Pravda on Media, Technology, and Rebel Filmmaking

As a media geek I am very excited with my new gear and setup. So excited that I’ve decided to share with you my enthusiasm with my latest purchase - the Canon HV30.

When I started building my little video production facility, camera and editing computer were my first concerns. I made two decisions - one was to buy a strong PC for video editing, and the other was to buy the Panasonic NV-MD10000, a great SD PAL camera with a lot of manual control of key parameters.

When I moved to Mac, I’ve experimented with Final Cut Express, which quickly led me to buy Final Cut Studio and make it my only editing solution.

However, on the camera side I wasn’t happy with my choice. The main reason was size. Going to shoot an event became a hustle, I had no way to take the cam with me just for fun, and the whole process became too much work and not enough fun.

So, I went back to my imaginary drawing board and decided to so a short requirement list for my next camera. I came up with this:

1. Small enough to fit into my laptop bag

2. Expandable with a standard shoe

3. HD

4. Light weight

5. Under $1000

6. External mike jack

In my last visit to NYC, I met with my good friend Bill Cammack, who has a tendency to take pictures of himself with social media divas, and asked for his guidance.

Bill is using Canon HV20, which is a great camera, that has it all. It fits the palm of your hand, supports HDV format on Mini DV cassettes and has many additional features (24p, external mike jack to name two of the more important ones) that make it a great buy.

After a lot of research I bought this little piece of equipment - Canon HV30:

It is based on the same body and sensor of the HV20, but with two significant upgrades:

1. Support for 30p- meaning, the camera can shot HDV in 30 frames per second in progressive mode. This is the reason that it is so great for web video - many video distribution reduce video frame rate to 15 frames. Video shot in 24, or 50 frames per second looks choppy a bit when down-sampled to 15 frames. 30 frames works like a charm.

2. It has a black body - which is way cooler than the silver one

Audio is THE most important part of video productions, especially for the web. The external mike jack is not XLR, which means that it is not a professional interface. However, there is an amazing and affordable mike from Rode called VideoMic (not the most original name in the world….). This is shotgun directional microphone, that does not require phantom power, and has a standard shoe. One of the biggest issues with the Canon HV20/30 is that the motor noise is picked up by the onboard mike. If you are aiming at a decent production, on board mike is a complete no no. I bought my VideoMic a while ago, and it is a great supplement to the HV30. It costs less then $150. And if you are into interviews, take a look at Shure SM58 - a great handheld mike, with great audio results, and costs only $100.

I had a chance to check out my new setup at TWS2008. I brought the nifty little camera with the VideoMic, and had a blast. I shot several videos with ease, and even brought the cam with me on stage. That’s exactly what I was looking for. I also recorded some indoors videos with it, using a tripod, and a small lavaliere. So basically, this camera provides the full range of use cases - interviews, studio shots, outdoors shots and everything you need from a small camera.

Talkiing about expandability of this camera, check out this setup of a great guys in the HV20/HV30 forum:

It is in no way a professional camera. It doesn’t have an XLR input, and even the MD10000 has more manual control on key parameters. Also the menus can drive you crazy sometimes. But it works great in 99% of cases, and with some effort and expansion you can cover almost all your needs with this small but smart piece of equipment.

So, here it is, your HD production kit for the following:

1 Canon HV30 - $785

1 Rode VideoMic - $139

———————————–

Total $924

And you still have some change for additional accessories (tripod is a must, so spend your money wisely….).

You can see some video footage taken by this little piece of equipment in this Vimeo group. Here’s one to note:

I will upload some of my videos soon.

Related articles

• Wired Test 2007: The Canon HV20 — Mos Def in More Ways Than Just Its Hi-Def Picture

It started with the definition of pathetic:

People Waiting in line a week before iPhone Release

And continued in a PR and operational disaster.

Last weekend Apple released two important updates:  iPhone 3G hit the stores, and iPhone 2.0 version software update was released. In a futile effort to limit iPhone grey market, iPhone 3G activation process was changed to include in store activation by AT&T or Apple representatives. As everyone (besides Apple apparently) feared, that process didn’t work that well. Some early shoppers had to wait for couple of hours before in-store activation succeeded, some were sent home to continue activation through iTunes, just to find the activation server down. Twitter and FriendFeed were full of horror stories about this process.

