OT: Your Office

epirb wrote on 11/29/2007, 6:44 AM

Yeah ill have to check it out, i wonder if it will handle fisheye lens' when i am doing panos on boats(tight areas) I use a 10mm lens and have been using Real Viz sticher unlimitted. The program wasnt cheap and works well esp with Fisheye. but has lots of bugs and they are terrible on fixing their issues.

BTW Serena, no pano in that shot just a 12mm W/A lens with the pic cropped to hide the crap below the desk. And yep the pic is squeezed, thought about fixing it but figured my setup is no where near most of yours.

Paul Fierlinger wrote on 11/29/2007, 7:51 AM

http://mydogtulipfilm.com/doc_paul.html
Or this might be faster and look under docs
http://mydogtulipfilm.com/index2.html

Serena wrote on 11/29/2007, 2:57 PM

I'll check out Autopano but so far I've found Panorama Factory v4 (v5 now available) quite amazing in ease and capability. I've fixed stuff which people have given up using Photoshop and certainly it does fisheye. I've done panoramas of extended objects extending in depth from 1.5 metres from the camera to infinity, which in fact PF stitched automatically; the essential thing is to pan around the nodal point of the lens. But at times I've had to manually identify reference points and it sounds that Autopano is even better.

epirb wrote on 11/29/2007, 5:30 PM

Just read in thier FAQ hat they are working on Fisheye -ability. :-)

masmedia wrote on 11/29/2007, 5:44 PM

Congratulations, Tim. I like your's best!

riredale wrote on 11/30/2007, 11:36 AM

Gee whiz, you guys all have big desks and big screens. I'm feeling more than a little envious.

Here's my office. A little cramped, but very portable. That's my FX-1 on the left.

Yes, that's really Vegas7. Here's a screen shot.

jrazz wrote on 11/30/2007, 1:13 PM

What is that? A computer for ants?!?

j razz

dcrandall wrote on 11/30/2007, 2:04 PM

OK, Here's my office.

-Dan

riredale wrote on 11/30/2007, 2:13 PM

It's a Sony Vaio UX-380n. Pretty cool, huh?

It has 1GB of ram, a 40GB hard drive, and a 1.2GHz processor. Amazingly, it runs Vegas7 very nicely, and previews both DV and m2t clips at 29.97. Stumbles a bit on crossfades, though.

It comes with a cradle that lets you use it with a regular keyboard, monitor, and external drives. But even standalone it behaves exactly like a regular laptop PC. It came with Vista, which is why I was able to get it from Buy.com for $999. You can install XP on it, but Sony refuses to help with drivers. Fortunately, there is an active user community (kind of like the community here) that has located all the necessary drivers and makes the upgrade easy. Under XP it's as quick and nimble as any laptop I've ever used.

The most recent versions come with solid-state drives, which helps boost Vista speed and slightly reduces power consumption. The stock battery is good for about 2:30 with XP.

I haven't run RenderTest with it yet; I suspect it would do a decent showing.

vicmilt wrote on 12/1/2007, 3:34 PM

This is the scene of the crime -

it's a 360 degree panorama that I was inspired to take because I just attended a Photoshop Tools seminar. The instructor showed us the new CS3 sticher and said it was "SO EASY" -

well, it was!

All I did to take this picture was sit in in the center of the office (about 12x16 feet ) on a rotating stool - with a hand held still camera - with a 16mm lens (vertical) and I just sort of shot the pan, eyeballing the cross overs at about 25%.

I did NOT believe it would work - especially since the 16mm lens is WIDE and distorts (as you would expect).

Then I just loaded the shots in PS-CS3 and let it go - period! It took a good ten minutes to think and balance and stich, but (to me) the results are amazing.

I swear I didn't futz with anything. You can tell by the top and bottom borders that the camera was handheld. How it matched the various parts, and figured the exposure balances is beyond me.

Now I used to do a lot of pano work:
1 - on a tripod
2 - by very specific overlaps
3 - in tightly controlled lighting situaltions

So this is totally amazing to me. Imagine if I'd been on a tripod - or even a little Careful.

Anyway I posted it LARGE so you can dig into my mess (forgive me dial-up guys) - like Serena, I believe in "artistic disorder" -
oh, I TRY - but I fail miserably. And believe it or not, I HATE disorder and mess. But I am a master at creating confusion.

So take a peek - BTW - most of those computers (5) are successively older. But I've got them all on a gigabit network and together they are quite a threat. One is dedicated to email and internet - one to Photoshop, MS office and whatever, and (of course) one EXCLUSIVELY to Vegas (totally virgin in all other respects).

www.interpubco.com/VicOffice

v

Serena wrote on 12/1/2007, 4:53 PM

Vic, that's NOT mess! Looks good, great layout. Nice spread of awards too. I'll have to try CS3 because it has done a good job, particularly difficult as you didn't stick to panning around the lens nodal point and auto-stitching would have been tricky. Was it a full frame camera (helps to understand the amount of distortion a 16mm wide-angle would have produced on each frame).

masmedia wrote on 12/1/2007, 5:23 PM

yours wins for most portable!

vicmilt wrote on 12/1/2007, 5:26 PM

Totally sloppy and fast shooting - full frame sensor - Canon 5D
I mean I sat on a piano stool and rotated - focal node?? ha ha

Serena wrote on 12/1/2007, 5:48 PM

Ah, 5D -- yes, I have one. I think Panorama Factory wouldn't have handled that nearly as well. Have to admit that my criticism of Photoshop panorama capabilities was relevant to an older version. Now I really am going to try CS3 (already use it for other functions).

vicmilt wrote on 12/1/2007, 6:08 PM

Look in the same area as "Batch" - not near the computer with PS right now.

