Did I miss you, Mr. Blog?

Not sure. Not really. Using Twitter these days mostly. I need something that will combine both Twitter and blogging, letting me expand on the blog when needed, otherwise they're one and the same for the most part. Let's see how that works.

My couple of tracks

For quick reference:

Halo -Shread-ar mix.mp3

and

Who Mike Jones.mp3

Moving my website

I took down the TWH website and am using this blog as the only part of my website for now. I'll be figuring out what to do with the rest of it later, I guess.

Just finished my first film contest

Just finished the 24-hour film race - http://www.filmracing.com - and it was a BLAST. Great cast, great crew, and great camera.

Shot with the Panasonic AG-HVX200 in 720 24p mode. Absolutely brilliant. In fact, I'm so impressed that I'm getting rid of my Canon XL2 immediately and moving towards HD as soon as I can.

New HD Camcorder + data rates

On Thursday my new camcorder arrived, the Canon HF100:

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=177&modelid=16187

Although I absolutely love my Canon XL2 for pro-level recording, it's just not feasible to take a 15-pound shoulder-mount camera for a quick "family outing" where you want to capture your son doing something adorable (which is almost all the damned time!).

I wanted an upgrade to my 5+ year old Sony consumer-level DV camcorder that allowed me to quickly capture video footage, had a small form-factor for easy travel and didn't make me think about whether or not I wanted to "mess with" taking it with me (a huge barrier to entry with my previous equipment that cost me a lot of great potential footage), a relatively easy workflow for editing the footage after it was captured, and technology that will last me for another 5+ years (theoretically).

The Canon HF100 address all of that, and pretty well. I'll have to go into more detail later about workflow and include a couple of sample videos, but for now I love the camera. No tape means instant access to all videos, faster and easier capture, and smaller storage media. Overall a better solution than what I had, and a great "consumer" product. It doesn't come close to my XL2 in image quality due to limited controls for lighting, etc., but I wasn't looking to replace the XL2 anyway.

Here are some interesting stats for future reference (mostly by me):

Captured 5:16;29 (drop-frame, hence the ";" at the end) of footage in the camera's AVCHD codec. I re-encoded for editing using both AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec) and ProRes 422 codecs. Here are some comparisons:

File sizes:

• Original AVCHD .mts file: 593.7 MB (622,553,088 bytes)
• AIC encoded file: 3.97GB (4,263,044,488 bytes)
• ProRes 422 encoded file: 5.43GB (5,826,822,504 bytes)

Ratios (vs. original AVCHD file size):

• Original AVCHD .mts file: 1:1
• AIC encoded file: 6.85:1
• ProRes 422 encoded file: 9.36:1

Data Rates:

• Original AVCHD .mts file: 15.72 Mbps (117.92 MB/min) **
  
• AIC: 107.66 Mbps (807.48 MB/min)
• ProRes: 147.16 Mbps (1103.68 MB/min)

** AVCHD is a VBR (Variable Bit Rate) encoding method - the data rate will vary slightly and can be adjusted in the camera as the "quality" setting. In this instance, I was recording in the highest data rate possible using the camera's "17Mbps" data rate. This is a good rule of thumb for the bit rate, but obviously it's not entirely accurate (either that or my calculations aren't).

Very interesting results. Granted, AVCHD is not an "editable codec", meaning that it's less-than-realtime due to the computational requirements to view it, much less edit it, in real-time. Hence, re-encoding to an intermediate codec such as AIC or ProRes is a requirement if your editing is going to be much more than simple in/out edits (i.e. adding effects, etc.).

