By David Hague   Tue, Nov 15, 2011

For a full review of the Kymera Wand and its magic, click here. It's magical! Harry would want one! And Merlin ...

By David Hague   Wed, Nov 09, 2011

I am an enormous fan of the TV show Dragon’s Den. For those that don’t know, it is a BBC UK show that has a panel of self-made millionaires who judge the worthiness of ideas, products and services from aspiring entrepreneurs. If they see one they like, they bid for the right to invest in it.

Dragon’s Den is entertaining, inspirational and contains many gems of business wisdom such as make sure you have a business plan, know your numbers, have a marketing strategy and more. The books each of the panel has written (including Theo Paphitis, Deborah Meaden, Duncan Bannatyne and Peter Jones) are worth a read in their own right. They are all available on Kindle, and I confess, along with similar books from Lord Alan Sugar (of UK Apprentice fame), I have used their ideas and advice to form what is the new incarnation of Auscam.

Anyway, approximately two years ago, a product appeared on Dragon’s Den that is an absolute game changer. A pair of technical whizzes had created a device that replaced the remote control for almost any device you’d like to name; it was a magic wand a la Harry Potter!

It could be waved, rotated, flicked, tapped (once or twice), swished, pushed forward or backward and more – 13 operations in total – to replicate the commands from your remote control(s).

I have resisted for a long time to order one, but two weeks ago I caved in. I have just added an XBOX Kinetic to my home theatre system and to perform the basic functions I do, whilst I have a Logitech Universal control and it is very functional, the Wand – called a Kymera– looked far more fun!

It finally arrived today in its elegant display box and instructions on Olde English parchment. Firstly you have to learn the various actions to perform commands, and this takes about 10 minutes. Next, you “teach” the commands you want to assign to each of the Wand’s options.

For example, to turn my Sony 52” Bravia on, I wanted to use the “flick up” command, and to turn it off, the “flick down”. It’s really very easy; you tap the side of the Wand twice while it is vertical to put it in learning mode, perform the required action and then point the sharp end at your remote’s infra red sender and press the button for that action. The Wand will respond with a vibration (every action has a specific vibration code to signify what is has done or it understands) and voila! Done.

In truth, it took me a few goes to get it just right, but this was down more to my ham fistedness than any error on the Wand’s behalf.

Once I had the knack of programming the wand, it was only a short time before I had the whole system setup; the Denon receiver/amp volume was controlled by rotate right and left, flicking between HDMI devices was flick left/right, XBOX options were taps and so on. The piece de resistance – the BIG SWISH was reserved for putting my Sony Blu-Ray player into play mode with something that starts with a bang!

When you use the Wand to perform an action, especially if there are others present, you simply cannot help but to ham it up a little – or a lot! And I confess, when I got the first command working, I burst into laughter. It’s just one of those gadgets that is a must have, for no other reason that it is Great Fun! You’ll want to turn things on and off, switch between devices or whatever you have programmed it for (lights, heating, iPod dock or whatever uses an IR remote) just for the sheer delight of it!

At $89.95 it makes a fantastic Chrissy present. The Kymera is beautifully presented in its box, the instructions are almost worth laminating and framing and well… what more can I say. They even provide the AAA batteries it uses in the price.

In fact, I am so impressed that I have negotiated that Auscam can sell the Kymera Wand to our readers for AUD$89.95 including freight. Simply click on "STORE" in the menu bar above to order.

Or email us at david@auscamonline.com (split your credit card number over two emails) and you can call on 08 94675922 or 0413 632286

By   Wed, Dec 09, 2009

Those in such a situation inevitably consider Final Cut Studio (FCS), the pro-level de facto standard. This $1499 bundle of Apple applications (upgrade $449) includes the Final Cut Pro 7 video editor; Motion 4 animation package; Soundtrack Pro 3 for editing in-movie audio; Color 1.5 colour grader; Compressor 3.5 video outputter; and DVD Studio Pro 4, a high-end DVD production tool.

It is, in short, everything you're likely to need when dealing with video - which is why it's considered a standard application for video professionals. But is Final Cut Studio too much of a step up for video enthusiasts who've outgrown, or simply run out of patience with, iMovie? I took it for a spin to find out.

The first thing you notice about FCS is its sheer size. Spread across a pile of DVDs, the default installation sits at 52GB and took several hours to complete. Most of this is bundled audio clips and other content, so careful consideration can pare this considerably.

Final Cut Pro (FCP), the centrepiece of the suite, is built around a four-pane view that incorporates the timeline layout and lots of controls. The feature-heavy interface does make sense once you climb the learning curve, but many of FCP's concepts will evade and quickly frustrate casual moviemakers who should stick with iMovie.

Patient experimentation confirms that FCP is a full-featured video editing suite that offers highly granular control over your video. Transitions, effects, and multiple video and audio tracks can be managed, blended, overlaid, adjusted, and fiddled with to your heart's content. New in FCP 7 are tools for changing playback speed; 'alpha transitions' so you can fade between scenes using detailed objects defined with alpha masks; global transitions; background exporting; and, for those of you working with a production crew, the Cinema Tools film management tool and the ability to share rough cuts of a video with multiple people via iChat Theater.

In short, FCP offers everything a post-production professional needs, and everything your average consumer, if they're honest with themself, probably doesn't. Those that insist on having more power than iMovie offers but don't need pro-level tools may find better value in Apple's $268 Final Cut Express.

But what of the rest of the FCS bundle? Do the other applications make FCS worth the cost?

Motion, for example, is a capable animation tool for animating text and images in three dimensions. Import your content, define their movement along paths, in two or three dimensions, then add effects to your heart's content before outputting files suitable for Apple TV, Blu-ray movies, iPod, YouTube, and more.

New features include 3D shadows and reflections, depth of field with selective focusing, credit rolls, camera framing tools, links between objects and new text features. Put it together, and Motion is a top-rate animation tool that's readily accessible and will be hugely popular with people who love adding fly-in effects to their PowerPoint or Keynote presentations.

Soundtrack Pro is a multi-track audio editor putatively intended for recording, editing and synchronising the stereo or even surround-sound soundtracks for your movies. New features like matching of voice levels, time stretching, and better multi-track tools fill out an already robust feature set. There's much greater control over waveform audio than in GarageBand, but none of the fun - Soundtrack Pro is all work and no play.

Then there's DVD Studio Pro, which doesn't have many new features but continues to offer a full suite of DVD production tools that leaves iDVD for dead. If you make lots and lots of DVDs - especially if you're selling them - the inclusion of DVD Studio Pro goes a long way to justifying the cost of FCS even if you're not doing pro-level editing.

Color 1.5 and Compressor 3.5, which respectively manage colour grading and output of final video projects created with FCS; both are feature-packed and more so in the new version, but prosumers aren't likely to find $1000 worth of value in them.

Verdict

So, is Final Cut Studio worth the expense? If you're a video professional, the new features add polish and capabilities - as well as excellent integration between packages - and you've probably upgraded already.

But if your job doesn't depend on video production? Not necessarily. FCP's many features make it appealing for control freaks, but those that just want more control than iMovie offers should stick with FCE. FCE offers timeline-based editing without all the high-end collaboration and pro-level output features that you probably won't need when editing the video from your cousin's wedding or the latest family holiday. Ditto audio editing, which is all business in Soundtrack Pro - mere mortals may do fine spending $299 for Apple's midrange Logic Express 9.

The clincher for FCS, however, comes in the inclusion of Motion and DVD Studio Pro, which are not available separately. Motion enables great video effects, while DVD Studio Pro offers great flexibility for those who live or die by their DVD output. For such customers, FCS is a value-packed bundle whose extra expense will be more than justified by the professional-quality output it produces.

www.apple.com.au/finalcutstudio

Price: $1499

By Steve Turner   Thu, Jan 14, 2010

The selling point on this camera is where it sits price wise. It packs a nice punch for its weight in the mid sized but hand held group of cameras. A part from looking a bit odd it is a nice package that performs very well. It has a couple of flaws but none of them fatal. At under $4000 they will sell a truckload or two.

