This post is a review of Canon’s new mid-range HD camcorder, the Canon Vixia HF M31. As a detailed, technical write up on the pros and cons of this new HD camcorder has been published by Camcorderinfo.com, this review will deal solely with my first-hand experience of having used this video camera for a few weeks. Hopefully, others considering the purchase of an HD camcorder will find this article useful in their research. Note that the HF M31 / HFM31 (32GB internal memory) is part of a series from Canon that includes the HF M30 /HFM30 (8GB internal memory) and HF M300 / HFM300 (SD/SDHC memory card only).

HF M31 Product Overview

The new HFM line of HD camcorders from Canon is easy to use. The small size is great as a secondary camera for a camera bag already loaded with a large dSLR. But don’t let the small size fool you, this HD camcorder is a very capable piece of technology. Canon upgraded last year’s highly regarded HF20 and HF200 models with better image stabilization and a touchscreen LCD to produce the new HFM series. Colour, noise and sharpness performance was very good for a model in this price range. Image quality wise, Canon could have done better with low light performance. Having said that, indoor video quality was not poor but it also was not great; it contained a little more grain than I prefer and the image was not as bright as it could be. Overall, the HF M31 / HFM31 produced very high-quality videos.

HF M31 Compression & Media

The HFM series line of HD camcorders uses AVCHD compression (which is based on the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 codec) just like most consumer HD camcorders. It has 5 levels of HD quality settings but no standard definition recording just in case anyone absolutely needs this. At up to 24 mbps, we really did see very good quality image on a 50+ inch progressive LCD screen. Keep in mind that the camcorder’s three frame rates (60i, PF24, and PF30) can be used for recording with each quality setting. Do note that the PF24 and PF30 frame rates are not recorded natively. Recordings made using these frame rates are converted by the camcorder and recorded onto memory as 60i. In the real world, we saw good results from PF30 and would not consider using PF24 for any scenes with panning or lots of movement. In fact, just shoot at 60i as it has been around for a long time and very compatible across technologies. And, if needed, deinterlace the final video when you output from your video editing software. Note, to edit AVCHD files, you will need the right software and hardware. Even on a 64-bit quad core computer with lots of RAM, rendering out 1080p videos from AVCHD files required a lot of computing power.

HF M31 Handling and Usability

One of the biggest strengths of the HFM series is its small size but that is also its largest downfall in my opinion. Small size means you tend to use the gear more often; we all know how large cameras can sometimes deter it from being used. But small video cameras have a pitfall in that it is not as easy to get a steady shot. So I was quite surprised that hand-held footages were very acceptable. In fact, even when zoomed in at 15X optical (or even 60x digital), one press of the Power Image Stabilization button coupled with the right breathing and camera holding technique, you can get an extremely steady image. This is when the subject is not moving of course. By default, Dynamic Image Stabilization is enabled and this mode is meant for your everyday shooting. It does an ok job when used with care, even during a walking scene as you will see in the video above.

The biggest update from last year’s HF model was a new touchscreen LCD. Most controls are now accessed using the LCD screen. Think of it like an iPhone screen but less sensitive to touch. Images produced here are bright and saturated. The best use of the LCD screen has to be the focusing system. When face detection and tracking are enabled, the camcorder does a very good job at “finding” faces and making sure focus lock is on them. To override, just touch another subject on the LCD screen and the camcorder will lock and track this new subject. A segment of the video above will show you exactly how this works. The LCD focus system is probably the neatest and most useful update in this new HD camcorder.

Things to Improve on the HF M31

As mentioned above, I think low light performance and image stabilization could be better on this unit. But given all the pluses discussed above, I can live with some grain and a slightly darker scene during low light recordings. On the other hand, what I really dislike is Canon’s proprietary hot-shoe size. You have to buy proprietary Canon gear, such as microphones or accessories that attach to a hot-shoe because the shoe provided on this camcorder is slightly smaller than the standard size. You can always purchase a shoe adapter such as the ones found at DM Accessories but that adds costs and you may lose the “hot” side of things if you go this route.

