Notes On Video

B & H closes at 12:00PM EDT on Sunday, April 17th, and will be closed through Wednesday, April 27th at 9:00AM ED. If you were planning to order something - that's in stock - you might want to do it now!

YouTube Changes It's Copyright Violation Policy It used to be that if you had three "strikes" against your YouTube account for uploading copyrighted material, then they would remove the account permanently. YouTube has now changed the policy,  and re-vamped their "Copyright Education Center." They also now require users who receive takedown notices to go to "copyright school." The Electronic Frontier Foundation applauds these changes, though they think they could do still more: As an initial matter, if YouTube is going to ask users to learn more about copyright when they get a takedown notice, they should require the same of rightsholders whose takedowns are disputed. As we have been reminded all too often, many content owners are badly in need of copyright education. Electronic Frontier Foundation :  YouTube Sends Users To Copyright School: Will Content Owners Have to Go, Too? Roger Deakins Continues His Move To Digital Cinematographer Roger

NAB is done, and I'm still trying to dig out from underneath the avalanche of stuff... The Most Intriguing Thing At The Show? Was the Blackmagic HyperDeck Shuttle the coolest item unveiled at the show? I'm not sure; I'm not even sure that I completely understand what it is...have they really come out with something that essentially does what devices like the $2,000 AJA Key Pro Mini and the $995 Atomos Ninja do for under $400? Admittedly, it lacks the LCD and some of the format conversion options of those digital recorders, but it does record 4:2:2 from HDMI or HD-SDI to ProRes on SSD, all for $345. Seems like the perfect "budget" recording device to use with DSLRs. Cinema5D : NAB 2011 -Death of HDSLR part 1: Uncompressed recorder for $345 Blackmagic : HyperDeck Shuttle Cinescopophilia : Blackmagic Design $345 HyperDeck Shuttle 10 bit SDI or HDMI Portable Recorder Atomos Ninja & Samurai If you want a screen with that, the Atomos Ninja & S

We're still digesting Tuesday's "sneak peak," and while most everyone is careful to say " we have to wait and see the real thing " the pro- and anti- camps are already staking out their high-grounds, and will be ready to do battle once the software is released. Here's the latest I've found: Firstly, you can find full-screen screen-shots in the article at NoFilmSchool , including this one: Also at NoFilmSchool , Ryan Koo takes on those that say that Apple hasn't really announced anything new - most of the features shown already exist in other programs - and says that it’s not what features you include in a piece of software, it’s how you design them : To me, a great example is the new Color Board. Apple scraps the three-way color correction wheels that we’re used to in favor of this [...] Just looking at the non-interactive screenshot, you can hazard a guess on how to use it: grab the white circle to adjust highlights, grab the gray circ

Sony Product manager Juan Matrinez gives a presentation about the Sony NEX-FS100 . Opening the talk by emphasizing shallow depth-of-field, which is a little ironic given the relatively slow kit lens and lack of ND filters on the camera. "35mm optics have a less rigorous specification than a smaller sensor. If you have a 2/3 inch sensor, in order to achieve 1080P resolution you need to have 100 line pairs per mm, whereas if you have a Super 35mm sensor, as we do in this camera, you only need 41, less than half." Comparing the NEX-FS100 to a DSLR "We're grossly oversampling for HD, and we're not allowed to say the specification of the sensor, but I can say that we are grossly over-sampling high definition" 35mm Film Gate Sizes Comparing the NEX-FS100 sensor to typical DSLR sensor Though the slides refer to the Canon 5D Mark II , Juan did point out that the same applies when comparing the NEX-FS100 to Sony's Alpha DSLRs NEX-FS100 sensor compared

Still another collection of reports on Final Cut Pro X (or 10) [ See earlier reports : Final Cut Pro 10 - Sneak Peak Wrap Up ..Part II ] Larry Jordan, take II Larry has already written a column with his thoughts [ Larry'sBlog : The sound of 1,700 Jaws Dropping ] but he also spoke about it in the last 10 minutes of the NAB Show Buzz episode for Wednesday April 13th . He described the atmosphere this way; " the enthusiasm for the product was as much relief that it wasn't as screwed up as everybody thought it would be," and noted that it was a "sneak peak" and adds that this was a sneak peak and that Apple was still soliciting opinions. I think he may be a bit optimistic; given my experience with software engineering, and that the release date is June, I don' t think they'll be making huge changes between now and then! Larry is carefully positive, though notes that "the devil is in the details." He also said that Final Cut X is bui

It's the last day of NAB, and there's lots of things that I've been meaning to list, so here we go with a catch-up edition of QuickLinks: RED RED Scarle t: Ted Schilowitz from RED talks to Jared Abams from Wide Open Camera about the RED Scarlet . Emphasizes that it's a better video camera than a DSLR and it can shoot good stills too. Shows how the menus work and talks about the lens that comes with the fixed-lens model: Vimeo : NAB2011 - Wide Open Camera - Scarlet & Ted from RED Ted also talked to Cinema5D about the RED Epic and the Scarlet :  Ted Schilowitz pooh-poohs my hdslr and I still think RED is cool RED Announcements . You can read RED's official announcements, including a notice that the situation in Japan has delayed the EPIC-X and Scarlet 8X (the fixed lens Scarlet .): Reduser :  Official NAB announcements... RED Epic on a remote-controlled helicopter: The Editblog:  This remote helicopter flies a RED! RED in Documentary work

