Alastair Brown, a professional filmmaker from the UK, came up with this great dolly idea for his own needs, the Glidetrack. The invention worked so well, that he now sells it via his web site. I tried the gadget this weekend, so here’s my take on it.

The dolly arrived within just 2-3 days via Fedex from UK. An extra $13 was paid for customs. The box was well-padded and all the parts found in tact. I am usually terrible with DIY work, but I had no problem at all putting all the parts together. There is a long stripe of steel that mounts to the tripod, and then a gliding part where you mount a second tripod head, or the camera directly. The Glidetrack is pretty light for what it is so carrying it around is not really a big problem. When assembled, it is about 1 meter long.

The lubricated plastic bearings do the job, and so moving the camera left and right in the track is very smooth and slippery. It will require you about 10 minutes to learn to push/drag the head to the rail correctly, but then it’s a free ride. I used the Canon HV20 for my tests, and I know that the dolly has been tested with it, as Alastair also owns one too. The Glidetrack also comes with some plastic legs on both sides that allow you to shoot floor-level footage.

The only kind of footage that will require extra care is if you would like to do forward/backwards rail movement instead of left/right one. It is still possible to do so if you mount the camera high-enough so the rail is not visible on the frame.

Overall, the kind of footage you get out of it can look impressive, the parts are high quality, and the tech support is fast. Every serious filmmaker should have one of these around. If I had to just complain about something that would be its price, which feels a bit steep, especially with the current UK pound exchange rate (update: the UK sterling has taken a beating, so this might be an opportunity to get the gadget).

More Glidetrack samples here. Discussion here.

Rating: 8/10

As you well know by now, I am a demanding person. And the series currently on TV (except “Lost”) just piss me off. I don’t really enjoy any of them. Some are ok by leaving them on the background while browsing the net with the Powerbook on my lap, but they are not good enough to put me in the zone, make me throw away my laptop and get glued to the screen.

What I need is this instead:

I need the TV series to be big. Grand. Epic. Be about big, important, things. Not casual things like 2 detectives with different murder stories each week, or other episodic-style TV that might even have a fade background longer story. I need the series to affect many lives, I need a complex story and mystery, I need action, and I need intelligence. Here’s an example that I just thought about:

The humanity in the 24th century is about to make a big discovery. They come in contact for the first time with an alien race. But instead of having 5 or 10 main characters with episodic style action, I want each episode to use completely different characters, spanned in completely different locations. In one episode you are dealing with the military and how they see this new race. In the other episode, you get to know a large cast of doctors who find something mysterious about the capabilities of the race. Another episode deals with the politicians or the security agencies about the issue. Another episode deals with scientists who are told to work in a specific thing. Another episode is dealing with exploration expeditions to another planet and what they find there that ties back to our main story. Another episode deals with normal travelers who happen to travel through the alien space and what happens to them. Another episode deals with some people back on Earth and their take on the whole thing and how that affects their lives etc.

This allows the show being military, scientific, romantic, political, or all in once.

The point is that the story and the mystery should be unveiled slowly, but at many-many different levels. For example, something mysterious seen in one episode, might get explained in another episode with different characters, far away from the previous location. Of course, most of these characters will be recurring. For example, the doctor you saw on episode 2, you will see him again on episode 8, or the General you saw on episode 1 you will see him again on episode 5 and then 12 etc etc. There should always be some connection between some of the characters, like a complex web that becomes more complex as time goes by and the mystery unveils little by little. And you will get your surprises between some of the characters or their history too. It’s just that the majority of the story should get progressed mostly by new characters each time (more than 100 recurring characters, even more non-recurring ones), rather than a very specific “main hero” character. I don’t want a main hero because it’s not realistic to have just one smart ass guy who can magically fix the problem on each episode. People don’t shine that often!

Instead, I need to see a UNIVERSE. Like Star Trek had a whole “universe” background story, with many many recurring characters and stories. When you talk about Star Trek you identify with the whole story of humanity up to that point, not about 7 people on the Starship Enterprise. ST is bigger than that. Star Wars too. Which is why George Lucas has expanded the universe of SW to many new details and information that you can read online or on his novels, about characters and situations that don’t show up in his movies. In other words, I need the creation of this virtual universe that shows me how big it is and how grand it is by showing me many different situations of many different people in it, with only tie-in being the main plot and their occasional path-crossing.

