July 2008 Archives

July 31, 2008 11:37 PM

Samsung: too much choice is a bad thing

This might shock some people since I've been so critical of their HDTVs in the past, but when I next upgrade my LCD TV, I'll almost certainly be getting a Samsung. I right now have an LE32A656 on my desk, and can say that the quality of their displays has improved in leaps and bounds. Samsung appear to have learned how to match their excellent SPVA LCD panels with decent video processing to do them justice, as well as a now-extensive array of video configuration options. Buying a Samsung LCD TV though, is not easy. Similarly to how the huge choice of incredibly similar Linux distros puts me off trying even one of them, Samsung have so many TVs with seemingly little difference in specification, and model numbers which are truly a mouthful. Here's a screen grab from their UK site. I've filtered the results to show only 40 and 46" 1920x1080p displays.

For someone used to Sony's V-Series, W-Series, X-Series (etc) naming, this is a little bit of a shock. Of course, I have plenty of time to wait before upgrading. The input lag on my own Sony KDL-40W2000 is truly pissing me off for gaming, but then again, it's not like I'll be doing a lot of that until Microsoft repairs my Xbox 360, so I have plenty of time to figure out the differences between these and whatever new models Samsung decides to introduce.

July 31, 2008 6:46 PM

Faster, Quadra, faster!

You can never have enough speed when you're rendering video, so, it's time for more upgrades. I just ordered the following cardboard box of goodies from eBuyer, the best online store in the world™.

Yep, it's another 4gb of RAM, coming to a total of 8 (what say you to that, Vista refuseniks?) and two identical hard disks to set up in a RAID0 configuration, effectively turning them into one fast 160gb disk. Too small for a lot of video stuff, and also there's the risk of data loss if one of the disks fails, but that's why I'm only putting Windows and Programs on it, and no irreplacabale data.

Oh, and I just overclocked the bugger some more too. I'm at 3.3ghz, not bad considering that I officially paid for about 2.40ghz.

Oh, and speaking of hardware, my Xbox 360 stopped working, started working again, and now does this:

That's Halo 3, by the way. Go Microsoft! Amazing how I can pump your operating system way past what I've paid for, but your joke of a console can't stand up for a year without imploding into itself.

July 28, 2008 10:44 PM

3K for $3K

If you haven't heard of RED before, then know that they're a company that makes revolutionary digital motion picture cameras at ridiculously fair prices. The 4K resolution RED ONE has been used and loved by various directors and at only around $20K for the body, it's a hell of a lot less expensive than competing pro products from the likes of Panavision and Sony.

Now RED are teasing us with details of the Scarlet, a 3K camera which is going to cost "under $3000". Yes, they're promising us resolution far beyond the best HDTV available at a price that, whilst not pocket change, is actually possible for a mere mortal to afford. Not only that, but all of this is coming from an ambitious company who have proven their quality, and the price includes a lens too. It's an indie movie maker's dream.

What else... it shoots RAW, so pretty much all you need to get right at the time of shooting are zoom and focus, with the rest being fixable in post. The better than 1080p resolution video means you can even digitally zoom later without experiencing too much of a visible quality hit. And, it shoots any frame rate you want, from 1 to 120 frames per second, so say hello to REAL slow motion and kiss 60i frame interpolation tricks and frame doubling goodbye!

Did I mention I'm excited?

Of course, details are vague, in typical RED fashion. I'm still not sure what the options for storage are. What I do know is that a fast 8gb CompactFlash memory card (priced at around $200) will reportedly only hold about 4-5 minutes of footage, so whether or not we'll need a laptop to continually offload footage to, or if there'll be yet more pricey storage addons we can use for longer shooting, is still up in the air.

And then there's the release date. I'll assume that "Early 2009" means some time around the end of Winter. It almost makes you wish winter would arrive. But not quite.

