MythTV on Mac x86

Via Make: The MythTV 'homebrew' PVR project has a promising Intel Mac OS X build coming along. More info and background on the project here. Could be very promising on an intel Mac Mini.

RES Magazine: 3d video from a couple of iSights

The January/February issue of RES Magazine has an interesting article on how to make 3D videos with a pair of Apple iSights. We'll post a link when the article gets archived, otherwise, grab yourself a copy!

Video Thing eBay of the day: Anti-Lust Machine ( circuit bent video synth )

Well, I can't really check out the web site this guy refers to since I'm at work, but the description alone won the "Anti Lust Machine" a VT eBay of the day post:

Up for sale is a circuit bent video synth created by Corneilius Brown in 1999. It was originally designed to control the sexual stimulation of large crowds or individuals. It accepts customized slides and projects them onto any video screen. (TVs, video projectors, etc). It also displays colorful geometric shapes that change with the control unit. The two video sources combine to create a very strange phenomenon. [...] I made a website dedicated to Corneilius (no not 'Cornelius') Brown. I put most of the pictures on there because I'm not sure if ebay would accept them or not due to their sexual nature.
PLEASE visit the website as it has more pictures and info...

eBay: Anti-Lust Machine ( circuit bent video synth ) (item 7399443155 end time Mar-26-06 09:23:02 PST)

Video Sampling Paintbrush & Canvas

Easier to see than explain- Painting from video sampling. Imagine the coolness of Painter (the paint program) hooked up to a digital camera.

Watch this MIT demo to see one possible future of "live" art.

-mike

Sony decides against downsampling on analog HDTV

This is the first good thing I've heard about any of the competing HD media formats: Sony decides against downsampling on analog HDTV.
Initially, both the HD DVD and Blu Ray specs included DRM that required an HDMI connection in order to play HD out to a TV. So if you were one of the many people who purchased an HDTV before the industry had picked its poison and started sticking HDMI jacks on the sets, you were screwed. The players were going to downconvert your HD signal to standard def if you used the (then standard) component connectors. Looks like maybe Sony is coming around after all their horrible DRM "rootkit" debacles (at least on this issue) and to be honest, as a non HDMI set owner, it was the biggest issue to me.

Movie Cards

We-make-money-not-art has a post about another tangible movie editing interface for kids, this one is based on cards that are arranged in a sort of storyboard style.
we make money not art: Tangible movie editing for kids

picturephoning.com: New study questions mobile TV and music hype

For some reason I keep getting pegged as a mobile media guy, and people are often surprised when I say that I'm not too interested in cellphones as content delivery devices. I think that treating networked handheld devices as little televisions is a mistake. It might be ok for ipods (which can output to televisions, etc and hold tons of music, movies, and pictures), but it's really ignoring the strengths of a cellphone. A cellphone's weakness is it's tiny screen and speaker. Its strengths are the camera, your address book of contacts, its network connection. As devices they beg for something more complicated than one-way traditional media. I think they are awesome as content aquisition and blogging devices, and I think there's a huge opportunity for some new, crazy networked games on them.

According to a survey conducted by RBC Capital Markets, about 75 percent of roughly 1,000 people polled said they had no interest in watching TV on their cell phones. And about 70 percent said they didn't see themselves using their cell phones for musical entertainment.

Link
Image found via: notes from somewhere bizarre

Karl Klomp

In the pomp tradition of Reed Ghazala, Karl Klomp calls his video glitch art "hyperkinetic audio visuals". They are pretty cool though, and moreso is his list of circuit bent video devices.

Found Via Data is Nature

dataisnature.com - Early American Computer Animation

The National Film Theatre 2 in London will be presenting the program "Early American Computer Animation" starting this Thursday, March 2nd.

The development of the computer as an animation tool inspired a period of radical innovation in techniques and visual form. By the late 60s, there were a number of film-makers using the new ‘dream machines’ as their medium, often exploring new aesthetics that had no precursor in the history of cinema. This programme (curated by Gregory Kurcewicz) features work by film-makers including Lillian Schwartz, John Stehura and John Whitney, who overcame the constraints of low memory and primitive interfaces to create works of lasting beauty.

A Curates Egg

A Curates Egg

Site updated, check "longform" to find film clips. But everything else there is equally brilliant!)

Lifelong Friendship Society is cooking something up. Looks to be a feature film, but who knows. It defies all explanation. Three trailers are linked on the site, each equally baffling and hilarious.

No other info than that. I emailed them, but assume a response may never come. I venture a guess that this is going to be feature film. Who knows.

I wonder who else in design/animation collectives is taking on feature films. MK12 is making History of America. Now these guys. I'm pretty excited by the bent, but brilliant minds going into this.

FreshHDV

Fresh HDV is a good page of links to HDV production info, with tips on combatting artifacting and other HDV pitfalls.
FresHDV | Fresh news & views for videographers, editors, filmmakers, directors & producers.
Found Via Mike

MakeZine.com: Maker Faire Movies

Make is hosting a mini film festival of DIY video's that celebrate the Make aesthetic:

The first film festival that celebrates makers and the DIY mindset.
Grab those hacked CVS video cameras and $14 steadycams. It's time for MAKE: Movies! MAKE: is hosting the first festival for makers to show off their DIY short video clips. Don't think of it as a contest, because there isn't much to win if you make the cut... other than the admiration of your peers, a bag of MAKE: goodies, and the chance to see your work on the big (well, medium) screen at the upcoming Maker Faire in April. Our favorite footage will premiere at a special MAKE: Movies! party at the Maker Faire and shown throughout the event. Of course, you're invited to walk down the asphalt carpet and say a few words about your work. After the Faire, the selections will be available for free download on Makezine.com. So charge those batteries, fire up Final Cut, and... Action!

