It's Been A While.....

It's been over six months since I've posted a blog! About time for me to get up off my arse and start typing....

So much has happened since Skunk Fu! wrapped... the main thing being Vultures - a sitcom about dicks...... private dicks.

Vultures was initially conceived while John Morton and myself were teaching a film production course to secondary school students in the Cistercian Monastery in Roscrea, Co. Tipperary , for two weeks. We were living on campus so we didn't have much to do in the evenings other than talk about projects we'd like to work on. One idea we were kicking around was a sitcom, but we didn't know what to write about.

Then one evening, as we were sitting in my car in the middle of Roscrea about to head back to the Monastery, we saw a bunch of men entering an old, rundown looking building. They give a little knock on this big old door and it would open, as if by magic. We were a little bored so we just decided to stalk out the building and figure what was going on inside.

That was the night that John decided that our sitcom should be about private investigators.

We soon enlisted the help of Paddy Dunne, a graphic designer and animator who knows his sitcoms. Paddy and John wrote the pilot episode, The Kris Kringle Konundrum which went into production in December, 2007.

During the week I'm going to write a blog about the actual shooting of the Pilot and next week I'll go into detail on the post production and distribution process. In the meantime why not check out the pilot for yourself!

Skunk Fu!

I've just finished my first TV series!

In one way I'm sad that Skunk is wrapped, but in another I'm delighted that I had the oportunity to work on a TV series that has been sold all over the world with such a talented crew.

I started on Skunk Fu! in March 2006 as assistant editor to Joe Fitzpatrick. I really had no idea what was involved in editing animation. I thought I knew - but I hadn't a clue! In the last year and a half I have learned so much about editing, working with Flash animation, broadcast standards and a whole lot more, but my most important lesson was don't work with Avid Xpress Pro unless you really have to.... he he he

Skunk Fu! is due to be broadcast in the US in the coming months on Kids WB and is currently being aired on the BBC and ABC Australia (I'm sure it's on in other countries now as well).

Check out the website - www.skunkfu.tv

I have the Skunk Fu! promo clip on my website - www.alanslattery.com

It's here... Yay!

Gabor, the Hungarian IT guy here in the Cartoon Saloon Skyped my in his Hungarian IT guy way to tell me that An Post had delivered a box! My Canon HV20.

The first thing that hit me was the size. It's teenie... so cute!

The HV20 records 1080i HDV. It has a 3.1 MP still camera and a 1920x1080 CMOS sensor. The manual controls are a little hard to get used to, especially after been using full size cameras, HVX200s, DVX100s, and my XH-A1. The menu button, the all-in-one joystick/button for exposure, audio levels and shutter is right next to Menu button which is right next to the Record button... all a little too close for my awkward thumbs.

I shot a little footage around the house, got Daw making coffee and some exterior stuff, captured it into FCP and it looked deadly! Some of the settings I tried resulted in quite grainy footage, but it was dark enough on our landing of no-lightbulbs (!) so that's to be expected.

One thing I noticed was that Final Cut took longer to capture from the HV20 than it does from the XH-A1. Why? I-oun-o!

I have a shoot next week and I'm using both the XH-A1 and the HV20 so I'll post my comments on how the two compare then.

My New HV20

I haven't gotten it yet... but it's in the post.

AnPost.ie tell me it's in Portlaoise Mail Centre... I should definitely have it by tomorrow so.

I've been wondering what to buy as a second camera to shoot with my XH-A1 and I'v eben looking at the full range of AVCHD and HDV cameras - well by full range I mean anything made by Panasonic or Canon!

AVCHD really seems to be the way to go - even a "full HD" HDV format wouldn't sway me. The reason I went with HDV this time round is because I haven't the facilities to work with AVCHD just yet. The new (completely new!) iMove can work with it, but that came out the day after I bought the HV20!


I'm not sure if iMovie works natively in AVCHD or if it transcodes the footage to AIC on import - just as it does with HDV. It would be handy if it did transcode the footage, because you could very easily work with AVCHD and HDV in the same project - unless you are using FCP6 where you can have differently encoded clips on the one timeline.... But I only have FCP5.

Over the next few days I'm going to be playing around with the camera and I'll post my thoughts on mixing HV20 footage with footage captured by the XH-A1.

