Archive for March, 2008

Tripod alternatives for image stabilization

March 24th, 2008

This is a very interesting video that explains several techniques for image stabilization on your still camera or camcorder. They are all very inexpensive and their effectiveness varies.

The water bottle technique would be best if you are on the go (walking) but if you’re doing stationary shots, the string technique would best. Enjoy!

Here is another DIY camera stabilization solution that is a bit more involved.  It is a very inexpensive version of the Glidecam 2000, which is what we use for X7 Media for our videos using our Canon GL2 camcorder.

Comments

, , , , , , ,

Awareness test

March 20th, 2008

Comments

,

The Most Advanced Quadruped Robot on Earth

March 17th, 2008

Boston Dynamics has just released a brand new video of their DARPA-funded Big Dog robot.

This robot must be seen to believe… watch it all the way as it is kicked (and recovers), slips on ice (and recovers), jumps, climbs, and does all sorts of eerie things.  It’s so cool!

Comments

, ,

Atlas 5 secret rocket launch

March 13th, 2008

Ok, maybe it wasn’t a very secret launch, but its payload was.

“The inaugural launch of an Atlas 5 rocket from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base occurred as scheduled this morning, thundering skyward at 3:02 a.m. local time (6:02 a.m. EDT) carrying a classified national security satellite.” — Spaceflight Now

I went outside last night around 3am to watch it (I was working late anyways — I’m not that big of a space nut!) but it was too foggy and the street light in front of my house wasn’t good for light pollution, but check out this time-lapse photo. Very cool…

av006streak.jpg
Photo credit: Gene Blevins/LA Daily News

Comments

, ,

Improve YouTube video quality in FireFox

March 6th, 2008

While watching movies on the iPhone version of YouTube I always noticed videos looked better. I just thought it might be the smaller screen. With this new Add-on for FireFox, I think it confirms that there are different quality versions of videos at YouTube. In fact, according to Josh, this Add-on streams from video.l.google.com instead of youtube.com. This makes sense to me because Google videos always supported much better video quality. Perhaps the YouTube player on the iPhone does the same thing?

The Add-on for FireFox is called “Better YouTube Firefox extension” that really does improve the video quality of YouTube, depending on the video that was originally uploaded. I always upload videos in a better quality than is shown at YouTube, and I can confirm that it does work with a side-by-side comparison of two of my videos using Safari (left) Vs. FireFox (right) with the Add-on:

youtube-hires.png

(Click for full size and to see the detail in the “Jason G.” logo bug)
(Click here to use this video for testing)

(more…)

Comments

, , ,