3D and High Frame Rates - the twin horseman of the film-making apocalypse - may not have been the stars of NAB, but they certainly put in an appearance in Sin City. And while this may not have been the year of 3D , with James Cameron giving the keynote, you had to know that 3D would make headlines, though I'm surprised over how small those headlines have been. Sony announced a couple of 3D video cameras at the show; did anyone notice that, or did you only hear about the F65 4K camera? Putting that aside, wherever 3D goes, discussion about presenting movies at high frame rates seems to follow. Higher frames rates - 48p or 60p -improve the quality of 3D movie presentations because: 3D is two images superimposed that have slight differences between them; left eye right eye, differences. If the motion of the object on the screen from one frame to the next meets or exceeds the displacement between the left and right eye, 3D goes away. It’s lost totally. And you’ve got all these movi

Filmmaker Magazine has the audio of an interview with David Leitner , who was at last nights SuperMeet, conducted right after the event: Much of the functionality now in Motion and in SoundTrack Pro and some of these other Final Cut Pro Suite programs is being folded into Final Cut itself. I asked Schiller about that, and he essentially said that this one program is going to contain much if not most of what is in those other programs... FimMaker : DAVID LEITNER REPORTS FROM THE FINAL CUT PRO X UNVEILING Nathan Bush at Through The Looking Glass offers his perspective on the announcement, and tries to interpret what Apple is up to: While the fate of its other video offerings remains unclear, it could be that rather than a simple upgrade from Final Cut Express or downgrade from Final Cut Studio, Apple has recognized another market segment altogether, one that has exploded with the DSLR revolution: the independent professional filmmaker. These are the filmmakers and videographers

Everyone's still digesting Apple's preview of Final Cut Pro 10 at last night's SuperMeet . Here's a collection of reports from around the web (see also yesterdays: Final Cut Pro 10 - In June for $299 ) This is NOT iMovie Pro, in 20 years of editing I haven't seen this much innovation as in FCP X @danrubottom Larry Jordan - who saw almost exactly the same Final Cut demo six weeks ago, so had a bit more time to get his jaw up off the floor - offers his views on what happened, along with some comments from Apple reps and an interesting perspective: Somehow, I managed to sit in the Apple executive section of the hall. In front of me was Phil Schiller, Senior VP for Worldwide Marketing. The head of PR was sitting to his right. The two lead engineering directors, or VPs, were sitting on either side of me. I was surrounded by top-level executives from engineering, PR, marketing, product management — literally a dozen extremely senior executives were sitting in the

Those aren't the two most important details, but they are pretty important! Apple rolled out a preview of Final Cut Pro 10 at tonight's SuperMeet . Since I wasn't there, I'll leave it to those who were to tell you all about it, but it certainly sounds interesting. They seem to have taken the UI of iMovie and Final Cut , thrown them together, and added lots of features (rolling shutter, audio syncing, etc., etc.,) via: Rob Imbs Rob Imbs posted this short summation video on TwitVid: Here's the wrap up . Andrew Reid at EOSHD  has already posted his thoughts: It is an absolute revelation. With one click colour grading, Open CL and all new 64bit engine, no rendering, no transcoding, 4K support and able to take advantage of more than 4GB RAM for the first time, Final Cut Pro X has been rebuilt from a blank sheet of paper. EOSHD : New Final Cut Pro X Revealed!! Breaking news! Final Cut Pro has new version and was renamed iMovie Express @F9Photo It loo

ARRI announced new cameras, third-party software support for ALEXA Log C and ARRIRAW, and - most interestingly for me, because I might *actually* be able to afford one - LED based fresnel lights. New Cameras: ARRI Studio and ALEXA M ALEXA M The ALEXA M splits the camera head from the body, producing a device ideal for mounting on 3D rigs and jibs. The head and body are connected with a fiber optic cable that can also be used for powering the head, depending on distance. The backend provides various recording options ; images, sound and metadata can be recorded to SxS cards or external recording devices. The ALEXA M has a PL mount and works with all existing 35 mm lenses ARRI is planning to present working prototypes of the ALEXA M at IBC 2011 (September) with production in 2012. ALEXA Studio The ALEXA Studio has a quiet mirror shutter and an optical viewfinder like the ARRICAM Studio , with the same control panel and buttons as the ALEXA Plus . The viewfinder i

