Francis’ Weblog

Hey guys & girls,
Escape have just put up an online questionnaire and if you fill it out you are put into the pot to win ANY escape studios course!

I copied and pasted this from their site…

“Escape Studios are offering you a chance to win a course.

The winner, who will be announced in one week’s time on Monday 9th July,
will be offered the course of their choice at Escape Studios absolutley free!

That doesn’t leave much time so if you’re interested you’d better get a move on!

To enter the prize draw all you need to do is fill out the questionnaire that can be found on the
following link.”

http://www.escapestudios.com/news_07.php?id=36

For all the digital effects / special effects guys and gals a new version of “Special Effects: The history of Technique” is gonna be coming out in April!

As people may know I don’t complain much… if at all but here it is. My first complaining blog entry (ok excluding the Lacie incident which I can say is now all sorted and i’ve received back a fixed lacie drive!.. love you lacie!). Ok where to begin:

It all started one dusty day in April. I embarked on a research project to find the best laptop to do digital compositing and digital effects. It needed to be a laptop because I knew I would be travelling quite a bit over the next year or so and I wanted to had a bit of a beast to process all the high-end graphics. The first decision was do I go with a Mac or a PC… in the end I decided to stay with a PC because I knew how to use it ok probably not the best argument but hey!

The Research:
My list of requirements was this:

• The system needed to run Shake for Linux; this is a digital compositing package which I will be using the most
• The system needed to run Maya for Windows
• The system also needs to run Adobe products ok enough to do work on them… so After Effects, Premiere etc
• Built in microphone for conference calls
• Bluetooth for linking to my mobile

The main thing which I knew was going to be an issue was the graphics card. After looking at the technical specs your basically locked down to an Nvidia Quadro graphics card, there was basically an alienware MJ-12 or a… alienware MJ-12 the only problem being that it didn’t have built in bluetooth, but hey I can live without that.

End of May: The purchasing:
I knew that I was going to Australia at the end of may, so I looked into seeing if it was cheaper to buy the laptop in australia or the UK, because alienware have a website in the UK and Oz. Now the Australian website didn’t sell the MJ-12 laptop so I went onto the UK website and changed the delivery address to australia. When you do this all the prices change to dollars and it became VAT free. I checked the import duty to Australia and it was 10% so I made 7.5% saving already, and also the price was a lot lower so I made in all an £800 saving. Some eStores have difference prices for products depending on where they are being shipped, so if they want to get into a market they drop the price.

I mulled over if I should get it went back to the site and suddenly when I changed the delivery address to Australia it changed the price to… wait for it… Euros!?!?!?!! ok it was working with dollars the week before I’ll ring them up. So I rang them up basically saying I can pay either in Oz dollars or pounds but not euros otherwise I would get charged 2.5% in bank charges. First of all I was fobbed off that there was a problem with the website. I rang back a couple of days later and still a problem. So I ask them if I could buy it over the phone and pay using pounds, they said they would find out and ring me back… they didn’t … so I ring again and again each time being old something or other, in the end I gave up and ordered it on the internet using Euros… I rang my bank just to say that a large transaction was going through and it was a mail order which wasn’t going to my house in the UK. They said that would be fine and they would authorise it. Just to be on the safe side I ring them up a again and ask them if there was anything on the system and they confirmed that I had asked for this transaction to be accepted.. cool!

So on 28th May 2006 I purchased the laptop, knowing I was going to be in australia in a couple of days time for just over a month, plenty of time to ship the laptop.

On the 30th May I get an email asking me to ring up and confirm my order, which I do and they say that they have processed the order and everything if fine, I ask when it will be dispatched and they say its about 7 days sometimes less.

31st June:
I get and email saying:

“The bank will not allow us to perform an AVS check (a name and address check on the card). The country you are resident in does not allow us to perform an AVS check as either they are a data protected country or will not check the details over the phone for security reasons”…

Interesting! its a UK bank card… all banks that I know use AVS and the country is the UK?!?

