A Symphonic Synchronization

Software developers are often more in-tune with the left, more technical side of their brains, while artists and performers are more inclined to utilize the right, more imaginative side of the brain. It’s rare to find someone who is able to so easily tap into both hemispheres, intertwining analytical thoughts with artistic expression – but we did.

San Diego native Patrick Walker and his wife Lea Ann are performing arts veterans, with surprisingly technical backgrounds. Both lend their vocal chords to the San Diego Master Chorale, while Lea Ann has been arranging music and orchestrating editorial pieces for a variety of live performances and area venues for 40-plus years. The couples’ passion for music and theatre eventually led to Patrick leaving his career as a software developer to pursue the arts full time with his wife. Combining their technical backgrounds (left brains) with their artistic talents (right brains), they formed WalkerVision Interarts.

In business now for over 20 years, WalkerVision is an audiovisual production company that specializes in multi-camera productions for San Diego’s thriving performing arts marketplace. WalkerVision maintains working relationships with the San Diego Master Chorale, the Lyric Opera San Diego, the San Diego Symphony and more; live switching as well as creating DVDs and Blu-rays of almost every act. With a strong background in film production, the Walkers rely on each other and their bulletproof workflow to produce flawless videos for each of their shoots.

What is it like working alongside family on projects?

My wife, Lea Ann, is a superb artist, with a great eye for shot composition and flow. It is great that we are able to enjoy the creativity and action of each project together.

I also work with my son Chris during the editing process. He manages cutting music videos and some of the shorter promo pieces using the Adobe Creative Suite platform, while I rely on Sony Vegas pro for the multi-cam editing on all our full-length performances.

What format are you filming in? What kind of cameras are you using?

We had sort of a shift in emphasis once HD became more affordable. We currently use three or four HDV camcorders – depending on the production. We have Sony A1U’s and Sony FX7’s. We archive everything on tape, but produce our products on disc.

Since you are filming these performances with HDV camcorders, is it hard switching the tapes and managing the workflow in general?

It varies per performance. We always coordinate with the show director ahead of time to see a rehearsal or earlier performance so that we can establish zones for not only the camera positioning, but important character entrances, special occurrences, intermissions, and any possible blocking to help us pinpoint when the right time to switch will be.

During a performance, are there any camera setups that you recommend?

It usually depends on the performance size, but it should definitely be at least a 3-camera shoot… One camera should be centered, and far away from the stage, for a wide-shot. This permits a view of the entire stage – you can catch all inferences, cross-stage dialogue, action… everything. The other 2 cameras should be closer to the stage, setup on the left and right flanks to catch the close-up shots. If you have 2 people filming a 3-camera live production, I recommend one person manning the camera in the back, and one person on either side of the stage for close-ups. After meeting with the show director ahead of time, you can get a sense of which side will have more of the action.

For larger performances, like the San Diego Symphony’s Summer Pops, we like to do a 4-camera setup. Similar to the 3-camera setup, we have 1 camera centered in the far back and 2 cameras on the left and right sides of the stage, but for this type of shoot, we have them on jib arms, so that they are able to obtain an elevated shot over the orchestra. We also set up an additional camera, centered behind the ensemble, to film the conductor. For these types of performances, we have another person that helps us, so that the only unmanned camera is the one that’s constantly filming the conductor.

How do you figure out who gets what shot?

It’s always an as-needed decision. We are interchangeable when it comes to camera angles, however I must say, shooting up close – especially if there is a lot of drama, action and movement – is much more demanding because you really have to shift around. So depending on how we are feeling that day, we will select who will get the job done better.

Also – as I mentioned, we like to have an overview of the performance ahead of time. If one of us knows more about the production than the other, they will be the one to do the close-up shots.

What about sound, do you usually plug into the soundboard?

We do, however the problem I’ve found with soundboards is that the house typically hooks up to the stage mics only, and it’s crucial to also record audience reactions and applause. We typically will record the audience with a separate higher-end mic for ambience, and even take sound straight from our cameras at times.

What is the most difficult project you’ve worked on, and why?

For us, the difficulty is never based on technology factors – it’s always artistic. The hardest performances to cover are “legitimate stage productions” – a.k.a. non-musical drama. Directors and actors make use of all the available space and time in a scene, via cross-stage dialogue and action. We have to be very careful to catch all of the action.

We know that PluralEyes is a part of your workflow; can you tell us a little about that?

PluralEyes is used on every one of our multi-cam shoots that we bring to post. Many of the groups we work with ask for DVD and Blu-ray copies of their productions, so this is where PluralEyes is a lifesaver. We actually just finished the Lyric Opera Production of “Fiddler on the Roof” archival DVDs for their company and actors, as well as Blu-ray. At the same time, we did the same for a chamber music concert at the Department of Music at University of California, San Diego (UCSD).

Can you tell us more about the project at UCSD?

Sure - the University – about a year and a half ago – completed a brand new music building containing the state-of-the-art Conrad Prebys concert hall. It’s acoustically excellent, seating about 600. Though it’s not a huge hall it has beautiful acoustics for small ensembles and has a blissfully quiet audio floor.

Sam Ersan – an area music aficionado - established a fund that sponsors a spectacular music series, the Sam Ersan Chamber Music Series, combining the talents of UCSD’s music staff with some of the San Diego Symphony’s most celebrated musicians. I brought 3 of my HD cameras and recorded the entire performance. I brought the tapes back and uploaded to the Vegas Pro workstations. In addition, we used dual-system sound, capturing the high quality audio separately. When I laid out the tracks in Vegas Pro, I used PluralEyes to synchronize the 4 audio sources and my HD camera video. If it weren’t for PluralEyes, I would have been working for hours just to sync up the sources.

Are there any other timesaving products or apps you use on projects – including on the “Fiddler on the Roof” production you just described?

Well, “timesaving” per se is usually not so important for us as “bulletproofing,” since we usually give ourselves enough time to edit in post-production. To make sure our projects run as smoothly as possible, we use a wide and unmanned camera, backup audio recording equipment, and secondary cables to make sure we can adjust when something fails on-location.

What do you see for the future of your company? Any distant plans?

As mentioned earlier, we are doing more HD shooting and editing now. We are also considering 3D project – that is, if it proves to be accepted by the consumer and of course, if we have clients asking for it.

