Our normally rock-solid webhost has been experiencing intermittent issues with their main DNS servers this week. It was fixed at one point, now it’s semi-broken again. The result is that sometimes you’ll try to load FreshDV.com and you’ll get nothing. And sometimes it loads fine. Bear with us while they work out the problem.

Shane Ross has the scoop.

One of the curses of cheap cost-effective “consumer” camcorders is the bottom-loading tape transport. It forces you to unscrew your tripod plate from the camera to swap tapes, which is a complete deal-breaker in some situations. For instance, long-form event shooting often requires multiple tape changes which renders these low-cost camcorders a lot less viable.

Fortunately, there are a number of accessories that can ease the pain of a bottom-loading camcorder. This company offers a number of shims and plate adapters for a wide variety of consumer camcorders that make it possible to load a tape without removing the camera from your tripod. And they are pretty reasonably priced too. Check ‘em out.

Thanks Mitch!

We mentioned Hitachi’s 7K1000 1TB hard disk announcement earlier this year. The drive utilizes Perpendicular Recording Technology to achieve the necessary high areal densities (take that, Superparamagnetic Effect). Here are two reviews of the drives, from Anandtech and Extremetech. Also, here is a RAID specs update from Anandtech on the drive. Prices are currently hovering around $400 for the drive, or 0.40 cents/gb.

A nearest-sized competitor the new Hitachi drives would be Seagate’s 750GB Barracuda 7200.10 drives, which are currently around $250 at Amazon (approx 0.33 cents/gb).

Shane Ross has released a 90-min instructional DVD for FCP users on the subject of project setup, media management, and organization. It’s just 39.95 until June 1.

Mac Break has an interesting video interview with Kwesi Collisson producer for “Conversation With Other Women”. In this clip he details some of the After Effects composting the crew used to composite a shot they needed to re-shoot at a location they were unable to re-secure after principal photography wrapped. I think it is always interesting to see larger budget films using tools like After Effects, it just goes to show how mature this software has become over the last several years in my opinion. If you find this interesting there is an additional video that details some more of their production workflow, creating a film look for HD, and of course some more After Effects compositing fun!

There’s a tendency among some people in the online community to take the sharing of information online less seriously than they might for print or in person. I’m willing to bet that we’re all guilty of it from time to time. After all, how much damage could an erroneous or misleading blog article do? In most cases, not much. But a recent post at Engadget showed just how much influence the online community can wield.

“Apple stock dropped 2.2% today in mid-afternoon trading as Engadget published news based on a faked e-mail inside Apple. ‘Apparently an internal memo was sent to several Apple employees–and forwarded to Engadget–around 9am CT today saying that Apple issued a press release with the news that the iPhone was now scheduled for October, and Leopard was delayed until January. About an hour and a half after that e-mail went out, a second e-mail was sent–this time officially from Apple–saying the first e-mail was a fake, and that the delivery schedule for the iPhone and Leopard had not changed.”

That is worth repeating…2.2 PERCENT, people! That is 100% real monetary consequences. And this all happened even though Engadget posted a retraction in a mere 20 minutes! To be clear, this isn’t really Engadget’s fault, per se. At least I don’t believe so. It’s not like they can just call up Apple and confirm with the PR dept…this was an “inside tip” after all. And Apple is notorious for being close-lipped about company matters. And I don’t blame Engadget for posting the news immediately, that would be a major scoop. But it serves to show just how much power an online presence can carry, and reminds us all of the responsibility we have to take our audience seriously.

This fall, early adopters will have the storage and backup option of…holograms. It seems somewhat surreal, as holographic storage has been considered for nearly 40 years. And finally, it quietly arrives. The company first bringing a holo solution to market is InPhase Technologies, the system is called Tapestry. They’ve been working on the product for 13 years. And it’s a timely debut, considering our industry’s shift towards IT-based camera and footage acquisition systems. All that footage and data will need to be backed up. Holographic storage currently offers 160Mbit/sec data transfer rates, with improvements to come.

