I like how the following video looks like. It’s a bit unique in its looks because it’s shot against the sun. This creates a very nice metallic look at the faces of the musicians (which is possibly created by a giant silver deflector behind the camera).

I felt like cooking something new and low-calorie today. This is a pretty filling dinner plate that only has 200 calories for 3 big pieces of spring-like rolls.

Ingredients (for 1)
* 40 gr whole grain or whole wheat flour (120 cals)
* 1 cup of vegetables: shredded carrots, bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, other. (30 cals)
* 45gr of tenderloin pork or chicken breast (50 cals)
* 2 tablespoons soy sauce (0 cals)
* 0 calorie non-stick spray

Execution
1. Set aside 1 tablespoon of flour (that’s about 5 grams). Get some warm water and set aside. Take a bowl and put in it about 25 grams of the remaining flour, while saving the rest 10 grams. Very carefully, add 1 tablespoon of the warm water in the middle of the flour in the bowl. With a fork try to create the dough, by adding small bits of water and the rest of the 10 grams of flour as needed each time. Be very careful not to add too much water, or you will have no alternative but to add more flour to make the dough rigid enough (and that would mean more calories). When the dough is rigid enough and it doesn’t stick to your hands anymore, cut it in 3 pieces and set aside.
2. Cut the meat in very small pieces. On a small frying pan spray some non-stick spray and stir-fry the meat for 2-3 minutes on medium heat.
3. Add the vegetables and stir-fry for another minute. Add the soy sauce and stir-fry for another 2-3 minutes until the vegetables get softer. Set the frying pan aside and let it cool. Preheat the oven at 375F (190C).
4. On a clean surface sprinkle some of the flour that you had left aside in the tablespoon. Using your roller pin and flour from that tablespoon as needed, roll each of the 3 dough pieces into a rectangular shape, until it becomes a very thin fylo pastry.
5. When all three dough pieces are shaped, take a tablespoon and equally distribute the frying pan’s mixture in the middle of each fylo pastry. Then carefully and safely shape each as a spring roll.
6. On a cookie sheet sprinkle some non-stick spray, place the rolls there and then spray their top. Place into the oven. On the 7th minute, turn the rolls over. In about 7 more minutes, the rolls are ready (or until they start to get a brown color). Enjoy warm!

It’s been over two years since the last time I was in Greece (thank the Greek government for invalidating valid passports and making me lose my trip and my ticket last summer), and so I feel a bit nostalgic about my home. Don’t think Greek islands and tourists, this is not where I am from. The mainland mountains are my home, very few tourists go there:

Of course, with just a 30 minute drive and can get you close to sea, in Preveza or Parga, shown below:

The music heard is the traditional music from the region. Bouzouki music is NOT traditional to mainland Greece, contrary to what many believe.

Pheww… that was NOT easy! Achieving the “300” look is a major pain in the bum, but I think I can manage it “ok”. To be able to try and color grade that way (bleach into bronze color the whole scene except the reds), I needed a clear “as shot” picture during their movie shooting, but I couldn’t find any that had a good resolution. So I found this one instead, and I played with it. Here’s what I came up with:

Here’s the actual grading that took place. It required 3 “Magic Bullet Suite” plugins one after the other (modified versions of the “Bleach bypass”, “Bronze” and “Coolish” templates were used), the “NewBlue Colorize MSP” (it comes with the retail version of Vegas Movie Studio, check your Vegas box), the freeware “Aav6cc” and the “Color Corrector”. The plugins must be used in the order I showcase above. However, each scene is different, because of different composition and lighting, so on every scene the values of the suggested plugins must be changed accordingly, otherwise you will end up with ugly results. There might be an easier way to do this, but I haven’t found any.

Update 1: Here’s a much easier to follow guide, using only Vegas’ own tools and the freeware Aav6cc plugin. While easier and cheaper, the result is not as good, but it might be the only way for some video enthusiasts.

Update 2: Another, easier, grading version using the free color tools, this time by using Curves. It’s better-looking than the above one, but still not as good as the first one.

Update 3: A last one, I promise. This one is the easiest to follow, but with Magic Bullet’s “Tropico Wash” template in use. Most of the job is done by Aav6cc. Guide here, resulted image here.

Ah… Apple released today Final Cut Express 4 ($199), with AVCHD support. What they don’t tell you on their spec list and left many people wondering in the forums is the actual maximum resolution and frame rates they support. So, I gave Apple’s tech support a call today. Apparently, FCE4 still does not support 24p timelines, and it doesn’t do 1080p (it only goes up to 1440x1080i).