It's totally cool - take the pix, let the computer do the rest.
Can't imagine how good it would be with some care put into it.

When you pull the individual pieces apart they are WEIRD.

Not a straight line in any of the joins. And the instructor said that it totally evens out exposure problems, as well.

LOL
v

ushere wrote on 12/2/2007, 7:54 PM

better late than never:

4:3 monitor replaced with another 20" 206bw. nothing's going to change till either bray or hd dvd makes its mark - then i'll think about some serious hd monitoring. meanwhile the samsungs are great, and the sony monitor is 16:9 switchable, so i'm more or less covered in sd....

now, if i could only get the birds outside to keep quiet when i'm doing a sound mix.....

leslie

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 12/3/2007, 4:00 PM

don't you guys know any better? you're supposed to take one image at one angle and let everyone say. Heh, sure, what I see is clean, but, what about the rest of his office?

Oh, and all the people who cleaned up their offices finally because they wanted to post a picture, you're welcome. :P

Dave

[r]Evolution wrote on 12/3/2007, 4:20 PM

Tom Pauncz

- Dude... you call yourself a Neat Freak... but I would much rather bring my project into your Bay than any of the others posted. Too much clutter in the Studio makes me think 'DisOrganized'.

- You've got a nice sized desk/workspace that looks like it accommodates all your equipment. If the rest of the room looks like this... I could totally see me working with you in that space.

Nice!

Tom Pauncz wrote on 12/3/2007, 4:29 PM

Tks sync2rhythm
Hate to say it, but yes. The rest, a wall of shelves for s/w and books, is just as organized. Organized chaos in some ways, but organized. At least I can find things., tho' any overflow ends up on the floor for a least a while.
:-)
Tom

ushere wrote on 12/4/2007, 11:52 AM

i can assure every anal neat freak here that a. you're not alone. b. clients DO pay attention to the 'order' in an office / studio environment.

as tom rightly points out, the ability to lay your hands on something WITHOUT breaking an alternative train of thought is a joy.

i have taken jobs from competitors on the simple premise that my studio looked 'professional', and i have taken my work to other studios (when i didn't have one of my own) simply because the dust on the shelves was as likely to be in the machines as well. i'm not going to suffer drop-outs because of someone elses lazy habits....

leslie

Serena wrote on 12/4/2007, 1:53 PM

Quite right too! Of course one cleans up between projects, if there is time. Knowing where things are doesn't require an empty desk, but we each have our way of working effectively and I don't think anyone was criticizing or seeking justification of those who prefer clarity to clutter. There are any number of office-style sayings ("tidy desk ...", etc) to cover each of our preferences. However some element of competition seems to have crept into this thread ("best & neatest editing suite") whereas I think the original intention was more a "getting to know you". But exploring the working philosophy is fine too.

John_Cline wrote on 12/4/2007, 3:10 PM

I'm lucky in that my clients don't hover around me in my edit suite. 99% of the work I do is unsupervised. At any given moment I'm juggling four or five projects simultaneously and it's pretty difficult to do that without generating a bit of temporary clutter. To me, minor clutter is an indication that something creative is going on. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

John

Serena wrote on 12/4/2007, 3:28 PM

Yes, I do not encourage supervision while I'm doing post production, but I know many video editors have to suffer the frustration of cutting under instruction. In reality they are just a human interface to the machinery. I've had the odd terse conversation.

ushere wrote on 12/4/2007, 6:06 PM

fortunately now that i'm semi-retired, i work on my own at my own pace. (the studio / office / whatever) looks tidy simply cause it's between jobs, but it never gets really out of hand. the few clients who still work with me have, over 15 years, learnt my little idocyncrcies, boiling point, sense of humour, so more often than not, i don't mind them sitting in. however, when i had my production / post business it was another matter entirely!!!

but, to inject a little lightness into the proceedings:

top ten lies of editors

1 It only shifts in preview

10 It's out of safe. you won't see it on air.

11 It won't really look like that.

100 I'll fill out the paperwork tomorrow.

101 I really don't mind working on sunday.

110 oh no... don't go by THAT monitor!

111 It works better as a cut.

1000 It's on the source tape like that.

1001 I'll be home soon...

1010 I think it looks just fine.

top ten lies of producers / directors

1 It's simple. it should only take you an hour or so.

2 I only need a few dubs...

3 Budget? oh don't worry about that.

4 Feel free to be creative with this.

5 I'll be there no later than...

6 The client will love it. they won't make any changes.

7 I'm positive i got that shot on THIS tape...

8 Never had a problem anywhere else i've edited.

9 Could you preview that just one more time?

10 Oh... just paintbox it out...

top ten questions asked by directors

I Would it have been quicker if it'd been logged first?

II Do you mind staying back for a meeting?

III Have you got enough to go on with?

IV Do you think you'll finish it in time?

V Have you got a spare vhs tape?

VI Did you mean it to look like that?

VII Do you need me here for this?

VIII Can i use your phone?

IX Why is it taking so long?

X Should i just shut up?

i know, they're somewhat dated, but then again, so am i....

leslie