Was not expecting this but when I upgraded to Aperture 3 I discovered to my surprise that it needs to upgrade all your thumbnails in your library which in my case took over 5 hours to complete. I started upgrading at 1pm and did not see the new updated programme till 6.15pm…just over 5 hours later. I think Apple should give you some warning about this as this could be critical to some photographers not being able to use Aperture for such a length of time. In previous versions this was done under the hood….YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED…this is an overnight upgrade !

I know this has been discussed on many other blogs, but while shooting part of a 3D project in London, from a public right of way several private “security  guards” tried to move us on and prevent us from shooting the exterior of their building. The law in the UK is actually quite clear on this: This extract is from the Met police web site:

“Freedom to photograph/ film

Members of the public and the media do not need a permit to film or photograph in public places and police have no power to stop them filming or photographing incidents or police personnel.”

In addition there are no laws preventing you from shooting normal people and buildings in the street, there are exceptions for military establishments, buildings covered by the official secrets act and nuclear power stations. But normal office buildings etc can be filmed at will. The security officers were from the Santander Building on Euston Road. We were not on their property and had gone by the book informing Camden council that we were going to be filming in the street, yet still they insisted we move on. For half an hour they obstructed us, behaving as though they had some kind of legal right to stop us filming (which they did not). Had it not been for the pressures of the shoot and the need to go to another location we would have called the police. It is getting harder and harder to carry out your legal right to film in public places. Contrary to popular belief you do not need to obtain a permit to shoot on the public streets of London (with the exception of Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square). Using a tripod is not illegal or a crime, however causing an obstruction is. To move you on for causing an obstruction the police would have to show that you are impeding the passage of others. Clearly if you are a big crew it is wise to contact the authorities before hand to smooth the way and get assistance from the local authority. You do also need to consider that many seemingly public places may be private property and you may not be allowed to use a camera under the land owners terms of access. In this case the only offence you are committing is trespass which is a civil offence so you cannot be arrested. You should leave when asked and your equipment cannot be touched.

Article by Alister Chapman   www.XDCAM-USER.com

I have been hearing quite a few stories of cameras that are getting severe internal corrosion damage. It appears at first glance that perhaps newer, file based cameras are less well built than older tape cameras, but there is more to this than meets the eye.  I have heard several stories of EX’s and PDW’s that have required expensive repairs due to corrosion. I’ve also found similar stories with other manufacturers solid state cameras. So what’s going on? These are worrying stories especially considering what I do with my cameras, so I have looked into the problem in some depth and found a couple of things.

In all the cases I have heard about, the cameras have been stored after the shoot in Pelicases. Pelicases are excellent at keeping moisture out, but also at  keeping it in and this may be preventing the cameras from drying out. This is not a criticism of the cases, they are excellent and I have several. It is the way they are being used which is at fault. A camera with condensation on the inside will not dry out in a sealed Pelicase, giving the moisture time to do it’s evil work. Prevention is better than cure, so the best thing to do is to never put a cold or damp camera in a Pelicase.  The other thing to do is is to keep large packs of silica gel in the pelicase. The silica gel should be re-charged regularly by baking in an oven. Storing cameras in Pelicases long term is not always wise. I store my cameras in soft bags and this may be why I have not had any problems despite the harsh hurricane and extreme weather environments I work in.

Perhaps just as importantly, there is I think, also another factor at play here. With a tape camcorder if there is condensation inside the camera you get a “dew” warning. As well as preventing recording it also tells you that you have moisture inside the camera. At this point most people will do something to dry the camera out, it also makes you take more care in the first place as you don’t want a dew warning to prevent you from shooting. So I think that camera manufacturers should re-instate “dew” sensors on cameras. It could prevent a lot of unseen damage, perhaps it would just be a warning to tell you about the moisture but not prevent the camera from being operated.

Talking to a friend of mine tonight I got really angry as he told me his plight…He has been producing fantastic work for various “big name” companies and as a designer his work speaks for itself. The “big name” companies are now dragging their heals to pay him…the work is done, their fancy new designs are making them money and he is too proud and professional to “pull his work” till he gets paid…to the extent he has reached the end of his cashflow so he can’t pay his outstanding bills which sets up a vicious circle.

Why am I tell you this because we are all in the same boat, we all talk about workflows with our Canon 5Dmk2, Sony EX-3s but forget that a more important workflow, we should all be paying more attention to is “CASHFLOW”.

I like most of you are running small 1-2 people businesses and we are all held to task with our banks as we dare not cross the line between credit and debt…yet if “they” get into trouble they get 64 billion pounds to help them out. THEY have the Bank of England … WE have one measly £800 over draft and God help us if we use it up.

Banks today are no longer here to help small businesses even though we may have say for talking sake £5K to come in from various sources that are owed to us so my advice to small businesses are as follows…

1. Don’t be taken in by the “promise of more work”. Take my advice the 2nd job is a pipe dream.

2. Do not lower your price on the possibility of future work.

3. Tell the client you will invoice them in two parts, that helps your cashflow and keeps the bank happy.

4. If you are coming to the edge of your over draft phone the bank and put a case to them, tell them about payments owing to you, 99% of the time they don’t care but hang on to the 1% as that may be your bank manager.

