Friday June 4th:

Saturday June 5th:

Sunday June 6th:

Tremulous

Nexuiz

Urban Terror

More Details:

If anyone would like to help us coordinate the live game play session for LAS, host a game, etc, please let me know!

And my favorite part, the tech section.

Until now, for the most part, the “flip cam market” of cameras has been a bit underwhelming, they’ve just mostly been “ok” but lacked some very nice features.

Kodak’s trying to answer those missing features with their new Kodak Zi8 and it’s 1080p resolution, HDMI output, Mic in jack, and face detection support.

On top of 1080p (at 29.97 frames per second), it also offers a 720p resolution mode, with 60 frames per second which looks kinda amazing.

I cover all the details in my video review:

Some of the other features that I really dig about this camera include:

• Expandable SD/SDHC card slot up to 32 GB; Rechargeable batteries and charger included
• Vibrant 2.5-inch viewfinder; Watch footage on HDTV with included cables
• 10 hours of HD video (Record ~20 min per 1 GB at 720p HD at 30 fps) with the expandable SD/SDHC Card slot that can hold up to 32 GB

What’s in the Box:

• Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camera
• KLIC-7004 Li-Ion Rechargeable Battery
• Adapter and cable for battery charging
• HDMI and AV cables
• Wrist strap
• User’s Guide
• ArcSoft MediaImpression Software for Kodak (on-camera)

It’s a great little unit that I am really impressed with! I plan to pair it with my shotgun mic, and mount the mic and camera in a handy flash bracket with a hand grip.

If you decided to pull the trigger and pick up the Kodak Zi8 and want to go through Amazon, you can grab it here with my affiliate link!

In the last Microphone review I did in early 2009, the microphone I heard to most feedback on was the Blue Snowball, and rightly so. The Blue Snowball is a classy looking microphone with some great features. USB means you can simply plug it in and start podcasting right away (with some issues under Linux).

With the many advantages to USB and the obvious popularity, I set off to research and try out the absolute best USB podcasting Microphone. If you’d like to see my take on a few fantastic non-USB mics, check out my review on those.

I’ll be comparing what might just be two of the best selling USB Microphones, Blue’s Snowball and the Rode Podcaster.

Watch my In Depth Look video for even more details:

The Blue Snowball:

Starting with the Blue Snowball, it has a few features I love, with it’s exaggerated 1920’s classic look. Some of the great features  include:

• Three operational modes, standard audio level, -10db pad, and a room mode. The room mode is great for using a single mic for a couple people… Though I find the quality takes a noticeable hit (see video for more). Over all I tend to really only find my self using the first main mode, unless I’ve setup a co-host with the Snowball, and he or she needs a little help keeping those levels in check.
• The Blue Snowball is probably one of the most prolific mics on the market, so support is wide spread. This has not led to very solid Linux support, but it is usable out of the box on Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Overall I find the Blue Snowball to have a very true sound, if not a bit t00 thin that can’t really be fully restored in post without a lot of extra work. I find the stand the Blue Snowball comes with nearly useless, it’s too short and built cheap, however the hole the stand mounts into is a standard mic pole socket, so you can easily mount the Snowball to any standard mic mount.

The new contestant for my label of “best podcasting microphone” is the Rode Podcaster. It has a more serious look and design, I can tell that Rode was aiming for a pro look and feel, and I think they nailed it. It’s a hefty microphone, nearly 2lbs in weight, with a metal body and it has a really good solid feeling in your hand – though that extra heft can be felt in your laptop bag if you’re traveling and want to record on location.