Important: Submit your movie by March 24, 2006!

Link
Found Via BoingBoing

Democracy - Internet TV Platform - Free and Open Source

Brian writes:

Democracy Player is a video content aggregator, and it also includes a component named the Broadcast Machine that allows users (budding filmmakers?) to easily set up a distribution channel for their work. It's very intriguing... I could potentially see filmmakers setting up channels to post short films, sample clips, teasers, or production
videos... who knows! Whatever the case, this is a great way to increase exposure.

Democracy Player: http://www.getdemocracy.com/
Broadcast Machine: http://www.getdemocracy.com/broadcast/

Here is a sameple BM page (complete with RSS feed for Democracy) I set
up: http://www.small-scale.net/bm/

Democracy - Internet TV Platform - Free and Open Source

Uncompressed 4:4:4 Stereoscopic Camera System - 3DVX3

This looks like a pretty impressive piece of kit. Stereoscopic 1280x720 HD camera, with the video recorded to two Mac CPU's mounted in the case!

No doubt costs a fortune but maybe could inspire DIY solutions. Gives me notions of using a Mac Mini in some kind of DIY HD camera. I'd be more likely to just duct-tape two hi-8 camcorders together or something though. :)

Macsimum News - Pixar looking to build more Mac OS X apps

Pixar Animation Studios, which is being bought by Disney, is is apparently building more native Mac OS X applications and is seeking programmers with advanced skills in Object-C and Cocoa, according to a post on Highend3D online

Link

Laser Projectors Coming to Cell Phones and PDAs

Light Blue Optics Ltd (LBO) has developed a revolutionary technology for miniature laser projectors dubbed PVPro(tm). Today they announced their latest demonstrator unit, which is only 3.78 cubic inches in volume, and is similar in size and shape to a typical matchbox. Projectors based on PVPro technology can be used to display images from a range of mobile devices, including laptop computers, personal media players like the video iPod, digital cameras and even mobile phones.

Link
Found Via Engadget

Japanese Warhol TDK ad

Link
Found Via ashleyb.org

MyVu Personal Media Player: LCD goggles - Engadget

Cute video goggles/earphones being marketed for the ipod, but probably usable with just about anything. These things tend to give me headaches personally, but I haven't totally discounted them as being something potentially useful for some sort of multimedia art project.
Link

Air freshener timelapse

This is film rather than video, but such sheer genius I had to share. A member of the filmshooting.com small-gauge film forum has hacked an electronic air freshener, which originally sprayed a whiff of scent at timed intervals, into a timelapse cable release for super-8 cameras, complete with the option of automatic day or night-time operation!

Pictures and details on the forum thread: http://www.filmshooting.com/scripts/forum/viewtopic.php?p=119826#119826

Nam June Paik

Toshi Hoo writes:

Nam June Paik has died at the age of 74:
If you are video artist and don't know Paik's work, you should. He introduced the world to video art in the 1960's and collaborated with the Fluxus art movement with folks like John Cage and Charlotte Moorman.

From the Mercury News:

MIAMI - Nam June Paik, the avant-garde artist credited with inventing video art in the 1960s by combining multiple TV screens with sculpture, music and live performers, has died. He was 74.
The Korean-born Mr. Paik, who also coined the term ``Electronic Super Highway'' years before the information superhighway was invented, died Sunday night of natural causes at his Miami apartment, according to his Web site.

MercuryNews.com | 01/31/2006 | Nam June Paik, electronic artist

Panoramic Video Field Test

Panoramic Video Field Test

360 degree panoramic VIDEO. Fun stuff.

-mike

The Scanner Photography Project

Mike Golembewski creates a strange and beautiful hybrid using flatbed scanners and large format cameras. He rigs old cameras to low-end scanners, the lens functions as it normally would, and the scanner slowly pulls the image in line by line.

It's kinda like when you put your face in the copy machine, and move it slowly left to right, and the scan bar does its thing. Imagine images of the outside world taken this way.

The Scanner Photography Project
Links appear to be dead now 3/07

Thanks, dylan!

HandBrake on Macintels

This is insane: Handbrake is doing H.264 full size encodes in REAL TIME on the new intel iMac. If this is true, I am going to have to buy one of those machines. (I really needed to buy a new refrigerator too. Oh well, I needed to lose a couple pounds from the holidays anyway)

...so I get a lot a emails asking if HandBrake will support the new Intel Macs. The answer is yes, a x86 build is already available from the download page. Not everything is optimized for Intel yet, but H.264 is and a 2.0 Ghz Core Duo iMac reportedly encodes about real-time to H.264 at full size (screenshot). The next release should be available as a Universal Binary and full optimized for both platforms.

HandBrake homepage

After Effects 7.0

Wahoo! Adobe announced and shipped After Effects 7.0. Check out the new feature overview (SWF: 23.1MB / 8:53 min).

• Redesigned, unified user interface


• Graph Editor Create precise animations with the new Graph Editor, which offers complete visual control over keyframe editing and easy synchronization of animated properties across layers.


• High Dynamic Range (HDR) color support 32-bit-per-channel floating-point color. (Professional edition only.


