Vegetation shots around the quiet ‘Palace of Fine Arts’ in San Francisco. My JBQ poses in the opening shot of the video. I experimented a bit with HV20’s DOF. HD version here.

Details from one of the finest bridges on Earth, the Golden Gate Bridge. HD version here.

We went to eat at “Pasta Pomodoro” with JBQ last night and as usual, we started talking geek. I started telling him about a pet peeve of mine: “Wouldn’t it be nice if I could save in a lossless codec my final cut video but to also save a ‘reference’ file to tell the video editor where the ‘splits’ are so I can re-edit that in the future? Sure, I wouldn’t be able to have layers, transitions and plugin information, but at least I would have the cut information, which is most important. Right now, I am forced to keep 12 GBs per tape footage on the hard drive, while I am only using 1/10th of that usually.”

And he replied: “That’s not the correct way of doing things. The right way would be to save only the portions of the .m2t or DV .avi files you are actually using. These formats can be chopped off and saved without a re-encoding, so this way you don’t lose quality at all. And you get to keep all your plugin, transition and other project information in the project file! It should also keep 10 seconds of extra footage left and right of your cuts!“.

At that point I thought: “Hell, that’s why JBQ is a software engineer, and I was just a petty programmer” (there’s a difference).

So, when we came back home I opened Vegas and tried to find such a feature. I was ready to fire up a feature request if there was no such feature. And yet, there is. Both on Vegas Pro and on Vegas Platinum (not sure about the plain version). Vegas 8 Pro is able to cut/save .m2t and DV AVI without re-encoding, while Platinum 8 can do only DV AVI (although it’s safe to assume that the next version should be able to do .m2t too). All you have to do is to “save as” your project, and check that “Copy and trim media with project“. The next screen will even ask you how many extra seconds left and right of your trims you want Vegas to save.

Very cool feature!

“Machines will achieve human-level artificial intelligence by 2029, a leading US inventor has predicted”, says BBC.

And I say: bullshit.

I’ve worked on an AI project straight out of college. It was my first real job with computers. And I am not talking about “expert learning systems” or other such boring academic stuff, but a project about real AI. The goal was to create an intelligent “being”. I quickly mentioned the project in my Feb 2001 editorial at the now defunct BeNews.

I can tell you one thing: we are far, far away from real AI. Even OpenCYC at this point is simply a collection of data without any real intelligence behind it. In fact, when it comes to AI, people somehow think that it will be ready in “20-30 years time”. They were kept saying that in 1970 too. And each year, it would slip one more year. Just like in some movies and TV series where they depict some really high technology and space exploration that supposedly takes places only 70 years in the future (e.g. “Space: Above & Beyond”).

Personally, I don’t think that human-equivalent intelligence will be ready before 2100. And I am probably optimistic already.

Consumers are stupid. They go where the wind blows. I was just reading that the LCDs have taken over the TV market so much that there is the possibility of plasma companies (like Pioneer that only does plasmas) to exit the TV market or to move to higher-end. People buy the much inferior technology of LCDs not only because of the lower prices, but also because they have no clue which technology is better. The article and even the comments agree. Consumers just don’t get it.

We are very close in buying that Pioneer Kuro 50″ plasma with JBQ so we were looking around plasmas and LCDs at Frys last week. All LCDs had considerable less black levels and were over-sharpened on their default modes (even if you tinker sharpening, it’s how they are). The plasma image was natural, natural, natural. But I guess people fall for the over-sharpened saturated look, thinking that the more “into your eyes” an image is, the better the TV is. Most LCD TVs don’t even de-interlace the right way. You gotta pay a premium for that, and honestly, it’s worth the money.

I KNOW that I will be blasted for writing this blog post, but unless you are very poor and can’t afford a plasma (or you simply don’t use the TV much), you have no excuse for buying an LCD TV instead.

Good “Lost” episode tonight. But attention to detail was really lacking. Here’s why:

It appears that because the helicopter group were about 1 hour away from the beach camp (according to what Juliet said), it means that they were actually pretty close to the camp. The island is pretty big. It takes OVER A DAY to walk to the Other’s village (that’s pretty clear from previous episodes). And yet, we see Sayid and his group entering the Othersville just a few hours after they left, and they even came back before the end of the same day. This is not possible according to what we know about the island locations. This was poor writing.

The reason I love “Lost” it’s because it has a realistic quality to it. But when there are “logical” bloopers like that (rather than normal visual bloopers), it really pisses me off.

The producers said that now the strike ended they will shoot 5 more episodes for this season instead of the original 8 they wanted to, and that they will “accelerate” the plot to fit in 5 episodes. Well, if that’s the kind of “acceleration” we are going to see, then I don’t want it. Plus the ABC decision to move “Lost” back to 10 PM at the end of April, that soured the milk even more.

Update: Amazing, scientific-based theory about “Lost”.

