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How Social is “Social” Media?
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Jonny Goldstein interviewed me back in August 2007 on his show Jonny’s Par-Tay [link]. Looking at the countdown timer to the end of the show, around -18:00 he asks me “So… Did you feel a little lonely before you got into all the social media stuff?” to which my response was that I’m actually LESS social NOW than I was before…
Jonny’s response was that it CAN lead to socializing, and he mentioned an instance of an IRL event, Vloggercue, hosted by Wreck and Salvage’s Adam Quirk that he was going to attend BECAUSE of the people that he met and knew because of social media.
While I agree that it CAN… How often *DOES* social media lead to actual social inteaction, for YOU? My point was that I became less social instead of more social because of the fact that my friends are always at my fingertips. For the sake of this post, I’m defining “social” as actually going somewhere to hang out with friends of mine, IRL.
Everyone sitting at that table (Grace, Rachel, Charles, Obreahny, Sandra & Mike), I’m only *seconds* away from interacting with, via social media, wherever I am. Instant messaging, status updates, texting, email, sites, forums, groups. I did a shoot in Central Park with Obreahny and uploaded it to my server sitting out in Central Park, using the park’s wireless access. I get footage from clients overseas via FTP, talk to them on skype or iChat and send them quicktime files for approval/changes. I watched a live stream of PodCamp Philly from NYC and appeared on-screen @ PodCamp Boston while I was sitting in a living room in Maryland.
There’s no reason for me to physically go ANYWHERE unless physically interacting with that person is the reason I’m going. You can’t go snowboarding together unless you actually go snowboarding. Other than that, the current state of communications enables you to be AS in-touch with someone as you want to be. I talk to my friend @CaliNative all day, every day. We’re both MIT Graduates, but we live 3,000 miles apart from each other and never met each other IRL. Meanwhile, there are people that have given me business cards, right here in NYC, that I never spoke to again after that particular day that we met.
Social media allows you to define your enviroment. You can create and maintain relationships that transcend physical and territorial boundaries. You can hold 5 completely separate instant message conversations at a time, which is absolutely impossible on the phone. Does that make you MORE social?… or LESS social? Is “social” being re-defined by technology enabling us to envision new directions?
I also say I’m less social because my tolerance for idiocy has plummeted. :) I didn’t have a lot of that to BEGIN with, but when you get to pick and choose the people you interact with on the basis of their intelligence, common sense and relevance relative to what YOU find interesting or important, it becomes really tough to tolerate people talking about ‘nothing’, or their own agenda which has nothing to do with what you find to be valuable in life.
Anil, Mike, Justin, Debbie, Grace, Bill, Kenyatta, Eric
Photo Credit: Jared Klett
So, yes. Social media DEFINITELY leads to situations where we all get together and have a good time, IRL. I think that more often, social media allows us to FEIGN getting together, which is actually *less* social than more so.
Bill Cammack • Cammack Media Group, LLC
Marry Rich
Yes, I know I said “only date broke chicks”, but now, we’re talking about marriage! :D
If you’re going to get married to a chick, make *SURE* she’s got ‘mad ducats’! :D
Don’t put yourself in the screwed-up position of having to support some deadbeat chick. That went out of style with The Flintstones and The Honeymooners. Women’s Lib is in FULL EFFECT… YA HEARD? Chicks have their own jobs… Chicks have their own money…. They’re even allowed to own land now. There’s no reason why you can’t find yourself a *RICH* chick to get married to. None.
You may have to do a little bullshitting, because chicks like to hook up with guys that are more successful than they are. Go hang out at the country club. Order an overpriced water and act like you’re drinking vodka. Drop a lot of references to your yacht and the several homes you own around the world. You know the drill. ;)
Anyway…
Now, there are two types of rich chicks you can go for. There’s the self-made rich chick that is educated and has her own career and has done what she’s needed to do to elevate her lifestyle to the lap of luxury. All props and credit to those women! :D … Then, there’s the type that’s rich because either her father or her ex-husband worked A LOT, and she’s become the beneficiary of their labor. It all depends on what you plan to do with her money, which kind of rich chick you want to go for….
If you want to keep her money to yourself, marry the rich, self-made chick. The higher she gets in her career, the more hours she’s going to have to spend working. This means you get to drive her fancy luxury car back and forth to the store to pick up the latest video games on her credit card. In this case, you’re basically the butler, Jeeves. It’s your job to pick her up from work after you chilled all day, drive her to the restaurant for dinner, since your ass probably can’t cook worth a damn, drive her back home and pamper her for about an hour before she falls asleep since she needs to get up early to go make you some more money in the morning. So, basically, by ‘working’ between 6 and 10pm every day, the equivalent of a part-time job, you enjoy all the luxuries she’s working so hard to make available to you. This works best with chicks you have no intention of having sex with.