• Animation and Behavior Presets plus project templates


• Faster mask rendering


• 32-bit audio support


• OpenGL rendering Use OpenGL for final rendering at high speed: OpenGL 2.0 capabilities include common blending modes, motion blur on 2D layers, anti-aliasing and track mattes, better shadows and transparencies, and more.


• Expanded file format supportnew support for HDV, Macromedia Flash Video (FLV), Camera Raw, OpenEXR, AAF (Professional edition only), 10-bit YUV (v210), and 32-bit TIFF and PSD formats.
  


• Timewarp Slow down and speed up footage with smooth, crisp results and minimal artifacts. Timewarp analyzes pixel motion to create more accurate in-between frames. (Professional edition only.)

I'm looking forward to using the graph editor. Selecting keyframes vs. motion keyframes vs. selected properties, etc. is a nice touch. And the color coding looks handy, especially if you're trying to adjust the X/Y/Z ease a 3D object... If only they'd implement labeling individual points on a mask...but at least now there's an auto-save feature!

HDTV Axi-Vision Camera

The HDTV Axi-vision camera can simultaneously acquire both an HDTV color image and a high-resolution depth image of a scene. What? Essentially, the Axi-vision records infrared information about the distance between the camera and what's in front of the camera at the same time as the usual broadcast info. The resulting grayscale image can be used to key footage in real-time without using a green/blue sceen, or painful frame-by-frame rotoscoping.

Full details here. Make sure to watch the videos for true delight (1, 2, 3).

"Video Voyeur"

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Video feature: Viewsonic's mini projector - Engadget

This thing with the battery pack and an ipod with video.
Yes.
Video feature: Viewsonic's mini projector - Engadget

Garage 3D question..

Andrew writes:

...I know it's not ask dr. wiley, but i was wondering-
my friend and i both have canon zr series dvs,
theyd be pretty easy to rig stereoscopically,
does anyone have the software to generate 3D?
with or without glasses?
canons XL1 had a stereo lens, but i think that
just utilized the interlace.
do you know anything about this?
or where i could try looking?

My guess is that this is one for Dr. Bohus...

Microtel - the teletext station for the voluptuous blinking eye

Teletext is a system which encodes extra information in analogue TV signals, where televisions with the right chip can decode and display special text and graphic pages. Teletext originated in the UK in the 1970's. Today teletext services still offer a range of text-based information, usually including national, international and sporting news, weather and TV schedules. There is an excellent Wikipedia page describing teletext and itshistory here.
[...]
This new channel is called Microtel. The station managers are artists Emma Davidson [Lektrogirl] and Paul B. Davis from Lektrolab. Microtel teletext programs will be broadcast by NOS, Netherlands public television.

Microtel is one of the projects curated by ambientTV.net as part of VBI [voluptuous blinking eye] - a submission for the exhibition "Satellite of Love" . This exhibition is presented by the 35th International Film Festival Rotterdam in association with Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art and the TENT Centre for Visual Arts. The exhibition runs from 26 January to 05 February 2006.

Up until 04 February 2006, you will be able to create teletext and email it to Microtel for inclusion on this website, a DVD to be distributed by SCEEN magazine andmost importantly broadcast on Netherlands TV station NOS. Check technical information for software downloads and FAQ's to contribute today!

Looks like there are only windows teletext editors available, so make one for me while you're at it, this sounds awesome.
Link

Looking for more VT writers

The current pool o' VT posters has gotten quiet, and I am stretched pretty thin between work, my blog, and my drinking habit (kidding). So I'm looking for new potential Video Thing writers. Drop me a line about why you think you'd be a good candidate and I'll set you up an account.

Sony RDR-AX75 DVR Dumps PSP Compatible Video - Gizmodo

Sony releases an H.264 recorder that will send to the psp:
Link
and another Link
Thanks DVD Guy!

ATI adding H.264 acceleration to Radeon cards

Looks like existing Radeon cards will get the acceleration added on via software (or a firmware update?)
Link
Thanks DVDGuy!

Red is real.

Mike dishes out the scoop on the new RED HD cameras over on HD for Indies.

Congress tries to plug the analog hole

Today Via Boing Boing:

The government is proposing that devices (consumer electronics, computers, software) manufactured after a certain date respond to a copy-protection signal or watermark in a digital video stream, and pass along that signal when converting the video to analog. The same goes for analog video streams, to pass on the protection to the digital video outputs.

The technology Congress is proposing (VEIL) is derived from one that originated with assorted interactive Batman toys that allowed the toys to respond to Batman television shows or videos. How cool—at least for toys.

The government wants your future TV, TiVo, computer, cell phone, Final Cut Pro, (input your favorite analog signal viewing / converting device here) to respond to the Bat Signal.

Link

H.264 DVD players

Looks like the first wave of H.264 dvd players are coming out of Asia. Some of these are hybrid divx/h.264/dvd players. One is an h.264 PVR Recorder.
Link
Thanks DVDGuy!

Retro Thing: Fisher-Price PXL 2000 - Wickedly Lo-Fi Home Video

Our sister site Retro Thing has a nice post today about one of our favorite pieces of lost tech- the venerable PXL 2000.

HD For Indies - Holographic discs in the works

From Mike's blog-

The holographic disk promises to retail for $100, and by 2010, it will have capacity of 1.6TB each. That's pretty inexpensive," said Ron Tarasoff, vice president of broadcast technology and engineering at Turner Entertainment. "Even this first version can store 300GB per disk, and it has 160MB/sec. data throughput rates. That's burning. Then combine it with random access, and it's the best of all worlds.

