Fusse Presents...

...In the Midst of It All summer tour. Also, the release of our new CD In the Midst of It All. It all starts with our CD release party on June 27, 2008.

4 more weeks...

Until insanity's over (or at least until I decide to do something stupid like this again). I'm working, going to school, and working with the band. I have until the end of May to get this album done, wrapped up, and sent off for replication and mastering. Unfortunate thing about that is it's May 9th, and we're still not done recording (nor is the album art done). With that I still have to write a 3 minute long piece of electronic music. Fortunately with John Cage argument, it pretty much can be the most random piece of music ever and still be justified (by the way I think John Cage is awesome and incredibly wierd).

So I keep saying, end of May end of May and the insanity will be gone, but I always ask myself... Will I ever do it again? The answer is apparently yes.

What is New Media Art?

ICAM is the only major, at least in the UC system, that is cross-listed/cross-diciplinary. Meaning that us (ICAM, Music majors) have to take some classes that are Visual Arts classes and same goes for the ICAM, Vis (short hand for Visual Arts guys). They have to take Music classes. So we both have to suffer through thing we aren't really good at to get our degree. Why is this such a reoccurring theme in education these days? I digress.

So as part of that, I'm taking a class called ICAM 40/VIS 40. (Notice the VIS part) This class is a an Introductory class to Computing Arts now also known as "New Media Art." This is all about how New Media Art emerged as well as a practicum of sorts where you create your own "artwork." But I'm finding a common theme here and that is: no one can really define New Media Art. (Even the bigwigs.) I'll throw out a name you've possibly never heard of: Lev Manovitch. He's huge in the New Media world, and he writes book about it. Unfortunately, (and he's even openly admits it) he says he'd "rather be the first than be right." Meaning he wrote these books that are pretty poor (I'm being nice here), but he did end up being first. Now that he was the first, his books are the established "textbooks" of New Media.

This is one of the reasons I believe that New Media is so jacked up... That's not the only problem though. You can see if you go to any of these new media festivals (ie ZKM [pronounced Zed Kay eM], FILE, Ars Electroica...) there is countless things people call as art which I and most other people around the world would consider garbage. (Though I do have to say a few things there are actually kind of cool.)

I'm going to close and show you what one group of "New Media Artists" calls art: http://0100101110101101.org/home/biennale_py/index.html. Ok... Since when has that been considered art? I don't know you decide.

CalIT2 Auditorum

Thanks to one of my courses I recently was able to check out UCSD's CalIT2 auditorium. CalIT2 in their words is "one of four California Institutes for Science and Innovation." CalIT2 houses the Center for Research in Computing in the Arts (CRCA) which is the driving force for the major which I am currently part of Interdisciplinary Computing in the Arts.

As part of the tour, they did a presentation of a few videos, but not in Standard-Def… Not even High-Def. This is in 4k cinema. 4k cinema (3840 x 2160) is 4x the resolution of high-def (1080p mind you). When the auditorium was built in 2005, CalIT2 was the first in the US to have a 4k projector. All the video samples (ranging from ~1 minute CGI animation to a ~15 minute Indie Film) were played back at either 24p or 30p uncompressed! The video assets did not reside in the building, city, state, or even country. It was all streamed from Tokyo, Japan via a fiber line.

Here’s a quote from SGI who does the storage for these humongous files: “SGI systems holding 4K DALSA camera files at the Research Institute for Digital Media and Content at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan were connected to the Calit2 auditorium, via 15,000 kilometers (roughly 9,000 miles) of gigabit optical-fiber IP networks, where a prototype Sony SXRD 4K projector”

Not only does it have 4k projection but 12.5 surround sound using Meyer Sound speakers.

This place is really sweet, and CalIT2/CRCA is an excellent resource. I’m sure I’ll be blogging a lot about things coming from both.

Back from Israel and No Longer Jet Lagged!

I haven't posted for a while. While for most of the hiatus, I don't have an excuse; I do have a legitmate reason for about 2 weeks of it. I've been on vacation with a group from the church... in Israel. Just getting over the jet lag. It was an amazing, life changing trip. We went from Sea of Galilee area down to the dead sea and ended in Jeresalem. It's super cool to be able to picture in your mind the places you read about in the Bible. I have a ton of pictures and eventually will be putting the better ones up on flickr.

If anyone is wondering, it's a 3 1/2 hour flight from San Diego to Atlanta and a 12 hour flight from Atlanta to Tel Aviv. And no... of course I couldn't sleep on it.

HD-DVD Death Imminent

Saturday, Toshiba announced that they might be pulling the plug on their HD-DVD format. This came from a death-blow decision made by Wal-mart on Friday to only sell Sony's Blu-Ray format starting this June. This adds to the list of non-supporters for HD-DVD this list includes NetFlix and Best-Buy.

This has been a long awaited end to the format wars, and personally I'm glad it's over. This is just like Beta-max vs. VHS only this time the better format won.

This is great news because I will have the solution for ripping Blu-ray to editable format guide by the end of the week. So, we won't have to deal with the HD-DVD side. :)

Success

I figure since I'm random everywhere else might as well be random here too. This was from a friend's house a couple of days ago... Bull's Eye not bad for throwing them without thinking. Maybe some how I could apply this power to other things...