5. Make a nuisance of yourself, phone the accounts dept. tell them your plight, you have done the work you are entitled to be payed…the 30 days are up. Write to the MD ask him if he/she can intervene, you have nothing to loose… by this time you no longer need or want further business from this company.

I get really pissed off when I hear good small companies being kicked around by big bullies when it comes to payment, there is no need to treat anyone like this in todays society…if only we had the power to stop their wages then the tables would turn.

It was a bit unnerving to say the least when Dennis Lennie showed us a deliberate but potentially fatal mistake during the making of his NanoFlash tutorial. We see a shot from his EX-3 footage showing a cameraman and all the viewfinder info is also in the shot.

I emailed Dennis to confirm he was using HD-SDI…so be warned…especially those of you who hire EX-3s that you need to have the SDI Out Display to the “OFF” position when using the NanoFlash otherwise you will record all the viewfinder info as well !

Yesterday evening I got an email from George Griswold from Video Now in Louisiana telling me he had been working with FCP-7 and the AJA io HD for over a month now.      www.videonow.info

I had a long think about this statement and came to the conclusion that George had upgraded Final Cut Studio rather than a fresh install. By upgrading his machine had retained the AJA settings and V6.0.3 firmware.

I was excited maybe if I installed the AJA firmware I too would get a working FCP-7 and AJA io HD. I downloaded the software from AJAs site and hey presto I also had FCP-7 working finally with my AJA.

This would be a good workaround till the new drivers appear so I did some preliminary tests to make sure the AJA was talking to my HD recorders and did some HM100 tests for someone else, everything was going smoothly…till…I tried to import a project from FCP-6 to FCP-7 and it crashed to the desktop. I repeated this 3 times and decided to re-install my FCP-6 SATA drive.

I can only assume that Mr Griswold has not had the need to import a project yet…how stable it is, time will tell but sadly I am back using FCP-6 on my second SATA drive.

After finding this out I thought it only fair to Email AJA with my findings…

“I’m pretty sure Engineering is aware of this issue but I will forward your findings to them just in case.
Regardless, I’m sorry for the delay but not too much longer.

Thank you for your patience.”

Best regards
Rudy

AJA Video Technical Support

Late last week, 9 to 5 Mac noted that a number of users have reported a Mac OS X Snow Leopard bug apparently related to Guest accounts that is resulting in a complete loss of user data. The problem appears to manifest itself on machines which had the Guest account option enabled under Leopard and were subsequently upgraded to Snow Leopard. Users booting their machines have reported that upon start-up, they have been logged into the Guest account. Upon switching to their regular account, the affected users have been finding all of their user data missing and unrecoverable except from a backup.

Further investigation revealed initial reports of the problem in early September, soon after Snow Leopard’s launch.

This could be due to a bug in how guest accounts are managed since data and settings are deleted from these accounts upon logout, but also could be from some corruption in the guest account. So far, it does not seem to be a widespread problem.

If this happens to you, immediately restore using your latest Time Machine backup (or other full system backup), and then go to the Accounts system preferences and disable log-in on the guest account.

One suggestion for preventing data deletion is for users who had Guest accounts enabled under Leopard and then upgraded to Snow Leopard to disable the Guest account and then reenable it. This results in fresh Guest account settings created under Snow Leopard, reportedly eliminating the problem.

Several threads on the issue have popped up on Apple’s support forums, but Apple has yet to make an official acknowledgement of the problem.

As a royalty free music business, we get asked many questions about copyright. There are numerous people that believe they can legally use up to 30 seconds of music without any legal repercussions and without having to seek clearance or a license.

Well, sorry to be the bearer of bad news…. This is simply not true and a bit of a modern myth.

Copyright law is complex and varies in different countries. US copyright law in particular, has a fair use clause, whereas here in the UK, there is no such clause.

This fair use copyright clause is misinterpreted by many who think that using up to 30 seconds of music is legal. The fact is that any use of music needs to be cleared or licensed. Even where copyright law includes a fair use policy the legal interpretation can vary considerably.

For instance, using a 10 second music clip as an intro to your podcast would probably not be classed as fair use, whereas using a 10 second snippet to critique a piece of music may be seen as fair use in copyright law. However, never assume you are covered by fair use copyright as there is no guarantee you will be safe.

I once heard an American music lawyer say… “When your use of music gets challenged you need a defence; having a license is always your best defence. If your defence is ‘fair use’ this will probably not be sufficient to save you in court.”

She went on to say that it is not worth the risk in nearly all cases.

A good rule of thumb is that it is not OK to use any amount of copyrighted music without permission from the rights owner or a music license. If you do feel fair use applies you will need to study the fair use guidelines for the copyright policy of your jurisdiction and to be completely sure you would need a music lawyer to confirm your belief for your particular circumstance.

