Despite the many gigs I’ve played in my time as a VJ - including over 80 in the last year of touring - I am yet to record my output on a single live show. It sounds terrible, but I know I’m not alone in this: Both musicians and visual performers I’ve worked with tend to focus on creating the show itself, rather than documenting the output. Musicians have a plethora of hardware available for recording audio, and the visual market is starting to get some wider options.

High-end video hardware creators Blackmagic (previously on CDMo) have released the “Video Recorder” (not sure if I’m keen on that product name), a $200 USB device which will “record” analogue “video” (ok, turns out I’m fine with it) in H264 format straight to your hard drive.

The base model lets you choose from Component, S-Video or Composite, and for $100 more you can get the SDI version; for all of those production houses which inexplicably don’t have any devices which allow capturing of video to computers.

Currently only Mac software is mentioned on the Blackmagic site, but that does look quite friendly, with simple buttons to select the source and output formats, and an interface for cropping out analogue weirdness from the stream.

There are other devices which fulfill similar roles, such as the aforementioned Pinnacle Video Transfer (available now), or “multimedia” hard drive enclosures from dubiously-able manufacturers, but something which isn’t much bigger than a thumb drive and coming from a company known for their high-quality video devices could just succeed. (via Gizmodo)

With the advent of consumer-level HD camcorders, Blu-Ray and HD DVD players, and HD-format disc burning, HD content creation is becoming ubiquitous. However, for realtime visualists looking to mix HD sources live, there hasn’t been a real HD mixing solution. Want to mix that HD footage on your PC with that awesome high-res project in VJ software like Modul8? No can do, buddy!

At least, that had been the case. With two Blackmagic Design Intensity cards and Blackmagic’s On Air software, you can mix two streams of HD as a simple AB mixer. With one Intensity in your machine, you can use a second laptop or source to feed your main VJ / live visual app of choice with true, uncompressed HD input.

We tested live, HD mixing for color performance, quality, and ease-of-use with some powerful, DIY visual software for live visuals. With the ability to mix in live HD inputs, live HD cameras, live computer inputs at full HD resolution, and more, the potential for live visuals is clear.

It seems that Sony didn’t really want us to know about the new stuff coming in the next version of their editing suite Vegas. Apparently the information was posted on the Sony site long enough for Videoguys to scribble down some points on a napkin.

Vegas 7

• XDCAM SD/HD support
• Improved HDV playback performance
• Enhanced hardware support for Blackmagic Design DeckLinkâ„¢ and AJA
• Improved workflow tools
• Cinescore software plug-in support
• Enhanced video monitoring

DVD Architect 4

• Scripting support
• Random playlist playback
• Keyframeable transformations, crop, and effects
• Buttons on video
• 4:3 and 16:9 preview settings

Vegas is a great NLE. I spend most of my time in Premiere but I still love Vegas for its incredible speed and small footprint, which make it perfect for mobile editing on my ageing Thinkpad. Being able to make edits, drop in new clips and tweak transitions while the project is still playing rocks me every time.

I can’t really say the new feature list looks revolutionary, but Premiere Pro 1.5 - 2 didn’t look that amazing on paper and it melted my face off It will be interesting to see what “Improved workflow tools” means. Ditto for “scripting support” in DVD Architect. Perhaps they’re getting ready for Blu-Ray?

via FresHDV