The Rode Podcaster:

The Rode Podcaster has a few really great features that I feel put this microphone in a category of its own for the consumer market, such as:

• The number one feature is the built in microphone jack. This means you can monitor your audio live, without the delay from USB. Something not possible with nearly all USB microphones and is such a critical way to avoid regretting a horrible recording session that could have been avoided with simply monitoring what was going into your recorder. The headphone jack being built into the mic means no delay, which is critical so your not finding your self getting tripped up by hearing your self on a strange delay. It does odd things to the brain.
• Not content with just acting as headphone jack to monitor your self, the headphone jack also shows up as a USB audio output device on your computer. This means when your doing a Skype call, you can set Skype to send audio to that jack, so you don’t end up picking up the bleed from your desktop speakers on your mic. Direct monitoring and Audio out ability can really improve the quality of your recordings.
• Overall I think the Rode has a great sound, it can be a bit quiet, so be sure you have your levels set right. But it’s always safe to error on the side of quite audio, you can boost that.. You can’t fix your recording if you clip out the entire time and blast the recorder with too much level.
• Last but far from least, the Rode Podcaster is a top fire-end mic, with a very narrow pickup range. What the heck does that mean? It means you talk into the top of it, not the side of it quite simply. The advantage is it’s not awkward to use if you put it on a mic stand or boom.  As for the narrow pickup range (this is better demonstrated in the video) stuff that is not directly in front of the mic, is hardly picked up. This is key if you are recording in a noisy room with PC fans, other background sounds, or have other hosts around you. One of the often missed causes of a bad sounding recording is when your hosts are picked up by the other hosts mics. Because they are not directly in front of the mic next to them that is picking them up, their voice has a poor sound quality, it gets mixed into the overall recording, and BOOM, you have some element in your recording killing your quality that is kind of hard to track down and figure out.

The Rode Podcaster does not come with a stand, so you’ll need something to mount it on. You can go with something simple and cheap, like a desk stand that sits right on your desk or a mic boom that clamps to your desk and lets you adjust the mic around to better fit how you are sitting. The desk stand also tends to transfer any noise on your desk into the mic, the mic boom can do this as well, but when you combine the boom stand with a shock mount, you can almost totally eliminate this issue.

To really get setup right, I’d recommend a boom and shock mount. I contacted the folks over at The DVeStore.com (whom I got my Rode Podcaster from) and told them I was doing this review. They put together a full Rode Podcaster bundle that induces the Mic, boom stand, and shock mount for a great price. I don’t make anything off their sales (unlike the Amazon links above), I just know them and been happy with the service.

The One:

Over all I am giving the crown for the “Best Podcasting Microphone” to the Rode Podcaster, it’s built in headphone monitor, support for Windows, Linux, and Windows (Linux & Vista/Win7 after a firmware update) really make this a fantastic mic. When you factor in it’s high-end sound quality, exceptional build quality, and Rode’s reputation for making great mics -  it’s a clear winner!

News is out that the W3C won’t mandate what codecs must be supported by a browser as part of the HTML 5 spec.

They state:

Now the bit there about Apple worrying about patents in Theora peaks my interest, but only because I had an actual IP lawyer say the same thing to just a little while ago, but just that he has “concerns”.. I’m starting to think lawyers every where say that about everything just because it leaves the door open for them to make a few extra dollars (hello Mono).

But that aside, I wanted to talk about another aspect of all of this:

One of the things that really bugs us Linux guys is how the fanboi tards of Apple and Microsoft (does MS have fanbois besides guys like Paul Thrott?) is the way they latch on to buzz words from he company, and then regurgitate them when ever they are challenged for details, or are preaching their path to salvation to someone when they really have no idea of the real technology behind that buzzword or if it truly is that great of a implementation.

But here’s the thing everyone, I’m starting to really come to the overall conclusion that OGG is just becoming an OSS buzzword.


Hear me out:

1. OGG is not even a codec. It is a container that can hold a codec… You could put MP3 audio inside an OGG container. But you hear people chant on about OGG and not Vorbis or Theora. When someone talks about Ogg being a “good codec,” it demonstrates the kind of impractical, blind bias for free-sounding buzzword projects.


2. Keeping things focused on the video side, since that’s what the <video> tag has the most potential for, lets discuss the issue of quality.

