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.

Link

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

Link

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.

Link

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.
Link
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.

Link
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?
Link

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.

Link
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.
Link

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.

Link

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