News for March 31st

Tomorrow is April 1st. I guess it would be appropriate to post some wonderful iPad related prank tomorrow; but it only just occurred to me, so I guess it's too late for that.

Menwhile:


Gizmodo says that YouTube is rolling out it's new redesign to everyone. The redesign is supposed to make it more streamlined and encourage people to explore other videos. I've been subjected to it for a few weeks now, and I don't like what they did to Comments. The comments all seem to merge into a lifeless block, and if you have moderation on it makes approving comments a pain. Two thumbs down.


After a bit of a drought, Camcorderinfo has a couple of new reviews up. They love, love, love the  Panasonic HDC-TM700. Under Product Tour and Color & Noise Performance they can't come up with anything for "The Bad" column! Wow!

Of course, it's not all dancing and cupcakes; though the camera has a 1080/60p mode, it turns out you can't do anything with it other than watch it from the camera:
the camcorder uses a proprietary MPEG-4 codec that isn't really compatible with anything other than Panasonic's provided software. Yes, the video shot with the 1080/60p setting looks stunning when you play it back on an HDTV, but the only way you can really do this is by playing back the footage directly from the camcorder. We couldn't find any third party software that would import or recognize the 1080/60p clips shot with the HDC-TM700, although we expect this to change if 1080/60p recording becomes more prevalent in the future.
And even though Panasonic includes a (Windows only) utility that can open (and should be able to export) the video they couldn't get it to successfully export the 60p footage in another format.


Their second review is of the Sony Bloggie MHS-CM5, which doesn't score very well at all, getting dinged for poor color and artifacting. It just doesn't live up to the competition:
The Flip [produces] excellent video quality, beating the Bloggie in nearly every performance category. In those areas where the Bloggie proved superior (i.e. sharpness and low light color accuracy), the difference is not significant. The Flip, on the other hand, boasted far superior numbers in low light sensitivity and had a much more accurate automatic white balance.


NAB is getting closer, and the serious announcements are starting to arrive.
Fujinon has turned out a 3D Lens with Synchronous Control. Take a look at that monster. It looks like one camera unit is mounted vertically below the unit (that's a mirrored panel you're looking at where the two lenses seem to overlap) while the other is mounted horizontally behind. I'm sure that whole set-up is beyond my budget, and beyond the scope of this blog, but it's an impressive looking piece of gear. It would definitely pass the Kiefer Test!

Meanwhile, this morning my teen-aged daughter - who saw both Avatar and Alice in 3D - told me - unprompted - that she "hates 3D." Maybe the wave has crested.



...you think I'm just setting you up for an April 1st prank, don't you?

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