The following “garbage” bug happens once every 20 alerts or so from AT&T after I hang up on a phone call (the bug could totally be AT&T’s of course, but I smell it’s the iPhone’s). It happens both with firmware 2.x and 3.x. I don’t remember it happening with firmware 1.x. English, French and Greek are enabled in the keyboard layouts — if that helps.

I just stumbled against a band called Art in Manila, for whom their label give away 2 free mp3 samples. I heard the songs, I liked what I heard, and went to iTunes to check the rest of their songs. I liked 4 more of their songs via the iTunes preview, which I purchased. Looking around for more info, I found that Orenda Fink is their singer. I checked her 2 free promotional mp3 songs, and I also liked what I heard. So I ended up purchasing one additional song from the singer’s solo album (“Blind Asylum”). Snooping a bit more, I am now looking at the O+S band, which is the singer’s latest project and they also have 2 free songs. If I like what I hear again, I will be buying once more tonight.

Moral of the story: 1-2 free mp3 samples (e.g. your 4rd or 5th best song) of your album should be given away for promotional reasons (and make absolutely sure you have tagged them correctly). However, this will only work if your songs are actually good. If you only have 1-2 good songs in the whole album, then you should get another job anyway.

Update: Bought a song from O+S too just now (“Lonely Ghosts”).

Swedish music video filmmaker and reader of this blog, Matti Nurmilehto, put my “butter smooth slow-motion” tutorial into action with his PAL 50i HV20 camera and Sony Vegas. Here’s the smooth slo-mo footage he got out of it after following the tutorial:

You should expect even smoother slo-mo from a 60i NTSC camera using my tutorial.

Stu “Prolost” Maschwitz posed the question of what filmmaking-related app would be nice for the iPhone. I replied that a cast & crew scheduling app, with push or wifi notifications, GPS locations of the crew, alarms, IM between the crew, and a backend DB somewhere, would have been great. If the app was to be developed & designed carefully, an iPhone can last at least 2-3 days on WiFi with the app constantly connected to check for messages (I was getting 3 days of registered VoIP on WiFi years ago already on my Nokia phones of the time).

And then it hit me: without background apps on the iPhone, this idea is busted. It just wouldn’t be a realistic solution.

Sure, we can talk all day about background apps needed because we want our Twitter or IM notifications in real time, but in all honesty, that’s more play than work. The idea above instead, is a real work app, and can easily save a lot of money during the shooting of a feature film. To me, this example made me feel even more the need for bg apps, than any other example in the past given by the average net user.

IMO, Apple should get a clue, and make sure they offer bg apps by January. That’s all I have to say about this. Either their phone is a smartphone that’s it’s truly useful to people, or it’s a glorifying ‘feature phone’.

Then, of course, there’s the Android platform, which does allow background apps.

Geeks.com, sent over the SanDisk Sansa View 16 GB for a review, along an 8 GB microSDHC card for it. In the box, we also received its USB cable (proprietary connector is used) and some standard earphones.

It took about 2 hours to fully charge the player the first time. The UI loads within 10 seconds and greets you with a scrolling interface. The icons are: Music, Photos, Videos, and More (Radio, voice recording, device settings). When a song is playing, a new icon appears called “Now Playing” (it doesn’t show up otherwise). The UI is controlled by an iPod-like wheel that is actually rotatable rather than touch-sensitive. There’s also a “Home” button, a power on/off/HOLD slider on the side of the device, next to the microphone. The 3.5mm headphone jack is placed on the bottom of the player, next to the proprietary USB connector. The 2.4″ LCD screen is very readable and supports many colors, however the font used in it is pretty ugly.

The device sports 16 GB of internal flash, but it also has a microSD card slot. We tested the slot with an 8 GB card that Geeks supplied for the test.

The music menu has all the normal options one would expect, e.g. playlists, artists, songs, podcasts, audiobooks, genres, and a few more, like “recently added”, “my top rated”, and [voice/FM] “recordings”. When you click on a song, it will start playing, with the band name, album title, song title on the top, followed by the album art, and the progress bar. Clicking the bottom part of the wheel, it will bring a new menu up, that includes options like “Add to Library”, Rate music, repeat, shuffle, EQ, Go List and even “Delete song”. The device supports MP3 and WMA, but the latest firmware adds AAC support too (.m4a). Audio quality was very good.

The Photo menu has some nice slideshow options, while the video menu allows you to resume a video you had started watching earlier. It supports WMV and h.264 videos up to the QVGA resolution. The FM radio option allows you to set presets and even record radio stations, while the voice recording is also pretty straight forward too.

