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tugrikI didn't, really.
For the most part I've just chilled out locally. Dinners with the sisters, movies with friends, much lounging in sunbeams with the cats. I've come to the conclusion I really needed that. Once I got over feeling guilty and fretty for not having a 'real vacation' I found I was so much more relaxed. *flops on his side lazily*
Tomorrow I'm going to run up to the city with Revs and try to rent a JVC JR-GR10U high-definition camcorder from a pro studio rental shop. We'll drag it through the city and down the coast in the rain to get some nice high-def footage to experiment with. Something I've not posted about yet that I've done way too much thinking about recently is getting back into my old love of videography. Jumping in at the 720p/HD level would give me a nice not-so-overpopulated niche to settle into while I reacquire my bearings. As the camera and support equipment would require the sale of all my audio gear and 4 months of savings to get into, Revar had the right idea talking me into a day-rental or two to see if I really enjoy doing this again or not. Cheaper that way. And -- it may give us ideas for places to go on our "why the heck not" driveabout this week.
I should make this into another post, but what the heck. It's 3am and I'm sitting around being lazy company while Revar reboots servers. Maintenance is easiest during the low-usage hours; it's something my career has me quite used to.
My college degree program back at Ferris State University was double-sided: Computer Engineering and Television/Video Production. For a while I even paid the bills (and ate only ramen as a result) with computer animation and video production work. The transition from there to network engineering is a story for later. The video part was a bit painful, work-wise: the fellow who employed me did weddings as 90% of his work. If anybody wonders why I'm so jaded about weddings and all that surround them it's because after the 50th or so one you see just how much of these "special and individual" events are cookie-cutter moneymakers for some seriously dishonest and greedy industries... including people like my boss. Hmm. Yet more material for future posts. Back to the thread at hand.
In re-evaluating "things to do that are fun, creative and Not My Day Job", I keep coming back to videography. Now and then I take a stab at it. Two years ago it was producing a demo movie for my company that's still used at tradeshows today. Last year it was utterly destroying my poor Digital-8 camcorder trying to get on-bike footage of the BRAG trip. Poor thing vibrated to death. *sad droopy-whiskers* At the conventions that I do photo-work for I spend way too much time watching the video guys and gals do their thing. Seeing![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
higginsdragon do his editing work on the FC video two years ago was a vicarious pleasure. So, with the equipment being so cheap nowadays (compared to when I did it for schooling), what stops me?
The biggest part is being outclassed by those around me. I don't really like doing something unless it's satisfying, usually due to one of three primary conditions: Doing it Right, Having a Purpose or Doing Something New. "Doing it Right" involves scary-expensive equipment lists. The geeks-with-money crowd that attend the same conventions I do have that one covered far more than I'll ever let myself. I don't know where some of these folks get their money, but deeyaaahm. It's just a convention, folks! What's with toting $150k of production gear? :) This also affects the "having a purpose" segment: The purposes that are needing filled are being competed for by these folks, in spades, with equipment falling out of their arms as they run. So this leaves "doing something new". I've kept my eye open for that for a while, following up on some of the ideas. Thus my ill-fated camera destroying event while trying to rig up the camera for that bike ride.
Recently, JVC decided to slap around one section of the video industry: High Definition Television. Now, I'm a huge HDTV fan. Thanks to eager-to-share roomates we have two HD sets in the house and HD programming by satellite ( *tilts head and drools at the prettypretty pictures on DiscoveryHD* ). More than a decade ago, back at Ferris State, I got to play with early HD-analog equipment Sony was attempting to introduce. I've been dying to make my own HD footage since then. Current cameras go for $60,000 and up -- a bit of a barrier. JVC shattered that by introducing the prosumer JY-HD10U (~$4k) and its little consumer buddy the HD-GR1 (~$3.2k). They are definitely lower quality than the pro cameras, but they are indeed true 720/30p high definition systems. The tradeoffs in quality and datastream type are far outweighed by the low price. While the fully-pro side of the HDTV industry frowns on these cameras, those actually producing HD footage are falling in love with them as B-roll and knockaround HD cams.
