I was reading in the Australian newspaper today that Amazon fully expects Kindle e-book sales to overtake real book sales within 12 months. Already, there are authors whose electronic versions of paperbacks sell more than the paper ones. It seems this e-thing is here to stay. (For me, the jury is still out on newspapers though. Efforts to date have not impressed me).

But what of video? Yes it is true that even with a cheap camcorder (or digital camera), it is quite easy to produce a YouTube or Vimeo video that the world can then see. Even in pseudo high definition.

But what of other distribution methods?

The “video” versions of the Kindle include iPads, iPhones, laptops, Zune (don’t sneer) and goodness knows how many other types of player out there. And of course to get true hi-def in the best possible light, you’ll need Blu-ray. In reality you also need to shoot with a full HD compliant camera – what you have is most likely AVCHD based, sort of a “hi-def lite”.

And herein lies the problem.

Quite simply, while not too many people (in comparison) would want to write content for an e-book, being quite content with say WordPress or its ilk, it seems every man and his budgie want to make video. This means to get the best possible coverage, you need to learn about the mysterious “codec” and equally baffling “wrapper”.

Without going into depth here, there are plenty of tutorials around on these subjects (www.auscamonline.com might be a good starter), just for example, if a video file is supplied as an “AVI” format it does not necessarily follow it is for Windows only, just as a Quicktime file is not necessarily Mac alone. Quicktime and AVI are only “wrappers” containing information therein (that could be encoded in MPEG2 or MPEG4 or other codec).

A query today from a reader to a magazine asked why his hi-def file shot on a Samsung camera was MPEG 4 and wouldn’t play properly on his laptop but was fine on his big, shiny plasma TV direct from the camera. This is the sorts of confusion and misunderstanding there is in video-land. In short, he didn’t have the codec on his laptop, nor was the screen resolution of this older machine up to it.

Other culprits that aim to confuse include DivX, XVID and there are lots more to contend with.

Suffice to say, if you intend to go beyond simply uploading to YouTube to showcase your work, then it would be a good investment to understand this side of the business as well.

My storage needs are pretty simple and regimented. I have two NAS devices (network attached storage) with 1 terabyte in each as permanent storage with one doing duty as a raw footage (video) holder and the other acting as a general backup of day to day stuff. Completed projects are archived off to DVD, if they are kept at all.

To date, this system has worked perfectly for me.

Over the last week though, my RAW footage NAS has decided to play silly buggers, with a permanently flashing blue light and the only way to turn it off being pull the plug. Investigations tell me that the blue light thing is symptomatic of “a long process in operation”. Well after four days of this, I am pretty well convinced that no operation on around ½ TB of data could take that long, so tried to get in (again) via RAIDAR to view the drives. This time I get a message suggesting the drives are kaput.

This is somewhat annoying. I thought the whole idea of RAID systems was to minimise this possibility, so to have both drives die at the same time could be a tragedy of monumental proportions.

Luckily however, unlike quite a few people I know, I NEVER reuse a tape that has been used for a project. For “play around” stuff I have 4 tapes marked for just that purpose, but holidays, professional projects and Important Stuff, my tapes are carefully labelled and locked away.

And that will happen with even more care now.

In this technology based world, longevity of a company usually means around 5 years. 10 years is better than average and 25 years phenomenal. So imagine then, a technology company that has been around for 50 years!

Well this is an achievement reached by Grass Valley, the makers of the Edius range of prosumer video editing systems and broadcast Grass Valley products.

In celebrating the announcement, a memo was issued today saying that the parent company, Technicolor, had received a binding offer from Francisco Partners -- a leading technology-focused investment company - that recognizes the value of the Grass Valley brand, the strength of the new and refreshed product line and the potential that can be realized through independent ownership of the company.

The memo goes on to say “The offer to acquire the business includes the complete product portfolio, the R&D centres and manufacturing facilities, as well as all current customer contracts and support agreements – everything that is part of the Grass Valley Broadcast & Professional business. Most important, because the business depends on its ability to design, manufacture, sell and support its market-leading products, the offer of course includes the great people within Grass Valley, from the design engineers in our R&D centres to the sales and customer support teams around the globe – and the many other people in between”

In a time when the industry is dominated by Apple with Final Cut, Sony with its Vegas lineup and Adobe, this hopefully will bring the Edius name (and Grass Valley as a consequence) into more prominence, as it is certainly worth deserving of a good hard investigation as an alternative platform.

I had a major lesson re-learned this week. A timely reminder if you will that tends to trap many.

I have just moved house to a place I call "The Shed in the Field", mainly because that is where it is, literally. There is no ADSL, no landline, digital TV is limited to ABC and SBS, water comes from a tank when it rains, there is no rubbish removal service - you get the idea. The reasons why I have made this move are not important.

I have decided to document the move and how with minimal access to technology, I can still live fairly well; decent FM radio, movies and TV shows being accessed that I cannot get free to air and so on. This has taken the form of the "Shed in the Field" project over at Auscam Online. And of course includes video. It is not intended to be perfectly shot and lit video, complete with scripts, but fly-on-the-wall stuff as I feel fit.

I intended to use my Canon XHA1 to at least get decent HD footage, and on the first morning, as the day dawned very cold and foggy, the view straight down the valley was breathtaking! I shot around 10 minutes of the scenery,and The Shed, but when I went to capture it, the computer and the camera (via Firewire) simply would not talk. It appears the Firewire port in the Canon has burned out.

For a good ten minutes I was down in the dumps; I like my 'big' camera and know it backwards. Anything but would never be as good. The nearest Canon service centre is 3 1/2 hours away, and this could take weeks!

Eventually, sanity prevailed and I picked up my backup camera, an old Sony and a loaner I had for review which is a Panasonic SDR-S50. The Panny is tiny, shoots to SD card and MPEG2. I have been using it for the last few days now, and am suitably impressed with it and especially low light abilities.

Now this is a basic, basic camcorder that sells for $299, and as such, forces you to think about the shots and not rely on automatic gizmos to get it all right. I accept that the stuff I have done is no Spielberg masterpiece, and wouldn't even rate as a Spielberg mega-disaster, but it has done the job I am asking it to.

So here is the lesson - again - a top shelf piece of equipment does not make you a top shelf videographer.

Reports over the weekend suggest the take up of 3D TV has not been the roaring success everyone seemed to expect. Sure, the State of Origin (for those who care) and some of the soccer matches were broadcast in 3D ? actually processed 2D I am told reliably ? but only to a small viewing footprint, so this is hardly a gauge.

The questions is simply this; would you have coughed up a few thou’ to watch a couple of football matches and a game of backyard cricket? Damned if I would.

We would be led to believe that the switch to 3D will be progressive and ongoing, but really, when you think about it, apart from perhaps the initial novelty, what sorts of programs would you think would have value added by being in 3D? Oprah? The Chaser Boys? Masterchef (gawd forbid)!

No. They would have no further redeeming qualities in my opinion, and because of that, as a film maker and occasional TV shooter, I would not invest in the equipment to make a change as I did from say, analogue to digital or SD to HD.

3D is a specialist niche ? much like IMAX I suspect ? and is suited to footage that will benefit from it. And this appears to be sport. As has been previously mentioned, I did see footage shot in true 3D (as against the Australian programs that as said were “processed”) of laps of the Nurburgring, and that was impressive.

But for the life of me, I cannot imagine Home in Away seen the same way.