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Flash – the George Bush of Web Technology

I didn’t vote for George Bush in his second term; truth be told, I wasn’t that keen on him his first term, but found him better than the alternative. But despite this opinion, I never felt it fair to blame him for all the awful events that happened on his watch. The Crash of 2000, Katrina, Enron, MCI, the sub-prime …

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Squeeze update: Opening multiple instances on the Mac

One of the tricks to speedy encoding with Sorenson Squeeze is to open multiple instances of the program and encode in parallel, which you could do on the Mac and in Windows through version 5.x. When I tested this with version 6, however, it no longer worked on the Mac. For this reason, when I reviewed Sorenson Squeeze for my …

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Ogg vs. H.264 – a real world view

Xiph, Ogg and Crossing the Chasm When comparing Ogg Theora to H.264, most reviewers have focused solely on video quality. But that’s only a small component of what it will take for Ogg to achieve mainstream success. I just finished my first foray into encoding Ogg Theora and I have to say that I was impressed by the technology; especially …

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Flash Player: CPU Hog or Hot Tamale? It Depends.

[Author’s note: In early May, Apple opened the API for Adobe to access the GPU for H.264 acceleration from within Flash. Click here to view details and some early test results.]In part, Steve Jobs stated that the iPad didn’t support Flash because it was a “CPU Hog,” so Apple used a technology called HTML5 instead. Since the comparative efficiency of …

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Shooting for Streaming – Five Key Tips

Five best practices for producing high-quality video. Anyone who’s ever picked up a camcorder and tried to tap into their inner- Spielberg knows that there’s a lot more to creating a high-quality, impactful movie than turning on the camcorder and pressing the red record button. The same is true with producing video for streaming. Corporate meetings are often recorded and …

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Streaming Production and Flash Delivery Workshop in Manhattan on March 23, 2010

Lisa Larson-Kelly and Jan Ozer will host the Streaming Production and Flash Delivery Workshop on March 23, 2010, at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. The workshop will feature two tracks, Streaming Production and Flash Delivery, each comprised of two ½ day courses. The workshop courses detail the complete streaming production and delivery workflow, from set design …

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Ogg vs H264 – Round One

Summary: This article is presented in reverse order, newest on top, oldest on the bottom. I’ve briefly summarized the goal and procedure, but you can read from the bottom up to get the background. Briefly, the goal of the exercise was to compare the quality of Ogg Theora with H.264 using two test files — one SD, the other HD …

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The Moving Picture: A Tale of Three iPads

Apple’s recent iPad announcement had a strong impact on three groups: broadcasters, technology enthusiasts, and just about anyone concerned with the survival of the newspaper industry. Since discussions in these areas provide a great view of the iPad’s strengths and weaknesses, I thought that I would detail them here. The iPad is best likened to a large iPod touch; though …

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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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