CyberLink has announced MediaEspresso 6, renamed from MediaShow Espresso, the latest version converts any video, photo and music files to a broad range of devices including smart phones like the Apple iPhones and Google Android phones; media players such as iPods and iPads; and game consoles such as Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. MediaEspresso 6 also features CyberLink’s TrueTheater Technology that enhances video quality as it converts.

MediaEspresso 6 offers an easy way to convert and sync videos, photos and music files to a broad choice of media players, without needing to understand complicated file formats and settings. Simply import your media content then select a preferred playback device, and MediaEspresso 6 handles the rest.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 features:

• Ultra Fast video conversion: The first video conversion software optimized for the new 2010 Intel Core Family Processors—Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition, i5, and i3 – NVIDIA CUDA and ATI Stream technology, delivering ultra fast conversion speeds with easy batch conversion
• Smart Detect Technology: MediaEspresso 6 auto-detects the type of mobile devices that are connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for any user intervention.
• Direct Sync for a broad range of media playback devices: MediaEspresso 6 converts media content that is compatible with a wide range of devices such as Apple iPhone, Google Android and Windows Mobile devices from Acer, Blackberry, HTC, LG, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson, and media players such as the iPod, PlayStation 3, PSP, Xbox 360 and Zune as well as other devices.
• Improve video quality instantly with TrueTheater Technology: MediaEspresso 6 enhances the videos while it converts. With TrueTheater Lighting, it corrects overall colors and luminance while TrueTheater Denoise improves overall video quality by removing unwanted artifacts from the video. Users will be able to enjoy excellent video even on mobile devices.
• Extensive format support: MediaEspresso 6 supports all popular media formats including MKV, RM/RMVB, FLV, DivX, MOV (H.264), WMV, MPEG-2, M2T, TiVo, MP4 and many more.
• Ease of use: Easy batch conversion, auto-shutdown, and the My Favorites list of device profiles, offer a range of easy-to-use and time-saving features that take the hassle out of the video conversion process.
• Share videos to Social Network: MediaEspresso 6 provides even more ways for users to share their content. Users can now publish videos and photos to Youtube and Facebook directly.

CyberLink MediaEspresso MSRP:

MediaEspresso 6 (download): $39.95

MediaEspresso 6 Upgrade (download): $19.95

Let me first start out by saying that if you haven’t yet heard, Videomaker is finally drawing on their more than 25 years of experience in video production and producing some new intensive workshops on topics ranging from Advanced Shooting to Green Screen and Special Effects. This is good news for people who are looking to quickly learn about many specific topics in video. If you haven’t seen it yet, the list of workshops can be found here.

While putting together these workshops, and to serve our attendees and readers as best we could, we decided to back up many of the points we cover in each teaching session with short examples from professional films, television, and documentaries. We figured what better way to learn than to study from examples of professional work? At the same time, we decided to future-proof ourselves and take as many of these clips as possible from Blu-Ray sources for a full 1080P experience. While that sounded great in theory, in actuality, it was tougher to accomplish than winning the World Cup. Sure, there were a ton of great tools out there that could rip a disc to an MKV or an AVI which could play back on a computer, but the problem we ran into was that our editing software did not support either format well and the AVIs usually had broken indexes. Additionally,when importing into our editing software it either wouldn’t import at all into our project, or the audio would be about as out of sync as a bad dancer.

Since MKVs are just containers for H.264 video and DTS or AC3 audio, our first thought was to just strip the container from the video and audio and then rejoin the two tracks together, saving us time by not having to re-encode. Much to our chagrin, we found it incredibly difficult (not to mention time consuming) to demux the file into audio and video sources and then remux, or combine, them into an H.264 file. In fact, because the H.264 stream was so high from these MKV sources, most muxing software wouldn’t even allow us to combine the video and audio at all, and there was no codec that could read the native .h264 file besides. Even if the audio source was DTS, our video editing program couldn’t read it. This process put us back to square one more times than even the most avid mathematician would care to count and eventually became so frustrating that we decided to scrap the idea all together.

