Why the New Hulu “Watchlist” Sucks

Hulu has recently implemented new functionality for how you access shows (and what is easily accessed).

If you follow Hulu’s constant recommendation to “update” to the new Watchlist, you lose all control of what content you watch.  In other words, the Watchlist is made so Hulu can force-feed you whatever programming they are trying to push.  They claim it is based on your viewing habits, but I believe that is b.s.  They are simply trying to control what you watch.

Here are some reasons why "watchlist" sucks:

1. You have NO control of what plays after the episode you are currently watching (this is a MAJOR problem).  If you don’t hit “play all” for a program, and the episode you are currently watching is finished, instead of playing the next unwatched episode, or even an episode from another show you have “favorited,” they will try and get you to watch some other “recommended” show (STOP TRYING TO FORCE ME TO WATCH “NEW GIRL.” Are you f*cking kidding me?!).  So once an episode is over, you have to spend a LONG time trying to navigate to the next effing show you want to watch.
2. When you open up Hulu or finish watching a show, there is no direct link to your Watchlist.  Not from the main page.  Not from the main navigation choices at the top of the page.  NOWHERE.
3. Sometimes if you've “favorited” a show but have already seen all the episodes, Hulu keeps trying to make you watch old episodes (even shows with new episodes you haven't seen force feed you episodes you’ve already watched from previous seasons!).
4. Similar to #3, here is no way to change if an episode has been marked watched/unwatched, so Hulu will FOREVER try to keep feeding you “unwatched” episodes even if you have, in fact, already seen them. I don't know how many times they've tried to force me to watch Episode 3 of the "The Wrong Mans."  WHY?!?!?!  I watched that episode YEARS ago, and much as I liked it, I don’t want to watch it again!!!
5. You cannot order your Watchlist, so the shows you watch most (or want to watch next or more often) are often at the end of a LONG list of garbage you've "bookmarked" but don't want to see every time I open Hulu.

I have more gripes, but I’ve already wasted enough of my day on this.

There doesn’t seem to any way to revert to the old Queue functionality, and while I love the new (more expensive and I’m totally willing to pay for it!) “watch without commercials” option, if I can’t revert to queue functionality, I will be ending my subscription.

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NOS Eighties Music Video from Story of the Running Wolf “Electric”

Nobody, and I mean nobody, is doing “new old stock” 80’s music like Story of the Running Wolf.

In their latest rehash/remake/re-love video from my favorite music era, SOTRW revisits Weird Science, with two adolescent kids creating a beautiful woman from synth parts and mannequin limbs.  I especially appreciate the effort they put into showcasing old tech (monochrome monitors, 5.25” floppies (they actually BEND!), et al).  It’s glorious.

The video was produced and directed by Bruce Driscoll and Marie Seyrat for Pyromantra Productions.  If those names sound familiar to you it may be because they are the band Freedom Fry (you should go getchaself summa that too)! http://www.freedomfrymusic.com/

If you EVER get a chance to see these guys live… DO. IT.  They are amazing --which is especially impressive for 80’s (mostly electronic) music.  Here’s a review I posted after I last caught them at the Sayers Club in LA: http://danbeahm.blogspot.com/2013/06/stratospheric-new-video-from-story-of.html

And if you didn’t see their last video for “Stratospheric” (a wonderful mashup of Labyrinth and Never Ending Story themes), check it out at: https://youtu.be/ZhrbEOPv5-k

Various credits and links for the “Electric” video:

Directed by Bruce Driscoll and Marie Seyrat for Pyromantra Productions.
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/ele...
Bandcamp: http://storyoftherunningwolf.bandcamp...
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/storyoftherunn...
Download the single "Electric" free on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/storyoftherunn...
Twitter/Instagram: @sotrw
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Storyoftheru...

Windows Doesn’t Always Load ICC Color Profile for Monitor

I recently installed a new EVGA GeForce 750Ti video card in an older machine.  I had some points on a credit card that would make a card in the sub $200 range “free,” so I did some research on video cards and upgraded my rather ancient GTX 260 (which I actually used while cutting our feature film in 2009!) to decrease my rendering times and allow for a bit more oomph when utilizing CUDA processing for effects and on-the-fly rendering in Adobe Premiere.

The GeForce 750Ti is basically the “sweet spot” for cost/power in gaming cards, which are the poor man’s video-editing cards (though, as of this posting, NVIDIA has released the GTX 960, which is the new sweet spot in this category).  I would have loved to install a higher-end “Adobe Approved” Quadro card(s), but this option is cost is prohibitive at the moment (we’re putting money into camera equipment), so this is a decent band-aid for this particular editing rig.