The engine can rev the AVCHD format out to a fairly quick 24mbps which will give you excellent piccies when you add in the three 1/4inch CMOS chips. These have an effective size of 2.5 megapixels. 24mbps is hitting the HDV speed so the difference is down to compression and tape versus card for recording. Personally I'm still in the HDV camp and expect to for a while. AVCHD demands a fast spec PC to play back smoothly so be aware of that. I still favour having a camera tape that, once digitised, can be safely stored away. But I am getting old fashioned here and recognise a new generation of filmmakers will prefer the immediacy of card recording.

The selling point on this camera is where it sits price wise. It packs a nice punch for its weight in the mid sized but hand held group of cameras. A part from looking a bit odd it is a nice package that performs very well. It has a couple of flaws but none of them fatal. At under $4000 they will sell a truckload or two.

The engine can rev the AVCHD format out to a fairly quick 24mbps which will give you excellent piccies when you add in the three 1/4inch CMOS chips. These have an effective size of 2.5 megapixels. 24mbps is hitting the HDV speed so the difference is down to compression and tape versus card for recording. Personally I'm still in the HDV camp and expect to for a while. AVCHD demands a fast spec PC to play back smoothly so be aware of that. I still favour having a camera tape that, once digitised, can be safely stored away. But I am getting old fashioned here and recognise a new generation of filmmakers will prefer the immediacy of card recording.

Looking down the barrel

I have to say that I think this is a fairly unattractive piece of kit. It's definitely there for function. No awards for industrial sculptor here. It's squat and looks like its had a bad side collision and been left a bit squashed.

What it has at the front is a proper focus ring. It's multi-functional but I'd bet most people would leave it on focus. It can be the iris if you like but there is a small thumbwheel further back that can do that job just fine.

On the same side is the very nice 2.7inch LCD screen. No problem in bright light with this. All the menus and settings are easy to see. I like the look of the menu layout and generally it's easy to get to the settings you need to change and then set up the user buttons for fast access in the field.

On the top is a removable handle that can also house the optional XLR mount. I'd have one of these please as it gives you great flexibility in the audio department and it's a tad risky to rely on the small 3.5mm plugs. Besides it makes you look all professional especially when you add a decent shotgun to the top.

Focus

The Leica lens is nice and goes from usefully wide to very long - enough to cover most bases. It has 13 elements in 10 groups. It has the usual aspherical glass and a secret coating to enhance resolution. Whatever herbs and spices they use it delivers sharp images all round. Low light is fine (if it's too dark then get a small light for goodness sake).

There's a focus assist and manual quick focus button - both very useful. Focus assist is very common now. The image is blown up in the viewfinder for more detailed focussing but the blown image is not recorded

Picture this

So I fired it up and went out hunting pictures. The viewfinder (a small but useful window you look in to see pics in bright light - now unfamiliar to a wide range buyers of small cameras) tilts up nicely for low shots. The long lens is good at 490mm (35mm equivalent). There are also stepped digital teleconverters built in that you could use sparingly. That could take you out to a whopping 120x zoom - but when would you? The optical stabiliser is very good and hand held zooms are possible if you have learnt to hold your breath like a waiting sniper (clearly I've been playing too much Call Of Duty).

Panasonic has added a waveform monitor to the LCD of a couple of their cameras and this is one of them. The WFM lets you accurately set black and white levels - a very useful field tool once you get to know it. As and editor for many years I'm used to looking at WFMs so I thinks this is a very cool idea. You can also set a range of interval recordings that are excellent for time lapse. There's a really good one on Vimeo ( a website for more serious shooters - have a look and search for the "Test Panasonic AG-HMC41E").

The front ring works very well and all controls are easy to find for manual use. Having blasted away for a while I plugged it into my big screen and wasn't a bit surprised to find the images are very nice. Good resolution, crisp and excellent colour. Just like a pro should be. I copied the files to my home PC and used Premiere Pro CS4 to edit them together. No drama here but I personally don't like the fact that you end up with loads of individual files - one for each time you stopped and started.

Apart from the small issue of AVCHD being a tad demanding the edit workflow does go well. But how and where do you store the original images for future use? I'm not with you if you're saying hard drive. Not yet proven for say a decade unattended in the cupboard.

Still life

This unit (why can't they have cool names instead of incomprehensible numbers and letters) can bring home excellent 10meg stills. As usual I won't recommend leaving your DSLR at home but you could grab some good stuff on the run.  

The jury's back

All round I liked this camera but then there are very few I don't! Panasonic is one of the reliable makers of good sturdy platforms. If you're looking to go AVCHD then this will make your doco/short film/wedding look very nice indeed. It fits nicely in the market price wise and is excellent value for money.

www.panasonic.com.au | 02 9986 7515

Price: AUD$4000.00

We liked...

• Multi-function front ring

• Image quality

• Quick start

• Waveform monitor

We didn't like...

• Not much - perhaps a touch ugly!

Auscam Scoreboard

• Documentation        9/10
• Features         9/10
• Setup                     8/10
• Value for Money      9/10
• Help Functions.        9/10
• Performance           9/10

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The tech stuff

• CMOS chips : 3 CMOS (1/4.1-inch progressive modes supported)
•  Viewfinder: 2.7 inch LCD
• Lens : Leica Dicomar F1.8 (Wide)/F2.8 (Tele)  38mm diameter
• 12x zoom (490mm in 35mm terms)
• Records to SD card : AVCHD format
• Shutter Speed Range : 1/25-1/8000 sec. (Motion Image), 1/25-1/8000 sec. (Still Image)(Progressive 1/25-1/500)
• Stereo Zoom Microphone : Dolby Digital/5.1ch, Zoom Microphone
• Still Picture Storage Dimensions : 10meg

By Steve Turner   Wed, Dec 09, 2009

It took just a moment to realise I was lost in a breathtakingly beautiful landscape of snow and mountains. It was just that moment when I stopped to capture another landscape when I noticed I was alone. My skiing partners had headed off along another run and I had been cruelly abandoned to my fate. It was eerily quiet apart from the hum of the nearby chairlift. I was in seriously mild amounts of trouble.

The mountains of NSW can be a harsh and unforgiving place to be. Armed only with five cameras, a chocolate bar and a comfortable mountain apartment, Steve Turner     explores the dangerous world of the alpine film maker.

Lost

It took just a moment to realise I was lost in a breathtakingly beautiful landscape of snow and mountains. It was just that moment when I stopped to capture another landscape when I noticed I was alone. My skiing partners had headed off along another run and I had been cruelly abandoned to my fate. It was eerily quiet apart from the hum of the nearby chairlift. I was in seriously mild amounts of trouble.

Going equipped

The trouble with going away is deciding just how many cameras you can take? The snow presents a range of serious issues. What colour jacket to wear? Red or white wine? It's difficult but the camera choice is the least of your worries. What I needed was something small and robust. I had a helmet but only because I knew some of the mountain would be done upside down.

In the end I chose five cameras - one of which will probably not count and was a surprise success.

First in the backpack was my trusty Canon HV30. It's a brilliant HDV tape camera that packs professional features into a domestic size unit. It also takes respectable happy snaps. Next in was the brand new Canon Legria S10 - the newest Flash camera that kicks out a respectable 24mbps in AVCHD. Its party piece is its still capability. A whopping 8megs and there's more. It can do that at the same time as shoot the video! Cool. It also shoots video at well greater than HD standard.

For size I took my Canon HV10 (We're noticing the brand theme now. -Ed). It's thin and easy to gaffer tape to anything. Just don't tell Canon we did that. For stills my excellent EOS400D with the 18-270 loooong lens attached.

Finally - just for a change in marketing - my new LG Renoir mobile camera. It's got a phone in it but that's irrelevant. The Legria shoots brilliant 8meg stills buuuut, so does the mobile. Neither can compete with the EOS DSLR of course but what counts at altitude isn't size.

Setting out

Day one saw the expedition make the perilous drive along the silky smooth road to Perisher.

I got Richard to shoot a couple of "road" shots. Nothing more than a view out the front window as we headed down the road. I like to get short travelling shots to illustrate coming and going. That always includes very brief shots at airports and on planes.

