July, 2009

• 28 July

  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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• 27 July

  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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• 27 July

  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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• 26 July

  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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• 26 July

  Reflections on H.264 and Silverlight from a week at Stanford

  All’s been quite on the Streaming Learning Center front as I spent the last week teaching several courses on streaming media production and encoding at the lovely Stanford Campus at Palo Alto. Other than a quick sneak peak at the ne

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• 23 July

  The Moving Picture: Apple Final Cut Studio: the Breadth and Depth

  By now you’ve heard that there’s a new version of Final Cut Studio shipping from Apple, aptly called “the New Final Cut Studio.” What’s new? Well, it starts with a new price of $999, $300 less than Final Cut Studio 2. You can upgrade to the new suite from any previous version, even Final Cut Pro 1.0, for $299. All …

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• 23 July

  Apple Compressor – New Encoding Features

  Apple released the new Final Cut Studio today; what’s in it for streaming producers? Some nice workflow improvements, especially for producers of short-form content; for producers of long-form content, though, objects in the mirror may not be as close as they appear. More on that below. In terms of more mainstream uses, the big news includes Blu-ray output from within …

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• 16 July

  Producing H.264 files for Flash distribution with Telestream Episode Pro

  This video tutorial details how to use Telestream Episode Pro to produce H.264 video files for Flash distribution.

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• 13 July

  Chosing a camcorder for streaming production – 5 questions to ask

  If you bought a camcorder ten years ago, chances were it was DV and stored its video on DV tape. Three years ago, it was likely HDV and DV tape. Today, it could be any one of five or six HD formats (AVCHD, HDV, DVCPRO HD, XDCAM HD, AVC-Int

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• 13 July

  H.264 Scalable Video Coding – what you need to know

  Over the next two or three years, streaming producers will be increasingly tasked supplying optimized video streams to devices as disparate as cell phones and set top boxes, along with different quality versions for users accessing the con

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