1st June @ 15:53 (isn’t skype great!):
I give them a ring and ask them whats going on. They say I need to photocopy both sides of my card, and a card statement or an offical letter from the bank. I said it was a british card and its been authorised and I can’t see how it could have POSSIBLY been declined. Me now being in australia, I just didn’t think about bringing a bank statement with me, silly me! So they want a photocopy of my card! BOTH sides after thinking I decide that they aren’t getting it… I can’t even get to my bank statements anyway. So I know i’ll ring the bank just to check whats happened. I ring the bank.. they reply saying that no transactions have been declined at all. In fact no transactions from anyone in the last couple of days declined or otherwise. Right… so what your saying is Alienware isn’t telling the whole truth…

3rd June @ 10am:
I ring alienware and manage to persuade the person on the end of the phone that they can charge my card with the delivery address details and it will work FINE!… and after a bit of persuading they do it… and guess what … it WORKS!

I took a look at the alienware website and they have a nice little page which tracks your order status. It says on Pre-processing.. it hasn’t even got to the card charged bit, I wait a day or two because it may just update at night or something so it could just be out of date. I say I need it quite urgently and they put the order on priority.

5th June:
Its still on the pre-process stage. I ring them up to be told that the status page is not linked to there system and has to be updated manually and sometimes this doesn’t happen… GREAT! But you must be nearly done because I was told it would take 7 days to dispatch? and I am told its been delayed because of missing parts. Great only 2 weeks before I leave Oz!

13th June:
For the last couple of days it says its been saying that payment has been received but not a lot else. I give them another ring to check the progress and they say they have received the parts today and they are building now and it should be dispatched on friday! yupiee!!

16th June:
I ring up to check the progress of the order and its been shipped! I ask for shipping ref and it was on DHL Express so I would get it on wednesday for my flight on the friday to New Zealand for a filming project that I needed the laptop for.

I track the shipping online and see it going from Dublin to London to Sydney…

19th June (5days before flight):
I check the DHL website and it says “Clearance delay” … clearance delay? its in sydney but its stuck in customs. I ring up DHL and ask what that means and they say that its been delayed because it has missing paperwork! ARGH! and could take up to 3 days to be approved. ARGH! I ring up alienware, they ring DHL and fax over the paperwork.

20th June:
I go to the depot and pick up the laptop as I need time to install things on it before I fly to New Zealand. Yupiee!!! I have a laptop!

I install things on it…

I start doing some graphics work and try and increase the resolution… strange I can’t get higher than 1440×900. But the laptop I ordered was 1920×1200… they have installed the wrong screen! ARGH! no built in camera, no Wide UXGA 17″ screen.

22nd June:
I can’t bare to ring Alienware so I send them an email saying about the problem with the laptop… I get no reply. But I need to use the laptop but I make sure I keep the plastic over the screen.

8th July:
I send them another email… still no reply…

12th July:
I ring them and ask what I need to do, they ask me if I notified them… which I did and after AN AGE they find my emails…

After communicating with them some more I they ask if I want a refund as its cheaper than sending the laptop back to them. Which I would love to do but unfortunately I need the higher res and better screen so that I can see the colours better for my digital comp / graphics work. The screen and the graphics card was the only reason I got the laptop in the first place. So I suggest to them that I send it to Australia as they are based out there… Each time they say they will call me back .. each time they do not.

One point I ring them to be told by a sales or receptionist that they are all in a meeting… ALL of customer service!!! how bizarre!

…

29th August:
I ring them and I get someone who says that someone else is now dealing with my call, but he’s unavailable but will call me back by the end of the day. So I ask her to DEFINATLY send me an email by the end of the day or ring me even if nothing happens. You never guess what happens… yup… nothing… I even say that I will be contacting Trading Standards on wednesday next week if this hasn’t been cleared up.

3 months and 3 days since I attempted to purchased the laptop online … and counting.

Last year saw and upserge in people going to the cinema in the UK, while our US counterparts have been seeing a decline… but don’t worry there is a new cinema on the block! (or idea at least!). Three german companies have come up with “Cinevision 2006″. It runs at a 10 megapixel resolution thats 5000×2000! and you thought your 1080p high def home cinema was good!

Just take a look at the quality and the size of the guy in front of the screen! So when’s it coming to the UK? give IMAX a run for its money, ok maybe not

Just have to be a bit more careful on the rotoscoping! people will REALLY see your mistakes up big!

More Cinevision 2006 photos can be found here.
You can see more information of the Cinevision 2006 here.

