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ikan See Clearly Now, the Pain is Gone!

0	Posted by Jeff Pulera June 21, 2011

The new ikan VL7 portable 7" LCD display has given my video productions – and my career – a new lease on life! More on that in a moment — but first a bit of history about "portable" monitors. I began filming weddings and events in 1992 with a Hi8 camcorder that had only a small black and white viewfinder, as color LCDs were not invented yet. Not only was it hard to frame and focus using the small b/w viewfinder, but it was also difficult/impossible to know if the white balance was accurate. One could very easily get back to the studio only to find orange or blue people on the video tape!

I’ve always had to wear eyeglasses and never got along very well with a viewfinder, especially when shooting stage events for hours on end. Back in the "olden days," a portable color TV or production monitor was a part of my kit to be lugged around to every wedding and event shoot, connected to the camera via composite RCA cable. Having the larger, external display allowed me to do a better job with framing, focusing, and white balancing the camera.

Years later, Sony came to my rescue by putting a nice little pop-out color LCD on the sides of their popular VX-2000 and PD-150 cameras. No more lugging a monitor and extension cords with me everywhere I went! No more eye strain! No more purple people! The Sony LCD even got a little bigger and better on my newer Sony FX7 HDV camcorder in more recent years. Everything was going great…and then middle age reared its ugly head.

I’ve been "north of 40" for some time now, and I’ve had increasing trouble the past year or so focusing on things very close to my eyes, with or without glasses. Focusing on the camera LCD for long periods causes eye strain, sometimes resulting in blurred vision. Realizing that an AARP membership is perhaps just around the corner, with some reluctance, I got my first pair of bifocals. Unfortunately, they really don’t help with viewing the camera LCD, which is neither close enough for the bifocal lens to work, nor far enough away for "normal" viewing.

I recently had a very big weekend shooting 6 dance recital shows at 2.5 hours each. In my experience, shooting dance recitals is more challenging than any other event I do. With a wedding ceremony, I can frame and focus a subject, and then relax for a bit before moving to the next subject, allowing my eyes to look around the room for the next shot, but not so with recitals.

When taping dance recitals, there are really no breaks other than a few seconds between each act. I have to focus intently on the LCD image as I simultaneously zoom and pan smoothly to keep all the performers in frame, at the same time riding the exposure control to keep up with the constant lighting changes, and of course sharp focus must also be maintained. It’s infinitely easier to frame and focus a close up of a stationary bride than it is to follow 20 kids moving around the stage when they’re the size of ants on the screen!

I determined that the camera LCD is just too tiny to stare at all day and thought it would be a wise move to invest in a portable LCD monitor. I’d looked at ikan monitors before, and while I’m sure the high-end models are very nice and worth every penny, they had features like HD-SDI, blue gun, and video pass-thru that I’d likely never use, and thus didn’t want to pay for. More recently, ikan released the VL7 monitor with HDMI input which seemed a perfect fit to my needs - and my budget.

The VL7 has a 7" diagonal screen with 800x480 resolution, switchable between 4:3 and 16:9 display modes. It weighs just over a pound, and one HDMI and two mini-jack composite video inputs are available, with one headphone output. The lower front panel features backlit buttons for power and input, and menu settings which provide onscreen feedback to adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, and sharpness. Underscan and Peaking functions are also available.

The base VL7 comes with an AC adapter, swivel shoe mount adapter, and two AV adapter cables for the composite AV inputs. A Deluxe Kit is available that adds a battery plate (your choice of Sony, Canon, or Panasonic), battery, charger, and case, but I opted for just the monitor and optional Sony battery plate, as I already have plenty of Sony L-series batteries and chargers that are compatible with the VL7.

For most stage events that I tape, I’m seated on a tall folding stool. This has the dual benefit of being more comfortable than standing for hours on end, while also keeping my head (and tripod) lower for the benefit of folks seated in the first couple of rows of stadium seating to my rear. If I am seated, mounting the VL7 atop the camera would force me to look up the entire time, and would also have the LCD sticking up into the view of those behind me, causing a distraction.

I decided to also purchase an ikan Articulating Arm to provide an alternative mounting solution. I was torn between getting the 6" or 10" model, but decided on the latter and am glad I did. Both models have ¼-20 studs on ball swivels at either end, and the arm itself pivots in the middle. If you’ve never used one of these devices, they are just really neat! Loosening the knob at the arm’s pivot point simultaneously loosens the ball swivels at both ends, so you can really achieve practically any mounting position you need very quickly, then lock all 3 joints with a simple twist of the knob, and it’s very rigid when locked.

