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DIY-WEBLOG:
Friday, May 31, 2002
DV.com has this quick little anecdote about "Quality Versus Flexibility" in shooting video. In sum, if you can't get the kind of shots you want the way you want to, then quality ain't gonna help. I've always thought that it's very easy to get too caught up in having the best gear without having given enough thought to what you'll actually be shooting. Will you be travelling light and cheap? Then you don't want to be hauling around a heavy camera and tons of gear. Are you working close quarters? Then 100x zoom isn't going to help -- you need to make sure you have a wide-angle lens. Your needs should dictate your gear.
I advise a lot of people looking to get into video and searching for their first camcorder. These folks typically fall into two categories: newbies who aren't interested in doing much research and who just want to start shooting video, and newbies who've done a lot of research and think they need a $3000 cam and hundreds more in accessories. The first set of newbies are easy to work with if you can convince them not to get the super-cheap all-automatic entry level cams and spend a hundred or two more for some important features like mic inputs. The second set is more difficult, since they're letting the gear dictate their terms. They want the best and think that anything less just won't perform. And I have to say that simply isn't true, all the more so because they haven't yet really shot much video at all. If you haven't shot much video then you really can't be sure it's for you -- so why blow $3000+ on gear that might end up sitting in the closet or being sold on Ebay for 1/2 of what you paid? A good, basic $1000 camera will give you enough control over your image to learn the basics without holding you back. Then, if you find you're using the camera and wishing you had more options and controls, start thinking about the upgrade. You might be thinking, "but don't you end up wasting the $1000 you spent on the first camera if you're just going to buy a better new one?" My answer is, "not really." First, because if you want to be shooting a lot of video it can never hurt to have a second cam if your primary one needs repair or you don't want to risk your $4k investment on a vacation shoot on a sandy beach. Second, if you really used that first cam, think of the $1000 as a very cheap bit of schooling -- compare that with tuition at a communications college. Now, I'm not arguing against having good gear -- believe me, I'd use it if I could afford it. But I am arguing against the belief that great gear = great video. Sure, great gear means great video in the hands of a great videographer. But in the hands of a mediocre videographer great gear = mediocre video. I know it's hard, but you'll be happier (and less poor) if you don't get sucked into the gear fetish and think practically about what you really want to shoot.
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Tuesday, May 14, 2002
Fellow Jersey-boy Kevin Smith is schilling for Panasonic's new e-wear mini-digital devices. I have to admit that the little digital camera/camcorder/mp3 player is cool, though overpriced for the amount of memory you actually get. It makes sense to combine these devices since they share basic components -- the camcorder and still camera both need a CCD and the camcorder and mp3 both need audio circuitry. But, according to a review in this month's Sound and Vision magazine (sadly, only the dead-tree edition), you can record a max of about 20 minutes of 10 frame-per-second MPEG4 video on the included 64 MB flash memory card. Heck, I can record 20 seconds of that kind of video on my pencam. At $450 Panasonic's e-wear thingy is still more expensive than cool. Bump up the video quality and lower the price, and I'm there.
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Tuesday, May 07, 2002
CNet has a rundown of some of the new techniques that streaming media codecs are using to help avoid stuttering and delays in your audio ro video stream. The article correctly points out that these techiques use your excess bandwidth to create a buffer of data to make up for any delayed or missed packets, but otherwise really don't change the nature of IP. That is, broadcasting audio and video on the net is a hack -- a pretty good one -- but a hack nonetheless. Which means that you're forcing packet switching to do something it wasn't designed to do in the first place, and which even big heaps of bandwidth still can't completely fix. Simply, packets weren't designed to arrive in fixed sequence, which is what linear video requires.
I'm finishing a paper that elaborates on this and gives it a fun political-economic spin (it's called "The Internet isn't Broadcasting"). Depending on what happens to it, it might appear somewhere on mediageek.
posted 12:02 PM [link
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