Sadly, the combination of lots of travelling during the last week (from Perth to Broome to Perth to Sydney and back to Perth all within in 7 days), the ‘excitement’ of Easter (and a broken front tooth now rubbing on my bottom lip) and trying to catch up has seen the inevitable happen The first bout of flu’ for the season.

Well I say ‘flu as we all do, when in all truth was know it is just a cold. And a bad cold is akin to Bird Flu. This is not that, although it is bad enough you could photograph it. Either way, between sneezes, coughs, splutters or Codril, this is a short blog this week.

On the plane between crocodiles and trophies we didn’t win, I saw a lot of TV. The plane to Broome was a sad little 717 where all passengers shared the one movie but the Perth – Sydney return flights were brand spanking new Airbus 320s with a screen each and around 300 channels (it seemed) to choose from. As is my want, I watched a lot of Top Gear.

I have waxed lyrical about the quality of the shooting in this show, and their adventurous and subtle use of Cokin filters to create the Top Gear ‘look’ as we call it in Australasian Camcorder magazine. But listening through headphones brought in a new dimension as well; the audio. I have mentioned before that audio is as important as the image quality in video, but not really discussed the quality of the audio. When it is done well, it makes an amazing difference.

Try it and see. Get a favourite movie out on DVD (or better, on Blu-ray) and have a listen. Then have a look at some of the tools you can use to accent your own video projects. My software of choice here is Sony Sound Forge, but Audacity which is shareware is also very good.

The shift in what is possible production wise today, compared to barely three years ago is mind boggling. Not just from a technical aspect, but what we are capable of doing that just seemed – well – impossible in the past.

For example, I have just finished an interview with Karla Grant, the Executive Producer and Presenter of Living Black on SBS television. It was all done via email and phone, and although the full time frame was over 6 weeks due to commitments at both ends, the actual ‘real’ time was possibly less than two hours.

That’s a double page spread with images destined for Australasian Camcorder magazine and also its web site.

That was last Friday. I had been chasing an interview with another personality for some weeks as well. He’s a little hard to pin down due to the nature of what he does, but after leaving some messages on various phone numbers I had, later on that afternoon he rang me, totally out of the blue. The next thing I know is that I am on a Qantas flight to Broome in the far north of Western Australia to interview Malcolm Douglas, the well known filmmaker and crocodile farm owner. In fact, I see him in just over an hour.
That’ll be another double page spread at least, with pictures and hopefully some video I can place on line.

Sitting next to me on the plane was the WA Police Commissioner. It just occurred to me that, whilst in reality he was deep in conversation with an offsider for the two hour flight, maybe with my run of luck, I could have asked to do a story on the Police Video Unit.

So what has changed? It seems more people have become aware that their exposure to other than ‘trash mags’ and tabloid TV is now important. It is also true that reduced airfares in particular have made it easier to get around (just this week Singapore Airlines and then Qantas slashed return airfares to London via Singapore to $1400 return. That’s half the cost of an ad on outside back cover).

But access to small portable mini DV and HD cameras, good mics and editing facilities in laptops have also contributed a monstrous benefit.

I mean, this piece has been penned by the pool and sent via 3G. How good is that!

The launch of One HD, the new free-to-air sports TV channel run by Channel 10, caused a bit of a flutter over the weekend. Using the Australian Formula One Grand Prix as its flagship program, many other programs were also shown showcasing sport at its visual best we are told.

But was it?

While in the main, on my laptop using a Compro capture USB stick and Windows Media Center, my office 27” LCD and upstairs on a 50” LCD, the video and audio was quite good, I noticed differences in quality at various times of the day. For example, the races in the GP telecast of a “lesser” interest to many such as the GT cars, seemed far better quality than the big race itself. And on the Saturday in particular, the V8 Supercars at one point were virtually unwatchable with much digital interference, frame dropping and stuttery audio.

Why would this be so? This is supposed to be digital broadcasting at its finest. Atmospherics shouldn’t affect it, I have boosters on my antennae (and besides, all other digital channels were fine including ABC HD) so what would cause this.

