Matt Sandstrom

it's a great camera if you don't mind no manual control. you can lock the auto system though so if you get a 35mm adapter like the letus35 flip you have a fun tool. hardly professional but fun, if you're into low budget music videos and shorts. i'm mainly using mine as a deck, but the plan is to get the letus. the non flipping adapters require drilling holes in the camera body to reach the display flip switches, not my cup of tea really. /matt

i'm sure you guys know this but i'll mention it for reference. led's are, as the name suggests, diodes, and thus have an almost constant voltage over them, always, no matter how much you add. the light it emits is proportional to the *current* you send through them, determined by the "spare voltage" on the circuit and the resistance of the same. to build an efficient led panel i think you need a led driver circuit, or there will be plenty of heat loss due to the necessary overhead on voltage. /matt

while that's true when the current and voltage aren't in phase the calculation gets more complicated than i think you realize. hmi's typically draw a bit more than tungsten since they're inductive and thus turn the current out of phase, and it also depends on the power source. /matt EDIT: that was a bit redundant, but what i mainly wanted to say is that there's nothing wrong with the formula, but as so often before there's more than meets the eye. everybody knows that e=mc^2 but we're probably few here who know why that is important. :-)

you can't translate it into stops like that because it doesn't take clipping into account, nor gamma. /matt

you need a lot of cable to see a difference, but if you do yes it will be less bright. both because some of the effect will be taken out as heat in the cable, and because the amperage may actually drop due to the increased resistance. compare with two lights in series versus in parallel. /matt

yeah, or use a dimmer. the only reason i see to use lower wattage bulbs would be if you need to use three lights on one household breaker or a 2k honda. i like 650w lights for that reason. /matt

there are no two viewpoints. i've no idea what alex is talking about. there's nothing wrong with having artistic ambition and videos in general get better the more artistic energy are put into them. that's a no brainer. it's the same with all design, which videos and commercials have more in common with than with art. the more creative you are and the better you express your vision the better the results, but if it doesn't serve the purpose it's worth *nothing*. and as for getting paid for what you do i just don't see the conflict. just ask gondry, funny you should mention him. i'm sure at least some of you already understood and the rest of you never will, so bye bye thread. /matt

why? the "attitude" i have is the one expected by my clients as well. i call it professionalism. using other people's marketing money for your own personal enjoyment is irresponsible at best (not that i'm accusing anyone of doing that mind you), and going to work without expecting to get paid is stupid. /matt

Oh, i think you're allowed to open a video any way you like. I was speaking from my personal preference, my attention span is way below average, and my experience of what people want; in my opinion music videos are commercials more than artistic expression. If it doesn't sell it's not worth much and if i wasn't paid to make them i wouldn't bother. ;-) /matt

the canon holds sync for several minutes, but only after i measured its speed and adjusted the playback speed to match. here in europe we have to do that anyway since we always telecine 24 fps at 25 fps, so instead of slowing down the song by 4% i slow it down by 5%, which creates a perfect match. all electronically controlled cameras will run at a very steady speed, but since it's not crystal you can never know exactly which until you've measured it. EDIT: oh, and no i don't shoot everything on super 8. most projects are 16mm or hdv, with the occasional 35mm and high end video like imx or hdcam gig. it's just that i own plenty of super 8 gear so when clients have very little money but still don't want dv it's a fun medium to play with. /matt

well good for you. ;-) it's a fact though that the sync isn't perfect and the opening shots are a bit dull compared to the rest. the only place where people actually watch a video actively is during the first seconds, then you get away with much more dullness, sloppiness and whatever. in my experience, that's all. i think it's a pretty great video that could be even better with a better opening. that the song doesn't really begin at first is not a reason to not begin the video. i made a similar mistake shooting the mind kaos video, but i think i managed to fix most of it in the editing. as for my lisa lindal video it was kodachrome, canon 814, flashscan telecine. /matt

hey, mathtiaeuys here. :-) i liked the video a lot, the song too, very good locations and performances from the band members, but i would have opened it differently. the dullest shots with the worst sound sync should never open a video, even if they fit the music well. you need something that makes people want to watch. honestly i almost turned it off after a few seconds. for me the video didn't begin until the flash frame and quick cutting into the live performance. up until then all i could see was bad sync and boring grading, neither of which bothered me after that. all in all still a pretty great video. keep it up. (is that accent genuine? i've been to brighton several times and never really met anyone with an accent at all, schoolbook english everywhere. i loved it but got a feeling perhaps he's imitating some other singer? if so he should stop) ;-) /matt

