A double-take for DoubleClick

I'm a pretty avid reader of all things news. Among the sites that I read on a regular basis are C|Net's news.com, CNN, Gizmodo, and Variety. There are many more that I check in on from time to time, but that's the cream of the crop for me. A blog post from Declan McCullagh caught my attention today.

From his prestigious post as a C|Net blogger he cried foul over this "Republican" (it was 12 out of 13 Republican committee members who signed it) drafted letter to their Subcommittee urging a more thorough review of the pending DoubleClick and Google merger. McCullagh poses the question of whether this is partisan retribution against Google because a lot of Google staffers are Democrats.

Whether this was a Democrat or Republican proposed idea, I say it's about time that the government got a little more involved in the investigation of these types of mega-mergers. I'm pretty sure that everyone has heard of Google, but not so many people know about DoubleClick or it's ad metric and tracking system. The entire idea of a search engine that records every search word ever entered and the unique tracking capability of a company like DoubleClick is frightening.

If the merger is approved and Google becomes one with DoubleClick, will you think twice about typing in your search at Google? You might know that Google records what you look for, and then they'll have the capability to combine that with other geographic and demographic information to more accurately identify you - or rather whoever uses your computer.

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to hear Google's CEO Eric Schmidt speak to NAB attendees. He really impressed me as a thoughtful, extremely smart, and very articulate business leader. He's well aware of the simple fact that if Google were to piss off too many people, another search engine is just a mouse-click away for everyone. The question could be posed: Does anyone really know what search engine that they could or should use if Google's "do no harm" philosophy were to suddenly become "maximize all profits" and they began to use your private information in ways unthinkable today?

In the spirit of our effort with Toast (you have joined us at DrinkMePictures.com, right?) which is reliant on people joining and telling others about what we're doing - I'd like to encourage everyone to use this opportunity to call your Representative and let them know how you feel about the Google and Doubleclick merger. Don't know how you feel about it? Well Google it... oh wait... can you trust their results to give you the unbiased results you expect when it comes to information about them?

It should be noted that this very blog is hosted by Blogger.com which is a Google.com owned company. Right now, I think they are a good company, but it is a little scary to think of what they could be in 10 years. Our "democratic" voice will be heard by how we support them as a public company.

The Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection is made up of the following Democratic members (as well as 13 other Republican members of Congress):

Bobby L. Rush, IL, Chairman
Jan Schakowsky, IL Vice Chair
G. K. Butterfield, NC
John Barrow, GA
Baron P Hill, IN
Edward J. Markey, MA
Rick Boucher, VA
Edolphus Towns, NY
Diana DeGette, CO
Charles A. Gonzalez, TX
Mike Ross, AR
Darlene Hooley, OR
Anthony D. Weiner, NY
Jim Matheson, UT
Charlie Melancon, LA
John D. Dingell, MI (Ex Officio)

The "N" Word is Making the Rounds

It happened so fast the other night when I went for a late-night omelette snack at the world famous Roxy cafe here in downtown Portland. There I was at almost 3am sitting at the counter waiting for my food amongst the zombie-fare of after-bar patrons all decked out in their Halloween garb. Behind me a group of four underage kids settled into their table when the noxiously intoxicated fellow sitting to my right took notice of their arrival.

I had been conjuring up a little smalltalk with this guy while I waited when he suddenly spins around and demands of one of the kids behind us, "what the hell are you staring at?" This quickly degenerated into him noticing and taking issue with one of them being black and also wearing a wig. As ridiculous as all this was, I couldn't believe my ears and the trash that was coming out of his mouth - in Portland, Oregon no less! He slung multiple bigoted insults, racial slurs, and threats at this poor kid until he finally stopped long enough and returned to the forward facing direction for me to ask him what he was thinking. His reply... "I just like to fight - and I'm really drunk." I should add that this guy was in his mid 20's and the kids were likely all under 18.

Moments later, one of the girls in the group of kids had a flash of brilliant thinking and brought this guy's behavior and ridiculous hate speech to the attention of Mikey - their waiter and patron saint. Without waivering for a moment, Mikey quickly replies to the guy next to me, "if you used any of those words, you're going to need leave here right now." Amazingly the guy didn't offer any further protests or insults and just walked out.

This incident was ironic to me because of the recent stupid racist comments by A&E's bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman. It is unbelievable that people are still this ignorant and biased today. What makes the story relevant to the world of film and employer/employee relationships everywhere is the great example Mikey provides of taking responsibility and having the self-confidence to act when necessary. The great part here is that I believe the Roxy's owner has given their staff the implicit charge to handle whatever may walk through the door. It's really fantastic to see it all work like it's supposed to.

Too often, companies remove all power from the people charged within their workforce to carry out their business and with the loss of power, employees respond by not taking ownership in their own work. How can anyone be expected to do their job if they're not given the respect and trust necessary for them to do the right thing without having to ask permission?