OTOH… >:D … If you actually ENJOY her company and want to hang out with her and hit it, etc… then make sure you get one of those beneficiary-chicks. The bad thing about trust fund chicks and divorcees is that they’re spending their money faster than YOU’RE spending their money! :O The good thing about them is that they don’t actually have to waste time going to GET that money, so you have loads of time to hang out with them all day, every day! :D Paris on a Tuesday? No problem! :D Tavern On The Green on Thursday afternoon? No problem! :D
Fortunately, even though the divorce/cheating rates hover around 50% to 60%, there are still a bunch of dummies that get married without prenuptial agreements, so there are tons of divorcees around. um…. And don’t think I’m talking about old-ass chicks, either! :D Check out what Wikipedia has to say about Marriageable Age in Utah! :O
Utah: 18 generally for first marriage, 16 with parental consent, 14 with court approval or previous marriage.
… um…. Previous marriage *BEFORE* 14? :/ …. Anyway, you see what I’m getting at. By the time those chicks are divorced, they’ll just be turning legal age. By the time they’re divorced for the second or third time, they’ll be the age they would have been if they had graduated college…. *IF* they had gone to school past the 4th grade, when they got married the first time :/ So that’s two alimony checks, and the chick’s dumb as a box of rocks!…..
SWEET!!! :D
Livecasting
My excellent friend ActionGirl hung out with me today. We did a dual-channel livecast using ustream.tv.
Livecasting, if you’re not familiar, is one of the newest internet fads, but it’s also NOT new. Technology has advanced to the point that the average joe has the ability to broadcast his or her life effortlessly and without cost (except for the obvious costs of computer, webcam, broadband connection, etc).
Similar to quasi-scripted MSM shows like MTV’s “The Real World”, people now have the ability to leave a camera running and pointed at them as they go about their daily business. Some people livecast from work. Some people livecast from home. Some people livecast on the move with EV-DO modem cards and laptops, like Sarah and Lisa do on justin.tv.
I became intersted in livecasting after watching Drew Olanoff’s feed from PodCamp Philly. It was fun watching Drew roam the hallways and run into conference attendees and presenters. There was something cool about interacting with this live show that was going on, NOW. :) It was different because you could actually affect the course of the show, assuming the host was monitoring the text chat room. It was different because you could call your friends that you saw in the background and have them come over and talk to you on camera. It was cool because you were receiving information RIGHT NOW, just like everyone that was actually in Philadelphia for the conference.
So I wanted to check it out, and ActionGirl was down to experiment with me….. um…. was down to join me in my livecasting experiment. :)
We started out outdoors, utilizing free WiFi in the area. We were streaming about one frame per five seconds. Our video was choppy and our audio wasn’t much better. Some glitch occurred where ActionGirl had bars of wireless signal, yet was unable to connect to the internet at all. Strange. Next, I tried receiving signal via my EV-DO modem card and sharing my internet connection with ActionGirl via airport. That was really slow, but I’ve never tried that before, and I think it was due to my card not connecting properly. I didn’t have this diagnostics entry in my taskbar that I should have had, so I don’t figure the card was functioning optimally at that point.
We retired indoors and used WiFi connections to stream from each of our macbooks. Connection was quick, and I was able to embed both of our streams plus a text chat on one page and run that from my site. I later added our friend Chris’ stream, so we had three simultaneous live streams on the page.
Livecasting is tough to do properly, IMO, without monitoring your chat room(s). I suppose there IS no ‘proper’ way to livecast, since it’s really “anything goes”, but in order to interact with your audience, you have to read what they’re typing to you. If you’re not planning to interact with them, clearly, you don’t have to bother with that. I found myself responding late to comments because while we were saying something, the text chat was scrolling up and I’d have to read up to notice what people said minutes before.
I think the audience is as important as the host… Meaning that if you have the right audience, even if that’s ‘only’ one or two people who actually know you or are genuinely interested in what you do, livecasting can be a fun and rewarding experience. The best times today were when our friends were on, even just for a few minutes, and we got to interact with them and answer their questions. OTOH, when the audience isn’t prime, it’s tough, if not impossible to get revved up to deliver your best ‘performance’.