The arm comes with a shoe mount attachment, which I didn’t use since I didn’t want the monitor on top of the camera. I tried the shoe mount in the studio and found that when hanging the VL7 off to the side using the arm, the added leverage put a lot of stress on the camera shoe and was actually flexing the plastic top part of the camera if I put any pressure on the VL7 with my hand!

This was on a prosumer Sony FX7 camera – more professional models should have more robust mountings, but I learned I would have to just use some caution and common sense when mounting any larger accessory on a shoe. To be clear, there was no issue mounting the VL7 directly atop the shoe. It was only when I extended the articulating arm out to the side with weight on the end of it that I became concerned with the structural integrity of the camera’s carry handle.

Since I wasn’t using the shoe mount adapter, I needed a way to mount the arm to my tripod. The ikan rep told me they’ve developed a universal clamp for this purpose, but that it wasn’t quite shipping yet, so I ordered a clamp from another vendor. The one I got will mount to any tripod leg, pole, table edge, or similar sturdy attachment point with a diameter between .5" to 2.5", and provides ¼-20 female threads to connect the ikan Articulating Arm (as we go to press, the ikan "Elements Pinch Clamp" is now listed on ikan’s website).

Clamping to a tripod leg, I was able to securely position the VL7 at a comfortable height, angle and distance that provided the perfect viewing experience, just below my line of sight to the stage. I’m very pleased to say that I made it through the entire weekend without eye strain and was able to work very comfortably using the VL7, in a situation that would otherwise have been uncomfortable at best, and likely would’ve affected the quality of the production at worst.

How is the image quality? Well as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, meaning quality is a very subjective term. Personally, I’m very happy with the picture quality and feel that the VL7 was an excellent investment. ikan makes other LCD models with resolutions from 1024x600 up to 1366x768, but without doing a side by side comparison with resolution charts, I can’t say how much different they would look from a VL7. If you’re working on high-end productions with high-end gear, then you’d likely opt for a higher-end ikan display to suit your needs and budget.

The image on the VL7 looks very good to me. I see no pixelization or "stairstep" edges on the video or text overlays coming out of my camera. The picture looks clean and sharp and provides several times the real estate of the camera LCD. In other words, even though it is not a full HD resolution, the image is very clean and makes it easy to verify focus, which is much more critical when working with HD. I feel that the size of the VL7 image is more of a benefit to me than resolution is – it just makes a big picture that is so much easier to see! My camera has a menu setting to toggle the overlay info text on and off for the video output, and I chose to leave it on, so I had the camera settings, timecode, audio meters and other important data overlaid on the big VL7 screen, easily readable at a glance. I’ve noticed that some LCD screens in my studio will smear or leave trails with fast panning motion, so I tried doing some exaggerated side to side whip pans and saw no smear at all with the VL7 – the image remained sharp and clear.

Overall, I’m very happy with the VL7 and the 10" articulating arm. I had one problem at the recital shoot, and this is my fault for not taking more time to familiarize myself with the VL7 since I ordered late and it arrived just the night before the shoot. All of the built-in camera LCDs I’ve worked with always show an overscan image – some of the image is cut off behind the plastic bezel of the LCD, providing some extra safe area when framing subjects.

With the VL7, I realized (too late) that it displays nearly the entire video image edge to edge, with little or no hidden margins outside the screen bezel. I had continued framing my subjects on the VL7 as I had for many years with the camera LCD, not taking into account the larger image I was seeing, so some of my shots are framed tighter than I’d like. Thankfully, I figured this out before I’d done too much shooting.

The VL7 does offer an "underscan" mode, but it doesn’t show any additional image; rather, it just shrinks the whole picture down enough to put some black border around it, so I have to remember to be careful with the framing and leave some extra room at the edges! I’m tempted to take a fat black marker and trace around the outside edge of the screen against the bezel edge to get me back into my comfort zone. Of course I don’t recommend that, nor would I actually do it, but that should give you an idea of the extra area being displayed.

I was using the 1080i HDMI output of my HDV camcorder into the VL7 for the recital shoot, but the VL7 also accepts composite video inputs, so I tried the composite feed from my FX7 camera and there is an appreciable quality difference. The image was somewhat softer, which is expected since the camera is converting down from HD to SD, and composite video is the weakest type of analog connection, below S-video and component.

HDMI will of course be my first choice for monitoring, but I appreciate the option to view one or two additional video sources, available by toggling the INPUT button, when I want to verify what the other camera(s) are recording. There is also a headphone jack that provides audio monitoring for any of the video sources, an unexpected bonus on such a reasonably-priced portable display. While there is no volume control, many headphones have volume control built into the cord, or it can be added inline easily enough.