Now a short word on the legalities of copying DVDs is in order at this point. Basically, in order to comply with U.S. law, any clips a person takes must be used in a way that stimulates creativity for the enrichment of the general public and not to just “supersede the objects” of the original for reasons of personal profit. Also, the clips need to be fairly short in length (i.e. ~30 seconds or less) and not harm any profits that the distributors and/or producers of the film would have made otherwise. Essentially, you shouldn’t be giving a free screening of films to others. This is more or less the rules that fair use follows. Of course, if you are using this software to back up your DVDs or Blu-Rays for personal use, that would also be lawful under current law until you begin to distribute it to others or use it for profit. However, it is always advisable to check out current law first before doing any of these activities to make sure you don’t get into any legal trouble. Wikipedia has some great articles on the legalities of ripping DVD discs and Videomaker has put together a great list of articles on how to stay legal as well so check them out.

That being said, our solution was to watch the disc in it’s entirety on our Blu-Ray players. Note the timecode, and then go back into the movie and use a great piece of software called Pavtube to rip the clips into an .mpg format that worked natively inside of our editing software. The clips turned out beautifully since there were so many options for raising the bit rates, dimensions, and frame rates of the video, and took very little time. The program also had just about every format imaginable to convert to and allowed users to type in timecode to mark in and out points in the video, which saved a ton of time and effort. It was also possible to copy the entire disc this way, but just expect it to take a lot longer depending on the length of the film. Now it should be said that on my Mac, it was possible to use MactheRipper and MPEG Streamclip to do the same thing, but I really liked decoding and converting my video using the same program on the PC. I’m not going to lie, I wish I could say that the Pavtube software was free, but for only 50 dollars, this program was well worth the headaches it saved when copying discs for editing. While I’m sure there are other software solutions out there that can do the same thing as the software we found, we were just hoping that we could save you the headache of downloading some of those shady programs that may not work the way you imagined!

We’ve all been there: We just finished editing our masterpiece, but now what?! Well, if you want to export for the web, I’ve already gotcha covered with my web compression tutorial But not everyone’s intended delivery is for the web. Many people want to export for DVD as well. In fact, I am willing to bet delivering via DVD is desired more than delivering via the web. So it only makes sense that I show ya how to do it.
Being a blog targeted toward Final Cut Studio users, the programs used will be Final Cut Pro and Compressor. What I’m going to show you will work for both HD projects outputting for DVD as well as SD projects outputting for DVD.
First open your project in FCP. With the timeline of your final edit selected, go to “File > Export > Quicktime Movie.
Of course, this brings up a dialog box with some important options.

(A) The first thing you want to do is name chose a name for the file FCP will spit out. As you can see by the name I chose in my example, I made a video for thePhilly Soft Pretzel Factory.
(B) Next, choose where you would like this new file to live when FCP is done exporting. The last few settings are the important ones.
(C) Choose “Current Settings,” which refers to your timeline settings. There really should be no reason to select anything other than “Current Settings.”
(D) If you’re exporting for DVD, I don’t see why you wouldn’t include Audio and Video with this file
(E) This option allows you to include meta data for chapter markers and compression markers (if you added any), which is for more advanced DVD authoring, and therefore, a later blog post. For now, since this is a 5 minute video I chose not to include any markers.
(F) This last option seems to confuse people, but it’s really quite simply. If you check mark this box, FCP will create a stand-alone file that can be taken to any computer and viewed (as long as that computer has the right video player and video codec installed).
If you leave this box UNCHECKED, FCP creates a file that ONLY POINTS TO YOUR ORIGINAL MEDIA. That is important to understand. This file simply tells a program where to find the original media in order for that program to do its thing. For example, if opened in Quicktime, this file will tell Quicktime where to find the original source media so that Quicktime can playback the video. If you take this file to another computer and that computer does not have access to the original source media, then Quicktime will not be able to play back the video.
So which do you choose; self-contained or non-self-contained? Well, if you’re going to be encoding for DVD on another computer, then you need to make a self-contained file (if that computer doesn’t have access to the original media). If you will be encoding for DVD on the same computer you were editing with (or on a computer that DOES have access to the original media), then you only need a non-self-contained file. (If you’re still confused [or if I’ve confused you], check mark this box to make a self-contained file [can’t go wrong with a self-contained file])
As you can see, I’ve left it uncheck because I’m not going to encode on a different computer.
Once you’ve chosen the settings that work for you, click Save.

When FCP is done exporting, you can drag the new file to the Compressor icon in your dock. This automatically opens the file in Compressor.