For me, *teamwork* is key. I’m not interested in doing my own solo livecast. If I know I’m going to be around interesting people or at an event that would be of interest to people I know, then I’m glad to broadcast it. It also helps if you actually like and enjoy the person you’re livecasting with so you know that even if NOBODY shows up, you’re going to have a good time that day. :)
Eventually, we called it a night. I felt pretty exhausted by then, actually. When we shut our feeds down, it actually felt strange to me to NOT be on camera. Once we came inside, we were on from around 6pm to 9pm, and even that felt like an eternity. I’m not sure how (or why) people do that during their every waking hour. I guess you have to be the type of person that enjoys random people interacting with you. I suppose some people do it for the fame or notoriety.
I don’t know that there’s going to be a way to monetize lifecasting. I experimented with product placement, including beverages and t-shirts. It’s tough to do well, live, trying to get products in front of a tiny webcam lens in the optimal size, focus and location. Still… A lot of people like to broadcast their lives, and a lot of people like to watch those broadcasts, so we’ll see where this fad takes us next. :)
Bill Cammack • New York City • Freelance Video Editor • alum.mit.edu/www/billcammack
Check out her moms!!! :O
Fellaz…
If you actually intend to spend more than a couple of days with the same chick, check out her moms. ASAP. NOOOOWWW! :D TO-DAY! :O
This is vital. Make sure you see what her moms looks like so you know what you have to look forward to (or run away from) in the future. How do they say?… “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”? :D
Granted, styles of eating and ideas about working out, etc, have changed since her mother was in prime condition in her heyday, so you have to factor that in to her mother’s current condition. It’s much easier for women to stay in shape these days… now that they are allowed to join gymnasiums and work outside of the home.
If she looks better than her moms…. like, TODAY… that’s a good thing. If they look about the same, that could be good or bad. If her moms could be mistaken for her sister, that’s good. Props to her mom, and to good genes! :D If she could be mistaken for her moms, that’s bad. :(
In case you can’t judge for yourself, let the professionals decide. Take them both out to a bar that has a doorman. If the doorman lets your girlfriend in, but cards her mother, it’s time for a new girlfriend.
We can assume, here in NYC, that your girlfriend’s mother is at least 13 years older than she is. There is NO EXCUSE for her mother to be more attractive than her… NONE! :D
As usual, make sure you factor in your girlfriend’s personality and character before ditching her. If she’s into staying in shape because she likes the way she looks to herself when she’s in shape, there’s a good chance she won’t “fall off” anytime soon. If she’s one of those “stay in shape until she gets a man” chicks, you’ll be completely dependent upon genetics. Just keep an eye on the ratio between when she picks up a snack and when she picks up the entry card to her health club.
Also, pay careful attention when your girl gets depressed. Chicks love to eat when they’re feeling down. If you suspect foul play in the kitchen, find a way to trick her into getting on the scale on a regular basis. Make a game out of it. :) Play “I bet I ate more dinner than you” with her on the pretense of determining weight before and after a meal, then make sure you keep daily and weekly stats like blog metrics.
Also, pay attention to your girl’s mother’s work ethic. If she likes to spend money more than she likes to MAKE money, she probably passed that on to your girl as well. If she took your girl to department stores more than she took her to “bring your kid to work day” at her job, your girl’s priorities may be irretrievably skewed.
You get the picture. Make sure you compare your chick to her mother, giving her moms write-offs for the extra years she’s had to stay in shape to avoid becoming a has-been. On the off-chance that the moms REALLY SHINES compared to your girlfriend…
find out if her moms is single. :D
DatingGenius
“Cab Game”
Living in New York City has tons of privileges. One of those is that you can ALWAYS get a cab! :D
It’s not like the sticks, where you have to call for a cab or else you never get to leave where you are. :/ Also, you can go to a bar and drink your ass off, then stumble to the subway, a bus or a cab and arrive safely at your apartment… Whereas if you live in the sticks, that means you DROVE to the bar, and you might need to park in the Dairy Queen parking lot and sleep it off before you get on the road….. IF you can get on the road at all because maybe your car has one of those breathalyzer joints where it won’t start if you’re over the limit, hahahaha :D
Anyway…
Cabs are a tremendous luxury and you have to make sure that your cab game is tight. If you successfully avoided sitting on couches, you came off with a fine young lady from the party, bar or club. :D Now… I know what your cheap ass is thinking… “I’ll take her on the bus, so that way, I only spend $4 for the both of us to get back to the crib… um… unless SHE has a metrocard, too, then it’s only $2 to get her home! :D”
ok… ok……….. So that’s what *I* was thinking. :/
Anyway… Don’t take her on the bus. No. No good. :( Spend the extra ducats to get your cab game on.
