Create Digital Motion - Record Your Gigs and Legacy Media to H264: Blackmagic Video Recorder

CDM shows us a nice looking hardware H.264 encoder from Blackmagic, your choice of inputs.
Create Digital Motion - Record Your Gigs and Legacy Media to H264: Blackmagic Video Recorder

5 minute romp through the IP - Patch based modular analog video computer run by a gentleman in a viking hat.

I am speechless.

Forums are up

I just set up public forums for Video Thing! I put in some basic topics, but for the most part anything goes. Have fun.

I'm live bogging Digital Cinema Summit at NAB

ProVideo Coalition.com: HD for Indies by Mike Curtis

...and I'm typing this while walling with my iPhone.

Cool panel on 3d - all my notes posted at Above link

MAKE: Blog: Panoramic video experiment

Another Make Magazine reader named Dr. Photon attempts Cementimental's Christmas bauble 360 degree lens hack. Unfortunately Mr. Photon does not have any video available to view from what I saw.

Quadruplex - Call for Submissions

Pete from Quadruplex writes:

hi wiley,

Hi, I really enjoy your blog and the videothings that you find.

I'm putting together a video screening that I think would be right up
video thing's street [...]

----------------------------------------------------------------------
the 2 mile
QUADRUPLEX
Video bending and noise films

Please Forward!

The 2 mile Quadruplex is a new film organisation that is pro-magnetism and
anti-narrative.
We are looking for video in the following (made-up) genres:

* noise
* video-synthesis
* video-bent
* demoscene
* trash/broken
* old media
* data bending/'Mush'-inima
* ear-eye experiments
* VHS nostalgia
* other...

for an evening of video, film and live performances in Hull, UK.
Deadline: 30th May 08

Screening in late June, exact dates TBA

Please send DVDs, mini-DVs or twisted VHS tapes to:
Pete McPartlan
The Quadruplex
140 Worthing St
Hull
HU5 1PR
UK

Or contact Pete about submitting online on: info(at)quadruplex.co.uk
Please don't directly e-mail video files...

www.quadruplex.co.uk

Create Digital Motion - The Battle for Analog: VHS and the Evils of DVD

From CDM:

"We know a little bit of our soul died when we brought in all this digital tech to our work. (Happy side note, though: my eyes now glow red. It’s totally awesome at parties.) So, we now proudly present The Battle for Analog, a completely nonsensical look at the analog world we might leave behind. (Well, unless you carry some mobile VHS decks to a gig, which could be a great idea … a little magnetic distortion live, anyone?)"

Create Digital Motion - The Battle for Analog: VHS and the Evils of DVD

Cute, but it sure is heavy on the, uhh.... digital effects.

Wednesday YouTube Scanimate videos:

More awesome Scanimate footage via youtube:

Tech Digest: Texas Instruments' Pico chipsets go into production - projection coming to mobile phones in 2008?

Tech Digest: Texas Instruments' Pico chipsets go into production - projection coming to mobile phones in 2008?

Thanks Gentry!

Japanese Pixelvision cameras

From videothinger Bohus Blahut:

Just thought that you might be interested in the PXL-2000 article i just wrote. It's about the PXL's that were made in Japan in the late 90's.
http://www.retrothing.com/2008/02/pixelvision-mys.html
I will be posting a video review of a modified PXL very soon. I'll let you know when it happens. Seems almost dumb to shoot a review of the PXL in HD.

Apple TV 2.0 vs. Blu-Ray, DVD & HD Cable: The Comparison [updated] | iLounge

Apple TV 2.0 vs. Blu-Ray, DVD & HD Cable: The Comparison [updated] | iLounge

Apple TV Take 2 released in the wild

The AwkwardTV folks are already at work hacking it. First word is that the OS is still 10.4.7, which means that old hacked plugins may still work.

Downfall of HD-DVD

Macworld Keynote: Apple TV Take two

Live from the MacWorld Keynote- the next big update to iTunes and the Apple TV: HD movies, 5.1 Audio $2.99 and $3.99 movie rentals from all the major studios (4.99 HD rentals), flickr and .mac photostreaming, rent movies directly on the AppleTV without a computer. Similarity engine movie reccomendations, and subtitle support (finally). If only they would let you add perian and movie subfolders or playlists without hacking it, I'd start giving them out to everyone I know as gifts. They're still too scared to address that "user with 800 divx movies with .srt subtitles" market. I guess I can't blame them.

Sony Offers a Single HDV Model for 2008 - HDR-HC9 - Sony

Sony Offers a Single HDV Model for 2008 - HDR-HC9 - Sony: "Sony has announced that they will release only one model in HDV category, the HDR-HC9, at least for early 2008. This decision only confirms the generally recognized fact that the tape-based HDV format has fallen out of favor compared to DVD, hard disk drive (HDD), and flash memory media using the newer AVCHD recording format." Retails for $1099.

Create Digital Motion � Pinnacle Video Transfer: Grab Analog Video Without a Computer

Create Digital Motion scoops video thing so often now that I'm beginning to wonder if we have become superfluous (!) Anyway, from CDM today- Super cool hardware H.264 capture device, plug it into any usb 2.0 volume (ipods, flash drives), and capture to H.264 without a computer. At only $129, I'm totally getting one.

Create Digital Motion- Pinnacle Video Transfer: Grab Analog Video Without a Computer

Also on CDM- The worlds smallest laser projector. I want one implanted in my head.

