I just read through Adam Wilt’s mammoth review of the HPX170. It’s definitely worth a read, if you’re into that sort of thing. Just prepare yourself to be there for a little while. Maybe make yourself a cup of tea and grab a sandwich first.

The last time I wrote about the HPX170 I mentioned a lot of the features I was excited about. Now I’m more excited.

Several design decisions — like moving the Manual/Servo zoom switch from the front to the left side — are particularly attractive. That stupid little switch (on the rare occasion that I wasn’t going full-manual) would always cause me to bump the focus when I tried to reach it. Also of note is a 1/4in mount on the handle, protected volume controls, and the now highly publicized switchable iris/focus ring.

Another handy feature is the ability to offload footage without removing the P2 cards or connecting directly to a computer. Apparently you can actually connect a USB or FireWire hard drive and the camera will create partitions on that drive to store the clips in. Pretty neat. The drive must be powered externally, however.

If you’re working with another HPX170 you’ll have the ability to store your camera settings and scene files on SD or SDHC cards to match settings across all units. That’s definitely handy, but doesn’t allow you to swap settings with other cameras — like the HVX200 or 200a. Still, I imagine if the HXP170 becomes anywhere as popular as the DVX100 (and subsequent revisions), it won’t be a challenge to find another HPX170 operator.

Unfortunately it looks like some of the coolest features only work in very specific modes. For instance, the ability to pre-record footage (that is, the camera will actually capture footage BEFORE you hit record) only works at 60i, 60p, and 30p. That’s probably not a huge deal for a lot of shooters, but it’ll give the 24p-ers (you like that? I just made that up) something to gripe about — myself included.

Other things I like

• Four (!) focus assist modes
• Variable frame rates (720p modes only)
• Waveform monitor and vectorscope built-in

The waveform monitor and vectorscope options are huge. I’m currently doing work using a green screen, and both tools are essential when you’re trying to evenly light a crude green screen setup.

Things I don’t like

• Variable frame rates only work in 720p modes
• No live data streaming (capturing live over FireWire) for 720pn modes
• Panasonic hasn’t sent me one to play with… yet (please?)

The timing of Adam’s review coincided with another major industry announcement — that of the Scarlet undergoing massive design and spec changes. There’s really not much to report on that yet. However, this new Scarlet mystery — in tandem with the HPX’s positive review — makes Panasonic’s offering that much more attractive.

Scarlet might still have the HPX170 beat on resolution when it does come out, but we all know by now that resolution is only part of the story.

Remember that CFL softbox that I thought was really cool? I made my own, and I thought I’d share some of the details on how I put it together.

Just so we’re clear though, I’m really not very handy. I have some tools, a little bit of common sense, and I get really excited about going out and collecting materials to build things. That’s pretty much the extent of my background in object construction.

I spent $66.54 on supplies, and maybe a few dollars more on some extra screws and nuts.

Purchases

• Lamp cord — $4.19
• Electrical tape — $0.69
• Black 14 gauge wire — $4.69
• White 14 gauge wire — $4.69
• 3/8″ 18in by 18in plywood — $3.82
• Light duty staple gun — $9.97
• Light duty staple pack — $1.90
• White drawer handle — $2.29
• Two foam core boards — $3.00
• Matte black spray paint — $3.99
• Reflective silver spray paint — $3.12
• Five flat-mount light sockets — $6.25
• Two packs of 4 14 watt CFL daylight-colored bulbs — $17.94

I’m pretty sure you could do this for less, especially if you already have all of the tools you need. I didn’t have a staple gun so I had to buy one, for instance. Here’s a list of other tools I used.

Tools

• Power drill
• Drill bits of various sizes
• Screwdrivers
• Pocket knife
• Small wrench
• Tape measure
• Ruler
• Pencil

I started by stripping the tips of the wires with a pocket knife. You might want to use a wire cutter. That would probably be easier. I wired everything in a series, which means that each bulb holds a position in the circuit, one through five. The alternative would have been to wire it in parallel where every bulb is connected to some kind of central hub.