We use Xrite EyeOnes (i1) with EyeOne Match 3 (v.3.6.2) software to calibrate our monitors.  However, after installing the card, I kept getting the dreaded “pink screen” hue almost every time I’d reboot the machine after calibration.  The most common cause for this malady is a bad video cable (I’m using a super-thick (24AWG) and fairly long 15 foot DVI Cable, so this was definitely a possibility).  However, I checked my cables (using DVI, HDMI, and even Display Port), and the cable was not the issue.

I also checked my system defaults to be sure Windows was calling up the custom i1 color profile as the profile for the monitor.  The profile was marked as the default and appeared to be the active profile in the color settings, so I assumed it was being used.

I couldn’t figure out what was going on, so I thought maybe it was the card.  I RMA’d the card, and Amazon sent a new one.  p.s. I really appreciate their policy of sending a replacement before they require you to send the defective unit back.  They give you a month to return the item once they send out the new one, so I didn’t have to go without a video card while waiting for the replacement (yes, I could have put the old one back in, but I was enjoying the decreased rendering times too much).

The new card arrived. I installed it and ran color calibration on the monitor.  For a couple of days, everything seemed great, until one day… the dreaded pink screen had returned.  I spent three more days researching the issue before I finally came across the solution.

It turns out there are not one, but TWO places where Windows 7 64-bit has settings for loading the monitor’s ICC color profile.

Yes, you can set your monitor’s ICC color profile at Control Panel>Appearance and Personlization: Adjust screen resolution>Advanced settings>Color Management (tab)>Color Management (button), but there is another place you need to do some tweaking in order to tell Win7 to actually USE these settings.  How stupid is that?!

So on the Advanced tab where you can select your defaults, there is a button at the bottom called “Change system defaults…”

In that panel, there is an “Advanced” tab, and at the bottom right of that panel there is a box called “Use Windows display calibration.” You must tick that box to get Windows to actually use your ICC monitor calibration setting each time it starts (even though it would appear, from the previous panel, that Windows IS using the default).  Unbelievable.  Why even have the option to set a default if the system isn’t going to USE that default without this “secret setting?!”  It’s not really a default if you aren’t using it, is it. Grrrrrr.

Many thanks to user “badspell68” for posting the solution to this problem in this thread:

http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/162431-color-profiles-calibration.html

p.s.  I think it’s worth nothing that the “pink hue” we experience when the EyeOne custom ICC profile isn’t properly being utilized is a result of the physical monitor settings.  I usually just calibrate the monitors using the “easy” setting in the EyeOne software, but at one point I actually went through the “advanced” setup which involves calibrating your calibration device to the ambient light in the room (our room is currently fairly warm on the color spectrum) as well as adjusting the physical settings on the monitor (not just changing the settings using software).  When I did this, EyeOne had me set the red hue of the monitor higher than it had previously been (higher than what looks good to the eye), thus when the custom color profile is not being utilized (when the monitor is displaying “as physically set”), the screen has a pink (red) hue in the white areas.

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My Personal Handbrake Settings

There is a LOT of confusion “out there” concerning the best settings for converting your media files with Handbrake.  There are a lot of opinions, and it’s not that anyone is necessarily wrong, but there are just a lot of different things that will work depending on your needs.

When I record television or rip the DVD’s I own, I like to convert the files to h.264, as it is a very efficient format for the quality of what you see (file size to picture quality ratio).  It’s also the format that Plex streams natively to Roku for the best (fastest and glitch free) streaming experience.

Since storage has become so cheap, I don’t worry too much about shrinking the size of media, especially if I’m ripping DVD’s (which are already SD instead of HD… which means fewer pixels and less space).  I tend to just keep the file at native resolution (though I always convert to square pixels so devices aren’t confused about how to display the file –the “stretching” or “squishing” you often see when your device is trying to figure out how to interpret a file and display the correct aspect ratio).

My files are usually around 550MB for a half hour tv show at 720p, and a normal DVD movie ends up being around 800MB to a gig (which is decent, considering a “normal” DVD is around 4 or 5GB).

Here are the settings I use when I do this.

PICTURE

One thing I learned recently is that you can actually trim your video file as you are encoding in Handbrake (so you aren’t encoding/keeping any footage that was recorded before/after your program).  If you switch the “chapters” dropdown to “seconds,” you can set the beginning and end points in minutes and seconds.  Just view your file in a media program like VLC to see where you want your in and out points to be, and then when you set them in Handbrake it will encode only the part of the file you want.