Link

Scott Fisher: PXL THIS 15, 11/19

PXL THIS 15, the 15th annual film festival featuring the Fisher Price PXL 2000 toy video camera premieres Saturday, Nov 19, 2 different shows 7 & 9pm at Sponto Gallery, 7 Dudley Ave, Venice, 310-306-7330, free admission. For more info, please visit: www.indiespace.com/pxlthis and www.81x.com/7dudley/cinema

Link

"I plugged the video-out port on my video card into the video-in port of my capture card. " Dude, I think you just blew my mind!

Link
Thanks Paul!

Video feedback

The Ultimate Video Feedback Page

Vintage Television Equipment

Here's a great dirt-style page of vintage television equipment and cameras collected by Mr. Chuck Pharis. Some amazing looking old cameras in here & totally arcane equipment.

Cool Hunting: Nokia N92

Phone/Camera/TV/Laser gun?
Link

MPEG Streamclip 1.5

MPEG Streamclip 1.5 is now available. Converts Mpeg 1/2/4 files to QuickTime .mov's (incuding Apple's H.264). Muxes and demuxes mpeg and m2v. Since it uses Apple's H.264 it is considerably faster than Handbrake at encoding. This with MactheRipper is the best solution for archiving DVD's or converting them to play on iPods or in iTunes.
Thanks DVDGuy!

Siggraph - Khronos Projector

Link
Interactive 4d video weirdness from Siggraph.
Thanks Nick

SWEET JESUS

Video ipod.


Daring Fireball weighs in on the product announcements. No firewire on the iPod is kind of a bummer, but frontrow does definitely make it look like we're in for some kind of TV connectivity, not from the ipod, which will only play 320x240, but from the computer itself. By all accounts, the small video looks awesome on the ipod- and that's the screen it's intended for once it's been formatted, the tv connectivity is more for photos. The ipod is the delivery device in this case, and video podcasting seems to be the big use for it... downloading daily shows and watching them on the subway. I've already noticed that the Cinema Minema podcasts I'm subscribed to in iTunes have already farmed out some video clips to my library. I expect HD connectivity from Macs to televisions to be coming next. The Front Row interface they've got in the new iMac begs it. And the airport express is too good a precedent not to expect some wireless video in the future.

The first Videoclip-sampleplayer with Midi

Found Via our sister-site Music Thing (who in turn got it off Module Records), the MFB VJ is a mini video sampler that holds 28 four-second video clips, with a crossfader and some onboard effects.

3D Monitor

From FutureFeeder:

LightSpace claims its DepthCube is the world's first solid-state volumetric 3D display capable of 3-dimensional projections without any headgear or moving parts. The display runs on a stack of 20 liquid crystal shutters synchronized with a video projector (50Hz refresh rate) all packed in a TV set box circa 1980.

Using Play-Doh as an interface to control digital media

Brendan Dawes is working on an digital media interface that involves adding and subtracting wads of play-doh to controll play speed.

As I twist the Play-Doh and take bits away, the film reacts accordingly in real-time. Add too much Play-Doh and the film rapidly speeds up. An intimate connection is made between the user and the media. Every action has a reaction in the digital space. No scary buttons to press. No instructions to read. It's just Play-Doh.

Link
Found Via Pasta and Vinegar

macosxhints - Record any video stream to disk using VLC

Link

Underwater Video Housing: On The Cheap

Nice How-To...

Paul's Homemade Underwater Video Housing

MK12 Guided By Voices Video

MK12 convinces me, once again, that not only are they mad geniuses, they are the cream 'o the crop. Guided By Voices Video

They avoid contrived 3d elements, have amazing transitions, and overall brilliant design. I especially like the 'print' look applied to the shots. These guys are getting better at telling stories, too.

Home Movie Night

Video Thing'er Bohus Blahut has started a video blog of his own: Home Movie Night. Looks great so far!

Every week we will feature a different home movie taken from 8mm, super 8, or 16mm film. Every film we share has been shot by amateurs, and many never have been seen by more than a few people.

Link

$80 camcorder for kids - Engadget - www.engadget.com

Vidster is Mattel's shot at the video-for-kids market, and I'll be interested to see if anybody comes up with any innovative hacks for it. It shoots at 320 x 240 resolution at 15 fps and connects to a PC via USB (Mattel included some custom editing software in the package). It's got 32mb of memory on board but it's expandable to 512. Not much more impressive than my phone, really.. but ever since the Pixelvision I am a sucker for this kind of stuff.

Thanks Peter!

DeCorp: FlatWire / Flat Wire Video Cable Product Listing and Pictures

Everybody has already probably seen these on BoingBoing, but they're still awesome enough to post again, Flat, paint over video cables fow walls, including component video connections. Practically invisible without having to stick holes in your walls.

3D HDTV, no glasses required - Engadget

From Engadget:

Newsight Corporation has developed a technique for displaying HDTV in 3D without the need for wearing special glasses.
The technique uses software processing to pass HD video streams through a converter chip that creates eight stereo
views on-the-fly. When a filter is applied to project each of the eight views in a slightly different direction on an
LCD monitor, the human eye picks up the different scenes and composites them into a coherent three-dimensional view.

