So far we discussed lots of factors which you have to consider when you are buying a Smartphone. I hope now you are comfortable with lots of marketing jargons they use and technical terms used in specifications.
Quick Catch-up
Today I’m going to focus my attention to operating systems in Smartphone. This is a really important factor which gives life to all previously discussed hardware.
If you go back few years in time, you will notice that there was lots of mobile operating systems developed by many phone manufactures. It was very confusing for customers. But today the situation has changed and you have to pay attention to very few mobile operating systems.
Here I’m trying to show you what are the strengths and weaknesses in those. Then you will get a clear picture as to which mobile operating system should be there in your Smartphone.
Apple iOS
iOS is developed by Apple, specially for their iPhone and iPad. The architecture of iOS is very carefully engineered to consume lesser hardware resources and deliver optimum touch display experience to users.
It’s having lots of functionalities and they are organized in very user-friendly manner. Most of the configurations are pre installed and users can start using the device without worrying about technical details.
Applications, the most important thing about Smartphone! And iOS supports the largest number of applications in the earth. You can find millions of applications in Apples App store.
The environment in iOS is well controlled and restricted. Therefore it’s less vulnerable for crashes. This would be a great OS for most of the non techy people who hate to struggle with technical issues.
Quick Catch-up
New Features and Possibilities of Apple iOS 5.0
Google Android
World’s fastest growing mobile OS and it’s developed and managed by Google. It comes for free, therefore devices that comes with this are having good price labels. Android has lots of functionality and user friendliness giving solid competition to iOS in Smartphone market.
When it comes to applications Google Play is having millions of different applications and it’s growing in an exponential rate. Lots of developers around the world are developing lots of creative applications for the android platform.
Unlike in Apple iOS, android is not developed for very controlled hardware environment. It’s a generic OS which could be used with any supported hardware platform. Due to that there can be some performance bottlenecks and technical issues.
The best part is, if you area techy person you can do a lot with Android than with iOS. You are free to do any type of software tweaking and have lots of fun.
Quick Catch-up
Windows Phone
This was in the game for many years, but recently Nokia-Microsoft collaboration gave a boost to Windows Phone as well as to Nokia. This is a proprietary Mobile OS developed by Microsoft. It’s highly performance tuned and comes with famous metro UI.
When it comes to application support it’s still way behind than iOS or Android. There are very lesser applications available, but most of the important ones for personal and business usage is there.
This is a future trend and if you are buying you must be ready to compromise application support while experiencing excellent elastic user interfaces.
Quick Catch-up
HTC HD 7 – The Windows Mobile Smartphone
Wrapping Up
It’s a very difficult task to say which OS is the better one. It’s highly dependant on whom you are and what you need. My personal point of view is as below.
If you are a techy person go for Android Smartphone.
If you looking for Smartphone for personal or business usage and you are a non-techy person iOS would be a great choice. Then you have to go for an iPhone.
If you fancy the aesthetic appeal in UI in your Smartphone, Windows Phone would be a great choice.
If you do a further research you will come to know that there are many other Smartphone mobile OS such as Blackberry, MeeGo and WebOS.
However there is no clear cut way to tell which OS is the best fit for you. If you need further personalized help, drop a comment here and I’m here to help you.
Cinema Industry is rapidly developing both technologically and conceptually in past few decades. Story writers came up with unbelievable stories, and then directors made them possible in Celluloid film. Sometime after 3D graphic designers made lots of impossible dreams possible with virtual reality characters and backgrounds. Especially in scientific fictions and action moves were empowered with lots of technologies and concepts.
Latest move post production is totally based on Digital based technologies. Digital era evolve the SLR camera to DSLR. Yet moves are recorded in analog celluloid films. Due to that there were lots of technical difficulties faced in post production face. Top of all there were no replacement to Celluloid film with digital recording technologies due to their low resolution video frames. However, in that past few years digital cinema cameras are been introduce which give us hope of total digital cinema production.
Existing Technology
Existing technology used to record a movie is Celluloid film. It is very similar to the film that we used in SLR cameras before DSLR camera comes. It’s like taking 24 still pictures in SLR camera and plays them as a film. In Cine camera celluloid film is running inside it, and there is a lens system to focus light in to that. The speed of running on celluloid film decided the frame rate of the video. The frames in the video get burnt in to celluloid film and then it need to be developed chemically. If the director needs some special color correction that need to be done chemically.