You should already see your file loaded in the Batch window. If for some reason you don’t, go to “Add File” in the top left corner and find your file.
Go down to the Settings tab. This contains presets that you drop onto your imported file. Look for the “DVD: Best Quality 90 Minutes” folder. This folder contains 2 presets. One preset is for creating a .ac3 file, which is an audio file. The other preset is for creating the MPEG file, which is the video file. Drag BOTH of these presets to your file in the Batch window. (If you’re project is longer than 90 minutes, then you’ll need to choose one of the presets made for longer videos).

Click on the audio preset that you that you just dropped on your file. This will load it in the Inspector window so you can make adjustments.
First go to the Encoder Pane and find the Audio tab. At the bottom of this tab you’ll see an option for “Dialog Normalization.” This is for leveling audio if you’re encoding many different videos that have different audio levels for the same DVD. If you don’t need to do this, which you most likely don’t, change this to -31dBFS to leave your audio untouched.

Still in the Encoder Pane, go to to the Preprocessing tab, change the “Compression Preset” to “None.” For some reason, this setting defaults to an option ideal for theater viewing. That’s rarely the case, so you’ll have to change it.

That’s it for setting up the .ac3 file for output.
Now go back to the Batch window and click on the MPEG setting to load that in the Inspector window.
First go to the Encoder Pane and click on the “Video Format” tab. Make sure the four options – Video Format, Frame Rate, Aspect Ratio, and Field Dominance – match your intended output. If you have to change any, you’ll have to click on the little gear to enable making changes for that setting. For me, I had to change the Aspect Ratio to “16:9” and Field Dominance to “Bottom First.”

Next, still in the Encoder Pane, go to the Quality tab.
“Mode:” should be set to “Two pass VBR Best.” This means Compressor is going to analyze your project twice to see how best to compress to MPEG-2. The VBR means “Variable Bit Rate.” That means the bit rate will increase during fast motion and it will decrease when there isn’t much moving in the video frame.
To get the best Two Pass VBR, I change the Average Bit Rate to “6.8 Mbps” and Maximum But Rate to “8.0 Mbps”.
Now, if you’re video is close to 90 minutes long, you may have to decrease these data rates, but these should be able to fit about 80 minutes onto a single layer DVD.

Now, some people don’t know this, and even I only recently was informed of this, but you can get even better settings than this.
Change the Mode to “One Pass CBR.” This grays out the Maximum Bit Rate option because CBR means Constant Bit Rate. There is no fluctuation like VBR. So if you choose One Pass CBR and set the Average Bit Rate to 8.0 Mbps, your entirevideo is encoded at highest bit rate possible rather than just the moments with fast motion. This should allow for about 60 minutes of video on a single layer DVD.
Note: Encoding at higher than 8.0Mbps can be problematic for some DVD players. So if you encode at a higher data rate, you will run the risk of your DVD not working.

(A) Next go to the Frame Controls Pane. In order to make changes in this Pane, you need to click on the little gear and change the Frame Controls menu to “On”
(B) Take a look at the Resize Filter option. If you’re project is HD, you are down converting to SD for DVD. So change this option to “Best (Statistical Prediction).”
(C) There should be no reason to change the Output Fields setting, so keep that as “Same As Source”.
(D) The Deinterlace option only has to do with…deinterlacing. Again, no reason to mess with this. If you’re video is already progressive scanning then you don’t need to deinterlace. If your video is interlaced, deinterlacing will actually reduce the quality anyway. So when you choose “Same As Source” in the option above, Compressor will ignore whatever is chosen in this option.
(E) The “Anti-Alias” and “Details Level” sliders have to do with Up-converting SD to HD, which you’re definitely not doing here. So leave these alone.
(F) Rate Conversion: Again, no need to mess with this. The Frame Rate option in the Encoder Pane should match the frame rate of your FCP timeline. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t. So if they match, Compressor will ignore whatever setting is selected in the Rate Conversion option.
So in a nutshell, if you’re not down converting HD to SD, then you don’t even have to turn Frame Controls on.

Finally, go to the Geometry Pane.
Don’t change anything in here. Just make sure the Frame Size and Pixel Aspect Ratio match what you’re trying to output. If they don’t, go back to the Encoder pane and make sure the Video Format and Aspect Ratio options are set correctly, then check these settings again.

That It! Go to the Batch window and Click Submit. A dialog box appears, click Submit in that too, and Compressor will begin doing it’s thing.

If you’re really bored, you can watch the progress bar in the History window. Otherwise, go out and shoot!

