OpenJPEG Bounty

I’m sponsoring a code bounty for performance improvements to OpenJPEG, through opensourcexperts.com.  If you are interested, you can find the bounty/grant details here.  If you might be a benefactor of such a bounty, I’d encourage you to pledge a contribution of your own.  If you have questions about the bounty, feel free to leave me a comment.

“I’m Everything” Music Video and SPFX for Piranha

So, one of the guys I work with at iTransact (“one of the guys”… he’s he VP), is Spaff Sumsion (www.spaff.com), who writes lyrics for spoofs of pop songs. Yes, just like “Weird Al”. Local radio personality and music guru, Robert Lund, performs them. Anyway, we were talking one day, and Spaff said, “You do movies?  Have you ever done a music video?”  Not yet.. but there is a first time for everything. So, we rallied up some friends and shot my first music video. The song is called “I’m Everything” and is a spoof of Michael Bubles “Everything”.  We decided the best compliment we could give to the original was not only to spoof the original song, but the original video as well.

So, with about a half dozen friends, we covered everything from the warehouse/studio, costumes, props, and equipment, to the hands doing hair/makeup, wardrobe, camera, grip, b camera, etc.  For being a last minute, no-budget deal, we had every major aspect covered. Setting aside a Sunday last week, we put the entire shoot in the can in just under 8 hours.

So, off I am to editing. Its been about a week now, off-and-on (about 10 hours total spent in editing), and its shaping up rather nicely.  It doesn’t have the “belly laugh” moments that you imagine going into it… In fact, I’d dare say it’s more “cutsie funny” way, than “riotous”.  But that’s fine.  Regardless, its turning out great, and I’m having fun doing it.  I’m looking forward to the finishing touches and putting it up on YouTube early next month.  Keep an eye out.

Behind the Scenes of

In the mean time, I’ve been working on some Effects for Piranha to help me finish up the video.  I need some blooming/glow effects.  This could probably be done in Piranha as is, by stacking a variety of existing plugins, etc.  But I’m lazy, I just want a dirt simple plugin, set a few parameters, and move on.

Here is the break-down of what I need done:   First, take the current frame, and build a basic luminance map from it.  This is simple enough, convert RGB to HSV, and then take V.  Apply a nice curve to V to crush the blacks and give a nice ramp that really pops out the highlights, but leaves everything else crushed to black.

Original Frame

After that is done, we end up with a gray-scale image that looks something like this:

Luminance Map

Next, we take the luminance map, and perform a basic blur, and a few more tweaks to the luminance curve and you get something that looks like this:

Blurring the Map

We are almost done.  For the sake of giving us some option, and astetic, we apply some color to the gray-scale luminance map, giving it a nice golden tint.

Pretty Golden Tint

Our final step is to composite this image over our original frame as an “Add” operation.  This results in keeping the original image, including in shadow detail, but adding the value of any highlights, and giving a nice roll into clipped highlights.  By adding the composite, we retain the golden color of our map.  And we get this nice, pretty scene.

Final Composite

At 2k there is A LOT of processing that goes on here.  At 4k, its insane.  Of all the steps, the blur is by far the most intensive.  So, while we can brute force this on the CPU, it will take a lot of time to generate the finished frame.  My rough guess, on a Dual Core, 3Ghz, it will probably take 1-2 seconds/frame at 4k.  Unacceptable for a real-time system like Piranha.  So, its time to offload the heavy work (blurring) to the GPU.  Since the other stuff is trivial for the GPU, might as well put it all there.

Piranha supports SPFX.  SPFX is basically a specialized interface into NVidia’s Cg shader language, which also convienently provides a integrated, runtime compiler.  SPFX defines how Piranha talks to Cg, but in fact, Cg is what does all the real work.  This is nice, because Cg is well documented by NVidia, and it a relatively well known language (for Shader programmers– of which I am not).

I spent the last weekend getting familiar with Cg, and writing a few silly plugins, but now its time to get serious.  And I need to finish up this music video soon, so time is important.  Over the next few days, I’ll post my code as I progress through writing this plugin.  While SPFX is specific to Piranha, the bulk of the code (in Cg) is not, and is perfectly portable to any application, game, etc. that supports Gc.

