Category Archives: Cool Tech

Pirates be warned: Blockchain is on patrol

Posted on by
Reply

Arrgh! Today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day so ’tis mighty fittin’ that news out o’ th’ Toronto International Film Festival announces a new tack on film distribution ‘n online piracy.

Canadian post-production companies Red Square Motion ‘n Unstable Ground ‘ave joined wit’ distributor Indiecan Entertainment t’ launch LightVAULT.

Th’ new crew offers an end t’ end solution fer th’ secure holding, quality control, conversion ‘n delivery o’ film assets t’ clients around th’ globe, promisin’ a one-stop solution fer digital storage, protection ‘n delivery o’ film ‘n media treasure.

“The core of the service is designed with protection of content from unauthorized sharing and piracy in mind, by using a blockchain-based forensic encoding technology.”

They harness technology from South Africa’s Custos who have “built a platform designed to incentivise people in criminal communities from all over the world to protect your content.”

“You never want your film to be on The Pirate Bay. You probably don’t want your film being shared on campus networks. You don’t want the guy from the local paper that you asked to review your movie sending it to his friends. We get people from all over the world to anonymously tell us when they find your film where it shouldn’t be. We have blockchain magic, and we will find them.”

How do they do that?

Bounty!

Pasha Patriki of Red Square Motion explains why he’s promoting this technology:

“My own feature film that I Executive Produced and directed (Black Water, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren), was leaked online several months before it’s official world release date. Since then, I have been researching technologies that could help track every delivery and download of the master files of the film.”

My take: ’tis a smart solution that helps filmmakers keep tabs on thar screeners. ‘Tis prolly worth th’ cost, as th’ price o’ piracy be growin’ in terms o’ lost revenue ‘n compliance. Arrgh!

How to spot deepfakes

Posted on by
Reply

Siwei Lyu writing in The Conversation brings attention to “deepfakes” and offers a simple way to spot them.

What’s a deepfake?

From Wikipdeia:

“Deepfake, a portmanteau of “deep learning” and “fake”, is an artificial intelligence-based human image synthesis technique. It is used to combine and superimpose existing images and videos onto source images or videos.”

My favourite technology show, BBC Click, explains it well:

Back to Siwei:

“Because these techniques are so new, people are having trouble telling the difference between real videos and the deepfake videos. My work, with my colleague Ming-Ching Chang and our Ph.D. student Yuezun Li, has found a way to reliably tell real videos from deepfake videos. It’s not a permanent solution, because technology will improve. But it’s a start, and offers hope that computers will be able to help people tell truth from fiction.”

The key?

Blinking.

“Healthy adult humans blink somewhere between every 2 and 10 seconds, and a single blink takes between one-tenth and four-tenths of a second. That’s what would be normal to see in a video of a person talking. But it’s not what happens in many deepfake videos.”

They analyze the rate of blinking to decide the veracity of the video.

“Our work is taking advantage of a flaw in the sort of data available to train deepfake algorithms. To avoid falling prey to a similar flaw, we have trained our system on a large library of images of both open and closed eyes. This method seems to work well, and as a result, we’ve achieved an over 95 percent detection rate.”

My take: Wow! So, basically, now you can no longer believe what you read, hear or see. Interestingly, this means that IRL will take on added value. (Oops, it seems that technology has already moved on: now deepfakes can include blinking.)

U2 explores AR

Posted on by
Reply

Irish band U2 has always embraced technology and continues to do so on their latest tour by embracing AR.

AR is Augmented Reality and superimposes information on top of your phone’s camera image.

Fans attending the shows will be able to hold up their phones to reveal a huge iceberg and a virtual singing Bono.

You can download the U2 eXPERIENCE app here. To test drive it, point it at the album cover for Songs of Experience. A virtual cover will float on top of the picture of the cover, shatter into shards as music begins to play and then an animated Bono will begin to sing.

As you move your phone side to side or up and down, you’ll see different angles of the holographic representation.

My take: this is pretty cool and might be many folks’ first experience of AR.

