Billy Fire LLC

Shedworx has just released a new version of their software that allows you to do a conversion into the WMV format as well as the AVI format. The added advantage for the Canon HG-10 is that the conversion keeps the video in the correct 16:9 format.

For this version to work Windows Media version 11 needs to be installed. I had an initial problem with this as I had version 9. As before, Shedworx were extremely efficient and worked out why I had an issue.

The following screen shot shows how simple the Shedworx interface is:

In this screen AVCHD files are added for conversion.

This options screen allows you to select the output format. In this case I have selected WMV.

Pressing the green button starts the conversion from AVCHD to AVI or WMV (depending on which you selected). Simple!

I was just reading how Matt Cutts had had some issues with his backup server and it reminded me that someone may be interested in a couple of recent occurrences where my backups saved my bacon (well actually not quite that serious, but it would have required me to do a lot of extra work to get things back to where they were supposed to be).

I while back I decided to install Carbonite. As I mentioned before, it was an extraordinary efficient process and is very easy to use. Carbonite is a backup service that runs in the “cloud” (i.e. somewhere on the Web and thus not subject to power outages at your home/office) that Matt talks about.

Recently I made 2 stupid mistakes by deleting files I needed in my haste to get things done. One of the mistakes was particularly daft. I had created a directory a while ago called Delete-Me. The directory was supposed to be a temporary staging area for files I would probably not need, but they could sit there until I deleted them. If I decided I did need them, they might still be there. For some strange reason I decided to store a very important file that I use multiple times a day in this area. The file is automatically opened by the application that uses it - and so I had forgotten where it was.

A few days ago I decided to clear some disk space and DeleteMe seemed like a good candidate.

The next time I opened my important application, its storage file was GONE.

I quickly realized that there may be a chance that the file in question might still be in my Carbonite backup. Praise God, it was! I presume that Carbonite leaves files in its backup for a period of time, prior to deleting them. I immediately put Carbonite in restore mode (i.e. it stops the backup) and copied the files from the Carbonite backup drive (somewhere in the “cloud”) to my PC. Everything is fine.

This was definitely a God thing because if I hadn’t opened my application when I did, Carbonite might have eventually deleted the file that I needed.

P.S. Len Pallazola of Carbonite kindly clarified (see below) that Carbonite actually retains files for 30 days precisely because of the sort of issues I had. So Carbonite is even better than I thought!

Images of Canon HG10 Camcorder

The following are several images showing some of the main parts of the camera. Excuse the dust.

The camera comes with several cables, notably a sound cable, a component out cable and a USB cable (not shown). The component out cable only transfers video data and hence needs to be used with the sound cable. An HDMI cable was not included with my camera.

These are the main controls for the camera. The top button turns the camera on and off and can change mode. Notice the little gray button at the top. This must be depressed before the button can be turned. The silver oval button starts and stops video capture. The small switch changes between video and still mode.

This larger view shows the battery. The charger input terminal is just to the right of the battery.

My dad always advised me to get a filter on any new camera lens to protect the lens (as well as providing desirable optical effects.) I bought a set of 3 43mm filters: UV, polarizing and skylight.

I have attached a UV filter to the lens.

The top of the HG10.

The top of the hg10 with its plastic cover removed. This show can be used for attaching a microphone.

The microphone input is cunningly concealed behind another plastic cover that has a small rubber hinge. I imagine that this cover is primarily for aesthetic reasons, but it also protects the terminal.

It seems that many camcorder manufacturers have a real blind spot regarding microphone inputs. I guess their studies show that most undiscerning camcorder users don’t really see this as a priority. The fact is, when you compare the two, you can really tell the difference between camera recorded sound and separate microphone recorded sound.

Top of HG10 with screen closed.

Output terminals (HDMI Out, Component Out, and Audio out) with plastic cover pulled back.

USB terminal. When transferring video to the computer this must be connected, as well as the power cable.

I recently bought a Canon HG10 video camera to replace my old Canon ZR DV camera. The ZR is still going strong, but the firewire port on the camera is broken and hence I cannot transfer videos to the PC anymore. I am left with pile of mini DV tapes, many of which I forgot to label.

I like the HG10 for the following reasons:

• It is high definition (HD) i.e. 1080 lines. I don’t have a HD TV but I think it best to be prepared for a client who needs high def. You can always convert down - but not up.
• It is an HDD camera (hard disk drive). This offers me the opportunity for an all digital workflow and no unlabeled tapes lying around. In addition the hard disk drive has enormous capacity (9 1/2 hours according to the manual).
• The camera is small, light and unobtrusive.
• It has a 24 fps and cine mode option.
• It has a mic input. The sound quality sounds ok from the built in microphone, but any serious project would require and external microphone.
• It has 43mm screw threads in front of the lens. The first thing I did after buying the camera was to get a set of filters. Not only are these useful of aesthetic effects, they also protect the precious lens (which has its own automated lens covering).
• The camera includes a large, well lit 16:9 attached monitor, as well as a viewfinder.
• My initial thought about the battery life is that is is going to be substantially better than the ZR. The battery attached to the rear of the camera and is charged by plugging an input into the actual camera.
• The camera has HDMI output, AV out (which also doubles as a headphone monitor), a component out terminal and a USB terminal so that you can transfer clips to a PC.
• My camera came with backup utility software, a Canon Digital Video Solution Disk, InterVideo WINDVD SE, Ulead DVD Movie Factory SE and DVD Movie Writer SE. More about software below, but one of the quirks of the AVCHD video format used by the HG10 is that there is not a lot of software available for editing it. With the software included, it is possible to transfer files to a PC, play them on the PC in their native format, do some rudimentary editing, transfer back to the camera and burn DVDs. Ideally one would keep the video footage in its native format all the way through the editing process. Once such software that promises to do this is Pinnacle Studio Ultimate version 11. However the PC requirements to do this include an Intel® Core™2 Quad 2.66 GHz or higher required for 1920×1080 AVCHD editing (according to the Pinnacle web site). This is a very powerful machine.