I also drilled holes through the plastic sockets (not pictured). I thought it would be easier than trying to drill though the board and hide the wires. The result wasn’t very attractive, but it works for now. Afterwards I wired them together and screwed the sockets into place.

Once everything was drilled, I plugged it in to get an idea of how it was going to look. So far so good.

I thought a handle might come in handy while trying to transport the box, but it ended up doubling as a way to hang onto my stand. Throw in a clamp (you know, for safety) and there you have it.

Next was the foam core boards. I bought two because I felt there was a better than average chance I was going to completely mess this part up. The board was cheap ($1.50 a piece) so picking up an extra wasn’t a big deal. I ended up not needing the second board, but cutting through the first one was more difficult than I had thought. It took a while to make sure the measurements were right — I really wanted to have the side panels supported by the bottom panel and it required that the top and bottom be exactly one centimeter longer than the sides.

All four panels were held together with electrical tape while fitting it to the board. I wanted to make sure everything was snug.

The panels were spray painted black on the outside and silver on the inside. The board was also painted silver (on the front) and black (on the back). Once everything was mostly dry, I stapled the foam panels to the wood.

Here you can see the reflective paint and how I drilled holes in the sockets to let the wires through. Not the prettiest option, but it’s functional.

Here it is on the stand. There’s nothing covering the face of the light, it’s just really bright. Also of note: the light ball behind the softbox is your standard house light. The softbox appears white/bluish because the camera was balanced for daylight (around 5000K), which sort of matches the output by my new CFL softbox.

I’ve done a few tests so far and I’m happy with the results. The color is nice, and the output is pretty good. And for less than $100, it’s not a bad deal.

What I’d do differently

If I were to make another one I’d almost certainly make it smaller. Probably 12in by 12in, instead of 18in by 18in. I’d also look into a better way to cut the foam core. A paper cutter, maybe? The wires would be fitted into holes drilled through the wood, and concealed in some way. I’d also add a switch so that I could turn it off without having to unplug it every time. A more traditional mounting option wouldn’t hurt either.

So there you go. If you’d like to see more pictures you can pop on over to Flickr and see them in all their full-resolution glory. Enjoy.

I love title sequences. And you might too, which is reason enough to highlight just how awesome The Art of the Title Sequence is.

It’s a website which houses (and pays homage to) a collection of amazing title sequences from films and television shows. Their most recent post shows off the simplicity and masterful cinematography featured in the first few minutes of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Other examples include Reservoir Dogs, Se7en, Bullitt, and one of my personal favorites, Stranger Than Fiction.

A word of caution, however: Watching the sequences quickly becomes addictive. So hopefully you’ve either got a lot of free time on your hands today, or your clients are really flexible on how you define “research.”

I think this is awesome. And now I want to make one. So I think I’m going to try.

The people at Indie4k created a softbox using five compact fluorescent bulbs. The kind that are color-balanced to match natural daylight (or about 5000K).

I’ve been using CFL bulbs to light almost all of my projects in the past year and it’s worked out well for me. The reduced heat output is reason enough to make the switch, not to mention the power-consumption benefits. I’ve even tried to make my own softboxes using the bulbs, but haven’t had great results.

At one point I tried using a single 120w-equivalent bulb with a cut-up t-shirt stretched over a picture frame that was precariously attached to a couple of clamps. This worked for a little while, but was pretty unsightly. It also had a tendency to fall apart when I tried to store it.

What the Indie4k people have done is made something that is not just practical, but nice looking; an accomplishment that’s especially rare for DIY projects. I realize that having good-looking gear may seem like a completely asinine thing to worry about, but there’s definitely a lot to be said for great design.

Being able to take pride in your work — and what you’re working with — is something I believe a lot of people can relate to.

Anyway, check out their post. Maybe soon I’ll be able to post pictures of my very own CFL softbox. Here’s hoping that I don’t electrocute myself in the process.