News on the brain front

Posted on by
Reply

Having written a feature about a body-less man, I’m always interested in learning about scientific advances concerning brains.

Previously, I’ve written about the Italian maverick planning to transplant a human head.

This week news out of Yale claims American scientists have revived pig brain activity for 36 hours.

Nenad Sestan is quoted as saying:

“That animal brain is not aware of anything, I am very confident of that. Hypothetically, somebody takes this technology, makes it better, and restores someone’s activity. That is restoring a human being. If that person has memory, I would be freaking out completely.”

Read more details here.

My take: this subject gets murky very quickly. Witness the ethical issues the scientists raise in Nature. Another questions whether a brain without stimuli would be torture. Heady stuff.

Features shot on iPhones

Posted on by
Reply

First there was Tangerine.

Now there’s Unsane.

Director Steven Soderbergh has revealed that he shot almost all of his latest film on an iPhone 7 Plus.

Jay Pharoah says Soderbergh should have used a Samsung.

I believe Sean Baker actually used an iPhone 5S to shoot Tangerine. Here he spills the full beans.

He mentions the Moondog Labs anamorphic adapter lens and the Filmic Pro app.

My take: basically, lack of a suitable camera is no longer an excuse for not filming. But everything else stays the same, starting with a great script and a smart plan.

Blackmagic 4K Pocket Cinema Camera Announced

Posted on by
Reply

As reported by No Film School in their NAB 2018 coverage, Blackmagic Design has just announced the next iteration of their Pocket Cinema Camera: 4K for under $1300 USD.

Shipping in September, according to Jacob Kastrenakes of The Verge:

“The new Pocket Cinema Camera 4K has a ton of features that’ll appeal to that market — like a mini XLR connector, LUT support, and 4K recording at 60 fps — but it still has limitations that’ll keep the camera confined to a niche audience (which, to be fair, is kind of true of every camera). Basically, unless you’re a filmmaker who’s typically in control of lighting and the overall environment they’ll be filming in, this camera probably isn’t for you. It doesn’t have in-body stabilization, and the small sensor will struggle in low light and require adaptors to get the depth of field you’d get from full frame or even Super 35 cameras. That might not matter to some filmmakers, but it could be an issue for people on fast shoots or traveling to unfamiliar locations.”

Here are the specs:

  • Full size 4/3 sized sensor
  • Native 4096 x 2160 resolution
  • 13 stops of dynamic range
  • Up to 25600 ISO
  • Carbon fiber polycarbonate composite body
  • Built in SD, UHS-II and CFast card recorders
  • USB-C expansion port for external SSD or flash disk
  • Features full size HDMI output
  • Professional mini XLR
  • 3.5mm audio jack
  • Built in 5” LCD touchscreen a
  • 3D LUTs
  • 4th generation Blackmagic color science
  • Supports remote camera control via Bluetooth

My take: Wow! There are so many great high-resolution video cameras available right now or in the near future.

Really Big Rollable 4K OLED Screen Announced

Posted on by
Reply

LG Display showed off the world’s first and largest rollable 4K OLED screen at CES this year.

As reported by David Pierce in Wired:

“The 65-inch display sits flat and sturdy on your wall, like a normal television, until you’re done with it. With one push of a button, the display descends down into its stand, rolling around a coil like wrapping paper. The screen can roll up completely for safe storage and easy transportation, or you can leave a small section of it sticking up, at which point the screen automatically shifts into a widgetized, information-providing display with weather and sports scores. LG’s device has almost nothing in common with most TVs, other than its size. Functionally, it’s more like a really big tablet.”

Fully unrolled, the aspect ration is 16:9.

But wait, there’s more! It can roll down to 21:9, eliminating the black bars above and below widescreen movies.

My take: I want one! I would hang it upside down from the ceiling, so it would mimic a cinema screen of yore.

180 Options Multiply

Posted on by
Reply

Get ready for an onslaught of new immersive video cameras.

Youtube launched the VR180 format last year and parent company Google has just partnered with Lenovo to make the world’s simplest point and shoot camera, the Mirage.

