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.

There has been promise of a major deal Netflix has in the works, to expand online content dramatically.  Even a promise of getting movies delivered about the same time they’re made available on premium TV channels.  Well, not if HBO is going to get its way!  HBO has control of a major chunk of film rights, spanning a number of major studios.  Instead, they want to restrict delivery to their own portal.  Oh great!   Another online portal!  Don’t we all want our content spread across 40 different web portals?

It’s not that I’m not willing to pay for it either.  I believe most out there would gladly pay an additional fee for the added content.  But we want it in one convenient place, and to not be required to have half a dozen boxes, and a computer piled around the living room TV.  Well guess what HBO, I was a subscriber to your cable service.  I just canceled my HBO  cable package, and I have no intention of renewing it.

More on the HBO vs. Netflix battle.

Radio of the Future

It’s a little funny when I think about a young person reading this title today.   I think the message would be quite the opposite as to what was intended in 1942.  Unlike then, radio is now in a decline.  Online content,  mobile apps that stream to your phone,  your computer, all offer tough competition to modern radio broadcasting.  Younger people (younger than myself anyway)  may not know that in the era of World War II, radio was the only network available.

One other fact about this time that might be lost on the young(er), is that most of the population lived a very modest life at the time.  It was the common belief that sacrifice would help our country in the war effort.  In addition, the government sold bonds to support the war.  Ads were everywhere, especially at the movie theater.  Perhaps we can learn something from this time?

Sorry about that tangent.  One thing I do enjoy about this era, is industrial design.  Many vehicles and electronic items, were influenced by the Art Deco movement of early 20th century.  I just can’t get enough of that stuff.   The graphic in this ad is a great example of this marvelous era of industrial design.

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Those of us who use Sony Vegas Pro, and have had to deliver Windows Media Video files share a common frustration.  Even as of version 9C, encoding of Windows Media (wmv) files are painfully slow to say the least.  Depending on the output resolution, you can expect around 4X to 6X render times.  Very annoying, because Vegas is blazing fast when rendering Mpeg2 files.  One reason is because all processor cores are utilized.  WMV rendering utilizes only a single processor core.

Recently, I was faced with a job that would require delivering over eight hours of video as WMV files.  One final render started late afternoon was still running the following morning, and not even half way through!  Rendering each hour of video would take around four to six hours each.  Instead, I chose to output as HD 720P mpeg2 files, and this did so faster than realtime.  About .8X or so.  The segments were imported into Expression Encoder, and the jobs were encoding at faster than realtime!  Even with the added step, render times were under 2X using a quad core Intel based machine!

Graphene Photovoltaics

College of southern California experts indicate us a more economical use of graphene photovoltaics

Can you imagine people powering their mobile phone or music/video device while jogging under the sun?

A University of Southern California team has produced flexible transparent carbon atom films that may have great potential for a brand new breed of solar cells.

In a paper recently published by the journal ACS Nano, researchers stated that organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells have been proposed as a method to create low priced energy due to their ease of manufacture, lightweight, and compatibility with flexible substrates.

This work indicates that graphene, an extremely conductive and highly transparent kind of carbon composed of atoms-thick sheets of carbon atoms, has high possibility to fill this role.

While graphene’s existence has been known for many years, it has only been studied extensively since 2004 due to the impossibility of manufacturing it in high quality and quantity.

The University of southern California team has produced graphene/polymer sheets ranging in sizes nearly 150 square centimeters that in turn can be used to create dense arrays of flexible organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells.

These organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices convert solar radiation to electricity, but not as efficiently as silicon cells.

The energy provided by sunlight on a sunny day is around 1,000 watts per meter square, for every 1,000 watts of sunlight that hits a square meter part of the standard silicon solar cell, 14 watts of electricity will be generated, Organic solar cells are less efficient; their conversion rate for that same 1,000 watts of sunlight in the graphene-based solar cell could be only 1.3 watts.

But what graphene organic photovoltaic (OPV) lack in efficiency, can potentially be compensated by its lower price and, greater physical flexibility.

Researchers think it may eventually be possible to cover with inexpensive solar cell layers extensive areas like newspapers, magazines or power generating clothing.

In the meanwhile Prof. Ruoff and his colleagues of the mechanical engineering department at the University of Texas at Austin, are studying the basic science in the development of graphene-based ultracapacitors for usage in electronics and other fields.

