It seems that what I enjoy most in the whole videography thing, is color grading. I enjoy that even more than shooting, or editing. Shooting tires me, editing frustrates me (especially because I am good at finding bugs all over the place), and exporting bores me as it takes forever to encode. But color grading, well, that’s fun! Here’s some nice dramatic color grading. I used the footage I shot tonight, which has lots of noise because of the low light in the room, but I think the result shows my point.

As shot

After color grading

How it’s achieved (for these specific light conditions) under Vegas:

1. Plugin Magic Bullet Movie Looks HD: “Bleach Bypass” to 50%.
2. Brightness and Contrast plugin: Contrast at 0.10.
3. Color corrector plugin:
– Studio RGB to Computer RGB template.
– White balance the Mid and Highs.
4. Aav6cc freeware plugin: Jack up saturation to 60% for the most prominent color in the scene (in my case, my yellow t-shirt).

Update: Some more color correcting and grading. Original image by Wonderlane, licensed under the CC-BY-NC license. Used here for educational purposes.

As shot

After correcting & color grading

Plugins used: Magic Bullet Movie Looks HD (“Green Pearl at 50%”), Contrast (at 0.10), and Color Corrector (white balance color correction, saturation 1.200 and Gain at 1.100).

My first ever special effects work. Sure, it ain’t very good (I only spent 10 mins on it), but it was fun.

Next up, be prepared to see me with a Jedi lightsaber. Hehehe…

The six most read blog posts on my blog:

1. Canon HV20 24p Pulldown (by far the most popular post)
2. From DV/HDV/AVCHD to PS3/Xbox360/AppleTV
3. From DV/HDV/AVCHD to Flash Video
4. Achieving the CSI:Miami look
5. Color Grading Tutorial
6. Crash course on Sony Vegas

Wait, what? My “perfect society” post didn’t make it through? 😀

Obviously this “new video business” I introduced to my blog four months ago generates page views (not that I really care of course). These articles don’t create visitors that “stay” here, as they mostly come from search engines and video forums and they never return after they acquire the needed information.

As you can see on my stats, while pageviews are riding pretty high, I have no more than 100-150 loyal readers. So, thanks to whoever you are. It’s important for me, as my blog is my shrink.

According to AppleInsider, Apple is preparing an “iPod Touch”-like PDA. I must say that this doesn’t make any business sense. There is no reason to create a “PDA” in this day and age. That market is dead. The market wants convergence instead, one device that does lots. Now, if by “PDA” they mean a larger iPod Touch with a bigger screen, I’d buy the argument. But just “PDA”…?

In the meantime, Apple doesn’t want us to “hack” their devices. Well then, they better release a fucking official SDK. Customers hack these devices because they want something more out of them, and Apple does not fulfill this customer need. So, what’s up with that Apple? Maybe Adam’s suggestion to boycott them is what some should do.