Studio Istanbul

Small countries - big music: "Absynthe Minded" & "GinGa"

azplanlos — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 18:07:35 +0300

"Absynthe Minded" and "GinGa" perform two concerts at Nublu Istanbul this weekend. We attended friday nights show and our advice: If you do have any chance to attend, definately don't miss it!

There is no ticket sale except at the door, entrance fee is 40 TL (at least yesterday).

Recently a club named "nublu" opened up in Istanbul's Karaköy area, a couple of streets next to our studio. Yesterday we went there for a concert and I really have to tell you: one of the best locations in town. A club that's doing everything right. Great interior design, perfect cocktails at the bar and best of all: wonderfull accustics (at least for a small stage like this). We actually came to see Absynthe Minded's concert but stayed for GinGa as well. And both did a great show that evening evening but unfortunately in front of a very small audience. Nevertheless we had a great night. But let me introduce you the two bands:

Absynthe Minded is a rock group from Belgium, performing sometimes relaxing but always groovy rock songs that reminded us of a jazzy version of The Doors and maybe even Dire Straits. In 2010 they were awarded with 4 Music Industry Awards in Belgium - including: hit of the year, best album and best band. Great catchy songs, check out their song Envoi:

GinGa is an alternative pop group from Austria (Vienna) and England (Manchester). We were really impressed by the power and drive of their music thanks to Starsailor's bassist James Stelfox's riffs filled with life by the rest of the bands melodic and rhythmic spirit - sometimes travelling almost to punk rock and getting melodic or almost acapella within a couple of seconds. An amazing journey between music styles. There's "no limit" when the cover version is better than the original song.

Also check out their own songs.

Daughter

azplanlos — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 20:59:13 +0300

Daughter are an English indie folk band originating from London in 2010. Originally the solo work of Elena Tonra, they are now a trio with the addition of guitarist Igor Haefeli and drummer Remi Aguilella. After releasing three EPs in 2010 and 2011, they were signed by 4AD and are set to release their first full-length album, If You Leave, in March 2013.

They will be live on stage in Istanbul on April 2nd (tomorrow) at 9.30 pm. I know tomorrow is the huge UEFA match between Real Madrid and Galatasaray - but if you want to take a break from football and enjoy some nice music - we recommend you to go to IKSV salon. You can get tickets at Biletix for 39 TL.

After their first demo started word of mouth on the band, Daughter self-released their debut EP, His Young Heart, on April 20, 2011. Later that same year, they released another EP, The Wild Youth, on October 2 through artist-led Communion Records. The latter EP earned praise from British website For Folk’s Sake who described Daughter as "one of the most unique sounds in the pop landscape today."

In 2012, shortly after headlining a 700-capacity show at the Assembly Hall in North London, Daughter announce their signing to prestigious UK label 4AD. Speaking of this, Elena commented "we couldn’t be happier to be working with 4AD, a label that has released so many inspirational records and whose ethos we hold in very high regard. It really is a privilege."

Daughter

Ara Güler Interview Recordings

azplanlos — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:02:00 +0300

Today we had the honor to record a few interviews with Ara Güler. Ara Güler is a Turkish photojournalist and nicknamed "The Eye of Istanbul". Trust us if we say, this man is a living legend.

The interviews where made in two different locations. The first parts we did in the Tophane-i Amire Kültür Sanat Merkezi, where currently an exhibition of Ara Güler's work is being presented. The other parts where recorded in a very crowded cay bahce in Istiniye, Sariyer.

Both locations were a huge challenge for the sound - the exhibition hall had a very high ceiling; the cay bahce was very noisy from the people and the bypassing boats on the Bosphorus. We used a Sennheiser ME 66 microphone and a Sound Devices MixPre compact field mixer.

We are very proud to have had the chance to meet Mr. Güler in person and try to impress him with our own Turkish language skills.

The recordings will be used for a German TV format - as soon as we get more details - we will let you know.

Ara Güler

Tophane -i Amire

Phronesis

azplanlos — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 20:44:43 +0200

The Scandinavian and British jazz band Phronesis will visit Istanbul in a couple of days. They have the ability to excite, inspire and move people in a way that few bands are able to do. Led by London-based Danish double-bass player Jasper Høiby, their charismatic live performances have captured the hearts and minds of audiences worldwide and prompted Jon Newey (Editor of Jazzwise Magazine) to describe them as “the most exciting and imaginative piano trio since EST”.

They will play live in Istanbul on March 27th 2013 9.30 pm at Salon IKSV. You can get tickets at Biletix from 28 to 39 TL.

Formed by Danish bass player Jasper Høiby in 2005, the energy and individuality of Phronesis comes from an extraordinary democracy of expression and intuitive empathy between the musicians – British pianist Ivo Neame and Swedish drummer Anton Eger come together with Høiby to create a propulsive groove-driven sound that is utterly accessible despite its underlying complexity.

