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

Over the many years of using a computer, I have tried many tweaks to try and make a PC run faster. Although there is lots of published information about tweaking Vista, I have not found one that utilizes a battery to speed up your computer. The discovery of this not-so-obvious solution truly made a difference in my daily computing. At the end of the day, Vista’s Windows Experience Index reports that my computer is faster and I can definitely feel that my computer is faster.

There is plenty of documented information on tweaking Windows Vista to run faster. Here are just a few of these good articles.

• How to Make Vista Run Faster
• Optimize Windows Vista for better performance
• How To Make Vista Start, Run and Shutdown Faster

Although helpful, none of the tweaks that I have found suggested using a battery to make Vista run faster. So here is my 2-step tip.

Use a Battery to Speed Up Your Computer

Step 1: Purchase a UPS. UPS stands for “uninterrupted power supply”, otherwise known as a battery back-up.

Step 2: Inside Vista, go to Control Panel >> System >> Device Manager. Double click on “Disk Drives” to show all available hard drives on your computer. Right click on a hard drive and select Properties. Under the Policies tab, you will see options for “Enable write caching on the disk” and “Enable advanced performance”. Select both of these check boxes and click OK.

After this tweak, Vista’s own Windows Experience Index show a 0.1 point improvement in the Disk data transfer rate (from 5.6 to 5.7). Launching programs takes a little less time now and overall performance is speedier. This is probably a surprise as the hard drive is normally the bottle neck in the PC. Speeding up the hard drive transfer rate should lead to increased performance, at least it did on one of our desktop systems.

Be sure to only enable advance performance ONLY IF you have a UPS. Note the warning under this option; it is there for a reason!

Recommended only for disks with a back up power supply. This setting further improves disk performance, but it also increases the risk of data loss if the disk loses power.

So if your computer needs a speed boost, you can try installing a UPS to try and give it that extra punch.

Tweet This Post

In the past month, I personally experienced two instances where used merchandise was sold as new without disclosure. The first time, it was with a brand new Dell Vostro desktop where the hard drive turned out to have been already used for 15,000+ hours! The second time, A-Power.com sold us a used hard drive telling us it was a new unit.

How did I know that these computer retailers sold used hard drives as new? Easy. I used a tool called Seatools by Seagate (a hard drive manufacturer) to read the power-on hours from both hard drives. Most hard drives, when used, will log the number of hours that it has been powered on. This information just requires the right tool to be retrieved.

Dell Sells Used Product as New

The brand new Dell Vostro destop with a hard drive that have been powered on for 15,000+ was a big shocker; 15,000 hours is equivalent to 625 days! After speaking with Dell Canada’s business tech support staff (whom by the way are always very courteous and helpful and were most sympathetic this time), we were directed to Dell’s normal customer care team. Even though we received a used product when we purchased a new one, the first response was that the purchase was more than 30-days old and nothing could be done. Note, the purchase was only 10-days past that mark. To make a long story short, we were finally transferred to a Canadian customer care representative and now have a brand new replacement hard drive in the Vostro machine.

A-Power.com Sells Used Product As New

Not long after the Dell incident, history quickly repeated itself. Being weary of getting a used hard drive again, a call was placed to confirm with a sales rep from A-Power.com that we would receive a new hard drive and not a refurbished one. We received confirmation and purchased the hard drive.

The red flag went up right from the get go. Normally, when you install a new hard drive into a computer, it will not boot up and notify you with a message stating that it cannot find a bootable drive or something to that effect. With the supposedly new A-Power.com purchased drive, it returned a blue screen of death upon boot up instead.

The second red flag came when trying to install Windows XP. Normally when you install XP on a clean drive, it will ask you where you want to install the OS. This time, the installation process found another version of Windows already installed and warned that it might cause problems to install two operating systems on one partition.

Given that A-Power.com has been in business locally since 1999 and that their sales rep had assured us that they only sell new merchandise, we gave them the benefit of the doubt that both the above flags were simply anomalies and probably nothing to worry about.

After Windows was successfully installed, we ran Seatools on the supposedly new hard drive and found that it’s power-on hours show that this was indeed a used hard drive. Not again – two separate instances from two separate computer retailers!

