“I actually enjoy vacuuming now”…

No-one in recorded history has ever said this apart from the woman in the ad on TV for the ‘Shark’ vacuum cleaner. Just as no-one ever says:
“I really look forward to sharpening my knives now I have …” whatever it is called.

My favourite though (can you hear the sneer in my voice), is the one that promises to fix the wrinkles around your eyes by employing ‘stem cell technology’ and give you “a really neat feeling”. Really neat.” I asked a doctor about this last one, and basically it is pure unadulterated crap. Apparently stem cells need a constant blood supply and of course, they don’t say what sort of “stem cells” they are. As my doctor mate says, they could come from a lantana bush for all we know.

Why on earth the watchdog doesn’t stomp on these ads, as well as the bogus haircare ones with all sorts of exotic fruits embedded in them (apparently) I don’t know.
But my major objection to these ads is their production values. I know enough Australian actors to get REALLY pissed off when I hear ads with American accents and voice overs, references to things that don’t even really apply here (such as the dreaded “mom” and “cookie”, left hand drive cars and of course, the wrong spelling (“tire”, “favor”, “color”, “frosting” for “icing” and so on).

Yes I know it is all about cost of production. Why shoot something when you can just slightly doctor and run something that already exists?
Here’s a thought. A lot of shooting IS done in Australia as we do a damn fine job and we are cost effective. Perhaps the production companies should look at selling their expertise overseas to make commercials as well as for the full length movie?

The cash flow would be better to start with. And open up a whole new global market.

(As an aside, many of these items are a monetary rip off as well – quelle surprise. One ad for a magnetic insect curtain for doors was marketed as I recall, for 3 payments of $7.95. The EXACT same item is down or local markets on the weekend for $3.99).

But you knew that …

Of late, camcorders released by the Big Four (Sony, Canon, Panasonic and JVC) have shunned being mass market to a large degree, especially at the lower price range. It appears that they have decided – probably mostly rightly – that people are using their smartphones more and more to get their YouTube or Facebook moments. Instead, camcorders have been released with specialist functions or features in an aim to gain buyers and leapfrog the opposition.

Sony has the inbuilt projector in a number of models and its whizz bang new stabilization system; Canon has used a lot of their higher end camera electronics and functions including lenses into their mid range giving fabulous optics and low light capability. Panasonic has concentrated on smaller sizes with lots of functionality, plus of course 3D and last week, at Auscam we looked at a new JVC that sported 250 frames per second.

JVC is an interesting case. For over 12 months we didn’t hear a lot about the company. Their previous distributor, Hagemeyer, decided to no longer carry the brand and for a brief period of time it went to Shriro which is the distributor for Casio amongst many other things. It was then picked up by Kenwood and here at least, we heard nothing for quite a while – from either their consumer or broadcast/professional divisions.

Now they are back with a bang with a flurry of new and innovative models and the latest carries on where the JVC GZ-EX555 we played with last week left off. As mentioned, that has the capacity to shut 250 frames / second. This new one, the GC-PX100 shoots from a time lapse option to an astonishing 500 frames / second.

All in a $999 package in a dSLR shaped body.

If you are a sports coach, or indulge in high speed sport and need a camcorder, while you cannot get this unit until June, you’ll certainly have it in your sights.

If you are one of the billion or so people in Australia who own a GoPro then you will know that as good as they are, there are a few drawbacks to getting the best quality imagery from them due to the nature of the beast.

These drawbacks – cause they are not really ‘faults’ – include rolling shutter errors, fisheye distortion, sensor noise, jerky footage due to movement and to a lesser degree, colour errors.
At the NAB trade fair in Las Vegas recently, German company ProDAD, released a single application called ProDRENALIN that addresses all these problems and more.

Additional functionality allows video to be rotated in case the camera had been mounted upside down, support for 4K and 2.7K resolutions, side-by-side comparison with the original and corrected footage and batch processing letting you apply correction to a large number of clips in one sitting. This latter function allows different setting to be applied to each clip in the batch as well.
ProDRENALIN is fully compatible with all GoPro Hero cameras in all supported resolutions, with the ability to import other action camera profiles.

ProDrenalin will be available beginning in May for AUD$49.00 from the proDAD online shop, and there is a pre-order special price of AUD$35.00 available now until the product begins shipping. More information is available at Auscam Online.

Everything old is new again it seems.

Those – ah – of the older demographic may vaguely remember the 8mm Bolex movie camera. Invented by Jacques Bogopolsky in 1927, it became the most sought after movie making camera in the world, even having its own newspaper called the Bolex Reporter.

There was even a 3D version made (in 1952), and the Bolex is still used in learning institutions and universities today to teach the basic of and fundamentals of filmmaking.
The original Bolex used 8mm tape and there was later a 16mm model; well now the Bolex is back in digital form.

Selling for USD$3299, and made under licence to the original Bolex Corporation, the digital version has all the whizzbangs you’d expect and is spec’d right up there with the best camcorders on the market today. For example, it has a resolution of up to 2336 X 1752 in 4:3 aspect ratio and 2048 * 1152 in Super 16mm mode. Of course it also shoots in 1920 * 1080 hi def mode.

The full specs are available here

So far, I have been happy with Windows 8. Looking at it purely from a user point of view in the realms of video editing and production, it is fast, convenient and when the editors become Windows 8 ‘native’, I can see that things will only get better.

I am now used to the majority of the shortcuts, like the touch screen access (if you don’t have a touch screen, which I suspect is a lot of people and reviewers then the whole ‘experience’ is somewhat lost) and generally, so far at least, stability has been very good.

Yesterday though I found an annoyance, which really bugs me.

Throughout the course of Windows 95, ME, 2000, XP and even the much maligned Vista plus of course Windows 7, my music collection which is quite extensive if not a little narrow in focus with my love of ProgRock, has played along beautifully no matter which version of the OS.

It co-habited quite happily with Windows Media Player and later, with Windows Media Center, but I have suddenly found that under Windows 8, most of my collection, all genuinely purchased music I hasten to add, is deemed by the OS to be unplayable due to DRM rights!

What? How? Why?

Not to worry I thought, I’ll just copy it all onto my XBOX and use that as a media centre.

Wrong. You can’t do that as an XBOX can only stream; I am really starting to wonder why an XBOX even has a hard drive as an aside. You can’t copy stuff to it, you can’t save Foxtel programs to it or even set a time to record. My only other alternative is to copy all the music to my old and somewhat dithery PS3 which is not a really satisfactory answer.

On a quick look around the web I have yet to find a definitive solution to these questions, so my music at this time stays on the Seagate external hard drive and plugged into my old 2 core beast.