More Blu-ray capacity.....http://tinyurl.com/6v87747
http://ow.ly/awXUA

Video Labs - Just Our Opinion Episode one http://ping.fm/MkBNc

VLC REEL FINAL with poster http://ping.fm/BAczg

Videogame sales up 15% for November, http://ow.ly/7X8NL

uscg st cc the workout 30 h264 cropped http://ping.fm/xDeqo

usc st cc the workout spanish 30 h264 cropped http://ping.fm/zkLv5

uscg st cc the ride 30 h264 cropped http://ping.fm/Dg1Hf

Video Labs Demo Reel http://ping.fm/POlDf

More democratization of the media - Wash Post article about VOA web show huge hit in China: http://tinyurl.com/64eq7hy

Patrick Pexton's article that highlights challenges of "attribution" in the digital realm: http://tinyurl.com/3v7gtqb

Check out our own David Ryan's fun past and current participation with the BBC series, Doctor Who: http://tinyurl.com/44yjevq

If you r ordering disc copies, this is good info 2 understand: Differences between disc duplication & replication http://tinyurl.com/6ytgk2v

Interesting review of Al Gore's app http://tinyurl.com/63ddebu

Here's a Wash Post article about a cool local-DC produced webisode series, http://tinyurl.com/6bx7vbv

"Our latest promo email went out yesterday, 20% off FCP services thru 6/30. Sign up to receive future promos: http://tinyurl.com/vlpromo "

We See Our Final Cut Pro Systems as . . . “Engines?”

We here at Video Labs recently acquired another Final Cut Pro HD (FCP) system. Are we turning into something other than our reputation as a reliable media disseminator?

No, not really. Although, sure, some clients ask us to shoot and edit their video projects, we have not strayed too far from our “media replication” roots.

We just are further living up to our an additonal part of our mission: provide media replication and related multimedia services.”

Now, we won’t enter the dangerous waters of trying to defend Final Cut Pro over AVID. We serve clients who have both systems.

But we do llike the ease, robustness and versatility that Final Cut Pro offers in allowing us to ingest, manipulate, and export media. So, given that, we look at the systems as "engines." Here are a couple of examples:

Where clients used to give us dBeta or BetacamSP masters, they are increasingly providing a hard drive with either a ProResHQ or other form of QuickTime file of a sequence on a hard drive.

From there, as mentioned in last month’s eNewsletter, a lot of clients are asking us to make H.264 files and assorted other compressions for web-posting, like Flash or compressed QT. We do that a lot for our PSA-producing clients.

And our FCP systems often get involved earlier in the process as well.

Many of our independent producer clients have their own Final Cut Pro systems (which they chose over AVID because of price as well as other reasons). But the price points are also such that while they can afford the editing system, they often don’t have the equipment nor the time to input the footage into their system.

For example, we have fulfilled many requests from clients to digitize either HDCAM or DVCproHD field tapes into our FCP as ProResHQ files and transfer those to their hard drive from which they can edit on their own FCP system.

And then when they are finished with the editing, those same clients often send us a ProResHQ of their edited sequence and have us output to HDCAM and perhaps add captions.

And it doesn’t stop there . . .

As we further follow that phrase, “. . . and related multimedia services,” another popular service of ours is making authored (aka “navigable” DVDs). So, from the above ProResHQ sequence, we have a variety of ways of creating the necessary anamorphic widescreen SD MPEG2 and AC-3 audio files . . . but again, our Final Cut Pro systems are almost always the starting point.

So yeah, while we have the talented team to edit projects for you, hopefully you can see how we at Video Labs also love to call our Final Cut Pro systems, our “engines.”

Contact us for a price quote as you need to use one of those “engines.”

CMYK and RGB Explained . . . (for the rest of us)

OK, if you are a graphic designer, you can probably skip this article, but if you are like many in the media field, you remain a bit glassy-eyed when you hear the terms CMYK or RGB used in describing the artwork of your projects.

For example, there are times when we here at Video Labs ask for your disc face or packaging artwork to be presented to us in RGB, and then there are times when we ask for it in CMYK.

What gives?

Well, here’s a brief starting primer:

CMYK = the complementary colors of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow plus the fourth color of Black. This is known as a “subtractive” color process, meaning that if you combine equal amounts of the three colors of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow, you will produce black. Some processes just stop there, but the addition of a fourth color, Black (K = Black) provides two advantages: 1) save having to use all three inks just to make black, and 2) this sole black ink can actually be a richer black than can be made from the mixture of the three other colors.

General rule #1: Printing processes utilize CMY or CMYK. (Hold that thought . . .)

RGB = the primary colors of Red, Green and Blue. This process is known as “additive,” because if you mix the three colors in equal amounts, you get white.

“Wait a minute,” you say. “If I mix red, green and blue ink together on a paper, it certainly is not going to come out white.”

This is true, but if you did it with colored lights, the results would produce a white lit object. And how about those red, green and blue pixels in your television or computer monitor? If all three are charged at the same time, the perceived result is white not black.

So general rule #2: RGB applies to lighting and digital displays of color.

But yes, here’s where it can get confusing. You rightly might ask, “Well then, I know that there are some RGB printers on the market. What’s that all about?” What’s going on there, is that for technical and economic reasons, those printers intake RGB artwork and then convert it to CMY or CMYK for the actual printing.

