Kyle Gilman’s Camera Noise Productions

The mystery is over. YouTube, in another in a long series of overdue moves, has revealed some real information about how people find your YouTube videos. In my case, it turns out that my most popular videos happen to be declared “related” to some other, more popular videos. I’ve never questioned the success of the “Bad Webcam Sex” video, which is naturally connected to all kinds of filth that people are mistakenly looking for on YouTube instead of the entire rest of the Internet. What really surprised me was the sudden and unexpected rise of viewers for Two Night Stand. I’ve now learned that nearly 50% of the traffic comes from being “related” to a video called “Fake Wife Swap” which was made for one of those 24-hour film festival challenges. 90% of Two Night Stand viewers come from related videos.

The other big change—which still hasn’t quite worked itself out yet—is the so-called “high quality” option for YouTube videos. On certain videos (the criteria isn’t at all clear to me) you can add &fmt=6 to the URL and get a significantly better video. Unfortunately I don’t know what you have to upload in order to get the higher quality. Is it a higher resolution, or a higher bitrate that I should be going for? Adding &fmt=6 to most videos gets you the usual blender-set-on-purée look. Some guidance from YouTube would be nice.

UPDATE: Brian Gary has an article at kenstone.net explaining the best settings to use to take advantage of YouTube’s higher quality options.

I was working on a movie in Avid Xpress Pro (on Windows XP) recently and I figured it was time to finally get some equipment so I (and a client) could watch the video on an external monitor. A DV deck is the usual way. You hook up the deck to the computer via firewire, the deck translates the DV to analog, you hook your TV into the deck and you’ve got NTSC video. Trouble is, I have very little use for a deck. Most projects I edit these days come to me already on a hard drive. DV tape is obviously on its way out, and spending $2000 on a deck I won’t be using much longer seems a little silly.

I was hoping to get an Intensity Pro. I didn’t need to capture or output any tapes, so that seemed ideal since it could also handle HD. But then I remembered that Avid doesn’t play well with others. Avid only works with Avid DNA products like the Mojo. The Mojo is essentially a glorified digital/analog converter that also adds 2:3 pulldown to 24p video in realtime and retails for $1700. It’s worth noting that Final Cut Pro adds 2:3 pulldown for free.

I considered a D/A converter, but they all run around $200 and don’t have any tape decks, in case I do need to capture a tape here and there. Eventually I decided that a cheap camcorder was my best option. First I got a $160 Canon camcorder. With Avid Xpress Pro I was getting a 16 frame delay and often drifting out of sync, which I assumed was because it was a cheap piece of crap. I returned it and got a $190 Sony DCR-HC28 since I’ve had such good experiences with Sony decks. I still get the 16 frame delay with the Sony camcorder, but I don’t have the drifting problem. I was working on a different project in Final Cut Pro, so I booted up the Mac OS to see what the delay would be. Turns out it’s only 2 frames, which is what I usually expect from FCP with a firewire deck. That really surprised me since it’s the same computer. From what I’ve read in online forums, the 16 frame delay is standard for Avid without a DNA like the Mojo. I’ve turned on desktop play delay, which keeps the video in sync, but it makes editing a bit more difficult.

I don’t have any plans to start shooting home movies, so I can’t say anything about the image quality of the camera. I can only assume it’s horrible.

Well, it’s official, HD DVD is dead. Now you can finally get a high definition DVD player without worrying it’s going to turn into a Betamax. I’ve looked at the options available and it seems pretty obvious that much like my first DVD player, the best value comes from the Playstation. Way back in 2001 I bought a Playstation 2 because I wanted to watch DVDs on TV instead of on my computer. And also because I like to play the occasional video game. It turns out the Playstation 2 was a pretty bad DVD player, but it served its purpose for a couple years until I got a very nice standalone DVD player. The PS2 spent a few years in the closet until it was resurrected for Guitar Hero.

Now, all the Blu-Ray players available retail for $300-400. A Playstation 3 can be had for as little as $400. So for a few extra bucks you get a really fancy computer along with the ability to play high definition DVDs. I think it’s going to be a while before I pony up that cash. I’m still really happy with the quality of anamorphic DVDs on my plasma. It might have to wait until after I get a 1080p display. I’d love to get Rock Band though.

Other pieces of equipment in line ahead of the PS3:

• A new graphics card. Leaning towards an nVidia 8600. My 6600 is getting pretty long in the tooth.
• A spiffy HTPC case for the guts of my old computer. I’m planning to hook up my computer to the plasma TV in the living room so we can check IMDb without leaving the couch. We’ll even be able to do picture-in-picture. Also, we can watch videos downloaded from the Internet.
• A Blackmagic Intensity Pro. For only $350 you get HD out of your computer, and realtime downconversion to SD.
• A new HD TV. Probably a 42″ plasma for the living room, so I can use the year-old 37″ as a client monitor in my office. I’m hoping Panasonic puts out some smaller 1080p displays soon.

I upgraded my computer a couple weeks ago, swapping out the motherboard, CPU, and RAM, but leaving the hard drives and case alone. I thought it would be pretty simple. I knew Windows would work without a hitch, but I knew from the beginning that I’d have to reinstall the Mac OS because it had been patched to work on my old AMD processor. What I didn’t know was that the OSX-on-a-PC drive interface situation had flipped since the last time I installed OSX. With my nForce4 motherboard, it was a hassle to install onto SATA drives. With my ASUS P5K-E P35/ICH9R motherboard, OSX refused to even see my PATA/IDE drives. My DVD burner and my Mac hard drive were both IDE, so I was in trouble. I went through a lot of work, so I thought I’d document it all for anyone who’s dealing with the same problems. The geniuses over at the Insanelymac forums were a huge help. Here’s what I did:

1. Bought a new SATA hard drive. I can never get enough storage anyway.
2. Used VMware Workstation to format the disk to HFS+ and install the OS. I followed the instructions on this post, although I used the Kalyway 10.4.10 install disc because I need 10.4.10 in order to run FCP 6
3. Replaced AppleAHCIPort.kext with the one at this post
4. In the BIOS, switched SATA mode to AHCI (from IDE)
5. BOOTED UP OS X!!!!!!
6. Ran script to get onboard components (sound, ethernet, etc) working.
7. Switched SATA back to IDE mode in the BIOS and booted into Windows.
8. Followed these instructions to enable AHCI mode in Windows XP
9. Switched SATA to AHCI mode in the BIOS and booted into Windows.
10. Suddenly I had a nasty audio skipping problem. It was clearly related to AHCI mode. It turns out it was caused by an eSATA drive I had plugged in to the computer, but not powered on. My guess is because of the hot-swapping capabilities of AHCI, the system kept polling the drive trying to figure out what it was, while in IDE mode it doesn’t bother looking.

I’m sure I missed a few steps, but those are the ones that stick out in my memory. There might have been some extra fiddling with ATA-related kexts. I also continue to have a problem mounting the boot disk when I boot with cached kexts. I use the -f flag on the Darwin bootloader to get around that problem.