Of the seven items on my wishlist, five (and a half) of them were announced at today’s Apple event. I’m counting the new Nike + iPod announcement as a half since it wasn’t expanded to include iPhones. Kind of a bummer, but maybe that just means I have an excuse to buy a new iPod nano.

Today will also go in my calendar as the first time I’ve ever really been jealous of iPod touch owners. They have the ability to download the new 2.1 firmware immediately, while the iPhone firmware won’t be available until Friday. I’m anxious to get my hands on it. From what I’ve read so far however, there was no mention of the push notification service at the event today — which leads me to wonder if we’re in for another firmware update by the end of the month. It’s a feature that could be really handy for apps like NetNewsWire and Twitterific (or Twinkle, if that’s your thing), and I was surprised that there was no mention of it.

I like the new visualizer in iTunes. It’s actually not quite as awesome as I was hoping, but it’s still fun. I was a little curious as to why it’s listed under the nondescript label, “iTunes Visualizer” while the other visualizers have names like Lathe, Jelly and Stix. Either way, it’s something I probably won’t use very often. But it’s nice that it’s there.

I’m really excited about HD shows coming to iTunes. I’m not as excited about the 1.5GB that each episode is going to take up, but having the option there is very cool. It’s also worth noting that when you buy an HD episode (which is a dollar extra) you still get the standard version too.

Even cooler still are the Genius playlists. I have a lot of music that I never really listen to. I tend to roll through a few bands at a time, then slowly migrate to another. I’m not a fan of shuffle. I like listening to the albums the way they were produced — in order and (generally) uninterrupted. Shuffling makes me uneasy as I have no control over what’s going to play. The Genius playlists afford me a safety net of general musical similarity. I like that.

And now that I’ve settled down a bit, I can clearly see that we once again have no new displays. I really thought we had that one on lockdown this time. Oh, well. I guess you’re really can’t have it all. But HDTV sure is a good start.

1. HD television shows and movies available in the iTunes store
2. iTunes 8 (to support all those new TV shows and movies)
3. Nike + iPod upgraded and expanded to include iPhones
4. 4th generation iPod nano (pretty much a given)
5. 2nd generation iPod touch (also a given)
6. iPhone/iPod 2.1 firmware update
7. New cinema displays

Okay, that last one is kind of a joke. I think I’ve wished for new displays before every major Apple event for the past few years. Still, I can hope.

Something I’m not expecting are new MacBooks or MacBook Pros. As much as I’d love to see a new design for the Pro, I’m not counting on it happening this month. There have been rumors floating around for a while about a dramatically redesigned case for the next generation, but nobody’s mentioned any dates yet. October, perhaps? Maybe by the time new models do come out I’ll actually have enough money to buy one.

I guess I’ll just have to satiate my Apple addiction with September 9th’s event, and hope that before the day is out I will have finally realized my dream of downloading Mythbusters in HD.

A video snapshot of a cemetery in Salem, MA.

On your iPod or iPhone? Watch it here.

UPDATE: You can download this video in black and white here (.zip file).

I have more problems with Soundtrack Pro than any other application on my Mac. Between crashing, and the seemingly endless file save progress indicators, I have managed to tip-toe my way through several successful projects. But it’s the looming uncertainty that puts fear in me whenever I send a project from Final Cut to Soundtrack Pro.

Recently I had the unique pleasure of being treated an an error I haven’t seen before, the curiously named CNSExceptionWrapper. I say it’s curious because most methods in the OS X frameworks start with NS, a remnant of NeXTSTEP — of which OS X is a direct descendent. The C prefix is a little peculiar however, and I wonder if it has something to do with one of the Core Services. Perhaps Core Audio? Who knows. I was only able to find a few references to the error after searching, and still haven’t found an explanation for what caused it.