I hope that clears everything up. If you have any questions or suggestions for future tutorials, leave a comment.

I’m sure we’re all familiar with the excitement that hits when someone is on the verge of discovering something new, when Christmas is fast approaching, or when a client tells you that your project turned out “beautifully.” That is the kind of head to toe excitement many videographers felt when Oakley billionaire Jim Jannard unveiled some astonishing details about the RED Scarlet camera back in 2008. It’s also the same kind of excitement that many digital cinematographers are feeling even now.

At first glance, this camera seemed to have it all: a 3K resolution recorded to a superior codec, virtually no compression artifacts, RAW recording, a highly modular design for added functionality, more dynamic range than you probably know what to do with, and a good price at $4,750 with a fixed lens or $2,750 without. Even with a $2,750 price tag, for a camera that can shoot at higher resolutions than anything else on the market, it was and still is a real steal.

Unfortunately, there is no fairy tale ending to this story. Unfortunately, in order to get the kind of fully functioning camera you’re used to, you would have to get a lens, a battery, an audio interface, a viewfinder, and grips for shooting. All together that high quality equipment can cost upwards of twenty grand – a very steep price for those who want to make great looking films on the cheap. Also, one of the biggest complaints about the RED camera is its post-production workflow. In order to have a chance at editing the footage from a RED camera, an editor would first have to make low resolution proxies from the original 4 or 3k files. Otherwise, these files are usually too large for any computer to handle successfully. As you’ve probably figured out already, this proxy rendering takes an awful lot of processing power and time which is often a real deal-breaker for getting projects done on a tight deadline. On the other hand though, super high resolution files above 1080p are a problem for any computer and RED founder Jim Jannard does have a knack for making very high quality equipment in which he spares no expense. As a result, you can expect to definitely get what you pay for with these products.

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Reprinted fron a MainConcept press release:

MainConcept GmbH, a wholly-owned subsidiary of DivX, Inc. (NASDAQ: DIVX) and one of the world’s leading providers of video/audio codecs and software development kits (SDKs) to the broadcast, film and consumer markets, today announced the release of MainConcept™ MPEG Pro HD 4 Plug-In Suite for Adobe® Premiere® Pro CS4 and CS3 software. This new MPEG Pro HD 4 Plug-In helps professional videographers, editors and producers edit high definition video in various formats.
Now available in five different powerful codec format packages, the MPEG Pro HD 4 Plug-In makes it quick and easy to edit video formats such as AVC-Intra in the Adobe Premiere Pro workflow. The newest MPEG Pro HD 4 Plug-In augments existing frame-accurate, native editing of a variety of formats in Adobe Premiere Pro, with full support for formats such as AVC-Intra or XDCAM 4:2:2, among others.
Various MainConcept MPEG Pro HD 4 versions are available:
MPEG Pro HD 4
H.264/AVC & MPEG

MPEG Pro HD 4
XDCAM

MPEG Pro HD 4
DVCPRO

MPEG Pro HD 4
AVC-Intra

MPEG Pro HD 4
Broadcast Suite

The MainConcept MPEG Pro HD 4 Plug-In adds professional enhancements to Adobe’s video editing flagship product, such as Dolby Digital 5.1 output channel support, AVC-Intra Class 50 and 100 support, and many other ready-to-use project, sequence and export presets for all sorts of devices as well as production and broadcast environments.
“Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 provides a comprehensive solution for creative professionals who need to craft world-class video,” said Owen Walker, senior product manager for Adobe Premiere Pro at Adobe. “MainConcept’s new plug-in extends the capabilities of Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 to an even greater range of workflows, such as those involving AVC-Intra codecs. We are pleased that MainConcept is dedicated to supporting Adobe software and providing even more options for our customers working in a wide range of formats.”
“Users will benefit from the unique features and various improvements we’ve added that build on the Adobe Premiere Pro workflow,” said Muzaffer Beygirci, Managing Director and VP Sales of MainConcept GmbH. “By providing multiple Plug-In options, we have created a comprehensive and cost-effective video editing solution for any production environment.”
A full list of features as well as the MainConcept Plug-Ins is available for online purchase and instant download at the MainConcept website. A free demo version is available for pre-purchase testing.
More information about the MainConcept MPEG Pro HD 4 Plug-In for Adobe Premiere Pro CS3/CS4 is available at www.mainconcept.com.