In editing, it will be linear editing. In very early stage, editors used to cut off the part of film and re-join them to get the edited movie. Later there were special editing stations to do non linear editing for celluloid films. In the case they need a 3D object in the film. They have to transfer the frame in to new celluloid film with the 3D object in it. Later mixing stations were capable of work with a computer and control entire procedure through that. This made the life easier when producing virtual reality moves using computer technologies.
In the early stage of cinema, they were using a very basic version of celluloid film. So moves were in black and white. Later the chemical that were using in the f celluloid film were improved gradually, so movies go better colors. Today they are capable of capturing the color in front of the camera as it is. With the improvement of the less kit and cinema rigs, in collaboration of all directors could come up with exceptional moves that we see today in theaters.
Advantages
The reason why movie producers are still using this technology is, it the only option to display and movie in large cinema screen. Celluloid films are having unlimited number of pixels theoretically. If you have good optics, you can expand the frame in to any larger screen. In theater this celluloid film fill will be developed as a “positive” which contain video frames in transparent film and it will be run in the given speed in projector with the aid of optical system to zoom it in to standard cine screen. And latest celluloid films are capable of capturing very accurate colors. Due to that some video producers are using celluloid film even to record videos prepared for television broadcasting.
Disadvantages
No matter how quality is the video celluloid films are having lots of problems. Most of the problems are there in SLR cameras and here it’s even worse. Mainly the cost, cost for celluloid film and cost of complex cameras are way higher to afford. Due to that to produce a cinema there is a huge cost barrier. And the cameras are huge and very less portable. If something goes wrong, you have no way to delete it. All the frames that captured are irreversibly burnt in to celluloid film. In such a case you have to throw the film away. In the post production phase you need very complex instruments to get the editing done. If you need to include partial virtual reality world in your movie its even difficult and take very longer time to finalize or render.
How about 1080p HD videos?
Now you must be wondering, “Why can’t we use full HD videos in Theaters?”. Yes 1080p HD videos are very common today with Blu-ray disks and people are watching them in big Plasma screens or projectors. 1080p videos are having the frame size of 1920 x 1080 which is very big for most of the home theater system we use. But when you take the same video in to theater the video resolution is way not enough. It will be blurred in the screen and you will realize that video need more details means more resolution. But do we have such cameras to capture such videos. Never seen in general production environments, but they are out there.
Digital Cinema Standards
The cinema industry was so badly demanding a digital cinema camera for years. Therefore various different standards were introduced to develop such a camera by various people. When it comes to HD video there were standards like 720p, 1080i and 1080p. Same sort of standards for screen resolution were introduced to digital cinema as well. So camera manufactures will have to comply with them.
2K Videos
It’s having 2048×1080 resolution video frames. Normally used in 24 fps yet you can choose to use in 48 fps as well, if you are using background tracking. This is a good resolution to display in cine screen, yet most of the people are still reluctant with the detail level.
4K Videos
It’s having 4096×2160 resolution in video frame and very good detail level to display in digital theaters. Frame rate is same as 2K. Most probably this will be the standard for future digital cinema.
8K Videos
It’s having 8192 × 4320 resolution in video frames. They could be use to video capturing to get the maximum amount of details for post production. Yet final product will be redder as 4K.
Advantages of Digital Cinema
Digital cinema solved many problems which were there in celluloid film technology. The main factor is cost. Initial investment could be higher for equipments yet cost for video shoot will be much lesser as long as they will be stored in reusable digital storage. Cameras will be less complex and smaller equipments with much portability. In the case something goes wrong you can easily delete it and re shoot it. In post production the editor can use all the non liner editing techniques to come up with exceptional video. Most of the latest movies are having virtual reality technologies included and those will be much easier why video also in digital format. Further, if you need to do a advanced color correction it also will be much easier and less costly.
Digital Cinema Cameras
Red Camera
The most discussed digital cinema camera is Red camera. There is a range of cameras with different capabilities. The very first one camera they released is Red One. This camera attracted massive public attention which was capable of recording 2K videos. Lots of people were inspired and started doing research on possibilities of digital cinema. Lots of theaters were looking forward to upgrade their conventional projector to digital projector.
In 2011 they released the camera Epic which is again capable of capturing video in 4K format and 5K format as well. The camera comes as different version like brain only (only the processor), Epic-M Pack and total package. This is excellent choice for any kind of commercial digital cinematography.
