This is apparently the first feature film to be uploaded on YouTube. Though according to their countdown on FourEyedMonsters.com it will only be on YouTube for the next 53 days (until August 15th).

The movie has already receievd a number of awards and is currently holding a 6.7/10 user-rating on IMDB. The Four Eyed Monsters movie is compiled and based on a video blog (series of video podcasts). I only had time to see the first couple minutes now at first, but hopefully I can eventually put off some time to see the whole movie online.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Via TechCrunch)

Chroma Player is a new movie player for the Mac, by MiraiLabs, that some say will be competition for Video Lan Client, VLC.

Although I am biased when it comes to VLC, I do not believe that Chroma can be a serious competitor for VLC. Chroma’s main disadvantage; you have to pay for it.
VLC has been my favourite movie player for the past years, mainly because of its simplicity, it always works, its user interface is not too fancy. Chroma has more eyecandy and some impressive features, that definitely make it a good QuickTime competitor.

Copied from Chromaplayer.com – Gallery

Personally without the possibility for transcoding and too much eyecandy its not an option for me yet.
Note all my opinions are from my first impressions from a distance; I have not been able to give it a trial run yet. So do take my critique with some scepticism.

(Via Mac1.no)

The coming block buster 300 which hit the US theatres March 9th, is made with a range of Apple tools. Here in Norway films don’t always hit our theatres before a couple of months. Trailer in HD can be seen here.

Although Avid was apparently primarily used for the editing, Final Cut Pro also edited its share. According to IMDB the Filmmakers preferred Macintosh, which explains the use of amongst others Shake and QuickTime.

Amongst other Trivia the film is shot almost entirely infront of “greensceens”, although technically 90% was in front of bluescreens and the other 10% in front of an actual green screen. The shooting was done in 60 days, though the post-production has taken almost a year, with about 10 visual effects companies.

(Via Baller Goods via Digg)

As rumored Apple aired an iPhone teaser at the Oscars last night. The so-called teaser can’t exactly be called a real ad, they have basically with an ounce of legal and copyright paperwork, whipped together a mixture of celebrity actors durnig the past 50 odd years answering the phone. And… saying, you guessed it: Hello!

The “teaser” can be seen here (.mov hi-quality).

Personally I feel this is a mediocre ad when it comes to design and originality, but at the same time it is a subtle hint of where Apple is wanting to take the iPhone. My previous ramblings on this very matter can be read in one of my older posts: Hoping Apple doesn’t iPhone.

And now back to looking forward to see some new and really innovating motion-graphical ads from Apple.

I have previously been rather pro iTMS (iTunes Music Store), and I believe in paying where fees are due, for various material, be it movies or music etc..
Currently I am residing in Norway, and I know many of my readers live in Europe, or in other words outside the United States. The US being the only country (correct me if I am wrong), where you can currently download TV series and full length movies from Apple’s iTMS. All this means that I have not seen any iTMS movies with my own eyes yet. Although I must admit a lower quality suspicion of movies ready for iPod video has been present. Now the-ish.com/blog has compared pirated material with material purchased on iTMS: iTunes versus Pirates. (Note: The compared material is from ABC material, and may not be applicable to other material.)

First comparison at the-is.com/blog

Second comparison

The first and most significant difference is that a great deal of the pirated material (still mainly TV shows) are appearing in High Definition (HD) quality, while material purchased via iTMS is still in Standard Definition (SD). (In my post Comparing 480p and 720p you can see some of the first hand differences between SD and HD material.)
Secondly iTMS material is in 4:3 and Pirated material is 16:9 (or widescreen). (Perhaps this is partially due to the fact that the iPods and still a number of computer monitors have 4:3 aspect ratios.)

However although this is a superficial comparison it does prove a point, restricting a materials quality, which can be purchased and costs money, will not exactly encourage more people to buy material if they can download better quality material for free. In addition restricting the material geographicly sadly only serves to boost piracy even more. My “superficial” conclusion is iTMS video quality must improve if they want more business.

Previous articles I have written related to iTMS:
Ad and iTMS Movies – Apple Follow-Ups
Domino effect for Apple’s iTMS?
(Via Mac1.)

Canon HV20 a $1100 HDV camcorder reviewed t hdvinfo.net. Some of its nifty features include: HDMI, 4-channel audio and 10x HD Lens w/ Super Range Optical Image Stabilisation. Canon’s 2.96 megapixel 1/3-inch CMOS sensor provides native 1920×1080 resolution.

Also found some lines written on the HV20 over at HD for Indies. And yes it will really boil down to what you need it for, with this 1/3 inch sensor you can’t have anything close to the quality of its big brothers, hence note the word consumer.

Gizmodo claims that the secret to making movies look smooth… as butter is the magical refresh rates.

Gizmodo looks at the correlation between film and the frequency at which LCD and projectors refresh them selves. Generally for computer screens the refresh rates have been a multiple of about three of the PAL systems 24 25 frames per second: 72 Hz.

Edit 1: After mixing some calculations, I accidently claimed that the PAL connection lead to refresh rate of 75 Hz. For detailed and more correct information check out PAL at WikiPedia. 

In one of the lectures I attended, I briefly heard of a quite impressive High Definition (HD) camera in the 2000px range. Just today I found an article over at Gizmodo on the Phantom HD camera, and they featured one of the first commercials shot with this HD camera.

Picture from Vision Research

The Phantom apparently has a shutter that is variable to 1/500,000 seconds, also you can select any frame rate from 1 to 1,000 fps. And I can’t quite seem to confirm this, but it seems to support 4:4:4 sampling. (If you don’t know what I am talking about, don’t worry. I might try and explain it some other time.)

Below is the ad hosted on YouTube:

Click here to view the embedded video.

A Gentleman’s Duel is a movie trailer clip from Blur Studios and has some of the ingredients that quickly captures audiences attention.

Personally I am greatly impressed with their 3d and characters. Even though I do not like to admit it, the sound and accompanied music enhances the experience even more. I am looking forward to see the whole short film.
Video below from YouTube.:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Somewhat in regards to my post on camera resolutions in “My Digital Camera 10 Years Ago…” this comparison page, compares the actual picture quality from movies in 480p vs. 720p. (Beware Pop-ups and rogue ads.) This screen capture is a very preliminary comparison, however it does show some of the advantages of High Definition (HD) pictures.

I would not exactly call this comparison a scientific one, as there is too little information provided surrounding the comparison. (I’m thinking compression etc.) This comparison does show the first hand differences especially in sharpness.

And I am looking forward to seeing more material in a higher definition. Though the transition is slow, it is definitely in progress.

(From my understanding 480p is derived by the NTSC format and tells us that there is 480 lines vertically, the P means that it is progressive. Progressive is contra to interlaced. LCD monitors are all progressive, and interlaced is from the old tube TV’s. 720p is basically a little better “resolution”.)