Loaded to the gills with recording gear we took the snow tube up the mountain to the baby slopes for a trial ski. Here is where the first camera fell over very quickly. The Legria revealed its fatal flaw within moments. It's the absence of a viewfinder. Other than that it's a great camera but back in the bag it went. Clearly Canon's engineers need to go skiing - and there are great slopes in Japan. Mind you so do all the other manufacturers who've decided the viewfinder can go. In bright sunlight and the brilliant white of the snow I had no idea what I was actually getting. In bright light you really need to bury your eye in a viewfinder. The glare is just too harsh.

So out came the trusty HV30 and its excellent viewfinder thingy. Now I could see. Originally I had in mind a decent test of the Legria and the HV30 was there as a backup. Good thing I took it.

Climate change...

It gets a tad cold up there at altitude. Funny that, being snowy and everything. I've shot in all conditions over the years (and there's been a few of them!). The only trouble I've ever had is condensation in warm, moist climates. Extreme cold and heat have never troubled the variety of cameras I've carried. So for this slightly extreme exercise I brought no protection other than sunscreen.

The bigger and more likely risk is falling down, either on the snow or getting from the bar to our apartment. And fall I dutifully did. Sven, my Norwegian brother in law, has a great saying. It's the "garage sale" because everything's got to go. An explosion of skis, stocks and body, hitting the ground with a vengeance. Still I came home with nothing more than a bent thumbnail and tattered ego (but at least that's expected). The cameras were protected by the padding of my ski jacket's pocket. So far then there's no extra bits needed.

Take camera three

The HV10 is a good candidate for extreme sport and that's the market it was aimed at. But there's a catch - isn't there always. It's a good HDV tape camera that knocks out great images. There are two flaws though. One is that the lens isn't wide enough. That's probably a physical thing determined by the shape of the camera that doesn't allow enough distance between the lens and the CCDs. So for outdoors it really needs a wide angle screwed on the front. That would then negate the size advantage. Second flaw is the battery. It sits nice and snug on the side and complements the design of the unit but it doesn't last long enough. Unlike most other cameras it doesn't allow for a larger battery to be fitted.

Despite that we strapped the camera to Sven's leg and then his helmet as he did two runs from the top of Thredbo (2 kilometres straight down!). The four of us had come down in a leisurely 45mins but Sven rocketed down in under 10. The resulting pics are novel when sped up 300%.

Still life

Everywhere you look in the mountains there's a landscape waiting to be captured. From our balcony there was a panorama of the snowy/mountainy kind. This is where my camera (with the built-in phone) came in handy. The Renoir has a great panorama facility. After you take the first image it creates a see through portion of the frame that allows you to line up the next easily. Take three snaps and it creates the finished panorama. Like the Legria though it has an Achilles heel. In the bright sun on the bright white slope you can barely see what you're shooting. The new generation mobile camera has the brilliant advantage of slipping into your pocket and it even has manual controls in the menus. It will be a very long time before the DSLR is threatened but at last I can put aside my inbuilt photo snobbery and just grab some nice happy snaps that print up very well.

This time the EOS didn't get a lot of use, but that had more to do with my lack of skiing ability.

It was the crashing thing that was a worry. Sven cheerfully zoomed the slopes with his DSLR slung casually round his neck but It'll be a while before I get to that point!

For mountains you want wide. Very wide. There can never be too much wide when there is so much to shoot. But then you also need long. At Thredbo there was some seriously manic jumping going on. Fabulous acrobatics that required a long lens and fast speeds. This is the world where DSLRs are on their own. Cameras like the HV30 can do the still stuff but it just takes too long to make manual changes. Good for the casual stuff but the serious end needs a serious camera.

The purists will argue that you need prime lenses (fixed focal length) too but lugging the kit around the slopes is going to be very hard work and the risk of damage too high.

Hot Shots

In the bright light of a sunny day dropping the exposure just a touch is a very useful tool. The sky darkens to a lovely deep blue while the snow is a nice and crisp white. Once I had my ski legs back in action I started to mess around with skiing and shooting at the same time. On a smooth fast run it's neat to hold the camera very low down and race across the snow. One long shot ended with me arriving where Sven and Richard were standing. Perfect but then I slid gently backwards out of control because my hands were in use holding the camera and I couldn't get the brakes on fast enough.

The ever confident Sven cruised the slopes getting cool shots of the rest of the group. Mostly that wasn't difficult as we hurtled down the slope at very nearly walking pace. What he did do well was not move the camera. He's learnt to simply hold it steady (as steady as you can under the circumstances!) and let the action happen inside the frame. He skis around people as if he's the camera. Sounds daft but it works. Too many people wave their cameras frantically around and attempt to do too much. When I ask other people to shoot stuff for me (so we can show I was actually there too) my warning is simple - "don't pan and don't zoom or it'll be on the cutting room floor" Most home movie makers are really crap at both. Ideally you rarely need to anyway.

At times both Sven and I were using video cameras and shot the same things from different angles. These will cut together nicely and add variety to the home movie I will one day get around to putting together. I'm a bit slow at the home stuff. I still haven't edited our backpacking tour from 1991.

The wish list

So what should I have taken? This was never a filming trip so I had only the home movie maker in mind while playing with the gear. The tripod was only ever used to get a group photo. If you were serious you could easily take a light weight tripod in a backpack.

What was used was the little Gorilla Pod. It's the mini-tripod with the flexible legs that can wrap around anything. It can also sit on rocks and be levelled for group pics. There's another trick you can use too. Stuff a sock full of rice and tape the end shut. Really good for sitting a camera on rocks and getting a nice steady image.

I would have liked a nice graduated ND filter to darken the blue sky but keep the bright white snow. But mounting the matte box even on the HV30 would have made the size a bugger to cart around. I had a wide angle lens to screw on the front but again found the extra weight irritating.

And next...

Next year we're planning a multi-camera shoot with all four of us blazing away all over the slopes. Should make for an interesting mix of pictures. What is brilliant is the amazing quality of the new generation HD cameras. The landscapes and colour pics look fantastic on the LCD screen. All I need to do is learn to stay upright for a bit longer...
ends

By Anthony Caruana   Wed, Dec 09, 2009

Distribution has become an increasingly complex element of the movie business. In times gone by we'd plan, storyboard, shoot, edit, print and distribute. While the tools we use to create our movies, documentaries and other visual artworks have largely taken the same tasks we did before and added a new twist or automation, distribution has changed in ways that were unfathomable. Now, videos need to be "consumable" on everything from a mobile phone to a big screen TV.

Viocorp started life as a video production house and faced that very same challenge - how to get content out, ready for a variety of different playback media, quickly. That lead them to developing their own platform for quickly distributing their work. Viostream is Software as a Service, or SaaS. Rather than the most common software model where we pay a large upfront fee, Viostream is sold as a monthly subscription.

Using Viostream, businesses are able to embed video streams into a website. While that can be done using free options such as YouTube, Viostream allows you to use your own branding. Nick Bolton, Viocorp's Head of Marketing, says that "it takes all the good stuff from YouTube but gets rid of all the bad stuff from YouTube. You get all the categories, channels, the ratings but there's no YouTube branding and it works straight away."

Video output from Viostream can be in high and low resolution versions using Windows Media, Flash and QuickTime in streaming, progressive and download formats. While you might not need all of these variations choosing the ones you want is a simple matter of choosing the output format.

One way to look at Viostream is to see it as a processing system. You create movies such as TV commercials, documentaries or in-house video. You send it to Viostream and it comes out ready for websites, intranets, extranets, mobile phones or almost any other viewing platform.

One of the great challenges that needs to be overcome with video streaming is bandwidth. Viostream goes some way to overcoming this by using Akamai as part of its backend service. Akamai transparently mirrors content so that users can receive content from whichever Akamai server is closest to them or has the fastest connection. Typically, if we distribute content from our own servers, our processing and network capability become bottlenecks. By transparently mirroring content Akamai spreads the load.

While all this might sound complex, Viocorp have developed significant automation within the process. For example, in some scenarios it's possible to send your finished footage straight to Viostream and literally push one button for the content to be published in versions that are mobile phone, iPod and PC friendly. If you use a Content Management System it's even possible to automate the connection between the Viostream and your CMS.

