Hasselblad have launched its H3D-31 DSLR 31-megapixel, the slightly tamer beast to its 39-megapixel cousin. The H3D 31 sports a 31-megapixel 44- x 33-millimeter sensor, micro lenses for faster ISO rating up to 800 and a faster capture rate at 1.2 seconds-per-image capture. It also features a mobile and tethered mode as well as Hasselblad's Natural Color Solution, Digital Auto Correction and Instant Approval Architecture.

This camera is of course aimed at the most serious and professional commercial photographers and deservedly so. The more amateur cameraman might want to save his $24,995 for a new car, dream holiday or deposit on a house. If anyone has one of these babies and wants to send it in to DVGuru so we can review it we'll give it back. Promise!

Engadget got wind of leaked details of the soon-to-be-released Canon HV20 HD camcorder by a brief "coming soon" appearnece on the Circuit City website (now disappeared). The 2.96 megapixel High Definition camcorder sounds remarkably similar to the HV10 featuring a 2.7-inch LCD display, CMOS sensor, 10x optical zoom, and HD recording to MiniDV tapes.

The only real difference between the HV10 and the HV20 appears to be an HDMI jack (which was really needed in the HV10). There is of course plenty of room for improving on the HR10s low performance light, difficult upright, pistol-grip body and poor audio recording. The HV20 was listed as $1100 which is actually less than Circuit Buy is listing the HR10 as at $1299, although the HR10 can now be picked up for about $900 at Amazon.

The JVC SR-DVM700 is a versatile media storage vessel for anyone who needs to offload video footage from a variety of sources and/or needs to move around a lot of media in various formats. The SR-DVM700 can offload and copy media from Mini DV tapes, DVD-R/RWs, DVD-RAM, and pretty much any other analog device. It also has its own 250GB internal hard drive for storing media. The device is expected to be hitting Japanese stores pretty soon. No word on releases in other territories.

Creating a timelapse movie can be daunting especially when you will be committing lots of time to your subject. A distracting side-effect that distorts the time-lapse illusion is flicker, such as parts of the scene that are lighter or darker in each frame. Granite Bay software has an informative guide on what causes flicker in time-lapse as well as cures to fix it. They even have a free Deflicker plugin for Adobe After Effects or Premiere because sometimes you can do everything right and still wind up with flickering footage.

As DV Gurus it is only natural to thirst for a behind the scene look behind a shoot. Flickr has an On the Set Film/Video group with over 1,900 photos for your "how'd they do that?" cravings. Ok some of them aren't that relevant/interesting but just look at all of those sweet set-ups. And if you have some behind the scenes photos from your latest production, add them to the pool.

Wanna get into video editing, but can't afford the latest studio bundle? Never fear, Ubuntu will have you logging, trimming, and printing in no time!

The popular Linux flavor is planning an April release for a new distribution aimed at video production enthusiasts and professionals. The software package features Cinelerra as an editor, Jahshaka for compositing, and audio suite, Wired. The Ubuntu Studio wiki also states the building of an "alt" DVD authoring program as one of the team's goals.

I find this information cool, but I must confess, I've never tried any of the apps included here. I have always intended to try one or the other, mostly for comparison to the expensive software I regularly use, but the thought of having to install another OS just to get a crack at them seemed daunting. However, with everything bundled into a nice tight "distro" April can't come fast enough.

READ via Download Squad

An upcoming documentary, The Truth About Elvis, takes an in-depth look at the conspiracy theory that The King lives. director Dan Bliss wants to separate the film from tabloid fodder, and make sure people the style and imagery of a true and earnest documentary. To do that, he's enlisted the help of the Panasonic AG-HVX200.

Bliss says the camera is a perfect fit for all the traveling 'Elvis required. He also praises it's ability to to shoot lengthy interviews with the help of a P2 Store portable hard drive. Using a Powerbook, Bliss would offload the footage to an external firewire drive, then back up each card to DVD. The system offers storage redundancy, and is a pretty good work-around for the current limitations of P2.

Of course, this isn't the first time we've posted on the success of the HVX in real world applications. Still, it continues to amaze as a an affordable option for "film" and television. Click READ below for more info about the film, and the work flow surrounding it.

Long time Apple host card maker ATTO debuted it's new Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) adapter Tuesday at Macworld Expo. Designed for the Mac Pro, the PCI Express card gets high-end users connected to RAID storage over one of the fastest connections possible. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that's great for video editors.

I won't bore you with all the details of SAS technology. Suffice it to say, SAS offers speed improvements over traditional SCSI, while eliminating some of it's hassles (now, what did I do with that terminator?) At around 3Gb (Gigabits not bytes) per second data transfer, SAS is a relatively affordable option for HD video editors, and provides reliability as well.

ATTO has been supporting the Mac platform for nearly 2 decades, and generally make great products. You can bet their new cards will have been tested specifically for the Mac Pro, and will perform as advertised. Click READ for a link to the product page.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated is scheduled to be released on DVD January 23rd. This is one film I've been eager to see. In case you haven't heard about it yet, this documentary by Kirby Dick does some digging into the top-secret MPAA ratings system and even attempts to find out the identities of the secret-decoder-ring-wearing MPAA ratings board members.