In the near future…. over the next ten weeks we are gearing up to support this year’s San Diego Symphony’s Summer Pops program, Comic-Con, and a world premiere performance of a work conducted by Tan Dun, an Academy Award winning composer.

WalkerVision Interarts is located in San Diego, CA. To contact them, please call 619-226-8228.

Lyle Kane of Reel Lives: filmmaking education for marginalized youth

Putting cameras in the hands of citizens can be a powerful, even revolutionary, act. When young refugee and war-affected filmmakers in New York begin learning to tell their own stories by making documentary films with digital SLR cameras, they get a taste of the impact that media can have.

But how can they learn the skills and craft of the art? One person who it tackling this challenge is Lyle Kane, the Executive Director of a non-profit organization called Reel Lives, a twenty-four-week, intensive filmmaking workshop based in NY for marginalized and at-risk youth.

Reel Lives is about much more than the technicalities of filmmaking. It provides a catharsis for the young men and women who learn to use art as a medium for telling their stories and grappling with their histories. Graduates leave the program with a sense of empowerment, and with the confidence and skills to go into their communities and enact real change. The Reel Lives intensive education combines media production, media literacy, and human rights.

Teaser: NO PARKING IN BHUTAN from Reel Lives on Vimeo.

Lyle began the first program in June 2010 with a single Canon 7D EOS Digital SLR Camera, a Zoom H4n audio recorder, and six boys referred from the International Rescue Committee in NY. Their inaugural workshop was in a pizza shop on 42nd St.

Soon after that Lyle acquired a grant to buy computers, and then a permanent location at The Paley Center for Media in New York. Having just completed their first year, they have acquired tripods, an impressive set of lenses, and more camera bodies.

The program now uses five camera kits and five computers, and employs two and a half staff members. Post-production is done using Final Cut Pro (FCP), the PluralEyes plug-in for synchronization, and Adobe After Effects.

The majority of Reel Lives students have no prior media experience and they're immersed from day one in an integrated menu of film theory, study of the documentary genre, getting hands on the equipment, and beginning to craft narrative around their chosen themes. Watching documentaries and learning to use equipment simultaneously pushes the students to develop a quick knowledge base and keeps them engaged in their own process.

Their media vocabulary also develops quickly. Lyle enjoys how comments change rapidly from 'loving a film', to naming specific camera angles, rhythm, and editing styles.

The students learn that lenses are as important as the camera body, and that recoding audio separately from the camera forces attention to sound quality, which can make or break a production. They also study how to make interviews and social issues visually compelling.

Footage from the Canon 7Ds gets converted to Apple ProRes 422 (LT) using MPEG Streamclip. Lyle uses the analogy that the footage directly from the camera is like a rock: it can be dropped into Final Cut, but it's very hard to shape and manipulate. Transcoding to ProRes turns the rock into metal, which is more malleable.

The students then name all their footage and sound, import it into FCP, assemble each interview from the 12-minute segments that the cameras allow, and then use PluralEyes to sync it up so they can begin editing.

Lyle recounts, "I was a little spoiled because other filmmakers had been telling me about PluralEyes, that it's a great piece of software, that it will make life 1,000 times easier. I reached out to Singular Software and was given three licenses right off the bat. So I didn't really know life before PluralEyes. I was told it was the thing to get".

Lyle says, "Especially for kids coming in that haven't done this kind of stuff before, it's literally hours and hours of work that is saved for them".

Having the synchronization step handled allows the students to concentrate on turning their footage into a story. "That's the magic moment with these kids. When they're shooting they're really distracted with the whole technical end of it. But when they're sitting down and looking at the footage, they start to find the bits that are important and put it together to form the narrative. That is where the catharsis happens of these people grappling with their own stories. The plug-in allows that to be a more seamless process."

Along with film education, Reel Lives students also develop pitching skills – one of a filmmaker's most valuable abilities. Six weeks in they each deliver a teaser, which they use to practice pitching as if they were seeking funding for a full documentary. They watch pitches from events at the Paley Centre, and participate in workshops to develop strong skills.

Teaser: FAHISHA from Reel Lives on Vimeo.

Heading into the program's second year of success, Lyle has his eye on expanding the Reel Lives offerings. Plans include submitting the films to international film festivals so the students will have opportunities to travel with their stories; further collaboration with local organizations to focus on topics including HIV and AIDS affected youth, immigration and conflict; developing curriculum so the films can be used in local and international schools for education and outreach; and acquiring college credit for Reel Lives graduates.

Reel Lives also connects the alumni with opportunities for paying work. Graduates have taken on public service announcements and videography projects on topics ranging from the NY State Dream Act to safety videos for a recycling company.

With a long-term vision for the program, Lyle comments, "Eventually we'd love to go international, really do programming that works for sustainability. Go in and do a project with a group of kids, but also a training of trainers, partner with a local NGO, leave behind equipment and a group of skilled people who can then work that program in perpetuity."

Teaser: My Parents Never Dance from Reel Lives on Vimeo.

Lyle believes that development of a media sector in marginalized communities is essential. He points to the photojournalist Mohamed Amin whose short film about the 1984 Ethiopia famine motivated a government's response and changed millions of lives.

Most of the students enroll in Reel Lives with visions of Hollywood in mind, but those quickly change when they learn the power of documentary films. "I'm a believer, I think doc filmmakers are really the new journalists. I think our students see that pretty quickly."

To watch the film teasers, learn more about Reel Lives, or get involved in supporting the program, visit the Reel Lives website or Facebook page.

Writer Sara McIntyre is a Communications Specialist and Filmmaker who calls Vancouver, BC 'home'.

Stack Exchange opens Q&A site for video

Bruce Sharpe

If you are a software developer, you know that the best place to get answers to programming questions is Stack Overflow. Joel Spolsky and co. have hit on just the right formula for getting the best answers (and questions) to float to the top.

Stack Overflow spawned Stack Exchange which is a family of Q&A sites based on the same model. I have long wished that one of those sites could be about video production. But it turns out that getting a site approved and off the ground is not trivial (and is a little mysterious for those of us on the outside). A proposal for such a site has been inching forward for many months, but I'd given up hope of seeing it in my lifetime.