“Phronesis have a precocious compositional strength, hitching striking themes to engaging grooves; they have improv virtuosity to spare, but never show off, and make light of travelling the most devious rhythmic routes.” – the Guardian

Phronesis

Text taken from Edition Records

Totally different - Istanbul's strong women

azplanlos — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 15:25:37 +0200

Totally different - Istanbul's strong women, is a 30 minute documentary, which potraits four young women going their own way. A feature by Gunnar Köhne in German language. It aired on WDR (West German Broadcasting) on March 05th 2013. We cannot embed the video to our blog, but the link below will redirect you to WDR's video player.

WDR

T6 Torx Screwdriver

azplanlos — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 21:57:44 +0200

Today we wanted to replace the hard disc of our mobile Avid system, which runs on an 15 inch macbook pro. We aquired a beautiful 750GB 720 GB hybrid ssd drive from Seagate (Momentus XT). After we cloned our system partition...

...we started to use a set of screwdrivers to get to the hard disc. At first we thought it will be like replacing or upgrading ram... one, two screws and the job will be done. After taking the keyboard off we decided to check ifixit - and found the following instructions:

MacBook Pro 15" Core Duo Model A1150 Hard Drive Replacement

We could not get the two screws in step 13 off... we had alot of options... slot, philips, square, hex, but no torx. A nice little story that we wanted to share - we all should have a T6 Torx screwdriver in our repertoire.

Torx

Castrol

azplanlos — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 12:31:45 +0200

Castrol is a brand of industrial and automotive lubricants that is applied to a large range of oils, greases and similar products for most lubrication applications. The Castrol brand is part of the BP's Group of Companies, but has retained its separate identity.

Last week we recorded the voice over for BP's Castrol 30 and 15 seconds TV commercial.

It is now on air on Turkish television.

BP Castrol

Studio Istanbul joins the Mac App Store

azplanlos — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 17:19:19 +0200

We proudly announce that our first application, the Exchange Category Exporter passed the review procedures and is now live in the Apple Mac Store. For $1.99 you will be able to export all your Exchange contacts based on their given category. Happy exporting.

For all who are interested in technical details about the review process, please continue reading... For all who want to know more about the Exchange Category Exporter please visit our software website and read our previous blog post.

It was a very interesting experience to witness the Apple review process. Only to be able to submit our application for review we needed to apply for approval at the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security. This was due to the fact that our application is using encryption technologies (https) to enable the communication between our software and an Exchange Server. This approval is valid for exporting our app from the US to anywhere in the world - with one exception: France, including the French AppStore.

For France I start a new paragraph. While the approvial at the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security was straightforward and could be done online, for the French approval you need to fill out a bunch of forms and send them by letter to an office in France. All the forms are in french. All the online FAQ's and support are in french. We decided not to invest any time in this and just skipped the french store for now. We prefer to use the time to develeop a new app actually.

After the export approval, Apple started to review our app. Sandboxing ok (after being rejected once because of a not properly signed - but anyhow sandboxed - helper file), libraries ok, no security issues. The review was rejected at first, since Apple wanted a demo exchange account for real testing. Yes, they really seem to review the actual features and most probably also the Apps behaviour in a real world environment.

The whole process took alot of time, but we are really amazed how serious Apple's staff takes reviewing all applications submitted to the Mac App Store. Security wise experiencing this process makes us feel much more comfortable in using App Store applications. After we provided them with some account details of an Exchange Server we set up just for this review process, it took around three more hours and our application was ready for sale.

Enjoy and feel free to share your thoughts on our app.

Studio Istanbul Software Development

Hansa Rostock Boot Camp

azplanlos — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 17:24:30 +0200

This year started with us flying to Belek, Antalya and do on site sound recording for NDR (North German Broadcasting). Hansa Rostock, german football team, did their Boot camp here and also played a friendly match against 1. FC Augsburg.

The plan was to wake up at around 11 am, have a nice breakfast with my family and slowly get ready to meet at 2 at Xoom Media's office in Kabatas to do a quick equipment check and catch the flight at 5pm from Atatürk airport. We would land at around 6 pm, arrive in the hotel at around 7pm - have a nice dinner with the journalist and plan the shooting day for the next morning - go early to bed and have a nice sleep.

The plan did not work out. First of all two days before I really got sick. Taking antibiotics sick. The day before the flight - late in the evening - my colleague called me. He just finished re editing the documentary, and asked me to playout the documentary early in the morning and bring back the recorder to the broadcaster before the flight.

The next morning I woke up. My throat was hurting, my ears were hurting, my voice sounded strange - I felt drunk actually. It was snowing outside. Snow in Istanbul equals chaos. When it is snowing in Istanbul there is special bulletin's on TV about it - days before it is announded that it might snow. Reporters travel to rural areas to report the first snow flakes and that it will soon arrive to Istanbul. To sum it up the news coverage you get in Illinois when there is a Tornado warning is the news coverage you get when its going to snow.