Last night I ran into an issue I’ve had off and on for quite a while. Let’s say I’ve recorded a project using two different audio sources; a shotgun on the left channel and a lav on the right channel. I bring them into Soundtrack Pro and mute the left channel (I usually just use it for backup), and proceed to do my work on the right channel. When it’s ready I export the master mix back to Final Cut Pro and… WHAT?! None of my changes/edits made it through! In fact the sound I hear couldn’t have possibly come from a lavaliere microphone. So, completely confused and demoralized, I switch back to Soundtrack Pro and play the sequence. The audio now sounds the same as it did in Final Cut, but completely different than it sounded just a minute ago in Soundtrack Pro.

What’s going on?

For whatever reason, it appears that Soundtrack Pro sometimes decides that the channel you think you’re working with isn’t the one it thinks you should be working with. So it changes it for you at export. How helpful.

To correct this (and trust me, this is a huge pain) right-click on the clip in the timeline. Choose Channel Select > Mono > 1 (or whichever channel isn’t currently checked). You’re picking the channel you DON’T want. Then right-click again and choose Channel Select > Mono > 2 (bringing it back to the channel you do want).

Repeat for every single clip in your sequence.

When I discovered this solution (and I’m using that term loosely) I was working on a project that’s only 60 seconds long. You can see how this could be a major issue for projects that are something like 60 minutes or longer. Even manually changing the tracks for every clip in a five minute sequence would be a chore. It’s something I really hope to see fixed in a software update in the future. It’s hard for me to believe that I’m the only person that’s experienced this issue.

It’s clearly not a secret that Soundtrack Pro kind of sucks. But I suppose that for all my complaining I’m really just anxious for whatever is next for Soundtrack Pro; be it the chopping block or the upgrade that it, and we, deserve.

I haven’t posted anything in a while. You may have noticed. To make myself feel better about my own blogging failure I thought I’d pass along a tip that the people at Creative Cow recently wrote about; key bindings.

It’s a $10 name for describing how to create your own keyboard shortcuts within Final Cut Pro. This can be a huge time saver. For example, to get started in Soundtrack Pro I normally have to right click (or control-click) on a sequence in the Browser, select Send To, then choose Soundtrack Pro Multitrack Project. Alternatively, one could bind the action to their very own fancy-shmancy keyboard shortcut and accomplish the same task in a fraction of a second. On my system, I have this action set to Option-Shift-S.

The process of actually editing these shortcuts is as simple as you might expect something in FCP to be (meh). Start by hitting Option-H to open the keyboard layout editor, then click on the little lock icon in the lower left to allow changes. From there you can have at it by choosing the key combination tabs along the top of the window, and searching for the desired command in the search area. Simply drag the command onto the key you want to bind it to.

Creative Cow lists a bunch of great shortcuts in their post, but I’d also suggest setting Render All to the letter Y. It’s a letter that’s not used by default for anything, and it’s something you’re probably going to be doing a lot of. Consider also binding Send to Color and Send to Motion to Option-Shift-C and Option-Shift-M, receptively.

The last thing you’re going to want to do is to save your layout (and if you really want to blow your own mind, you can even set a keyboard shortcut for that too!). From the menu bar choose Tools > Keyboard Layout > Save Keyboard Layout… and give it a name. Something like, “Jason’s Keyboard,” or, “Master of space and time” would do nicely.

And finally, if things get too crazy in there, you can always hit the reset button to get yourself back to the Apple-supplied shortcuts.

To make a long story short, they’re back now. But if you added anything in the past four days, you might want to login and see if your new tapes are still intact (probably not). If you created a user account in the last week, your account should be fine, but any tapes created will have been lost. Sorry about that.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email me or leave a comment here.

A huge, super special, wet and sloppy thanks to Jason Seifer of Rails Envy for all the help. I’d be sobbing in the corner rocking back and forth right now if it weren’t for him.

Since moving to Salem I’ve been working on an idea to create video snapshots about some of the cool things I’ve seen here. This video highlights the The Build Guild, a meetup for people in the web industry, and is the first in (what will become) a series of similar snapshots.

