Notes On Video

Kai W at DigitalRevTV compares the video performance of the Panasonic GH2 to the Canon D60 and finds what several other people have already noted on the forums: the GH2 does a better job in several areas: In 24fps, the GH2 image is sharper with more detail GH2  doesn't suffer from moire nearly as much as the  60D Rolling Shutter problem is slightly improved 60D  white balance is better ISO 3200, noise is lower on the GH2 , BUT 60D goes to 6400 Both shoot at 24p,25p and 30p, but the  GH2  also shoots in 1080i at 50 and 60fps 60D's Screen is much better Stereo mic input on GH2 is not standard; requires an adapter In the video Kai notes that the GH2 is more expensive, but here in the US the Canon 60D - body only - is only $30 cheaper than the GH2 with a kit lens: Canon 60D $969 @ Amazon, body only , Panasonic GH2   $999.95 @ Amazon with 14-42mm lens Which to buy? If you're just starting out - and don't already have a collection of len...

Matrix Video , Canada, seems to be the first to have posted the Sony brochure for the PMW-F3 [PDF]

Zacuto Z-Finder Pro 3x Brian Troy gets a Zacuto Z-Finer DSLR viewfinder, and writes a review: Overall, the Zacuto Z-Finder Pro 3x is comfortable, reliable, magnifies your LCD screen, is easy enough to put on and take off, and it’s lightweight. It gives me confidence that my subject is in focus and the pros outweigh the cons by far. Will I be purchasing one? Absolutely! It is everything that I can imagine wanting or needing in a viewfinder? Yes. BrianTroy :  Zacuto Z-Finder Pro 3x Review USB Follow Focus Earlier in the week, the 5D Mark II Team blog team posted about a USB Follow Focus that works with Canon DSLR's, and would be "available soon." Soon is now, as Okii Systems LLC. has released today the Okii USB Follow Focus Controller . 5DMarkII : USB Follow Focus Controller Released Blu Brothers at L.A. SMUG Meeting, Feb. 10 Vu and Lan Bui adopted DSLR video shooting as soon as it came out (with the Nikon D90 ) and, with Smashface Productions , shot the fi...

Bloggie Touch Mac Software Sony has released Mac software for the Bloggie camera. This update is for current Bloggie Touch models that are on store shelves right now including the MHS-TS10 , MHS-TS20 and MHS-TS20K . When the new Bloggie Entry, Bloggie Duo and Bloggie 3D (aka MHS-FS1 ,  MHS-FS2 , and MHS-FS3 ) become available, the updated Mac-compatible software will already be included. Sony Blog : Bloggie Touch Software now available for Macs Magic Bullet Denoiser 1.0.1 This update fixes the following issues. In Final Cut Pro : When rendering a clip with Denoiser applied – canceling and then resuming the render causes the canceled frame to be black with blue specs in it. This can also cause blue frames in other areas of the output. Fix an issue where you often get an “Unable to sample” error while using Denoiser . When Denoiser is applied, it sometimes scrambles the output video. In After Effects : Denoiser can cause After Effects to crash whi...

Rule Boston Camera continues to post video's from their LearningLab Series , and the latest features Richard Schleuning , National Sales Manager for the America's for Zeiss. He talks about the history of the company, their ZF SLR lenses, and their Compact Prime Cine CP.2 lenses. The CP.2 lenses are expensive, but offer some notable improvements over the standard Zeiss SLR lenses: 14-blade diaphragm (vs 9) 300 degree plus focus rotation Common outer dimensions (for the majority of the lenses) makes it quick and easy to interchange a lense during shooting T-stops Calibrated Lens Scales Lightweight Interchangeable mounts There is no electronic communication between the lens and the body; this was done because they wanted to make the mounts interchangeable. Switching mounts requires a torque wrench and a test chart or calibration device to set the back-focus for the lens correctly. The first time a new mount is put on a lens, it needs to be adjusted using shims (p...

Rule Boston Camera's ongoing educational programs for February: Shared Storage Demystified Feb 2nd 10am - 12noon Rule's Tom Talbot covers various storage and asset management solutions. Creating An Efficient Audio Environment Feb 9  10am - 12noon Paul Stewart of Genelec and Jordan Tishler of Digital Bear Entertainment provide an overview of audio monitoring technology. Maximizing The Benefits Of Canon's 5D and 7D Feb 16 10am - 12noon Canon's Carl Peer highlights some of the benefits to filmmakers when shooting with the Canon 5D and 7D. Media assets And Shared Storage Feb 23 10am - 12noon Bob Russo , Avid Applications Specialist discusses the challenges and solutions for managing media assets in a shared storage environment. RSVP to events@rule.com