A good example of how that automation works can be seen at the Macquarie Radio website. There you can see many different video segments that have been prepared and distributed using Viostream. Clicking on one of the videos, you'll note it appears quickly and that there's no hint that the movie is using a third party service provider.

Until recently, Macquarie was running a service called Live News. They were using Viostream's auto-ingest functionality to grab news and other footage directly from TV networks, under licenses, and then distributing them online.

EyeOnQ is an initiative the Tourism Queensland. EyeOnQ pulls together video content from lots of different sources, including user-generated content, making it a one-stop shop for anyone considering a holiday in the Sunshine State. However, rather than using embedded video, EyeOnQ uses Viocorp's web TV system called VioTV.

The number of applications for VioTV is boundless. While it seems a natural fit for sports (take a look at tv.rugby.com.au or raboplus.com.au) we were intrigued to see stock-market updates over commsec.viotv.com and marketing campaigns like Riva Coffee (www.rivastakeout.com.au). What you'll notice on those sites is that the video player has been skinned so that it looks like part of the site and not some sort of embedded afterthought. We saw Viostream's capability in action early in 2009 at a conference where some of the presentations were filmed and made available later that day.

Along with all the benefits you'd expect like full-screen playback, thumbnails, playlists, polling and commenting, VioTV includes a social networking element. This makes it easy for your potential audience to know when new content is published and to tell their friends when they see something of interest.

By Press Release   Fri, Jan 15, 2010

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA (January 6, 2010) - Panasonic Corporation (NYSE: PC) will release the world's first* professional, fully-integrated Full HD 3D camcorder in October 2010. The company will begin taking orders in April. Engineering samples of the professional Full HD 3D solid-state camcorder will be exhibited at the Panasonic booth (Las Vegas Convention Centre, Main Hall, #9405) at the 2010 International CES in Las Vegas, USA, from January 7-10.

This Full HD 3D camcorder will offer the following core benefits:

Easier to Use

Current 3D systems are large-scale setups in which two cameras are fitted to a rig in parallel, or vertically intersect across a half-mirror. Separate recorders are also required. In Panasonic's new Full HD 3D camcorder, the lenses, camera head, and a dual Memory Card recorder are integrated into a single, lightweight body. The camcorder also incorporates stereoscopic adjustment controls making it easier to use and operate.

The twin-lens system adopted in the camcorder's optical section allows the convergence point** to be adjusted. Functions for automatically correcting horizontal and vertical displacement are also provided. Conventional 3D camera systems require these adjustments to be made by means of a PC or an external video processor. This new camcorder, however, will automatically recalibrate without any need for external equipment, allowing immediate 3D image capture.

More Flexible

The solid-state memory file-based recording system offers greater flexibility to produce Full HD 3D videos in more challenging shooting environments. The camcorder is lighter weight and smaller than current 3D rigs, while providing the flexibility of handheld-style shooting. Setup and transportation is simplified, making it ideal for sports, documentary and filmmaking projects.

Solid-State Reliability and Workflow

Right and left Full HD video streams of the twin-lens 3D camcorder can be recorded as files on SDHC/SD Memory Cards, ensuring higher reliability than on other tape, optical disc, HDD or other mechanical-based recording systems. This solid-state, no-moving-parts design will help significantly reduce maintenance costs, and the 3D camcorder will be better able to perform in extreme environments and be more resistant to temperature extremes, shock, and vibration.

And users will enjoy a fast, highly-productive file-based workflow, with instant, random access to recorded content; easy plug-in to both Mac and PC-based platforms; and longer recording capacity.

More Affordable

Using a standardized, fully integrated design, the Full HD 3D camcorder will be offered at a much lower price than traditional 3D rigs. Transportation expenses for this handheld unit will be less and faster setup times reduce labor costs. Using standard, re-recordable SDHC/SD Memory Cards available already everywhere, media costs become almost insignificant.

In addition to a camcorder, Panasonic also plans to offer a professional-quality 3D Full HD LCD monitor for field use as well as a professional HD digital AV mixer for live event production. Panasonic will offer professional production equipment to allow video professionals to efficiently create 3D content, so consumers can enjoy 3D video using Panasonic 3D home theater systems.

Major Specifications (tentative)

* Product Name: Twin-lens Full HD 3D camcorder (made-to-order)
* Suggested Retail Price for Main Unit: US$21,000
* Available: October 2010 (made to order)
* Power Consumption: Under 19 W (main unit only)
* Weight: Under 3 kg (main unit only)
* Recording Media: SDHC/SD Memory Card
* As an integrated twin-lens Full HD 3D camcorder capable of recording Full HD 3D video to Memory Cards. As of January 2010 (based on our investigation)
** The point at which the left and right-camera lenses' optical axes converge

Development Background

Movie companies and content producers are eager to produce more 3D content. 3D video is set to become a mainstream motion picture technology. In response to the resurgence of 3D movies, in September 2009, Panasonic proposed the world's first 3D home theater systems, based around 3D-enabled Blu-ray Disc players and Plasma TVs (announced and exhibited at CEATEC 2008). In February 2009, the company established the Advanced Authoring Center (within Panasonic Hollywood Laboratory) - at which 3D movies are authored for replication on 3D Blu-ray Discs (announced at CES 2009). Currently, producing 3D movies is a painstaking process. Panasonic intends to promote the production of high-quality 3D video content by accelerating the development of 3D video production systems designed to boost production speed and efficiency.

By Press Release   Mon, Jan 11, 2010

Sydney - 12 January, 2010 - Sony Australia today introduced the pocket-sized 'bloggie' mobile high definition snap camera. This stylish and fun camera offers effortless image capture with a unique rotating lens, capturing footage from every angle and making self filming easier than ever. With a built-in USB arm, 'bloggie' camera offers simple on the go USB charging and allows users to upload MP4 videos and photos for hassle-free sharing on the web.

The new 'bloggie' camera MHS-PM5K boasts a CMOS Sensor, allowing users to record high definition videos of up to 1920 x 1080 resolution and also capture 5.0 megapixel still images with a simple click of a button. Face Detection technology is also incorporated to ensure your loved ones always look their best.

With the embedded Picture Motion Browser (PMB) Portable software, 'bloggie' camera enables seamless uploading of videos and photos to popular sites such as YouTube^TM, by simply connecting to an internet-enabled PC. With the PMB Portable, users can easily pre-select images and videos from the camera before instantly uploading to their favourite social media channels.

"With consumers increasingly uploading and sharing videos and photos online via various social media channels, Sony's new 'bloggie' camera unifies this experience and offers a fun, hassle free solution,"  said Di Shepherd, Senior Product Manager for Handycam at Sony Australia. "Lightweight, stylish and easy to use, 'bloggie' camera will redefine your online experience, allowing you to effortlessly capture and upload HD video and high quality images via its built-in USB arm."

Simple and fun 360⁰ shooting experience with 'bloggie' camera

With a simple flip, 'bloggie' camera is automatically switched on, allowing users to capture spontaneous and high quality video footage easier than ever before. The MHS-PM5K comes equipped with a built-in 270⁰ rotating lens, making it the ideal companion for personal video diary moments and self filming direct to the camera. The rotating lens is also equipped with a 4x digital zoom for getting even closer to the action.

A bonus 360⁰ video lens attachment is included with the MHS-PM5K, which enables users to literally capture footage from any angle[1]. Simply snap on the bundled 360⁰ video lens and place 'bloggie' camera in the middle of the room and it will record 360⁰ coverage of the surrounding environment in video or stills[2]. Using additional software supplied, this footage can be unwrapped into an entertaining panoramic video or still image.

Record anything, anywhere

Pocket-sized and available in four vibrant colours - blue, pink, white and violet - 'bloggie' camera boasts a unique, design with incorporated rotating lens for added portability. Incorporating an expandable Memory Stick^TM and SD/SDHC memory card slot, 'bloggie' camera allows users to experience the full benefits of the camera with their preferred choice of storage capacity. A 4GB Memory Stick is included that allows users to capture up to 120 minutes of HD footage. With an optional 32GB Memory Stick, users can record up to 5 hours and 20 minutes worth of personal video diaries or footage of friend's birthdays and family parties in high resolution video quality

The intuitive 'bloggie' camera features full auto shooting, including face detection, offering users an easy imaging experience, with no need to adjust controls. Designed to fit any pocket, the lightweight camera is packed with features and is a perfect companion for individuals who like to capture all their stories and stay connected with friends and family by simply sharing their footage online.