However, this is not the whole, or even the important story. The important story is the unfulfilled promise of MobileMe, the new .mac service from Apple. The service, dubbed by Apple as “Exchange for the rest of us”, supposed to automatically and instantly synchonize contacts and calendar entries between laptops, iPhones, iPod Touch and the web. Guess what? This insanely expensive service just doesn’t fulfill it promise. While web and mobile device sync works like a charm, desktop applications are synched between once to four times an hour. That means that if you add a meeting to your laptop calendar, and then close it, it won’t be synched with either web or iPhone/iPod. This point made some of MacRomurs readers pretty angry. These discrepancies are major enough to challenge even the most devoted Macheads.

So what did we learn today? First we learned that Apple, with all its glory, screws up once in a while. The shining armor just got a dent. Not clear if it will become a hole, but it is certainly a dent. Second, it is a reminder that at the end of the day, Apple makes software and hardware, not divine entities. Yes, they are much better than Microsoft’s product, in design, look and feel and overall user experience, but they are still, you know, computer stuff, that don’t always work.

As for me - I just hope that this is a mishap from Apple direction, and not a slippery slop towards Microsoft’s product’s level…

Sitting on the couch at blip.tv’s offices in Manhattan, chatting with Dina Kaplan, the company’s COO and Mike Hudak, CEO, I realized that one thing that Dina said was the true story behind this small company - that probably their content and distribution is the biggest and most unnoticed threat to TV networks.

Blip.tv is a video distribution and monetization platform. it offers distribution services to its customers, such an embedable player, distribution to main video sites, twitter notifications, and cross posting to blogs. The company also cut sponsorship deals for its customers with brands, as well as using basic advertisement technology to provide CPM/CPC of deals.

Their uniqueness is in their business strategy - focusing on independent producers of online shows:

- Independent producers are in most cases the ones who are not linked to major TV networks, the guys who just go out there with their own money (or, in some cases, investment money) and produce their own shows.

- Shows are not the dog on skateboard videos you see on YouTube, but an episodic content, just like regular TV shows.

Blip is hosting different kinds of shows, such as cooking shows, drama, comedy, technology and news.

Here’s an example of such a show, Political Lunch:

So, what’s the big news?

Well, couple of weeks ago, Mike and Dina showed me one cool thing - their integration with Sony Bravia. Sony Bravia has an Ethernet socket. And what I saw at blip’s offices is their content on a large screen TV with blip’s menu and interface.

Though Internet and TV integration is not a huge news, blip’s move into this area is significant.

Till now, independent creators had to face two challenges:

- The limited user experience web video offers

- How to promote their shows without the huge marketing budgets the networks have.

Now, blip’s player is no longer confined to the limitations of web video viewing experience. If users can just as easily see Political Lunch or The Closer, the competitive landscape is fundamentally different that the traditional separation of Internet video and TV experience. And again - the key here is that the content we are talking about is not the regular UGC low end content, but well produced shows, that are not a part of the TV industry.

In this new deal, blip.tv challenges the TV networks as they are providing new kind of content, from a new kind of creators, but on the same display vehicle - TV. By breaking the walls around web video user experience, and increasing the exposure to independently created shows, blip.tv are on a heads on attack on TV networks. Sure, they don’t have the money the big guys have - TV advertisement models and price range are much more profitable than what blip.tv and other online video communities can get today. However, like every innovation, things might take time, but they are definitely changing the landscape in a fundamental way.

It is yet to be seen if blip.tv will be around 3 years from now. I believe that they will be successful and snatched by one of gorillas in this market.

However their success or failure will not only indicate if they are good business people. It would be a clear sign for things to come in the market niche of independent content creators.

Image via Wikipedia

- Apple got a new VP of Product Design - Doug Field from Segway. Tim O’Reilly has an interesting observation about this move.

- Friendfeed is under fire:

• Om calls it FakeFeed
• CenterNetworks Shows that the guys who are followed most are not necessarily the ones who contribute to the conversation.
• Scoble believes that conversation really matters there.
• My view - Friendfeed is a hyped application. It has novelty by showing which topics are the most discussed among my friends, but it is nothing more than that. Maybe after the hype, now comes the phase of sad realization…

- HeySpread provides cool service for multisite video distribution and encoding. Business model is similar to wordpress.com - users buy credits for encoding, watermarking etc. Read more at their blog

Have a great day!

