Sd | Glenn Ward

Should we be filming in HD for corporate / presentation video output?

The time has come to make the decision. HD or not to HD? And for those still getting mixed up, HD is High Definition and HDD is Hard Disc Drive, be sure you know the difference when you are purchasing you video camera! For a few reasons I have still been shooting in SD (Standard Definition) for corporate and by corporate I mean presentation video output (video for PowerPoint etc) File size being one, especially as I have footage backed up from my edit suite to a server daily and then an off site tape backup. Also, shooting to DV tapes provided a simple short term backup solution. Many of the videos produced are also not to be viewed on a television but accompanying information on a PowerPoint slide, so is often shown at in smaller dimension.

The thing is, more and more, stand alone presentation pieces are played on the desktop or from an online portal with the ability to display at full screen, now obviously standard definition is 720 x 576 against most monitor screen dimensions being at least 1024 px wide, in which case a SD is stretched to fit the screen causing massive pixelation.

A point to note that file compression is much better than it used to be so producing HD videos as mpeg4 with a h.264 codec has less file size implications and doesn’t cause your machine to grind to a halt when you try and play it back on desktop software.

My final point in my HD or not to HD argument that is fast leaning toward A HD win is that of Hardware. Even prosumer HDD cameras like the Everio have moved away from mere TV playback through your AV cables but not record in edit suite friendly formats. This means, drag and drop functionality that saves hours on your production work flow and produces better output.

Review – Sony Dream Machine ICF-CL75IP iPhone alarm clock radio with 7 inch display

This Christmas I asked Santa for a new clock radio with an iPhone dock built in. My old one was perfectly alright but since it was built for the iPod it no longer charged my phone which had become quite annoying. My eldest sister rose to the challenge and being partial to my gadgets, I think had a little bit of fear of getting it wrong! But she got it so right!!

The new Sony Dream Machine and it is a DREAM MACHINE does everything I wanted a clock radio to do and a whole lot more, with a few nice touches thrown in there to polish it off.

Where to begin? Let’s start with the obvious! It’s got a 7 inch screen! As you know 7 inches is quite enough! And like you are wondering now and I was wondering as I took it out the box, is that merely a digital picture frame or can I watch movies through it? And yes, yes you can. The 7 inch display (800×480) allows you to watch your iTunes movies, video on YouTube, and even things like the iPlayer! Genius! and supports Mp4, M-Jpeg and Avi file formats. It also is a digital picture frame for when the machine is idle and this can easily be switched to sleep mode when you hit the hay with 3 taps of the snooze button.

The dock foe the iPhone pops out, spring loaded from the right hand side, you can control your music or video from the iPhone or from the dream machine. The sound is good and I’d so far to say more than you’d expect from a clock radio. Oh! Clock radio! The main function, it’s got a sweet clock radio that allows you to be woken up by radio, iPhone or sound of nature and matching image. One of the nice little extras is that you can set more than one alarm and adjust them from one button on either side of the display the alarms can also be programed to just go off over weekdays or just at weekends which if like me you are away most weekends saves having to remember to manually switch it.

The entire menu screen is based on the playsation 3 theme and is just as intuitive, you’ll get to grips with it with limited consultation of the instruction book.

The dream machine has 1 gig internal memory so that you can import photos, music and video. It has a USB slot SD slot and obviously the iPod dock.

The radio is pretty sweet an gets a better signal than the old clock radio I had in exactly the same position.

OK now for some negatives
The first USB stick I plugged into it could not be read, second one fine.
I cannot for the life of me figure out how to delete the sample pictures which is really frustrating having them on my little slide show.
Also, if the clock radio is on sleep mode and you drop the iPhone in you will get the this device is not supported error and it keeps flashing up but this is no biggy! Just tap snooze and drop the iPhone in again.