If I was to give an analogy for what I want, is the online massively multi-player version of a computer game rather than a single-player PC game played by just one person. I am not sure I can make it clearer than that. It just has to feel “bigger than life” by taking place in a believable new universe. Heck, why else would I watch TV? If I wanted to watch reality TV, or traditional TV series, I would just record my own life during the day and watch it at night. I would probably be less bored.

Yes, my TV show idea above is indeed something like what “Lost” does right now. “Lost” is the first series to have so many main and recurring characters and have the viewer in the gaming seat, but I need the series I imagine to go even further. Even on “Lost” we don’t know the names of all of the 47 survivors, let alone their stories. “Heroes” is one of the shows that also tried to be “grand” (many characters, big thematic concept), but it fails in its implementation rather than the idea.

The only problem with this show idea is that it’s very expensive: not only you need completely different sets for each episode (or 2-part episode specials), but you need to make sure your many-many recurring actors are available for the job whenever you need them. Having an actor on call costs extra. Lastly, I need to know that there’s an end date, like on “Lost”. I don’t want the story to go on forever until it fails with the ratings and the series gets canceled. I need to know that the story is structured so carefully that there’s story for 3 or 4 or 5 seasons — and then it’s done.

But damn me to hell if I will ever enjoy a new TV series that’s not as “big” and “complex” somehow. I need to feel emerged with the story and their world, otherwise they are dead pixels to me.

I blogged about the new sci-fi/fantasy shows of the season a few weeks ago. Now that the fall season series have all being aired, here’s a quick review of each — to save you some TV evaluation time.

* Fringe.
Boring. I can’t pinpoint why, it’s just badly structured. It feels stupid at times. The background story just doesn’t make sense, I care not for the heroes. The episode with the bald man was interesting, then it fell back to obscurity again. Rating: 6/10

* Crusoe.
This is one show that it’s bound to become repetitive fast. Crusoe could be an interesting mini-series, it looks fabulous, but it doesn’t have the durability and flexibility of being interesting every single week. Rating: 6/10

* Life on Mars.
The most engaging series of the new season. It’s just cooler than the rest. It has more mystery and action too. Not perfect, but promising. The Brits had the right idea here. Rating: 7/10

* Eleventh Hour.
The worst of the new series. This is crap, crap, crap. Just bad. It’s just, I don’t know, it feels like an ’80s series. I was really unhappy to see that it does well in the ratings while “Life on Mars”, airing at the same time, dipped. It just shows how shallow viewers are. Look, it ain’t THAT terrible in absolute value, but it has nothing to hook me. There is no background story, it’s just individual episodes where we learn nothing about the main two characters. And there are only two recurring characters. I’d say that this series feels like “scifi for old people”. Rating: 3/10

* Knight Rider.
Oh, come on. Suckiness reached a new level. Rating: 4/10

* The Mentalist.
It’s just a cheap detective series, a’la “Life” and “Psyche”, but while it really doesn’t break any new ground, is well done for what it is. It airs at the same time as Fringe, and it has kicked its ass in the ratings so far. For a geek, it is a very mediocre series, but for old people who like CSI and the like, this is actually a breath of fresh air for them, a breath that can actually take without feeling lost. Rating: 5/10

* My Own Worst Enemy.
One of the worst. It’s just badly made. There’s nothing else to say here. It sucked. I feel bad for Christian Slater who tried to revitalize his career with this. Rating: 4/10

* Sanctuary
Oh boy. I hate to sound like a bitch to its producer Damian Kindler, as he was kind to let me interview him in the past. But I just can’t lie either. I hate its dark look, I hate its non-realistic computer generated backgrounds. I mean, honestly, is it cheaper to pay 3D artists to model a drawer rather than ask the studio to buy a real one? I really don’t like the premise of the series either, it just feels like a “monster in the closet” bedtime story. Just not my cup of tea. Rating: 4/10

* The remaining shows, “Kings” and “Dollhouse”, will be aired after January 2009. I will revisit them then.

The conclusion is that this is probably the first TV year where absolutely none of the new TV series are actually great. Last year was bad too, but “Pushing Daisies” kinda saved the day (although the series is really suffering right now in the ratings).

