Well,
that was quick. Right after yesterday's surprising announcement,
Sony flew its yet-to-be-released NEX-VG10 camcorder into London just in time for
today's showcase event. Naturally, we had to get our hands on this shiny baby,
and boy we were impressed. In case you missed the news, this snazzy device is
the world's first consumer HandyCam with interchangeable lens, meaning you can
share E-mount lenses with your young NEX DSLRs, or take advantage of
the abundant A-mount lenses with the help of an adapter (which will cost you
extra, mind you). Likewise, there are also hot and cold shoe mounts on the mic
shaft to cater your current camera accessories. Read on for our thoughts on the
rest of the camcorder -- we've put together a little sample clip for you at the
end as well.
There
isn't much to complain about with this $2,000 (and, sadly, possibly £2,000 for
the Brits) piece of kit in terms of appearance and ergonomics. We like being
able to hold it by either the seemingly solid body (using the strap) or the mic
shaft, and both ways provided comfortable grip without much fatigue due to the
light weight (even with the bundled lens). We were also able to quickly master
the jog-dial control next to the 3-inch screen, but for this price, we expected
a touchscreen interface as well to make life easier. As for the bundled F3.5-6.3
18-200mm lens, we found that zooming required a bit more effort than we liked,
so thankfully there's auto focus mode -- just like any ordinary camcorder -- to
save us from further wrist work with the focus ring. We must also point out that
unlike the Olympus PEN,
this Sony camcorder didn't pick up any mechanical noise from its lens auto
focussing; otherwise, this kit totally wouldn't deserve such price tag.
Of
course, what we really care about is the picture and sound quality. All is
revealed in our sample reel below (remember to enable HD playback mode), but in
brief: stunningly accurate colors, sharp 1080/60i picture, and impressive audio
sensitivity (notice how the mic was able to pick up conversations from afar; you
can also enable just the front mics to minimise background noise). You may
notice some shakiness while we were adjusting the lens -- we'll blame it on our
lack of practice from the little hands-on time we had. Regardless, the NEX-VG10
certainly lived up to our expectation, and we look forward to hear what the
filming hobbyists think of this prosumer-level camcorder when it comes out in
September.
Update: commenter
aim120 dropped us a link to Sony's own sample clip. Enjoy!
wireWax is a new service (still in beta) that takes the concept of YouTube annotations and makes it much better. On wireWax you can build interactive tags into your videos. Each tag that you add to your video have another video from YouTube or Vimeo or an image from Facebook, Flickr, or Instagram. A tag can also include an audio track from SoundCloud or a reference article from Qwiki.
What makes using wireWax different from using the YouTube annotations tool is that clicking on your tags (what YouTube calls annotations) does not send you outside of the video you're currently watching. This means that you can watch a video within a video or view a picture or listen to a different audio track within the original video. When you click a tag in the original video the video pauses and the tagged item is displayed.
Exporting & Saving
One thing that SVG can’t do is save the resulting image as a bitmap. It’s easy for <canvas> because the element is already a bitmap in the first place! The canvas can export its image to a data URL (e.g., data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGg...). This data may then be rendered in the browser, which could then be saved or dragged to the desktop, used in a new canvas, and so on.
The browser must support PNG images, and it may have varying support for GIF and JPG. For our example, we’ll stick with PNG since it supports alpha transparency, and where we haven’t drawn on the canvas, it’ll be transparent.
To get the data URL, we simply call canvas.toDataURL('image/png'). Note that we’re calling toDataURL() on the <canvas> element, not on the 2D context. This is because we’re getting all the pixels in the canvas, not just the pixels in a particular context.
So taking the example we’ve put together already, we’ll make the browser redirect to a PNG version of the image when a user clicks on the <canvas> element (a contrived example, I know!):
canvas.onclick = function () { window.location = canvas.toDataURL('image/png');};
I am sharing of export images from web app specially to Eve and Sham, maybe useful for our harmonia project.
This is the workflow i was mentioning on exporting the contents of the new html5 tag canvas to an jpeg or png and it opens in a browser, which then can be save or be used for other things, we could also explore on other options of sending the image directly to other applications.
http://jsbin.com/abagi3/5/
Above url is a live prototype and you can actually view source to see how easily it is being done. :)
Google () announced Wednesday morning that it has begun rolling out mobile editing for Google Docs (). The update isn’t yet available for everyone, but it should be available to all over the next few days.To date, only Google Docs spreadsheets have supported mobile editing. When the the update hits, all Google Docs documents will be editable on devices running Android () 2.2 (and higher) and iOS 3.0+.We’ve not been able to test it out yet, but Google has released a little video — as seen above — showcasing the new mobile editing capabilities of Google Docs.
That means that...
- You can work on that important memo...while on the bus or train to work.
- If you're behind on a group proposal, but really want to make it to the ball game tonight, your whole team can work on it from the bleacher seats.
- You can take minute-by-minute notes at a concert so you'll always remember the setlist. And your friends can jealously follow in real-time at home.
- and the list goes on!
Stipple is a new service (still in an invite-only beta) that allows you to create interactive images. Using Stipple you can upload an image and tag it with pinmarks. Within each pinmark you can include videos, links, text, audio files, and more images.
Animoto’s functionality is in the ability to take photos and video that the
user specifies, add a music soundtrack ,which can be from their open source
music library or music uploaded by the user, to create a movie complete with
transitions.
it is a great way to have students in an online class introduce themselves.
Students are able to choose the images they would like to share as well as
select their music. This provides a window to the students when they get to
choose how to express themselves
Explain Everything is an easy-to-use design, screencasting, and interactive whiteboard tool that lets you annotate, animate, narrate, import, and export almost anything to and from almost anywhere.
Explain Everything has been a top paid education app since its release in Australia, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Finland.
Import PDF, PPT, DOC, XLS, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and RTF files from Evernote, Dropbox, Box, GDrive, WebDAV, Email, iTunes, and any app that allows you to open these files types using "Open In…". Export MP4 movies, PDF documents, PNG images, or XPL project files directly from your iPad.
This seems to be the granddaddy of mVideo and mAPT. But for now, from what I can see, it still works on a post-processing scale - i.e. record, and THEN annotate, not allowing you to add comments or tags in real-time. (Yet.)
But it seems like a very good source of revenue, offering educational licenses, etc.
Digital Cosmetic Mirror by industry giant Shiseido can be used to test make-up and recommendations without even having to pick up a mascara brush
Using augmented reality to do sampling is a novel way to involve consumers, and can be a useful technology for saving on waste
The terminal then gives you tailored recommendations. Pressing a few buttons on the touch-screen paints make-up onto your image in realtime, allowing you to see the results instantly. You also try out make-up that is currently making waves, along with printing out before and after photos with product information for you to go make the purchase of whichever colors caught your eye the most.