DV for Teachers

I just love how much free hype Apple’s gotten on this. Business majors and MBA candidates, rev up your graduate theses to analyze how they generate so much press mania (which most of you poor mutts will have to write in MSWord on a Windows machine). In the meantime, here’s a nicely done (and fairly plausible) wish-list for today’s announcement from Alchemist Muffin (because all the other good blog names were taken). Via Slashdot, via popurls.

Which news feed will you follow? I’m going to try several, but Fake Steve writes that he will live-blog the keynote Going to be a fun day.

I just discovered Rands In Repose, a fascinating blog about/by/for tech engineers/managers. Entertaining, yes, but full as well of valuable insights about people, management, software, working on a computer, and living with all of them. The author, Michael Lopp, just published a book, Managing Humans, which intrigues me as well. (That link goes to a slide show about the book and the author; I haven’t read it yet.)

The ideas I’ve found here connect with instructional technology and teaching in the attitude he takes toward managers and projects and on the ways the programmers/employees relate. Lopp digs under the many assumptions, acknowledged and implicit, that govern the relationships, and good teachers can learn from reading his examples and reflecting on them.

Via Daring Fireball.

I still shoot Standard Definition: MiniDV, 720×480, 29.97 fps, 4:2:2 compression, etc. etc. But HDV is coming to education. It will be a while before schools and colleges have the funds to upgrade their TVs and display systems to show HDV, but those of us who produce and teach video in education need to know about this format. From Consumer Electronics.net.

A Beginners Guide to High Definition Video.

Mark Frauenfelder of BoingBoing notoriety points to this great-looking book at Amazon, The DV Rebel’s Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap. He says it sounds great, and I think so too.

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.

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.

The DR-MV1S is a combo VHS deck and DVD recorder, with a FireWire input for dubbing from MiniDV machines. All it does is flash “LOADING on the front display. Apparently, we’re not the only ones with the problem. See this list of moans from VideoHelp.com, where I found a link to this on the JVC support site:

A limited number of units of certain models of DVD recorders (Models-DR-MV1S, DR-M10S, DR-MH30S, DRMX1S, SR-MV30U) have experienced the symptoms described. While manually resetting the unit, as set forth in the question, restores normal operation, the symptoms may reappear. JVC has identified the cause of these symptoms and will make the necessary adjustments to affected units to eliminate the likelihood that the symptoms reappear. Adjustments will be made free of charge at JVC Factory Service Centers. Click the Factory Service Center link at top left of this page to obtain your nearest location. Please call 1-800-252-5722 and select option 4-3 if you have any questions regarding this process.

I have an email in to the support folks. This unit had the same problem two years ago. Let’s see if they do the right thing.

Time ’s too limited to link directly to all the pieces here worth a look at Zoom In Online Spotlights, but go browse a bit: video tutorials for various audio and video apps, interviews with folks at all levels of film and video production and distribution from very indie individuals to corporate insiders with valuable info to share on workflows, strategies, and success stories. Better than most newsletters of its type.

dvworkshops.com
Importance of the Big Picture, Story Question and Building the “Sound Bite Train”

The latest newsletter from Aron Ranen’s San Francisco-based DVworkshops: with good ideas for organizing your project during and after you shoot.

The Creative COW newsletter linked to a discussion thread about copyright and fair use issues in a graduation video. No definitive answers, but if you’re producing a video like this, especially for sale, it’s important to be aware of the law’s requirements and the risks you may run for not following it.