28 January 2008, 13:12 in

Choosing a new camera

My Casio EX-Z1050 camera served me well until recently. Since it was damaged at a concert, I have been looking for a replacement ultra compact camera. If it’s too big or heavy it will end up being left at home.

The EX-Z1050 featured a 3x optical zoom and 10.1 mega pixels, and I was very happy with it. It was compact and lightweight, easy to use, had long battery life, and most importantly, it was easy to take good pictures with. The downsides were that the screen was hard to read in bright sunlight, and the flash wasn’t very powerful so it was only useful at very close range.

I think that most cameras available from reputable manufacturers are pretty decent these days; it would be pretty hard to buy a lemon. However, doing a little research before spending your money is always worthwhile. Two websites that are particularly useful for camera news and reviews are Steve’s Digicams and Digital Photography Review. I like Steve’s best cameras section, which lists some of his picks for the various categories of cameras out there (e.g. DSLR, Prosumer, entry level, ultracompact, etc), as it can save you time by narrowing down your choices.

Here are some of the models that I considered. I’ve included a link to the review at Steve’s Digicams for each, along with the approximate price they were available for on eBay (prices in Australian dollars, including shipping costs):

I ended up going for the Canon IXUS 75. It received excellent reviews and features has a 3X optical zoom, 7 mega pixels, a nice big 2.5 inch screen, and seems like good value for money. I received it today and I’m thrilled with it. It is attractive, compact, the screen is big and clear, and it is very easy to use. Recommended!

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25 April 2007, 14:02 in

Interlacing

Recently I was playing around on my dad’s video editing computer and was trying to render to both DivX and XviD from a high-definition Sony Vegas 7 project. I was having trouble with ugly horizontal lines appearing whenever there was motion in the image. Turns out it was an issue with interlacing.

I vaguely knew about interlacing but decided to do a bit of research to find out more. I found a good site called 100fps.com, and the Wikipedia entry is also very good. I will attempt to explain in my own words…

Video recordings can be categorized as being either progressive (non-interlaced) or interlaced. Interlacing is a technique that allows for a video signal to have smoother motion, at the sacrifice of some still image quality, without requiring any extra bandwidth.

With progressive scan, an image is created line by line. Let’s say we have a 720p signal at 25fps. Then, each and every frame, 720 horizontal lines are drawn in order to create the image. This would be done 25 times per second to give a frame rate of 25 fps. Simple, makes sense.

Interlacing works a bit differently. Say we have an interlaced video signal at a certain resolution (number of lines) and frame rate, say 1080i at 25 fps. This signal actually consist of 50 fields per second, where each field has half the resolution of the output image so 540 lines. So a single frame of 1080i video contains 1080 lines, but the image is made up from two fields of 540 lines each; the odd lines come from one field and the even lines from the other field. So a frame consists of two captures (fields) from two moments in time.

If we simply combined two consecutive fields from an interlaced video signal to get a single full resolution frame then, because these fields represent slightly different moments in time, we get some visual artifacts wherever there is movement.

So what is the point of interlacing then? From 100fps.com:

Movies with 25 non-interlaced (=progressive) frames per second don’t look very fluid. If you watched a football game with 25 progressive fps it would look as if the ball isn’t flying fluidly thru the air. With 50 fields per second which are then combined to 25 frames per second this looks much better.

So interlacing is in fact a clever way to compress a movie when one cannot use digital compression methods. Interlacing reduces the bandwidth (= storage space nowadays) by half, without losing vertical resolution in quiet areas (in motion areas you don’t notice very much anyway, because it’s moving 50 times per second). So interlacing is a way to display the nonmoving parts with full resolution and the moving parts with half resolution, but fluidly. It’s a very clever way to cut bandwidth without sacrificing much quality.

So, when recording video, there is the option of recording non-interlaced for higher vertical resolution, or interlacing for smoother motion. If had we unlimited bandwidth, we could simply use a high resolution to give good picture quality, and a high frame rate to achieve smooth motion, and not worry about the extra complexity of interlacing.

From Wikipedia:

The perceived vertical resolution of an interlaced image is usually equivalent to multiplying the active lines by about 0.6. This means that, when viewing progressive sourced material, a progressive display will show a more detailed image, when compared to an interlaced one, even if both have exactly the same display resolution.

To display interlaced video, the fields must be somehow turned into frames. This process is known as deinterlacing. Various methods exist, including blend (also known as average or combine fields), weave (do nothing), area based, motion blur, discard (discard every second field, so you show only the odd or even fields and resize them to the full frame size), bob (also known as weave; the fields are shown one at a time, scaled up to the frame size, but at twice the frame rate), and progressive scan.

Hopefully this is of some help if you are confused by the terms interlacing and progressive scan.

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24 April 2007, 18:52 in

Budget home theatre PC specs

Iavor recently asked me to help him spec out a basic low budget home theatre PC. Here’s what I came up with from the Nintek website:

Total: $959.90

I think this system represents very good value. I’m not sure how this one would go with high-def TV recording and playback but it would certainly handle standard-def digital TV without problems. Personally I would spend a little more on the case but this one will do the job.

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6 April 2007, 14:58 in

Casio EX-Z1050 camera

I bought a new camera in Kobe on the first day of my Japan trip. It’s a black Casio EX-Z1050, an ultracompact camera with 10.1 megapixels and a 3X optical zoom. I also got a 2GB SD card, mini tripod, and soft carry case (kind of like a sock) for it. It replaces my Casio EX-Z750 which was great but has been malfunctioning recently.