Republicans on Tax Cuts – Part II

McCain wants to cut taxes! YEAH for America! More Republicans get more of their money to spend the way they want to! Capitalists Unite! Seriously. I’m not being facetious. Read his summarized tax plan. Now read it again. And let’s walk through it together.  I’ll hold your hand.

Keep Tax Rates Low: Entrepreneurs are at the heart of American innovation, growth and prosperity. Entrepreneurs create the ultimate job security – a new, better opportunity if your current job goes away. Entrepreneurs should not be taxed into submission. John McCain will keep the top tax rate at 35 percent, maintain the 15 percent rates on dividends and capital gains, and phase-out the Alternative Minimum Tax. Small businesses are the heart of job growth; raising taxes on them hurts every worker.

I agree. Entrepreneurs are at the heart of American innovation. I’m an entrepreneur. I’ve been scheming up small business plans since I was a junior in high school. As an entrepreneur however, I can tell you that the second sentence is entirely wrong, and down right frightening… Entrepreneurs are high risk takers, and they have the least amount of job security. And anyone employed by a small business, is equally at risk of losing their job. “- a new, better opportunity if your current job goes away.” Does he know something I don’t? Maybe he’s going to send your job overseas. He’s done it before. “John McCain will keep the top tax rate at 35 percent, maintain the 15 percent rates on dividends and capital gains”– So, no tax cut for the top tax rate, and no tax cut of the 15 percent rates on dividends. So, where is he cutting taxes again?

Cut The Corporate Tax Rate From 35 To 25 Percent: A lower corporate tax rate is essential to keeping good jobs in the United States. America was once a low-tax business environment, but as our trade partners lowered their rates, America failed to keep pace. We now have the second highest corporate tax rate in the world, making America a less attractive place for companies to do business. American workers deserve the chance to make fine products here and sell them around the globe.

Yeah, a Tax Cut! Hey, I’m an entrepreneur! Double Sweet! I get a tax cut from 35 to 25 percent. Actually, I don’t, because I’m not a Corporation. Well, who does it help then? In helps McCain, and his rich buddies. How can I say that? “A lower corporate tax rate is essential to keeping good jobs in the United States.” Well, that may in part be true, but its a stretch. Corporate taxes are taxes on profit. More profit, means more employees, right? Yes. More profit means more United States jobs, right? Not even close. More profits for corporations means more money for investors and shareholder. Moving jobs overseas to lower-wage countries also helps profits, and with fewer taxes on those corporations, means bigger profits for the people who have invested more into those companies. That’s great for wealthy pastors, overpaid company execs, and rich politicians, but it means very little for you and me. Okay, what’s next.

Establish Permanent Tax Credit Equal To 10 Percent Of Wages Spent On R&D: This reform will simplify the tax code, reward activity in the United States, and make us more competitive with other countries. A permanent credit will provide an incentive to innovate and remove uncertainty. At a time when our companies need to be more competitive, we need to provide a permanent incentive to innovate, and remove the uncertainty now hanging over businesses as they make R&D investment decisions.

Hey, this sounds awesome! Do you know what it means? Well, it means, once again, that McCain is doing great things, that will benefit you and me, right? Nope. While I don’t have a problem with this plan, once again, it really only impacts businesses, and certainly has no value for the working individual. We’re still not taking about a reduction in your taxes. In fact, this is money that will be lost tax revenue. Money that has to be made somewhere else… I wonder where the money to compensate for the tax credit will come from? Most likely, you and me.

Ban Internet Taxes: John McCain believes we must make a farsighted, robust, and fervent commitment to innovation and new technologies to sustain our global competitiveness, meet our national security challenges, achieve less costly and more effective health care, reduce dangerous dependence on foreign sources of oil, and raise the quality of education in the United States. John McCain has been a leader in keeping the Internet free of taxes. As President, he will seek a permanent ban on taxes that threaten this engine of economic growth and prosperity.

