Is your Macbook embarrassed by the size of its small drive?

After months of my Macbook Pro feeling inadequate by the size of its Hard Drive I decided to treat it to a bit surgery and give it a drive 3 times its original size. I felt that increasing the girth of its drive would increase its confidence and it would no longer feel embarrassed and mocked by other macs due it always running out of disk space.


After a number of friends had recently performed this op on there macs I felt well it must be easy if those idiots can do it can, so I decided that a Western Digital 750GB 2.5" SATA-II Scorpio Black Hard Drive - 7200RPM 16MB Cache would give my mac its confidence back 

Look at the size of that thing

So I downloaded this great piece of software called Super Duper which is produced by shirt-pocket. This offers you a great cloning tool for free that enables you to back up your current internal drive to an external drive then allows you to specify the backed up drive as your new boot drive. In theory even my mum would be able to do this so I backed up the drive and all appeared to be fine, I backed up the drive and then tested the new drive via the caddy and my machine booted 1st time and the new 750Gb seemed to work.


Great I thought now its time to take apert my Macbook Pro which again isn't hard to do loads of tutorials out there but its only a few screws and your in there.


So I slip in the new BIG Shinny 750GB Black drive turn on the power and.......Nothing not a thing well apart from a white screen with a flashing folder icon with a question mark.


This wasn't meant to happen this was meant to be an easy op.


Ok I have now spent 2 days scouring the internet and as always you come across a million and one possible issues but not one definitive solution.


So Im now stuck with MBP that only seems to boot via its old drive internally or via the new drive if it sit in an external caddy.


So now my MBP is even more embraced by its lack of internal GB's as it needs to have an extension that sits on the outside in order to perform.


So if your mac asks you for some surgical enhancement maybe its best just to tell it that it should be proud of what it already has.

** UPDATE Well after much hair pulling I just decided to copy over the files the old way installing the drive and installing OSX from the disks supplied with my mac and then this allowed me to copy over all the info off my old drive using my StarTech USB to SATA IDE HDD Docking Station.

Star Tech Dock

Having a hard drive dock is great if you swap drives a lot or need to pull files off drives that you have that are no longer in machines.


All in all the new drive is running well in my 13" Macbook pro.

Computers in Vision

Some times when I explain to people who don't work in the film industry what I do on set they cant always seem to understand  why they need someone dedicated on set to sort out the computers.

Well with so many things that need to come together to make a sc work having someone on set who can sort out technical issues and visualise what is needed to help to achive what is required for the sc in what can be sometimes can be only a few minutes notice is a skill.

Holby City Set 2010

On set it can often be very hard to pin a Director down to what is required so they regularly tend not to know what they want until they have done a run through on the sc with the actors. I will generally have all the graphics ready in some format that is an interpretation of what is scripted which the art department have signed off and feel is correct for what is required.

Allowing the Director/Production to have this ability to change on the day can some times be a nightmare, especial if they know what they don't want but cant explain what they do want :) but that is another skill you sometimes rely on being able to read people interpret what they want. A good director thought is able to put over their vision of the sc to the rest of the crew wether it be the art dept/camera/make up.

lynda la plante The Red Dahlia Police station set (onset)

Since computers have become part of every day life it has made part of my job easier as people tend to understand what would be feasible/achievable in the time scale given but its often the case of the 7P's = Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. Thats what people often don't see its what I do before the shoot day that makes things run smoothly making sure your back-up machines etc are ok, having maybe a few options in case they don't like what you show them 1st whats the plan B?

lynda la plante The Red Dahlia Behind the Sc's

There is nothing more rewarding than a director thanking you at the end of the days shoot  as you managed to pull off a sc that they thought was going to be hard work and it all went smoothly.

As a computer and video playback tech you tend only to be on a production for a few days as they only need you on the sc's they require computers etc, so you never really become part of the crew as such your more of a Tech Hobo traveling from job to job dropping in for the day eating their catering and then off onto the next job.

Filth : The Mary Whitehouse Story: Multi projection set up

This does mean thought that things never get boring one day you could be sorting out the computers in a police drama and the next day you could be projecting moving backgrounds etc for driving sc's

Sony HXR-NX5E

Sony HXR-NX5E

Ok after doing a few events with this solid state camera thought I just had to mention how great it is for event work.


This month I did a job with Drew Perry of amplify video and we used 2 of these cameras to cover the Rock Diva Freestyle Dance event at Bridlington spa.