High Definition (HD) vs. Standard Definition (SD) is more than just 'ook ook, more pixels'. It comes down quite a bit to how you use the screen. The widescreen (16x9) nature of things and the ability to resolve more fine detail in 'noisy' scenes mean the media lends itself well to more movie-like works. Outdoor vistas, complex cityscapes, detailed patternings -- things that are muddled or outright painful on NTSC systems -- become pleasing to the eye again. Close-ups on a subject show detail and feeling in the motion of the face, similar to filmed works, instead of the plastic sterility of waved about news-cams. You can get away with concentrating more on the places and the emotions instead of the shaky-cam whipped-by-fast action sequences. At least this is how I see it. And, if the moviework I did in college and the preferences I have in movies I watch today are any indication, concentrating on the environment of a scene is the kind of video production work I want to do.
So, yeah, I'd love one of these cameras. At first, just to document things. The drives, the rides, the pretty sights around home. Just like every other camera-waving tourist, but with more clarity. If I could make the fascination stick and develop back towards my old love of the media, I could get back to producing short stories for the screen again. That's the hope, anyway. And, for events I'd want to help out at (like the conventions I go to)... nobody's really shooting in Hi Def. It's an open niche. It's doing something new, taking me out of the "dang it, I'm competing" feeling I get around the tons of others shooting video.
The end result wouldn't go too far, though. Distributing HD isn't exactly easy. D-VHS decks aren't in very many homes, and there is no proper HD-DVD format consumer available yet. This is part of why I'm going to rent a camera and take batches of test-footage to fuss with. For now I'll keep the video in on-harddrive format and do drops at 480p to DVD. Friends with studly enough computers should be able to play back the native file format if they wanted to see it, and Revar's new Roku-HD1000 should play the MP@ML streams just fine. The goal will be to see how well the final output, be it DVD or computer-displayed, goes over. Will it be 'oh, video, whatever', or will it be 'oooh, that looks good!' ? I'm as curious of my own reaction as I am of my friends'.
If nothing else, the rental should be fun equipment-geekery. If it doesn't stick and I walk away from videography again, at least I'll have done so without blowing a lot of cash. And, if it sticks? I could really use another creative outlet. Creating things makes me feel a lot better. And, it keeps me from taking it out on everybody with 4-yard-long livejournal posts. :)
For the most part I've just chilled out locally. Dinners with the sisters, movies with friends, much lounging in sunbeams with the cats. I've come to the conclusion I really needed that. Once I got over feeling guilty and fretty for not having a 'real vacation' I found I was so much more relaxed. *flops on his side lazily*
Tomorrow I'm going to run up to the city with Revs and try to rent a JVC JR-GR10U high-definition camcorder from a pro studio rental shop. We'll drag it through the city and down the coast in the rain to get some nice high-def footage to experiment with. Something I've not posted about yet that I've done way too much thinking about recently is getting back into my old love of videography. Jumping in at the 720p/HD level would give me a nice not-so-overpopulated niche to settle into while I reacquire my bearings. As the camera and support equipment would require the sale of all my audio gear and 4 months of savings to get into, Revar had the right idea talking me into a day-rental or two to see if I really enjoy doing this again or not. Cheaper that way. And -- it may give us ideas for places to go on our "why the heck not" driveabout this week.
I should make this into another post, but what the heck. It's 3am and I'm sitting around being lazy company while Revar reboots servers. Maintenance is easiest during the low-usage hours; it's something my career has me quite used to.
My college degree program back at Ferris State University was double-sided: Computer Engineering and Television/Video Production. For a while I even paid the bills (and ate only ramen as a result) with computer animation and video production work. The transition from there to network engineering is a story for later. The video part was a bit painful, work-wise: the fellow who employed me did weddings as 90% of his work. If anybody wonders why I'm so jaded about weddings and all that surround them it's because after the 50th or so one you see just how much of these "special and individual" events are cookie-cutter moneymakers for some seriously dishonest and greedy industries... including people like my boss. Hmm. Yet more material for future posts. Back to the thread at hand.
In re-evaluating "things to do that are fun, creative and Not My Day Job", I keep coming back to videography. Now and then I take a stab at it. Two years ago it was producing a demo movie for my company that's still used at tradeshows today. Last year it was utterly destroying my poor Digital-8 camcorder trying to get on-bike footage of the BRAG trip. Poor thing vibrated to death. *sad droopy-whiskers* At the conventions that I do photo-work for I spend way too much time watching the video guys and gals do their thing. Seeing
higginsdragon do his editing work on the FC video two years ago was a vicarious pleasure. So, with the equipment being so cheap nowadays (compared to when I did it for schooling), what stops me?The biggest part is being outclassed by those around me. I don't really like doing something unless it's satisfying, usually due to one of three primary conditions: Doing it Right, Having a Purpose or Doing Something New. "Doing it Right" involves scary-expensive equipment lists. The geeks-with-money crowd that attend the same conventions I do have that one covered far more than I'll ever let myself. I don't know where some of these folks get their money, but deeyaaahm. It's just a convention, folks! What's with toting $150k of production gear? :) This also affects the "having a purpose" segment: The purposes that are needing filled are being competed for by these folks, in spades, with equipment falling out of their arms as they run. So this leaves "doing something new". I've kept my eye open for that for a while, following up on some of the ideas. Thus my ill-fated camera destroying event while trying to rig up the camera for that bike ride.
