Multimedia, AV Archive

While we at OSNews often talk about desktops, laptops, and netbooks, there is another "form factor" which is making inroads into various households: the home theatre PC, or HTPC. There are a lot of software packages out there that will aid in turning a computer into an HTPC, and since I've been testing three of them extensively over the past months, I figured we'd talk about what you use.

I had no plans to write a mini-review for the Canon SX200 IS which I bought recently, but I can't contain my excitement about its video mode, so I had to share. The story behind it is that after testing various digicams in its class, I concluded that this is the best HD video P&S digicam in the sub-$500 price range (not counting digi-recorders like the Sanyo Xacti). Read on for more info, and for some directly-out-of-the-camera samples to download and scrutinize yourselves.

Sony Pictures Imageworks has released five digital image-manipulation software tools under open source licenses. Imageworks (the unit of Sony Pictures Digital Productions that handles visual effects and digital character animation) has contributed other open source software in the past. However, the release of five tools at once brings its involvement in open source to a new level. The new effort includes a Web site aimed at keeping open source developers up to date on the projects. All five of the tools are licensed under the new BSD license, and are hosted on Google Code.

Geeks.com, home to many Kodak digital cameras, sent us in the Kodak V1073 10MP digicam, one of the first touchscreen digicams in the market. Naturally, we had to put its user interface under some scrutiny, and compare it to the UI of the non-touchscreen Kodak cameras.

After an 8 year long development process, the team behind the VLC Media Player has released version 1.0.0 of their popular and capable media player. Even though previous versions weren't necessarily unstable, reaching version 1.0 is still somewhat of a milestone.

KDEnLive 0.7.5 was released a few days ago, so I installed it on my Ubuntu machine to see how the app has been progressed since the last time I tried it. KDEnLive is the most actively developed, and easiest to use Linux video editor. Its UI resembles Sony Vegas in many ways; if you know how to use Vegas, you won't have trouble with KDEnLive.

De wonderen zijn de wereld nog niet uit. As we all know, Flash is a terrible resource hog on just about any device. Even my quad-core desktop space age computer sees spikes in processor usage whenever Flash rears it ugly head, let alone my poor Intel Atom-based devices. Well, it seems Adobe finally pulled its head out of its behind, and has committed itself to enabling proper Flash performance on Atom-base devices. The catch? You need a Broadcom Media Accelerator, or an NVIDIA graphics chip.

"EarCandy is a PulseAudio volume manager that automatically changes your sound depending on the current application using it. For instance if you listen to music and a Skype call comes in, the music will fade out (based on your settings) until it's turned off, and the skype sound will be the only one running. Or if you listen to music and then play a YouTube video, the music will be again turned off and you will only hear the sound of the YouTube video. The application doesn't have a fancy interface, it only does what it's supposed to, and does it well."

Chris Montgomery, otherwise known as Monty, is the founder of Xiph.org foundation and creator of the Ogg container format. He has been sponsored by Red Hat for several years to improve the codec quality of Theora and the next generation version, called Thusnelda, is already proving to be better than H264 as bitrate increases. Monty has posted some test results demonstrating the improvements. Chris Blizzard from Mozilla Foundation has some updates as well.

I moved into the realm of digital SLR photography back in 2003 when when I got myself a Canon 10D. The 10D served me very well for 7 years and 14 000 pictures. Then I decided it was time for an upgrade so, I got myself a full frame 21 Megapixel monster, the EOS 5D MkII. It's quite an upgrade, it even does video. These are my impressions after having it for a few weeks.

Over a year ago I posted a (non-OS news) article about this new geeky & underground, grass-root movement in videography -- similar to the artistic explosion digital photography saw a few years ago. We call ourselves "DV Rebels". Given a slow weekend, I decided to revisit the topic today with some newer videos shot with the Canon HV20/HV30 cameras, these $500 gems that have been the catalysts in the said movement. The HV lines of cameras are so popular that over 220 official music videos were shot with them, among other kinds of art. In the old article there has been criticism about the "motion photography without a story" nature of the videos that were sampled, but I think that since then these hobbyist videographers have come a long way. Have a look inside for some of my favorite HV20/30 videos available today, while you can check even more here.

"Firefly" is the best Joss Whedon work to date, but I always try to give the benefit of the doubt on new sci-fi shows. So tonight, as I was watching "Dollhouse" on TV with my ex-Be engineer husband, JBQ (currently at Android, along with many other ex-Be engineers), I noticed something familiar at the Dollhouse supervisor's computer screen. It seems that the Dollhouse's business runs on... BeOS. Click in for some snapshots of the scene. Update: mikesum32 tells us that they used a screenshot of BeOS full screen! In the screenshot BeShare and 'Jabber for BeOS' were open. I recognize quite a few names in their lists (some of them are OSNews readers to this day), so congrats for those who made it to... TV!

iTunes and iPod users can now enjoy the fruits of HD movies as offered by Apple's iTune store. Starting today, HD movies can be bought and downloaded for $19.99 apiece, and Apple's also promising movie rentals for $4.99 within 30 days after new releases. Downloads include both the standard HD file as well as an iPhone/iPod-ready SD file. The store already had 1200 "stunning" HD videos for rent, now has a growing arsenal of ones for purchase, and Apple intends to steadily add to that arsenal as time goes on. The press release is really pushing that vampiric film "Twilight" for pre-order, so go out and purchase your favorite tale of a spineless teenager with less emotion than a stick (no offense to sticks) today, now in flying HD colors.

Geeks.com, known for their cheap digital cameras, sent us in the Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS, a 14 megapixel digital camera with a 720p HD video recording capability. Geeks also threw in a Peak 8 GB Class 6 SDHC card to properly test the camera's HD capability. We are taking the camera for a spin, and we have a small HD video shot for your own evaluation.