Still, smartphone cameras have some limitations. For example, because of the constraints of the lens, it is almost impossible to snap a really good close-up or a really good distance shot. Say, Can You Make Phone Calls on That Camera? article tells there are companies that are producing dozens of inexpensive smartphone attachments that can easily convert a mobile phone into a mini-professional camera. These products include zoom, fisheye and ultra-up-close macro lenses.

With a good smartphone camera can give amazing good pictures and video when lighting conditions are good (for example outside) but when it is dark the limitations will show easily (for example many inside locations). How to Shoot Great Video With Your Smartphone article tells that before you can overcome your smartphone camera’s limitations you need to understand them. After introduction the article gives you lots of tips how to shoot great video with your smartphone, including instructions for simple DIY accessories like the one you see in picture below.

Some professional movie makers have even found smartphone cameras and tried them. Feature film shot on a smartphone to get theatrical release. Olive is the very first full length feature film shot 100% on a cell phone according to the film home page. Hooman Khalili first got the idea to make a feature film shot entirely on a smartphone in January 2010. A little less than two years later, his film “Olive”, shot on a Nokia N8, is going to be shown in a Los Angeles theater for a week.

When I first read about this, it feels just like another gimmick. Marketing with “A feature film shot on a phone!!” gets a lot more attention, yeah. It would feel like “another indie short film” if shot on anything else. Yet for Nokia more marketing proof the Nokia N8 is the World’s best ever Camera phone!

The news on film shot with N8 became much more interesting when some technical details how they do the shooting came up. First I was a picture of their camera setup in Amerikkalaisohjaaja kuvasi kokopitkän elokuvan Nokian puhelimella article. They have some way attached the full size movie camera optics to the N8 camera to the phone. Good optics are essential to get good quality shots and right film visuals like shallow depth of field. Here is a picture of the camera system from Olive – Behind the Scenes video.

A 35 mm lens adapter was fabricated to fit the smart phone in order to achieve a shallow depth of field. Feature film shot on a smartphone to get theatrical release article tells that Khalili and his team had built what they needed from scratch, dismantling a 1940s-era movie camera to figure out how it should be done. And when it came time to attach the camera to the phone, the best they could come up with was double-sided tape. The downsize of the special construction was what the image you see on the N8 screen upside down, which is a little bit annoying I think. For more details take a look at Olive – Behind the Scenes video.

The one overhead shot in the movie was made by putting the phone in a remote-control helicopter. This is where the small size of the camera phone and built-in optics is comes very handy. Camera phone optics as such were OK for motorcycle shots.

A gimmick is a gimmick, and they have maybe made things difficult for themselves with results that maybe aren’t as wonderful as they could be with some more traditional film gear. Bu if the result is good then all good. Tasty sweet is a tasty treat and what was used to bake it is insignificant. Interesting test for limitations of cell phone camera capabilities.

Here are some notes I made from the presentation now presentation that I found interesting (have been interested in 3D technologies for long time and I have TV production experience from AssemblyTV).

Panasonic has been for several years been very active on live 3D TV productions. They provided the technology for 3D shooting of 2009 French Tennis Open. The entire 2011 French Tennis Open, Roland Garros, was broadcast live in 3D to over 17 countries across Europe. And several other events.

Panasonic has nowadays two main 3D TV camera models: AG-3DP1 and AG-3DA1. AG-3DA1 was the first integrated twin-lens full HD 3D camera recorder on the market. The AG-3DP1 is a newer P2HD Series integrated twin-lens 3D camera recorder. They are nowadays the main tools for 3D TV production. In addition to this also a side-by-side rig with two AK-HC1800 are used to shoot 3D TV material.

In 3D TV production setup each 3D camera has two HDSDI outputs: one for HD picture for left eye and other for HD picture for right eye. Those video signals go to 3D video capable video mixer that is used in the same way as normal TV production video mixer. At the moment AG-HMX1000 mixer (2/4 cameras) and AV-HS450 (16 ch 2D upgradeable to 9 ch 3D mixer). The monitoring of the 3D video is done on 3D capable LCD monitors and 3D glasses (shutter technology).

I earlier wrote that BBC plans to use 3D on London Olympics at summer 2012. The presentation gave some details on the actual 3D TV production hardware that is planned to be used on London Olympics. Panasonic has been for a long time been the company that has provided to TV broadcasting cameras and related equipment for Olympics for a long time. So practically all TV camera gear (2D and 3D) will be from them. The main 3D camera models to be used on London 2012 will be AG-3DA1 and AG-3DP1 (also two AK-HC1800 rig may be used). The video mixers will be AG-HMX1000 and AV-HS450. The 3D video monitoring will be done with BT-3DL2550 monitors.

