Notes On Video

Sony announced the PMW-EX1 HD video camera months ago, but it’s only in the past month that articles about it have started to appear, and it still seems to be in pre-order status. And first things first, this is an expensive toy; $6,699 is the price at the moment, putting it out of reach of the video hobbyist. But what a camera. Sony sells a variety of HD camera’s, and this one bridges a gap between their semi-pro cameras and their true pro cameras. On the semi-pro side, existing cameras like the HDR-FX1 and HVR-Z1U feature three chips, a fixed lens, record to tape (MPEG-2) and cost about $3,000. In size and shape they are very similar to the PMW-EX1. Then you jump to the professional cameras like the PDWF330, which feature interchangeable lenses and record to optical discs using Sony’s XDCAM format. But it’s a big jump; $15,000 is at the low end for these cameras. For me, the intriguing thing about the professional XDCAM cameras is the move away from tape based recording. Except for t...

I've just spent some time playing with Photomatix an interesting little tool for creating High Dynamic Range images. What? If you have a digital camera, you probably know that they have a very limited dynamic range. Imagine you are taking a picture of a person sitting under a sun umbrella. If you set the exposure for the person, the surroundings will be over exposed. Set exposure for the surroundings, and the person will be underexposed. No matter how you adjust the settings, the camera doesn't have enough dynamic range to capture detail across the scene. HDR photography is kind of a trick. Put the camera on a tripod and take three (or more) photographs; one correctly exposed, one under exposed and one over exposed. Then merge the three images to create a single image with a higher dynamic range. That's the basic theory. How? Well, pretty simple really; get a camera and a tripod. Many digital cameras have an auto exposure bracket function; turn the feature on by setting ho...

The good news; an hour of video may only be 8GB (as opposed to 13GB for an hour of HD video saved to DV tape.) The bad news; someone at Sony quoted the 'less than $8,000' price tag, which is not encouraging!

If you follow HD video production , or film production, then you have probably heard of the RED ONE cameras . These are low cost (if you consider under $20,000 low cost), 4K resolution digital video cameras. There's been a lot of excitement about these cameras over the last year or so. I've always been a little skeptical - not that it matters a wit; I'm not spending $17k on a camera in the near future - but it seemed that the sites that were always getting excited about these cameras were always posting 3D rendering's of the camera. I mean, come on , a 3D picture does not mean your boat has come in! Anyway, it's looking more and more real now that Peter Jackson has shot a short feature using a couple of the Red prototype cameras. Crossing the Line is set in World War I, though it was shot in Masterton New Zealand (which was not a location of the original festivities.) The camera fan boys seem to think this camera is going to turn the industry on it's head. Sony...

A report on MacNN suggests that Apple won't ship any iMac that supports Blu-ray until 2008 . Whether the same holds true for the desktop line is unclear. I've been eagerly awaiting Apple shipping hardware and software that supports Blu-ray (or HD DVD even!) so it's a little dissappointing; though it does mean I don't have to worry about finding the money to actually buy the hardware for a while!

TalkingPointsMemo has an interview with John Kerry about his new book. Whether that's your thing or not, watch to the end of the clip to see a bit of back stage at The Colbert Report . It's particularly interesting to see Colbert checking to see that Kerry understands the show, and explaining a 'bit' that they might do.

News.com is reporting that Google is close to releasing a filtering system that would prevent copyright content from being uploaded to YouTube . The system, called Claim Your Content, will automatically identify copyright material - though how it does this was not explained.

Always wanted to put together your own television series? Well, here's your chance: The “ Xbox LIVE Originals” contest will invite a wide range of artists and Xbox users to create a 5 to 15-minute pilot episode introducing an original television series. The pilots may be live-action, animated or both. All entries must be submitted before June 29th, 2007. A selection of standout finalists will be featured exclusively on Xbox LIVE Marketplace starting in July. The winner of the contest will receive a $100,000 deal with Xbox LIVE to create a six-episode series based on the short pilot as well as an exclusive screening event at the 2007 New York Television Festival.

Well, it's NAB, so that's hardly surprising, but there's a bunch of interesting things that caught my eye: a) Apple announced Final Cut Studio 2 . Another upgrade expense, but as always they seem to throw in some cool new features that you feel like you just have to have . I haven't looked too closely, but the feature that is supposed to remove camera shake sounds very neat. b) Microsoft wants everyone to stop using that pesky Flash format for streaming video. So they have come up with Silverlight , which is cross platform (for the moment; I'm sure once they put Flash out of business they'll dump that pesky Apple support.) The big plus for this one is it's support for HD, but if it just fixes the many synch problems that Flash has, then people will probably jump at it.. c) Meanwhile, Adobe wants to bring Flash video to the desktop . The Adobe Media Player (hmmm...interesting name) will "let users subscribe to and play video podcasts published with RSS (...