60 fps and the curse of adobe

This post is somewhat of a reference for myself, in case i forget how to do it in the future.

I have been making a film/music video, and in it I needed someone to film stuff for me remotely, ie I wouldn't be able to film them with my Nikon D90, so they'd send me this footage. The possibility of slightly different formats didn't seem so daunting at first. But when I received the footage, it became a matter of how to get Adobe Premiere and After Effects to give me the right footage from these two formats. It was a pain to figure out the order to work the footage.

First, I wanted to convert my friend's footage to nice black/white. She filmed it with a flip, which was 1280x720 at 60 fps. My D90 films at 1280 by 720 at 24 fps. (apparently the slower 24 fps is more suitable for classic film.) My Adobe premiere settings were all set for the D90 imported video, and obviously if i imported the raw flip footage it would be choppy and have lots of dropped frames.

So far, I've only figured out how to convert frame rate. I created a new Premiere project which was a 60 fps, 1280x720 format. I encoded it to raw (not H.264) video at 24 fps. This was color footage that would load into the project where the other D90 videos were being edited.

Adobe Premiere: Project for import
Sequence Settings - Preset saved as "60fps to 24fps conversion import"
New Sequence->General
Editing mode: Desktop
Timebase: 60.00 frames/sec
Video: 1280 horizontal 720 vertical
Pixel aspect: 16:9
Display format: 60 fps
Audio: 32000 Hz
Preview file format: Microsoft AVI
Codec: DV 24p advanced

For export:
File->Export->Media
Format: Uncompressed Microsoft AVI
Preset: Custom
Video codec: V210
Quality: 100
Width: 1280
Height: 720
Framerate: 24
Field: Progressive
Aspect: D1/DV NTSC 16:9

After the 60 fps media has been converted to 24fps progressive, import the new video into the project of Adobe premiere where it will be used in editing. This time, link it with aftereffects by selecting Replace Footage with After Effects Composition. It will open a new after effects project in which you can add an effect, such as grayscale. To render in Premiere, firstyou can play the video back and forth slowly, basically to let it all render into ram. This I mean using the mouse and adding the clip onto a sequence timeline, then playing that chunk of the sequence back and forth until no more skipped frames appear. My guess is either this is generating a preview that is smooth, or it is rendering each frame for the 24fps needed for output.

Tomorrow I will attempt to edit all the frames.

Things a man should learn

More and more I've come to understand what it is to be a man. Well, not really in the sense of a movie star super hero should be able to all these things, but i think there are a few things that i've personally really wanted to do, and realize that not many people in the modern world can do it. so maybe we look back on our forefathers and say that's how real men lived.

So the things I have learned or am attempting to learn to do:

1. Ride a motorcycle
2. Shoot a gun
3. Shave with a straight razor
4. Drink whiskey
5. ?
6. Become clint eastwood
7. Profit!

***

Surprisingly relevant: from reddit

Travels, done

I totally didn't post about each place I travelled to. But a brief summary is this:

San Francisco - Sept 3
North Carolina
Bermuda - Cancelled! Due to passport expiration
Davis
DC (for work)
North Carolina - 11 pm Monday night to 5 AM tuesday night - got a haircut
Chicago
San Diego - November 19

the new science and math

more and more i'm beginning to think that being a nerd in high school is not enough. being good at science and math is no longer the ticket into a good college and future. parents, sending your kid to science summer camp? making them do research projects? making them practice math competitions? not enough. the new math and science whiz is entrepreneurship.

NFTE launch teaches kids to bring products to market in 4 days

Used to be we'd look up to the kids with high SAT scores. (In my geeky world, that is.) and those who were good at "extracurriculars" would get into the ivys. But that might not even matter anymore if your kid really knows how to think, and make their ideas real. instead of just memorizing the right answers, they create the right answers out of nothing.

and that's why my poor children are going to have to bear piano lessons, tennis lessons, math and science competitions, as well as learn business savvy.

San Francisco

Flew in on JetBlue on Friday, and Christine and I spent the night at Conor's house, which has an awesome floor to ceiling bay window view from the 27th floor. His pull out couch/bed was surprisingly comfortable, and might even convince me to actually buy a pull out sofa for my basement instead of using a futon.

We went to Off the Grid for dessert after some sushi in the city. I have a ton of pictures but they are all on my iPhone app which saves photos but doesn't make them available to your normal phone, so i'll just have to describe them: creme brulees, banana fritters, spicy mini tacos, a local IPA. And apparently this happens EVERY WEEK.

We had breakfast at Tartine, which was crowded as usual, but Conor took us to a nice picnic spot on the Missions commons somewhere, and we sat on his very useful waterproof picnic blanket. He has a knack for picking out places with views and nice grassy areas. The night before, we drove straight to the Twin Peaks where there was an amazing panoramic view of the city, from the waterfront to the mountains. It was dark though so I didn't get any pictures. And it was a warm SF night, so we only left shivering a little bit when the fog rolled in.

