I have been very busy with my television work lately and when I’m not shooting for broadcast, I am up in the mountains shooting astro-timelapses. I just wanted to post something new to my site because it has been a little while since my last post! I shot the picture above yesterday afternoon on the Swift River in New Hampshire with the Canon 5Dmk2. Awesome light at 4:30pm in the afternoon!

I fired off a few more shots with the Canon 5dmk2. A few of these are still images from a astro-timelapse I shot two nights ago. This really is an amazing camera.

I am working all the home Bruins hockey games this winter and also sneaking off to shoot a documentary in Florida the first week of December. I will be working on another documentary that will take me all over the country during the next two months and I will blog as I work in different cities. Perhaps, if I have time, I can meet up with a few of you who follow my blog.

If you live in the New England area, tune into the New England Sports Network and check out the promos I shot for the hockey show, “The Instigators”. I used the Sony PMW-EX1 and Letus Ultimate to shoot a bunch of childhood pranks the TV show hosts played on each other. I hope to get some of this on my website soon. The promos are running around the clock during commercial breaks.

In other news, my parents moved to Arizona a few months back and they really want me to visit them! My Dad, in the picture above, is enjoying his “Arizona Freedom” with his Harley and some sort of assault rifle. He use to be a cop, but I think he is taking his retirement way too far! My parents also have my dog, Zac, and I miss him a ton. I am going to try to get out there mid December and I will be bringing my Canon 5dmk2 camera to shoot a few astro-timelapses. I will post these directly to my website since they will not be part of the night time lapse project I am working on. That big project won’t be ready until next year.

I will also be pulling the trigger on a $60,000 camera package. I am still not certain if I will go RED ONE or Sony PDW-f800. I am leaning towards the Sony f800 and will post a blog on the strengths and weakness of both. I really could use your help on what I should buy. Your opinion could help sway my decision.

I will be shooting more with the RED ONE in the up coming months. I am going to be shooting snowboarding in New Hampshire at 120 FPS and hope to shoot some winter storm stock footage at 4k.

I am already planning a trip (vacation) this summer to the Vancouver area to downhill mountain bike Whistler B.C. I have always wanted to get out that way and I am putting time away to do it.

Finally, I have a few blogs that I keep promising all of you. I have all the pieces and I just need to sit down and put them all together. I have a blog half done talking about the new Cox Communications “HD Sprinter” remote television truck. This truck is using Sony PMW-EX3 cameras and Nipros fiber optic adapters to cover sports with multiple cameras in HD. Yes, that is a $50,000 Fujinon 42x 2/3 inch TV lens being mounted to an EX3 in the above picture!

I also need to post a blog about the current state of live sports television and the new MSG TV New York NHL hockey truck. I have a big blog I need to do about the RED ONE camera and the 4k workflow with Adobe Premiere. Plus a ton of you are asking for details on the dolly that I use. I must take pictures of that to help you all build your very own!

My house at the top of the mountain. I am writing this blog from inside! The genny is almost out of gas and the batteries are dead since the solar panels don’t work anymore. I will have to replace them at some point. The satellite internet connection is spotty because the wind is howling outside. I wish this place had a bathroom.

I have been enjoying my days off! Taking pictures of my hand reflecting in a small pool of water trapped in a rotten hole of a tree in the middle of nowhere. Now where did I put my mountain bike?

It is also looking good that I will be at NAB 2010 this April. I am really looking forward to this, I had so much fun last year and made a lot of new friends in the television business.

That is about it. Sorry that I have not kept this page updated. It is a lot of work. I just got around to answering 58 emails I have received through my website during the month of October. I hope some of the stuff I know can help you make better television and films. That is really why I spend my free time working on this website.

-Tom

I am going to try experimenting with a plugin for Wordpress called Flowplayer. Flowplayer is a bit of code that allows you to embed Flash and MP4 video files into your Wordpress blog.

You can also use this code and player with any webpage. It can be found for free (I am using open source free code) or purchased as a commercial license by clicking here.

Below is an example of a short piece of video shot with the Canon 5Dmk2 camera. It is an extended take of the very first scene with Adam Gotsens in the short film, “Burial Site”. This video is ungraded and the audio is from the 5Dmk2 built in microphone.

I edited the .mov h.264 file directly on my timeline with no transcoding. I am using a super fast eight core mac pro tower. I encoded the video using Apple Quicktime Conversion to h.264 720p and then used Visual Hub to convert it back to h.264 mp4 in a much smaller file size for the web.

If you want to add this to your wordpress page, you can download everything you need by clicking here.

I am planning to buy the licensed version so that I can customize the controls and get rid of the “Flowplayer” watermark. Let me know if you have any trouble viewing this file. Try clicking the little box on the lower right to go FULL SCREEN! Looks really good in HD eh? The video is 30.42 MB though, so I will have to try to knock that down for my longer films without compromising quality somehow.

Is this better than me using large .mov files on this website to showcase my films and videos?

Let me know if anything on this website malfunctions or is not displaying properly.

I will be adding a few new web videos soon. They include a short video blog about the RED ONE camera and a blog about the new HD PBS Frontline show open and element package.

I just need some time off to get it all done!

Thanks for keeping an eye on this place for me.

