SD Cards, the Future, and You

Remember how DVDs were the next big thing? Or maybe for some of you, cassette tapes? Well I’m saying that the next big thing in media acquisition and delivery is the SD (Secure Digital) card. Now before some of you get on my back about internet delivery, hear this: even though the internet has provided a great way to deliver content, producers still need to account for people who are behind the cutting edge of technology, not to mention the psychological satisfaction of actually receiving a physical item. Perhaps in a decade the majority of the United States, and likely the world will have internet fast enough to satisfy all requirements, but until then, we need a new format to subside with. SD anyone? I can’t speak for everyone, but I’d rather not wait an hour for my HD movie to download when I can have it now off a piece of plastic the size of a postage stamp.

Cost for a card has dropped to a fraction of what it was 3 years ago, and capacities have increased nearly a hundred fold. Speeds have increased, and continue to do so. People want their content–now. Faster, more reliable. and likely soon to be cheaper than a CD or DVD, SD provides that speed for a transitioning user base whether it’s being used for audio, video, image or data storage.

Beyond content delivery, SD, and it’s newer, faster SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) variant has also become the recent standard for acquisition. Big names Canon, Nikon and Panasonic have all caved into the pressure to make SD the media of choice for consumer and prosumer grade point-and-shoot and DSLR cameras, and now a card that holds around a thousand pictures costs less than a roll of film. Its acceptance has made it cheap, universal, and available. What’s not to like?

SD has been in my mind for the last few months due to its relevance in the video production world. As tape-based formats such as HDV are in their way out, the obvious next step is a tapeless workflow, giving higher resolution, better data rates, faster transfers, and greater durability.

There are really only a few choices for this in the sub-$10,000 category of video: a segment with many independent producers such as myself. P2 cards, designed for Panasonic camcorders such as the HPX-170, give the greatest data rates but also have the most substantial price, well over $1,000 for a 32GB card, which in turn produces about 3 hours of top-quality video–let me remind you that one hour DV/HDVtapes are about $3. P2 cards are rather large, however, as they are designed to fit in the 54mm slot on some laptops- bad news for Mac users.

Sony’s answer to this is the SxS Pro Expresscard format–essentially the “new” laptop card format, coming in at 34mm. Compatible with their XDCAM EX camcorders, the SxS Pro sticks are also quite pricey, comparable to P2 at similar capacities. One answer to this price hurdle was made by a company called e-films, with their MxR Adapter product. The MxR allows the inexpensive SDHC format to be used inside an Expresscard carrier, eliminating the need to exclusively use Sony’s format.

The SDHC cards are mainly being used now by Panasonic, Canon and JVC. Of most note is Panasonic’s HMC150 camcorder, which records to SDHC cards up to 64GB in capacity. To compare costs with the other formats, a 32GB SDHC card costs about $270. JVC recently released several camcorders that record to the cards, and its only a matter of time before Canon, who has been manufacturing consumer models with SD acquisition for several years, releases new prosumer models that also use the specification.

Solutions for file-based acquisition have been around for a while, but so far have been expensive or limited in functionality for real-world situations. In my opinion, the FireStore, a hard drive based recorder did not meet the needs of all productions due to its limited storage space, physical size and dependence on a battery. This being said, it’s essential that the tapeless format be fully integrated into the camera.

There are also a number of negatives for SD including a 4GB file limit, the fragility of the card’s connectors, and the current data limit of the cards for higher quality recording. I do think, however, that most of these can be corrected by software updates, manufacturing practices and the general advance of technology in making newer versions, or as SDHC cards are concerned “classes.” Currently Class 6 cards are some of the top rated for video acquisition, maxing out at around 24Mbps for AVCHD.

For more on AVCHD, see last week’s post.

I’m not the only one banking on a bright future for SD. In the latest release of Apple’s MacBook Pro has ditched the Expresscard slot for one that supports SD. Keep in mind that the MacBook Pro is designed for media professionals. It doesn’t leave much for manufacturers to realize that they want their products to work with perhaps the hottest laptops on the market. Taking all of this into account, I hope to be producing entirely tapeless products from start to finish: shooting, storing and delivering on SDHC, or another similar format within the next year or so. With any luck, the normal consumer will adapt to the technology smoothly, perhaps with devices offering multiple options for viewing such as DVD/VCR combo players, making content delivery easier, more affordable and more compatible than it’s ever been before.

