Shooting and working in 4K is nothing new to professional film makers and compositors, but with the announcement of the JVC GY-HMQ10 being priced at under $5,000, 4K is finally within reach of prosumer and hobbyist videographers. However, most TVs and computer monitors will still max out at 1080p, so what’s the point? Personally, I don’t see 4096 × 3112 pixel TVs entering the average American’s living room any time soon, since if you’re sitting ten feet from the screen, the TV will have to be 80 inches before you’ll be able to see the difference between 4k and 1080p.

Even if your final output is still 1920×1080, you’re still going to get quite a bit of use out of 4k footage once you’re in post production. 4K footage is a whopping four times as many pixels as 1080p, and if you’ve ever had the experience of editing HD footage down to a final SD output, you know those extra pixels are a glorious luxury to have. It’s not uncommon to have a shot you’d like to crop and re-frame in post, and if you have four times the pixels, the amount of flexibility you have is enormous.

Additionally, shooting high resolution for green screen keying will make your keying process much simpler. With four times the data, your keying software should have an easier time differentiating the green pixels you want to key from the edges of your subject. Similarly, if you plan on doing any motion tracking, a more detailed image should help your tracker to stay on the points you’ve defined.

Now for the bad news. Much higher resolution images means much bigger files. The JVC GY-HMQ10 shoots to a variable bit rate h.264 file, which should be manageable, but if you’re editing in Final Cut Pro and have to trans-code to ProRes, file sizes are going to be enormous. If storage is a problem, plan on shooting in 4k selectively, and sticking to 1080p for the bulk of your footage.

It’s worth noting that with files being compressed to h.264, much of the color data will be lost. We’re excited to get our hands on some GY-HMQ10 footage to see exactly what we can do with it.

If you’ve ever directed or set up a live event, you know how hard it can be to find reliable and affordable camera operators. Though there is nothing that can beat a knowledgeable camera operator, Panasonic has come close with it’s new AW-HE120 pan and tilt camcorder. Their camcorder can mount to any surface and give a video feed and remote control ability to a director making multi-cam events easier and cheaper than ever to pull off.

Panasonic made this camera 60% lighter than their previous offering, making the camera mountable on almost any surface.  In order to get a video feed, the camera can be connected through HDMI and a standard Ethernet cable. The HDMI gives a high quality 1080/59.94p video feed while the Ethernet cable allows a director to control every aspect about the camera from a distance. The camera also comes with a 20x zoom range so that you can mount it in the back of a room and still achieve excellent close up shots, has a 2.2 megapixel U.L.T. 3-MOS sensor (in true Panasonic style), and has three different ND filters – 1/4, 1/16, and 1/64. Though the ND filters seem like a bit of an overkill given that the camera will almost always be mounted indoors, it did include some excellent engineering with a pan range of -175 degrees to 175 degrees and a tilt range of -30 degrees to 210 degrees meaning that this little beauty has more flexibility than an owl.

For those needing to mount the camera to a white ceiling, the unit comes in pearl white though a black metallic model can be bought for theatrical occasions. Panasonic will be shipping this item in what they call “winter” so expect it to come out shortly before CES in January.  The suggested retail price is $8,900, making it clear that Panasonic is targeting the house of worship and theater markets with this product. However, if you’re finding it hard to get quality camera operators for a fair price, this could be the product you’ve been waiting for.

On-line sources for video content of all sorts, from artistic to instructional to experimental, are multiplying at a dizzying pace. Video collaboration, particularly collaboration “in the cloud,” is a quickly maturing concept.  And behind these sites for online video collaboration is the basic motivation for film makers and graphic artists to find new muses and wider audiences. Clearly there is no shortage of inspiration for those of us who are as passionate about video as we are about music, art, science, technology, and more. One of my favorite sources for such inspiration is the exceptional TED.com.

TED talks have been around for a long time now and many of us are in the habit of regularly visiting TED.com to check out the latest on-line releases. On a recent web surfing excursion to TED, I came across an extraordinary piece featuring an exhilarating example of collaborative on-line video editing. (Videomaker has blogged on this topic recently: see Daniel Bruns’ excellent blog posted August 8^th on the phenomenon of leveraging HTML5 for music video production by bands like OK Go, Arcade Fire, and Danger Mouse.) Some of you are likely very familiar with Aaron Koblin’s work. Koblin’s TED talk, “Artfully Envisioning Our Humanity” posted this past May is a marvel.  If you haven’t already, you really need to check out Koblin’s TED talk.