All I can say is yupieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee … ok back to where I left off yesterday:

After posting to my blog I had a couple of suggestions… ok one. That was Jame’s idea of “you could try the old stick it in an air tight freezer bag with some silica gel and bung it in the freezer for 30 minutes trick.”. Which I slated him at the time but i’m slowly coming round to the idea. But still seems a bit radical. I’m sure silica can freeze as well and not soak up the damp as well…

Anyway I needed to test my last theory. Because the drive wasn’t being recognised by WinXP it maybe the controller card in the lacie drive which was not working. So the drives could be fine and dandy. The data could be fine. its just the interface to the computer which isn’t working. So in desperation I purchased ANOTHER Lacie 1TB Drive. The theory being that the hardware would be the same so I could swap the disks around and basically “replace” the controller card, and hopefully it would all work. Anyway posted my theory to Lacie to see if it was possible and got this back:

As long as both drives are the same make and model and both devices are Bigger Disk EXTREME devices bought around the same time, then yes in theory it will work.

Any variation of that it may not work. We don’t test this, for we don’t do any data recovery. Some bridges are only made to support particular models of drives. Drives newer then the case may not work. In the same regards certain makes and models will not work with certain cases.

This is of course in theory. We do not have a direct answer for you. This is not something we test.

Right so in english… maybe if I’m lucky. There was one minor flaw in my plan. The new lacie that I purchased was a tripple interface (USB2, Firewire, Firewire-800). My old drive was just a double interface (Firewire, Firewire-800). So the interface/controller was already quite a lot different, just need to hope that the RAID disk controller part hasn’t changed. Also it looks like Lacie have swapped disk manufacturer. As the disks in my old lacie were Seagates and the new system was maxtor, this maybe because they were having so many problems with failed disks in the past. So the harddisk params could also be different if they are not auto detecting the drives … the RAID array setup could be different connecting all the drives together as one… loads of things could go wrong and all kinds of chaos could happen… Also the backing plate screws are under a “Do not break this seal or your will invalidate the warrenty” so by openning up both of the drives will invalidate the warrenty on both. Anyway for £400 quid per drive to save my data. It was worth the price…. ok so I started to job, and hey if I was right and the disks were working I could easily put them in another machine so i’m not loosing the disks.

Here is what I did because I couldn’t find any photos etc on the net of what the lacie looks like inside and how easy it actually is to do:
1. Firstly I took the 4 screws out of the backing plate.
2. Removed the outter cover as you can see from the photo, by sliding it up and way from the front, looking down on the lacie drive you can see the double interface.

3. Now write down the serial numbers of the drives and where they are located in the unit so that you can put them back in exactly the same place. Just incase if they have cable select on and you put the drives in the wrong order then things will get very messy.

3. As you can see from the image above its in two parts a fan in each. Each side of the lacie holds two harddisks with the controller on one of them. What you need to do is unscrew is one little screw at the other end of the unit.

You can see that i’ve already taken the screw out. Then all you need to do is shift the two harddisks towards you and that “unclips” the two drives from the front panel. Make sure you take off the side with the controller attached to it, then you only have to remove two drives rather than all four.
4. Make sure you take off the ribbon cables and power cables carefully. I actully had to unscrew the drives from the chassie to get the power cables out.

5. You basically now just swap all the drives over with each other so you end up having all your old disks using the new controller… and put everything back together again. Both the double and tripple interface drives had exactly the same insides. The only difference was the fact there was three interfaces connected to the board… anyway a lot easier than I thought it would be
OK then came the big switch on. I replaced the lacie cover, plugged everything in … switched it on… the lacie seemed to boot up ok. Then plugged it into my computer and… BINGO! It worked WinXP regognised it and all my files appeared. So in my case it was the controller that was broken, not the disks. THANK GOD! Now i’m trying to get Lacie to send me out a new controller card for the drive which is “just” in warranty but isn’t really anymore because i’ve broken the seals to get into the drive. But even if they can send me over a new controller for 50quid i’ll do it.
I’m now copying all the stuff off my drive onto a mates lacie drive so I can then rebuild the new lacie that I just purchased. He’s also keeping a backup of some of my stuff… just incase

But PHEW!

