Just this morning I put together a DV-16×9-Anamorphic sequence with source material I shot with a a Canon PowerShot TX1 (720/30p, Photo-JPEG), Sony HVR-Z1U (1080/60i, HDV), and Sony PDW-F350 (1080/60i, XDCAM HD), in addition to DV media (480/60i, DV Anamorphic) that matched the sequence settings. Some formats require good unlimited-RT performance (a faster machine) than others, but on the new generation of Macs mixing media formats on the timeline works quite well.

The Photo-JPEG clips showed up with Orange (Unlimited RT playback) along the render bar and while this format might not be played back in real-time without dropping frames, it’s better than having to render to play back. The XDCAM-HD and HDV footage showed up with Green (Real time preview) along the render bar and it played back perfectly without rendering. So you might see some stutter, depending on the format and the system. On my MacBook Pro (2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) all three “foreign” formats played fine on the DV-Anamorphic timeline. Of course, once you introduce effects like a dissolve and a foreign format, you will have to render for full-frame-rate playback, but I was still able to preview (with some stutter) dissolves between the Photo-JPEG and XDCAM-HD footage on the DV timeline.

If you’ve not yet upgraded to Final Cut Studio 2, what are you waiting for? The upgrade is well worth the $500 (some vendors sell it for as low as $450) upgrade price. And add to that that Final Cut Studio adds Color to the mix, a professional level color grading application that used to sell for way more than the cost of Final Cut Studio, this upgrade is one of the best values ever to come from Apple. Another new feature of 6 worth looking into for high-end work is ProRes, a high quality format which makes a good choice as a mastering format or common format when mixing various video formats. ProRes is a 4:2:2 component format that does not mungh the color of materials originally shot in component formats the way DV and HDV does.

So start mixing media and defy the old wisdom of sticking to a single format. Now that Final Cut Studio 2 has removed the multi-format media editing barriers, you can shoot with whatever digital format you want, shooting each aspect of your project with the camera and format that’s right for that particular shoot, and all your archive and found footage from various sources call all be mixed in with ease. Viva La Difference.

Thanks to Josh Snider for asking me the question that led to writing this post. Many of my blog posts originate as my answer to a question posed to me, so I encourage you, dear reader, to send me your questions.

Steve Garfield demonstrated broadcasting web video streaming from his Nokia N95 phone using Qik, which is pretty cool, you can have your own page on Qik and make the videos available on your page. Full disclosure: the N95 phone was provided to Steve by Nokia and he used a trial mobile phone account provided by AT&T. Does it matter whether we are demonstrating something given to us for promotional purposes vs. something we bought? I think in the future everyone will become an extension of a corporate marketing program for fifteen minutes (with apologies to Andy Warhol), if marketing became a more organic process it could be a good thing.

Apogee Duet Audio Interface

Nate Aune is with Jazkarta, a company delivering open source solutions for building web-based video community services branded for your own organization that can pull in video from YouTube and Blip.tv. For show and tell he showed us the Duet audio interface from Apogee, it’s a really cool FireWire audio interface with several inputs and outputs. He looks forward to using it to record performances as well as interviews in the field with his laptop. A visit to the Apogee site reveals these details: the Duet provides both inputs (2 channels of 24-bit/96kHz audio via balanced XLR inputs with selectable 48V phantom power and 2 unbalanced high impedance instrument inputs) and output (1 stereo headphone output and 2 unbalanced -10 dBV line outputs) and sports a cool multi-function controller knob for volume and input gain. It interfaces to your computer via FireWire 400 and is compatible with any Core Audio-compliant audio application and control functions are built directly into Apple’s Logic Pro, Soundtrack Pro and GarageBand. It comes bundled with Apogee’s Maestro software for control and low latency mixing.

Audio Technica ATM 10A

Nate asked, “I’m looking for a high quality microphone to record interviews,” I suggested for starters, the small mics from Giant Squid Audio Lab are worth taking a look at. Adam pulled out his Audio Technica ATM 10A, a condenser microphone available for about $100 which he uses for interviews. According to the Audio-Technica site, the ATM 10A has been replaced by the AT8010, which looks like pretty much the same, an omnidirectional condenser microphone idea for interviews with a very smooth response on- or off-axis. It runs either on battery or phantom power.