I like to keep my files at their original size, but aspect ratios can wreak havoc on media files.  Some programs are in 1:78 (16:9), some are anamorphic with “non square pixels and a 1.33 aspect ratio stretched to 1.78, etc…  I like to make sure everything is just square and physically as it should appear, thus I set “anamorphic” to “none,” and then choose modulus 2.  Then I tick “keep aspect ratio” and choose my width or height.  With HD recordings, I sometimes “down rez” to 720 from 1080 (it’s a smaller file that won’t look much worse (if at all) on an HD screen).  With DVD’s and SD recordings (720x480 pixels (wide) or 640 x 480 pixels (4:3)) I sometimes “up rez” just a tiny bit if the file is actually 640x480 displaying 720x480.  What this means is that a file that is 720x480 but in anamorphic format will actually display as 720x540 in square pixels.  That means more lines of horizontal resolution, for a slightly better picture with not much more space taken up.  Alternatively, a 720x480 file that’s anamorphic but wide screen will display as approximately 848x480 as square pixels.

All you really need to know is that if you’re encoding a non-HD file, tick the “keep aspect ratio” box and then let Handbrake set the width when you set the height to either 480px (native SD resolution) or 540 (if you want to up the horizontal rez a bit –I only do this with anamorphic files so they convert to 720x540).

Finally, make sure your cropping is set to “custom” and all the fields read “0.”  This will keep your file from having black borders.

FILTERS

You can spend a lot of time playing with these.  I just set decomb to default and it does a decent job of removing the horizontal lines created by television interlacing.  Basically the “decomb” filter only applies de-interlacing when there is motion (when the horizontal lines caused by interlacing become visible).  Handbrake does a decent job of “choosing” when to apply this filter, so I just let it do it’s thing.  Using the other filters requires quite a bit more processing (thus time to convert), so I am just satisfied with the speed/quality of letting Handbrake “decomb” as it sees fit.

VIDEO

I haven’t messed a lot with video settings.  I keep things pretty close to default, but I do know I want a constant framerate (and leave it as the same as source), and I use constant quality instead of variable bitrate.  Variable bitrate takes up less space, but it takes more time to convert and isn’t quite as “good” as constant Quality.  I set the H.264 level to 4.1 and set the speed to around “fast” or “faster” (depending on the show I’m converting and what kind of quality I want from the file).

Hopefully these settings help somebody set up their Handbrake satisfactorily!

…

Enabling CUDA for Adobe Premiere Pro

I’m pissed at Adobe, and I feel like a chump.

For several years I’ve been using Premiere Pro (CS4/CS6) without harnessing the CUDA capability of my graphics card (192 CUDA cores, to be precise).

How could this possibly happen?

Well, Adobe’s software will only “look” for the cards that are listed in a text file called “cuda_supported_cards.txt.”  This text file is by NO MEANS comprehensive.  In fact, it lists VERY FEW cards.

There is a program in the Premiere Pro system directory (C:/Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Premiere Pro CS6) called GPUSniffer.exe.  If you run this program from the command line, it will show you the exact name of your installed video card(s).  When you add this card (be sure to use the exact name listed by GPU Sniffer) to the “cuda_supported_cards.txt” file, only then will Premiere harness the CUDA power of your graphics card.

Once you have added the name of your device to the approved list that Premiere Pro uses to verify the card, the “GPU accelration” option will be available under the General tab of your Project Settings.

Specific instructions:

1. Type CMD into your Start Menu search field (at the very bottom of your Start Menu).
2. Right click the cmd.exe program in the list and select “run as administrator.”
3. Navigate to the appropriate directory (C:/Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Premiere Pro CS6) first by typing “cd\” to get to the root (c:) and then “cd Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Premiere Pro CS6” to get to the Premiere Pro directory.
4. Type “GPUSniffer.exe” and take note of the card listed in the information returned.
5. Open Notepoad with admin privileges (right click on the Notepad program icon and select “run as admin”), then navigate to the same directory (C:/Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Premiere Pro CS6) and open the “cuda_supported_cards.txt” file.
6. Add the name of your card to the list (it must be EXACTLY as it was listed in the GUP Sniffer dialog), and save the file.
7. Next time you open Adobe Premiere Pro, GPU Acceleration will be available from the drop down in your project’s “General” tab of settings.