Yesterday I attended TWS2008, and moderated a panel with a bunch of smart people:

Lior Zoref, head of digital marketing in Microsoft Israel (yes, he works for MSFT, but we still love him)

Oded Kramer, Content Development Manager, Ulpaney Herzeliya

Eyal Magen, the co-founder of Gigya, one of the most succesfull widget platforms worldwide

The panel, which started in a fairly standard and quiet manner, quickly became a heated debate between Oded, who claimed that social networks didn’t have the magnitude required to make them a worthwhile venue for the TV industry, to Eyal and Lior who defended their turf by saying that TV is not conversational and belong to the past.

This debate compelled me to show off my latest purchase in the video department - a shiny new Canon HV30, that with the Rode Videomic is a great tool for quick and dirty video sessions, in full HD (Thank you Bill for the recommendation!)

Niv Calderon was kind enough to take this picture, that tells it all…

Oded Kramer, Lior Zoref, and I with the neat little cam…

Image by Brnboy313 via Flickr

Good morning,

- Boxee, an open source OS for the living room, goes to Alpha this Monday. Good luck for this group of brilliant guys

- HBO bought 10% of Funny Or Die - another move of TV brand towards the Internet. Rafat wrote a great post about it, and a video here.

- An insightful and funny presentation about Final Cut Server, the new media management product from Apple, by Richard Townhill, Apple’s Director of Pro Video Product Marketing, can be found here.

- Chris Hambly and his social media gang from the UK are organizing another great Media Camp, focused around industry and academia relations.

Have a great day!

Surprisingly enough, my call for action against US networks, asking them to allow me to pay for downloading their content from my country, didn’t result in a Million Man March to Washington.

So, I chose the other path - hacking the system

Part One - Breaking The System

I am using iTunes a lot. Though I can’t use my  credit card to purchase content, I found a simple way to use iTunes:

a. Find an American address (could be a hotel or any other establishment) and use its address for your iTunes account.

b. Buy iTunes gift cards in Amazon or an Apple store if you are visiting the US.

c. Redeem the card in iTunes - and you are on!

Part Two - Enjoying The Experience (While Spending Money…)

Now, this is cool. A true VOD experience on my computer, with class A content that I love to watch. And the biggest plus - no uncertainties.

You see, one of the things I hate most in downloading P2P content is that I don’t really know what I am getting at the end of day - is it really the movie I wanted to see? Is it in high quality? And when will I be able to see it? With iTunes I know exactly what I am getting. Episodes are downloaded fairly quickly, so I can decide that I want to watch a specific show, and half an hour later start watching it. Not perfect, but better than P2P experience. Also, I easily find shows iTunes store, so I am not wasting time. I bought $50 worth content in two months. Not bad isn’t it? The only annoying point is that rented movies are viewable for 24hrs - which is very lame. I am working long hours, so is my significant other, and we tend to watch films at night, sometimes falling asleep in-front of the computer. Therefore, we sometimes see movies over several days. This limitation is extremely annoying - and I hope Apple will change it soon.

Part Three - The Moral Dilemma

Then I fell in-love with Californication. After downloading the pilot and couple of season 1’s episodes fI became a fan. When I told my friend about it, he looked at me as if I am a loony - ” Why don’t you download it for free?” well, I said, I like the speed and simplicity of iTunes. “Ok, so I would download for you, and you could watch it whenever you want”.

So, this is the essence of the whole story isn’t it? iTunes’ value proposition is providing legal content, ease of use, and certainty in content quality. Would I pay for this service, when a free alternative exist?

I can speak only for myself - and say that yes, iTunes service is worthwhile paying for, even if I can download content illegally with almost no chance of legal action against me. It is a fact that in two months I paid iTunes more than I paid to my cable or satellite provider in two years. This is because iTunes is providing me the content i want to see in lower rate, and smarter business model, than my local VOD provider.

TV networks are shooting themselves in the leg by not allowing me to buy their content in a simpler way. They are losing money because of that. I can understand why they are doing that - but I can’t agree with their views.

Guys - let me pay you - at the end of the day you will make more money and happier customers.

And for the cable operators and VOD providers, here is a tip - price your service in comparison to iTunes, and not other VOD packages. This is the future - and if you won’t wake up - you would not be a part of it.

 

Image via Wikipedia

- Jeff Pulver gives advice to college graduates

-Cult of Mac has new details about the new iPhone - or not…

- blip.tv hosts some of Revision3’s shows

- MacVideo has an amazing interview with Walter Murch, The Godfather editor, about Final Cut and Avid

Have a great day!

If you see an interesting story that I should refer to, please email me