DV for Teachers

A how-to on video production in the wild:

“You have finally decided to fulfill your life-long ambition and go on a safari to view and film the wild animals of Africa. Since you are going to spend a lot of money for airfare and the safari itself, you want to be able to bring back memories of your trip , share those experiences with your friends and produce professional, high quality video for presentations, film festivals, clients or competitions. You do not need the most expensive professional equipment to bring back high quality video of your experiences. You are already excited about going on the trip, but are you as prepared as you will need to be?”

Andy Carvin on the EdTech list:

“Yesterday my old friend Larry Anderson from the National Center for Technology Planning emailed me about the podcasts and videos I’ve been posting this week from Bangladesh (http://www.andycarvin.com). He asked me some questions about the setup I use for creating the content, saying it would be useful to share with my friends and colleagues. So here are some details about my setup, responding to Larry’s specific questions.”

A starter list if you’re considering a very inexpensive video camera; note that several of these are not digital.

“In the market for a new camcorder but don’t want to spend a fortune? Here’s a list of ten camcorders that received high marks from users who own them. They may not be the absolute latest and greatest (some of them are last year’s models) but for the aspiring videographer they should do the trick.”

A very specific guide to understanding and setting up your Final Cut Pro projects for stability and good organization.

Choosing the right settings for a project may seem confusing at first, but it’s important we don’t skip these steps or it may easily lead to larger problems down the road.

Includes several screenshots of menus and settings dialogs; bookmark and/or print this, as it can save you many tears.

We have enough new and old Macs around the ITC (we’re mostly a Windows-centric place; I’m the prominent Mac-head here) that this will prove to be of use:

“Learn the version(s) of Mac OS included with computers produced since 01 Jan 1998.”

Free Images and Visuals

It’s not software, really, but this links to a long list of sites offering free images – for presentations, videos, brochures… need a picture? Check this list.

“Finding quality images and photos for complementing an important article, essay or news report is already a challenge for many. Imagine when the goal is not only to find good images, but also to find some that you could openly and freely use without needing to pay royalties or one-time publishing rights. [....]

But as long as your subjects do not require photos of art masterpieces stored in world museums, or faces of popular stars, you may be likely to find highly interesting visual alternatives by exploring the world of free and grassroots image clearinghouses.”

“Celtx 0.9.4 is an open source application, built on the Mozilla Application Framework, that combines scriptwriting, preproduction support, and online collaboration for film, TV, theater, and other media. This release adds tabs (for content viewing, script, title page, database, and web research), script editor improvements, improved dialogs for find/replace and for creating new projects, a Storyboard category, and other changes. Celtx is free for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows.”

“MovieToGo 0.9 converts QuickTime-readable movies into 320×240 H.264 format movies for video iPods. It includes the option to place movies in a queue for simple batch processing. MovieToGo is free for Mac OS X with QuickTime 7.0.3 and iTunes 6.x.”

An impressive array of free and cheap software downloads for Mac and Windows:

“DontCrac[k] hosts a community of passionate audio software developers who collaborate with final users in order to offer them the best audio products.”

Discusses six “hacks” for digital video:

• Create a Two-Column Script


• Roll Your Own Dolly


• Wrangle Your Music and Sound Library


• Turn Video into Matrix-Style Symbols


• Create a Credit Flag (I like this one)


• Take Donations Via Paypal