If you take her on the bus or the train, you’re still in public. Tons of people around. If you take her in a cab, it’s just you and her. I mean, yeah, the cabbie’s there, but he needs to concentrate on the road and making sure he turns on your street. :) Never mind him. Think of the cabbie as your personal chauffeur, “Jeeves”. It’s his job to drive and mind.his.own.business. It’s just you and her in the back of the cab. Also… if you can’t see HIM in the rear-view mirror… HE can’t see YOU… Capicse? :D
If you take her on the bus or train, it’s all LIT UP and ish… Once you close the door to the cab and that little light goes out, it’s darkness, like Eddie Murphy and his brother in Hollywood! :D Much more mood-enhancing. Add that to the isolation and the fact that you basically have your own couch instead of sitting on a hard train bench crushed up between a couple of people that didn’t understand they weren’t slim enough to fit in that space between you and the next person… and cabs are WELL WORTH the extra ducats! :D
So… Now that you’re in the cab, you need some basic tactics. >:)
The most important style is the “Richie Cunningham”. If you don’t know who that is, go back and watch reruns of “Happy Days”. Now… Richie was pretty much a scrub, so he was scared to press up on girls he was interested in. Because of this, he had certain tactics he would use so that he could play it off if she didn’t go for it. So, To do the “Richie Cunningham”, you’re sitting next to her on your chauffeured couch in the darkness with only the Manhattan street lights shining down on you, and you start faking like you’re tired. Yawn once or twice. Look at your watch or the clock on your phone or whatever so that she sees you’re feeling tired.
Put the phone away, then give a large !!!YAWN!!! while stretchng both arms out to the side. Make sure your arm on her side ends up BEHIND her neck instead of IN FRONT OF her face! :/ As you relax your hands from the yawn, your arm will naturally land… LIGHTLY!!! on her shoulder with your hand on the other side of her. Act surprised :O that your hand didn’t come all the way down, and look at her like “OH!… Sorry ’bout that!” and pay attention to what her face looks like. It’s either going to look like :D , :/ or :O .
:O = “GET YOUR HANDS OFF OF ME, CREEP!!!”, in which case it’s a good thing that you did the “Richie Cunningham” because now you can act like it was an honest mistake and remove your arm, ASAP! :D
:/ = The female version of the “Richie Cunningham”, which is her playing it off like she didn’t notice that you just put your arm around her. This is a good thing, because SHE DEFINITELY NOTICED. The continuation of this version of the Richie is to look her in the eye and smile at her, and she should smile back at you, happy that you like her. :)
:D = Her laughing at you because you were so timid and intimidated by her that you felt you needed to resort to the internationally-known “Richie Cunningham” so that you would have a back-door to exit if she didn’t like you! HAHAHAHA awwwwwwwww. :D This is STILL a good thing, because she’s happy that you finally let her know you were interested in her, even though she now thinks you’re scared of her, and it’s going to take you a long time to live that down and regain your pimpin’ status! :D
–
DatingGenius
The Lab – Episode 02: Response To Randolfe
In response to The Lab Episode 02: American Pimp Randolfe wrote:
Now, this was really entertaining and very cool. I’ve always been fascinated by the world of prostitution.
Thanks. :)
Initially, I didn’t think the world of prostitution was interesting at all. It’s just not sporting… paying someone to have sex with you. It’s like how when you were a kid, in order to get candy that you liked, you had to wait for your parents to buy it for you and then you got it in the rations they allowed. Later in life, you have your own money, so you can afford to buy as much of that same candy as you want, whenever you want. The candy’s just as good, but there’s… I suppose “wonder” missing from the situation. It’s not a surprise that you’re getting it. You planned it, you went out and bought it. Same thing as buying chicks. *yawn*
Another problem with prostitution is that it takes YOU out of the game. If anybody can pay this chick do do what she does, you’ve accomplished nothing by paying her except guaranteeing that you get whatever service(s) she provides. That’s completely lame compared to getting out there and seeing what you can do. Same thing with strip clubs. Lame. Why go to a location where you can give the girls money, but not (legally) mess with them… instead of going to a regular bar or something and meeting a girl that you can do whatever you want with for free? I know the draw of the strip club is that the women are supposed to have fantastic bodies, but if you live somewhere like NYC, it’s just a numbers game. There’ll be another fantastic body coming down the street in about five minutes, depending on where you’re standing or what establishment you entered.
