Late at night, when I am working with my Powerbook on my lap, I leave the TV on the background sometimes at the Music-in-HD channel. I usually watch this so I can get inspiration for music video clips that I could potentially shoot. At least once a night, they play videos from Fiona Apple. I don’t particularly like Apple’s music, as I personally find it weird — although I prefer it over Björk’s.

Anyways, one of her videos, “Not About Love“, is an interesting one to me (YouTube link). It’s a cheapo video clip, co-starring Apple and comedian of Greek descent Zach Galifianakis. It apparently was shot on video, and so quality suffers and I would not be surprised to hear that it was actually shot with a consumer widescreen DV camera (yes, the ones that cost $250). However the director does a good job in creating a funny, interesting atmosphere.

This is what I am after. Given the fact that I actually own a much better camera than he did when he shot the video, all it takes is some imagination on my part and some basic editing skills. Am I ready for it? I think so. Especially if JBQ helps me out during shooting with his photography skills, I think I can ultimately create something worth watching.

We were watching last night a documentary about the history of video games. Among the “subplots” discussed was an 8-year old kid (or was he 10?) that had game addiction. His addiction was mostly on FPS and MMORG online games (he had little interest in non-violent games). At some point the camera showed the kid glued to the Mac, with the father trying to get him away from it telling him that he had enough for today, while the kid was shouting not wanting to go away. The parents already knew that their kid had an addiction (a psychologist actually confirmed it). And yet, they still let the kid log in to Mac OS X and play these games and then they had to fight to get him away from the computer.

Why didn’t the parents take the following action instead?
1. Remove all games from the Mac except Chess.
2. Install a few freeware puzzle and table games just so the kid doesn’t die of boredom.
3. Remove his current OSX user account.
4. Create a new non-administrative user account with very limited Internet access. Internet access should ONLY be allowed for the following sites:
a. *.wikipedia.org (for help with his school work and personal education)
b. *.mail.google.com (for his email needs, friends)
c. *.cnn.com (for potential news interests the kid might have)

And that’s it. Let the kid cry his way out of this. He should accomplish nothing. He has everything that he needs, that a kid of his age should need that is, and nothing more. Heck, he can still connect his camera, load iPhoto and email a picture to his friends via Gmail. Or use iMovie and burn a DVD. Or write a document, or edit a picture. What more than that a kid should need? Internet access and application installation rights should be limited — especially in his case so that he can’t download or install new games.

Δωσ’του και δυό μπάτσες άμα δεν κάθεται καλά, και τελείωσε η υπόθεση.

For those who either do HD video editing, or they mostly watch TV on or next to their computer, this monitor is one of the best purchases one can make right now.

It is a 24″ 1920×1080 monitor selling for $399 after rebate. So far nothing special. The special treatment is all the extra TV-related ports it has: HDMI, S-Video and Component! It has no TV tuner, but it is perfect if you want to use the same monitor as TV-via-cable-box or plain PC monitor, and even more perfect if you are doing video work and you need to test the gamma values of your video via a component or S-Video signal. Using an HDMI switcher you can even connect the monitor to two of your graphics card’s DVI ports (via a DVI-to-HDMI cable), or one VGA and one DVI, or S-Video/Component out — depending what your graphics card supports.

And of course, the full 1080p resolution makes it great for 1:1 video zoom which results in better 1080p video quality. This is the cheapest solution today for 1080p testing with general usage also in mind. Two functionalities in one at a respectable price point.

I don’t work for Westinghouse or Newegg btw. But I salivate over that product.

“Madonna is reported to have started injecting herself with vitamins to boost her energy levels. The singer, who turns 49 on Thursday, is said to have surprised passengers on a recent flight from New York to London by injecting herself with a vitamin shot in her arm. Nutritionists said that such a drastic practice could have potentially harmful long-term effects on her health. […] It is understood that Madonna was injecting herself with B6 and B12 vitamins to boost her energy”, writes ThisIsLondon.co.uk.