As you might have figured so far, I am a Madonna fan. I have been since Feb 1985, when I first saw “Like a virgin” on a Friday evening on the Greek TV’s “Mousikorama” show. I always admired her no-shit attitude and strength — both in her professionalism and in her muscles. Maybe because I totally see myself in her claim that she’s “a gay man in a woman’s body”.

However, this divorce business lately shows to me that she’s not above Guy Ritchie, her soon to be ex-husband, in many levels. I believe that this is the reason she married him. She needs someone to guide her, someone more intelligent and cooler than her. Being the multi-millionaire Madonna, a person everyone calls “a bitch”, she meets people that are afraid of her. She can’t find someone stronger than her to put her in her place. She has trouble finding men who can control her. I believe that she needed to be with someone who will tell her things the way they are, and not the way she wants to hear them as. And Guy was just that. He’s that cool normal guy who goes to pub every night for a beer, who has this very balanced view of the world, who can see clearly in front of him and who’s not afraid of her stature. Unfortunately, these kinds of relationships are a ticking time bomb, because when time passes and she manages to go over that “need” and is able to start treating Guy as an equal and not like something higher than her, then she is in need of something stronger than him. Same thing happened with her first husband, Sean Penn (another no-shit person, but he happened to be less mature than Ritchie at the time). At least that’s my totally non-scientific take on the situation based on my totally subjective estimations.

Where it becomes messy is that Madonna tried to paint Guy ugly in the media and via their divorce lawyers. He was dumbfounded when he found out what Madonna was saying about him! The tabloids were having a fun day interviewing lawyers as to how much money “Ritchie can get out of this divorce, as there was no pre-nup!”. Guy though rises much higher as a person again. He pretty much said: ‘I don’t want a penny, I just want my bloody peace’. That’s the kind of ethics and coolness that attracted Madonna to Guy in the first place (he’s not a looker anyway). Madonna’s Kabbalah fixation was detrimental to their relationship (Guy tried to follow it just to be nice to his wife, but he ultimately shunned it away as he is an agnostic/atheist at heart), and her wish to adopt a second child from Africa was another (obviously Guy didn’t want all that media circus again around him, like the last time they tried to do just that). So, they were driven apart.

Personally, as an outsider who just reads the news and tries to piece together what happened (for some weird reason), I believe that Madonna will never find the same intellectuality, intelligence and coolness in another man. She’s 50, and she has become a bit of a ghost lately (kind of like Michael Jackson). I think that not backing down on a few things in their relationship, was a mistake on her part. When she will be 70 years old, she will regret what’s happening today.

Vimeo released Vimeo Plus today, a “pro” account for their video service with a number of features not existing in its free version. I don’t personally need the majority of these features as I upload only once or twice a month, but I will probably buy a subscription soon to support the staff.

I read here that Vimeo doesn’t make enough money from ads, and that it needs this kind of support from its users, or the future might be ugly for the site and its employees. Although I got to say, its HD feature did help with traffic the last few months.

Personally, I believe that the basic features are the ones that bring customers, and not the exotic ones. Vimeo lacks stability, for example, compared to Youtube. You never know if your encoding will go through, or if it will have its HD or SD version not re-encoding just because, or that slowness that exists in many parts of the site, or all the other weird bugs that pop up daily. I would personally gladly pay for better experience rather than for 2 GBs of space. I mean, honestly, unless you are uploading full TV episodes or feature movies, do people need 2 GBs of space per week? It is almost impossible under normal situations (and taking into account our busy modern society) to export more than 15 minutes of good HD footage per week for uploading. If people use up all that 500 MBs per week with the free account, they are either uploading crap, or they have no clue how to encode properly in order to save bandwidth.

Anyways, I have a soft spot for Vimeo because of its artsy side and its cool and very responsive staff, and so I wish it the best of luck, and hopefully I can financially contribute soon too.

The Sony PS3 is the greatest TV entertainment device in my opinion, far superior to the AppleTV when it comes to format and resolution support. I have heard people saying that “I want to view my videos on the TV, but I don’t want the PS3 because I don’t play games”. Well, I don’t play games either anymore, but the PS3 remains the best device to get your MP4 h.264, WMV, mpeg2, AVCHD, and XViD 1080p videos to playback on TV. The AppleTV will refuse to playback files over 720/25p at 5 mbps. The PS3 can deliver 1080/30p, with bitrates ranging from 20 to 35 mbps depending on the format used. The only major format missing from the PS3 is support for WMA v10, and the MOV container (easily fixed with Quicktime Pro, by re-wrapping the MOV h.264/AAC file to the MP4 container — without re-encoding). Heck, even the $199 XBoX360 is a better deal than the AppleTV when it comes to video performance.