Electro-Voice RE50

My note: For hand-held field interviewing I prefer (and thus I own) the Electro-Voice RE50 omnidirectional dynamic “reporters” microphone. It is very rugged and has excellent acoustic isolation between the mic capsule and exterior case so you don’t hear the handling noise when you hand it from one person to another. It’s not as sensitive as a condenser microphone, but I’ve never found that to be a problem using it with the audio recorders, cameras, and mixers I use in my work. Both the AT and EV are excellent mics, one thing to consider is that microphones, like speakers, are a highly subjective purchase.

Adam Weiss is now using the moniker, Digital Media Strategist, and it fits him well. He does podcasts and other new media stuff, including the award-winning podcasts for the Museum of Science, and also does The Puzzle Podcast and Boston Behind the Scenes. Adam’s show and tell this month was the Circa Notebook System which he first got as a free starter kit while visiting the Levenger store in the Prudential Center. This is old analog technology designed to work like we do, Adam carries four of five notebooks, etc. looks like a spiral bound notebook, but all of the pages come out and go back in wherever you want, you can carry one notebook, take pages out and put it in the right notebook, various kids of paper are available, and you can buy a punch and make your own paper. The levenger version of this notebook is the highest quality, alternative version sold at Staples is cheap and does not work as well.

My note: if you like the Circa notebooks, check out D*I*Y Planner , a community of people who are into paper as a medium for planning, productivity, and more. They share advice and inspiration and are home of the free kits .

John Coyne is on hiatus from the social media company company he was working for and is doing freelance shooting and editing. He had a question about a site Steve and I mentioned for “instant web sites” it is Jottit which I blogged about a while back saying that Jottit is to web tools what haiku is to poetry

Gabriel Mugar, who treaches television production at Madison Park High School, is working on Press Pass TV, civic minded citizen journalism, they are looking for adults who are interested in working with youth on creation of content on a volunteer basis. They want to build a freelance network of adults that can help cover stories. Their high school program starts in February. Press Pass TV is related to Citizen Schools, which operates a national network of apprenticeship programs for middle school students, connecting adult volunteers to young people in hands-on learning projects after school.

Tom Beach of TRB Design has been reading Chris Anderson’s book, The Long Tail, his blog entries on his new book about how commodies all go to zero is really interesting to him.

I was a panelist at the recent Web Video Summit held in New York on December 10-11, 2007 and there I met many interesting people involved with start-ups in the web video space, two that stood out for me that might be of interest to this group are Kaltura (a collaborative media start-up self-described as YouTube meets Wikipedia) and Bid4Vid (a way of linking people who need media with people who make media). Two recent blog posts are related to this: “Kaltura: Wiki meets YouTube by way of Yochai Benkler” and “Linking those who make media with those who need media.” I also interviewed Shay David, Co-Founder and CTO of Kaltura in Episode #24 of Art Film Talk.

I also spoke about bandwidth checking feature of the JW Flash Player. Version 3.10 of the player introduced a new bandwidth checking feature for video. Using two simple flashvars, the players can determine a site visitor’s bandwidth and automatically switch to the file with the appropriate bitrate. While my home connection typically clocks in around 2,300 kbps, I’ve been in some internet cafes where the bandwidth is more like 350 kbps. In fact today at Sweet Finnish it was about 150 kbps with so many people at this meeting hitting the net. With this feature you can show different sized movies based on the visitor’s bandwidth, improving the overall experience of video viewing on your site if you use a custom Flash player.

Paul Day is producing a right wing christian satire in the form of a weekly radio show and he’s intersted in hearing ideas of how to make it look and sound better.

Graham English is a blogging musician who is immersed in the social web, his current project is to compose a song a week for 2008. In the near future he’ll post his Music 2.0 manifesto on his blog. Stay tuned.

Rick Burns is doing a site called 9neighbors.com they bubble up cool content created locally on a neighborhood level, they are currently covering Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Newton, and Brookline. They and the community bubble up and highlight the best stuff. You can add your feed and they will filter it. As a user of the site you can recommend stuff like on dig.

Jeff Glasson does a podcast, diecastAUDIO for diecast model enthusiasts, , why audio for a visual hobby? He was a radio DJ in college, podcast was the natual evolution for him. He currently has a single chip Sony camera, wavering between a three chip camera or high definition, or….