At a town hall meeting held for employees yesterday, the company rolled out a new space-less corporate logo that "is meant to represent the unity of its two main divisions." That's the official "rebranding" as a result of the Comcast merger. But the NBC peacock will remain part of the NBC brand, and the spinning globe continues to be used by the movie studio, which suggests that this logo will primarily be used for interoffice memos. Clearly great days are ahead for NBCUniversal, as employees were all given ...a "Big Idea Book" in which they were to record their own. YahooFinance : NBC Universal now NBCUniversal under Comcast

The 10th Annual San Francisco SuperMeet will be held tonight ! If you can't get there, the event will be streamed live, starting at 6:45 PM PST at http://supermeet.com/live/ While the event is run by the Final Cut Pro User Group Network , you don't have to be a Final Cut user to get anything out of this event. Presentations include: CANON Presents: Michael Blieden , Explorer of Light "Yes You Can Use Autofocus And Still Call Yourself A D.P. " Kevin Jardin and J ohn Stark present their video " I The Pro Res Maker. " Best of the Best – Tips, Tricks, and Secret Techniques in FCP 7 - Returning to the Stage: Abba Shapiro and Steve Martin ! What's Happening in 3D Production ? - Alex Lindsay " POST IN A FLASH " - Tony Cacciarelli , AJA Video Systems Smoke on Mac OSX -J osh Courtney and Marc Hamaker The New Up: "Bitch" - Peggy Peralta and Albert Lopez SuperMeet : San Francisco

Development of Lightworks , the - now - open source video editor continues apace. They have just released version 10.0.3 which has over 150 changes. The focus for this release has been on stability and reliability, but they have also attempted to address codec support issues: The other major issue was codec support… what works and what doesn’t. We realize that this is an important area for everyone and we are working hard to address it. As we said in our previous announcement, some things are just not straight forward due to legalities. In this version, we are much more explicit about what is and isn’t supported. We have made a major change that allows Quicktime files to be imported via ‘Create Link’. These changes also extend support for import formats to AVCHD (wrapped as .mov). The important point here, though, is that codec support is a major part of the work we are now focusing on and over the coming weeks and months you will see more support being made available. Please bea...

Panasonic AG-AF100 Focus Remote Control The Manfrotto 521PFI Focus Remote Control [B & H: $269.95 ] is a focus/iris remote control designed to be used with Panasonic prosumer cameras. Features include focus and iris manual adjustment, focus min and max adjustment, as well as re-write position references for the iris and focus knobs. Peter Lundström at the editman tried it out with the Panasonic AG-AF100  and found it works; as long as you have appropriate lenses like the Olympus 14-35mm and the Olympus 35-100mm lenses. He's happy with it, though he does note that using the internal lens motor to focus might make noise that's picked up in audio recording: I have to say that having this little device mounted at an ergonomic spot makes focus pulls much easier. You can also do repeatable focus pulls even with the 35-100. I've tried to use my Shoot35 FF unit but you can't do this because of how this lens works, but the 521PFI can! theeditman : Electronic focus...

I really like the imagination and creativity in this ad:

Sony isn't talking about the sensor design of the PMW-F3;  other than to say it has a "very interesting" color array design. But at the recent PMW-F3 preview they did talk about the sensor in their F35 Cinema camera, and that certainly got my attention as I wasn't aware of it's "unusual" design. The F35 is an unusual HD video camera with an unusual price; somewhere around $200,000. This camera has been used to shoot feature films, including Tron and Transformers 3 . To understand how unusual the sensor is, it's important to understand how most digital cameras - both still and video - currently work. CCDs and CMOS chips detect brightness, not color. To detect color, color filtering must be added. But this means that any one pixel in a sensor can only detect one color (Red, Green or Blue). Most cameras use one of two ways to calculate the RGB value for a pixel in the final image. Single-chip cameras Most single-chip cameras use a Bayer col...

Passive 3D TV Review Vizio's 65-inch XVT3D650SV ($3,700), the first mainstream TV equipped with so-called "passive" 3D technology gets reviewed at Crave , and while the glasses are lighter and the screen slightly brighter, resolution is severely impacted: We expected this difference because, as Vizio, LG, and other purveyors of 2011 passive 3D TVs admit, the system they use halves the effective 1080p resolution, delivering only 540 lines to each eye. We just didn't expect it to be so obvious. As Matt said, it makes you appreciate how good "1080p to each eye" looks CNET Crave : Passive 3D vs. active 3D: Hands-on TV comparison Read more: Meanwhile, Bud Light makes their own fun of 3D "safety": YouTube: Bud Light 3D Test Commercial HD Sundance and Kickstarter Sundance Institute announced a new program to connect its artists with audiences by offering access to creative funding and marketing backed by the Institute’s promotional suppor...

