Wither Widescreen? 16:9 is not wide enough!

Take a look at the most beautiful films-
the ones that win best picture, best cinematographer, etc…
how many of them were shot 4:3 or 16:9?
None of them.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut is supposed to open this coming October 5th in NY and LA. It is a remastered film print, not digital projection. But ask yourself, if all the HD camcorders are 16:9, will this mean the end of truly w-i-d-e-s-c-r-e-e-n movies?
The beauty of Cinemascope’s 2.55 or 2.35 to 1 ratio really helps draw us into a film.

Try to imagine Gaff’s spinner flying through the futuristic dystopia that Ridley Scott created if we only had square movies…

Use P2 (i.e. PC cards) on your ExpressCard-based laptop.

Addonics has released their ExpressCard Cardbus Adapter

This ExpressCard CardBus adapter is one of the few ways to add back the CardBus slot that is missing in new laptop computers. It is designed to allow the use of PC cards through the use of an adaptor that plugs into the ExpressCard slot and has a small PC Card “slot” that hangs on the outside of the user’s laptop. Addonics specifically states that it “can now accept CardBus Wireless broadband card, LAN card, Panasonic P2™ Card, CardBus eSATA adapter, video capture card and many other types of CardBus adapters.“

Panny’s new AJ-HPX3000 P2 versus RED-1.

Panasonic announced the nearly $50,000 AJ-HPX3000 to a fanfare of applause from P2 fans who laud the new camcorder’s 2/3 image sensors, 10-bit processing, full 1080i recording capability and two improvements to the basic P2 workflow- lots of slots and AVC-Intra recording for higher quality and longer record time on the cramped P2 cards.

The question is, why?

Please use “Over-Under” when wrapping cables.

Setting up for a job today, I opened up some wrapped mic cable, fifty-foot lengths of wrapped mic cable, and as I played out the cable, I realized that whomever the (insert pent-up, anger filled, derogatory term here) was who wrapped this cable up- they did not use “over-under” to wrap the cable but made dozens of loops, all in the same direction, which I now had to waste time to fix.

This follows a job just a week ago where I worked with a very tech-savvy kid who just graduated from a University. He was wrapping some cable and I watched him just loop, loop, loop his way through the cable.

I asked him what the heck he was doing.
I’m wrapping cable the right way, he postulated…

Sony’s SxS advantages. Are they real?

This post has moved:

http://techthoughts.org/2007/09/19/sonys-sxs-advantages-are-they-real/

Sony’s XDCAM-EX & HD1000u & more!

This post has moved:

http://techthoughts.org/2007/09/18/sonys-xdcam-ex-hd1000u-more/

JVC’s webcast camcorder? Almost!

JVC recently showed (in Italy) a spiffy little camcorder, the GR-DA20, but hasn’t announced any US release dates or prices that I could find. This little Mini DV wonder sports what appears to be a 2.5″ LCD on the back that slides up or down to assist viewing from above or below the camcorder. Quite an innovation for a camcorder since the “sliding” screens have heretofore been pretty much been limited to cell phones (and the video cameras in cell phones, well, suck.)

Clearly a consumer camcorder- with just a few buttons and a joystick to control your navigation through what I am sure are a myriad of menus on this MiniDV maestro, this means that you won’t be adjusting focus and iris on the fly while leaving your audio with manual gain and on-screen metering. Ha. Don’t even think about it.

But the 36x optical lens, and the sheer design of this camcorder actually does take a few design cues from professional “box” camcorders. There’s no screen that swings out to the side. No, it all maintains a singular, purposeful design. There’s no wondering how one opens the screen. You point it at the subject and there’s your screen looking at you.

So what makes this almost a webcast camcorder?

Premiere Pro CS3 for Intel Macintosh

As a longtime Mac-based Premiere editor, I switched to Final Cut Pro 1 only because Premiere 5— the latest version when FCP debuted— was a lethargic editor with a new and unwelcome user interface. If I had to learn a new program from scratch, I figured I’d give Final Cut Pro a try, and I’ve never looked back.

Now, with the Intel-only Mac version of Premiere Pro CS3, we can be assured that there’s no legacy Mac code holding this version of Premiere back; it’s a ported-to-Mac version of the software that was redesigned from the ground up as Premiere Pro after Adobe abandoned the Mac platform. Also, Adobe has seen fit to offer FCP users a keyboard preset so they can make the transition to Premiere Pro a little easier by keeping keyboard commands and hot keys the same.

There’s a five page review in the September issue of EventDV. I’ve noticed that the camcorder articles here get a lot of clicks, but once you shoot the footage with your new camcorder, you have to edit it somewhere. Premiere Pro proved itself to be a good tool. Now, I’m not allowed to reprint my review here, (contracts) but there’s no subscription required to go and read it over at EventDV.net. You can also subscribe to the magazine and get more photos than appear online. Odd, but true.

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It’s official. We’ve Moved!
Change your bookmarks. Re-subscribe.

We are at http://TechThoughts.org.

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Handy tower of links!

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On the right-hand side of this page, a little ways down;
Under the info about IEBA Communications, LLC,
I’ve added a host of links to useful tools.

These are not ads. There’s no money
or remuneration changing hands.

But I often need these links.
You might like them too.

You have any?

Enjoy.

Sony’s new HDV at IBC.

This Post has moved:

http://techthoughts.org/2007/09/10/sonys-new-hdv-at-ibc/