But today I got some good news. There is now a Stack Exchange site where video production people can go to get answers to their questions. It's called Audio-Video Production and, yes, it's about audio too. That's fine, especially because that was the mechanism that was used to get it into flight: the video site proposal was merged with an existing audio site. Yay!

I now encourage everyone who has a question or an answer to participate in the site. It's in beta and it needs to prove itself to become a permanent fixture. I predict that once people start using it, it will become an indispensable tool for video production people at all levels.

PluralEyes and Final Cut Pro X - Questions and Answers

Here at Singular Software, we are getting lots of questions about PluralEyes and Final Cut Pro X. Here are the answers.

Q: Does PluralEyes Support Final Cut X today?

A: No.

Q: Will PluralEyes Support Final Cut X?

A: As with any new host release, we intend to support FCP X as soon as we can, but the technical information we need to do so has not been released yet. In the meantime, the engineering team has begun the process of analyzing FCP X.

Q: When?

A: We can't make any promises. We haven't seen the technical specs to know how much effort will be required and we don't know when these specs will be available.

Q: Will it be a free upgrade?
A: Yes, for anyone who bought PluralEyes (for FCP 6 or 7) recently.

Q: I thought I detected some weasel words in that last answer.

A: Our updates have always been free up until now. We can't guarantee that an FCP X update will be free for those who didn't buy recently, but that would be our preference.

Q: I see other plug-ins are supporting FCP X already. Why aren't you?

A: There are several different developer kits. One of those has been released and is being used to update some plug-ins. The one we need has not been made available to us.

Q: What about those of us still using FCP 6 and 7?

A: PluralEyes will continue to support those versions for some time and through subsequent releases.

Q: Hey, wait. Doesn't FCP X have auto sync built in?

A: As expected, a basic auto sync feature has been included in FCP X. We also expected that PluralEyes would be able to add value to FCP X, and our experience with it has confirmed that. We have heard from several customers that they still want PluralEyes.

Q: I need PluralEyes for FCP X! Can't you do something?

A: We're doing everything we can think of. If you would like to make your wishes known to Apple, they provide a page where you are invited to give feedback about Final Cut Pro.

Update: Apple has published an FAQ in which they say that the interfaces we need will be available "in a few weeks". http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/faq/

Feature Interview with Kevin Shahinian of Pacific Pictures

Kevin Shahinian and the team of filmmakers at Pacific Pictures are known internationally for their groundbreaking ‘concept’ wedding films.

While the current trend in movies and TV has directors adopting an ever more cinema verité, documentary-realism style to inspire an immediacy in their big budget projects, the team at Pacific Pictures have flipped that concept around. They take extra effort to bring a modern Hollywood polish to their documentary work that adds a grand, commercial look and feel, and uses fiction narrative in ways that enhance the viewer experience and add layers of depth to a real event.

Kevin latest pièce de résistance, Flawless, is a stunning 12-minute action film chronicling a couples' harrowing engagement night. The film premiered at the wedding reception. This might seem an unexpected choice when he’d been hired to make a wedding video, but his clients’ story had elements that lent themselves well to the action genre, and Kevin was looking for opportunities to push the limits of his creativity. In this case he was eager to film a motorcycle chase scene with a Porsche Cayenne chase car mounted with a Gemini Crane and the Cannon EOS 5D Mark II Digital SLR Camera.

...included a full-speed car chase filmed over two nights on a blocked-off street in Long Beach

In telling about their relationship, the groom had described how perfect he wanted the night to be, and how a few things had gone wrong. Kevin recognized his opportunity and expanded the couple’s story into a dramatic script that included a full-speed car chase filmed over two nights on a blocked-off street in Long Beach. This project required the biggest crew to date for a Pacific Pictures film, commanding a complete production team including stunt drivers.

'Flawless' the official trailer

In 2010, on his breakout 28-minute concept wedding film City of Lakes, Kevin had returned from shooting in India and hired a rough-cut editor to assemble and synchronize two terabytes of footage before the creative editing could begin. The editor faced a huge, tedious job and they expected it to take more than a week of solid work.

PluralEyes has completely changed his work process

both on set and in the editing suite

The editor asked if Kevin had heard of the PluralEyes plug-in and initially Kevin brushed the comment aside, thinking it was the usual editor tech talk. When it came up again, he resigned himself to checking out the plug-in and was astounded as, within seconds, all the audio and video footage from multiple cameras over multiple days became instantly synchronized.

Kevin says that PluralEyes has completely changed his work process both on set and in the editing suite. It has cut an entire component out of the post-production schedule and allows him to get into the creative work sooner, which is where he prefers focusing. “Relying on PluralEyes allows us to be more creative, quicker. Inspiration tends to die when I am forced to figure out a technical puzzle. This process allows us to be creative more immediately.”

It also allows him to move quickly on set by not having to stop and slate between each take. Kevin shoots a lot of coverage often using simultaneous cameras, and doesn’t like to slow down if he doesn’t have to. While directing numerous takes where actors are running the same scene over and again, not worrying about issues like camera and audio sync keeps the focus on performances. He mentions that working this way makes his sound recordist skeptical, but Kevin trusts the PluralEyes software will clean up the mess. “I don’t have to wait, and the rate of success is amazing. We just click a button and literally in a matter of seconds the work is done.”

'City of Lakes' the official trailer

Kevin is an epitome of the highly creative, avant-garde filmmaker. During post-production he works from his studio in Los Angeles alongside colleagues in other cities and as far away as London, UK, where his VFX artists reside.

Rough-cut editors in LA set up the edit and project file, and use PluralEyes to sync everything. On live event films this team assembles a basic documentary-style edit of all the footage and then Kevin comes in to complete the artistic version.

Content is shared through the exchange of hard drives with communication by phone and email. His primary creative tools are Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe CS5 with add-ons including Tiffen dfx software, Adobe After Effects, and Magic Bullet Looks.

On this latest action film Kevin has taken on sound design as well as being the primary editor. In a medium where money is always being stretched, use of the Singular software cuts down on the need for additional staff as well as time. “What I love about PluralEyes is it can be running in the background while other work is happening.”

“Tell Bruce he could be charging about five times more than he is for PluralEyes. I always feel like I’m stealing something with this product.”

