My 5 year old PC almost died yesterday (apparently it was just the gfx card to blame, which I replaced since), so amidst all that I checked out the PC prices. Having a fresh look at the current prices, I decided to write this blog post: what would I buy if I was starting doing video today. Here’s what I put together for $2500 (plus tax/shipping).

1. PC
I found this DELL model being the best in terms of features and price. I configured it with the basic PC speakers, Intel Pentium dual-core E5400 (2MB L2, 2.7GHz, 800FSB), 64bit Win7 OS, 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz, 21.5″ Dell ST2210 Full HD 1080p Monitor with VGA cable, 500GB SATA Hard Drive 7200RPM. Price: $718.

2. PC Extras
A. You need to buy a few extras here: a cheap GeForce PCIe card that has PureVideo HD support (VP2+). The cheapest you can find that can do some good PureVideo will do (Purevideo CUDA is starting to get very good support for h.264 acceleration from many applications, including Flash). You can find such a card for about $60-$70 in other stores, like Geeks.com.
B. An SDHC reader. Must clearly mention SDHC (plain SD won’t do). Price: $10.

3. Camera
If you’re serious doing some video art, then there’s no better buy than the Canon T2i. Smokes any other camera at that price range. Price: $800.

If you don’t have the money for lenses and a dSLR, get a Canon digicam. The cheapest HD Canon digicam (as of this writing the SD780 IS), costs $200, and it has enough manual controls to do a great job. In the case of getting such a digicam, ignore the “lenses” section below. Update: There’s a new cheap camera in town, that does 24p. More here.

4. Lenses
Start off with 3 lenses. While it’s true that the more expensive ultra-sharp lenses do offer better quality, starting off with some basic Canon lenses will also be acceptable (don’t go for non-EOS lenses). I’d suggest a somewhat fast prime, a longer prime or zoom lens, and a wide-angle one. Overall, depending on what you’re buying and where, these can cost between $350 and $500.

5. SDHC card
Buy a 16 GB SDHC card, Class 6 (slower Class SD cards might get you buffering/skipping problems). Don’t buy no-name flash cards, you might regret it. Price is at around $100.

6. Tripod
Something like this is good enough. As long as its head is “fluid”, and of somewhat good quality, you’re good to go.

7. Sony Vegas Platinum 9
The most advanced non-pro video editor, with full 24p support. You can also configure Vegas Platinum for full-screen 1:1 size preview on the HD monitor mention above (1:1 size preview helps with editing). Price: $75

8. Cineform NeoSCENE
Unfortunately, you can’t edit the Canon dSLR h.264 footage without transcoding it to a faster codec. This is the fastest “intermediate” HD codec of all. Price: $100 (at Videoguys.com). If you’re going to use Cineform, do NOT upgrade to Vegas Platinum 10, stay with Platinum 9, that works best with Cineform.

[Optional]
Buy an ND filter at 0.6 (4x). It will help you get more shallow depth of field outdoors on a sunny day (when the aperture tends to shrink — think of ND filters as sunglasses for your lens). These usually cost between $50 and $70 at the size that your lenses would require it at.

It’s been months now that we use the AppleTV exclusively as our audio server, so I wanted to report again on the topic, based on that long term usage. All I can say is this: it beats the hell out of any other system.

We have it hooked in our TV via HDMI, but we never turn ON the TV (the AppleTV must be connected to a video cable, otherwise it wont’ start up). We simply use our iPod Touch to control the Apple TV, via the “Remote Control” application, and it works a treat. Only things missing in the Remote Control application is the ability to rate new songs (but ratings already on songs are perfectly usable in smart playlists), and turning the AppleTV OFF (which can still be done blindly using the AppleTV remote control: hit twice the “menu” button, and then long press on the “play” button). A few more gripes remain, but they are not that important really.

Overall, we have found that this is the most enjoyable way to listen to music in our case, and our 85 GB of music. And given that an AppleTV costs a little over $200 these days, and most people in the our area already have either an iPhone or an iPod Touch, it makes it — by far — the best solution for music listening in the digital age.