The second thing that Canon should have provided was a mini HDMI to HDMI cable. If you choose to use HDMI to send a signal out to your TV or computer, you will have to purchase this cable as it’s not provided.

Lastly, when the camcorder is powered off, there is no locking mechanism for the image stabilization system. You should never shake sensitive equipment like a camcorder but even more so with this unit. You will hear the rattling of something loose inside. That is actually the image stabilization system! I am surprised that there is no way to park the mechanical parts of this system when the power is turned off on the unit. Once power is turned on, there is no more rattling as the stabilization system is activated and locked down.

Conclusion – Canon Vixia HF M31 / HF M 30 / HF M300

The Canon Vixia HF M31 is easy to use, fun and capable of recording very high-quality video. For a camcorder that records HD video at up to 24 mbps, I can live with, at least for now, a somewhat darker and slightly grainy image during low light shooting. In normal and bright light conditions, video footage is sharp, vibrant and smooth. For those of you considering the purchase of a new HD camcorder, you can check out the video above. All footages were taken on a cloudy day and no post-processing was applied; only transitions and titles were added. Happy shooting!

Tweet This Post

One of the benefits of mass consumer adoption of mobile technology is that many companies are beginning to develop some very cool and useful applications. Not all Smartphone apps are useful but the latest app offering from Microsoft is an interesting one and the way they are making the offer is sure to trickle to other app providers. For a limited time, you can download the Top 100s by Year by Bing iPhone app for free. As the name of the app implies, you can literally listen to the Top 100 songs between 1947 and 2009… for free. No strings attached. You will, however, get popup reminders in between a few songs to remind you to download the Bing app. To be able to listen to thousands of songs for free, I think this is something all users can live with. I can only imagine how royalty payments (if any) are tracked and how long Microsoft will offer this for free. If you love music and have an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, install the app now.

Do you think this free giveaway will help Microsoft increase Bing app installs? Only time will tell but giving mobile users the ability to listen to thousands of Top 100 songs for free is definitely a great incentive for any campaign in my opinion; one that only few companies can even consider offering.

Note that you will need a US iTunes account to download and install the app. Here is the official description

Hear thousands of the greatest songs of all time.

This $1.99 app is offered for FREE by Bing for a limited time.

Please help keep this app free longer by downloading the Bing app now.

What were the top songs for 2009, the year you were born or graduated from high school?

Spin the wheel to find the year you want to hear. Click and listen. View the list to find the #1 song for that year, from 1947 to 2009.

These lists are not solely based on the Billboard charts and record sales, instead, these are lists of songs that have stood the test of time based on their initial and lasting popularity, and on their impact on the overall scope of musical history.

Feedback is welcome at forums.nutsie.com.

The songs are streamed in shuffle mode like a web radio station through 3G, Edge or Wi-fi.

Enjoy!

Tweet This Post

A recent move by Google to pull its business out of China made top headlines around the world. As Google controls nearly two-thirds of the world’s search results, it is definitely a big story when it makes a fundamental business decision to up and leave potentially the largest economy in the next 50 years to come. Yesterday, a story published in the Washington Post announced that GoDaddy, the largest domain name registrar, is also ceasing its service to lease out .CN (China) domain names. Does it not send a strong message to the Chinese government when two of the largest internet players are not interested in doing business in your country? Before we draw any hard conclusions, the reason for Google leaving China was due to censorship issues. Now GoDaddy is closing shop there due to recent Chinese regulations that any registrant of a new .CN domain name must provide a color head shot and other business identification, including a Chinese business registration number and physical signed registration forms to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), a quasi-governmental agency. On the contrary, most domain name registries require only name, address, telephone number and e-mail address. One can only guess at what the Chinese government is trying to accomplish when imposing such strict guidelines but there may actually be some validity to this heavy-handedness.

