Aiptek Action HD GVS camcorder first impressions

This looks promising as a low cost camcorder useful for teaching and learning media. Not available in New Zealand so bought 2nd-hand off ebay. Arrived in the post today. Later (12 Mar) found out how to check firmware - identified as version 2302 made in Jan 2009.
Very good first impression. Seems to do a good job of what we want for our teaching with 3 important features in a low-price package: AF-lock, Ext Mic input and Remote Control.
Our students do some animation exercises with modelling clay and other physical objects. The Remote Control, close-focussing ability and AF-lock are good value for this. The Aiptek is also a stills camera taking 5 megapixel stills, but a surprise discovery is that a stills 'burst' mode can be changed to a single still mode - and this delivers 16:9 format 1280x720 stills which is an ideal size for ease of animation editing on modest computers. Switch off "Continuous Shot" in the menu then animate with the "OK" button on the remote rather than the "Still Photo" button.

Other reviewers criticise "flimsy" construction - on handling the camera it seems robust enough and looks to be of a similar construction standard to its competitors.

Other reviewers comment on over-sensitive microphone recording giving distortion with loud subjects. My first tests were with recording lectures and presentations and the results were good. But on filming an enthusiastic group of children singing loudly I discovered that problem! It did not seem to be the dreaded "clipping" except in extreme cases - my guess is that an Automatic Level Control does exist but was leaving too much high frequency in. I got acceptable improved results by applying an equaliser with gain reduction over 3000 Hz. After updating the firmware from ver 2303 to ver 2901, audio performance seems to have improved with less serious distortion happening less often. Conclusion - I can live with this OK for entry-level educational use. I can do ambitious indie work with some care, eg adding in a home-made attenuator for loud subjects.
A low cost $8 "Genius" computer desktop mic for Skype etc gives excellent results apart from a little more background hiss than I would like.

Others criticise poor low light performance - seems good enough for what we need with good results in all classroom lighting and acceptable results in low-level household lighting even with the "NightShot" setting off. The specs claim that the lens maintains its f/3.2 aperture from wide through to full telephoto and my first tests seem to back this up. This is unusual in a good way because most low cost optical zoom lenses lose light-gathering power when you zoom in. F/3.2 is average for a wide angle setting but is remarkably good for a telephoto performance.

I found the back ports cover difficult to remove so I got out a craft knife and cut the tight plastic holding peg down smaller - that worked well and the cover now removes comfortably with a fingernail.

Aiptek will need some care in classroom handling - some eccentricities to watch when mounting on a tripod. The tripod hole is shallow so you may need some spacers - I cut some out of cardboard. You need to open the LCD door before you mount it on the tripod else the door gets stuck.

The Ambarella chip on which many budget camcorders are based seems to be a work of genius that performs extremely well. I feel sorry for the inventors that the resulting cameras seem to not quite fulfill their chip's potential for creative power. The Chinavasion A4402 tested earlier runs its chip fast giving excellent video quality but misses out on perfection by not having any alternative to an always-on autofocus. The Aiptek does give us more controls including the all-important focus-lock. So could I shoot a film festival indie movie on it or would I be confident using it in the 48 Hours competition? [Edit] At first my answer was "no, not quite good enough" but after the firmware update I am re-editing this article to say a marginal "yes". Indie - some limited possibilities. Education - looking very good. More to come as other teachers test it.

[EDIT 16 Mar 2010 - FOLLOW-UP] - I have discovered Aiptek's firmware update page and upgraded the camera's operation system from ver 2302 to ver 2901. The bitrate for the 2 top HD settings has gone up. Now reporting 720p60 increased from 6mbps to 8mbps. 1080p30 increase from 8mbps to 11.3 mbps. Audio quality seems to be better. Odd effect fixed - previously 720p60 had a better wide angle with the stabiliser on but narrower angle with the stabiliser off - reverse of what I would reasonably expect. They are consistent now.

[EDIT 25 Mar 2010]"Aiptek GVS Camera Test Song (Processed)" now on Youtube.

"The Lovely Bones" IMO Excellent

I have just seen "The Lovely Bones" and IMO it was excellent and effective. I have not read the book therefore I experienced this as a self-contained movie and it made sense to me that way. The surreal afterlife scenes worked for me as an imaginative dreamscape with the storytelling purpose of reflecting events on Earth that relate to the main character. I walked in with lowered expectations because of the critics and I was surprised, completely engaged, and impressed by an outstanding movie. My track record continues of loving movies that get a hard time from the critics.

Nice opportunity - shame about the mash

Last century on New Zealand television there was usually a comedy show that week by week would give us topical parody and satire of our national life and current events. Since 2000 this has been sadly reduced with with the flickering light kept alive only by the occasional series from the Gibson Group. 10 weeks in 2007 was the last appearance of "Facelift". Example at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nfv58CrSuEo

Gibson Group have announced a new show: "The Mash Pit"
www.mashpitcomedy.com
Nice that there is an open opportunity for the public to submit creative work to a TV show. I could be right into this - but it ain't gonna happen and the reason is the mash-up gimmick. I find it very difficult to get live acting performances that are uninhibited and outrageous enough to work effectively as comedy. My actors are getting very nervous about well-publicised internet identity safety issues and it is difficult enough to get them to agree to screening on Youtube. They will not like the possibility of having their most outrageous moments taken out of context for mashing and I am not going to risk my friendships and film-making networking by trying to push them into it.

I also have a problem with music library and other content licensing that will not extend to mash-ups.

Nice idea to encourage wider participation in making TV comedy but I wish Gibson would try playing it as a straightforward submission without gimmickry like the mashing. On looking at the website I get the impression that the mashups are few in number and ineffective so they are failing to deliver an attractive advantage to outweigh the participation barrier they create.