This is a highly recommended setup.

FCC Disclaimer: Apple is not paying or asking me to write the above. It’s my own personal experience with the setup.

UPDATE: I wrote an article, comparing the Apple TV music experience to MPD’s.

Greece saw lots of protests and strikes in the past few years, as part of the social unrest that governs the country lately. However, the country is now in ruins financially, and yet, Greek people STILL don’t fucking get it. They want their cake, and eat it too. They somehow think that “the government should bail the country out”, without realizing that it’s the CITIZENS who should give up some of their benefits in order for that to happen. The government doesn’t have a hen with golden eggs, unfortunately.

The people who mostly strike are the civil servants. I have written about them before here. Professionally, civil servants in Greece equate with a king or queen in another country. They have so many benefits, they get so much more money than freelancers, and they can’t get fired (they have their jobs for life). Civil servants are the people who CAN give away some of their benefits in order to fix Greece back. “…many government workers enjoy preferential tax rates, can retire at the age of 54 (in some cases earlier) and enjoy 14 months of pay for 12 months worked“, writes CNN. Think of that for a moment!

All the new government is trying to do is bring some balance between how civil servants are treated in the EU and US, in order to help the country save money and pay its dues. Who else is going to pay for that 30 years of European Union cheating? The freelance unskilled workers who have to also compete with the Albanians’ ultra-low wages? Won’t happen! The only major social cast that does have enough money to give back are the civil servants, simply because they have been milking it since 1920.

Many Greeks have had this problem in my experience: they can’t really understand themselves in a bigger picture. They can’t understand that for something to happen, everyone must contribute. Instead, they see it as “the other guy’s problem, not mine”. Not to mention that some Greeks have a VERY snobbish approach against the Europeans. It’s “the Europeans”, and then there’s “we, the Greeks, who gave these stupid Europeans the Light of Civilization”. They think that a family in Sweden, or in France should bail out the corrupted Greeks just because they’re Greeks. Because they think that other countries STILL OWE THEM.

News flash: THEY DON’T.

Get a good look in the mirror Greece. I do hope that you don’t get a bail-out from EU. You don’t deserve it. Not until your government has the fucking balls to remove most of the benefits from the biggest MENACE of the country: civil servants. Saving the country should be the No1 priority for all, no matter the cost. This is no time for strikes! Going on strike when the economy is so bad, shows citizens who don’t understand what the hell is going on. Strikes don’t help the economy, they destroy it even further!

And then Greece has a problem, and it creates a diplomatic incident when someone tells it like it is? Sorry my compatriots, but that magazine cover was WELL DESERVED. It’s the fault of every one of you for letting your own country fall into such situation (I’m mostly looking at you recipients of European funds back in the ’80s). Not just some government that came and passed. Accept responsibility and dug yourselves out of the hole. Do something that’s admirable, for the first time in 2500 years.

This is one of my favorite electro-rock bands, the Quebec-based We Are Wolves. Their new album, “Invisible Violence“, was released in the US a few days ago. Download some legal mp3s to sample their music here.

I got disappointed with LOST’s “Lighthouse” episode last night. Three reasons:

1. This episode is AGAIN about the Losties learn that they are “candidates”. The previous episode dealt with the exact same thing. I simply found the episode redundant because of this. That’s what happens if you don’t plot ALL your episodes and seasons at the very beginning and based on the story you got, and instead you have to listen to the network about “how many episodes they want this season” or “how many seasons”. In my opinion, LOST should have ended last year. The second part of the 2nd season and first part of 3rd season should have been merged. Ideally, LOST should have only been 3 seasons of ~24 episodes each.

2. So there’s a lighthouse. CLOSE to the fucking caves. That no one seen before? What type of bullshit is that? That was a total cop-out. Even the writers knew that this is a total cop-out, and that’s exactly why Jack was put to say “how come we never seen it before”, and then they had Hurley to say “I don’t know dude, maybe we weren’t looking for it before”. Total fucking cop-out.