UPDATE: You may also need to do a regedit fix documented here: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1061522?tstart=120

• Go to Regedit
• Find this key by selecting Edit and then Find at the top:- " 0cc5b647-c1df-4637-891a-dec35c318583 "
• Within this key, there is a value called: "ValueMax"
• This value represents the % number of cores the system will park - the default is 100% (ie: all Cores are potentially park-able)
• Change the value from 64 to 0 so the "ValueMin" and "ValueMax" are both zero
• You will have to find the key a few times and repeat the process for each time it is found - the number of instances will depend on the number of power profiles in your system

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Vimeo “Hide this video from Vimeo.com” Problems

Sometimes you need to share a video with people without making it available to the entire internet community, and password protection is not the preferred method.  I recently had this issue come up when I needed to post a music video that was being shopped around to various online outlets (blogs, new agencies, etc.), but the client’s PR firm didn’t want the people to have to use a password.

Anonymity is your friend in these situations; a link that is published nowhere is often as “secure”  (at least as inaccessible) as a published link that is password protected.  If people don’t know where to look, they can’t find/see the video.

Vimeo has recently added this functionality to their Pro accounts (YouTube has had it for a long time), but I was having a heck of a time getting it to work.

When I ticked “Hide this video from Vimeo.com” in the privacy settings of my video, the video was marked with a “private” sash/label in my video listings.  When I sent the link to people to view, accessing the page simply returned a message stating:

Permission Denied

Sorry, there is no video here.

Either it was deleted or it never existed in the first place. Such are the mysteries of the Internet.

Very frustrating.  The whole point of an unlisted link is to be able to send it to people so they can access the video.

Turns out Vimeo’s unpublished functionality ONLY works with embed.  So a video that returns the above message when you send the link IS visible to others, but ONLY when embedded.

The work around (to send a link), is simply to place the word “player” at the beginning of the link and to make sure “video” is in the path.  So, “http://Vimeo.com/hiddenlink” can be accessed as “http://player.vimeo.com/video/hiddenlink”

Why Vimeo has it set up this way is beyond me, and they need to fix it so you can share your hidden video with links more easily (without having to figure out this workaround on your own since it is posted NOWHERE on their site).

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Some Motion Logos I Like

It’s time to create a more permanent Teahm Beahm motion logo, so I spent a little time today cruising through the work of others.

I’ve always really dug the Focus Films logo, and though I’m a little embarrassed to say I watch his films, I think Jerry Bruckheimer’s motion logo is one of the best out there.

Village Roadshow

 

Rankin Bass

Stephen J. Cannell

Sit, Ubu, Sit

Production Logo

Motion Logo

Vanity Logo

Splash Logo

Logo Bumper

Production Ident

What’s the Difference between Preset Bins and Custom Bins in Adobe Premiere Pro?

This question was kind of driving me crazy, as there didn’t seem to be any clear cut answer anywhere on the web.  So here it is…

Custom Bins simply store shortcuts to presets.

Preset Bins actually store the presets.

I mean, they’re both containers for data stored elsewhere, but this is how they function within the Premiere interface: one holds links, the other holds the actual presets.

Thus, Custom Bins allow you to organize presets while leaving them in their original location, which is useful when setting up a bin for commonly used presets.

Preset Bins are great for holding presets that are project specific.  For instance, I’m currently working on a project with some pretty bizarre color balance and level settings.  It’s not likely that I’ll ever use them on another project, so I’ve set up a Preset Bin named with the title of the project.

On the other hand, I use things like Cross Dissolve, Reverb, Brightness/Contrast, Colorista, and Exponential Fade in most of my projects.  Thus, I’ve set up a Custom Bin named “COMMON” with those effects in it.

And now you know.

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TeraCopy: Better than Windows Explorer but still lacking

I do a lot of file copying.  Most people do.  However, as a filmmaker, photographer, and recording artist, I do a lot of copying of massive amounts of data (my machine is currently running a >800GB transfer that’s been going for more than 20 hours).

The native Windows Explorer copy feature makes me nervous, because sometimes it drops data or runs into trouble with transferring data, and basically, for lack of a better term, just craps out.

A while back I finally found a copy program I like to replace the simple “cut and paste” in Explorer.  Checksum verification was the single most important feature I was looking for.  Basically this means each file is analyzed and assigned a number and then checked against the transferred file once copied.  From the ubiquitous Wikipedia: “A checksum or hash sum is a small-size datum computed from an arbitrary block of digital data for the purpose of detecting errors that may have been introduced during its transmission or storage.”

When I shoot photos or video, I need to be absolutely sure the data is not lost or corrupted during transfer.  Checksum verification helps mitigate this problem.  I never transfer anything important without running checksum verification.