Ability to Easily Hide Online Leads to More Stolen Content and Malware Sites

Consider this trend. Is there not an increasing amount of spam and hacking coming out of .CN IP addresses? You just have to ask your data center. Or read publications like The Register who published that “Domains in the PR of China rank second behind only those in Cameroon (.cm) as the most likely to harbour malware, according to a survey by McAfee published earlier this month.”

I for one think it makes good sense to know exactly who owns a domain name as this brings accountability to a world where hackers can easily hide behind IP addresses. For what it’s worth, I believe services that allow a domain owner to stay hidden are doing a dis-service to all web site owners out there. Whatever the reasons may be for some domain owners to hide their contact information, I am willing to wager that most of the domains that have their WHOIS info hidden are in fact hiding for a reason. Most likely, they are using these domains as a place to publish black-hat content; whether that be copyright infringed content or other types of spam and malware related content.

What Will Happen to GoDaddy Customers?

Every organization has a say as to how they want to do business. GoDaddy’s response was to leave China. The one question now is what will happen to the current customers who have already registered .CN domains through GoDaddy? I wonder how / if the company will help them renew these .CN domain names.

A Day When There is No More Copyright Infringement

What China has put into policy is a little strict in my opinion but I for one welcome the day when more accountability comes into the world of domain registration. There has got to be a way for great companies like GoDaddy to pioneer the way and help protect their customers from all the spamming, site scraping and malware web sites out there. I can only dream of an Internet where there is no need to police and shut down websites for copyright infringement or malicious activities. If the new policies in China are effective, we can hope that day will come sooner rather than later. But that will only be true if the rest of the world will follow China’s policy to up requirements for registering a domain name. We can only wait and see. Let me end this article by asking domain owners this question. Similar to verifying a Paypal account with a valid email, bank account or credit card number, do you think the industry should be moving towards some sort of a verification system for renewing and registering a domain name?

Tweet This Post

Did you get a new computer and now want to sync all your iTunes and iPhone data to the new computer? For anyone going through this process, take comfort in knowing that there is a simple way to seamlessly transfer all music, photos, data and iPhone apps to the new machine. There are quite a few articles discussing this but having to wade through all the technical data is daunting. In short, here is a simple process that worked for me. Note, I installed Windows 7 on a new harddrive so I still had all my old data after the new install. If you are doing an upgrade, be sure to backup all your data for the move and you will still be able to use this migration method.

1. Upgrade to the latest version of iTunes (this will make the transition easier as the new machine will also be running the same version of iTunes)
2. Sync iPhone on old computer for the last time
3. Deauthorize iTunes on the old machine
4. Copy the entire My Music folder from the old computer to the new computer
5. Install the latest version of iTunes on the new machine
6. Plug in the iPhone on the new machine and sync
7. Re-setup any preferences (where to sync music, photos, videos, contacts etc…) and re-sync again on the new machine and authorize the new iTunes

My original setup on the old iTunes machine was pretty much default and I just let it control most of the settings. So by setting iTunes up on the new machine similarly, I was able to just copy the entire My Music folder (where the iTunes folder is stored in) and let iTunes re-sync everything. iTunes did not miss a beat and did not complain about any missing libraries (or anything else) on the new machine. To my delight, it just continued to sync with my iPhone as if it was running on the old machine.

So if you are moving to a new computer and want to sync your iPhone to a new computer, give the above process a try. As with any computer move, just be sure to have backups of all your data before the move. Smooth syncing!

Tweet This Post

There was a time when a personal computer would just do what it was supposed to. I am referring to the tried and true Windows XP operating system. Over the last two years, newer computers came loaded with its successor Windows Vista. I have to admit, I liked the new user interface and some of the powerful tools that came bundled with Vista. In fact, the install disc contained a tool that fixed one machine (twice) when Vista just refused to boot. I can remember both times thinking to myself how cool it was that a corrupted OS can self heal. Thinking back now, if Vista did not break itself, I would have had to use that boot-up disc at all! Enough about Vista. The following is a recap of my own experiences upgrading from Vista to Windows 7 and why I feel ripped off by Microsoft. It is not what you may think.

