Blog

My Room

2011-11-23T22:42:25Z

I get asked on a lot on Twitter and Facebook about my setup and what equipment I use. So I thought I'd address that in a quick post.

Our shop is based around DaVinci Resolve (Currently 8.1). In our main room (my room) we run the following setup.

2009 Mac Pro 2.93GHZ

24GB of Ram

NVIDIA GT 120 (for GUI)

Cubix Expander 16x Host Card

Decklink HD Extreme 3D

Sonnett SAS Card (32TB direct attached storage 2k DPX capabable)

In the Cubix I have 2x GTX 480s, RED Rocket. Was trying to get 3x to work but powersupply didn't seem to work.

We also run Blackmagic Ultrascopes on a simple PC.

As far as monitors we have FSI's and Panasonic Plasmas

All of our equipment lives out of the suites in a machine room - makes it cooler and more quite

A New Resolve Panel

2011-05-28T02:08:48Z

Ok so its been a hundred million years since I've updated this blog (yes I hope to get better), but I've been busy - tons of series to grade, books to finish, travel and I've just sold and bought a house. Anyway, just wanted to post a few shots of another new Resolve panel I got for the shop, that just got in. And plus I have to compete with my buddy Alexis Van Hurkman who took some awesome unboxing shots with when he got his Resolve panel. But unlke me, he probably took them with a real camera - me iPhone 4 without a flash! Sorry for the blurry photos!

We're having a professional photographer come into snap some shots in the next week or two so I'll post more soon.

Also, big shot out to Torrey Loomis at Silverado Systems for facilitating getting us this new panel and cubix expander box.

There really are no words for the awesomeness of this panel. Its fast and its functional and its why we've put them into play in our suites.

A Big Box

Monster Power Cables, USB Cables and Software/DongleCenter Panel in the Box

Side Panels in the Box Beefy Power Cables and USB connections. Seriously these are the badest power cables in the universeLow Profile. Sorry about the power plug on the wall need to adjust the plasma down

Straight on view

The Color Correction Handbook

2010-11-20T20:39:13Z

Well I've been waiting a while to make this post but my good friend and colleague Alexis Van Hurkman's new book The Color Correction Handbook is out and available for order! After receiving my copy this week I can sum up the book by saying it stands alone in the category of color correction and grading training and reference material. Put simply the book is fantastic! Alexis spent months pouring his exceptional breadth of knowledge of color science and his years of hard earned experience as a working colorist into this book. What I think will impress everyone, is that he takes what are sometimes very complex topics and puts them into easily understandable and approachable terms and exercises with a sprinkling of very useful tips. What's more is the book is pretty close to platform agnostic as Alexis discusses Color, Resolve, Pablo, Scratch, Lustre, Baselight and others. Although I discussed the book with Alexis and saw samples while he was writing seeing the entire book together is just down right impressive. You can rest assured because Creative Cow regular Joe Owens was the technical editor on the book its also one of the most technically accurate books I've ever seen. I've read a lot of technical books and written quite a few myself but I'm just blown away by how thorough and complete this book is. I'm very proud of Alexis and I really encourage all of you to check out the book today. It's absolutely a must read.

Here is the book on Amazon.

Catching Up

2010-11-11T00:51:36Z

Oh man! I suck! When I started the new blog I had hopes of contributing every week. Well...that hasn't happened. Let me tell you what has been happening...

IBC 2010

2010-08-18T13:47:30Z

I've been very lucky the past few years to be able to speak at major postproduction conferences such as NAB, Editors Retreat, NY Post and GV Expo. This year though is the first year I've been invited to speak at IBC. IBC is a huge conference basically the European equivalent of NAB. The conference this year is in Amsterdam September 11th and 12th.

I'm teaching four sessions and I'm excited to meet some European friends that I've only talked to online, plus I'm super stoked to be going to Amsterdam - never been.

If you'll be attending IBC this year let me know I'd love to meet up. Also be sure to get a ticket to the AJA party! Where ever AJA puts on a party its always crazy fun.

Here is the link to the IBC 2010 Digital Media Training Workshops Conference

The Magic Trackpad

2010-08-08T23:01:55Z

On a search to find a replacement for my mouse I came across yet another "Magical" product from Apple. Big Surprise - I think they're all pretty awesome

Shortly

2010-08-03T00:39:11Z

Recently Apple announced that they now support extensions within their web browser Safari. According to Apple, this will be a "magical" way to improve your web browsing exeperiance. Ok I only used the word magical because it seems like everything from Apple these days is magical! Tonight I began my exploration of Safari extensions and I came accross one that I'm loving. I write a lot for books, emails, online training etc. One thing that I'm always doing is shortening URLs to make them more print friendly, less ugly on a web page and generally easier for a reader to access.

The New Mac Pros

2010-07-30T15:44:54Z

I was planning to do a long write up about how much I loath the new Mac Pro's that came out this week but decided I had nothing more to add. Instead here is one of the best written articles I've read in a long time not only about the tech of the new mac pros but the overall stance of Apple in the Pro market. Enjoy the read

http://bit.ly/9Zj5Q8

The New Robbie Carman.net

2010-07-02T13:45:41Z

For quite sometime I've wanted to redo my blog. For the past few years I've been using Wordpress which is a great CMS system for blogs and the like, but I've been getting more and more frustrated by Wordpress in terms of its customization. Of course there are plenty of ways to customize Wordpress themes, plugins, widgets, etc., but it was really the themes that were driving me crazy. Themes that I liked were often hard to modify with out a deep knowledge of CSS.

So after asking quite a few people on Twitter about options a number of people suggested checking out squarespace.com. I did and love it! The site you're on now is published via the squarespace platform. Obviously, there are some things I'm still working on but overall I like the new look as well as the back-end tools much better than I liked messing with Wordpress all the time.

My goal is to be much more interactive with this blog. On this main page my plan is to post bi-weekly about various topics that are of interest to me and hopefully you too.

Here's a quick breakdown of the site:

Books and Training - you'll find more information about my training products that I've done and products that I'm currently working on.
Conferences and Speaking - you'll find out about upcoming conferences and other speaking gigs I've done as well as download presentations.
Color - I plan on posting weekly tips and tricks about Apple Color and links to other great articles about color correction and grading.
RC & The Magic One - this is my musical scratch pad, full of songs that I write, produce and record in my home project studio.
About - you can find out a little more about me as well as find my current C.V.
Contact - if you have questions or comments please use this contact form.

Thanks!

Robbie

P.S. Previous blog posts that I've made using Wordpress haven't been moved over to Squarespace. If you're looking for something old let me know... I have a feeling that it was info that didn't really matter.