Killer Camera Rigs (The Complete DIY Guide)
By Kendal Miller
FreshDV.com

$39.95
Dan Selakovich
www.dvcamerarigs.com

This review is for all those out there like myself who take great joy in saving a few bucks and creating and customizing your own rigs. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the book “Killer Camera Rigs,” now might be a good time to do so. This book is distributed as an e-book which while you may print it and take it out to your workshop, might be easier to use if it were actually in print. The guide assumes you have some degree of competence with basic hand tools and power tools…and if you don’t, chances are that this may be over your head.
Continue reading ‘Killer Camera Rigs (The Complete DIY Guide)’

MOTU announced their new all in one V3hd Firewire Input/Output interface for video and audio today, and at first glance it looks very impressive! This realtime hardware device offers a staggering number of input and output options on the box, which also connects to your editing workstation via a single firewire cable. All functions can be controlled via software on a PC or Mac (FCP and Premiere Pro support) and also via a multi-use rotary knob on the front of the unit. In fact, the V3HD can be used completely as a standalone converter box with no computer connection required. That same control knob can be used to tweak volume monitoring AND output levels if necessary. There is a physical timecode display on the unit, and programmable metering. The software offers control via a intuitive graphical display showing the HD and SD signal path. Click the thumbnails to see all the input/output ports and options in detail, as well as a software screenshot.

The Motu V3HD can ingest any source and send it to the workstation over firewire in Uncompressed SD or DVCPRO, DVCPRO 50 and DVCPRO HD. Uncompressed HD is not an option, unfortunately, as it simply won’t fit over firewire. The V3HD preserves timecode on capture, so timecode-accurate HDMI or HDV captures could be transcoded to DVCPRO HD on the fly. The unit offers a host of monitoring options, basically anything you can think of. Monitor via HDMI, HD-SDI, Component, etc. Or all at once…
Continue reading ‘MOTU V3HD All-In-One Video Audio I/O FW Interface’

The 2007 “Todos en alta” High Definition Cinema and Video Conference will be held this year in Zaragoza, Spain. Spanning three days, the conference begins on June 28 and continues through July 1.

The conference will feature Rick McCallum from Lucas Ltd for a talk about the future of digital cinema. The BBC and FOX will host workshops on HDTV, and there will be digital screenings of Star Wars, 300, and Superman Returns. A number of digital cinema companies will be present for hands-on evaluation and testing, including Panavision Genesis, Sony F23, Dalsa, Phantom HD, Silicon Imaging, HPX500, and others. For more information, check the official website.

For those of you who haven’t had the chance to check it out yet, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates recently sat down with Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg at the D5: All Things Digital Conference to discuss their respective companies and technology in general. A fascinating and rare look into the lives of these two pioneers who have changed the landscape of technology forever. You can watch the entire full length interview via itunes here. Definitely worth the time for anyone interested in media or technology in general.

As most of you are well aware of by now Red Digital Cinema previewed their “Crossing The Line“ demo footage at NAB Expo this year, which just so happened to be shot by seasoned director Peter Jackson. FreshDV brought you the Red Video Podcast interview with “Leader of the Rebellion” Ted Schilowitz and a great little segment with DP Richard Bluck.

Red Digital Cinema has now released an article detailing a review by Peter Jackson himself as published by “ONFILM” magazine. Its an interesting evolution to have a respected member of the filmmaking community with the experience level of Peter Jackson lend his opinion to both Red and the digital cinema revolution. Check it out below.
Continue reading ‘Interview With Peter Jackson on Red Digital Cinema’

 Nikon Lens Tests with SG Pro and HVX200 (LARGE) [2:16m]: Download
 Nikon Lens Tests with SG Pro and HVX200 (SMALL) [2:16m]: Download

Matt Garrett and Bruce Allen recently conducted a series of Nikon lens tests with a SGPro 35mm adapter mounted to a Panasonic HVX-200. They tested the 17-35mm f/2.8, 35mm f/1.4, 85mm f/1.8, 105mm f/2.0, 135mm f/2.0, and 180mm f/2.8 Nikon lenses. That’s quite a lineup of glass!

My first impression is that the footage is quite sharp, and exhibits a minimal amount of vignetting, both which are potential problem areas for 35mm adapter systems. We’ve arranged with Bruce and Matt to host the files here so all you video-hungry FreshDV hordes don’t drive up their bandwidth bill.

You can view the test results for yourself using either the 640×360 22MB small version, or the full-res 1280×720 version which weighs in at 367MB. Thanks guys, for taking the time to do the lens testing and sharing your results with the community.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, you have probably heard of the C-A-N-O-N HV-20 “consumer” camcorder that sports a incredible image quality that some say rivals the big boys. Yeah, that camera. Digital Trends has a review of the HV20, and like most reviewers they came away impressed. They rated it 8.5 out of 10, stating “It seems Canon took the complaints about the HV10 to heart and solved most of them…â€?

We’ve mentioned the cute little HDV Camcorder That Could quite a few times here at FreshDV lately.

The HV20 is available for $1049 from B&H and $1039 from Amazon.com. Purchases made via those links are a big help and directly benefit FreshDV.