I wrote to years ago at Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens posting that researches are developing a new generation of contact lenses built with very small circuits and LEDs.

The news today tells that the idea of those contact lenses has progresses. Electronic contact lens displays pixels on the eyes tells that the first contact lenses containing electronic displays into the eyes of rabbits as a first step on the way to proving they are safe for humans. US and Finnish team says that they have demonstrated the operation of a contact lens display powered by a remote radio frequency transmitter in free space and on a live rabbit.

The test lens was powered remotely using gigahertz-range radio-frequency energy. The power transmitter was placed ten centimetres from the rabbit’s eye and RF energy was picked up on the lens with 5-millimetre-long antenna printed on the lens. The test lens had only one pixel.

Now we have to wait displays with good resolution become available some day. Maybe some day they can replace some larger displays…

Mimicking the brain, in silicon article tells how new computer chip developed by MIT researchers models how neurons communicate with each other at synapses. The MIT researchers designed their analog computer chip so that the transistors could mimic the activity of different ion channels. With about 400 transistors, the silicon chip can simulate the activity of a single brain synapse. By the way there are about 100 billion neurons in the human brain, each of which forms synapses with many other neurons. The MIT boffins are planning to use their synaptic chip to model specific parts of the brain, such as the visual cortex. Compared to trying to simulate it in software on a supercomputer cluster, by using the analog synaptic chip, the simulation will run faster than your own brain does. (The brain has a 65Hz to 80Hz cycle time).

One cause is running your cable over a high power source, so run camera wires away from power lines. Make sure to run camera wires away from power lines (a minimum of 12 inches / 30 centimeters).

Also 24vac power transformer connections can cause similar problems. The type of AC power transformers you use to power your cameras can contribute to Ground Loop problems. A ground can be introduced to your camera “Capacitively” through the power transformer windings depending on the type and construction technique used to build the AC transformer. If you get problems an old trick is to reverse the wire on the 24V AC power supply to get the bad signal to go away. Not that this reversing trick is only for 24V AC system when you know what you are doing; do not try to reverse wires on 12V DC powered systems or you can damage your power supply and/or your camera.

Another issue with ground loops are metal buildings. If you mount cameras to the side of a metal building, remember that the entire building is one large conductor. You should never connect both ends of a video cable to local grounds. To avoid grounding on camera end, some form of electrical insulation between the building steel and camera is a good idea. Video Ground Loop Interference for CCTV recommends to put a piece of wood between the camera and the wall and that will fix the interference caused by video ground loops.

If coaxial cable shields are connected together anywhere in the system, separate them if possible. Similarly remove all but one ground connection on each coaxial cable if possible. The ground is usually at the monitor end of the coaxial cable because the monitor equipment plugs into the main power supply which is grounded.

There are video ground loop isolators (or “isolation transformers”) that can help to solve ground loop problems. My Ground loop problems in video lines article gives more details on them and links to video isolator products. For DIY solutions read my Build video isolator and Build humbugging transformer blog postings.

“In many cases, DRM restrictions prevent legal users from doing something as normal as making backup copies of their music. Because of these inconveniences, some consumers choose to pirate,” DinahVernik, assistant professor of marketing at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business says.

DRM does not seem to work on games either. DRM Drives Gamers To Piracy, Says Good Old Games article says that it can actually drive gamers to piracy, rather than acting as a deterrent. In an interview, a spokesperson for Good Old Games said that the effectiveness of DRM as a piracy-deterrent was ‘None, or close to none.’ ‘What I will say isn’t popular in the gaming industry,’ says Kukawski, ‘but in my opinion DRM drives people to pirate games rather than prevent them from doing that. Would you rather spend $50 on a game that requires installing malware on your system, or to stay online all the time and crashes every time the connection goes down, or would you rather download a cracked version without all that hassle?”. According to Kukawski, the situation with restrictive DRM has reached the point where gamers often feel pushed into buying a game at full price, but then still download a cracked version to avoid the DRM.

DRM interrupts the user experience. Since when did any DRM solve piracy? I’d love to hear some high-level exec answer the question of “Why use DRM if it doesn’t stop piracy?”. The problem is that pirates don’t care about copy protection, it does not stop them. DRM doesn’t do a damned bit of difference to piracy – the pirated versons have been cracked to remove the DRM sometimes weeks before the main release – the ONLY people affected by DRM are the legitimate buyers. DRM is really just painting everyone with the same brush and treating everyone as a criminal/pirater.

