Rodrigo A. Sepúlveda Schulz

VLC #009: Snow in Paris today

Yes... the first snow this winter. It doesn't snow every year in Paris, but it did last winter, and today was the first day for this winter. No wonder it was getting really cold...

Question for video tech people: which external disk?

The good thing about DV is that you can buy tapes everywhere, and that the format is rather compatible with many cameras (most) and not too bad quality. There’s even HDV tape out there. I guess there are a number of professional format tapes as well for bigger cameras (hey, what do professionals use for movies  ?)

 The bad news about DV tape is that you never get to watch your tape, because cabling your DV camera to your TV is cumbersome, and seeking in a tape for the right moment is boring to say the least. Now with modern computers, it is very easy to import your DV footage into your computer’s video editing program. And then do whatever you want it, including searching it.

I’ve spent the last 2 days importing stacks of DV tapes into my Mac using iMovie. easy enough, and I’ve watched my past trips to Japan, London, China, South Africa, Greece, etc. I can’t wait to start sharing some of that footage with you :D

Quoting Wikipedia:

“Video compression

DV uses DCT intraframe compression at a fixed bitrate of 25 megabits per second (25.146 Mbit/s), which, when added to the sound data (1.536 Mbit/s), the subcode data, error detection, and error correction (approx 8.7 Mbit/s) amounts in all to roughly 3.6 megabytes per second (approx 35.382 Mbit/s) or one Gigabyte every four minutes. At equal bitrates, DV performs somewhat better than the older MJPEG codec, and is comparable to intraframe MPEG-2. (Note that many MPEG-2 encoders for real-time acquisition applications do not use intraframe compression.)”

That means that if you need ONE GB for 4 minutes, then you need about 15 GB for one hour, ie for one classic 60 min tape. Guess what ? my 250 GB hard disk on the mac is basically full. Only 20GB left, and I’ve only downloaded a few podcasts and imported a selection of my DV tapes (before editing and deleting of course).

Hence I’m now on the trail of a new external disk (I already own a 160MB iomega, a 300GB maxtor…). My other computers have also a few hundred GB of space disk space between them. Geez, I need some NFS here to use all this disk space, but I’d rather specialize my hard disks… One for backup, one for video, one for documents and pictures…

So. Here comes the difficult part. I tend to use different computers for different things, but multimedia is done basically on all platforms.

• Hence I can either choose a disk with a USB 2.0 (480 Mb/s transfer rate) connection, or a firewire 400 (400 Mb/s trasfer rate) connector or a firewire 800 (800 Mb/s) connector. And then attach the disk to whichever machine requires it. I have USB 2.0 and FW connectors on all of them.
• Or I can attach all these disks to several machines, and use filesharing mechanisms such as NFS, the Windows Share, SAMBA, to access all disks on my small network.
• Or even (yeah I know) install a file server somewhere and attach everything to it. But then as in the previous case, I’m constrained by my network connection : Wifi (max 11Mb/s with 802.11b, or 56Mb/s or 802.11g), or my LAN speed (I still have some 10Mb/s devices such as an old hub, but most of my cards are 10/100 Mb/s cards, or 10/100/1000 Mb/s cards on my last Apple + DELL machines). The good news here is that the network speed *can be* faster than the transfer rate on the external hard disk. Good! But today I’m stuck at my current network spped 100Mb/s + the operating system overhead (I have no numbers here). Oups.
• The final solution is to attach a network enabled piece of storage. They now connect with a 1Gb/s port to the LAN. Cool, this means now I need to get a multiport 1Gb/s switch at home ! Pfff… in order to get the same kind of speed than a computer-attached device right ?

Fortunately, most modern external disks ship with 3 interfaces: USB2, FW400, FW800. So any disk will do. But depending on price, they tend to be fast or not, noisy or not. So I’ll have to go on the higher end, and get a quiet and fast disk. You don’t notice it, but with so many devices around, I kinda need to consider this. Multiuser access is not a real requirement, although I’ll be doing something with that computer, and something else with this one here, think just 2 simultaneous backups…

And I forgot to speak about RAID technology that these hard disks are offering as well, as added security to your disks (right, and now what happens when the AC stops working… ?)

OK: upgrading to a 1Gbps network at home seems a must now with all these video files. Am I correct here ? A 1 Gbps transfer rate on the network means I can transfer approx. (network overhead here. Anyone has numbers) 1/8 = 125 Megabytes per second ? Meaning a 100 GB disk backup will take about 800 seconds, so about 13 minutes, and 20 seconds. That’s 10x faster than today. Instead of 2 hours, less than a quarter of an hour. Cool. Any good switch you recommend ?

