We all knew that we could expect some big things of the television manufacturers at CES. But an 80″ 4K television? That seemed like just a dream. However, Sharp has made it a reality with their CES announcement of a truly astounding 80 inch 4K touch-screen television and large battery-run portable displays. Their touch-screen televisions will be called the Aquos Board which Sharp imagines professionals drawing , taking notes, and saving information on.
In addition, the televisions come with 4 HDMI inputs, a built-in WiFi controller (for streaming television), has a dynamic contrast ratio of 6,000,000:1, and a 120Hz signal. Each television will also have a USB port for playback of video, music, and photos making this a truly interactive television display. If you’re thinking about getting this for your next preview monitor or business meetings, it’ll cost you a cool $13,795. A price that’s not for the weak of heart.
At the same time, Sharp also introduced another 80 inch television, the LC80LE844U, that has built-in WiFi, 4 HDMI inputs, 3D capabilities, a 240Hz signal, and Sharp’s new AQUOS Beamzit, a free media-sharing app that allows users to wirelessly send photos, music, and video to the television using an Apple or Android phone.
Not to be outdone, Sharp also showed off its lightweight, WiFi enabled battery powered portable displays that can be carried from room to room. The smallest display in this line, the 20 inch model, weighs in at only 5.5 pounds. This technology means that it’s possible to easily carry a preview monitor from work to home without having to find an outlet to plug your television into. Even if you plan on keeping the television where it is, the thinness of the display should ensure that you keep plenty of space in your living room.
Lastly, Sharp also announced an ICC-4K television which provides four times the resolution of a 1080p television. No word on when this television will be available or the cost, but it’s already quite clear that the 4K revolution is upon us!
Nikon recently released the D7000, Nikon’s answer to Canon’s release of the new 60D. The D7000 offers manual exposure control and continuous auto focus while shooting full 1080p HD video at 24fps. The D7000 is by far Nikon’s best video capable DSLR on the market today and packs a powerful punch. Chase Jarvis got his hands on an early version of the D7000 and has posted up a video, you can see it below. We can’t wait to get our hands on one for review to see how it compares to Canon’s 60D – we will keep you posted with all the latest.
Well, this was a long time coming. Apparently, Canon brought out a 4K 8 megapixel camera at their 2010 Expo for shooters all around the world to drool over. While the body may look like an oversized hair dryer, it’s what’s on the inside that will make Canon blow you away. The camera can shoot in 60p at a full 4K resolution, a 2/3rds inch CMOS sensor, and a fully functional flip-out HD LCD. Unfortunately, this is just a concept camera and Canon has said that they have no intention of bringing it to market so those of you who already started to count the remaining savings in your bank account, can safely deposit your money away. I can’t say for sure why Canon would ever dangle the 4K carrot in front of us without a solid release date, but they are definitely not the first to do so (read: RED cameras). All of the ranting aside, the camera is actually not meant for video capture (as if anyone really believes that) but instead is a “multipurpose image capture device.” This means that one is supposed to use the device like a camera that is constantly taking photos giving users a ton of potential pictures to choose from when it comes time to edit. Capturing photos this way sounds mildly innovative but one still can’t help but think that the camera would just do better as an incredibly high resolution camcorder. Nonetheless, this camera at least marks Canon as an intentional competitor in the emerging 4K camcorder market while at the same time proving that 4K is the next big revolution to hit video. I have no doubt that we’ll be seeing more of these kinds of cameras soon so keep a keen eye out on the market.
Just a few weeks ago, Videomaker had the privilege of sending a member of it’s staff to Yellowstone national park with the exciting promise of being able to get our hands on one of Canon’s newest releases. What we saw when we arrived was Canon’s completely redesigned 60D. With 1920×1080 video resolution plus an articulating LCD screen, this camera immediately drew our undivided attention. The first place we were able to put the camera to use was on an exciting gondola ride up into the Grand Teton mountains. On our way up to the top, the Canon representative told us all about the camera such as how it has an upgraded sensor that can capture 18 megapixel pictures, a built-in flash, records on SDXC cards, and best of all has a manual feature for controlling audio. That means that even though this camera still can’t compete with the EOS 1D and 7D for picture quality, when it comes to audio, has everything but the 5D Mark ii beat.
When we finally reached the top of the Grand Tetons, I was happy to see that the camera was very simple to use as it resembles every other Canon camera’s buttons and designs very closely. The camera was also very durable and lightweight – two things that matter a lot in location shooting. When we next went to a waterfall in Yellowstone, we were happy to have a number of different frame rates for shooting video. The 60D allows for 30, 25, and 24 in full HD, and 60, 50, 30, 25, and 24 in 720p. Moving water looked really nice in 720p60 and the HDR bracket shooting allowed for some really nice separation between the waterfall and the sky. Even so, as with all cameras with CMOS sensors, there was still some rolling shutter issues to deal with which became very apparent when capturing a strolling black bear with an 800 millimeter lens. As enthralling as it was to capture a black bear on film, almost all of the footage was unusable. Of course to Canon’s credit if we would have captured the video using a fluid head tripod rather than a ball head, there’s no doubt the footage would have looked a lot better. As it was, the articulating screen helped out immensely for getting shots from all angles and allowed us to capture great video of the wildlife at Yellowstone park. Honestly, after using this camera with its articulating lcd screen, it’s hard to believe that this won’t become a standard in Canon’s entire line of cameras. To see how this camera performed as well as the beauty of Yellowstone make sure to take a look at the pictures after the break or the video below.
