Schneider Optics is now offering their well known and liked diffusion filters in easy to install round sizes.  Read on for more details.

Schneider Optic’s renowned Classic Soft®, HD Classic Soft®, Black Frost™, and Hollywood Black Magic diffusion filters are now available in popular round sizes specifically for today’s leading SLR, digital SLR and DV cameras.

A favorite tool of Hollywood cinematographers thanks to their ability to “hide the trick,” Schneider precision optical glass diffusion filters are routinely requested by top talent who appreciate looking their best. And getting the image right in-camera also means big savings over costly, time-consuming post-editing. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been having an interesting conversation with school instructor Dylan Bennett over a blog post I made on Monday about a viral video on YouTube.

The video is a well choreographed piece by film students in Montreal using a popular song.

Mr. Bennett was commenting about how, as a video production instructor, he strives to teach his students not only the video producing skills and techniques but also the rules and ethics that go along with being a video producer.

We often write in Videomaker about how legally and ethically one shouldn’t use copyright music without permission,  and how, even recently, YouTube has taken down people’s fun videos because they used 10-seconds of a song without permission from the copyright holder.  But, apparently, the rules are changing.

Mr. Bennett sent me this blog post that Google put up this week, saying it’s OK to use copyright music, TV shows, or other approved media on YouTube… “if”… and it’s a big IF.  If the record company/TV network/copyright holder sees a financial benefit to them.

Read the rest of this entry »

Part of my duty as Technical Editor here is wrangling the annual Best Products of the Year. Basically, any product that has passed through our doors is fair game, but the products must do what they do very well. It can get sticky from year to year and from category to category, but we always make it happen.

Nine of our 16-or-so categories have been chosen (no, I’m not telling you which ones.) In a break from years past, we are running the Best Products of the Year in the January issue this year. So think of it as a second holiday gift guide, if you will–we start with the camcorder buyer’s guide in December, and the Best Products story in January, combined with our first-ever pocket camcorder buyer’s guide (you know, those little cams that look like cell phones? Yeah, those. Generally speaking, the ones with fixed focus and no optical zoom that otherwise wouldn’t qualify to run in the full buyer’s guide.)

Anyway–back to writing copy. But we hope you enjoyed that little preview of what’s coming up. Stick with us in ’10… we think you’ll like what you see. (And if you need to renew, give our friendly customer service reps a buzz at 1-800-284-3226!)

Here’s a well-choreographed fun video you gotta see. A one-take music video to the tune “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas. The camera begins outside a building on the University Montreal Quebec’s campus, and then travels through out the building, hovering down hallways, peeking into classrooms, gliding up stairs and down, finally finishing in the TV/film department’s studio… with more than 170 students performing and lip-syncing… all in just one take. Read the rest of this entry »

The office is bustling, here at Videomaker, as we prepare for our upcoming workshops. The weekend of October 9^th is coming up fast and we couldn’t be more excited. For the first time ever, we’re offering an Intensive Lighting Workshop, as well as our Basics of Video Production Workshop.

Our Basics of Video Production Workshop is a start-to-finish course on movie making. This is a great way for beginners to become familiar with the equipment and the processes involved when telling a story with video.

For those of you who already have a grasp on the basics of video production, the Intensive Lighting Workshop will allow you to build upon your production skills and knowledge by focusing on light theory, equipment and techniques.

If you’ve been to one of our workshops you know that it’s a great way to get hands-on experience with professional equipment, learn new techniques and work with people who are as enthusiastic about movie making as you.

It’s not too late to sign up, so if you have never attended one of our workshops, or just want to build upon your previous experience, now is as good of a time as any to join in on the fun.

Click here for more information on attending a Videomaker Workshop

An interesting article on CNET contemplates what is going on with the Voodoo brand, which was acquired by HP in 2006. The brand has been much less active compared to, say, Dell’s Alienware brand (coincidentally, acquired by Dell in ’06), which has remained fairly active by comparison.

When HP found Voodoo, Voodoo was a game system builder (that also happened to make some systems that were very capable of editing video.) Their claim to fame were systems that were highly optimized. Some features trickled into HP’s (numerous) other product lines, but unlike another HP-owned brand (Compaq), you’ll be hard-pressed to find any Voodoo references on HP’s Web site. However, Voodoo‘s Web site is alive and well, with several HP stamps present, but there are only two products (the Envy 133 notebook and the Firebird desktop).

Alienware’s Web site is quite active by comparison; there are two base models of laptop and two base models of desktop. We’ve reviewed Alienware iron in the past and it has always been very solid; we wouldn’t expect that much has changed there. Dell hasn’t trumpeted that a lot of Alienware innovations have trickled into other product lines (e.g. Precision, XPS) but it seems like many have gotten there.

Have PCs gotten to a point where we don’t really need the premium brands anymore? We began noticing that several years ago, it got to the point where pretty much any computer off the shelf can edit video, though for the best performance (shortest rendering times, etc.) you still need to change the stock configuration to switch to a faster processor, more robust storage, etc. Luckily, this is not a big deal to pull off. (The lackluster economy is almost certainly not helping the case for a premium PC, either.)