They seem to come cheap these days, although I would probably need 8 ports to hookup all my stuff. Netgear has one here for about 114 euros. (4/5 ports come for less than 50 euros)

Now I’m looking at buying at least 1 TB of storage. Yep… sounds like a lot. But hey, according to the rough calculations above, that’s only about 65–70 hours of video storage (the rushes). Much less it you are editing videos, producing different formats, etc. So I’m looking at the stuff on LaCie’s catalog. Nice & funky company producing nice stuff. 3 choices here:

• the Big Disk Extreme with Triple Interface (retail $999)
• the Bigger Disk Extreme with Triple Interface (what is the difference? same capacity, same price range or even cheaper, maybe quieter ? more extensible ?) (retail $799)
• the Ethernet Disk (I’m seriously considering this one, but it’s running embedded WinXP ???). (retail $999)

And indeed the Biggest Disk (feeling like callaway golf clubs here) is a bit harsh in my home environment…

So what’s your recommendation? Any other brand you’ve been using lately ? Any horror story form the field ? I really like the idea of a mega storage space (+ security backups), that I can share between all my computers. And I don’t mind upgrading to a Gb/s network.

I wrote about personal storage earlier in January this year, and LeDanois had an interesting perspective. Maybe I should go and watch for the stock price of some of these companies…

Just started using another productivity tool: evernote

It's been years that I've been looking for an easy way and*perfect* way to take notes and keep track of all my ideas.

In no particular order:

• I've tried taking notes on my laptop in notepad: I have tons of .txt files that I never open up, because they tend to cluster my desktop and I cannot search all of them at once, nor easily track the dates.
• I’ve tried using a wiki: kind of works because you can share it easily with other people: the formatting is kinda weird, but it works. You need to be online though. (any solution for local and server-side wikis out there ? reminds me of Lotus Notes doesn’t it ? and the new efforts by Ray Ozzie with the newly announced SSE.
• Of course I’ve used stacks of A4 paper: not pratical to keep in one place
• I’ve tried notepads (been using that in the last 2 weeks), and I keep telling myself that I need to put them on a digital document at some point
• I’ve tried speciliased paper organizers with special to-do lists: great, but not serachable. So I keep in a lot of stuff, with no priorities in the end.

So, here I found on the download squad this little program called EverNote. Waow: it solves all of the above problems: it keeps track of all your notes + multimedia notes + links to the web + searchable by category, by date, etc. and in its basic version (enough for me as I don’t need handwriting recognition) it’s FREE. I guess Microsoft’s OneNote works the same way ? never tried it.

So here you go: tip of the day, is to use this little program to manage all your notes taking. i’m interested in your feedback, a comparison with OneNote and above all, whether there is a way to publish this content to a group (ie. a wiki approach).

Update: there's an extension for Thunderbird and Firefox that allows you to post directly. It's available here. It's already included for IE (thanks P. in the comments section)

The CNET party I missed last week

There was a funky “digital living” party last thursday (nov 17) at the Paris Stock Exchange building. somehow I missed it (too tired), as I was there the day before for the French Tech Tour dinner, and the day after, being filmed by Thomas…

Nothing is lost, as CNET has just published a video of the night (short 3 min clip). Very different atmosphere than the night before, and somehow I’m feeling a bit old when I watch it :D

 

Your dream shop for your iPod

Just spotted on Loic’s blog: there’s a store in Paris, dedicated to the goodies, extras and accessories for you iPod. No need to go online anymore here ? Sounds like fun, although in the comments of Loic’s post, people say the stuff is expensive, and that indeed they might not keep their brand for long…

Searching the web, I found this review from June 2005 when they opened, saying they didn’t have a site. Well indeed, they just have a page and a skype ID . There are however sites in Germany (http://www.ipodlife.de) and the UK (http://www.ipodlife.co.uk) sharing the same brand…

 

 

VLC #008: a little walk in my neighborhood in Paris

I’ve had this idea for many many years: take pictures of Paris (there’s a blog on that now), and film atmospheres. I remember discussing it with a friend at least 3–4 years ago. But then, there were no easy solutions out there to make this idea feasible.

I fully realize that you need both creative talent and training to produce nice documentaries, but hey, I’m none of that, just a plain blogger. So here I bring you a little walk trough the Marais in Paris, where I live. It’s the historical part, so you’ll first start off the Bastille metro station, sitting just on top of the port of Paris (yes we have one): you’ll see the new Opera de Paris, the place de la Bastille with it’s genie on top of the column, and we’ll walk through the lovely Place des Vosges that has a lot of hidden secrets including the former house of Victor Hugo.

There’s a square garden in the middle, with a nice statue of Louix XIII (the guy who ruled France in the 3 musketeers!). And we’ll finish off with some boutiques on the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois (totally crowded on weekends) with a small glimpse at 2 hôtels particulier: the Musée Carnavalet and the current Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris.