Check Your SMART Info

Most people would never consider or even know how to check power-on hours on their newly purchased computer or hard drive. Because of shady business practices, the customer would have spent hard earned dollars on used merchandise thinking that they had purchase a brand new product. Here is how you can protect yourself.

The power-on hours and even the temperature of your hard drive is stored in the SMART information section (available on most computer hard drives). As I mentioned, Seatools can retrieve and show you this type of information. Another popular program called SpeedFan can also retrieve SMART info as well. For those who just purchased a new computer or hard drive, be sure to check your SMART info!

When is it OK for Computer Retailers To Cheat Customers?

If this sort of sneaky behaviour occurs from the local computer store to an industry leader like Dell, imagine what could be happening at every level in between? To say that I am irritated is an understatement. With large technology retailers like Circuit City and The Source filing for bankruptcy recently, it shows that consumers are not spending in this sector during the financial crisis. But does an economic down turn give computer retailers the go-ahead to cheat their customers? Imagine if pharmaceutical companies decided one day that in order to get through tough economic times, they would sell returned or even expired medications? So when was it OK for computer retailers to start cheating their customers?

Tweet This Post

Over the weekend, reports began popping up in various news channels that Toshiba Corp is planning to give up on its HD DVD format for high definition DVDs, conceding defeat to the competing Blu-Ray technology backed by Sony Corp. It was reported that a source at Toshiba confirmed an earlier report by public broadcaster NHK that it was getting ready to pull the plug.

“We have entered the final stage of planning to make our exit from the next generation DVD business,” said the source, who asked not to be identified. He added that an official announcement could come as early as next week.

Just a few weeks ago, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group. announced that they will release their high definition DVD titles exclusively in the Blu-Ray disc format beginning later this year. It will be no surprise if Toshiba is truly raising the white flag in surrender to the format war between its own HD DVD format and Sony’s Blu-Ray HD format. After all, 3 top retailers, Wal Mart, Best Buy and NetFlix, recently announced that they have plans to support the Blu-Ray format.

Is this the end for Toshiba’s HD DVD? Some skeptics are still hanging on to the notion that the format was is not over. Just as Paramount previously denied that it was dropping HD DVD, Toshiba announced this morning that, “The media [has] reported that Toshiba will discontinue its HD DVD business. Toshiba has not made any announcement concerning this. Although Toshiba is currently assessing its business strategies, no decision has been made at this moment.”

So, is this the nail in the coffin for Toshiba’s HD DVD format? With the recent Blu-Ray backing announcements from major movie studios and retailers, even if this is not the final blow, it will be extremely tough for Toshiba to fight back. My advice to all HD DVD player owners is to keep enjoying your HD movies. But know that by this time next year, if you wanted to watch a new release in HD, it will probably be under a Blu-Ray format.

Tweet This Post

A few weeks ago, I received an invitation to attend Microsoft’s Unified Communications Launch Event in Vancouver. Two days ago, that event took place and I was in attendance. The event was well attended and took up the biggest ballroom (and more) in the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre. So what exactly is Microsoft’s Unified Communications and, more importantly, will it take hold in the market place like Microsoft Outlook and the Windows Operating System? Here is a recap of the launch event with some of my own thoughts on the direction Microsoft is heading in the communications arena.

What is Microsoft Unified Communications?

The morning started nicely with a light breakfast of various scones, muffins, fruit, juice & coffee. At 9am, an announcement informed attendees that there were 2 tracks; one for technical and one for business. There was no mention of more than 1 track on the agenda that I had printed out from the confirmation email so I thought I would check out the technical track to start.

The technical track was interesting. The first session was actually more business oriented than technical. The session started with an overview of Microsoft’s Unified Communications. The speakers performed a live demo using the internet connection provided by convention center. It was to showcase that the new Microsoft security technology works in normal networks like the ones at WiFi hot spots, hotels and even convention centers.

Here is a video of the demo where 2 users easily escalate their text instant messaging session to full voice conferencing with a few mouse clicks and at the same time adding 2 other users into the audio session.

The best way to describe Unified Communications is simply email, voice and data communications all managed in one single place. In short, Microsoft is launching the Office Communicator Server and Client as an extension to their current product of Office 2007. Office Communicator works seamlessly with Outlook (Microsoft’s ever popular email client).