July 27, 2008 12:05 AM

Tell them it looks amazing, and they'll agree

I've been planning on writing about this phenomenon for years, but only now have I really been tempted to. Have you ever noticed that people will say that something - in my case, video - will look amazing, even when those of us with objectivity can tell that it's really not? Consider the uptake of HDTV in recent years. Now consider that your average store display setup will either not really be HDTV at all (I've seen BD Players connected via Composite or SCART recently), or will have most of its High Definition picture information degraded by poorly set up equipment (temporal NR processing, edge enhancement). However, people will still spot the letters "HD", and gather around it to coo accordingly. In the latter case, it's still partly justified; most messed-up HD still looks better than the mush that goes out over the air. When I first got an HDTV in 2004, my friends had similar reactions. Near the beginning, I was still playing my Nintendo GameCube on the thing, hooked up using S-Video. (The top of the range Component video cable had to be imported and was still on its way from Japan). The console, as such, was outputting 480i NTSC (and not even very good 480i NTSC, thanks to the console's flicker filter). Before I explained to them that this wasn't really HDTV, the people I showed it to expressed their adimiration for the beautiful visuals, using the usual clichéd expressions: "wow, you can see every detail!", sometimes explaining with words the non-existent picture information that they were seeing. Similarly, when Universal released "TRAFFIC" on HD DVD, on a disc which looked the same as its NTSC DVD counterpart, certain review sites completely failed to notice that their "HD DVD" did not actually contain video derived from an HD source! Although the likes of High Def Digest are far from knowledgable when it comes to assessing video quality, the fact that their reviewer awarded this disc an 8/10 score for its video transfer goes some way in proving my point. What's really pushed me over the edge to write about this now though, is the gradual appearance of videos marked as "High Definition" on YouTube. Now, assuming we take "High Definition" to mean at least 1280x720 pixels, anyone with some tech knowledge will know that even the better YouTube videos fall far short of this status. Well, check this out - it's the trailer for Pixar's WALL-E, and it's in "TRUE-HD", nonetheless!

Now to be fair, the video quality here, by YouTube standards, is very good indeed, but that's still no excuse for abusing terminology in this way (we'll ignore for now that TrueHD is an audio codec). But why do you think there's so many people praising it? Because they have been pre-empted to by the "TRUE-HD" lie in the video's title, of course. It is truly scary that people can be manipulated in this way and don't trust their own eyes.

July 25, 2008 1:01 PM

Archive Index

July 24, 2008 7:57 PM

I love this little camera

Me and my TV production partner in crime Douglas were wandering around sunny Glasgow yesterday, and recorded some of these images with my little Canon HV30 (in 24f 3:2 mode). They were tweaked a little in software, but other than that nothing fancy was used (not even a tripod). It's pretty funny that you can get image quality better than some Hollywood-produced Blu-ray Discs from a ~$700 consumer camcorder that records heavily compressed images to an MPEG-2 based video tape.

This is under the bridge at Kelvingrove, right beside the subway station. My compliments to the people involved.

And onto the museummy/art gallery place. I can't even remember what it's called, that's terrible!

July 21, 2008 11:56 PM

Why did the package designers make the game look boring?

Since colour goes a long way in keeping me interested in what I'm looking at, I complain a lot about how boring most modern video games look, with their muted, rusty-looking, monotonous tones. So, I never really jumped on the Assassin's Creed pre-hype bandwagon and, when I picked up the game in a store, I left it on the shelf. Here's why:

OK, so it's not the dankest game ever, but it never really grabbed me, until a friend of mine forced me to play the game. And what a delightful surprise I got, because the Assassin's Creed package does the work of the artists who worked on it a huge disservice. Here are some examples of what this beautiful game actually looks like, as played on a relatively accurate calibrated HDTV:

Even better, the game is fantastic fun and is the exact opposite of boring, and sort of reminds me of what I wished the Prince of Persia sequels had played like. Guess the old saying of never judging a game by its cover is more true than ever.

July 15, 2008 11:03 PM

Behold, Xbox 360, the winner of E3!

STRIKE TWO!

