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Shooting with the Canon ESO 7D

I just spent about a month with the Canon EOS 7D, specifically to evaluate its HD video shooting capabilities. The results were very impressive, with amazing depth of field, and relatively low noise in low light situations. You can read my review here. Here’s a video I shot of my daughter Rosie, shopping online on my HP notebook computer. I’m …

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Interview with MPEG-LA’s CEO re: H.264 Royalties

I just got off the phone with MPEG LA President and CEO Larry Horn regarding MPEG-LA’s announcement that the AVC Patent Portfolio License will continue not to charge royalties for free Internet video through December 31, 2016. Here are the details of the Q&A. Ozer: You made a lot of folks happy today, Larry, congratulations. Horn: Thanks. We’ve been getting …

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MPEG-LA H.264 Royalty Policy for Free Internet Video – FREE!

MPEG LA’s AVC License Will Continue Not to Charge Royalties for Internet Video that is Free to End Users (DENVER, CO, US – 2 February 2010) – MPEG LA announced today that its AVC Patent Portfolio License will continue not to charge

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Streaming Producton – Improving Video Quality – the Video

This is a video from a session at Streaming Media West. In addition to the production/pre-processing and encoding tips, it’s a unique opportunity to see me – Jan Ozer – as a blonde, which I was for roughly 6 weeks last year (a Halloween thing). Here’s the agenda for the video to give you a rough idea of what I …

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YouTube’s “New” HD Formats

Last Friday, I produced a concert for old time band Allegheny Blue to test out the NewTek TriCaster TCXD300.  I uploaded a 720p file to YouTube to present to the band, and when I went to view the file, I noticed that the Google subsidiary had subtly changed the playback interface. Specifically, as you can see on the bottom right …

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Shooting for Slow Motion

If you want fast or slow motion in your video (like slowing this spinning ballerino), you have two choices: you can adjust the speed in your editor, which can produce interpolation artifacts, or you can adjust the frames per second captured by your camcorder, which should deliver higher quality. If you choose the latter approach, there are three components to …

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Windows 7 Performance for Streaming Encoding

A Windows 7 upgrade can cost more than $300 for the software alone — is it worth it if you’re a streaming producer looking to shave encoding times? Well, that’s what I detail in this article. By way of background, I had a great testbed for this – a dual processor, quad core 3.33 Ghz Xeon (Nehalem-based) computer from custom …

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Apple Soundtrack Pro Tutorial

As with video, it’s hard to capture audio perfectly. Fortunately, Apple Soundtrack Pro makes it easy to correct many common problems. In this article, I’ll detail how to remove pops and clicks from your audio file, boost volume via normalization, and remove background noise. Note that although Final Cut Pro allows you to perform some of these functions on the timeline, I recommend working …

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Webcasting for the Masses

Webcasting live events used to be complicated and expensive, but a range of products and services—some new, others that have been around for a while—have simplified live event streaming and made it much more affordable. In this article, I’ll identify the relevant live marketplaces and outline key companies and technologies to consider in each market. Let me say up front …

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Review: Microsoft Expression Encoder 3

Expression Encoder 3 is the encoding component of Microsoft’s Expression Studio, a five-product suite ($599 retail/$399 upgrade), and of Expression Web, a three-product suite that also contains Expression Web and Expression Design ($149/$79). Microsoft is also selling Expression Encoder 3 as a stand-alone product with a list price of $49. Seems like a good decision, because although there were some …

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