Editing HDV - In Hinesight

Dont! Just don't.

I'm in the middle of a nightmare - I'm cutting a 190 minute piece and thought "huh! I'll capture to HDV and edit with HDV.... that's smart!" NO IT'S NOT SMART. YOU'RE A FOOL!!!! I should have read my own post about editing HDV using Apple Intermediate Codec in Final Cut Pro.

Rendering HDV is a pain in the arse. You go to render everything - you have to render everything, even a dissolve - and you get a lovely progress bar telling you that Final Cut will be "Conforming" until Christmas!

I now just render for preview (ctrl + r) and that bypasses the need to conform the video. I'll get into this in a bit more detail later.

If you are shooting HDV (now don't get me wrong, HDV footage looks great), for the love of God transcode your footage to DVCProHD, AIC, DV...... anything other than bloody HDV before you start to edit.

I'm currently transcoding the footage to DVCPro50 to make for an easier edit workflow. It looks great when burned to DVD and that's as far as this project is going.

QuickTime Fills The Screen

Hurray for Apple! QuickTime Player has now caught up with every other bloody media player out there!

Early this morning I read an article on TUAW that said that Apple had released updates for QuickTime and iTunes, so off I went to install.

The iTunes update was grand.... run of the mill stuff, but the QT update unlocked a function that was previously only available through QuickTime Pro - Full Screen Playback.

It is kind of silly that Apple are still charging people for QuickTime Pro when almost everything that it does (fullscreen playback, audio transcoding, video transcoding......) can be done through the iLife suite.

I'd say the main reason they unlocked the full screen option now is because of the QuickLook feature in Leopard which will allow you to preview documents, images and video in full screen mode without having to launch any programmes other than the Finder!

Sorry Redmond, the wow starts in October :)

Editing HDV in Final Cut Pro 5

This is what i have discovered while getting my head around editing HDV footage from my lovely, shiney, sexy (is that wrong?!?) new Canon XH-A1...

HDV can be captured straight into Final Cut via firewire, but you have to set the system up for HDV capture before hand in the Audio/Video Settings menu. The Capture interface is similar to the regular capture in final cut, but is geared ONLY towards HDV. It can be logged and batch captured..... or so it says in the help menu, but I have had no success. For some reason Final Cut could never find the timecode, so I just used capture now.


HDV can be edited just the same as DV but because HDV is a long GOP codec, there are only 2 full frames of video in every second and about 23 "in between" frames. This means that if you make an edit, or use a filter or a transition in the footage, Final Cut has to reproduce the affected frames. This is very taxing on the processor and means that simple fades cannot always be played back in realtime.


The upside... and there is an upside... is that HDV is small. 1080i HDV is about the same size as regular old DV.

I haven't been using HDV for either capture or editing. I have been using the Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC). Again, AIC capture must be set up in the Audio/Video Settings menu. There is an option in the "Capture Preset" called HDV - Apple Intermediate Codec. This allows you to capture HDV through firewire and re-encode it on capture to AIC.

The HDV-AIC capture window is just two fields for filename and description, and a Capture button. You cannot log the footage, meaning that AIC cannot be batch captured through firewire. The AIC QuickTimes in the Capture Scratch folder now become your master tapes! If you have a HDV player with RS-422 Deck Controll and a component video input card you can capture and batch capture to your hearts content. Or if you want to send an EDL or a Final Cut project somewhere else you might have to go down the route of having the tapes logged and captured to an external drive that you can take away with you at at post facility. You are probably better just to make the QuickTimes you new masters though, and keep them backed up somewhere.

If you wanted, you could re-encode the AIC files as compressed DV files as an "offline' option. Edit with the DV files and then at the end just re-link the project back to the AIC files for colour correction and stuff.

Unless you have a super new Mac AIC will not capture in realtime. The tape will play at speed, but Final Cut will have a delay on the footage meaning that it will still be capturing and re-encoding for a few minutes after the tape has stopped - depending on the duration of the footage. The file sizes for AIC are about three times as big as HDV, but they are much easier to work with as you can edit them the same as you would DV or "real" HD.

The sequence should be just set to "Apple Intermediate Codec 1080i50" in the Load Sequence Preset menu.

After that, it's all the same as editing DV......