REVIEW: ioSafe SoloPRO Fireproof External Drive

Today, external hard disk drives are a “dime a dozen” so to speak. They all use drives from a handful of companies, wrap them in a plastic or metal enclosure with USB, eSATA or some other interfaces, add a cheap external power supply, and box it up for sale. What all these drives lack, however, is security for your data. Sure, you can use a RAID, but if catastrophe hits- a fire, flood, tornado, etc, your data is gone. This is where ioSafe stakes their claim.

Mastering the Dallas Screenwriter’s Association – 2011 Short Film Showcase

What does it take to master 11 DVD’s, 4 WMVs, and 3 .mov’s onto one disc? Not a lot. But it does take a thorough of understanding what goes into mastering a DVD and what the shortest distance is between Source and Delivery.

The Dallas Screenwriters Association had gathered more than 12 movies for it’s 2011 Showcase. Add to this some PSA’s and some new media created specifically for this program, and you have the makings for a special challenge. But there’s a way around this potentially tricky multiformat maze that enabled the finished DVD to be delivered in just a couple days- and that includes delays for work on other projects, and the need to create a few new media bits.

Apple’s new iMovie Pro. (aka Final Cut Pro X)

Say goodbye to the Pro Apps as you know them. The writing has been on the wall for several years, yet many Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Studio users continue to cling to the hope that Apple will make a major leap with Final Cut Pro and bring it into 64-bit computing, and finally address the numerous issues that have been on wish lists, sometimes for an entire decade.

Well, Apple demoed iMovie Pro at the FCP SuperMeet this past Tuesday April 12th and made absolutely no qualms about visually signifying the end of the Pro apps as we know them. There was no talk of Color. Soundtrack, Motion, Compressor, DVD Studio Pro, Blu-ray authoring, 3D authoring, feature film features, etc. No the focus was solely on Apple iMovie Pro.

How did we get to this sorry state? Well, I think there was a conversation in January that sort of went like this:

IEBA Review: Datavideo DN-60 Solid State CF Card Recorder

When it comes to camcorders, most everything is moving to flash media.

There are, however, an incredible amount of HDV and other tape-based HD camcorders out there, still working hard and producing great images. How do you get these camcorders up to speed with the new flash-media workflow? With an external recorder.

Thus far, the need for external devices to record HD footage has primarily been served by Focus Enhancements’ FireStore line. However, there has been growth in the segment recently and Datavideo has entered the fray with a unique design and price point under $500. Does the Datavideo DN-60 Solid State CF Card Recorder give the more expensive recorders a run for their money? Let’s find out.

You Tube Rents Videos – Mine Included!

YouTube recently added rentals to their streaming portfolio, and with a catalogue of outdoor adventure videos that were basically sitting dormant here, I decided to bring the entire video series into the new Millennium- including direct sales on Amazon, streaming on Amazon Unbox, rentals on YouTube and availability on Netflix’ portfolio.

I’m in the finishing the Amazon process with my first video there, and was just notified that two of my videos were approved for rental on YouTube.

How NOT to treat production professionals.

I can understand shrinking budgets. I can understand low budget production, I can understand working for free. But so many of these videos have popped up in the past year or so that it demonstrates a bit of push-back: the abuse of production professionals is really becoming an epidemic.

If two ops, a camera package, with ENG audio and basic lights used to cost $1200/10 then why do producers, or corporate people who are needing a video made, somehow think it’s now okay to pay $500 for it?

Don’t miss a TechThought. E-mail subscriptions now available.

Sure RSS is fancy, there’s Twitter & Facebook… but if you subscribe to enough stuff, or get busy on a project, you are simply not going to scroll through pages of stuff to try and make sure you didn’t miss a phenomenal article from me. Well, now you can subscribe by e-mail.

When I post, You’ll get an e-mail that will just sit in your in-bin till you have the time. I use it to follow other essential blogs and find it far better than chasing down good info through so many other various methods– especially since e-mail is an absolute requirement when it comes to business tools. Facebook, Twitter, RSS, etc, not so much. Computers should be doing the work for us, and e-mail subscriptions make that happen.

iPhone 4 Shoots Motorcycle Race to Pike’s Peak- Impresses Doubters

There’s plenty of iPhone 4 videos hitting YouTube. Suddenly, anyone with the new iPhone is a moviemaker. I guess it’s like owning a pencil, everyone is the next Stephen King. Or a paintbrush, everyone is the next Michelangelo.

But there are certainly a few standouts that demonstrate that creativity and storytelling ability shines through no matter what the production medium. Hoptocopter Films is one such production company.

When is a trade news site not useful? When it does so little.

I’m just one person. I write when there’s time between jobs, or while stuff renders, etc. But I try to really make it interesting and useful to readers. In fact, in the 2 years I published elsewhere, and not touched a single thing on this site, the articles I wrote here were STILL garnering some 50 page views a day. This is down dramatically from when I was publishing new content, but testimony to the quality of the work I produce.

So it really bugs me when I see competitors to TechThoughts, and to EventDV Magazine and Web site, for which I am a owner, and contributing editor, respectively, getting traffic for writing as little as TWO SENTENCES and linking to something else.

10 Minutes to air is NOT time for Fundamental Change.

An 8 am crew call for a Noon live webcast makes total sense in the total production scheme of events. There’s a lot to set up, review, practice, re-adjust, and more that those 4 hours literally just fly by. I was recently tapped by Magic Video, Inc. To oversee and direct a live webcast for a corporation announcing a name change and philosophy reorganization to their key personnel. The announcement to the public and shareholders will come later.

Crew were all on hand early, making sure all the technical aspects of the production were up to speed and ready for that “red light” of live production. The talent, meaning the two CEOs of the company, didn’t arrive till 20 minutes before air, they had rewritten the script and, instead of bullet points, they said they wanted to read it verbatim. All those changes with 15 minutes to go? Time to scramble…