DV for Teachers

Steven Schleicher at Digital Video Editing:

I received a DV tape the other day that was dubbed from a VHS tape. Popping the tape into my Sony deck I instantly saw something that the person who dubbed the tape over looked; the person didn’t use a TBC when making the dub and the video had jumped up approximately 50 lines. Solution? Modify the size of the image in Final Cut Pro 3.0. But that is only part of the solution. This Final Cut Pro Quick Tip explains how.

Lots more good articles and tutorials on the Digital Video Editing page, including networking with Macs and Windows and a comparison of Avid Xpress DV and Final Cut Pro.

On an editorial note, I tried News Items for a while and all my favorite updating tools broke. so back to the usual format. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, whisper /”thank you” and continue reading.——-

Suzanne Kantra Kirschner on a new development that could change many things, including multimedia in schools:

Hypersonic speakers, from American Technology … focus sound in a tight beam, much like a laser focuses light. ... When it rolls out in Coke machines and other products over the next few months, audio quality will rival that of compact discs. ...
The applications are many, from targeted advertising to virtual rear-channel speakers. The key is frequency: The ultrasonic speakers create sound at more than 20,000 cycles per second, a rate high enough to keep in a focused beam and beyond the range of human hearing. As the waves disperse, properties of the air cause them to break into three additional frequencies, one of which you can hear. This sonic frequency gets trapped within the other three, so it stays within the ultrasonic cone to create directional audio.
Step into the beam and you hear the sound as if it were being generated inside your head. Reflect it off a surface and it sounds like it originated there.

Teachers aiming a correction or reproof to an individual student that no one else in the class can hear; what are the implications for video?

More wierdness from browser, server, news items, who knows what all. Trying to work it out and to also get this site migrated to our own server, though that may take a while. Updates are coming, no kidding.

Okay, here’s a quick one: seasoned editor Patrick Inhofer compares Avid and Final Cut Pro in a professional, even-handed discussion that weighs the strengths and weaknesses of each in different circumstances. It is another of those “It depends…” reviews, so it doesn’t just say “A = good, B = bad,” but instead calls on the reader to do some thought about the two. Which is good.——-

A panel of entertainment industry experts at the International Broadcasting Convention discussed the the ways the studios contribute to the problem:

Johnathan Taplin, chairman and chief executive officer of Intertainer Inc., a Culver City, Calif.based on-demand video service company, said: “Technology is not the problem. It’s the content cartel! ...Taplin claimed that Hollywood operates a de facto monopoly on content that bottles up movies so tightly that piracy becomes the best and often only—way to distribute them digitally. “There is a content cartel used to running over networks that it controls,” said Taplin, charging that the studios, “want to be able to control the food chain from beginning to end.”

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We’ve installed Frontier on a Mac OS X server here so we can offer weblogs; it seems to take some time….

This week I’ll help someone troubleshoot QuickTime on Windows, and give a workshop on iMovie, and show some folks from Athens Tech around our studio. I like my job.

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A panel of entertainment industry experts at the International Broadcasting Convention discussed the the ways the studios contribute to the problem:

Johnathan Taplin, chairman and chief executive officer of Intertainer Inc., a Culver City, Calif.based on-demand video service company, said: “Technology is not the problem. It’s the content cartel! ...Taplin claimed that Hollywood operates a de facto monopoly on content that bottles up movies so tightly that piracy becomes the best and often only—way to distribute them digitally. “There is a content cartel used to running over networks that it controls,” said Taplin, charging that the studios, “want to be able to control the food chain from beginning to end.”

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Nice update from Steve Martin of Ripple Training with information about OS X Dock tricks, tips on labels for DVD-Rs, and DV classes (if you live in southern California). You can sign up for his newsletter too.

A great explanation of Final cut Pro’s Color Correction tools, with technical explanations, screen captures, and real-world examples by Andrew Balis at Ken Stone’s FCP site. Still the most complete single site for FCP information.——-

Mac Design Online’s Final Cut Pro section explains how to do the cool effect common in movie trailers:

Expanding blurring titles

The effect where titles spread out and then blur away to nothing has become a popular way to make plain old text look more interesting. It’s really not that complex: What we do is expand the text by animating the tracking (the space between the letters). On top of that, we add an animated blur filter that gets progressively more blurry as the letters expand outward. Usually we fade the effect out as it gets blurry—few blur filters will go far enough to totally lose the text. You can also start the blur at the beginning of the shot—it’s entirely dependent on the needs of the job.

Mac Design is a nice Mac-only magazine for multimedia apps. I like their site so much I’m going to add it to the permanent links to the right of the home page.——-

Adam Wilt seems to know more about the guts of DV editing, regardless of program or platform, than anyone. He’s updated his site to include information about DV as a technology, and a FAQ that covers many questions from rank beginner to total engineering tweak.

I’ve been asked by many teachers about retro-fitting an existing system for editing. Here’s a key quotation which addresses that question:

Can I build a PC- or Mac-based NLE system myself? Yes. If you don’t mind opening the computer case and fiddling with the innards, you can buy one of the low-end or mid-range board sets and do it yourself. But be warned, it’s often not a trivial task. Careful attention to detail and optimization of system configurations and drivers are often required. Also be prepared to download the latest drivers from the Internet; often you’ll need new video card drivers as well as newer drivers for the brand-new 1394 board you have just purchased.

After explaining how long it sometimes takes him to find conflicts and troubleshoot (remember, this is a guy who breathes this stuff), he summarizes this section:

Better yet, if you’re a video producer and not especially interested in fiddling with the innards of PCs and Macs, have your VAR [value-added reseller] build a system to your specifications. Let them fight IRQ limitations and driver-incompatibility hassles—and be willing to pay for it. If time is money for you, think about how much time it would take to resolve these hassles yourself. It took me the better part of three days to get my DPS Spark installed, working, and stable enough for my satisfaction, since Windows decided to reshuffle interrupts every time I rebooted, and I had an old Matrox Millenium driver that hogged the PCI bus. During that time I was only half as productive as normal: what’s 1.5 days of your time worth? [...] On the other hand, if you’re a certifiable lunatic like me, just have at it! Just realize that it’s still a “Plug and Pray” world inside that PC’s case, and no, it’s not an evil conspiracy against you when it doesn’t work the first time. That’s just the state of the art on the bleeding edge of desktop video technology…

So if your $$$ budget is small and you’re adapting an existing system, plan on a bigger time-budget than you would like. If you’re buying made-to-order, follow the links to Adam’s site and start with the resellers he recommends before researching others. I can’t endorse them myself, because I haven’t ordered from any of them except , who I believe served us well. (Not to be construed as an endorsement by the State of Georgia, etc.).——-