So the holidays are over, it’s back to blogging for me.
As you might have gathered from the title, this is going to be a slightly different kind of post. However, I recently had to (you guessed it) hang a plasma on plaster lath walls, and found the information on the internet totally lacking. Hopefully Google will help other folks find this post.
This review has been a long time coming. Now that the students are safely nestled away in their bunks, I can turn my attention to what really matters. The duel of the century. The battle to end all battles. The moderately-priced supposedly-hd direct-to-memory camcorder showdown! It’s the Panasonic HDC-SD5 versus the Sanyo Xacti HD1000.
Read on for the inside scoop.
So. There were some serious security issues with Flash support in Quicktime. Apple released 7.3.1 to fix them. Unfortunately, they fixed them by disabling Flash support.
Let us step back for a moment. Quicktime plays Flash files? Yup, Quicktime will playback SWF files that are compatible with Flash version 5 or earlier. They can also be embedded as tracks within other quicktime files. Many content producers take advantage of this to add interactivity to Quicktime movies.
Needless to say, an update suddenly removing that capability has created some serious issues for a number of users. No warning, no downgrade path and no comments about workarounds. Sounds like classic Apple to me. Jerks.
While doing the exposure tests, I also shot a resolution chart. Unfortunately, the only chart I could find maxed out at 800 lines, but you still get a nice idea of the quality of this camera.
Click for a full raster TGA. These are shot at an exposure of F8.
A few folks have asked about the low-light performance of the XDcam EX. I decided to spend some time pitting it against a few of the other cameras that I’ve got on hand.
Read on for a full breakdown. The short summary? It does damn good.
Normally, I’m rather mean to Sony. Usually, they deserve it. Prepare to have your collective internet minds blown.
The Sony XDcam EX is the best camera you can buy for less than $15,000. It’s my new favorite camera. It’s the first camera in years that I’ve actually wanted to own personally. Read on to find out why. Thanks very much to Pat Hart at AVI Systems for making this camera available to me.
Youtube has expanded their previously very limited program of cutting content producers in on ad revenue. This is good for folks who are already planning to post their content on Youtube, though it’s probably not your path to web2.0 riches.
Ok, first discovery – Flash doesn’t seem to support compressed headers on Quicktime H264 files. Just choose ‘fast start’ and you’ll be all set.
Adobe released Flash Player 9 Update 3 today, which includes official support for H264 video and AAC audio. That’s about the nicest thing I’ve heard all week. OK world: upgrade now. On2 be damned.
The camera is sitting on a solid surface. The surface is not moving. But watch the background. The camera has electronic image stabilization turned on, and it’s getting confused by my bouncing – it thinks that it must be bouncing, so it tries to compensate. Fail.