DV for Teachers

Yesterday I noted the Wall Street Journal’s Career Journal linked to this site. Welcome if you followed that link. #


A colleague with a German visitor in his school wrote asking about “zones” or “regions” in DVD players. A Google search found a number of vendors with information; MPEG.org is the DVD standards body [oops – correction – the standards body is MPEGLA – Tim] which oversaw its development. Neither has any info on its site about Region codes (according to Google). I found this faq which seems competent, but I can’t absolutely vouch for its authenticity. Caveat et cetera #.

Steve Martin at Ripple Training has a November report, with great suggestions for easily making and organizing individual sub-clips from a long capture in Final Cut Pro, money-saving tips for testing a DVD project prior to burning, and a nice brief positive review of Sorenson Squeeze for compressing video for web or CD-ROM. Steve is one of the great multimedia answer guys – a compulsive teacher, and a good one. #

Digital Media Net’s Digital Video Editing site has numerous articles worth reading in recent updates: among them, an After Effects and Photoshop speed comparison between Dell’s latest 3.06GHz racehorse and Apple’s Dual 1GHz. Charlie White’s summation: “Mac slaughtered again.” Can’t argue with the numbers; Apple badly needs to keep up in the speed race. It’s not the only valid point of comparison, especially for educators who use or teach video, but it’s important. #

Other good reads from that site: a laudatory review of the new Cleaner 6 from discreet; features on QuickTime authoring and Final Cut Pro; customizing iDVD; a series on Lighting 101; and lots more. Go explore.

Oh, hey, one more from their Mac Alert site: Networking Windows with Mac OS X. These guys know their onions. #

From Charles at Playbacktime: Looking for an inexpensive alternative to commercial rotoscoping and video painting tool? how about open-source Film Gimp, which runs on Linux and was used on Scooby Doo, Stuart Little 2, and others. They may not be the best movies, but the animation continues to push the state of the art. If you run Linux, you can do it too. #

Yow. Almost forgot: out of the office tomorrow, in Phoenix Monday through Wednesday [for this – I’ve written a little about it before – more later]. #

Don’t know about connectivity in the hotel, so maybe no news from here until late next week. In the meantime, many new links at Judy and Robert’s Little QuickTime Page #.——-

The Career Journal site of the Wall Street Journal Online posted a story – Hints for Finding Online Journals – that links to DV for Teachers. Thanks.——-

From the Video Systems email newsletter:

When “Let’s Go to the Tape” Doesn’t Fit the Future
In a conversation some time ago, Edward Grebow, then president of Sony Broadcast and Professional, U.S., put a question to a reporter that he had every intention of answering. “What’s the only part of a camcorder that hasn’t benefited from digital technology?” Grebow asked. “Videotape, of course. Expect to see that change pretty soon.” [ . . . ]At previous NABs, JVC has shown a hybrid camera that records to a hard drive or miniDV cassette. At NAB 2002, Sony introduced its DVCAM DSR-DU1 hard-disk drive. The device attaches directly to the back of a DVCAM camcorder for simultaneous disk and tape-based recording of up to three hours of DVCAM or DV video. The product was demoed working with NLE apps from Apple, Adobe, and Avid. [ . . . ] Hitachi makes the latest foray into the non-linear recording arena with the November release of the Z-3000/CR-D10 DVD-RAM camcorder. The CR-D10 portion of the camcorder records variable-rate MPEG2 onto DVD-RAM or DVD-R discs. The camcorder employs DVD-VR, the recently released DVD Forum specification for video recording. Systems including Windows, OS X, Linux, and Unix can read and write to DVD-RAM and are compatible with DVD-VR specs. [ . . . ] It’s the higher capacity Blu-ray DVD recording standard, settled on earlier this year that should finally make the move from tape a reality. Blu-ray allows the recording of up to 27GB per disc, although if pursued, a double-sided, double-layered DVD will ultimately yield 15GB per disc. Expect to hear more manufacturers at next year’s NAB tout their move away from the late, great format of tape.—Dan Ochiva Technical Editor, Video Systems Senior Editor, Millimeter

Okay okay okay. Here I am.

Right now I’m trasnferring some ESL lessons from audiocassette tape to CD for a professor (yes indeed fair use, and thank you for asking). I’m usingTC Works free SPARK ME audio editor in OS X on one of our 700MHz iBooks, importing via a Griffin Technology iMic. A bit of a daisy-chainish kludge, but it’s working nicely.

I spent all of last week learning Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server Essentials. I’m allegedly prepared for as a Apple Certified Technical Coordinator

I learned how cool Jaguar is – and how to set up a server, how to make many different types of connections, permissions, imaging drives and other stuff.

Make sure to check Charles Wiltgen’s PlaybackTime regularly – he’s got some good information and insights in the overlapping areas of copyright, digital rights management, video productiona and compression, and communication policy. Smart.——-