It all sounds good in first glance, and someone could go as far as to say that this might be the next best mp3 player after the iPod, if it wasn’t for the inconsistent UI. There are multiple ways to go “back” to a previous menu, that make the whole usability pretty confusing. On that, we should add that the device failed to read all of our AAC’s album art, and about 40% of our mp3 album art (all jpeg files embedded in the tags, ID3Tag v2.3). The Nokia cellphones also only read about 50% of my mp3’s album art, but if at least there was consistency in the failing of the two devices, I would have talked about a bug on my tagging, but both devices fail on different songs, so it seems that they are just buggy (iTunes and Mp3Tag can read all of them for example).

Also, the player is advertised as having gapless playback, but while the feature seems to have been worked on, it was certainly not as gapless as the iPod is. There was still a small sound heard when hoping between tracks.

The biggest problem however was the database corruption that I experienced twice within the last 3 weeks. The device would fail to recognize that it had GBs of songs in it, even when the “system info” utility correctly reported how much of the flash space was used. In order to fix the problem, you need to either delete or add a song via a PC, so you can force a re-generation of the DB (that takes up a few minutes when the device is full). Problem is, if you are high up in the mountains camping, and you don’t have a laptop with you, here goes your music for the time being.

The USB usability is a bit weird too (the UI for it doesn’t make it clear which mode is set on). More over, when I try to “eject” the device from Explorer, the device reproducibly crashes my Explorer (other devices don’t do that).

On the up side, the player can deliver over 25 hours of continuous playback, which is a feat. Overall, this is a good player if you just want to listen to some music and radio without having high expectations of a consistent interface and usability. It’s definitely better than most cheap mp3 players out there, but nowhere near the mighty iPod (or even the Zune).

When I learned that the new Canon SX200 IS digicam has not only exposure compensation in video mode, manual focus in steps, but also the very important exposure & focus locking, along manual white balance/color/sharpness/contrast/saturation/skinTone/R/G/B, it was a sure sale for me. So we went with my JBQ today at Costco and bought one for $330 (he got a toy too, he bought a 120GB iPod Classic to fit his 50 GBs of music).

The camera records in 1280×720 resolution, at 30.00 fps, at 24 mbps bitrate, with the h.264 (baseline level 4.1) codec & mono uncompressed audio, in the MOV container. Now, think that the best AVCHD camcorder out there, also records at a maximum of 24 mbps, but at the much more demanding 1920×1080 resolution. This means that 720p at 24 mbps is actually a very solid, very generous bitrate.

I set up a scene on my balcony and tested SX200 IS’ video capabilities against my Panasonic FX150, Kodak V1253, and my trusty Canon HV20. Please note that while I shot everything in auto, I turned down to the minimum the color/sharpness/contrast/saturation/SkinTone of the SX200 IS, because that’s the look I like the best (and it’s more color-grading friendly). Please take a good note: the DEFAULT video look of the camera is MUCH more punchy and sharp in every way, which it might be what some consumers want, but definitely not what a serious videographer wants (the damn thing doesn’t color grade otherwise).

The Panasonic has a larger sensor, it records 24 fps in MJPEG at 25 mbps. Unfortunately, this bitrate doesn’t seem to be enough for the less-optimized MJPEG codec, as the picture shows below. The very famous Panasonic LX3 produces the same looking video as the FX150 btw, the two digicams are more alike than different in their video behavior. The Panasonics have exposure compensation, but not locking, creating a very jumpy exposure effect, which kills the seriousness of the footage captured. On the upside, its MJPEG format is very smoothly editable under Sony Vegas, unlike the much slower format of the SX200 IS.

The Kodak V1253, records in 720/30p at 12 mbps MPEG4-SP (simple profile, the same kind of the mpeg4 format as… cellphones record as). The Kodak cameras are plagued with color problems mostly, and the fact that they have absolutely no controls (not even exposure compensation). Under Vegas, its format is near-uneditable, and makes the editor very crash-prone (it realistically requires proxy editing). What Kodak has for it instead, is cheaper prices, starting at $120 (I guess, you get what you pay for).

The Canon HV20, is an HDV camera, shooting 1440x1080i mpeg2 at 25 mbps. In order to properly compare it with these mostly-30p 720p cameras, I had to shoot in the shade with an ND4 filter, at 1/30th shutter speed. I always have Cinemode ON btw, in order to emulate the filmic look (which is why the screenshot is not very sharp and might surprise some of you). I used 720/60i project properties on Vegas (in other words, I trusted Vegas to do a proper resize of the footage), and I used “blend fields” as the de-interlacing algorithm as it provided the best-looking image compared to not de-interlacing at all, or using interpolation (I tried all three options, and analyzed their best(“full”) captured screenshots before I decided which one to include above). Compared to the SX200 IS, it has of course many more options and controls since it’s a real camcorder, but most importantly, it has a better lens that provides twice as much background blur.