This is the other side of “drug” use. And that’s not the only thing that Madonna overdoes. According to a physician’s opinion in a UK magazine 2 months ago, she is addicted to endorphins that are released after many hours in the gym (she spends 4 hours a day, everyday, in various gyms and that almost cost her marriage recently). Madonna does not smoke or drink much anymore, and she is against recreational drugs. But what she does with these injections, gym and her crazy macrobiotic diet (I hope that she doesn’t impose this to her children), she is not far off a “junkie” either.

For the 1000th time I will have to write this in this blog: Παν μέτρον άριστον (”all good things in moderation”).

I blogged about the AppleTV back in the day. My idea of using digicam clips instead of miniDV still stands, although since then I purchased an HDV camcorder so it makes sense to try to make use of it. Now that I can export real progressive 1080p videos out of my HDV 1080i camera I need a device that can manage 10 Mbps 1080p h.264 files. Unfortunately, the Quicktime engine is extremely slow playing back files created by the x264 encoder instead of Apple’s own encoder — no matter how you encode the file (with CABAC or CAVLC). So not only the AppleTV must be fixed to work better with h.264 but it must add support for 1080p too — currently it can go only up to 720/24p and iTunes will REFUSE to upload to the device a 720/30p file even if it was carefully encoded with less than 5Mbps which is AppleTV’s maximum bitrate. 1080p playback would probably mean that a hardware decoder must be used. 250 GBs of disk and ability to add DivX/WMV plugins wouldn’t hurt either. Give me that for $400 and I’d buy it in a heartbeat.

Update: And apparently AppleTV will refuse to work via an HDMI switcher that has no support for content locking (most cheap ones don’t).

I actually don’t dislike the features and flexibility the Javascript language provides, but I don’t like the slowness it brings. On Digg today there was this article about javascript and how it slows down the web. And this is so true.

Heavy JS/Ajax is the No1 culprit for my 12″ 867 Mhz G4 Powerbook not being able to keep up with most sites today. As you may remember, I have JS+Plugins all turned off on all of of my browsers there in order to be able to get a respectable rendering time without the computer overheating from the intense computations talking place and burn my lap. Sites like LinuxDevices.com, LiberatedFilms.com and of course Flash on YouTube (Adobe stopped optimizing Flash for PowerMacs a long while back), used to, or continue to bring my Powerbook down. We are talking about over 10 seconds to register a click if one of these sites is loaded. When I bought this laptop, it was surfing the web just fine. Today, it can’t just even do that properly. Heck, I am forced to even use the mobile version of Hotmail instead their new Ajax-based one these days.

For me, these are the culprits:
1. Heavy javascript used even when it’s not really needed. Advertisers should get a clue too.
2. Flash video not optimized enough, at least not on PowerPCs.
3. Heavy CSS.
4. Unoptimized WYSIWYG-created bloated HTML.

To make it clear: I am not against using these technologies. But they must be used wisely.

The Canon HV20 currently is the No1 best selling HD camera worldwide as it’s the best there is. Its Cine-mode contributes to the good sales, a mode that emulates the “film look”. Cooler colors, less contrast, better dynamic range so highlights are not blown out. This mode can be used only when shooting in 24p mode.

However, there is a lot of controversy about that “Cine” mode. You see, while it helps out with highlights, it loses a lot of detail in dark areas of the picture — detail that is present when shooting in shutter/aperture priority modes. The truth is, most film cameras do the same too, but there are many those who — amongst them myself– who would like to have the extra detail anyway.

So basically, you will have to pick your poison: Do you prefer the traditional film look with less detail in the dark places, or more detail equally distributed in the image but blown up highlights?

One thing to remember here is that CineMode would best serve professionals and not amateurs. You see, when shooting a real movie, there are very bright lights everywhere. Even if the movie ends up having a “dark look” like “The Matrix”, it is STILL shot with very bright lights and then adjusted later in post processing. You see, it’s better to capture as much detail as possible and then discard it in post if you want, rather than not having it at all. Problem is, amateurs don’t have their own lighting people or equipment around to shoot properly on each scene.

One movie that looks exactly how HV20’s Cinemode records, is “Syriana” with Matt Damon and George Clooney (sample pic). It is non-detailed on dark spots while it performs well on highlights. Personally, I didn’t like how it looked. Some other modern films look cleaner IMO.