Casio EX-Z1050 camera Casio EX-Z1050 camera (rear)

The user interface is clear and straightforward to use, the physical controls and buttons have been simplified compared to the EX-Z750, and the display is big and bright. The EX-Z750 had a cradle which was the only way to charge the camera or transfer the photos to a PC, whereas the EX-Z1050 comes with a USB cable and a battery charger.

Most importantly, it appears to take good photos (although I am no pro-photographer so my opinion is probably not very meaningful). I’m very happy with it so far.

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1 March 2007, 21:06 in

Swiftech MCX159-Cu chipset heatsink & fan

The northbridge fan on the motherboard of my dad’s video editing PC recently died. The PC is a AMD Athlon 64 3800+ socket 939, with 2GB Corsair RAM, an ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard, Lian Li PC70B tower case, NVidia 6600 graphics, and four hard disks. As usual when something goes wrong with a family PC, it’s my job to fix it.

Here is a shot of the inside of the PC. Unfortunately due to problems with my camera this is the only photo that came out.

Inside of dad's video editing PC (Feb 2007)

I ordered a Swiftech MCX159-Cu chipset heatsink and fan from PC Case Gear as a replacement for the broken factory cooler. For a chipset cooler, this thing is a real beast, with a thick copper base and tall cooling fins. It came with mounting brackets for both AMD and Intel platforms, and some thermal paste.

Swiftech MCX159-Cu

Mounting the Swiftech cooler on an AMD motherboard involves accessing the back of the motherboard, meaning the motherboard had to be removed from the case. We soon realised that the Swiftech was too tall and clashed with the Zalman VF700-Cu cooler on the graphics card! Fortunately dad has a well equipped workshop so he shortened the cooling fins down to reduce the height of the heatsink.

Other than that the install was uneventful. After getting everything back together the computer booted first time and all was fine. The Swiftech is a great little chipset cooler and fairly quiet too. Just be careful that you have enough clearance to mount it!

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25 January 2007, 13:05 in

Maxtor OneTouch 300GB external hard disk

I’ve always been paranoid about losing my data. I perform backups every now and then, but usually don’t bother backing up some stuff like my music because it simply takes up too much space. While ordering from PC Case Gear I also ordered a Maxtor OneTouch 300GB external hard disk. This should give me the capacity to back up more thoroughly.

Maxtor OneTouch 300GB external hard disk Maxtor OneTouch 300GB external hard disk

The disk is compatible with USB2.0, Firewire-800, and Firewire-400. It came pretty well packaged and included the hard disk itself, a power brick, power cable, and a Firewire-800 cable. Unfortunately it did not include a USB2.0 cable, which is a bit silly because it would be the most commonly used option for PC users. Fortunately I had a spare USB2.0 cable lying around. The drive itself is very heavy and solid.

Setting it up (under Windows XP Pro) simply involved plugging in the power and USB2.0 cable and switching the drive on at the back. In Windows I went to Computer Management (right click on My Computer and choose Manage), then Storage, Disk Management. From here I initialised and formatted the drive as an NTFS partition.

The drive is still formatting as I write this. I don’t think I’m going to install the OneTouch software at this stage; I’ll just copy files onto it manually. One thing that is bugging me is the cooling fan seems to intermittently vibrate and make a lot of noise.

Let the backing up begin!

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25 January 2007, 12:19 in

Corsair Flash Voyager 8GB

I recently ordered a Corsair Flash Voyager 8GB USB2.0 flash drive from PC Case Gear.

Corsair Flash Voyager 8GB Corsair Flash Voyager 8GB

I was pretty impressed by the 8GB capacity; that’s almost double a normal DVD-R. It seems good value at $269. A 16GB version is also available but it cost substantially more.

The body of the Flash Voyager is made from soft rubber which makes it nice to handle, and probably also makes it quite resistant to being dropped. It should come in handy for moving files between computers.

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31 October 2006, 23:59 in

OzStick Ultimate Arcade Controller

Some weeks ago I placed an order for an OzStick Ultimate. It is an arcade-style two-player controller with a joystick and six buttons for each player, as well as player 1 and 2 start buttons and a coin button. It has a PS/2 plug and is recognised by a PC as a keyboard, so you can simply plug it into your PC using the supplied PS/2 cable or a PS/2 to USB cable. Moving the joysticks or pressing the buttons registers as keystrokes on the PC.

It is perfect for playing old arcade games via the MAME32 emulator on my home theatre PC. I had previously tried using the keyboard and also some wireless gamepads, but a real arcade controller like this makes the experience more authentic.

The controller arrived today in a large cardboard box, packed in plastic and padded with newspaper.
OzStick Ultimate in boxMe unwrapping the Ozstick Ultimate

The only assembly required was screwing the joystick knobs onto the threaded poles.
OzStick Ultimate unwrapped without joystick knobsCables and joystick knobs for OzStick UltimateOzStick Ultimate joystick poleOzStick Ultimate assembled

Krzysztof was over so we played some Bubble Bobble 2 and then some Street Fighter Alpha 3.
OzStick Ultimate set up in my living roomKrzysztof testing out the OzStick Ultimate

The controller worked well, and feels very solid. Our only gripe was that the joystick knobs come loose very easily. A little thread-locking compound on the thread should solve that problem.

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