For this reason, I love TeraCopy.

I also love that you can pause a transfer, and also that you can initiate several transfers that will run in the order you set them up (rather than try to run them all at the same time… though that options exists as well).

I wish you could pause a transfer or test, shut down your computer, and come back to it.  It doesn’t seem like there is anything that would prevent this from being possible (TeraCopy would just need to store the same “pause” information and then access it once the computer was restarted).  This would be AMAZINGLY helpful for when you’re in the middle of a large file transfer but need to shutdown or restart your computer.

My biggest complaint with the program is that Code Sector brags about how FAST TeraCopy copies files.  They say it over and over again.  It’s even their freaking TAG LINE (see photo).

In all my personal experience and in EVERY review I’ve seen online, TeraCopy is proven slower than just about any transfer program out there… including Window’s native “cut and paste.”

But the thing that has REALLY been annoying me lately is just how insanely slow the file check runs after the actual transfer takes place.  It actually takes CONSIDERABLY longer for TeraCopy to run the Checksum verification after the transfer than it does to actually transfer the files.

I would REALLY like to know what is going on there.

There have also been quite a few times where I’ve initiated a large file transfer and then left it to run overnight, only to come back in the morning to see an error from TeraCopy that states simply “TeraCopy has stopped.”  Uh, ok.  What about all the bragging on the TeraCopy product page about how TeraCopy will try again and again to transfer a file, but ultimately if it fails it will simply skip the file instead of crapping out (like Windows Explorer)?  From the product page: “In case of a copy error, TeraCopy will try several times to recover and, in the worse case scenario, will simply skip the file, not terminating the entire transfer.”  This has not been the case in my experience (on many occasions).

Still, though slower than Windows Explorer copy, I feel more secure transferring my precious data with TeraCopy.  Perhaps it’s a false sense of security, but at least I sleep a little better at night knowing that checksum verification has been run after the file transfer.

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“Stratospheric” (the new video from Story of the Running Wolf)

The best thing on the internet just went live today. Hardy Howl Films presents this nostalgic gem for the LA duo Story of the Running Wolf. I’ve embedded the video below, but do yourself a favor and watch it in 720p full-size to enjoy all the glory of the especially well done film-to-video-transfer and 80’s-television-look goodness.

Story of the Running Wolf is Josh D’Elia and Jeffrey Chernick.  While other acts may be attempting a return to all things 80’s, D’Elia and Chernick do it with a precision and flair that leave all others in the dust.  Not only that, but they are not simply imitating the past with covers (like most 80’s-return bands trying to access via corny, clumsy comedy), but are instead writing their own original material that could easily and seamlessly mesh with any video line-up circa 1983 MTV.  Think Naked Eyes, Asia, A-Ha, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, New Order and you are on the path to Story of the Running Wolf.  These guys remind you what the 80’s was all about.  When you see and hear them one might first be tempted to cringe at just HOW MUCH 80’S they have conjured, but NO ONE who was alive in that decade can resist the mysterious day-glo neon and checkerboard-bad-3D-cool that some how sucks you in (because it IS cool whether you like it or not).

The video for “Stratospheric” is a mash-up of originally imagery in the style of The Never Ending Story (they made a freaking LUCK DRAGON!) and Labyrinth.  Let me just say that D’Elia as Bowie is spot on, but literally each and every visual element and piece of the story does it’s part to transport the viewer right back to a time when Aquanet was as ubiquitous as OP.

Even the motion logo at the beginning of the video got my pulse pumping with nostalgia.  The way D’Elia (who did much of the post work on the video) and Hardy Howl captured the “Sit, Ubu, Sit” and “Stephen J. Cannell Productions” feeling (remember the guy pulling the piece of paper from the type writer and flinging it into the air so it turns into the “c” of the logo?), right down to the warbly audio and cheesy-quasi-industrial video music queue, is just perfection.

Perhaps the best thing about this video, however, was how it transformed a room packed full of LA-hipster-douchebags at the Sayers Club in Hollywood last Saturday night into a screaming mob of 8-year-old little girls.  It was magical to see the mass of scarf-wearing (IT’S 90 DEGREES OUTSIDE!!!), pretentious a-holes drop their guards and literally scream with joy when the music started pulsing, the video rolled, and FREAKING FALCOR came flying across the screen.  Not even the scenester elite could deny the awesome.  The performance from Story of The Running Wolf that followed the video’s premier was nothing short of magical (and was mystically enhanced by the AMAZING and legendary sound system at the Sayers Club).