So... I've Got It! .. Sorta

So, I have been working on a massive research project -- Blu-Ray to editable format rip solution -- for weeks, and I figured one out from start to finish. That allows for creating clips from movies which can be brought in to Sony Vegas (for my purposes) or any NLE.

The sorta part of it is that I have to work through my cryptic notes to figure out what I wrote. Once I get a cryptologist to figure out my own hand-writing, I will post it right here step-by-step. Stay tuned.

HD Formats Demystified

Last weekend before Saturday night service, we decided to record the services using our Canon cameras to get some good eye candy stuff for future promos. Whilst I was helping the guys get the camera ready, I was asked to set the DTE recorders we have to create .mov files instead of .m2t because Final Cut Pro won't natively accept m2t files. I replied, "we can't record in 'f' (pseudo p) mode if we record using mov files. That's just the limitation of the drive." Then, I was asked, "what's the big deal of recording in "1080i60" verses "1080f30"?" At that point, it of struck me that I need to go hit the books again to explain this concept completely and correctly.

Understanding How HD Formats are Named

We all see commercials for HDTVs nowadays claiming: "Beautiful 720p", "Stunning 1080i", or "See the amazing quality of 'Full HD, 1080p'". (all paraphrase of course) All these numbers and letters can be confusing to most people (the average consumer). Here I will demystify the numbers and letters.

HD is branded with a number-letter-number i.e. (720p30 or 1080i60).

1. The first set of numbers (1080i60) is the vertical resolution so 720 means that you have 720 lines from top to bottom of the screen and 1080 means you have 1080 lines from top to bottom of the screen. This chart should help you understand the size difference between the formats.
2. The letter in the center (1080i60) means it is either progressive scan (p), interlaced (i), simulated progressive scan (f). The difference between interlaced and progressive is how the screen (or playback method) draws the image. Progressive scan allows for the screen to play all the lines in succession in one screen refresh and is great for fast moving subjects. Interlaced draws the odd numbered lines 1, 3, 5...1077, 1079 in the first screen refresh then draws the even numbered lines 2, 4, 6...1078, 1080 in the second screen refresh. Interlaced suffers from artifacts when an object is moving quickly.
3. The second set of numbers (1080i60) is the number of frames (or fields) per second. In progressive, the number stands for frames per second where as in interlaced the number stands for fields per second. Fields vs frames concept goes back to progressive vs interlaced. A frame is all lines together; a field is either the set of all odd lines or the set of all even lines.

So What Does This All Mean to Me?

If you are a consumer, don't be fooled by the labels. Full HD (1080p) is a broadcast standard, but almost most all of (I will not say all because I can't know 100%) local and cable digital broadcasts are in either 1080i or 720p. The only thing that supports true "full 1080p" at current time is HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. So make sure the TV can correctly convert interlaced to progressive. Just keep this in mind when you're going to the store to pick up that cool new 50" LCD TV for the Master's tournament coming up (Go Phil!). ;)

If you're a videographer or an engineer like I am, always keep in mind what your end product will be. For my purposes, the end product is the 2 20-foot 720p60 side-screens. That is why I shoot in 1080f on my ENG cameras because they do not natively shoot 720p. Shooting in 1080f allows me to edit in progressive instead of editing in 1080i and de-interlacing the footage. De-interlacing video can either result in artifacts or degraded quality.

To make a long story short, I ended up recording the video using m2t files. For the most part, everything we do is edited in Sony Vegas which allows us to import and edit m2t files straight. If on the off chance we end up editing in FCP, I always have shareware apps . :)

Proof of Concept

Proof of concept is a short and/or incomplete realization (or synopsis) of a certain method or idea(s) to demonstrate its feasibility, or a demonstration in principle, whose purpose is to verify that some concept or theory is probably capable of exploitation in a useful manner.
- Wikipedia

This is MY PoC. I have a myspace, but I rarely use it. Mostly because, I think I don't really have much to say. I'm introverted in a massive way, but that's how God made me. In all actuality, I have a ton to say... I just never say it. I have ideas and concepts that only I know, but I've always wanted to share them. (For the most part, probably bad ideas but... whatever.)

Now for my intro:

For those who don't who know me, I'm the Production Engineer at EastLake Church in Chula Vista, CA. (Church of 4000+) What that means is I do just about anything technical. FoH (Front of House) mixing (aka Live Sound Reinforcement), post-production audio, video pre/post-production, motion graphics, Chyron Duet creation and operation, lighting design and operation... You get the picture: big nerd. I'm also a Junior at UCSD majoring in ICAM/Music (Interdiciplinary Computing in the Arts and Music/Music Emphasis). Pretty much a Computer/Electronic Music major. To add to the list, I co-manage/produce a local San Diego band called Fusse, and I do some IT consulting.

Now to my selling point:

What exactly am I going to post here? To answer that, I'd have to know. All I can say is that I will be posting on anything from random ideas I had during the day to some training manual for those who do what I do. And everything in between. I feel like my calling is to teach, so here's the start of something new (for me at least). Hopefully, we'll all learn somthing in the process.