CNet UK has a nice little info-video online (Perhaps we need a new word?) chronicling the history of the iPhone from inception to the iPhone 5 (Which wound up being the 4S actually).
Watch out for the number of transistors inside an iPhone 4, which we compare to an early Intel chip. It’ll blow your mind — and help explain why the whole world thinks it’s normal to be able to find out where the nearest good pizza restaurant is while watching the latest Hollywood blockbuster and tweeting about it.
A surprisingly good combination of information & motion graphics here, makes for a fun watch.
The “I’m Not Bruce” blog has a short piece up about the headaches people in the video business deal with when talking to “regular people” who don’t understand video. All too often do I get an email from a user “Can you make it an MOV?” or “Can you make in an AVI so I can embed it in PowerPoint?”. Asking them about codecs means nothing to them, but he has a great analogy to break it down for everyone.
Not all sandwiches are good, and asking me for “a quicktime” or “an mov” or “an avi” is like asking me for “a sandwich on white bread”. You’ve specified that you want a sandwich (video file), with white bread (container format) but you have yet to tell me what kind of sandwich you want (codec).
Get the rest at his site, definitely worth a read.
HDR cameras are nothing new, with the Spheron VR camera probably leading the way. However, what if you can’t afford the pricey HDR camera but happen to have some old stereoscopic equipment laying around. A new video from Soviet Montage takes two Canon 5Dmk2′s and a Beam Splitter rig, and combines it into live HDR video (although only at two exposures).
This video highlights several clips we’ve made using our new High Dynamic Range (HDR) process. Video is captured on two Canon 5D mark II DSLRs, each capturing the exact same subject via a beam splitter. The cameras are configured so that they record different exposure values, e.g., one camera is overexposed, the other underexposed. After the footage has been recorded, we use a variety of HDR processing tools to combine the video from the two cameras, yielding the clips you see above.
If you’re still a bit uncertain about exactly what happened with Deepwater Horizon or the various options for cleanup, Al-Jazeera has a nice simple animation showing the details. In it they cover the three leaks, the robot subs, the dome, and the relief well strategy.
Air traffic is almost back to normal after the lengthy delays caused by the Icelandic Volcano. A visualization from Ito, IdeasInTransit, and using data from FlightRadar24 shows the slow return to normalcy across Europe’s flight system.
A visualisation of the northern European airspace returning to use after being closed due to volcanic ash. Due to varying ash density across Europe, the first flights can be seen in some areas on the 18th and by the 20th everywhere is open.
The flight data is courtesy of flightradar24.com and covers a large fraction of Europe. There are a few gaps (most noticeably France) and no coverage over the Atlantic, but the picture is still clear.
vReveal. the windows-based video enhancement package that can fix camera shake, blurriness, and various other problems using CPU & CUDA-accelerated GPU algorithms, now offers a basic free version.
With vReveal software for Windows, it’s easy to quickly fix the videos from your cell phone, HD camcorder, digital camera, or other device. Stabilize, brighten, sharpen, add fun effects and more with just one click. It’s completely free.
Of course, the hope is that the free version wets your appetite for the paid “Premium” version, available for only $40. The free version is limited to 480p outputs.
This is a year old, but still fun. Kyle Downes’ major project for his his 3rd year BA chronicles the history of video games from Pong, through the videogame crash led by the Atari ‘ET’ disaster, the rise of Nintendo, and the current war of the consoles.
This is my major project for 3rd year BA(multimedia) at RMIT (which I graduate from this year), created over about 4 months.
Software used: Maya 8.5, After Effects, Premiere, Illustrator, Photoshop and Flash.
All modelling/texturing/lighting, animating and compositing done by me.
Over at the New York Times they have posted a video on the history of the Olympic pictograms. What is a pictogram? Why it is a tiny symbol meant to encapsulate the essence of a sport (or use of a very important facility).
Designer Steven Heller traces the evolution of the tiny symbols for each Olympic sport since their appearance in 1936.
With HTML5 supporting a native <VIDEO> tag for including flash-free video, the war for a suitable video codec has started a new battle between Ogg Theora and h264. Jan Ozer just completed a hands-on comparison of the two at various bitrates, focusing on the low bitrates used by most internet streaming services and found h264 the clear victor.
“These tests are very aggressive, but purposefully so—at very high data rates, all codecs look good. In particular, YouTube encodes their H.264 video at 2mbps, about 2.5X higher than my tests. So my conclusion isn't that Ogg is a bad codec; it's that producers seeking the optimal balance between data rate and quality will find H.264 superior,”
However, h264 is still encumbered by patents and legal entanglements that, while currently free to users, could turn it into a literal ‘pay to play’ scenario. This could all prove moot however, thanks to Google’s recent acquisition of On2 and their high-performance VP8 video codec. In a recent plea by the FSF:
“With your purchase of On2, you now own both the world’s largest video site (YouTube) and all the patents behind a new high performance video codec—VP8,” the letter says. “Just think what you can achieve by releasing the VP8 codec under an irrevocable royalty-free license and pushing it out to users on YouTube? You can end the web’s dependence on patent-encumbered video formats and proprietary software (Flash).”
Where do you weight in on the web video codec debate?
The latest issue of ‘Dazed & Confused’ magazine is cashing in on the Augmented Reality craze with several markers inside the issue, each connected to a short film.
Holding the March issue up to a webcam sets Dazed’s Augmented Reality fashion in motion, with five exclusive fashion films showcasing the best of the spring collections. Contributors include the likes of supermodel Jessica Miller and photographer David Armstrong, working with the Dazed fashion editors on stories ranging from avant-garde performance pieces to a chilling horror short.
You can view a short 30s trailer showing clips of all the videos, and a chance to see another interesting feature: Pause the video at any point and see the designers of the various clothing overlaid on the video.
CNet UK has a nice little info-video online (Perhaps we need a new word?) chronicling the history of the iPhone from inception to the iPhone 5 (Which wound up being the 4S actually).
The “I’m Not Bruce” blog has a short piece up about the headaches people in the video business deal with when talking to “regular people” who don’t understand video. All too often do I get an email from a user “Can you make it an MOV?” or “Can you make in an AVI so I can embed it in PowerPoint?”. Asking them about codecs means nothing to them, but he has a great analogy to break it down for everyone.
vReveal. the windows-based video enhancement package that can fix camera shake, blurriness, and various other problems using CPU & CUDA-accelerated GPU algorithms, now offers a basic free version.
With HTML5 supporting a native <VIDEO> tag for including flash-free video, the war for a suitable video codec has started a new battle between Ogg Theora and h264. Jan Ozer just completed a hands-on comparison of the two at various bitrates, focusing on the low bitrates used by most internet streaming services and found h264 the clear victor.
The latest issue of ‘Dazed & Confused’ magazine is cashing in on the Augmented Reality craze with several markers inside the issue, each connected to a short film.
VizWorld.com 
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