What became interesting to me about the situation was the “why” involved. I wanted to know WHY a chick would give her money to a pimp. I mean, I know WHY chicks “ho”… because they can make more money than they could with whatever skills they learned in school, or by NOT going to school. As long as she’s having sex with random guys anyway, she may as well get paid for it. What I didn’t understand was what was in it for the ho to give her money to a pimp, who seems to be doing nothing but shopping for himself, or misappropriating the funds to his benefit, as Brainy so properly explains. The pivotal statement about that is the part where the guy says “doctors need nurses, so hoes need pimps”. Once you realize that the pimp isn’t the leader, but rather the assistant… things start making perfect sense.
Personally, I have an unusual resume in this area. I believe I am one of the few men alive who has been a prostitute, a john and a madam at different times in my life.
That appears to me to be a relatively unique collection of titles, being that they require different motivations. It’s not tough to be a john, though. Just about everybody’s a john at one point or another, purely by definition. Everybody that’s ever bought a chick a drink with the intention of having sex with her is a john. He’s paid for sex, whether he got it or not. Everybody that took chicks out or spent any money or resources on them with the intention of eventually (and hopefully sooner rather than later) having sex with them is a john. Everybody that married a woman in order to (attempt to) lock her down from having sex with other guys is a john.
It’s tough to be a pimp (madam, as you describe it) for most guys, because nobody wants to go out with a ho. Nobody wants to date a ho. They want them around when it’s time to have sex, but that’s about it. In order to be a pimp, you’d have to accept that your girlfriend is going to be having sex with other guys….. which completely defeats the purpose of calling her your girlfriend in the first place, so cognitive dissonance usually screws that one up.
I traveled the world for four decades, off and on, with a Woodrow Wilson Scholar who spoke seven languages, was brilliant and a chronic alcoholic. We spent an inordinate amount of time drinking in Red Light Districts.
He was exclusively homosexual but loved talking to the girls, barmen, cab-drivers and patrons about their lives. I was a “situational bisexual†who’d setlle for a real girl if a feminine male couldn’t be found.
YIKES! hahaha You remind me of the discussions where people like to claim that men that have sex (intentionally) with men in jail aren’t homosexuals… BECAUSE… there weren’t any women around! HAHAHAHAHA
You understand how women came to be deemed “property†when a woman in Brazil gives you a card with her home address on it and asks you to come visit her in the afternoon (after you’ve screwed for money) because she is looking for “any man†to support her and rescue her from the life.
Well, I mean, it wasn’t until August, 1920, according to
The point being that without the ability to vote and make laws that would benefit them and without the ability to get jobs that guys just wouldn’t let them have, there’s no way a woman could own property. If she can’t own property, the only way she’s going to get it is if she marries someone, and then he leaves it to her in his will. Even under those circumstances, if she got married again, by law, her husband would have absorbed whatever she had gained from the previous marriage. There was no way for a woman to ‘get ahead’ at the time, so renting herself out permanently to a marriage or temporarily in order to make ends meet isn’t much of a stretch… and I’m talking about America, hahaha FORGET about Brazil! :D
I’d hesitate to even call women in the condition you describe “property”, since they can be had for so few $USD. There are enough sites that I’m not going to link to that have endless descriptions of what you can get in whatever country with some ridicuolus economy. You can have women all night and all the next day for what you might spend out with your friends for a night having drinks in Manhattan.
What’s so amazing about “pimping†(from my point of view) is that a pimp turns the normal straight world upside down. He has these women going out and slaving away to give him all their earnings. Meanwhile, the traditional husband goes out and slaves all day to turn all his earnings over to his wife & kids.
Well, that’s exactly what it is, a reversal. Like I mentioned earlier, it makes sense if you look at it from the point of view of the woman as the pivotal character. It’s not so much that pimps are CREATING hoes, as I originally thought. It’s more that the women are hoes ALREADY, and as such, require or look for a certain type of man to involve themselves with. The pimp appears to the ho as someone who’s worth paying for in order to procure their time and/or attention. The pimp likes the money more than the ho, and the ho likes the pimp more than the money, so it’s a fair exchange. She gets to hang out with the pimp, and he gets to go shopping with the money she makes on the corner.
In a traditional husband situation, the value is in the female. She represents his opportunity to have sex at the drop of a hat instead of going out in the street and trying to find and convince a chick to have sex with him. She also represents the opportunity for him to procreate, as well as someone to raise the kids while he’s at work. This starts all the way back at dating, like I mentioned before. The guy gets used to buying her drinks and paying for her to eat or go to the movies, and it’s only a natural continuation that he continues to go to work to ‘bring home the bacon’.