Link

Memory Stick Pro Duo Video Recorder

The Memory Stick Pro recorder is an analog to digital video converter that records movies and TV shows straight to your Memory Stick Pro Duo, for playback on PSP

Link
Found Via BoingBoing

VinylVideo

Bohus writes:

There is actually a long history of video stored on vinyl. Not too long ago the earliest recordings of some of Britain's earliest broadcasting experiments (done by Baird)on acetate. These were digitized and restored on the internet someplace.

[The video turntable in last post -w] isn't the same (and is wickedly cool I should mention) but I thought that you guys might be interested. Also you might want to check out a current take on similar technology. Hit www.vinylvideo.com to learn more.

Video Turntable

From We Make Money Not Art:

Video Turntable, by miyakodub, is a machine that appears to be very similar to a regular turntable. You put a disc on it, the disc rotates, and then the system picks up sound that's encoded on the disc. But Video Turntable uses a webcam instead of a phonograph needle, transparent discs with color patterns instead of traditional black discs with grooves, and a digital computer vision system instead of analog circuits to decode and produce sound.Multiple transparent discs can be stacked, creating different combinations of colors and thereby sound. The system can recognize five colors: black, red, yellow, blue, and green. Depending on which area colors appear in a webcam's view, the system controls pitch, pan, volume, delay, etc. You can also draw color patterns on a disk by yourself and use it to play unique sound patterns.

Link
Video

OnSuper8

Giles Perkins writes:

It's a video thing in the widest sense of the word -

Super 8 film is alive and kicking and we've set up www.onsuper8.org to provide the latest news, views and information for those using the little film but editing digitally. Why not combine those luscious celluloid images with the ease of DV editing? Sounds like the best of both worlds to me!

processing LIVE : using processing and powermates as a vj tool

This guy uses custom software built in Processing, controlled by a series of Griffin Powermates to VJ, in this case for the band Bitshifter.

Link
Found Via Pixelsumo

Roger's 3D Adventures

Roger's 3D Adventures is a blog about 3D video.

Media Mirror

The Media Mirror is an interactive video installation, in which 200+ channels of live cable television are continuously arranged in real-time to form a mosaic representation of the person that stands in front of it.

Link
Thanks Skye!

RAREVISION - Slo motion on 60i camcorders

Via the Slo-Mo video festival's how to page: A cool article about how to get good slow motion with camcorders that shoot 60i, by Thomas Worth.

Camera Phone video festival

organgrindermedia.com is hosting a phonecam video competition in October. Videos must be 3 minutes long and originate on a phone. External sound sources can be used, and multiple phones can be employed. No word on whether or not you can do any finishing effects on the footage in an editor, but if you can't it's a pretty gray area since they require you to upconvert the footage to SD- you have to submit your completed short as a DVD. Nokia has a similar competition going (originally it was just normal shorts shot with phones in mind as the final output, now it includes shorts actually shot on phones), but I may enter this one instead, since it seems less intimidating to me for some reason. I've been playing with an idea for a longer piece that would use both phone footage and SD footage cut together, and this may be a good starting point for the phonecam portion of it.

Again, this makes me think about the possibility of a video thing festival... maybe something that is just a compilation of our stuff on a DVD, rather than a laborious actual festival. Talk amongst yourselves.

HD for indies: The HD Analog Shutout - no HD on your HDTV

I don't know if Mike will get a chance to recap his latest HD for Indies post here, so I'm going to go ahead and link to it for him, it's worth reading in full if you've got the time. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Movies don't want to be trapped in freaky, proprietary, locked up formats.

It looks like the Hollywood studios are requiring use of an HDMI connector with HDCP (hardware device copy protection) for high definition video content on next generation formats, HD DVD and Blu Ray. [...]
So what does this mean? Imagine you spent $2000-$5000 on an HDTV a couple of years ago. You're into all this new tech, you love it. So HD DVD and Blu Ray discs actually ship, and you plunk down $500-$1000 for one of the first players (assuming you're OK buying into one of two competing standards) and you take it home and pop it in your player. Woops, your set lacks HDMI with HDCP, you only have HD component analog connections. Even though they work with all of your other high definition gear, the player will quietly downsample your HD signal to standard definition. You watch the movie, and frankly, it doesn't look any better than your regular DVDs that play on your kids' $50 player. Box it up and return it, you don't think it's worth it. You could be watching a regular DVD on a $50 player on a $300-$800 TV and it would look pretty much just as good...

Korg Kaptivator

The Kaptivator is a drum-machine style control surface for vj's that will work off a live dv feed or clips. It does audio level and bpm detection so that you can automate some of the mixing to music.
link
Thanks, Skye

Experimental video creation for children

Here's an interesting article over at we-make-money-not-art about an experimental multiuser video station for kids that uses miniature video cameras and tokens with embedded RFID tags to hold the media.

Demonstration movie (requires QuickTime 7)

G-Play

The G-Play is a tiny 100gb drive that will store ripped images of DVD's, DivX files, and various sundry audio and image formats, and then play them out to your a/v hardware over composite, vga or analog stereo connections. It's complete with a tiny remote. Pretty awesome, although the model I saw does not play H.264 (you could fit about 20 DVD images on the G-Play. If it played H.264 you could fit a hundred movies at about the same quality). The_DVD_Guy got one of these, and according to him, the company that makes the decoder chip on this thing has started making H.264 player chips, so.... next model?
Personally, I'm still holding out for a video iPod, but this is getting pretty close to the target, the capacity pretty much biff-whomps anything similar in price/size on the market.

