I have been having skippy jumpy footage issues with both my 5D and 7D. All the footage from Asia has skips in it. I can’t tell you how much angst this has caused. When I was opening the h264 files in Quicktime, they skipped, sometimes very badly. Converting to ProRes in StreamClip or Compresor and opening in Final Cut got the same results. I tried different card readers, a USB reader, different cards, different hard drives, everything short of an exorsism. I uploaded the h264 captures into Smug Mug and they were better, but there was still skipping, now in random places. I checked all 3 of my Macs, the skipping varied, but it was always there to some extent. No one had an idea what was going on, not Canon, not Apple, and I could find nothing on this on the web. Then on call number 3 to Apple, I was lucky enough to get a great tech support guy on the Final Cut line. The deal is that there is something slightly off in the CODEC of the files straight out of the camera. Why, I have no idea, especially since it is happening in every possible configuration. The solution is to open a new project in Final Cut. Open a new bin and place the clips into it. Then batch export the clips to a new folder on the hard drive. Close that project, open another new project and import the converted clips. I used ProRes 422 1920×1080 30p. They play just fine now. If anyone has any idea why this is happening out of the camera I would very much appreciate knowing.

I have been getting emails wanting more specifics on workflow and was about to make an entry on transcoding (changing the CODEC) on the 5DII footage so that FC can read it, but then I saw that Vince Laforet does a very good job of explaining it. The difference is that I use Compressor, rather than StreamClip, for no particular reason other than that is what I have always used. I do use StreamClip when I need to send off a compressed file though. The other great program I use is Squeeze, which is absolutely the best Flash convertor I have ever used. In fact, we just changed the flash player on the main site, and it is playing the FLV files a bit dark and contrasty, so I will be using Squeeze tonight to redo the files.

What are you doing right now? Are you doing the thing that you most need to do? I found myself a couple of days ago with pads of lists, setting up jobs in 3 time zones, coordinating with all the various suppliers, crew and location folks that entails. Then I found this scheduling software called Omni Focus. Super nerdy. But I love it. Synchs with my iPhone. Lots of online videos feature mondo nerd types explaining its merits and how to get the most out of it. But it works, or I should say it gets me to work. Now when I have moment somewhere, I can look up Context:Phone and start making calls off the list, no time like the present. I am not sure if having this sort of thing leads to wearing a belt holster for my phone, but who cares, I now have more time to do what I really like to do, and even better, the nagging worry the resides in the back of my head about, “what should I be doing, right now?” has gone away. Check it, you’ll love it.

I am not entirely sure what to make of this, but it was an exceptionally bad week for the world of the electron over here at studio DHS. Saturday, a visiting art director accidentally smashes a 500 gig spinning Iomega HD to the floor. Wrecked. Tuesday my never failing super designed Glyph crooked. Weds, one of my G5s onboard 500 gig drives failed. Friday, in a spasm of elctro failure, a brand new Light Panel unit starts to bleat, then fails, followed by a program failure at Smug Mug, then all the electricity in Marina del Rey goes out. Wow, did somebody put a hex on me? None this was tragic. We triple backup everything- at least 2 working copies on connected drives, a third copy on night time backup drives that we store on the other side of the room, and all the still images get burned into a library of DVD. Just in case of a nuclear holocaust, once a month I send to my mom’s garage in Oregon a big drive with everything we did that month. I guess that makes 5 backups on everything. The Glyph is being replaced by the super apologetic people at Glyph tech support in upstate NY, the Light Panel is being replaced by Samy’s, and we popped in a new onboard drive to the sick G5 for a hundred bucks. I had to put out some serious coin for a pile of new G drives and a couple more Glyph raids, just to be sure. I have decided that since an art director smashing a working drive to the floor was never part of the backup contingency plan, nor was 3 drives failing in 3 days, that we need to add another layer of protection. I can not tell you how much I am looking forward to the ram based drives becoming price competitive