Notes On Video

First image of the NEX-5N with external EVF | SonyAlphaRumors Yep, more Sony rumors, this time a picture of the new EVF for the NEX-5N . Could be an interesting accessory (they note that it won't work with the current model cameras.) Blu-ray Player for Mac & PC | MacGo A new Blu-ray player application for Mac or PC that's currently selling for $39.95 ($59.95 regularly.) Mac Blu-ray Player is the first universal media player for Mac&PC in the world. It can not only play blu-ray HD movies on Mac or PC, but support any movie, video, audio, music and photo you have ever seen.Bring your PC or Mac with the most popular Blu-ray HD video enjoyment, and this is what Mac Bluray Player can do. Feel free to download it now. How to create better audio for your video production | Dan Taylor | TheNextWeb A fairly detailed article about the audio side of things: I’m hard pressed to find a decent outline regarding the production of crystal clear audio behind your video. Le...

Sony PMW-F3 News | @CineAltaNews | Twitter The following information from Peter Crithary, Marketing Manager for Production at Sony Electronics: Up coming goodies for #PMWF3 this year: High power 14x zoom lens using native F3 mount, #3DLink option, PL mount wide angle zoom lens #F3 Sony PMW-F3 Two-Day Workshop | AbelCine AbelCine is offering a two day class on the Sony PMW-F3 on August 24th & 25th in both New York and LA. Cost is $250 per day, and you can attend single days. Review: Litepanels 1x1 - the LED light | Daniel Freytag | Freytag Film Daniel finds these LED lights are both easy to set up, light to carry, and ideal for the single shooter: At first sight you probably wouldn't trust the plastic housing, but it is amazing rugged! So it will survive your everyday production. The more important part, the light quality, is even more amazing! The output of the Litepanels 1x1, compared to it's size and weight is truly epic. B & H : Litepanels 1x1' Mono...

It's been a couple of weeks since I've updated the list of new Final Cut Pro X resources, tutorials and opinions. Here's some of what's been going on: Tips How to Sync FCP X Effects Across Multiple Machines using SugarSync | FCPEffects Not sure if this has been noted here before, but an interesting solution for syncing installed effects across multiple machines. How to Share/Copy a Final Cut Pro X Project | FCPEffects Here's another tip that explains how to share Projects FCPX Sharing? Sure you can... | Steve Modica | CreativeCOW Mark Ferris of Blue Ox Pictures also explains how to share Events and Projects on shared volumes. Other News Developers to get XML code from Apple in 2 weeks | Sean Cole | CreativeCOW Though Apple promised some XML code to developers by now, they still haven't received it. Need to Get Your Whole Team Using FCPX? | Liz Sunter | Jigsaw Broadcast 11 to 20 user license pack: ...download all 20 copies on a single acco...

Review of the Sony HXR-NX3D1 | Philip Johnston | HD Warrior Philip does a rather unusual 2D review of a 3D camera. Odd that he doesn't post some of the 3D video ( YouTube does support 3D video.) He does think it's a really good 2D camcorder, and even likes the way it feels when holding it. He also prefers it over the much cheaper consumer model - the HDR-TD10 - which is very similar, though it lacks XLR audio input. He does note that there's limited manual controls - there's no gain control - and in 3D mode the options are even fewer; you can literally only set exposure, focus and zoom; spot metering, white balance, IRIS and Shutter Speed are all disabled. [You might also want to check out the new digital binoculars that Sony announced today .] B & H : HXR-NX3D1 NXCAM 3D Compact Camcorder [$3,99.00] B & H : Sony HDR-TD10 Full HD 3D Camcorder [$1,498.00] *UPDATED* Big Megapixel Camera Next Week | CanonRumors Next week Sony is expected to make some ...

Sony has announced two new digital binoculars; the DEV-3 ($1,399) and the DEV-5 ($1,999). They support HD video, can capture 7.1 megapixel stills, and have f/1.8-3.4, 0.5-10x optical zoom lenses, and a pair of 1,227-dot viewfinders. They are expected to be available in November A couple of sites have already had a chance to spend some time with these binoculars; Using the double electronic viewfinders was easy when looking through the binoculars, zooming in and recording video. However, using them to scroll the menu system and playback footage was difficult to get used to. The optional added 5-inch LCD on the top made a huge difference to the usability of these binoculars. [1] and there's already a video on YouTube from the Swiss Video Academy (with English captions): Sony DEV-5 / Digital Binoculars - First Look Review And as others have noted, they look like they came out of Star Wars! It's probably not surprising that Sony would think to add 3D capabilities to ...