And kudos to the folks at Hardy Howl for bringing CUPCAKES to the event! The staff didn’t know what to do with themselves (the manager commented that no one had brought food to the club… ever) except abandon their reserved cool and climb aboard the life-sized Falcor that Hardy Howl brought to the club for PHOTO OPPS!!! Seriously… slutty club girls sans underpants with faces filled with a joy and innocence that would have brought tears to their daddies’ eyes.

If you EVER get a chance to see Story of the Running Wolf live, do NOT miss the opportunity. And if you can see them at the Sayers Club (this was their second performance at that venue), do anything and everything you can to hear them amplified by electronics that I can only assume involved some sort of pact with the devil.

A new album (including “Stratospheric”) is slated to drop in the near future, so for now you’ll have to sate your SOTRW hunger by downloading the single from iTunes and watching the video over and over and over again.

Alternatively, you can catch the tasty flava of Story of the Running Wolf in the remixes they’ve been doing at the behest of various bands on the LA Scene including an upcoming remix for Fitz and The Tantrums.

…

Authoring Mixed Aspect Ratio DVD’s in Adobe Encore

This is an old issue, but one that still comes up often enough for me.

I haven’t authored a 4:3 DVD in years.  This is because I haven’t seen a 4:3 screen in years.  Almost every television and computer monitor is now being made with a 16:9 (widescreen) aspect ratio.

However, we still delve into the archives often enough to find SD video that was shot 4:3.

When creating a widescreen DVD in Adobe Encore, these 4:3 videos usually wind up getting “stretched” on the screen to force 4:3 to conform to the 16:9 aspect ratio.  This is especially problematic when the video stretching makes your wife’s butt look wider than it actually is (doh!).  Thus, finding a solution was imperative.

For a specific example: I recently created a "wide screen" DVD of 20 or so archival live dance videos, along with some newer live dance videos as well as some dance for the camera pieces we had recently created.  Some of the archival videos were from quite a few years ago and had been shot 4:3, though most were shot 16:9.  When viewing the DVD (which is created as 16:9), there were still a few videos displaying 4:3 stretched to 16:9 rather than "pillar boxed" so there was no stretching.

Most of the clips were also rendered out of Premiere with the correct MPEG-DVD settings so that no transcoding was needed.  However, a few videos were still being transcoded by Encore, and this is where the problem was arising.

The solution for me was to go to those videos, right click on the video asset (not the timeline, but the actual video), "revert to original," and then "select transcode settings."  From here I could set the transcode setting as 16x9 HQ DVD instead of "automatic" so that the final video output was widescreen instead of the 4:3 that was getting stretched (Encore wants to leave a 4:3 original video as 4:3, which might make sense, but is not what we want for a 16:9 DVD!).

Hopefully this information helps someone find what they're looking for.

Show Background Video in Adobe Encore Menu

I was getting frustrated when no matter what I did I couldn’t see the background video running in my Adobe Encore cs4 title menu preview.

I searched hi and low, and the only thing I could find said I had to remove all graphics from the menu for the background video to work (this is completely untrue).

Finally, I discovered that when you are looking at the preview window in Adobe Encore, there is a little “disc” icon with an arrow pointing to the right in the top row of the preview menu on the far left hand side.  Click that icon, and the background video is rendered so that you can see it in the preview.

I put all my text and graphics back in the menu (using Photoshop), and it still works flawlessly.

…

Filter Bubbles:

The internet is bringing us closer together, right?  Breaking down walls, helping us live in harmony, helping us to understand people outside our environment and safety zones, etc., etc. Right?

Wrong.

It’s like The Offspring said: “You Gotta Keep ‘em Separated.”  I’m not going to go all conspiracy theory here, and suggest that “the powers that be” have a sinister motive for delivering filtered search results (outside of maximizing their advertising dollars), but the effect is the same.  Even though we may search the exact same terms as someone on the other side of the planet (or even just in a different income tax bracket or socio-political sphere), we live in separate worlds, and the algorithms and filters that deliver our search results and news feeds not only keep us separated but increase the rift.

Here is a fantastic TED Talk on the subject, delivered by Eli Pariser.

My buddy sent this to me back in May.  I decided to see what’s been happening, if anything, to fight this trend since Mr. Pariser gave his now (somewhat) famous presentation.

Turns out, not much. [frown] Google, Facebook, Bing, and just about everybody else are still working to feed you the information that is, well, you… and they are keeping you separated from those outside your bubble while doing it.  Boo, internet!  Boo!!!!