I look at video codecs in a cost per-bitrate kind of math. As in, if to make video X look decent at say 960×540 I need to have that video in 512kbps in one codec, and 768kbps in another, that codec that requires a higher bitrate is going to cost me more in bandwidth since it will have a large file size, transfer time for my self to upload and my viewer to download, and a higher cost in storage for my self, my server, and my viewer.

The original Theora codec came from On2, and was called VP3. On2 created VP3 in an attempt to compete with H.263 and is a very old design. To make matters worse, Theora has recently seen some really great improvements in it’s bitrate to quality ratio but because these improvements are not official, and not yet shipping in any software encoder that support Theora (without building your own source) we don’t get to see the improvements.

Even with these improvements, after real world tests by people who know how to get the best out of each type of codec Theora still falls flat. It simply is an old codec designed for last generations video.

See these examples comparing the latest Theora to the latest x.264 and VC-1: http://cid-bee3c9ac9541c85b.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public/BBB|_Compare


3. H.264 video with AAC Audio is a great combination that is here today, and has a fantastic Open Source implementation in x.264.

This is the thing that really stumps me. x.264 is damn good. Amazing file size for quailty. I can put out a 720p (that’s 1028×720) x.264 encoded video with a smaller file size than a Theora 540p (960×540) video. If you follow me there, I am saying I can put out an HD video and a standard deff version in Theora, and the Theora will have a larger file size than the HD version. On top of that, the Theora codec loses more color detail, and won’t play back on a fraction of the systems, when you consider non-Linux desktop machines and devices.


Does h.264, AAC, or the OSS implementation of x.264 have patent issues? Maybe… Who cares? As a viewer of a video, you are not liable for any infringement, it’s possible the producer of that content could be. But even as a producer, I’d have to be a crazy person with a tinfoil hat to think that some coalition that represents dozens of companies worth billions of dollars is going to come after little old Chris Fisher. It’s just not worth it to them. Not to mention by the time they got down my driveway I’ll have already apt-get remove’d my gstreamer-ugly codecs.

The other flip side of the up hill argument that OGG Vorbis and Theora fanbois have to fight is that professional content producers don’t have to worry about the patent issues ether. When you buy Apple’s $2,500 Final Cut studio, or Adobe’s near $3k CS4 suite, they come covered. Apple and Adobe (and all the other makers of those types of software) have bought and paid for the distribution license.

From the angle of the hardware playback manufactures (like say, Popcorn hour, or TiVo), the cost for them to legally have a hardware based chip decoder is well under $1. So they look at the situation and thing, “well… That lawyer guy we pay $475 an hour says he has concerns… Or we pay less that the cost of a cup of coffee and we have a legal contract that says we are covered with h.264!”.

I don’t understand why we let these patent concerns in the OSS world cock block us so often, and then other times blatantly ignore them. Especially given our proven track record of being able to re-implement (ACPI, SysV, VFAT), adapt and move on so quickly.


You see it in every mainstream device running Linux today, The Palm Pre, the TiVo, the Android phones, on and on, all of these Linux devices support tons of codecs except for Theora. HELL – The new Popcorn C200 is DROPPING support for Theora from the previous model.

I feel like just shouting out on the top of a mountain MOVE ON everyone. Ogg Vorbis and Theora need to DIE. They just don’t hold up to AAC and X.264. They are practically dead right now anyways. Let them go in peace!

ANDD…. END OF RANT.


Now allllll of that said, I still want to implement Theora video using <video> tag for browsers that support it, with a fallback to flash for those who don’t. WHY after all of that above? Because I want make the content that we produce available in as many ways as those consuming that content want it. Plus I work my ass off to make the Ogg Theora versions, and they get a tiny tiny fraction of the downloads… So… I hope the <video> tag will make my efforts a little more worth while.