Unfortunately, I was a little off my game when I shot this and as a result the audio suffered greatly. Sorry about that.

About a year ago I worked for a few months teaching myself Ruby on Rails. I’m not a programmer, but I really wanted a tape logger that I could use on my iPhone, and one hadn’t been introduced yet. So I made my own.

It’s not perfect. I did the best I could with the knowledge of programming that I had at the time, and the result was a single release of a web app I called Tapes. Since it’s debut in Apple’s web app section I’ve had 5,485 people sign up as users. I have no way of checking to see if they’re actually using the application, but if even a handful of them still find it useful I’d be thrilled.

But now we have the ability to write native apps for the iPhone and iPod touch. I would love nothing more than to be able to sell Tapes (don’t worry, I’m thinking $4.99) through the iTunes store and do my part to fill the gaping void of production-oriented apps. My biggest problem in reaching this goal is that I’m STILL NOT A PROGRAMMER. I’ve been studying up on C since February, but I don’t really feel like I’ve got a firm grasp on it yet. And after that I have to learn Objective-C. And then the Cocoa-touch framework. And make sure the UI is intuitive. And then get accepted into Apple’s dev program even though I’m not really a developer. All without having a formal education in computer science.

Basically, it’s hard.

But hard isn’t bad. Just challenging. So I promise you this, Internets: If it can be done, it shall be done. I will do my best to come out with a native tape or footage logging application at some point in the future. I have no idea when, or how. But I’m going to try.

And if you know anybody that knows anything about writing Objective-C apps, please send them my way.

Because I need some help.

This summer has been pretty crazy what with moving across the country and everything. I haven’t had the time to write about everything that I thought was interesting, so I thought about creating a linked list (no affiliation to this guy, of course) to catch up on what’s been going on around here.

• The biggest news is that Meagan and I have moved from Orlando, FL to Salem, MA. We love it. Salem is amazing. You should definitely take a look at all of the pictures I’ve shot since moving.

• The real bombshell here, however, is that Meagan is going to be working with legendary, dragon-slaying designer Dan Cederholm, of SimpleBits fame. We’re all pretty excited about that, and I can’t wait to see what kind of mind-expanding creations these two come up with in the months to come.
• A week (to the day) after arriving in Salem, Meagan and I found ourselves attending the first ever gathering of The Build Guild. The Build Guild is a collection of web developers and designers from the greater Salem area, who meet to talk shop and eat some delicious Salem food. The first meeting was a lot of fun, thanks in a big way to the Guild’s founders, Marc Amos and Angelo Simeoni.

• A fews days prior to leaving Orlando, I wrote about my MacBook Pro having a logic board failure. After I got the computer back I decided to try and restore the system from my latest Time Machine backup. Something I wasn’t aware of is that Time Machine uses your computer’s MAC address to identify it for a backup. When that address changes (such as when you get a new logic board), you have to perform a bit of Unix voodoo to get it to work again. I found a great walk-through on the topic over at Mac OSX Hints. If you’re having a similar issue, this should straighten things out.
• I’m a big fan of The Edit Blog for it’s fantastic production-related content. On a recent post Scott linked to a post by a very frustrated filmmaker trying to work with Soundtrack Pro for audio mixing. He lists his grievances and calls for it’s immediate execution by Apple. I’ve had my share of frustrations with Soundtrack Pro, but I’ve never wished death upon it before. He makes some great points though. Definitely worth a read.
• Lastly, I’m going to bookend this post with another mention of moving. One of my new favorite blogs, Big Contrarian recently had a post about moving that I loved. Read it and subscribe immediately.

Back in March I bought a bag from STM, based (in part) on a post by designer Cameron Moll.

