HD video makes old camcorders obsolete

I have again become interested in digital video after finding my old digital camcorder during a move. While iMovie 08 imports the footage just fine, the camera suffers from a few fatal flaws.

First, it is bulky. While it's not so large that I have to carry it on my shoulder, it's not something I'd want to carry in my bag.

Second, it doesn't record in high definition. I purchased a HD television last year, and I cringe every time I have to watch something in standard format.

More important than the other two flaws is that the camera is old technology.

Camcorders are now smaller, more powerful and cheaper. The greatest advance is the introduction of consumer-level high-definition camcorders.

Shooting and sharing high-definition home videos are necessary now that HDTV is gaining mainstream traction. The quality difference between standard and HD video is immense. To preserve video for years to come, having it in the highest quality available is a necessity.

There are three options as to recording medium: tape, hard drive and flash memory.

Tape gives the best video quality. Manufacturers are still producing camcorders capable of recording HD to the DV and MiniDV tape formats.

Tape allows easy archiving of raw footage. Once a tape is full, it can be removed from the recorder, stored for safekeeping and replaced with a fresh tape.

Some camcorders come with built-in hard drives. The drives allow the camcorder to be smaller and lighter. Unfortunately, video quality is not as good as MiniDV tape.

The most exciting new technology is the AVCHD format, which records video onto a tiny SD memory card like the ones in digital cameras. By recording to the tiny SD cards, camera manufacturers are able to shrink the size of cameras even more. Many AVCHD camcorders fit into the palm of the hand and weigh less than a pound.

AVCHD records in a compressed format, so when you do import it onto your Mac or PC for editing, it has to decompress it into an editable format. This can cause some quality degradation.

If video quality is your biggest concern, go with a tape-based camcorder, such as the Canon HV20.

It has exceptional video quality and the ability to shoot cinema-quality video.

If you are wanting a smaller camera, I'd suggest taking a look at the new AVCHD camcorders from Panasonic or Sony. AVCHD gives you great looking HD video and Dolby Digital encoded audio in a much smaller package.

I'm definitely willing to trade video quality for size, since most of my videos end up on the Web or my iPhone.

Justin Williams is a local blogger and the owner of Second Gear, a local Web and software development firm. He can be reached at justin@secondgearllc.com.

Originally published in the Evansville Courier & Press.

Demise of Google Video is cautionary tale for consumers

Last week Google decided it was no longer interested in participating in the online video sales and rental market and shut down the paid portion of its Google Video site.

Google opened its video store in January 2006 and sold video content from partners such as the NBA, NHL and CBS television. The videos ranged from $2 to $20.

With Google's $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube, it's hardly a surprise to see Google shut down its lesser service. It would rather focus its time and resources in profiting from advertising-based revenues it can generate from the millions of videos viewed daily on YouTube.

The problem is that any video purchased from the Google Video store is now 100 percent useless, because you will no longer be able to play the videos you purchased or rented.

Each video purchased via Google's online video store used a remote server to verify and approve the DRM (digital rights management) used by the videos sold on the store. Along with shutting down the video store, Google also shut down the DRM server that authenticated videos, so no video will ever be able to authenticate and play again.

DRM is not a new technology, and is being used in many different technology arenas. Any time you purchase a DVD movie, you are purchasing a disc with a form of DRM on it that prevents you from easily playing it in a non-US DVD player. If you've purchased music or video content from Apple's iTunes Store, you're most likely purchasing DRM-protected content as well.

When you try to play an iTunes Store-purchased song or video, you periodically will be greeted with a login screen asking for your iTunes Store and password. This is used to authenticate your rights to play this song much in the same way Google Video did with its online content. If Apple went out of business tomorrow, which is highly unlikely, the music or videos you purchased would no longer be playable.

Apple has recently been pushing for music publishers to allow the company to sell non-DRM crippled versions of their songs on the iTunes store, but only one of the big four publishers, EMI, has jumped on board.

These DRM-free songs are playable not only in iTunes, but also any other music player. What's more, they are not reliant on being authenticated against a remote iTunes server.

When you purchase DRM-restricted content online, you never completely own it, despite what companies such as Apple or Microsoft tell you. You merely own the rights to play that content under restrictions set forth by both the seller and the content publisher.

I hope that the demise of Google Video will be the wakeup call many consumers need and that they will think twice before they invest their money in DRM-crippled content.

Personally, I want the videos and music I purchase to be usable not only today but also 10 years from now. With DRM, I'm not so sure that's possible.

It's not all bad news, though. In keeping with its "Do No Evil" mantra, Google is attempting to make things right for the users who are no longer able to view their downloaded "Star Trek" episodes, by offering users Google Checkout credit in the amount equal to or exceeding the original purchase price.

The fact that the compnay is refunding users with credit with Google's Paypal competitor instead of cold hard cash leaves me with a sour taste. I suppose I can use my $2 worth of Google Checkout credit at the Mrs. Fields store to wash that taste out of my mouth.

Justin Williams is a local blogger and the owner of Second Gear, a local Web and software development firm. He can be reached at justin@secondgearllc.com.

Originally published in the Evansville Courier & Press

iWork introduces easy-to-use, worthwhile updates

Last week Apple released its latest update to its iWork personal productivity suite, featuring new versions of its Pages and Keynote word processing and presentation applications, as well as introducing a new spreadsheet application called Numbers.

Pages is Apple's word processing and publishing application that meshes the best of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Publisher into a single application. Pages comes with more than 140 templates to quickly create things such as a resume, garage-sale flier or course syllabus. Pages also includes native support for Word's change tracking, which is key for anyone who has ever collaborated on a Word document.

