Video Producer Needed - Students Welcome

Are you thinking of a leadership career in the film and media industry?

White Label Space is looking for a volunteer to coordinate the production and editing of video material in support of our Google Lunar X PRIZE efforts. Our team is increasing its output of video content and urgently needs a motivated individual to help maintain a steady flow of video for distribution over the web.

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Liaise with team members to obtain raw video input in a timely manner
  
• Direct the editing team, dividing up workload according to resources and availability
• Manage and maintain information system for storing video data at all stages of editing
• Publish the finished video products on the web
• Monitor the audience engagement and follow-up on audience responses
  

We are looking for somebody with a proven track record in coordinating the efforts of volunteer groups.

This role would suit a media or film student, but applications are welcome from people from all backgrounds and ages.

Please send application letter with CV to: careers@whitelabelspace.com

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New Promotional Video

Live 720P HD recording using a Canon 40D & Nikon D700

I'm looking forward to what these hacks will bring us. The Indie film maker has never been in such a good position to produce high quality movies for an extremely low cost.
This is also good news for GLXP teams, as recording their progress in high quality HD suddenly becomes a whole lot more affordable.

Nikon D700

Some Canon die-hards have already managed to coax their DSLRs to record video via live-view, and it looks like Nikon aficionados are now able to do the same, albeit not quite as easily just yet. That's because the mod requires both access to Nikon's SDK for the D700 and the necessary skills to actually do something with it, in this case capturing video from the live-view feed via USB. see rest of story on engadget

Canon 40D

If you're just now starting to come to grips with the fact that Canon's utterly succulent EOS 5D Mark II is just way, way out of reach, here's a little something to lessen the impact of your inferiority complex. An enterprising young buck with a passion to bring video capture abilities to other EOS cameras figured out a way to enable that very capability on all Liveview EOS DSLRs.see rest of story on engadget

Video on Flickr

Near 720p video made with a Canon 40D, using the Live View feature. Camera was connected to the laptop via USB, and a russian program recorded the output. See the video ouput see here on Flickr.

Russian source
Canon 40D-vel készült videó. Részletek a spottr.hu-n!

Can This SONY Camera Work on the Moon?

Sony has just released the first 24.6 megapixel camera called the DSLR-A900.

This is a good time to raise the question of using a conventional camara in a Google Lunar X PRIZE (GLXP) mission. Cameras developed for the consumer market (here on Earth) can have costs that that are orders or magnitude lower than the equivalent space-qualified cameras.

Obviously the environment at the Moon has an environment with vacuum, radiation and temperature extremes far more severe than on Earth. However, all these issues could be easily overcome by putting a camera in a pressurized housing with temperature controls and metallic walls.

Modern cameras are clearly small and light enough to be flown in space. Mass could even be reduced by removing their components like the casing and the flash. There is an extra mass penalty due to the pressurized casing that needs to be considered but it would not be a show-stopper.

Here are the most relevant details of the DSLR-A900 (from Sony's Technical Specification Page):

• Weight: 850grams (approx.)
• Width: 156.3mm
• Height: 116.9mm
• Depth: 81.9mm
• Ouputs: Video (PAL or NTSC), HD/HDMI™ (1920x1080i 59.94/50Hz), USB 2.0
• Recording Media: Compact Flash I/II/MicroDrive, Memory Stick™
• Recording Format: JPEG, RAW, RAW+JPEG, 16:9 selectable
• Image Size: 6048 x 4032 pixels (JPEG) (24M)
• Max. Continous Frame Rate: 5fps (approx.)
• Image sensor type: CMOS
• Image sensor colour filter: R, G, B, Primary color

So the main question is, can such a camera be compatible with all the requirements of the GLXP?

Firstly, is the image quality sufficient? Does it provide enough image resolution, colour resolution, Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), Field Of View (FOV)?

Secondly, how about the video quality? It has enough pixels to meet the HD definition but is the frame rate high enough? Will the images with motion be too blurred?

And finally, what about the interface to the rest of the GLXP hardware? What communications protocol should be used? Most developed for space does not use USB for example.

If you have some thoughts on this, post them on our Google Group Open Forum.