Notes On Video

Apple is supposed to be rolling out some new hardware on October 14th. Everyone seems to think it’s going to be new MacBooks , but my Magic8Ball iPhone app says “Don’t count on it” (seriously, that’s what the Magic8Ball says, I don’t have any inside track on this folks!) But I’m not really that worried about MacBook updates…what I want is Blu-ray support. Come on Apple! You’re part of the Blu-ray Consortium thingo , why no Blu-ray support? I could understand back when the whole Blu-ray HD DVD thing was going on, but that’s been over for aaaaaages. Maybe Steve just doesn’t care ? If they don’t announce something October 14th I’m going to have to write Steve Jobs a carefully worded letter! What does the Magic 8 Ball say? Damn!

B&H Photo sends out an electronic newsletter now and again, and the latest issue has a hands-on with the Nikon D90 written by Allan Weitz. It's worth checking out if only to see the sample video they have there (some nice shots; though watch the curve of the helicopter blades!) I don't think it says anything particularly unexpected about the feature: [...] the camera's DX-format CMOS sensor is far larger than the sensors found in most consumer camcorders. As a result, the image quality of video captured with the Nikon D90 is noticeably sharper and contains fuller detail and tonality in the mid-tones as well as in highlights and shadow areas. [...]autofocus and viewing the action through the camera's viewfinder, is replaced with viewing, composing and auto focusing on the 3" display and AF locks at the moment the record button is pressed in D-Movie mode. There's also a good explanation of the cause of the "jelly" video effect [...]Unlike tradition...

With nothing else to talk about, here's an interesting article about the Canon 5D Mark II: Canon EOS 5D Mark II: Worth the wait? It's interesting for two reasons: it has a pretty good comparison of the major features of the Nikon D700, Sony Alpha DSLR-A900, Canon 5D and Canon 5D Mark II, and the writer is kind of ho-hum about the whole thing, especially the video capability: While there are some obvious applications for it in areas like wedding, law enforcement, insurance and other professional and commercial environments, a lot of its usefulness will rest on the implementation. In a nice touch, the camera has a minijack for an external microphone. Clearly this guy isn't blown away by the idea of video, and if that's the case, then I guess the camera almost looks like a 21 MP version of the original 12MP camera, and some people aren't pleased about that! If you aren't sure that the Mark II is that much different from the original, it's worth checking out...

Engadget has some pretty awful pictures of a concept camcorder that JVC was showing at CEATEC. They say it’s SDHC, and it does have AVCHD on the side, and they claim it’s for “sophisticated users” (is that shorthand for people that can be suckered into spending more money than the average Joe?) Apart from looking like an 80’s security cam, it’s hard to figure out what would make this “sophisticated.” Obviously it’s a fixed lens, and the zoom control is a little rocker switch on the top. . .I just don’t see it. Still, everyone’s going HD…

Canon's 5D Mark II remains a hot topic. Michael Reichmann at The Luminous Landscape has a preview of the Canon 5D Mk II , as well as a demo video . The video is mostly him talking about the camera, but there's some clips at the end. Definitely read the article, as it's mostly about the video features. Some interesting notes: He found that a 15 second sample clip was captured at 47 Mbps and was 80MB in size. When translated to Apple Intermediate Codec this expanded to 169 MB Though QuickTime 7 could playback the video, there were dropped frames on his 2.6Ghz dual core Macbook Pro with 2 Meg of RAM, He didn't see any real "Jelly" problem It's important to note that this was with a pre-production model that he had for only a day. From the video, the notable thing is that there's no obvious movie record mode on the camera (or even a button!) You go to Live-View and then click the set button to start recording. This is interesting as it almost suggests...

Adobe has announced the new CS4 suite and there's an update to Premiere Pro coming. It's $799 standalone or $1,699 as part of the Production Premium Suite, which adds After Effects and Soundbooth (oh great, more ways to spend money.) I have a bit of a soft-spot for Premiere as I started using it way back at version 1 (that's the original version 1) and even wrote a review of it way back then. But then came Final Cut - which was another leap forward for desktop computer video editing with it's UI borrowed heavily from Avid - and then Adobe abandoned the Mac platform when they came out with Premiere Pro, so I haven't been using Premiere much lately. But they came back to the Mac with CS3 in 2007, and here's an update. MacWorld has a preview article (they call it a first look, but I'd call it a glance) and there's some interesting features: OnLocation for capturing, and logging video in the field. Adobe Media Encoder for batch encoding Premiere Pr...

