Blog Archive

Our First Time Lapse Video

Posted on 2/4/2012 12:47:00 PM

Have been wanting to try the Intervalometer feature of Magic Lantern on Canon T3i. Just did it!

 

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How to Repair DSLR .MOV on Corrupted SD Card

Posted on 1/24/2012 2:51:00 AM

It is miserable for any professional videographer dealing with corrupted memory cards of lost footage. We experienced the same this week with some lost wedding footage. If this happens to you, read on!

We filmed wedding footage with Canon 7D and T3i/600D DSLR. One of the SD cards from the last wedding prompted a "Format before Use" error message. While panicking, here's what we did to recover the files.

The corrupted media was Sandisk Extrrem HD 16 Class 6 memory card. Sandisk has replaced this card with the Sandisk Extreme 16GB Class 10 version.

We tried the following data recovery programs.

Recuva
Recuva by Piriform is a free data recovery program. We have successfully recovered audio files on SD card in the past. Unfortunately, since the SD card won't be mounted with a drive letter, Recuva refuses to carry any scanning. No luck!

RescuePro
RescuePro by LC-Technology is a professional data recovery program. The standard version can be obtained free for a one-year license when purchasing any Sandisk Extreme series memory card. We are able to recover 22 .MOV files. However, none of the recovered .mov files are playable.

Sandisk tech support refered us to LC-Technology for further troubleshooting. After talking LC-Tech support, it was determined the H.264 .MOV files cannot be recovered with RescuePro Standard version. Only the Deluxe version ($69.95) "might" be able to restore HD .MOV files. On top of that, they offers a mail-in media service program to have data recovery performed in their facility. For a 16GB memory card, the standard cost is $225.

Active@ File Recovery
Active@ File Recovery ($34.95) by LSoft Technologies Inc. successfully recovers 25 .MOV files from the same memory card. However, they were all not playable too.

BadCopy Pro
BadCopy Pro ($39.95) by Jufsoft successfully restores 31 .MOV files. But still, none of the file is playable.

EaseUS
EaseUS ($69.95) comes with a free trial allowing recover up to 1GB of data. We tried to recover one .MOV files but the file is yet also not playable.

Changing Recovery Strategy

Since we are very confident the movie content on the SD card were not overwritten, we started to think the issue is not the corrupted SD card. It might be the lost of the complex H.264 file structure that was needed to be recovered.

With a bit of google search, we found two DSLR MOV repair tools, one for Mac and one for PC.

Remo Repair MOV by Remo Software for Mac

HD Video Repair Utility ($128 US) by Grau GbR for PC

We tried HD Video Repair Utility. The demo version offers restoring half the length of the video file. A reference playable .MOV file is needed (or any .MOV file recorded by the same camera) in the process so it knows how to reconstruct the corrupted MOV files structure. BAM! It successfully recovers the wedding footage.

$128 is bit deep. However, it's priceless to restore valuable footage that cannot be reproduced.

Reading from other blog posts, earlier version 1.5 was actually a freeware/donateware. If you want to save some money, you can search really hard on the Internet to find any Ver 1.5 floating around. There is a trick in doubling the file size so restoring half actually means restoring the entire video.

Lesson Learned

It was a mistake we made at the beginning that we "move" the .mov files from SD card instead of copying. We should have locked the Write Protect tab on the card before all footages were successfully transferred.

Sandisk provides a lifetime warranty on their Extreme series media. We called Sandisk to arrange for a new replacement card.

 

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Announcing New Microphones from RODE!

Posted on 1/17/2012 11:54:00 PM

Latest news by James Biddle, Western Regional Sales Manager of RØDE Microphones / Event Electronics

It's my great pleasure to let you know about two new product announcements RØDE will be making later today in anticipation of winter NAMM in the US.

Firstly we are excited to announce the new Stereo VideoMic Pro. More than just an evolution of the Stereo VideoMic or a stereo version of the VideoMic Pro, the SVMP has an incredibly wide yet natural stereo image along with excellent shock mounting and controls, all packaged in the perfect form factor.