video gamma is also manipulation, in fact even more so than cinegamma which is closer to the native ccd response. i agree about shooting in dv though, unless you need hdv for future-proofing. /matt

you calibrate it like an sd monitor, by outputting bars then adjusting the brightness until the black is just barely crushed, then using the blue only function and tweaking the color until you see four bars of the same intensity. crt hd monitors are insanely expensive though. if you have one chances are you're renting it and then you can have the rental company calibrate it for you. the crt hd tv's aren't really hd since their masks only have like 500 lines. /matt

with all due respect i think a thread becomes about what people post in it, and as long as it's pretty much on topic i don't see the problem. it's not like it's been hijacked either. it was a dead thread before this discussion. so that you and the rest of us who like to download codecs can play it while the rest of the people can't see the clips at all? why don't you realize that you have a problem that needs fixing instead? everybody else can watch the nomos clips fine, including us with ancient computers, no codec download required and no frames dropped. flv is a *great* format for web video. /matt

well, obviously alex has had a problem, you're not suggesting he's lying, are you? :-) my point though is that i agree with you that the films were fine, and that his problem lies on his side. i just watched some clips again and they played very well at the full frame rate on my ancient ibook g4 as well as my wife's equally ancient xp lifebook. i'm glad you have a jury again. gives more credibility to the award. i'll send something for sure. /matt

because "everybody else" didn't have a problem, just you. there's absolutely nothing wrong with the nomos films and i'm sure somebody out there has had major problems with the clips you managed to view without problem too, see what i'm saying? /matt

alex, i'm trying to help. i'm not "accusing" your precious computer of anything. the films on the nomos site were (are?) full frame rate, and if you didn't see that it's a problem on your end. simple as that. /matt

do you have agc turned off? even if it was the hdv codec, a locked down shot of a sky wouldn't show any artifacts. and a cable problem would cause the same amount of noise throughout. /matt

alex, if you have a crappy computer and slow broadband access you can't really blame nomos, can you? the films *were* full frame rate. use a flash downloader and play them locally for better performance. /matt

the component (!) output is supposedly before the mpeg compressor, so you should get the full hd. analog cables don't have bitrates, but depending on the cables used you can get interference of all sorts. what exactly is wrong with the image on the monitor? /matt

to make things even clearer, dv is *always* 720x480/576 no matter what converted from, shot on, telecined from and so on. /matt

i shot a music video on a mix of eterna 250t and vision2 200t, see if you can tell which is which? i tried to use one emulsion for one setup, but there's also some intercutting. and despite correction in telecine as well as web cmpression you can still see a bit of a difference. hint: i like the eterna better. click mindkaos on my homepage. http://www.mattias.nu/ /matt

it *is* the same everywhere because licenses are global. i don't know what kinds of licenses the u.s. bureaus sell domestically, but they do sub license the music all over the world, hence control *is* lost. and in any case i'm talking about all kinds of licenses, not just tv and film, which you would have seen had you bothered to read my entire post instead of just finding one sentence to bite on. your patronizing attitude isn't helping. i've also been involved in both buying and selling music rights for film and tv for several years and i know what you're saying. it's just the "period" that i don't agree with. /matt

like i said you don't generally buy derivative rights from the bureau, i only know of some big tv networks that do. the swedish state television for example have a license to use music as they see fit, they produce let's say 2 hours a day that contains music, and they pay a number of million dollars per year. considering that the going rate for tv right is several thousand dollars per track which is maybe only 3 minutes i'd say they pay much less that the independent producer. one cool side effect is that they can use music that's otherwise impossible to license, like beatles tracks, and they do. ;-) one thing to consider is that usually the producer will buy sync rights (that's the derivative part) for tv productions, while the exhibition rights are covered by the network's licensense, so you don't have to pay that for tv shows. very often i'm given music by artists for free since they know if i'm making something for tv they will get paid once it airs. if this is the same in most of the world i'm unsure of though, maybe it's just (northern) europe. it's not unlikely that some/many/most networks require all rights to be cleared before delivery. /matt