End User Perspective on Unified Communications

From the end user perspective, you can now manage emails, voice mail, telephony, instant messaging (IM), audio & video conferencing from the new Microsoft Communicator client.

Why 1 Single Point of Management through Office Communicator?

From an user perspective, you will now be able to:

• Receive Asynchronous (email, voice mail, IM) and Synchronous (IM, audio & video conferencing, voice calls) messages all in one place
• Simplify communications with “Presence” – the ability to tell if your contacts are in a meeting, on the road or only available by mobile
• Let others know the best way to contact you – ie. by IM, email, voice mail, voice call etc… at any given time and based on your own work schedule
• Use your PC as a “soft” phone through Microsoft’s VoIP technology
• Click to call contacts – no longer need to memorize or lookup telephone numbers
• Forward desk voice calls to cell phone
• Simultaneous ring desk phone and cell phone
• Continue to use current Microsoft Outlook without changing to a new email & calendar client

IT Perspective on Unified Communications

From an IT perspective, you simply run Office Communicator Server 2007 (OCS) on top of Exchange and things will work seamlessly together.

How OCS Management Will Help IT

From an IT perspective, you will now be able to:

• Roll out and encourage employees to use IM for work communication and know that it’s secured and tracked for legal & risk management purposes
• Run OCS in conjunction with Exchange and data will be shared seamlessly
• Manage user accounts, secure and backup all communications at 1 single point

Is Microsoft Unified Communications Really That Good?

During the morning sessions, I was very intrigued with Office Communicator’s ability to streamline email, voice and data communication. I can see how Presence technology (the ability to see and reach your contacts in the most suitable fashion) and managing voice calls through a PC has benefits.

But as I absorbed additional information in the afternoon business sessions and was able to draw a more complete picture, some concerns and questions began to pop up. Such things as:

• To save costs, Microsoft is proposing telephony over a network (VoIP). In fact, Microsoft was diligent at this launch in pointing out that they are now a software based telephony provider (using Nortel’s hardware). I am not sure today’s network infrastructure is stable enough to completely handle mission critical voice calls. Networks go down. That is a fact. So if the telephone is mission critical like in health care, financial, sales & marketing and even many technology related requirements, the “soft” phone proposal may not be the best option.
• Less the CEO of a corporation making a mandate that all outside sales agents will begin to use the “soft” phone while on the road to save on long distance costs, I think there will be a huge revolt from tying sales calls to an internet connection. I am not sure if VoIP call quality will be as good as the cell or regular phone network. During the demo’s throughout the launch day, voice quality was definitely not the greatest.
• Throughout the day, I heard many presenters talk about cost savings of long distance charges from employees who are traveling but there was no mention if the mobile Communicator Client can take advantage of VoIP (ie. make a VoIP call from your mobile phone). Even if it can, an internet connection is required to make this work so there is still cost issues and connectivity requirements in play here.
• Video conferencing, audio conferencing, multiple phone ringing, receiving voice mail in email, seeing if others are online or not in IM are definitely not new concepts. Many users are already taking advantage of these tools on any given day. But Microsoft is offering the whole ball of wax with 1 single point of contact. More importantly, all of it will be secured and tracked. The new Office Communicator deals with convenience and risk management more than introducing new technology to the market place.

Although there were business case studies and video testimonials presented from organizations such as the Edmonton Oilers (National Hockey League) and the Ontario Association of Community Care Access Centres (health care), I think this launch is still a soft one for Unified Communications. A Microsoft representative I was speaking with was not able to provide pricing yet.

Summary of Office Communicator

My impression of Office Communicator and the whole concept of Unified Communications is that it is still very new outside of the Microsoft corporation. I do not run Exchange and just out of curiosity, was interested to see if Communicator would work as a standalone product. While speaking with a rep from Avanade, a global IT consultancy specializing in Microsoft enterprise platforms, even he told me OCS cannot run as a standalone without an Exchange server. However, I found out differently on my way out of the conference when I bumped into one of the Microsoft speakers and I posed the question to him. Yes, OCS can run on it’s own for all of you who are interested to test it out. But you will, of course, be missing many of the goodies that are available only through integration with Exchange. What a standalone OCS + Communicator Client setup will do is still provide Presence information through monitoring user activity on the PC and information stored in Outlook.