DIY 35mm adapters for shooting DV with cinematic depth of field

I've been meaning to write something about this for a while, but fortunately just found a site with a better explanation than I could probably manage, and also instructions to build the thing: DOF Machine

Basically the principle is that you use a 35mm lens to project an image onto a ground glass, and then shoot that image on DV. This way you get the cinematic shallow depth of focus that DV cannot usually achieve due to the small size of the CCD.

There are many people online who've built devices to do this, varying from professional-looking machined boxes, to gaffer-taped Heath Robinson contraptions involving CD-R cakeboxes and spinning clear CDs, to amazing conglomerations of filter rings and adapters:



Here's a page with info on the above contraption and some stills of the impressive results: http://www.enormousapparatus.com/35adapter.htm

There are also commercially avaliable adapters such as the Micro35

The hub of discussion about such DIY adaptors is the dvinfo.net Alternative Imaging Methods forum (which also contains lots of other stuff possibly of interest to us video experimentalists such as home made HD cameras!)

There are various complications and drawbacks of course, but it seems pretty straightforward to build one of these adaptors. Definitely something I'll have to experiment with some time.

Video Keytar

This is so uber-dorky and utterly video thing I can't believe I missed it before:

Introducing the RGB guitar solo. Viditar is Livid's pioneering custom made video instrument for real-time video expression and performance. Viditar's integrated hardware and software takes video performance away from the computer and onto the stage. Generate high quality real-time video performances by combining video triggering, scratching, source mixing, and live camera manipulation, to give you total control over hundreds of effects and thousands of media files.

Link
Evidently they custom build these things, so you probably have to pay big bucks for the privelage of getting made fun of for wearing one. Livid does make a tabletop video controller called the tactic that gets big points for being partially made of wood.

Thanks to Skye for initially sending me a link to the Tactic

z-agon

Each face of this cubic movie player is a high-resolution and rimless display allowing you to watch digital movie contents in any place where there's Wi-Fi.

Link
Found via We make money not art

Full res, feature-length film playing off iPod Shuffle

I... I mean a friend of mine, ripped a feature length DVD to the H.264 format, and then transferred the resulting (800mb) file to an iPod shuffle. This is a picture of the movie playing, full speed, full resolution (and I mean full resolution. It looks good) off the iPod Shuffle. This movie is playing over USB.

I did the encoding using Hand Brake for OS X. The only kink in the whole thing is that a good 2-pass encoding from DVD to H.264 took almost 9 hours on a G5. But this really reminds me of the first time I made mp3's out of one of my audio CD's (back in the dark ages) so I could listen to it on my computer without the disc... It's the beginning of something big.

paul_slocum's Atari 2600 color sequencer

Paul Slocum has posted some info on his blog about his recent art installation- Televisions hooked up to Atari 2600's running custom carts, reflecting color combinations off a gallery wall:

The setup is 3 TVs facing the wall attached to 3 Atari 2600 consoles, and the Ataris are programmed to play a repeating sequence of color that lasts about 4 minutes.

Each color is actually made up of two colors that are mixed by displaying one color at the top half of the screen and the other one at the bottom, and the two are swapped at 30Hz. It gives the sense that the colors are flowing. And the refresh frequency for each TV is gently modulated out of sync with the others, which gives the light even more motion.

This piece will be installed at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas, June 25th - July 30th.

Photron - 3000fps @ 1024x1024 -yeehaw!

Photron - High-Speed Cameras and Primatte shoots 3000fps at 1024x1024, or 10,000fps at 512x512 pixels. Or check out the gallery of super high speed footage.

High-Speed video cameras

Sam writes:

somewhat related to your recent foray into slow mo stuff - engadget had an
interesting article today:
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000043047434/
on this high speed video camera:
http://photron.com/products.cfm?id=KingOfHighSpeedVideo
http://photron.com/gallery/gallery.cfm
Thought you might be interested if you hadn't seen it already.
Really slow site right now though...

Photron - High-Speed Cameras and Primatte

Digital Media Thoughts - Digital Media News & Views

How to get PVR content onto your Sony PSP - it's specific to the Beyond TV PVR software, but interesting nonetheless. Step by step instructions. PSP's are quickly becoming the portable media player of choice.

-mike

Volumetric Video, Averaged Video

Two Video Things previously linked from my other blog:

[Volumetric Video] The basic idea is simple: Video is composed of a large number of individual frames, each with X and Y dimensions. Just stack each frame on top of the next and you've got a Z dimension to place into a volume renderer.

Jason Salavon has made a number of art pieces with averaged images, kind of in the spirit of Brian Whitman's computer-averaged holiday record A Singular Christmas. In The Late Night Triad, 64 nights worth of late night talk shows were aligned and averaged until they revealed 'ghosts of repititious structure'.

MacWorld (finally) reviews Final Cut Express HD

Macworld: Review: Final Cut Express HD


Final Cut Express HD is a solid entrant into the world of semi-professional editing at a reasonable price. If you’re not rushing out to buy an HDV camcorder, the most compelling new features are the Digital Cinema Desktop and the additions of LiveType 1.2.1 and Soundtrack 1.2.1 (which, admittedly, are pretty cool). But given Apple’s emphasis on HD, and the fact that each version of Final Cut Express is basically a stripped down version of the previous year’s Final Cut Pro, this party is definitely going to be hopping in the future.