Panasonic thought it was April and NAB time today, and so they had a bunch of press releases. Among them was their new high-end prosumer/indie camera, the HMC150. This is a pretty nifty camera, an upgrade over the HVX-200, which was the indie filmmaker’s darling so far. This camera uses 3CCD 1/3″, which creates as much background blur as the HV20. Not very much that is. On the other hand, it records full HD at 30p and 24p, and also native 720p and 1080/60i. It’s expected to cost $6000.

The most interesting point here is that Panasonic goes AVCHD and the tapes are a thing of the past. I did fully expect that all prosumer cameras will be AVCHD for this next generation. I now expect Sony’s and Canon’s announcements to also be AVCHD-based.

The AG-HMC150 sounds sweet with its 3.5″ LCD screen, but two things really bug me to the point that I want to throw this camera to the head of its product manager:

1. No internal (swappable?) hard drive in addition to its SDHC card slot. This makes the camera even more expensive, and honestly, not as convenient as Panasonic would like us to think it is. Panasonic is a big flash manufacturer, so they want us to buy, buy, buy SD cards. Freaking douche bags.

2. According to the press release, it uses 13 mbps for 1080/60i (1440×1080). This is not enough. We’ve seen that res/bitrate on many other cameras and quality was not even better than the HV20 which is a $700 camera nowadays. Panasonic should give at least 18 mbps to 1080/60i and 24 mbps (full AVCHD spec) to 1080/24p/30p (1920×1080).

And 1080/60p would have been nice too, at around 40 mbps (even if they had to go over the AVCHD spec). But I understand that it might be a bit early for 1080/60p (the next big version of Blu-ray will support that, but that’d be in years from now).

But honestly, these two points above, are really stinky. I can’t wait to see what Canon has to offer for their next-gen prosumer line. I have $3000 to spend.

A guy claims that youtube’s Anonymous Anonymous videos are all censored. I don’t know if this is true or false, but I know that even on Digg now their posts are “buried” and never see the light of the front page anymore. I don’t know if this is just coincidental, or people had enough of the Anonymous Anonymous group, or if organized Scientologists fight back the same way as the group does. Hopefully Youtube clears up the situation.

Regarding Anonymous Anonymous’ actions, while I fully support their opinions about Scientology, I don’t think they go the right way about it. If they want some action against this for-profit “religion” (for the record: I personally don’t consider it a religion), they should write to their congressman, raise money to post ads, and educate people to not join the cult. Picketing outside the Scientology offices proves and brings nothing at the end. Scientology is what it is, and it’s not going to change, so picketing outside their offices is a waste of time.

I know that fans of “Jericho” wouldn’t want to hear this, but these 7 episodes on the second season is the end of the road for the show. I hope they conclude the series without a cliffhanger on the 7th episode.

Apparently, the ratings were terrible for a season opener, and it can only go downhill from now on. Some will say that the 3 leaked episodes was the reason, but I don’t believe so. Only Jericho fanatics would try to pirate these episodes, and they aren’t many of those. Even if there were 1 million fewer viewers because of the leaked episodes, 8 mil viewers overall would still not be good enough. Jericho needed a good 12 mil as a starter to hope for about 9 mil at the end of its season and hope for a renewal.

To add to this, the show had a downgrade: camera equipment. It looks like a damn soap opera now. No film-look at all. It just looks red and ugly, no dynamic range or color spectrum. At the beginning, I thought it was just me, but then I saw that others noticed too. In fact, I was a bit surprised that people actually did notice! Some say that because they went digital it makes the show look cheap, but it’s not the digital part that makes it cheap, but the fact that they use cheap cameras that probably don’t have good lens support. There was almost no DOF in the new season opener.

So that was CBS’ plan for “Jericho”‘s comeback? Make it cheap, cheap, cheap? I feel that CBS stabbed us in the back. Oh well, business is business.

I called my little bro today and to my surprise he told me that he started watching “Heroes” and “Lost” for the first time. He is still on the second episode of “Lost”, but he is loving it so far. But he wanted to know more. He asked me how many episodes are around, and what I know about them. I told him that I won’t spoil it for him. But he insisted. True story:

Eugenia: You have to watch it yourself, Lost is a puzzle, if I spoil it for you, you won’t enjoy it as much.
Teo: But I want to know who gets off the island and who dies.
Eugenia: Sorry, I can’t tell you. There are deaths and twists, but you gotta watch it yourself.
Teo: Does the doctor die?
Eugenia: No.
Teo: Does the hot brunette die?
Eugenia: No.
Teo: Does the fat guy die?
Eugenia: No.
Teo: Does the pregnant woman die?
Eugenia: No.
Teo: Do the Chinese die?
Eugenia: No. They are Koreans btw.
Teo: Does the old guy with the scar in the eye die?
Eugenia: No.
Teo: Does the blonde guy who killed the bear die?
Eugenia: No.
Teo: Does the father with the kid and the dog die?
Eugenia: No.
Teo: Then no one dies!!!!
Eugenia: Yes they do! You forgot 4 main characters, and 3 of them die.
Teo: No, I mentioned them all.
Eugenia: No, you didn’t.
Teo: Yes, I did. I don’t remember anyone else.
Eugenia: Then it’s a good thing they died.
Teo: ….