Tiny Create Digital Motion - Laser Projector Becomes World’s Smallest Projector

Retro Thing: Cartrivision

Bohus Blahut has a great post today about another forgotten video distribution format: Cartrivision.

[...]The format is called Cartrivision, and it dates all the way back to 1972. It was the first such format developed and sold in the USA. The unusual carts are square - the reels are one atop the other inside. It recorded only every third field of video and displayed it three times - a clever way to use the technology of the day to yield a decent picture and still fit a whole movie into the 8 inch square cassette.

The player was built into a number of specially made televisions, making the buy-in a hefty $1350 (nearly $6800 in today's money). Blank carts could record TV shows using the inbuilt timer, and there were pre-recorded movies and special interest programs.

Since there were no corner rental stores, you'd choose your film (the advertising copy does mention the availability of adult films, no surprise there...) from a catalog and the cartridge would be shipped to your Cartrivision dealer. You couldn't buy feature films to keep, nor could you rewind the cartridge at home. If you wanted to watch the movie again, you'd have to take it back to the dealer and pay a fee to re-rent and rewind the flick.

Why? Cartrivision was developed in cooperation with the film industry, and these were the stipulations they placed on this new home-based movie experience. It does smack a lot of the many current format wars, and the tyrannical terms of digital rights management. To be fair, home movie rental was unfamiliar turf for the studios back then, and at that point they made all of their money from a film's theatrical release and possibly a rare showing on TV.[...]

Cartrivision: The USA's First Crack At Video Cassettes

Create Digital Motion - Mobile Small form factor HDMI/HD recording - record your HD gigs in .. HD!

Create Digital Motion : Mobile Small form factor HDMI/HD recording - record your HD gigs in .. HD!

Oculon pocket svga projector

Link to CDM article, link to product page.

Eyeclops- $50 video microscope toy with rca out

I saw this cool 200x toy video microscope on amazon. Looks like it could be hacked or otherwise used for evil in some cool way.

CVM - Richard Baily

Tonight I recieved an email from the brother of Richard "Doc" Baily, the amazing mathematician and artist who contributed visuals to movies like Soderberg's Solaris Remake and Superman Returns (among others). I had written Doc last year about his 'Spore' Software and had recieved one reply but then the conversation abruptly ended. Doc's brother informed me in his mail that Doc had, sadly, passed away in April of last year, and he was now attending to Doc's archives of work. The one piece of good news he had to share was that the Center for Visual Music (who did the wonderful Oskar Fischinger disc) will be putting together a collection of Doc's work.

I am the legal trustee and copyright holder for Richard's artistic and musical work, and I apologize greatly for not replying to you in a timelier manner. Yes, I do have some high rez prints that Richard had developed and was marketing. One day I will place them for sale on Image Savant, just not right now. You are really thinking correctly about images. I will contact you when the prints become available if that is good with you.

If you wish to use or see some more of his material I have contracted with a company called Artbeats who is set-up to deliver a good variety of Richard's cg work at a very reasonable and affordable cost (Dreamlight, Dreamlight 2, Light Waves, Nightmare Light). If you wish, please check them out.

Dreamlight 1+2

There is a DVD coming out very soon of his collaboration with John Buchanan that I know you will be very interested in. The works are called Xtacism/ Aura which should be coming out this year through the Center for Visual Music (CVM).

CVM - Richard Baily

Magic Horse

My video for Horse Plus Donkey's song "Magic Horse". iPhone optimized version here

The New Wave - 70's doc on analog video synths

Thanks Demonbabies!

Warning! - Reduser.net

Warning! - Reduser.net

How to enable your AppleTV as an Xgrid node

This procedure will show you how to setup you AppleTV as an Xgrid node. I'm not really sure why you'd want to do this, but this is proof-of-concept. There's not a whole lot of Xgrid-aware apps out there, but Techspansion's excellent video converter VisualHub is aware. (as is Final Cut- ed.)

Link

Quartz Composer built stereoscopic recorder

Here's a nifty OS X application that creates red/blue 3D movies using input from two firewire cameras (like the two iSight camera setup featured in Res magazine a while back.

Link

Online Video Format Wars: News From The Front

Online Video Format Wars: News From The Front

Content-Aware Image Resizing

Yet another Siggraph video that blows my mind -- "Seam Carving for Content-Aware Image Resizing" by Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir.



(via AE Portal News)

Part of what's so interesting is the idea of finding patterns in images/video that allow a system to be "content-aware". The use of edge detection to determine important vs. non important visual information reminds me of the process of analyzing time-sliced video footage to interpolate when cuts, dissolves, or wipes take place. Eddie Elliott has a great example of this on his website. Essentially, if you take all the frames of a video and place them back to back to make a cube, by looking at the sides of the cube you can see where a left to right wipe, a cut to different looking footage, or a cross dissolve take place. Someone told me a couple years ago about a company trying to refine the technique in order to create a software program that logged archived footage procedurally, rather than hiring someone to plod through hours of footage.


Image from Eddit Elliot's Video Streamer page. For more on time-slice/slitscan artworks, Golan Levin has a good archive here.

Adobe adds H.264 to Flash Player

Link to MacNN article

Steve Jobs poo-poo's little plastic discs for video

During the iMac/iLife special event Steve Jobs introduced the iDVD part of the package with a dismissive "There are some people who still want to make DVDs." This followed a demonstration of some really nice HD web galleries being generated by iMovie. It's nice to know somebody that high up has caught on to the fact that locked-up oxidizing plastic discs that are illegal to copy are a bad way to hold video.


