One of my favorite companies purchases one of my least favorite companies. Not sure what to make of that. In any case, Google has announced its acquisition of On2 Technologies, makers of the VP6 video codec (among others) which powers most flash video content. On2 is also the company that created the framework for what became Ogg Theora.

It’s an acquisition that makes a lot of sense. Between YouTube and all of the other Google properties, having an IP-rich video R&D group can only benefit them. And for $100 million, it seems like quite the bargain.

Not available in the states yet, but Logitec (not Logitech) has revealed an XY stereo mic attachment for the iPhone. The price in Japan is under $100, so it’s a realistic alternative to a standalone recorder like a Zoom. It’s also got a separate mini-jack stereo line input.

Check out the translated product description, or the product listing at importer Geek Stuff 4 U.

Kodak has announced the Zi8, the next in their line of flip competitors. Features are pretty similar to the Zi6, but now you get 1080p video, instead of 720p.

The bigger feature, in my book, is the external mic jack. Suddenly the camera is a whole lot more flexible. It’ll be very interesting to see if the quality can match the features, as I was immensely let down by the original Kodak cam, the Zi6.

One also wonders what the point of 1080p is, with tiny, crummy sensors, but I suppose a bit more oversampling can’t hurt, if your goal is nice-looking web video.

After what seems like ages of rumors, Apple has announced a new Final Cut Studio, with upgrades to Final Cut Pro, Motion, Soundtrack and the rest.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that there any life-changing upgrades. Even Apple’s press release can’t highlight more than some prores updates, new formats, and some minor tweaks. Hmm.

VLC has finally done what so many google products seem unable to achieve – left beta. VLC 1.0.0, available now, adds support for a number of new formats, as well as substantial interface refinements. The player that plays everything is now even better. Cool!

Edit – apparently Google de-beta’d a bunch of their apps today too. Weird.

I’ve been meaning to write something about the hubbub surrounding the HTML5 video tag, but in the meantime, Ars Technica has a nice writeup.
I got a chance to see an amazing example of the video tag, combined with some simple JS and CSS, at a recent conference. It had everyone in the audience salivating. Unfortunately, licensing and patent issues could prevent widespread implementation. And of course, without support in IE, you’ll be stuck creating fallback flash videos for the foreseeable future.
Anyways, I’ll have more thoughts on the debate before too long, for now check out the Ars writeup.
And, yeah, I’ll get back to blogging.

Now that FCS3 is apparently in the hands of some outside testers, a few more bits of information are leaking out. AppleInsider has a bit of a roundup – no feature details, but at least more confirmation that an update is in the pipeline.

Cough, is this thing still on? Sorry for the absence, the end of the semester sort of owned me.

TUAW posted a little blurb about a new app called Evom, which is a super simple video conversion app. Similar to the now-defunct iSquint, it’ll take anything in, and spit out ipod-compatible video.

It’s still in beta, and may not be free when it launches, but it looks pretty slick.

FreshDV has an interview with a developer from the Foundry, discussing a demo project they have to correct rolling shutter. It’s worth a viewing if you’re interested in the pros and cons of CMOS. I’ve had discussions with folks in the past about the sort of optical analysis necessary to correct rolling shutter in post, so it’s pretty cool to see it being done. Also interesting is his guess that within 2-3 years, rolling shutter won’t be an issue (in new cameras).

The AJA KI Pro is a DDR recorder which records from HD-SDI or HDMI directly to ProRes Quicktime files on a variety of media types.

This is a pretty amazing piece of hardware, small enough to travel with. This makes a pretty awesome complement to something like an XDCam EX.