I cannot believe that some of the people on this weblog are so blinded with happiness by the idea of sticking it to the US that you are driven to mention the words "free" or "libre" with China in the same sentence! China is home to one of the most repressive regimes in the world! You GNU zealots with your communist agenda make me sick.
I think it's an outrage that something like Java gets to be put into Windows at M$'s expense, and we still have to deal with the crappy Windows interface.
Let's face it, they stole it from Apple. When will they be forced to use their own interface? Sheesh, even free projects like KDE and Gnome have been able to come up with their own look and feel. How hard could it be for a commercial software company with full time programmers?
And when does Apple get paid reparations for this theft of look and feel? I just think that if Sun gets theirs, Apple should be able to, too.
What's next? Should Microsoft be forced to include Mozilla with every copy of Windows? How about Linux? Should they have to include 1 copy of FreeBSD, Linux, BeOS and QNX with every sale of their Windows software?
Now, don't get me wrong, I hate MS as much as the next guy in the open source community, but doesn't this open up a slippery slope? Where does it stop?
Well, TI and something else. I've noticed on my HP49G, when playing around with RPN mode, that it's pretty easy to fuck up your order of operations if you aren't careful and you aren't familiar with RPN.
It's no South Park fantasy. It's the real thing, man. Well, actually, mostly speculation as far as I can tell, but check these out:
Throbbing Gristle was rumoured to have played around with their harmonics in such a way during one or two shows that their audiences experienced uncontrollable vomiting and presumably a loss of control of other bodily functions (heh).
A more general overview of "aural warfare" projects that were rumoured to have taken place is available here.
However, I doubt any of this could be achieved with MP3-encoded sound, what with its low fidelity and whatnot...
I thought the whole movie would be following along the lines of how the machines took over and came to power, but after viewing the trailer, it looked like it was going to be just another plotless shoot-em-up.
As an aside, did anyone else just realize what an appropriation of the Terminator universe the Matrix was?
Oh, I almost forgot. You don't need a progressive scan camera to be able to get that "film look" for your footage. The same thing can be done in software with video filters. As I'm most familiar with Final Cut Pro, I would like to now point you to Joe's Filters, where he provides a "film look" filter along with a ton of other highly useful effects and color correction utilities.
Also, while I'm on the subject of effects, I'd like to touch on a matter of personal taste. Don't use the canned transitions that come with editing programs, like wipes and dissolves. They are cheesy. Instead, go with an immediate cut between clips, a cross-dissolve or a fade out/fade in.
I'm currently enrolled in a broadcasting class at my high school this year after having taken a digital filmmaking class last year. We have done everything in Final Cut Pro (as we have Macs, and it is the best editing software for the money, period), and I handle most of the editing for the broadcasting team. I'm currently working on writing my own video filters and effects using FXScript in Final Cut Pro and generally learning a ton about it.
That said, here's the equipment that we use to make it happen:
a boom mic (I have no idea what model, but it cost around $300, I think)
a wireless clip-on mic (again, no idea what model, but it works well)
a bunch of G4 Tower workstations with Final Cut Pro 3 (though this is mostly because we have a ton of people doing different things all at once, you don't really need more than 1)
a dual 1Ghz G4 Tower with 1.5GB RAM on which we (I) assemble everyone's edited footage and export to video.
The Canon camera is our high-quality camera - we use it whenever possible, as the footage quality is much better than the Sonys. Also, what is probably its greatest advantage is the additional adapter module that attaches to the bottom of it and allows mic input from the boom mic and wireless mic (which have 3-pronged plugs instead of what most of us have on our computers). It comes with dials to adjust the mic input levels and such. This allows for an exponential leap in sound quality, as good mics cut out annoying background noise like humming, hissing and other general environmental noise. Don't use the cameras' built-in mics if at all possible, as these just can't get close enough to the speaker to cut out other noise and usually aren't very high-quality anyway.
We use Final Cut Pro mostly because we have the luxury of a lab full of mid- to high-end Macs, but also because it is an extremely powerful software package for what you pay for it. The only thing that really compares in that price range is Avid XpressDV, which is slightly more expensive, runs on Windows and has its own unique advantages. Some people will try to tell you to use Adobe Premiere to edit your footage, as it is less expensive than either of the two suites that I just mentioned, but I wouldn't recommend it. While I have not worked with it personally, my filmmaking/broadcasting teacher worked with it at the last school he taught at, and it gave him nothing but trouble.
