Mastering the Dallas Screenwriter’s Association – 2011 Short Film Showcase

What does it take to master 11 DVD’s, 4 WMVs, and 3 .mov’s onto one disc? Not a lot. But it does take a thorough of understanding what goes into mastering a DVD and what the shortest distance is between Source and Delivery.

The Dallas Screenwriters Association had gathered more than 12 movies for it’s 2011 Showcase. Add to this some PSA’s and some new media created specifically for this program, and you have the makings for a special challenge. But there’s a way around this potentially tricky multiformat maze that enabled the finished DVD to be delivered in just a couple days- and that includes delays for work on other projects, and the need to create a few new media bits.

HD DVD dead. Let’s move on.

Remember more than two years ago when Apple CEO, Steve Jobs held the Sony’s HVR-FX1 HDV camcorder up on stage and called it “The year of HD.”

Here we are several years later and, mostly because of the protracted “format war” between HD DVD and Blu-ray, we have been left with almost everyone sitting on the proverbial fence.

The war’s over folks. There’s only one direction to go and it’s been picked for us. 

Blu-ray 1.0, 1.1, 2.0… is your player out of date already?

Cnet Asia has a nice little rundown on the versions of Blu-ray specifications players are supposed to meet. Little did we know that October 31, aside from bringing out ghouls & goblins, made version 1.0 part of the undead– no longer living, but yet, still out there, walking around.
Well, maybe not walking, but still sitting on store shelves.

Blu-ray 1.0, 1.1, 2.0… is your player out of date already?

Cnet Asia has a nice little rundown on the versions of Blu-ray specifications players are supposed to meet. Little did we know that October 31, aside from bringing out ghouls & goblins, made version 1.0 part of the undead– no longer living, but yet, still out there, walking around.
Well, maybe not walking, but still sitting on store shelves.

Specs lie. (Actually they just mislead us.)

In a wonderful commentary article (rant) at High Def Digest, Joshua Zarber takes a moment to put down the hardware and the manuals and speak directly to the “number purists” among us and basically tells us to grow up.

HD Home Audio Formats Explained.

High Def Digest has an amazing rundown of each audio format available on each high-def home video standard- i.e. Blu-ray and HD DVD. Moreover, Joshua Zyber gets into the nitty gritty about the various audio interconnects between the players and other equipment, and how the myriad of audio formats are handled by each interconnect, on each optical standard. Yes, that’s a matrix of 56 different possibilities that Mr. Zyber has organized into a nice, neat article.

Blade Runner – The Pristine Print

I went to see Blade Runner – The Final Cut.

First I have to say that the Zeigfield Theatre in NYC is a beautiful place to watch a film.
Even though the preshow was filled with commercials like your local run-of-the-mill multiplex, the theatre itself is a posh, 1000+ seat, single-screen, elegant viewing room. It is up stairs from the street level and the entire ambiance evokes the feeling of stage theater, as opposed to just the silver screen. The only thing it is missing is a curtain to open up in front of the screen before the main performance. (But then, if the screen was covered, there’d be no commercials… but I digress.)

The previews rolled right into the Ladd Company logo, (the green tree) which I immediately recognized. Then a long pause, and the first concussions of the stellar Vangelis soundtrack and the opening titles, white on black.
I looked carefully at the screen and saw that they were rock solid.

No waviness. No jitter. No odd flicker. Perfect… it was made as well as they could make it…

HD-101, a reference for your friends and family.

For the most part, readers of this blog are tech savvy folks that can actually recite the two different ATSC HD frame sizes off the top of their heads.

This is something mere mortals (i.e. usually everyone else in our families) simply cannot, or care not to do.

But then, when any of those folks need camcorder advice, or computer help, or digital camera assistance, they turn to us. As if knowledge about how to shoot and edit professional video equals a complete encyclopediac knowledge of every consumer camcorder, computer, software problem & how to fix it.

But there’s now help from a retail friend…