Regardless, I don’t think I have much of a choice, so if I go ahead and shoot music video clips for local bands I will be using Cinemode.

If you buy *any* TV today, you will be watching an image like this one by default:

The colors and their temperature is jacked up like hell. They do that on purpose because when people are shopping for TVs in shops, their only frame of reference is “how lively the colors are”. And so manufacturers have NO ALTERNATIVE but to jack up the colors so they can have a shot in the TV market.

For years we left our TV, a 55″ Sharp 1080i rear-CRT projection, on its default settings. We just don’t mess up with it. It’s a bit of a taboo, and also because we trusted Sharp to do the right thing. But now that I am involved in video work, I just can’t stand how TV looks by default. You switch on Jay Leno’s or Conan’s show, and everyone looks RED. Everything is just so freaking saturated that it doesn’t make sense. It makes me sick. At first, I was thinking “what the hell are TV channels are thinking of shooting like this, don’t they do white balance tests before shooting?”. But now I know. It’s not the TV channels to blame, but the default settings in the TVs.

So, I decided to give an end to this visual ordeal. I went to Sharp’s picture settings and did the following changes tonight:
– “Color” went from “50″ down to “5″ !!!
– “Brightness” went from “50″ up to “65″.
– “Color Temperature” went from “High”, three notches down to “Low”. The “Low” temperature emulates the film look and looks very cool, especially in indoors scenes.

Now, everything looks so much more natural, more “filmy”, and I am such happy camper:

I only hope that when we will buy a new TV, these settings will be there so I can get them back to acceptable levels. Cheaper TVs don’t have adequate color controls you see, so I am rather stressed about it.

Check this guy on YouTube (born in 1928), showing off and testing his brand new Canon HV20 HD camcorder and his video editing skills. That’s just so cool and refreshing to see older people still having curiosity for new stuff.

My grandfather has a similar age as he does, and he can only do simple arithmetic calculations in his head. My grandmother faired better, she went 1 year to school so she can actually recognize simple written numbers. And that’s about it.

I don’t even have to go as far back as my grandparents. My mother spent just 6 years in school, and my father 7 (he ran off from high-school in the first year, they had summon everyone in the village trying to find where the hell he ran off to).

None of them is capable of using a computer, or operating a camcorder or a digital camera. Their education level matches most of their compatriots (at their respective age bracket) in the north-west of Greece, so it’s not of any surprise. People born in big Greek cities fair better, but still, it shows how far behind Greece still is compared to the education level of USA or Northern Europe.

Update: And then, I read this. When I was in school in the ’80s in Greece, there WERE NO BULLIES, and the teachers made sure of that. Sure there were a few kids that were a bit difficult to deal with, but they would never do anything to hurt you unless you really provoke them. I really don’t understand why USA has so many bullies at schools. For me, this is a completely alien concept, and so I perceive it as very degrading of the US culture.

In its journey from CD to MP3 player, the music has been compressed by eliminating data that computer analysis deems redundant, squeezed down until it fits through the Internet pipeline. […] “You can get used to awful,” says record producer Phil Ramone. “You can appreciate nothing. We’ve done it with fast food.” writes SeattlePI.com.

Oh, Shut. Up.

We had the programmer purists, the linguistic purists, the film photography purists, now we have the music producers too. The guy listens to music live every day and expects that everyone will and should be able to do the same. Well, it’s not that easy to do so.

A lossless codec like FLAC only “compresses” data 51% compared to uncompressed WAVE CD and that’s a lot of MBs for just one CD. Compare that to just 50 MBs that mp3 is able to compress for an album, compared to about 390 MBs of FLAC — storage ain’t free you know, especially for small portable devices. And besides, even the CDs don’t have the best music quality possible even if they are uncompressed, you need the Super Audio CDs for that. Where this going to end? “Rent a band for the weekend to get the best possible quality?”

One thing that consumers can do to listen to music the way the musician/producer intended them to is to buy better headphones and encode their mp3s to 160 or 192 mbps (mp3 won’t scale well to more than 192 kbps anyway). That’s a good compromise and I do agree that every iPod owner should throw away their legendary white earphones and go buy some good headphones.