Panic's Steven Frank chimes in.

(p.s. I know I'll probably sound like an Apple shill for saying this, but I just got one of those new iMacs, and it's the nicest computer I have ever worked on, and that includes the quad Mac Pro I use at work. The glass front LCD and keyboard and overall zippiness of the machine just plain make me happy whenever I use it. I just put FCS 2, Logic Pro, and all my assorted free video transcoders on there and it positively sings.)

AppleTV hacking goes to the next level

What started out as a thread on the somethingawful forums has progressed into a veritible orgy of Apple TV hacking- Xvid support with Perian, external USB storage, bluetooth, people monkeying with the screensavers in quartz composer.. in fact so much is going on it's becoming difficult to track. Apple's YouTube update set hackers back a bit- it didn't shut them out completely, it just removed a lot of the superfluous bits of OS X that were making hacking in extra features so easy. Luckily AwkwardTV seems to be tracking the majority of the hacks and plugins as they spring up (after briefly being Digg'd into oblivion). I need another few hours to parse all this information before I start modding my AppleTV, but if it saves me all the time I've been spending transcoding XviD files, gives me subtitle support, and lets me play my HD files without waiting a whole week to convert them to a format that may or may not play on the AppleTV, I am there.

(There's a good compendium of command line hacks here as well, make sure to check whether or not they work after the YouTube update though.)

Wireless video teddybear.

Creeptastic.
Link
Found Via BoingBoing

Create Digital Motion - Why I Want a Portable VHS Video Case, from Museum of Lost Interactions

Righteous commentary on CDM about a joke design for a portable VHS walkman, and how it would actually be a cool piece of equipment.
Link

The Scanimate - 70's Analog electronic motion graphics!

Awesome page about the Scanimate- a scanner-analog video synth the size of a room that they used to do very early title animation and motion graphics- Think wiggling letters on The Electric Company and the opening title of Logan's Run.

The Scanimate is basically an analog computer connected to a scan converter. This means that high-contrast artwork is placed onto a light table under a "high rez" camera. In the late seventies, that meant it was about a 500 line vidicon camera, but was not interlaced video, for reasons I'll get into below.
The image then appeared on a "high rez" CRT, (cathode ray tube) which in turn was scanned by a regular monochrome NTSC video camera. The reason for this "re-scanning" is that the analog computer could do all sorts of wierd and wonderful things to the sweep on the CRT, thus animating the artwork. The only trick was that the "animator" actually had to "program" the move by wiring up a complex analog circuit and adjusting any (and sometimes all) of about 250 knobs. The wiring was done at several "patch panels" where you had access to the innards of the analog "CPU" waveforms. You had horizontal and vertical sawtooth waveforms, a variety of oscillators which could phase lock to the horizontal or vertical sweep or each other, and summing amps and multipliers. Ramp generators could be fired off in sync with a specific timecode on videotape, and each ramp could "multiply on" an oscillator, offset, or whatever you needed to wire up to "bend" the raster to the client's content.

The original raster could be "sectioned" so that if the artwork had up to five words, the words could be individually animated. The second camera's output (the one viewing the CRT) was colorized according to the greyscale values it saw, and that image could then be layered by keying it over videotape of previous "passes". The passes were recorded on 2" IVC helical analog video recorders, which could (sometimes) manage an embarrasing number of generations before the client noticed it. You could never get away with it when you needed to.

The client(s) would sit on couches at the rear of the room, and at least at Image West, there were two Scanimates, one on either side of the room. A video switcher and monitors were at the front of the room, and through a door were the video tape machines, which were 2,000 pound monsters that ran on megawatts of power and required compressed air.

Because the Scanimates produced output in "real-time", the clients could literally sit down and say things like "Make it move a little faster", or "Can you make it more of a teal color?", and the animators would tweak it, get an approval, tape it, and the guy would walk out with his master. It was hundreds of times faster than cel animation, and so $2,500/hour to command the entire facility was a bargain. If the client wanted something more complex, of course it took longer, and cost more. If he couldn't make up his mind, we could keep trying this and that, and he paid for his own indecision.

link
Thanks Jesus!

Setting up an automated workflow to convert files for Apple TV on OS X - vellery.net

Link

Video to film- via inkjet printer!

A very cool hack that is surely the seed for a new product- A method of Transferring video to 16 or 35mm film using an inkjet printer.

Found Via BoingBoing

HD For Indies - Final Cut Studio 2 details

Mike has more details about Apple's next generation production big-box than you'll know what to do with. Some things that excite me: The new color correction application that incorporates recently purchased Final Touch, Zspace animation and virtual cameras in Motion (I guess I don't need after effects any more) and "open format timelines", mix formats, resolutions, framerates, all in a timeline and it doesn't matter- it just works.
HD For Indies, nab 2007 notes from apple sunday press

Run Lola, Ruuuuuuuuuuuuun! at daniel shiffman

Processing guru Daniel Shiffman has set up a system with thousands of 60x32 pixel cells, all playing Run Lola Run, each one frame ahead of the next, spread out across a bank of displays.
Check out the video.

Link

WIRED: Visual history of the television

From Bakelite to Plasma: TV Through the Ages -

MAKE: Cellular automata video synthesizer kit & Videothing CONTEST!