Koblin has built an online environment wherein artists and videographers can contribute to a collaborative video featuring the late Johnny Cash’s final recording Aint No Grave (Can Hold My Body Down). It’s an astute choice, not only because this is a wonderful version of this song about living on through one’s legacy. Cash has been missed by many of us since his death in 2003. Koblin’s choice of Aint No Grave is also astute because there is no “holding down” the creativity of the still image contributors building a video and embracing Koblin’s site and his vision. As more and more images are added to the montage, it is clear that this site is tapping into both profound reverence for the artist (Johnny Cash) and into an enthusiasm for collaboration in video. The very nature of this project means that there is really never an “end-product” or a finished video, but rather iterative experiences that change with nearly every viewing, as long as the contributions keep coming and the video keeps evolving. Collaborative endeavors such as these inspire us to return again and again, to both add to and to admire the outcome. If you haven’t already, you really should check it out. (Visit The Johnny Cash Project.)

Many video producers toil to perfect their craft in simple DIY studios at home, or in temporary rented space, or simply out in the world with their camcorder in their hand. Unless you’re working closely with a cadre of fellow practitioners of the video craft (which luckily, many of you are), the work of video is usually less an act of collaboration and more often a solitary enterprise. You often shoot alone, edit alone, and release your video alone, hoping to capture a wider audience as your videos catch on via YouTube or Vimeo or elsewhere. But projects such as Aaron Koblin’s remind us that we can do amazingly creative things when we work together.

When HD was first introduced to the video world back in the 1990’s, IT departments at production houses around the world gave a collective groan. Back then the best video transfer speeds were 50 MB/s with a Firewire cable, making HD video transfers a huge vortex of wasted time. With the advent of Firewire 800 (which was capable of speeds up to 100 MB/s) and eSATA (with speeds up to 380 MB/s), video transfer speeds took a huge leap forward. Even so, video editors were still losing precious years of their life waiting for HD projects to transfer from one hard disk to another.

Now USB 3.0 is looking to solve that problem. With the support of manufacturers such as Sony, Intel, Microsoft, Compaq, and IBM, USB has quickly become the connection of choice for computer equipment ranging from keyboards and mice, to coffee warmers and iPods. As a result, USB cables and connections have become by far the most common in the computer world. So when USB 3.0 was announced in 2007 with speeds up to 400 MB/s, the video world quickly realized that there was huge potential behind the new technology due to its many features and advantages.

One of the greatest features of USB 3.0 is that a 25 GB file can be transferred in just 70 seconds essentially eliminating the frustration of wasted time when transferring large HD assets from one hard drive to another. Additionally, with such high read/write speeds, USB 3.0 has become a viable connection for editing on external hard drives without the speed delays of current connections. This gives studios and editors a reasonable workflow option in a world where solid state media recording has become the new norm. With rapidly falling prices on external storage, studios now have the option to buy hard drives such as Buffalo’s newly released SuperSpeed USB 3.0 external DriveStation HD, edit on them, and then store them much like tapes were stored in the past. The advantages of this set-up is when a client asks for a re-edit on an old project, instead of having to reconnect footage from tape, studios can simply connect their external hard drive using USB 3.0 to their computer and start editing right away saving huge amounts of transfer time. Lastly, another potential advantage of USB 3.0 is its increase in the market. It is quite possible that if you are at a friend’s house with a USB 3.0 hard drive and no cable, that your friend will probably have a USB 3.0 cable for you to hook your hard drive to your computer.

As great as USB 3.0 could be for video editors, there are also some other interesting products that could be a great boon to the video-editing world. Just this last May, the Serial ATA Organization announced the specs for SATA revision 3.0, allowing for transfer speeds of up to 700 MB/s. Also, Intel also announced a curious new technology called Light Peak. Light Peak is an optical cable standard that can deliver bandwidth from 1.25 GB/s to 12.5 GB/s. Whichever technology becomes the standard, one thing is for sure: the future for HD video production has never looked so good.

As I predicted, the larger part of our small-town lost power again last night in our first BIG storm of the season.

Not being able to use any electronics, instead relaxing in the semi-dark with candles and a roaring fire, sipping hot cocoa and roasting marshmallows made me realize that the Holidays (with a capital “H”!) are just around the corner.

So with the Holidays approaching,  you’re thinking you need a new camera to make sure you capture all the twinkle, sparkle, radiance and laughter during the over-commercialized season, right?

(Read our latest 2009 All Camcorder’s Buyer’s Guide here, that we just put online this morning, as an advancer for your early Holiday shopping pleasure!) Read the rest of this entry »

When someone new approaches me with a video project they’ve shot that they want me to gently critique I can always tell if that person has had any still photography training within just a few seconds. The first things skilled still photographers do is compose. They see the finished shot in their mind before they ever even put the camera to their eye. They instantly see the Rule of Thirds grid, or Divine Proportion, (also called Golden Rule), and they often say they “compose” shots everywhere they look, whether they are shooting or not. These are the people I call “The Eye”. They just have it, it’s in their brain, they “see” composition the way others see color.  Read the rest of this entry »