DIY Optics projects

Yair writes:

nice selection of diy optics from a surplus optics store-
http://www.anchoroptics.com/documents/
found via http://www.htservices.com/Tools/MachineVision/index.htm

When too many geek threads cross - Star Wars Lego Video Game - 3D rendered Legos

Lego Star Wars: The Video Game - this one is just getting too weird - It's Star Wars. Portrayed in Legos. In 3D. On Mac OS X. Altogether now: Star Wars/Lego/Mac geeks, unite!

Slit Scan

Michelle from Chaise Magazine writes:

...you might be interested in Golan Levin's slitscan video project repository. some very very cool experiments with "video cubism'" type work - http://www.flong.com/writings/lists/list_slit_scan.html (he also has lists of eyetracking and image averaging artwork at http://www.flong.com/writings/lists/)

"Slit-Scan imaging techniques are used to create static images of time-based phenomena. In traditional film photograhy, slit-scan images are created by exposing film as it slides past a slit-shaped aperture. In the digital realm, thin slices are extracted from a sequence of video frames, and concatenated into a new image."

New Scientist - Card trick holds promise for movie effects

A bunch of people sent in links to the Dual Photography site, but it seemed a little too tech-y to post yet. Today NewScientist has a shorter summary of what it is and what it means for the effects industry. The basic idea is that they hit an object with light from a projector and take a digital photo from a different angle, and then are able to extrapolate an image of the view from the projector just from the reflected light. It's a neat trick, but the New Scientist article adds,

Eventually, dual photography could be used to alter lighting after a movie scene has been filmed or to add photorealistic virtual objects and characters that cast realistic shadows in post-production.

USATODAY.com - $29.95 disposable video cameras

The first one-time-use video camera goes on sale this week at CVS drugstores in the Northeast. The $30 camera saves images to internal memory, and is returned to a CVS chain for processing and DVD burning at an extra cost.

Link
Found Via PSFK

Lenses...

Bohus Blahut (BOH-hoosh BLAH-hoot), the director of one of Tree Wave's videos, writes:

I've tried posting on the blog under the name "Gulag Picture Radio" BTW, and while I'm all registered and everything I don't see any of my posts anywhere. Just thought I'd mention that.

Anybody else having trouble posting comments? I'll check on it... -W

A few items that I've used in front of the camera are as follows:

Anamorphic lens taken from a WWII gun camera (?). It weighs around 20 pounds and has a mount unlike anything I've ever seen - it's about 6-8" across. Needless to say I never actually mounted it to the camera, instead holding it. I also seem to remember devising some sort of mount on a mic stand. I've used it with several video cameras (Canon L-1 and XL-1 come to mind) and with a Bolex 16mm camera.



Fresnel magnifying sheet originally manufactured as a cheap magnifying glass for older folks. Because it is thin plastic and flexible, you can get a lot of cool distortions that way. I've also seen similar flexi sheets with a bunch of little miniature fresnel patterns on them. They are sometimes used as privacy screens that you paste to your bathroom windows to let light in, but not let anyone see in.

Thin (but stiff) mylar squares - often used as mirrors in kids toys or books. Mount this in front of your camera at a 45 degree angle, then shoot your subject with the camera pointed sideways in relation to them. Flex the mirror for weird effects, remembering to flip the picture orientation in your editing software. The BBC used to use this effect for Doctor Who for when the Ice Warriors shot anyone. They used something called "Mirrorlon" which I would expect to be much thinner than the mirror I'm talking about which would give you some nice ripply distortion.

I've also used a lot of still photography filters with video cameras. Here in Chicago there are massive photography swap meets where you can get tons of special effects filters for next to nothing. Many of them can be useful for video. I've used a star filter, fly's eye filter (image in middle surrounded by 5 identical images, and filter can rotate - great for 60's pop singer look), polarizing filter (great for cutting glare when shooting through a window, or for making a car look less scratched up), center focus, some gradiated filters for dramatic skies...

The problem is that with my current video cam (the Canon XL-1) the lens is so massive, it's so hard to find filters to fit it at these swap meets. Common filters for still photography are 45-55mm (probably other sizes too), and the XL-1 clocks in at a massive 72mm. You can get adapter step-down rings to compensate, then zoom in a little to avoid vignetting.

There are also some great gadgets that I've used with old film cameras in front of the lens that aren't filters. My Bolex has had an iris attachment (for transition effects), a clock work device for a variety of animated wipes, titling rigs, and my personal favorite... a 3D lens set for shooting 3D films. Before you ask, yes I've shot some 3D footage, but I'm missing one important part of the projector arrangement to see if my experiment worked. :)

Lenses

A while back I wrote about infrared filter lenses for DV cameras. I'm interested in what other weird lenses are out there- maybe impractical for regular, professional use - but perfect for video projects that are... ahem.. *crunked up*. And don't just say "fish-eye!"

Post in the comments or send us a tip.

kiteCam

VT reader Yair Reshef writes:

been watching your blog and i feel this can be of interest to you. [...]
I shot this footage using a 25 dollar wireless cam i order of eBay. hooked it to a kite and it gave nice results.

i also tried to make low cost diy video/music scratching platform, like this stuff using a broken turntable with a reflective sticker on it, a small securtiy camera and eyesweb for tracking and was able to get some nice results. its still ver. 0.1 but its a proof-of-concept i guess. very responsive. and with several records with different diameters can be used to scratch several different sources! [ link]

Kurt Ralske

VT reader Kurt Ralske sent us some kind words and a link to his portfolio of excellent video art. Pieces include a permanent display at the MOMA that's tied-in with the Museum's visual branding, a collaborative video improv piece made by three different artists, and a visualization generated from live video feeds of zebra fish.