Recently, JVC decided to slap around one section of the video industry: High Definition Television. Now, I'm a huge HDTV fan. Thanks to eager-to-share roomates we have two HD sets in the house and HD programming by satellite ( *tilts head and drools at the prettypretty pictures on DiscoveryHD* ). More than a decade ago, back at Ferris State, I got to play with early HD-analog equipment Sony was attempting to introduce. I've been dying to make my own HD footage since then. Current cameras go for $60,000 and up -- a bit of a barrier. JVC shattered that by introducing the prosumer JY-HD10U (~$4k) and its little consumer buddy the HD-GR1 (~$3.2k). They are definitely lower quality than the pro cameras, but they are indeed true 720/30p high definition systems. The tradeoffs in quality and datastream type are far outweighed by the low price. While the fully-pro side of the HDTV industry frowns on these cameras, those actually producing HD footage are falling in love with them as B-roll and knockaround HD cams.
High Definition (HD) vs. Standard Definition (SD) is more than just 'ook ook, more pixels'. It comes down quite a bit to how you use the screen. The widescreen (16x9) nature of things and the ability to resolve more fine detail in 'noisy' scenes mean the media lends itself well to more movie-like works. Outdoor vistas, complex cityscapes, detailed patternings -- things that are muddled or outright painful on NTSC systems -- become pleasing to the eye again. Close-ups on a subject show detail and feeling in the motion of the face, similar to filmed works, instead of the plastic sterility of waved about news-cams. You can get away with concentrating more on the places and the emotions instead of the shaky-cam whipped-by-fast action sequences. At least this is how I see it. And, if the moviework I did in college and the preferences I have in movies I watch today are any indication, concentrating on the environment of a scene is the kind of video production work I want to do.
So, yeah, I'd love one of these cameras. At first, just to document things. The drives, the rides, the pretty sights around home. Just like every other camera-waving tourist, but with more clarity. If I could make the fascination stick and develop back towards my old love of the media, I could get back to producing short stories for the screen again. That's the hope, anyway. And, for events I'd want to help out at (like the conventions I go to)... nobody's really shooting in Hi Def. It's an open niche. It's doing something new, taking me out of the "dang it, I'm competing" feeling I get around the tons of others shooting video.
The end result wouldn't go too far, though. Distributing HD isn't exactly easy. D-VHS decks aren't in very many homes, and there is no proper HD-DVD format consumer available yet. This is part of why I'm going to rent a camera and take batches of test-footage to fuss with. For now I'll keep the video in on-harddrive format and do drops at 480p to DVD. Friends with studly enough computers should be able to play back the native file format if they wanted to see it, and Revar's new Roku-HD1000 should play the MP@ML streams just fine. The goal will be to see how well the final output, be it DVD or computer-displayed, goes over. Will it be 'oh, video, whatever', or will it be 'oooh, that looks good!' ? I'm as curious of my own reaction as I am of my friends'.
If nothing else, the rental should be fun equipment-geekery. If it doesn't stick and I walk away from videography again, at least I'll have done so without blowing a lot of cash. And, if it sticks? I could really use another creative outlet. Creating things makes me feel a lot better. And, it keeps me from taking it out on everybody with 4-yard-long livejournal posts. :)
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no subject
Date: 2003-12-29 10:28 am (UTC)And hey, if it's geekery without expensive commitment right off the hop, then all the better. :)
Glad your vacation turned out enjoyable. :>
-Whitewater
no subject
Date: 2003-12-29 01:00 pm (UTC)While I don't know about dropping the cash for a HD camera, I've been off and on pondering saving up the money for a Large Format camera. Twenty square inches or more of film goodness for each picture.
And unlike a "professional" model 35mm SLR, or a medium format camera, large format can be had for less than even the new canon digital SLR. (New 4x5's start in the $5-700 range, and used cameras can be had for even less)
Give it a try and let us know how it comes out!