If you're looking to get some Blu-ray deals, checkout the sale at Amazon: Amazon Blu-ray Sale

Zacuto EVF - battery info Zacuto has issued another video in their series on the upcoming Zacuto EVF . This one's on batteries; they said they were looking for a battery that performed as close as possible to the Canon LP-E6 battery. They also revealed that they have removed the 12 volt input they had originally planned to include, and decided to use a dummy battery as a plug-in or external battery option. The Zacuto EVF is supposed to be released in March with a price of around $775. Zacuto : Z-Finder EVF - Part 5 'It's All About Power" More on post on "the final word on 3D" One more follow on from Roger Ebert 's recent column, Daniel Engber at Slate has jumped in to defend 3D. The first part of the article doesn't really bring any new facts to the discussion (arguing that we didn't evolve to watch 24 frames per second either, seems a little beside the point.) And, frankly, I don't care whether people like or don't like watchi...

At last Wednesday's SMPTE New England event held at Boston Rule Camera, Dr. Hugo Gaggioni CTO, VP Technology and Peter Crithary , Marketing Manager, Production, of Sony’s Broadcast & Professional Solutions Division gave a presentation on Sony's Super35mm cameras. While much of the event focused on the upcoming PMW-F3 , it began with discussion of CMOS vs CCD, their high-end Super 35mm camera the F35 , digital memory recording and S-Log. But everyone was really there to see the PMW-F3 , and participants did get to handle a pre-production model, and see footage that had been shot with a PMW-F3 . The Sony PMW-F3 is supposed to be shipping in February, and Sony seem confident they have a winner on their hands. It may not take on the Panasonic AG-AF100 (that’s the job of the upcoming NXCAM 35mm ) but it looks more like they are going after RED , and maybe the studios and independents that are using the 5D MkII . And they are still being coy about some details: Se...

Noise Industries has announced its latest FxFactory freebie plug-in pack, Manifesto . The brand new Manifesto titling plug-ins provide new and current FxFactory users with a quick and easy way to generate eye-popping titles in Apple Final Cut Pro , Final Cut Express , Motion and A fter Effects . Manifesto comes in two variants: a static title generator and a title roll/crawl generator. Manifesto Highlights Optional Keyframing: No keyframes are required for animation. The text of choice is scrolled in and out of frame automatically based on the length of the generator track. This feature also lets users match a title roll (or crawl) to the duration of a different clip. Use Existing RTF Files: Manifesto can reference an existing RTF file on disk, allowing users to rely entirely on an external program for text input and layout. Built-in Motion Blurring and De-Flickering: Create high-quality animations at any frame rate with built-in motion blur and the ability to reduce interl...

The DSLR Stealth Factor Andrew Reid argues that the important thing about DSLR video cameras is their small size and stealth abilities. DSLRs like the GH2 are pretty far from industry standards and professional A/V equipment as we know it. They are a complete break from what has become the norm at broadcasters, rental companies or film studios both large and small. As video cameras they throw the baby out with the bathwater as far as operation goes (they’re photographic cameras, after all). Convergence : Avoiding militants and dogma – The DSLR Stealth Factor Lighting for Video Adorama has put together a couple of videos on using HDSLRs, hosted by Mark Wallace. The first part focuses on shooting, and the second episode covers lighting (which will apply to any kind of camera you use.) Episode 48: HDSLR Pt.1: Shooting Video W/ a DSLR: Adorama Episode 49: HDSLR Pt.2: Lighting for Video: Adorama Photography TV HDSLR shot movie sold to Paramount “ Like Crazy ” a movie sho...

Rule Boston Camera is hosting a  LearningLab on Zeiss   lenses (notably the cine-style compact prime 2 series lenses) this Wednesday from 10am to 12 noon. RSVP to events@rule.com . Jan 26th - Zeiss Lenses Richard Schleuning covers Zeiss' manual focus lenses, including the cine-style compact prime 2 series lenses as well as the ZF series lenses.

Canon 5D Mark II Replacement I always love a good rumor, and there's been surprisingly few about the Canon  5D Mk II replacement, but now comes word form Canonrumors.com that - maybe - the 5D replacement will be called the 6D , have a 24 MP sensor, and appear in the first half of 2011... The only problem is that Canon's naming scheme seems to suggest to me that the better (more expensive) cameras have the lower number i.e. the 1D>5D>7D>60D. At least, that's my understanding of how the naming scheme works. There's no way a full-frame sensor camera with the same build quality as the 5D/7D could cost less than the 7D . So if there is a 6D with a full frame sensor, it would seemingly have to have lower build quality (and cost) than the 7D . If it was going to be a 5D replacement (with similar build quality), and they didn't want to call it the 5D Mk III , surely they'd call it the 4 D ? But even the idea of renaming it doesn't make sense; ...