One of my favorite explanations of color balance...

The fine folks at Cambridge in Color have a very helpful explanation of color balance. (among other things)

The concepts behind light and color are key to the work we do with images both in the field and in post. Check out the article which includes several solid visuals...

TimK

A Primer on 3d Modeling...for those of us who don't do it for a living.

(Sorry for the gap in posts. I've been traveling for an extended period.)


Over the years, I've dabbled a bit in 3d animation but I am a neophyte relative to anyone who does it on a regular basis.

That's why Jeff Brown from FireMist Media is in my rolodex. When I have a need for something in the way of complex 3d animation, he gets a call from me.

Jeff has put together a white paper on 3d modeling to give those of us on the outside a bit of insight into the general concepts of 3d animation. For those of us who purchase this sort of work from vendors, this article will certainly help you begin to cut through much of the jargon involved in 3d work.

Download the PDF from the link here.

TimK

4 cores? 8 cores? How about 240 processor cores?

NVIDIA has been making some pretty heavy-duty display cards for professionals for a number of years now. I use 2 NVIDIA Quadro dual head cards to drive my 4 monitor post production workstation. The acceleration provided for visual effects preview is extremely helpful in getting more work done in less time.
With all the focus on bigger and badder CPUs in our workstations, one of the more intriguing advancements in computer muscle is happening somewhat quietly. That would be the advent of parallel processing over a much larger group of processor cores.
While I'm absolutely positive we'll continue to see advancements in CPU power, one CPU core represents the capability to process one operation at a time...at an incredible speed of course. When you add more physical processors, you gain processing power but your limitation becomes how well the math can be sectioned up between two processes and the energy expended to figure out how to divide the operations up-and on the back side, reassemble the results into one unified dataset.
When you have multiple logical cores on one physical wafer, you now have the ability to do multiple operations using each logical core, limited by the pipeline that gets the operations on and off the chip as well as the efficiency of the code to divide and reassemble data. Multiple physical processors would involve multiple "pipes" to get data on and off each processor, gaining some extra torque over an equal configuration utilizing the same number of logical cores on one physical processor.
For operations like 3d animation or complex visual effects where the data that needs to be streamed onto the processor and the math involved is small in relationship to the processing necessary, multiple physical or logical cores are of immediate benefit. In video editing applications, adding processor cores can be helpful where large amounts of decode and encode operations are necessary, say when editing highly compressed HDV or AVCHD footage. In applications where the material is less compressed, or even uncompressed, multiple processor cores become less of an advantage as the dataset that needs to be moved becomes larger, but requires less processing, moving the speed burden to hard drives and buss speed.
NVIDIA has recently started focusing on their CUDA technology. CUDA is what gives software manufacturers a way to tap into the processing architecture of NVIDIA's powerful graphics cards to complete processes that may or may not be display or graphics related. NVIDIA uses parallel processing to get the speed from their configuration. While the cores may be smaller, there are a LOT more of them. The Quadro 5800 card for instance, has 240 processor cores. One example of utilization of this kind of processing is the CUDA-enabled RapiHD™ H.264 encoding plug-in for NVIDIA Quadro cards.
(Wikipedia's take on parallel processing-good general info.)
A way to picture the relative capability of an 8 core CPU and a 240 core GPU might be to picture five decks of cards being dealt out. With eight dealers, each dealer has 32.5 cards to distribute...with 240 dealers, each one distributes 1.083 cards. Even when we take into account that the 240 processor cores are smaller, the share of the load they have to carry is MUCH smaller and the processing is all happening at the same time. The 8 dealers may be very fast but they can't throw 32 cards out at the same time and expect them to fall neatly in front of each player in the proper rotation...they have to go one at a time. They may be dealing cards out of a pitching machine at a velocity that could severe a human limb, but the cards still have to be handled one at a time-serially. In the case of the 240 dealers in parallel, they also handle the cards one at a time with the one caveat that all but 20 of them are only handling one card with one destination. Which way do you think would be faster?
I think that GPU based processing is one of the most interesting areas of computer processing to keep an eye on... With GPUs becoming available to handle instructions along with ever more powerful CPUs, I don't think that the exponential growth in computing speed and power will be leveling off anytime soon. This technology is even being deployed as the primary processor in specialized workstations...learn more about Tesla here.

TimK

Sasquatch...The Loch Ness Monster...and Magenta

I came across this article on biotele.com (a site that calls itself the "neurostimulation portal" which seems appropriate, looking at the home page design) that explains why...spectrally...magenta does not exist.

It's an interesting article for those of you who are interested in color theory and how the human brain perceives color.

TimK

Slumdog Millionaire wins "Best Film"...without much film at all.

Slumdog Millionaire is truly one of those inspirational filmmaker stories. We never get tired of an underdog and a low budget film about a poor person in India is about as un-commercial as you can get in the feature film industry.

