The Owle

March 13, 2010

Caught up with Amani Channel (@urbanreporter) at the stand at SXSW today. He was sporting an awesomely cool piece if geek kit. The Owle  (@wantowle). Certainly drew the crowds everytime he took it out. The wide angle makes so much more of the video capabilities of the iphone and the plugin directional microphone makes a big difference to the quality of the video experience.

Cant wait to get my hands on one! ;-)

Filed under  //   #Geekbag   SXSW  

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The Pogoplug

March 9, 2010

The first of our SXSWi trial kits turned up this morning. The Pogoplug from Cloudengines. "Your personal Cloud". I am looking forward to testing this out in Texas as it should allow for easy movement of files between our "base station" in the Austin Convention Centre and Aquila Towers. Julia and Adam will be making up daily emails and press releases using the bits gathered by us in the day so an easy way needs to be found to transfer files, mainly pictures and docs, but depending on the internet speeds we can get, video transfer too, may be an option.

First impressions are good, if a little larger than I had envisaged. Plenty of USB ports on the back to load up with drives and one on the front for quick access, perhaps best suited to a memory stick. The bright pink colour has drawn some interest too from the folks in the office.

Setting up seems simple, just plug and play. Hit upon a small snag here as the manual says plug in and visit activation webpage, activation page says don't proceed until both lights on the ethernet plug are glowing green. I had one green and one yellow flashing light. After 15 minutes and no change i looked up the troubleshooting guide for info. Checked the firewall and UDP information was all correct but still no joy. Anyone who knows me knows I have little patience for manuals and such like so I decided to brave it out and press proceed anyway. 

Connection found the device first time and took me thorough the security setup. May be worth a note on the manual or the online troubleshooting guide to say try it out anyhow. The unit does not seem to behaving any different than I would expect it to and the light on the port has continued to flash yellow.
Once security has been setup you can then access any USB harddrive connected to the unit from any web browser or iphone (free app download). I added a 4GB memory stick (pc format) and a 1TB (mac format) to the unit and logged in. The files are instantly accessible from the web browser and seem not to be affected by the different file formats or indeed wether the drives are pc or mac.

The files come up with generic icons to display the files immediately but seems to have a script running in the background to index the files and make thumbnails of them. Over time I could even preview the audio and video files in the file view without opening or downloading them. One small drawback, perhaps due to the browser limitations is the amount of files that can be displayed on any one screen at a time. Not a problem for small drives or memory sticks i assume, but the 1TB drive had well over 6000 files and could be painful trying to find something. I suppose if you are going to have the drive shared for any length of time it may be advisable to do some housekeeping and breaking things down into smaller folders etc...
After installing the iphone app and logging in I managed to easily look through the files on both disks, as well as stream music directly to the phone and watched 10 mins of a 1.5GB quicktime movie. Impressive.

All in all, first impressions of the unit are good. Will set it up as soon as we have established a base with a hardline connection and begin using it in anger. Hopefully it will prove an invaluable connection between the Heart of England and the Heart of Texas! 

More soon...

Filed under  //   #Geekbag   SXSW  

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The #Geekbag on its way to SXSWi

March 4, 2010

Version 2 of the #geekbag had its first outing at @conkertu last weekend. Unfortunately, things have been manic in the run-up to SXSW that I haven't had time to upload any content. Hoping to get some of it edited down and ready to upload whilst on the plane over. Never been good at sleeping on planes, add to that the fact that I have started snoring again badly, I will be trying to keep myself busy and awake for fear of being lynched by my wingman phil or being thrown into the luggage compartment by the rest of the angry passengers.

 

The new configuration of the bag seemed to hold up well, highlighted a few new modifications to be made and ideas for the V3.SXSW version.

 

The addition of the protrack was a bonus this time as the nice folk at conkers changed the venue to the waterside area, a lot more comfortable, nice leather sofas to sit on while listening to the speakers and presentations. Major drawback though was that it was their working cafeteria and there was a steady flow of punters chatting and ordering steamy lattes from the nice man in the corner. Anyway, to the point, this meant that the sound I was getting on the camera mics was no good this time so added a table mic and protrack into the mix nearer the speakers to pick up better sound. I realise tis means post-synching the audio and the video, making more work but at least we could hear what they were saying. As the day progressed and the “visitors” became louder, I opted for my Sennheiser radio mic plugged into it and 'close micing' the last few speakers to cut the babble out. This highlighted the first change to the V2 bag.

 

I had taken along 3 radio mics, 2 for interviews and one for the protrack. Two should suffice. Only interviewing one person at a time and recording the audio on the protrack from the panels means the third one was taking up space. I did a roundup at the end with both Phil & Emma but by that time all the panels were finished. One mic down, more space for.....

 

A new addition to the bag (great find @hadleypaul) is the XLR to USB cable, allowing me to plug a microphone into the macbook and record the audio directly into FCP, Audacity or Garageband.

 

Batteries... I took along 5 batteries to be safe but found after a 7 hour day and 4.5 hours of footage filmed I was still on the first battery. Two should do well enough, but I'll pack 3 from now on to be safe.

 

V2 bag has a set of 8 lens filters but takes up quite a lot of space. If I had of though about the type of filming I would be doing beforehand I could have easily let them behind. No use for a ¼ promist filter if you are shooting a panel discussion! :-) The raincover was also not needed as there was plenty of space to keep my kit inside if the weather had turned sour.