Kevin and Pacific Pictures also take on same-day wedding edits where the team works quickly to deliver footage that gets shown at the reception. These are balanced between other ideas for films and concept wedding stories, and the ongoing adventure of filmmaking. Kevin is preparing himself to direct feature films using all the creative and technical experience he’s gaining along the way.

Kevin caused quite a buzz at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference in April 2011 with the release of his trailer for Flawless, which can now be seen online at www.pacificpicturesblog.com. Keep an eye on that site and www.pacificpictures.net for more boundary-pushing creativity from Kevin Shahinian and the Pacific Pictures team.

Pecha Kucha 15: Lisa Robertson

Poet and essayist Lisa Robertson, author of Occasional Works and Seven Walks From the Office for Soft Architecture, reads sections of her work. With remarkable literary talent, Robertson shares an intriguing new perspective on features of Vancouver’s ever-changing cityscape.

Pecha Kucha 15: Scott Hawthorn

Entrepreneur Scott Hawthorn has turned his love of small, intimate spaces and connecting with strangers into rare gifts to the city of Vancouver. Join him for a discussion of the Salt Tasting Room, Judas Goat, Native Shoes, Alfresco Tonight and Parking Spot Gallery. Bonus feature: A novel way to invite a crowd over to dinner.

Pecha Kucha 15: Margot Leigh Butler

Margot Leigh Butler, academic director of the University of British Columbia’s Humanities 101 Community Program, describes the work of volunteer “education activists” who are dedicated to improving awareness and perceptions of low-income residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

Pecha Kucha 15: Michael Tippett

We are living in an age of crowd-powered news. Michael Tippett, CEO and co-founder of NowPublic.com, investigates how consumer-driven content and social media platforms reflect both the wisdom of crowds and the madness of crowds.

Pecha Kucha 15: Lindsay Brown

Rewind to June 1976 with Lindsay Brown, founder of Ouno Design, as she discusses Habitat Forum, a component of the first United Nations Conference on Human Settlements. Held in Vancouver, the event was hosted in five seaplane hangers, each one refurbished by 11,000 volunteers and decorated with paintings by Bill Reid.

Pecha Kucha 15: Ben Chibber

Ben Chibber is living proof that many parents were wrong; you can make a living as a skateboarder! Join the founder of Vancouver’s Monkē Skateboards and Dryspot Indoor Skateboard Park for a sneak peek at a career most people can only dream of.

Pecha Kucha 15: Peter Busby

Peter Busby, managing director of Busby Perkins and Will Architects, traces his sources of inspiration and his career path from political science student and drywaller to green building architect and a Member of the Order of Canada.

Pecha Kucha 15: Emily Jubenvill

Emily Jubenvill, greenspaces coordinator for the Vancouver Public Space Network, urges audiences to recognize the injustice that underlies our industrial food system. It’s time, she says, for a food-wise revolution where consumers become involved in building sustainable, local food systems.

Pecha Kucha 15: Office Supplies Inc.

Street artist Office Supplies Incorporated emerges from secrecy to discuss his series of posters entitled “Vampire Shit.” In keeping with his on-going effort to add life and humour to Vancouver’s urban landscape, these posters represent an attempt to communicate with “outsider” graffiti artists.

Pecha Kucha 15: Paul and Cariann Burger

After beginning their professional careers in the movie industry in Los Angeles, Paul and Cariann Burger moved to Vancouver and co-founded Cargoh.com. In this presentation, they describe how this curated online marketplace allows independent artists and designers to connect with a global market.

Pecha Kucha 15: Stewart Butterfield

Explore the creative process with Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Flickr^® and more recently co-founder and CEO of Tiny Speck online game developers. Butterfield suggests that real creativity arises not from creative freedom, but from understanding and mastering the constraints influencing a design.

MoMoVan Panel: "Where is the Money?"

Mobile Monday Vancouver, Nov 1, 2010 A panel discussion on the state of VC and Angel financing in the mobile space. 
Note: The sound gets much better after the first couple of minutes.

DigiBC First Anniversary Party

DigiBC celebrates its first anniversary with a bash at the Granville Island Brewing Company. A good time was had by all.

Nokia's "Calling All Innovators" contest

In this MoMoVan presentation from early November, 2010, we hear from Martin Barclay of Nokia about their "Calling All Innovators" contest, which aims to capture the attention of mobile app developers with its record setting prize pool. We also get a word from Rob McGarry, the director of R&D for the local Nokia group that is responsible for developing and operating Nokia's Ovi online app store. Rob is also a director of DigiBC.

Nokia is making a concerted effort to capture the attention of mobile app developers, with a total of $10M in prizes ($4M of which is tagged for co-marketing of the most popular apps), with its unified development framework and IDE called Qt (pronounced "cute"), with its Ovi store (Nokia's answer to Apple's app store) already delivering almost 3M downloads a day, and with its powerful new N8 smart phone.

So if you are a mobile app developer, Nokia has a wanted poster out for you, and a big reward for those who can generate consumer interest demonstrated through downloads.

And if you are wondering about the rather industrial looking background behind the presenters, that would be the microbrewery that is part of the Granville Island Brewery. Mobile app development is not the only creative juice flowing at these events.

Readability on the iPad

I bought an iPad recently, mostly because many of our customers in the video production field seem to be finding them useful for all kinds of things. I couldn't really see why I personally would want one very much since any time I would use an iPad I could probably just as easily use a laptop. But I was completely prepared to be convinced that it is as cool as people say.

And mostly I like it. It's got a nice form factor, it's surprisingly snappy for surfing the web, it's a great ebook reader, etc. Dropbox has a very nice iPad app that makes accessing files on my other computers pretty easy. I still haven't found the killer feature that makes it indispensable, but it's growing on me.

There are only two things so far that are bugging me. The first is the whole model of getting files onto the iPad. It is based on synchronizing with a single computer via iTunes. But I want to put movies onto it from one of several computers around here where they are being produced. The only way seems to be to pick one computer as the master for sync with the iPad, copy all the movies onto that computer, import them into iTunes and then sync. Ugh. It's baffling to me why it has to be this inconvenient.