After much encouragement from a colleague, I finally dedicated some time to upgrade my Vista Business machine to Windows 7 Professional. The funny thing was, this colleague had never even used Windows 7 but like many others (including myself) had just heard many good things about this newest operating system from Microsoft. I had a gut feeling that they just wanted me to be the guinea pig and report back. Nonetheless, I performed a clean install of Windows 7 Pro on a new hard drive in my machine.

Microsoft Ripped Me Off

Since installing Windows 7, I felt totally ripped off by Microsoft over the last 2 years having to endure Vista all this time. It was not until I installed Windows 7 on my first machine that I realized I had been forced into a life of time-wasting; either waiting for Windows Vista to load, trying to fix software and hardware incompatibility issues or unknowingly agreeing to run my computer slower than the hardware would dictate otherwise due to all the overhead that comes along with running Windows Vista. Based on the overwhelming comments on one single article I posted called How to Fix Windows Vista Slow Network Transfer, I know that there are many other frustrated Vista users out there.

No cure for a deadly disease was discovered and it has only been a few weeks or so since the Windows 7 upgrade but I must admit, I feel completely liberated – if there is such a thing when describing about a piece of technology. Just knowing that my personal computer will once again do what it’s supposed to and do it rather quickly is a comforting feeling. Nonetheless, I still created a recovery disc for Windows 7. You never know when that might come in handy. I am hoping never.

Benefits of Upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7

As a heavy computer user, here are a few things that I can share with you about upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7.

1. Boot up is speedier in Windows 7.

2. Logging in to Windows 7 is also much quicker.

3. Network transfer speeds are fast and stable. It took tons of effort to tweak Vista to get decent transfer speeds but the higher transfer rates were not sustainable. Right from a fresh install and without any tweaking in Windows 7, LAN transfer speeds averaged about 50MB/s on a gigabit network. For those who may not be familiar with network speeds, this is pretty fast for consumer computer gear. It means you will be able to transfer 6 GigaBytes of data in 2 minutes (which is about the size of a high definition movie). Often times, it may not even be possible to achieve this speed between two internal hard drives within the same computer let alone through a network. Network transfer speed may be very important for those who run a NAS or server to share files, stream media or backup data across a network.

4. Windows 7 has a much sleeker look and feel and there are lots of easy tweaks for customization.

5. Again, it’s only been a few short weeks since running Windows 7 but it feels very responsive and stable. And a bonus for all irritated Vista users, U have experienced significantly less hard drive thrashing under Windows 7.

More Reasons to Upgrade to Windows 7

For many of you sitting on the fence and wondering if you should upgrade your Vista machines, take comfort in knowing that when you do upgrade to Windows 7, your effort will be highly rewarded. Of course, remember to download and run Windows 7 Advisor to make sure your computer is ready for the new OS. In addition if you do plan to upgrade instead of do a clean install, do your research and know which version of Windows you currently have as there is only one specific version of Windows 7 that will allow you to smoothly run the upgrade.

I have performed a clean install as well as upgraded a Vista Business computer to Windows 7 Pro and both times, it brought new life to these machines. I am very happy to announce that I have been completely purged of Windows Vista. Three cheers for Windows 7 – hip, hip hooray! And yes, the more I use Windows 7, the more I feel that I have been ripped off by Microsoft for having to put up with Vista all this time. It’s going to be smooth computing with Windows 7 and XP from here on. We must have hope right?

Tweet This Post

While you may finally be able to achieve fast LAN transfers under Windows Vista, the high speed you managed to have gained may not last. The annoying symptom of moving large files over a LAN in Windows Vista’s is that network performance may simply slow down before the file is fully transferred. The problem was not easy to detect since it was not an issue when transferring smaller-sized files. No need to pull out any more hair, here is the solution.

