Here’s a ‘drug’ that can help you get over your addiction to “Lost”. 😉

Only problem with the otherwise funny commercial: people still credit J.J. Abrams for “Lost”, while he only worked for very few episodes in the beginning. Lost is what it is because of Damon and Carlton, not J.J.

Ok, someone explain this to me please. What’s the big deal of having front page news of a guy having sex with a prostitute? As long as the club had a license to operate and prostitution is not illegal in the NY state (I don’t know, maybe it is), what’s the big deal? My problem is that by reading the articles both on BBC and CNN I can not figure out if what he did is possibly illegal or not. Nothing is stated about the legality of the whore club. Cause if it’s not illegal, then it’s no one business with whom this guy is sleeping with. Who knows? Maybe he can’t get it off with his wife anymore, and being a guy, he has needs. Getting it off with a whore says absolutely nothing about his work and his character as a professional.

“According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called “transactional” data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns,” writes the reputable WSJ.

Among HV20 users there is this magical method to lock+set exposure: the cellphone trick. You place a brightly lit white/gray cellphone screen in front of the HV20 and you follow a convoluted set of actions afterwards. And this is a “trick” that many people use, doing it because they think it works. They think that the HV20 has a “magical point” of f2.8 where no gain is introduced. Well, what they actually end-up doing is under-exposing. A sensor of a camera is what it is, it can’t be “overclocked” to perform better magically.

This trick doesn’t work. It’s a fucking myth. Stop using this stupid method. This is how this guy’s video ended up looking by using this method. Here’s another test video doing the same trick. Yes, the grainy artifacts are gone on the second half of the video using the “magical method”, but this is not because the method is magical, but because the camera UNDER-exposes. You can do the same thing without going to all of these weird steps, just under-expose. Here’s another test, again, it has no grain simply because the scene is under-exposed and it’s only saved because the candles are bright enough. But you don’t need this “trick” to get there.

Instead, do either of the following as long as your camera supports setting a custom white balance (all Canons do):
1. Buy a gray card (check the link on how to use it). As long as you can get close to your shooting subject, there is no substitute for the gray card, sans a light metering device. It costs $4 and you have no excuse of not owning one.

2. If you really want to use a similar method, at least use a method that works more precisely. For example, zoom all the way in to the same level as your shooting subject and fill the frame with a white or brightly lit point (e.g. a white shirt of a person, or a wall). Then, set the custom white balance at that point, and then zoom out. Lock exposure after zooming in, and compensate based on the brightness of what you zoomed on. As a plus, you will have an “ok” white balance too.

That’s the same method used by many photographers, and it’s one that works best without extra equipment. No cellphones, no extra steps. That’s it. Amusingly, the common wisdom in still photography (which is called “expose to the right”) says exactly the opposite: never underexpose, even if you have to increase the sensitivity/gain to get a proper exposure.

Update: The cellphone trick only makes sense if the exposure compensation doesn’t follow the same program curve as the exposure. Now, if indeed the exposure compensation follows a different program, *and* if that program doesn’t change the gain, *and* if the regular program changes the gain before going wide-open, it makes some sense, but none of those assumptions are documented anywhere.

The vast majority of the emails I get the last few months are video-related. Many people are asking me how to create travel videos like my own. Well, there is not a single way of putting a video together, but I will share my procedure of how I edit. This procedure can help you out put together good-enough cuts, but don’t expect artistic videos like those from Charlie or Remyyy on Vimeo. I ain’t no artist, I am just methodical. 😉

To follow the procedure, we will use as an example one of my videos, so please open it on a separate browser window.

1. Decide what you want to shoot. When you do, shoot your subject according to the suggestions here, and transfer your footage to your computer and video editor. Finally, secure your time. It usually takes me 3-5 hours to finish a small 3-5 minute video.

2. Bring the first clip from the list in the timeline. Trim it to 9-10 seconds long. If that scene is, let’s say, 40 seconds long, find the best 9-10 seconds in it, and use only that. If your video editor is not very precise in trimming, you can trim ~15 seconds of each scene, and do a second pass later. Pannings might need a bit over 10 seconds to look complete, but more static shots don’t need more than 8 seconds. The Internet crowd is an impatient one.

