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January 2009 Cover Image

January 2009 Table of Contents

Is your camera dirty? This months issue covers the topic of camera maintenance and cleaning. Learn how to care for your camera with the proper cleaning tools, techniques, and storage. Good maintenance and cleaning means having a camera that works well beyond its years. Be sure to check out this issue's Bags, Boxes and Backpacks Buyer's Guide to help you decide how to best protect your gear, as well as our Editing Laptop Buyer's Guide for some useful information when shopping for your new editing laptop. Also, we discuss the fast-approaching transition to digital over-the-air TV, as well as producer's rights, copyright and what constitutes as Public Domain.

Feature Stories

Cameras Need Lovin' Too: Camera Maintenance and Cleaning

As a videographer or photographer, you might have multiple lenses and filters that you lug around wherever you go and change whenever the shot requires their use. Over time and even with proper storage and care, your gear begins to wear out from use.

Bags, Boxes and Backpacks
A Buyer's Guide for Your Gear

If you think all gear bags and cases are alike, think again! Bags and cases offer more choices of style, color, type, material, build, support and price than all your other gear combined. From hard cases to backpacks, there's a gear protection support case for every camera.

Editing Laptop Buyer's Guide

Imagine hopping a plane in New York with your raw footage on your laptop and arriving in London with a fully-edited video several hours later. It could happen. Laptops have largely replaced desktop PCs for most applications, and they're becoming increasingly more popular...

Digits Over the Air

The transition to digital over-the-air TV is nearly complete. So what does that mean for videographers? While most of our discussions of television are generally about either criticizing the medium as a whole or trying to get distribution for our own productions

Reviews

Workstation Review
iBUYPOWER Video Pro Editing Workstation

The Professional... The best way we've found to think of iBUYPOWER's Video Pro system is as a well-primed canvas that is ready to accept the paint of your video projects. It's the first 64-bit Windows Vista-based system (this one happens to run Home Premium) to cross our threshold...

Camera Support Review: Manfrotto 585 Modosteady 3-in-1 Camera Stabilization System

Aside from missing many features the bigger camcorders offer, due to the lack of real estate, these tiny cameras have the big problem of getting a steady shot.

Software Review
Adobe Premiere Elements 7 Video Editing Software

Let's Test The Elements... Most beginner editors want to jump right in and start cutting up some video as soon as they can. It's not always that easy. User-friendly operation can be hard to come by when we want to make a professional-looking product.

Camcorder Review
Canon VIXIA HG21 HD Camcorder

Load Up Your Canon! Canon's new VIXIA HG21 is a high-definition hard-disk-drive powerhouse, with 120GB of hard-drive space and a ton of exclusive Canon-only features. Prosumers rejoice: the HG21 is the perfect fit for family events, weddings and entry-level professional videography.

Videomaker's 2009 Best Innovative Hardware: Redrock Micro M2 35mm Lens Adaptor Review

Goin' Prime-Time. One of the main tools of the cinematographer's art for controlling image properties is depth of field (DOF). If you're going for the "Film Look" the first place to stop is the Redrock Micro M2.

Columns

Viewfinder
Tiny Camcorders

The size of camcorders has been shrinking since their inception. The first camcorders were typically shoulder-mounted and much heavier and larger than today's units. People tend to hold heavy things with their arms to their sides, using both hands under the load….

Basic Training
About Face!

Many video cameras now seem to include face detection capabilities. But what exactly is face detection? Our primer explains how it works and how it might stump you, too. The story of face recognition technology begins back in 2005, when Nikon released the Coolpix 5900….

Distribution
HD Online Convergence

HD Online: We have the technology. We can build faster internet connections, with better delivery service than ever before. Better, stronger, faster. The convergence of lower-cost HD prosumer camcorders, faster internet connections and improved content delivery...

Lighting
Lighting Greenscreens

Many editing software programs now have easy-to-execute chromakey effects, but, to get your scene looking good, you need to plan first and light it right. You have the greenscreen, the right editing software, and a great idea... but how do you make your subject look real?

What's Legal
producer's rights

The Public Domain - Unraveling the Confusion of when Copyright claims dissolve. When our country's Founding Fathers adopted the U.S. Constitution, they wanted to make sure that, unlike in England, no person could have an unlimited monopoly over property….

Tutorial
Rotoscoping: fix goofs, change virtual sets, or make your hero fly

How to fix on-set goofs, change virtual sets, or make your action heroes fly through the air amidst gunfire, snowflakes, or magic dust. Rotoscoping is one of my favorite things in Visual FX. I know that sounds crazy, but the results of rotoscoping can be so rewarding.

Editing
Simple Compositing

Everyone loves to be awed by movie magic, and you can bedazzle your audience using our simple compositing tips that reveal the Secret of See Through Layers. Compositing is omnipresent. It would be nearly impossible to watch a Hollywood film or an hour of television….

Audio
Choosing a Microphone

C'mon! Pick a mic.. any mic! Right!? Wrong! From pickup patterns to wired or wireless, there's a confusing array of mics to choose from. Let's narrow your focus a bit. We've all heard them - videos that sounded like the mic was under a box in the next room.

Departments

In box
readers' letters

Inspired by Viewfinder Column; Separation of Editorial Coverage versus Advertising; Sound Needs Consideration, Too; The World is Reading Videomaker - There are a number of contract manufacturers in Asian countries; The World is Getting Smaller; Muddy Happy Birthday Waters

Quick Focus

Viewer Beware! Don’t Get Stung by DTV Upgrade from Your Cable Company trying to take advantage... More Free Stuff! proDAD Adorage and Vitascene Effects, full starter kits... Free HD Video-Sharing Site, Motionbox is geared towards sharing, storing and editing HD video free

New Gear
hot off the presses

HP's LP2480xz DreamColor display provides a range of more than one billion colors at 30-bit; Sony's HDR-FX1000 HDV camcorder includes 24P scanning and advanced color settings; Calibrated{Q} DVCProHD Decode enables QuickTime to handle DVCPRO HD footage for playback.

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