Posts Tagged “pro video”

While the world waits for Apple to release official news about their new tablet computer, a few smaller (and lesser known) companies are releasing their own touch screen tablets.  Archos has a few models out, there’s the viliv, and then there’s the whole CrunchPad thing which is now called the JooJoo.  And I’ve never played with any of them.  I have however been (for some reason) drooling for an iSlate for the past year or so.  And in my impatience I prematurely ordered a Camangi WebStation and am ready to report the bad news…

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This week I sold my old G5 along with a 23″ Cinema Wide Display, a BlackMagic card, Sonnet Tempo eSata card, and a Sonnet Fusion 500P populated with 5 x 500GB hard drives. It was a complete edit system including lots of fast storage, but as part of my “out with the old – in with the new” theme, it all had to go.

Hindsight certainly is 20/20 and I like to review technology after the fact to reflect on how well it worked. Overall my G5 was a great machine and it was difficult to let it go. But a couple of the components were very hard to let go: the monitor, and the storage…
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While I rarely go out to the movies (because of my awesome home theatre setup), I did see Cloverfield in the theatre. Like many others, I wasn’t a fan of the extreme shaky-cam which literally left me nauseous. I need to start with my opinion on the camera shake choice – because it’s relevant to what’s happening with the bonus features: I feel that they could have toned down the amateur-home-video-shake and still conveyed the cinéma-vérité “real found footage” feeling. I loved the idea of the movie and was impressed with the execution, but hated the over the top shaky-camera work. It made the movie very difficult to watch and therefore less fun. However, it was an artistic choice on the part of the filmmakers.  Whether or not I agree with it’s necessity and/or effectiveness – it was technically correct.  It was their choice.  And even though I found that choice very annoying, I still looked forward to getting the movie on Blu-ray to get more info about the cloverfield mythology and see all the bonus features.

Well, the bonus features are harder to watch than the movie – and this time it was NOT an artistic choice…

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Back when I first started this blog I had the theme of “out with the old and in with the new” and it started with the upgrade of my old G5 to a new Intel 8-core PowerMac. In that early post I mentioned the Dell Ultrasharp 2408WFP because it has loads of inputs including the new DisplayPort connector Apple has sort-of recently embraced. I believe that the writing is on the wall that DVI will eventually be on the outs and any monitor I invest in these days needs be ‘future proof.’ So during the black days after Thanksgiving I ordered one and it arrived today!

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Red leader Jim Jannard has been trickling updates all day to his big November 13th announcement. This time the information first comes in the form of more upgrade options for current Red One owners.  I’m sure by now they’ve all read the announcement and are trying to figure out how they’re going to come up with the probable $22,500 to upgrade. In a way it’s like finding out their wife is pregnant, at least they’ve got 9 months to raise the cash to support their expected new baby.

For the rest of us the information to focus on is surrounding the new Scarlet and Epic products what all they’ll do and what they’ll mean to our pocket book.

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Has anyone else noticed lately that the industry hasn’t quite figured out the whole 4:3 vs 16:9 thing? This is one of many ads I saw last night during Chuck that completely ignored the fact that the majority of american televisions are still 4:3.  I have an original HD DirecTV Tivo and an HD projector. I don’t get local channels in HD yet and was watching the 4:3 NTSC feed of Chuck.  I don’t know if DirecTV is just taking the HD feed and cropping the sides off or what.  But either way, it is the responsibility of the people making the ads to protect any important information inside of 4:3 title safe.  (By that I mean the Editor or the Producer or the Ad Agency or the dude at Microsoft who said “sure that looks awesome”)  In this case (see photo) the Windows ad “Life Without Walls” the “S” is completely cut off and on most TV’s the word “WALL” would also be cut off due to the 10% action safe. In another major ad last night the on the screen talent was half outside of 4:3 safe – literally one eye on screen and one off.  Again on an older TV that probably means you can only see his arm flapping around.

Here’s a message to the dude (or chick) at Microsoft who paid millions of dollars for that mess… if the majority of people watching the ad can’t see the last half of your tag line, how is your message getting across?  Surely the tag line “Windows – LIFE WITHOUT” is not what you were hoping to communicate.  But that is the message that 80% of viewers saw Monday night.  Maybe you need a new editor/producer/ad agency to give millions of dollars to. Call my people and we’ll talk.