12Feb GoPro Hero 3+ black edition sale $349
If you are in the market, the Hero 3+ black edition is on sale right now on ebay for just $349 with free shipping. It’s a limited time, random ebay sale so if you want one you might want to move fast.
12Feb Asus ux32vd 840 EVO SSD upgrade video
I have the snappy Samsung 500GB 840 EVO, I have the $8 screwdriver set, and now it’s time to upgrade my Asus Zenbook ux32vd laptop. As you can see from the video the upgrade isn’t too hard, just a lot of tiny screws and shifting the battery around to get the hard drive out. Over all pretty painless.
The ram in my Zenbook has already been upgraded to an 8GB stick, I ended up using the value select because it was on sale but it might be worth it to spend a few extra dollars on the Corsair Vengeance 8GB stick
You can actually buy the Zenbook with an upgraded 250GB ssd and 10GB of ram for $500 over the base price if you don’t want to hassle with it. However, doing it yourself does save you some money and gets you some better parts. Currently the 500GB 840 EVO SSD is around $300 and the 8GB stick of ram is under $100. So ruffly $400 to do it yourself or $500 with a smaller hard drive prebuilt.
I haven’t had a lot of time to run speed tests on the new install, but I was able to quickly test out the Samsung 500GB 840 EVO’s “RAPID mode”. This uses the EVO in conjunction with 1GB of system ram in order to buffer both read and write speeds. The test above is from Samsung so it’s probably tweaked a bit in the EVO’s favor still it’s reporting 1164 GB/s reads and 974 GB/s writes. Running Crystalmark 5x at 1000GB last night, sequential I hit 986.7 reads and 869.3 writes which is very impressive. I’ll try and get some more speed tests posted towards the end of the week, but I think the Samsung 840 EVO currently my top pick for SSD drives.
11Feb Under $6 1/4 20 ball head to cold shoe mounting solution
So here we have 2 relatively low price 1/4 20 to cold shoe ball head adapters. The one on the right will set you back $9.50 while the one on the left will only cost you $5.40 (or as low as $3.38 if you look around
). The one on the left
took the slow boat from China (about two weeks for delivery) via an ebay order while the one on the right showed up in about 2 days via Amazon prime. They look about the same, don’t they?
Other than a few minor cosmetic differences these two 1/4 20 to cold shoe ball head adapters appear pretty much the same to my eye. Quality, weight, and design all seem pretty much identical. The only real difference here seem to be the amount of time you wait for delivery. It seems to me that if you have the time to wait, you might as well go with the cheaper unit.
The only real issue I have with this type of 1/4 20 to cold shoe ball head adapters is that there is only 1 thumb nut on the cold shoe adapter portion. In order to get things secure you have to tighten the thumb nut down on the camera shoe, then spin the adapter around until it snugs up against the top of the thumb nut. If too much pressure is applied in the loosening direction the whole thing spins free.
In order to resolve this problem I usually apply a dab of loctite or super glue to the inside threads, then thread the cold shoe adapter in enough to secure it without obstructing the workings of the thumb nut (see above picture). Let it dry for an hour or so and the cold shoe adapter is locked in nice and solid. Once that’s done attachment only requires a single thumb nut in order to secure the 1/4 20 to cold shoe ball head adapter to your camera or rig.
Keep in mind these are sub $10 1/4 20 to cold shoe ball head adapters so they aren’t designed to handle a lot of weight. These units are hand for microphones, LCD panels, gopros, and LED lights, but I wouldn’t use them to mount a full sized DSLR and lens to anything. Still they’re very hand to have and at $3 to $5 a peace, you can afforded to have a handful of them in your kit.
10Feb BlackMagic 4k Camera price drop to $2995
It looks like BlackMagic is dropping the price of it’s 4k production camera to $2995, coming down $1000 from earlier pricing. There has been a lot of speculation about the possible price of the new Panasonic GH4 (which will also be 4k capable) settling in at around the $2000 price point. While the BlackMagic 4k production camera offers up a raw video workflow alongside Blackmagic’s colorista color grading software, the SSD recording method, poor low light performance, form factor, and design make the BlackMagic 4k production camera a bit cumbersome to use.
