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Streaming production

Streaming Production and Flash Delivery Workshop in Manhattan on March 23, 2010

LISAJAN.jpgLisa Larson-Kelly and Jan Ozer will host the Streaming Production and Flash Delivery Workshop on March 23, 2010, at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. The workshop will feature two tracks, Streaming Production and Flash Delivery, each comprised of two ½ day courses.

The workshop courses detail the complete streaming production and delivery workflow, from set design to Flash Media Server setup, from H.264 encoding to Flash Player creation. The instructors are recognized authors, experienced producers and frequent speakers at industry workshops hosted by organizations like Streamingmedia.com and the MCA-I.

Early bird pricing is $170 for any ½ day course, or $300 for the full day. For more information or to sign up, visit http://streamingflash.eventbrite.com.

Shooting with the Canon ESO 7D

I just spent about a month with the Canon EOS 7D, specifically to evaluate its HD video shooting capabilities. The results were very impressive, with amazing depth of field, and relatively low noise in low light situations. You can read my review here.

Click over to the article to see some of the sample videos I shot with the 7D.

Distributing your video

Details of March 23 Training Course

lisa.jpgHere's a short video discussion between Lisa Larson-Kelly and myself discussing the upcoming training. If you're curious about the training, or how Oovoo works (it's pretty cool) click over to the main article. For more information on the training, click over to http://streamingflash.eventbrite.com/

Flash Player: CPU Hog or Hot Tamale? It Depends.

ipad.jpgIn part, Steve Jobs stated that the iPad didn't support Flash because it was a "CPU Hog," so Apple used a technology called HTML5 instead. Since the comparative efficiency of Flash vs. HTML5 seemed easy enough to quantify, I endeavored to do so, using YouTube's new HTML5-based player as the test bed. Specifically, I played a YouTube video in the same browser twice, once via HTML5, once via Flash, and measured CPU utilization during playback.

The results? Decidely bi-polar. You can probably guess which pole was colder.

Choosing production tools

Better buy 64-bit systems from here on out

I got an interesting e-mail from Adobe today, which I've pasted in its entirety below. The key message is this:

"Adobe today confirmed that ... Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 and Adobe After Effects CS4 are the last versions to support 32-bit operating systems. Future versions will be native 64-bit applications which will run only on 64-bit operating systems."

This has some interesting implications about future hardware investments and provides a preview of what CS5 will bring. You can read the full release (and my short analysis) in the complete article.

CS4 and 64-bit Systems

This article describes the advantages of a 64-bit operating system when running Adobe CS4, and tests CS4 performance with different RAM configurations. If you're producing HD video with CS4 running a 32-bit OS and feeling frustrated by slow performance, this article will tell you why and how to fix it.

Recent Blogs

Seawell and the future of Scalable Video Coding

I’ve been tracking Scalable Video Coding (SVC) for the last year or so and there’s been little tangible evidence of adoption. Recently Toronto-based Seawell Networks came out of stealth mode, but only barely, announcing that they are in the H....

Ogg, MPEG-LA and Submarine Patents

A few weeks ago, I published an interview with MPEG LA CEO Larry Horn on the patent group's decision not to charge for free content encoded with H.264. Then I got a note back from a reader who stated: I'm disappointed. The interview seemed to be pr...

If you're encoding in QuickTime/Compressor, you gotta checkout x264

So, I was doing some consulting work for a client who's currently encoding with the x264 codec. Part of the work involved benchmarking their current quality against other encoding tools I have around the office, so I downloaded the x264 QuickTime Cod...

Another Ogg to H.264 comparison

I recently posted an H.264 vs. Ogg comparison, which you can see here. http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/ogg-vs-h264---round-one.html I got lots of good feedback and am in the process of reworking my tests, primarily (I hope) to use a m...

Google Closes On2 acquision - Better check your wallet

Late last week, Google closed the On2 acquisition that they started in 2009, and now owns the VP4 - VP8 video codecs. At the time, there was much debate about Google's intent, now most analysts assume that Google bought On2 to open source the codec a...

Encoding your video

Xiph, Ogg and Crossing the Chasm

adoption curve-sm.jpgWhen comparing Ogg Theora to H.264, most reviewers have focused solely on video quality. But that's only a small component of what it will take for Ogg to achieve mainstream success.

Details of March 23 Training Course

lisa.jpgHere's a short video discussion between Lisa Larson-Kelly and myself discussing the upcoming training. If you're curious about the training, or how Oovoo works (it's pretty cool) click over to the main article. For more information on the training, click over to http://streamingflash.eventbrite.com/

Preprocessing your video

Streaming Producton - Improving Video Quality - the Video

janhead.jpgThis is a video from a session at Streaming Media West. In addition to the production/pre-processing and encoding tips, it's a unique opportunity to see me - Jan Ozer - as a blonde, which I was for roughly 6 weeks last year (a Halloween thing).

Click through to the main article to watch the video.

Color and Brightness Correction in Final Cut Pro

Of all the skills necessary to successfully edit video, one of the most important is brightness and color correction. To understand how to adjust brightness and color optimally, you have to know how to read a waveform monitor.

In this tutorial, first we'll learn how to enter Final Cut Pro's color correction mode and read the waveform monitor. Then we'll learn how to diagnose and correct a range of brightness and color related problems Using Final cut Pro's Color Corrector effect. Click over to the main article to view the tutorial.

Video tutorials

Color and Brightness Correction in Final Cut Pro

Of all the skills necessary to successfully edit video, one of the most important is brightness and color correction. To understand how to adjust brightness and color optimally, you have to know how to read a waveform monitor.

In this tutorial, first we'll learn how to enter Final Cut Pro's color correction mode and read the waveform monitor. Then we'll learn how to diagnose and correct a range of brightness and color related problems Using Final cut Pro's Color Corrector effect. Click over to the main article to view the tutorial.

Sorenson Squeeze 6

Sorenson Media recently released Squeeze 6.

If you click to the full article, you can view a screencam that I created for Millimeter magazine. In a couple of weeks, I'll post a written article comparing encoding quality and performance of Squeeze 6 with previous versions and other products in its class.