I did find this though…

DuckDuckGo.com claims to provide you with search results sans filtering.  You simply get what you search for.  Here’s a nice little presentation page on why they do what they do (basically, an illustrated recap of the TED Talk on Filter Bubbles by Mr. Pariser).

First Ski Jump

Yesterday I had a great day at A-Basin –-spring skiing at it’s best (minus the powder, but still…)  I couldn’t help noticing all the little kids everywhere, as I am super excited to get Ezra up there on the slopes.  It’s crazy how in love with and excited I am about my kiddo!

So when I saw this video today, it was even more poignant.

This is one of the cutest and most terrifying things I’ve ever seen (how often do you get that combo?).

Netflix Continues to Fail (?)

This morning I opened my e-mail to find this note from CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings:

Dear Jonas,
I messed up. I owe you an explanation.

It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology. Let me explain what we are doing.

For the past five years, my greatest fear at Netflix has been that we wouldn't make the leap from success in DVDs to success in streaming. Most companies that are great at something – like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores – do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us). So we moved quickly into streaming, but I should have personally given you a full explanation of why we are splitting the services and thereby increasing prices. It wouldn’t have changed the price increase, but it would have been the right thing to do.

So here is what we are doing and why.

Many members love our DVD service, as I do, because nearly every movie ever made is published on DVD. DVD is a great option for those who want the huge and comprehensive selection of movies.

I also love our streaming service because it is integrated into my TV, and I can watch anytime I want. The benefits of our streaming service are really quite different from the benefits of DVD by mail. We need to focus on rapid improvement as streaming technology and the market evolves, without maintaining compatibility with our DVD by mail service.

So we realized that streaming and DVD by mail are really becoming two different businesses, with very different cost structures, that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently.

It’s hard to write this after over 10 years of mailing DVDs with pride, but we think it is necessary: In a few weeks, we will rename our DVD by mail service to “Qwikster”. We chose the name Qwikster because it refers to quick delivery. We will keep the name “Netflix” for streaming.

Qwikster will be the same website and DVD service that everyone is used to. It is just a new name, and DVD members will go to qwikster.com to access their DVD queues and choose movies. One improvement we will make at launch is to add a video games upgrade option, similar to our upgrade option for Blu-ray, for those who want to rent Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 games. Members have been asking for video games for many years, but now that DVD by mail has its own team, we are finally getting it done. Other improvements will follow. A negative of the renaming and separation is that the Qwikster.com and Netflix.com websites will not be integrated.

There are no pricing changes (we’re done with that!). If you subscribe to both services you will have two entries on your credit card statement, one for Qwikster and one for Netflix. The total will be the same as your current charges. We will let you know in a few weeks when the Qwikster.com website is up and ready.

For me the Netflix red envelope has always been a source of joy. The new envelope is still that lovely red, but now it will have a Qwikster logo. I know that logo will grow on me over time, but still, it is hard. I imagine it will be similar for many of you.

I want to acknowledge and thank you for sticking with us, and to apologize again to those members, both current and former, who felt we treated them thoughtlessly.

Both the Qwikster and Netflix teams will work hard to regain your trust. We know it will not be overnight. Actions speak louder than words. But words help people to understand actions.
Respectfully yours,

-Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO, Netflix

p.s. I have a slightly longer explanation along with a video posted on our blog, where you can also post comments.

If you follow the link to the post on the Netflix blog, you’ll see a LOT of people explaining why two separate accounts (Netflix for streaming and now “Qwikster” for DVD’s) for what used to be one service is a horrible idea, and how they’ll be switching to Blockbuster for their mailed DVD needs.

Did Netflix not see this coming?  Why in the WORLD would they give their customers such a huge opportunity/reason to switch to a service that definitely has a benefit over their service (you can physically return/swap a DVD at a local store immediately, vs. having to wait for the US Post to do everything with the new “Qwikster”).

Also, I assume they had to go with the annoying spelling (Qwik with a “w”) so the Nestle bunny wouldn’t sue?

Netflix obviously had to do some restructuring because they weren’t going to survive on the price structure they had going, but this seems like some extremely poor planning.  Did they do any market research before going this route?

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

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Like Rats from a Sinking Ship? (Netflix Changes Plans and Rates)

Netflix recently announced that they will be changing their subscription plans and rates.  The unlimited single DVD and streaming plan that once cost $9.99 a month (I was actually paying $8.99 when I first signed up), will sky rocket to $15.98.  The plans can be purchased separately for $7.99 each (so no discount for the combo).  New users signing up will see this change immediately, while existing users have until Sept. 1 to change their plans.

