Daniel Tsou » hd

A sneak peak at Gear65 #9

Daniel — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 10:36:10 +0000

I actually managed to finish editting Episode 9 of Gear65 already, but since there’s still three more days before it’s up (Gear65 is usually up every Thursday, though last week I was late by a day…), I decided to give you guys a sneak peak of the episode by showing you a video clip we filmed during our recording.

Be sure to check out Gear65 this Thursday!

The closest thing I have to a lightsaber (HD Video)

Daniel — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 13:10:43 +0000

More videos! This time, I found WiiSaber, this fun application that runs on any mac with a bluetooth, and connects to your Wii Remote, producing lightsaber sounds just like the Lightsaber Unleashed app for the iPhone. I’m still looking for one that makes the sound come out of the remote’s speakers though. If you know one, let me know!

P.S. This is the second HD video I’ve uploaded onto YouTube in 24 hours, and I realised that the HD version isn’t available this time. I’m not sure if it’s because there’s a limit to how much HD videos you can upload, or if it’s still processing the HD version.

Updated: The HD version was still processing after all. Check out the HD version above!

Upgrading a Macbook’s RAM (HD Video)

Daniel — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 00:00:56 +0000

My dad and I upgraded his MacBook’s RAM from 2GB to 4GB last night, so I took the opportunity to play with my HD camera again. Oh, and sorry about the shakiness. This was completely ad-hoc, and the mini-tripod wasn’t suitable for this kinda recording, but I had turned the motion stabiliser off before recording, thinking that I’ll be relying on it (The shaking was me trying to adjust/remove the tripod).

Otherwise, hopefully you can see what HD video is like from the Sanyo Xacti HD1000, at 720p, 30fps.

Upgrading MacBook (Aluminium) RAM from Daniel Tsou on Vimeo.

P.S. This video is available in HD!

HD horrors with Final Cut Express

Daniel — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:00:08 +0000

Ok, I’m totally on a roll now. Getting quite annoyed (thank God not agitated or pissed, just annoyed…) after discovering a big truth regarding HD video and Final Cut Express.

So as most of you know, I bought a new HD camera to film videos for Tech65. Today, I decided to give a hand at editting my first HD (720p) movie, so I imported the files from the camera into a folder on my iMac before importing it into a new Final Cut Express project after discovering before hand that “Log and Transfer” (quicktime link) doesn’t work with this camera. I was happy that I could just edit as usual with the HD files in the project, before discovering the following:

It looks quite normal doesn’t it? Just to explain what you’re looking at, the left window is the clip I would like to add into my sequence, while the right window is a preview of my sequence now. I edit by setting a start point and an end point (called in and out points) in the left window and drag it into the right so that it drops into my sequence.

So what do I want you to see? Well, if you notice, the left window is in HD. It’s a widescreen view and fills up the window completely. THE RIGHT IS NOT!!! IT’S A NORMAL 4:3 VIDEO WITH AN UGLY LETTERBOX!!!

What happened was that because my Sanyo camera was smart enough to make things very simple for its users by placing AVCHD files together with the photo files so that you didn’t have to dig through a series of complex folder structures just to find your video file. The thing is, Final Cut Express won’t recognise the files if they’re not in that complicated folder structure, so it’s gonna treat it as a normal video. And since Final Cut automatically sets the sequence frame size to the type of video you drag in, and since it can’t tell it’s a HD file, it’s making me edit it as a standard video!! I just wasted a lot of time!!!

And guess what, I tried iMovie 08, and boom! Immediately the “import video” window popped up, took the HD clip in my camera, and put it into iMovie to make a proper HD movie! Final Cut just tried to act smart on me…

My new camera has arrived!

Daniel — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 11:11:24 +0000

I finally made up my mind to get the Sanyo Xacti HD1000 instead of the HD1010 camera, and after several days, I finally got the package. Strangely it took Warehouse123.com 4 days to verify the credit card. Apparently that’s a rare case, because most people seem to be getting theirs a lot faster than me. Once it was verified, the whole package arrived in less than a day from the moment I got my invoice.

Anyway, I chose the Sanyo Xacti HD1000 series for the following reasons:

Portable – being able to carry this camera anywhere I go means I won’t miss opportunities to film
Flash based – This reduces production time dramatically compared to DV tape cameras where I need to wait for the whole video to import minute for minute
It’s a great still camera too
It’s a lot cheaper than most cameras that are capable of what this camera is
Mic input – Lets us hook up mikes like our H4, useful when the camera is far from the cast, which happens often
The options in this camera are wide – should we decide to go HD, this camera can go up to 1080i, more than we’ll ever need. It supports shoe accessories and lenses too.

So why not the HD1010? Well, the HD1000 was on offer, and for S$140 more, I only get 300fps filming, 1080p (I won’t even go to 1080i…) as well as some minor features which didn’t mean much to me. Looking forward to do really cool stuff with this camera.