The potential consequence for NOT utilizing money to maintain the relationship is infidelity, which could lead to his ONE girlfriend or wife or whatever leaving him (thus taking the immediate availability of sex with her), or much worse than that….. He might end up on the Maury show with seven other guys who might be the father of “his” new baby. :O
The way prostitutes toss around money when they have it is puzzling. Some believe it is an “easy-come and easy-go†mentality. Several prostitutes, male and female, have told me that they will go out clubbing and blow most of all their night’s earnings on partying and drugs “because you have to do something to relax after all that you’ve gone through to make the moneyâ€.
That’s interesting. I have nothing to add to that because I don’t know any actual hoes. I mean, I know “easy” chicks, but not actual professional get-paid-to-have-sex chicks. The easy chicks either have sex just because they enjoy having sex or because they feel it’s an indication that SOMEBODY likes them. Either way, since they don’t make any money from that, I’ve never heard of what you just mentioned.
I always tell people that “working Hollywood Blvd for one summer in the late 1950s†was the best 3-months of life education I ever received. Indeed, it enabled me to get up and go to a 9 to 5 job for the rest of my life with no regrets.
Another concept I don’t have an educated opinion on, due to no experience whatsoever with prostitutes. I would guess however that the randomness and potential danger of the situation would point out how easy it is to get on a subway every morning, spend all of one’s daylight hours in a job, having regurgitated conversations at the water cooler, then coming home, eating dinner, watching some completely biased news and then some form of find-the-criminals-by-science show and then going to sleep only to wake up and do the exact same thing again when you wake up. It’s like even though you’re only making minimum wage, at least you’re guaranteed a certain amount of money at the end of a two-week period. Fringe benefits being stuff like it’s incredibly unlikely that someone’s going to toss you out of a moving car while you’re working “fries” at the fast food restaurant.
Actually, the pimps profiled in the clips here remind me of “pitch men†of sorts. I think their ’sharp’ manner of talking and ‘being operators’ resembled Bill’s persona. Now, I’m not advising Bill to become a pimp (if given the opportunity). Nor am I advising him to decline the opportunity should it arise :-).
hahaha Nope! Not my style. Too much work. :) The ROI is incredibly low. Not only that, but the fact of the matter is that you’re depending on someone else (or several chicks) to give you money. If something happens to that chick, you’re DONE! :D It’s like gambling… like trying to make a living playing the lottery every week. Besides that, I’d be skeeved out that some chick was messing with several guys all day, then wanted to come hang out with ME! hahaha YEESH! :) Pimping is for guys that like money more than chicks…. I’m not one of those guys.
Having said that, I’m not advocating spending money ON chicks. That’s trickin’, like I mentioned before. I’m just saying… Given the option between wasting 8 hours doing some job to get money and hanging out all day with a chick I enjoy… you’ll find me in Belmar sipping Maragaritas. :D
For sure, he’d be perfect to play the role of a “slick pimp†in some future blockbuster movie. However, he’ll probably do just as well pimping some new “techie thing†instead of some new “titty thing†:-).
I rarely receive such intelligent (and somewhat flattering) responses to my thoughtful postings on vlogs. But I felt my insights were greatly appreciated last time around so I thought I’d chance sharing them once more.
Obviously, you have some unique viewpoints. You might need to start your own “street life” blog. :)
Bill, here’s looking forward to seeing you at the Oscars! :-)
I’ll let you know when someone offers me a project that I think might go. ;)
Digital Video Data Rate
First of all, I’d like to thank Lynne D. Johnson for the opportunity to blog as a Fast Company Expert.
There are many reasons a particular digital video might not run well, or at all, on your computer. You might not have enough processor speed. Your video card might not be able to handle the task. You may not have the necessary codec installed. If you can see and hear the video, but it doesn’t run smoothly, your best bet is to lower the data rate. It might seem that the answer lies in decreasing the frame size. A smaller video should run more smoothly than a larger video, right?
In most cases, digital video being presented on a computer or over the internet has been compressed. By definition, the video you are watching is “smaller” than the original video. It’s smaller in size (perhaps 320×240 when the original was 640×480), but it’s also smaller in file size, or the amount of space it takes up on your drive. The parameter that limits your frame size is independent of the parameter that limits your data rate. If you decrease the frame size without decreasing the data rate, you end up with a video with a smaller viewing size that takes up the exact same amount of space on your drive.
Data rate is measured in kbps (kilobits per second or thousands of bits per second). You can set a data rate limit when you compress a digital video. If you leave the frame size the same as the problematic compression attempt and decrease the data rate, you end up with a smaller file size as well as a video that demands less processing power.