180 is the shorthand for VR180, which is the moniker for 3D VR180. The two front-facing lenses approximate your eyes, creating depth.

Lenovo has published the camera’s specs but the biggest drawback I see is the lack of a view screen. It truly is a point and shoot camera, although you could use the onboard WIFI to send the picture to your smartphone for viewing.

David Pierce, writing for Wired, says:

“VR180, like most things in VR right now, is the simple-but-usable version of what will someday be much cooler. It exists for a few reasons: because 360-degree video is actually really complicated to do well, because there aren’t many great ways to watch 360 video, and because even when they do watch super-immersive footage, viewers don’t tend to look around much. With VR180, your camera can look and operate more like a regular point-and-shoot, and viewers get a similarly immersive feel without having to constantly spin around.”

Digital Trends did a review at CES 2018.

You can pre-order the Mirage Camera now from B&H.

There’s also the YI Horizon VR180 coming soon and it includes a view screen, higher resolution and HDMI out, I believe. See Think Media‘s review:

My take: I’m a big fan of 180 and can’t wait to play around with both of these cameras. (Also, I wish the ‘VR’ label would just go away since this technology is not “virtual reality” but basically “reality”. Virtual Reality to me means computer-generated environments; video games are a prime example. 180 is as close as we’re going to come to reality other than actually being there.)

Isaac Asimov hitches a ride on Elon Musk’s Roadster to Mars

Posted on by
Reply

Elon Musk, Earth’s real life Tony Stark (see this infographic and this tidbit for proof,) just sent his Tesla Roadster into space aboard SpaceX‘s Falcon Heavy rocket on February 6, 2018.

See four hours of live footage of Starman and the Tesla Roadster in space.

See where Starman and Elon Musk’s Roadster are right now.

But wait, there’s more!

In addition to the “Don’t Panic!” message on the dashboard, there’s a second, hidden, message tucked away in the Roadster.

Nova Spivack of the Arch Mission Foundation, whose mission is to preserve and disseminate humanity’s knowledge across time and space for the benefit of future generations, explains:

“We are very happy to announce that our first Arch [data crystals that last billions of years] library, containing the Isaac Asimov Foundation Trilogy, was carried as payload on today’s SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch, enroute to permanent orbit around the Sun. We are eternally grateful to Elon Musk and his incredible team for advocating the Arch Mission Foundation and giving us our first ride into space.”

This is not the first time messages have been sent into space physically.

That honour goes to the Pioneer Plaques of 1972 and ’73 and the Voyager Golden Records of 1977.

Interestingly, interstellar radio messages predate that by a decade.

My take: did you know Marvel Comic’s Howard Stark, Ironman’s father, was modelled on Howard Hughes? Talk about coming full circle.

Kodak looks to the future and the past

Posted on by
Reply

There is good news and bad news from Kodak.

Some will remember Kodak as the leading photography film company of the last millenium, toying with bankruptcy in 2012.

The good: Kodak has fully jumped into 360 VR with the Pixpro ORBIT360 4K:

“The KODAK PIXPRO Orbit360 4K VR Camera adopts a minimalist approach to an all-in-one 360 ̊ VR camera, with two fixed focus lenses housed by a futuristic camera body. Each curved lens is designed to work in tandem, to capture full 360 ̊ 4K Video and easily upload 360 ̊ videos and photos to social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube via the camera’s Smart Device App while on the go.”

The real news from CES 2018 however is that Kodak plans two new cameras for later this year. See 2:05 in this report from Digital Trends:

The bad: Kodak has stated that the price for its upcoming Super 8 camera will be in the $2,500 to $3,000 range, which is three to five times more than originally planned.

They also released some test footage:

To my eye this is soft and jittery. I much prefer the rock-steady footage from Logmar:

My take: On one hand, I’m really looking forward to Kodak’s 360 camera that can fold out into a 180 3D mode because I feel this format has the best chance to win the immersive VR stakes. On the other hand, shame on Kodak for jacking up the price of their inferior Super 8 camera.