When your cover an event like a dance event in a theatre it throws up all sorts of issues like filming in low light conditions/mixture of different light sources daylight/tungsten/led pars/follow spots/ pyro's and orange people (way to much fake tan) all things that can really test a camera.


When looking for a camera to cover an event I like it to have a few things to make your life easy:

• A lens and chip that can perform in low light
• At least a 16x zoom
• motorised/programable zoom
• To output 4:3 (you still find a lot of venues with 4:3 Projection screens)
• output HD and SD and have SDI
• A good screen or viewfinder

On first impression both Drew and I found the layout of this camera was really good lots of assignably buttons and everything just seemed to be in the right place and it ticked all of the above points.

I did find that in the dark I was fumbling around to find buttons. I found the buttons a bit small and close together so was not sure if I was on the correct one,but this is probably just because I haven't used the camera enough to get my hands muscle memory to land on the dial/right buttons to change everything on the fly with out looking. Its very similar in layout to a lot sony units that are this size e.g. Z-1 Ex-1 etc.

Sony EX-1

I found the auto focus coped well and only on a few occasions did it struggle when we lost the follow spots on dancers, I know I hear you all saying what you used auto focus but when your on an event like a free style disco dance event and your zoomed in you struggle to keep up with the action as well as adjusting exposure.

Having worked on loads of dance events some times peoples costumes can cause issue with auto settings if they are heavily bejewelled throwing out focus so you just have to be on the ball ready to over ride issues. This did happen a few times but it can only be expected when lighting conditions are changing so much. I found that even adding gain the noise level was very acceptable for being shown on screens during the event.

So far I have been really impressed with this camera and for its price think its very good, if you get one with the 125Gb drive on the side you can record something like 11 hours of footage which would cover even those ridiculously long boring conferences we all some times have to do :)  plus you can record onto SD cards at the same time so you have a backup.

I cant wait to get my hands on one of these cameras again I have been really impressed with the performance of this small chip camera so far.

Conference Streaming

Recently I have been involved in some conference streaming jobs which have been great fun. There are a number of options open for clients for streaming pending on there budget and how complicated there shows are.

One great piece of kit I have used for a number of jobs has been the tricaster studio.

Tricaster Studio 350

 The tricaster is an amazing piece of kit for your conference or live event needs, not only can you mix 6 live feeds you can input computer feeds, overlay graphics, chroma key live, essentially its a TV studio in a box. Not only can you record the show as your mixing it you can simultaneously output it to a live stream across the Internet. Its amazing to think that something like this is now available to buy off the shelf at such a reasonable price. This kind of technology was only available if you had very deep pockets or had access to an OB Van a few years ago, now schools and places of worship and clubs have this technology for there events.

As powerful as the tricaster is some times it can be a bit over the top if say your client just needs a single video feed and the ability to stream there presentation to the web at the same time as the event.

So when the budget is tight using such streaming sites as Ustream can be an amazing tool. Even using the Ustream free Producer software you can do Picture in Picture which is great for when someone has slides in keynote or PowerPoint.

 You can also cue up videos to be streamed full screen or using pip in Ustream. All these tools weren't impossible to do a few years ago but they were hard to pull off.This kind of technology has meant that streaming your event live to the world is much more accessible than it ever used to be all you need is an Internet connection and someone who knows what they are doing like me :)

Exciting times for 550D/T2i Owners

If like me you own a Canon 550d/T2i you may be aware of the Magic Lantern open platform for developing the firmware on the 5D, and now at the end of 2010 the latest 550D version of the firmware are available to download.

Magic Lantern have brought what video users of DSLR's have been asking for with the latest version I have been testing the 24/12/2010, you now have control over elements of your video that were previously not available when using just the official canon firmware.

Now you can choose your white balance via kelvin from 1700k to 10,000k, select a much wider iso range including 160/320/640/1250 which you could not before. You can have an active Histogram on your live display along with active zebra markings for under and over exposed areas.

Blue checks show under exposed areas on the frame.

You can now disable the hideous AGC (auto gain control) and actual control the audio levels going into the camera via the internal or an external input, you have control over the analogue gain and your able to add digital gain to the individual channels.

Over the next few weeks I will be doing more tests with my camera I have already done a few audio and video tests and once I edit the footage I will be uploading my findings.

For now here is an iso test I will be trying lots of tests to see if its really worth using magic Lantern on your 550D. If you have any good ideas on a test you would like to see let me know.