I’ve been doing some work with the Panasonic AG-HMC70U and the Sony HDR-FX1, the former being an AVCHD and the latter an HDV camcorder. It’s interesting to compare them as they are really so different; different feature set, different video format, different resolution. I shot some stuff in a video studio the other day. This was done rather hastily between other work, so it wasn’t as great a test as I was hoping. It did reveal that the color is not too bad a match. I had been worried that there might be a notable difference between the two, but I’m not as worried now. Sony HDR-FX1 (top) Panasonic AG-HMC70U (bottom) The stills definitely reveal a difference in video image resolution. The Panasonic AG-HMC70U stills seem to show more resolution; this shouldn’t be a surprise since the AG-HMC70U AVCHD video is at a higher resolution than the HDV format (1920 vs. 1440). Unfortunately, these stills didn’t work well for absolute comparison as the shots weren’t done on a tripod and there’s a lo...

Gizmodo has some video tests shots with the Nikon D90 . Interesting to see the depth of focus, as well as focus problems (there's no autofocus in video mode!), and the reviewers note about problems zooming smoothly and that a tripod really makes things easier. No, an SLR isn't going to replace a video camera perfectly. At least, not this one. And probably not the Canon 5D Mark II either. Meanwhile Amazon had been accepting pre-orders for the Canon 5D Mark II, but now it says it's not available, and you can be emailed when it's available. B&H doesn't seem to be taking orders either, though it says that arrival is "Approximately November." Of course, if the economy grinds to a halt next week, who's going to care?

Some people think Blu-ray is on it's deathbed, or at least that it will never reach the success of DVDs. They could be right; broadband is continuing to challenge physical mediums (sales of DVDs are down too.) On the other hand, Blu-ray is a useful format for HD content; the question is will a mass audience adopt it, or will it end up being used more by content developers? Blu-ray may just be a good way to back up large quantities of information. Not surprisingly, Sony thinks that Blu-ray's future is still bright. This article on Sony's Electronics Blog say's that everything will be fine: " Expect Blu-ray to Live on Despite Reports of its Imminent Demise ". Meanwhile, Apple still has no Blu-ray support, the biggest reason I have held off getting involved in the format. I just get by with anamorphic DVDs instead.

February 19 is the end of analog transmission television . All those stations are going to turn off. And if you’re still getting TV “off the air” and don’t have a digital TV, or haven’t bought a digital converter, then you won’t be able to watch television. And you will be better for it. At least one Senator is concerned They did a test cut-off in Wilmington Carolina early in this month that revealed some problems: "As the current administration winds down, both agencies must remain vigilant so that the next administration does not inherit a communications crisis." - Senator Daniel Inouye But it turns out that the problems were more mental than physical : According to the Journal, by mid-afternoon roughly 74 calls had been placed to two TV stations, WSFX-TV, a Fox affiliate, and WECT-TV, an NBC affiliate. The newspaper also reported the FCC received about a hundred calls on its toll-free help line in the first few hours after local broadcasters shut off their analog signals...

Someone just pointed me to the Cadbury advertisement with the gorilla playing drums to Phil Collins "In The Air Tonight." I like the mood of this; the way the camera glides over the gorilla face at the beginning; just not sure I get the connection to Cadbury chocolate. Particularly as the first thing I do notice in terms of product placement(other than the drums) is the headphones....it's looks like an iPod ad! Still, makes a nice change from some of the ads out there. UPDATE 3:59pm: and I just noticed that this is the second "gorilla" post of the day! Totally unintentional!

Sony has announced a third generation internal Bluray writer , the BWU-300S, which is priced at $400 writes at 8x and comes bundled with software. Very cool, but PC only. Me, I'm still waiting for Apple to do something about Bluray support. The Nikon D-90 isn't the only camera offering 720p video. The Kodak EasyShare Z1485IS (point and shoot) does it too!. Is Michael Moore's " Slacker Uprising " the first full-length movie to be released online for free? Or at least the first one intentionally released for free? Well, who knows, but it's out there. The Gorillapod is this really heavy-duty bendy tripod that will support a camera up to 11 pounds (the Panasonic AG-HMC70U is only 5.3lbs without battery.) Wow. That's pretty heavy duty, though it does have a heavy duty price: $149.95. You could get a real tripod for that!

I said I wasn't going to say anything more about the Canon 5D MkII and less than an hour later I discover that the video shot by Vincent Laforet is available on Canon's site . It's all pretty amazing and beautifully shot, but right at the end, there's a pan across the New York skyline and there definitely seems to be something going on there (though it could be enhanced by the shake of the helicopter.) Hard to tell. But there's a lot of other shots (several with the camera in motion) where you don't notice anything. Definitely check it out.

Funny that I mentioned RED the other day, because now comes news that they are completely redesigning Scarlet (the $3,000 video camera they had planned.) the market has changed and we have discovered a lot of things in the process. We have a new vision The news is on RED’s forum . Just to clarrify, RED has announced both Scarlet - a comparatively low-budget video camera - as well as the DSMC (Digital Still & Motion Camera) an SLR-type camera too. The thread is an interesting read as the forum members take turns trashing the Nikon D90 and Canon 5D. While I take what some of the fan boys say with a grain of salt, the references to the “ Jelly video ” problem of the D90 are worth noting. You can see an example linked from here . This frame capture shows the problem; the top part of the frame seems to lag behind the bottom as the camera is quickly panned left to right. Rather than capturing the whole frame at once, the image is being captured from top to bottom, and in that time the c...