Whew, ok, that’s enough for now.

Let’s end this with the following summary rules:
• For disc face artwork on replicated CD/DVD projects, where we use offset or silk-screen printing, we will ask for CMYK artwork.
• For offset printing of packaging (like DVD wraps, etc.) we will also ask for CMYK artwork.
• For duplicated DVDs, where we use thermal transfer printing for disc faces, we will ask for RGB artwork, again, as stated above, even though it will be converted to CMY in printing. (As stated above, this printing process does not have a separate “K,” or black).
• And for digital printing of packaging (like DVD wraps, etc.) we will ask for RGB artwork. Again, the digital printer will convert it to CMYK.

Next time, we’ll touch on another term we often use with our clients, Pantone Matching System (PMS) colors, aka “spot” colors and the role that plays in printing.

We welcome your comments, and please feel free to contact us at Video Labs (301-217-0000) with any further questions.

Meet another new face at Video Labs

Tommy D’Aquino is another new member to our Video Labs’ multimedia team. He came on board last fall.
In addition to his expertise with Final Cut Pro, Tommy brings to the table a wealth of experience with After Effects, Flash, animation and web-based training.

Plus Tommy just happens to be an easy-going guy with a great “can do” attitude. That’s always nice to have around here amidst our many “rush orders.”

Before joining Video Labs, Tommy worked in both frontline multimedia and management positions during an 11-year tenure with Fortune 500 company SAIC.

He received his BA in Film / Video production from UMBC, and then Tommy went to Hollywood where he sharpened his multimedia chops working on projects for a variety of clients, ranging from Warner Bros. to Playboy.

Tommy then returned east where he became an in-demand multimedia instructor both at professional workshops and within academia.

Perhaps Tommy’s equanimity comes from his large family (his wife and five children). Or maybe he just gets his “yah-yahs” out with his passion for music. He plays the drums and a bit of guitar and enjoys playing along with Foo-Fighters and Chevelle, as well as just jamming with his older brother and children – all of which are quite musically inclined.

So, regardless of the complexity of your multimedia project, we know that you will enjoy working with Tommy just as much as we are glad to have him here.

Contact us at 301-217-0000 or email us at sales@videolabs.net

A New Face at Video Labs Multimedia

We have a several new team members here at Video Labs, and over the next few months, we’ll introduce them to you.

Enrique Huaiquil (Ha-why-keel) has been with our Multimedia team for about 8 months now.

Originally from Santiago, Chile, with roots to the proud Mapuche culture, Enrique moved to the US with his family when his father took a diplomatic post in Washington, DC.

After developing a passion for photography and videography at a young age, Enrique went on to earn a BA in Film/Video and Media Productions from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

He expresses a unique sensibility in his visual art, which is evident at his personal website.

Enrique’s other passion is soccer. He plays for two teams and recently traveled to LA one weekend to watch the Chilean national team play the US. (How diplomatic . . . the game was a tie.)

While also being a versatile video editor, Enrique has developed into our leading in-house aficionado with our high-end DVD authoring platform, Sonic Scenarist.

And we have been calling upon his advanced videography skills on several projects of late.

While Enrique is bilingual with English and Spanish, you can also be sure he will speak your language when it comes to delivering high quality multimedia projects.

Bienvenido, Enrique!

We are on the H.264 bandwagon!

Video Labs is on the H.264 Bandwagon. Are you?

While the list of media deliverables from our clients becomes ever more diverse, it is apparent that an H.264 file is becoming as common of a request as is a dBeta or HDCAM dub.

First, understand that H.264 is a codec. A codec is short for “compression/decompression.” The main purpose of a codec is to reduce the size of a media file to make it manageable while at the same time maintaining as much quality of the original file as possible.

As an analogy, think of how a .pdf of a Word doc maintains the quality (and other advantages) while doing so at a much smaller file size.

An H.264 is acknowledged as one of the best codecs at doing that for video.

The name H.264 is actually a combination of identification protocol structures from two international technical organizations. One uses letters and another using numbers, hence H.264 If you want to drill down further into that, click here.

As a side note, H.264 can also be referred to as AVC or “Advanced Video Codec.” You might also see it referred to as a mpeg4 file. The mpeg4 part of this can get confusing, but suffice it to say that you’ll run across H.264 files that have either .mov or .mp4 in the extension.

The properties of the format allow for versatile use, from mobile phone video . . . to being “the first advanced codec to be accepted into the Blu-ray format.” (from the book, “Blu-ray Disc Demystified”)

And its that versatility that has made H.264 so popular.

But all is not perfect.

While H.264 is a great delivery codec, Final Cut Pro and AVID both have to decompress such files and convert them into a file format acceptable to them. For example, for Final Cut, a popular conversion is to Apple ProRes files. Such conversion adds a step, which means time, and time means $$.

That’s why if you are just sending us a sequence from your Final Cut project to import into ours, we may ask you to export it as a ProRes file on to a hard drive rather than give us an H.264 file.

But our research indicates that newer versions of the editing programs coming to market will be able to accept H.264 as a native codec.

Regardless, our present experience here at Video Labs shows that our clients feel that the advantages of H.264 as a delivery format far outweigh any possible disadvantages.

And to that we say, "Keep ‘em coming!"