Beijing Olympic Broadcasting has acknowledged that some of the fireworks in the opening ceremony were digitally created and were inserted into the feed live.
I’m sure a bunch of folks will get all self righteous and use it as an excuse for more anti-Chinese rhetoric, but I can’t see much reason to get upset…
Electronista says that the new Canon AVCHD cameras are hitting our shores now, bringing with them the first implementation I know of that records AVCHD at the max bitrate of the specification (24mbps).
Up until now, the AVCHD cameras I’ve used have been rather lackluster compared to HDV cameras, mostly due to far too aggressive compression schemes. AVCHD has the potential to be far superior to HDV at similar bitrates, so It will be exciting to see the video produced by these canon cameras. The HF11, which records to 32gig of internal flash, or external SDHC memory cards is particularly interesting. The other models record to harddrives, which is a bit meh.
One little item to complain about: the 24p mode records to 60i files. Excuse me? 24p in 60i (with a pulldown) made a little sense with DV since DV was only ever designed for 60/50i interlaced video. 24p in 60i with HDV made a little less sense, since it was a new spec, but since it was a physical tape you could make a claim about tape speeds and whatnot.
But throwing 24p inside a 60i container on a file based camera? Wow. That’s some pretty serious artificial market segmentation! The AVCHD spec allows for 1080p24, so why make it hard?
In any case, look at how many badges it has! It’s gotta be good! And the truth is, I’m excited to try this camera.
Andy Ihnatko has posted a sample clip from the Kodak Zi6 pocket camera I mentioned a few days ago.
It’s not Xdcam EX1, but it makes the Flip look like a sad little relic.
Note – when I went, the Vimeo built in player wasn’t working, but if you login to vimeo you can download the original quicktime by following the link in the lower right. Very nice.
VMware Fusion 2 Beta 2 came out last week.
Features? Run OS X Server as a guest OS. Multiple snapshots. What does that mean? Observe:
Ever wanted to test under two versions of Quicktime without maintaining a machine just to trash for that purpose? Make a snap shot at once version, update to the new version, and then jump back and forth.
I lack the words to describe just how awesome this is.
Wow, no idea how I missed this a few weeks ago. Kodak announced the Zi6, a 720p, SD-based pocket-sized digital camcorder that retails at $180.
Has the same flip-out USB connector and built in editing software that you find on the Flip, includes rechargeable batteries, a bigger screen and uses removable memory. Even if the quality is just moderately crappy, this could be a winner.
There’s an article up at the Beijing Olympics site with some pictures of the master control room for the upcoming olympics. I’m a sucker for stuff like this.
I see P2 VTRs and XDcamHD VTRs. I’m looking forward to tuning in.
Sanyo launched the Xacti HD800 in Japan this week, and it’s hopefully headed for the United States before too long. Electronista has an article with some hands on shots, or you can read a translated version of the japanese page via google.
It’s essentially an update to the HD700, which is the evolution of the HD2 and HD1. It maintains of the smaller form factor of the bulk of the Xacti line, rather than going with the bulky look of the HD1000. You get 720p with an 8 megapixel sensor, and much improved noise reduction.
I’m a big fan of the quality of the HD1000, but I’ve missed the smaller form factor of the HD1. This looks like the perfect balance.
Slashdot ran a story a few days ago, discussing the new audio compression filter YouTube seems to be using on content. Essentially, they’re trying to get everything into a single intensity range to, presumably, make jumping between videos on YouTube a bit more pleasant. However, like anyone who uses a compression plug in for the first time, they’ve over done it. Waaaay over done it.
There’s a thread on YouTube’s forums discussing the issue, and a fellow named ‘ccalam’ has posted a video demonstrating what happens with and without the compression.
The fix, until YouTube does something, is to mix in some constant volume high frequency noise, which will get stripped during the bit-compression phase, but which misdirects the audio compressor enough to keep your actual audio safe.
I can sort of understand what YouTube is up against, as this is an issue I struggle with on Media Mill as well. There are lots of things I can do to make really bad videos look and sound better, but those same things will make good videos look and sound worse. You always try to walk the line between both extremes, but you always wish you could do more.
Although it’s a month old, I hadn’t seen this review of the Steadicam Pilot by Charles Papert. It’s very well written and in-depth – I wish there were more reviews of this quality on this sort of equipment. The Pilot seems like a great choice at well under $4000. Not quite as sexy as the $10,000 Sachtler Artemis, but hey…
Edit: A good tip when linking to a review is to link to the review. Fixed that..
I was using an XDCam EX on a MacBookPro today and getting very strange results – copying the BPAV folder from the SXS card to the internal drive resulted in totally corrupted video in both the Clip Browser and XDCam Transfer. When I tried copying the BPAV to an external drive, there were no problems at all. The laptop had FileVault enabled. I’m beginning to wonder if FileVault interferes with the XDCam software in some way.
More testing is needed, but it’s very curious.