'bloggie' MHS-PM5K HD snap cameras will be available in Australia from mid-February 2010. RRP is $299.00

By Frank McLeod   Wed, Dec 09, 2009

Magix as a player in the Australian consumer/prosumer editing market is beginning to push for its market share with a product range that addresses the needs of the amateur to the prosumer sections of the market up to and including the low budget 'indie' film maker.

This program in the standard version will import standard definition video in both 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios from tape, hard drive and DVD camcorders and VOB files from DVDs. In addition, it will accept input from webcams, digital cameras and mobile telephones. <i>(What about camera-enabled refrigerators? -Ed)<i> In regard to high definition, MMEP can accept HDV in both interlaced and progressive forms. The Plus version can also handle AVCHD and, as an aside, perform two-camera editing.

It's in the Box!

Magix Movie Edit Pro (MMEP) comes on a DVD along with a bunch of other interesting programs. There is Photomanager 8 (reminiscent of Adobe Bridge, an application manages your digital images including slideshow creation, online storage and burning to disk) and Screenshare, a trial program for linking PCs online, both from Magix. In addition from third party sources there's, iClone 3 SE, a 'lite' version of a program for 3D animation, such as seen in many computer games, Mufin Musicfinder Base, which assists in finding similar music on your computer and Vasco da Gama, a travel route mapping application that unfortunately doesn't acknowledge the Asia Pacific region. Perhaps it is these inclusions along with the main program that makes it a SLLLOOOOWWW install - over 15 minutes on my quad core PC.

Record = Capture or Import

When first opened, the user gets to nominate the location for the project's assets and the format - 16:9 or 4:3 - and then you move onto the user interface proper. From three buttons on the top right of the screen you can navigate between Record, Edit and Burn.

MMEP opens a new project in a window with three options displayed - Record (from your camera or other video source) Import (from files already on the PC) and Video Recorder where with the correct connections via your display adapter, you can watch and record TV to your PC's hard drive. Recent projects are displayed below

Record is to Magix what Capture/Import is to other programs and runs in the expected way. Files imported subsequent to the first may be appended to that movie or used to start a new one. When determining the captured files destination, you can also elect to capture the file as an MPEG file.

Edit

This option displays the imported clips depending on your selection from the three icons above the track window. The views are either Storyboard with transitions indicated in between the clips, simple Overview clips-only or as a Timeline with its multiple tracks. Each one of these tracks will become either video or audio tracks, depending on what you drag into them. The video is seen in the Program Monitor, which if not visible can be turned on by selecting it under the Windows menu.

The major windows in the Edit section are dockable which is always a nice touch and works really well with two monitors. If you choose to dock the various window but would like to return to the default arrangement, Reset window arrangement (or F9) returns to the original display settings.

All the usual and expected functions are found when the Edit function is selected and most of the tools in frequent use are found on a Toolbar (surprise!) above the top right hand side of the Track box. In this program, as in many others, it is well worth checking out what lies hidden under each of the menus and tool icons, as well as under the right mouse button, a seriously underused tool of editing. Also, attention should be paid to the small arrows beside each toolbar icon for multiple options are also hidden there. One of the bigger surprises is the detailed Audio mixer brought to life by the icon at the far right of the toolbar and the Audio FX controls that become visible by pressing the Fx button on the mixer console.

Four tabs become available

(1) Import - for the importation of other assets into the project, (2) Fades - being a large range of transitions which are dragged to the clip junction points, (3) Titles and (4) Effects.

Import opens up an Explorer-like display that enables access to assets on the computer as well as online. It's of interest to note here that some cameras when set to widescreen have their files imported natively with a 'squeezed' appearance, and a 4:3 aspect ratio on the Program Monitor. While different programs treat this differently, in MMEP, it was simply a matter of using Movement effects then Size/position, unselecting 'Keep proportions', selecting Percentage (as opposed to pixels) and making both dimensions 100%.

Still on the matter of importing files already on the PC, it should be noted that MMEP doesn't like importing DV-AVI that has been captured using other programs. I suppose you can't blame it for that, but it's irritating that when importing, you can only import one file at a time, as opposed to a collection. This makes it a nuisance and time consuming later if the files were captured using scene select and then not saved as a project.

As to Fades, there are more options available here than any one sensible person would ever use - but whatever else is said, you will not be limited for choice.

Again, presets for Titles boggle the mind, there being over 60 individual choices that can be made under the umbrella of this heading. This includes a section for lower third labelling such as seen on news programs where a speaker has a banner displaying their name near the bottom of the screen. Text for titles (end credits can be imported from any word processor which can generate an RTF file), making this a much more convenient way of avoiding spelling errors and typos.

Some of the video effects under the Effect tab deserve individual comment. MMEP has one method of applying a simply crossfade that I've always liked, where one clip's beginning is simply dragged over another clip's ending. This gives easy control over the length of the effect and is very convenient and easy to use.
Another Effect preset which is impressive is the range of various 'intros' and 'outros' with titling options that are quite effective for use of themed beginnings and endings and are quite sophisticated in their appearance. To alter the text displayed by these effects, the Title tab has to be activated.

Many advanced functions are also included under Video Effects. Of note is Chromakeying, which offers a number of different colour choices for the key. Of course, picture-in-picture is there along with a variety of derived permutations and combinations, all depending on the availability of up to 32 video tracks.

The ability to export the movie from the timeline gives the user a lot of options covering a variety of situations. This of course is unrelated to burning the output to a disk and I must say this is one part of MMEP that I found disappointing.

Burn

Creating a DVD with an interesting intro and menu system is a mixed bag. Using the File/MovieShow Maker can quickly and easily get you a smart looking and sounding beginning to the movie plus/minus your tailored text, which would be a boon for newbies. Getting from there to a nice and relevant menu is another question and it involves changing from the standard view to the advanced. Intuitive - it ain't!

It strikes me as strange that in this day and age of widescreen and HD TVs that there are more templates for DVD menus for 4:3 than 16:9. The video tutorial on this section is rather limited, as for example, it failed to tell you how to change the title on the opening menu of the disk, defaulting onto the name of the original project. This was rather irritating until I lucked onto finding, under Advanced, that by double clicking on the title, a window popped up allowing this to be changed.

In summary

Magix Movie Edit Pro 15 is a good solid editing program but not an easy starting point for the editing neophyte. It has a lot of potential and power, but to me is let down in the output to DVD stage. Magix should also by now have accepted that 4:3 video is passé. If like some, you use a standalone DVD authoring program, then that would bypass this obstacle, but that's hardly ideal.

Vendor:     QVS Software | http://www.qvsoftware.com.au/ | 02 9748 2555
Price:      $110

AusCam Ratings

Performance:      7
Documentation:    6
Features:   8
Installation:     7
Value:      7
Help: 6

We liked:   number of tracks, range of effects, filters and titles, dockable windows, export options, audio controls.

We didn't like:   Cryptic help file (in parts), limited and inflexible DVD authoring ability.

By   Tue, Dec 15, 2009

Here we have the new look, online only AusCam magazine. Whilst I appreciate not all will be happy about this (and that includes me) I assure you there was no other choice in order to keep the concept of an Australasian magazine dedicated to video going. Simply, the cost of a single print edition is $25,000 plus, and this is paid for primarily (>90%) with advertising. So no advertising means no paper magazine. Here at least we can keep it going - and there are extra benefits.

• The content can be refreshed much more regularly
• Interactivity can be included
• We can make things downloadable
• Create special offers
• Make it cheaper to produce and therefore cheaper to subscribe
• Make special online areas available to subscribers

... and much more stuff we are still discovering.

Plus!

We are working on a way using the PDF file system to be able to create a "paper version" we can post out to those that absolutely must have one ie: they don't have Internet access. It won't be a flash glossy magazine (and the flash and the gloss is what the ads pay for), but the content of reviews, tutorials, features etc will all be there as a carbon copy of the web site. Additionally, we are also looking at a special CD based version with even more content! That is why I feel this is a step forward, and not a step back.

