As a visualist I have an incessant appetite for gear. The inaugural Plug N Play Brisbane on Tuesday reminded me that it doesn’t have to be this way, however. While I rocked up with bags and boxes of computers, cables, cameras, controllers and hardware, others arrived with a single laptop, and of course were able to put equally compelling material on the screen. Or, to be perfectly honest - more-compelling material, as I struggled to remember which icons were required to get 3L’s automation chains working.

Debilitating addictions aside; everyone present was interested in my source for cheap security cameras, BNC converters, HDMI cables and other necessary items, so I’m guessing that the rest of the community may also enjoy: DealExtreme (disclosure: Affiliate links used, if you buy stuff I get a cut).

DealExtreme has a huge range of, basically, ephemera: iPod batteries, LED torches, cable converters, chargers… The type of things you’d get for $20 in a local shop, or you could find on eBay for $2 plus $15 shipping. DealExtreme matches those deceptively cheap eBay prices, and then proceeds to not charge shipping, which puts everything into the category entitled “Ridiculously Cheap Stuff”.

The range is large and varied. This coupled with a not particularly intuitive search and categorization of the site has resulted in me wasting many hours paging through, but along the way I’ve bookmarked plenty of things which may be useful to the average VJ:

Quite a few of you raised an eyebrow when we topped our gift guide with the Canon HV20, an affordable (as little as us$700) HDV camcorder. Like the New England Patriots (that’s American football for the rest of the world), the Canon HV20 appears to be largely unbeaten as the best-available visualist-friendly camera. It’s small, it’s light, it’s cheap, it does HDV, ’nuff said. It’s also eminently upgrade-friendly, with indie producers adding 35mm lenses and nifty accessories. And even those of you with larger, more powerful cameras occasionally want something you can toss in a backpack or use as a backup.

But that got me wondering — is the HV20 really One Camera to Rule Them All?

I have a couple of candidates I think could be interesting.

The big rival as far as HDV appears to be Sony. The HDR-HC7, for instance, has more sophisticated manual controls than the HV20, and I like Sony’s night-shot mode for extreme infrared applications. It’s also a little heftier than the Canon, in a good way — it’s a camera I find comfortable to hold. cnet even likes the Sony better than the HV20. (camcorderinfo.com begs to differ; see their link below) Like many things in life, it looks even cooler in Japanese.

Unfortunately, "manual control" on a consumer-level Sony means navigating the horrible touch screen interface, and worse yet the HDR-HC7 introduces a bizarre new manual focus multi-function control. (Translation: some strange add-on bit of plastic that’s utterly useless for controlling anything.) All that said, I do like Sony’s cameras, despite their quirks.

Here’s the problem: the HDR-HC7 is running a street of over $1100, while the HV20 is well below $800. Is the Sony $300 better than the Canon? (Heck, is the Sony better than the Canon, period?) Tough to justify, I think.

I could not help but post these. How can you resist a Zeiss Mark I planetarium projector, a 1929 French Semivisor or a 150 foot Radio Telescope as a screen?. You can’t. At least, I can’t. Check out these Oobject series for more visualist inspired gear-porn. Im not a gear whore, but I find these series quite beautiful. The projectors have a striking aesthetic, the vintage TVs are stunning, and I could die to play a set in the desert on a giant radio telescope.

How my heart aches:

• Planetarium projectors
• Vintage TVs
• Giant Screens

DIY Gorillapod with parts from Home Depot with a Cannon HV10 attached.

I like to shoot video, but I rarely ever plan my outings - so this means I’m either carrying a lot of gear, or I’m always ill prepared. I was pleased to stumble upon some instructions for building a Gorillapod and a String-tripod/monopod - both small, light and incredibly useful tools for shooting video/film/stills gorilla guerilla stile.

There is a plethora of great instructable camera gear. My favorites so far:

• DIY String Tripod/Monopod
• DIY Gorillapod
• DIY Figrig

Check out the Film and Video Group at Instructables for more. I took a quick trip to Home Depot yesterday and made the Gorillapod and the String Monopod, for $14 - combined!

Via Make Magazine and Instructables.

Thomas Dolby, on Music Making Past and Future: The CDM Interview
Thomas Dolby Extras: Live Performance Technical Details, Logic + Max/MSP

Thomas Dolby’s recent tour was important for more than just the music, though — onboard was legendary visualist/VJ Johnny DeKam, also known as a founder of Mac software maker Vidvox. Here’s what Thomas had to say about Johnny:

To have a VJ up there of Johnny [DeKam]’s stature, mixing live feeds with footage of his own, is definitely exciting. Of course, I’ve never seen the full experience myself, you know. But he does a really good job, and he’s very spontaneous. He’s got a lot of different tricks and toys that he tries out on a nightly basis. Other video guys and VJs who’ve come have sort of been in awe of him because he writes his own software that everybody else would like to get there hands on.