I love this bag. It’s just about perfect. I love the the pockets, especially. There are just so many really well placed storage spaces on this bag. I can fit all of the normal computer accessories (power supply, extension cable, headphones, etc.) plus just about everything else I might want to take (a hard-cover Moleskine, pen, wireless Mighty Mouse, wireless aluminum Apple Keyboard, Swiss Army Pocketknife/USB drive, Apple Remote…).

So imagine my surprise (read: horror) when I noticed that the strap on my amazing little 4 month old bag was coming undone. In a word, bummer.

The good news is that shortly after shooting an email to STM, they wrote me back asking where they could send a replacement strap, and apologized for any inconvenience. Fantastic.

So it looks like I’ll be keeping this bag around for a while longer. And for that I am grateful. I’m pretty sure I’ll be looking to them first for any future digital cargo-carrying needs.

Around 2am, Thursday morning I put my MacBook Pro to sleep. I was going out into the living room to watch a movie with my roommates (the Mel Gibson tour-de-force, Ransom) when I figured I could use my computer to convert some video I was in the process of archiving. I went back into my room and lifted the lid. The screen didn’t turn on.

Now, I know that sometimes that happens. You just have to give it a minute before the screen kicks in and you’re right as rain. Well, I gave it half an hour and still nothing. I tried connecting my external display and nothing. I wasn’t even getting a backlight. NOTHING. At this point I went and made an appointment at the Millenia Apple store for that afternoon.

After taking a look at it, and hearing about my various restart/reset attempts, the Genius (named Jason, btw) told me that my logic board was probably fried.

Well, that sucks. He told me they’d send it out and have it back to me in about 10 days. The problem then is that I’m not going to be around in 10 days. I’ll be settling into my new home in Salem, MA at that point. So he kindly told me that they’d be happy to ship it there instead.

I went home and spent a few days trying to work exclusively from my iPhone. And as great as it is, it’s not a desktop replacement. At least not yet. So I dug out the first Mac I ever bought, a 12″ PowerBook G4. It was in need of a pretty serious cleaning as it had recently been put through the special kind of abuse only a 14 year-old can inflict.

After the cleaning, however, the trackpad wasn’t as responsive as I would have liked. I also lost the ability to use two-finger scrolling. I solved the latter by downloading iScroll2. But to fix the first issue, I’d have to do a little bit of Mac surgery. I went into the closet and pulled out a twin PowerBook G4 that only lived for about a week before being stepped on by an unapologetic professor with a weight and coordination problem.

I took stock of what parts I was going to harvest (I seemed to be missing a few screws from the working machine too) and got down to business. The process took about an hour, and in the end I had what felt like a much newer PowerBook G4 to play with. Which is what I’m writing this on now.

I look forward to getting my working MacBook Pro back in a week or so, but it’s always a humbling experience going back a few years in the Mac legacy. In fact, I’m amazed that this machine runs as well as it does. With a lone 1.33GHz PPC processor, and just 768MB of RAM, I don’t have a problem running Leopard, or doing all of the web-browsing things I’d want to do. Obviously I’m not doing any video work on this machine, but it’s fine for photos, and music, and most multi-media operations.

It’s just one more reason why I love these machines so much, and why I’m not ripping my hair out over a toasted logic board.

We were lucky enough to arrive on the same day as the launch of a new telescope called GLAST, which is going to be studying gamma rays. Pretty cool. We took some pictures which can be found on Flickr but I thought I’d post a couple here too.

You might even be interested in grabbing that picture of the engine as an iPhone or iPod touch background.

I realize it’s already been covered by more than just a couple of sources, but I thought it was worth mentioning (and celebrating) the release of Celtx, version 1.0

Celtx, of course, is your friendly (and free) script writing software available for just about every computer platform in existence. In short, it’s awesome. And it just got better. The Celtx website outlines all of the new features, and even includes a couple of helpful videos to send you off in the right (and hopefully creatively inspired) direction.

I’m a huge fan of the Consumerist, a website advocating consumer rights and sharing the terrifying ordeals that some companies put their customers through. It’s got a certain car-wreck shock value to it, I suppose.

