Notes On Video

Apple may not be keen on Blu-ray, but Amex Corporation has announced the Portable Blu-ray Super Multi Drive , a very sleek and sexy external Blu-ray player and reader. It supports both OSX and Windows XP, though note that the Mac OS doesn’t support Blu-ray playback, so the usefulness of the player-only version is rather limited. The BDP-2 Blu-ray Player US$289.00 The BDR-2 Blu-ray Recorder US$389.00 An Intel Core 2 Duo and NVIDIA GF8000 Series or better is required. The text at the top says “New MacBook, Pro and Air. Get this with Toast, and you’d be able to make Blu-ray discs. Firewire Meanwhile, Steve Jobs has reportedly responded to a query about why the new MacBooks don’t have Firewire : Actually, all of the new HD camcorders of the past few years use USB 2. It’s a good point. While HDV tape-based cameras require Firewire to transfer video, all the harddrive and chip-based cameras work with USB (as I’ve found with my new camera.)

Yesterday’s comment about Blu-ray licensing at Apple's MacBook announcement had me puzzled. What was this "bag of hurt" that Steve was on about? Is it the money that Apple would have to pay to put in Blu-ray hardware (and software that writes to Blu-ray?) Is it licensing issues for people writing Blu-ray discs? Or is it both? Or something else? Well I did discover that Roxio already has a Blu-ray plug-in for Toast that will write Blu-ray content to either a Blu-ray player, or even a DVD disc (I didn’t even know that you could put Blu-ray content onto a DVD!) Interestingly, it’s an additional $20 (ontop of the $80 for Toast.) I can't help thinking that one of the reasons they didn't just include it in the package was because of extra licensing fees they had to pay. At a guess, it sounds like if Apple added Blu-ray support to iDVD (iBlu-ray) would they have to pay $10-20 per machine for licensing too? That’s probably the kicker. As to licensing issues for users, t...

Apple came out with new MacBook Pros, and MacBooks today. Built using a new manufacturing process, they feature a glass trackpad, LED-backlit display, new graphics chip, and a new mini display port. They don't include Blu-ray, but someone asked about that omission in the Q&A at the end : "Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt. It's great to watch the movies, but the licensing of the tech is so complex, we're waiting till things settle down and Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace." - Steve Jobs

DPReview.com has their review of the Nikon D90 up. They are a little concerned about the matrix metering and how the highlights tend to slip a bit more than they'd like, but otherwise they seem to like it. Video get's a mixed review, with them noting it's hard to escape the impression that this is a first-generation implementation . After describing the problems of the rolling shutter, they go on to note: The automatic exposure can result in rather 'stepped' exposure changes - the aperture is locked so the problem seems to stem from amplifier stepping. Color rendition is not as convincing as in stills recording, with the red channel appearing to clip in our bus sample. Autofocus is also only available prior to recording, using the less-than-spritely contrast-detect mode, so once the 'rec' dot appears, you'll be left having to focus manually. The sound quality (11kHz Mono) - with no option for an external mic - was also criticized, and in the end they co...

With Blu-ray players still hovering around $300 - and Apple still not supporting Blu-ray authoring *grumble* - I've been disinclined to jump on the Blu-ray bandwagon. But now comes rumors that a Samsung player may reach down to $149 ; at least on sale. That's quite something. On the other hand, I'm still inclined towards the PS3 as the Blu-ray player of choice because you get a game machine, and it seems to be more future-proof than the stand-alone players . Reviewers have taken a crack at deciding between the PS3 vs. standalone player before (note that the review is over a year old) and come away with mixed feelings, but at $149 vs $400, I'm suddenly remembering that the PS2 I own has a fairely heavy layer of dust on it. So do I really care about future prrof players? About Profile 2 with support for secondary decoders, local storage and internet connections, or does all that not really matter if all I'm doing is watching a movie? I guess I'll wait and see wh...

I just finished the previous post, and discovered that DPReview now has a couple of new Canon 5D Mark III sample videos up on their site: get them while they're fresh! . They are both just over 20 MB, and run at right around 39 mbits/s. On the computer I watched these on (a lowly 1.83 GHz Mini Mac) playing in QuickTime Player, the bicycle rider plays very smoothly, but there's a strangely colored frame at 3:16 and I have no idea what's caused that. (I tired playing it on a Windows machine and see the same thing, though it's reported at 3:17!) These clips were taken with a pre-production model. Oddly colored frame (right) in sequence In the second clip (the street scene) the same thing happens at 4:16. Also, the pan is kinda jumpy, which I have to think is caused by the tripod rather than the camera (as the first clip doesn't seem to have that problem.) No obvious jelly problem (but then these are fairly slow pans.) Canon 5D Mark II HD Video samples @ DPReview.com

myDesert.com (website of The Desert Sun , Palm Springs) has an article from Jefferson Graham of USA Today about the Nikon D90 and Canon 5D Mark II that focuses (pun!) on these cameras video capabilities: New Canon, Nikon SLR cameras shoot video . The article pretty much confirms what I've picked up from other sources, but it's always good to hear that what you think is true, still seems to be so. His main points: [he doesn't like] Live View. If you try composing your image in bright sunlight, it's nearly impossible to see. [these cameras let you] make use of the mouthwatering, supersharp, add-on accessory lenses that camera makers promote to let us zoom in really close or go wide for wonderful vistas. Auto focusing is very problematic, more so on the D90 than the 5D [on the D90 it's manual focus only once recording] . [...] On the 5D, Canon adds a cool button on the back of the camera to keep the image in autofocus. Advances in low-light sensors have gotten so g...

* Josh Lowensohn at CNET wonders if a new theater view in the YouTube Player could be a precursor to HD support for YouTube . Personally, I’d love it if YouTube made some effort to support widescreen format videos. A lot of the content I’m now producing is wide screen and if I want to put it on YouTube I have to either letterbox it or pan-and-scan it. I just wish that YouTube would take the content and letterbox it itself. * For a whille there, it looked like Apple might not be releasing new MacBooks next week, but never fear! Apple has sent out invites to the media for a special event about new notebooks on the 14th! One interesting note: Should the price points prove accurate, however, they would imply that Apple is prepared to slash the price of its entry-level MacBook by more than 27 percent. * RealNetworks has some software called RealDVD that – ostensibly – was designed to let people “back-up” their DVDs. 'Not so fast,' says the movie industry, that violates the DMCA!

DPReview has a Photokina Interview with Canon Inc's Director and Chief Executive of Image Communication Products Operations, Masaya Maeda . Lot's of variations on "No Comment," but there was one interesting answer to a question about possible issues with the sensor 'heating up' when shooting extended movie clips (an issue I wasn't even aware of until the announcement of the Nikon D90, when that was given as the reason for the limit on movie clip length): "We don't have that problem with heating because power consumption is very low in our newly developed sensors. There is no impact on stills image quality even after shooting extensively in movie mode." UPDATE: I realize that it might be a bit confusing that I have a comment from a Canon guy and a reference to a Nikon Camera. The Canon guy is, of course, being asked about the movie mode in the Canon 5D Mark II. The Nikon D90 also has a movie mode, and when it was announced, there was talk tha...

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!