DV for Teachers

I’m showing off Manila blogs to my Freeware for Teachers workshop folks.——-

Nice collection of utilities to make Mac OS X do what I want.——-

Macworld’s Chris Breen: “Suppose you’ve got a video clip that runs a bit shorter than the narration that accompanies it. You can’t allow the clip to fade to black while you’re nattering on about what the clip displays, so you must find a way to extend the clip. My solution for doing so is to add a still clip.”

Comment: This guy is a great Mac guru and this is a good tip: add a freeze frame to your video to stretch it just enough.——-

Ken Stone adds 3 more items: a review of a book on motion graphics using FCP’s tools and two white papers, one on choosing the best codec for your needs and the other on using Excel spreadsheets for shotlogs.——-

Quote: “Public Knowledge’s Senior Technology Counsel, Mike Godwin, has written this plain-spoken guide to DRM, explaining what it is and why every citizen should know something about it. Download the attached pdf file, and find out what you should know about DRM.”

Comment: Recommended by Stephen Downes’s OLDaily newsletter.——-

Quote: “Welcome to the DV in Education pages hosted by Denbigh ICT Centre, Denbighshire LEA and moderated by David Baugh and Dewi Lloyd. These pages allow you to register and discuss with other like minded people the uses and potential of using Digital Video in Education.”

Comment: Gosh – a DV for teachers blog-like site. What an idea!

DV in Education writes reviews of software and equipment, articles on best practices, and hosts a discussion forum. I’ve added them to my links on the left of the home page (which are overdue for a cleanup). Welcome.——-

I’m picking up on the wireless at Will’s honbu, but it’s slow enough that I don’t trust it for more of the overdue posts backing up on me. They’re coming though, really.——-

I’m nearing completion of the update to OS X Server 10.2.8 and a new installation of Manila 9.0 (formerly known as Frontier). Slow at times, and I haven’t figured out how to fix the port forwarding issue that prompted the overdue upgrades. Onward, to Learning!

Quote: “DittoAV is a full-featured text editing system with an integrated media playback system. In order to speed audio transcription and video logging, we have developed DittoAV.”

Comment: I haven’t tested this yet, but plan to. Got a big project, and this looks interesting and potentially valuable.——-

Quote: “QuickMix is a video-editing application that
specializes
in multi-track movies. Tracks can be viewed and edited independently or
together. For example, if you’re making a music video, you can edit the
video track without affecting the sound track, then play both tracks
together. Editing is performed with commands such as Copy and Paste,
similar to QuickTime Pro, with more advanced capabilities available as
well.”

Comment:
I’ve
worked a little with the demo of this app, and it offers an easier way
to add multiple tracks and titles to QT movies without paying quite as
much for the poorly documented editing features of QuickTime Pro. Worth your consideration, but YMMV.
——-