Sticky: Traveling with batteries, Pro Apps Updaters, etc.

• FAA rules on lithium battery transport
• Apple Pro Apps - save those updaters!
• PMW-EX1: XDCAM Transfer 2.5.1 for Mac Released; fixes CLOCK-mode timecode import bug.

SxS Joins P2 in the Dustbin of History?

Here at the Apple Worldwide Developer’s Conference, Apple announced a new lineup of MacBook Pros. The 13” and 15” models drop the Expresscard34 slot, in which we stuck our SxS cards for reading (or our Duel Systems P2 card adapter), replacing it with an SD card slot. The 17” keeps Expresscard34, for now.

Remember when, not so long ago, SxS boosters derided P2 as a reflection of the past, based on an obsolete card format (PCCard, or PCMCIA, which stands for People Can’t Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms)? Glass houses, meet stones: looks like SxS, which fits in Expresscard34 slots, is also too backward-looking for the new low-end and midrange MBPs.

So what now? SD is the solid-state format of the future (or at least of today)? Should we be looking to Duel Systems to make an SD slot adapter for our SxS cards?

Then, of course, when we need to read P2 cards, we plug the P2 adapter into the SxS adapter into the SD slot… making the new MacBook Pros the turduckens of the data-capture world! 

Cine Gear Expo 2009

The “expo” part of Cine Gear Expo took place on Friday and Saturday last week (there were also Master Classes and film screening starting Thursday and ending Sunday). This year it was at “the Studios at Paramount” in Hollywood at Gower and Melrose. It was a balmy 70ºF (21º C) under cinematically cloudy skies, a far cry from the 100+º F of last year.

RED+FCP+Color: Making It All Work

I had previously reported that 2K REDCODE footage (2048x1152), shrunk to 93.75% to fit an HD timeline in FCP, came back from Color as 1920x1080 footage shrunk once again by another 93.75%. I’ve since explored this further and found out what was going on—as well as run into and characterized one of the oft-reported “softening” issues in Color. With these and other minor surprises in mind, I’ve developed a RED+FCP+Color workflow that works for me; maybe it’ll work for you, too.

Review: Sony RM-1000BP LANC Remote Control

Sony’s US$1200 (street price) RM-1000BP Remote Commander is a LANC remote control. It connects to any Sony camcorder with a 2.5mm LANC (a.k.a. Control-L) jack, which means most consumer/prosumer Sonys built in the past two decades. 

On most of those camcorders, it’ll do pretty much what any other LANC controller does: start and stop recording, zoom the lens in and out, and (maybe) change focus or white balance. But on the latest generation DV camcorders—the HVR-Z5U, HVR-Z7U, and HVR-S270U—it gives you full access to just about every button and control on the camera, including menus and picture presets. 

Review: Sony VCL-HG0872K wide-angle lens for HVR-Z5U

The US$1000 VCL-HG0872K is a 0.8x wide lens designed specifically for the HVR-Z5U HDV camcorder; it bayonets in place of the Z5U’s lens hood. It widens the view nicely with negligible sharpness loss, and it actually improves image geometry through much of the zoom range.

If you read my NAB 2009 wrap-up in Firefox…

Just a quick update: I had some HTML comment lines in my NAB 2009 Wrap-up article. They caused Firefox (but not Safari or IE) to redact the sections on Storage, JVC, and Sony.

I’ve removed the comments and now Firefox sees the whole article. You may need to refresh those pages if you have ‘em in cache.

Review: Sony HVR-Z5U 1/3” 3-CMOS HDV Camcorder

“When Sony bought Konica/Minolta”, says Sony’s Juan Martinez, “we suddenly became a major lens manufacturer.” One of the results of this acquisition is the HVR-Z5U, an HDV/DVCAM camcorder with a 20x fixed “G lens”. Consider it the wide-zooming half-brother of the HVR-Z7U, which shares much of what comes behind the lens.