Editing software

I have experimented with a couple of different options so far in terms of editing the footage.

1. Shedworx has created a program, VoltaicHD, that converts AVCHD files into AVI files. These files can then be edited using Windows MovieMaker (which is included with Windows XP) at the camera’s full resolution. The software is very easy to use and Shedworx were incredibly helpful when I asked them some questions. The software is also very inexpensive and so this represents a great way of being able to edit for probably as low a price as possible.
2. I also investigated software from Elecard. They offer a wealth of software including software to convert AVCHD files to MPEG files for editing.

One quirk I have discovered is that even though the camera’s sensor picks up information at 1920 x 1080 pixels, it stores it to the disk at 1440 x 1080. This means that when you start a MovieMaker session, you need to set the resolution back to 1920 x 1080, otherwise everything will be squashed horizontally.

Before attempting to register a domain name at Network Solutions, read this article.

Apparently, Network Solutions takes the domain name that you enter and puts it on hold. This means that once you have seen that the domain you want is available at Network Solutions, if you want the domain you have to pay their relatively high fees ($34.99 for one year for a dot com) as compared to $9.95 for one year for a dot com here.

You can check this phenomena out for yourself by making up a name (that you are NOT interested in), trying it at another registrar. If it is available try it at NetworkSolutions.com, then go back to the original registrar and see if it is still available.

Some posts on this subject say that the hold is only temporary, so to be charitable to NetworkSolutions.com you could argue that they are doing you a small favor by restricting its registration from other registrars. However, if you happened to be in a race to register a domain name there would be nothing to stop someone else registering it at NetworkSolutions.com

You can view my Technorati profile here:

Technorati Profile

I have been thinking that it might be fun to create some video tutorials of various aspects of this business. This practice seems to have become even more popular with the advent of YouTube.

I was aware of some software packages available, such as Camtasia, but Camtasia is expensive and probably has an overkill of features compared to what I was looking for. I noticed that Adobe has an offering (Adobe® Captivate® 3). It looks really nice and feature filled, but at a fiendishly high price. So I looked for an inexpensive alternative solution.

Overall I downloaded about 5 packages, all of which had free tryouts available, but also were very reasonably priced. The first 3 that I downloaded did not record sound through my microphone (I have a USB microphone and headset which may cause issues for some packages) . Finally I found Screen Recorder Gold.

The software installed easily and worked first time - video and audio. Audio and video quality seem excellent. You can choose the capture area and you have the option to add mouse and keyboard sound effects. I am not sure about sound synchronization, but I don’t think this is too critical as there will not be any lip-sync in my videos. Also the ability to add captions seems to be somewhat limited, but my intention is to create basic video with an audio commentary. If I get more sophisticated I will have to save up for Camtasia.

Up until now, backing up my PC has been a very onerous task. I had to use multiple DVDs, without any real confidence that I would be able to restore files should disaster ever strike. And apparently disk drive failure and data loss are very frequent occurrences.

I recently heard about Carbonite on the radio. Carbonite is a new backup service that runs a small backup application on your PC. It gradually backups up all the files that you need backing up and once this is complete it continues to backup files as they change. This ensures that you always have an up-to-date backup (or at least close to up to date). The best part is: this all takes place in the background without any effort from the user.

Two things hat really caught my eye about this service are:

1. Carbonite claim you get unlimited backup
2. At the time of writing this post, one year of services costs $49.95 and 2 years cost $89.95

Use this link to download a free 15-day trial subscription to Carbonite, and get an extra free month of service when you buy: http://www.carbonite.com/raf/signup.aspx?RAFUserUID=148521&a=0

I never realized how much I used Windows Explorer until yesterday.

For some, yet to be discovered, reason every time I opened Windows Explorer (or the Control Panel) for that matter I got a “Windows Explorer has encountered a problem” error. This was followed by a “DrWatson Postmortem Debugger has encountered a problem” error. After this my computer completely hanged and all I could do was switch it off, check disk etc.

I found that I could still use Windows Explorer by just ignoring the error window, but it seemed sluggish and I was just putting off the inevitable computer hang. Having said that, DrWatson only seemed to rear his ugly head on a random basis, so sometimes the screen would just refresh itself and I could carry on as normal.

Of course I searched the Internet for possible solutions - and it seemed that every man and his Windows XP using dog were having similar problems. To make matters worse every problem posted in a forum was followed by multiple possible solutions.

I was beginning to start pulling out my already thinning hair when I found a truly excellent Web site:

http://www.helpwithwindows.com/techfiles/explorer-crashes.html

The site suggests that a lot of problems are caused because of ’shell extensions’. It suggested downloading some (also excellent) software called ShelExView which shows you all the shell extensions running on your computer. By disabling all the shell extensions and then opening Windows Explorer and then re-enabling each extension, one at a time, I was able to find, firstly whether a shell extension was causing my problems (it was) and secondly which specific shell extension was causing me my problems (WMN Toolbar from Visicom Media).

I uninstalled the toolbar and now everything appears to be fine. Pheww….

As you may know, one of the beauties of cascading style sheet (CSS) formatting of Web pages is that you can create a different style sheet for screen and print (and several other options for that matter, like handheld).

One thing to bear in mind is that background images will not appear in print unless the user has the ’show background’ image option set on their browser. In other words, say you had a logo that you wish to appear on screen and in print, you will need to put the image in the Web page as opposed to including it as a background image for a style.