It’s going to be interesting to see how this affects the masses.

Obviously Netflix couldn’t sustain their business plan on the current rates under which they were operating (unless they planned on carrying only obscure documentaries and non-studio titles… which they were teetering on the edge of as it was).  I assume this pricing change will allow them to start carrying more popular and newer titles.  We’ll see if it improves their instant streaming catalog (I kind of doubt it).

Unfortunately, in the transition, the change promises to hurt independent film.  As a filmmaker who’s movie is about to be purchased for DVD rental by Netflix, this blows even more hardcore.

Netflix pays filmmakers a negotiated (but much more “standard”) price per disc purchased.  Netflix pays a negotiated price for a period of time for unlimited streaming.  Obviously they’re going to pay an unknown indie film much less than a film from an established studio with star power.  Thus, the DVD deal is much better for a filmmaker (even established filmmakers/studios).

If people bail en masse from Netflix’s “unlimited DVD” package (which initial user reactions indicate), we stand to lose a substantial amount of expected revenue from this source.

Not only that, but the timing of this announcement was AWFUL.  Netflix will increase their initial DVD order for an indie title based on a higher number of current users with the title in their queue (you can queue a DVD before it’s actually available –not so with streaming titles).  As soon as our agreement with Netflix was secured, we told our fans to place the title in their queue, and many, many people did.  The very next week Netflix announced their plans to change their pricing and plans.

I wonder how many existing “DVD” subscribers immediately bailed on Netflix, thus driving down the number Leading Ladies DVD’s queued.  I wonder how many more will bail before Sept. 1.

Our film is slated for release Sept. 13, 2011.  Just enough time for all our fans to cancel their DVD memberships with Netflix.  Hopefully our fans will wait till the last second to cancel DVD memberships (so the order still goes through –I’m betting Netflix already has this factored in for current orders, however).

Hopefully people will just actually buy the DVD and support independent film.  Here’s a link.

Viva la storytellers!

p.s.  I don’t know if it’s related, but the Netflix widgets for film titles (an image linked to a button that will add a title to your queue) has recently stopped functioning –it’s been down for days.  Hmmm.

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Trims and/or Chapters Adjusted

Add this to my long list of gripes about Adobe Encore (currently using CS4).

Just opened a project that had been burning fine.  Changed nothing.  Now after I click “build,” Encore gives me an error of “Trims and/or chapters adjusted.”

Most solutions found via the web suggest this problem arises after transcoding, however, my video and audio is all MPEG-DVD generated out of Premiere (no transcoding occurs in Encore).

Lame.

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FINALLY - Flash, thus Hulu, Supports Multiple Screens with Full Screen Video

I haven’t tried it out yet, and I won’t be anytime soon as I’m running many, many video renders on this machine and it’s not really the best time to try to watch Hulu, but I was very happy to see this message when I powered on today:

Adobe Premiere Pro CS4: Disable Audio Clip, Timeline Won’t Play

When working in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, sometimes when I disable an audio clip to silence that isolated audio (Clip>Enable) the timeline will no longer play.  You hit the space bar… nothing.  You click the play button in the Program Window… nothing.  Actually, “nothing” isn’t exactly right.  The play button does toggle to the stop icon, but only for a few seconds, like it’s trying to play, but then it switches back.
I’m posting this because I can’t find the issue documented anywhere, and I just wanted to let people with the same problem know they aren’t going crazy.
I don’t have a fix, but it happens to me often enough to be an issue.

[UPDATE] One solution (as posted by Greg in comments): find any disabled clips in your timeline.  If two disabled clips are butted against one another, Premiere will not play (obviously a glitch in the program).  Thanks, Greg!

I have had this problem when only one clips is disabled, but hopefully the above works for you!

LCD Soundsystem Says Goodbye

It is so hard to type through the tears.

Tonight LCD Soundsystem bids farewell with their last live broadcast performance. Their last “official show” will be April 2nd at Madison Square Garden.  The show sold out “instantly.” Hopefully we’ll still get to catch ultra-underground performances at nameless bars and secret knock clubs across the planet for years to come, but only time will tell. 

James Murphy was interviewed by Stephen Colbert, before performing “I Can Change” and then waving toodle-oo.  The mellow tune was well done and apropos.

As an aging musician, it was hard to hear the “I’m getting to old to rock” sentiment that Murphy (age 41) put forth as the impetus for the move, but to each his own (and I can certainly understand where he’s coming from).

I still plan to keep writing and rocking well into my 90’s; maybe I’m losing my edge.

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