Category: confessions of a pixel pusher

flash video sucks

confessions of a pixel pusher internet media

yeah, yeah,

youtube. Everybody talked about all that money g paid for it.
Next one on the list of things to mention is the ample amount of content.
And then -of course- people mumble about DRM. Lawsuits. All that stuff journalists like to write about.

But, did anybody ever look at it???

It looks like shit – curtesy Flash video. 95% install base made this format an instant winner.
And it still looks like shit. When MTV appeared it at least had the same TV quality than the rest.
The sad part is, that it seems to be good enough. People don’t seem to mind.

two divided by two plus one plus allot still makes zero

confessions of a pixel pusher media

Once about a time Amanda and Andrew (2) made rocketboom. And it was alright. Had a couple of ideas, was fresh, delivered in iTunes daily. Overall it was worth watching. Then they broke up (divided by two). Andrew got a new leading lady (+1). I never started watching again (=0). She tried to much to be like the old rocketboom AND try to find her own style in the same time. Amanda went to LA. She signed with a talent agency. And now ABC picked her up (+allot):
ABC’s “page” for Amanda Congdon

Just watched the first installment. It it dull, boring. No content. Nothing of interest. More visual treatment but nothing that mattered or that was original. She still does the signature swing into the camera thing. But not even those worked. Timing is indeed crucial.
Perceived production value on the original rocketboom was definitely higher than it is now. Which is ridicolous, since ABC probably spends between five hundred and thousand times more per second than the original did.

Another sad part of the new presentation is the whole “breast in your face” action. No, it is not me. I have watched her for hours, daily on Rocketboom. Yes, she never was ugly. But it was a good mix, with her looks not trying to center stage. Which is almost always horrible boring. It seems ABC never understood her or the whole concept. They tried, and failed dismally. It could easily be that ABC will loose around hundret US$ per viewer per episode on the web. Nobody would care to watch this.

I hope that ‘zefrank’ is really only one guy. So he can not split up, and leave us with no decent content left in the those video feeds.

camera contrast range

confessions of a pixel pusher

A very interesting overview of the different response curves for the Arri D20, Thompson Viper, RED and some other cameras.

Panavision as seen by the LA Times

confessions of a pixel pusher media technology

Panavision in an Article of the LA Times

According the LA Times Panavision does well. They are planning to make twenty more Genesis this years. Sounds like allot, but their own subsidary “Plus-8” has added that many of the competing Viper cameras to their rental inventory last September.

looks like I will go to Macworld

confessions of a pixel pusher technology

Just forty days left to overcome the fear to speak in front of crowds.

HD for Indies did a roundup of articles around Zodiac.

could not get much cheaper

confessions of a pixel pusher linux

quick howto

how to turn old PC into something useful.

I like the idea of putting the boot CD back into the tray upside down for keeping it handy, for whenever it should be needed.

virtual vacation and entourage

confessions of a pixel pusher internet linux technology

Running a postfix server with virtual mailboxes. It’s all pretty nice. Vacation however was sketchy. So say the least. One thing that breaks “Virtual Vacation” (implemented via virtual.pl in /var/spool/vacation, and, yes, googlebot, I am writing this for you) are < > brackets around the recpients email address. Entourage does that for instance. I do not think that there is anything wrong with that. Postfix does not deliver the ‘out of office’ reply in those cases though the mysql table called vacation gets the name of the sender added. Tricky and odd bug. My fix was to add:

if($from =~/< ([^\s]+\@[^\s]+)>/){$from = $1 ;}

right after the line:

if ($from =~/([\w\-.%]+\@[\w.-]+)/){$from = $1;}

which was already in there.

Free and open software is great. Just sometimes it’s the odd things that get you.

the super spin

confessions of a pixel pusher

An article about the Superman Workflow. Sounds awesome. I am sure lots of interesting work has gone into this. The title talks about an “all data Workflow”. They used freaking video tape for crying out loud. Digital tape, but still tape.

Superman was a show that some vendors had trouble getting their in’s and out’s aligned with. The Digital Sandbox / panalog solution probably works really well. But it also makes interchange harder than a less elaborate standard. Adding a vendor can not be done as easily as when you ‘just’ exchange DPX files. Worse can be better.

Superman was also the show that had some -shall we say- ‘QC’ issues: Rumor has it, that the images from one of the cameras had flaws that spawned elaborate fixes. From what I have heard these errors had only been detected late in the game. Which would mean that dailies did not do what dailies are supposed to do: making sure that you have in the camera what you want to have.

I think it is a problem if you simple take the traditional workflow and just replace analog with digital. Replace one linear media (film) with another one (video tape). Digital files have a complete different set of attributes than those older linear means to transfer image information.

data management

Apple confessions of a pixel pusher media photo technology

Stu Maschwitz writes about data management for digital still photography

It is so very true. We can generate lots of data, some of it might be of potential value for us in the future. The filesystem keeps the it for us. But that’s about it. There is almost no help from the computer to really manage data. Yet that’s one of these things that computers could be really really good at: organising data. Spotlight was a nice attempt. But Apple of all companies messed up the interface. The underlying search technology seems to be working, but the interface is pretty much useless.
In order to find the ‘spacehogs’ on my drives I had to write a perl script that shows me which data is stored in which folders (including it’s sub folders). Should be simple for the OS to just show me where those GBs have been going. Yet I had to gapher tape my own solution, which is never a good sign.

viral media

confessions of a pixel pusher history internet media

Advertising Age is raving about Dove’s “Evolution”. Their headline reads “Better ROI From YouTube Video Than Super Bowl Spot”. Now that’s what some people want to hear. And it leaves reason behind. Jumping head over heals into the current media internet bubble bath.
The Dove campaign is great. How often is there an ad for a cosmetic product that I want to show to my daughter? It certainly works on the internet. Because of it’s content. Certain content will work well on the internet. But let’s face it, if something works really well it will get killed by it’s own success: Today you can find a video of mentos + coke on Google Video. It is prominently featured on the google Blog.
Dove is great since it’s decent and sells soap. Are you feeling having a Diet-Coke or Mentos after watching the latest and lamest sticky liquid orgy? Certainly not. Actually with todays video dropping Mentos into big soda bottles becomes officially lame. The Meme has suffocated itself under it’s own weight.

Update:
Cnet however sings a different song. I wonder how many kids run around now with the video cameras to do the ‘next big thing’.