monitors

Ever wished for something, but figured it was more or less impossible? At the end of a Roland briefing yesterday, a rep pulled out the CUBE Street EX amp almost unceremoniously. And then he showed me what it could do: It produces “50 watts” of power.* It runs on eight AA NiMH batteries – for five hours. It weighs just 7.4 kg (that’s just over 16 pounds). It connects whatever you want – two XLRs, four independent channels, for any combination of instrument, vocal, laptop. It’s angled, so you can use it as a stage monitor. It has a mounting …

Ce n’est pas un phonographe. Photo (CC-BY-SA) Roadside Guitars. Gibson Guitar has announced in a press release they’re acquiring the Stanton Group, which includes, aside from the well-known Stanton DJ brand, KRK monitoring products and Cerwin-Vega loudspeakers. It’d be easy to see this as a guitar company buying a DJ company, but it’s more than that. KRK and Cerwin-Vega are speaker/monitoring brands. Stanton and Cerwin-Vega each have footholds in the larger consumer arena, not just the pro world, a detail Gibson is quick to emphasize. And Gibson themselves have quietly, steadily grown beyond just guitars. The new “Gibson Pro Audio” …

The Arduino isn’t quite an deal choice for a live generative visual computer – but it can do some gorgeous things with signals. Sebastian Tomczak has a gorgeous hack (as seen via Limor Fried) that manipulates RGB data lines with the Arduino. You connect horizontal and vertical sync signals, then go to town. The Arduino in this case just converts the signal to digital and uses the lower 8 bits of the 10-bit data – a real Swiss Army Knife-style job for the microcontroller. I’m curious looking at this, though – what other sorts of microcontroller projects might be possible? …

DisplayLink technology has existed for a while, and started appearing in more devices in 2008. It sounds like a very visualist-friendly concept – add extra monitors via USB – yet I haven’t seen it in action nor heard from any VJs using this hardware. The DisplayLink site proudly displays seemingly daisy-chained monitors, and touts the energy efficiency of not using extra graphics cards to add more displays. As to performance, DisplayLink is a software accelerated solution, compressing and sending the video data over USB. Various reviews have noted the performance hits this causes, and the DisplayLink Mac driver (released December …

I’ve recently had another shipment arrive from previously mentioned purveyors of cheap gadgetry, DealExtreme (disclosure: Affiliate links used, if you buy stuff I get a (tiny) cut). Last time I write about the site, I noted that super-useful VJ things such as preview monitors weren’t available. They are now. As you can definitely tell from a larger shot, this 3″ (seems to be around 390×260 pixels) monitor isn’t going to win any awards for image quality or resolution. The manufacturers have also managed to label the AV and Line In ports around the wrong way. However, if there was an …

One of my most important requirements for an effective working environment is pixels. The more I have, the more efficiently I can work. Starting in the days when dual-outputs required having an AGP and a PCI card working in tandem, and eventually bringing in multiple computers controlled via Synergy (on CDM) I’ve steadily upgraded to the point where I currently have 6560 pixels of desktop-width in front of me, spread over 3 machines. The current biggest and brightest is a BenQ G2400W. After purchasing my first HD video camera, I spent several months looking for a reasonably priced monitor with …

One of my most important requirements for an effective working environment is pixels. The more I have, the more efficiently I can work. Starting in the days when dual-outputs required having an AGP and a PCI card working in tandem, and eventually bringing in multiple computers controlled via Synergy (on CDM) I’ve steadily upgraded to the point where I currently have 6560 pixels of desktop-width in front of me, spread over 3 machines. The current biggest and brightest is a BenQ G2400W. After purchasing my first HD video camera, I spent several months looking for a reasonably priced monitor with …

Mike has reported some new facts from RED on HD4NDS, concerning the next moves for this industry-challenging company. 1.) A “professional pocket camera” – also referred to elsewhere as a handheld camera 2.) A “new line of 4K projectors” 3.) A “new line of 4K displays” I asked “Plural on both?” he said “Plural on both.” No timeline, no pricing, no features on any of that beyond the obvious. At this point, I think they’ve learned about saying too much too early, so they are just putting it out there. For Visualists, I think the RED pocket camera may be …

In case you missed it on MAKE and Robert’s flight404 blog last week, Robert Hodgin’s mom has translated his algorithmic Processing sketches into real-world quilts. I think we shouldn’t stop here and let Yuko have all the fun. I’d love to see more Processing-based quilts and crafts soon. (Craft Magazine is just waiting for some serious geeking.) Ideas in comments? (Now, my last attempt at quilting didn’t go so well, but that was some years ago … maybe this will roll better.)

Mike of HD for Indies fame has an article on DV.com on building a workstation (Mac or PC) for HD editing and post/correction. Getting the right gear involves lots of decisions. I often spend an hour or two reviewing filmmakers’ or producers’ needs before we arrive at a system recommendation. Every shop and every project has its own peculiarities, so don’t take this list as gospel. It might be worth (ahem) consulting with someone whose advice you trust to fine-tune your needs, budgets, expectations, technical comfort level, and other factors. Myriad little extras and doodads make the system complete, but those …