Phantom announces Remote Control Unit

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prcu.jpg

Phantom announces Remote Control Unit

From the VRI website: "Our new Phantom Remote Control Unit is a 5" life saver!  This small, lightweight, hand-held device controls your Phantom digital high-speed cameras as well as a providing a video monitor all in one package.

The RCU supports the entire high-speed imaging workflow. Set up the camera, trigger the shot, view the cine on the LCD screen, trim to the frames of interest, and save the result to a CineMag. Without ever touching the camera!

The 5" TFT touch screen technologyallows you to control a camera with just the tap of your finger. A scroll/jog dial gives you an alternate (and fast!) way to change many settings or to scrub through a recorded cine."

Hmmm.. seems like they've been inspired by the Weisscam ;) Seriously though, interfacing wirelessly for high speed recording makes a lot of sense and it's one the most useful features of the Weisscam. I've never been a huge fan of the Phantom control software and this to me seems like it will make the workflow faster and more intuitive. The unit will probably be expensive too and I don't predict it will be something thrown in with the package for nothing. It's not really a necessary accessory and "operator comfort" isn't production's highest priority so this may be a hard sell from a rental perspective. I REALLY hope to find one in the case on my next Phantom job though. Less cable. Less laptops. Less headaches. Sign me up. 

http://focus.visionresearch.com/?p=186

http://www.visionresearch.com/index.cfm?sector=htm/files&page=Remote_Control_Unit

Quick and Easy Transcoding

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Quick and Easy Transcoding

I'm not a post guy. Never have been. But as the workflow has moved from film to tape and tape to data, I've had to learn far more about post production then I ever thought I would need to. Especially now as I'm often working as a video engineer, I need to know every single technical detail of the codecs and formats I'm working with and how they will make their way through the post production food chain. 

As for transcoding, or turning one file format into another, this is something I've found myself doing more than ever now that I've added the Canon 7D to my ever expanding gear pile... it's a sickness I tell you. I've found that in working with the 7D footage, I prefer to transcode to Apple ProRes from Canon's crummy, inter-frame, H.264 based codec. ProRes is Intra-frame, is well supported with all my hardware and software, and makes for a very robust and faithful image.

There's the sloooooooow way of transcoding - opening FCP, making a ProRes 422 timeline, dropping the Canon clip in there, not changing the settings when prompted, and then exporting. OR there's the quick and painless way of doing it, in a batch no less, that Jem has so graciously explained on The C47. In this video, he walks you through the process of building custom export settings in Compressor and creating a Droplet which you can use to transcode your Canon media to whatever format you specify simply by dragging the files onto the icon. Faster, easier, smarter. Watch it.

I've been doing quite a lot of this and I've discovered the ratios to be pretty predictable in how your original files expand or shrink depending on which ProRes codec you transcode to. Here are the numbers:

ProRes Proxy: x .75 - .8 of original file size

ProRes LT: x 1.4 - 1.6 of original file size 

ProRes 422: x 2.4 - 2.6 of original file size

ProRes HQ: x 3.75 - 4 of original file size

Very useful in figuring out drive space requirements or how many hard drives to bring to the job.

UPDATE 02/07/10:
Canon has announced the EOS E1 Video Plug-in for Final Cut Pro. It will enable you to bring Canon media directly into FCP via the Log and Transfer tool. When it's released, it will be available here:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/finalcutstudio/