DV for Teachers

We’re looking at blogs as a teaching tool with Mary Stuckey’s class, and they are awesome.

For Rene: Foxit Reader 2.0, a free PDF reader that’s supposed to be much faster than waiting for Acrobat to load. Take a look.

I’m working on a video project in which we’re interviewing a group of freshmen here at GSU almost every week about their impressions of college life, from the classroom to the dorm room to the libraries and labs. Ellen brought me a copy of this article examining at the capabilities and expectations of modern college students (at least the digital haves; looking for information about the digital have-nots).

USATODAY.com – Totally wireless on campus

A.J. Hunter can’t start the day without first pulling out his laptop. Each morning, the 21-year-old Ball State University junior downloads his schedule onto his Mac Powerbook G4, which — along with his iPod and cellphone — is always close at hand.

Hunter, of Uniondale, Ind., is a typical tech-savvy college student. He can access the social networking site Facebook from his cellphone. He uses e-mail and instant messaging anywhere on the wireless campus. He downloads music to his laptop and his iPod, and he uses a 1-gigabyte flash drive provided by the university to transfer files and songs and to access his digital portfolio.

An elementary-education major with a concentration in technology, he says the portfolio includes lesson plans and other documents illustrating his progress in his field. He transfers files to his folder on the university’s iLocker to save storage space on his computer.

Technology is so second-nature, “I can’t even think of when I use it and when I don’t. It’s such a part of life,” he says.

Hunter isn’t a techno-geek. He’s just a “digital native” — a term that has been used to describe millennials, the first generation who grew up in a world filled with computers, cellphones and cable TV.

This is an extended excerpt, but the entire article is worth your time.

Review of handy new features. What’s New in Final Cut 5.1.2

A lot of Final Cut Pro users have been waiting for this release to bring more HDV camera compatibility, and streamlined Panasonic P2 support to FCP. This article isn’t about that stuff at all. Instead, we’ll focus on the other exciting improvements in this modestly named update (just up to 5.1.2 from 5.1.1). A couple bug fixes, a lot of new effects, more interactive video scopes and other goodies.

Streamingmedia.com: Tutorial: Shooting Top-Quality Streaming Video—How to Minimize Motion
bq. Excessive motion can ruin otherwise terrific video. From codec to camera to edit, this tutorial tells you how to keep it to a minimum.

Streamingmedia.com: Ben Waggoner, Program Manager, Microsoft Codec Team
bq. For years, Ben Waggoner’s been sharing his expertise on video codecs with the streaming industry. These days, he’s working on Windows Media, and here he provides the lowdown on the latest developments in Microsoft’s audio and video codecs.

How did I miss this one? Busy doing other things and reading other places on the web, I suppose. I just found DV Guru, and it’s full of tips, workflow ideas, links to new products, and industry assessments. Another site to check every day, and worth it. For one example, they link to FilmSite.org, Tim Dirks’ huge site with historical timelines, synopses of classic films, and much more. It’s been around for ten years! An excellent augmentation for any film studies class. Beware the pop-up ads, though. Tsk.

Here’s another example: a post about the importance of integrating your audio with your video edits. For some of us, it’s a no-brainer, but not everyone picks that up. DV Guru offers good info for experienced editors and newbies too, and a busy comments section to boot.

Macworld’s Dan Frakes tests three freeware apps for resizing a batch of jpg images. His favorite is mine too: Pixture Studio’s PhotoToolCM. (He mistakenly calls the developer Picture Studios when it should be Pixture.)

Blogger Zach Wilt posts some clever security tips for Mac users on campus:

Keeping the college student’s Mac secure at zamwi.com
No viruses, no spyware, malware, none of that. So how do you keep your Mac secure? I am talking about keeping your Mac secure from those who walk right up use your computer while you are MIA. Specifically for the college student who leaves their Mac on all day, I have a nice selection of tips to keep intruders out!

Not exhaustive, or even very thorough, but some good ideas and software freebies for helping you keep track of your Mac and of those who might try to get their paws on your data.

This is exciting; here’s the blurb from Macintouch:

Red Lightning Software’s DV Monitor 1.1 enables videographers to view live video on a Mac just as on a dedicated field monitor. The software provides 1:1 pixel accurate video, exposure zebras, image flipping for 35mm depth of field adapters, on-screen guides, screen calibration to NTSC or PAL standards,, and other features. This release adds support for 16:9 Digital Squeeze mode and customization of each Overlay Guide color. Until November 1, DV Monitor is $129.99 ($149 thereafter) for Mac OS X 10.4 (Universal Binary) and a DV camera with FireWire.

DV Monitor will improve location shooting for all kinds of videographers – schools will be able to make much more professional-looking video with this. It doesn’t have live waveform monitors or vectorscopes (DV Rack does this for PCs), but it allows for much more precision than the standard viewfinder on any camera.