Category Archives: Photographers

ZumoCast

iPad, Movies, Photography

Your own iPad cloud.

I have some 800 uncompressed movies stored on a 4+4 terabyte ganged series of hard drives, attached to a MacMini which is connected to our TV. Uncompressed because one day I believe 100″ LCD screens will be affordable and compression drops quality. That 100″ screen will need a high quality original DVD file. These movie files, in VOB format, average 4-6gB each and while you can copy these to your iPad there are two snags.

First, you will run out of space on the iPad very quickly, and you are wasting resources as an uncompressed file is unnecessary for the iPad’s small screen. Second, you are wasting your time as the iPad cannot play VOB files; it’s limited to m4v/H264 video files which average 1.2-1.3gB. So I have a few favorite movies on the iPad which I have converted to m4v using Handbrake and RipIt (where needed) but the process is very inefficient. Conversion averages 30 minutes, and I have to rotate the files on and off the iPad owing to its very limited storage.

Well, there is a miracle app for the Mac and your iPad which does everything you could possibly wish. It’s called ZumoCast and it makes your Mac or PC into your own cloud storage. It will access your movie, picture or music files over the air and can access these whether they are on the Mac or on HDDs attached to the Mac. And here’s the magic part. ZumoCast converts those monster VOB files to m4v on the fly and displays them perfectly on the iPad after a few seconds of buffering using our home wifi. To set Zumo up you download the Mac app, tell it which folders you would like your iPad to see, install the iPad app and click away. The movie quality on the iPad’s screen is superb.

So now my iPad has access to the 4tB of storage attached to the Mini, access to the Mini itself and access to any other Intel Mac on the network where I have installed the Zumo Mac app. Unless I have the Mini doing some processor intensive task like a backup there is no stuttering, multitasking works fine and for music files I can route the sound to any network device in the home. The Macs in the home have suddenly become my own cloud storage, accessible from the iPad.

Two other items of lunacy – Zumo says the iPad app works over 3G as well as wifi (I have not tried that as my iPad does not have 3G), and ZumoCast is free. Quite how their business model works I have no idea as there are no ads, but free is good.

Showing the folders on the MacMini made available to ZumoCast on ther iPad – including four remote ‘Movies’ HDDs.

AirPlay works fine for sound but not for video.

The iTunes library on the remote Mac works beautifully with AirPlay.

A movie directory from one of the remote HDDs seen in ZumoCast on the iPad.

Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ – the original VOB file plays on the iPad over the air.

If you want to store the converted file on your iPad, ZumoCast allows you to do that though it’s hard to see why you would need to do this – maybe for viewing/listening where you have no wifi or 3G access? The stored file will be in the appropriate iPad format.

Limitations: ZumoCast cannot play copy protected DRM files – like older iTunes music purchases or any iTunes movie purchases. However, if your content has all been ripped from DVDs and CDs, like mine, this is not a problem.

ZumoCast compared to Apple’s Remote iPad app: ZumoCast doesn’t care what format your remote file – music or video – is stored in, as long as there’s no DRM. Further, you do not have to have iTunes running on the remote Mac for the iPad app to work as ZumoCast addresses the remote files directly, not through iTunes. Remote will play DRM files on the remote Mac but that Mac must have iTunes running. So it seems the only time you would prefer Remote is when the remote file has DRM.

So with ZumoCast you can use the iPad as a remote controller for your file servers where your music and video files, regardless of format, reside, and watch them on the iPad; further, for sound tracks you can route the sound to your AirPlay device of choice. There is no need to perform format conversion to suit the limited range supported by iTunes or the iPad and storage is not an issue as your files never make it to the iPad, the latter being used solely as a routing and display device. Inspired.

Alfred Stieglitz

Photographers

A change agent.

The American photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) took photography out of its early frou frou era and into the modern world. He was not only a fine photographer, he was also a great promoter of other artists, including photographers, painters and writers, primarily through his 291 Gallery in New York. In all things artistic, Stieglitz was on the cutting edge of the avant garde.

The Steerage, 1908

His best known image is The Steerage where, as a passenger on board the first class section of a ship to France he chanced on the image of the fourth class passengers in what was known as ‘The Steerage’ – maybe because the people were herded in there like steers. Rent the PBS documentary on Stieglitz from Netflix and you will hear how, when he first saw the crowd, he was fixated by the straw topper and the white suspenders; he dashed back to his cabin for his monster plate camera, one exposure left, and captured this stunning image – no one had moved. Twenty-five years later a young Cartier-Bresson was doing much the same, albeit with a strong dose of surrealism added, but he could bang away over three dozen times, with his pocket sized Leica. Not that he needed to.

Even in his earlier work, Stielglitz’s sense of immediacy was in abundant evidence.

The Terminal, 1893

This is the New York location where horses pulling streetcars, before the days of electrification, were changed. The photograph is electric, not just for its historical interest but also because of the sense that you are there. You can almost smell what’s happening.

Stieglitz was a class act, selfless in his support of fellow artists not least, in later life, of his great love Georgia O’Keeffe, another transformational American modern painter.

Stieglitz in middle age.

