An Egyptian human rights activist who posted videos about police abuse says YouTube has shut down his account because of complaints that the videos contain “inappropriate material,” writes CNN.

I think YouTube did the wrong thing here. If the images were “graphic” they could have been placed under a “you must be 18 or older” prohibition. But under no circumstances these kinds of videos should have been taken away. It’s sites like YouTube that such things should be posted and made known to the public. The guy didn’t win an award from international journalism bodies for nothing.

Or is it that YouTube only wants to feed us with Britney videos and flaming farts?

Handheld I am afraid.

Got my toys today. Here’s my HV20 on the cheap shoulder bracket with the DM-50 microphone and the WD-H43 wide angle lens.

And the HV20 with a Canon 50/1.8 lens, mounted using a 52mm reverse ring. This allows for macro shots. Time to go find some spiders.

Remember back in the ’90s and early ’00s how geeks would rig their PCs, overclock them, add dual Voodoos etc? What myself and other enthusiasts are doing these days with the HV20 is very similar in fact. I thought I left the geek culture, but in reality I am still right there, just on another level.

This version has different music and the snowboarding scenes have been reworked. I think this version is much better. HD version here.

I just received the Canon ZR800 DV camcorder today and I gave it a very quick whirl, handheld, around my house just before the sun went down. Color graded. I plan to shoot some serious video with it soon, just to showcase that High Definition is the not the A and Z of videography. This $200 little camera can produce some good footage if you are careful with the shooting and playful during editing. Sample footage here!

I also received today a shoulder bracket, a 52mm reverse ring to mount macro lenses, while Tiffen sent me a Steady Stick for a review. I will be reviewing that in 2 weeks time (update: review posted).

If Turkey wants to enter the EU, that’s just one of the things they need to fix. You can’t prosecute people just because you don’t agree with them.

Ok, this sucks big time. Here’s a very, very interesting portable PMP that supports 720p playback, the Cowon A3, but it has two major problems:

No .mov video container support (even if they support the underlying format), and no AAC support. It’s like Cowon gives the finger to Apple. Truth is, Apple matters, and Cowon should start adding support for these formats.

The second problem is that it comes with a 800×480 screen instead of a 852×480 one, and this means that every 480p widescreen video viewed won’t fit in the that resolution (because of the wide aspect ratio), so these videos will always have to be resized.

An enthusiastic online friend recently traveled to an exotic country to shoot a documentary. He is not a professional, but he wants to be one. Unfortunately, inexperience strikes fast when doing such leaps. The friend arrived there pretty much with just enough tapes, the HV20 and a tripod. But truth is, there’s more than that needed if you are after a professional result. Here’s a list of things you need to get with you if you are shooting serious documentaries away from home:

1. Your HD camera and the stuff it came with. ($700 to $1500).
2. Enough tapes. Maybe about 25-50 of them. ($150).
3. A steady, fluid, tripod. It’s important to be ultra stable. ($200)
4. A shoulder bracket. This is needed for “reporting-style” shots. ($50)
5. Two ND filters, at different strengths. ($100-$150)
6. A polarizer filter. ($50)
7. A good wind-shielded shotgun stereo microphone. ($200)
8. A stereo lavalier mic and wind-shielding for it ($50).
9. A wide-angle lens (for scenery). $250
10. A telephoto lens (for wild-life). $250
11. A fast laptop with a firewire port and enough RAM able to capture the footage and let you review your tapes at the end of the day. If an important scene didn’t come out right, you must re-shoot the next day if possible. ($1500)
12. A 500GB external USB 2.0 hard drive to backup your tapes. ($200)
13. A 5-in-1 light reflector to be used on interviews. ($30)
14. A second battery and a travel charger that works on the country you are going to. ($50)
15. Headphones to review the audio recorded. If your audio was problematic during an interview (e.g. too much wind), you must re-shoot. ($20)
16. The appropriate firewire and USB cables, and an HDMI or component cable that will allow you to potentially review your footage on a TV if required. ($30)
17. A big enough camera bag that will let you carry some of the stuff mentioned above. ($30)
18. Cleansing gel and cloth in the event your lenses need clean up. ($20)
19. A cleansing tape in the event your tape head needs clean up. ($15)
20. Travel insurance. A license that will allow you to shoot professional stuff on other countries, as well as “image release” contracts for your interviewees. ($?)

Good luck with your documentary or travel video. Get your wife to carry all that stuff… 😉

One more on color grading. This is some color graded footage I shot with the Panasonic LX-2 digicam last week in Lake Tahoe. The camera is able to shoot 480/30p and 720/15p (would have been nice if it could do 720/24p at least) so it’s an interesting one.

I love the dramatic look of the following too. I used Aav6cc, use almost all options on Color Corrector, and I also used two Magic Bullet plugins back to back to get this look.

BTW, just a note to my video-related readers: My phone number changed (apparently it stopped working a good while ago, but I hadn’t notice as this is not my real number, but a gateway from the real phone world to VoIP). My new number is now listed in my “contact” page. As long as you call between 12 PM to 6 PM PST time, I should be able to take your call if you have any video-related questions (it’s faster than answering emails, I get too many lately). Alternatively, install GizmoProject, the VoIP application, and call me for free from in there. My Gizmo/SIP info is also listed in my “contact” page.

I received a Nokia E51, an iPod Touch 16GB, and the shotgun mic for my HV20 today. Still waiting for the ZR800 though. Hopefully it will arrive tomorrow.

I like the E51. Really nice phone. Only real problem it’s got is its pathetic video recording performance (9 fps, what the hell?).

The iPod Touch is soooo thin… Interchanging between the iPhone and the iPod Touch in your hand, the difference in thickness brings a weird feeling. Thank God you can manually sync with the iPod Touch btw.

Haven’t tested the DM-50 mic yet. I need to finish up my Adobe Photoshop+Premiere Elements review first. Adobe sent me a review package last week.

Update: Stupid Apple. They have no special keyword to recognize the user agent of the iPod web browser. The word “iPhone” is unique enough so it can be used relatively safely as a keyword matcher, but the iPod Touch just has words like “AppleWebKit”. “Mobile” and “iPod” (not close to each other), which I am sorry to say they are not that unique so it’s difficult to decide if it’s a genuine iPod or not. Anyways, I just added special support for it on OSNews and Gnomefiles, but most other sites don’t support it (e.g. mobile.live.com does not let me use the actual mobile site while it does let me do so when using the iPhone).