mediageek

Category: video

  • Minidisc in Bizzarro World, or, It’s a Wonderful Format

    CNET.uk has a feature on “Format wars: the tech that should have won,” sizing up some media and computer systems that lost out in the marketplace, despite their technical advantages. The article imagines a world where technologies like the 8-track and Betamax predominated, instead of cassettes and VHS. Two of my favorites–that I still use–are…

  • Ripping Video Streams with Real Player 11 beta

    The beta of Real Player 11 came out the other day, for Windows only, and I have installed it and fooled around a bit. I do have to report that it does what it advertises: it very easily rips online video and saves it to your hard drive. From YouTube to streams coming off our…

  • Distributor Death Takes Down Another Indie Mag

    After publishing 80 issues, the great independent culture and politics magazine Punk Planet has announced its closing. According to a front-page post on PP’s website by Daniel Sinker there are several factors contributing to its demise, “bad distribution deals, disappearing advertisers, and a decreasing audience of subscribers.” The bankruptcy of major distributors is a problem…

  • Pirate Radio USA To Be Freed upon the ‘Net

    The free radio documentary Pirate Radio USA is scheduled to be released for free, without DRM tomorrow at its distributor’s website, B-Side Entertainment. Correction [2007.05.30]: It’s not free to download, but darn close at just $2.99 — without DRM hassles! Available now. I think this is a great move for the filmmakers, DJ Her and…

  • SM East: Microsoft’s Bid To Beat Flash at the Plug-In Game

    This morning’s keynote was Microsoft’s Sean Alexander giving a peek under the hood of its new Silverlight platform which offers a bi-platform (MacOS & Windows) browser plug-in rich media player that looks an awful lot like Flash. He also showed off MS’s new production suite offering design and authoring tools that look a lot like…

  • More Free Video Editing

    The Camcorderinfo blog has posted a round-up of video editing apps for “non-video folks” and a couple more free video editing apps. I haven’t tried most of the apps listed, except iMovie, so I can’t vouch. Using a free app (whether it’s free as in beer, or free as in speech) is a good way…

  • The Pirate Max Headroom

    Nearly ten years ago, on Nov. 22, 1987, Chicago television viewers experienced the strange visage of a DIY Max Headroom interrupting the WGN evening news and Doctor Who. This wasn’t the first time a pirate TV operator had taken over a licensed signal in the US, but it was the last time, and the pirate…

  • Blogumentary for Free Online, a Smart Move

    I haven’t watched it yet, but independent filmmaker and blogger Chuck Olsen has uploaded his entire Blogumentary to Google Video for free. As Jason Scott notes (towards the end of the post), here’s a guy who gets that getting his film done and out there for people to see, however and whenever, may very well…

  • Keeping the Archive Alive

    If you’re engaged in any sort of media making, a thing that it’s smart to consider is how you’ll keep your works alive and accessible. Magnetic tapes, hard drives and optical discs all have a lifespan that is only somewhat known, and often unpredictable. Even media like photographic film, which has shown itself to be…

  • Bringing People Together with Streaming Media

    This evening I helped put on a live video webcast [archive webcast link] for an event where I really felt like the webcast served a practical and necessary purpose, allowing many more people to view the event than could fit in the venue. The event was an open forum to tackle “Racism, Power and Privilege”…