Notes On Video

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 (...

The last couple of days I've been getting spam through the YouTube mail box. Someone signs-up on YouTube and then starts sending emails to other people on YouTube. Great! Just what I need; more junk mail. I sent YouTube an email, and got the following: Hi there! We realize that there has been a recent rise in spamming issues here on YouTube, but thanks to you and many other users, we have been able to ban 100s of users who have been spamming such as lolitabrasil, xacana, moodswing, sirirca, kanefevehure47 and many others. We are working on creating a spam free site and hope to have ways of implementing this soon. We know it annoying!!! Keep reporting these users and we will do our best to rid you guys of spam! Thanks for reporting this! Yes! It annoying!

I just noticed that the last three postings in this blog begin 'Sony' and then list a product name. Seems I'm a little Sony obsessed lately. Okay, so I promise the next post won't be about Sony. Or Blu-Ray. I'm looking at buying a new tripod and wireless microphone system, so maybe I can write about that...

A couple of months back I went to a demo of Sony's XDCAM HD system which was pretty cool; the cameras record to an optical disc. When editing with Final Cut Pro you see the individual clips immediately, and can quickly pick what you want to copy across. Pretty cool; but at $20,000 for the cameras, not something I am looking at getting soon. Then about a month ago Sony announced new consumer HD camcorders that will record to DVD and HD. Look interesting, though quality may be compromised by the compression used, and work flow with Final Cut Pro is unknown. Then Sony announced new pro-sumer HD camcorders (the FX7 and H1U) and a 60GB hard drive that can be used to record content (while at the same time you record to tape.)Very cool, though work flow with Final Cut is unknown. But the downside; the unit is $1,800. That's just way too much to even consider for me. I guess I'm stuck with tape for the next few years.

Not really a surprise, but Sony announced the 'pro' version of the HDR-FX7, the HVR-V1U . It's about $1,000 more than the FX7, and adds 24p recording, which is exciting for those that want to make something for film distribution (or even just film-like.)The other cool feature is support for recording to an external hard drive (the HVR-DR60.) CamcorderInfo has a comparison chart between the HVR-VR1 and HDR-FX7 . I want one, but at $4,000 I can't afford it!

Sony has formally announced the HDR-FX7, a replacement for the two year old HDR-FX1. It seems to have the same basic specs as the HDR-FX1 with regard to video performance, zoom lens etc, but the camera is a lot smaller, and also features an HDMI output. I have an HDR-FX1 and like it. I can't say that the size really worries me; though I really want to get some kind of shoulder brace for it and I don't want to spend the $250+ Sony wants for their one...

I garantee it! I was reading reviews of the Samsung Blu-ray viewer and they were less than encouraging. Made me want to buy an HD DVD player. In fact I almost did! So...no more Blu-ray discussion until a) The Sony player is out and everyone raves OR b) The PS3 is available OR c) Apple releases a machine with a Blu-ray burner Until then ...no more Blu-ray. I promise!

I seem fixated, but really this is my way of working off the obsession. Amazon currently has 39 Blu-ray titles listed. They list 46 HD DVD titles They currently have a promotion where, if you buy three discs in one order, then you get 10% off any Hi-Def disc (meaning either HD DVD or Blu-ray) title that you buy for the next year. Sony's Blu-ray player is listed at $999, and not available; but I've actrually been toying with the idea of buying three discs anyway. I think I have completely lost it.... NOTE: in the future I'm going to use Hi-Def disc to mean either HD DVD or Blu-ray. I toyed with the idea of saying HD Disc, but that's too easily confused with HD DVD

Just saw an ad on TV for the movie RV (It's so-so) and they said 'get it on DVD or Blu-ray.' Wow! Amazon is selling the DVD for $13.99 ($28.95 list) The Blu-ray disc: $27.25 (list $38.95)

Sony announced that they have 50GB Blu-ray disc's available. Woot! But wait! They are going to cost $48 each. Ouch! Meanwhile they just can't seem to make up their minds what will happen in the upcoming HD DVD/Blu-ray battle. Anyone care?

David Pogue at the New York Times compares the new Canon HD camcorder. He seems to like the Canon for it's fast focus and good stablization. It also performs better in low light than the Sony, though it's not a clear win for the Canon. I'm still waiting to see what the Sony Hard Disk based camcorder is like...

Man, the bad news just seems to keep on trickling in. CNET reports that Sony has released in Australia the BWU-100A, a Blu-ray drive for desktop computers that does everything BUT play back commercial movies released in the Blu-ray format. Evidently it has something to do with copy protection issues. I don't necessarily blame Sony for this, but it just seems like there's one piece of bad news after another.

Ouch! Apple announced new Mac-Pro desktop machines, but no Blu-ray support. Guess we'll have to wait at least until January for any hope of that. High-Def Digest reviewed the same titles from Warner released on HD DVD and Bu-ray discs and found the Blu-ray versions wanting; notably issues with aspect ratio, compression not as good, slow navigation, and Warner dropped the Dolby Digital-Plus track off of the Blu-ray release. Admittedly they were comparing a Toshiba HD DVD player (Toshiba developed the standard) with a Samsung player that is known to have some issues, but this is kind of troubling. Meanwhile, analysts predict that "the battle between two hyped formats for high-definition DVD will confuse shoppers and turn many of them off the whole technology." I don't think anyone needed a crystal ball to come up with that prediction, but it's making me feel kind of blah again about Hi-Def discs...