On Sunday, Christine and I went spontaneous house hunting when we saw a sign for some availability near the pier. We looked at two units, each priced about $650k which was surprisingly cheap for an area like that. The first one was amazing and had a private roofdeck, and basically screamed bachelor pad and private entertainment. We were able to take some photos from the second one because the realtor, understanding that we weren't really able to buy his houses, was happy to let us just wander and look at the unit ourselves.




Later, we went to the area around Fisherman's Wharf, and then to Ghiradelli Square, because I was insistent on revisiting my favorite spots from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. We had bread bowl soup at Boudin, then delicious mocha from Ghiradelli. The best thing of all was finding parking right at the entrance of the square at the base of the hill, with 1 hour still left on it. That's usually what makes my day at any given touristy spot, in addition to the rest of the attractions.

JetBlue all you can fly pass

I purchased the JetBlue Boston Blue Pass in August. Basically, it gives me a free pass to fly through any of JetBlue's Boston based routes through November 22, as long as there's a flight available. This is actually an amazing deal, and I've already begun to take advantage of it.

On Sept 3, I traveled back from Sacramento, CA where I attended my cousin's wedding and also visited Christine. (We had already booked a flight there so that leg didn't save me any money).

On Sept 17, I took a day trip to Raleigh, NC to visit my parents and visit Nathan and Erica. Day trips to NC are ok because it's only a 2 hour flight. It could literally like I go home for dinner then come back the next morning.

So from now on there's going to be a bit of vacationing, for a few weekends at least until I get tired. I'll try to keep a photo log here, and when my iphone app is developed I'll try to add tags of all the locations as well.

Up next: San Francisco, the Caribbean, and Las Vegas.

tech hipsters

i got the overwhelming sense this morning that there's a gradient of how hip you are in tech. in hindsight that's almost the meaning of tech, because being recent on technology basically defines you as a hipster. but even within that community there's the hipsters who are first adopters, and there are the slower tech giants, and the all encompassing tech consuming masses that follow trends.

if you look historically at how the internet generation came to be, you'd see that there has always been a trend of cutting edge technology being slowly adopted, then suddenly becoming mainstream, then become obsolete and lagging. Apple and Microsoft were hipsters in their time especially compared to established behemoths like IBM. Google was and still is the hotshot, but their hipster rep is going quickly as they become the new evil empire Microsoft became after Windows XP. The iPhone was a sign that you were a hipster both in tech and music, and for the longest time I resisted it. But i'm a late adopter. Nowadays droid is the new thing, and even that is becoming mainstream too quickly for owners to really be early adopters.

We move on to the world of social networking. Facebook and Twitter, with their lack of business models but meteoric rise in popularity, have matured to become platforms for other businesses that are based purely on facebook and twitter apps. Foursquare, which resides solely on the formerly hipster crowd of smartphone users, is now a platform upon which more forward thinking developers build their newest apps. And everyone is trying to push into the crowded apps startup world, so that there are even apps that characterize you and build a social network based on which apps you possess. In other words, whether you're an apps hipster and at the front line, or whether you're downloading and running something because your grandfather told you that all of his friends at the retirement center use on their iphones.

Where do we go from here? What's the newest level of hipsterness, that will be built on the networks of apps that run on facebook that run through google's servers that run on a windows or mac OS that run on a PC or Apple machine?

speaking of hipsters

har har

gadgets galore

today, april 25th, is the day where i catch up on technology.

first, christine bought me a casio fh100 slowmotion capable camera. it records 640x480 at 120fps, which is definitely enough to capture sports and make those sweet slow motion videos for highlights videos. it is relatively hi-def at that speed as well. for higher definition video it does take 30fps at 720p which is way more than my last documentary, so it's going to be an upgrade for my videography in many ways. i spent a little bit of time recording my cat chasing a laser pointer: Bella.

next, I bought an iphone and finally upgraded my service, so now i am part of the "smart phone crowd" despite being ok with not having internet and gps on my phone for years. but it's for a iphone app project i am working on and my itouch didn't have a camera, so why not. time to join the modern crowd.

and i am doing all of this development on a mac mini loaned to me by my colleague on the project. i have so many new toys to play with.

bike repair with craigslist

i just bought a bike frame on craigslist, from a guy who's becoming my buddy because i've purchased parts from him in the past so this time we recognized each other in the first email exchange.

this time i got a frame and while i was there, we decided to basically put it together more or less. and i learned a bunch of things. this post is kind of a note for myself for reference.

frame size: 49 cm (about 19") is measured from the top of the seat post to the top of the bottom bracket.