“Could magnetic tapes, hard drives and optical disc formats like Blu-ray be replaced by a data storage format that uses holograms? The world’s first commercial holographic storage system is launched this autumn, with the product able to store the equivalent of 64 DVD movies on a (write-once) disc about the size of a CD.”

“The first holographic products are certainly not mass-market - a 600GB disc will cost around $180 (£90), and the drive costs about $18,000. Potential users include banks, libraries, government agencies and corporations.”

Read more at the Guardian. Obviously, current transfer speeds are a limiting factor. And the price is also rather prohibitive. But InPhase is claiming a 50 year archival life for the media, which is a sight better than current optical disc backups. I wonder, will this mean that the Blu-ray and HD-DVD “generation” will be completely skipped over as a long-term mass-data backup solution?

Two new mass-storage options on the market. The Mercury Elite triple interface 2TB array is a $1100 solution in brushed aluminum with a Mac-inspired cheesegrater front grille. And Buffalo ups the ante with their 3TB TeraStation at a cool $2,499. Read on for all the juicy details.

On the tails of recent Advanced Access Content System volume key discovery efforts by the hacking community, the organization responsible for the AACS encryption on hi-def discs announced that next week new film releases and discs would feature a new (uncracked) volume key…which was then promptly cracked. This week. Before the revised keys have even hit shelves.

“AACS LA’s attempts to stifle dissemination of AACS keys and prevent hackers from compromising new keys are obviously meeting with extremely limited success. The hacker collective continues to adapt to AACS revisions and is demonstrating a capacity to assimilate new volume keys at a rate which truly reveals the futility of resistance. If keys can be compromised before HD DVDs bearing those keys are even released into the wild, one has to question the viability of the entire key revocation model“ (emphasis mine -MJ)

Why do I continue harping on this subject? To keep reminding FreshDV readers, many who are content producers and creators, that draconian DRM is not the answer. In this case it seems to be backfiring in a major way.

Spotted this one over at Little Frog in High Def. Off topic, sorta, but well worth a few minutes. The Professionals - Masters of Video, from Funny or Die. Watch below…
Continue reading ‘OT: Funny or Die - The Professionals’

FootageFirm is giving away footage of 25 major city skylines to the first 500 takers. It will cost you just $8.50 shipping and handling.

“The DVD contains skylines of 25 different US Cities, each 30-50 seconds in length, and the perfect addition to a stock footage library. The clips are in DV AVI format, 29.97fps, 720×480. The bonus high definition clip of the NYC skyline is 29.97fps, 1920×1080, Photo-JPEG QuickTime format.”

Cities include Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Washington DC, Detroit, Ft. Lauderdale, Los Angeles, Houston, Indianapolis, Tucson, Las Vegas, Miami, New York City, Oahu, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Fe, and Seattle.

Apple Compressor offers an option in the Inspector window to run a Applescript on that file following the encode process, called “Execute action on output.” And if you’ve never considered how to take advantage of that feature, here’s a handy tutorial. The author includes an example Applescript that will automatically upload the freshly-encoded file via FTP. Too cool.

Thanks Mitch!

Okay everyone this is your opportunity to help us take our next step forward in the development of FreshDV. The last few months have been a whirlwind of activities and ideas for the site. We would like your ideas on what improvements to FreshDV you would like to see, and any additional articles, tips, tutorials, or features you would like to see incorporated into the site. Let us hear what you have to say and drop me a line at Kendal@lmpstudios.com.

On May 20th, Art Lebedev Studio will begin accepting limited pre-orders on the highly-anticipated Optimus Maximus OLED Keyboard. “OLED” refers to the individual Organic LED displays on each key of the keyboard that can display any image or character that you choose. This makes the Maximus extremely versatile and configurable. Consider the possibilities of a keyboard that displays your NLE shortcuts when you are working in that software, but then switches on the fly to accomodate other programs, say Photoshop. Very useful.

Like all things in life, you get what you pay for…the estimated retail price of the Maximus is $1500. They have posted a price comparison of theirs vs a bundle of other high-dollar non-standard keyboards (some really cool models there that I’ve not seen before). Lebedev anticipates that the first 200 models will be completed by the end of November ‘07 and shipping before the new year.