DV for Teachers

Resources at Ken Stone’s FCP Site

Ken Stone’s site for Apple’s Final Cut Pro has a great resource page I just discovered, with links to backgrounds for FCP as well as iMovie, troubleshooting tools for Macs, and important links to standalone installers for the last four versions of QuickTime.

This is very important for both Windows and Mac users of QuickTime, so they can install or go back to the version they want. The different versions have different capabilities for saving files, so keep the different installers handy.

Here are the links, and major thanks to Ken for letting me know these older installers are still available.

Apple QuickTime 4.0.3 stand alone installer.

Apple QuickTime 4.1.2 stand alone installer.

Apple QuickTime 5.0.1 stand alone installer.

Apple QuickTime 5.0.2 stand alone installer.
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Please remember the victims and families of Tuesday’s tragedies.

Camcorder Reviews at dvspot

Need some comparisons of DV camcorders? Most educators using DV will buy consumer camcorders, and DV techno-whiz Adam Wilt has a pointer to dvspot, a new site which posts reviews and comparisons of consumer cameras. It’s an off-shoot of the Digital Camera Resource site, which reviews digital still cameras.——-

Please think of the people in New York, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere who were affected by today’s violence. Pause, breathe, think, and then act.

Video Formats for PowerPoint

I’m helping the Dean with a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation about our College which includes a 40-second clip from a video about the college. Inserting video in a PowerPoint presentation on a Windows machine isn’t as straightforward as it ought to be, especially if the presentation is to be projected from a laptop computer and the video enlarged to fill the screen.

QuickTime files won’t play within PowerPoint (and there is no good reason for Microsoft not to support that), unless the presentation slide includes a link to a web page and the QT player is loaded from there. (I’m going to ask Judy and Robert about other options with QuickTime). AVI format will play, but the format is no longer supported officially by Microsoft and the best compression possible still looks terrible if the clip is to be played full-screen. I don’t like Real, because its player is set to play other multimedia files that play better in their native players.

The Dean awaits; more later, including the promised links in yesterday’s update.——-

I’m using the video file compression program Cleaner 5 to make some QuickTime movies for a CD-ROM that needs to play on Windows machines. I made an error encoding one of the movies that is now costing me some valuable time and delaying the departure of a visiting professor from Egypt, who is patiently waiting for the disc.

I forgot to “flatten” one of the movie files as it compressed from DV format to QuickTime. “Flattening” the movie has to do with the different ways Windows and Macintosh computers handles files. If the movie isn’t flattened, the QuickTime player under Windows won’t be able to handle the playback.

I’ll update this posting a little later with links that better explain this.——-

2:30 p.m. update: I got a nice email from David Simpson, Guide of About.com’s Desktop Video site, after complaining to him about the pop-under ads. He doesn’t like them either, and will pass on any comments to the folks who run About.com.

More DVD Followup

Yesterday’s DVD seminar got me interested in finding out more, so I went to a former favorite site on Desktop Video at About.com, and was pleased to see so much new and up-to-date material. Go here for solid information about DVD authoring and a Q&A with Apple’s Senior Product Line Manager for DVD Products, Mike Evangelist.

Caution: the site uses those nasty pop-under ads! I would never link to them unless I found their information and links so useful. Write them and thank them for the content but tell them the ads stink!——-

I’m back from the “DVD Authoring Simplified” seminar. iDVD is very nice, albeit limited in the way iMovie is limited. These limitations are virtues for people beginning to work in the medium, or for projects which don’t require more than an hour of material, or which don’t require complex interaction… which pretty much covers the overwhelming majority of educational uses, as far as I can see.

I’m now better prepared for our new PowerMac G4 when it comes with iDVD and the DVD-burning SuperDrive.

Video in the Curriculum

Teachers share their ideas for teaching video production and editing in yet another great thread on the DV for Teachers discussion boards at 2-pop. Ideas offered include having students make a biographical slideshow set to music; a public service announcement about a school club, team, or activity; try to recreate a two- or three-minute sequence from a favorite film; and to create a 30-second commercial for a fictional product or service. All these have a place, and require the student to think as a producer: to emphasize the best way to communicate the desired message with the tools provided. Read the thread, and contribute your ideas.

More DVD News and How-Tos

Today, I go to the Atlanta Apple Market Center for a “DVD Authoring Simplified” seminar. Our Center should receive our new dual processor G4, which will be able to make DVDs with iDVD, within a few weeks. The seminar should help me get ready to run with these new tools.

Also on 2-pop, go to the newly posted “Best of the Boards – A Special DVD Edition,” a compilation of messages about authoring DVDs. Read this to keep from re-inventing the wheel. Millions have DVD players at home, office or school, but few people on the planet have yet made a DVD. Now the capability is only a few thousand dollars away. Teach your students the skills to make and distribute video that makes VHS look like mush.

And think about it, in these under-funded times: how effective a fund-raiser would it be to sell a highlight DVD of your school’s athletics? A DVD yearbook? Dances, parades, interviews, how-to instrucions? What would your students or their parents pay for a disk like that?——-

Make a DVD: Hands-on How-to with the new Macs

Since the spring, MacEdition has posted a series of reports – Nine weeks with DVD Studio Pro: An introduction to pro DVD authoring on the Mac – from Eliot Hochberg about making DVDs on the new Macintosh G4s, using Final Cut Pro, QuickTime Pro, and iDVD Studio Pro. While not for raw beginners, his matter-of-fact style and real-world savvy make this a good resource for folks with some DV savvy and the new hardware and software.

Thanks to Judith Stern and Robert Lettieri for the link to DV for Teachers on their Little QuickTime Page, permanently linked on the right side of our home page.——-