Eventually, you’ll get the video down to a manageable data rate for your computer. Hopefully, the video still looks good. If it doesn’t (since there’s now much less data per second making up each frame), you have the choices of either decreasing your frame size or decreasing your frame rate to get the visual quality where you want it now that you’ve dealt with your performance issues.
Bill Cammack • New York City • Freelance Video Editor • alum.mit.edu/www/billcammack
EMS Episode 59: Renzo Gracie Invitational 2007 Awards
I just got back from the Renzo Gracie Invitational @ Clifton High School in Clifton, NJ. My friend Carlos competed in the Men’s Blue Belt division.
Carlos introduced me to Renzo, but before that, Renzo presented personal awards to John Danaher, Matt Serra & Ricardo Almeida.
We got there around 10 am, and left around 6 pm. There were teams from several U.S. states as well as Ottawa, Canada. UFC and IFL stars were in attendance as well. I was exhausted just from WATCHING the whole tournament! :D
ReelSolidTV International
So we got to Uptown Lounge, and decided on Calamari as the fun-food while we “got our martini on”. We tried out the camera in low-light, but it didn’t work out at all, which was to be expected since I hadn’t read the manual. I had no idea of what I might have been able to change to produce the best setting.
Anyway… X hours later, we headed for a pizza shop, where I shot an extremely mellow (for ME) video with my new, fresh-out-of-the-box Samsung NV3. :D
When I got home, I plugged the camera in via USB and uploaded the videos really quickly. They open up in AVI format, 640×480, as advertised:
Format: XVID Decoder, 640 x 480, Millions
Audio: Microsoft ADPCM, Mono, 22.050 kHz
FPS: 30
Data Rate: 1615.81 kbits/sec
Here’s where things got tricky. :D Originally, I loaded the clips to my iMac. As soon as they uploaded, I double-clicked one of them and it appeared in Quicktime Player. I played it immediately, and it had these black clipping blotches where the camera was aimed directly at bright lights, like the menu signs in the pizza shop. I figured this had to do with the camera and that I didn’t read the manual before just pointing and shooting. So then, I went to transfer the videos to my MacBook, and they didn’t run at all. Quicktime Player would open the first frame of the cips, but it would “quit unexpectedly” when I pressed play. I tried restarting and rebooting. No difference. I looked in the manual on the disk, which is way more extensive than the hardcopy they give you, and it said to install the XviD codec.
To install the XviD codec, you have to install DivX. I installed both and rebooted. I opened the clip in Mpeg Streamclip, and the “blowout blotches” were gone, except there was a large section that glitched at the bottom of the pizza shop counter, where there were no lights at all. I figured the problem had something to do with interlacing. I could be wrong, but the programs were looking for interlaced video, and the NV3 shoots 30 frames per second. That’s different from 29.97 frames per second, and that’s certainly different from 60 interlaced fields per second like NTSC television has. I decided to render the video that had this one large glitch in it out to DV codec, using Mpeg Streamclip. I could have exported to Mpeg-4, but I wanted to see if it would look good in DV, since most of the time, I’ll want to bring the clips into FCP for editing.
I rendered to DV and resampled the 22 kHz audio to 48 kHz for the same FCP compatibility reasons. The DV file opened up in quicktime player, looked good and ran flawlessly. I imported that file into Compressor and used my iPod settings to make the m4v to send to blip and iTunes. I cropped the end of the video in Compressor.
After that test, I changed the flow. I made it so that all AVI files open in Mpeg Streamclip. I selected in and out points by pressing “I” and “O” where I wanted my in and out to be for the clip. I selected “export to mpeg-4″ with the settings of 50% quality, 1100 kbps data rate, sound AAC 44.1 kHz stereo (even though the NV3 records in 22 kHz mono) @ 96 kbps, 640×480, upper field and everything else deselected. I got the same results, except the file was named mp4 instead of m4v.
I was very happy with the results. The colors are a little oversaturated, but like I said, I never read the manual, and the video’s straight out of the box. Insert battery, insert 2gig memory card, spin the dial, point & shoot. I barely knew how to play the videos back on the camera at the time. :D
Anyway… A good time was had by all… as you can probably tell from the video! :D I’m definitely looking forward to ReelSolid.TV expanding past the borders of the U.S.A.! We’ll get to find out what’s going on in Japan from Masami, and what’s going on in France from Laetitia. Cheers to both of the ladies for helping me to NOT waste my day! :D
Masami & Laetitia
On the way to the subway, I called Masami. It turned out that she was already downtown and hanging out with a friend of hers. Perfect. One door closes, another one opens. :D We decided that I’d buzz her when I got downtown….
