Comments on: New videocamera

By: eoin

eoin — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 15:01:52 +0000

If it helps, i have a sister with Down’s and i took no offence at the use of the word retard. Pollitically correct naming can get pedantic. Whatever word used to describe people with mental difficulties will have negative connotations because it is used to describe people who are less intelligent than regular people. So retard can be replaced with any other word and it will be used as an insult to call people stupid. As long as i don’t feel the story has anything negative to say about people with disabilities, then its all good.

By: John

John — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 00:39:48 +0000

Okay, Craig. So you don't feel it is a big deal, but it is a big enough deal to post a comment about it and forward it to your group. Got it.

I'm not going to make a big deal about it either, because every movie ever written will have something that offends someone. I guarantee it.

I've gotten another email about this issue, and I wrote back, not so much apologizing as acknowledging: yes, you have a right to feel that way. I understand your concern. I hear you.

It's frustrating that these types of comments get posted on entirely unrelated articles, such as this one. I think I'll have to have a standing post entitled, "Dear Writer, You Have Offended Me...", upon which interested parties can express their displeasure. Sort of a sacrificial lamb.

By: Craig Freeman

Craig Freeman — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 19:25:48 +0000

I am a parent of a child with down syndome and belong to Dads Apreciating Down Syndrome and have been urged to write to WB about Charle and the Chocolate.. Beacuse the use of the word “Retard.” You sir are the writer who wrote it into the movie. A movie directed to the youth market. I am passing your name on to the rest of the group to assure your propper credit for your work.. I don’t feel it is a big deal but others want to boycott the movie and WB. I see it as a need less alteration and you’ll be know as the guy who wrote the line. good day, Craig Freeman

By: John

John — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 19:04:05 +0000

As an update, I just cut together my first 10-minute project using this camera. Here's what I've learned.

It's a helluva lot easier to import it into iMovie than Final Cut Express, which balks at the format (.avi, which is really mpeg-4). Just create an mpeg-4 project and go to town.

Not surprisingly for a tiny camera with a tiny microphone, sound is poor if there's any significant noise in the room.

For web-oriented material, the quality is actually just right.

By: Chris Nolan.ca

Chris Nolan.ca — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 05:14:31 +0000

Just a note about the video clips. They are encoded in H.264 which is the new Quicktime 7 codec. I haven't upgrade yet (too cheap at the moment to re-buy the pro license) and they don't run on version 6 of quicktime.
Thought I'd include that here in case others had the same problem.

By: Brendan

Brendan — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 04:22:40 +0000

I was just going to comment regarding your camcorder and the fact that FC Pro and Express both only edit natively in the DV format without external hardware, so some conversion is needed - but Mike C. beat me to it.

And yet I still felt compelled to post, so there you go: redundancy at it's finest. Cheers.

By: Harry

Harry — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 01:25:48 +0000

Ben, I have a ZR50 I bought a couple years ago when my own son was born. It doesn’t do well in less than brilliant light.

By: John

John — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 23:42:31 +0000

Ben:

The DV camcorders are a lot more economical, and have terrific quality. It was the size/digitalness of this one that made it more expensive. You should also look at used DV cameras, because a lot of times they work great.

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 23:18:25 +0000

I’m a father-to-be, too. Been looking for a decent camcorder that wouldn’t break the bank. Yours is a little too expensive for me. Was looking at the Canon ZR series.

By: Brandon

Brandon — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 07:19:08 +0000

Ohhhh… It would be great for Apple to come out with a small tapeless QT formatted video camera. Tapeless is without a doubt the future of video.

By: Mike Curtis

Mike Curtis — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 23:06:47 +0000

Hi John! Thanks for the link to HD For Indies, I've had a display glitch that shoves all the content way down the page for the last week, very annoying but I'm working full time at a client's site this week and haven't had time to fix it yet.

As for the constant rendering, I'd suggest finding some means of batch converting your MPEG-4 files to DV (or whatever you want to edit in). If you had Final Cut Pro HD, I could suggest using Apple's Compressor. If you don't, try digging around on versiontracker.com for something inexpensive to convert files with.

Cheers and have fun with your little camera and impending fatherhood!

-mike