NASA's Cassini spacecraft has been orbiting around Saturn and its various moons since 2004. In that time, it's collected thousands upon thousands of awe-inspiring images of the ringed planet and its satellites.

Sequence put together not by Nasa, but by a science-loving geology student, Nahum Chazarra.

This is great. Knock yourselves out arguing over the interpretation of the pie chart, the mysterious absence of other devices (Wii, PS3?), the non-inclusion of "PC" devices... there's enough here for days of argument. (It also shows how misleading the phrase "more than" can be.)

Andreas Gal is one of the Mozilla team leaders:

I want to land bug 714408 on mozilla-central as soon as I get review for it. It adds hardware-accelerated audio/video decoding support to Gecko using system decoders already present on the system. Android, for example, ships by default with a number of decoders, and in particular for such mobile devices we really have to use these hardware-accelerated decoders for good battery life (and performance).

Looks innocuous; in fact, it's the Firefox team caving in and using system decoders for H.264 and AAC and MP3 (patent-encumbered all), and essentially admitting that the open source WebM video codec is not going to get any traction on the web. Those with long(ish) memories may recall which company said it would drop H.264 support from its browser - but so far hasn't. Read the whole thing; fascinating.

Good for Cambridge-based Blinkx:

AOL today announced that its video search results are powered by blinkx. In turn, blinkx will incorporate AOL's premium video assets into its current index of over 35 million hours of content, making them easily searchable and accessible to users around the world.

The partnership expands the quantity and quality of AOL's video search results and also delivers integrated Safe Search tools that block adult oriented content from minors.

A few years ago, Blinkx was poised to take over the world because of its ability to search inside video. Somehow the promise wasn't quite fulfilled.

The latest update adds functionality:

Videographers were promised from the introduction of FCP X that in the near future we would once again be able to edit a multi-camera project, and Apple has delivered. With up to 64 active camera angles available, FCP X may actually shake the industry to its core with that level of multicam facility in the basic editing package. This means that you can actively edit more cameras than I have ever heard of being used for any multicam project, with the possible exception of the Super Bowl or, perhaps the bullet-time for The Matrix.

However, what's completely mystifying is why Apple released a not-good-enough initial version in June 2011, rather than waiting until it had everything it needed. It has lost clients - will this really get them back?

(Thanks @rquick for the link.)

"Which came first: Apple's creative pro market shrinking, which might have led to dramatic changes in Final Cut Pro; or Apple's cavalier attitude toward legacy features, which might have frightened video editors? According to the professionals we spoke to, there was already signs of an industry shift to Avid before FCPX came along, but Apple still had a very loyal and dedicated user base that it's now turning away from.

"'The perception here is that Apple is more concerned with selling iPads and iPhones than they are with the people who have stuck with them since the 90's, the professional editors and VFX people,' said Jude Mull, who works at a post-production facility in Hollywood that processes and digitizes some of your favorite TV shows."

Final Cut Pro X is looking for professionals like iMovie 8 did for amateurs - a refit too far. Professionals have alternatives, however - such as Avid.

"Today, Facebook released their Messenger app and seconds later, we see that there is a video component to the application"

"Just for starters, we’ve sold more than 53m Xbox 360 consoles, and Xbox has been the top-selling console in the last year. There are more than 30m Xbox LIVE members. And more than 10m Kinects have sold to date. Those are pretty big numbers for a device that, until recently, had primarily been purchased by hardcore gamers. But something interesting has happened in the last few years. While people are still playing a ton of video games, 40% of all Xbox activity now is non-game. Put another way, we’re seeing an average of 30 hours of video consumption per month per Xbox, a number that is growing fast."

Might not help you understand the film. Then again, it might.