Tech bloggers balance tradeoffs between laptops and smartphones, tablets.
Smartphones and tablets make it easy for anyone to capture photos and videos, but those mobile devices don’t always cut the mustard when it comes to editing, producing and managing videos. Though they acknowledge that smartphones and tablets are easy to carry, two technology bloggers still prefer to use HD cameras and laptops to create and manage the videos they use to cover industry news.
CarryPad and UltrabookNews tech blogger Steve "Chippy" Paine includes a Toshiba Z830 Ultrabook and Panasonic Lumix FZ150 camera in his video production gear.
Both Steve “Chippy” Paine of CarryPad and UltrabookNews, two mobile technology news blogs, and Hubert Nguyen of Ubergizmo, a gadget and Internet culture blog, regularly receive manufacturing samples of hi-tech products for review purposes. They see and try all the latest equipment, and when it comes to the gear they use to produce video for their blogs, they are very picky about speed, quality and reliability. When assembling video production tools, they say it’s crucial to calculate tradeoffs between efficiency, speed, ease-of-use, manageability and quality.
Today’s smartphones and tablets have built-in cameras able to capture HD video and connect to the Internet using Wi-Fi or high-speed mobile networks, making them ideal for quick video capturing, editing and uploading all from one device. Today’s top of the line smartphones and tablets can have up to 2GHz of processing power; they don’t provide the same level of performance or control as a laptop and DSLR camera or HD camcorder combo.
“I publish a lot of time-critical videos to YouTube while mobile,” said Paine. “There’s a special need for lightweight tools and flexibility between output quality and upload speed.”
Speed Critical for Tech Bloggers’ Video Tools
Paine shoots video using a Panasonic Lumix FZ150 camera, and his primary video editing computer is a Toshiba Z830 Ultrabook. When covering press conferences, he often races to scoop other reporters by shooting, editing and posting quick, hands-on product videos, often getting it all done in a matter of minutes. Before moving up to the Intel Core i5 Ultrabook with a solid-state drive (SSD), he used a laptop built with a traditional hard-disk drive and Core i3 processor.
Video production gear of Ubergizmo's Hubert Nguyen includes a Samsung Series 9 13" Ultrabook, Sony NEX-5N interchangeable lens camera with Sony ECM-SST1 mini shotgun mic, Apple iPhone 5 and Canon Vixia F200 camcorder (not pictured).
Paine often captures video in high-quality 1080p, then edits it and renders it down to 720p H.264 format. The Cyberlink PowerDirector 10 editing software takes advantage of the Quick Sync encoding technology built inside the Ultrabook, which he says can render at least six times faster than real time, which means a two-minute video gets rendered in 20 seconds. “That relatively small 720p video can then be quickly uploaded to YouTube, and I can output a higher-quality version later,” he said.
“Quick Sync is one of the most important aspects of modern video, I think, at least for those who are willing to export to H.264,” said Nguyen, who points out that his Samsung Series 9 Ultrabook doesn’t have high-end graphics. That said, no computer is ever fast enough for Nguyen, a former Nvidia graphics engineer turned blogger. “But I tend to use a mid-range processor to keep power consumption and heat down,” he said. “In the end, this is a tradeoff. Whenever I can connect to an electrical outlet, I push the CPU to the fastest settings.”
But relying on a mobile device with an SSD has its challenges, according to Nguyen. “When editing video, I have to watch storage space,” he said. “An SSD beyond 256GB is expensive, so I need to make sure that the drive is cleaned up regularly.”
Paine points out that the SSD speeds up the edit process because his Ultrabook starts up within seconds after opening the lid. “I’ve tested a lot of ultra-mobile editing solutions, but nothing comes close to the latest Ultrabooks with SSDs for power-to-weight ratio,” he said.
Editing Video on Tablets and Smartphones
Although he prefers using a Canon Vixia F200 camcorder for longer videos or Sony NEX-5N camera to produce higher-quality video, Nguyen doesn’t always carry all of his video recording gear so he relies on his iPhone 5 when necessary.
“The audio recording remains the weak point of the smartphone,” he said. “We’ve explored the idea of using mobile devices to perform simple video edits, and it works, but the PC remains the platform of choice because we typically don’t just upload a video, we also type a description, add tags and insert the video in an article. For data entry, mobile devices are not optimum at all.”
Paine says he finds the iPad impressive “as long as you’ve got a compatible iPhone to take the video with,” he said. “That’s one of the big limitations of the iPad solution. How am I going to zoom into the stage to capture a new product unveiling using an iPhone?”
Though Paine is unwilling to be confined by the restrictions of the Apple ecosystem, he’s still interested in using a tablet for editing video. “I’m interested in the new CloverTrail platform as I’ve already seen demonstrations of 1080p to 720p rendering that are way faster than I’ve experienced on a netbook,” he said. “For video less than 5 minutes, a CloverTrail tablet might just be the answer for my needs.”
“Seeing Is Believing”
“This is something that users wanted to see for themselves,” said Nguyen, pointing to a video he produced showing the original iPad handling a complex PDF file. “There were a lot of questions about that capability because eBooks were not so great at reading PDF files. The video simply showed a real-world example. Seeing is believing.”
Video can be more relevant than writing, particularly when it comes to describing new device interfaces, video games and other visual experiences, according to Nguyen. “Our audience wants to see live video of gadgets and technology because it’s the closest thing to experiencing it themselves,” he said. “We favor short videos, and the overall goal is to share our own experience and make our readers feel like they’re there with us.”
