On Friday, May 9th, I was fortunate enough to have been given access to cover the rally for Senator Obama held here in Eugene, Oregon.
Needless to say, I hadn’t been through a trial by fire like that in many years - reminded me of my days interning for free at one of the local newspapers back in the day.
The AVCHD format has been touted as the cure all for the consumer and lower end prosumer market for acquisition of video content. The biggest obstacle has been the raw horsepower required to decode the hight compressed HDV format - leaving many using the format left wanting due to the nature of the formats burden on what many thought were fairly powerful computers being used to edit video footage.
The recent release of AVC Upshift for Windows has now changed the nature of editing AVCHD content on computers that up until this time were underpowered.
In December of 2007, I finally made the switch from my beloved SONY TRV950’s to a pair of SONY HC7 camcorders.
Having shot with them intermittently since that time, I’ve come to appreciate, even love, shooting with them.
Gear isn’t nearly as important as we are led to believe
Read that again - Gear isn’t nearly as important as we are led to believe
So how does this fit into the Solo VJ paradigm?
Although having quality video acquisition tools is important, I think the future for solo video journalists will lie more in online content distribution - not which high end camera one shoots with - or whether it was edited on a MAC or PC.
Up until December of 2007, I had been a vocal opponent of making the switch to HD - especially for those solo video journalists who were dedicating their craft specifically for the web.
The idea of shooting HD with the end product being a 480×270 pixel end product just didn’t seem practical in my opinion.
Of course I have made the jump to HDV - Why the change now?
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