For more on Johnny (and yes, hope to revisit his work and Vidvox soon here on CDM!):

Johnny DeKam’s Website
Johnny DeKam’s Live Visuals Rig on Thomas Dolby Tour [Create Digital Motion]
Johnny DeKam Profile [M-Audio]

The tour with Bobby Flynn is hotting up now. Over the weekend we had two shows: In Brisbane and the Gold Coast, which meant that I spent about 8 hours of my weekend setting up and tearing down my rig, aligning projectors and screens, running cables, and running around. The tour map currently displays 16 gigs down Australia’s east coast, and we will have another 35 or so joining them over the next week or so as dates are finalized. The cardboard box protecting my V4 during transport has already torn, and I’m sick of plugging and unplugging cables. So I need to get this stuff cased up, for the protection of my hardware and my sainity.

The current list (left to right, top to bottom):

• Wii - for pre-show warmups and after hours fun. Need to organize a wireless sensor bar.
• Behringer BCD2000 - Ghetto, but functional.
• Behringer BCR2000 - less ghetto than the BCD2000, and more functional.
• Numark AVM02 - Reviewed here.
• Samsung 940n 19″ LCD Monitor
• Lacie 200GB External Drive - Several years old, so should probably be replaced
• Macbook - Main Laptop. Running VDMX, Max/MSP/Jitter, Ableton Live etc.
• Thinkpad - Backup laptop. Running Ableton Live, Max/MSP/Jitter, Processing etc.
• Korg Kaoss Pad Entrancer - Video/Audio effects unit.
• Edirol V4
• Small Form Factor PC
• Voxson portable DVD player/monitor

The blogosphere this week is all abuzz about the supposedly desire-inducing Upravlator. The awkwardly-named hardware comes from Art Lebedev, the mysterious designer who first promised the Optimus Keyboard, a unique “design concept” with tiny color displays under each key. That indeed sounds cool, but instead, after months of delays and promises, the shipping product turned out to be the Optimus Three, with three little displays that double as buttons. Full keyboard with displays: interesting. Three display buttons with no real function: erm? Instead of spending about US$150 on an Optimus Three, why not a Nintendo DS Lite? Which do you think would be more useful?

This week, we get the Upravlator. Imagine a powerful interactive piece of hardware that connects to your computer’s video port and dynamically displays, in full color, everything from interface widgets to graphics and video to dynamic Web content, all completely customizable for your own needs. Sounds unbelievably useful, right? Good thing we already have such a device: it’s called a monitor. Want touch input? It’s called a touchscreen monitor. Now take that monitor, divide it up into a tiny 4×3 grid, eliminating a significant portion of its usable space. Replace the full resolution of the touchscreen with 12 buttons (thousands of levels of resolution reduced to a dozen). Put it in a big bulky case, wait until 2007 to ship it (presumably for some enormous price), and require developers to rewrite software to use it. Now you’re getting the picture:

Upravlator Product Announcement [artlebedev.com official site]
The Upravlator unveiled [DVguru]
Art Lebedev explains Upravlator to five year olds, no one else [Engadget]
(and, like a zillion other blogs)

Worst of all, the Upravlator takes up lots of desk real estate and a free VGA port — two things better dedicated to a real monitor, especially when touchscreen monitors are coming down in price.

The dynamic keyboard remains a cool product. It may come in at an astronomical price, but the concept is good: take the physical feedback and ease of a great hardware input device (keyboard) and add dynamic visuals to make it more flexible. By contrast, the Upravlator and the Optimum Mini Three are useful neither as displays nor as input devices and actually reduce efficiency. We’ll wait for the Optimus-113 keyboard, if it can actually ship.

Don’t be too sad, though. You want gadget lust? Chumby’s got your gadget lust. You’ll be hearing a lot more about this homebrewed, open source, hackable gadget soon, because Team CDMo desperately wants one right now. Let’s compare:

You go offline for a couple of days and what happens? Only the deluge of RED camera information since it was announced. The Red Digital Cinema website has been updated, and Mike of HD4Indies has been working Red’s booth at IBC and has been furiously blogging his experiences.

Red show their footage for the first time on a 4K digital projector: Red 4K footage - “I told you so” (presentation bootlegged on Youtube)
Addon hardware details released: New Red Hardware
Conversion tool for output of Red footage to your NLE: Redcine software
Red’s compression codec: Redcode 4K RAW

The camera still looks a little OMG IT’S TEH FUTUAR kitschy to me, but to be fair I don’t like the design of most Oakley gear, and if Oakley sales are anything to go by a lot of people are going to love the look of this thing. Not that it really matters, at the moment they’re delivering the quality they promised at the price they promised, so people would buy the thing if it was put together Mad Max style from rusted car parts.

Over the course of a conversation with Peter I became aware that he was oblivious to the existence of video baluns. This made me wonder, how many other VJs are going through life as he is: Anxious and empty, unsure whether the venue he’s playing at will be able to do justice to the imagery he creates, or if they’ll push his feed through some kind of horrible, unshielded composite cable which has been draped over hot lights and snacked on by rats since the last refit in 1982.

There’s no shame in this, I too was living under this ominent shadow of doubt. Until I discovered baluns.

Thomas Dolby’s blog continues to induce rabid gear lust. After drooling over Mr. Dolby’s live rig and repurposed vintage MIDI controller, we now get a glimpse at Johnny DeKam’s live video rig. (Kevin Johnsrude caught this one, and reminds us that “envy is one of the seven deadly sins.” Better keep that in mind.)

Actually, we can divide this into “things to envy” and “things to note.”