3. After trimming, discard the rest of the clip (as long as it’s all very similar). Discard the whole scene if the footage is too shaky, don’t feel bad for it. Discard the scene if it’s badly exposed, if it doesn’t look too interesting, if the scene is too static with no moving subjects, or if it doesn’t have anything to do with your main subject of the video (e.g. if you are shooting a bridge, discard all bird footage you shot the same day but doesn’t show the bridge in some way or another). Trim and discard in the same way all the other clips in the list, one by one. Be ruthless. Usually, only 1/10th of footage is good enough. It’s 1/5th only if you are really good and really careful when shooting.

4. Now that you have all the scenes you need in the timeline, and are all trimmed down correctly, re-arrange them in a logical order. For example, view the video I link above. I start with a scene that shows my subject in full. Then, I go bit by bit closer and I scrutinize its details. The second scene gets me to the foot of the bridge. The third scene shows the floor. The fourth scene shows the floor and the balusters. The fifth one goes to scrutinize the balusters. Somewhere along the baluster scenes, there is a scene that shows the cables. And so the next few scenes are dealing with the cables. After the cable scenes are done, I am including a scene that “ties together” the cables and the other side of the bridge, by showing its foot again, and so the last scenes deal with the foot again. So basically, the idea is this: you start with a subject, and then you make sure your next scene includes both the current subject and the next subject (e.g. both the balusters and the cables). This way, the viewer “hops” from one subject to another but has a frame of reference of what is what and where it exists in the overall environment you are shooting at. By not including random shots, in random order, you don’t surprise your viewer negatively (except if you are doing artistic videos, in which case anything goes).

5. Start your videos with a fade-in and finish with a fade-out. Between subject jumps includes fade-in and fade-outs too. For example, moving from the balusters to the the cables, I use fade ins/outs. But between shots of the same subject, I use cross-fades. This technique is like creating “micro-chapters” in your video. One chapter for the foot, one chapter for the balusters, one chapter for the cables etc. It just keeps everything organized in the mind of the viewer. Unless your video is about cool stuff (e.g. scating, night clubs etc), you want to avoid crazy transitions: stay with cuts, fades and cross-fades.

6. Always add a title to your video in the first scene. It makes it look more professional. At the end, it’s good to add credits, license information and copyright info to avoid potential problems in the event you want to upload it online. Unless you are too possessive, why not license your videos under the Creative Commons “Attribution” 3.0 license? Most people give their footage for free and they don’t mind it if others download it or re-use it (in fact, they feel honored by it). But without adding license information, by default, the law does not allow us to re-use your video. So, it’s good to clear this up in your credit roll.

7. Now play your video in its entirety. You will find that some scenes might need a bit more trimming or fixing, or simply might need removal. Think of this step as the “clean up”, re-affirmation, step that the video ties well together.

8. The music is as important as the rest of the video. Strapping together on the video your favorite pop song won’t cut it. The music/song must fit the subject of your video. For example, look at my video at 00:13 seconds. I made sure the “change” in the music happened when the new scene started. This way I signal a change in the viewer’s mind, that the sound follows the video flow because there’s something important in that scene (even if there isn’t). That’s how you make videos look interesting, by “audio suggestion”. Then go to the 1:25 minute of the video. Look how the music is kinda normal, but when the new scene starts out on 1:30, the music fits 100% that new scene. Look how that cable bounces like it’s a guitar string, while at the same time the music itself features a guitar string loop! It’s details like this that can make a video a pleasure to watch! Of course, you can not always have together A/V changes exactly at the right spot, so sometimes you have to split the music and re-arrange it as you do with video. In my video above I have actually re-arranged the music track a fair bit to suit my needs. Because I have to re-arrange the music track sometimes, I only use Creative Commons “Attribution” music, and I suggest you do so too if your videos are going to hit the net. Finally, also fade-in/out the start and finish of the music track too.

9. Play again one last time the whole thing, with music added, to find any discrepancies, and fix them if you do.

10. Last step: color grade, color grade, color grade. Most footage looks dull without modifying the gamma, or the saturation, or the contrast. I personally use Magic Bullet extensively, but even the basic tools that come with your video editor by default should be able to do a good job. Color grade each scene separately. I also take it into good faith that your footage has the right white balance, otherwise you need to color-correct too (note: color correction and color grading are not the same in video editing terminology). When everything is done, export in progressive mode (de-interlaced)! An internet video should not be over 3-5 minutes long.