Keynote, Apple's answer to Microsoft PowerPoint, outshines its competition in every category. Keynote was initially built because of Apple CEO Steve Jobs's disdain for having to use PowerPoint during his presentations. Keynote's text handling is second to none, and its fluid slide transitions will make your PowerPoint-using brethren beyond jealous.

Keynote is the finest Mac application ever created. It has a beautiful, intuitive interface that is easy for the most novice Mac user to get started with, but also powerful enough to cater to more advanced presentation creators.

This year's revision of iWork introduced Apple's Excel challenger, Numbers. Numbers makes working with spreadsheets more accessible to regular people.

Numbers is compatible with Excel and its classic workflows, but more interesting than that is how Numbers breaks the paradigm of a spreadsheet being nothing but a matrix of rows and columns.

Numbers lets you create multiple resizable spreadsheet tables on a flexible canvas. Like the other iWork applications, Apple includes dozens of useful and attractive templates to quickly accomplish common tasks such as tracking expenses, generating invoices or building an A-plus science lab report.

With its latest update to the entire iWork suite, Apple has beaten Microsoft to the punch in having support for the new Microsoft Office 2007 file format.

Microsoft doesn't plan to fully support the new file formats until they release Office 2008 for the Mac in January. They have released a file converter to help open Office 2007 documents on your Mac, but if you're working with documents all day, it's tedious.

The speed improvement iWork offers over Office 2004 for Intel Mac users is astounding.

Microsoft Office 2004 is the last remaining major application to not release an Intel-compatible version of their software, which means that it is still running in the painfully slow Rosetta emulation layer that let's Intel users run PowerPC (G4 & G5) versions of their software.

Competitively, iWork undercuts Office for anyone that is looking for an office suite to edit their personal documents, but isn't interested in shelling out $400 for a full version of Office 2004. Apple offers the full iWork 08 suite for just $79.

With each revision of Apple's office suite, it has come closer to being a direct competitor and alternative to Microsoft Office. Mac users have always been paranoid that Microsoft could wake up one day and decide to stop releasing new versions of Office for Mac OS X. With iWork 08, Apple has released a suite that is compatible with Microsoft Office, but more importantly matches the personal productivity needs for 95 percent of the Mac user base.

With iWork 08, Apple's message to Microsoft is loud and clear: Bring it on.

Justin Williams is a local blogger and the owner of Second Gear, a local Web and software development firm. He can be reached at justin@secondgearllc.com.

Originally published in the Evansville Courier & Press

Wii has fresh gaming options

When I was growing up, my mother told me I was born with a Nintendo controller attached to my arm. I spent countless days and nights sitting in front of the TV mastering Super Mario Brothers on the original system It seems that some 20 years later, I'm still attached to video games. My gaming poison of the last few years has been Microsoft's Xbox 360. (The Mac guy using a Microsoft product? For shame!)

The 360 has a great collection of games and excellent high-definition TV support, and its online capabilities are second to none. Another benefit of the 360 is that it had a year jump on its competitors — the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii by being released in November 2005. Being out a year has let game developers put out dozens of excellent titles.

We're approaching the first anniversary of the launch of the PS3 and Wii, and I finally purchased a Wii. When the Wii initially launched, I had aspirations of getting one under the Christmas tree, but the systems have been nearly impossible to find locally.

The shortage is caused by high demand for the console, but also by Nintendo refusing to produce enough to meet demand. By having so few machines in the channel, the company can continue to brag that the Wii is so popular, you can't find one. Luckily, I finally found a lone Wii sitting at Target last week, and I snatched it.

The major selling point of the Wii is its unique controller. Video game consoles have traditionally had controllers with several buttons, triggers and toggle sticks. This is intimidating for nongamers. Nintendo wants to embrace a wider audience and instead uses a remote control to play games on the Wii. The Wiimote talks to your Wii by interfacing with a sensor bar that you place on top of your television.

To help bring home the difference between a traditional video game controller and the Wiimote, Nintendo ships each Wii console with a collection of sports games cleverly dubbed Wii Sports. Wii Sports includes bowling, tennis, boxing, baseball and golf.

To bowl, you go through the same motions you would holding a ball, except with the Wiimote. Tennis involves hitting forehands and backhands by swinging the remote like a racket at the TV screen. It's a workout if you aren't in shape.

Wii Sports is definitely the highlight of the entire Wii game current lineup, especially if you have a group of friends over.

If you've been itching to play a game of Tecmo Bowl on your old Nintendo, you don't have to dust off your 20-year-old console anymore. The Wii has the ability to download classic games from the Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis system. Playing older games with the Wiimote is a bit cumbersome, so I suggest buying a classic controller for $20 that has the layout of the Super Nintendo controller. If you have a Nintendo GameCube, you can play those games on the Wii as well using the GameCube controller.

Sadly, the third-party lineup for the Wii isn't nearly as great as it is on the Xbox 360. Games I thought would be fun on the Wii, such as Tiger Woods golf, were plagued with issues that come up with launch games. Tiger Woods '08 promises to fix the swing issues, so there may be hope for golf fans. Obviously if you are a fan of the standard Nintendo console characters such as Mario and Zelda, you'll enjoy playing those games, but there's currently not a game out there that has the "gotta have it" feel that many games on the 360 have. I do have high hopes for both Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Brothers Brawl, which will be released in November and December respectively.

At $250, the Wii is the cheapest next-generation console on the market by $150, and it is a bargain for the amount of fun it offers. I still prefer my Xbox 360 for the game selection and its ability to play DVDs and HD-DVDs, but the Wii offers a different style of game-play. There's definitely room for both consoles next to my TV.

Justin Williams is a local blogger and the owner of Second Gear, a local Web and software development firm. He can be reached at justin@secondgearllc.com.

Originally published in the Evansville Courier & Press