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More Sony NEX-5N specs | Photo Rumors A very clear picture of the NEX-5N , and amongst the new specs details is "Improved audio quality during video recording"; whatever that means! Panasonic to offer high end X lenses for Micro Four Thirds | EOS HD Panasonic plans to introduce a "Lumix X" line of lenses similar to Canon's professional "L" series. New Genus Bravo Deluxe Follow Focus System | Cinescopophilia Pictures and video of the new Genus follow focus, which fits into the middle pricing for follow-focus units [B & H: $569.95 ] Life’s a Beach – an insider’s guide to working the Cannes Film Festival | Mick Southworth and Martin McCabe | movieScope Everyone must be planning to go to Cannes, as this is evidently the most popular post on the movieScope site right now: Speaking as distributors, there are better markets for the acquisition of new product, such as the AFM. Most of the best films have been sold well before Cannes s...

Sony’s NX70 Rocker Switch…”Taking the bull by the horns” | Philip Johnston | HD Warrior Philip did a review of the Sony HXR-NX70 [$2,799.00] weatherproof camera a while back that was very complimentary, though they noted that the rocker switch on it doesn't work as well as you'd hope. He recommends using a Manfrotto 521i lanc zoom [$159.90] control instead, though notes that Sony may have a firmware update that will fix the problem. HD Warrior : Review of the Sony HXR-NX70 HyperDeck Shuttle “User Review” £263 (Updated) | Philip Johnston } HDWarrior Philip also reviews the Blackmagic Hyper Shuttle [$327.75], with some interesting results, particularly because he used it with the 8-bit NEX-FS100 . In his samples, you can see a very clear image difference (though once you put your final image up on YouTube or Vimeo, the viewer may not see the difference!) He also notes the huge amount of space required.  HD Warrior Still, I'm interested because the differences ...

Adobe has rolled out Muse , their new WYSIWYG HTML web development tool for those of us who hate HTML. Think of it as Adobe's answer to Apple's iWeb tool. At the moment it's a free download as it's in "public beta" until "early 2012." It's definitely beta; it crashed repeatedly when I tried to paste an OBJECT tag into the Insert HTML function! Muse has a four-mode way of working; Plan, Design, Preview and Publish, and provides a number of widgets that make it easy to add functions like menus and accordions. You create the basic structure of your site in the Plan mode, then add actual content in Design. It's also a bit unusual because it's an AIR app, but the really unusual thing about Muse might be the pricing model. Adobe Muse Plan View Rental Software Muse will be available by subscription only . According to Adobe, "this will allow us to add new features to Muse regularly and customers will always have access to the mos...

Rule Boston Camera 's ongoing educational programs: Thursday AUG 18 | 6pm - 8pm PUB NIGHT Director of Photography Tom Guilmette shares his experiences with social media from the basics of using the web and a website to promote himself as an industry professional to "going viral" and using the web as a teaching tool (and more). UPDATE : Tom says he will also be talking about Sports TV, Red Epic and the Phantom Flex . See also Videography : Vinten Vector 75 Takes Up Residence at Fenway Park Tomguilmette.com : The Phantom Experiment Rule Boston Camera 395 Western Avenue, Boston MA 02135 RSVP: events@rule.com

Test: 16mm f2.8 SEL1628 e-mount and wide angle Sony VCL-ECU1 on FS100 | Jean-Philippe Archibald | jparchibald.com Jean-Phillipe recently bought an NEX-FS100 , then he sold his Canon 7D and bought an NEX-3 with the 16mm pancake lens to go with it (since the cameras share the same E-mount.) He posts a review of the 16mm lens, along with the add-on wide-angle adapter. His results are similar to other's experience with this lens: Sharpeness is good except in the corner Corners are soft wide open, improves when stopping down. at f5.6 they are pretty good. Behind the Glass: An Introduction to Lenses | Daniel Hayek et. al. | Vimeo The Vimeo Video School is back with an introduction to lenses starring Vincent Laforet. It explains aperture, lens types, focal lengths and much more. The Red Epic and why being tiny is cool | Epic in Action The latest post at a new blog that is devoted to the RED Epic : The modularity of the Epic allows the camera to be stripped down to a...

Steve Weiss of Zacuto was back on the Planet5D podcast today, talking about a number of different things: Revenge of the Great Camera ShootOut They are looking at shooting an additional episode of the Great Camera Shootout that will accomplish two things; it will add some cameras that weren't available when they started (the Red EPIC , Sony NEX-FS100 and the Panasonic GH2 ) and they plan to shoot the same scene with all of the cameras as a comparison. They are planning to shoot this in September, show it at IBC, and hopefully release the new episiode before the end of the year. Critics Idol Steve outlined ideas for a competition called - at the moment - Critics Idol . The idea was to have film maker's compete, and have it judged by a panel of film makers. They are looking at trying to make the competition open to people the world over, though that's evidently a problem for the lawyers. Also, he said it's unlikely they can use the name Idol ! New Products ...

