JBQ and I were speculating last Sunday about the new RED DSLR. The only information we have about this product is what RED’s founder, billionaire but otherwise really cool geek guy, Jim Jannard said: ” ‘revolution’ applies more to this than the RED ONE did to cinema”.

JBQ knows a lot more about photography than I do, and he believes that it’s not much that RED could do to take away market share from the Canon, Nikon and other $1000 to $4000 market space. These markets are saturated and they can do pretty much everything there is to do, and this is why we now see these models come out with HD video (’cause they ran out of really neat still features). You can’t really compete in that market, especially with no compatible lenses.

So he believes that RED is not going against that prosumer market, but the high-end pro one. Against the Hasselblads that is. They could aim for a 45-47mm size rather than the traditional 35mm ones, possibly a non-reflex camera, could employ some clever mosaic technology, and shoot 60 megapixels or more. While currently we have medium/large format cameras that can shoot lots of MP, they cost anything between $20,000 and $40,000 a pop. RED can offer something at around $10,000 or $12,000, and literally kill both the expensive Hasselblad and sister models on one side, and Canon’s 1DS high-end camera on the other side.

In the DSLR dance around HD video lately, the new Canon 5D is the king: full 1080/30p and mic input, among other niceties. It seems to not have most of the problems found on the Nikon D90 (like exposure jumps while panning), and rolling shutter and focusing seems not to be a huge problem either. In other words, this is one cool camera, with amazing video quality. I just hope that its A/V output can work while recording so we can use external monitors.

My only problem with the camera, and I mean, really the only problem, is the fact that it captures video at 30.00 fps instead of 29.97 and 23.976. This means no 24p, making it useless to indie filmmakers, and also, the 30/1001 difference in the 30p frame rate creates ghosting when imported into a video editor like Vegas, because editors resample instead of re-timing (and then just resample the audio instead of the video). And this is a huge problem, believe me. It’s bad because most people won’t know about this and would drop the files in the timeline as-is. And when their (usually NTSC) output is ready, they won’t understand why the hell there’s ghosting in the final footage.

I hope that the photography department of Canon gets a clue and offer us 29.97 (NTSC), 25.00 (PAL), 24.00 (film) and 23.976 (IVTC film) fps choice. This is very easy to fix with a firmware upgrade, so I hope Canon listens. Unfortunately, from what we’ve seen in the past (e.g. with PF24’s lack of attributes), Canon doesn’t actually listen.

If Canon was to fix this small inconvenience, I think JBQ’s current Canon 5D would be at eBay right now, in search of some capital towards the new 5D.

Update: I just called Canon about the 5D-MII at 1-800-828-4040 (in US, press the 3rd option) and the guy was very helpful. When I mentioned that I needed REAL 29.97 (instead of 30.00 fps), and 25, 24, and 23.976 fps options, and how important that is for proper video editing (29.97), and for indie filmmakers (24p), he wrote everything down to the company’s INTRANET feedback form. I suggest everyone interested in that camera doing so too! It’s a free call, it only took me 2 minutes, and they were very receptive for the feedback!

I spent the night searching for music videos that were shot on either the HV20 or HV30, and added them to a new group on Vimeo. The music videos must look like there was an effort to make them look professional, rather than just one-take random live shots, in order to be added to the group.

I estimate that there are about ~100 music videos shot for promotional reasons using the HV20/30 cameras, which confirms the revolution these little cheap gems brought to the amateur filmmaking. Also, most of these videos were shot with the HV20 rather than the HV30. The few videos missing from this collection can be found on Youtube.

According to the “Guinness World Records 2009″ book edition, “Lost” is now the most downloaded show of all time. Take that CSI:Miami, most watched show on TV worldwide, that you only get 60+ year old viewers who can’t get bothered to change the channel.

This just shows what kind of people watch “Lost”. Not boring, unintelligent, people that is.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Asian people. But their software practices suck. Sure, not all Asian companies are like that (there are some real pro software companies in Japan and India), but most of the rest, suck big time in the way they work and offer software solutions.

Such examples are all too common to ignore: viruses in mp3 players, media player gadgets that feel that they were designed by 3 year olds, super buggy software in general etc. As a reviewer who has seen lots of gadgets in my time, failure is what I expect from no-name or semi-noname Asian products when it comes to software.

