This is a sample video footage of a Canon EOS 7D in action at 1920x1080, h.264, mix of 24fps and 30fps. This sample footage really impressed me that I might do my own video test soon.
Between Canon 7D and Nikon D300s, the 7D simply has the upper hand—video is very much a legitimized use of this camera, not a secondary one like the D300s. - Gizmodo.com
The first 1080p HD YouTube video is simply brilliant. In more ways than one.
The Muppets performing Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody".
A Quarter of Canadians Will Clock Over 63 Million Hours A Week Watching The Olympic Winter Games
And for the first time in Olympic Winter Games history, every race, ceremony and moment of national pride during the 2010 Winter Games will be broadcast live into homes across the country, entirely in high definition (HD).
"The majority of Canadians can't make the trip out to Vancouver or Whistler, but they will tune-in to catch their favourite events and athlete performances on television," said Ian Kilvert, General Manager of Corporate Brand Management, Panasonic. "HD is the gold medal standard for experiencing every moment in Vancouver - it really is the next best thing to actually being there."
Yesterday the iMovie 8.0.5 update introduced the new "iFrame" (knowledgebase) format which is 960x540 pixels (quarter of a full-HD resolution).However, iMovie has been exporting to this resolution since the introduction its new architecture in iMovie 08. It is actually the maximum size which you can use to export for sharing, unfortunately (see screenshot from mobileMe gallery).
However, it will probably mean that:
Still, I'd prefer a real 720p resolution option instead of this halfbaked approach. But Apple probably has something up it's sleeve we don't know about :-)
Technology is always getting smaller, faster, and cheaper. One segment of technology that will have a major impact on how society experiences new events is video capture. Video capture devices have become pocket size but the quality of video has grown steadily. Let's delve into the different current technologies and give you a feeling of what to expect when you buy one of these pocket devices.
First let's talk about the quality of video. Not long ago home video was absolutely horrible to watch. The graininess and sometimes out of sync audio was deplorable but doable. Today we have pocket cameras that produce video only laserdiscs provided. The high definition resolution for these pocket cams are 720p. So watching the video produced by one of these cameras on a 720p resolution TV or HDTV will utilize all the resolution provided by your expensive TV. You will be able to make out details that you would otherwise have a hard time seeing on other inferior quality video. The easiest way to think of HDTV resolution like 720p, 1080i, and 1080p is to break them down into their resolutions that you would normally see when modifying your laptop or desktop's resolution. 720p = 1280 x 720, 1080i = 1280 x 1080, 1080p = 1920 x 1080. Now to go along with this list is the caveat that the difference between 720p and 1080i is negligible. It really is up to the viewers preference. Now let's take a look at one of the latest pocket cam offerings from Creative. The Creative Vado HD records 720p quality video at 30 fps. The fps or frames per second of a recording can give you an idea of what to expect the video to look like. Anything less then 30 fps might look choppy. Although the true test is for you to view the video wherever you will most likely watch it. For example on your computer or on your TV. It also possesses an HDMI output port so you can plug the device directly into your TV and play the videos from the device onto the TV. The video recording uses the H.264 codec. This means that in order to play the video you need a player that supports this codec. For most players on your computer you can download a plug-in that will enable you to watch this format. A popular codec pack for Window's users is the Combined Community Codec Pack.I’m sitting here, in my dining room, waiting for Nerdblurb’s first video podcast to finish downloading. And I aren’t even sure if it’ll play as supposedly it’s in HD. I suspect HD footage and my super high tech 512MB RAM won’t play well together. 21 minutes to go…
Click through to Vimeo in the videos below to see them in full HD.
It's almost discordant to see such amazing, high quality footage, but not attached to big budget, point-perfect productions. Yes, the music can be cheezy, and the cinematography is not always exactly right... but this is a nascent new technology that is putting the capacity to create truly beautiful motion pictures in the hands of all of us.
DSLR movies are going to be big in 2009, I am certain of it.
Apologies for the delay, I have not been feeling too great as of late, but without further ado here is the final part of my media review of 2007. In this post I will look at the music, books, software, television shows and hardware that impressed me the most last year.
