Adam Froehlich

For free programs, Audacity is pretty popular for a basic audio editing/recording software. Reaper is also free, but more geared towards recording and music production. For video stuff, I find myself using Adobe Audition the most because it's so easily integrated with the rest of Adobe CC, and is fairly powerful.

Freesound.org has a huge selection of free to use sound effects, though the quality can vary a decent amount. If you find yourself using a lot of stock sound effects, Audioblocks.com has a subscription-based library that's decent. The highest quality will likely be from a site where you pay per clip, like Soundsnap.com For a projector sound, you could probably get away with blending a repeated loop if you can't find a 10+min long clip.

The SmallHD user guide for the FOCUS I linked seems to show a color option. Are you on the latest firmware, OS3? Maybe it's a newer feature.

I've not used a FOCUS, but the 702's have 2 seperate modes: focus peaking, and focus assist. Peaking is the sharpening effect you're seeing, and assist is the sharpened color overlay that you're seeking. I'm fairly certain it's the same way for the FOCUS's. http://guide.smallhd.com/m/74611/l/831210-peaking http://guide.smallhd.com/m/74611/l/831209-focus-assist

This lens seems interesting... @Roberto What would you say the effective aperture for this lens would be? I know macro and micro lenses behave a little different with light loss, so how much light would actually be needed to get proper exposure, with a decent DoF so close to the lens? I ask because I have some hi-speed projects with a Phantom Flex in the works, and exposure at 2000fps already requires so much light, I would be worried that the high speeds + small aperture would compound into a massive amount of light required, something we hope to avoid.

Are you sure? I just jumped into Media Encoder and it allowed me to set any custom resolution on a Quicktime MOV w/ h.264 at any aspect ratio.

These are delivery specs, for the final output, rather than acquisition specs, which would dictate how you would shoot it. I feel like these specs aren't presented intuitively, however, so I'll only answer what I'm confident in rather than give mis-information. 1.Composition size is the export resolution. The resolution of 432x252 provided is definitely not HD, so that seems confusing, and is actually a 12x7 (1.714) aspect ratio, so be sure to set your editing timeline accordingly. You may as well set the timeline resolution to that size and scale the footage down so there aren't any aspect ratio inconsistencies once you render. 2.Things to consider during production would be the delivery aspect ratio (12x7) for framing while shooting, and the framerate, so yes go ahead and shoot at 30fps to avoid any framerate mismatches. 3. Video bitrate is set at export (depending on the codec), and I'm assuming they're meaning at least 9,000kbps, or 9mbps. I'm not sure how the XVID codec they're asking for handles bitrates, I've never used it. The 24bit rgb color depth is also sometimes called 'millions of colors' and is a default for many codecs. 4. Final Cut Pro does not natively support exporting XVID or AVI files. I would suggest exporting in a different codec, and using a different encoder to export the AVI in the XVID codec. In my quick limited research just now, it seems XVID and AVI are more Windows based formats, so you may have trouble with a Mac. Edit: I see they also accept h264 MOV's, that will be the easiest format for you most likely. 5. I believe so.

You're likely correct. Luckily, we were moving on at the point it became a problem. Thanks for the advice, I'll be sure to re-calibrate the one we used with that in mind soon.

Here's some of my limited experience with the Foton-A: I just ACed a feature where we did 10 days with a Lomo 37-140mm and the Foton-A front. During prep, we tried to go wireless with a Cinegears system, but obviously the motor wasn't strong enough, so we ended up using an older Arri FF-2, a solid metal beast. 8 Days in and the Foton had stripped several of the teeth from the drive belt that connected the gear to the main body of the follow focus. I pulled focus from the barrel for the rest of the day, and just kept doing that for the next 2 days because it ended up being way easier. So bottom line, even a tank of a follow focus will have some trouble. We ended up ditching the lens once we moved from principle to greenscreen/vfx, it just caused too much trouble. Through trial and error we found that you can adjust the drag of the focus by adjusting the tension on the 4 indicated small screws along the A portion of the lens in this picture. Be EXTREMELY CAREFUL, however. Too much tension, and the focus is basically locked in place, too little, and the parts labelled A & B will start to drift, and elements will become misaligned to produce a very soft image (this was one of the main reasons for switching to different lenses.) Each screw also seems to dictate the drag on different sections of rotation, making it harder to set it consistently across the entire rotation. Setting a common mark between A & B before doing anything may be a good idea, should they become misaligned. I would be interested to hear from someone with more technical knowledge of the Foton-A. All of my information has come from trial and error, and in the end, we still had to accept defeat, so take my advice with a grain of salt.