Call for links

Do you have a garage video project you're dying to tell someone about? Has the Asperger's syndrome sufferer next door hacked a Commodore 64 to do 3D? Got the scoop on some new HD video microscope? Got a motion graphics project to show off, or saw a great reel we missed?

Send in your video thing tips!


In the meantime, here's a piece from Tom's Hardware Guide on How to build your own XGA video projector for 300 dollars.

Rtv Visual Entertainment Generator

80 bucks seems a little steep for this, but I can see how it could be handy- the RTV lets you use VGA computer monitors as NTSC monitors, without a computer.

Now you can put an old VGA monitor to good use, or simply get more out of the one that's connected to your PC. The Visual Entertainment Generator, or 'VEG', is a compact external unit that easily turns a VGA monitor into a multimedia center for watching TV or for use as a display for your favorite gaming console.[...]The VEG uses 3:2 pull down correction that eliminates jitter from DVD movies that occurs during the transfer from film. With motion and adaptive de-interlacing, the VEG improves the clarity and sharpness of the picture.

Link

Psyop- Bubbles

Nice new piece of work by PsyOp. Justin at Tween (who is mirroring the clip) says each particle is hand placed, which would certainly make for a lot of painstaking work.

Media Sensitive glasses (we-make-money-not-art)

This is a slightly less aggressive take on the TV-B-Gone device: Sunglasses that go black when there is a TV in sight.

As part of her Social Defense Mechanisms: Tools for Reclaiming our Personal Space research, Limor Fried (creator of the Wave Bubble and the Minty MP3) developed the Media-Sensitive Glasses that automatically darken whenever a television is in view, so as to protect the wearer from television's 'hypnotic' effect.

Link

Setpixel // Shadow Story

Shadow Story allows children to physically play with sketches that they created. Shadow Story is a projection-based interactive installation. Children cast shadows on the wall using their bodies to interact with the elements in the visual projection...

Link

Edirol CG-8 Visual Synthesizer

Why rely on software to generate your cheesy dance-club visuals when you can buy an expensive piece of hardware to do it?

CG-8 Visual Synthesizer

Apple - Mac OS X Downloads - Video - Trans Lucy

For people with serious attention deficit disorder:

[Trans Lucy] Allows you to watch DVDs on your computer in a whole new way. The movie display can be floated above all applications and the translucency of the video can be adjusted so you can see through the video and work with documents underneath.

Link

Love and Leafblowers from Shynola

Blur: Goodsong

SSSSSSLLLLLOOOOOO MMMMMOOOOOO VVVVVIIIDDDDEEEEOOOOOO

Slo/Mo Video: Touring Festival+DVD+Website, Seeking one hundred and twenty slow motion video submissions. Each exactly 1 minute in length. Deadline July 15th, 2005. Fiction and non-fiction, The more crunked up the better.

That sounds like a challenge. I'm game. Nick, didn't you say you just got an AE plugin that will do some kind of motion interpolation that would allow you to do convincing slow motion in already shot video?
Link

Quartz Composer Samples

Quartz Composer is a developer tool that ships with Mac OS X 10.4 ("Tiger") that allows you to access all the nifty graphical powers of Tiger's CoreImage without having to learn how to program. Fooling around with it I managed to make a couple of screen savers, and I can already see that there's a lot more potentially that could be done with it. Quartz Composer has controller patches for midi input, but what I think would be really nifty is if you could use it to create your own iTunes visualizers. I'd love to see something replace the tie-dyed-vomit visualizer that has been shipping (relatively unchanged) with iTunes since it first came out. It was fine in 1995, but it just doesn't show off what the Mac can do now, it's an embarrassment. The current homebrew visualizers aren't much better.
I want someone to make an Atari Video Music Emulator!

Check out some sample Quartz compositions on this Japanese page: (You'll need to have Tiger/QuickTime 7 installed)
Link
Found Via QuartzComps.com

H.264 day three: Demonstrations at HD resolutions

Shapeofdays.com has a bunch of very informative H.264 tests, basically affirming what we already know, that at the present moment it's God's-own-codec.
Link
Thanks, Mike!

My ghetto 360° video experiment

Inspired by this previous Video Thing post about panoramic video, here's my incredibly lo-fi DIY attempt.



Old plastic Christmas tree bauble I found in the garden the other day
+
Felt tip pen
+
Blu Tak
=

+
"Polar Coordinates" distortion in After Effects
=


1.1mb mpeg4 test clip!


EDIT - now also on Youtube! :)



It's decidedly fuzzy, and my demo isn't exactly spectacular as the camera was tethered to capture card and power supply, (battery dead & couldn't be bothered to find a blank tape) but works much better than I thought it would! Exciting results for such a half-baked attempt.

I'm going to build a more robust and high quality version (ie get a better mirror ball!) some time soon.

Oh, and by the time I took the above photo of my setup it had gone a bit wonkey, but I did have the ball lined up with the lens much better than it looks there!

Near-Near Future: Khronos Projector

"The Khronos Projector allows people to visualize movie content in a new way. By actually touching and deforming the screen, the user can send portions of the image forward or backward in time."
Link