Apple v. Adobe. – FCS v. CS5. – The choice is pretty clear.

Adobe has really been pushing the limits when it comes to what the software package can do. From CS3, which was nice, but had a few carryover PC apps from a recent purchase, to CS4 which broke new ground in terms of authoring DVD’s for Flash, video in a PDF, and more.

Now CS5 jumps a whole new direction with 64-bit ONLY computing. This cuts some old computers off, but with a decent system, you can access tons more RAM. Add to this the new Mercury Engine using GPU to handle video processing and you can handle multiple streams of heavily compressed video where one stream used to choke a computer. Specifically I mean H.264 and AVCHD, which seem to becoming defacto standards in tapeless acquisition these days.

In an article in EventDV Magazine, Jan Ozer does a pretty nice head-to head comparison and

I’ve returned.

After a couple years writing some great articles and reviews elsewhere, I’ve decided to roll all this media back together under one umbrella. Amazingly, after nearly 7 years of no posts, my work here gets more traffic than the other blog ever did. Plus I have complete control of the blog here and can make changes how and when I see fit, like tying Facebook and Twitter into the blog.

Break free of Apple’s limitations. OS-X on a PC.

I’ve blustered on and on about how Apple doesn’t offer anything like a Shuttle PC for Pro Mac users who need something smaller- or something that is rack mountable, to easily integrate, remain connected to, and travel with all the other video gear.

Pictured here is Shuttle’s Quad-Core Xeon Processor. I pitted the Shuttle against the Mac Pro, similarly configured, and guess which costs more? Moreover, there’s an article on LifeHacker which can make the Shuttle (or any similar build your own) system the cheapest Mac Pro anywhere…

Cell Phones, Wireless Keyboards & data secuity— or not!

The biggest difference between Mac OS-9 (and earlier) and X is that the owner of the machine is not the sole user. By this I mean that OS-X integrated the multiuser OS architecture that the person who bought the machine is always one of many users (even if they are the only user).

A recent iPhone article brought this to light because, now, as phones and PDA’s get more powerful, they too could benefit from multi-user technology that would let you hand your phone/ pda/ web browser/ ipod/ mail tool, to someone else to make a call, without giving them complete access to all your private e-mail, web browsing history, and more. Apple’s simple “slide to unlock” is simply not enough…

Leopard. 1 million files. Little improvement.

I am a reluctant user of OS-X.

Three things turned me off to the new OS.
Apple has yet to rectify the problem(s), some of which I know are not directly their fault and will never be “fixed” because that’s the cost of “progress.”
The three things are:

The size and complexity of the OS has exploded.

The eye candy takes too much processor power.

OS-X still doesn’t work right.

.

.

Specs lie. (Actually they just mislead us.)

In a wonderful commentary article (rant) at High Def Digest, Joshua Zarber takes a moment to put down the hardware and the manuals and speak directly to the “number purists” among us and basically tells us to grow up.

Red rolling shutter redux

There’s been a bit of discussion about the image distortion caused by the scanning (rolling) shutter used by CMOS chips which are starting to proliferate in the prosumer and professional video camera world. The key problem, as I have mentioned previously, is that the scanning imaging device is no longer sending the image solely to scanning displays- i.e. tube televisions. Today’s displays include plasma, LCD, DLP, OLED, etc. Most are progressive, but some include circuitry to display the image as if it were a scanning device.

Confused yet?

Mike Curtis, of HD For Indies, is very heavy into RED usage and promotion on his web site. RED is the video camera that I will agree is changing, or will change, the hardware business in the video industry. I checked in with Mike about the “rolling shutter” issue…

Firestore versus Archos.

Riddle me this, caped crusader…

If I want to capture video
direct to hard drive
in a pocketable recorder

I could pay a lot or a little,
then get a little or a lot.
So which do I order?

.

not SDHC, not P2, not SxS, not MS, but HDV on HDD.

I’ve been shopping for a new camcorder.
Not so much for me, though.

IEBA Communications already has an HDTV arsenal that is based around the Sony FX1/Z1u camcorders (pictured here). I’ve been shooting HD with numerous camcorders for corporate and event video work since 2003. I’ve shot 720 and 1080. I’ve shot on flash media, and tape. I’ve recorded to two different external hard drive recorders. I’ve edited this footage and shown it to clients.

The problem isn’t with my client’s interest.
The problem is turning it around as fast as possible.

Specifically- corporate work that requires an entire day’s worth of presentations to be available compressed and streaming… the same day. They can relent and accept SD (but the widescreen HD that I made for them was so very impressive). But no matter what format a camcorder shoots this stuff in it’s not perfect for BOTH places it has to go:

1) in our data pool for possible editing later,
2) on the web for e-learning.

The former loves DV.
The latter loves Flash.
Those two, disparate solutions don’t exist in one camcorder…

Our Cinema Treasures. Do you?

Films influenced me greatly while growing up.

I still remember seeing Rocky from the back of a long, long theatre- a single screen house that had been split into two and the screen was so far away that it was like watching TV. I remember seeing Apollo 13 the week it opened. I got to the theatre late and I had to sit in the third row. The screen was so large that I had to turn my head to see left and right and take the whole image in. Point is, the rooms in which these films played were sometimes as memorable as the films themselves.

In my time, I have seen numerous theatres go dark. The Mayfair. The Devon. Sams Place, the SamEric. GCC Northeast 4. The Orleans 8. The Boyd. etc.

There is a place on the web where we can treasure these cinema houses. Those that passed, those that still exist, and those that are being reborn. This last aspect is something to cherish in this age of rampant (& crappy) development, and in an age of disposable mass media- where little is worth the electrons that carry it…