OK back to this edition; we have a large number of bases covered. For features we have a piece from Steve Tuner on a trip to the snow and Biggles chips in with a story on upgrading industrial strength cameras,. For camera reviews, we look at the Sony flagship HDR-XR520, the Creative Vado, the new sensation, the Flip and Canon Legria HF S10 and software wise, Magix Movie Edit Pro, Sony Sound Forge 10, Windows 7 and Silverlight and Final Cut Studio.

I spent some time studying camera bags and cases and in 'quirky', Sharon has spoken to a developer who creates what he calls 'lateral video'.

But it doesn't end there. The team has got together and created a whole bunch of top tips for Adobe Premiere, Grass Valley Edius and Sony Vegas 9, the AusCam shop has been updated, the charts brought up to date and finally, Juanita's In Front of the Camera series continues.

There are other new things afoot too. If you have your email address registered with us you'll know about our back issue system; if not, by paying a small fee, you get access to the majority of reviews, features and tutorials  online since AusCam started. For full details, visit our secondary website at http://www.auscamonline.com. Here there is also a regularly updated news section, jobs in the industry and lots more. A lot of it is in beta testing for a few weeks, so if you cannot find these section immediattely, it just means we have them offline for tweaking/fixing.

As always, thanks for all the support, I really appreciate it. And will continue to keep you up to date as we move forward.

David and Budweiser (and of course the rest of the AusCam team)

By David Smith   Thu, Dec 31, 2009

The interface was always clean and simple, with numerous features popping into view once appropriate icons on the main window were selected. In other words, possibilities and options became available on a 'need to know' basis.

Pinnacle Studio's latest incarnation is Version 14 and it is an evolutionary rather than revolutionary improvement on its predecessors. There are three versions available, namely Studio, Studio Ultimate and Studio Ultimate Collection, the one reviewed here.

One option is to buy the 372-page paper manual which I recommend. In the boxed version of the Ultimate Collection, you also get a folding green screen backdrop for chroma-keying.

The Studio interface

The key element of Pinnacle Studio's operating paradigm is the 'album'. This is a context-sensitive collection of features accessed by selecting one of the buttons to the left of the upper panel.

There are three tabs at the top left of the Album window called Import, Edit and Make Movie. These represent the three main steps in going from your video or collection of still images, through the editing process to the ultimate destination which may be a video file, a video tape or a DVD.

The options available within each tabbed pane relate logically to what you need to complete that stage of the production. Studio opens to the Edit pane because that's probably where you'll spend most of your time.

To the right of the upper panel is the single Player (preview) pane below which is a standard set of playback controls as well as a frame counter, volume control and DVD preview button. There's another slider above the Player pane for changing its size. It's also possible within preferences to set up Studio to preview on a second computer monitor or on an external TV, provided this is supported by your graphic card.

Finally, there's the Movie window which can be toggled between Storyboard, Timeline and Text views, depending on your needs.

Depending on which version of Studio you bought some options or plugins may not be available. Only in Ultimate Collection is everything accessible. In the cheaper versions you will be directed to the Pinnacle website to purchase an upgrade Activation Key. Studio also sends you to the website on other occasions, tempting you to try, then buy additional software.

The MOVIE Window

This is the action centre of Studio. In Timeline view, there are three video tracks available, the Video track, Overlay track and Titles track, one below the other. The Video and overlay tracks also have tracks for their sync audio, and there are two more audio tracks, one for Sound FX and Voiceovers, the other for Music.

You can switch to Storyboard mode and see your project laid out linearly along a series of 'filmstrip' lines. This is a good place to make changes to the order of chunks of your video, as the storyboarding name implies.

A third mode is Text view, in which detailed information about each item on the timeline is displaed, much like a edit decision list (EDL). This can be handy for making very fine adjustments to durations of clips or transitions: you simply enter the new numbers in the appropriate field in the clip Properties window.

Audio clips display their waveforms and volume changes can be made by left clicking on the volume envelope and dragging it to a new level. Quite complex envelopes can be built up this way. Unfortuantely there's no way to alter the height of the tracks, so the precision is limited. There's another way, though which is to use the audio mixer, which includes facilities for surround sound mixing and placement. Movements of the faders are reflected in the volume envelope at the cursor's current position, and the gain values are listed numerically for each track. This can be done in real time during playback. It's not a pro mixer, but it works fairly well.

Menu options in detail

IMPORT

The Import window is fairly simple, allowing you to capture from a camcorder, VCR, or other devices such as memory sticks, rip from a DVD or Blu-Ray disk, import a set of stills, or capture a video as a series of stills for use in stop-motion animation. The destination folder is selected here and its available space indicated clearly.  The import process is straightforward once the Start Import button is pressed.

EDIT

This tab handles a massive range of options and it is here that the immense power of this software is tapped, although as is typical of Pinnacle products, the range of options is not immediately apparent. Each of the buttons shows a set of thumbnails of the various clips, effects, transitions and so on, but it's really important to notice the extra options available via the dropdown menu at the top left. For example the transitions thumbnails initially displayed are the 2D set, but the dropdown reveals six more categories, each containing anywhere from a dozen to more than a hundred presets.

When you roll over each thumbnail an animated preview appears in the Player window. Brief descriptions of the various options are as follows:

Show Videos

Thumbnails of all of your video clips appear here, either as files (whole clips) or scenes, if scene selection was used for capturing. Thumbnails can be displayed with or without duration information.

Clips are added to the storyboard or timeline by dragging and dropping.

Clicking the little video camera icon at the top left of the Movie window reveals a new tool, the Clip Properties window, with its own new set of left-hand buttons. Here you adjust all sorts of aspects of a single clip

Show Transitions

Once again you just drag a transition's thumbnail onto a pair of clips on the timeline (or storyboard) and double click the transition to open its properties window. Here you can adjust the duration and direction of the transition and watch the result in the Player. All transitions and effects will play back immediately, but the more complex ones will only display in lower resolution until background rendering has caught up. Background rendering is on by default but can be turned off if necessary.

To remove a transition or effect you select it, then click the little trashcan on the top right of the timeline.

Show Montage Themes

Montage themes are pre-packed clips designed by graphic artists to give your video a polished, integrated look and feel. Most themes provide Opening and Ending templates and many also include Segue templates, used for transitioning from one scene to another. Montage themes are handled just like any other clips and have their own properties window. Studio Ultimate Collection comes with seventeen presets with tantalising names such as Downtown light, Seasons, Video Wall and so on.

Drag a Montage to the timeline and double click it to open its Properties pane. As an example, Video Wall presents you with a wall of 20 video clips lined up on a vertical wall that swings in to fill the frame. There is also title text in front of the wall. Text is edited by replacing YOUR TEXT HERE with whatever you like. Clips in the video wall are chosen from the mini album by dragging them to the respective numbered Drop Zones.

This is an extremely simple and rapid way to produce some quite complex and attractive composites. There's not much scope for modifying them but that's not the point: they are well designed and there are sufficient templates to cover many common projects, including weddings, travel and some pretty avant garde ones like Extreme.

Show Titles

Pinnacle have always had simple but effective titlers and Studio Ultimate Collection takes this much further with the addition of very effective Motion Titling. Titles are always added to the Title Track in the timeline and they usually feature a transparent background, allowing the background video to show through. As the website makes clear, Pinnacle is Avid, so in typical Avid fashion the titles and overlay video tracks lie below the main video track. No dramas here, but other software such as Vegas always does it the opposite way, with the upper tracks dominating those below (which I think is more logical).

The Titles Properties window gives a fair degree of control over how the text will look and move, all made much simpler if you just choose the preset you like. Once again you have individual control over the beginning, middle and end, via Enter, Emphasis and Exit windows. This window includes a special timeline where all of the layers in the title are visible and can be altered. Layers can be grouped and/or locked giving quite a range of options, including selecting a background colour and style if required.

Show Photos and Frame Grabs

Self explanatory, this tab handles all of your still images, including frames grabbed at full resolution from your video clips.

