DivX and Xvid encoded videos are mainstream. DivX compatible DVD players are ten a penny, letting you watch ‘downloaded’ videos in the comfort of your living room (the way nature intended) and not hunched up in front of a PC. But if you’ve got a library of videos sitting neatly on your PC, the chore of burning these to CD or DVD may not seem too appealing. The recent crop of media streamers let you browse media on a PC wirelessly in the comfort of your armchair, but what if you don’t want your PC switched on 24/7 just in case you fancy watching a copy of Lock Stock? What if your budget doesn’t stretch to a fully fledged Home Theatre PC or Media Center? Help is at hand with Freecom’s Media Player.

The Freecom Media Player comes in two separate flavours – one with a wireless network connection and HDMI port (the Freecom Media Player 350 WLAN), the other with a wired network connection (the Freecom Media Player 35) which we look at in detail in this mini-review. You can also buy the Media Player in a stripped down version without a harddrive and both can be used as an external harddrive.

Hacking Microsoft’s Xbox became the latest craze amongst the gaming gurus. But it wasn’t just about pirate games. Those wonderful nerds turned the Xbox into a fully fledge media center PC and with a few minor (and more importantly cheap) modifications, its potential was shown in full glory. With such a huge internet following, the likes of Xbox Media Center (XBMC) became a phenomenon - a must have addition for all Xbox owners. In fact despite being freely available, XBMC is the most complete, the most slick and the most powerful media center software I have ever used. And I’ve used a few. The only major thing missing was High Definition playback.

So the next generation machines with HD capability surely must have the potential to become must have addition to the video-philes arsenal? A Media Center PC for a fraction of the price and without the hassles that plague those machines – noisy, prone to crashing and overheating. We take a look at the Blu Ray capable Sony Playstation 3 to see if Sony’s realized its true potential.

There's 5 fundamentals in web streaming: 

1) Substantial compression always reduces the quality of video.
2) DO NOT compress footage you want to edit.
3) Reducing the frame rate will not reduce the file size.
4) Reducing the resolution will not reduce the file size.
5) Get some web space - you tube videos look rubbish.

This tutorial will discuss briefly what compression is, a bit about codecs, why and how we need to use compression for web use.  I will concentrate on using the windows media video method and Vegas and show how to get the best from this codec and look at the results of using different levels of compression.  All suggestions as to what is 'best' are based on my own investigations and hints and tips from others.

Saturation is a tool I often use. Saturation adjustments can be used to tweak a piece of video to give extra impact by making colours more vibrant, or a very different feeling can be evoked by making the colours washed out.  Some groovy special effects can be done with ease - remember the little girl with the red coat in Schlinder's list?

Firstly lets get it clear what saturation is - paint is a good analogy.  If we start with grey paint and add purple the paint will slowly go from grey to very purple, from saturation down to saturation up in the picture on the left, we are increasing the amount of colour.  Now look at the brightness boxes, the saturation has not been changed, the amount of colour is the same but we see it brighter or dimmer as the level of brightness changes.  At their extremes saturation fully down would give a grey box, saturation right up would be a very purple box, brightness right up would be white, right down would be black. 

In the previous tutorial on curves we were adjusting brightness only -

Over the last ten years two pairs of letters have given us all the power to make movies, DV and PC. Even modestly priced DV cameras can produce surprisingly good video but with a few tweaks you can improve the look of any camera's output from mediocre to stunning. The problem is that most DV cameras typically produce images low in both contrast and vibrancy. Unfortunately we can’t add detail that was never there, but most video editors have a few tools that to give that wishy washy DV video more punch and vibrancy. The first thing you should understand is how to use 'curves'. The following advice is Vegas specific but the technique can be applied in most decent editors.

The budding amateur's forever restricted by cost. You'll never get slick looks with cheap equipment and even budget gear's out of the reach of humble amateurs. So why not use a cheap alternative to low end specialist equipment? Professional looks the Blue Peter way is a specialty of Digital Director and exemplified by our very own forum member, The Guru. When Digital Director’s forums held their annual summer video competition, The Guru decided to enter using a palmcorder, and nothing else. No professional lights or sound equipment. Here he shares his tecnique of acheiving a professional taking heads look.

We haven’t forgotten about High Definition, honest. Incredibly it’s been a year since our first peak at the fledgling UK High Definition consumer market. And despite a distinct lack of ground breaking advances, we’re slowly seeing the first signs of what the industry hopes will be a mass consumer market: Sky now broadcasts in High Definition, HDV cameras are in their second generation and more importantly we’ve seen the release of the first Blu Ray player in the UK, the Samsung BD-P1000.

 
Why browse through your DVD collection when your multimedia PC shows a thumbnail gallery of films playable at the click of a button? Well that's why I occasionally set about the tedious task of backing up my DVD collection for instant PC playback. Unfortunately I'll either get bored, frustrated or end up moaning about quality before the first film is ripped to my hard-drive. In fact it'd be quicker to search out and download the film you own on a bit-torrent site than rip and encode. So why, with the technology available, can't we download films? And I'm talking about legitimate downloads here...

Well, after a long wait, that service is finally available in the UK with download services from lovefilm.com, BTvision and Apple. In this Digital Director review we take a look at the film download service available from BT: BTvision.

Or how to have a complete breakdown in six months

Last year some friends of mine came and asked if they could borrow some of my video equipment for a project they wanted to film. On and off over the next few weeks I'd see lights, tripod, a dolly or cables go out in the morning in a van full of excited people and return late at night, returned by a team of weary souls. Six months later I was invited to a party in a pub where they'd set up televisions everywhere, all borrowed of course (mine was balanced precariously over the fruit machine.). Their finished video lasted all of twelve minutes, was nowhere near professional quality and filled me with envy. I'd forgotten the pride which comes from watching your own unpaid hard work on screen. There's something special about having friends round, slipping a DVDo into the player saying "here's what I made with some mates" and then waiting for the praise to flow.