Allan Tépper requests three improvements in iTunes’ podcast handling, plus one more thing

Dear Apple’s iTunes Podcasting Team:
We love podcasting, and we love the fact that Apple’s iTunes has helped to facilitate the growth of this relatively new medium since 2005 with iTunes 4.9. Congratulations on releasing iTunes 10 now, in 2010. This letter is to point out three key areas where you need to improve the user experience of podcast subscription and commenting, especially with regard to podcasting in worldwide markets and with its use with mobile devices, and in some cases where some of your competitors (i.e. Google/Android and RIM/Blackberry) already offer podcast subscription apps which are much more user-friendly than the current iTunes podcasting experience. Oh, and of course, there will be one more thing! Read the rest here.

Although it has been in existence for many years and is known to be among the best and fastest ways to connect local external hard drives or disk arrays to a computer, Apple strangely has been the only computer manufacturer to my knowledge which has not yet offered a direct eSATA port on any of its computers. Even way back in the Apple G5 tower era, I used to add eSATA ports to high-end video editing systems I integrated, and this of course has continued with the MacPro (Intel) era of Apple towers. The lack of direct eSATA port on all other Macs [iMac, MacBook(Pro), and Mac Mini] has sadly meant that video editors have had to settle with FireWire 800 speeds… until now. The highly respected OWC (Other World Computing) is now offering a US$169 custom modification to iMac 27” (mid 2010 models) to add eSATA, which untaps 3.3 times faster performance with an external disk array or SSD, compared to FireWire 800. This article will cover what the extra speed means to a video editor, how eSATA has been added to Macs before (with compromises), and the advantages of OWC’s new official upgrade plan. Read the rest here…

Click here to hear episode 4 of TecnoTur‘s English channel.

Universal Cable Productions’ Covert Affairs simulates Caracas, Venezuela from Toronto, Canada

In episode 3 of Covert Affairs, Universal Cable Productions simulated Caracas, the capital city of the South American country of Venezuela, both visually and linguistically (at least they attempted the latter). Covert Affairs is an enjoyable new series from USA Network (a division of NBC Universal) which last week broadcasted episode 3 (Southbound Suárez), where the protagonist Annie Walker (Piper Perabo) —a novice CIA agent— is sent to Caracas to carry out her third assignment. This article will describe a bit about that, and about Universal Cable Productions’ feat in simulating Venezuelan scenes, along with some cultural and linguistic blunders. Read the rest here.

As first covered here in ProVideo Coalition by Matt Jeppsen, Sony has just announced the NEX-VG10 as a first response to HDSLRs which have been used for HD video productions for quite a while already, despite their well known limitations. Fortunately, the NEX-VG10 eliminates several of those HDSLR limitations, while establishing some of its own, with its initial segregated progressive policy. This article will establish the details of these limitations, their workarounds, and the way a professional “big sister” will likely make them unnecessary, although certainly at a higher price. Read the rest here…

Karl Soulé of Adobe: little known benefits in Premiere CS5/Tamara Benavente & her short film Lost and Found

TecnoTur episode 3 (English) is now available. Tamara Benavente of Ellanvannin Multimedia tells Allan Tépper and the TecnoTuristas about how she produced her latest short film Lost and Found, using a Sony camera and Adobe Premiere. Then Karl Soulé of Adobe tells us about some little known yet extraordinary features in Premiere CS5.

You can subscribe free to TecnoTur via iTunes or at TecnoTur.us, or you can listen right now using this player below:

Now the Lumix GH1 can record 50mb/s MJPEG or 32mb/s AVCHD!

I first wrote about the Lumix GH1 in March 2009, and at that time, I requested a review unit from Panasonic. Then in June 2009, I wrote a followup article with a written interview with Panasonic’s PR department, to clarify several technical issues. Unfortunately, all of Panasonic’s answers were negative from a pro perspective. Over a year has passed; I still never received any review unit from Panasonic (while countless other manufacturers have sent me several products for reviews); and competitive cameras from Canon have come out, like the 7D and T2i, and Sony has shown similar models, at least in the consumer division. However, last week I heard that a happy hacker had modified the GH1’s firmware to permit 1080p internal recording, either 50mb/s MJPEG or 32mb/s AVCHD. Read the rest here…

Can editors and colorists finally scream: “Look Ma’, no professional i/o!”?

