Category: General

The other 3 dimensions of 3D – Mark Schubin. http://bit.ly/dr2OeH Always challenging, always technical, I always learn something!

I had the pleasure of producing a podcast featuring Mark Schubin for a couple of years. Every episode was challenging – the man has an amazing understanding of technology – and I learnt a lot. Now Mark’s primary outlet is his newish website – The Schubin Cafe.

This article details the problems with variable inter-ocular distances in the range of humans from youth through teenager to adult, and the impact of viewing distance on stereoscopy. Clearly 3D is not way more complex than 2D with a bit of depth!

RED with MX sensor shows 13.5 stops dynamic range on ARRI derived test. http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=42396

Pictures to come 13.5 stops of dynamic range is a good two stops better than RED claimed for their original sensor and, from memory, comparable in Dynamic Range with a Sony F23.

Not that Dynamic Range is the only harbinger of quality but it’s good.

Paramount’s new division for micro-budget films: 10 films $100,000 each first year. http://bit.ly/dbL1ON

Do they have Paranormal Activity envy?

“Aren’t you tired of being fed the same movies wrapped in different paper?” asks the Insurge website, “We want to find and distribute crazy, unpredictable, and hopefully awesome movies – movies that make you want to line up to see at your local theater with all your friends (and us).  Movies that a big studio would never release because they’re too risky, too silly, and they don’t star Sandra Bullock.”

Is a google set top box the “wave of the future”? http://bit.ly/bqezPS Lots of opinions from fairly positive to “never going to happen”.

I’m biased as that type of index is exactly the vision we had for Open TV Network and Google faces the might of entrenched players, competing set-top boxes and very little reason for established players to cede the set top box away from themselves to Google.

If anyone an do it, it might be Google, but I’m with the naysayers on this one.

Futures trading for Film Profits http://bit.ly/bReQud This can’t end well. “Insider trading seems like it would be a non-trivial issue”

I think this is a very bad idea. The ‘wisdom of the crowds’ is no more likely to get it right than the “experts” – and the example on predicting revenue for Alice in Wonderland proves that point. Insider trading is going to be a huge problem.

But really, gambling on predicting the revenue of a film is what the studio has already done. Why is there a need for an exchange so that all and sundry and lose their shirts?

Latest videos from Feb LAFCPUG meeting now on Open TV Network. http://bit.ly/dnoEh5

Larry Jordan on “How to configure your (Final Cut Pro) system to minimize problems and Nesting. Best $1.49 you’ll spend this week.

Barry Goch provides an extensive (48 minutes for just $1.99) introduction to “Smoke on a Mac” – more than a product demo.

Andrew Balis gives us a quick 50c run-through of Moviola’s new “Final  Cut Pro Field Guide” software.

OK Go leave EMI, form own lable. http://bit.ly/aZ0uL1 EMI banned embedding for real viral campaign, tried fake viral. Band leaves. Profit.

Pop band OK Go are riding a wave of viral video success again with the amazing video of Here we go again but their last video flopped because their then label, EMI, refused to allow the video to be embedded in blogs or similar, defeating the mechanism that fuels viral video. EMI compounded their heavy handed error by attempting to create a fake viral campaign by having people tweet for a free song.

OK Go tried to get EMI to relent and allow the Internet to do what it does but EMI didn’t budge so today they announce they’ve left the label  – OK we’ll Go it alone!

EMI, it’s been 10 years sine the Cluetrain Manifesto. EMI managed to fail spectacularly on just the first five of 85 theses:

Markets are conversations.

Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.

Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.

People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.

“Why Apple should buy Adobe” http://theappleblog.com/2010/03/09/why-apple-should-buy-adobe/

Simple answer, they shouldn’t!  Also that the writer thinks After Effects could be discarded makes their knowledge of video production pretty suspect, and therefore the rest of the article should be treated with suspicion.

But it’s an interesting thought. Apple could buy Adobe out of cash on hand. Adobe’s market capitalization is about 18.5 billion today. Apple’s has just gone over $200 billion with about $40 billion cash on hand.

I don’t see how it would make sense for Apple though. They’re an experience company, not a software or hardware one.

Kyte introduces broadcast quality (SD) streaming in a backpack, not a truck! http://tcrn.ch/9GL5yJ

It’s hard to believe that a backpack kit with wireless links can do the same portability and live reporting flexibility as those news trucks I see driving around LA all the time, with their relatively clumsy microwave uplink tower.

Kyte’s partners in the backpack make some clever use of mobile broadband connections:

LivePro is a computer in a backpack connected to six data cards all uploading live video at the same time, balancing the load across three different carriers (Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon). It is made by LiveU and Kyte will be reselling it to its larger customers.

79c an hour for Desperate Houswives from advertising revenue. http://nyti.ms/aRhoU2

This is right at the high end of advertising revenue per viewer per show.  Most fall in the range of 25-65c per viewer per show, with a few very successful outliers at 70-80c per viewer per show.

And yet, through iTunes they want $1.99. Just let me pay that advertising revenue equivalent (and remember that includes distribution costs) and have no advertising.