Hire great people, give them the most latitude possible while still requiring them to be accountable, and most of all - don't create policies that strip the power of decision and action from the skilled people you've entrusted to carry out your business. It seems like common sense, so why isn't this common any more?

Major props to Mikey for diffusing a bad situation and doing the right thing!

I'd love to hear your thoughts... comment or e-mail me.

It's happened - Red has shipped some cameras

When I returned from NAB, I wrote about the "Red One" camera and the SI-2K digital camera. Exactly 494 days from their original announcement of the "Red One" and "Mysterium" sensor, the folks at Red have shipped their first cameras to a few customers. The very first cameras shipped on August 31st, 2007. fxguide has some coverage of the haps with pictures. It is nothing short of astounding at how quickly Oakley's founder was able to engineer and produce a camera so remarkable in such a short period of time.

When any product is hyped as much as the Red camera, you never really know if it has any chance of living up to expectations. In order to meet their delivery date expectations, Red shipped the first cameras with only a portion of their final set of features enabled. Through free firmware updates over the coming months, they'll be able to bring the full list of features up to the specs they originally promised. The great thing about the company so far is that from outward appearances, they've been very transparent and forthcoming in dealing with their customers - even going so far as to ask for feedback about what features to keep in the camera.

So what are people saying about how the cameras perform? So far, a lot of people are practically falling over themselves to gush about how great the images are, and how fantastic the camera is. Score some points for the Red team. The only negatives I've seen relate to non-active features (such as no current functioning electronic viewfinder) and questions relating to overall dynamic range compared to Panavision's Genesis (which costs many times more - and is only available to RENT). Most of the good discussions are taking place on the Cinematographers Mailing List in the cml-2k-444 list (you need to be subscribed to read them).

It's probably a good time to point out that the workflow for a pure digital camera such as the Red One can be a pretty substantial departure from that of a video camera. The captured footage bears more of resemblance to the "RAW" mode stills of many digital SLR still cameras than the videotape of high-definition. Images have more color information and bits than can be displayed on any electronic display and so they have to be "adjusted" or managed using a Look-Up-Table (LUT) to be viewed properly. This is true both for what is seen on-set on monitors during production as well as before the footage can be used in post. It's very much like the telecine step for traditional film except it doesn't require a super-expensive suite of equipment to be transformed into something usable.

When a LUT is applied to footage, you are only seeing a representation of a selected set of the available information contained in the RAW image source. Much more akin to shooting on film, with RAW image acquisition, you have to be comfortable trusting in the expertise of the skilled technicians on set rather than the absolute certainty of knowing you're looking at what you're really getting. It can be freeing, but it also can be scary - depending on who's involved.

When digital cinematography started emerging with the first digital movie cameras, a new position was called for - the data wrangler / IT guy. Lots of productions are getting by without someone filling this role when shooting on a high-definition format such as HDCam. A Red One will be very difficult to operate without someone working on set to assist with the data/LUT management and display setup. The whole shoot could be severely compromised if the technician working to calibrate the displays and manage the data and LUTs doesn't have adequate experience.

With 50 cameras shipped from Red and in professional hands, they are still working through the bugs and enabling features as fast as they can. It's a good time here to talk about the lesser known SI-2K. Silicon Imaging's camera has been shipping since July '07. They continue to refine the workflow and interface for their camera and really have a great system.

Adding to their existing capabilities, SI announced at IBC that two of their SI-2k cameras can now be paired together to record stereo 3-D images. It's not clear what specific 3-D capabilities SI has instilled in their actual hardware or software. I can infer from their press release that their software will allow synchronized recording among multiple cameras, but do they have a mounting platform to physically put two SI-2k's with all the lenses and focus hardware in parallel - which would be required for 3-D?

The SI-2K and Red One continue to improve as they are bringing incredible capabilities into the hands of cash-strapped professionals. It's ironic that while these are superb tools at a price never imagine a decade ago, the complexity of working with them is increasing to that of tools costings many times more. To really push this new technology it's going to take a new breed of cinematographer who is willing to dig deeper into color management and digital issues than anything before.

The final question I've been wondering as a producer is what is a Red One or SI-2K going to cost in the near to medium timeframe? I've seen prices listed for a Red One for around $1k/day without lens. That would put a full usable camera package around $1,700 - $2,000/day. I'm expecting and hoping that as more cameras hit the market, the rental price drops to about half that. I have yet to see anyone renting an SI-2K - unfortunately. Does anyone reading this have access to one they'd want to rent? Comment or e-mail me...

The high cost of high-def discs

Blu-Ray or HD-DVD? Do consumers care? As important as this question may be - do the content creators really care? Without great content, no one is going to be compelled to buy into either format.