If you’re working with any camcorder with an HDMI output, or even composite output, and need an affordable, lightweight LCD that can run off AC or battery power, consider the VL7. And don’t forget the ikan Articulating Arm, which can be used for mounting just about any accessory like a light, digital audio recorder, video recorder, microphone, or of course an LCD. I showed the VL7 and 10" Articulating Arm to an associate the other day, and he is also impressed with the quality, features, and pricing of both items, and they are now on his short list of "must have" gear!

To learn more about ikan products, visit: http://www.sharbor.com/vendors/KAN.html.

Safe Harbor TOP 10 products for 2010

0	Posted by Jeff Pulera January 6, 2011

2010 really flew by, but not without some major happenings in the video and animation products world, so the Safe Harbor staff has put together a short list of products that we felt worthy of a Top 10 listing. Inclusion in the list is based on a variety of criteria and does not necessarily reflect sales numbers. So let’s take a look at the Safe Harbor "Top 10 for ’10," in no particular order.

Mac Pro - Mac users had Christmas in July with the highly anticipated release of the new Mac Pro workstations with up to 12 processing cores, more memory, and updated display card offerings that have proven very popular with HD editors seeking more horsepower. Fingers crossed for a new FCP for 2011!

EDIUS 6 - Grass Valley fans finally got their EDIUS 6 upgrades towards the end of the year, adding more than 100 new features, including 10-bit editing, 2k/4k resolution, and 16-camera multicam editing. EDIUS 6 provides native, realtime editing of many new tapeless HD video formats including Sony XDCAM, Panasonic P2 and Canon XF.Adobe CS5 - One of the biggest hits of the year may very well have been the release of Adobe Production Premium CS5. True 64-bit coding and the Mercury Playback Engine powered by nVidia GPUs have brought extraordinary speed improvements and increased productivity for Premiere, Photoshop and After Effects users.

Adobe CS5 - One of the biggest hits of the year may very well have been the release of Adobe Production Premium CS5. True 64-bit coding and the Mercury Playback Engine powered by nVidia GPUs have brought extraordinary speed improvements and increased productivity for Premiere, Photoshop and After Effects users.

Quadro by PNY - Speaking of nVidia, the new Quadro by PNY graphics cards have more CUDA cores, new Fermi architecture, and massive amounts of memory to provide amazing performance for video and graphics applications. Quadro cards were especially popular in new Tsunami workstation builds featuring Adobe CS5.

modo 501 – Billed as "the next evolution in 3D modeling, animation and rendering," modo 501 upgrades were a hot commodity, offering cleaner, faster rendering with speed improvements of 30-40%, simplified animation rigging, and more included content, among other new features.

Osprey 240e - The Viewcast Osprey 240e was a hit with school, government and business users looking for great performance and value in a PCIe analog video streaming card for the PC. The optional Simulstream software allows encoding of multiple codecs at once to reach a broader audience.

Cintiq 21UX - Graphics professionals were grabbing up every Wacom Cintiq 21UX we could get our hands on, as demand exceeded supply for many months. The newly-redesigned 21.3" drawing tablet allows users to draw directly on the screen with precise 2048-level pressure control using the advanced pen technology. If I had a nickel for every inquiry I got about this item, I’d be writing this from a beach somewhere rather than watching it snow outside. :)

Maxwell Render 2/RealFlow 5 - Next Limit is tied with itself, treating users to long-awaited updates of both Maxwell Render 2 and RealFlow 5 for amazingly realistic simulations of light and water, with support now for more host applications. RealFlow has been used extensively in many recent blockbuster movies such as "Avatar," "District 9,"and "2012."

Cinema 4D R12 – Maxon offered a great 50% discount on new C4D R12 upgrades when bundled with the Maxon Service Agreement. Cinema 4D R12 is a powerful 3D modeling and animation program which was used for many of the VFX shots in "Iron Man 2." The R12 version is loaded with new features like Linear Workflow, Camera Deformer, Color Profile Support, and Render Queue.

Matrox MXO2 Mini – Last but certainly not least, we have the MXO2 Mini to round out the round up! The stylish little aluminum breakout box has been exceedingly popular with users of Mac and PC, laptop and desktop, and supports Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro CS5, and Avid Media Composer NLE editors. Who wouldn’t want one to provide video capture and preview, 10-bit hardware up/down/cross conversion, and hardware-based realtime H.264 encoding (with the MAX option)?