Tom

Then, just over a year ago, I watched a video in full screen, high definition video over the internet. I was amazed. I did not think the technology was at that point and that it could be possible to post high quality video to a world wide audience with the click of a button. The HD video website is called Vimeo, and they are simply, hands-down, THE BEST.

Other websites followed, like Exposure Room, giving people a free method of HD delivery to the masses.

But, sometimes the Flash encoding on Vimeo and XR does not meet up to my high expectations. Vimeo has a great comment and community system setup, but occasionally, the video quality suffers as it is encoded into Flash. I am not certain why, but some of my videos look better than others (compression wise) and I am exporting them the exact same way out of Final Cut Pro. I also found that when uploading video to Vimeo, it is best to do it around 10am EST. If I were to set an upload at 10pm EST, the up speed is super slow and sometimes the encode screws up. Lots of people set the video to upload and encode before they go to sleep. Perhaps this is directly related to the number of encodes going on at the Vimeo servers at a given time.

Now, a new HD web video option is available and from my first experiences, it looks better than Vimeo, YouTubeHD and Exposure Room. Perhaps the Flash encoders are even more powerful at Facebook.

I know that this technology has been available with Facebook since the end of 2008, but I think that the company may have upgraded their encoding servers or Flash codec. The HD video looks very good on the site right now.

When I click full screen on my iMac computer, the Facebook HD looks far better than anything I have ever seen. I have posted an embed of the first video I have uploaded to Facebook HD. I think the embed will only play in standard definition. In order to view it in HD, you must click the “Facebook” logo in the upper left of the window and watch it from their site. Unfortunately, I think you must be a member of Facebook to view HD. It is free, so sign up now, just to try it out.

I hope Vimeo can use similar encoding technology and improve their website. Perhaps, because Vimeo got so big, so fast, they are trying to sort things out. Time will tell.

UPDATE: Looks like Vimeo is working on this problem. Click here to see the mp4 conversation at Vimeo.

Let me know what you think. When you post a comment, please let me know what type of computer you are using to view the HD video and tell me how it played out on your screen (ie. choppy, smooth, ect)

I must say one last thing about web video. All the video on my website is hosted by my server and all of the videos are in 720p HD quicktime. This is the clearest and best way to view HD internet video, in my opinion. But it takes a toll on the web hosting, server bandwidth and you need a decent computer to view it. A lot of people are looking for third parties to host HD video for new and old computers.

Perhaps, Facebook will allow HD embeds with their great Flash encoding in the future for people who have video intensive websites.

To address some of the concerns about who actually owns your content on Facebook, I cut and pasted a little part of the May 1, 2009 terms and conditions.

You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how we share your content through your privacy and application settings. In order for us to use certain types of content and provide you with Facebook, you agree to the following:

1. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (”IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (”IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account (except to the extent your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it).
2. When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others).

So as far as I see it, you are in control of your content and allow Facebook to send it where they please. But, if you want that roller coaster to end, you simply delete the content and all is well. The content no longer is used on or by Facebook.

I must say, it only took Sony 10 days to turn the camera around, but it felt like months. I really missed the EX1. As soon as it returned, I had it back in service full time. Aaron at Letus sent me the second generation Nikon mount for my Extreme. This is much better and makes for a very tight connection. Thanks Aaron!

I have three videos I will be editing very soon to add to my site.

The first is a “video journal” of my trip to North Carolina embedded with the University of Rhode Island basketball team as they took on Duke. I am directing the photography and shooting a documentary that follows the team for their entire 2008-2009 season for a local television station. I will not give too much away as far as the doc goes in my web video, I will simply comment on the gear. I will explain what I used and how I used it in certain situations. I traveled alone for this part of the doc and was responsible for the pictures, the sound and the story. I shot this all with the Sony Z7U HDV camera in 24p. I am not editing this documentary. I am only posting some of the footage to my site.

The second video I will put up will be a short behind the scenes of a shoot I did with my EX1 and the Letus Extreme with Matt Cassel (New England Patriots Quarterback) as he visited cancer patients at Children’s Hospital in Boston. This was shot for a PSA for a local sports tv station. The tv station will edit the actual promotion.

The third video I have to get done for my site is just a bunch of EX1 and Letus Extreme visuals of Providence College and their basketball program. I overcranked everything at 60 FPS for a Rhode Island television spot. My editor will be cutting the footage into a 30 second commercial to air with the Providence College basketball broadcasts to promote the coverage. This spot will have a religious tone to it and we actually have someone composing music and scoring the piece!

Keep an eye on this page, I think I have a day off near the end of November!

I decided to go with a simple, three column, white page design that will load very fast and be easy to navigate.

Wordpress is great because it allows people to write code for cool add-ons and other interactive elements that add a dynamic property to anyone’s web presence.

I must thank Bytes For All for their passion to create code for the masses and provide answers and support at no cost. I will donate money to the guy who designed this great “Atahualpa” theme. I also would like to thank all the code writers who have created the many plugins I have added to this site to make the page what it is. It amazes me that people do all this open source work for free.

Please take a moment to register on this site and check it out. Even if you do not register, you can still post comments to the text boxes at the bottom of most pages. I look forward to your input and let me know if you find any bad links or other errors on the pages.