We're so excited about the new video cellular automata kit from MAKE magazine, that we're going to hold a contest to see who can make the coolest implementation of it- bend, hack, unexpected use or just a sweet case design, the sky is the limit.. Get the kit here and send your entries (pics, video, descriptions!) to wiley at mediatronica dot com. *


The winner will be chosen by a panel of Video Thing participants and the prize is your choice of a neuros mp4 recorder or an elgato eyetv hybrid! The deadline for submissions is July 1st of this year.

From the Make page:

We have a new kit for sale in the Maker store, the Cellular automata video synthesizer kit. This easy to contstruct kit is a fun way to play with cellular automata and video synthesis. When complete you will be able to uncover endless visual and sound patterns on any TV with a composite NTSC video input. The kit provides a pre-assembled, pre-programmed Video Critter Mini board, three potentiometers, and a push button. Just solder up the potentiometers and button to the circuit board, add an enclosure, and you're done!

(* this contest isn't sponsored or endorsed by Make magazine, but we love them and hope they will smile on it as a celebration of all things MAKE)

MAKE magazine Link

BoingBoing post about the kit

Wikipedia: Cellular Automata

Elgato's Turbo 264 USB stick painlessly coverts vidz to H.264 - Engadget

Elgato's Turbo 264 USB stick painlessly coverts vidz to H.264 - Engadget

More Apple TV early reports

VideoThing's Mike Curtis' new blog: Apple TV Hacker!

Macworld: Video: Macworld Video: Exploring Apple TV

Warranty Voiding at MacDevCenter

Apple TV reportedly hacked for XVid support

Apple TV Dissected

QuickTime gains 720P Apple TV high-definition export mode

Looks like I'm going to get an Apple TV after all...

In an undisclosed and largely unnoticed update to its QuickTime video playback and conversion software, Apple has quietly added an “Export to Apple TV” feature capable of creating high-definition videos viewable on the Apple TV accessory. Unlike Export to iPod, which currently creates sub-DVD-quality 640 by 480 videos, Export to Apple TV creates not only full DVD-quality 720 by 404 videos, but also 1280 by 720 videos. These videos are viewable in iTunes, but cannot be transferred directly via iTunes to an fifth-generation iPod.

Link

picturephoning.com: Neochroma enlarges tiny mobile phone displays to desktop monitor size

Via picturephoning.com: a prototype stereoscopic (?) phone attatchment that enlarges mobile phone displays to desktop monitor size.

Torch Computers for artists

Torch makes large VESA mount displays with small form factor computers for multimedia art installations. No logos, hidden cables, and nice white or black enclosures. Look pricey, They do custom work as well.
Link
Found via Paul Slocum

Retro Thing: A New Super 8 Movie Camera!?

Retro Thing: A New Super 8 Movie Camera!? first in about 20 years, has some interesting features - read on...

Numark 3 screen lcd display

The Numark VM03–MKII is a 3–screen/6–input LCD video display monitor designed for any video monitoring application. The advanced design of the VM03–MKII allows the user to monitor video sources in either a rack–mount (3 rack spaces required) or tabletop setting.

Link

Found via Create Digital Motion

CDM's 2006 Best-of list

Create Digital Motion has a good year end best-of list of products for 'visualists', a term they use in reference to multimedia artists, VJ's, and motion graphic pros. CDM blows us out of the water as far as the VJ, processing, and mograph stuff goes and is worth a look for anyone who works deep in any of the pro-video realms.

Link

50 dollar helmet video camera

The Tony Hawk Helmet Camcorder straps to any helmet and comes with a 32MB memory card recording up to 30 minutes of video and sound. It weighs less than 1/2 lb and uses just two AAA batteries. The Tony Hawk Helmet Cam also features auto focus and 640 X 480 resolution, plus a built-in microphone with a 12 foot range.

Link

AACS Cracked

From Reuters:

A hacker known as Muslix64 posted on the Internet details of how he unlocked the encryption, known as the Advanced Access Content System, which prevents high-definition discs from illegal copying by restricting which devices can play them.
The AACS system was developed by companies including Walt Disney Co., Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp., Toshiba Corp. and Sony Corp. to protect high-definition formats, including Toshiba's HD-DVD and Sony's Blu-ray.

Link to Technorati Search for AACS

STEPHEN BECK

Stephen Beck has been building video synths and making multimedia art since the late 60's, and he's our latest video thing hero (I'm going to kill those ads and bring back the hero links this week, btw).
His work 'video weavings' actually got displayed on theDiamond Vision giant video screen at Shea Stadium during a Mets game in 1982.

It comes from the magic squares devised by Arabian thinkers of the sixth and seventh centuries, when they mastered algebra and applied algebra to their art. The religion of Islam forbids any representational image. It's a totally different concept of visual expression than what we have; you're just not permitted to portray an object of creation. It's largely based on portraying what we would call mathematical harmonies. Their wonderful arabesques and domes and patterns are all manifestations of mathematics, which in our day and age we would find in some equation in a book, which perhaps makes it less vivid, and less important to many people. People ask me sometimes, 'Is this mathematical? How does this relate to mathematics?' And I say, 'It is mathematics, just like music is mathematics.' You have implicit structures of harmonies and ratios. Instead of music, where there is vibration of air, here it's the vibration of light, with different colors and patterns. You don't have to relate to it as a drab mathematical theorem or equation. It takes on a much more vivid presence.