I also criticise the way that this format seems to give a time lag between production and public screening. This is a yet another barrier to parody of current events.

Hey Gibson Group, I am a fan of your past comedy work, but I think you are stumbling with this "Mash Pit". A final thought - if mashing is such a good idea, why aren't you supplying examples of your recent productions as fodder for the mashers?

The Vintner's Duck

New parody on Youtube. A few weeks ago I heard a radio interview with Niki Caro about her latest movie "The Vintner's Luck" and it seemed to have parody potential. This led to us filming "The Vintner's Duck" on 26/27 Dec. It is now posted on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhzJyhrwlLs

Adaptations of books to film are often difficult to the point of controversy but this seems to have been an extreme case. See our Youtube notes for our parody-world take on this. Some sources for the issues around the real-world project:

"Author Cried over Vintner's Luck Film"

http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/3076674/Author-cried-over-Vintners-Luck-film

"Second Sight - Wrestling with the Angel"

http://secondstogo.blogspot.com/2009/11/wrestling-with-angel-niki-caro-and.html

Love Dance of the Parodyciums

Our latest video on Youtube - Love Dance of the Parodyciums - is presented there as a wildlife mockumentary. It is really another test of the CVSEJ-A4402 low-budget hybrid camera. A common teaching need is the stop-motion exercise where students animate objects like modelling clay puppets by taking a series of still digital photos. We wanted to do that kind of test. On Dec 23 2009 I was at the beach and I saw 2 photogenic scraps of seaweed both about 2.5 cm long. No tripod available so I made a steady mount for the A4402 with a piece of wood I found placed on a ramp of sand that I made to get it to the right angle to point down at the hand-sized interesting collection of seaweed that made up my set. I then began the classic process of move the seaweed actors a few mm then take a photo repeated many times. My quick test turned into 405 photos taken over nearly 2 hours and I admit that I got sunburned which I am always careful to avoid and has not happened to me for many years. NZ is in the southern hemisphere so Dec is summer.

Distance from camera to work was about 20cm. Focus switched to "macro".
Colour balance manually set to Sunlight. Still image resolution set to the default native 5 Megapixels.

How does the A4402 perform in this situation? I do not get a clear answer from this movie because (con) I can see focus "hunting" variations but (pro) I also feel that this setup is a difficult one for a simple autofocus system to handle. It was only later that I realised that my "dressing the set" with interesting background seaweed was a bad idea because it gave a wide zone of objects to focus on in a closeup situation where the depth of field (zone) is small. The "star" seaweeds - er "Parodyciums" were on the near edge of this zone and they were mostly slightly out of focus. I hit them with the video editor "unsharp mask" filter to make them seem to look clearer. I also added contrast-lowering overlays to give the background areas less contrast and move viewer attention more on to the Parodyciums.

Re-ink re-visit good results

Good results this week with re-inking of the colour cartridges of my Canon iP5200 printer. I have been using this printer for black-and-white work and I let the colour run out months ago. I expected that the old ink would have blocked the heads forever so it was a pleasant surprise to get colour printing working again. After the refill I needed to run cleaning 5 times before getting a reasonable test result. It has since got better with repeated use until now it is doing a useful job of printing photos. The "JET TEC" kit I bought had good instructions and a syringe. I have since discovered bulk ink suppliers online and I am trying some of that ink. This printer has 3rd party imitation cartridges and I discovered they had refilling holes with plastic plugs so refilling was remarkably easy. Important to cover the exit hole with tape and work on newspaper and wear latex gloves because these CLI-8 cartridges do leak a little on removing the exit hole tape after filling and replacing the plug.

I have also tried refilling another printer, Brother DC-110 with LC47 cartridges. That worked and is my easiest refill so far because the cartridge has a valve that closes on removal so preventing leaks.

I am also successful with 1 trial with an HP 56 black cartridge.

My earlier unsuccessful adventures many years ago were very messy with most of the ink going everywhere except inside the cartridge. This was with a Canon BC-02 cartridge which was a lot more difficult than this week's experiments.

Green screen chroma key - the Askar details

Received this question in the Youtube comments for "Test Scenes for Askar"

i read that it wasn't possible to chroma key with HDV format. how you do this?

Difficult to give a long answer in the Youtube comments area - so here is the place.
The forums I was reading said it was possible but I borrowed cameras and did experiments because I do not take what I read as the final word. For this scene I borrowed a "real" greenscreen sheet that a local studio imports from China and sells for $100. Careful lighting of scene and sheet with film lights each side angling in so shadows do not hit the screen.

It helps to get the camera as far away from the green screen as possible then zoom in - you can then get the actors away from the screen. We did this in an ordinary classroom. Shot on Canon HV20. Editing was so easy - used the now unfortunately discontinued Ulead Mediastudio Pro 8 software. I selected the "bluescreen" preset then clicked on the green area with an eyedropper tool and hit 100% with the slider control. No masks, no separate tuning of various colour channels, really just one click on the default setting for dummies and instant gratification. I understand that most Video Editing software has this "bluescreen" setting but the screen does not need to be blue - green(this case) and red work just as well and there is an eyedropper control cursor to click on your screen colour to get the process started.

I think that to get "composite" shots to work, we need to get it together with hi-definition and pro greenscreen material and careful lighting.

We ran out of time for the main shoot and I needed to visit the "mystic" actor at her home and we did her closeups there. Same camera and greenscreen cloth but I could not borrow the film lights so I used halogen work lights as sold at $30 each by hardware stores - these go well as low-budget film lighting.