Author Archive
Finally! For years, those of us with dual (triple?) monitors have yearned to have fullscreen playback of flash video on one monitor, while we continue to work on the other monitor. Until recently, when you enlarged the video to fullscreen on one monitor, clicking anywhere in the other monitor would return to the embedded web page version of the video. There were a couple of hacks to supposedly work around this, but they never worked for me.
As of the most recent version of Adobe flash player, this has finally been corrected. I just happened to noticed the update features, and fullscreen video on a second monitor was one of them. Hooray! This ends a long lived peeve I’ve had with the flash video player. Especially since embedded video is too small on high resolution monitors.
H.264
Did you buy a cheap consumer HD camera lately, like the FlipCam or the Kodak zi8? Good, those are cool. But you probably discovered that they’re NOT cool when it comes to editing the footage in FCP. Unfortunately, the .mp4 file and the H.264 QT file type that those cameras shoot are not supported by Apple’s Final Cut software. They’re compressed output formats and they simply don’t work well in FCP. Luckily, there’s a FREE solution to the problem: MPEG Streamclip, a 3rd party software that converts these files into more editing-friendly formats.
MPEG Streamclip is very stable and lets you trim clips down, so you only export the clips you want to use in your edit. Just go to File > Export to Quicktime. A new screen will come up with a list of compression types, quality, etc. To keep the quality as close as possible to the original recording select “Apple ProRes 422.” Apple has made a few variations to the ProRes family; Use ProRes 422(Proxy) or (LT) for smaller file sizes. Always make sure to slide quality to 100% and leave the rest of the settings untouched, including dimensions. Happy editing!
This article is a video production tip from Indigo Productions for Pixelriffic.
This is a second effort at a homebuilt teleprompter. My first one was pretty crude, and actually required a second tripod. This one uses a single tripod. I used some 1/2″ plywood, an 11×14 photo frame, a chunk of 1×4, and an old tripod head. The camera needed to be elevated, and I just happened to have this laying around. The key is the beam splitter glass purchased online. This is essentially the same as a two way mirror.
I was using an LCD computer monitor with the stand removed for the screen, attached to a laptop via a VGA cable. This worked well enough, but added to the clunklyness. The freeware prompter software I was using was somewhat buggy as well. I recently acquired an Apple iPad. Several teleprompter solutions are available for the iPad. I settled on one called Teleprompt+. The software works very well, and can actually be remotely controlled via an iPhone. It’s pretty much complete now, short of coming up with a better looking fabric shroud. Including the teleprompter glass, the whole rig was well under $100 in materials.
The Internet Archive is a vast repository of still and moving images, text and audio. It’s also the home of the Wayback Machine, enabling visits to websites from years past. The moving image archive has a wide range of content that has found itself in the public domain. The AV Geeks section has many educational films from the latter half of the past century. This particular example is from a 1959 Coronet film. Coronet produced countless films like this one in the 50′s and 60′s. If you’re old enough to remember what an event bringing out the 16mm projector was, you might just enjoy this.
UV Filter
I ran across a video on Youtube, in response to a question as to why you should use a UV filter, and more importantly why they range so much in price. The video was an excerpt from a podcast on DSLRs. I was curious to hear their answer, and after ten minutes, the speaker did little more than tell a long story about how a UV filter saved his expensive lens after his camera took a dive into the mud. The final answer offered was not to spend over $30 for a UV filter.
I found this annoying on a couple of levels. First of all, the author said nothing about what a UV filter does. Nor did he address why UV filters can range from $10 to well over $200. Perhaps the author does not even know himself. Yes, many photographers and videographers keep a UV filter on their camera to protect their costly lens from damage. Generally a good idea, and there is (usually) nothing wrong with this.
The primary purpose of a UV filter is to (wait for it…) filter UV rays. Not only those emitted by the sun, but by fluorescent, and some other types of lamps too. Even though UV itself is not visible, the result is a slight blue cast over the image. Blue skies appear with a light haze when shot without a UV filter. The degree of this effect depends on the lens and the camera used of course.
