The digital revolution has given way to exposing the world to many great things. But there has also been various negative events exposed to the light of day thanks to the growing number of devices that can capture digital video. For instance, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was exposed due to personal digital cameras. The only footage of the 2004 Asian tsunami was captured by tourists via home video cameras and the London train bombings were documented via cell phones.
The convenience of digital video has even spawned a new human rights group called Witness, which is based in New York. Gillian Caldwell, executive director of the group says, "images have more resonance" which explains the group's motto: "See it. Film it. Change it." Right now they have over 3,000 hours of footage of human rights abuses and they are hoping to create a YouTube like site for human rights. Caldwell said rights groups are increasingly harnessing the "power of images and human stories to motivate change." All thanks to the democratization of digital video.
Movie scenes, especially action sequences, are influenced by the sound effects added in post. For example, in a fight scene the punches can be off by a foot or more but what really sells the illusion is the sound effect of a hard, fleshy hit.
Lots of research has gone into placing the right sound effect at the right time, but what if a completely different sound effect was applied? Would it change our perception of what we see on the screen? That is what Adam Ecker and Laurie Heller sought out to answer. What they found was that depth perception is influenced not only by visual phenomena such as shadows, binocular disparity, and object size, but also by sound. Good to know especially for those action scenes.
Creating a timelapse movie can be daunting especially when you will be committing lots of time to your subject. A distracting side-effect that distorts the time-lapse illusion is flicker, such as parts of the scene that are lighter or darker in each frame. Granite Bay software has an informative guide on what causes flicker in time-lapse as well as cures to fix it. They even have a free Deflicker plugin for Adobe After Effects or Premiere because sometimes you can do everything right and still wind up with flickering footage.
To the right is a screen grab from the credits of Children of Men which used a sample from the Free Sound Project. The sample is "male loud scream" and is probably the first time a major motion picture used Creative Commons content with proper accreditation. So what is the Free Sound Project? Only the biggest database of free snippits, samples, and remixes available to anyone to download and reuse as they see fit. Go Children of Men. And if you want to see more behind the scenes stuff about the movie, check out our previous post.
As DV Gurus it is only natural to thirst for a behind the scene look behind a shoot. Flickr has an On the Set Film/Video group with over 1,900 photos for your "how'd they do that?" cravings. Ok some of them aren't that relevant/interesting but just look at all of those sweetset-ups. And if you have some behind the scenes photos from your latest production, add them to the pool.
They say you should wear your heart on your sleeve, but what about your whole upper body? Film Tees produces shirts especially for filmmakers out of Paul Zadie's (founder of Film Tees) frustration for lack of quality filmmaking clothing. Tell the world you are the boss with a director t-shirt. Why do you make movies? Because it is all about the story. Or throw most people off with a picture of a C47 clip for you lighting gurus. Whatever your message any one of these shirts would make a good Valentines Day gift for any filmmaker you know, and it is good to find someone producing specific clothing for a specific audience.
Besides the actual invention of movies itself, the next best innovation was adding sound to the picture. How they did this is probably a little hard to comprehend in this day and age let alone in 1929. Fleischer Studios, the animators of Popeye, Betty Boop, as well as Superman, made an educational cartoon to explain to the world how sound becomes joined to motion pictures.
It is certainly entertaining to see how they captured sound waves and transferred them to film. And the beauty of this piece is it is in the public domain so you can download a very high quality MPEG-2 version and do whatever you want with it. Lucky for us, the Vintage Tooncast has gone through all of the trouble of converting it to a Flash movie so you can watch it in a jiffy. But if you want to download a beefier version, then check out the Internet Archive.
P.S. If you like classic cartoons like this, the Vintage Tooncast has quite a collection.
Guy Cochran from DVCreators.net reviews the Rode to recording package. If you are looking for a kit that has everything you need to capture great sounding audio, then listen up. This comes with:
(1) RODE NT1-A Microphone
(2) EVENT ALP 5 Biamp Powered Monitors (studio speakers for the laymen)
(1) PRESONUS INSPIRE Firewire Audio Interface
(1) STEINBERG CUBASE LE
(1) SONY ACID XMC
(1) PRO PAK Software Suite
(2) 10' premium RCA cables
(1) 25' premium Mic Cable
(1) RODE TRIPOD tabletop mic stand
(1) Comprehensive Setup Manual
At the end of the episode Guy gives you a taste of what it sounds like and it sure sounds beautiful. What would you expect to pay for something like this? $2,000? $1,000? How about $750 from the DV Creators store. He certainly makes a persuading case.
What's the biggest hot button topic right now? DRM. It's all over next gen gaming consoles, new operating systems, and even strung through out HD DVD and Blu-ray discs/players. Security expert Steve Gibson takes an inside look at AACS, the most invasive system for digital rights management ever created. Ever wonder why it takes so long for next gen DVD players to recognize a disc? It is all of the security hoops the system has to hop through. If you were ever curious at all about how this DRM stuff works, this podcast should go straight to the top of your playlist.