Anyone who has ever read the seven articles I’ve published so far about critical video evaluation —be it with the HP DreamColor monitor, or any other brand and model— knows why this process has traditionally required a professional interface to do this properly. Even Apple has warned about this, both verbally at NAB 2005 when announcing the Digital Cinema Desktop, as well as in writing, in Apple’s support article TA27705. This situation has affected other professional editing programs too. This situation has convinced many video editors —even those who now deal exclusively with tapeless footage— to buy a (seemingly) otherwise unnecessary professional i/o interface from manufacturers like AJA, Blackmagic, Matrox, or MOTU. Has this situation changed with Premiere CS5, together with 10-bit/30-bit DisplayPort or HDMI connections on computers? Read the rest here…

TecnoTur episode 2 (English) is now available, and includes an interview with Radio Lollipop, and with Matrox regarding all pro video announcements at NAB 2010. Brittany Smith of Radio Lollipop —an international radio network based in the UK, with affiliate stations in children’s hospitals throughout the world— tells TecnoTurabout her background in commercial radio, and her current position at Radio Lollipop. Then Rubén Abruña and Allan Tépper travel to NAB 2010 in Las Vegas and interview Wayne Andrews, a Matrox pro video product manager. Wayne tells us about ProRes422 encoding in Windows, compatibility with Avid MC5, and MAX 2.0 with scene analysis and VBR encoding.

• Allan Tépper interviews Brittany Smith of Radio Lollipop and Miami Children’s Hospital.
• How to send comments, questions, and testimonials to TecnoTur: call +1-305-668-8556 x133 or record the message yourself and e-mail it to us at audio (at) TecnoTur.us
• Rubén Abruña and Allan Tépper travel to NAB 2010 in Las Vegas and interview Wayne Andrews, a pro video product manager at Matrox, regarding new Matrox announcements, including MAX 2.0with its new VBR and scene analysis, and —for the very first time in history— encoding of Apple’s ProRes422 in Windows with Matrox OEM cards, and the new compatibility of MXO2 Mini withAvid MC5, in addition to Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe CS4 and CS5.

Immediate playback

To listen to the first English episode immediately, click here.

Free subscription in iTunes

To subscribe to the TecnoTur ’s English channel free via iTunes, click here, or search for TecnoTur in iTunes

In upcoming TecnoTur episodes

In upcoming episodes, you will find:

• The Castilian version of the conversation with Jorge Dighero and Ralph Messana of NewTek, regarding their TriCaster TCXD300. [The English version of this conversation appeared inTecnoTur (English) episode 1, and is still available.]
• A conversation with ExWex/Monogram, regarding their BCC. (English channel only.)
• A conversation with award-winning editor Norman Smith (Castilian channel only).
• More of Rafael Andreu and Ramm Productions (Castilian channel only).
• A conversation with Victoria Mesas García of Escuchalibros, regarding audiobooks. (Castilian channel only).
• A conversation with Tamara Benavente of Ellanvannin Multimedia regarding her short film Lost & Found (both TecnoTur channels).
• A conversation with Adobe regarding Premiere CS5. (English confirmed. Castilian pending.)
• A conversation with AJA regarding NAB 2010 announcements. (English confirmed.)
• A conversation with Blackmagic Design regarding NAB 2010 (both languages booked).
• More tech info from Allan Tépper, Rubén Abruña, Vanessa Brown, Tanya Castañeda, and Liliana Marín.

Alternate subscriptions & information

To see other RSS subscription options or reach the cast and crew, visit EnglishPodcast.TecnoTur.us

Castilian channel

To find out about TecnoTur ’s original channel in Castilian, and its cast and crew, click here.

When people first hear about MONOGRAM’s BCC (Broadcast Case) production TV studio in a box, some of them mistakenly assume that it is a copycat of existing portable TV studio systems that have been on the market for a while. However, as soon as they get closer or hear more about it, they realize that it is quite the contrary. I had never seen a touch-screen interface before on a vision mixer (“switcher”), let alone for an entire portable production studio with onboard audio mixer, character generator, 4:2:2 recorder, and H.264 video streamer. I had also never heard of one with an onboard intercom system, yet alone one that could even power the cameras over a unique combined camera cable, which unifies SDI (or HD-SDI), power, intercom, and even tally information in one very manageable enclosure. In this article, you’ll learn how unique and groundbreaking the BCC really is. Read the rest here.