Television
British television and especially British comedy continues to decline as reality shows dominate the channels. The only two British shows of any worth last year were the BBC comedies The Armstrong and Miller Show and Steve Coogan vehicle Saxondale. American television continues to impress. My favourite two shows of the year were The Shield, which is ever brilliant as it moves towards its final season, and the wonderful David Duchovny comedy Californication. Last year I finally got round to watching The Sopranos after having almost everyone I know recommend it to me. This is one show that really does live up to all the hype is has receives and whilst the final season was a little surprising in places the conclusion was very clever indeed. Other shows worthy of a mention are:
Dexter (yes, the second season contained a number of plot holes and may not have been as perfect first but it was still good television)Music
Not an outstanding year for my kind of music unfortunately but there were still some good albums released. My favourite album of the year was Cassadaga by Bright Eyes followed very closely by the Grinderman’s debut album. LCD Soundsystem’s album Sound of Silver also deserves an honourable mention even though it is not the kind of music I usually listen to.
Books and Magazines
As I mentioned in my previous post 2007 was the year of Italian director Mario Bava. Not only were we lucky enough to have the majority of his films released on DVD but Tim Lucas went one further by surprising the Euro-Cult fan community and finishing his major tome Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark. This monster of a book is without doubt the finest work on a Euro-Cult director. It is beautifully produced and contains 1128 pages of meticulously researched information. Even though it is difficult to read because of its immense weight it is a must own for any fan of cult cinema and well worth the retail price.
I was very happy to see Jeff Rice’s long out of print books The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler finally be republished by Moonstone. I was a little disappointed by the numerous errors and the overall quality of the book but was very happy to see these available again.
On the magazine front the aforementioned Tim Lucas comes out on top with Video Watchdog. Even though the overall quality of the magazine has slightly dipped while Lucas has focused on other projects such as the long awaited Bava book it is still head and shoulders above all other competition. Midnight Media’s Is it Uncut? comes in at a very close second continuing to be the best British magazine on horror cinema.
Software
The best software this year was undoubtedly Slysoft’s AnyDVDHD program which proudly stuck two fingers up at the all the unnecessary DRM that surrounds the Blu-Ray format. Until region hacked Blu-Ray players become available the only way to enjoy region-free Blu-Ray is by building a powerful Blu-Ray media centre with AnyDVDHD running. Whilst on the subject of this great piece of software it conveniently allows me to move on to the worst software of last year – Cyberlink’s PowerDVD Ultra. Rushed on to the market in time for Christmas 2006 to satisfy those who had found that the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive would offer HD-DVD playback on high-end computers, PowerDVD Ultra is an over expensive, buggy piece of software. It cost me around £75 to buy what was in essence a beta piece of software. If it wasn’t for AnyDVDHD I would not have been able to watch HD-DVDs released by Studio Canal. After many frustrating months I purchased a stand-alone HD-DVD player and was finally rid of PowerDVD. I am not sure if these bugs have been resolved, does anyone know?
Hardware
Whilst I have been very impressed with the Toshiba HD-A20 HD-DVD player and, to a greater extent, the Toshiba 42” HD 42X3030D LCD television I purchased last year, the best piece of hardware I used in 2007 was the Xbox Media Center. This fantastic piece of kit has completely transformed the way I watch television and is a great way to store all your media files. You can find a second-hand Xbox for around £30 these days, add a 500GB hard drive, an Xecuter modchip and an Xbox HD lead and you have an unrivalled media centre than can do almost everything you ask of it. I really cannot recommend it highly enough.
So there we have it, 2007 the year that was. Looking back on my review of 2007 I have already found that I forgot to include Disturbia and American Gangster in the favourite film section and have no doubt neglected to mention other worthy DVD releases. Does any agree or disagree with my choices? I would love to hear your thoughts.
So what am I looking forward to in 2008? I would love to see a number of unreleased gialli appear on DVD. We already have Nothing Underneath (1983), Sister of Ursula (1978) and Red Rings of Fear (1978) announced and rumours of Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971) being officially released by Koch Media in Germany but what else could be unleashed on DVD? It would be good to see HD-DVD rise from the dead and bury Blu-Ray and all of its pathetic DRM (we can dream can’t we?) and have some HD releases of gialli.
Expect to see this site move to Wordpress in the very near future. I have recently built a Wordpress site for the B1G Idea and was very impressed with its ease of use and numerous features. Expect to see, and listen, to my first foray into audio commentary production over the coming weeks as I provide one for the first episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker and expect more fan composites to appear over the year. Here’s to a good 2008!