The subway ride was uneventful. I got to the store and went to the display where they have all of the digital cameras out for you to check out. I had already checked and knew that they had the NV3 in stock. What I didn’t check was whether it was WORKING OR NOT ON THE $&(%#* DISPLAY! :evil: So, of course, I got to check out the Sony, but not the Samsung. The sony didn’t have a memory card in it, so that meant you couldn’t use “fine” mode (30fps). You had to use regular mode (15fps). It was very cartoonish, and as I panned from side to side, it was very jerky. I was aware of what fine mode looked like already from kitykity’s post, so I wasn’t concerned about it. The NV3 was another situation, entirely. I was sure it took good video from Randolphe’s stellar review of it (besides saying it didn’t work well in low light). That was one of the things in the Sony’s favor. Part of their advertisement is how well the camera works in low light.
The NV3 is flat black. The W70 is bright, reflective, mirror, metallic silver. The NV3 zooms without changing form. The W70 has this big “HEY! I’M TAKING FILM OF YOU” zoom lens that telescopes towards the subject(s). Besides speed issues that I mentioned in the previous post, people have completely different reactions to cameras from video cameras. It’s like they don’t think you can take video with them or even good video with them or get sound with them. It helps for the realness of the moment, because people aren’t “acting like they’re on camera”. Another benefit is that it goes right in my pocket. With a video camera, you have to bring other bags, etc. The NV3 shoots an extra video mode, which is 720×480@20fps. I couldn’t decide, especially without seeing ANYTHING working on the NV3, so I called Masami to find out where to meet up with them. Another thing I had noticed that was REALLY annoying about the W70 is that the wide/telephoto lever is on top of the camera, facing the front. I don’t know WHO came up with that idea, but it’s really dumb. You have to hold it in a really strange and uncomfortable way to utilize the zoom. The NV3 has the lever on the back of the camera, in perfect position for you to one-hand the shot and still zoom.
So I met up with Masami, and she was with her friend Laetitia who was visiting from France! (Sweet! 8)) We strolled down to Veniero’s Italian Bakery on 11th street & 1st avenue for some amazing desserts. Maybe an hour later, we started making moves so the ladies could “get their shop on”, and then I needed to go back to the store to choose a camera.
I needed to get the camera now because “the moment” was unfolding right in front of me, and I was aware that I had ZERO ability to record it. Since I was heading out specifically to get a camera, I hadn’t brought my Canon. We got to the store, and it was crowded, yet they only had two attendants working the camera section. It was completely retarded. People were stacked up waiting around, browsing cameras, like I had done earlier that day, waiting for someone to help them. Meanwhile, the guy that was working the area was ringing up a customer, and the girl working the area was getting rapped to by some guy that was talking about taking a camera hiking or something. :? I guess he couldn’t tell she wasn’t interested in guys. Anyway… I got in position and as soon as he finished saying whatever he was saying, I told her that I wanted the Samsung camera. I told her this to try to be really simple for her. With the amount of people there, and only two workers, I decided this would be the best thing for her, as opposed to complex sentences. She STILL looked at me like she didn’t know what I was talking about. I had already asked the guy for his take on the cameras, and he had told me how the NV3 is also an mp3 player and he had been the one that pointed out the non-telescoping lens. I also knew the NV3 can be used as a voice recorder, so since the cameras were the same price, and the only benefit to the Sony was the low-light capability, I went with the NV3… basically off of Randlofe’s review of it, since I never actually saw it in action.
So the chick was really crabby, like she was having a bad day… which I can understand, because she was working while I was shopping. :D I’m sure that when you work in the service industry, you have to deal with a lot of jerks and people that make your day miserable on a regular basis, so I just rolled with it and thought it was funny and amusing. She just had this “I don’t care at all about serving you” aura to her that was really funny to watch, being that she was dressed up in a little colorful outfit, specifically placed there to be the human interface between the customers and the cash register. She was probably new to the job and was just doing it to get money anyway. If the job wasn’t so easy, she’d probably quit and do something else… or nothing.
So I bought the Samsung NV3, and I got a 2gig memory card with it. I read the manual just enough to figure out how to put the battery and memory card inside, then I turned it on. I took a couple of test videos, and they looked perfect, right out of the box. I looked at the instruction manual, and it doesn’t tell you how to use any… and I mean just about ANY of the features! :D There’s another manual that’s on the disk they give you, so maybe that has more information.
Next, we were off to Uptown Lounge to test out the Martini selection (Chocolate, Lemon, Apple…..) but not without stopping first @ a shoe store along the way… because… well… you know how it goes! :D
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