Further more, it's an interesting problem to have to worry about backing up the "original media" from captured footage that has no "locked-in" original media. With my DV camera, I have the original tape, which has time code embedded in it as I shoot. That means if I edit a project and somehow lose the media that I'm editing from, I can recapture and relink the media from the source tapes as the project knows down to a single frame what footage it needs from the tape and where to get it. With AVCHD, there's no embedded encoding, at least not in the Canon HF100. So to "back up" the media, I'd basically pull all of the files off the SD card that I used for recording, and store them on another media form somewhere. Given that the card that I'm working from is 16G in size, a hard drive is the only option I have, basically. As such, I'm looking at upgrading my storage capabilities to support my existing video projects (which are taking quite a bit of space these days) as well as my new camera, which has MUCH bigger storage requirements, as you can see above.

Fun times!

More later, including some sample video recorded on the camera.

MOTU Digital Performer 6 (DP6) just arrived!

The upgrade to my DAW (audio-recording software) just arrived in the mail with little fanfare. Huge manual as usual, but the upgrade is pretty significant for this bad-boy. Can't wait to install it!

AT&T mobile card returned

As you could see from the numbers in my previous post, they were pretty good, ONLY if you were in 3G. The minute you hit EDGE with the card, you realize how slow the EDGE network really is. What's funny is that the places that I got really good speed off that mobile internet card is usually in the same place that I could also find free wi-fi for not much more hassle.

I'd think the only place that card might be useful is if you do a lot of computing while in a car (perhaps a realtor or something). I can't think of a better use-case. Coffee-shops, restaurants, hotels, whatever - most places have free (or low-cost) wi-fi.

This thing wasn't worth the $60/mo it added to the cost of my cell phone plan.

Internet speed test data

I'm putting some speed test data here for my own reference as I hop around and try out my new AT&T broadband wireless (3G) card. I'll compare it to the wireless card at various points as I'm traveling this month as well as my home internet connection. I'll post my summary thoughts later.

Already you can see a pretty big speed difference between wi-fi and the 3G card (even in a hotel - this hotel's wi-fi seems pretty impressive by average standards). The big test will be next week, and "out and about" in Austin.

All tests done here: http://www.speedtest.net

Here's the data: (Connecting to / ping / speed down / speed up)

Port Aransas (6/7/2008), 3G Card:
Austin / 240 ms / 1836 kbps / 931 kbps
Chicago / 260 ms / 1843 kbps / 342 kbps
Kansas City / 349 ms / 1870 kbps / 309 kbps
Los Angeles / 229 ms / 1613 kbps / 535 kbps

Port Aransas (6/7/2008), hotel wi-fi:
Austin / 63 ms / 8675 kbps / 1077 kbps
Chicago / 48 ms / 8667 kbps / 853 kbps
Kansas City / 87 ms / 8592 kbps / 1050 kbps
Los Angeles / 61 ms / 5544 kbps / 735 kbps

Austin (6/9/2008), Daily Grind coffee shop, wi-fi
Austin / 175 ms / 2578 kbps / 319 kbps
Chicago / 75 ms / 2562 kbps / 343 kbps
Kansas City / 115 ms / 2673 kbps / 334 kbps
Los Angeles / 82 ms / 2227 kbps / 322 kbps

Austin (6/9/2008), Daily Grind coffee shop, 3G card
Austin / 171 ms / 1628 kbps / 668 kbps
Chicago / 158 ms / 1777 kbps / 727 kbps
Kansas City / 365 ms / 1675 kbps / 569 kbps
Los Angeles / 236 ms / 1683 kbps / 430 kbps

Austin (6/10/2008), Home wi-fi (TW cable)
Austin / 57 ms / 7084 kbps / 509 kbps
Chicago / 46 ms / 6221 kbps / 509 kbps
Kansas City / 70 ms / 5579 kbps / 506 kbps
Los Angeles / 52 ms / 6855 kbps / 381 kbps

I'm thinking about making my blog the front page of my website. Then I can drop the rest of that weird crap all over as I need to - you know, those static web pages "About Me" and "Here are my crappy cell phone videos that I shot". Those things. Wonder how all that would work?

My blog is back?

I'm going to start using my blog a bit more, I guess.  Between this and twitter, not sure when to use one or the other.  I just need one place where all my random stuff goes... hmm...