mediageek

Category: geek stuff

  • HD Video for under $200?

    Last month Kodak announced its entry into the hot mini-camcorder market, obscurely named the Zi6. Kodak’s big splash with the Zi6 is that it offers HD video for just a little bit more than the standard-def Flip camcorders. Now, Sanyo has had an “HD” flash memory camcorder on the market for a while, though reviews…

  • FCC Hearing on Broadband and the Digital Future Going On Now

    If you enjoy a good FCC hearing now and again, you can watch the hearing live online: http://www.fcc.gov/realaudio/#jul21 If you don’t quite have the four and a half hours to spare you should be able to watch an archive on the FCC website within some reasonable timeframe after the hearing is over. If you prefer…

  • Wired Gadget Lab on Flip Mimo: Good, maybe not work extra bucks

    Those of you following these little flash-memory pocket-cams like I am might be interested in Wired’s Gadget Lab review of the new Flip Mimo, which is a smaller, slightly more feature-rich version of their signature $150 Flip camcorder. Though slimmer and prettier the Gadget Lab concludes: It’s a solid little cam that’s easier to transport,…

  • Reconsidering Solid State Video

    The face of digital photo and video is changing as we speak. Well, not really the face, so much as the skin and innards. Until very recently video = tape and photo = memory card. Now, tape is on its way out, and digital still cameras are getting much better at doing video, too. One…

  • Goodbye minidisc, Hello Zoom H2

    I’ve finally broken down and abandoned my beloved minidisc for mobile audio recording. I held out for as long as I could, which wasn’t hard. Until recently the format that never caught on (in the US) was the best portable digital audio recording format, especially when Sony finally unveiled Hi-MD four years ago finally allowing…

  • The O.P.s — Original Pirates — Full Power and Micropower

    As long as there have been transmitters, there’s been broadcasters who aren’t interested in appealing to a higher authority for the right to use them. As for nearly as long, there’s been some federal agency hunting them down. But not nearly successfully enough to quash unlicensed broadcasting altogether. To whit, this 1934 Modern Mechanix article…

  • When Underground Culture Was Hard(er) To Find

    Filmmaker Danny Plotnick’s “Out of Print” is an absolutely brilliant and simple but effective short film about the somewhat lost pleasures of hunting down underground media, from cult films and bands, to underground literature and zines. By his own description, it’s “an ode to the counterculture of the 80s and 90s when unearthing quality culture…

  • Free DivX Pro for the Holidays

    I’m not the biggest fan of DivX because it’s not terribly useful for web distribution of video — especially if your audience isn’t particularly computer savvy. Nevertheless, DivX Pro is not a bad tool for compressing videos into the DivX codec, which is good for getting pretty high near-DVD quality video onto CD-Rs and such.…

  • Fresh Air Double-Ender Correction

    Last week I noted in a post about my interview with Michael W Dean that the NPR program Fresh Air uses the same kind of recording method that we used. What we did was talk over Skype but record our own voice locally. Then Michael sent me a file of his audio and I edited…

  • New Sony Cam Appears To Get Flash Memory Recording Right

    Unfortunately, the entry price is over $6000 MSRP. But if you’re a video pro or a very serious indie journalist/documentarian you might consider saving your pennies and golden dollars for the just announced Sony HVR-Z7U. The specs on this thing really sound like Sony has been paying attention to what serious video makers want in…