Stumbled on this today… Is it wrong that it actually made me quite sad?  Anyway - I don’t think that firewire 400’s quite dead yet, or that it should so quickly be condemned to death! Infact, I’d still take firewire over USB2 any day of the week… Constant throughput anyone?

All you pro-users that apple have decided that can’t have Firewire 400, well you’ve got 800, haven’t you… (And all you that have bought macbooks, and been stripped of your firewire - well, the apple-tax has just gone up again, eh?!)

Now I’m all for the future and new technologies and all that, but they’re not always as good, are they… If like me you’ve still got more than a few firewire HDD’s, and you need to use DV or HDV cameras etc - get yourself a FW 800-400 cable - and then  a Firewire Hub.  I know it seems obvious - but having watched that video; essentially FW400’s obituary - I hate being told how to run my life, my business or my creativity by people who want to make money.

I’m looking at Apple more directly than most here… Target Disk, over FW400 was probably one of the most useful things that Mac’s could do until recently… Such a quick and handy way to copy (and rescue) files.  Why take that away and replace it with a lesser alternative? Well, surely, that sort of thing comes down to money… Licensing…

What about the future?…

http://www.firewire3200.com/

http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/12/18/battle-of-the-data-titans-usb-30-vs-firewire-3200/

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/11/superspeed-us-1.html

Seems as competitive as ever… Anyway, I digress.  I love FireWire - I know thats very materialistic of me - but I do.  Until firewire 3200 comes out to play, I’ll stick with my FW & eSATA toys, thanks very much.

Anyway, I know it’s a bit of an in-joke type thing, but I was strolling through Lightroom and I saw this! I can’t help but laugh at it every time I see it…

Perhaps one of the best things that I stumbled upon during my time there, was this RED… Not just any RED mind you, for this one, at long last, is a RED for hire with the mount I’m after!…

[Photo by filmcafe Rich... Yes indeed,  I was able to tare him away from the 'sound-stuff' long enough for him to pop a shutter!]

But there is a more important question at stake here… What on earth must I be talking about to be pulling such a stupid face!?

Answers on a postcard to filmcafe towers

No news yet, but we’ll let you know when we hear anything.  Anyhow, we met some great new folks making this film - all of whom we owe a load of thanks.  For want of a better cliche, it restores my faith in humanity when you meet people that are open to new ideas and are willing to take a chance on you and donate their time and talent to your cause.  The BMX-ers of Creation Skate Park, Team Fluidity and The Welsh Bockers - your Cafe salutes you!

As the post over at filmcafe says, I’m not going to go into detail about the film just yet. I’m a bit too superstitious in these matters, so I’ll wait for the official verdict before I show it off.

Splice, over and out!

Sometimes, however, certain shortcomings arise that are so catastrophic that the solution is not immediately apparent, easy or unchallenging. Sometimes, the solution will mean more work than you’d have liked; sometimes more than you originally thought: sometimes it’ll mean more work than you could possibly imagine!

Sometimes though, the best answer to a digital problem comes from a very ‘analogue’ kind of mind and thankfully, we have the privilege of knowing one such ‘analogue genius’.  Unspoiled by the digital age, he thinks in feet and inches, not ones-and-zero’s.  He stands, monolithic, casting his portly shadow over… well… lots of things!

He may have an unhealthy collection of nuts, bolts, screws - large pieces of cars… He may need to be plied with alcohol to even consider listening to you.  And he may have some very strange opinions on extra terrestrial beings, but rest assured, he IS a genius - of the highest order.  If Brunel were here now, he’d probably say something like… 

“Wow! nice idea!  I’d have built a bridge, but your idea’s well better.”

So while our very own Isambard whittles and machines for us, locked away in his ‘workshop’ - working to almost incomprehensible degrees of accuracy and tolerance for someone with glasses so thick - I ask you all to raise a glass to our secret weapon…

To Mr. Jones!

I really have to thank the very lovely Warren Orchard for his help in securing the beast at Walters Photo Video for us filmcafe folk.  Without his help, we’d still be staring into the abyss of Christmas with nothing to look forward to but cracker jokes…

That said, at almost the exact moment that we parted with the cash, we got a call from the lovely Martyn at Jessops in Cardiff offering us the one (and only) one that they’d had delivered.