The other minor annoyance is the readability of the browser. This may seem ungrateful of me because Safari on the iPad is surprisingly good as is. It's fast, you can resize it easily and quickly with a multitouch gesture and it's just all around quite beautiful.

But often, once I've found the page I want to read, I don't want to have to resize it and move it around to get it framed just right on the screen. It would be much better if there were a button that I could press to reformat the main content like an ebook. Thanks to the Readability™ tool, you can get pretty close to just that. There are just a few little steps to get there. :)

The general idea is that the Readability tool is a bookmarklet that needs to be added to Safari. Here's how. (Thanks to Ken Clark for explaining how to get bookmarklets on the iPad.)

1. Go to the Readability site using a browser on your computer. (I used Chrome on a PC.) Set up the options. I used the following: Style=Newspaper, Size=Extra Large, Margin=Narrow.
2. Drag the Readability badge to your bookmark toolbar to create a bookmarklet there. Edit the bookmarklet, copy the text of its URL and get that to your iPad. You could mail it to yourself, for example, and read the message on the iPad. I used Dropbox.
3. On the iPad, copy the text to the clipboard.
4. Open Safari and click the "+" to bookmark any page. Change the name of the bookmark to Readibility and save it in the Bookmarks Bar.
5. Go to the Bookmarks manager, navigate to the Bookmarks Bar and click Edit. Paste the text into the URL field of the Readability bookmark.

To use it, open any page that you want make more readable. Go the Bookmarks manager and click the Readability bookmark. It will take a few seconds to reformat the page (it has to fetch some CSS from the Readability site, etc.) but after a short pause you will have a wonderfully readable page.

Here is a movie review from The New Yorker as displayed on the iPad. (Click the image to see a full-size version.)

And here it is after applying the Readability bookmarklet.

Update: It works on the iPhone too. I'm still experimenting with the best settings.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 12: Kevin Millsip

Kevin Millsip, sustainability coordinator with the Vancouver School Board, describes this generation’s mandate to spearhead a U-turn in attitudes and actions toward sustainability.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 12: Ifny Lachance

Cycling advocate Ifny Lachance hosts and produces the community radio show, Pedal Revolutionary Radio. Here she presents creative ideas for community events promoting transportation by bicycle, including Critical Mass, Bicycle CARCass, and pie-jousting on a bike.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 12: David Ramslie

David Ramslie, sustainable development program manager for the City of Vancouver, presents a brief history of the green building movement in Canada, plus present and future building innovations.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 12: Diane Roberts

Diane Roberts, artistic director for Urban Ink theatre company, reminds participants in the sustainability discussion to open their eyes to the stories and ideas of others in order to find places of commonality.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 12: Tegan Adams

Tegan Adams, teaching and research assistant in the faculty of land and food systems at the University of British Columbia, challenges listeners to create a personal food ethic – to consider where their food was produced and how, then make choices that promote sustainability.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 12: Jaime Kowal

Photographer Jaime Kowal believes in the power of visual storytelling to educate and inspire others. In this presentation she invites individuals to share their images and ideas for a greener Vancouver on GreentheCityVancouver.com, a website created by her company Graphic Activist.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 12: Initiatives Summary

Steven Cox lists several notable on-going sustainability initiatives in Vancouver: Growing Chefs, 100 Mile Diet, Al-Fresco, Car Free Days, Richard Campbell and the Third Wave Cycling Group, Front and Company consignment store, Make Shift, Lanefab laneway housing, Ocean Wise chef Robert Clark of C Restaurant, Shark Truth and the Living City Design Competition.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 12: John Robinson

Dr. John Robinson, executive director of the University of British Columbia’s Sustainability Initiative and a lead author on the last three reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, presents UBC initiatives to accelerate sustainability in the areas of building design and operations, community engagement, and partnerships with the private and public sector.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 12: Eesmyal Santos-Brault

Eesmyal Santos-Brault, green building expert and principal of Recollective, describes a number of collaborative sustainability projects he is involved with. Informal projects include the Vancouver Design Nerds, GreenBuildingBrain.org (a free database of green building resources) and The Hive (a collaborative office space). He also introduces Fallingwater Cottages, Recollective’s new project with Patkau Architects.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 12: Ken Lum

Internationally-celebrated artist Ken Lum presents his vision for a sustainable city as a community that is not indifferent to trauma, that values cultural differences, and is accepting of diverse lifestyles.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 12: Preet Bal & Poonam Sandhu

Preet Bal and Poonam Sandhu of Sandhog Creations Society discuss their voluntary effort to promote recycling during the annual Vaisakhi parades in Vancouver and Surrey – parades attended by 50,000 and 100,000 members of the East Indian community respectively.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 12: Ernesto Gomez

Ernesto Gomez, cofounder of the Nuba restaurant group in Vancouver, draws on Nuba’s own business model to demonstrate how companies can not only embrace a commitment to value and sustainability in their product offerings, but also help build a better community.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 12: Denise Taschereau

Denise Taschereau explains her career trajectory from a degree in environmental management to self-professed “swag baron” and owner of Fairware promotional products. Her passion for helping companies align their corporate buying with their values stems from an awareness that individual choices “in high volume” have a huge impact.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 12: Mark Holland

Mark Holland, senior planner with HB Lanarc and a member of the City of Vancouver’s Greenest City Action Team, casts a vision for Vancouver in the 21st century as a city that brings people together through play. Ideas presented include providing locally-grown food, celebrating marine activities and the arts, and recognizing pets as “exciting members of the urban cast of characters.”

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 12: Keynote by Mayor Gregor Robertson

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson outlines “greener city” measures already undertaken by the City of Vancouver over the past year and the city’s 10 goals for the next decade. In closing, he encourages Vancouverites to share their green ideas at Talkgreentous.ca.

iPod-compatible version

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 12: Intro by Steve and Jane Cox

Vancouver has set it sights on becoming the greenest city in the world by 2020. But just what would it take to reach that goal? On June 23, 2010, over 2,000 Vancouverites packed the Queen Elizabeth Theatre for Pecha Kucha Volume 12, the kick-off event for the City of Vancouver’s Greenest City 2020 Conversation. We invite you to listen in on this special Pecha Kucha edition sponsored by the City of Vancouver and the University of British Columbia.