Link
Found Via Cory Arcangel

TVease.net Hannibal Deuce

The Hannibal Deuce Plus is Linux-based MythTV DVR box that does pretty much evertyhing you could want a settop box to do. It rips dvds, it'll Torrent videos off the net and store them, has wireless connectivity and can run multiple tuner-cards for DVRing mutliple simultaneous channels.
link
found via BoingBoing

Consumer Electronics Daily News: iProjector to Make its Debut at CES 07

The iProjector is a unique video projector that lets you view video and pictures from your iPod, DVD player or computer. It also features multiple video inputs so you can attach game consoles and play just about anywhere.

Other features include: Docking and charging station for iPod Video, iPod Photo or iPod nano, 800x600 native resolution, 24-bit color, 1000 ANSI lumens brightness and a projection size of 30 inches by 90 inches.

Nothing big here since you can already plug a 5th gen ipod into any projector with RCA inputs, but the addition of a dock is cute. If the price is right it could be a nice package though.
Link

Neave.tv ...Carlitopolis

I don't know if you guys have checked out neave.tv yet, but it's a really great flash viewer for online video that lets you view stuff in a channel based "TV" format.
Anyway, this is great video that floated up on my player that I can only hope was of a live performance.
Neave.tv ...Carlitopolis

Circuit Bent Sega Megadrive

This guy circuit-bent a Sega Mega Drive and stuck it in a wooden enclosure. Colorful glitchy weirdness.


Link
Found Via Paul Slocum

Make 3D worlds extrapolated from a pile of photographs

Create Digital Motion � Microsoft Live Labs Photosynth Transforms 2D Photos into 3D Worlds; Hands-on

Good geekery!

New fangled 2K+ camcorder comparison

SI-2K vs Red One

For those who haven't been keeping up on new camera developments, Silicon Imaging will be releasing their SI-2K camera in the next few months, and Red Digital Cinema will be releasing their Red One probably in the second quarter next year. I (Mike Curtis, rare contributor here) wrote a ridiculously long article (about 12,000 words) going through how the specs between the two compare.

Both of these two cameras are doing some radical new stuff as compared to traditional camcorders:

-modular/configurable form factor, moreso than regular camcorders
-data centric, tapeless recording
-full raster, 10 (now Redcode is 10 or 12) bit wavelet based proprietary RAW codecs to 2.5" hard drives
-12 bit RAW uncompressed recording as well
-record to small form factor disks, then copy to a computer/other hard drive
-emphasis on the post solution with a desire for widespread native NLE support
-under $20,000
-variable frame rates
-720, 1080, & 2K resolutions all from same camera
-windowed/cropped sensor mode for lower resolution, smaller lens coverage, but higher frame rates
-higher than video frame rates
-progressive imaging
-multiple lens mounts available

Anyway, if you are trapped in a mine and have some time to read, and are interested in these kinds of next generation cameras, check it out.

-mike

Video the Vote

Shadowplay by Joy Division | C505

This video project was inspired by the famous album cover art of 1979 album, Joy Division's "Unknown Pleasures" designed by Peter Saville. Original video footage is from Joy Division's TV performance of "Shadowplay" on Granada Reports. The video footage was animated with the same topographic style of the album cover design.

Link
Found via Rhizome

Sharp demos 4Kx2K 64" experimental LCD

Sharp's very, very sharp experimental screen | CNET News.com

Somebody asked me how you would monitor a 4K signal - if not using the Viewsonic monitor (like Red had at the IBC booth) that is slightly sub 4K, or using the incredibly pricey, really for theatrical display Sony 4K projector, perhaps something like this would be used in the future - a 64" 4K LCD panel, DCI spec resolution - 4096x2160 (which is twice 2Kx1080 in each dimension). That
s about 9 megapixels. Another company was showing a similar resolution panel at IBC, I can't recall the name though.

This unit is experimental only, however, and not planned for resale at this time. They were also showing off a million to one contrast ratio screen.

EyeTV Hybrid

One of the guys here at work just got the Elgato Eye TV Hybrid and I'm really impressed with it. It's a usb dongle for the mac that gets HD tv off the air and lets you record it and automatically outputs to ipod, dvdstudio pro, idvd, transport stream, toast, and just about anything else you can think of. It uses the mac remote and has it's own layer in frontrow. It also provides you with analog hd inputs in case you feel like plugging in your game console and playing/recording it on your computer. I'm not a big TV watcher, but this is an unbelievably slick device/software package, and I totally want one now.

Opinion: High-Definition Video--Bad For Consumers, Bad For Hollywood - News by InformationWeek

Cory Doctorow from BoingBoing on how consumer HD video products are being used as a carrot to con people into accepting a bevy of DRM that will severely cripple how they can use the content that they purchase.
Link

ProLost: Less is more

ProLost: Less is more

Digital Heaven

Digital Heaven

LoVid

LoVid create artwork using homemade video synthesizers that remind me a little of Peter Blassers audio synths. The use of patchwork fabric enclosures give the devices a weird kids-toy quality kind of like Chumby.
Lovid will be performing tomorrow (9/18) on south street seaport in the speigeltent, then will present at iEAR in Troy New York next week.

Apple to release iTV video streaming box in 2007 - Engadget

Codenamed iTV, Apple is releasing a Mac Mini-like settop box in the first quarter of 2007. The presentation listed "wireless component" as a video out option, as well as HDMI. We'll continue to watch this device as more information is released. Shipping price is listed at $299.

