After a long, long weekend of trouble-shooting, I finally managed to capture and export my 1st video with the RGBD toolkit!

The dSLR and the Kinect sensor calibration is off, which left a lot of blank spots in the depth data, but I knew that before recording this, still, I just wanted to walk through all the steps to get a sense of any other issues I might run into. 

It looks like, aside from a lot of issues with the 1473 model (special thanks to Gino for letting me borrow his 1414 model) and three days of using a checkerboard printout that happened be printed with ink invisible in IR light, aside from those two frustrating and confusing issues, everything is working great. 

I’ve even set up a workflow using BitTorrent Sync so I can capture with the laptop (giving me more freedom to move around) and edit on my iMac (which is a lot more powerful). Two folders with all the depth and color data keep themselves in perfect sync, which is very helpful. 

Next up, to properly calibrate the two camera and record a more accurate video.

TAKE 06 14 22 52 33 Test 02 06 15 02 06 55

1) Somewhere between Michigan and California. 2) Opening up a package of newly arrived FTOM shirts. 3) Staying late at the office to finish up work on a giant waterfall scene - GIno accidentaly stands up into a hair-full of Gap-n-Crack. 4) Giving Erica her birthday present - a beautiful little terrarium made by Tory. 5) Enjoying the park before heading into work. 6) Late night dinner with Gino. As you can see, my camera has been giving me some problems lately. 7) At LA Makerspace for the Kickstarter #ProjectJam. The entire group helped make a test-campaign for the Loneliest Mix board-game: heartbreaking adventure for the entire family. http://mikeambs.com/7x7

1) Writing something new… it’s been a while. 2) Late night dinner with Erica at iHop. 3) Flying out of LAX to Michigan. 4) Picking up Xander from school. 5) Flipping through old photo albums at my Mom’s house. 6) Chloe and Xander doing their best bored-photo-pose. 7) One last swim before check-out. http://mikeambs.com/7x7

1) Driving back home after a much-needed weekend in Julian. 2) Packing up a 52hz mixtape while listening to the State of Cinema. 3) The tire that never stays inflated… even after taking it to get fixed. 4) The *entire* team was crammed into one elevator for a meeting, my camera wouldn’t load fast enough to catch it, but, as you can hear :) , Gino managed to get everything. 5) Erica giving Breaker a hard time. 6) Installing the green and red lights on Factory Row for BLANK. 7) Erica developing negatives in the bathtub. http://mikeambs.com/7x7

1) Timing how long Erica can blow bubbles. 2) Dancing in the car / with the car to Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac. 3) Running a test move of the cave side-scroller with the VOLO. 4) Enjoying some piece and quiet in Julian. 5) Being beaten very badly by Erica in checkers… 6) Playing charades with Erica when she has had a lot to drink is funny. 7) Celebrating Gino’s birthday at Pinocchio’s. http://mikeambs.com/7x7

1) Giving Maeby some love and attention while Erica is in Michigan. 2) Caught a double-feature with Billy at the Hollywood Arclight. 3) Picking Erica up at Union Station with Nathan! 4) 2nd time on Cars in one day thanks to a tip from Forest. 5) Taking pictures with Einstein at the Observatory. 6) Animating one of the opening sequences of BLANK. 7) Showing Nathan around the office - Gino is busy putting the final touches on the steam engine. http://mikeambs.com/7x7

I found an hours worth of time-lapse screen recordings from early editing passes of For Thousands of Miles. I’ve been using FCPX for almost a year now, I can’t say I miss the 6-hrs-remaining render window in FCP7.

1) Gino painting the full-scale train cars for BLANK. 2) Erica taking Chloe’s 4x5 portrait. 3) Playing Quake II and listening to Drive. 4) Watching the youtube video: Worst DJ ever. 5) Playing Apples to Apples with Liz, Chloe and Erica. 6) Dropping off Erica at LAX. 7) The VOLO arrives! http://mikeambs.com/7x7

1) Chloe sneaking a pair of goggly-eyes on a toy-machine. 2) Liz and Erica surprise Gino with a bunny-cake at work. 3) Date night at the Grove. 4) Unpacking all 18 feet of the mono-steam-rail for BLANK. 5) Breaker has been very cuddly lately in the mornings. 6) Attempting to control-break glass… it didn’t work out so well. 7) Riding the carousel swing at Disneyland with Liz and Chloe. http://mikeambs.com/7x7

1) Exploring Joshua Tree with Erica and Xander. 2) Driving home. 3) Xander’s favorite thing to do in Minecraft is to build massive-massive structures, rig them with TNT and blow them up. 4) Emergency meeting. 5) Erica drinking coffee and doing cross-word puzzles… which I happen to find very funny. 6) CPR class at work. 7) I didn’t catch it on vide, but Greg finally landed this. Post-stick-finding mission. http://mikeambs.com/7x7

1) Finally, for once, something goes as planned during pre-production. 3D printing to the rescue. 2) A dog Erica found wandering the streets spend a few days resting up at our house. 3) Erica dancing around before working on her minature train-car. 4) Building the cave side-scroller set. 5) Getting ready for factory-mishap #1. 6) “Take this bag of poo! I’m not kidding, man, they’re gonna shoot me!!”. 7) House warming.

1) Going over equipment woes before production. 2) Erica working on her vinyl-tree, it’s not actually made of vinyl, but it’s meant to be a special Vinyl-tree. 3) Heading into Electric City… which a very interesting place. 4) Erica and Maeby snuggling. 5) Gino touching-up Factory Row. 6) Erica found a stray dog in the neighborhood and tried to find it a home. 7) At work on the weekends, putting in some final details.

1) A day at the beach. 2) Xander getting his 4x5 taken - showing off his fancy new Angry Birds arm tattoo-sleeve. 3) Pinning up storyboards at work - one full wall down, 2 to go. 4) Reading Mad Libs in the truck. 5) Ran out of gas. 6) Laughing at all the Minecraft pigs riding around in circles. 7) Xander picking out dog-toys for Maeby. http://mikeambs.com/7x7

1) On my way to Florida for a last-minute project that came up at work. 2) Enjoying the waves between shooting. 3) Working out the details of a world. 4) New arrivials! 5) Lunch run. 6) Stretching out together. 7) Week 1 of storyboarding. Here we go! 

http://mikeambs.com/7x7

1) Erica and I met Rodrigo for dinner near LAX during a long layover, his film Purgatorio was premiering in Mexico! 2) Giving the truck a long overdue cleaning. 3) It was a Mrs. Field’s kind of day. 4) Animating during a test-run of a Phineas and Ferb remix event at work. 5) The next day, Erica taking photos during the Animash event. The video file was corrupted though and the sound was not useable. 6) It rained a full night, and the city-issues garbage bin happened to be right where all the water from our roof collects and comes down - so the entire 4 ft tall trash can was full of water. I couldn’t move it. I had to drill a hole to empty it. 7) Some days the clouds over the Burbank mountains are beautiful.

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