3. And Jack has a kid in the alternative universe. Like we care. The 6th season is too late to bring such characters into the main character’s lives. Even Dogen is. He should have at least been *mentioned* in the past by Richard or Ben in order to stomach him in the 6th season. Like the bomb last year. Another such major element that should have been mentioned before the 5th season (cryptically, of course).

All that shows not poor planning, but how that industry works. Yes, the writers have written the GENERAL story of what’s going on in LOST, but not the details. The details are written when each episode is written (usually 3-5 months before the episode is aired). And that’s where the problem lies. For a show like LOST to be REALLY cohesive, everything, every important detail, had to be written by 2004 already.

Yesterday marked the longest shoot session I ever did, with an overall time of 8+ hours. It was for the music video of a track by the band Midnight Strangers. The music video/short-film deals with technology addiction. More in a few days, when the video is up and ready. Until then, here are two unmodified screen-grabs from yesterday’s shoot.

Glenn “Avene” Thomas is an old timer in the HV20 community, but he lately experiments with the cheap Canon HD digicams. This is a music video with one of these cams.

Downloading the original WMV file looks great. Here’s a re-sized still from that WMV:

One very interesting tidbit that I was made aware of just a few moments ago: even the cheapest Canon new digicams now, like the A490 that costs $100 (announced last week), do 29.97 fps instead of the traditional 30.00 fps. This shows a change in the mentality of Canon regarding video, and how they feel that their digicams can play a role in the video market. Happy times ahead for us video geeks. I wouldn’t be surprised if their near-future models also do 24p (23.976 fps), selectable to 25p and 30p.

Last summer I was interviewed by the cable TV show “Visual Crunch” for the HIJK music video “Alibi” (the very first music video I directed, 2008). The show aired tonight, but I was a bit shy to let you know before I actually watched the show myself and see how I looked on it… Well, I looked as fat on it as I’m in real life, not much more, I think. Thankfully, my English panned out pretty well on (the HVX-200) camera too, another one of my fears.

I’d like the thank the band for their kind words though. Meant a lot to me. We’ve already discussed shooting a new music video for their new EP, so I hope we will be shooting soon!

If you’d like to watch the show, here are the re-runs of the specific episode #5. Our segment is on the second part of the show. Check out first if you have access to the MYX channel btw (Channel #368 on Comcast, I believe):

– Feb 19, Friday at 1730 PT/ 2030 ET and 2100PT/ midnight ET
– Feb 20, Saturday at 2000 PT/ 2300 ET
– Feb 22, Monday at 1200 PT/ 1500 ET

“Pandorum” is a sci-fi movie released last year. I just watched it tonight, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I found it to be some really good sci-fi, very well made. It’s such a shame that critics killed it. It cost $40 mil but it only made back $14 mil after the critics backlash.

The interesting thing here is that I enjoyed this movie more than I enjoyed “Moon” (which I watched last week). “Moon” was highly praised, and it’s a miracle film made for just $5 mil, but I found its premise a bit more boring than I found the action-based “Pandorum”. Only “District 9” came ahead of “Pandorum” last year, IMHO. “Avatar” was great for its tech, but less intense for me.

[SPOILERS] While critics found the zombie-like monsters “derivative”, I actually found them to be an allegory. They were created because Gallo was insane, with Gallo representing humanity. And Gallo got insane because of the effects of the cryogenic technology. The movie delivers a message without sounding technophobe. I liked how at the end the 1162 people survived, they had nothing with them. No tools, not even clothes, to start again anew to the new planet. Another allegory to show us that if we want a second chance as a species we’ll have to fight for it, and that we’d really have to start from zero.

Overall, very enjoyable, and a great sci-fi flick. The critics can go suck it.

This is a new section I’m starting on my blog, titled “band of the week”. It’d be a band that I discover through my endless music researching daily, and that I think you should listen too.

The first band I’m presenting is Scanners, from London, UK. Scanners’ second full album, “Submarine“, was released yesterday. It’s great hooky indie pop-rock, with some elements of goth punk rock. You can legally download three songs for free here, and one more here.