There's a write up about photographer Vinvent Laforet's experience with the 5D Mark II at Gizmodo " A Taste of the Canon 5D Marl IIs mindblowing Full HD video ." It's depth of field control and low light performance look soooo cool. Someone posted in the comments: "A top commercial film editor who who regularly edits RED camera footage - and has seen the raw footage from the 5D MKII - says the 5D MKII is "far superior to the RED camera" in terms of low light performance…" RED is a company that's produced a comparatively low cost very high-res digital video camera, and they are supposed to be releasing some kind of SLR/video camera for around $3,000 either later this year or early next year (note that the comment is not relating to the new camera, but the existing one.)

The purchase of the Panasonic AG-HMC70U has meant the purchase of one more expensive item: a new camera bag. Turns out that the bag I have which is quite a bit bigger than the Sony HDR-FX1 I usually schlep around, isn’t big enough to hold the Panasonic. And – all things considered – it’s a big bag! So I had to get an even bigger one. A trip to a local camera store revealed a wealth of bag possibilities; though it turned out most of them were camera bags. I could pull out the dividers on some of the larger ones, but it seemed like you’re paying a lot for that padding. Even for the few straight video camera bags, it was obvious there was no cheap solution. I ended up focused (pun?) on a range of bags made by Kata. I hadn’t heard of them before; turns out they are owned by Bogen. They have a website that let’s you find bags based on cameras , and their selector recommended the: CCC-10-A ( about $240 street) for the AG-HMC70U. Interestingly, I managed to try the CC-195 at the store (abou...

Norwegian Broadcasting's technology site, NRKBeta , got their hands on some video clips from the Canon 5D Mark II and are very positive about what they see. Look better than HDV (25 mbit/s MPEG2) vs the 5DMkII 40 m/bit H.264 Canon says IS-Lense image stabilization is active. You can shoot stills during video, but there will be a break in the video. Meanwhile, on the Rob Galbraith site , it notes that clip length is actually half an hour, or a 4GB movie, but the amount of footage you can cram into 4GB depends on the subject matter. In testing this translated to 12 minutes. Other details: You can capture at 1920 x 1280 or 640 x 480. Canon is moving from Motion JPEG to MPEG4 on all it’s PowerShots. The stereo-in is a 3.5mm jack. Levels are adjusted automatically (no manual override) and there is wind noise suppression applied automatically (and cannot be adjusted or turned off.) White Balance can be set before recording, or Auto WB will adjust during recording. Shutter speed is set au...

While it's supposed to be out in November, there are already reports of high demand for this camera, which may mean you won't get one until the new year if you wait too long to order. Worse yet, it might take a while for the price to go any lower than the list $2,699.99. Meanwhile, the SlashGear site has some links to video shot using the camera . I really like those fish-eye shots.

Only a couple of weeks after Nikon announced the D-90, with it's ability to capture 720p movie clips, along comes Canon with their 5D Mark II a 21MP camera offering 1080p 1,920 x 1,080 video capture at 30fps (with a maximum clip length of 12 minutes.) The clips are QuickTime files, H.264; 38.6 Mbits/sec. Wow! The camera also has a mic input, while the D-90 only had a small built-in microphone (no word on whether it's stereo or mono.) EDIT: reportedly the audio is 16-bit PCM at 44KHz and stereo is supported with external mics. I'm intrigued by this camera because a) it's a Canon mount, b) the video capture could be interesting and sometimes useful, and c) it has a full frame sensor. It's list price is $2,600; more than the D-90, (which is not full frame) but less than the original 5D list price (which is now selling for about $2,400.) If I hadn't just bought the Panasonic, I'd jump out and get one of these; and yeah, I know it isn't practical as a prima...

The Nikon D90 I may have to switch camera brands. A little back story. When I first got into film photography, I really wanted a Nikon SLR because I was under the impression that they were THE camera for 35mm. I never did get a Nikon, and as luck would have it, I ended up getting a Canon DSLR partly because they were first to come out with a reasonably priced DSLR, and partly because I had one on loan for several months and loved it. I’ve been very happy with the Canon over the years, and always felt that the difference between the Nikon and Canon SLRs have been – at least from my perspective – mainly issues about UI and minor performance differences with no obvious winner unless you are at the extremes: if you’re a sports shooter versus a studio shooter, one camera may be clearly better. But unless you’re a pro-photographer, either brand will probably serve you nicely. But then Nikon went and announced the D90, which has one very interesting feature: Movie capture: 24fps 1280x720 moti...