No Love for AVCHD

I was surprised today by the release of the latest incarnation of Apple’s video production suite, Final Cut Studio 3. The update was sudden and without warning, no mention of it graced the presentations at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in June or the giant NAB (North American Broadcaster) show in Las Vegas the month before. Nevertheless, in these days of rapidly progressing digital media, the advancements found in the new programs are quite relevant to modern workflows. Tighter integration between editing and compositing programs is one major selling point of the suite, as well as greater automation to speed production. Apple added 5 new flavors to the already popular in house PRORES codec, from an offline quality to a full 4:4:4:4 finishing codec. I found everything I expected and more in the hundreds of upgrades, except for one thing: native AVCHD support.

For a few years now, consumer camcorders have been using a codec called AVCHD, an MPEG4-based compression scheme that has remarkable quality at quite a low data rate. In fact, the compression is twice as efficient as widely popular tape-based HDV, not to mention the resolution is an actual 1920x1080 pixels, compared to the 1440x1080 of HDV. First used as a strictly consumer format, AVCHD began to move its way up the ladder to prosumer and professional demographics when the data rate being recorded by the cameras surpassed that of other formats, such as HDV. Around 2008, Canon and Panasonic (as well as several others) offered cameras with a data rate of 24Mbps, nearly that of HDV at 25Mbps. Considering the efficiency of AVCHD compression, and the option of uncompressed audio, the new format became a viable option for those looking for an affordable way of recording HD programming.

Now that you know your history...

Final Cut Pro, the central editing component in Final Cut Studio is now in its 7th revision. It touts itself as a program that can handle nearly any type of video format with ease. Apparently not AVCHD. The Final Cut solution to AVCHD is to first convert to Apple’s PRORES. I’m not saying this is a bad thing. In fact, it’s probably what I would do myself if I had a camera that shot AVCHD. The reason for doing this is to ease the computer’s processor during editing. Because the codec is so compressed, the computer needs to work hard to uncompress the footage for editing, slowing down the work unless one has a sufficiently fast machine – compression is an entirely different topic I’ll have to cover at a different time, but you get the idea. AVCHD is fully supported in iMovie ’09, shipped free with every new Mac computer. All I’m asking is for the $1000 flagship video editing program to support it, should someone choose to edit natively. One instance I might find it useful would be quickly cutting together vacation footage or the like. PRORES takes a lot of hard drive space, not to mention time to convert. Hacking together a few shots to put up on YouTube shouldn't have to take long in the world’s most advanced editing software. Video editors have some of the most powerful computers on the planet, for some reason, I don’t think that a little extra processing power is going to be a big deal for most, especially if the projects are kept simple. For someone serious about video production, they understand what AVCHD is, know when to use it, and know when to encode to something different – a choice that countless iMovie users don’t even have.

Sony’s Vegas editing software has natively cut AVCHD footage for some time now, and as more and more cameras are being offered in the flavor, it’s only logical for other software manufacturers to follow suit. In the brand new MacBook Pro I purchased last month is an SD card slot. A large percentage of current camcorders record to cheap SD or SDHC cards, in you guessed it, AVCHD. It would seem logical for Apple to fully support the format they are fully aware of, as the expresscard slot was removed for the SD option. The top-of-the-line Sony EX-1 and EX-3 camcorders record to the Final Cut Pro supported XDCAM EX format, yet Apple removed the way to transfer the files by eliminating the expresscard slot in the 15” MacBook Pros. I’m not saying I don’t like my computer, but sometimes things seem a bit backwards. Maybe someone will realize this soon enough and offer a fix in the next Final Cut Pro update.

Next Time: SD cards, the future, and you.

Current Trends - Red Marketing

Perhaps it’s coincidence, but as of late, I’ve been seeing a new sort of trend in print and electronic marketing. It’s not the green revolution, and it’s not the customized content phenomenon; what I’ve noticed simply concerns the hair color of models and actors. Red, in a manner of speaking, has become the new black.

Yesterday a red-haired woman was selling me Zyrtec, then two commercials later, an entire family was having a Target sponsored picnic, their hair all matching the red, Bullseye logo. Looking at all the commercials I’ve seen in recent weeks that contained people, redhead actors occupy at least 25% of them, sometimes it seems closer to half.

It seems like everywhere I turn, a red-headed man, woman or child is trying to sell me a new product or service. Perhaps it is the novelty of it all that fuels the craze. Every type of business is trying to separate themselves from the competition, but the claim of providing something fresh and different needs to be accompanied by the perfect face to sell it. What better way to market an idea as original than to have what most people would consider a “rare” kind of person using it– a stand out individual promoting what companies hope will be a stand out product.