The PBS documentary is an excellent place to start if you are new to Alfred Stieglitz.

Eisie’s nurse

Photographers

A wonderful reminiscence.

Here’s a picture of the nurse whom Eisie photographed in Times Square all those years back on V-J day:

Here’s the picture:

Until the word ‘iconic’ was destroyed by overuse, this was one of the great iconic reportage snaps. He took several as the sailor was kissing every woman he passed. This was the best. From the end of the last war America won ….

Ansel Adams, photographer?

Photographers

Please ….

It’s no great secret to long time visitors here that I detest the landscape work of Ansel Adams. His picture postcard subjects, rendered in grossly over processed pretentious monochrome, leave me feeling physically ill. One of his most adulated snaps, ‘Moonrise Hernandez’ is a perfect example. Clearly taken in broad daylight (look at the shadows on the tombstones) it has been grotesquely processed to imitate moonlight. For all I know even the moon was pasted in from another image. As for his image of Half Dome, Yosemite …. well, better not to get me going.

Yet critically deprived Americans – eager for a claim to an ‘artist’ of their own – drool over his pictures and some even cough up serious coin to stick one of his monstrosities on the wall. The older and more yellowed, the more they pay. I know of what I speak, having had a close brush with death viewing the great man’s work myself. Yes, dear reader, I have held an original Adams print in my (cotton gloved) hands, which is more than 99.9% of his uncritical fans can say.

Well, if you thought his landscape work was pure garbage, be assured that his street photography makes it look good by comparison.

NPR has had the courage to reproduce twelve of his street snaps and it’s hard not to laugh once you have supressed the urge to cry at the thought that someone actually paid him for these. Just click the picture below, but maybe first get something cold, liquid and strong. You will need it.

Drink before you click.

The new AppleTV – Part III

Hardware, Movies

Adding a DAC.

Part II appears here.

The new AppleTV lacks traditional coaxial analog connectors for sound output; it comes with an optical Toslink sound output socket only. So if you want to route the AppleTV’s sound output to external speakers via an analog external amplifier/receiver lacking a digital optical sound input, you need a Digital Analog Converter (DAC). Speakers (and amplifiers, for that matter) built into TV sets are generally poor quality so bypassing them and using external loudspeaker boxes connected to a receiver ensures better sound.

There are two versions of the DAC, depending whether your sound system is 2 speakers and an optional subwoofer (2.1) or four corner speakers, a center and a subwoofer (5.1).

My Sony receiver is not that old yet it lacks a Toslink connector for optical digital sound, meaning I had to interpose a DAC between the AppleTV and the Sony. Adding a new digital receiver makes no economic sense, so I bought a Gefen DAC. There are two models.

  • For 2.1 sound – use this one. $58 at the time of writing. This is the one I use.
  • For 5.1 sound – this one. $91.

I went with the Gefen – cheaper units are available – as research disclosed it was known to work with the AppleTV.

Red circle denotes removed rubber Toslink covers. Green arrows show Toslink cable connections.
Apple Remote included for scale. Gold connectors route two channel analog sound to the receiver. iPad backdrop.

As the specifications are silent I also purchased a short Toslink optical fiber cable only to find that Gefen includes one in the box with the DAC! So save $6 and don’t buy a separate cable. Then I ran into a serious snag. I had never so much as seen a Toslink cable before and, no matter how I tried, I could not get the flimsy connector to stay in either the Gefen or AppleTV sockets. After a spot of head scratching and Googling, it transpired that the optical ends of the connector are covered with translucent rubber caps, circled in the above picture. Removing these allowed the connectors to fit at both ends. Duh! I knew that engineering degree would come in handy one day ….

After that it was plain sailing. I switched off the TV’s speakers, connected the AppleTV to the Gefen and routed my two RCA coaxial cables from the Gefen DAC to the Sony receiver. The DAC comes with a small power supply so you will have to search out yet another adapter to make it fit your already overburdened power strip. The red LED on the DAC confirms it’s getting power but in practice you will hide it out of the way.

The sound is excellent, the Sony receiver’s volume control is set at half way through the scale so clearly the amplifier is being adequately driven by the DAC and, equally importantly, not overdriven. The TV remains connected using an HDMI cable (for video) and the orange cable you can see connected to the AppleTV is for wired internet. I use wired in preference to wireless as the AppleTV sits right next to my broadband modem and I always prefer wired to wireless, having grown up in a world where men were men, cars had carburettors and the word ‘digital’ was not in common use. The small cable routed to the front bezel of the AppleTV is the optical sender from my IR blaster.

Check the Comments to this article to learn how the HDMI and Toslink sound outputs interact.

I have to add that until now I have always thought the USB connector to be one of the worst designed on the planet, and just slightly better than the Firewire800 one. Well, it must now take the runner’s up place to the Toslink one which, though keyed, is so small that you have to look awfully hard for the keyways, for some reason only fits one way (nonsensical for an optical signal) and will leave you scratching your head because of those little rubber covers about which the instructions are silent.

We now enjoy premium quality video and sound from the new AppleTV and greatly enjoy watching our photo slideshows with the help of this handy little device, as well as listening to our music and watching Netflix and iTunes movies.