Download the MP3 or listen through our player. (Running time: 1:05:53)
Blu-ray was out in full force today at CES with numerous announcements. First up, HP announced it's first Blu-ray burner, the BD135. All we know about it is it will ship sometime in the first half of the year. Second,all of the top Blu-rayers gathered together for their press event held today with representatives from Warner and Disney among others. Their big announcement, victory over HD DVD. How can they make this bold claim?
Only 4 of the top 20 next gen DVDs were HD DVD.
Blu-ray holds 96% of Japan market.
The PS3 seems to be the pillar of confidence for Blu-ray with numerous surveys indicating many plan to use the PS3 as their primary DVD player.
These "facts" sound a bit dubious to me, but it is good to see the association is kicking with confidence. Too bad no one else seems to be enjoying the format war as much as these guys. Check out the full transcript from the event.
Being Monday morning CES has officially kicked off. But over the weekend there were more annoucements of new camcorders then you could shake a stick at. Luckily, Camcorder Info has been following all of the action and even compiling this handy guide for the latest camera news coming out of Vegas. Be sure to check it out throughout the week for every announcement, but you can be sure DV Guru will keep you posted on the bigger announcements.
RCA introduced a rather affordable MPEG-4 digital camcorder coming in at $129. The camera is not much larger than a pack of cards and features a 1.5 inch LCD screen that can swivel 180 degrees. The biggest draw back is the lack of rechargeable battery so instead expect to feed this thing 2 AA batteries for a meager 2 hours of power. The device is aimed at the cameraphobic as it can connect directly to the TV and requires no software to connect to a PC. There was also talk from RCA about a DVD dock so users can burn DVDs and totally bypass the PC. Expect to see the camera sometime this spring and the DVD dock sometime later. (via Engadget)
JVC is wasting no time announcing newcamcorders but we saved the best for last. Today JVC announced a full 1080i, 3-CCD, hard-drive camcorder aimed at consumers. What sets the JVC unit apart from the crowd is the inclusion of a Fujinon lens commonly used in many high end professional camera systems. More specs include:
(3) 1/5-inch CCDs
Total pixels: 2032 x 1116 (equivalent to 2.27 million pixels)
Number of effective pixels: 1952 x 1096 (equivalent to 2.14 million pixels)
16:9 aspect ratio
Expect to see the HD Everio GZ-HD7 sometime in April. The price wasn't mentioned but my guess would be around the $1,000 mark. According to CamcorderInfo.com this thing will go for $1799. Boy was I off. CamcorderInfo also got their hands on a picture.
It's 2007 so out with the old and in with the new. JVC announced an update to their Everio G Series camcorders complete with four new models. All 2007 models feature One-Touch DVD burning and PC backup, basic in-camera editing and organization, and support for SDHC so you can use the newer, higher capacity SD cards for recording. Most of the new cams will support the docking station which provides battery charging and a firewire port out. The breakdown of the four new camcorders looks like this:
The digital revolution has given way to exposing the world to many great things. But there has also been various negative events exposed to the light of day thanks to the growing number of devices that can capture digital video. For instance, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was exposed due to personal digital cameras. The only footage of the 2004 Asian tsunami was captured by tourists via home video cameras and the London train bombings were documented via cell phones. 
Creating a timelapse movie can be daunting especially when you will be committing lots of time to your subject. A distracting side-effect that distorts the time-lapse illusion is flicker, such as parts of the scene that are lighter or darker in each frame. Granite Bay software has an 
To the right is a screen grab from the credits of Children of Men which used a sample from the 
As DV Gurus it is only natural to thirst for a behind the scene look behind a shoot. Flickr has an 
Besides the actual invention of movies itself, the next best innovation was adding sound to the picture. How they did this is probably a little hard to comprehend in this day and age let alone in 1929. Fleischer Studios, the animators of Popeye, Betty Boop, as well as Superman, made an educational cartoon to explain to the world how sound becomes joined to motion pictures.
Guy Cochran from 
What's the biggest hot button topic right now? DRM. It's all over next gen gaming consoles, new operating systems, and even strung through out HD DVD and Blu-ray discs/players. Security expert Steve Gibson takes an inside look at AACS, the most invasive system for digital rights management ever created. Ever wonder why it takes so long for next gen DVD players to recognize a disc? It is all of the security hoops the system has to hop through. If you were ever curious at all about how this DRM stuff works, this podcast should go straight to the top of your playlist. 
Blu-ray was out in full force today at CES with numerous announcements.
Being Monday morning CES has officially kicked off. But over the weekend there were more annoucements of 
JVC is wasting no time announcing 