Tech bloggers balance tradeoffs between laptops and smartphones, tablets.
Smartphones and tablets make it easy for anyone to capture photos and videos, but those mobile devices don’t always cut the mustard when it comes to editing, producing and managing videos. Though they acknowledge that smartphones and tablets are easy to carry, two technology bloggers still prefer to use HD cameras and laptops to create and manage the videos they use to cover industry news.
CarryPad and UltrabookNews tech blogger Steve "Chippy" Paine includes a Toshiba Z830 Ultrabook and Panasonic Lumix FZ150 camera in his video production gear.
Both Steve “Chippy” Paine of CarryPad and UltrabookNews, two mobile technology news blogs, and Hubert Nguyen of Ubergizmo, a gadget and Internet culture blog, regularly receive manufacturing samples of hi-tech products for review purposes. They see and try all the latest equipment, and when it comes to the gear they use to produce video for their blogs, they are very picky about speed, quality and reliability. When assembling video production tools, they say it’s crucial to calculate tradeoffs between efficiency, speed, ease-of-use, manageability and quality.
Today’s smartphones and tablets have built-in cameras able to capture HD video and connect to the Internet using Wi-Fi or high-speed mobile networks, making them ideal for quick video capturing, editing and uploading all from one device. Today’s top of the line smartphones and tablets can have up to 2GHz of processing power; they don’t provide the same level of performance or control as a laptop and DSLR camera or HD camcorder combo.
“I publish a lot of time-critical videos to YouTube while mobile,” said Paine. “There’s a special need for lightweight tools and flexibility between output quality and upload speed.”
Speed Critical for Tech Bloggers’ Video Tools
Paine shoots video using a Panasonic Lumix FZ150 camera, and his primary video editing computer is a Toshiba Z830 Ultrabook. When covering press conferences, he often races to scoop other reporters by shooting, editing and posting quick, hands-on product videos, often getting it all done in a matter of minutes. Before moving up to the Intel Core i5 Ultrabook with a solid-state drive (SSD), he used a laptop built with a traditional hard-disk drive and Core i3 processor.
Video production gear of Ubergizmo's Hubert Nguyen includes a Samsung Series 9 13" Ultrabook, Sony NEX-5N interchangeable lens camera with Sony ECM-SST1 mini shotgun mic, Apple iPhone 5 and Canon Vixia F200 camcorder (not pictured).
Paine often captures video in high-quality 1080p, then edits it and renders it down to 720p H.264 format. The Cyberlink PowerDirector 10 editing software takes advantage of the Quick Sync encoding technology built inside the Ultrabook, which he says can render at least six times faster than real time, which means a two-minute video gets rendered in 20 seconds. “That relatively small 720p video can then be quickly uploaded to YouTube, and I can output a higher-quality version later,” he said.
“Quick Sync is one of the most important aspects of modern video, I think, at least for those who are willing to export to H.264,” said Nguyen, who points out that his Samsung Series 9 Ultrabook doesn’t have high-end graphics. That said, no computer is ever fast enough for Nguyen, a former Nvidia graphics engineer turned blogger. “But I tend to use a mid-range processor to keep power consumption and heat down,” he said. “In the end, this is a tradeoff. Whenever I can connect to an electrical outlet, I push the CPU to the fastest settings.”
But relying on a mobile device with an SSD has its challenges, according to Nguyen. “When editing video, I have to watch storage space,” he said. “An SSD beyond 256GB is expensive, so I need to make sure that the drive is cleaned up regularly.”
Paine points out that the SSD speeds up the edit process because his Ultrabook starts up within seconds after opening the lid. “I’ve tested a lot of ultra-mobile editing solutions, but nothing comes close to the latest Ultrabooks with SSDs for power-to-weight ratio,” he said.
Editing Video on Tablets and Smartphones
Although he prefers using a Canon Vixia F200 camcorder for longer videos or Sony NEX-5N camera to produce higher-quality video, Nguyen doesn’t always carry all of his video recording gear so he relies on his iPhone 5 when necessary.
“The audio recording remains the weak point of the smartphone,” he said. “We’ve explored the idea of using mobile devices to perform simple video edits, and it works, but the PC remains the platform of choice because we typically don’t just upload a video, we also type a description, add tags and insert the video in an article. For data entry, mobile devices are not optimum at all.”
Paine says he finds the iPad impressive “as long as you’ve got a compatible iPhone to take the video with,” he said. “That’s one of the big limitations of the iPad solution. How am I going to zoom into the stage to capture a new product unveiling using an iPhone?”
Though Paine is unwilling to be confined by the restrictions of the Apple ecosystem, he’s still interested in using a tablet for editing video. “I’m interested in the new CloverTrail platform as I’ve already seen demonstrations of 1080p to 720p rendering that are way faster than I’ve experienced on a netbook,” he said. “For video less than 5 minutes, a CloverTrail tablet might just be the answer for my needs.”
“Seeing Is Believing”
“This is something that users wanted to see for themselves,” said Nguyen, pointing to a video he produced showing the original iPad handling a complex PDF file. “There were a lot of questions about that capability because eBooks were not so great at reading PDF files. The video simply showed a real-world example. Seeing is believing.”
Video can be more relevant than writing, particularly when it comes to describing new device interfaces, video games and other visual experiences, according to Nguyen. “Our audience wants to see live video of gadgets and technology because it’s the closest thing to experiencing it themselves,” he said. “We favor short videos, and the overall goal is to share our own experience and make our readers feel like they’re there with us.”
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