After systematically shutting down services inside Windows Vista SP1, here is a fix that resolved the issue of a slow down in network performance as you transfer large files. My internet security suite is was Shaw Secure and it turned out that 1 particular setting was causing network performance to drop during large LAN transfers. In order to achieve maximum network performance and sustain high transfer speeds, Shaw Secure’s real-time antivirus protection had to be disabled. Here is a network bandwidth graph of transferring a large file over the LAN with real-time scanning enabled. See the drop in transfer speed after a while and it just never recovered.

If you run Shaw Secure or another security software and your Windows Vista network speed slows down over time, try disabling your real-time anti-virus scanner to see if it fixes the problem. Of course, if you do decide to disable real-time protection, be sure to schedule frequent scans of your computer to keep yourself protected.

Tweet This Post

Recently, something very odd has happened to Wordpress that powers this blog. Front facing pages load fast but the back end Wordpress admin pages are extremely slow to load. So slow that at times, when I save a draft, the new content would not even take. Nothing times out but many admin pages are just extremely slow to load. It turned out to be one of the plugins. Luckily I don’t have many plugins on this blog and just systematically deactivated each. The culprit was an older Google Sitemap plugin. Simply made a quick update to a new one and admin sluggishness was gone! Can’t believe how fast Wordpress can be when it’s working right. If you are also experiencing Wordpress admin pages loading slowly, try deactivating your plugins.

Tweet This Post

Twitter’s search actually does a pretty good job at locating tweets for a particular geographical region. Just enter the city name in Twitter search and it will find all results containing this city. Recently, there has been an increase in Twitter robot accounts taking advantage of adding a city name to their auto-posting of classified ads. When I search for the term Vancouver, I now also see a list of annoying classified posts from various “for sale” bots. I was so annoyed by this that I even tried Twitter’s LEAVE and BLOCK commands but apparently, the spam classifieds still show up in Twitter search results. Luckily, there is a solution to remove spam from your Twitter searches.

User Twitter Commands and Operators to Fight Twitter Spam

Since neither LEAVE nor BLOCK was able to filter Twitter spam in search results, I tried using a typical “-” operator, a common function used in many search engines, and sure enough, that worked! So if the Twitter spammer’s handle is @sellyourstuffusingtwitterspam, you would type it into Twitter search (without the @ sign) following your keyword. In my case, the keyword was “Vancouver”. This will remove any tweet that contains Vancouver AND the spammer’s username, essentially, filtering all their spam tweets out of your search results. Here is how your spam filtered searches would look like:

Filtering 1 Spammer:
Vancouver -sellyourstuffusingtwitterspam

Filtering 2 Spammers:
Vancouver -sellyourstuffusingtwitterspam -anotherspamusername

This little minus (-) operator has helped me gain control of Twitter search once again allowing me to completely remove all spam ads with a city name. In fact, I was surprised Twitter has not disabled these bots from auto posting free classifieds in Twittersphere. But luckily, there was a fix. I hope the above tip can help you enhance your Twitter experience.

After discovering a way to filter out spam from Twitter search, I did some research and found that Twitter indeed has many commands (for accounts) and operators (for searches) that users can utilize to help manage their Twitter accounts.

Enjoy spam-free searching on Twitter again. I know I am!

Tweet This Post

Twitter is a fun and productive tool that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates. This free social networking service has grown so exponentially that, unfortunately, it is often times plagued with bugs and server time outs – frustrating to say the least. The latest bug that is tormenting Twitter users worldwide is the inability to upload a background image. A Twitter background has to be 800 kilobytes in file size and must be in a JPG, GIF or PNG format. But even if you abide by these rules, many users are still getting the dreaded “There was a problem with your picture. Was it an animated gif? We don’t support those!” error. No Twitter, I was trying to upload a JPG that was 700 kilobytes in file size. Seems like Twitter already knows about this bug but there has not been a fix yet… until now that is.

• Profile images: can’t add or remove an image, or current image reverts to old image
• Error uploading profile picture or background image

Over at Joomlabear.com, there was a solution to remove metadata from the JPG itself and this allowed the image to be uploaded to Twitter. Unfortunately, this did not work for me.