Show Menus

DVD menus are handled by a special tool in Studio. Intriguingly, they are simply selected from the range of presets, and dragged to the very beginning of your timeline. To have a Main Menu followed by a Scene Select Menu, you simply drag one of each onto the beginning of the timeline. It all seems to simple to be of much use, but if you delve into the excellent manual, and especially online video tutorials the penny drops and you'll find you can quickly build quite complex menu systems to guide users through your finished DVD or Blu-Ray disk.

When you drag a menu to the start of the timeline (it's edges will be green if it's correctly placed) a pop-up asks you if you want chapters created for you at fixed intervals, or at the beginning of clips, or if you prefer to add chapters manually. You can choose static or moving thumbnails and also choose the action at the end of each chapter.

Show Sound Effects

Studio comes with quite a good set of basic sound effects and, as always, the More Sound Effects option takes you to the Pinnacle website where you can buy more.

Show Music

Music is handled by Scorefitter, a streamlined and integrated version of SmartSound, (reviewed by Frank McLeod in the October issue of Auscam). This comes with nine styles of music, each having several songs, and each song having up to ten versions. The music sounds good and is generated to match either the length of your project, or a duration you dial in. In fact you could use Scorefitter as a music generator to create royalty-free music for use in other applications, or as the bed for tracks you can embellish with acoustic instruments or synths.

MAKE MOVIE

The final step in your production is to output your video in any of the numerous formats supported by Studio. The window is pretty much self explanatory, with settings for Disc, File and Tape being quite comprehensive and easy to understand. Licenses for MPEG-4, H.264, MP3 AND DivX codecs require entering Activation Keys into a special window. These must be regenerated and sent to you via email if the software is changed to a new computer, or if the hard drive fails. I know piracy is a problem, but it's infuriating when you're in the middle of a project and for one reason or another you have to replace a drive or reinstall the software, then get the activations, then enter them all before you're back to work. In fact the best solution to this issue I've seen is the little USB dongle that is provided by Propellerheads for their stunning new program Record. Check their website at www.propellerheads.se to see how it works. I love it!

How does Studio perform?

Unlike Sony Vegas Pro, my NLE of choice, Pinnacle Studio 14 does exploit the GPU on your graphics card to assist the CPU and provide good playback performance. With Vegas and Studio installed on a Q6600 2.4GHz computer with 3GB RAM and an ASUS EAH4850 graphics card with 1GB RAM, I was surprised at how sluggish Studio was to operate. The program itself takes well over half a minute to load and every time you choose a new menu item there's a distinct pause of 2 - 10 seconds until the new menu page opens. Playback was reasonable but, compared to Vegas Pro, the Pinnacle software is frustratingly unresponsive. On the same machine everything in Vegas is instantaneous, which gives that slick highly responsive feel I've come to both love and expect. It will be interesting to test Studio on a new Core i5 or i7 machine with Windows 7, but with a full gigabyte of dedicated graphics memory the performance was disappointing.

Responsiveness aside, the word that came to mind in describing Studio was 'surprising'. Surprising because it looks a bit like a toy, but in fact contains some extremely powerful and useful features.

For example the audio effects include noise reduction, de-essing, chorus, a 'grungelizer' and even vocal removal for making karaoke music tracks.

Similarly, the video FX list is large, including various tools for colour correction, blurring, embossing, old film, stained glass and so on. There are also special tools for picture-in-picture editing and chroma keying. One of the most powerful features is the Magic Bullet Looks SE plug-in by Red Giant. This is a highly featured, fully customizable post-production suite for special effects, colourizing and much, much more. This inclusion alone is worth the price of the entire package (The latest full version of Looks sells for US$400!).

Import formats

    *   Video: AVCHD*, BD Blu-ray*, DV, HDV, AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, DivX ® *, MPEG-4*, 3GP(MPEG-4)*, WMV, Non-encrypted DVD titles (incl. DVD-VR/+VR), QuickTime ® ; (DV, MPEG-4*, H.264*)

    * Audio: MP3, MPA, WAV, AC3*, WMA

    * Graphic: BMP, GIF, JPG, PCX, PSD, TGA, TIF, WMF, PNG, J2K

Export formats:

    *   AVCHD*, BD Blu-ray*, HD-DVD, DVD (DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R or DVD+RW, dual layer), S-VCD, Video CD (VCD)

    * Apple ® iPod ® , Sony ® ; PSP/PS3, Nintendo ® Wii, Microsoft ® Xbox compatible formats*

    * DV, HDV, AVI, DivX*, RealVideo ® 8, WMV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4*, Flash, 3GP*, WAV, MP3*, QuickTime ® (SD format)

    * Dolby ® Digital 2 channel and 5.1 channel audio*

 Conclusion

Pinnacle Studio 14 Ultimate Collection is a powerful video production suite based on a very simple user interface. It has a rich array of features that will make it relatively simple to create high quality high definition videos for distribution on tape or disk, or in many other formats for web distribution.

Despite this the program is somewhat limited by surprisingly sluggish responsiveness and by the small number of video and audio tracks available. It would definitely be possible to produce a broadcast quality program using this software. The obvious comparison is with competitors such as Premiere Elements and Vegas Movie Studio. I think that for flexibility, responsiveness and especially for the unlimited number of tracks, Vegas Movie Studio would be the pick of the crop.

 Vendor:  Lako Pacific/www.lakopacific.com/1800 657 601  

Price:     $249.95

AusCam Ratings

Performance:     6
Documentation:               9
Features:             8
Installation:        8
Value:    8
Help:      9

We Liked: Powerful array of audio and video FX, cleverly implemented Montage Themes     and DVD menu system, Scorefitter music generator.

We Didn't Like:  Sluggish responsiveness, severely limited number of tracks, Activation Key process

By Graeme Hague   Thu, Dec 10, 2009

Admittedly, software history is littered with the wrecks of programs that have undergone some kind of complete revamp that turned out to be more of a step backwards than forwards - numerical advances in software version don't always herald improvement. But thankfully this isn't one of those occasions and, by the way, this release is hardly a revamp either. Still, it's been over two years since Sound Forge 9 was released, so maybe the bosses at Sony have been rattling the door of their SF department and suggesting it's time to get their feet off the desk.

Before we look closer at this release, it's worth examining the relevance of a product like this these days. Sound Forge is still, after all, a two-track audio editor and in an industry that offers LE multi-track recording facilities such as Pro Tools 8 LE included in the cost of entry-level hardware interfaces it's difficult, you'd think, to justify buying SF10 and hamstringing yourself to those two tracks and still requiring some sort of decent hardware, too. Why choose Sound Forge?

The answer is easy. Sound Forge 10 (and its early incarnations) is the big, sharp, real knife you take out of the drawer when you have some serious audio slicing and dicing to do. SF10 is the dedicated audio editor that will do the job precisely and offers more options, more tools and better results when things need to be fixed or enhanced. If it can't be done with SF10, it probably can't be done.

The Interface.

I must say that I've always found all Sony audio applications as having a slightly bland appearance and SF10 hasn't changed. Does it matter? I reckon it does, because professionals using this kind of software use it a lot and sometimes, strange as it may sound, long days in front of the monitor are helped when there is - for want of a better description- a more visually exciting interface to keep you interested. You can crank up the colour and intensity of the icons and customize the appearance of wave files, but it's still predominantly that Sony grey-on-grey look. Am I being too picky? Maybe.

Otherwise the interface is quite straightforward, since as a two-track editor nothing much can happen until you select some audio and start applying effects or edits. I find that a difficult interface is one with too many choices, filled with confusing icons and forcing you to squint to find what you want. No such problems with SF10. I did have some annoying moments trying to horizontally tile four open files down the screen - no matter what I did SF10 insisted on placing them in four quarters of the screen. Eventually I gave up.

While I'm complaining I'll get another small whinge off my chest. Because of my job as a musician, sound engineer and reviewer I have a lot of software on my computer. When I installed SF10 it automatically found all the non-Sony plug-ins and made them available as effects. In fact, it also compiled a list of "favourite" processes although how it made this decision for me is a mystery- I've got a perfectly good wife to do that sort of thing. The thing is that most of these third-party plug-ins won't work, which is fair enough. Except for the irritating procedure of trying them one by one to find the compatible plugs and then removing the dud ones in preferences... probably it was caused by the install procedure using the same plug-in folder as everything else (my choice), but it'd be better if SF10 ignored third-party plug-ins by default and forced you to try them.

