eightdotthree » Movies

The noisy sea lions from Pier 39

Ryan — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:32:31 +0000

In honor of the sea lions who apparently took a fishing vacation up north I present this. Audio was recorded using the Voice Memo iPhone application and it was edited with iMovie.

Inspiration comes in small doses

Ryan — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 04:31:46 +0000

I found this video on Jeff’s blog and found it to be really inspiring. It is especially relevant since I was just reading about the Flip Mino HD camera he used to shoot it with.

He proves you can do a lot with a little, he cleverly glued a wide angle lens to his Mino camera, and still create something meaningful and beautiful.

Another problem, Flip videos have no audio

Ryan — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 01:10:07 +0000

I own a Flip video camera and for what it is meant to do I like it. However once I get my videos off the camera I can not hear the audio anymore. I still haven’t found a solution on the internets and even their own website admits the problem, but their solution of “update your software” does not work for me nor does it seem to work for a number of others. The odd thing is, if I upload the video to YouTube or Flickr the audio track comes back.

What a pain!

update, after some more searching around I found this solution, which if you read the comments the author recommends removing old QuickTime video codecs and only leaving Perian installed. Worked for me!

Trouble with my Apple TV

Ryan — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:36:52 +0000

After trying to rent two movies I realized there was trouble in paradise. When I try to sync via iTunes I get the following error.

The Apple TV “Apple TV” is not responding. Check that any firewall software running on this computer has been set to allow communication on port 3689.

A quick Google search reveals I am not the only one and there is no known solution. Thanks Apple!

Flickr Video Test

Ryan — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 20:05:37 +0000

Have a Backup Plan

Ryan — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 04:01:14 +0000

I have never done much backing up, and I have never had any major failure of a critical drive. A good backup plan seems like a good thing for me to have. It seems as though I must be due for one.

Here is my plan, based on the advice found here.

A good backup plan must be redundant and automatic, therefore I am purchasing two hard drives, and two external enclosures. One 250gb which will back up my iMac’s internal drive, and one 500gb, which will back up my external media drive that holds my music and photo collection. I will do a SuperDuper backup each night of each drive, which will essentially mirror the drives. The idea being, that if my iMac’s drive fails on me, I can just add in the drive in the enclosure and pick up right where I left off.

This is in addition to backing up off site to Mozy and Time Machine.

Next month I will buy two more of the exact same two drives so I can do the exact same thing, only I will take them to work every month and switch. That way I always have a drive off site in case of a fire.

Again, this is addition to my off site backup to Mozy. Like I said, I am due for a major failure.

Movie Industry Strikes Again With HDCP

Ryan — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 15:10:37 +0000

Update – Seems as though if you want to watch next gen DVDs on your PC you will have to purchase it from a large manufacturer due to a $15,000 license fee. Read more.

Seriously though, as if we weren’t already treated with enough contempt, we have to deal with one more thing in the move to HD. HDCP is yet another way to control how and where we watch content we purchase legally.

The fact that I won’t be able to watch my HD-DVD or Blu Ray disk on my PC without a new video card and maybe monitor really bugs me. Its not like I need it because playing back the video is very hardware intensive, its just so the movie studios can control it.

HD Beat has a better explanation