Interesting article about a rally for sensible fall backs on fair use provisions for documentary film makers who are being shafted for background music and images that they have no control over.
Category: AV Related
This article is essential reading.
Broadcasting is facing a threat that’s not economic – it’s attention-based. Those giant networks are providing a media experience which is personal and immediate, something a broadcaster can never offer. They’ll change the face of television as well.
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Don’t Copy That Floppy!
Browsing the Internet Archive I chanced upon this, a 9 minute anti-piracy short from the mid 80s called Don’t Copy That Floppy. Its has a certain ‘old world charm’.
It contrasts nicely with the 3l33t speak of YT Cracker.
Plays . . . . AND records !
The new Samsung YM-PD1
The new video iPod is looking less and less exciting. Especially when compared to the PSP.
From the ilounge review
Is there any video bummer? Well, the big one on the hardware front is playback time. The 30GB iPod runs for only 2 hours, says Apple, when playing back video. And the 60GB iPod runs for 3. That’s considerably short of both the PSP and Zen Vision, which run for 4-6 hours – and both include replaceable batteries. Yet again, Apple dropped the ball on including that – apparently the most frequently requested iPod feature – and because of its video functionality, that’s now a considerably more relevant omission. Given that the prior iPod drains additional battery life when outputting to a TV screen, it remains to be seen whether a 30GB iPod can even last long enough without a wall charger to show a complete movie on a TV – and pity, now there’s no charger in the box.
And on those pay-for video files from iTunes (of course, NOT yet in Australia)
The other big issue is Fairplay, Apple’s digital rights management software. Fairplay permits you to transfer the videos to five devices, but not to burn them on CDs or DVDs. In two words, that sucks. Given a choice between a $38.99 box set of DVDs from Amazon or a $34.99 download of low-resolution, unburnable video clips, we’d take the DVDs any day of the week. Getting them on to the iPod might not be easy, but frankly, if we’re going to cough up that sort of cash for TV shows, we want better quality and better usage rights than that.
Still, they point out
Regardless of any review the new iPod receives, we’re convinced that Apple has a no-brainer solution for its customers: in every way except battery life and the absent wall charger, you get more this year than you did last year, and even if you didn’t think you wanted one, you’ll now have a hard disk-equipped video player for the cost of last year’s music player – or the cost of a Sony PSP with only 1GB of flash memory. The 30GB iPod is $100 cheaper than the 30GB Zen Vision, too. Unless a competitor can come up with a radically improved device, there’s no question that Apple will have the most popular – not most powerful – video player around by this time next year.
Straight from EFF . . . the word on the new push to lock down consumers rights on digital TV.
EFF aims this at Europeans but as you will read it will apply to Australia.
This system requires tight controls over analogue outputs. These outputs are very useful in current digital devices — they ensure compatibility with existing consumer equipment and enable innovative products. Without unrestricted analogue outputs, sophisticated personal video recorders could not exist without special arrangement or permission from copyright holders or broadcasters.
CPCM allows rightsholders to specify restriction of playback to a single “household,” granting copyright holders a veto over which households are “legitimate” and which ones are “illegitimate.”
No account of the exceptions to copyright that safeguard education, criticism, free speech, and fair dealing is taken in CPCM. An educator who may have a legal right to show a clip to her class has no means of taking restricted content out of a CPCM system and into a classroom. A volunteer adding assistive information for disabled people to a programme has no means of extracting the programme into an environment where this activity can take place.
The proponents of CPCM promise an as-yet-unspecified “compliance body” that would require manufacturers to adhere to a set of rules for designing DTV equipment, that would ban Free and Open Source Software-based tuners, players, recorders, and so forth (on the grounds that these technologies could be modified to remove the restrictions set by the rightsholders or broadcasters).
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ccMixter Open Source
Creative Commons music sharing/remixing hosting toolset is now open source and up on SourceForge. This may be a useful model for Soundbyte v3 when we get time to build it.
There’s a lot of ‘cast’ in the title.
Here are a stack of videos from Duke University’s recent symposium on podcasting. Of particular relevance are the technical and podcasting in the classroom sessions.
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Film is dead
I’m quite taken by the forcefulness with which Robert Rodriguez (maker of Sin City, Once upon a time in Mexico) declares that film is dead.
“People ask if I would go back to shooting film. I say, “I’m driving a Ferrari — why would I go back to a horse and buggy?” Artists are usually technology-averse, although there are some who are pioneers, cutting-edge people. The movie industry is still shooting film, but everyone else is shooting digital.”
His Ten Minute Film School is great.
Here’s some entries for a little competition where movie trailers were re-edited to change the genre of the film. They are quite amazing. (originally from Snarkmarket)
The Shining (winner) – http://www.ps260.com/molly/SHINING%20FINAL.mov
West Side Story – http://www.ps260.com/Trailer/westsidestorytrailer_small.mov
Titianic – http://www.ps260.com/elfollador/Scary%20Titanic.mov
(update)
Here’s a link to the New York Times article on it.
Robert Ryang, 25, a film editor’s assistant in Manhattan, graduated from Columbia three years ago with a double major in film studies and psychology. This week, he got an eye-opening lesson in both.
Since 2002, Mr. Ryang has worked for one of the owners of P.S. 260, a commercial postproduction house, cutting commercials for the likes of Citizens Bank, Cingular and the TriBeCa Film Festival.
A few weeks back, he said, he entered a contest for editors’ assistants sponsored by the New York chapter of the Association of Independent Creative Editors. The challenge? Take any movie and cut a new trailer for it — but in an entirely different genre. Only the sound and dialogue could be modified, not the visuals, he said.