New Technology

Over 175 people attended the first VideoCamp Austin last Saturday, February 27, and the event was a rousing success. Co-organizers Talmadge Boyd and Weston Norton of Reel Social Media and Lights. Camera. Help. co-founder David Neff coordinated the event, which took place at The University of Texas at Austin's Jesse H. Jones Communication Center. Local aspiring filmmakers and videobloggers learned techniques and tricks of the trade from fellow attendees with years of experience. 

VideoCamp Austin followed the barcamp model of the "unconference," in which a large piece of paper was taped to the wall with a handwritten schedule on it. Sessions were written on stickies and then placed in open time slots. Folks who showed up early to sign up had an idea of what they wanted to talk about, such as Arts from the Streets filmmaker Layton Blaylock's presentation on making a documentary. However, spontaneity was the main focus, as Rachel Farris of PetRelocation.com learned. She didn't have a presentation prepped, but used PetRelocation's Pup in the Air videos to demonstrative the effectiveness of "Using Online Video in Your Business." Air Sex World Championship host Chris Trew of The New Movement taught an "Improv Comedy in a Video and Filmmaking" session where a few of the attendees were pulled into the demonstration.

Next month's VideoCamp Austin event is a free one-day ad-hoc gathering of video, public relations, new media and marketing professionals born from the desire for people to learn about best practices in online video production and distribution in an open environment. David Neff of Lights. Camera. Help. and the American Cancer Society, Talmadge Boyd and Weston Norton are coordinating this collaborative event that includes discussions, demos and interaction from participants who are the main actors of the event. Not surprising, as I'd first met Dave at BarCamp Austin 3 in 2008. Although he shared information about his project SharingHope.tv, the real take-home message I got that day was that non-profit organizations should use online video and documentary filmmaking as a way to convey their messages. With VideoCamp Austin, Dave is taking this mission even further.

VideoCamp Austin will be held on February 27 from 10 am to 4 pm on the University of Texas campus at CMB Building UT Campus, Studio 4B. The event is being organized in a "barcamp" style, that is, it is an ad-hoc rather than pre-determined schedule. Barcamps are an international network of user generated conferences -- open, participatory workshop-events, with content is provided by participants. The first Barcamps focused on early-stage web applications and related open-source technologies, but the format is now widely applied to a variety of other topics, including social media tools and now video and filmmaking.

Don't piss off the geeks. They've got their Twitters and they know how to use them.

We found that out back in April, when Time Warner Cable (TWC) announced that Austin would be one of four cities in the nation to get "consumption-based billing." The proposal was to cap the standard broadband Internet plan and then charge extra for usage over the cap.

The proposal was portrayed as an issue of fairness -- a way to manage excessive or abusive users. In reality, it was a shot directly at emerging online video usage.

Standard definition video requires about 1GB/hour bandwidth. That means there will be about 1 gigabyte of data transferred for every hour you watch video. So a 20GB cap means you have sufficient bandwidth to watch about 20 hours of video.

If you reach your usage cap and try to stream a movie across your Internet connection, TWC is going to assess a surcharge. You’d pay about $2 for a typical movie. [...] High-definition video is worse. It uses about 2GB-4GB/hour, so that surcharge could jump as high as $8 for a single high-def movie.

The geeks were irate. The issue became the talk of the town, and was covered nationally. By the end of April, TWC announced that the plan would be suspended while they conduct a "customer education process." (shudder)

Consumption-based billing has not returned -- yet. Online video remains a serious threat to cable video, so none of us believe that we've heard the last on this issue.

Editor's Note: The following report is from Aaron Zern and James Curry, who went to one of the first screenings of Terminator Salvation in Austin and sat in the new D-Box seats, the ones that Chris Holland tried out. I was interested to hear how the seats felt during a whole feature film, and thought I'd share their discoveries. (Thanks, guys!)

D-Box seats are billed as "The next Dimension of your cinematic experience. Taking you literally inside the movie" and the promotional material explains that "Using advanced proprietary robotics and commercial-grade motion technology, D-BOX Motion Code immerses theatregoers into the heart of the action. The experience is nothing short of stunning." Rhetoric so dramatic that it would lead you to opine that D-Box represents an advance akin to that between going to see a moving picture, and going to see one of those fabulous new talking pictures with sound. Common sense, on the other hand, would lend itself to suggesting that a gyrating seat in a darkened theater is more likely a leap between going to see a moving picture and going to see a moving picture while being made to feel slightly queasy.

At Galaxy Highland, we were ushered into the theater a little ahead of those with regular tickets and invited to take our seats in the D-Box section, 22 seats spanning two rows about halfway up from the screen.

When it comes to things digital, we like to think of Austin as a national leader. And we mean "leader" in the good way. That's why it's so surprising that according to a report by Nielsen published last week, Austin is the fourth least prepared city in the nation for the upcoming digital television transition.

On Friday, June 12, 2009 – less than two weeks from now! – all full-power television stations will cease "analog" transmissions and will broadcast only a "digital" television signal. This affects all households that receive over-the-air television via rabbit ears or rooftop antenna. Preparing for DTV is usually pretty easy. Older televisions can receive digital signals with the addition of a low-cost digital converter box.

As it currently stands, 30,000 central Texas households could lose their television reception when the transition occurs. The City of Austin regards this as a serious public safety concern. Rondella Hawkins, Manager of the City's Office of Telecommunications and Regulatory Affairs noted, "Television is a primary source for news, weather and public safety information for many Austinites."

To help remaining residents across the digital television divide, the city has scheduled a Walk-In DTV Help Clinic that will be open June 3-12.

Time is running short, but it's not too late. For more information about the DTV transition, visit http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/telecom/dtv.htm or http://www.dtv.gov/.
 

Photo credit: "Digital TV Coupons" by Gary Hunt. Found on Flickr and used under Creative Commons license.

This past Wednesday I attended a reception held by D-Box Motion Code and the Galaxy Highland 20 Theaters in Austin celebrating the installation of twenty D-Box motion seats in one of the theater's auditoriums. The seats use three motors and "intelligent vibrations" to bring a new element to movie watching: coordinated motion and vibrations timed to the picture's soundtrack. The result is something like those flight simulator rides at amusement parks (MGM's Star Tours comes to mind), which use the power of visual suggestion combined with motion to convey a moderately intense physical experience.

The reception included both a standalone demo unit (the two seats pictured together) and a full-immersion experience using about fifteen minutes of the new film Terminator: Salvation. While the seats deliver the expected bumps and rolls during explosions and car chases, there are a few more subtle touches that I actually found quite clever. When one character starts a car, the seat vibrates slightly to the purr of the engine while the characters hold a conversation.