I learned the value of a quality UV filter some years ago. I was getting some terrible lens flare in an outdoor shoot. Much worse than I had ever dealt with before. I finally realized the one thing that had changed. I had added a cheap UV filter to my camera. The internal reflection caused by the poor quality filter were caused greatly exaggerated lens flare. Removing it solved the problem.
I soon learned that there is a good reason for the cost differences in UV filters. Cheap filters usually have a single coating on the outside. High quality filters are coated both in and out. This reduces internal reflection, and prevents lens flares. The quality of the coating does vary, and is extremely important. Cheap coatings can be difficult to clean among other things. The quality of the glass is also very important. Cheap filters have thicker glass. Necessary, because the glass is a lower quality. High quality filters have thinner glass, and is of a much higher optical clarity. Finally, it’s the coating that performs the function of blocking the UV rays. Not surprisingly, cheap filters will actually block little or no UV rays.
So, you spent $900 on your new prime lens, and you’re going to put $20 worth of glass in front of it? I’d suggest investing a little more. You don’t necessarily have to spend over $200 on a new Heliopan UV filter, but a cheap UV filter should be thought of as little more than a second lens cap.
Sony NXCAM
This is Sony’s first pro AVCHD camcorder. In fact, I’ve just acquired one for my own use. With all the craze about using DSLRs for video, they fall far too short for me for some of the work I do. Covering an entire days worth of seminars for example. This camera has to SDHC slots (or Memorystick Pro) and with two 32GB cards, over six hours of non stop footage is possible. You can even switch cards while actually shooting, allowing almost unlimited time. Clips that span multiple cards can be rejoined in software. An optional hard drive allows up to 11 hours of capacity.
The Sony “G” lens goes all the way from an approximate .6X wide angle, to a 20X zoom. This camera adds an enhanced stabilization mode called “Super Steadyshot”. I was able to get shots in this mode that almost looked as if I was using a Steadicam device, but in fact they were shot handheld.
This camera uses three 1/3″ CMOS sensors. Sony also adds some special processing to enhance the video quality from these relatively small processors. The results are very impressive, and get quite close to some of the big sensor pro cameras. The shotgun mic seen here is actually included with the camera. An improved model over the previous shotgun offered with its predecessors. Audio quality with this mic is quite impressive. The overall audio performance of the NX5 is greatly improved over previous models. Lots of audio options too. Assignable channels, internal stereo mic, phantom power, a limiter, and so on.
I’ve used Sony gear for years shooting event video, and video for business. They are certainly not without their flaws. These cameras do however shine brightly in critical areas. The addition of this tape-less model is a welcome one.
Panasonic AG-AF100
I was tempted like so many to make the DLSR plunge for video production. The shortcomings of such a rig just seem to outweigh the advantages. I was only a matter of time before manufacturers combined the best of both worlds. Panasonic’s upcoming AG-AF100 looks to be a major benchmark, as the second large sensor camcorder in the sub 10K range. It looks to offer much more than the Sony VG10, but is quite a bit more expensive, at $5000 for the body sans lens.
The official Panasonic site is here, but a local dealer has a page with much more information, and it’s here.
Sony NEX-VG10
I just ran across this review of the new Sony NEX-VG10 camcorder. While it resembles some of Sony’s other “Handycams”, it differs significantly in design. It uses the same large CMOS sensor as the Sony NEX series still cameras. This results in the sort of great depth of field images people are getting from DSLR’s while shooting video. And like those cameras, the lens is interchangeable. Unlike the various still cameras that shoot video, the design is much more suited to shooting video. One of the most appealing aspects to me, is that it does not suffer from the arbitrary shot time limit of DSLRs. Record time is only limited by media size and format. A whopping three continuous hours can be recorded on a 32GB card at the highest quality setting!
I look forward to getting my hands on one to check it out. For a $2000 list price, it seems like a pretty good deal to me.
Click ..! Click..! Click..! Click..! Stitch… stitch…stitch..stitch. Aaarrrgh..! Well many of y’all might be aware of this process for creating panoramas, so I am not going to talk about that it here. This traditional process of making panoramas i.e. taking multiple images and stitching them involves lot of effort and time. While taking landscape panoramas might be relatively easy this way, making panoramas of a scene with lots of fast moving objects – the stitching can take hours to make it look seamless. And imagine the effort that would involve in a 360 degrees video – stitching frames seamlessly would be a nightmare…!
