Here’s another video from an Adobe Evangelist explaining transcoding and why it’s not neccessary in Adobe Premiere CS5. I’ve explained transcoding in layman’s terms here on PCN in the past but it’s nice to see it done in context with bringing DSLR footage into an editing timeline. … Continue Reading
While researching H.264 hardware encoders for our upcoming book I came across this video from Richard Harrington about the Elgato Turbo.264 USB encoding stick for use with Final Cut Pro. … Continue Reading
Yesterday OSNews ran an article about the fine print in camera manuals that restrict creating video to personal use only:
You see, there is something very important, that the vast majority of both consumers and video professionals don’t know: ALL modern video cameras and camcorders that shoot in h.264 or mpeg2, come with a license agreement that says that you can only use that camera to shoot video for “personal use and non-commercial” purposes (go on, read your manuals). I was first made aware of such a restriction when someone mentioned that in a forum, about the Canon 7D dSLR. I thought it didn’t apply to me, since I had bought the double-the-price, professional (or at least prosumer), Canon 5D Mark II. But looking at its license agreement last night (page 241), I found out that even my $3000 camera comes with such a basic license. So, I downloaded the manual for the Canon 1D Mark IV, a camera that costs $5000, and where Canon consistently used the word “professional” and “video” on the same sentence on their press release for that camera. Nope! Same restriction: you can only use your professional video dSLR camera (professional, according to Canon’s press release), for non-professional reasons. And going even further, I found that even their truly professional video camcorder, the $8000 Canon XL-H1A that uses mpeg2, also comes with a similar restriction. You can only use your professional camera for non-commercial purposes. For any other purpose, you must get a license from MPEG-LA and pay them royalties for each copy sold. I personally find this utterly unacceptable.
Today, Engadget has their legal writer assure everyone that the sky is not falling: … Continue Reading
H.264 is a codec used to shrink down high resolution video for storing, viewing or delivery. Think of the codec as the cookbook and H.264 as the chicken section. In a cookbook, there are many ways to prepare chicken. You can fry it, bake it, broil it, make soup from it, the list goes on. The same is true for video. Once you prepare it, you can burn it on a DVD, broadcast it, stream it on the internet, make quicktime movies for iPods etc. You take the same ingredient (chicken or video) and cook it into something that can be consumed in different meals or in the case of video, different media applications.
H.264 is a cooked (finished) format like fried chicken is cooked from raw chicken. The fried chicken is finished and ready for consumption. You might be able to watch uncompressed video on the web if you have huge bandwidth and time on your hands just like you can eat raw chicken if you want to, but there are better options.
… Continue Reading