Any serious video editing will require some serious hardware to handle everything smoothly. Tons of RAM (on the order of 768MB or more) is a must, and it is also desireable to get a dual processor machine (dual Athlon systems are fairly inexpensive if you're working on a tight budget and choose to go with a Windows solution). Also, make sure your machine supports FireWire. On any fairly new Mac, this is a given, and support for it is built right into OS X and has worked flawlessly for me. FireWire is pretty much the only way to do video capture well, as most, if not all, DV cameras support it and it is many times faster than USB.
The editing will take much longer than shooting any of your actual footage. Make sure to plan your time accordingly.
Also, if you want to get better image quality, see if you can find a digital video camera that uses BetaSP instead of MiniDV. They may be more expensive, but they produce a much higher image quality and consequently, look much better on NTSC monitors and TVs (I'm assuming you're in the US here).
As far as distributing your footage is concerned, I know that Final Cut Pro allows you to export the movie in several different formats suitable for online distribution, as well as printing back to tape and burning to DVD. Printing to tape is how we finalize our broadcasts, as we just hook up a camcorder, record our edited footage onto it, and then hook the camcorder up to the coax broadcasting hardware with component video cables. Beyond that, I don't have any experience. For DVD authoring, I know that Apple also sells DVD Studio Pro, which I've heard is an excellent DVD authoring tool.
I've learned so much in this past year of working with digital video that I'm sure there's tons that I'm leaving out, but I hope this is enough to give you an idea of what is required. Please feel free to respond with any more questions, I'd be happy to answer them.
That's ludicrous. I could go out and buy an Athlon XP or even a Pentium IV for half that price, and get twice the performance or better. Why the hell would anyone buy this?
I bet even the mobile versions of the aforementioned processors are cheaper and faster.
I think the big effects studios are moving to Linux, alright, but not for the free software. Most studios use high-end commercial compositing, rendering and modelling software (to name a few catagories) to get the job done (or they write it in house, like Digital Domain's Nuke). Most of them don't work with stuff like Film Gimp because it simply doesn't have the features that they are looking for right now.
Anyway, a large-scale replacement of artists' desktops is taking place, moving from expensive SGI hardware to faster, cheaper x86 hardware running Linux. This is why it is so important that high-quality drivers are available for high-end graphics cards in Linux, and, unfortuantely, the best for nVidia comes from nVidia in binary format. Monkeying around wtih the kernel's binary interface with each incremental release is not going to make nVidia's job any easier.
This may very well break some rather expensive commercial Linux products, but that doesn't seem to bother most kernel developers. Reminding the purveyors of binary modules that they continue to operate at the pleasure of the Linux kernel developers and their open-source licenses is seen to be a necessary (even enjoyable) task.
See also: quickest way to discourage commercial development on your platform.
Gee, do you think all these corporations who have been embracing Linux in these past few years will still be using it when they can no longer use their expensive software investments with it? I doubt there are reasonable open source alternatives for most of these applications, like video card drivers or movie production applications, for example. Good luck on getting more people to adopt your platform after that.
I forsee a massive move to FreeBSD if this bullshit continues.
Funny, though not primarily because it is absurd (that would make sense with any country). It is particular about Soviet Russia because it is poking fun at the totalitarian state that people felt was controlling them. Hence, the car driving you, etc.
Yakov's whole act pretty much fell apart after the Iron Curtain came crashing down...
Unfortunately, this was largely due to the large amounts of bandwidth unfairly utilized by the "power users" of the network, who used applications such as KazAA and Napster most likely to pirate music and other questionable activities. It is sad that we will no longer be able to get satellite TV here because a few people using DSL had to ruin it for everyone else by getting greedy.
Why can't people just take what they need, instead of running off with everything that isn't nailed down?
I am stunned that Real Networks would want to take such a viral model as the GPL and incorporate it into their own source licensing schemes. What could motivate a company to do such a thing?
They have a moral obligation to release their code under the BSD license, so that it is free for all to use and we don't get the jackbooted source code police busting down your door after trying to make an honest buck selling your own improvements to their source code. What a bunch of anti-innovation socialists.
Are they releasing their encoder as Open Source? I'd like to see the source, because otherwise, with including Ogg support and everything, they look like they're violating the GPL.