One of the more mysterious aspects of video editing is the use of proxies. The very word can strike fear into even the most confident of video editors and make beginning editors decide to start a new career. However, with the onset of high bit rate HD video editing, proxies have become a necessary evil. Just recently while working on the newest how-to video on shooting reception videos, I decided I had enough. Previewing my Canon 1D Mark IV footage natively on the laptop I was working on was like watching molasses dripping into a bucket in the middle of a North Dakota winter. In other words, it was unbearably slow. As a result, I decided to go online and figure out this proxy editing thing once and for all. I already had some knowledge having gone through several forums and news stories on the subject, but never really figured I’d need to use it. Boy was I wrong. I mean, when waiting for Premiere to spit out even one frame of the 45 Megabit per second HD video is less preferable than watching Robin Williams play Popeye, you know something has to change.
My search led me to all sorts of places on the net, but eventually I found the best solution was using either MPEG Streamclip, Compressor, Adobe Media Encoder or Super to make quick proxy versions of my files and then rename them with the Bulk Rename Utility. In case you were wondering, the best encoding settings were either ProRes Proxy (if on a Mac), or H.264 at about 3-5 Mbps (on Windows). At that point, it was possible to edit with the proxies scaled to the size of the source footage. Even though I lost a little quality, I more than made up for it in saved time. Instead of waiting for hours for my footage to render, I was able to watch my edit in real time which is crucial in order to get a “feel” for the edit (and not get mind-numbingly bored). Once I was finished with my edit, I simply reconnected my footage with the original source footage and because it had the same timecode and video settings, I was able to render it without any hiccups. I’m not going to lie to you though. Even though this method saved me time and effort, it still required two programs and an awful lot of time, which really wasn’t cool. Read the rest of this entry »
Just recently, a team at the University of Tokyo found that using titanium oxide could allow optical disks to store 5,000 gigabytes of information. Honestly, that’s astounding. At the same time, a lot of people’s minds began buzzing with the implications. With these discs, Hollywood studios could release entire television series such as Lost and 24 plus bonus content all on one disc. Video games could finally fit huge engines and graphics all on one disk. Finally, studios could include super high resolution video on their discs so that people could see the movie in its fully rendered glory. However, let’s stop for a moment to take a quick poll. How many of you even own a Blu-ray player? If more than one of you out of 10 raised your hand, congratulate yourselves on being ahead of the curve. Though a majority of people still get their movies and television series delivered to them by optical media, it seems as if new media such as Blu-ray simply can’t pick up steam. A Harris poll taken last year showed that only 7 percent of Americans owned a Blu-ray player. Even though Blu-ray offers more than twice the resolution of standard definition DVDs and a higher quality sound, Americans still aren’t sold on the idea. Of course, this begs the question: why?
Popular reasons include the extra price of Blu-ray discs and that some people are happy with things just the way they are. However, there seems to be an even bigger reason behind all of this. Let’s take one last poll. How many of you watch movies or television online? If more than half of you raised your hand, then you would fall in line with research recently done by shopping site Retrevo. The study found that 51% of people in all age groups watched at least some of their television online. With these facts, the question becomes this: when the internet offers both free and cheap high quality video content all without having to leave your La-Z-Boy, why would anyone want to invest in a Blu-ray player or a Blu-ray disc? The answer might be that for most people there are no better alternatives for watching high-definition content on their internet-free TVs. However, with products such as the Apple TV, the new Google TV, Roku, and of course, the HD rich cable set top boxes, it is evident that hardware manufacturers and cable providers are betting that pretty soon, you won’t have an excuse not to.
The only real problem I can foresee with Internet TV is the fact that bandwidth is notoriously spotty with many internet providers. Also, no software or hardware provider has yet mastered the user experience with Internet TV. Often, they’ll make the experience too much like the internet itself (and no one wants to type on a keyboard), or they’ll make it too much like a TV which is very limited in its function. However, one day when a company finally gets the balance of TV and internet just right, Internet TV could be the biggest revolution since cable.
wondertouch by GenArts has just released their popular particleIllusion for After Effects on the Mac. Previously, this release was only available as a standalone sibling to particleIllusion 3.0 and piAE for Windows, but is now available as a plug-in right in After Effects. This allows users the flexibility to create natural, high quality effects such as smoke, fire, explosions, sparkles, fireworks, and abstract effects without having to leave the After Effects environment.
New features for piAE on the Mac include:
* The ability to load most of the more than 2,800 existing particleIllusion emitters in After Effects, including the popular “Pro Emitters”
* The same emitter search engine found in wondertouch particleView
* Access to all top-level particle parameters, including size, life, number, velocity, etc. to further customize the particles for each project
* OpenGL-accelerated rendering
* Full support for HD content
The price for all of these amazing features is only $299. Existing customers can get the plug-in for $179. particleIllusion will also come bundled with their other programs and Pro libraries as well.