I can only imagine what amazing new hardware and software offerings I’ll be writing about 12 months from now. Thank you to our loyal customers for a great 2010, and we look forward to serving you all in 2011, our 24th year of providing tools for video, animation and graphics professionals worldwide!

Panasonic AG-HMC40 AVCCAM solid-state camcorder

2	Posted by Jeff Pulera December 18, 2009

The highest video quality setting of "PH" records the full 1920x1080 or 1280x720 HD resolution at 21Mbps, with settings of 1080i60, 1080p30, 1080p24, 720p60, 720p30, and 720p24. 1080i may also be recorded using the "HA" or "HG" quality settings at 17 and 13Mbps respectively, with the most economical setting being the "HE" mode which records 1080i as 1440x1080 at 6Mbps.

Of course, the lower the data rate, the more video you can fit on the card, so if you’re simply shooting a talking head video like a conference, you can get up to 12 hours of recording on a single 32GB card! For jobs that require a higher quality, just choose an appropriate format. Even at the highest quality setting, you still get a full 3 hours of recording time on a 32GB SDHC card.

SDHC media is much less expensive than the P2 and SxS media used on other solid-state cameras, which is an attractive feature of the AG-HMC40. This camera has a single card slot, unlike P2 and SxS-format cameras which have dual slots that allow swapping of cards on the fly for uninterrupted recording. Being used to changing HDV tapes every 60 minutes myself, I don’t think the recording time "limit" of 3 to 12 hours would present any issue to most users.

This is my first time using a solid-state camcorder, as my previous experience has been with DV and HDV tape-based units, shooting wedding, event and corporate videos. Since the full Panasonic specs and other reviews are readily available in print and online, I won’t seek to do a thorough technical review here, but rather will list my first impressions of the camera from a videographer’s point of view, as I would in sharing my observations with a friend or associate. So, don’t expect any resolution charts or signal-to-noise ratio graphs here!

I received the AG-HMC40 as a demo unit from our distributor, so the battery was already charged and attached. I simply powered up and started shooting right out of the box, finding it easy to start using immediately before looking at any instructions. The flip-out LCD offers touch-screen control, and with just a few taps, I found I could quickly switch to any of the 9 video recording formats.

I’m used to shooting 1080i HDV, which uses a reduced resolution of 1440x1080 and Long-GOP MPEG-2 compression. The HDV format has a tendency to show compression issues at times, for instance with fast action or whip-pans, which will cause the image to degrade and show blocky artifacts. No such problem with the AG-HMC40 – I did some very fast back-and-forth whips of the camera outdoors, and the 1920x1080 video playback was crisp and sharp with no apparent artifacting using the best PH record mode.

After playing with the camera for a bit, I went back to investigate the contents of the box, and was impressed with the included accessories. A 3-hour battery and AC adapter/charger are included, and I was happy to see that the battery can actually be charged on the charger – most cameras require you to charge the battery on the camera, meaning you can’t charge batteries while using the camera. Nice touch, Panasonic! Optional larger batteries can provide up to 7 hours of record time.

Component and composite AV cables are included, or you can use your own HDMI cable. A small infra-red remote control is handy for playback duties, or recording when the operator might wish to get in front of the camera for taking video or stills. The bonus plastic stylus for the touch screen proved to work much better than my large fingers when navigating menus on the LCD, working accurately with the lightest touch.

I was surprised at the inclusion of 3 RCA to BNC adapters, for those that might need to connect the component video output to professional gear having BNC inputs. Most manufacturers expect you to run down to Radio Shack for connectors, but that can be a huge inconvenience for many users in rural areas, so the inclusion of these adapters is appreciated.

Also included for a limited time is a Panasonic 16GB SDHC card. Other quality brands of SDHC card should work as well, provided that they are Class 4 or higher. The last goody I found was a top carry handle for the camera. It quickly attaches over the shoe mount using two knurled thumbscrews and provides a handle that works well for low-angle shooting, and it also has a shoe mount on top to get mics and lights up away from the camera. Unfortunately, there is no handle-mounted zoom rocker switch like the AG-HMC150 has.

Back to the camera, it includes a built-in stereo mic and there is a standard mini-jack input for connecting an external mic. Mic volume can be adjusted using the touch-screen LCD controls, and a headphone jack is provided for monitoring. Optionally, Panasonic offers the AG-MYA30G two-channel XLR interface box that attaches to the camera via a multi-pin jack. This add-on also accepts a shotgun mic, and would be a good option to consider if quality audio is important for your intended use.