The following set of 16 presentation videos was created for the City of Vancouver in under two days, thanks to Pluraleyes and Singular Software Presto for Sony Vegas Pro.

Hosts Steven and Jane Cox, directors of Cause+Affect Design, provide an overview of the origin of Pecha Kucha and their motivation for spearheading this initiative in Vancouver. Pucker up and practice saying “Pecha Kucha” with help from this clip.

Philanthropy

Let me depart from the usual tech and tech event flavor of this blog to write about something I care about deeply.

I don't buy lottery tickets because I figure I have won the lottery several times already: I am a white mail born in Canada into a middle class family. How many more advantages does a person need? The impulse to want to help others who, simply by accident of birth, do not have the same opportunities I have had is very strong. So what is the best way to do this?

Like most businesses I'm sure, we at Singular Software get a lot (and I mean, a lot) of requests to donate our software or other things for various causes. It would be easy to just say yes to all of them, but I used to consider them carefully and support the ones that seemed genuine and worthy. I'm glad I took the time to do so because a few of them were for purposes that I strongly disagreed with. And of course some are simply not genuine.

But in recent months I have been examining more carefully what I and my company can do to actually achieve something and be effective. Every one in business is keenly aware of the difference between activity and accomplishment (or should). Our charitable giving should be looked at in the same light. And mine, I'm afraid to say, has been mostly activity with questionable accomplishment.

So now I am taking a much more active approach to my philanthropy (modest as it is). But, perhaps paradoxically, one result is that I have less time to assess and respond to incoming requests and may seem less generous than before.

Here is how I explained it to one particularly persistent request for assistance.

I have given a lot of money to various causes over the years and have concluded it was a complete waste. The reason why is that it was passive and reactive, with no real attention being paid to the impact it might have. My response to this is not to pull back, but rather to redouble my efforts, take the time to devise a donation strategy, pick my battles and be very conscious of whether I am being effective. This takes a lot of time, but I like how it is working out.

Part of the strategy is to allocate my time carefully. There are only so many hours in the day that I can spend on philanthropic efforts. Every minute that I take to write letters like this one is a minute I can't spend finding the most effective way to stop the trafficking of women in Vietnam or free a political prisoner in Burma. We get a lot of requests for donations to all kinds of things. We can either say yes to all of them or no to all of them, but there is no way we are going to take the time to investigate them to see which ones we feel we should support. Instead, we will use our time to identify the efforts that make the most sense to us and we will put a lot of support behind those, without having to be approached about it. In other words, don't call us, we'll call you.

So, no, I don't know your organization and I am not going find out about it. I will assume that you are a good person who is sincere in what you are trying to do. If that is the case, then I think you will agree that there are many ways to do good things in this world and that we should be respectful of the time and efforts of those who are doing what they can, even if it is not directly supporting our own specific cause.

On re-reading the above, the tone is a little harsher than it needed to be. (I overreacted a bit to the sixth attempt from this person to contact me.) I have all the respect in the world for those who are taking an active role, whatever it is, when so many don't. But the opportunity cost is too high to just be reactive.

This is not to say that I will never consider a request for support. But if the message doesn't hit me the right way right off the bat, you may just get a link to this blog post in response.

There seems to be a bit of a minor revolution happening in the realm of aid, philanthropy, NGO strategy and social entrepreneurship. I am late to the party, but I am catching up. I plan to write more about this in the future.

Update: In the case that prompted this post, I took the time to learn more about the effort behind the request and have given them the support they asked for.

NV10: How (Should) Journalists Use Social Media

Social media is having a significant impact on the way that we share news and stories, and so is also changing how journalists go about their work. In this panel discussion with Kirk LaPointe, Managing Editor of the Vancouver Sun, and Lisa Johnson, a reporter with CBC television, we get some fascinating incites into the use of social media tools in the hands of journalists.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 11: Jesse Korzan

The 2010 Winter Olympics bid proved to be the perfect springboard for the budding web design talents of Whistler ski bum Jesse Korzan, now with Work[at]Play. From Pecha Kucha Vancouver, Volume 11.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 11: Todd Smith

Todd Smith draws on his expertise as an art director, motion designer and design educator to investigate the creative and collaborative process behind a truly great idea.
From Pecha Kucha Vancouver, Volume 11.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 11: Christine Jung

Christine Jung, CEO of Hexart Studio Corp. and a ten-year veteran of the New York fashion scene, showcases how you can dress to impress online playing High Heels & Chocolate, a social network game that will debut on Facebook in August 2010.  From Pecha Kucha Vancouver, Volume 11.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 11: Michael Gordon

How do we make our city a fun place to live and play? That's what Vancouver City planner Michael Gordon has on his mind as he commutes to work on his skateboard.  From Pecha Kucha Vancouver, Volume 11.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 11: Brian LeRoux

The future of software: mobile, open, and free. Brian LeRoux, Lead Software Developer at Nitobi, pitches this vision of tomorrow's Internet, developed through open source collaboration, and demonstrated by their own open source PhoneGap software.  From Pecha Kucha Vancouver, Volume 11.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 11: Lauren Bacon

Lauren Bacon, web designer and co-founder of Raised Eyebrow Web Studio Inc., challenges the belief that the real and virtual worlds are totally separate. Let Lauren convince you that the Internet reflects some important truths about the real world.  From Pecha Kucha Vancouver, Volume 11.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 11: Glenn Entis

Computer graphics has come a long way from the early days of vector graphics displays and geeky movies like Tron, as Glenn Entis shows in this quick retrospective from his experience in the special effects industry over the last 30 years. Now as President of the local chapter of SIGGRAPH, he is excited to be hosting the SIGGRAPH 2011 conference right here in Vancouver.  From Pecha Kucha Vancouver, Volume 11.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 11: Mara Branscombe

Dancer, choreographer, yoga teacher, and producer Mara Branscombe celebrates life as a "wild living endless forest of possibilities"! She was the rehearsal director for a flash mob during the 2010 Winter Olympics that saw over 3,000 people dancing in unison to highlight the imagine1day project for children's education in Ethiopia.  From Pecha Kucha Vancouver, Volume 11.