Apple to release iTV video streaming box in 2007 - Engadget

Images at iLounge

Motion DSP, pixel restoration/enhancement, free on youtube - The Digital Video Information Network

Motion DSP, pixel restoration/enhancement, free on youtube - The Digital Video Information Network

Ways to make video look better through post processing.

AppleInsider | Microsoft leaks Windows Vista pricing

AppleInsider | Microsoft leaks Windows Vista pricing

$199 for home basic, $239 for Home Premium, $299 business, $399 ultimate; Amazon taking preorders with Jan 30, 2007 preliminary ship date.

See article for more details.

Radical Software

Collected now online- all the issues of Radical Software, a great 70's MacLuhanite zine about early video art and media activism. This stuff is like porn for me, vintage video gear with a good dose of pre-internet media theory.

As problem solvers we are a nation of hardware freaks. Some are into seizing property or destroying it. Others believe in protecting property at any cost including life or at least guarding it against spontaneous use. Meanwhile, unseen systems shape our lives. Power is no longer measured in land, labor, or capital, but by access to information and the means to disseminate it. As long as the most powerful tools (not weapons) are in the hands of those who would hoard them, no alternative cultural vision can succeed. Unless we design and implement alternate information structures which transcend and reconfigure the existing ones, other alternate systems and life styles will be no more than products of the existing process.

Memory Mirror

More awesomeness from the Royal College of Art 2006 show.
Link Via Pixelsumo

Picturephoning.com: Tiny radio chip stores video clips

A 'Memory Spot' no bigger than a grain of rice offers greater memory and faster transfer speeds than RFID tags - and could be read by a cellphone, reports New Scientist.

'The chip, called a Memory Spot, is small enough to be attached to a postcard or a photograph and could be used to append video, audio or hundreds of pages of text to all sorts of everyday objects. In hospitals, for example, the chips could allow doctors to add detailed medical records to a patient's plastic wristband.

Link

Slashdot | Core 2 Reviews All Around the Web

Slashdot | Core 2 Reviews All Around the Web

....and why should you care? Because it is widely expected that Apple will use these chips in their G5 tower replacements, expected to be called Mac Pros. They be fast. Fast good.

Sci Fi Tech Blog- Frisbee Camera

I can think of about a million awesome uses for this. Unfortunately it's still just an idea.

Drifting in from the "What the hell?" department comes the Frisbee camera. Yes, in case there aren't any pretty young things around to impress with your acrobatic Frisbee tossing, now you can record all your amazing jumps and throws for playback on your cell phone, which is way manlier. And if you're thinking the footage from a spinning Frisbee would most likely give you vertigo, designer Adam Sutcliffe is one step ahead of you: a fin on top of the disc attaches to a rod that pokes through the center axis, which in turn attaches to the camera.

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More DIY 360° tests

Following up to my post a while back about my experiments with panoramic video, I've just got round to putting some more footage online. I shot these shortly after the original experiment, using a slightly more advanced setup (nice new glass bauble instead of old plastic one! ^_^) but it has, typically, taken me an age to get round to putting the results online.



I've experimented with shooting sideways, and also stuck cheesy video effects on a couple of shots for no good reason. Hope you enjoy.

New lasers from Ricoh read both HD DVD and Blu-ray - Engadget

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SCI FI Tech -Marantz bows first 1080p DLP front projector

From the Sci-Fi channel's Tech Blog

Marantz's VP-11S1 is the first projector to include Texas Instruments' 1080p DLP chip, and it has the processing chops to use it: a souped-up image processor from Gennum, which upconverts all lower-resolution video to 1080p. Although the projector uses only a single DLP chip instead of three, its color wheel spins faster than any previous DLP projector, said to reduce the potential for any color-smearing artifacts (sometimes noticeable as a "rainbow effect" on single-chip models). But the single-chip design at least keeps the cost down to a mere $20,000 — still worthy of a spit take, but not bad for such a first-ever, ultra-high-end item, considering.

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Pixel Maelstrom

"Pixel Maelstrom" is a nice circuit bent audio-responsive video generator made from a TI-99 4A.
From the looks of it, the creator Philip Stearns was very methodical in his modifications, and is getting some cool effects here, blocky text and colors similar to what you get with a NES and a dirty cartridge, but the reactivity to sound is really what sells it. This is one of the first video glitch projects in a while that hasn't had me yawning and grumbling about how I had done the same stuff back in '94. Check out the videos.
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Found via Data is Nature

RED update from Jim Jannard

Mysterium sensor... - DVXuser.com -- The online community for filmmaking

Jim Jannard posted over on the dvxuser forums:

We stated before that we had images from a 'test slice' that proved the design of our sensor. Now we have images from a full size sensor.

Definitely an important step along the way. Also announced that they'll be putting the breadbox prototypes in the hands of professionals to let them shoot some test footage to show, presumably at IBC if all goes well.

-mike

Create Digital Motion

Create Digital Motion has officially launched- Live visuals, motion graphics, equipment and software... all the stuff we like.

Glitchism - circuit bent video effects

Karl Klomp's site has images, video and info on his circuit-bent modified video mixers and effects, which he's selling on ebay as part of his "Glitchism" project.

As well as his devices, he's got a useful gallery of obsolete video hardware so you know what to look out for if you wanna try your hand at some DIY video mangling yourself.