This is one of my favorites! Ban Internet Taxes. Man, I hate Internet taxes. I’m all for banning them. I’ll do all my shopping online, and never pay sales tax again! But let’s keep reading… “Innovation and new technologies”- what does that have to do with Internet taxes? “meet our national security challenges”- WTF? “Achieve less costly and more effective health care”- Since when does health care costs have anything to do with the Internet? Again, companies (especially big companies) care about one thing. Profit. McCain’s no idiot. He’s not going to do anything to reduce health care expenses.. why? Because, true to the Republican creed, and Capitalist philosophy, if you want quality health care, you’ll find your own way to pay for it. And maybe those tax cuts will help.. Oh, I almost forgot, there aren’t any tax cuts! Besides, those companies don’t want McCain cutting into their profits (because somewhere, either him or one of his buddies will lose out on some money to be paid from those profits), they want him to increase their corporate profits, which means more money taken from you. Sorry, middle class that can’t afford quality health care! Sorry. Anyway, I digress. Where were we… Oh, right, “reduce dangerous dependence on foreign sources of oil”- Holy shit! Seriously? I’d like to see him explain how that will work… Hopefully you’re seeing the ludicrously of this entire paragraph (titled, remembered, “Ban Internet Taxes”), and finally, “raise the quality of education in the United States”. Wow. I’m almost speechless… Almost. But not quite. One more to go.

Ban New Cell Phone Taxes: John McCain understands that the same people that would tax e-mail will tax every text message – and even 911 calls. John McCain will prohibit new cellular telephone taxes.

If I’ve learned one thing from cell phone companies, Republicans, and… hey, wait a minute… Something fishy is going on here.. Oh! I almost misread that.  No New Cell Phone Taxes.  Well… I can agree with that.  Maybe this McCain guy ain’t so bad.  Maybe I’ve been too harsh.  Let me think about this for a minute and what it means….  Uhm, nope.  Still can’t get past the rest of his tax plan.  Sorry reps.

I’m almost done. If you take a look at McCains voting history is it related to Tax Reform, a nice pretty picture is painted. And I like what he did, then. In fact, back in 2000-2002, I liked McCain in general. I thought he’d make a great president. He really was a Maverick. But over the last 4-6 years, McCain has changed. His attitude, policies, and tactics have all changed, significantly, and I feel like he’s turning into as much of a tool for major corporations and special interest parties as Bush is. Reading over his recent record, it sounds pretty on the surface, but digging in, between the lines, I think there are some serious concerns to be had.

Republicans and Personal Freedoms – Part I

I was listening to a local radio talk show, where the host had invited a party spokesman from both the Republican and Democratic camps, to talk about “why them, and their candidate”. Near the end of the program, the host asked each spokesman to summarize, in 30 seconds or so, their party’s “brand”.

The Republican was first off, with a strong statement about minimizing government interference in our lives. “We are free to choose how we spend our money… We don’t want government telling us we have to pay for social programs and benefits that we don’t believe in. We don’t want government telling us how to live our lives. We are the party of Freedom, and the party of Capitalism. For Capitalism to succeed, we have to be free to do with our money as we see fit.” Those are statements I can get behind.

But then I started thinking about what the Republican party is today, and its major influences. This got me thinking along-side of a lot of different topics, from welfare, social security, health care, education, finance and the economy, and ultimately, to religion.

I have some points that I’ll get to later, primarily finance and the economy, but first… religion.

I’m surprised that a political party that is so strongly supportive of a minimalist government, and one which believes in individual freedoms, can be so bitterly opposed to issues of personal freedoms such as same-sex marriage, and abortion rights. I’m surprised that a political party, which is so deeply rooted in Christianity, can be so adamantly against the social programs which take away opportunity from the poor and underprivileged (I’m pretty sure Jesus would approve, not!). I’m surprised that a political party, which is centered on individual freedoms, is the first to listen to and obey every whim of their wealthy pastors and pompous leaders, to the point that their “freedom” becomes one that is dictated to them by another (and subsequently, blindly followed). I’m surprised that a political party, which is focused on individual freedom (and individual responsibility), places individuals into power who’s objective is centered on that individuals freedom, and not those who put them in power.

Follow with me over the next few posts (hopefully), and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Making the Argument for ‘Change’

Lately, my friends and family have been getting all worked up over politics. So, here is the first of my political postings. Now mind you, I despise organizations that tell me what and how to think, let alone affiliating myself with one of them. While this dictates the bulk of my religious views, it also carries over to politics as well. I find myself avoiding any “party”, and instead relegating myself to a label that summizes my political position: “fiscally conservative, socially liberal”. Given this position, I might one day find myself in the Republican camp, but not until they get back to fiscal conservation and separating themselves from the Moral Right and NeoCon fascism. In fact, as of late, the only thing that Republicans are conservative about is social perspectives. They are neither environmentally conservative, nor fiscally conservative. And despite arguments to the contrary from themselves, they are not organizationally (government) conservative, nor conservative with regard to foreign policy. Based on this, you won’t be surprised to find that I find myself sitting in the Obama camp this election season.

