Today's the day

The new wefcpug season kicks off today, Monday 11th Oct.  Taking our cue from the success of  'Avatar', all our presenters will be in 3D, and surround sound (provided they move around a bit).

We're back in the usual room behind the club at BBC Bristol - contact Richard in the usual manner to get your names on the list.   7pm kickoff, gathering beforehand if you can to help get the gear set up.

On the bill tonight - 'Matrox Reloaded' - using the mxO2 in a studio context, direct capture to disc (exciting new development to be announced) and multi-layer chroma-keying.  With music and dancing girls - what more do you want?   There's stuff about IBC and Soundtrack from Richard plus whatever problems have been stored up over the summer.

Late Change to OCTOBER MEETING - NOW OCT 11th

(If you're on the email list you'll know this already, or you are about to!)

We've had to change the date of the October wefcpug to NEXT MONDAY, which will be the 11th October.   Provisionally, it's the usual venue (room behind the Club at BBC Bristol) but please await further confirmation of this!

Working title for one contribution (from myself) is Matrox Revisited - a comprehensive (I hope) rundown of a day in the life of a studio shoot with - look everyone, no hands -  no tape.   OK, except as backup.


Plus - a rundown of IBC reports and rumours.

See you in a week's time, and sorry again for the delay.

The Dec 2008 meeting - links and photos

Quite a night, we'd all agree. Thanks to our contributors, Donald Sievewright of Matrox, and Richard Mills from Onsight.

Congratulations to Hugo, the lucky winner of the Matrox MXO2, seen here grasping Donald's hand firmly (but not as firmly as he's grasping the Matrox box!)

As the other photos show, the bit after the presentations was worth staying for, when we got the chance to lay hands on the kit that Onsight assembled.

There'll be another chance to live the evening again in the next podcast: both Donald and Richard gave interviews and reprised their presentations.

Richard also gave me permission to pass on that very useful slide showing HD cameras, their specs, and how acceptable the various commissioners and broadcasters find them. The doc, which is a pdf, is downloadable here (link to file on the podcast site).

December meeting - special guest

If you thought last month's was a packed meeting, wait until you hear about the next one - we intend to see out 2008 with style! We've got another special guest, we've got new hardware to play with, we've got another big prize in the world-famous wefcpug raffle. OK, I made up the world-famous, but we got a prize, we got a raffle!

What we will have are solutions to problems that most of us are about to meet in the move to shooting and editing in High Definition:
- how do you monitor picture quality, especially on location?
- how do you import and export HD footage, especially with MacBook Pro - can you import?
- what possibilities are there to cross-convert? In real time?
- what about this alphabet soup of P2, SxS, XDCAM, HDMI, SDI, 422 ?

Our guest is Darren Godwin of Matrox digital solutions, and he's going to be demonstrating his company's latest version product to do all the above, and make the coffee. It's called the MXO2, and it's certainly making waves.

He'll be talking about the new features (soon to be announced officially), he'll be talking file-based workflows, we'll have a portable HD shoot 'n edit station there before our very eyes.
Now that's surely enough to bring you out on a December evening?

Oh, and I nearly forgot, there's an MXO2 up as first prize. And a special discount for anyone who's there and places an order before end of year.

Better sign up early to guarantee your place - we may well have to close the doors to latecomers on this one - email Richard as usual.

Crew call is: 630pm for 7pm Monday 1st December, BBC Bristol. Rear security gate.