We better stop them fast before they steal any more of our freedom.
It seems perfectly reasonable to me. If these techs start offering tech support in their "free" time, they're pretty likely to start demanding that it be included in their "paid" time.
That would make the companies liable to make up for their employee's overtime wages that they never even asked for, imposing financial hardship upon them. So it only makes sense that they would root out the troublemakers in such a fashion.
Like in most creative pursuits (which most Slashdot users don't seem to be familiar with), the creativity of the user is far more important than how fast the hardware they're using is. Macs just work. I have never once had to deal with hardware failures or flaky drivers screwing things up on my Final Cut Pro workstation.
The creative process is nothing at all like hacking away at code. Believe me, I've done both. What you computer robots don't seem to understand is that we artists don't want or need to be interrupted by stupid things like taking half a day to get a CD burner running, or desperately trying to get our video card working properly with X-Windows. The Mac allows an uninterrupted, pleasurable working environment that is, above all, easy to use and intuitive, allowing me to execute my concepts more clearly without having some stupid interface get in my way.
It was never a pain when I was working with ink and paper, and it shouldn't have to be any harder when working in a digital medium. The End.
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I cannot believe that some of the people on this weblog are so blinded with happiness by the idea of sticking it to the US that you are driven to mention the words "free" or "libre" with China in the same sentence! China is home to one of the most repressive regimes in the world! You GNU zealots with your communist agenda make me sick.
Let's face it, they stole it from Apple. When will they be forced to use their own interface? Sheesh, even free projects like KDE and Gnome have been able to come up with their own look and feel. How hard could it be for a commercial software company with full time programmers?
And when does Apple get paid reparations for this theft of look and feel? I just think that if Sun gets theirs, Apple should be able to, too.
Now, don't get me wrong, I hate MS as much as the next guy in the open source community, but doesn't this open up a slippery slope? Where does it stop?
What's wrong with people just downloading it for themselves? This seems like unecessary government intrusion.
Or is this a Canadian thing?
"John Marshall has made his decision. Now let's see him enforce it."
Well, TI and something else. I've noticed on my HP49G, when playing around with RPN mode, that it's pretty easy to fuck up your order of operations if you aren't careful and you aren't familiar with RPN.
The weblogging phenomenon is an outpouring of talentless hacks putting up shitty websites to jump on the Interweb bandwagon.
- Throbbing Gristle was rumoured to have played around with their harmonics in such a way during one or two shows that their audiences experienced uncontrollable vomiting and presumably a loss of control of other bodily functions (heh).
- A more general overview of "aural warfare" projects that were rumoured to have taken place is available here.
However, I doubt any of this could be achieved with MP3-encoded sound, what with its low fidelity and whatnot...Man, I sure feel sorry for you modem users stuck with text these days. With cable and kazaa, I get all the porn flicks I want.
would be if they embedded these in Jon Bon Jovi MP3s.
As an aside, did anyone else just realize what an appropriation of the Terminator universe the Matrix was?
Also, while I'm on the subject of effects, I'd like to touch on a matter of personal taste. Don't use the canned transitions that come with editing programs, like wipes and dissolves. They are cheesy. Instead, go with an immediate cut between clips, a cross-dissolve or a fade out/fade in.
That said, here's the equipment that we use to make it happen:
- 1 Canon GL2 MiniDV camera
- a bunch of Sony digital video cameras (that's not the exact model, but close to it)
- a boom mic (I have no idea what model, but it cost around $300, I think)
- a wireless clip-on mic (again, no idea what model, but it works well)
- a bunch of G4 Tower workstations with Final Cut Pro 3 (though this is mostly because we have a ton of people doing different things all at once, you don't really need more than 1)
- a dual 1Ghz G4 Tower with 1.5GB RAM on which we (I) assemble everyone's edited footage and export to video.