The camera has a 12x optical zoom, and I really like the smoothness of the variable-speed zoom rocker. At the slowest speed, it took over 2 minutes to go from full wide to telephoto, which would work quite well for dramatic effect at weddings. The LCD shows the zoom setting in increments of 0 to 99, which I found helpful to judge where I was at in the zoom range.

While most pro and prosumer camcorders will have a pair of manual zoom and focus rings up front, the AG-HMC40 has but one ring. A switch at the left front of the camera lets you choose between focus or zoom/iris control for the ring, with the zoom or iris preference being set in the menu. If moving the switch during recording, the noise is picked up by the built-in microphone. The ring does offer smooth control, whether adjusting focus, iris or zoom.

There is a thumb wheel for iris adjustment, and notably, the user can change the direction of adjustment in the menu. I found the iris wheel to work opposite of what I was used to with my own camera, so I switched direction in the menu. Little amenities like this are appreciated.

The camera doesn’t have a lot of manual control buttons, as many functions are handled through the touch menu on the LCD. To make up for it, there are 3 "User" buttons which can be programmed with various duties to suit the user’s most common needs to avoid having to access onscreen menus during shoots.

The AG-HMC40 does offer many higher-end features not usually found at this price point. Benefits include color bars, black balance adjustment, and zebra pattern settings from 50% to 105% in 5% increments. Timecode options include DF, NDF, Free Run and User, and the ability to set a start point for the TC counter. A pair of camera Scene Profiles can be saved as well for quick camera setup, and metadata can be included in recorded clips.

A few other notable features are Focus Assist, OIS (Optical Image Stabilization), face recognition, one-touch High Gain (34dB), digital zoom and a Pre-record function that starts recording 3 seconds before you hit the record button, bettering your chances of getting the critical shot every time. Time-lapse recording is also possible using the Interval Record feature. The Synchro Scan feature allows monitors to be shot without flicker by matching the shutter speed to the display refresh rate.

The camera doesn’t shoot standard definition formats, but will downconvert video output to NTSC with conversion options of Letterbox, Side Crop, or Squeeze. The latter two options are usually not found on cameras at this price level.

AVCHD is a very complex codec, so it requires a lot of processing power to edit. For a limited time, the Grass Valley EDIUS Neo2 with Booster NLE software is currently included for native editing of the AVCHD video files. The Booster option allows Neo2 to handle more realtime streams of AVCHD than any current competitor. AVCHD is also supported by other edit packages in varying degrees, and some users prefer to convert AVCHD to an intermediate codec, such as Cineform Neo Scene, for easier editing.

Files are typically transferred to the edit machine’s hard drive by inserting the SDHC card directly into a card reader, or files can be moved over a USB cable. Another option is to use a capture card to ingest the video playback from the camera in realtime via HDMI or analog Component, which records to a codec supported by the capture card and software. The Matrox MXO2 Mini and Black Magic Intensity Pro are two options for capture devices. In studio settings, users might appreciate the chance to capture the live video to their computer at uncompressed quality via HDMI, bypassing any in-camera compression of the signal, especially for green-screen work.

Keep in mind that this camera uses ¼-inch CMOS image sensors, which are not known for great low-light performance, so consider that in certain situations, auxiliary lighting may be beneficial. The step-up AG-HMC150 model uses 1/3-inch CCD technology which is said to offer better low-light performance, though I’ve not tried that camera. In normal lighting though, the AG-HMC40 image looks great.

I did find that I can use up to 24dB GAIN on this camera and still have a much cleaner image than my HDV camera at 6dB GAIN. Lowering the shutter speed will also let more light into the camera for better images. When shooting 1080i60 for example, drop the shutter from 1/60 to 1/30 to increase sensitivity. The AG-HMC40 also utilizes DRS (Dynamic Range Stretch), which adjusts the image to preserve details in shadow areas and also avoid blown-out bright areas when both appear in the same shot.

Videographers moving from DV to HD on a budget will welcome the versatility and features this camera has to offer. That said, it may not have all the manual controls and low-light sensitivity that wedding videographers desire in a main camera, in which case they might consider the AG-HMC150 as a main unit, with the AG-HMC40 (or a couple of them!) as B-cameras for multiple-camera ceremony shoots. For schools, this camera would be an excellent choice for student videographers.

As a videographer, I’m impressed that a camera of this size and weight (just over two pounds) can provide the performance, features, and ease of use that it does at this price. Adding the XLR audio package and a wide-angle lens will make this a well-rounded performer for most applications without breaking the budget. Did I mention that registering the camera increases the Panasonic one-year warranty to three full years? The more I think about it, the better this camera looks!