On the other hand the very sexy Panasonic GH4 fits into a DSLR form factor while offering up a massive amount of features. It’s as though Panasonic actually listened to it’s customers, then built a camera that checks off almost everything on the list.
- 4k recording at both Cinema 4K: 4096×2160 / 24 fps, and QFHD 4K: 3840×2160 / 30 fps
- Wi-Fi remote photo and video monitoring and camera controls
- Focus peaking
- 40 FPS RAW burst mode
- Multiple video codecs MOV, MP4, and AVCHD
- 200 Mbps data rates
- Improved low light performance
- In camera 4k playback
- 8 bit or 10 bit Clean 4:2:2 hdmi output
The list of features is actually much longer than that and you can find a whole run down on Amazon’s pre-order page. Although the GH4 doesn’t record raw, it still looks to be a much more attractive option than the BlackMagic 4k production camera. If the speculated $2000 price tag is correct, the GH4 is going to be a very popular camera.
I’ve looked at other Micro 4/3 cameras in the past, but the GH4 is the first one I would consider buying. For the price this camera looks amazing. Hopefully Panasonic will have a demo model out on the floor at NAB, i would love to get my hands on this thing.
10Feb Batch processing Gopro Hero 3 protune clips in Gopro Studio
I’ve been shooting allot with the Hero 3 black edition lately and do to a misunderstanding I had about how the Gopro Studio software works, I was unaware that you could batch convert files to .avi or .mov, instead I was exporting each file individually using the export option in step 3 of the program, this isn’t a big deal for one or two clips but if you are dealing with 10 or 15 clips it can be a real pain. In an effort to help others, I thought I’d post what I’ve learned after talking to Gopro’s software engineering David Newman.
At the very bottom of the screen in step one there is a very small “CHANGE DIRECTORY” button. If you click on that you can set your export folder. This seems pretty simple now, but I was distracted by the larger “Export” button at the top of the screen and hadn’t really noticed it.
Once you’ve set the output directory, click on the advanced settings button and set up your output format. AVI and MOV are standard but you can make adjustments to quality and size.
When you’ve got your export format selected in advanced settings, hold down shift and select the clips you would like to convert from the import panel. Then hit the “add clips to Conversion list” button on the bottom right of the screen.
After you’re clips are selected, hit the “Convert all” button and wait. When the clips are converted, you can basically skip steps 2 and 3. Add the converted clips to your NLE and adjust the color in Premiere pro. Adobe CC has native support for Cineform files so there really isn’t any need to do anything else with the Gopro Studio app.
I had wrongly assumed that you were required to go through all 3 steps in order to export files. Up until now I used the app so little that I’d never bothered looking into what was output in step one. I guess it’s easy to overlook the really simple stuff.
08Feb Seiki 39-Inch 4K monitor $362 Amazon warehouse deal
If you’re looking for a lot of screen real estate and want to move up to 4k, Amazon Warehouse deals has the Seiki 39 inch 4k panel on sale for just $362 refurbished. While the panel isn’t the greatest display in the world with its 30hz refresh limit and imperfect color reproduction, that’s still a lot of work space and $362 is a pretty darn good price. There are a limited number on sale so if you want one you might wanna move fast. Current retail price on this panel is $499, so that’s a savings of $138 if you don’t mind buying refurbished.
07Feb Freenas PCI-e 4 port SATA upgrade revisited
It’s been awhile since I’ve made any changes to my original Freenas build (you can find that here). At 18TB of storage in raidz I still have 4TB left which seems to give me enough of a buffer when deleting and adding new projects to the Freenas box. The old PCI-e 4 port SATA card I’ve been using occasionally gives me slow downs when transferring files over the network, sometimes dropping down to as little as 20MB/s for a few minutes before jumping back up to 80 or 90MB/s. So I’ve decided to try and find a replacement.