John Herman really likes spaces, it’s the selling point for him as far as Mac OS X Leopard goes. He produced a stage show, Atoms, Motion, and the Void, which closes tonight (it’s playing in Portsmouth at the Payers Ring Theater). You can listen to the play at radioghost.com. John also produces improv comedy, the troupe is called Stranger than Fiction , he’ll be doing a show on Tuesday, January 19th 7:30pm on Mogulus, the link is: www.mogulus.com/improvcomedy

My note: Atoms, Motion, and the Void is a one man show in the tradition of old time radio shows with Sherwin Sleeves, the 79 year-old alter ego of 39 year-old stay-at-home dad Sean Hurley from Lemon, New Hampshire. The podcast that the play is based on won a “best of New Hampshire” podcast award. My wife Alice and I went up to Portsmouth to see the show on opening night and in one word, amazing. We really liked it.

Jared Spool runs User Interface Engineering, a user interface engineering think tank, he works with large company clients, they produce podcasts and webinars on various topics related to design and development, right now they have five positions to hire, a live events person, an editorial assistant (print and email production), a product manager for webinars, an intern web design, and a CSS guru contractor. Jared is looking for someone who has gotten rid of all the tables in their house. He also has a blog called brainsparks. He’s warning clients that social media spending is on the rise, are you ready to deal with this?

Jesse Baer is a self-proclaimed tritter fiend (misc on twitter), he says that he’s “not made much media to speak of,” but people try to get him to come to to Boston Media Makers, now that he’s got a camera and a Mac, he’s “ready to make ghetto media,” his day job is working at digital natives project at Harvard Berkman Center as an intern, studying how kids use the internet.

John Wall (The M Show, Ronin Marketeer , and Marketing over Coffee) does marketing for software companies, lots of digital media, podcasting, blogs, wants to check out what people are doing, they just got their first Mac in house, and John says it “has ruined his life,” since he used to come in the morning and start the PC booting and go get coffee, and now “he’s all ready to work” in the morning.

My note: I’ve noticed this winter, more than ever before, many people I know who have been long time Windows users have gotten new Macs instead of a new Windows machine. It’s nice to see after years of marginalization that the Mac is making truly serious inroads among creative professionals. In my circle of friends I count two marketing professionals and three media makers who have bought Macs this winter. Could this be the turning point? Has the gap finally widened enough between the complex and horrible Vista experience and the simple and elegant Macintosh experience to encourage people to switch?

Andrea Mercado is the blog co-manager of PLA Blog, the official blog of the Public Library Association, her show and tell was her new Xotic PC laptop, it’s light, white and sassy, has a camera, they offer custom skins, she’s really happy with it (of course she’s running Windows XP, not the disaster known as Windows Vista).

Amy Carpenter is a blogger, artist, who paints, draws, and makes videos. She was one of the earliest attendees of Boston Media Makers and found it inspiring, she was back to see what’s happening. She’s got a new drawing project, She’s Drawing, you should check it out. Her work is typically mixed media, with more oil around the corner.

Thinkspotting is a new competitive mini-blogging for ideas, a way to get ideas out there and do it as an organized forum, they do a podcast every two and a half weeks. The competitive aspects of the site include giving top users the ability to show their adsense ads on the idea. A similar site, half-bakery, is, in comparison, less unorganized and messier.

OK, that’s it for this month. Sorry for leaving some folks out, I could only type so much this month. The meeting of Boston Media Makers at Sweet Finnish Cafe in Jamaica Plain is the place for media makers to hang out and share knowledge and news with each other the first Sunday of every month stating at 10am.

External SATA drive
LaCie d2 external drive via FireWire 800 interface,
LaCie d2 external drive via FireWire 400 interface, and
Mac Book Pro internal SATA drive (5400RPM).

While performance among various drives and interfaces is bound to vary, I think the test confirms that unless you’re using a RAID, the fastest single disk performance you’re going to see with a MacBook Pro is with an external SATA drive.

Notes: Xbench 1.3 used for tests, units in MB/sec; Hardware: MacBook Pro (Santa Rosa) w/ Fujitsu 5400 RPM SATA internal drive and SIIG eSATA II two-port EXpressCard/34 interface card; External SATA: Western Digital Caviar SE 2 SATA 7200 RPM drive w/ 16MB Cache in PowerSpec enclosure; External FireWire Drive: LaCie d2 Firewire Drive (internal: Western Digital IDE 7200 RPM drive w/ 8MB cache). All file systems HSF+/Journaled.