No nice calm breakfast, taxi to the office - one suitcase with clothes for a week - it took around an hour - traffic jams due to the snow. Playout of the documentary on XDCAM. During the playout - Mustafa calls - hey lets meet one hour earlier - you know its snowing... playout done... on the way to the broadcaster - suitcase plus player, usb cable, power adapter and two xdcam discs I am not supposed to forget.

Taxi takes forever - its snowing remember- arriving at the broadcaster's office - taxi driver cannot park - i tell him just make a round i ll be right back - elevator is not working - taxi driver is not amused had to do three rounds - arrive in kabatas - now in total we have eight pieces of equipment and arrive at the airport. after both security checks we have more than 30 minutes until checkin - nice.

Relaxing time. Time for a newspaper. Checking is one hour late (due to snow). Other flights are being canceled. We board. 10 minute after departure time the pilot announces that due to the snow we have no permission yet to start.hashtagging turkishairlines on twitter for complaining. 2 hours later with 3 hours delay in total we start and arrive late at night at the hotel to find out that the production forgot to book our rooms -.-

We had fun anyway. We got our rooms and our rest. I was still sick but I managed. We were mostly filming on different football fields surrounded by mountains - with alot of wind - and super cold temperatures. In the evenings sauna, great food and China Oel inhaling in the hotel room.

On the second day I saw this and was like - Wow maybe I ll meet Fatih - but I didnt. We went back to our families on friday - without any bad surprises. At this point let me say - even though it sounded like a very bad start - even though I was sick - if you are working with a great time - it's all good. Thank you guys.

I couldnt find an embedded link, but one of the short reports you can watch (in german language) here:

NDR Mediathek

NDR

Xoom Media

The Progressive Interlaced Odyssey

azplanlos — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 13:27:21 +0200

It just happened. The goal was to edit a 6-8 minute report about the Iraqi wetlands. Easy job - maximum two days of work. Like always the broadcaster expected a 25i SD version. We received the source files on a hard disc. As we discovered everything was shot with a Canon 5D Mark2 and Mark3 in 1080p. It was 100s of GB of material.

This is how the progressive interlaced odyssey in our post production house started. The clip files of both cameras were apparently copied to the same folder. We tried AMA and it actually worked (without having any TC), but it was way too slow for editing. We were looking at around 8 hours worth of source material that needed to be transcoded to DNxHD - of course we didnt start editing that day.

Transcoding the linked AMA files to DNxHD within Avid caused some trouble and errors resulting in a crash - I guess the cause was AMA linking to both cameras using the same folder. What we did is use MPEG Streamclip to batch transcode all the files to DNxHD and then imported those files into a 1080p project in Avid Media Composer.

Finally we could edit. No surprises in that stage, except that the sounds where recorded on an external device with absolutely no reference to the corresponding clips from the camera. We made the final version, recorded the voice over, made a final audio mixdown. We color matched both cameras and did an overall CC - since the source material was RGB and played out a good looking version in 1080p format - which is great for Vimeo, but totally unacceptable for an European TV broadcaster which is still in 25i PAL territory. What we needed was to convert the 1080p version to an 1080i version, which then we could downconvert to an 25i PAL SD version.

The first thing we tried was to open up an 1080i project, import our 1080p sequence, apply a time warp filter with 100% speed using Fluid Motion and say that the source is progressive and the target should be interlaced. It actually worked, but just looked awful. Remember this was the Iraqi swamps, so alot of moving water pictures. In the calm parts of the sequence, it actually didnt look to bad, but as soon there was a pan or we were shooting from a boat looking at water - not acceptable.

Our second option was to try the "Interlacing Progressive Footage" tutorial from Creative Cow. It yielded better results than the Avid Time Warp approach, but still not acceptable as soon we were looking at critical pictures with water movements.

At that point we were really considering to just deliver the 1080p version and let the broadcaster deal with conversion - which of course was not an option - but overworking hours till late at night and the thought that if the camera team would just shoot in 720p with 50 frames per second would make everything so much easier - it made us daydream.

In the end our salvation was a third party plugin for After Effects. I wont mention the name hear right now - you might think - hey he got paid to write this, blah blah blah... but if you want to know - just drop us a line in the comments and we ll mention it of course.

By the way all three options were really time consuming - I mean you are creating 25 new pictures every second - no wonder. If you produce for television we recommend to use a camera which is able to shoot in interlaced mode or in the worst case scenario shoot in 720p50 mode and copy all cards 1:1 to separate folders.

We hope that if you ever encounter this kind of problem this will help you out a little bit. If you have any further questions - please dont hesitate to ask.