Ok before I get to the nightmare that is my lacie drive a mate sent me this saying how proud he was to work for Phillips. Its a funny site and make sure you check out the other vids in the menu

http://www.shaveeverywhere.com/

Ok now back to the pain… All I can say is AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH… My 1TB lacie hardidsk has stopped working. I plug it into Windows XP and it just does nothing… WinXP isn’t even detecting it, nada, zip. Oh boy am I happy… not. It has ALL my digital compositing work on it, and of course no backups as its a 1TB disk, its quite hard to backup.
I’ve tried every combination of switching the lacie on, with the computer on… off, with the lacie on… off switching it on with it plugged into the computer, without then plugging it in.. you name it i’ve tried it and I tried everything!

Next… the search of the net
Ok I recommend against that, all you find are stories of wo. People crying over broken hardware and general upset people, mostly blaming lacie for selling drives that have no way of cooling down properly and blow up within 6 months. A perfect example is D’Arcy Norman’s Blog, he had so many comments to it he had to switch them off because it was getting too much!

What to do. I checked the lacie.com website, downloaded the lacie tools knowing that it wouldn’t work because XP can’t even see the drive so how would the tools work.. anyway tried it… failed. Also they say if you return it to them their standard process is to format the disks as they don’t do disk recovery. So sending the drive back to them was a no-no if I wanted to get the stuff off again.

They recommend sending it off to a disk recovery centre like OnTrack who do data recovery services and are infact about 20mins drive away from where I live. Anyway gave them a call and they said basically it would cost £300 for them to inspect the laice and between £1,500 and £11,000 to recover the data. BLIMEY! Their must be another way!
… to be continued

A mate of mine does art of a living and thought his gallery needed special mention He makes some awesome stuff. Anyway check it out if you get the time. Hit the round circles at the top to see more… (its not immediately obvious).
http://martintidy.tripod.com/

Found a good show Reel on YouTube for Digital Compositing Work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDvBy0bkyvg&search=vfx

This is quite a nice example of some camera stabilisation work. Nicely done, you can do this kinda thing using the stabilise node in Shake.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9vRV8FgCu4&search=rotoscoping

Within the next two months the new edition of Steve Wrights book “Digital Compositing for Film and Video” is going to be on the virtual shelves to buy. I’ve had a sneak peak at it and it looks a lot better laid out than the previous verison. You don’t have to keep referencing the images in the middle of the book as the entire book is in colour! yupiee! It was only the very smallest of speak peaks tho.

I can only find the old version of the book on amazon but for some bizare reason it has the new cover on it. Its definatly the old version tho.

Its come to that time in the year when everyone in the visual effects industry finishes the films they are working on and goes on holiday! Ready for the next lot of films to be worked on in the next month or so. Effects houses are going to start looking for new talent over the coming months. So all my compositing mates time to start looking for new companies to work for!

Found this cool site www.topcoder.com, the basic premis is that topcoder put up a request for a component to be built and you supply a design or code for it. It then gets reviewed and if it is passed you get the dosh. topcoder then uses the code in one of their client projects and put the code in their repository for everyone to download and use. Found one Guy who calls himself adic and he’s made over $81,000, kinda crazy money.

Ok, maybe not but if the popularity of his 17 year olds video blog is anything to go by there maybe a lot more digital comp artists out there! I think every teenager wants a logitech camera now! :). But it is interesting how motion tracking and even crude home auto blue/green screen compositing programs are appearing to go more and more into main stream. Ok notthing like the quality of shake and the 3D characters are.. hmmm… interesting, but after using shake and the crazy amount of little bugs around the place, and crashing randomly always seemed as a bit of a shaky (no pun intended.. ok maybe I did). Oh which reminds me a couple of people asked me what book to read about digital compositing… you have to get the bible:

 
The Art and Science of Digital Compositing 
by Ron Brinkman

But don’t get the 1999 version! a new version is just about to come out. This book is a good starting point and gives you a good feel on the technologies used and how compositing works. The book is supposed to be technology independant but definatly has a gearing to Shake.

You Tube is my link of the day… got loads of funny vids on it…

I’ve created an Amazon wishlist which has a load of good Digital Compositing books and also a load of DVDs which have really good extras which show you how to do digital compositing in the real world. You can get to it here.