In the past years consumers haven’t seen many ads with red-headed people. For the longest time, blonde hair was the staple of standard marketing practice. In my opinion, people simply got bored. A characteristic initially used to make people stand out became the norm, requiring a progression in the cycle of public interest. Blonde hair may come back into style, but consumers need time to forget about it; perhaps for several decades, making now the time for a new push in establishing a norm. Though it is inevitable that the very thing that is new and different cannot stay that way for very long. As marketers begin to see a positive response in a certain tactic, its appearance becomes saturated within the market.

Hollywood actress Amy Adams even claims that dying her once blonde hair to red got her more work, appearing frequently as “kooky,” fun-loving characters. It must be a good time for auburn actors in the marketing business; maybe now is time for the rest of us to go out and buy it in a box.

Movie Review - Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

We all knew going into the theater that day that the movie we were about to see would be big, bold, and filled with more action than the average person could possibly stomach. Director Michael Bay brings Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen to theaters this summer, following the huge blockbuster success of Transformers in 2007.

The story of the last film builds in the sequel with the main protagonist, Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBouf) preparing for college. Besides having a shape shifting Camaro in the garage, Sam also bears the secret of the Autobots: a robotic alien race now enlisted by the United States military to hunt down evil Decepticons. When Sam discovers a remaining piece of the power-giving All Spark, the Decepticons give chase, calling upon The Fallen to destroy the Sun and bringing an end to the earth. Its up to Sam and his bombshell girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox) to uncover the secret of The Fallen and save the world from a dark end.

I went to Revenge of the Fallen expecting robots, things blowing up, and Megan Fox - I got what I was looking for. The first scene of the movie shows a military attack on an evil Decepticon robot disguised a bulldozer. As waves of marines and helicopters swarm toward the machine, it springs to life and rears up into a 300-foot-tall behemoth that cruises down a Chinese highway squishing cars like bugs. Five minutes have passed it and already seems like the climax of any other movie you’d see on a Saturday afternoon.

The explosions are battle scenes are without a doubt the most intense I’ve ever seen in a movie. Michael Bay Employed the actual US military, so from planes, tanks, submarines, and aircraft carriers to foot soldiers, what you’re seeing a lot of the time is the real deal. There’s enough dust, smoke and fire in the movie to block out the sun, and be ready for a full assault on a remote desert outpost. High-altitude jumps, a rail gun, Blackhawk helicopters, and assault rifles with a dozen accessories are enough to complete any guy’s movie checklist. It’s all there, and it makes for a good time.

Two expectations down, one to go. The scene introducing Mikaela involves her draped over a motorcycle, painting a design on the gas tank. A golden glow illuminates her as the camera moves across. It was a well put together shot. In fact, it was a slow-motion-inducing, jaw-dropping, girlfriend-punching-you-in-the-arm kind of shot. Visuals are spectacular in the film, whether they involve its characters or varied world landscapes. The level of detail found in the robots is incredible; and the animations during transformation from vehicle to standing bot are without a doubt from the very finest in Hollywood and ILM. Apart from the amazing lighting found in every shot, I found the seemingly constant camera movement particularly captivating. The level of care to keep the camera moving up, down and around at all times is remarkable. It’s quite fun to watch, and really helps to sell this movie as an over-the-top, blockbuster hit.

There are, however, a great number of times in the movie where things are a bit heavy-handed or completely overdone. One example that comes to mind is when the time comes for Sam to leave Mikaela. The camera circles the pair 720˚ (yes 720˚!) as The Fray’s Never Say Never blares “Don’t let me go” in the background. Much of the music in the movie seemed forced, including another appearance from Linkin Park, but it did implement what is currently culturally relevant. Comedic content is hit or miss, and it altogether saturates the movie. I had quite a few chuckles, such as Mikayla struggling to get Sam to say “I love you” throughout the movie, but was a bit surprised on a few profanities and racy punch lines that involve a pair of robots voiced in a very obvious, “urban” fashion.

I’ll come right out and say it, Revenge of the Fallen is not a good film. Sure, the visuals are great and the acting isn’t horrible, but there is absolutely no subtlety. It’s a point A to point B story fed to you bite by bite, with hardly any room for narrative development or character growth. But before you write it off from your weekend movie fix, hear this: it was a lot of fun. That’s right, the movie was wonderfully entertaining, and because of that I would recommend it to anyone looking for an exciting trip to a sci-fi action experience. One warning, at over two and a half hours the movie gets to be a little long and perhaps too intense for everyday moviegoers, so be prepared to commit some time to this one.

So how does one rate a bad movie that they liked? Maybe I’ll break the rules a bit and give it two ratings, the first for its quality as a film and the second for sheer enjoyment.

Official Score: 2.5 Stars out of 5

Enjoyment Factor: 4.5 Stars out of 5

Combined Score: 3.5 Stars out of 5

Trailer