seat post - 26.6 diameter (the old 26.7 was too tight)

rear wheel has a single speed gear with spacers on it. it was the kind that looks like this: and spacers are needed to adjust the position of the gear so that the chain is straight.

crank tool: ccp-2 needed to pull out cranks. spin the nut as low as possible, insert into the threads by the crank, and spin the tool so that the nub at the end pushes into the bike, so the tool basically pulls the bike out.

inserting cranks: just use a socket wrench to tighten the nuts as tightly as possible.

chainring: single speed, just a single metal disc that has 5 openings for chainring bolts. bolts onto 5 pronged crank

basically he put these things loosely together for me so i have a good idea how to install the cranks and gears in a bike. i still have to find a headset and handlebars, and the seatpost.

and a coincidence - i've been reading up on iphone programming and before leaving had opened the addison wesley iphone programming - the big nerd ranch guide on my computer. and just now i close it but notice that the picture is of an open bottom bracket in the bike, similar to the ones i was looking at today on craigslist.

spring

it's not quite the right temperature yet but today was like a spring sunday. this was on the schedule:

house renovation (demolition to access ceiling joists)
photography (organize photo365 and other photos)
bike repair (degrease and clean axle, reinstall bearings)
motorcycle (took it out of storage and rode down memorial drive)
beer brewing (boil hops and prepare wheat ale)

the temperature was like 40 degrees F but the ride was actually pretty nice. crisp, not chilly, and full of sun.

soundtracks

for my own reference, but i can see a new taekwondo video in the near future if these inspire me enough.





i'm looking for a song not necessarily for a dramatic fight scene, chase, or action montage, but where there's some sort of emotional growth or outburst, or when someone makes a speech that causes someone else to realize something. imagine a zoom into someone's face or eyes as someone else is talking in the background.

i'm probably also going to need a high speed (for slomo) camera.

movie nights

after playing the mustache game a few times and reintroducing foot fist way and black dynamite to the club, i've decided that it's high time we get back to the classics. some of which i haven't seen in a long time, or ever. we really need to watch cult classics and 80's movies, some of which are really bad, some of which are really good.

off the top of my head, i want to have a movie night for:

teenage mutant ninja turtles
princess bride
bill and ted's excellent adventure
back to the future
goonies
space balls
ghost busters
airplane!
monty python series
big trouble in little china
mad max
gremlins
the dark crystal

ah, to go back to the days when i was 8 and watching saturday afternoon movies! and when most of my friends were like 2 or 3...

snow

it is groundhog's day, and we have had our fourth (?) snowstorm of the winter. the first one was christmas, and i got back to NC in time to miss it. then there was another day when lincoln labs closed. then recently when lincoln closed early, and today when lincoln closed completely. except today, there was mostly rain, which made the streets slushy, the snow piles dense, and everything miserable, in general.

driving a stick shift in boston during a snow emergency is very stress inducing. mainly it's because people are all driving slowly and i have to really test my understanding of a clutch and first gear. but there were a few instances of trying to drive uphill from standstill, or trying to reverse into a parking spot half covered in snow, or driving through a huge puddle while going decently fast. i've decided that although manuals are fun, eventually i want a fully automatic electric/hybrid, and i want to move out of boston.

but, that being said, it's amazing to see piles of snow higher than the cars parked next to them, higher than the people walking behind them on the sidewalk. and if it weren't so grimy and cold, i'd be out there because there must be some great photos to be taken of boston winter storm of 2011.

demo video

just a link to my demo video:

text twist

i've been playing alot of text twist online and it just occurred to me that ideas are kind of like those elusive 5 letter words in the game. sometimes you just have no idea what the answer is. but with a scramble and a different alignment of the elements (letters, technologies, whatever) that you already have, sometimes a completely new idea or application will just leap out at you. and it's so crystal clear that it's hard to see how you simply could not piece it together before. i find myself needing a scramble so often because i'll always hear about some new invention or web technology and be like "damn it's so obvious, why couldnt i have thought of it before and made a fortune on it?"

reno

i'm in reno, in a room of my own in a 2 bed suite (christine's with her parents in the other room) and scrolling around on tv - i havent watched food network, south park, or spike tv in a long time, but i hit up some music channels instead:

starting the year

today i go back to work and i'm looking for signs that the year will be awesome or shit. well, it's hard to say because it's been such a mix. my milk spilled completely from its container despite precautions to keep it upright, and i spent about 15 minutes in the bathroom washing my workout clothes and underwear in the sink while other guys peed in the urinals behind me. and as i reached down to sqeeze out the water the sink soap dispenser spooged on my sleeve three times. but, some nice guy brought a bunch of donuts and left them sitting around for people in the atrium, and dan brought in cookies. so breakfast was not lost. i forgot my password (really??) and got locked out of my login, but as a result i was able to implement a newer and cooler password. we'll keep count for the rest of the day.