Prof. Ruoff says batteries are relatively slow, they can store energy but require sometime to charge up, and then they distribute energy slowly, over time.

Ultracapacitors can be charged very quickly, in seconds, and discharge in a short time, but, today, they’re not able to store very much electrical energy.

The development of stable and less costly ultracapacitors is seen as a key step in using wind or solar-generated power, particularly if researchers will find methods to enable capacitors to store energy longer, that is not yet possible.

Even with their current storage capacity, the graphene devices could provide quick energy when needed in certain situations on the ecological way.

They could be used, for example, to absorb heat generated in braking an automobile or train, and store it for a short time, and then use it for the electrical needs of the vehicle (i.e. starting the vehicle or acceleration)

About the writer – Sophia H. Walker writes for the solar battery charger blog, her personal hobby weblog dedicated to tips to help people save electricity using solar power for small gadgets.

A Postage Stamp

This is something that has been bugging me more and more these days.  It really came to a head when I was trying to view a sample video from a fairly major effects plugin provider.  Unfortunately, the embedded video was so teensy, it wasn’t big enough to get any real impression of what the effect plugin was really doing.  Yes, I could click the “fullscreen” button, but on my 28″ monitor, it looked like an 8 bit video game.  And this is a company who should know better.

The fact is, the trend towards larger monitors has been with us for some time.  The old 320X240 typical standard for embedded video is scarcely larger than a postage stamp at the resolution of a large monitor.  There is no reason for video less than 640X480 in the case of a 4X3 example, or at the very minimum, 640X360 for a widescreen video.  This is the bare minimum in my humble opinion.  Another thing I can’t stress enough, is that you can always, and you should, upload higher resolution video clips, and then let your player, or Youtube, scale them down as needed.

Yes, I know there are some out there still using a 12 inch monitor at 640X480 total resolution, but no good ever came from catering to the least common denominator!

Hulu Plus

Hulu recently announced their upcomming “Hulu Plus” subscription service. Hulu is an online video portal, with a well designed interface. They also offer a stand alone application that give a somewhat “Tivo like” interface suitable for a media center. While the free portal will still carry on, subscribers can now watch entire seasons of current series, as well as more movies, and many vintage TV programs. For ten bucks a month, this beats the heck out of $1 or more per episode.

Is this the perfect transition from conventional television, to online video delivery? Well, in a word, no. There are a couple of problems. The first isn’t Hulu’s fault really. So far, CBS has refused to play, leaving three of the big four networks. Comedy central once supplied content to Hulu, but they childishly took their toys and stormed home months ago. Content from other cable networks is also conspicuously missing.

I think this is a pretty good step forward for what will inevitably be the way of the future. Unfortunately, Hulu Plus, and every other effort to deliver television programming online so far has fallen short. Seems content providers are obsessed with either driving you to their own website, or having you subscribe to an overpriced cable TV package. This is really a shame, as it drives viewers to uses dubious sources like Bittorrent to find the programs they seek. And this is exactly the same problem that drove illegal music sources like Napster, until legal music sources like iTunes offered easily available music downloads. Sure, illegal music downloads weren’t eliminated, but they dropped dramatically once legal alternatives were available.

Quite simply, what people want is a way to view content in one portal. I believe Hulu’s new service will show that people will pay for this. Many already pay for individual shows and series from sources like iTunes. Hopefully, the TV entertainment industry will get a clue. Time will tell.

Iphone 4 video test from Jesse Power on Vimeo.

The iPhone 4

Supposedly, over 600,000 pre-orders have already been submitted for the new iPhone.  So much so, that AT&T’s system took a fall as the result of

the huge traffic influx.  I wasn’t one of them, as my contract has another six months or so.  I will definitely get one as soon as it’s offered.  The feature that interests me the most is the video camera.  Claiming to be able to capture at 720P, the idea of having a decent video camera in my pocket all the time would be great!

I could only find a small video on the apple site as an example, and it looks pretty good.  You can’t however expand it to full screen from the website.  I look forward to seeing more examples.  Inbuilt editing is also a pretty slick new feature.

Sure, it won’t compare to dedicated HD camcorders, but it makes phone calls too!  Usually….

Zoom H1 Recorder

I’ve used the Zoom H2 recorder from Samson, and I currently own an H4.  These things are amazing for the money.  And this new model will sell for $99!  Very cool indeed.