Final Cut Pro 7, Mac OS X 10.7.5 and nVidia GT120 Aren’t Playing Nice

Posted by Eric Hansen - December 7, 2012 - Apple, SANs and Post Production, Tutorials

I’ve noticed this now on enough systems to call this a bug, and since it involves 2 out of date pieces of software and one out of date graphics card, it’s unlikely that Apple will address it. Problem: Skipping playback in the Canvas and/or Viewer windows in Final Cut Pro 7 on Mac Pros with […]

Quick Production Tip – Save Your Ticket Numbers for Airline Miles

Posted by Eric Hansen - June 12, 2012 - Production, Travel, Tutorials

When you get airline tickets for a trip, jot down the ticket number. You can then use this to get miles for the trip if it wasn’t booked with your Frequent Flier number. On most production trips, I don’t book my travel. The producer or their assistant does. Usually I’ll give them my frequent flier […]

Example Slate for Printing Your Tapes

Posted by Eric Hansen - October 31, 2010 - Apple, SANs and Post Production, News, Production, Tutorials

I’ve delivered tapes to many broadcasters and producers including NBC, National Geographic, Red Bull, etc. Their requirements are pretty similar, so it’s fairly easy to just use a generic template for all your tape prints. This is one I’ve been using for awhile. I will eventually add more templates for different uses, but this is […]

Difference Between Different ProResseseseseses, Offline/Online Tip

Posted by Eric Hansen - October 8, 2010 - Apple, SANs and Post Production, Color Grading, News, Production, Tutorials

This post is not technical. This is very simple. What really is the difference in quality between all the different flavors of ProRes? Currently there’s Proxy, LT, SQ, HQ and 4444. Proxy, LT, SQ and HQ are all 4:2:2 at 10bit, but at very different bitrates. I saw a comment by Shane Ross on his blog […]

SSD (Solid State Hard Drive) in a 3.5 yr old 15″ MacBook Pro – Overview

Posted by Eric Hansen - September 6, 2010 - News, Tutorials

I really wanted a new MacBook Pro. Mine was just getting old and sluggish. At 3.5 years old, I guess it’s time, but it’s in near perfect condition. I think the old Aluminum MBPs look better than the new Unibody ones with black keyboards anyway. I love the Expresscard slot, so if I bought a […]

Error: Out of Memory – WTF? I have 8GB of RAM!

Posted by Eric Hansen - August 7, 2010 - Apple, SANs and Post Production, Production, Tutorials

I just finished a commercial project that had a lot of high res still images. Anyone who’s used FCP for even a short period of time knows how terrible it is with images and .psd files. We started getting Out of Memory errors and due to the extremely long hours and tight turnaround, the editors […]

Tutorial: Adding Pulldown

Posted by Eric Hansen - February 27, 2010 - News, Tutorials

In an earlier tutorial, I addressed removing pulldown from 3:2 and 2:3:3:2 (24pA) sources. You can find this information all over the web pretty easily. But recently I found that I needed to ADD pulldown to a 23.98 edit to deliver it in NTSC SD. Many modern video cards like the AJA Kona 3 can […]

60i to 60p to 24p Slow Motion Conversion and the Resolution Myth

Posted by Eric Hansen - September 4, 2009 - News, Tutorials

The following tutorial requires Adobe After Effects. I’m not sure what versions this works on, but I’m using CS3 (8.0.2). A trial download of After Effects CS4 can be found here. I’m currently testing this conversion in Compressor and will post that tutorial later. At TGR, slow motion is a huge part of the process. […]

Pulldown Removal for HDV and P2

Posted by Eric Hansen - August 5, 2009 - News, Tutorials

I’m currently working on the post workflow for a year-long documentary about following wolf packs. The scientists are shooting on the RED One and various small cameras including the Canon HV20. The decision was made right away to do everything at 24p (actually 23.976p), which means every camera needs to be in this mode, and […]