(Sobs uncontrollably to self at awful irony and awful, awful hardware manufacturing standards)

July 15, 2008 6:24 PM

Nintendo pwns longtime fans with limp E3 showing

That's the general consensus anyway, and it's certainly also my opinion. Nintendo's E3 press conference just finished. Are you a video gamer who wants more, well, games to play? If so, you're out of luck yet again. Last year was no fluke: Nintendo are still trying to please their new "casual" crowd. There's a new Animal Crossing game, a Star Wars lightsaber game, more of those damn Rayman "Raving Rabbids", a resort-themed update to Wii Sports, and Wii Music, a music "game" that you "play" by simply pressing buttons and waving the remote control arond (no, you don't appear to actually have to get anything right, you just have to be there and move around). There's also GTA for DS and a Pokemon game. There's also the already announced upgrade to the Wii remote which makes it more accurate. So you can use it to throw Frisbees for a puppy on the beach with precision. Animal Crossing will also use a microphone so you can hear other Wii gamers speak (uh oh). And that appears to be it. Us older Nintendo fans have been given enhanced ports of Zelda and Resident Evil 4, and we have Super Mario Galaxy and Smash Bros Brawl. I guess we're meant to be happy with that.

July 15, 2008 2:29 PM

Cheap camera accessory "roundup"

And by "roundup", I mean pictures of two fairly pedestrian items that just arrived! Hooray! First up, I needed a carrying case. Being in thrifty Scotsman mode I decided to get one from Hong Kong, through eBay. It arrived today and guess what? It works! You can put the video camera and some accessories inside it, just like the item description said, and after only minimal re-shaping. Hooray!

Why does it say "Camera-bag" on the front in a pseudo-Russian, pseudo-Western style font? Why not write "Diaper-bag" instead, to deter would-be thieves and petty criminals? Will we ever know? More interesting is the wide angle lens, which at around £10, was so stupidly cheap that it was worth buying if only to fulfill curiosity, or to use it once every few years. Here's a nice barrelly-distorted view of where I'm sitting right now with said lens on. Don't you love the fact you can see it around the edges? Very maritime.

Optical discs to starboard!

And with only the camera's lens:

July 14, 2008 8:53 PM

Mii Channel, Singstar and FF13 no longer exclusive!

Microsoft's E3 2008 press conference just finished. Here is a roundup as seen through the eyes of me. Fallout 3 shown. Looks just like every other "earth is ruined, colours are undersaturated, tones are monotonous" 360 first person shooter. Might be worth a look, probably not. Resident Evil 5 shown. Also looks very muted, but it's survival horror, and if they can make that work for them, so be it. Looks fun, and you'll be able to do co-op play over Xbox Live. Gears of War 2 shown. More TV shows that only people in America can watch are being added to the Marketplace. Claims are made that Xbox Live is the most popular way of watching such content online. America, wake up: if you keep up this insular geographically-based copyright bullshit, BitTorrent will always be the most popular way of watching such content online, and sadly, is easier for me to recommend to others than yours.

The 360 dashboard is getting overhauled with a firmware update. One of the new features is a ripoff of Nintendo's Mii Channel which is so blatant that it borders on plagiarism. Interestingly it's being developed by an ex-Nintendo studio, Rare. If the pictures make you think "ripoff", wait until you see it in motion: the animations and quirky facial expressions that the Miis... sorry, avatars, pull off, are about as original as a Todd Goldman painting.

The 360 is getting a karaoke game called Lips, the user interface of which is similar to a property owned by Sony Computer Entertainment. However, Lips' lyrics appear in the middle of the screen, instead of at the bottom. That's not all though, because the 360 is also getting a bunch of Square Enix games, including the previously PS3-exclusive Final Fantasy 13, which is fantastic news, unless you're 13 years old and only own said PS3. Here's what our friends at the specially-created E3 subforum at BoardsUS.Playstation.com, which covers exactly that cross-section of gamers, think of the news.

How awful that more people will get to enjoy the game! The irony, as any Nintendo fan over the age of 13 will probably remember, is that this is not the first time that Squaresoft have kicked their exclusive partners in the teeth, and that in the world of business, money talks and shit walks (or perhaps instead of "shit" we should more appropriately say "lucrative high-selling content featuring pretty emo kids with big hair".

Anyway, regardless of what exclusives have been swiped from competitors, it's a damn good time to be a 360 owner. I'll be interested to see what Nintendo and Sony have to show us tomorrow.

July 11, 2008 4:22 PM

When Vista tells me this...

