The Maritime Festival
Video from this year’s Maritime Festival in Salem, MA. Music is “The Trial of the Century” by The French Kicks. Everything shot on a DVX100a and edited & graded in Final Cut Studio 2.
Nobody is talking. Say something »
DaisyDisk
If you’re looking for a way to recover some room on your hard drives you should give DaisyDisk a try. It’s a beautiful app with a sharp focus — to help you find the crap that’s hogging space on your drives. It’s a free download and includes a fully-functional 15 day trial. A license is $19.95.
Immediately after installation I found over 3GB of hidden QuickTime reference files on my Desktop (presumably from Compressor). Not only that, did I mention that it looks awesome? Unlike other applications where your crap still looks like crap, DaisyDisk makes your crap look like beautiful, slick & polished crap.
Nobody is talking. Say something »
Sail Boston 2009
classid="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B"
codebase="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab">
codebase="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab">
On Saturday I bought a 16GB iPhone 3GS. On Sunday Meagan and I went to Sail Boston to see the tall ships hanging out in the harbor. I couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity to try out the 3GS’s video mode, the result of which can be found above.
Overall I’m impressed. I was able to achieve a selective focus with a little bit of planning, and the quasi-manual exposure control is handy. I was expecting a frame size larger than 640 by 480, but I suppose that leaves room for the iPhone HD next summer. Even so, I cropped the frame’s ratio from 1:1.33 to 1:1.68 which gave the perception of true widescreen. It sacrifices a little bit of vertical resolution, but most people probably aren’t going to notice.
I spent a few hours doing the editing and color grading, although it should be noted that the raw footage is pretty impressive on its own. Color saturation is fantastic and the auto exposure & white balance worked well in most situations. After importing I had to render the audio before I could play it back in Final Cut, which seemed odd. Sending the project to Color went smoothly, but I must have had some old settings in there because when I sent it back to Final Cut suddenly I was working in ProRes. I went from a data rate of about 3,000 kbps to 64 mbps.
That’s not exactly an efficient use of disk space.
Anyway, I’m excited to see what other people do with the the phone, video wise. I wouldn’t be surprised to see entire filmmaking communities develop around the device. It’s just so much fun to shoot with, and to challenge yourself in spite of the hardware’s limitations.
6 People are talking. Say something »
Tracking Time
This is what I want from time-trackng software.
- Tracks time in minutes
- Tracks individual tasks
- Ablity to group tasks for invoicing
- Timer in menu bar
- iPhone companion app
- Well-designed interface
- Doesn’t charge monthly fees
- Ability to manually edit/enter time
- Native desktop application, not web-based
For years I’ve been using Billable to track my time and create invoices. It’s simple, I’ll give it that. The application is focused only on tasks, clients & invoices. Unfortunately Billable’s time-tracker is stuck inside the application. It’s too often that I’ve forgotten to turn it off (or on) when switching between tasks. I realize that’s probably more my own fault than Billable’s, but without that timer out in the open, it might as well not exist. It’s a decent median application that gets the job done. It’s just not quite what I’m looking for.
Lately I’ve been using The Hit List to track tasks. Everything from household items to professional deadlines. I’m a big fan of keeping only one to do list.
I really think The Hit List could be great for my time tracking workflow except for one significant limitation — there’s currently no way to input time manually. If you forgot to set the timer when you started you’re out of luck.
Granted The Hit List is in beta still (until November? ugh) so this could just be something overlooked. Afterall you can click in the ‘actual time’ field and edit the numbers therein. They just don’t stick.
I know that other applications — Billings, for example — work for other people. Most have too many features, or subscription plans that I don’t want any part of. Everything I’ve tried feels like too much or too little. I don’t need to keep track of every single detail. But I do need to track individual items, and group them accordingly.
I guess I’ll stick it out with Billable for now. But in such a crowded market, I’m surprised there aren’t more median products to choose from.
3 People are talking. Say something »
Feelings
Sometimes you don’t know how you really feel about something until somebody like you comes along and articulates it so well.
1 Person is talking. Say something »
Make Your Film Work
My name is Jason. I have 7 years of freelance experience editing and shooting videos. I've got equipment, talent, and style.
Looking for Something?
Feeds for your Consumption
Pictures on the Tubes
Talk on the Tubes
via Jason Hawkins' Twitter