It’s the kind of site where you hope you’re never the one writing in with your own tale of woe. Unfortunately, a recent shipping experience I had prompted me to write in with one such story.

You can head over to my post at the Consumerist’s website for all the bloody details, but the short of it is this:

I ordered a new Sennheiser G2 100 Wireless Mic set from B&H for an important last-minute shoot. I choose overnight shipping via UPS. Instead of the package arriving at my door as I had hoped (and expected), I was told I would have to drive out to a construction site where I could meet up with the driver as he helped another, already overloaded, UPS driver with some of his delivers. Ultimately my driver never showed up and I had to drive 30 minutes to the UPS distribution center later that night.

It wasn’t a good time. I was pretty miffed about the whole thing and asked for a refund on the $40+ I spent on shipping. I was told that somebody would be in touch. About a week went by and I hadn’t heard anything from UPS. I did get an email from somebody at B&H who expressed concern over my story, and said that they’d get in touch with their UPS people to straighten things out.

A few days went by and I got a phone call from “B&H’s UPS guy” who offered a really sincere apology as well as a $50 B&H gift card. Not too bad. He also assured me that nothing like this would ever happen again; not to me or anybody else.

I really appreciated the apology, and especially the personal phone call. Somebody (actually, his name was Lou) went out of their way that day to make sure I was being taken care of. You can’t over-appreciate something like that.

In the end, I don’t imagine this is something that happens very often. Nevertheless, it probably shouldn’t have happened in the first place. That being said, I’m really happy with how B&H (and ultimately) UPS handled everything. And I especially like that I should soon be getting a $50 gift card to B&H. A card that I intend to use on my first visit to the B&H store in New York later this summer. Can’t wait. No shipping required.

I shot another set of ads for the wonderful guys of Rails Envy recently, and the first four are now available as your nerdy entertainment for the week.

We shot the ads against a white wall in tiny apartment with surprisingly solid results. I was able to blow out the rear wall enough to cover up the textured paint, and later I dropped a green screen behind our Burt Reynolds look-a-like. Trying to do any kind of chroma keying with MiniDV footage is always going to be problematic, but since this was produced to be viewed (mostly) on the web, the lower quality of the key wasn’t a huge issue.

The software I used to pull the key is a handy little plugin called dvMatte Pro 3, which specializes in keying DV footage. I wrote more about this little gem here. I know I’ve said this before, but it’s become an indispensable tool for a lot of the work I’ve done recently. Really great stuff.

These ads are always a lot of fun to work on, and I thank the Envy guys for the opportunity to work on a project like this.

If you’ve already seen it, you probably know the story. The HPX-170 is one of Panasonic’s new P2 offerings, shedding it’s MiniDV baggage while checking off wish list features HVX users have been compiling.

The 170 is a solid state system. This is huge for me. I’m so sick of tape it’s not even funny. The idea of stock piling hard drives is much more appealing than hoarding boxes of tapes. It’s also much more eco-friendly, right? Embracing a completely tapeless workflow feels like the best move to make right now. It’s really exciting to see Panasonic biting the bullet with a camera aimed at DVX and HVX users.

The camera is said to feature all kinds of neat bells and whistles including an LCD flip mode for people using 35mm adapters, several persistent focus assist modes, including a waveform monitor and vector-scope. The focus ring will also be swapable with the iris dial at the flip of a switch. So many great improvements. I can’t wait.

FreshDV has a great video interview with Jan Livingston of Panasonic about the HPX-170 and the HVX-200a. The rest of their NAB 2008 coverage is fantastic as well. Definitely check it out.

Panasonic’s own coverage of NAB is surprisingly good too. Their NAB page features short videos from vendors they’ve partnered with. Companies like RedRockMicro, VariZoom, Steadicam, Avid and so many more.

There’s an ongoing discussion over at DVX user.

Here are some more pictures of the camera.

Fresh DV has even more pictures and the official press release.