iiSight
from Apple isn't just a plaything; I've been using it
with producers such as Whit Runmel, who operates out
of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. A former Marine,
former housing contractor and BU College of
Communications graduate, Whit is a busy and talented
fellow. His original screenplay, THE SECRET BOY, which
takes place in New England, recently won a fellowship
from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts &
Sciences’ Nicholl Fellowships Screenwriting
Competition, and he's developing several meaty video
projects for HBO and other venues. On and off over the
years I’ve edited several of his documentary and
corporate video projects when he operated as Witcom in
Boston.
At
the moment I'm helping on one of his cable show
proposals, delivering a sampling of DVCAM
footage from a prison documentary he's shooting with a
talented local North Carolina crew-- and I'll be able
to detail the project more completely in a future
article as the project moves forward. The point is,
although Whit is originally from Massachusetts and
Maine, he can't always travel up here for post work.
Yet, when I expressed an interest in helping get the
project going, we sketched out some scenarios for
internet review to get it done more or less
interactively, he sent up his tape sources so I could
capture them, cut them, and thus was born the CLEX--
Co-Located Edit Experiment, using iSight, OSX, Final
Cut Pro on my desktop G4 Macintosh tower, and an IKEA
desk lamp.
 |
|
iSight,
unlike other webcams, comes with several
flexible mounts
like the magnetic stem attached to this desk
lamp,
perfect for quick repositioning during
a conference. Photo by Loren Miller |
The
CLE workflow is simple enough and there are some
interesting choices in how to send cut material to a
client. The "live" method relies on a webcam
link and a cable modem or DSL subscription, the faster
and broader the better. Using iSight and MacOSX iChat
software I was able to go online live with a fellow
feature editor in Australia for two hours. The editor,
Nick Meyers, proved he was in Australia by pointing
the camera out the window to show me a beautiful sunny
summer day—at my place it was midnight in January in
Boston. We traded clips from films we’d cut by
switching from camera to direct deck playback, which
iChat and other software supports, with impressive
results. In the entire two hours, only one
interruption forced a relink. He didn’t even have an
iSight on his end—he plugged in a FireWire DV
camera! Worked beautifully.
Notice
in the photo the iSight is suspended upside down under
my IKEA desk lamp—this makes for easy aiming and
positioning to either a computer timeline screen, or
bin window—the client can actually pick shots-- or
playback monitor, accompanied by a soft even uplight
if needed.
Through
the miracle of a true Cool Tool costing $8.00 called
iGlasses (www.ecamm.com/mac/iglasses/)
I can reverse and flip the outgoing image to normal,
even though the camera is upside down. iGlasses has
some other tricks up its sleeve—it allows you to
manually focus the iSight—down to 1 inch. You could
in fact send your fingerprints over the web to your
client, and I have no idea why, but it’s extremely
cool. For example, macro-focus would be very useful in
posting a video about stamps or coins. IGlasses offers
many ways to enhance the image.
When
I'm ready to send review material I’m cutting, I
train my suspended iSight onto my broadcast Trinitron,
and simply playback the timeline. While playing, I am
listening for client remarks. On a “good” day, the
client can view the cut material without dropouts, and
if bandwidth permits, he can annotate by voice in
real-time. You learn quickly to say “over” or
“go” when finished talking to allow your
respondent to start talking. This isn’t full duplex
phone communication. But your client can watch
as changes occur as you make them, and review/approve
them, as though sitting at the producer's desk behind
you. Not bad for the price of a DSL connection!
If
the connection is challenged, producer can go into
iChat's text chat and send back notes. When it works,
it's great: there is enough image fidelity so that he
can make sense of the cut, and the audio almost never
fails. We're pioneering all this using older QuickTime
6.5-- on my end, a desktop G4. On Whit's end, a
PowerBook, and as he uses no camera on his end, it's
merely a "one-way video chat," an option in
iChat. Ironically, I’ve had more trouble connecting
with Whit in North Carolina than with Nick in
Brisbane, Australia. We’ve discovered his office DSL
connection lies behind a corporate firewall and it’s
possible the required broadband port is not open, for
security reasons. Such things must be investigated
before you invest heavily in CLE.
As I
write this, MacOSX 10.4 (AKA "Tiger") is
being released, and one of its new components is
QuickTime 7 and a powerful, scalable new flavor of
MPEG-4 video compression called Advanced Video Codec
(AKA "H 264"-- no, not a congressional act).
It is so flexible and low in bandwidth requirement it
can be used to compress video for cell phones, or web
conferences, or DVD's! The new Tiger iChat will allow
not one but multiple-person web conferencing using H.
264. I expect to report on this too in the near
future.
If
peer-to-peer connections are dicey, there are services
dedicated to helping you get connected. For
example,iVisit, (www.ivisit.com)
is totally platform agnostic, offering several choices
of service, including a freebie for evaluation, and as
low as $40.00 a year for "serious" web
video. And while these services send and receive
heavily compressed motion images, they are not
"postage stamp" windows anymore! Consider
that traditional videoconferencing involves
essentially a small TV station with production staff
and satellite links, costing hundreds more, per hour!
We
now have ability to quickly compress an edited offline
sequence directly from an Avid Express Pro or Final
Cut Pro station to a format specifically for a
platform (like Windows Media Player, although it also
has a Mac player) or just one popular cross-platform
format (QuickTime). The resulting review file can be
uploaded to a dedicated server to avoid clogging
limited-storage email accounts. For example, I
use my $99.00-a-year Dot-Mac account (www.mac.com)
and upload review files to my public folder for my
clients. No live connection needed here. I just send
them my account name and password, the window opens,
they download. This is "time-shifted” or
“near-time review."
With
such new tools and services, Co-Located Editing is
becoming real, and offers extended reach to post
craftspeople of all kinds, from audio designers, to
voiceover talent, to effects mavens, to plain old
editors, allowing producers to use talent they've
found or been referred to, regardless of distance or
mobility.
Today,
even your salary can come to you via PayPal email!
It's
a new world of very cool tools indeed.
When
he’s not co-locating an edit, Loren S. Miller works
as a freelance writer , graphic designer, and
developer of KeyGuides™ for computer users needing
keyboard shortcuts at a glance. Visit www.neotrondesign.com
and reach Loren anytime at lormiller@mindspring.com