That’s it, you now know everything I know. I have no more tips regarding the editing methodology of a normal travel video. Of course, for interviews, short movies, parties etc, other rules can apply. But for the kind of videos I do, where I try to keep it one kind of subject per video, this method works very well. I hope it works for you too.

I am a bit bothered by the iPhone SDK’s terms. It is still not as open as it should be, and this says a lot about the way Apple does business. More specifically, the terms disallow:

– Background applications: say goodbye to services, VoIP or a multi-IM application running on the background. They can only run when you have them loaded full screen.
– Interpreters: Say goodbye to J2ME, Python and what not. Sun said that they want to port J2ME to the iPhone, but I wonder, did they actually read the terms of service, or are they betting on buying Steve Jobs lunch and getting away with it?
– Data sharing: While copy/paste might get handled by the system in the future, you are not allowed to include spreadsheet data on a word processor app. It feels like J2ME all over again. Yuk.
– Plugins: say goodbye to, well, all kinds of plugins and extensions. Including a port of Gnash, as our beloved Jesus Jobs doesn’t feel that Flash is appropriate for the iPhone.
– High-bandwidth applications: I wonder, will they limit their iTunes app too? What if Napster builds a music store client too? Will they allow it?
– Too many of the same app: so what if the 4th Sudoku app is better than the first 3 already on the App Store? Will Apple disallow it just because there are too many of them? What about the time and money the developers put into it, who might have actually started working before the first 3 such apps, but were late because they wanted to make it a BETTER app? Bad luck? Well, it’s not bad luck for the devs only, but for the consumers too, who are stuck with 3 inferior apps.

Ok, Apple feels that needs to protect users. But instead of building an operating system that is made for this job (e.g. making sure that no app can crash another app, or steal data), they limit their own market. This is a lot like leaving the door of your house unlocked, but hiring a bouncer to keep the unwanted out.

On the other hand, from the customer’s point of view, they offer a clean solution. But it’s only as clean as iMovie is. Users that heavily do video, usually use iMovie for a while, but soon enough they hit the wall. They need more features. And they move to Final Cut Express or Pro, or After Effects. But there is no such upgrade path for the iPhone. You are stuck with an iMovie-limited software market. Hopefully, Apple will eventually see the light, or users will have to jailbreak the iPhone again and use a third party App Store.

A video of San Mateo’s creek bridge. This video was created in order to test the Kodak V1233 HD-capable 12MP digital camera for an upcoming gadget review that will get published next week. Unfortunately, not all scenes were shot with the high quality setting because the camera sometimes “forgets” its settings (long story, read the review here). Video is color graded. My JBQ appears in the last scene. HD version here.

As most of you know, I am a pessimist. I am all dark and gloomy regarding the future. However, it is in the nature of humans to also be optimists. And indeed, I am an optimist for a few things.

One of those things is about the existence of aliens. Most of us agree that there is life elsewhere in the universe. But most disagree that such life is actually intelligent and visiting this planet as we speak.

I choose to believe that they do visit us. Not only because I have personally witnessed a UFO, but mostly for the following reason: If we accept that no alien race is visiting us or has visited us, then it’s safe to assume that WE will never be able to reach another inhabiting planet.

And we all know what this would mean: death for the human race. And that’s where this optimism, or faith if you like, kicks in. It has nothing to do with proof, but a glimpse of hope for our own race instead.

My very intelligent JBQ (what a turn on!), wrote a blog post replying to popular Michael Reichmann’s opinions about digital photography. A very good read.

From Telegraph, thanks to blog reader James for sending it my way:

“In countries such as the US, Switzerland and the UK, the freeloaders accepted their punishment, became much more co-operative and the earnings in the game increased over time.

However, in countries such as Greece and Russia, the freeloaders sought retribution – exerting revenge on those who had punished them – even the model citizens who had paid their way. Co-operation for the common good then plummeted as a result.

[…] In societies where this behaviour is widespread and the rule of law is perceived to be ineffective – that is, if criminal acts frequently go unpunished – anti-social “revenge” punishment thrives.”

A very interesting article. 😉