NV10: Telling Stories in Land and Food Systems

Agriculture students are passionate about saving the planet, but not so practiced at communicating. In this talk, a panel of four from UBC's Faculty of Land and Food Systems describe how equipping these students with basic journalism skills and podcasting technology is helping them to articulate their enthusiasm.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 11: Irwin Oostindie

Long time advocate for social change in Vancouver's downtown east side, Irwin Oostindie is leading a project to transform the old Woodward's building into the W2 community media arts centre.  From Pecha Kucha Vancouver, Volume 11.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 11: Heather Redfern

As Executive Director of "The Cultch" (Vancouver East Cultural Centre), Heather Redfern has overseen a major renovation of their theatre, which has become a focal point for a thriving creative arts community on the east side.
From Pecha Kucha Vancouver, Volume 11.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 11: Kevin Vallely

Whether he is man hauling in record time to the South Pole, skiing the Iditarod trail, or slogging through the jungles of Borneo, Canadian explorer and architect Kevin Vallely finds himself wrestling with the question: "What are you looking for?".
From Pecha Kucha Vancouver Night 11.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 11: Ryan Opina

Previously with Nokia, and now Lead User Experience Designer at Big Park, Ryan Opina demonstrates that we present ourselves digitally through an average of five online personas.

NV10: Monica Hamburg: Finding Your Online Voice

With a fun combination of wit and wisdom, Monica Hamburg advises the budding blogger on how to develop an authentic online "voice". From Northern Voice 2010.

NV10: David Ng: Good Science

David Ng describes Phylo, a cool trading card game to teach biodiversity. A study showed that children could easily identify and describe a large number of Pokemon characters, yet knew very little about the real world of plants and animals all around them. Inspired by the success of Pokemon, David Ng's group at UBC has successfully leveraged a web community to rapidly develop Phylo, and to draw attention to 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity. From Northern Voice 2010.

Nice way to add tweets to your blog

The folks at Plublitweet have put out a neat little bookmarklet that makes it easy to embed a Twitter message in a blog post or on the web. Not only is it stylish-looking, but it's got live links. There are other goodies that it provides, but I'll let you visit their site for details.

Here's an example of what it gives you:

PluralEyes is awesome! RT @thedvshow: FCP Tips: @PluralEyes w/5D MK II - Final Cut Pro http://cli.gs/57PDtThu May 06 04:08:07 via EchofonAlister
alisterrobbie

And another ...

@kevinshahinian love the Pluraleyes as well! Simply magnificent...Wed May 05 22:05:38 via TwitterrificRajan Patel
MyAVL

OK, I admit it, this is just an excuse to brag...

what did I ever do before PluralEyes... Brilliant.Wed May 05 19:52:56 via webKevin Shahinian
kevinshahinian

DemoCamp: Drupal Geo Openlayers

Mack Hardy (@affinitybridge), Directory and Technical Lead at Affinity Bridge, talks about cool things you can do with geo in Drupal.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver 9: Stephanie Hodges

Finding real food and cooking it yourself. Stephanie Hodges, nutritionalist and "adventure foodie" at Vitalis, integrates scientific research from East and West, culinary wizardry and common sense in the presentation at Pecha Kucha Vancouver, Volume 9.

DemoCamp: Canpages API Contest

Amy Rae, Director of Business Development at local search firm Canpages describes their nation-wide programming contest for smart phone application developers. There's a $5,000 prize for the first-place winner.

Pecha Kucha: Michael Ziff

Michael Ziff, co-owner of Hip Baby, sees code everywhere. He explains what that means and weaves a thread that ties together many unexpected phenomena in this presentation at Pecha Kucha Vancouver, Volume 9.

PKVN09: Michael Ziff from Singular Software on Vimeo.

DemoCamp: The Business of Geo

Parveen Kaler (@kaler), founder of Smartful Studios, speaks about the business of Geo Location and Location Based Services. Currently, the Geo technology stack is fractured into disparate slices of functionality. Who owns the data and what functionality currently exists? Parveen looks at where data and functionality gaps exist within the stack. This motivates the types of applications and services that can be built today. It doesn't make sense for a viable business to build a product without a revenue model. He enumerates different methods to monetize Geo Location services and describes how to build a revenue strategy.

DemoCamp: Compass Engine

McElroy Flavelle, CEO of CompassEngine, talks about tools and services for developers to build the next generation of location-based games.

Careful: 23 Hour Day Coming Up

As a committed advocate of the 25 hour day, I dread this weekend. Many parts of the world will switch to daylight saving time on Saturday night. Clocks will be moved ahead by an hour, people will lose an hour's sleep and there will be dire consequences. Don't say I didn't warn you.

DSLR Sync Drift in Final Cut Pro

This post is a follow-up to my earlier post about the 99.9% speed problem that some people encounter with Final Cut Pro. I have learned a few things since then so now I can explain better what is going on. I have also simplified the procedure for avoiding the problem. Thanks go to Philip Bloom and Robin Charters for illuminating discussions about this unfortunately complex topic.

Symptom: My sound drifts out of sync!

You carefully synchronized your audio track with your video. (I hope you used PluralEyes :). It lines up nicely at one point in the timeline, but the farther away you get from that point the more out of sync the audio and video get.

There are a couple of different reasons why this can happen. Perhaps the clock in your audio recorder is not very accurate. (The Zoom H4 and M-Audio Microtrack are not very good in this regard. The Zoom H4n however is excellent and is highly recommended.) Another possibility is that some frames were dropped while capturing.

But if you are working in Final Cut Pro, a far more likely explanation is that it has not been set up exactly right. More specifically if you sometimes work with NTSC frame rates (like 23.98 or 29.97) and sometimes with non-NTSC frame rates (like 25 for PAL or 30 for the Canon 5D), then you have to take some care.

This problem is not specific to video from DSLRs but their rise in popularity and the accompanying increase in the use of dual-system audio techniques has resulted in the problem showing up more often.

A not-recommended solution

Some people solve the problem by changing the speed of the audio clips to 99.9% or 100.1% depending on which version of the problem is happening. I don't recommend this approach because it causes the audio to get resampled twice for no reason, which extracts a performance and quality penalty, and because it can cause issues in downstream processing. Better to set up FCP properly in the first place.

The recommended solution

In this section I'll just tell you what to do so you can get back to editing. But if you want to know why, you can read more about that farther down.