...What in the hell is it actually talking about? It's my computer! When I clicked "Delete" over this folder, I was GIVING it permission! Who's permission do I need to carry out daily tasks?

July 11, 2008 2:58 AM

NeatVideo: Noise reduction that's actually worth using

Noise reduction has a bad reputation, because most of it is crap. The number of people that abuse it and turn noisy video into annoyingly processed video appears to be quite large. So imagine my delight when I first discovered NeatVideo last November. This filter is so good that I now use it exclusively whenever I need noise reduction. Standard NR filters often simply cut off certain frequencies in the picture, making it look like a watercolour painting (the "MPEG NR" features in most TVs are implemented in this way), or simply smooth rapidly moving areas which look like they might be noisy. NeatVideo is a hell of a lot smarter than this. The reason it works so well is that it first requires that you create a "noise snapshot", that is, show it exactly what you want it to get rid of. To do this, NeatVideo asks you to highlight a featureless area of your video that's covered in noise: for example, an untextured white wall. Once it has this, the filter has a really good idea of what to get rid of, and what to keep.

It tackles noise in two ways: in single frames, and across multiple frames (spatially and temporally). When you first launch the filter, you're shown options for the temporal filter. Even on its own, this is pretty effective, because it too uses the noise snapshot for decision making. You can tell it to smooth noise across 0-5 frames, and also adjust the "Treshold" (from -100% to +150%) for fine-tuning. One thing I've noticed about the temporal function is that it doesn't leave artefacts, provided you've given it an accurate noise snapshot (it can make some wonderfully screwed up abstract art if you haven't!). The filter seems to know when to stop, and backs itself off in situations where other filters create trails/motion blur.

The spatial filter is configured by clicking the "Configure" button. From here, a new window launches, where you define the noise snapshot (or load a previously created one), and then fine-tune the spatial filter settings. NeatVideo has an advanced mode which allows you to alter the settings for each video component (Y, Cb or Cr) - specific to the high, middle, and low frequencies. Truth be told, I've never needed to use this, and prefer using the filter in basic mode, which simply lets you control the amount of reduction in the Brightness component (Y) or in both colour components (Cb and Cr). If you want, you can choose to only attack the colour components, and leave the black and white portion of the video alone. This is a complete lifesaver. Anyone who's shot video in low light conditions with anything other than a 3CCD camcorder will know that it can result in a mess of coloured red, green and blue mush. NeatVideo lets you remove the reddiness, greeniness and blue-i-ness of said mush, leaving you with something that looks much more like natural film grain. Or you can attack the Brightness component too and be rid of it, as well. There's a price to be paid for this quality, though: NeatVideo is cripplingly slow. Depending on whether you use the spatial filter, temporal filter, or more likely both, NeatVideo crunches through about 4-5 frames per second of standard-def video on my overclocked Intel Core 2 Quad (~3ghz), and 1 frame or less per second of 1080p HD. But, given it's affordability, and the improvement in quality it offers, that doesn't really bother me: just queue up some clips and leave it on overnight (or over a few nights). Anyway, take a look at the results of this ugly-looking stack of tapes. The before parts of the image are surrounded by a faint white outline. Most of the image is the processed result.

And here's the view which lets you see a contrast-boosted view of exactly what you're removing. Yikes!

NeatVideo comes in a few different versions, priced accordingly. The free version is limited and not of much use to most of us. The standard version, priced at $50 US, processes standard def video - any resolution you want up to Digital PAL (720x576). The step-up version has no limit on resolution and costs $100, so is the one you'll need for High Def video. You can also upgrade to the HD version at any time, like I did. Better yet, NeatVideo can be used in a huge number of applications: take your pick from a version designed for Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere, Sony Vegas (both the Pro and Consumer versions), VirtualDub (which can also be used with AVISynth's LoadVirtualDubPlugin command), and Pinnacle Studio.

If you shoot video on anything other than a top of the range pro camera - and maybe even if you do that too - or if you want to clean up ugly old VHS recordings - then buy it!

