Just when I thought I wouldn’t have anything to blog about, I find a bug in Compressor. Hoorah!

Step 1:

Make a cluster. Doesn’t have to include other machines, but it has to be a real cluster, created in QAdministrator. Read the docs if you don’t know how to get this far.

Step 2:

Submit a job to the cluster using the Compressor 2.1 “Video for iPod” preset.

Step 3:

Listen to the silence of your missing audio track!

Audio track is fine if you submit it to “This Computer” but disappears as soon as you submit it to a real cluster. Tested on an xServe, an iMac and a Macbook.

Fun!

As a minor aside though, if you want to run jobs simultaneously in Compressor (which Apple says can’t be done) take a look at the qmasterprefs command line program. Particularly this bit (using qmasterprefs -list):

-service “Compressor Processing” on instances 1 autorestart off unmanaged off

Changes the instances to whatever you want, rebuild your cluster and marvel at the simultaneous processing!

I’m back, catching up. Luckily it seems like not much happened in the world while I was gone…

I’ll get a real update together tomorrow.

Here’s a 640×360 H264 encode of the trailer for The Typist.

Here’s a full res 1920×1080 version. Right click and save to your computer, rather than trying to watch it in a browser.

I can’t comprehend why Canon hasn’t pushed forward industry support for 24F. It’s absolutely ludicrous that 6 months after the launch of the Canon XL-H1, the major editing packages can’t edit it, and none of the decks can play it. Why Canon, why? Part of introducing a new format involves supporting said format. Instead, 24F is being left to die, used only by those willing to spend hours tweaking and testing.

</rant>

I’ve been really bad about reading comments, but just looked back and saw that some folks from way back in the day posted. Hi Stalyn and Ignitor! Crazy…

Got my copies of Final Cut Studio 5.1 today. Been poking around a bit and there are definitely some nice things. Compressor in particular seems a bit less weird. I need to play around a bit more to get a sense of what has changed.

Still digging out from being gone for a few days – the sheer excitement of being stranded in a field in Texas with a broken down UHaul has overwhelmed my urge to blog. (It was an interesting weekend)

It’s project time! We’re shooting a project right now in which many of the crew end up watching a monitor in a room separate from the shoot. This often means that the crew doesn’t know when tape is rolling and when it’s not. Now, wouldn’t it be convenient if there was a tally light that could be placed anywhere within reason to alert the crew?
Read on…

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Does anyone have a good method for determining whether chrominance is legal, based on YUV values? I can go with RGB if need be as well. Best I’ve found is that the three RGB channels shouldn’t average to greater than 75% of 255 in 8bit sampling, but I’m not really convinced that’s accurate. Aren’t the values in some way weighted based on the hue?

Arggg…

I’m off to Austin for a few days to help a friend move. Everyone says Austin has an abnormally large population of hipster video folks, so I’m looking forward to being immersed.

If Apple releases the Macbook on Tuesday, I’ll surely blog it. Otherwise, I’ll check back in next week.

Yeah, so I disappeared.

Been working feverishly on the Media Mill project to meet my end of the semester deadline. Check out the link if you don’t know what it is, and post in the comments if you’d like to know more.