New Radiohead Album is Great

I'm listening to the new Radiohead album right now.
I paid nothing for it, and it feels great.
Check it out for your self.
DRM free mp3s delivered straight to your e-mail box, legally.
I love you Radiohead.
I'll be buying a hard copy of this album now.
It's faster than their previous stuff, but its still great.
Nice melodies, and structure.
And no, I won't be posting a link to the mp3s. GO TO:
InRainbows.com
Get your own.

The Dreaded Final Cut Pro "File Error: Unknown File"

I'm getting a re-occuring error that is starting to chap my ass(I've since run out of chapstick).
I've seen others with similar problems here.
I'm trying to submit video to Current TV, and according to their best practices, which is smattered with lovely engrish phrases like this one:
"2. Select “Expert Settings” and clicking the “Share” button."
I'm supposed to export using Quicktime Conversion, using the LAN/Intranet Setting(an h.264 compression). I keep getting the same "File Error: Unknown File" no matter what. I've tried creating new timelines, new projects, Saving As, Saving a copy, exporting the full qt .mov and reimporting it. Nothing works. I get the same thing every time. I'm getting quite pissed off as I've tried submitting other similar h.264 compressions that are working.
I've even tried exporting the movie and sending it to iMovie. I get this error:


What the hell? Is this a quicktime problem if its happening in both FCS and iMovie? Can anyone save me from this infernal digital damnation?
I'm running an Intel Mac Mini 2 GB RAM 10.4.10 FCS2. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

AJ-PCS060G Panasonic Portable P2 Storage product

Battery-powered, ruggedized, and super simple, the Panasonic AJ-PCSO60G is the way to house the content filmed on your new P2 format camera. It mounts as a normal drive on Window and Apple computers via a USB 2.0 port. This unit is able to withstand a greater degree of shock and vibration that it's tape counterparts. Unfortunately the copy time is about 4 minutes for a 4GB disk(without data verification). This is data transfer is occuring in near real time, and doesn't seem like it would allow live hot-swapping of P2 cards for recording shots > 8 minutes at a time(and that's with an 8 GB card!) I don't know exactly what Panasonic is expecting the average news gatherer to do to plan around these extremely brief windows for getting a shot. They need a product that can quickly dump the data from these cards so that you can shoot a live event without having to stop shooting to wait for your one of your cards to be copied.

MPEG-4 HDDVDs

It looks like Universal is going to be taking a change and releasing a MPEG-4 HD-DVD of The Interpreter. I'm not so sure why a company would want to stray from the VC-1 codec that they've been utilizing for all their other releases. The contend that they have not plans on making a complete switch, but it still leads us to believe that the VC-1 hasn't clenched its position as the dominant HD-DVD format.

Format Wars: HD-DVD & BLU-RAY Media PC!

Vidabox is first-to-market with their 2 new HD-DVD & Blu-Ray Media PCs, Named the MAX and LUX.
The MAX model comes complete with a 7" touchscreen for navigating video content.
The MAX is also prices at around $4400, and is a fairly hefty price-tag for those early-adopters who jump on the bandwagon.
The menus look pretty spiffy, and I'm curious to find out if there is any difference in the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray interface.
Nice to see that someone has put one of these dual-format players out there.
When Warner comes to market with their dual-format discs, this player will become obsolete, but I don't see that happening any time soon...

AVCHD - HD on a DVD?

Ahh. Yet another pro-sumer codec for digital video. This one promises to fit HD content onto standard DVD disks(in the future it will be Blu-Ray mini-discs). AVCHD looks to be some derivative of .h264. Sony is going to be first to market with 2 AVCHD camcorders, the HDR-UX1 and HDR-SR1. The HDR-UX1 records AVCHD to DVD media, and the HDR-SR1 records to a HDD. They share the same low-power consumption 1/3" ClearVid CMOS sensors.
As no mainstream video-editing suites support this format at this time, what are we expected to do with footage at this point? Anyone have a quick work around for converting from AVCHD to something that FCP or Sorenson Squeeze can handle?

Format Wars: Apple Positions itself to Support BOTH Formats!

Thinksecret is reporting that Apple is planning on Supporting both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formats. I think that this is the right way to go for them. Apple has been so successful in the video production environment, that choice of one proprietary format would be damaging to their ability to be viable as an editing solution. I'm just waiting for them to make some arrangements with NEC and Ricoh to bring a dual-format player to market. Apple is a very forward-looking company and I'm glad that they've chosen to universally support these new High-definition storage formats.