Warp Stabilizer Effect in After Effects CS5. 5, A short demo video from Richard Harrington   showing the results of using the Warp Stabilizer to remove Rolling Shutter and stabilizing image: Vimeo: Untitled Sound Devices: PIX Production Recorders The portable PIX 220 (HDMI-only) and its sibling the PIX 240 (HDMI and HD-SDI) record Quicktime files to CompactFlash cards or removable 2.5-inch solid-state hard drives. PIX Production Recorders Sony PMW-F3 News Sony has confirmed that a future free firmware update for PMW-F3 will support HDMI output and HD-SDI output at the same time. DSLR News Shooter has pictures of a prototype 18-252mm lens for the F3, as well as an LCD loupe (which looks sort of similar to the one that will be coming on with the NEX-FS100. Sony shows off prototype zooms lens and viewfinder add on for the F3 Sony NEX-FS100 Demo   ProVideoCoalition has a video with Sony’s Juan Martinez showing off the new camera. Most interesting of all, he also s

Tonight's the night we find out what all the fuss is about. Will Apple dazzle us at the SuperMeet ? Tickets If you're in Vegas, and still don't have a ticket, the last batch of tickets go on sale at 10:00am Vegas time: SuperMeet The doors open at 4:30PM for the SuperMeet Digital Showcase , and the stage show begins at 7:00PM (Las Vegas time) Reporting Still no word on a Live Stream, but it appears there will NOT be one this year. [ CONFIRMED: NO LIVE STREAM ] Live Blogs: No one seems to be doing those either, except for this French one! : www.finalcutmtl.org: Supermeet live sur Final Cut MTL Looks like Twitter is going to be the place to get the latest buzz. More Rumors Business Insider thinks Apple is going to launch a "far reaching" video service: Apple will use its new massive data center in North Carolina to offer an advanced web-based video subscription product that rivals Netflix. Apple's been building this data center for ages now,

It looks official; Cicso to kill the Flip and shed 550 jobs: WSJ: Cisco to Exit Flip Video Business That's a pretty amazing turnaround since Cisco bought the business for $590 million back in 2009. Engadget : Cisco killing Flip line of camcorders, axing 550 employees in restructuring effort I must admit, I bought my daughter a Flip for Christmas, and I wasn't that impressed with it. Not because I was expecting it to be as good as a portable camcorder, but because it didn't seem to produce better pictures than my iPhone , and in some ways, it seemed to produce worse ones. What will the Smartphone kill next? Point and Click digital cameras are probably on the list....

AJA announces support for Thunderbolt and Multi-Format I/O AJA is demonstrating support for the all-new Thunderbolt technology based HD/SD I/O with a product codenamed “ Phaser ”, which supports HDMI 1.3a input and HDMI 1.4 output for stereo playback, provides 10-bit up/down/cross-conversions, with RS422 device control and professional reference/LTC I/O, in a highly portable design. The Editblog : Photo of "Phaser" A second product, “ Riker ,” AJA’s multi-format I/O technology for everything from SD to 5K workflows, is designed to address rapidly changing I/O and processing requirements via an arbitrary hardware scalar that enables users to scale up or down any sized-raster (up to 5K) in realtime at full quality. “Riker” connects to its host via high-speed 8-lane PCIe 2.0, over a 3-meter tether cable. “Riker” and “Phaser” are technology previews only. Products supporting this technology are currently in development and will be announced soon. AJA : AJA Previews Thunde

Like Sony, JVC has also unveiled at NAB a "pro" 3D camcorder that is based upon an existing 3D consumer camcorder. The new GY-HMZ1U ProHD 3D camcorder shares much in common with the JVC GS-TD1 , though the pro-model notably adds XLR microphone inputs and a shotgun mic holder. JVC GY-HMZ1U The handheld camcorder features dual 3.32 megapixel CMOS sensors – one for each lens – and delivers 34 Mbps AVCHD recording in 3D or 24 Mbps in 2D. Video can be recorded with timecode at 60i to provide smooth motion (for sports and other fast action) or 24p for a film-like effect. The GY-HMZ1U can also capture 3D time lapse and 3D digital stills. Equipped with an advanced image stabilizer, the twin F1.2 HD lenses offer a 5x optical zoom in 3D and 10x optical zoom in 2D. Video is recorded to non-proprietary SDHC or SDXC media cards or to the camera’s built-in 80GB internal memory. The GY-HMZ1U’s 3.5-inch color LCD touch panel offers glasses-free 3D viewing and built-in tools like zebra

Last Tuesday Sony Europe held a webchat on the NEX-FS100 with DPs Den Lennie of F-Stop Academy and Zulqar Cheema , and Sony Europe product specialist’s Kanta Yamamoto and Anna Doublet . Den and Zulqar were part of a focus group that took part in preliminary discussions about the camera while it was under development, and got to play with a pre-production version of the camera briefly prior to it's announcement. Here’s an edited transcript of the chat. I’ve put the answers with the questions, deleted non-answers and off-topic comments, corrected typing errors and edited for clarity, and reordered the questions to put similar topics together. You can read the entire chat online at Facebook Sony Professional Europe (click the Live Web Chat button on the left-hand menu to access.) Q: What’s the HDMI output? Is HDMI as effective as HD-SDI? Den Lennie : I've also been informed that HDMI is 8 bit. I was told by the guys who make the nanoFlash that HDMI and HD-SDI use t