Laikos FilmArt

Okay,
This will be my first post for the year 2008, however the artwork come from year 2007. Lol, this is a malay wedding shoot in Taman Selasih kulim I shot about 2 months ago. I like the guys house because they have lots of orchid plant in front of their house. I shot this video with Canon XL1s, and edit it with Final Cut Pro 5.0, the final video was 45min, 4 min MTV, 10 Mins prayer ceremonial video. Took me about 90 mins to render the DVD using DVD studio pro on my iMac G5 20" (2.1GHz) loaded with only 1.5G RAM. So here's the MTV Clip enjoy.

(ps: sorry the song is not english)

Machinima has been around for a while but I've not tried to play around with it till lately when I start to play World of Warcraft (WoW) again. I got to make a few friend from the game and it is really fun and exciting. One great thing is that the game allow video recording and screen shoot of the screen without needing any third party application like many other games. Good job blizzard. Best of all it works on my mac too! So I met this Drenai Shaman from the land beyond and decided to have some fun with her. Check it out, a little cranky video I made using the World of Warcraft, not as impressive since I'm not that familiar with the game camera control and emotes yet.
Thanks to Kirachan of teh Fallen Legion

This is not really a video related post but I just want to share a tips I've learn at home and after some reading on dhcp manual.
the problem is that by default dhcpcd daemon will automatically overwrite

/etc/resolv.conf

Upon system restart if your ethernet (ethx) is configured using dhcp
The behaviour of the dhpcd daemon is controlled by the configuration file

/etc/conf.d/net

Gentoo Installation manual did not spell out how to prevent the /etc/resolv.conf overwritting
but here is my /etc/conf.d/net

# This blank configuration will automatically use DHCP for any net.*
# scripts in /etc/init.d. To create a more complete configuration,
# please review /etc/conf.d/net.example and save your configuration
# in /etc/conf.d/net (this file :]!).
config_eth0=( "dhcp" )
dhcpcd_eth0=( "-R" )



And here is my /etc/resolv.conf file

nameserver 202.188.1.5

The key to preventing the dhcdp from overwritting the /etc/resolv.conf file is

dhcpcd_eth0=( "-R" )

Okay, so home you all get your Linux box kicking with this

3 weeks ago I managed to shoot a Chinese Wedding Dinner and Tea Ceremony. That was my first job using the Canon XL1s. Overall I would say I'm very impressed with the camera performance. Three outstanding features of the camera are:
1. Low Light Peformance
The Specs said that Canon XL1s require 2lux minimum illumination. Well 2 lux is quite a low light as I can see. I've managed to get good quality images in the restaurant and outside the restaurant.
2. Microphone
The Canon XL1s does not come with XLR type microphone but the omni mic that come with the camera can produce good sound quality too. It does not have flange and echo as the normal MiniDV camera mic would.
3. Body weight and Manual Lens
This is the best part of the camera. Having Canon XL lens is priceless when you want to shoot DOF and do manual focus. Although the Auto Focus is a little slow but the speed is reasonable in most cases. The camera body is made of Magnesium allow and it is rather heavy for the size. That is where all the fun are. Having heavy body is good especially when shooting freehand (shoot without tripod/support). Heavy camera can help to reduce shake, for Canon XL1s, the Optical IS does help quite a lot too.
Alright so I wouldn't want to bore everyone with words, so here the highlight of the wedding I shot. (Made on my Mac)

Okay, I've been videocamless for a few months (3.5 months to be exact). So after the long agonizing wait I finally got my Canon XL1s. Ohh yea here it is, picture speaks a thousand words

It's been a while since I have time to play around with my faithfull Panasonic MD1000, today is a warn hazy day, however I decided to bring my videocam to go out just to warm up the machince a little.

It happen that there was my ND Filter in the bag and I fit it to the camera lens. Well what a interesting discovery, by fixing the ND Filter it is so much easier to create artistic DOF effect using this camera.

The ND filter I used is HOYA 52mm, 4X ND filter. I have to use step up ring to mount it to the 43mm MD10000 lens.
So I learn from SLR camera that to create DOF effect, the Appreature size have to be big, and F-stop value have to be small. Also, zoom to the Max. Basically narrow down the lens angle (if you are more familiar with SLT camera)

So, I set the camera to
Manual Mode:
AWB/MF - Auto White Balance/Manual Focus (Although, it's totally okay to use AF)
F=4.8
Shutter=1/125
Zoom=10X
4X ND Filter

Here you go, this is what I got.



As you can see, the effect of DOF is pretty obvious on the background image, and the foreground image is clearly in focus.
The application of this shots, you know what to do with it ;)

Labels: Kulim, laikos, Malaysia, MD10000, Panasonic, Videography

I've use MacMini and iMac Intel Core Duo before, by comparision,
MacMini uses Turtle Beach sound device, while
iMac Intel Core Duo of course uses Intel High Definition audio solution
and
Here comes iMac G5 it uses Burr Brown PCM3052 sound audio solution.

While MacMini sound is punchy, I found that the iMac G5 sound is even more solid. Well of course out of these 3, the one with not so good sound is iMac Intel Core Duo, (I suppose the same for iMac Intel Core 2 Duo too)

At first, I thought it is just my intuition however, I found this article which really make sense

from http://forums.vr-zone.com/archive/index.php/t-63998.html
rilsmartin
May 15th, 2006, 10:58 PM
Gents,

the iMac G5 is using PCM3052- it is cretainly NOT an AC97 codec as it uses good old I2S/I2C to communicate with the southbridge... For the note, AC97 spec limits the datarate to 48KHz/20 bits, so if the CODEC says 96KHz/24 bits, it just can't be AC97. Apple has never ever used the AC97 bus (which is a hardware implementation of the audio bus), but always the combination of I2S and I2C. For the note, AC97 is not even implemented in the southbridge!


PCM3052 is quite a high end codec that has not much to do in a computer: 8 level quantizer, 4th order noise shaping... It is a very similar DAC to the one used in most NAD cd players, and they have pretty good reputation.
The iMac Intel uses an HD-Audio CODEC that isn't as good- bummer! Lots of features, but quite poorly designed ADC and DAC sections...

The question to know what sounds best (Old iMac, new iMac or Audigy) is also a question of taste. Audigy is using a 8ch DAC from Cirrus Logic with good performance, while the old iMac is using a DAC from Burr Brown; they propose two different sound signature, and I would prefer burr brown for a better low end and slam.

Now the good news is... Terratec has a box called Producer Phase 24. It is firewire based, with pretty high end converters from Cirrus Logic (even better than the ones used on the audigy) and Terratec just released drivers in Universal Binary... It provides stereo in/out (electronically balanced), plus headphone out with volume control, SPdif I/O and midi I/O, all for around $250... It can also be bus powered (6W max) by all macs, including the iBook...

So, this really explain why...