In late 2011 they are planning to release another camera good for small scale digital cinematography named Scarlet. It comes with an affordable and good set of features as well. Most attractive thing in there is some version of Scarlet support Canon lenses. This will be a good news for the people who already doing digital cinematography using Canon DSLRs.
There are lots of Movies, commercial and music videos done using red cameras. Below video shows some of those.
Canon EOS C300
With the start of digital cinema era Canon also decided to come in to the market with a camera called EOS C300 which is capable of 4K video capturing. There were lots of cinematographers who are using Canon DSLR cameras for their production. This will be good upgrade for them since they can use their existing lens kits. And I believe this will be a good competition to Red camera as well.
Future
SLR to DSLR
Sometimes ago most of the professional photographers were using analog SLR cameras for their photography. Once the Digital SLR camera comes and they improve up to Full frame camera most of the professionals started using DSLRs for they work. Today it’s very rare to find a professional photographer still using a SLR. It’s true that there is a data loss when we convert the continuous data stream like light in to discreet data system like Digital. But most of the cases human eye is not capable if identifying it with the latest digital advancement. And considering many other factors like ease of use, cost, fatly tolerance and digital post processing professional have been shifted to DSLRs.
Digital Cinema Possibilities
In cinema industry large part of the movies are still producing with celluloid film because digital technology was not developed to not to make feel difference to human eye. But with this advancement of digital cinema cameras and their 2K and 4K video formats, future movie producers will start using digital cine cameras more. Even now most of the forthcoming massive movie productions are doing using digital cameras, especially Red Camera Epic.
Post production
Importantly there won’t be much effort to improve the post production environment since they are up to standard already. All they need is very powerful computer to handle high resolution videos and relevant software. If talk about software they are more than advanced today to get any classy work done. Most of the productions housed are using clusters of computer to get more processing power for editing and rendering. If it’s still not enough they can easily get a online cloud cluster or rendering farm.
Digital Theaters
At the same time theaters also need to be equipped with the latest digital projectors. Their initial cost of way bigger than previous film projectors, yet with that investment they will be able to deliver amazing movie experience to the audience.
Windows 7 is one of the greatest products I have experienced after Windows XP. But when it comes to folder arrangement I came to know there is a missing feature. In windows XP I could disable ‘Auto Arrange’ then drag and re arrange icon the way I want in any folder. In the case I need to re arrange folders in more organized way I could enable ‘align to grid’. After that still I could drag and re arrange, but icons will be aligned to a virtual grid.
Once I start using Windows 7, I noticed that this features is there only in Desktop, not for other folders. I was keep looking for a solution to disable auto arrange and enable align to grid whenever I want it. Finally I found a way.
How It Works?
When you go to folder in Windows 7 you won’t be able to see the options ‘Auto Arrange’ and ‘Align to Grid’ in the right click menu. If you want those back you have to change the System Registry with some values.
That sounds too geeky. How can an average person going to enable those options in right click menu? Here we go with the solution.
Download this file
Save and Unzip it to a known location of your computer
Run ”disablefullrowselect.reg” file by double clicking on it.
It will give you the below pop up window.
Say “Yes” to continue and of course this is a trusted file. It won’t cause any harm and you have nothing to worry about.
Then it will give you below pop up confirmation
Click “OK” and we are done.
If this process cause any problem to your system, reverse it to original configuration by running “undo.reg“
Then you can go to a folder and right click. Under “View” you will be able to see the options “Auto Arrange” and “Align to Grid”. You can enable and disable them for any folder any time.
Hardware: Intel Core i5 2nd Gen // 4GB DDR2
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium // 64 Bit
Tips
If these options won’t appear even after following these steps, you may try restarting your PC.
These options will be disabled for “List” and “Details”. If you are in such a viewing option change it to “Medium Icons” or may be “Large Icons” to enable those options.
Now you have total freedom to drag and re arrange the files in any folder the way you want. If you want to apply any specific configuration to entire folders, follow below steps.
Alt-> menu bar appears -> Tools -> Folder options -> View -> “Apply To Folders”
Ex: You disable “Auto Arrange” in current folder, then follow the above steps, auto arrange will be disable for the entire folder in your PC
Note
By the time I was writing this post I didn’t know the original creator of registry patch. Recently though a comment below I got to know him. I could have notice him earlier If I opened this file in notepad. He is Ramesh Srinivasan and click here to visit his blog.
