it as your master, and present it to your encoder of choice. It’s your point of origin … and it can be used repeatedly.

A few notes: Make sure you export as a self contained movie. This will provide stand alone playback support if the movie is moved to a different computer. Also notice the size of this file. Since it is an uncompressed source, it will be quite large. Lastly, prior to exporting, make sure your export settings match the native settings of the project sequence.

Option Two:

Export the sequence Using Quicktime Conversion. The Final Cut documentation refers to this option as exporting Quicktime compatible files. This method should only be considered if you intend to use the resulting file as your distribution copy. Why? Quicktime Conversion re-compresses the source based on the codec, frame rate, data rate, etc., that is determined prior to exporting from your project timeline. This holds true even if the exact same settings as the project sequence are implemented.

In most cases QT Conversion settings will be optimized for a specific method of distribution. An example would be selecting the Sorenson 3 codec for a web movie with a low frame rate, low data rate, and scaled down pixel size. Or maybe using my recommended 3ivx codec for an iPhone copy. The point is Quicktime Conversion compresses the media. If you present the resulting file to a third party encoder and re-compress, quality degradation will be unavoidable.

Upon reviewing the specs of encoded movies using the new Movie to iPhone preset in the latest version of Quicktime [7.2], it’s nice to see that my aspect ratio recommendation is now formally endorsed by Apple.

From the QT Export menu located in the Export Settings – you will notice two iPhone presets. Selecting Movie to iPhone will encode a native 16×9 movie to a 480×270 distribution copy. Quicktime uses the H.264 codec [.m4v] with medium to low data rates. My guess is the data rate is program dependent. Standard 4×3 or NTSC 720×480 movies yield distribution copies at the native iPhone 480×320 aspect ratio.

The second available Export option is Movie to iPhone [Cellular]. This is a .3gp movie version that is optimized for the EDGE Network and considers limited bandwidth restrictions. As I previously stated – not something that I’m particularly interested in, however the setting is available if needed.

Remember these presets are fixed. Now that we are clear on the recommended aspect ratios, don’t be afraid to experiment with your favorite encoder and strive to optimize your projects. Personally I prefer to use slightly higher data rates in order to maximize image quality.

Tired of all the iPhone news and buzz? Sorry about that. As media producers I believe it is our responsibility to educate ourselves entirely when a new and viable method of content access surfaces. Video on portables is obviously nothing new. However *if* this device is destined to set a new standard in terms of portable video consumption, various aspects of optimized content distribution need to be addressed.

First let me state that I have an iPhone. I purchased it here in NYC on the Monday following the release date. My entire purchase and setup experience took less than 15 minutes. What drove me to buy this device? The new video specification that Apple has implemented. I truly believe Apple will maintain the exact same video specification with the inevitable release of the widescreen video iPod that will not include phone features. In any case I was anxious to begin to experiment with it. So far my experience has been 100% positive. More on this in a moment …

As HD camcorders continue to become more affordable, many video prosumers are shooting native widescreen video. If you intend to prepare your produced widescreen video for optimized iPhone viewing, I have a few suggestions:

Typically widescreen distribution aspect ratios are calculated by dividing a predetermined horizontal pixel measurement by 1.78. For example: if you decided to embed a widescreen video clip on your site with a horizontal measurement of 640 pixels, 640 divided by 1.78 = 359.550. In this case the widescreen aspect ratio of the site video should be 640×360. What is the significance of 1.78? Since the 16×9 spec is nothing more than a relationship of numerical units and not pixels, dividing 16 by 9 gives us 1.777 [1.78], our magic number. Ultimately 16:9 is equivalent to a ratio of 1.78:1 [1.78 units wide by 1 unit high].

As I stated in the previous post, the native aspect ratio of the iPhone is 480×320. Not true 16×9. In order to maintain proper scaling of your widescreen iPhone videos in the landscape position, encode your distribution copies at 480×270. The one caveat is that the viewer will need to enter the theatrical aspect ratio mode by double tapping the iPhone screen in order to view the video as intended. Skipping this step will force the video to play back in a cropped state.

What about containers, codecs, frame rates, and data rates? Lot’s of interesting stuff to talk about here. Acceptable results can be achieved by simply following the QT Pro settings recommended by Apple, located here. I went ahead and made a few changes that in my opinion result in improved quality.

It’s important to remember that enhanced parameters will increase the size of your files, and in some cases create playback snafu’s due to the lack of sufficient bandwidth. For example Apple recommends restricting the video Data Rate to 900 kbps for WiFi access. I decided to bump this up to 1500 kbps. In this example I used the MPEG-4 container and the H.264 video codec [Single-Pass, Baseline], 480×270, 30fps, and Keyframe every 96 frames. I had no trouble accessing and playing the encoded movie directly from the web on the iPhone using my internal WiFi network, a phantom network in my building, as well as in a public place. As far as EDGE compatibility, forget it. Video encoded using the specified parameters would never playback. This makes no difference to me due to my total lack of interest in ever using the EDGE network for casual video viewing.

I would also like to suggest that you look into the 3ivx MPEG-4 Codec. This is sort of a secret weapon of mine. It can be purchased for $20 [for personal use] and easily installed/incorporated into your QT Pro workflow. According to the site, 3ivx “features enhanced compression efficiency and introduces new Advanced Simple Profile features such as B-Frame and QPel encoding. The Mac OS X versions are compatible with QuickTime 7 and are Universal Binaries optimized for Intel based Macs.” It also performs well when incorporated with Compressor, Episode Pro, and MPEG Streamclip. Needless to say video encoded using this codec looks great on the iPhone.

I’m trying to secure permission to use 30 seconds of high quality HD footage that I will optimize for the iPhone for demonstration purposes on this site. I’ll point to it in a future post. For now you have my initial thoughts.

Well encoded video looks amazing on the iPhone. Bring on those widescreen video iPods …

** Please note: Be careful when installing video codecs on your system! Please read the supplied documentation thoroughly, and install at your own risk …

** Be sure to check out MPEG Streamclip, a fabulous piece of free software.

The Apple Developer Connection site is one of the most extensive data resources available to anyone interested in application development for the Mac. Apple just posted what I believe will become a very important resource: Web Development for iPhone. Currently there are seven general categories including: Design Practices, Interaction, and my favorite – Ensure a Great Audio and Video Experience. Needless to say the media specification will be a hot topic for producers who seek to perfect audio and video distribution copies for the iPhone.

In fact this afternoon I spent some time working with standard NTSC video, analyzing the results of various sets of encoding parameters for the iPhone. Since the display sports a proprietary 480×320 aspect ratio that is not true 16:9, a bit of ingenuity is necessary in order to properly scale standard definition video for the landscape [horizontal] view using what Apple refers to as a Theatrical Aspect Ratio. Personally I prefer a distribution aspect ratio of 480×270 for standard Dv. This format will cause a slight loss in resolution that in my opinion is unnoticeable when viewing on the iPhone. The key is the videographer needs to pay close attention to framing when shooting. It’s important to leave a bit of play in the video composition frame in order to properly scale the image prior to encoding. More on this as testing progresses …

And so it begins. I’m looking forward to what will surface in terms of applications when independently developed widgets are added to the mix. I have a feeling this is not too far off.

I think it’s time to fire up Dashcode …