I digress, the point of my post was, as the title describes, how to make the argument for ‘Change’. Not that I’ve got the answer mind you, but with everyone I know making arguments of their own, I find a disturbing trend, one which needs to be rectified.

That trend is arguments made from non-quantifiable statements, and emotionally based positions, used to defend a particular viewpoint. I’m no high school Debate champ (in fact, I never took Debate), but I can tell you that the moment you start making arguments to the tune of “Well, if you can’t see my position, then you must be an idiot!” is the moment you lose the debate.

All too often, I find arguments made without basis-in-fact, statistics, or precedence. Now, I’ve come to expect this from Republicans. Since, for the last 30 years, the foundation of their party is based on religious idealogies (ie, religion), and the basis of religion is “faith in your leaders” (whether your leader is Jesus Christ, Budda, Rev. Joe Bob Brown, G. W. Bush, Paul Wolfewitz, Carl Rove, or… you get the idea). But for Democrats, I tend to expect (hope for?) more analysis, research, and supporting fact when someone makes an argument to support the Obama cause.

So, when someone makes the statement “McCain’s energy plan is a joke!”, do me, yourself, and the rest of the cause for “Change” a favor, and make a case for your statement. Show me references, and indisputable facts where McCain hasn’t done his research in what is best for our nations energy situation.

Republicans, when you start spewing off how socialized medicine will bring an end to democracy, site some references where the same has happened to other countries, or where other socialized programs have been an overbearing detrement to out goverment– and be sure to site some hard data. Making the statement that Social Security was a flawed program won’t cut it. I want to see some numbers regarding what the economic impact of it was. If you want to state beliefs and conjecture opinion, tell me how life in America would be different if we didn’t have Social Security. But remember the facts first, otherwise, in the end, we’ll end up throwing a bunch of worthless opinions back and forth, which ironically, only ever results in solidifying your opponents position within their own mind.

Need an example for a properly backed up political rant?

http://notamerica.wordpress.com

New Job

Not much to post. Today was the last day working at Utah Interactive. I start work for iTransact on Monday. Little better pay, lots better schedule, which should help on the filmmaking front. I worked with some really cool people at UI, and I’ll miss lunches and coffee with them, but I think this will be a better move in the end. Up side is, I’m going go work with some other cool people.

A Slave to The iPhone

I got an I phone. It’s pretty cool. Now I’ve downloaded the WordPress app. I don’t think my ability to blog reliably will change however. Time will tell.

A few more YouTubes

I uploaded a couple of other films to YouTube today.  The first one, Jabberwocky, was a short experimental adaptation of the classic poem by Lewis Carroll.  It was my second short film, made during my very short stint (1 semester) of film school, almost 10 years ago.  It’s a fun piece of nastalgia to go back and watch these little films.  Not the best production quality, etc, but they were simple and fun.

The second film was my submission for Fox’s failed reality show, “On The Lot”.  It was a fun little piece of film to make, but now I see the faults it had.  Al and I had a lot of fun writing the script and making the film.  It was the first (and only) project to be shot on a 35mm lens adapter, and my first real experience with a steadicam.  The whole thing was shot on HDV, in an afternoon, with a small cast and crew.  I am especially proud of the editing, particularly the pacing.  I also think the short has a nice visual astetic, though I spent of a lot of time cleaning up each shot to match color, etc.

Enjoy, and feel free to comment, good or bad, on each.  I’ve still got a few more to post.

Okay, that was a total failure…

Not the short film, just me blogging about it.  Production was fun, if a bit hectic.  We started about an hour late, which meant we lost our first shot, which we were supposed to shoot at “magic hour”.  Now I have to go back and reshoot it.  Damn.  From there on, the night was behind schedule.  We were supposed to wrap at around 3am, but didn’t actually finish until nearly 5am.  It was the first night, and momentum was still building up, but by the end of the night, we were tired but all in good spirits.  A good bunch of people to be on set with.  Good attitudes, and lots of great memories.