As you can see, the HV20 (as expected, even with the less sharp Cinemode mode) and the SX200 IS kill the competition out of the water. Yes, I know of the newer Panasonics that use AVCHD-lite instead of MJPEG, but they still don’t have as much control or bitrate as this Canon camera! Sure, the SX200 IS doesn’t have shutter speed control and a 24p mode, but compared to ANY other consumer 720p digicam below $500, it has the MOST controls and the BEST image!

If they add shutter speed control and 24p option in a future model (even without IRIS/ISO control), that team at Canon should get a medal.

Verdict: get one yourself! Don’t bother with its competition (unless you prefer to buy an actual camcorder, or a DSLR).

Update: Read the comments below, there’s some more info.

“[Lost]It’s going to be one of the last huge television shows in terms of size of cast and scope of production… Given the fact that network television is changing, it may be one of the last great rides of this kind of big epic storytelling.”

This is what the resident director/producer of Lost, Jack Bender, said to journalists recently. Of course, I know all about TV going back to being episodic (and cheaper, as the whole entertainment industry is getting sized down), but this just sucks every time I read it anyway.

I just want my EPIC shows back! I want complexity!

I was just looking at some videos shot with the 5D, and many of them are official music videos. And it makes so much sense, the 5D is the best cost-effective camera for this specific job. It seems that many professional filmmakers who shoot music videos by trade, have flocked behind the 5D. At $3,500 (with two medium quality lenses) is a bargain.

With its 30p, you can shoot the video with 25% sped up audio, and then slow-down the video in post to 24p to match the original audio (confused? read here). Then, there’s the unparalleled quality of the videos straight out of the 5D (higher bitrate than any HDV/AVCHD prosumer camera), its color and image control that can emulate film looks, shallow DoF, and now, full manual control. The fact that its audio abilities are less than ideal is irrelevant towards shooting a music video, since the audio is added later.

At this point makes absolutely no sense to buy any prosumer camera ($2,000 to $10,000) and put a 35mm adapter in them to shoot music videos. Because, either the bitrate of these cameras can’t surpass the 5D’s (e.g. EX1, XH-A1), or the resolution is actually lower and adding a 35m adapter kills quality even more — even if the bitrate is higher (e.g. HVX200).

It only makes sense to get these cameras instead if you actually need true 24p recording (which is coming to the 5D too, and it’s not necessary for 25% slow-downed music videos anyway), if you need 60p/60i for better slow-motion, or if you need better audio options.

In other words: if you are in the business of shooting music videos, get a 5D and use it as your main camera. And if you happen to need better slow-motion abilities, get a consumer Canon HF-S100 that shoots in good quality 60i (when interpolating to 540p it creates a 60p file that produces smoother slow-mo).

Of course, for music bands that don’t have that kind of money, they can try my guide for shooting their music video for less than $430.

UPDATE: Heh, what do you know? This article was published today at NYTimes!

* If you are using Vegas with progressive Cineform files, make sure you read this. This is a must-do, or you are losing heaps of quality. The bug is actually not Cineform’s or Vegas’, but whoever wrote the AVI container specification.

* I updated the OSNews’ Mobile Detection Kit package a few days ago. It now includes detection for the Palm Pre among others.

* The Blitzen Trapper are preparing a new EP, that includes songs previously available only via CD-Rs sold at their gigs. Too bad that “Crushing the wheat” is not included, as it’s one of their best songs. I will be buying anyway though.

* David Carradine (along John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Steve McQueen) was one of my father’s favorite actors. I never liked the guy for some reason. While kung-fu and shit are all under my geek skin (I even practiced some tae-kwon-do ITF for a while back in the early ’90s), Carradine rubbed me the wrong way somehow, as a kid. I felt that there was something weird about him. I guess now we know (and there were allegations by one of his numerous ex-wives that he had sex with a young close relative of his). Yuck.

* I guess I have a fetish too. I like intelligent men. For example, there’s this Sony Vegas engineer that I don’t even know how he looks like (never seen a pic of him), but he’s so damn smart that… The guy just gets it, while some others in his team just manage to piss me off.

* JBQ and I watched the “Valkyrie” movie last night. Pretty good movie, we liked it.

* I now have a Google profile. Complete yours too!

* I cooked some Thai curry with rice for lunch, and my stomach hurts right now. Burp…

* Follow me on Twitter for more small useless updates such as this post.