You might have heard before, but in case you hadn't, today marks the last day of DV Guru. We've had a fun time blogging about all things digital video, and while it may be the end of the line for our lil' blog here, don't think it's the end for any of us. Allow me to go on for a minute about everyone, and let you know where some of your favorite bloggers are headed.

Ajit Anthony has been here since day one, and will keep going with his personal project, Squigglebooth. He's been an invaluable asset to the team, and kept the site afloat for a good amount of time with just himself.

Ajit says:
I feel like I have involuntarily graduated the DVguru school of filmmaking. It has been a great ride and a great education. To post here everyday also meant I had to learn on what I was talking about. I feel so much richer from the experience.

I'd like to thank all the people who have blogged for DVguru (and they have been several) and especially all you readers. We certainly are not stopping this because of a lack of readers. If anything, I can safely say we are leaving on a high note. Special thanks to people like Mike Curtis who was a resource in every way. Thanks to Randall who was a constant source of motivation that clearly pushed this site forward.

I am supposed to be blogging for other DV related sites, we'll see. What I do know is that I will be blogging at Ticklebooth and videoblogging on Squigglebooth. Hopefully, you will see one of my films playing at a theater near you. Thank you.

Chris Tew, most notably of PVRWire, is leaving the Weblogs, Inc. fold and partnering with webtvwire.com and webtvhub.com covering the biz of IPTV and internet distribution.

Russell Heimlich, one of our podcast peeps, will continue to contribute to NewTeeVee. In his time here, he did a ton to help our site, including the most trafficked post of DV Guru's lifespan. Yeah, it was the DVD rewinder, but still, pretty awesome.

Erstwhile features writer Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo is in pre-production on the upcoming internet TV drama The West Side. The show won't be premiering until March, however, so for now he can only offer up his solipsistic (his word, not mine...) ramblings at No Film School. We still blame him for the site's demise... but only because he's so awesome, we wish he could have written more, but peeps are busy, and we understand.

Adam Nielson will continue to work at his "real job" in television at KSL-TV in Salt Lake City, but online he'll be working with several projects, including Tech Check Daily, an online show about technology.

Sheila Ward has been a breath of fresh air to DV Guru. In her short time, she brought an awesome amount of content to DV Guru, and I'll always be grateful. She's not heading too far, since she'll be contributing a little to Download Squad with stuff like imaging tips and potentially some video how-to stuff. Besides that she'll be off doing her video business thing.

Brian Liloia, one of the "second generation" of DV Guru-ers, has some of the most interesting post DV Guru plans. This April, he'll be moving to an ecovillage community in rural Missouri, where he hopes to help build homes made out of mud and straw, partake in organic gardening, learn the ins and outs of solar and wind power, and promote a sustainable, low-impact, and self-sufficient lifestyle. While there, he has plans to start up several video/filmmaking projects in the form of some documentary work, and a series of online "TV shows" about the community and the theme of sustainability. Other than that, he'll continue writing a little bit for Download Squad and TUAW.

Randall Bennett, AKA me, has a ton of things going. I'm going to still contribute to some Weblogs, Inc. properties, like Blogging Stocks, but I'm also working on a new project called Tech Check Daily (with Adam Nielson) and continue ruling the world. Still haven't ruled out the possibility of leading another DV blog, but we'll have to see.

I've got to say I've had such an awesome time helping shape this site. All of our writers are great, and expect to see big things out of all of our writers. The other missing link? You. We have the most loyal and interesting readers in the whole world! (*tear*) Honestly, our readers are intelligent and always have an interesting comment to leave. Working at other blogs within Weblogs, Inc., I often dread reading the comments because they're filled with unintelligent drivel, but thanks to readers and comment writers like you, DV Guru has been an awesome place to be. Thanks, and we'll see you in the blogosphere in the sky (or at NAB, whichever comes first.)

In a move the studios are apparently really excited about, the Associated Press is reporting the MPAA has signed off on a technology from Sonic Solutions that allows legally downloaded movies to be burned to DVD. These average, everyday burned DVDs allow consumers to play them in their average, everyday players. The twist? The burned DVDs have CSS, the copy protection scheme behind "real" DVDs, embedded on them. As most people know, however, CSS is easily overcome, but as long as it makes the movie industry happy, I'm happy.

MMMmmmm.... more "Spike" porn pics. This time, those crafty RED kids took a picture of the much anticipated camera next to an ENG style cam, the F900, and a smaller prosumer cam, the HVX. Granted, Spike doesn't exactly have any sort of storage on it's pretty lil' chasse, but that lil' chasse is pretty nice looking, and pretty small. One could see that hidden away in a small-ish camera bag. Now, if that little camera gets the same results as the 4k footage we've been seeing, we're sure in for a treat!