The documentary asks whether Hollywood movies and independent films are rated equally for comparable content; whether sexual content in gay-themed movies is given harsher ratings penalties than their heterosexual counterparts; whether it makes sense that extreme violence is given an R rating while sexuality is banished to the cutting room floor; whether Hollywood studios receive detailed directions as to how to change an NC-17 film into an R, while independent film producers are left guessing; and finally, whether keeping the raters and the rating process secret leaves the MPAA entirely unaccountable for its decisions.

The MPAA also provided a little comic relief when it got caught with its hand in the cookie jar and admitted to making 10 copies of the movie to distribute to board members without the filmmakers permission. You gotta love it.

Ahh to be young again! Full of dreams, uninhibited, not a care in the world...except for how many DV tapes it will take to record you friend Joey's birthday party...

My Life As A Child is a 6-part documentary series where children record their lives on video from a first person perspective. The Learning Channel selected 20 youngsters ages 7 to 12 for the project, checked out some video gear to them, and let them tape for 4 months. The footage they captured makes up the 6 one-hour episodes, and marks a first for TLC in melding user generated content and television. The show claims to be "frank, intimate, and eye-opening" as children share their perspectives on growing up in the 21st century.

I couldn't find any hard DVGuru info about the production (camera info, production notes, behind the scenes info.) Still, I can't help but be a bit fascinated by the fact that this sort of thing wouldn't have been possible 7 or 8 years ago. The relative price of camcorders, this generation's experience with video, and the popularity of "viral" video content all seem to culminate in a project like this one.

My Life As A Child airs on Monday, February 26 at 7PM (ET/PT.)

The more information a filmmaker has at his or her disposal, the better decisions the filmmaker can make. Video scopes give you an objective stream of information about the picture coming out of your camera. ScopeBox aims to go beyond Serious Magic's DV Rack, and it does by leaps and bounds according to Frank Jonen from his hands on review with the product. Some things that set this software package apart from the rest include:

• Full screen, undistracted view
• Full color scopes
• Customizable layouts
• Clean interface
• No real-life looking knobs that are hard to use

To get a more in depth look at ScopeBox with lots of screen shots then give Mr. Jonen's six page review a read through.

As I mentioned earlier today, my family just got back from a trip to Disneyland. As we were getting ready to leave home, I decided to leave my laptop, shut my brain off, and just not think about video technology for a while. I was doing pretty well, until my wife and I sat down to something called "Turtle Talk with Crush" at Disney's California Adventure.

Audiences sit in an auditorium with a large screen featuring and animated ocean scene. A host with a microphone explains what we are about to see, and invites Crush (the turtle form Disney/Pixar's Finding Nemo) to enter. The animated turtle swims onto the screen, and the magic begins.

A few audience members are selected by Crush to answer questions, then the turtle asks a few questions of his own. What it amounts to is a puppet show where the dummy has been replaced by a computer animation. I get that someone is talking into a microphone to supply the voice, and probably even using cameras to see the audience. What blew me away was what appeared to be quality animation being rendered on the fly. The mouth was in sync with the words, and gestures seemed totally random.

I attended the show twice, just to make sure, and was treated to a completely different experience, with children asking very different questions. I concluded that some sort of motion capture technology is at use, however no amount of prodding could persuade the host to "pull back the curtain."

If anyone has any insider info for this attraction, or even a good guess as to how it could be done, I would love to hear it. It also begs the question "how long will it be until animation is just captured from an actor's movement, and rendered on the fly?"

Click READ for a Video via YouTube

Now that even morning and daytime television are saturated with HD, you know it's arrived. All the clarity and sharpness, however, strikes fear into the hearts of talent. Thanks in part to film grain, viewers don't notice age lines and puffy eyes as much, but with digital and it's all or nothing glory, every line and skin imperfection is aired out for all viewers to see. Some say it's the end of the extreme closeup, and that stars will start putting anti-HD measures in their contracts, but an article at the Hollywood Reporter provides hope. Makeup artists are stepping up their game, utilizing new techniques to literally airbrush away imperfections. I tend to tell my talent that on my tiny HDR-HC1, I've enabled the beautifying filter, and since it's a documentary, they've got nothing to worry about.

I discovered a new internet TV show called Viral the other day which focuses on what TV shows are available on the internet and often takes a behind the scenes look at how the show is made and the video producers and actors behind it.

About 7 minutes into the first episode of Viral (see below) you get a quick lesson from Doug Bressler of the animated show DoogToons. Doug shows you how he records in voice and brings it to life in animated characters. He first records spoken audio using GarageBand on a Mac and then exports the audio as an aiff file. He then does a rough drawing of a cartoon bear and loads it up in flash to animate it taking you briefly through the tedious part of syncing up the characters mouth movements with the audio.

Here is the video, you'll need to get to about 7 minutes in to see Doug at work.