Anamorphic for the GoPro, Mac Pro reviews, Hardware & Software, Work/Life Balance

Letus Corporation @letus35
Letus Tweeted this interesting idea yesterday; an anamorphic adapter for the GoPro Hero!

Introducing the newest member of Letus Anamorphic Club: 1.33x anamorphic lens adapter for @GoPro 

Mac Pro Reviews

Mac Pro, Final Cut Pro X 10.1, and five streams of native R3D | Philip Hodgetts

Benchmarks, schmenchmarks: this is the performance I care about. Bottom line: multiple stream native RED 4K editing without proxies is practical if you have the storage speed.

The New Mac Pro: Ridiculously Fast | Larry Jordan

Here’s the speed of the Mac Pro talking directly with its internal flash drive. Holy smokes! I have never measured speeds this fast — BUT, even this speed does not fully load a single Thunderbolt 1 pipe. The new Thunderbolt 2 protocol, which the Mac Pro also supports, is more than twice as fast as the internal flash drive.

The Mac Pro Review (Late 2013) | AnandTech
Cheaper to build your own, but would it look as sexy?

The DIY PC route is still going to be more affordable. If we go the Ivy Bridge E route and opt for a Core i7-4930K, you get more cores than either of the options above for around $600 for the CPU. Adding in another $330 for a motherboard, $180 for 12GB of DDR3-1866 memory, $1400 for two W7000 GPUs and $220 for a fast SATA SSD (Samsung 840 Pro) we’re at $2730 for a configuration that would cost at least $3499 from Apple.

Hardware & Software

Center Crop Mode for Super 16 Lenses now Available on the Sony F5 and F55 | B & H Photo

The Center Crop Mode is one of the highlights of the new v3.0 update. The new feature takes a crop from the center of the 4K Super35 sensor, making it possible to use Super 16mm lenses and shoot in XAVC HD, XAVC 2K, SStP, and 2K RAW. RED cameras have had this feature for years, and it’s something I’ve always felt the F5 and F55 had been missing. 

Back To ListingsRSSPrint Beachtek DXA-SLR PRO audio interface review part 2: with Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera | Pro Video Coalition
The Beachtek DXA-SLR is $439:

Prior to doing this test, I discussed with Beachtek about how to adjust the input of the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera when used with the DXA-SLR PRO, given the fact that (at least as of publication time of this article), there are no internal audio meters in this camera. Beachtek stated that with the current firmware, we should be setting the camera input to maximum input for best results.

A 4K monitor for $419?!
Tiger Direct has a Seiki 39" Class 2160p 120Hz LED Ultra HDTV Bundle for $519, but have a $100 rebate of some kind going on at the moment:

• 39-inch (38.5-in. Diagonal) direct lit LED backlight
• 120Hz refresh for 1,080p signals, and 30Hz for 4K signals
• 3840x2160 panel resolution
• 300-350 cd/m2 Brightness
• 6.5 rms response time

top After Effects feature requests of 2013, plus a peek at what we’re thinking about for the near future | Adobe

Make it faster: We don’t get all that many feature requests that use the exact words “Make it faster”, but a large number of requests do ask for essentially this in more specific terms.

Film editing stages – Sound | Oliver Peters
A definition of terms and techniques:

The deliverable requirements for most TV shows and features are to create a so-called composite mix (in several variations), along with separate stems for dialogue, sound effects and music. A stem is a submix of just a group of component items, such as a stereo stem for only dialogue.The combination of the stems should equal the mix.

Work/Life Balance

The abundance of slowness | Content Creators & Curators

2. Stop trying to be a hero. Commit to a schedule you can sustain and tasks you can complete without killing yourself. No one will go into cardiac arrest if you turn down a project.

The Trouble With Overtime | CG Masters

My numbers show me that artists on a sustained 10-hour schedule will be able to accomplish about 5.5 hours of task per 11 hours of pay. Congratulations to me, I have managed to double the cost of making visual effects and slow down production, exactly the opposite of what I should be doing.

Business

8 Things The Film Biz Can Learn From The Music Biz | Truly Free Film

Part Three: “We’ve turned into a nation of grazers. And the artist’s job is to constantly be at the smorgasbord. Not to deliver one big meal that is picked at and thrown away, but to constantly provide tantalizing bites to the public.”

The Desolation of NZ: Government Bails Out US Producers Again | VFX Soldier

Then in 2011, the US studios showed up again. This time they tried to take advantage of emergency legislation needed to help Christchurch earthquake victims by attaching bills that would grant them the power without due process to disconnect internet access of anyone they suspect of piracy.

Shia Labeouf: “Should God sue me if I paint a river?" | Film Drunk

Hot on the heels of his apology in the clouds, Shia Labeouf has provided additional proof that he should probably shut up for a while. The Beef recently did an email interview with BleedingCool, in which he asserted that “authorship is censorship” in a series of misspelled missives when asked to defend his plagiarism.