I've spent some time tracking down what it would take to actually author a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD disc, and was very surprised by how difficult (and expensive) it is. The first step is to take the high-definition video and have it encoded to a supported Blu-Ray or HD-DVD video and audio codec. Currently both formats support either MPEG-2, Windows Media VC-1, or H.264. That seems to be the easy part. Getting the encoded video into a flavor acceptable to the high-definition disc authoring software of your choice (whether for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD) is an adventure in frustration. There are so many caveats and problems with the better codecs (VC-1 or H.264) and so few affordable authoring packages that you'll likely end up falling back to MPEG-2 which is not as efficient. The lower efficiency means reduced picture quality compared to VC-1 or H.264 at equivalent bit-rates. Many of the first studio-produced Blu-Ray titles were encoded in MPEG-2 because of the authoring/encoding difficulties involved.

Once you get through all of that hassle, it's time to actually burn a disc. If you are creating an HD-DVD it's going to be really difficult. There are NO HD-DVD burners on the market to allow you to burn a disc. This last January, Toshiba announced with much fanfare their model SD-H903A HD-DVD burning drive, but it has yet to see the light of day on a retail shelf. Is there a conspiracy by Hollywood studios who don't want consumers to get their hands on high-definition recordable devices? No. Blu-Ray BD-R burners are readily available and set-top Blu-Ray recorders are surely headed to US shores as early as next year [see below].

In the process of authoring a standard-definition DVD, it is usually necessary to produce at least one - if not several - "check discs" in order to test the physical disc in various consumer DVD players. Without the ability to burn HD-DVD-R check discs, you must physically replicate an HD-DVD just to test it.

Rebecca Masterson at Deluxe's DVD Authoring division in Burbank told me that they have simulation software they use to test titles, but in order to create a "check disc" they must do a limited replication run using their small "micro-plant". This process takes them approximately 24 hours in-house and can cost upwards of $3,000 PER DISC each time a check disc needs to be created. Compared to the ease and low-cost of using virtually ANY DVD-R burner to create a check-disc for a standard-definition DVD, this is a major barrier for everyone but the largest content creators (ie. studios).

Even though BD-R drives exist for Blu-Ray, that doesn't mean it's any easier testing Blu-Ray discs. Most set-top Blu-Ray players have their ability to play BD-R discs turned off. This is supposedly to prevent piracy, but it has the ugly side-effect of eliminating playback for legitimate discs that you might want to create. I'm told that the latest Playstation-3 firmware (v1.92) will now allow BD-R discs to be played in a PS-3.

Another hindrance for Blu-Ray is the lack of any professional authoring software. The only low-cost authoring software I'm aware of is the PC-only Ulead MovieFactory Plus and DVDit Pro HD by Sonic/Roxio ($499). There is also the new Vegas 8 from Sony Creative Software which will support some kind of direct Blu-Ray burning. None of these are what I would consider "professional". Beyond that, the lowest priced software is Sony's own Blu-Print which is a minimum of $50,000 per license or the industry-leading Sonic Scenarist which is around $100,000 per license.

Sony announced four new Blu-Ray recorders (available only in JAPAN initially) and it's certainly interesting to speculate why there still aren't any HD-DVD consumer recorders.

To sum up... it's difficult, expensive, and frustrating to try to author high-definition discs for either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD at the moment.

Blu-Ray
Pros: BD-R burners are available today, set-top players are beginning to play BD-R discs.
Cons: Super expensive for true professional authoring software, VC-1 or H.264 encoded discs cannot be authored on low-cost software.

HD-DVD
Pros: Very good "professional" authoring is available in Apple's DVD Studio Pro.
Cons: ZERO HD-DVD burners available, difficult support for H.264 or VC-1 video

The high-def holy war

It's been a busy week for the companies behind the competing Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formats, and their various supporters. The business as usual of the past few months was interrupted on Monday morning when Paramount and DreamWorks Animation announced they are going to be exclusively supporting HD-DVD only for their high-definition releases. Then comes the news (Wall Street Journal / LA Weekly) that the HD-DVD group is paying Paramount and DreamWorks $50M and $100M respectively in promotional considerations and incentives for their decision to drop support for Blu-Ray. This leaves Sony/MGM, Disney, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Brothers as the backers of releases on Blu-Ray while HD-DVD will now exclusively add Paramount/DreamWorks to the lonely Universal Studios.

The early adopting consumers are all in a commenting tizzy on the blogs over what this will eventually mean for their beloved formats. Does this mean that HD-DVD has a chance after all? Will another studio like Warner Brothers be tempted by cash to drop their support of Blu-Ray?

