Hey that rhymes! My wife blessed me with a Creative Vado 3 HD camera for my birthday and here’s the first video using it. This camera supports up to 2 hours of 720p HD footage and has some other nice bells and whistles. I didn’t mention this in the video, but I want to thank Chris Pirillo for recommending this camera to me. If you decide to purchase it, go to http://go.tagjag.com/vado3

In this video, I provide an update on my high definition goals.

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Basically, the Mac Pro fund raising drive has been cancelled. I’ve decided to apply those funds towards future giveaways to the community ($95). Much to the delight of a lot of my listeners/viewers, I am going to PC route. I have sold a majority of my equipment here to raise the money to buy a Core i7 system. I’ve sold my Canon Powershot TX1, my old gaming machine, my HP Mini, and my camera lenses to raise the money. This is why the camera angle you see now is with my Canon HV20. So yeah, Bwana.TV will be back in high definition shortly.

In this video, I discuss my thoughts surrounding Western Digital’s recent announcement of a 1 Terabyte 2.5 inch Hard Drive.

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This is an exciting development since it touches the gaming world as well as the mobile computing market. 2.5 inch hard drives are widely used in Xbox 360s and Playstation 3s, so this pricey option ($299!) is available. For more details, visit this link: http://bit.ly/Rx52D

In this video, I answer question from Twitter from CarlDavid815 – http://twitter.com/CarlDavid815 – who asks "Is a mac mini good for video editing? like a 5min HD video for youtube? im using a aiptek 1080p HD camcorder and im getting mni!" Thanks for the question, CarlDavid815.

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I'm sorry to say, Mac Minis are not an ideal solution for HD video editing. I'm pretty much in the same boat as you in terms of the video I produce. My videos are about 5 minutes, 720p, and are uploaded to Youtube for HD. In order to do efficient editing of HD Video, you'll need a fairly powerful CPU, video card, and a fast hard drive. Having these three components will eliminate the possibility of bottlenecks later on. If you want to do HD video editing on Mac OS X, I don't think you should get a Mac Mini, Macbook or even an iMac. I would recommend spending money on a Mac Pro, or even a Macbook Pro on the low end of the spectrum. Thanks for the question CarlDavid815.

In this video, I answer question from Twitter from CarlDavid815 – http://twitter.com/CarlDavid815 – who asks "Is a mac mini good for video editing? like a 5min HD video for youtube? im using a aiptek 1080p HD camcorder and im getting mni!" Thanks for the question, CarlDavid815.

Sponsor: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit www.gotomeeting.com/techpodcasts Sponsor: Try SquareSpace free for 14 days, use the code bwana to save 10% on the life of the account www.squarespace.com/?associateTag=bwana

I'm sorry to say, Mac Minis are not an ideal solution for HD video editing. I'm pretty much in the same boat as you in terms of the video I produce. My videos are about 5 minutes, 720p, and are uploaded to Youtube for HD. In order to do efficient editing of HD Video, you'll need a fairly powerful CPU, video card, and a fast hard drive. Having these three components will eliminate the possibility of bottlenecks later on. If you want to do HD video editing on Mac OS X, I don't think you should get a Mac Mini, Macbook or even an iMac. I would recommend spending money on a Mac Pro, or even a Macbook Pro on the low end of the spectrum. Thanks for the question CarlDavid815.

In this video, supereddie asks a common question:  “What is the best netbook, I want to get one.”  This question is a difficult one to answer for everyone, but there is a methodology I believe can help you make an informed decision.  Since netbooks have common functionality across CPU, memory, screen size, and weight, you should decide on the features which differ among vendors such as HP, Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Dell, Samsung, and MSI.  Make you decision based on the following features:  Hard disk space, battery life, expansion ports, and look & feel. Prioritize these four feature sets and decide which model meets your needs. Thanks supereddie for the question!

In this video, I answer a question from Dean who has a complex issue with Youtube HD videos:  “I saw your very interesting and informative video on You Tube on how to post HD videos to You Tube.  I have been able to do this, but my videos have a lot of motion artifacts and blocking.”  Dean provides the following presets that he’s using:  “File Format: MP4 Video Format: H.264 Data Rate: 2000 Image Size: 1280 x 720HD Frame Rate: 30 Audio: AAC 192kbs Frames: 24″  My only recommendation at this point would be to try a different encoder other than iMovie to see if helps the issue.  Hopefully, someone in the Bwana.TV community will be able to offer other suggestions regarding your issue.  If you have any other questions you’d like me to attempt to entertain, email me at help@bwana.tv

In this video, I share a great tip shared by Yaroslav who writes:  “I work for a data recovery company and we’ve recently put up a webpage with some typical sounds dying hard drives make. Just thought you might find it interesting for your podcast or blog: http://datacent.com/failing_hard_drive_sounds”  Based on the sounds I’ve heard from the site, it sounds very accurate and painful.  For those of us who have had hard drives die on us, these sounds can bring back nightmares   It looks like a great resource for diagnosing what is going on with your hard drive in your computer.  Thanks Yaroslav for the great tip!!  If you have any other questions you’d like me to attempt to entertain, email me at help@bwana.tv

In this video, I quickly show a new feature that Youtube quietly rolled out regarding HD videos.  Now if you click the “Watch in HD” link for HD videos, it now resizes the video and takes over the top portion of the screen.  It’s a fairly large size and makes for a better experience.  To check it out, just click on “Watch in HD” on any Youtube video and notice the change.  Enjoy!

In this video, I give some tips on how to best prepare high definition (HD) video for upload to Youtube and other video sharing sites which support HD.  The first tip is to note the 1,024 (1GB) limit on Youtube or whatever video site you use.  HD video tends to be very large in size and it’s important to note the size before uploading to your video sharing site.  The next tip is the make sure you have a proper HD source device.  Make sure your video camera supports at least 720p resolution (1280×720).  My camera, Canon Powershot TX1, supports 720p and goes for about $400.  The Flip Mino HD costs $200 – $250 and the Kodak Z16 Pocket HD costs $179.  Both of these support 720p video.  If you already have an HD camcorder (I have a Canon HV20), you can use that as well.  The next tip is encoding.  I use VisualHub (which has been discontinued) for Mac, but there are tools such as Virtualdub, SUPER, and Handbrake for Windows that can do the same thing.  When encoding, make sure you enable RTSP streaming, and also enable H.264 support.  H.264 gives great video quality with high compression and also is compatible with most mobile devices such as the iPhone.  Once the files have finished converting, make sure the resulting file size is less than 1GB or whatever your favorite site’s limit is.  Once that’s done, you can go ahead and upload it!  I hope these tips help you move to HD on the web.  Enjoy!