Pixelrrific

Archive for the ‘general’ Category

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 importance of color bars cannot be overstated. One of the most important steps in making your video look the best it possibly can is knowing how to use them.

Some of you out there probably think that the familiar SMPTE color bar image is only useful with scopes. Not true.

Here’s an excellent article on the subject.

First of all, let me say that this has very strong language, and is definitely NSFW!. I have to admire the production work from the Onion. These folks are so spot on. You may have seen this already, as it’s definitely been making the rounds. I’ve not heard anything from Sony about this. Could it be that they actually have a good sense of humor? Or perhaps do they realize all press is good press? Well, we all know they darn sure ain’t dumb.

This was to be the new camera that the HDR-FX1000 finally won out in a couple of important areas. Ironically, it was not image quality. The Panny produces a beautiful image at it’s highest quality setting. It’s also suprisingly good in low light, and probably as good as any HD cam anywhere near this price range in low light situations.

So where did it fall short? It wasn’t the lens configuration, which has a real absolute zoom unlike the Sony. In fact, design and operation was pretty darn good overall. It seems almost exactly like an old DVX, so if you’re coming from the old Panny workhorse, you’ll feel right at home. This of course does make it seem a bit dated, but who cares? I would say a better flip out display would be nice. Menu navigation could be a bit better too. Minor issues really.

Turns out to be two key areas I took issue with. First of all was the AVCHD file format. The compression is efficient, allowing about 90 minutes on a single 16gig SD card. This however seems to also make it rather choppy in the editor as compared to HDV. Sony Vegas does provide native AVCHD support nowadays, but it puts such a load on the system that stepping preview resolution way down is mandatory. Render times can be quite long as well. Mind you, this is a 2.88ghz quad core intel with 4gigs of ram!

I could have probably worked around that. Again, the image quality is simply vibrant with beautifully saturated colors, and very crisp as well. Seems however for some reason Panny has dropped the batteries used with the ol’ DVX, and gone with a new system. Not only is the highest capacity battery almost $200, it only runs about 90 to 120 minutes! Huh?? The largest capacity L series Sony batts will run over six hours and cost half of that.

The other issue came from the fact that unless you plan to buy countless numbers of SDHC class 6 cards, you have to dump your video to hard drive before you can shoot again. You’ll of course want to back up that hard drive as well. With the old tape system, it’s not so urgent. I can turn around an shoot aother six hour event right after the first with no trouble.

I suspect this cam might be better suited for applications other than event video. It would be ideal for the budding filmmaker. Or for doing short shoots where you need to get into post right away.

As for me, I don’t see going tapeless for a little while yet.

After much research, I finally decided to pull the trigger on Sony’s new camera. This is a much more fitting replacement for the venerable HDR-FX1 than the HDR-FX7 was. On the plus side, the latter can be had at much reduced prices now, and is a good camera for the current price.

Several advances come with this camera, including new glass, and new CMOS sensors. Amazingly, Sony has finally decided to include progressive scan and real 24P! A first for them in this price range. One of the most attractive aspects of this camera is the low light sensitivity. An amazing 1.5 LUX makes it one of the best HD camcorders anywhere near this price. Several other improvements include esentially doubling the number of pixels in the external display. It’s amazingly crisp and bright.

I wish they’d included XLR inputs, but you have to look to Sony’s higher end models for that. There are some other quibbles too, such as puzzling over why they removed the absolute zoom lever, and went back to the continuously spinning ring. For the money however, I just don’t think you can go wrong.

We recently moved, and had to give up our much loved Grande Cable and internet. We had the HD service from Grande, and this required a switch away from using our Tivo as our DVR and tuner. It was a tough adjustment, as nothing compares to a Tivo in terms of functionality. After a time, we became used to the Motorola DVR, and it worked reasoably well for us. It was definitely no Tivo, but pretty acceptable over all.

Many moons ago, Scientific Atlanta made some of the first cable boxes on the market. There was nothing to compare them to really. The first boxes were just specialized tuners, with no menus, or any added functionality. In our new home, Grande services were not avaiable. We went with Time Warner Cable. A couple of years ago, we did have Time Warner expanded analog service, and were reasonably happy with it.

Enter the Explorer 8300 DVR/Tuner. This thing has to be the worst design of any such critter on the market. It’s as if they considered what might be the intuitive operation, and did just the opposite. The DVR portion is suprisingly clunky. Want to search for a show by name? Be prepared to scroll through hundreds, as it only allows you to enter the first letter of the name!