Build a Backyard Theater - Popular Science

Popular Science has an article about Lumenlab DIY video projectors, with rough plans for a fresnel-lensed, wooden-cased wheeled thing that I am in love with.

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Found Via Make

macprime.ch - Forum - Terminator by QuickTime Player

Some enterprising German Mac site caught a QuickTime Player reference in the point of view footage from Terminator III. Funny, I also see a "PPC" reference on that still.. does that mean that Apple drops Intel and goes back to IBM processors before they end up building a bunch of OS X running humanoid death machines that wipe out the human race?
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The DVD War Against Consumers (BusinessWeek) | DefectiveByDesign.org

The excellent anti-DRM site DefectiveByDesign.org points to an article in Businessweek that actually criticises the excessive use of DRM in next generation DVD players. A pleasantly surprising consumerist sentiment for the magazine.

Makers of new DVD players are going too far in copyright protection efforts, but buyers needn't take it lying down [...]
there's an ominous feature buried in this so-called protection mechanism: If a particular brand of player is cryptographically 'compromised,' the studio can remotely disable all of the affected players. In other words, if some hacker halfway across the globe cracks Sony's software, Sony can shut down my DVD player across the Net.

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Found Via Eyebeam Reblog

CinemaTech: Coming from Texas Instruments: Handheld 3-D Projectors for Consumers?

CinemaTech tracks a BusinessWeek Europe article that alludes to consumer-end portable DLP's that could project in 3D.. just vapor and rumors right now of course, but.. *slobber*... *hlompth*.. *drool*...

Choose Your Own Adventure DVD's

The classic "Choose Your Own Adventure" kids books are being adapted into animated DVD's. Not the first time that a choose your own adventure-style disc has been made, but it's notable that they are adapting the actual books for this.

With a distribution deal set to become final today with a distributor of family DVDs, Norton, 31, and Crames, 30, are hoping to persuade a new generation to test the adventuresome waters, using a remote control in place of a bookmark. First up is "The Abominable Snowman," a film aimed at children ages 6 to 11 that allows users to guide what happens by registering their choices on their DVD player.

'Adventure' DVD Idea Leaps From Books - Los Angeles Times

Wired News: The Dead Formats Society

Momus muses about dead formats and the transient nature of media (a subject near and dear to my laserdisc-lovin' heart) over on the Wired site.
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Welcome Editors Keys

Video Thing would like to welcome this week's sponsor, Editors Keys. The company makes key cap shortcut labels for all the major audio and video applications- an easy, affordable alternative to pricey editor's keyboards and full key cap replacements (which require you to yank out all your keys and only fit in certain keyboards). The pre-cleaning cloth and applicator they include make sure that the labels don't peel or collect gunk like a lot of key labels do.

Editors Keys have launched a new website which carries all new Video and Audio editing keyboard sets for the following programs:

-Avid
-Adobe Premiere
-Final Cut
-Photoshop
-Sony Vegas
-After Effects
-Pro Tools
-Cubase and many more...!

Each key contains your programs shortcut function and tool on it for faster access, whilst keeping the keys 'Letter' in the corner for standard typing.

HDMI DRM dormant until 2010 -Boing Boing

From Anti-DRM advocate Cory Doctorow over on BoingBoing:

Hollywood studios and some CE manufacturers have reportedly entered into an informal agreement to hold off on using the 'image constraint token' in HDMI DRM until 2010 or 2012. The image constraint token is a flag in a video signal that instructs receivers, DVD players and other high-definition sources to 'down-rez' their output to a low-definition signal when connecting to an 'untrusted' screen or other sink.

The effect is that if your screen or recorder isn't blessed by Hollywood, they can limit the video they send to it to a low-resolution image. Manufacturers who want the full signal have to enter into the HDMI license agreement and agree to cripple their hardware in lots of ways -- and have to promise not to make their equipment compatible with anyone else's, unless they, too, agree to cripple their hardware.

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Videos from NAB 2006

Related to the camera link I just posted, here are some videos from NAB 2006. Of interest are demonstrations of the Automatic Revolution self levelling Steadicam rig (costs $80K!), a long demo of the Silicon Imaging camera, and a quick demo of the Varizoom DV Rig Pro camera support system for those long shooting days.

-mike

All about cameras at NAB 2006

NAB is the biggest tradeshow of the year for video professionals. Mike Curtis over at HD For Indies has posted a huge long article about cameras and shooting gear from NAB 2006 on his site here. All the new interesting cameras, including Sony's 3x slomo HD camera, Red Digital's amazing new camera, Silicon Imaging's new camera that records 10 bit wavelet based codec stuff to USB 2.0 disc in a portable computer, Grass Valley and Ikegami's new HD camcorders that record to hard drives, Arri's D-20, new HDV camcorders from JVC, the crazy Automatic Revolution self levelling Steadicam rig, and tons more.

iVisualize

Way back at the dawn of Video Thing, I posted about Quartz Composer, an OS X developer's tool that gives you easy and direct access to all the graphical tricks built into the operating system. People have done some amazing stuff with it, including some pretty impressive VJ apps. (I was able to make a couple of screensavers with it.) My complaint at the time was that there was no way to make an iTunes visualizer plug in with it. I wanted someone to make an oldschool analog-looking visualizer like the Atari Video Music to replace the cheesy ravey 90's looking visualizer built in to iTunes.
Today I saw this:

With Mac OS X Tiger Apple introduced a convenient way to create your own graphical effects: The Quartz Composer. Sadly by default these could only be used as screen saver or run in Quicktime.
With iVisualize it is finally possible to run these in iTunes, have them react to your music, and display a lot of song information.