For more information regarding the SVMP, please visit www.rodemic.com/stereovideomicpro.

The second product announcement is one of the most exciting product developments that RØDE has made in recent history - a high performance on-camera microphone based on the NTG3, with an integrated digital recorder!

The VideoMic HD is an exciting new product in development that will certainly gain a lot of attention for RØDE and its complete line of broadcast products, and cements us as the 'owners' of the on-camera microphone category.



For more information about the VideoMic HD, please visit www.rodemic.com/vmhd .

Best Regards,
James Biddle
Western Regional Sales Manager
RØDE Microphones / Event Electronics

 

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Online Delivery of DVD Production

Posted on 1/16/2012 3:22:00 PM

Ever since Adobe Encore CS3, the DVD authoring process supports exporting to Flash output. We tested the feasibility of this export type to add as an offering to our event output.

We have been wanting to test the possibility to add this option to current wedding packages to deliver the entire wedding DVD content online. Not just to post all individual clips on vimeo or hosted at our website, we want the client has the same viewing experience just like watching the wedding DVD online.

We tested out with this entire Persian wedding we finished before. The results are pretty good.



Even subtitle text works (Check out the Honeymoon clip). Awesome!

However, it doesn't support multiple audio tracks. Thus the "Background Option" option in the Setup menu won't work.

Since it is all Flash content with FLV/F4V, it won't work on iPad. Hopefully Adobe will make a HTML5 export in the future CS release.

 

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DIY Experience with XH-A1 Lens Hood on Canon WD-H43 Lens

Posted on 1/8/2012 1:40:00 PM

One of our customers Hao Ngo shared his experience on attaching the XH-A1 Lens Hood on the Canon WD-H43 Wide Angle Lens.

I was hesitant to purchase the hood for the WD-43 as I am definitely not a DYIer. This is what I did:

I applied electrical tape carefully around the edge to create thickness. Then I was able to mount the hood to the WD-43 and it holds. I haven't even applied magic wrap to the backside of the hood where it meets the lens body yet.

I'm sure those of you that are true DYIers will have no issues with this. If I can do it, anybody can...

Hope this helps somebody else out that was on the fence.

Hao Ngo.
BrownCowSoftware.com

 

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Synology DS1511+ NAS Review

Posted on 1/7/2012 2:12:00 PM

We recently purchased a Synology DS1511+ NAS. It's more expensive than other NAS in the same category. However, knowing how bad it is losing client's footage, we decided to bite the bullet. We are quite happy with this product.

Synology DiskStation 5-Bay Scalable Network Attached Storage DS1511+

I was first looking for a storage device to replace my classic DROBO which is painfully slow. It is for archiving and backup. At times, speed doesn't seem to be a concern for me. It constantly lost it's USB connection until I have to reboot to get it back. Then I came across this Synology DS1511+ recommended by people leaving comments at Amazon DROBO product page. So I decided to give it a try.

Knowing I wasn't getting for direct editing purpose, this NAS surprises me with the transfer speed. I got about 90 to 120MB/s on average when copying files from it to my local RAID.

One of the things I like about Drobo is I can mix and match different hdd capacity to form the array. Synology has the Synology Hybrid Raid (SHR) which do the same. Also, it can support up to 2 drives fail tolerance.

After using DS1511+ for a few days, I have to say..WOW. Solid performance + solid software and hardware. It's intimating with lots of additional features. I still need time to explore them.

Setting up is the most intimating part. I just went through the assistant program and started creating the array. SHR is I'm all after with the flexibility to expand in the future. That's same feature DROBO provided.

It comes with all sort of features such as mail server, web server, FTP, media server, BT and eMule download client and much more. I am still exploring. It's so flexible that it opens many other ideas for me to use it more than just as a storage device.

The next thing for me to try is to have all the AVI files store there and edit directly from NAS. Will try that for my next project.

 

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