This is pretty sad. Today there are *consumer* AVCHD camcorders in the market that shoot in full 1080/30p, while other consumer HDV cameras, like all the Canon HD and few Sony ones, support 24p (after removing pulldown). And the market is going that direction anyway, and FCE does not get updated all too often, which means that in a year from now FCE will be obsolete (if it’s not already for prosumer users).

So, let me get this straight: I buy a $750 HD camera (e.g. HV20), and then I need to buy software for $1200 (e.g. FCP) in order to fully use my camera in 1080/24p?!? This is ridiculous. And it wouldn’t have been ridiculous if there were other video editing solutions on the Mac platform that support 1080/24p, but they are not. Avid and After Effects cost even more than FCP’s $1200. There are no other video editors for the Mac.

My friends, this is a case where buying Sony Vegas 8 Platinum ($130, supports 24p), and a brand new DELL PC with 2 GB of RAM ($800), makes more sense than being forced to buy FCP for your Mac for only these two added features over FCE. Hell, if you already have a PC, use that as your video station and get Vegas 8 Pro ($550). Keep your Mac for other stuff (yes, I have two Macs myself, I use them for “other” stuff too).

Two music video clips, both shot with the Canon HV20, a now $750 camera. Only a few years ago shooting at that quality meant thousands and thousands of dollars, and now it’s accessible to everyone with some basic shooting talent. Good times we are living in. The first clip can be seen here (the director has disabled embedding), and the second one below:

But you don’t even need an HD camera to shoot good quality clips. I wrote before about my plans of doing so, and about how you could produce such a music clip for less than $600.

The fact that I only get horny about engineers (and have married one of the brightest of all) is not a coincidence. Good, intelligent engineers are difficult to find around. Just like finding a woman who looks like a model and yet knows how to cook. Just as rare. Thing is, true engineers are needed in today’s world more than women who look like models and know how to cook. The problem arises when an engineer is needed but an engineer is not hired.

Recently, I made a specific bug report to an online outlet, that apparently created “unnecessary stress” to their (mostly CSS/Ajax) developers. The developer claimed that the bug is not a bug of their tools but a bug of the third party user plugin. Problem is, it’s their tools that created a kind of file that the user plugin can’t deal with. And how can they claim that this is not their bug when they don’t seem to know how to read the source code of their tools (they do have the source code as their tools is just an open source solution). Then they claimed that because a certain X application could use the file, it’s an indication that the user plugin is at fault. Which I personally dispute, because that certain X application uses the same open source library to read the file as their OSS tools. So if their OSS tools create a buggy file format, the X application WILL know how to deal with it, but that’s not necessarily true for the user plugin (plugin, which was written by the same people who spec’ed the file format). And that user plugin is the final target of their business, not the X application. Clearly, you need a C engineer, and you ask him to fix the tools to output a format that the user plugin can read.

But this is exactly a case where the company does not understand why they are in the business they are in. If you can’t hire a real C engineer to fix the *real* bugs, then close down the shop. That’s my opinion anyway. Hopefully they will see the light because despite all this, I like them. I have a weird way of showing this to people, but if I am downright rude and full of criticism, then it means that I care. Otherwise, I wouldn’t bother.

In the end, it boils down to open source being free only if your time and business have no value.

I got quite some email lately from users asking about how to color grade their footage. First things first: “color grading” is not the same as “color correcting” in video terms (although it can be in photography terms). Color correction is all about making the scenes look more natural, as they were in real life when shot (example), while color grading is all about “abusing” certain colors of a given scene in order to make that scene look different than the real life, often more stylish (example). Many movies, like the Matrix, were color graded the same way on almost every scene in order to create a cohesive, unique “atmosphere” that gave it a visual identity.

Anyways, there is no way I can teach color grading to anyone, because it’s not only a personal aesthetic issue, but for each clip/scene the templates and plugin settings you use are always different (depending on the lighting, colors used and composition). It is up to you to use these 4-5 most important color plugins the way you feel best. And these plugins on Vegas are:

1. Brightness and Contrast (comes with Vegas)
2. Color Corrector (not “Secondary”, comes with Vegas)
3. Magic Bullet Editors 2.0 for Vegas ($400, demo here or here. After installation check its “Use GPU” checkbox if you have a GeForce graphics card, otherwise it will be really slow). Sony also distributes for free an older, unaccelerated, version of MB. It’s slower, but hey, they give it away for free.
4. Aav6cc (free download. On Vista you might have to install it as “Run as Administrator”)
5. Curves (optional usage, comes with Vegas)
6. Unsharpen mask plugin, put the first of its sliders on the 0.300, and the second one on the 0.100. Comes with Vegas.

