Some Olympic stats.

The Olympics are in many cases, multiple Superbowls or World Cup events being staged at the same time. What does it take to produce all this?

Well, some stats being passed around on the production reveal it’s a huge undertaking, and I’m sure these stats don’t account for everything because those crews that come in always have to retrofit the stuff built out to “make it work right.”

Canon’s PowerShot SX-20 IS – review

There’s a lot of buzz about HD video on DSLR’s. What this misses is that HD video is also possible on most every digital still camera made today, with fewer and fewer exceptions.

When Canon upgraded their venerable PowerShot S-series, they did it in an odd way, the US got the CCD based SX10 which could not shoot HD video, but the rest of the world received the CMOS-based SX1, which could shoot 1080p30 HD video with stereo audio built in.

After several months, Canon brought the SX1 to the US. But those wishing to avoid the CMOS distortions I easily demonstrated in my earlier review were still left out in the cold, despite cameras lower in Canon’s lineup offering CCD-based HD video. Finally, Canon brought the SX20 to market which adds HD video and more megapixels to the camera. Is it a winner? My hands-on will find out.

Do Effects? Check out FXguide!

If you love visual effects, SciFi, etc. And especially if you are in the business of making visual effects, then you need to be sure FXguide is on your regular reading list.

I’ve been subscribing to the FXguideTV podcasts for a while and I think they are some of the best produced, and FREE, industry-related podcasts I’ve found.You can even see them in full-on 1080 HD as opposed to an SD feed or just 720. 

If you have others you’d like to recommend, leave them in the comments!

Preview: NEXTO DI’s NVS2500 portable media storage.

The big buzz surrounding the NVS2500 is all about three features built into this diminutive, battery operated media storage device:

• the fast SxS transfer to internal hard drive
• the ability to play back professional codecs like XDCAM EX
• the eSATA slot for fast transfer to a computer

I’ve performed some preliminary tests and have some numbers to report.

Wet noodles for drumsticks? NO! it’s CMOS video!

With all the rage about the Canon 5DmII for video, and everyone all gaga over the shallow depth of field video for a pretty inexpensive price, you have to remember that with every silver lining, there is a cloud… or something like that.

A nice new music video demonstrates that it’s not just camera motion that CMOS chips distort from reality, even motion within the frame, like a drummer drumming (something drummers in bands simply insist on doing constantly, throughout the whole darn song.)

If you want to have your wet noodle video featured on America’s Funniest Home Videos, then shoot it with a DSLR. Giggle-inducing images after the break.

Film fights back- on cost.

It is interesting to read about push back from studios and even producers where cost is concerned- and film is reconsidered instead of digital. 

Some of the thoughts are true, you need a digital imaging technician to do it right, you need a media wrangler, but weren’t those positions already there on film crews (DP, loader, respectively)? Using less film reduces cost, but it also reduces quality- at a time when digital is improving quality with every codec revision. 

Film may still record more latitude, but HDR still cameras are already here so HDR video can’t be far behind. Those few advantages film has are slowly being whittled away, while the advantages digital offers keep increasing. The only one Film may keep, in the end, is as an archival medium, having already demonstrated, in some cases, 100-year stability.

Consumer Digital Still HD video shoutout.

If you can get a consumer camera that shoots HD for just a couple hundred bucks, why not load up on the cameras and get multiple angles of an event for next to no cost. Plus, you can move them around easily, perch them in unusual places and you don’t need a half-dozen video camera operators. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Well, the reality is that the rolling shutter CMOS image distortion in video cameras is just as prevalent in digital still cameras. You can easily see it when you bounce the camera up and down lightly, or pan the camera side to side. Things that you naturally do when you are recording video with the camera in your hands instead of on a tripod. These motions distort the image from what really exists in reality. Camera flashes are partially bad- partially illuminating multiple frames. When you play that back, it looks completely unnatural.

To quantify these CMOS distortions, I secured two brand new digital still cameras that shoot HD video and pitted them side by side in some critical tests and the results clearly demonstrate the difference between CMOS and CCD when it comes to capturing video that faithfully represents what happened.

DSLR Video – it’s a tool. Not the holy grail.

While the industry may be all atwitter about using Digital SLR cameras for video to get that shallow depth of field (DoF) you get with motion picture cameras and prime film lenses, the truth is, very shallow DoF and beautiful bokeh will not save a crappy story, bad writing, misguided direction or bad acting.

It is as if suddenly, a single piece of technical gear will magically make a movie be so much better. It’s the latest “got to have it” piece of tech. In reality, the camera can only make it look better; and certainly not sound better.
Moreover, if the camera op isn’t well versed in all the serious caveats these DSLRs have, it will look far worse than if you just shot your movie with a prosumer camera and spent all that extra money and time on script rewrites or a great director.

The Foundry offers fix for CMOS “Rolling Shutter”

After seeing their corrected footage, I have to say, wow.

Not only does it seem to properly recognize the distortion and correct it, it lets you calibrate it for specific cameras, and it doesn’t correct the whole image, just what moves- so an object moving in the frame (like the bus) is fixed while the street poles are left alone (which a “global adjustment” would distort.)

Hey camera manufacturers… there’s code that solves the problem.
Now you can fix it in the camera and save us the headache of having to process all our footage after the fact.

Very convincing video demo after the break.