 

All in all I think I was more prepared on this outing and the choice of kit held up well. It was also a pleasure to carry around all day compared to my Bletchley Park shooting day.

 

I have a few hours tomorrow to rethink and come up with any last minute changes for V3 as I am schlepping it half way across the world this time and will probably end up with it on my back 9 hours a day whilst running around and filming all the craziness of the Southby week.

 

Mmm, running round with cables, not a good idea, must rethink.....

Filed under  //   #geekbag   SXSW  

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The #geekbag, slowly taking shape...

February 15, 2010

Over the past eight months I have been trying to refine the bits of kit I take around with me to various events. Trying to capture sound and video in the best possible format and quality but also minimising the amount of kit I have to lump around with me. If you are constantly struggling with overly large bags of equipment it can effect the enjoyment of the day, I try to enjoy the events I am at as well as getting content from them.
My first outing to Bletchley Park saw me take my DSR500 (broadcast DVCam), Tripod, field monitor and radio mics. About 40 minutes in to the day I realised that lumping all that kit around makes for an unhappy Nat. I think I managed to capture some good looking interviews but there had to be a better way. A three man crew would have been a godsend but as i was trying to do these things "as a bit of fun" that was not a viable Idea. I think I could have come away with two or three more interviews if I had been a little more "mobile".
Moaning constantly throughout the day and for a few days afterwards, I finally broke down @gabysslave's resolve and she let me go out and spend a bit of money.  The #geekbag was born... 
V1 #geekbag consisted of a Sony Z1-HDV camera, small "stills camera" tripod and 2 radiomics.  I managed to get delivery just in time to test it out at #conkertu. The size of the camera made a massive amount of difference to the enjoyment of the day and once you get the video up onto the web the fact that the camera is not as good as the DSR is not as apparent.  I still had not found all the kit I needed yet, as the afternoon sessions were to be captured "audio only" for podcasts. In order to get good quality audio I needed to mic up the panel / speakers but they seemed adamant that they wanted to wander around making it impossible to get anything decent without radio mics. The only way for me to record anything using the radio mics was to plug them into the Z1. I ended up recording 4 hours on the Z1, camera pointed at a wall, then had to digitise the tapes onto the mac, cut and export the footage as audio podcasts. This meant a 10 hour job to get it up online. Obviously, I had not paid enough attention to the audio side of things...
V2 #geekbag has a few audio enhancements, most significant of which (in both physical size and $$$'s) is the Alesis ProTrack. Similar to the ZoomH4, it has stereo mics on one end and xlr inputs on the other. The main difference is that it is essentially the "microphone" of the system. The brains and hard disk recording facility is provided by plugging an iPod or your iPhone into it. This allows for recording and uploading to the 'net via wifi or 3G.
 The two apps I use most with it are AudioBoo and FiRe Recorder.  I like the instant upload, picture and geo-tag that AudioBoo offers but with a 5 minute limit, I find myself uploading most of the bits I do to Soundcloud or even using posterous audio, recorded using the FiRe Recorder. I assume that the long term plan for the Audioboo team is to bring out a "commercial model", allowing people to pay for longer recording times and other add-ons. The ProTrack can also serve as a stereo "in-line" mixer for direct input into my mac for live capture or streaming.
Another audio addition are the "iPhone to xlr" leads allowing me to use a professional mic like the Rode NTG-2, plugged directly into the headphone socket, giving better sound quality to the recordings as well as allowing a radio mic to be plugged directly into the phone.
I have not had chance to use these new bits of kit other than testing them in the office so am looking forward to their first "work-outing" at the second #conkertu on the 27th of Feb. Have a look and see what its all about.
Generally, I am happy with the shape the #geekbag is taking, i feel that every time I use it I am able to refine the process allowing me to capture the best quality of whatever event i am at without feeling too weighed down by large amounts of kit.
There are, however, two more things that I need to source/sort as soon as possible. Currently I am using @gabysslave's DSLR tripod, Manfrotto 190XB, to keep the size down compared to a broadcast camera tripod. This works perfectly for a "lockoff" interview style shot but does not allow fluid movement while recording. I need to find either a fluid head for this tripod or find something that is just as lightweight.
Another piece of kit I feel would be useful is some kind of "flip" camera. There are a few types floating about. I have a kodak Zi6 but the sound quality is absolutely shocking. It sounds as though you are recording everything whilst using an electric razor. The Zoom Q3 and Alesis VideoTrack both have awesome audio features and reasonable SD video, making the file sizes nice and small for quick upload times. For me though, the fact that they record in 4:3 aspect ratio is something I cant ignore. There are so many of these cameras about with hundreds of online forums listing the pros & cons of each one that I am struggling to make up my mind which one to add to the kit list.
So, this is my #geekbag. The guys in the office laugh and call me "hero in a half shell". Admittedly, it does look rather like a turtle shell but it is comfortable to lug around and so far, fits all that i need in one tidy space. I am sure that it will always be a work-in-progress, always being refined and added to, as what I need to get out of the bits that i capture changes. So, too, will it always remain a money pit. A place for me to keep up with the current technologies and to satisfy my never ending quest for that "killer gadget" that will change my life and the way that I work.

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