At least it appears that Motorola at least looked at a Tivo. It seems Scientific Atlanta has never seen one. It’s much like going from a modern computer back to a 1985 model running Windows 3.0. And yes, I do mean 3.0 and not 3.1! Why? Are these that much cheaper than the Moto? Does SA save that much by doing this in house and not working a deal with Tivo? Does Time Warner simply not give a s**t? I’d really like to know.

After Epson’s recent victory against aftermarket ink suppliers this past year, affordable aftermarket cartridges are nearly impossible to find. The ones that are available are either old stock, or of dubious quality.

Let me say that I do feel that Epson produces some of the Best ink jet printers on the market, if not the very best. Print quality is amazing, and you get a great bang for your buck. You will rarely find a photographer that uses any other make.

When my carts went low recently, I discovered the retailer of aftermarket carts no longer supplies Epson equivalents. This was also the case with several other retailers. I did finally find some from a small unfamiliar online shop, but I’m a bit hesitant to deal with unfamiliar suppliers.

I finally decided to simply purchase the brand name Epson carts. Six carts were $90! Just down the isle, I found the new model version of my printer. It was also $90! Well, I decided to just buy a whole new printer. Why not after all? I will turn the old one over to Goodwill, in hopes it may have some continued use, and would avoid the trash heap for a bit longer.

While pleased to have the new printer, It’s disturbing that this practice leads to the sort of waste and pollution that is harming our planet. The ink recyclers I used to send my old carts to no longer accept Epson cartridges. It’s hard to believe that anything but pure greed is at the root of all this.

Now I do believe every manufacturer out there deserves to make a profit, and has the right to protect their products, but this goes too far in my opinion. Onece I have a separate disc printer I doubt I’ll buy Epson again.

You know, I just seem to keep holding out hope for an iPod killer. In some ways, this player does come closer than most any out there. Nice form factor, beautiful display, and great sound that I feel is superior to most iPods. What did finally cause me to pull the trigger and buy this thing is bluetooth support. Not just for headphones, though it does do that, but you can actually take calls via bluetooth from your mobile phone!

What could possibly be wrong here? Well, it’s the podcast support. Samsung lumps them together with a general RSS feed grabber and calls them “datacasts”. While it does work, you can’t create playlists of the “datacasts” and only episodes of the same podcast will play continuously. This is a similar problem to Zune’s implementation of podcasts.
The Zune is also quite a good player, but like the Samsung, the podcast support is seriously flawed. If music and pictures (and video to some extent) are of interest to you, this is a great player. If however you’re a podcast fan as I am, you may be best served by Apple.

I once was taken away many a time by a music video. I witnessed the dawn of MTV. Of course, many of the videos of that time look more than a bit dated now. I’ve watched few in recent years, but still love music. I’m not so old that I can’t appreciate this enjoyable tune by Fiest.

These days, not quite as many music videos stand out in my mind. Perhaps it’s a curse of inexhaustible budgets, and music that’s a little bit less than inspired. If you watch TV at all, you’ve seen a snippet of this one. It’s part of the Ad for the new Apple Nano. A great choice on Apple’s part, as this thing is catchy to the point of infective! I do think it’s a great work, and worthy of the attention. It’s very well produced, a great pop song, and it will probably be stuck in your head for a good while once you hear it.

Now for the rant. Once upon a time, 320 X 240 pixels would fill your computer screen. In time, it would cover just one quarter of the your display. And so the progression goes. Now that same video is about two inches across on my present display.

Yes, you can of course click a button on the Youtube player, as with most any other streaming video provider, and make it fill your screen. The resulting video looks much like the vintage Fisher Price video camera some of us have a fondness for. And what was the name of this camera? Pixelvision!

Could the problem be that the music companies are afraid that the video will be pirated? Very possibly so. It is certainly not an issue of storage space, as hard drives are so ridiculously inexpensive. Perhaps it’s a consideration for the bandwidth impaired? No, as it’s possible to encode multiple bandwidth streams in most every delivery medium on the planet. And no, it’s definitely not a limitation of Flash, as you can find some amazing examples of high resolution Flash videos on the interwebs.

Could it be greed? Could it be fear? Both? It’s hard to say. I do think that sites like YouTube should consider moving into this century. My eyesight isn’t as sharp as it once was, and I don’t enjoy postage stamps as I once did.