Let me know what you think, and whether I should move out from my neighbourhood  …

ps: I’ve been playing with compression settings a little bit. They might not be optimal on this video.

VLC #007: Meet Versac, a semi-pro politics blogger

Hum… I’m feeling like Thomas Blard today… Posting one video every half an hour . Actually the guy is loving it and is taping everyone he meets! You should start doing the same. It's fun.

I have probably 20 or 30 interviews to publish online still… sorry for the low vlogging, it does take time doesn’t it ?

So, here I bring you someone you should really READ. He doesn’t talk much, but he WRITES a lot, both on his personal blog (http://www.versac.net) and on a collaborative blog (http://www.publius.fr).

What about? Politics. Yes, the real stuff happening out there. Citizen media meets citizen analysis, and citizen gruntling. His stuff is quite good, although in French. And I hear the man is launching a video blog in preparation for the French presidential elections in 2007.

Grassroots journalism, straight talk with less well-known politicians, it will be great. Anything you want him to focus on early (theme, person, etc.), just leave a comment here or on his blogs!

Oh, and his name is Nicolas Vanbremeersch, better known in the blogosphere as Versac.

VLC #006: Innovation at Microsoft

Slightly over 2 weeks ago, I attended a great afternoon conference, called the Entrepreneur’s Club, at SGAM (Société Générale Asset Management) in Paris, organized by its 3 partners: Maurizio Arrigo, Marc Fournier and Xavier Lorphelin.

What was nice about it is that they had a number of their portfolio companies present on stage to a crowd of about 100 people, including VCs from other funds, and to other members of the venture ecosystem. Most of these events tend to repeat themselves, but it was good that they would host it at SG, and bring in the community to them.  I understand that there were also workshops in the morning that I didn’t attend.

Companies we heard about in the afternoon included: Parrot (the Bluetooth devices for talking hands-free in your car), SEVA (a new gaz technology for airbags) and Sequans (waow! here: it’s a Wimax fabless semiconductor thing), and Attitude Studio (a  French 3D animation team). In the afternoon I also attended to good presentations by Arma Partners on their views as tech bankers on the mobile industry, and heard Yannick Petit from Avenir Finance talk about the new startup compartment on Euronext: Alternext.

I have a few pix up here on Flickr.

 

Actually we also had a nice keynote from Microsoft’s France CEO, Eric Boustouller that lasted quite a while, in which he discussed many things related to the venture industry and the software industry. I taped for you a few minutes where he discusses innovation at Microsoft. In a nutshell:

– it comes in tems of new products: 15 major lines to be announced in the coming 12 months, ie over 150 new products

– in terms of new business models: live.com and software as a web service, sponsored by advertising is a major piece of news (new business models appear every 5 years at MSFT: the Internet in 1995, .net in 2000)

– in terms of small acquisitions of tech companies to enhance the technology porfolio

– in terms of business development, with the recent launch of a dedicated team for the venture industry.

Enjoy!

OTS #001: Kasso blogs, Sarko replies...

French actor, director and producer Mathieu Kassovitz is a man of convictions. I was very impressed with his early movies as a director: ‘Métisse’ talked about the diffculties of inter-race relationships (Spike Lee has a similar movie).

‘La Haine’ was a blow in your face: shot in black and white 10 years ago, it talked about the French suburbs and the misfits that it produces.

He then went on with ‘Assassins’, etc. I particularly liked his short films. I have them somewhere on a VHS tape. Yep, that IS REALLY FOR ME something we should put on VOD instead of full feature movies and documentaries these days… Short films, stuff you don’t find elsewhere.

Anyways, Mathieu has always spoken his mind. In his personal blog, he writes a very critical post on our current French Minister of Interior, Nicolas Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa, the guy who talks a lot (always with a TV camera crew around him) and produces not much. Everyone talks about him becoming the next President of France. What an illusion ! Although he might actually be a serious contender with his mastery of the media, what has he produced as Minister of Interior twice? as Finance Minister ? Hard to find more shallow…

What is amusing here, is that M. Sarkozy had his staff (I don’t think he would actually write a post himself) post an answer to Mathieu’s blog post (I might be wrong, please correct me it that is the case). Incredible. The potential #1 guy in the country talking to bloggers… Well Mathieu is a very well known person indeed… and a spokesperson for many others.

I had a chat with Guyom 2 night ago; he’s a movie producer on Mathieu’s team. He confirms that all these these posts are actually true.

So, there you go, scoop of the day: Mathieu Kassovitz is preparing an anwser to Sarkozy’s answer to his post…

Caveat emptor.

(via tfmc, via Pointblog)

update: Guyom produces short-movies. His preferred these days is La Chepor. You can buy it online here.

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Reminds me of this post. You can get TVtad from here. For details read the screencopy above…

(via diggnation)