The recognition for the film (to date) includes:

2008 Camerimage Film Festival "Golden Frog" Award for best-in-class visual aesthetic and technical values

National Board of Review of Motion Pictures "Best Film for 2008"

American Society of Cinematographers nominates Anthony Dod Mantle, BSC for Outstanding Achievement Award for Slumdog Millionaire.

A total of four 2009 Golden Globe Awards






Nominated for ten Academy Awards

Received 8 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Directing, Cinematography and"Film" Editing.


In addition to being amazing, it's also a "film" that was acquired, in the majority, digitally. (depending on who you're quoting and whether or not you refer to raw footage or finished screen time the figure sits around 60-70%).

There has been a LOT of buzz around some Digital Cinema Cameras, but this one has been a bit under the radar.

The Silicon Imaging 2K and 2K Mini are now officially cameras of legitimate capability... Actually they really aren't two cameras. The 2K Mini is the sensor assembly alone and works by ethernet link to a fast laptop, which constitutes the 'processing' portion of the camera body, complete with viweing LUTs and an onboard version of Iridas SpeedGrade embedded for viewing picture adjustment. The full SI 2K takes the mini and inserts it into a full camera body with all the processing and storage on board, including the embedded version of SpeedGrade, no laptop required. If you have the full SI-2K, you already have the Mini, just detach it from the full body and connect it to the body via ethernet and you have a dash cam or POV camera with a full body on .

The camera uses a Super 16mm sized Bayer sensor (for more on Bayer, see my blog post on the Bayer patent from 12-14-08).

The workflow-favored format for the camera to write to is CineForm RAW, which is a high quality, compressed RAW motion picture format that has several post workflow options for editing directly inside an NLE without 'flattening' the image.

(**I should probably point out that I was involved a bit with this camera's testing prior, and shortly after its release, as well as involved with CineForm products, so I am probably not without my biases...)

Congratulations to everyone involved with Slumdog Millionaire, and congratulations to Silicon Imaging and CineForm.

Links for more info:

Slumdog Millionaire at IMDb

Silicon Imaging

CineForm

So what qualifies as 'High Definition' Video?

One basic criteria often referenced for high definition video is having at least four times the resolution of standard television (double the pixels horizontally and vertically). However...

A significant source of confusion for production professionals migrating into HD delivery is that the accepted picture sizes for digital television distribution vary and not all are “high definition” by any modern standard we could apply. In the United States, the ATSC or Advanced Television Systems Committee has issued “Table 3” of picture formats for digital television, specifying 640x480, 704x480, 1280x720, and 1920x1080 as digital video display resolutions. Both the 640x480 and the 704x480 formats have interlaced and progressive variations at multiple frame rates, with the progressive scan versions often referred to as “extended” or “enhanced definition,” the spoken shorthand being “EDTV.” (HighDef.org has the chart, as well as a simplified version here.)

The two accepted frame sizes for HD, 1920x1080 interlace/progressive, and 1280x720 progressive are 16:9 aspect ratio picture formats.

1280x720 is not 4x as many pixels as standard definition video (it even falls short of 3x), but it is used as a progressively scanned image. Most professionals would agree that progressive scanning does allow for the perception of very high detail with the tradeoff being progressive scanning does sacrifice some aspects of the smooth motion of interlaced scanning at an identical frame rate.

Advocates for the 1280x720 progressive format point out that while 1920x1080 images may be larger in size, when the 1080 frame is interlaced the picture delivers only half of the picture content every 60^th of a second, while “720p” can refresh the entire image every 60^th of a second. In this scenario then, 720p would deliver only slightly fewer pixels over time than “1080i,” and it would be temporally “sharper.”

The comparison and debate over spatial resolution (frame size) and temporal resolution (frame rate) and whether one trumps the other didn’t begin here and it won’t end here either. However, it's probably significant to note that one large stock footage library has ceased placing new footage acquired as anything less that 1080...and the trend for program format for an increasing number of broadcast and cable networks is to simply require a 1080i master with the stipulation that footage may be acquired as 720p (not mastered) with prior clearance... Many local stations will undoubtedly drag their feet on upgrading local origination to HD resolutions in the present economy, but mastering you content in HD maximizes shelflife.

Each professional needs to take a hard look at what sort of projects they do and what kind of delivery requirements are involved. It does look as if mainstream program distribution is definitely pointing toward 1080.

John Galt of Panavision chats a bit in the pasture...

John Galt, Panavision's Senior Vice President of Advanced Digital Imaging (and I'm happy to say, a professional acquaintance of mine) has taken some time to chat with CreativeCow.net on pixel counts, dynamic range and a really interesting new technology that Panavision has in the queue called 'DynaMax' (Think HDR in motion).

Some of this discussion does come back to the point of what the human eye actually sees... The December 9th, 2008 entry here on the blog has some additional thoughts... see "Shoot it and they will...probably see it"

As always, I refer those of you with questions to watch Panavision's excellent videos on camera sensors, image sharpness and modulation transfer function, which are permanently linked in the right margin.

TimK