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Review: Kulabyte XStream Live 2.1

If you’re producing a live streaming event, you have three choices when it comes to encoding: You can hire out the work, buy a streaming appliance, or build your own streaming encoder. If you choose the third approach and want to stream HD H.264 video via Flash, Kulabyte’s XStream Live 2.1 Flash video encoder needs to be on your short …

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Lighting for Streaming

Without question, lighting is the single most important determinant of streaming quality. Shoot a well lit scene with a consumer camcorder, or a poorly lit scene with the latest HD wonder with 2/3” CCDs, and the consumer camcorder wi

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Silverlight Counterpoint

Earlier this week, I posted a column relating to Silverlight observations made while teaching a seminar at Stanford. My colleague, Stefan Richter, posted a snippet of the column on his site, www.flashcomguru.com, a premiere learning site for Flash de

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Liquid-cooled HP Z800 Workstation Test Drive

I produce a lot of screencams and other narration-type recordings, and workstation noise is a constant concern. I also have multiple computers around my office, most off testing some software program or rendering some project. While “cacophony” is definitely too strong a word to apply, less noise is always good. For this reason, I was excited when HP called to …

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Final Cut Pro 7:First Look Review

By now you know that Apple has launched an update to Final Cut Studio. I got an early look last week. The new version will cost $999, a reduction in price of $300. If you own any previous version of Final Cut Pro—even version 1, insisted the product manager in our meeting—you can upgrade to the new Final Cut Studio …

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Final Cut Pro 7 details and Screencam

Apple recently released Final Cut Pro 7 and I was fortunate enough to have an advance copy, from which I've produced the feature overview screencam that you'll see if you click this link. For more information on Final Cut Studio, you can read my f

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Review: Telestream Episode Engine

For VP6 and H.264 encoding, Telestream’s Episode Engine is fast and produces equal or better quality than most other streaming encoders. For those producing shiny optical discs, MPEG-2 performance and quality is also quite good. However, Win

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