The new firmware for the PS3, released tonight, adds Flash 9 support on the web browser, which apparently, allows Vimeo to playback! Yes, Vimeo videos can now be (kinda) viewed on the TV too. Unfortunately, because of a small javascript bug on the PS3 browser, the browser doesn’t understand that there’s a flash container in the Vimeo page, and so it doesn’t load the video. However, if you instead try to view the video from another web site, like my blog, where a Vimeo video is embedded with simpler javascript, the video plays great! So if the Vimeo staff fix this little problem, we will be able to have full Vimeo support on the PS3.

Proof of Vimeo working with the new PS3 firmware:

The other thing that I am expecting Sony to fix is Flash fullscreen support. Their new version doesn’t go fullscreen for any flash video (not just Vimeo’s), while the older Flash 7 version did. I am sure this will be fixed eventually, although they might have removed it on purpose because of speed problems. Nevertheless, the PS3 browser allows you to zoom on a page, so you can fit the video in the whole screen.

Update: Hulu.com works btw in its default 360p mode. It gets slow on its 480p mode, while I get just a black screen on its HD mode. So I guess, when the Vimeo js problem is fixed, we can watch the Vimeo videos in “HD is OFF” mode for maximum compatibility.

I thought I’ve seen everything Madonna has done, but this condom commercial back in the ’80s was one that I never saw before, or knew it existed. I was watching the “Sex: The revolution” documentary on VH1 Classic TV channel tonight, and they featured that old ’80s commercial with Madonna, in the eve of the AIDS outbreak, asking people to use a condom. “It might be the most important thing you’ll ever do“, she says in the commercial. Based on her haircut, I’d say that the ad was shot around 1988.

Searching on Youtube about the ad yielded nothing. You can find pretty much everything about her on Youtube, including some very rare ’80s footage, but this ad is not there. So I snapped a picture from my TV to show to other Madonna fans that might search for that ad in the future. The ad exists, it’s just more rare than rare. 🙂

I have a video of the ad too, but I won’t be uploading it.

Apple removed the firewire option on the new Macbook laptops. This is a terrible situation for people with HDV and DV cameras. And there are a lot of them, among them prosumer and professionals. Only Macbook Pro laptops still retain a FW800 port, which needs an adapter to work with firewire cameras. Problem is, after tax and some RAM, the cheapest Macbook Pro is over $2200, and that’s just too expensive for most people, including most prosumers.

The firewire death was of course written on the wall when all camera manufacturers switched to AVCHD, but the thing is that Apple jumped the ship too early in my opinion. I would have preferred to see this firewire removal in the next crop of Macbooks, in ~1 year from now. Just give people enough time to switch to newer cameras first.

It is my opinion that the removal of FW400 from the Macbook (and the lack of 24p support on FCE) will send a lot of videographers over to the PC camp. Alternatively, just buy the older Macbook model for $1100 (after tax and some RAM). Sure it’s not the newest model, but it will be fast enough for DV/HDV editing and multimedia. Or just buy a DELL Vostro 1310 with Sony Vegas Platinum 9, which is more feature-complete than the older Macbook (more RAM, hard drive, ports) at the same price.

Having said that, I still suggest people use real desktops for video editing and not laptops, but hey.

Update: I forgot about our audio friends. Apparently, a lot of MIDI and other recording hardware uses firewire, and so all these GarageBand enthusiasts are in the red too now. So this makes both the iMovie/FCE and GarageBand users pissed off. It almost doesn’t make sense: Apple’s decision not only kills Macbook sales, but it also kills iLife/FCE sales! Some examples of disgruntled people: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7…

I sent feedback to Apple about the lack of FW400 from the Macbook. I suggest you do the same too.

This is a frame from my recent pampas grass video. The dramatic look was achieved using the Magic Bullet “Bronze” and “Aged” templates, a harsh “Sony unsharpen mask” (500/500), and the “Sony flare” plugin.

Before

After

In off topic news, JBQ bought us an acoustic guitar today. 🙂

Let me know which video you like best, the one above, or the one on my previous post.