Resolution – Cannot Upload Twitter Background

Although not a formal fix, what did work for me was to click on “Don’t use a background image” before clicking “save changes” during the upload process.

Using this work around, I was finally able to update my Twitter background. How do you like the design?

I hope this can help all of you who are also having difficulty trying to upload a background image to your Twitter account!

Tweet This Post

After a few hours of testing (& hair pulling), I was finally able to use an iPhone to view YouTube videos on a Wi-Fi connection without the dreaded buffering problem. For those who are also suffering from slow YouTube connections on your iPhones over Wi-Fi, here is a fix.

There is more than enough evidence out there that when using an iPhone over Wi-Fi, YouTube videos are barely (if at all) watchable. Here are a few of these discussions:

• iphone+Wi-Fi+youtube slow?
• YouTube Really slow on iPhone
• iPhone 3G + Wi-Fi + YouTube = Slow!

Something is bottle-necking the connection and most videos are extremely slow to load or they simply time out. Ironically, the hang ups do not happen when viewing YouTube content on the slower 3G network; the problems only occur over Wi-Fi. Having read quite a few online discussions about this problem, I began methodically testing variables on our Linksys WRT54GL wireless router.

Here are some of the most relevant settings that were tweaked:

• Afterburner
• Frame Burst
• SecureEasySetup
• Wireless Channels
• Bradcasting SSID
• Wireless Network Mode

Currently, the wireless network is set to G-Only since this was the best setup for our office. It was only when I switched the Wireless Network Mode to B-Only that YouTube videos began watchable again. None of the other settings had any effect.

YouTube Videos Play Fine on Slower 3G Network; Not Wi-Fi

So why would watching YouTube videos on the slower 3G network play fine but not over the speedier G-Only Wi-Fi? While on the 3G network, the lower resolution of YouTube videos are downloaded while on Wi-Fi, the higher resolution of the video would try and load. So the reason why video would play well on the slower 3G network is because a lower resolution video is being loaded.

iPhone YouTube Wi-Fi Slow – RESOLUTION not SOLUTION

Sure, B-Only wireless settings allowed the iPhone to view YouTube videos but the Speedtest.net iPhone app does show slower speeds while the router setting was on B-Only versus G-only. Not only just for the iPhone but using B-Only would slow down the entire wireless network in the office. Although B-Only was a fix, it was not a solution. Needless to say, after finding this fix, our router was re-setup for G-Only.

After hours of testing, I believe this hiccup has something to do with Safari on the iPhone and its ability to run YouTube videos properly over Wi-Fi on 802.11g. Everything seems to work smoothly over 802.11b.

Let’s hope Apple has a fix on the next update! In the meantime, if you really need to watch YouTube videos on your iPhone, try using the built-in YouTube app on your iPhone to view them or set your wireless router to B-Only mode.

Tweet This Post

There seems to be a glitch on the iPhone 3G when it comes to deleting emails. Through one of my IMAP accounts, when I try to delete an email, I consistently get the error “Unable to Move Message”. When the email account was setup on the iPhone, it was already selected to move deleted emails to the local trash folder of the phone. If you are also unable to delete emails on your iPhone, try this. Go inside:

Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendar > Email Account > Advanced > Deleted Mailbox

Then tap on Trash – even though you may already have a check mark beside it. This should allow you to start deleting emails.

Tweet This Post

As of yesterday, no YouTube videos could be played on my iPhone through the built-in YouTube App. As we recently modified settings on the router in our office, we thought it was something on our end. Sure enough, no router adjustment could resolve the issue. We continuously get the “This video could not be played” error message. Others on MacRumors are also reporting the latest YouTube outage on the iPhone. Essentially, no YouTube videos are able to be played through the YouTube App on the iPhone. I am sure Apple and YouTube are aware of this glitch and a fix is just around the corner. In the meantime, there is a temporary solution. Just use the Safari browser (on your iPhone) to view YouTube videos instead. This should allow you to continue enjoying YouTube videos on your iPhone.

Tweet This Post