So, how is it?  Well… It’s great!  Though at this precise moment, it’s raising more questions that it’s answering re: fulldome…

I’ll see if Santa brings me a copy of “Answers to all those fulldome questions you have regarding the 5D mkII” in paperback… but I think it’s fair to say I’ve had my present for this year!… I had no idea I’d been so good!

28K?! Was it a dream? Who on earth would dare shoot 28000 x9334 pixels? I’ll try anything twice, but 28K? We’re going to need some more storage!

I think that sensor is an exercise in ‘look what we can do’ more than in ‘look what you can do with what we’ve made’. If someone can tell me that it’s what they’ve been waiting for, then I’ll eat my words, but I don’t think anybody’s been waiting for a 261 MegaPixel video camera…

Apart from that chip however, I take my hat off to RED - I want one of (nearly!) everything they make [or plan to make] - with RED cherries on top.

From the new list of prospective products however, It’s the 24mp 6K epic that most tickles my fancy!

We’d been struggling to get the right lens on a stills camera at 4K until very recently, and now every Christmas and Birthday has seemingly come to fruition in one glorious moment! - Soon we’ll be able to shoot in 180 degrees, at 4K square, at 100fps, with our first choice of lens! I really can’t think what could be better than this!

Obviously the RED mantra of “Prices, Specifications and Delivery Dates are subject to drastic changes. Count on it…!” mean that the path to 6K next autumn/winter won’t be a straight road from A to R.E.D.

Take the Canon doldrums that we’re floating in at the moment. We haven’t pre-ordered a 5D mkII because they couldn’t give us a delivery date - and we weren’t going to give them £2300 to sit on while RED were waiting to announce… And what an announcement!

“November” is fading fast, Canon… Get the 5D’s on the shelves soon so that people (like me) have enough time to get their monies worth - otherwise I might not bother and save my pennies for Epic.

Over 2 years ago, RED proclaimed that they were bringing an end to up-resing. And for most people, they have - in fact down converting, or RED-Cine is the most common path for the footage - people want the depth of field, quality of image etc - but 1080 is big enough for most!… Not us however, RED’s 4K (16:9) has still had us up-resing pretty much 100%. We want to shoot 6K to generate and capture true 4K fulldome content. We hope the spec’s don’t shift in the wrong direction and most of all, we really, REALLY hope that we’ll be allowed to know the true, actual, real calendar date that we too will be able to render obsolescence obsolete!

Our shiny new homepage has a twitter feed on there too, so that we can provide even more immediate news feeds to you while we’re out in the cold, popping our shutter.  Very soon, it’ll also allow you to see our content catalogue in all it’s glory.

If you’ve just come from there, or you don’t want to take a peek just yet - here’s the same (though smaller) sneak preview of some of our latest images.

More info and more images will be available soon - and it won’t be long before we let you get your hands on them.  Send your list to fulldome, c/o filmcafe rather than Santa this year!

What a perfect day to be inside - the first dry one since who knows how long - but wowzers!  The new images we collected transported us to the great outdoors again quickly enough! We were all really (pleasantly) surprised at how much space there seemed to be with our latest offerings up on the dome.  It never ceases to confuse (and amaze) me how much better the images look when they’re perspective is re-realized, projected on a dome.  And it’s very often the ones that you least expect to look good that take your breath away.  

Again, this is why we’re so lucky to have Mario and his team on our side.  This just wouldn’t be possible without his openness to our new ideas. Dr Martin (pictured, dressed for polar exploration) and I, extend our warmest thanks to them again.

So, I guess you’ll all be interested to see what we’ve come up with… Well, we’ll be showing them off to you soon enough!

Sit tight, fulldome-fans - we’re coming up with the goods!

But with all of that happening, you might have failed to notice another “change” that pricked my interest. The Video games industry’s sales are up 42%.  Video games are outselling music.  So I what’s going on I wonder?!

Is it that nobody is listening to music anymore? Surely not.  iTunes has sold over 3 billion songs since it’s launch, I don’t use amazon or anything else, but they must be doing ok too. That’s got to be eating into tangible music sales [Never mind Illegal downloads over p2p etc].  But why is it that nobody’s buying tangible music anymore?