Hmmm, so I'm wondering if I should be concerned that Sony Alpha Rumors doesn't have a release date for the NEX-VG20 , even though they have one for the other cameras that are supposed to be announced on the 24th? In the comments with the post, people asked about the VG20 , and Rumors said that they hadn't heard anything about that, but would try and find out more. The announcement of the NEX-5N, NEX-7, A77 and A65 and new lenses should probably be enough for anyone, right? SonyAlphaRumors : (SR5) Exact Sony A77/NEX-7 availability report

The Massachusetts Production Coalition June Member Meeting featured an Audio Roundtable with a panel of six audio professionals discussing various aspects of audio production in film and video. The Moderator was Chris Anderson from Slice , and the panel consisted of Dylan Schwartz , Rumblestrip Audio Jim Sulivan , Mix One Studios John Whitcore , Regional AVID Pro Tools Rep David Williams , Freelance Sound Mixer Brian McKeever , Soundtrack Boston John Kusiak , Composer Following are some highlights from the talk, which covered general audio issues, ADR, as well as the CALM Act and working with composers. John Whitcore : There’s so many incredible tools that we have as audio professionals. There’s a company right in town here, iZotope , they have a plug-in called RX2 , an amazing plug-in for removing noise, hiss, and all that stuff. But it can’t fix everything, and it’s just so much more work after the fact, so just be kind to the audio guys. Pay attention to the little...

Camera Review: Sony PMW-500 | Sean Twamley | Imagejunkies.com Sean is a freelance cameraman based in the UK who works on current affairs, documentary and sport, and does most of that work for the BBC. He recently decided on the Sony PMW-500 [B & H: $24,999.95], in part because several departments at the BBC have standardized on it. On the face of it the 500 appears little different to any other Sony camera and I think that’s probably the point. Cameramen don’t want buttons being moved from where they’ve got used to having them. Nice additions are six assignable buttons, two of which are on the handle, that can all be given a different function. For example I’ve used one of the switches on the handle as a record button and a couple of the switches on the side for a particular white balance setting. The filter wheel at the front is just for ND as this camera uses electrical colour correction. Sony announcing three NEX lenses on August 24th? | Dana Wollman | Engadget It looks ...

I've been thinking of getting a new small camcorder because, though I've been very happy with Sony HDR-XR500 , it doesn't shoot in 30p or 24p, and I really wanted something that could shoot in those video formats. Also, something with a few more manual controls was appealing. The Canon HF G10 first got my attention back when it was announced. I liked it for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it has a sensor specially designed for HD video, so in theory it should produce an improved image. Also, it has manual controls; even if you have to access them through a touch-screen interface. After several weeks of back-and-forth on the pros and cons, I finally broke down and bought one this weekend, partly because it's the Massachusetts tax free weekend and partly because Best Buy had them in stock and I had a 12% off coupon, as well as $105 in gift certificates. It just seemed like an excellent time to buy one! First Impressions I'd played with t...

Available Light Comparison Tests Shed Light on Formats | David Heuring | Kodak A film and digital camera low-light comparison was performed by director Kate Dennis and cinematographer John Brawley, and the results then shown to different audiences. They shot on 35 mm and Super 16 using KODAK VISION3 500T Color Negative Film 5219 (7219 in the case of the smaller gauge). They also used the Arri Alexa, RED MX, Canon EOS 1DMK4 and a prototype of the not-yet-released Sony PMW F3. While you can't see the tests, you can read about what they did and their impressions of the results: “I still adore film – but you need to calculate your audience response,” [Dennis] says. “The digital formats are so clean – the resolution so astounding – that the qualities film brings (that humanising softness and luminosity) can't help but accrue meaning. The choice to use film is becoming a very deliberate one. Whether, in the end, we associate it with nostalgia, or something more compelling like tr...

FS100, 5D MKII, & AF100 Depth of Field Comparison | Cinescopophilia Magnanimous Media from Chicago have put together a DoF comparison for the Sony NEX-FS100 , Panasonic AF100 , and Canon 5D MKII using the same two lenses; a Canon 24-70mm and 70-200mm L-Series. As expected, the 5D has the shallowest DoF and the AF100 the widest. 3D Haters Beware: Peeking at a 3D Future with the JVC GS-TD1 Twin-lens Camcorder | Zack Lieberman | NoFilmSchool Zack is aware that there are a lot of 3D haters out there, and seems to spend half of this article alternately saying that's okay to be that way, but 3D is real cool. Either way, he got to spend some time with the 3D JVC GS-TD1 camcorder [B & H $1,699], and really liked it. He's also at work on his feature film debut, which will be shot in 3D. Shooting 3D takes some getting used to; while I’m steadily learning, I definitely wouldn’t call myself truly skilled. That said, the camera makes it as easy as possible and has grea...