Channel 10 would never divulge if in fact they were using HD cameras – they cost big bikkies – but I’ll give them here the benefit of that doubt. Certainly studio shots were crisp and clean and it appeared pit shots were the same. I haven’t yet hooked up the surround sound amp. So cannot comment on whether it was true 5.1 audio, but if they so and it wasn’t, that claim would not have lasted long!

A quick discussion with Steve Turner, a writer for my magazine Australasian Camcorder, who full times as a director and producer for Channel 7 may have solved the problem.

Without getting into technicalities, let’s assume that a TV station has 100 bandwidth units over three “normal” channels and one high definition channel (complete with 5.1 audio). To get the very best out of the HD channel, this might take up 70 bandwidths so the other channels hum along on 10 bandwidths each. It’s not high def so no one really notices a slightly less than average quality and audio is hardly affected at all.
But what if suddenly the three normal channels need more bandwidth for some reason? In this case, the hi def channel might get cut to only say, 50 bandwidths, and the quality of the video and audio will certainly degenerate. This is apparently what happened during the F1 broadcasts over the weekend.

This very problem is why, I am told, that some free-to-air channels are doing bugger all with their digital channels – they just don't have the bandwidth to cope and so they have the same program on different channels.

The answer of course lies in successive governments having it seems no clue about the digital changeover. I won’t be holding my breath until they get it sorted.

I was going to do a piece on a specific piece of kit tonight that I have, is VERY impressive, every video editor should have one and it also actually works across all applications, not just video editing applications.

But when I asked for pricing and delivery information, and some photos, I was gently reminded of the non disclosure clauses I had signed that are valid until Thursday midnight coming, and the penalties for breaking them. I am guessing that testicles attached to a 12v battery are not a pleasant thing.

But this thing while not unique, is a serious advancement on the standard input devices available for computers. The mouse has been around forever, trackballs seem to have vanished and I don’t know about you, but touch pads annoy the hell out of me. Worse, are those little stick things in the middle of the keyboard on a laptop.

So sorry, you’ll have to wait. But I promise it’s worth it.

And with a neat segue, while I was testing this gizmo today I had the back arrow key fail on my Acer Ferrari 5000 laptop. Now this was a tad annoying as not being the best typist in the world – hell to paraphrase, I am not even the best typist in the room and the only other member is Budweiser the dog – so I use the back arrow a lot. But do you know the cost of getting it fixed? All that has happened is the clipping system to hold the key in place has cracked, so a what, piece of plastic worth 5c plus etching of the keycap?

$229!!

$60 for the replacement of the whole keyboard and the rest is labour. I am told Dell is worse, and Apple is off the scale.

Extortion in my book.

I like order. It allows me to look at things in a balanced way, make the appropriate decisions at the appropriate time and see clearly. I am not a freak about it mind you – I’ll leave that to the mad woman at the supermarket yesterday who asked – no, INSISTED – that all her groceries be packed alphabetically. I kid you not.

In film making, having a vision of what you want makes it easier to get to the end product. This is why it is so important to do things such as shot logging, taking notes on location, having a proper script to work from and so on. But to make things easier for you, a few tools I find are a great help, and with the assent of cloud computing, they can even be free!

The two major ones are a good word processor and an easy to use spreadsheet. What makes a good word processor? In this case, that it has an outlining feature. As well as for general writing, outlining for me is indispensable for scripting as it is so easy to move sections to new areas, swap subsections and change styles very easily. In the absence of a dedicated scriptwriting package, you can’t go past it.

The spreadsheet is used for shot logging tapes from the camera and marking scenes in order of order, takes as best to worst etc. All of this is simply catalogued by the time code and can be referred to again and again. Done correctly, these shot logs can be exported from Excel to a database with a tape naming convention added and you have a readymade catalogue available to recall any scene you have taken on any tape you keep.
Master time saver when you simply want a generic shot of something.

I have an Excel version of a basic shot logging system I am happy to make available to anyone that wants a copy. Simply send an email requesting it to david@australasiancamcorder.info