I have a friend that insists on “owning” cd’s with cases and paper artwork etc. The same friend alphabetizes his collection by artist and keeps discs from the same artist in chronological order. I guess he sees his CD’s as a status symbol… “I’ve got x number of…” but I think he’s of a dying breed. Wait ’til he has to move house and pack his 2000+ discs away, transport them and unpack them into a diferent corner of a diferent house where they look even more unsightly than they did in his old house.

I think that the bigest reason people buy digital music is because because it’s convenient.  I don’t mean that they don’t have to go out in the rain to get their disc, though I’m sure that’s a factor too. What I mean is, they buy digital because it’s simply drag-and-drop to put it on whatever generic mp3 player you have… and I guess that’s probably an iPod. Convenience is king and nobody knows it better than apple. If you’ve bought an AAC with DRM from them, it’s not going to play on anything except an iPod - and if you’ve added your own music to iTunes, you can only sync it to an iPod.  Monopoly anyone?

I’m not being disparaging of apple - on the contrary, I’m probably one of the worst fan-boys you’ll ever meet.  My iPod is my status symbol. I still have a 40gig 2nd gen one, but there’s a nano, a mini and 2 iPhones in our house - between 2 people. They haven’t cornered the market, they’ve invented it, and reinvented the [click] wheel (sorry) while they’re at it.  Weren’t we all obsessed with mix-tapes once upon a time? Hi-Speed dubbing was the highlight of my evening, ready for the 45 minute journey to school the following day - one side each way. Bliss!

Who’d have thought 10 years ago that you’d be able to carry 160gig of music in your pocket?  Who even knew what a gig was or how many songs that would be?   But that’s the point.  Everything is starting make a bit more sense to everyone and all the parts of one machine are starting to talk to everything else around it.  Format’s are settling down enough (and are being licensed enough) so that other manufacturers can incorporate support for them into their hardware. I  can drop my mp3’s out of my iTunes and into my iPod, almost any phone, PS3, Wii, 360,  onto another computer - mac, pc, linux box…

But what’s all this got to do with the Video Games Industry?

Sorry, that was a bit more of a tangent than I expected. There was an interesting debate on Radio 4 today about this, and their expert (didn’t catch who, sorry) was citing that the real growth in the games industry was down to the multi-functionality of these ‘home entertainment systems’.  The convergence of technologies and the portal they provide to interacting with your digital media.  He went on to suggest that interaction was the key factor in all of this.  The “Black Box In The Corner” is finally starting to reciprocate!  No longer does it talk at you, but now, with the array of games consoles connected to it, feedback is instant - you are in control!

Video games have been ‘interactive’ for decades…

But basic input/output has been getting less basic every day.  And the better the interactive experience gets, the more we seem to want to play.  But the interactivity doesn’t stop in your living room.  You don’t just get to play against the silicon brain under the telly, but you can now play against the brains you know and love, or love to hate around the world, while talking to them and seeing their distracted faces in a distracting part of the screen!

But what ever happened to real, tangible people?

Just because they don’t go out in the rain to but CD’s, doesn’t mean they don’t go out in the rain full stop. We’ve all become a bit too drag-and-drop, haven’t we?  I check to see what so-and-so did on that night out they had without me (the one I was invited to, but was simply too useless to attend).  At something past midnight I catch myself looking at the photos they took and posted on facebook… Does anybody actually keep in touch any more?  Or do you just ‘poke’ your friends every now and then and join the groups that you feel obliged to because you’re not going to attend the event around the corner that Jim invited you to… Why?… erm… because you’ve got HellBoy666 from Copenhagen to slaughter on HALO for the 3rd time this week? (remember: a Halo doesn’t have to fall very far for it to be a noose!)

I think the TV’s pulling the wool over our eyes yet again.  It’s not becoming more interactive, it’s becoming more of a barrier.

In response to this ‘interactive is good’ talk of today - I agree in part, but I think there are more shared and sensory experiences of interactivity that we’re not exploring and are missing out on.  That’s not to say that I think there should be no screens or games in our lives at all, I just think the flat screen’s that we’re all buying so we can sit at home and feel connected could just be a step backward, or at least a side step…

Follow us on our journey to develop interactive fulldome content that you can enjoy in 360 degrees with other living, breathing human beings - express and share emotions with - and let them do the same with you - then we’ll talk about Halo!

We’ll be keeping a record of what we do on this blog so if you’re interested in any way, please keep checking back, subscribe to our rss or comments feed or whatever. We want to share our experiences.

thanks filmcafe