Editing and Mastering

Enough complaining. Let's have a look at what SF10 does really well, and that's working with audio.

A new trick for SF10 is "Event Based Editing". It sounds more complicated than it really is, but it's still a good idea. Usually, when you're working with a larger file that requires separate sections to be manipulated, such as part of a voice-over needing a boost in volume, once you've completed that edit the altered section of audio is integrated back into the whole file. Short of hitting an Undo key it's hard to somehow revisit that exact selection of the file. Event Based editing allows you to select separate parts of the file and work with them and it maintains the boundaries of that edit in the Event Based view. It's like cutting your file into smaller clips, but it doesn't go so far as to actually make the cut.

Even better, it's a sneaky way of multi-selecting discontiguous parts of a file and applying the one edit to them all - something you can't do in the normal Edit Tool mode. By applying splits to the file to isolate all the various parts into separate Events you want to affect, then Ctrl-Select them all, you can apply an effects process or edit to all of them at once. Neat!

It's not a perfect science yet. For instance you can't name the events, which would have been handy if you needed some kind of reminder what the edit was, plus when you switch in and out of Events Based view the selection doesn't remember what event you were working on before. Also, all the events boundaries are wiped and the entire file again becomes one single event (probably why you can't name them) whenever you save the file. That might seem reasonable, but if (as you should be) you're a little paranoid about losing work and constantly hit the Save button every few minutes, then the workflow advantages of Events Based edits - being able to recall the edits - are lost, too.

Another new feature is the elastique Timestretch which provides time and pitch manipulation. Note I don't say "correction", because this isn't an intelligent pitch correction plug-in like Autotune. It's a purely manual effect that can be used to fix pitch and timing problems, but you have to do all the hard work yourself. I found that pitch changes were prone to a munchkin effect despite that there is a formant parameter - mind you, how bad those munchkins can be will depend largely on the source file. However the time stretch feature worked really well.

I'm happy to announce that a large chunk of CD Architect has been brought into SF10 allowing you to create and burn Red Book standard audio CDs. It's not such a big deal since CD Architect was normally bundled with Sound Forge anyway, but it makes more sense to be able to start and finish a project inside the one application and considering that SF is strongly focused towards polishing and mastering audio, then being able to finish off the job with a CD burn from inside SF is more satisfying.

Talking of mastering, this brings me to the best bit about SF10 and the definitive reason Sound Forge should be on your DAW. Aside from the fact that all the usual editing tools that SF10 offers are excellent on their own, the bundled inclusion of Izotope mastering plug-ins has been increased to six. The Izotope Mastering Bundle now includes its (Mastering) EQ, Exciter, Imager, Limiter, Reverb and Multiband Compressor.

Yes master

Mastering is a black art and requires specialized equipment and skills. No one should argue that given the choice and budget all your audio should be mastered at a dedicated mastering studio. However, if you don't have the opportunity or the cash, then SF10 with these Izotope plug-ins is the next best thing. What I like about them most is that while there's a bunch of presets to choose from, tempting you to be lazy, in fact their own interfaces are simple and encourage you to try settings for yourself.

Sony has applied other tweaks here and there such as a save function for screen layouts and some extra tabs. Nothing that will set your desk on fire. You might say that being the first release for two years, Sound Forge 10 is a little light-on for new features. But perhaps the old adage of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" applies here? The bottom line is that if you never need to record or edit beyond two tracks of audio, then Sound Forge (now SF10) should be at the top of your software list.

It will do everything you need and more- and do it very well.

Vendor: New Magic www.newmagic.com.au  03 9722 9700
Price:      $589RRP Australian or $239 Australian upgrade.

AusCam Ratings

Performance: 10
Documentation:     10
Features:    10
Installation:      10
Help:  10

We liked: Still a great, solid audio editor.
We didn't like: Can we add a dash more colour please?

By David Hague   Wed, Jan 13, 2010

If people are not investigating VoIP in this day and age, they should be. If there are better and cheaper ways to do things, why fill Telstra's coffers (or Optus, Voda, 3 ....)?  There are numerous VoIP solutions - some better than others - and Skype is one of the more popular as there is no hardware to install, and it's free for many call types.

A limitation is the lack of integration of Skype with any sort of contact management system, of which Microsoft Outlook would be by far and away the most popular, especially in the business world. Bn Australian designed package could be destined to change all that.

What has this to do with video you ask? Quite simple, all small business - including video operators and associated businesses are looking at ways of cutting costs. And telephony is one of the biggies along with rent and power.

Melbourne based Skylook has released a package of the same name that is an extension to Microsoft Outlook . By itself, Outlook allows basic email sending, receiving, forwarding and archiving; with the addition of Skylook, it lets you also do these things to phone calls, Voicemail instant messages and SMS as well as combining email, reminders, voicemail, IM and SMS. For example, you can get Skylook to SMS appointment reminders to you.

You can call Outlook contacts by using the interaction of Outlook via Skylook with Skype, record phone calls in MP3, receive voicemail messages in your Outlook inbox, forward voice mails, have emails read out over the phone and much more.

Skylook is not cheap at A$174.95 / computer for the basic version or $614.95 / 3 user licence and free upgrades for life, but if you are a heavy phone user, the benefits will be gained within matter of weeks as against the phone company alternative. Monthly subscriptions are available and there is a 14 day free trial copy by download.

Contact Skylook at www.skylook.biz

By David Hague   Wed, Dec 09, 2009

The Flip

There are two flavours of the Flip - the Cisco one and the one I've had to play with called the Mino HD Flip. There are some legal battles going on as I write this, so once the dust settles we'll see who gets the Aussie rights to the name/model.

For the uninitiated, the Flip is a small, boxy 5x2x1cm HD based video camera. Controls are minimal. On the back is a small 4cm LCD screen and underneath that is a Big Red Button for on off. Either side are indentations that offer transport and zoom controls and delete. The sides of the Flip have switches to turn the unit on and to pop up the USB port to allow battery charging and video transfer to a PC or Mac. On the front is simply the lens. The only port apart from the USB is a TV out port (not HDMI - simply composite)

Using the Flip is therefore easy. Start up is quick and imagery is while not exceptional, quite good. Or to put it another way, if you regularly post YouTube with video from your mobile, the Flip will certainly set your trousers on fire. If however you're used to, say, an AVCHD based Hi-def camcorder, you'll most likely yawn.

Based on that, the Flip and its ilk have their place, but I suspect the marketers are aiming at the YouTube/Vimeo market as against anyone with an interest in making video of length. As if to support this notion, there's even Flipshare video designed for exactly this, shipped with the camera.

Creative Vado

In the same vein as the Flip is the Creative Vado. I feel somewhat sorry for Creative; 15 years ago it was a major force in the gadget market and literally owned the sound card and PC speaker market. Since then it's been copier rather than real innovator and despite the fact in a number of cases in my opinion, the products have been superior (the Creative Zen music player springs to mind) it's very much an also-ran these days. Hopefully that will pick up.

I fear not with the Vado however.

In many ways it has advantages over the Flip. The lens is higher up the body meaning it is harder to get your finger or thumb in the image. The controls are on a 4-way and press button affair that's more intuitive and it even has an HDMi port making the imagery played back on a hi-def TV far better than the Flip can offer with its piddly composite cable. The LCD playback screen is also bigger (5cm v 4cm) and again, in my opinion clearer.

But the marketing machine of Cisco I suspect will walk all over the Vado. I have yet to see anyone comment on Twitter that they've uploaded via their Vado. In other words, the Flip is the iPod and the Vado is the Zen or Zune.

So I'll say this. If you're in the market for one of these cameras, do have a look at the Vado and the Flip before buying. Don't be one of those going baaa.... Baaa.

But if you want to make video with decent audio as against 10 second YouTube clips you little control over, get a proper video camera you can hold steady. Unless you want to attach them to a helmet, an internal car mount or similar, as for this, the Vado (and the Flip) could be perfect companions.