The Canon camera is our high-quality camera - we use it whenever possible, as the footage quality is much better than the Sonys. Also, what is probably its greatest advantage is the additional adapter module that attaches to the bottom of it and allows mic input from the boom mic and wireless mic (which have 3-pronged plugs instead of what most of us have on our computers). It comes with dials to adjust the mic input levels and such. This allows for an exponential leap in sound quality, as good mics cut out annoying background noise like humming, hissing and other general environmental noise. Don't use the cameras' built-in mics if at all possible, as these just can't get close enough to the speaker to cut out other noise and usually aren't very high-quality anyway.We use Final Cut Pro mostly because we have the luxury of a lab full of mid- to high-end Macs, but also because it is an extremely powerful software package for what you pay for it. The only thing that really compares in that price range is Avid XpressDV, which is slightly more expensive, runs on Windows and has its own unique advantages. Some people will try to tell you to use Adobe Premiere to edit your footage, as it is less expensive than either of the two suites that I just mentioned, but I wouldn't recommend it. While I have not worked with it personally, my filmmaking/broadcasting teacher worked with it at the last school he taught at, and it gave him nothing but trouble.
Any serious video editing will require some serious hardware to handle everything smoothly. Tons of RAM (on the order of 768MB or more) is a must, and it is also desireable to get a dual processor machine (dual Athlon systems are fairly inexpensive if you're working on a tight budget and choose to go with a Windows solution). Also, make sure your machine supports FireWire. On any fairly new Mac, this is a given, and support for it is built right into OS X and has worked flawlessly for me. FireWire is pretty much the only way to do video capture well, as most, if not all, DV cameras support it and it is many times faster than USB.
The editing will take much longer than shooting any of your actual footage. Make sure to plan your time accordingly.
Also, if you want to get better image quality, see if you can find a digital video camera that uses BetaSP instead of MiniDV. They may be more expensive, but they produce a much higher image quality and consequently, look much better on NTSC monitors and TVs (I'm assuming you're in the US here).
As far as distributing your footage is concerned, I know that Final Cut Pro allows you to export the movie in several different formats suitable for online distribution, as well as printing back to tape and burning to DVD. Printing to tape is how we finalize our broadcasts, as we just hook up a camcorder, record our edited footage onto it, and then hook the camcorder up to the coax broadcasting hardware with component video cables. Beyond that, I don't have any experience. For DVD authoring, I know that Apple also sells DVD Studio Pro, which I've heard is an excellent DVD authoring tool.
I've learned so much in this past year of working with digital video that I'm sure there's tons that I'm leaving out, but I hope this is enough to give you an idea of what is required. Please feel free to respond with any more questions, I'd be happy to answer them.
I bet even the mobile versions of the aforementioned processors are cheaper and faster.
Anyway, a large-scale replacement of artists' desktops is taking place, moving from expensive SGI hardware to faster, cheaper x86 hardware running Linux. This is why it is so important that high-quality drivers are available for high-end graphics cards in Linux, and, unfortuantely, the best for nVidia comes from nVidia in binary format. Monkeying around wtih the kernel's binary interface with each incremental release is not going to make nVidia's job any easier.
See also: quickest way to discourage commercial development on your platform.
Gee, do you think all these corporations who have been embracing Linux in these past few years will still be using it when they can no longer use their expensive software investments with it? I doubt there are reasonable open source alternatives for most of these applications, like video card drivers or movie production applications, for example. Good luck on getting more people to adopt your platform after that.
I forsee a massive move to FreeBSD if this bullshit continues.
Yakov's whole act pretty much fell apart after the Iron Curtain came crashing down...
Why can't people just take what they need, instead of running off with everything that isn't nailed down?
The tenets of basic economics are hurting the legitmate consumers every time someone steals DVDs.
They have a moral obligation to release their code under the BSD license, so that it is free for all to use and we don't get the jackbooted source code police busting down your door after trying to make an honest buck selling your own improvements to their source code. What a bunch of anti-innovation socialists.
We better stop them fast before they steal any more of our freedom.
All you're missing are links to this product as seen on ThinkGeek.
That would make the companies liable to make up for their employee's overtime wages that they never even asked for, imposing financial hardship upon them. So it only makes sense that they would root out the troublemakers in such a fashion.
The creative process is nothing at all like hacking away at code. Believe me, I've done both. What you computer robots don't seem to understand is that we artists don't want or need to be interrupted by stupid things like taking half a day to get a CD burner running, or desperately trying to get our video card working properly with X-Windows. The Mac allows an uninterrupted, pleasurable working environment that is, above all, easy to use and intuitive, allowing me to execute my concepts more clearly without having some stupid interface get in my way.
It was never a pain when I was working with ink and paper, and it shouldn't have to be any harder when working in a digital medium. The End.