The latest snafus come from Asus and MSI. Read and weep. The reason why these things happened is because of how most of these companies work: an engineer develops a version of the OS/firmware, and takes it home to test it further in his work/personal laptop, and one good day he goes to his boss and says: “it’s stable-enough, release it. Here’s the ISO image you need, from my laptop, it’s pretty stable, I’ve used it“. And so that used version (with cracks, porn, viruses and the like), ends up in end-production.

What many of these companies lack is process. It is also a cultural thing. They don’t take software seriously. Software doesn’t make them money directly, hardware is. Software for them is an after-thought. This is the philosophy they have. And this is why Samsung and LG’s touchscreen phones suck compared to the iPhone. Because these guys don’t get it.

PINK the series, season 2 started a few days ago. Good stuff from Blake:

Also, don’t miss these two Tom Cruise impersonations, they are amazing! Down to the voice!

Second part here.

If you are a cinematography enthusiast, then you should definitely buy the Blu-Ray disc of “The Fall“. It’s shot with a Velvia-like film, and it looks fantastic. The director of photography did an amazing job, and if that’s not all, the movie and story-telling itself is something.

Apple released last month a Windows decoder for their ProRes intermediate, visually lossless, codec. Quicktime 7.5.5 also includes the decoder, although there is no encoder for Windows.

This release is actually godsend, as it can help with the interoperability of various platforms. Here’s a scenario for video editor workers need to collaborate with Linux, Windows and Macs, but they don’t want to use uncompressed footage.

Mac: Final Cut Studio, Avid Codecs LE freeware, and the freeware Perian codecs installed.
Windows: Huffyuv, Avid Codecs LE freeware, Lagarith, and Quicktime 7.5.5 installed.
Linux: FFmpeg or Mencoder encoder installed.

Exporting from Mac to Windows: Use ProRes or Avid DNxHD.
Exporting from Windows to Mac: Use Huffyuv in YUY2 mode or Avid DNxHD.
Exporting from Linux to Windows: Use Huffyuv in YUY2 mode.
Exporting from Windows to Linux: Use Huffyuv in YUY2 mode.
Exporting from Linux to Mac: Use Huffyuv in YUY2 mode.
Mac to Mac: ProRes, Avid DNxHD, or the less good AIC.
Windows to Windows: Huffyuv in YUY2 mode, Avid DNxHD or Lagarith RGB/YUY2.
Linux to Linux: Huffyuv in YUY2 mode.

Exporting from Mac to Linux: You will have to either use uncompressed, or export with the Mac version of Lagarith (in RGB mode), load it on a Windows PC (which should also have Lagarith installed), and then use either a Windows video editor or mencoder that can read “Video for Windows” AVI files (so it can read your Lagarith Mac file), and export in Huffyuv in YUY2 mode. Then this Huffyuv file would be readable by Linux. Expect color shifts in all those re-encodings, although no major quality degradation.

This nice vegetarian dish, which a variant I had today for lunch, only has 200 calories.

Ingredients (for 1)
* 45 gr of Ronzoni Healthy Harvest penne rigate (140 cals)
* 1 small onion or shallot, chopped (4 cals)
* 1 clove of garlic, minced (2 cals)
* 10 thin slices of zucchini, cut into halves (5 cals)
* 50 gr of red, yellow and green bell peppers, coarsely chopped (16 cals)
* 1/2 cup of fat-free vegetable (or chicken) broth (8 cals)
* A half of a big tomato (15 cals)
* 40 gr of eggplant (10 cals)
* Black pepper to taste
* 0 calorie non-stick spray

Execution
1. Cook pasta as per instructions, drain, set aside.
2. In a cooking pan, spray with the non-stick spray. Add the onion, zucchini & peppers and stir fry until the vegetables become softer and brown-ish.
3. Grate the tomato and eggplant using a cheese grater. Add both into the cooking pan.
4. Add the minced garlic, black pepper and vegetable broth. Cover, and simmer for a few minutes until there is almost no liquid left in the pan.
5. Toss the pasta in, mix well, serve, and enjoy.