[Via the illustrious, HDforIndies]

Kids, especially you HVX200 sporting P2-lovers out there, our day is on the horizon: Solid state hard drives are on their way! SanDisk is going to show off their first 32GB flash-based hard drive at CES, and says the drive could be released as early as the first half of this year! The transfer between a P2 card and a flash-based drive would be so minimal, it'd feel virtually instantaneous.

For those of you not up on your geek knowledge, typically the slowest part of a computer has been the spinning discs of magnetic hard drives. Video folks have gotten around the annoyance of those pokey hard drives by chaining them together in RAID arrays. Now, though, the problem could be eliminated almost entirely, with these flash-based drives.

Keep in mind, the drive is supposed to be a laptop drive, so we're not sure exactly how that'll play in a video world, but regardless, we're one step closer to greatness.

[Note: The image is of the Super Talent 8gb laptop flash drive]

I originally titled this post "Oh, snap!" because LG's on again off again combo HD-DVD + Blu-Ray player, if released, could save next-gen optical from an untimely demise. Many consumers (including me) have been sitting on the sidelines of the format war waiting for a clear winner, but obviously a combo player would not only be a winner for LG, but retailers might start moving some Blu-Ray and HD-DVD titles off the shelves.

Finally we could see some sort of unification. Please, oh please, LG, don't dash our hopes! And Samsung, we know you're all cozy with Blu-Ray and e'rythang, but throw us a bone and release a dual format player too.

[Via Engadget]

Now that even morning and daytime television are saturated with HD, you know it's arrived. All the clarity and sharpness, however, strikes fear into the hearts of talent. Thanks in part to film grain, viewers don't notice age lines and puffy eyes as much, but with digital and it's all or nothing glory, every line and skin imperfection is aired out for all viewers to see. Some say it's the end of the extreme closeup, and that stars will start putting anti-HD measures in their contracts, but an article at the Hollywood Reporter provides hope. Makeup artists are stepping up their game, utilizing new techniques to literally airbrush away imperfections. I tend to tell my talent that on my tiny HDR-HC1, I've enabled the beautifying filter, and since it's a documentary, they've got nothing to worry about.

Now that we're through our first real Christmas season with next-gen optical officially released, do you have any Blu-Ray or HD-DVD devices lying around your video production filled household? I don't have one, and I figure the only people likely to have one are people into console games. The PS3 has a Blu-Ray drive included, and the Xbox360 has an HD-DVD add-on, although it's not mandatory to play games.

So have at it in the comments! Do you have one? Do you need one? Do you want one? Do you really even care about next-gen optical?

While it's been possible to shoot super wide angle shots for a while, that is to say 270-degree and above angles, for about five years, one problem is they typically cause some sort of angular distortion when played back. A South Korean researcher invented a lens that can produce a super-wide angle shot with no discernible distortion. If you're a little confused by the above pic, that black nub at the top is the camera's lens. The reflective surface on the bottom bounces light toward the lens at a super-wide angle. The lens then sees a picture in a really wide angle. It takes a computer to transform the image to a pan-able 180 degree picture. The lens isn't targeted specifically toward content creators, the lens will see use in security and robotics applications, where having an uber-wide field of view is more useful. If the lens truly is distortion free, we could see a positive impact in the video and multimedia worlds, but as is usual with technology that hasn't hit commercial availability yet (*COUGH* red camera *COUGH*) we'll just have to wait and see.

[Via The Raw Feed]

We're on the hunt for bloggers who have a penchant for punditry, writers who have a fervor for the video production and bloggers who are enthusiastic about video as well as proficient writers. If you think you fit the bill, email Randall (at) WeblogsInc.com with the subject line DV Guru Job Search, and in the body list your name, the video creation item you couldn't live without, and three original unpublished posts of about 50-200 words in the style of DV Guru. Also, we're looking for columnists, so if you're more of a long form writer, hit us with wih one feature length post (400 words) that'll help us get an idea of your writing flow.

Here are the rules, once more.
Emails with attachments will be immediately deleted.
Subject: DV Guru Job Search
Body: Name, fav video creation item and three original unpublished posts of about 50-200 words OR a feature post of about 400 words.

Good Luck!

Party time! We invite CamcorderInfo genius Richard Baguley to join us on today's show. We breakdown multi-monitor setups, talk about JVC's latest HDV cam, and as always give you an update with this week's red alert. Stream it straight from this page with our player below (just press play) or download the mp3 (right-click-> Save As). And be sure to subscribe to our podcast via this feed, which is working now.