Some people like to further speculate that if there isn't a clear "winner" between the two formats soon that the current crop of high-definition discs may go the way of SACD and DVDA. What?!? You've never heard of SACD or DVDA? That's because they died in the womb of their great "idea". These were supposed to be "super" high-fidelity audio discs which would give music lovers unparalleled sound quality. The problem was, very few people could actually hear the ultra-high frequencies and sound differences between the high-definition audio discs and normal audio CDs. Worse yet, most people were willing to have less quality for more convenience and less money (ie. free) in the form of downloadable MP3s. Not enough people cared about the quality to make a compelling reason to pay for all new CD players and buy new versions of the CDs they already owned.

There are many other differences in this format war than any previous ones of the past. SACD/DVDA never achieved any marked level of market penetration nor did they get enough labels on the bandwagon to release CDs to drive those sales. Not the case with HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Sony sold a mere 18 million Betamax units globally in its entire 27-year span of existence starting in 1975 and ending in 2002 (US availability ceased in 1998). There are already over 4.5 million Blu-Ray equipped Playstation 3s sold and in consumer's homes.

The true "battle" for which format has dominance will start to take place this holiday season when Toshiba has their sub-$300 standalone HD-DVD player available. Sony is rumored to have a similarly priced Blu-Ray player in the works for the holidays as well. Past CE hits have told us that the sweet spot for most American consumers is in the under $200 price range. This level of pricing won't be achieved by either format until at least the 2008 holiday season.

Until then, I'll still be a content producer trying to find affordable ways to actually produce high-definition discs. Right now, that doesn't exist for either format.

There's worms in that Apple

Following my post about Microsoft's Windows Media Player, I thought it'd be a good time to bring up the frustration that Apple has been giving post-production professionals in the past 18 months. Sure, they've enabled people to edit P2 media on Final Cut Pro like no other system, but at the expense of being locked into an Apple Mac OS system for their media. While P2/MXF is platform independent, the first step to work with it in Final Cut Pro is to convert it to the Apple (only) proprietary DVCProHD codec.

In order to take the finished footage (that averages out to be less than 1GB/minute in DVCProHD) onto a PC platform, it must first be converted to another codec - presumably an uncompressed one so that further quality loss isn't introduced which results in files that are ~7GB/minute or more. What's even more irritating is the conversion to another codec introduces the very likely possibility that there will be a colorspace conversion or other change which will result in even more headaches.

Now Apple introduced another "Apple only" codec in ProRes 4:2:2 at this year's NAB. It gives SD-data rate for HD footage with nearly no visual loss. A dream come true for most editors trying to edit on a small system with no expensive dedicated RAID array. Too bad that dream becomes a nightmare when they want to give some footage to their After Effects guy who might just so happen to be using a PC - or when they need to create a Windows Media file in HD.

Hey Apple - just because I can't use footage created in FCP on a PC doesn't make me say, "hey, I better get myself another FCP system." Instead I'm thinking, "You f*!#ing bastards, you're making my life difficult for no reason." The ability or inability to use DVCProHD footage on a PC that was created on a Mac has no relationship whatsoever to the end business and financial results for Apple. They're simply being bastards for bastards sake - to say, "look how cool we are because we have this, and the PC doesn't."

Kudos to Apple for taking themselves from having no editing product to having the best selling editing platform on the planet and in the process creating a very profitable base of users to milk on every upgrade. Shame on Apple for sticking out their tongue at the rest of the industry now that they've arrived.

Just because Apple is viewed in a much more positive light than Microsoft,
that doesn't mean their end-goals or means to achieve world domination are any less evil than Microsoft's well documented abuses of their monopoly position. I'm pretty sure I haven't heard Apple mumbling Google's mantra of "do no harm".

Take iTunes as another example Apple's near-monopoly exclusion. Where are the indie films on the iTunes store? Or fair negotiations with those poor and defenseless record labels who are nearly bankrupt these days?

Windows Media Player - an open letter to Microsoft

Dear Microsoft,

After spending countless amounts of money creating Windows Media Audio/Video and creating several new(er) versions of Windows Media Player, how is it possible that your software still can't accomplish even basic tasks that Apple's Quicktime Player has been able to do for years? You petitioned SMPTE and managed to turn Windows Media Video into a standard known as VC-1, yet there aren't any obvious specifications for what computers can actually play back high-definition Windows Media without stutters and playback anomalies. No standards exist for what bitrates can be supported "safely" on desktop PCs.

Even basic functions that are taken for granted in Quicktime - such as jumping to a specific point in time in a media file, or scrubbing forwards/backwards are impossible within Windows Media Player.

If you are to be taken seriously for your efforts of advancing computer audio/video, you have to create a product worthy of any professional consideration. So far, Windows Media Player suffers from the same bloated syndrome that plagued the Windows OS back in Windows 3.xx days.

Please fix this at your earliest opportunity.

Best Wishes,
A frustrated Windows User (and media professional)