Let me know what you think… Am I way off base? Have I given you something to ponder? Or maybe you are way ahead of me, ether way let me know! I’ve started a forum thread to get your input!

(Cross-posted on the Jupiter Broadcasting Forum)

So what the heck is Flowplayer? Well if you ask Wikipedia it sounds like just another dang Flash player:

“Flowplayer is a video player for the World Wide Web. It allows users to embed video streams on their personal web pages. It is an open source project with a GPL 3+ license. Commercial versions are also available. Commercial versions allow users to add their own logos. It can play flash video.”

But let me tell you, it is so much more:

I don’t think I’ve ever been giddy over a video player until I meant my new crush, Flow. On top of being awesome (which I’ll get into in just a sec) it is an open source project with a GPL 3 license.  They also offer a few flavors of a commercial license that let you fully brand the player, and of course, support them with some cash.

Flowplayer’s real power comes in it’s advanced scripting options, their API is object-oriented and not just a flat list of functions. They have what is known as an event model, allowing you to link custom functionality to every player event (such as play, pause, rewind, stop). And if you are a jQuery user you will be delighted by the seamless way in which Flowplayer and jQuery work together.

On top of the incredible power that JavaScript and jQuery give you, they also have built in plugin support to Flowplayer. Some already-existing plugins allow you to, for example, place HTML content over the video when the playback ends, or implement custom playlists using only basic HTML skills, detect the viewers available bandwidth and dynamically select the best bit-rate for them. If you really want to go crazy, you can build (or use their free examples) all of the player’s controls out of HTML.

How am I using Flowplayer:

LIKE A PRO, that’s how! My day job wants to start creating tech help videos for our clients, and the general Internet audience. We kicked around the idea of hosting the flash version of our videos on YouTube, but we are worried that people leaving comments might scare our audience away (these are not computer savvy types), I am a big fan of blip.tv and started going that route with our videos. But in the end I realized that for a commercial company we need to have more control and flexibility… I realized I was going to have to roll my own solution.

My solution (note: files are hosted on Amazon S3):

1.    On initial page load, instead of loading the resource heavy flash player and flash, it loads a place holder image with a play button. This means our pages load FAST, and peeps with slower PC’s don’t take a performance hit on our page (a very common problem on Jupiter Broadcasting with all the flash videos).
2.    Using my mad skills, I got the Flowplayer plugin working that detects your bandwidth, and sends you one of three versions of the video, most appropriate for your connection speed. So we won’t be slamming client’s networks with our videos if they can’t handle them.
3.    Using Flowplayer’s ability to accept JavaScript commands, I have setup a central config file that all the players on our site will read from. So we can change all the players color themes, size, streaming properties, you name it, in one single config, and all the players will update. Even years down the road, with a huge video archive, they will all update. That? That’s called EPIC. HUGE. EPIC.
4.    That central config also means we can change out the pre and post roll ads, or even just turn them all on at any point.. So again, all flash videos on our site will always be able to feature our latest promos. Or if we want, we can override and setup a on-off video that has it’s own config outside the global config.. So a promo ad just for a certain video, or certain color scheme, etc.
5.    Google Analytics integrated into the player. YUP. Those handy action aware contexts in Flowplayer really pay off here. It knows when someone hits play, pause, fast forward, volume up/down, etc (still kinda basic, just getting going with this)… Leveraging Google Analytics, I’m be able to track at what point someone tunes out of the video, or fast forwards, or heck, even rewinds so we know when we needed to make something more clear.

Want to know more?

I’m still new to all of this, so I am probably not the best resource, but here are a few good ones:

• Flowplayer’s fantastic documentation with real work examples.
• Flowplayer also has a active user forum.
• They are also rockin a Flowplayer twitter account which they are very active on.

If you’d like to ask me a question about the stuff I’ve done, send me a tweet and I’d be happy to try my best to answer!

Do you have an easy and cheap tip to get rid of that buzz? I’d love to hear it! Leave me a comment of your trick!