The “we need DRM, otherwise we can’t provide all the content we want to!” argument is horrible, stupid, and insulting. DRM does not allow businesses to provide content in new markets. DRM allows businesses to provide old markets in places where they make no sense. Every company which complains they can’t do X without DRM really means they don’t want to do X without magic fairy dust. Meanwhile, everyone else is busy providing X without DRM, and the only difference is the companies which want magic fairy dust aren’t getting paid what they expect.

Monopolies do not exist in modern digital world. People will always acquire the product they want, and if you aren’t willing to sell it, all that means is that people will always acquire the product they want without paying you. A lack of DRM doesn’t make piracy legal, but it sure makes paying for stuff a lot more enjoyable.

To understand why DRM can’t work well in practice needs mature thinking and/or very good abstract thinking applied to real life operating environment. It seems that many people making decisions on using DRM do not seem to get this. The electronic publishing business seems to be going the same route as music and movie industries have been going through. DRM offers made by companies are promise a lot to the publishers. And publishers think that it would be nice if that would work as promised.

The whole idea of DRM relies entirely on security through obscurity, and if you publish a standard then that obscurity is gone. Even with an obscured scheme, if it’s worth it to anyone (ie there aren’t easier ways to get the same content) then someone will reverse engineer the format and work out how to extract the data from it in a usable way. This will always be possible, because the player itself has to get the data into a usable format itself in order to display it. All DRM does is inconvenience legitimate users, pirates will just download media that is not drm encumbered and have a better user experience. Many DRM schemes backfire and give users a lot of trouble.

Reality has already pretty much already rendered DRM as obsolete. DRM does not and has not protected music industry. DRM does not and has not protected video game publishers. DRM does not and has not prevented every significant song, movie, or other work from being easily, readily, and widely available on torrents. So, other than annoy the end users, what purpose does DRM serve?

Besides DRM there are also other methods the content producers have tried with not much help either. Report: Piracy a “global pricing problem” with only one solution tells about that a major new report Media Piracy in Emerging Economies from a consortium of academic researchers concludes that media piracy can’t be stopped through “three strikes” Internet disconnections, Web censorship, more police powers, higher statutory damages, or tougher criminal penalties. That’s because the piracy of movies, music, video games, and software is “better described as a global pricing problem.”

The End of Content Ownership article tells that the cloud, along with subscription and on-demand services, will transform our perception of content access and ownership.

For example Spotify is a digital music service that gives you access to millions of songs for free or with a small fee. Spotify is funded by paid subscriptions, advertisements in the Spotify player for non-subscribers and music purchases from partner retailers. And you can listen a lot of music at Youtube for free as well.

Traditionally a Wi-Fi device was measured according to its receiver performance, using metrics such as receive sensitivity. With video delivery, transmitter performance is ultimately measured according to user experience. Raw throughput is no longer an adequate metric for measuring wireless network performance, as was the case with internet data traffic.

If we use around 10-20 Mbps per HD stream, multiple HD stream delivery requires no more than 40-80 Mbps of actual throughput. The main challenge is to deliver this relatively modest throughput consistently and robustly across an entire home to multiple nodes. Quality-of-service (QoS) related metrics, such as packet loss, delay and jitter, to which HD video is highly sensitive, must be optimized as well, sometimes at the expanse of raw throughput.

This must be accomplished over a constantly changing and hostile wireless fading, interference prone channel. The challenge becomes converting an unpredictable medium into a controlled and managed one. We can’t control everything, but we need to make the system to work well enough to be enjoyable.

Super Hi-vision (Ultrahigh-Definition Wide-Screen System with 4000 Scanning Lines) is the technology developed by NHK Science & Technical Research Laboratories that delivers the images at considerable higher resolution than HDTV. The picture quality is picture quality is said to be 16 times better than HDTV.

It is claimed that this technology is so real that viewers feel as if they were actually at the site of the broadcast and find themselves attempting to touch what’s on the screen (by the way same type of promises was made in the introduction of HDTV if I remember rigt). The large, wide-screen video images with the resolution equivalent to that of printing strike viewers as a fresh surprise. The cutting-edge technology captures the attention of the international community.

Super Hi-Vision feed over IP page gives some details on the data rates on this new video system: Live feed made use of a codec developed by NHK for efficient transmission and broadcast of Ultra High Definition TV signals. The encoder compresses the video signal from approximately 24Gbps down to 180-600Mbps and the audio from 28Mbps to 7-28Mbps. Wikipedia Ultra High Definition Television has also some additional information on different higher resolution than HDTV video systems.