With the excitement behind the iPad and with the NAB conference just around the corner, it’s hard not to catch technology fever. As I’m sure you’ve heard countless times before, technology is rapidly changing. Ever since 1985 when Videomaker first started, the magazine has covered everything from reel to reel Super VHS editing to high speed laptops running advanced non-linear editing programs. With such a vast amount of change in so few years, it is hard not to wonder where it’s all going to go from here.
Moore’s law states that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every two years. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the history of the CPU, or Central Processing Unit. Due to the miracle of silicon, brilliant engineers have been able to take a processor from 9.3 million transistors in 1995 to 2 billion in 2008. However, given today’s technology, engineers are fast approaching the day when it will be impossible to fit additional transistors on a CPU chip due to the fact that engineers are going to need nanotechnology to do the job. With that being the case, CPU companies have instead started to stack chips together with multicore technology. Unfortunately, this again can only last so long as you eventually run out of space in a computer to place these extra chips. As a result, researchers are turning to new materials to write with on CPUs. For example, researchers from IBM and Georgia Tech recently ran a silicon/germanium helium supercooled transistor at 500 GHz. Although this was only a single transistor, if IBM was able to match this speed with multiple transistors, computing power could advance a whopping hundred-fold. As a secondary measure, IBM also developed a graphene transistor that can operate at 100 GHz, or 20 times faster than some of the fastest processors in the market today with the advantage that graphene doesn’t need to be supercooled in order to run at faster speeds. At the same time, it can be manufactured in the same way as silicon chips are today. With graphene based chips, computers of the future could process HD video clips faster than SD clips process on current computers, meaning that you’ll finally have some time to be creative on a deadline. Read the rest of this entry »
Well this was a long time coming. When Internet speeds went from dial-up 56kbps to broadband in the late 90′s, content providers the world over realized the huge potential for delivering video, information, and rich applications to users. This led to a huge boom in internet activity only rivaled by the introduction of quick and easy to use internet on cell phones. However as with any heavy traffic situation, you eventually get jams and the internet is no exception.
With the vast number of users downloading large video and application files over the internet, speeds and bottle-necking became a huge issue. Additionally, even with the vast improvement of internet speeds (up to 20 megabits per second today), there were still long wait times while downloading large files – which has become increasingly more common as games and applications become more complex and as videos achieve higher and higher resolutions. The problem didn’t stop there however. Even if a person could theoretically achieve internet speeds at 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) or more, getting those speeds from a router to a computer wirelessly would be impossible with current technology. At the moment, the fastest consumer option for wireless transfer is Wireless USB technology which can transfer at speeds up to 480 Mbps; half of the theoretical 1 Gbps speed coming into your home. Read the rest of this entry »
I had the chance to examine Panasonic’s HD 3D camcorder the day before it was announced at their press conference. It records on SD flash media. The camcorder is for the professional market, but it is small in size. I was able to operate it with one hand, but it was not long enough to rest on my shoulder, so it was a little heavy.
Unlike typical 2D video (where both of the viewer’s eyes see the same image), 3D imaging relies upon serving each of the viewer’s eyes with a different image. This requires the camcorder to record two video signals, therefore, it has two lenses, two image sensors and two SD card slots. The camera operator can choose the point of convergence of the two images. Playback of the 3D video requires a 3D monitor (LCD or Plasma) with two video jacks, and the viewer must wear battery-powered 3D glasses.
I just saw the motion picture Avatar in 3D a few days ago. It was an incredible experience. Little did I know that, less than a week later, I would be holding a 3D camcorder in my hand. The image from Panasonic’s 3D camcorder is incredible.
We all knew that we could expect some big things of the television manufacturers at CES. But an 80″ 4K television? That seemed like just a dream. However, Sharp has made it a reality with their CES announcement of a truly astounding 80 inch 4K touch-screen television and large battery-run portable displays. Their touch-screen televisions will be called the Aquos Board which Sharp imagines professionals drawing , taking notes, and saving information on.
With the excitement behind the iPad and with the NAB conference just around the corner, it’s hard not to catch technology fever. As I’m sure you’ve heard countless times before, technology is rapidly changing. Ever since 1985 when Videomaker first started, the magazine has covered everything from reel to reel Super VHS editing to high speed laptops running advanced non-linear editing programs. With such a vast amount of change in so few years, it is hard not to wonder where it’s all going to go from here. 
Well this was a long time coming. When Internet speeds went from dial-up 56kbps to broadband in the late 90′s, content providers the world over realized the huge potential for delivering video, information, and rich applications to users. This led to a huge boom in internet activity only rivaled by the introduction of quick and easy to use internet on cell phones. However as with any heavy traffic situation, you eventually get jams and the internet is no exception. 
I had the chance to examine Panasonic’s HD 3D camcorder the day before it was announced at their press conference. It records on SD flash media. The camcorder is for the professional market, but it is small in size. I was able to operate it with one hand, but it was not long enough to rest on my shoulder, so it was a little heavy. 
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