Is full communications track ability and security something that is missing at your company’s risk assessment management? More importantly, is there enough of an incentive for you do something about it? If the answer is yes to both of these questions, then this enterprise level solution may be your answer. It’s not new technology but Microsoft’s Office Communicator does provide one single point to manage all your communications, access anywhere capability and all the while doing it securely with tracking.

Thanks to Microsoft for the great event (which included breakfast, lunch and a cocktail session) and for the evaluation copy of Office Communicator Server and Office Communicator Client.

Did you attend this event (either in Vancouver or somewhere else)? Are you already reaping the rewards from OCS? Does Unified Communications sound like something you would be interested at implementing? I would love to hear from you. Do leave your thoughts.

Tweet This Post

There have been quite a few complaints that Outlook 2007 (running in Windows Vista) is not sending out emails properly when paired with certain Linksys routers. I actually experienced this recently – what a mess. Thought I would share a quick fix and save some of you from hours of hair pulling.

For one reason or another, my Linksys WRT54GL wireless-G router began intermittently dropping DNS connections (4.2.2.2) even though the default gateway (192.168.1.1) respond normally to pings. In short, I can see and access other computers in the local area network, but there is no internet connection. After 2 weeks of tech support calls and more than 4 hours of total support time, the effort finally paid off. Linksys is sending a replacement unit.

During each call, tech support suggested changing MTU settings, disabling Block Anonymous Internet Requests, hard resetting the router, re-flashing the firmware, power cycling the modem & router, running static IP & DNS settings on each computer, adjusting various wireless settings, etc…. You name it, we tried it. Of course, after each tedious call, the router would work fine. After some usage, the DNS drop would return. It got to the point that every 24 hours, the router needed a hard reset and a full re-setup to work properly again.

The WRT54GL has a 3 year warranty so I chose the cross shipment method for replacement. Cross shipment is where Linksys sends you a replacement unit first. After you receive the replacement, you simply send back the defective unit as opposed to having to send in your unit first before Linksys sends you another. The only difference is when you choose the cross shipment method, Linksys will put a hold on your credit card for the retail amount of the unit that they have sent you. Once they receive the defective unit, the credit card hold will be cancelled. Fair enough. I went through the RMA process and am awaiting a replacement unit.

After dusting off and setting up my old Linksys wireless-B BEFW11S4 router, all was well again… except for Outlook not being able to send out any emails! After some quick research, it turns out that the BEFW11S4 has been well documented to have email send issues. Two must do’s for this router to unblock Outlook sending emails are:

1. Set Max MTU to 1492 (rather than the disabled default of 1500)
2. Port triggering should be setup with these settings:
• TriggerPort Range: 25 ~ 25
• IncomingPort Range: 113 ~ 113

After these settings, both Outlook 2003 (running under Windows XP) & Outlook 2007 (running under Windows Vista) were still not able to send emails out. I had to further tweak each computer manually to send out emails via Outlook. Here is what I had to do in the time being until the new replacement router arrives.

Under each Outlook email account, I removed my normal SMTP setting of smtp.domain.com (your SMTP will be different and is based on your own domain name). It was replaced with an SMTP setting from my ISP – in this case, my cable provider. This solved the XP system but not the Vista system. For Outlook 2007 under Windows Vista, when using your ISP’s SMTP, an additional step of disabling authentication is required.

Under Tools >> Account Settings >> Account (Double clicking on each email account) >> More Settings >> Outgoing Server Tab, uncheck “My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication” like so:

Voila! Emails are going out again.

Funny enough, after switching SMTP settings, I disabled the above Max MTU settings and Port Triggering on the BEFW11S4 router and emails are still going out. Go figure!

Not sure why there are so many issues (& resolutions) in the Linksys forums regarding email send issues with certain Linksys routers but there you go. Hope this quick fix can help others with your Outlook email send problems.

In the meantime, I hope Purolator gets here quick with that replacement unit! I miss my faster wireless transfer speeds and stronger WPA encryption!

Tweet This Post