Panoramic photography has been a niche area in photography so far. I have often seen realtors shooting 360 panoramas of their properties and landscape panoramic photographers but not much in sports or people photography. With 360 degree cameras likes the Sony bloggie, Sony TX1 (~250 degrees panoramas), GoPano+ optics(complete 360 degress) etc the panoramaic photography scene seems to be catching up. Creating panoramas for live events, action sports photography, photo-journalism, commericals and for that matter anything is very easy with these technologies- the applications are endless. The best part of these panoramas is the interactivity it offers to the viewer – the user typically ends up watching the same scene more than once to get a different perspective everytime. CNN a while back reported the Haiti earthquake in 360
Most of the technologies either involve a multi headed cameras OR have a glass optic which can be mounted on a camera. The later is much cheaper than the multi head camera approach(you may check Immersive Media website for a multi headed camera). There are many companies in market which sell these glass optics – GoPano, 0-360, Egg Solution, Remote reality. These optics also come with a software which help you to “unwarp” the images you get from the camera.
Typically these glass optics can be mounted on any camera you have. Grab the images and import it in the software – Click and voila…! You have a one shot zero stitched panoramic image. You could also create 360 videos with a similar setup.
The images below didn’t take more than a minute, NO KIDDING, it was that easy – Click and “unwarp”. The software will create a interactive panorama like the one below.
Thats me and my girlfriend Pallavi in the panorama at Coopers Rock, West Virginia country side.
Drag your mouse in the scene and use Control/Shift keys for zooming in and out.
SomeFunAtCoopersRock360
The equipment I used to create this One shot-0 stitch panorama:
1. Canon 7D (you can use any camera)
2. GoPano Optic and the software sold by Eyesee360.
I am not done yet people- With the same optic, and any video camera you make your own 360 video like the one below/or the CNN haiti 360 video you saw above
Many readers in my previous article argued that you dont need a 500$ seperate lens/optic for making panoramic images like these. But a few photographers agreed to the fact that in certain situations where you would like to capture a panorama at that very instant – you can not use the traditional approach. Also think of making a 360 video -not many of us are familiar of stitching videos. Or are you? 
The market for 360 videos seem to be catching up lately. There are different technologies which can help you make your own 360 vide0.( Immersive medias multicamera approach or EyeSee360 glass optic)..I work for EyeSee360 and hence I dont want to brag about our product or technology. But all I can say is, our stuff is better(if not anything definitely cheaper)
You could also create 360 videos using the optic like these -
Thats me and my room mate Mehta in his car. Again I used the same setup to record this video. You can watch the same video in an special 360 videoplayer called VideoWarp player available freely on the internet.
This small video I made, would help you get a better understanding how these can optics fit on your camera
Currently these optics cost around ~500 USD and I am waiting for the eyesee360s cheaper optics (~100USD) scheduled to go on sale sometime late this year.
About the photographer:
Amey Kanade is part-time photographer working with Enduring Tribute Photography. He likes photographing people, CD covers, weddings, travel and more recently 360 photography/videography.
His pictures have been published on NYtimes, Music CD covers, photography artciles on and off. He also works as a engineer/photographer with EyeSee360, Pittsburgh which manufactures optics for 360 video/image capture. Currently he’s also working on building platforms for hosting panoramic photographs/videos and making this technology more popular amongst casual photographers.
You can “like”/contact him on his facebook page
Panasonic HDC-SDT750
I guess I must be in the minority here, but I’m just not as excited about the whole 3D craze as everyone else seems to be. This is probably due to the fact that I have a visual disorder that results in the fact I get virtually no sense of depth from 3D. One thing is for sure however, and that is the growing number of upcoming 3D capable TVs.
Panasonic is betting on the camcorder end of this with the HDC-SDT750. For you event shooters, I can remember when many thought that HD was overkill for our business, and standard def was just fine. Today, I shoot HD exclusively. Who knows, the same may eventually be the case with 3D.