Need fast, cheap, reliable storage for video editing on your MacBook Pro? Tired of paying a price premium and performance penalty with external FireWire drives? Tired of dropped frames with that USB external drive? Want to be able to move a project between the laptop and a PowerMac or MacPro and keep it on a fast SATA drive? Several interface cards are available for the MacBook Pro to interface with SATA drives.

The eSATA II 2-Port ExpressCard-M interface card from SIIG, and the Tempo SATA Express 34 from Sonnet make it possible to connect two SATA drives directly to your laptop. This allows you to buy fast and and inexpensive bare SATA drives and the enclosure of your choice and fashion your own drive systems.

If you don’t fancy being your own system integrator, the G-SATA drive from G-Technology might be the choice for you. It comes with a PCIe interface card for your desktop computer) with two SATA ports and cables (if you’ve got an older Mac with PCI or PCI-X, there’s a range of cards you you can use). With the one of these ExpressCard SATA interfaces you can take the G-SATA or other SATA drives on the road. The G-SATA may be initialized as two individual drives or configured as a software RAID 0 (striped) for the best video and audio editing performance or RAID 1 (mirror) for data security and the the peace of mind knowing that if one drive fails, the other still has your precious data.

If you’re assembling your own drives (my preference), I suggest using SoftRAID, an excellent utility for creating RAID 0 or RAID 1 volumes in software. SoftRAID features a very well thought-out interface and excellent technical support. Although a Hardware RAID solution provides better performance and plug-and play simplicity, the SoftRAID solution is good when you want to move media to a pair of portable drives in the field without special hardware. Each approach, Software RAID-1 and Hardware RAID-1 has it’s place.

So first I tried Apple’s 30-day trial of .Mac, lured by the promise of being able to not only keep my address books in sync, but I could access my addresses online as well. Well, my experience with that was not a good one, first of all I’m not keen on paying $99/year for the service and I also experienced having my desktop’s address book wiped out when I did the first synchronization (to be fair the online discussion on Apple’s boards helped me learn it was a bug in the version of Address Book I was using and there was a work-around to the problem).

Eventually I got the .Mac synching to work and I recovered the missing data, but wow, what a wild ride that was. And $99/year on top of that? Not a good deal. I already have a web server, online file storage, etc. I just needed synchronization. Then several months ago I came across a new application, SyncTogether from Mark/Space.

I’ve been using The Missing Sync for Palm OS (another Mark/Space application) for quite some time to synchronize my Address Book and Notes with my Palm Phone (no, I’m not getting an iPhone yet, that’s another story) and it’s worked well for me. So when I learned they had acquired a new synchronization application, my interest was piqued.

SyncTogether is a Mac to Mac synchronization tool that syncs contacts, calendars and Apple mail settings and filters between Macs on a network. I’ve been using it to keep my Address Book contacts between my laptop and desktop Macs in sync and so far I’m very happy with it. Installation is pretty simple and it works well.

You can also use SyncTogether to synchronize iCal calendars, Safari bookmarks, Apple Mail settings and filters, and even some third-party applications, but so far I’ve only been using it to keep the Address Books in sync. I’m told, however, that SyncTogether provides you many of the benefits of Calendar groupware so for a group of people using Macs, it could very well be an inexpensive way to keep calendars in sync, but I can’t really say much about it since I’ve not used that aspect of it.

Being able to use SyncTogether makes me very happy because I no longer need to remember to put all important changes into a single address book. Whether I’m traveling and using the laptop or working in my home office, my address books is now always up-to-date and instantly accessible. SyncTogether is sold as a $49.95 download and can be used to synchronize up to three Macs. Each additional license adds three more Macs. The Missing Sync for Palm is sold as a $39.95 download.

Click To Play Video (FLV, 320×240)

The video was shot casually in a matter of minutes with a Canon PowerShot S410 digital still camera in movie mode and edited using Final Cut Pro on the train ride from Boston to New York on the way to Podcamp NYC. Once I got to Podcamp, I uploaded the video to blip.tv thanks to the WiFi access provided by UrbanHotspots. Piano performed by Howard Apley.