In my opinion, it is going to be much easier, cheaper and less stressful to get royalty free music licenses from a reputable company.

Excerpt from http://www.mediamusicnow.co.uk/blog/2009/04/18/fair-use-music-copyright/

Many people are under the misconception that as long as music is not used for personal gain within a video then it’s fine to use… WRONG ! MCPS told me today if anyone wants to use copyright music on a video for online use they need to negotiate a price with that artists record label which could start from £1000 upwards.

YouTube are now excluding music from home made videos as they are not willing to pay the copyright fee. YouTube have recently struck an agreement to pay for the use of commercially made music videos eg. Those made by the record companies themselves.

I have been a long time campaigner (15 years) for production companies to pay a flat fee allowing us to use copyright music anytime we like but so far this has not happened.

I reckon if all the video production companies in the UK paid £250 a year it would rake in £1.25 million…that’s a lot of money to share between music producers and owners.

If for instance you are filming a wedding video you need to have a Limited Manufacture Licence now this licence starts from £8 allowing up to 5 DVD copies…plus you must have a PPL licence (Dubbing copyright music) costing £19.55.

To be completely legal for filming and copying 5 DVDs of a wedding is £27.55 and that still does not cover you for putting any part of the copyright music online.

Limited Manufacture Licence

http://www.prsformusic.com/users/musicforproducts/LM/Pages/LM.aspx

PPL licence via the Institute of Videography

http://www.iov.co.uk/showarticle.pl?id=29046;n=40

I get asked many times by corporate clients if they can use copyright music in their video, my stock answer is…” £1500 plus or copyright free music at zero cost”…copyright free wins every time.

There is actually no excuse these days for not using copyright free music as it’s far better than it used to be…here are some links to the ones I have used over the years…

Trackline Music    http://www.trackline.com/

NotePad Music   http://www.notepadmusic.com/

AKM Music   http://www.akmmusic.co.uk/

Digital Juice    http://www.digitaljuice.com/

SmartSound    http://www.smartsound.com/sonicfire/

I still do not know what the answer is to this problem but I would like to share a word of warning…I was filming yesterday and choose to film in SP 1080i mode as I had a 12 hour day. Now as we all know we do not film 12 hours of material in a 12 hour day but those precious 22 extra minutes per 16Gig card can be useful.

Now why did I choose 1080i and not 720p well firstly there is a lot of action footage and the final production ends up on SD DVD and watched mainly in the UK. A rule of thumb for filming in HD is as follows…

1. End result = DVD = interlace

2. End result = web = progressive

So I stupidly choose SP mode instead of HQ mode to “save on card space”. My 16G cards being SDHC Transend cards for archive purposes as this job will not be completed till sometime in July. So you start to see the picture…I was saving card space when I had at least three 16G SDHC cards with me and even at full HD would not fill 3 cards. 

So as they say in the good old Indiana Jones films “You choose badly”…why. I have an Apple Mac Pro with an AJA io HD box so I can afford to start with the best setting and down convert later if needed. 

To get to the point I was reviewing some of yesterdays shots and it came to the canoe section when I noticed square pixel boxing all over the water shots to be fair this will not be seen by the time it gets to an SD DVD but it’s there all the same. I have not experienced this before but I also have a nagging doubt that it may also be the cards fault as well.

In my own Sherlock fashon I took things back to basics and tried to re-create the problem without success…I filmed a sink of water at 1440 and 1920 but both looked fine although the 1920 was crisper looking as you would expect, but no blocking.

Fortunately 99% of the footage is fine and it spans 2h 24m using 3 cards I had forgot I had used 20mins of one of the cards last week. So my advice is as follows…

1. Only choose HQ mode for filming with the EX1, EX3

2. Web based productions look better shot with 720P 50

3. TV and DVD based productions look better with motion shot on 1920 x 1080i 50

4. If like me you need archive where the SxS card becomes a pain only use Transend Class 6 SDHC or Panasonic Class 10 SDHC cards.

My conclusions…

I doubt if this was card problems as the rest of the footage is fine and the SDHC card is only a problem if you are using over cranking as they do not work in this mode. You do not get a choice of HQ and SD for the sake of it…HQ gives you the best quality so don’t compromise for the sake of a £40 SDHC card !

UPDATE…It’s not a card problem it’s the technology, seemingly moving water is very hard for digital to understand and compresses it into wee square boxes, you only see this effect when you have moving water. I filmed further test footage this morning and it did not matter a hoot wether it was on HQ or SQ mode and I also filmed onto Sony SxS and SDHC both the same quality…though the HQ pictures were much punchier.

I have to admit I have not filmed a lot of water shots with this camera so I was caught out when I suddenly saw the square boxes in the moving water but as I can do nothing about it I will avoid filming water sports in the future. The best part about video is that you never stop learning.

If you want exposure on my web blog please supply a picture of the item you are writing about. I will not print any press releases unless accompanied by at least one decent resolution picture of your product.