After doing a little bit of research, I came across the Crest SATA III 4 Port PCI-e card. Some people say it works great with Freenas while others say that it isn’t supported by with Freenas at all. I picked up this card with the intention of find out. At a price of $35 it’s 22 dollars cheaper than my old SATA 4 port card and it supports SATA 6GB as opposed to the 3GB limit on the older card.
If all goes well I’ll be installing the Crest SATA III 4 Port PCI-e card this weekend and let you know if it is in fact compatible with Freenas. If it isn’t I’ll probably still keep it around and install it into one of my other systems. Freenas has worked great for me and saved me quite a bit of money, but I wish there was a little more information out there on supported PCI-e cards. Hopefully this test will help a few of you out.
UPDATE: The install took less time than I thought. I can confirm that the Crest SATA III 4 Port PCI-e card does work with Freenas. Currently running 9.2.1 (lastest version) and all the attached drives were detected by Freenas without any problem.
07Feb Tascam DR-60d $199 with a free copy of Pluraleyes 3
If you are in the market for a field recorder, B&H has the Tascam DR-60d field recorder on sale for just $199 and that includes a free copy of Pluraleyes 3. That’s a pretty darn good price for an excellent little field recorder. Pluraleyes also adds a lot of value and is an excellent way to automatically sync audio from external recorders.
For more info on the Tascam DR-60d field recorder check out this full video review above. You can also find my full audio samples here as well as an overview here.
06Feb Crucial M500 960GB $449 Amazon Sale
The Crucial m500 960GB SSD drives might not be quit as fast as the Samsung 840 EVO 1TB drives, but the slight difference in performance will save you $80. Right now Amazon has the Crucial m500 960GB SSD drives on sale for just $449 while the Samsung 840 EVO 1TB drive is priced at $529. That puts the Crucial m500 bellow the magical 50 cents a GB mark (works out to about 47 cents a GB), making it a pretty darn good deal if you need (and can afford) a large capacity SSD. Not sure how long the Amazon sale will last, so if you want one you might want to jump on it before the prices head back up to the $500 mark.
06Feb SanDisk Extreme Plus 32GB micro sdhc speed test
I’ve been using my Gopro hero 3 allot lately and I’ve been getting occasional dropouts when shooting in protune mode. I ended up throwing the hero 3 off that cement structure 3 times in the Cobalt cage review video because of it. Turns out i’m yet another victim of Sandisks buzz word labeling system. I had wrongly confused the “Sandisk Ultra” with the “Sandisk Extreme Plus” when I was replacing a few lost memory cards. It turns out “Ultra” is actually Sandisk’s term for pretty slow and “Extreme Plus” is code for decently fast. So I figured before I return the Sandisk Ultra, i’d run a quick test on it to see how well it actually stacks up against the Sandisk Extreme Plus.
For this test I set H2testw to write 3GB to the Sandisk Ultra, than read that 3GB back from the card. As you can see the average write speeds are only 3.5 MBytes per second. Since my Gopro hero 3 is running the slightly older firmware update (new firmware takes data rates down to 35 Mbits per second) in protune mode it requires 45 Mbits per second write speed, that works out to about 5.6 MBytes per second. I’m kind of surprised at how slow “Ultra” really is and the number of dropouts in recording I was getting make sense.
Testing the Sandisk Extreme Plus really shows how slow the Sandisk Ultra is. With the same 3GB read/write test the Extreme plus was able to average 35.7 MBytes per second write speeds and 63.1 MBytes per second read speeds. That means for the price difference of $17 (Extreme Plus $39 and Ultra $22) you are getting 10 times the write speeds and 3 times the read speeds. That’s basically the difference between occasionally losing a shot and never having a recording dropout.
From these speed tests it’s pretty easy to see that the Sandisk Extreme Plus is worth the extra $17 if you plan to record in protune mode. If you don’t use protune mode, you can probably still get away with the Sandisk Ultra although for the price difference the Extreme Plus still seems like the way to go.
My request to Sandisk is that they make the fast cards red and the slow cards some other color. That way when I’m quickly ordering a replacement card on Amazon, I don’t get the Ultra and the Extreme Plus confused. Or maybe I should take the time to read through the description before placing an order, it could go either way.