We finally crashed back at the motel around 5:30/6am.  I decided to push the mornings scheduled call time of 8:30am back to 10am to give us a few more hours of sleep.  So, day two was behind schedule.  Originally scheduled to wrap around 4pm, we finally wrapped at 6pm.  10 pages down, in 2 8-hour days.  That’s a typical Hollywood pacing.  Not to bad.

With plenty of sleep to be had, we decided to pick up a little early and move the call-time from 9am on Sunday to 8am.  We were on set and setting up for our first shoot of the day by 9am.  Perfect.  Still a little slow getting our momentum back, we struggled to meet our schedule at the mansion, but managed to stike set by 1:30, and were out of the location by 2pm.  Nice!  But we’re not done yet.  At this point, we were able to release the majority of the company and all of the cast, which was actually about an hour earlier than scheduled.

With only one location left, we headed out at 3pm, to shoot our opening montage.  What should have only taken about 2 hours to shoot, required some last minute set dressings and shot logistics.  When it was all over, we finally wrapped production at around 7:15pm Sunday night.  15 pages in 3 days.

My hope was to edit on set, and be able to assemble scenes as we shot them.  We did this a few months ago on the SLC 48-hour film competition, and it worked out really well.  Not so well this time around.  Being a much larger production, I wasn’t able to get away from the set for more than a few minutes at a time, let alone long enough to catch a few minutes of an edit, and make notes.  It was important, and helpful, if nothing else, than to be able to as Scott (Post Coordinator) how things were shaping up, and if he had any special requests for shot coverage, etc.

Being the largest company I had assembled to date, that posed a few of its own challenges.  We never did get a script supervisor and our 1st AC cancelled a day before the shoot, so we were winging it with spare hands.  I think I even rolled focus on a few shots.

Transportation was a bit hectic.  In retrospect, and at the suggestion of Linda (producer), we should have assigned one our of PAs to Transpo, and had them shuttle cast/crew between base camp and the locations, particularly on Saturday where we were shooting on the side of the road.  At times we had 6 company cars, 2 prop cars, and a 5-ton grip truck parked on the shoulder of the road were we were shooting.

Almost a week after production, I finally got the last of the footage to Scott for editing, and got my first real glimpse of the edited scenes.  I’m happy with it.  It’s still a “rough cut” so there is lots of room for improvement, but all in all, the scenes make me chuckle inside– a good sign.

Hopefully we’ll have a finished rough cut in time for the wrap party this weekend… And hopefully I’ll get some BTS pics and some frame grabs to post soon.

Wow. I’m lame.

It’s been how long? Lame. Ultra-lame. Truth is, I knew from the start that this would probably happen.  I’m just not much of a “journalling type”.

But, let’s see. I got my RED camera. Like, 3 months ago. You can rent it if you like. It’s cool. It takes pretty pictures that move (some people call it video). I’ve rented it out a few times, and made some cool films with it. We even made one in 48 hours.

Then it broke. I had to send it back for a few days. But, they fixed it, and now its back again. I like my RED camera. It’s pretty (in the same way that the original H1 Hummer is pretty).

Lately, I’ve been doing more stuff for Piranha. I wrote a plugin to edit R3D footage from the RED camera. Then RED changed their file format. Jerks!

I also started to play around with tweaking the FCP Import plugin, so I could import my 48-hour film (which was cut on FCP) into Piranha, and play around with my 4k footage from my pretty RED camera.  But then RED changed their file format. Jerks! (Don’t make me punch you in the face, or call down the wrath of God on your little wet, rat of a mexican dog.)

The last two weeks have been spent in pre-production on two new short films I’m trying to get shot this summer. One is a reshoot of a film that I made last year for the Group 801 project (10 filmmakers, 10 short films each month, for 6 months— brutal!). It was a cool script, but the execution wasn’t perfect. Plus, now, I have a pretty, new, RED camera. So I’ve been auditioning, and cleaning up the script, and scouting locations, and starting to pull together my crew. It should be fun.

The second script is a new story, that I thought would be fun. It’s a dirty, silly, sexploitation horror. That is all I will day. If all goes well, it should be quite the romp.

Finally, today, I’m playing around with the latest version of Celtx. It’s cool. It kicks ass! I just wish it had a budgeting module. Maybe for 1.1. Hopefully, I’ll post again before that happens.