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Silverlight is Microsofts "version" of Flash.  Flash of course has been around for a much longer time than Silverlight and is a much more mature product.  However, Silverlight is based on the .NET programming platform and the Window Presentation Foundation (WPF) layer.  This means for a much more robust and extensible programming language and capability than Flash and Activescript can provide.  This will allow you to creative the immersive content that will win in a Web 3.0 world.

Mark my words now, content will become less and less Video based and more and more interactive and immersive based as time goes by.  That means more then just chaptering videos.  It means tight integration with social networks such as keying of videos to twitter flows.  It means interacting with other around the content on webcams and messaging.  And Silverlight looks to be a great platform to creative these incredibly immersive experiences- that is of course if enough people are willing to download the SIlverlight environment into their browsers.  And it also depends on how deep of an experience HTML 5.0 will be able to provide - my suspicion is that it will be very good but not as deep as a platform based on a true programming language and environment.

For example if you have a cube with 1 face directly toward a light there would be no wrapping to the other faces (no light hitting) because there is no straight line from the light to those faces. But with a sphere you would see a fall off around the sphere and the quality of that falloff is dependent on the type of light.

A kino (florescent) light, for example is very soft, so you can think of the light as kinda fluffy and therefore wraps softly and lightly around the subject.  However, an HMI is a an extremely sharp hard light (actually a single point light) which therefore has a quick falloff and fast wrap falloff on the subject.  Tungsten is also quite sharp, though much less then an HMI.  You can make a Tungsten or HMI wrap more by adding some diffusion and thereby softening it.  

When placing a light, the softer light will wrap more and therefore will have to be moved further off angle to have a good falloff from light to dark on the subject as opposed to a hard light which can be on a more direct angle.  Understanding this will help you to get more bang for your buck with light placement and helps to avoid some flagging you might otherwise do to control a poorly placed light.

 If you are editing a project at 24 frames per second and cant go subframe for audio then you can only cut or move audio at frame lines which is every 1/24 of a second.  While 1/24 of a second sounds short and small, your ear can hear a whole lot faster then that.  Take, for example audio recorded at a 48 KHz sample rate - that is 48,000 samples per second - each lasting 1/48000 of a second.  Why so much? Cause we hear very very quickly.  So to take out an audio pop, or edit a syllable or sibilance or move a word in sync with picture you almost always need a higher audio resolution then the sample rate of your video (24 Hz).

Avid - doesnt allow subframe audio editing so you are forced to export to an audio program, do your work and reimport the results.  Adobe CS4 Premier does allow subframe audio editing, down to the sample.  FCP allows some subframe editing.  ALL audio editing tools allow subframe editing (since they arent really tied to video anyhow).

First you need to export the audio from your video project to bring into protools.  A good format for this is OMF.  You do not want to just mixdown the audio into a wav file because you need your tracks to be independent to put different eqs and effects where you need them.  Also make sure that you put sufficient handles on your material to allow for crossfades and extending of clips.  I like to have 5 second handles but less can work as well.  You should also put a pop at the beginning AND the end of your audio so you can check sync and drift later on.

To import OMF into protools you need to enable digitranslator, which costs in the range of $500. This will allow a complete one step import and placement of your audio on separate tracks.  

Once you complete your work simply mix down into a wav file and reimport into your video NLE.  Check that your pops line up and you will be good to go.

However, for video production, the chip resolution race in the DSLRs makes no difference really - or at least not directly.  Think about the resolution of a HD frame (1920x1080) - now think about how many pixels a 6 megapixel camera can capture - now how about a 12 Megapixel.   It just stops mattering because you cant fill a 1 gallon bucket with more then a gallon of water.  Have you ever tried to bring a still image from a high megapixel camera into an HD project in Premier? It complains that it is too large.  So the megapixel race isnt important to the video side.

Well... thats not entirely true - the MORE megapixels you have the WORSE your aliasing issues will be.  This is because the optical low pass filter will be much finer and allow more detail into the camera imager when there are more megapixels.  Therefore the techniques used to get video from the chips currently, such as pixel binning, row skipping etc, will have more of a disparity with the actual resolution hitting the imager.  Therefore you will alias more.

So in fact a higher megapixel HDSLR camera will perform more poorly (everything else equal of course other then the megapixel count).   hmmmm - interesting.

One thing to note, is that although the Targa images are uncompressed, you are still limited by the information in the original video file.  So the compression artifacts will still be there.  BUT, and here is the key, you have not introduced any NEW compression issues by using targa images.  So you can hand off the Targa images to someone else, for effects or whatever is needed, without fear of losing quality when exporting from your NLE.  They can do their work and in turn export Targa for you and similarly no quality will be lost (except, of course, any quality loss from the work they did on the footage).  Its an excellent way to collaborate over footage.

Couple caveats, your video files (sets of stills) will be large.  So you will need the storage to move them around OR a lot of time to ftp them to the other person.  You need to make sure the person receiving the images can pull in a sequence of stills as a video file into their NLE or effects program (most if not all can).  You need to make sure the images are numbered sequentially at the end of the file names so that the NLE knows how to order them (most if not all NLEs do this for you automatically when exporting Targa, though you need to make sure the name has the numbers at the end).  Finally, and this is very important, make sure to use the exact same frame rate when exporting and importing, otherwise frame blending will occur to match the frame rates OR your footage will play back too fast or too slow in the receiving NLE.

The 7D outputs an HD stream live through its HDMI connection while recording - this allows you to use a larger, high quality monitor to pull focus.  Since most times filmmakers are using these HDSLRs to capture shallow depth of field, both for aesthetics and to avoid aliasing, critical focus is very difficult to hit.  With a good monitor you can do this.

The T2i had an HD stream from its HDMI port UNTIL you hit record.  Then it switches to SD.  And you cannot use an SD signal to get precise focus.  So this camera is good for set it and forget it focus situations, such as an interview (with little movement) or other controlled shots. But nothing where you need to pull focus by using a monitor.  Good to know ...

Once you have keyed it - just place it over a sold.  Find a texture to use as a background and screen it onto the background with opacity to taste.  Then use a circular ramp to have some color highlight the keyed action.  You can also screen a texture over the foreground with a low opacity and then randomly wiggle it to create a nice "noise" effect.  Play around with some other options or plugins but try to be subtle - Dont do too much at a time.  With just a little work you can have amazing b-roll cutaways for music videos, promos and any creative pieces.

Adobe Premier you just point to a p2 dir or a folder containing many p2 dirs and it finds everything and references it there so you can actually use one of your masters as a working copy - lovely and i didnt realize till i started with premier a few months ago. 

My guess is that premier actually was the less developed platform at first so just referenced files where they are to be simpler and now its working out for them.