(Via Digital Camcorder News)

Mark your calendar for next Wednesday, June 13. At 9:00 PM Central FreshDV will be hosting our first official LIVE video interactive session. We’re calling it FreshTV, and it is the beginning of some exciting changes here. We’ve been looping a series of tutorials and general-interest content on FreshTV for a few days now, as you may have noticed.

We’ll begin the live videocast at 9PM by showing a few exciting tools and products we are working with, including the hot new Ikan HD monitor, Cinevate Brevis 35mm adapter system, Zacuto’s handheld HVX rig, and the Bartech BFD remote focus device (to name a few). At approximately 9:30 we’ll start taking questions via a embedded chat box and e-mail.

How can you participate, you ask?
1. Bookmark www.freshdv.com/freshtv/.
2. Ensure you have Adobe Flash 9 installed for your browser of choice.
3. Tune in at 9:00 PM Central Time on Wednesday June 13, 2007.

TED Talks presents another fantastic “look what’s coming” app called Photosynth. The creator Blaise Aguera y Arcas shows some of the amazing possibilities, it really has to be seen.

“Using photos of oft-snapped subjects (like Notre Dame) scraped from around the Web, Photosynth creates breathtaking multidimensional spaces with zoom and navigation features that outstrip all expectation.”

What’s really cool is that they are beautifully leveraging “the cloud”, the social community (in this case, Flickr) to source all the images that Photosynth then intelligently stitches together. Watch the video below.
Continue reading ‘Photosynth Leverages Flickr to Generate 3D Models’

Keyboard Magazine has a feature article entitled “Linux: It’s Not Just For Computer Geeks Anymore“ that delves specifically into Audio Production on the Linux platform. While I don’t believe the article as a whole quite delivers what the title suggests, they do present a nice summary of the better audio-related applications and options for the GNU/Linux platform.

 GPVA NAB 2007 Roundup [10:43m]: Download
 GPVA NAB 2007 Roundup [10:43m]: Download

Recently myself and fellow FreshDV editor Kendal were live video guests at a Greater Philadelphia Videographers Association meeting. We did a short Q&A with GPVA members and also presented a 10-minute NAB 2007 “Roundup” video. The video features many of the interesting, unique, and essential products we ran across at the tradeshow. Stuff that is highly relevant and timely for independent videographers and production companies. It was a tall order to cram all that info into such a short timeframe, so we figured it would be a waste not to share it with our loyal FreshDV readers. So here it is. I’ve listed a summary of all the products we covered in this clip after the jump.

I would be remiss not to also mention two companies that very kindly created promotions for readers in association with our NAB Roundup. Videoguys donated a complete Edius Pro 4 Wedding Editors bundle as a doorprize for the May GPVA meeting, and have also generously created a Free Shipping discount. And Nattress provided members with a 15% discount off ANY filter package purchases at nattress.com. Both of those promotions are still available.

Click the Download links above or watch via our FreshDV iTunes Podcast Feed.
Continue reading ‘NAB Video Podcast - GPVA 10-Minute NAB Roundup’

Specialized Communications announced today that the eagerly-anticipated product CinePorter will not go into production.

“Due to lack of market interest, the CinePorter will NOT be going into production. With the introduction of larger P2 Cards and lower prices, the P2 lineup no longer needs a product such as the CinePorter.”

(Via Little Frog in High Def)

 NAB 2007 Wrapup [1:17:44m]: Download

Mike Curtis, the high-definition guru behind HD For Indies recently sat down with FreshDV to discuss the big trends and what he found exciting at NAB this year. We also delve into Mike’s unique consultancy work for filmmakers and common (perfectly-avoidable) digital filmmaking and acquisition mistakes.

NAB discussion topics include the Red One camera, Red Digital Cinema’s 4K projectors and pocket cam, the Apple Final Cut Studio/Color/Motion updates, ProRes 422 and conversion options, Sony XDCAM EX and other low-cost tapeless options vs HDV, AJA IO-HD, Avid’s DNxHD and Scriptsync, Dalsa Origin camera, SI-2K camera, and the new Canon-specific adapter from P&S Technik. Plus you get to hear Mike’s soliloquy on Codecs and Flowers…

Click the Download link above or listen via our FreshDV iTunes Podcast Feed.

FCS 2 has a new feature called SmoothCam. It’s a filter in Final Cut that will smooth out those shaky shots. Not only does it work on clips in your timeline like any other filter, you can also drop the filter on clips in your project/browser window and it will analyze the clip in the background. That’s right…you can keep working on the timeline as it processes behind the scenes. That is killer.

So last week Create Digital Motion posted the first SmoothCam test/tutorial I’ve seen online. They realized very quickly that HDV footage requires horrendous processing times with that filter unless you first export the clip into some other codec, they are suggesting ProRes 422. Some video examples shared as well.

Scott Simmons followed suit soon thereafter with his extensive SmoothCam test, complete with examples. And then updated the test with a head to head comparison vs competing NLE’s. Thanks for the hard work, Scott!

ArtBollocks refers to the way “artists” justify what they do by means of pretentious, overly complex and fanciful descriptions validating whatever creative decision they have finally chosen to take. For instance…video in black and white. Is it poor white balance and lack of color correction skills…or “Art”? Are you guilty? Join the discussion.