July 4, 2008 8:20 PM

Magnetica, another game made less good by the Wii

MAGNETICA (aka ActionLoop or Puzzloop) is a classic puzzle game that's probably appeared on more formats than I can count, under some guise or another. It was fantastic on the Nintendo DS thanks to the intuitive touch-screen controls, and it works perfectly with a standard D-pad, too. Well, now it's been ported to Wii Ware and uses motion sensitive control, so is, as you'd expect, much less fun.

Yes, as always, the launcher is in the middle of the screen, and you throw the coloured balls (marbles, whatever you want 'em to be) and try to create runs of three in order to clear them and progress. The difference is, now to spin left and right, you have to twist the Wii remote in the appropriate direction. Sounds OK, right? Wrong, because wrists don't twist 360 degrees.

This isn't too big a deal on its own, but we need to step back and just consider the number of games that are being, and have already been, buggered up and watered down so as to be indoctrinated into Nintendo's accessible video game paddling pool. There's Super Monkey Ball, Sonic, Excite Truck, even the fun Lost Winds would have worked better with a standard game pad. The truly excellent Wii games - Zelda, Resident Evil 4, Mario Galaxy, Smash Brothers - are all ones which don't use the motion sensing functions as their primary control method. In fact, all four of them rely on the Nunchuk's directional stick for character movement and keep motion sensitive functions in roles which let them enhance the gameplay rather than make it annoying.

Curiously, even the visuals have even taken a hit. The stylish, nicely crafted, metallic environments on the DS version are instead now a much less pretty collection of jarring shades and drab textures. It's not awful, don't get me wrong, it's just so much blander and less effective, which would appear to sum up Nintendo's new approach to video games quite nicely.

Don't get me wrong, Magnetica Twist is still pretty fun and it's probably worth £5 for US Wii owners thanks to the current exchange rate. But it shouldn't have been compromised in this way. Considering that most people my age seem to think that the iPod touch wheel is the most intuitive way possible to raise or lower the volume of their music, it might just be me being tragically uncool and enjoying proven control schemes more, so give it a shot. My suggestion to Nintendo though: now you've introduced new people to gaming, why not wean your new players off the magic wand and onto directional buttons?

July 3, 2008 2:43 AM

It's a Canon HV30!

Since people seemed to like our hastily made short film, me and the rest of the group decided we're going to have to make something else. So it was only appropriate that Mr. Head Video Geek was appointed to seek out a sufficiently high quality consumer camcorder. Mr. Head Video Geek chose the Canon VIXIA HV30. Why?

Well, we don't have all the money in the world (to say the least), so whatever we bought had to be at a consumer level. Second, since I demanded we go for at least an attempt at the film look with our last production (achieved by deinterlacing and cropping a 576i/50hz 4:3 source to a 576p 16:9 one - nice for framing, not so nice for resolution), a true 16:9 high-def camcorder with a 24p mode was a must.

So, I managed to get an HV30 from America for around £300 of our British pounds. That's in contrast to the UK price of around £620, and was achieved through unfair European pricing, the weak US$, and a friend in the States who gets a nice staff discount. The American model is of course labelled "NTSC" (it most certainly is not NTSC, it's 1080i/60 or 1080i/24f and don't you forget it) and has one nice advantage in addition to the European version (as well as the price): the 30p mode. Yes, the American version lets you shoot in 60i, 30p, or 24p wrapped into a 3:2 cadence (which is a pain, but one you can overcome). The 30p can then be slowed down to run at 24p, creating proper slow motion. I promise not to overuse that in my next short.

Of course, if you're like me, using software to (partially) work around the limitations of consumer equipment is part of the fun, and I can't wait to actually make something with the thing (seriously, I'm amazed anyone buys camcorders at all, if you're not making something planned, then what else is there to do with them apart from take boring footage of your dog or the outside of your house?)

So, what about the image quality? For what it is, the HV30 is damn impressive. You'd be nuts to expect 35mm Hollywood quality from a high-end consumer device that records on the fly to a 25mbps MPEG2 video tape, but given some careful shooting, post production tweaking (adding a noise dither, as usual, helps the perceived detail greatly), and knowing how far your money goes, I don't think the HV30 will disappoint anyone.

Next up: a proper mic and a wide-angle converter lens.