The key points to avoid the problem are these:
1. Don't mix NTSC and non-NTSC material in one sequence. (Instead, use Compressor to conform everything to a common frame rate.)
2. Use an Easy Setup that matches your clips, especially with respect to the NTSC properties of the frame rate.

How to avoid the problem in the first place

1. In FCP, close all open projects. Update: It wouldn't hurt to also turn off the option to automatically re-open the last project in FCP. (Uncheck the box Final Cut Pro > User Preferences... > Open last project on application launch.)

2. From the FCP menu choose an Easy Setup that matches the frame rate of your video clips. If you can't find an exact match, pick one with the same NTSC properties as your video. For example, if you are working with 30.00 fps material from a Canon 5D, then choose an Easy Setup with a 25 fps frame rate.

3. Quit and re-start FCP.
4. Create a new project and import your clips.

5. Add your video clips to the timeline first so that Final Cut will auto-conform the sequence if that's needed.

How to fix a broken sequence

The following procedure is not foolproof but it has worked for people, and it's pretty quick to try. I just wouldn't rely on it.

Maybe you've already done a lot of work on your project and can't bear the thought of starting over again from scratch. The following procedure will let you solve the problem for an existing sequence, but it may have to be re-done if you add more audio clips later. Because of this fragility it is not our preferred procedure.

1. Select the problem sequence in the FCP browser, right-click it and choose Export > XML.
2. Open that XML file in a text editor.
3. Look for the tags <ntsc>. If they all say
<ntsc>TRUE</ntsc>
or if they all say
<ntsc>FALSE</ntsc>
then you don't have a problem. But if there is a mix of TRUE and FALSE values, you need to change them so they are all the same. What value should you pick? The one that matches the NTSC-ness of your video clips.

Once you have fixed the XML, you must go through the procedure to establish a new Easy Setup as above or the NTSC changes won't stick.

Why does this work?

When you add a video clip to a sequence, FCP knows what frame rate to use: it just looks at the video clip properties. Audio doesn't have a frame rate like video, but FCP needs to assign it one because many editing operations are tied to the video frame rate. So when you add an audio clip to a sequence, FCP has to pick a frame rate for it.

That choice is apparently made based on the sequence presets (which are set by the Easy Setup), and can depend on what settings are in the cache, not just those that are currently selected. You have to go through all the re-start, etc. steps to ensure that the cache is cleared. FCP seems to be able to adapt to whatever frames-per-second are chosen, but it needs some help to get the NTSC property right.

But you don't need to understand those subtleties. You'll be safe if you always follow these steps: (1) choose an appropriate Easy Setup, (2) restart FCP, (3) create a new project.

PluralEyes on the Digital Convergence Podcast

I was interviewed today by the very nice Carl Olson for the latest episode of his Digital Convergence podcast. We talked mainly about PluralEyes but managed to fit in some thoughts on left-brain/right-brain duality and making 3D movies too. Digital Convergence is a new podcast about all matters to do with making video with the new breeds of hybrid DSLR cameras. Carl has put his finger on a hot topic and it's good to see a well-produced podcast on the subject.

Beauty Night 2009

The Beauty Night Society hosts its annual "All I Want for Christmas" fund-raising fashion show featuring pin-up designs by Nancy Black. Enjoy the inspiring story behind show ... and enjoy the beauty!

Pecha Kucha: Anne Pearson

Anne Pearson, owner of Vancouver Special Art+Design, roams the world to bring the best examples of affordable, clever design to Vancouver. In this presentation, Anne gives an interesting retrospective on how the urban daily experience in Vancouver has changed over the years. From Pecha Kucha Vancouver, Volume 9.

Trust Agents co-author speaks at Third Tuesday

Julien Smith, co-author of Trust Agents, speaking at Third Tuesday.



Props to Carlson Media for the nice recording.

Pecha Kucha: Elvy Del Bianco

Elvy Del Bianco, Manager of Arts Initiative at Vancity works to redefine wealth in the Creative Economy. From Pecha Kucha Vancouver, Volume 9.

Pecha Kucha: Su-feh Lee

Su-feh Lee, dancer, choreographer and Artistic Director of Battery Opera talks about how she uses the materials of "time, space and the human body" to help people make dances. From Pecha Kucha Vancouver, Volume 9.

Pecha Kucha: TJ Galda

TJ Galda of Electronic Arts shows off some of the latest tools and toys behind animated movie production, and how they are making their way into games. From Pecha Kucha Vancouver, Volume 9.

Pecha Kucha: Tom Pedriks

Tom Pedriks, Creative Director at Haymaker, presents some of the funniest hockey branding you are ever likely to see, at Pecha Kucha Vancouver, Volume 9.

Pecha Kucha: Sarah Bancroft

Sarah Bancroft, co-founder of Vitamin Daily, presents at Pecha Kucha Vancouver, Volume 9.

Pecha Kucha: 2010 Design Team

A moving tribute to Leo Obstbaum, Design Director for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games, who passed away unexpectedly last August. Sounds like he was an amazing guy and is much missed by those who knew him.

Pecha Kucha: Chris Staples

Chris Staples from Rethink presents at Pecha Kucha Vancouver, Volume 9.

BC Demo Day II: Atimi Software

Atimi Software presentation from BC Demo Day II.

BC Demo Day II: Backstage Technologies

Backstage Technologies presentation from BC Demo Day II.

BC Demo Day II: CIS

CIS Vancouver presentation from BC Demo Day II.

BC Demo Day II: CellMap

CellMap presentation from BC Demo Day II.

BC Demo Day II: Absolute Software

Absolute Software presentation from BC Demo Day II.

BC Demo Day II: 2010 Showcase

Everything you ever wanted to know about the 2010 Digital Media Showcase, from BC Demo Day II.

BC Demo Day II: Introductions

Introductions at the recent Demo Day II.

BC Demo Day II: airG

Presentation by airG at BC Demo Day II.

BC Demo Day II

The 2010 Showcase and Service initiative is by far the most ambitious product innovation through collaboration project ever conceived to promote the BC wireless and digital media industry to the world. On October 22, several participating companies took the stage for 3 minutes each (give or take) to showcase their most innovative applications or services.

We'll post videos of several of those presentations over the next few days.