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Pioneer BDR-101A Blu-ray burner now available, for just $999 - Engadget

Pioneer has released a $1k internal IDE Blu-Ray burner. Discs come from Sony, 25 bucks a pop. I think I'll wait a little while on this one.
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Timeline of CGI in film and television - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikipedia has an interesting and comprehensive history of CGI use in films, with stills. Did you know that Westworld was the first film to use 2d computer-digitized images? It probably cost half the budget for a few seconds too, I'd expect.
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Adult Film Studio Offers Downloads to DVDs - Yahoo! News

Starting Monday, Vivid Entertainment says it will sell its adult films through the online movie service CinemaNow, allowing buyers to burn DVDs that will play on any screen, not just a computer.
It's another first for adult film companies that pioneered the home video market and rushed to the Internet when Hollywood studios still saw it as a threat.

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Found Via HD for Indies

The Light Organ

Phillip Sanderson writes:

Hi Video Thing
.you might enjoy this? An updated "light organ" image to accompaniment synthesizer.

At last a use for all those unwanted adult movies now using the wonders of max/msp/jitter you can turn them into pixelated lyrical piano music. At least that is what psouper has done with an updated "light organ" image to accompaniment synthesizer.

See more at :
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Read more below:
The concept of a correlation between sound and vision goes back to antiquity. One starry night on the island of Samos Pythagoras stood contemplating the skies, to him he very rhythm and motion of heavenly bodies in their orbits appeared to him as if governed by a cosmic harmony, a carefully choreographed sequence, the music of the spheres.

Renaissance artists such as Leonardo da Vinci produced sophisticated spectacles for court festivals that fused music and colour. In 1760 Father Castel constructed an Ocular Harpsichord or as he described it a " harpsichord for the eyes". Castel's machine was a normal harpsichord above which were 60 small windows, each with different coloured-glass and a small curtain. Each time the player depressed a particular key, the relevant curtain would rise to show a burst of colour.

In the next two hundred years many new instruments for combining light and sound were built. The British painter A. Wallace Rimington developed a Colour Organ which provided a moving light accompaniment to the 1916 New York premiere of Scriabin's symphony Prometheus: A Poem of Fire. Scriabin had scored not only the music but also the precise colours he wanted to accompany particular passages.

Such colour music forms the conceptual starting point for Fleshtones, a piece for extreme pixelated porn and auto generated accompaniment. Footage from webcams and other online sites is broken down into a simple tableau of colour bands, at times rather like the paint charts one might find in a DIY store. Given the subject matter this palette is either predominately pink or coffee coloured thus producing a sequence of flickering fleshtones. Using the wonders of max/msp/jitter these Fleshtones are turned into lyrical piano music that rises in falls in response and exact correspondence to the onscreen movement. The motion of earthly bodies thus is transformed into something of beauty, harmony and contemplation.

AVCHD format will enable 8cm DVD-equipped HD camcorders - Engadget

Sony and Panasonic are working on an H.264 variant that that would record directly from cameras, sort of like HDV. Engadget seems down on the endeavor, but personally if I am going to shoot something in a compressed "HD Jr." format, I'll take H.264 over Mpeg2.

What I really want is a cellphone that shoots iPod-sized H.264 and blogs it Lifeblog-style. If I'm going to shoot HD footage, I'll stick with DVCPRO HD.

Sony and Panasonic-parent Matsushita have teamed up to develop an encoding format based on MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 that will enable future camcorders to capture HD footage directly to standard 8-centimeter DVDs. Called 'AVCHD,' the new format is able to handle numerous resolution/frame-rate combinations, including 480i at 60fps, 720p at 24, 50, or 60fps, and 1080p at 24fps (or 1080i for 50fps and 60fps configurations), and can encode audio in either 5.1 channel AC-3 or up to 7.1 channel Linear PCM.

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NAB2006DayThree

NAB2006DayThreePt1

Create Digital Motion

The VJ content of Create Digital Music has spun off into it's own site: Create Digital Motion, with their VJ Roundup as the first article.

Modern Mechanix - Flat Screen TV in 1958

This is crazy- Modern Mechanix posts about a flat screen crt technology developed in 1958 that got abandoned over licensing issues.

BECAUSE OF NEW TECHNIQUES in the field of electronics, airplane instrument panels and home television sets may soon have something in common—a rectangular picture tube less than three inches thick. The thin cathode-ray tube was invented by William Ross Aiken and developed in the Kaiser Aircraft and Electronics Corporation laboratories. Military uses for the new TV tube were developed for the Douglas Aircraft Company. For the aircraft pilot, the thin TV tube will serve as an electronic windshield, showing an artificial picture of the terrain and sky conditions about him. For the TV viewer at home, the new picture tube may result in new designs for sets, with screens mounted in any wall or hung like picture frames.

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picturephoning.com: Video Glasses Meet Mobile TV

picturephoning.com: Video Glasses Meet Mobile TV

Kowon Technology, a South Korean venture start-up, has announced an eye-glass type display - dubbed MSP-209 - a mobile broadcastings screen incorporated into eyeglasses.