Run Time: 34:33
Show Notes:

Tips & tricks for multi-monitor setups
JVC's new HDV Cam
Fiber optic TV (FiOS)
CCD vs CMOS
Black Friday [via CCI]
Bella's new DV Keyboard

Earlier Russell posted about how to create a space scene with NO CGI. Devon Delapp, proprietor of the aptly named DevonDelapp.com, and TV writer, wrote in to give us a heads up on his neat lil' article about a pretty neat lil' process. Film nerds know how costly it is to shoot a car sequence (especially single cam.) Fortunately for all of us, Delapp diagrammed a process for shooting a car scene without a green screen. Sure, that takes all the fun out of post, but shooting with a 20 person crew, some lights and mirrors makes for a fun shoot. Granted, it's probably outside the production level for most readers of the beloved Guru, but it's well written, interesting and at the least, gives you an idea of how lucky we are with the advent of cheap and effective chroma/color keying.

While a new audio app replacing a program that hasn't changed significantly in six years isn't always big news, to me the more notable news was the fact that Adobe chose to release the beta of Soundbooth for both Mac and Windows platforms. Ever since Final Cut Pro started showing up Premiere, many industry pundits started speculating Apple was going to become a vertically integrated platform for media. Adobe then followed suit by dropping Mac support for Premiere. The release of Motion, and to a lesser extent Shake, had some worried that Apple aficionados would lose After Effects as well. Fortunately, to this point, that hasn't been the case.

The friendly/tense Apple/Adobe relationship got a whole lot more interesting after the release of Apreture, which some (including myself) looked at as a direct challenge to Adobe to come up with more interesting interfaces, and more efficient application programming. Apreture could scroll through thousands of RAW images without any noticeable loading time. Adobe took the challenge and released a beta of Lightroom, which is still in beta.

Now with Soundbooth, could Adobe make an attempt to break into Apple's vertical integration attempts. Could Soundbooth + a new version of Premiere featuring Serious Magic integration + After Effects and Photoshop mount a competition to the Apple production bundle? I think Premiere is the weak link in that scenario, but who knows... maybe some a shot of Serious Magic is all Premiere needs. What do you think? Would you buy an Adobe suite OVER Apple's suite? Or more specifically, what would it take for you to buy one over the other?

UPDATE: I was just informed by some folks that Audition will stick around, and continue to be Windows only. Soundbooth is supposed to be a single track editor, whereas Audition will continue in the multi-track editor of choice. That makes Adobe weak in comparison to Soundtrack Pro, but still attractive none-the-less.

During most sports replays and bumpers are cut with some form of propritary edit controller, like EVS for example. I've worked in many-a TV truck, but never on a production as big as say... the Super Bowl. It seems the larger the production, the more off the shelf hardware they use! During last year's Super Bowl, all of the live broadcast bumpers were cut using Final Cut Pro. Granted, the systems use broadcast standard KONA 3 cards from AJA, but the fact they could edit virtually live sports in HD blows me away.

Fox also uses FCP for all of their sports coverage, but FCP isn't the only NLE getting use in sports. Turns out FSN South uses Vegas to cut it's promo and bumper material. They say they've cut down days worth of pre-production editing into 14 hours.

Looks like some of the old school is finally getting on board the NLE bandwagon.

Follow the READ link for more info out of this month's TV Technology.

If you're not familiar with particle emitters, get familiar. Motion graphic artists use them to create that extra bit of polish that makes an animation stand out. The marketplace for particle emitters is pretty broad, with two companies standing in the front: Trapcode and Wondertouch. While Particular from Trapcode has some nice features, ParticleIllusion from Wondertouch is a full-featured application with an endless supply of emitter libraries. We got our grubby little hands on ParticleIllusion, and were fairly pleased with one gripe. Read on for the full review.

Coming from the world of televison, a production switcher is something that is extremely expensive. A decent low end model will cost often in to the low $20,000s. Luckily for us, we can use a software solution that produces great results. Wirecast is a software-based switcher that out of the box will shock any person from the television industry, and impress anyone else. The software runs on literally any machine (Mac or Windows, or Paralells, I'd guess...) and has a built in chromakeyer (green/blue screen compositing tool,) built in titler and will play back any video source Quicktime or VFW can handle. Download and play with the demo, it's totally worth the $400 easy. I know it sounds hyperbolic, but I've never used a peice of software that has so much potential. That being said, the interface is a little clunky if you're used to TV switchers, but If they refine the interface to fall more inline with tradition, I'd have no problem recommending the software to any small multi-cam environment.

The latest version adds support for a built in streaming server, instead of streaming to Darwin, and then having Darwin stream out to the interwebs. They also support HDV cameras, and will deinterlace 1080i (and 480i for that matter.) The result of the stream can be output to another monitor, another video out source, streamed live or recorded as a video file locally. In the limited testing I've done, I've found Wirecast most limited by hard drive bandwidth available. Wirecast + solid state storage = switching bliss on the cheap.

[Thanks, Lars N]