Things to remember:
a. Make sure your source footage is not over-saturated, or the grading won’t take much effect. Do not use “color effects/settings” in your camera, always shoot in “neutral” color mode.
b. You don’t always have to use all of them in the plugin chain. Just use the ones that produce the visuals you are looking for. The more plugins you use, the slower rendering and encoding will become, so use with care.
c. If you use most of them at once in the plugin chain, use them preferably in the order above, although this is not mandatory.
d. Using Magic Bullet will make rendering and encoding 6x slower if you don’t have a GeForce card, and about 3x slower if you do anyway. So be patient with it because it’s the main plugin that can easily create the “wow” effect compared to all the other ones.
e. Aav6cc is a bit buggy when used in conjunction with PNG images. You might get a black preview window occasionally.

Now, just play away! Play with contrast, play with saturation, the three-way color wheel, the gamma, the 50+ templates that come with Magic Bullet, or independently handle colors using Aav6cc (I personally love to saturate the “yellow” color on Aav6cc and then check the “reverse influence”). It’s up to you to play around with combinations until you get a result that satisfies you on each clip. Good luck with it!

Update: For the most complex color effects you will need Magic Bullet, but some times you don’t. With a bit of skill, you can recreate similar looks without it, by using just the included Vegas tools and the free Aav6cc.

Example 1:

Contrast on 0.08. Color corrector saturation 1400, gamma 0.970, gain 1.050. Color Corrector’s “Low Wheel” 299.7 and 0128. “Mid wheel” 303.7 and 0.168. “High Wheel” 306.9 and 0.310. Aav6cc: Blue and Cyan on Saturation 50 and Lightness -50, Yellow on 65 and “invert influence”, Red on 50 and its lightness on 10, Magenta on 50.

Magic Bullet “grand sky” template. Color Corrector’s Saturation to 1750.

Example 2:

Color Corrector Saturation 2300, gamma at 0.700. Aav6cc’s Blue saturation at 60 and lightness at -15, Cyan’s saturation at 60 and lightness at -30.

Magic Bullet “Grand Sky” template, Color Corrector’s gamma at 0.700, Saturation at 2300.

Fill up the form here and download legally and for free their nice album. FONO is an indie rock band from San Diego. Check their myspace page for samples of their work before decide to download or not. Note: They will add you to their mailing list without telling you or letting you confirm. Be aware.

Most of you are aware of my diet recipes. Most of the suggested entrees that are marked as “diet” are measuring at 200 calories each, but they are designed in a way that would fill you up. When I am on a low calorie diet, I eat at least 3 of these entrees per day, plus fruits and yogurts. I live a very sedentary life and I am very short, so I can easily (and healthily) manage a diet of about 700-800 calories per day (I would need more than that if I was working/out or going out more, of course).

So last week my recipes got linked from a dieting forum and its dieting readers flocked to find some low-cal recipes. According to my stats, the most popular recipes proved to be my 65-calorie per muffin recipe, and the 200-calorie full pizza. One of the referrers linking to one of my recipes was a blog of a woman who is currently dieting. Apparently, she does between 200 and 400 calories per day, which is of course, excessively low.

I wouldn’t normally reply to her blog, but I decided to leave a message and say that aspartame is not as good as splenta, and that in reality that none of these “diet sugars” are actually very healthy. I did not comment on her dieting plans, I just made a remark on sugars. But I guess the lady does not like to listen to feedback that consists of well known facts. So she deleted my (polite, for a change) comment.

This begs the question. Should I leave my diet recipes up and available? I wrote them and shared them because I believe that they can fill up bellies without storing lots of energy. There aren’t many TRULY low-calorie recipes out there that have so much quantity in them. But by stumbling upon this abnormal usage of my recipes, an abuse, it raises the ethical problem of creation/sharing and the responsibility that comes out of it.

I can approach the problem with two ways:
1. Remove the diet recipes so I have no part in any anorexia/abuse case.
2. Let the dieters decide what they want to do for themselves and let Darwin run its course.

I think I’ll choose #2.