Chris Breen offers Macworld’s HD Camcorder Buyer’s Guide. There are several kinds of HD cameras now and Chris goes through lots of options to consider. HD is a whole new ball game, so read up and don’t make assumptions about what will work with your existing editing software or computer.
Debra Kaufman reports on a Digital Cinema Society session on encoding video for the web: Online Video: Codecs, Encoding and Compression for the Studio Daily Blog It’s a quick report of what must have been a much more in-depth discussion, but go for the take-away formats that have, for now, the widest reach among potential viewers.
This introduction is “gentle” only in technical terms; Mark Pilgrim’s language can get quite salty, so if your school’s filters block four-letter words, you’ll need to read this at home. Nonetheless, the four part A Gentle Introduction to Video Encoding (part one, part two, part three, part four) is an excellent introduction to concepts, terminology, patent status, and limitations of the formats. It does not provide any instruction or tutorials, but those are widely available through the Google.
This list is very thorough. In Amit Agarwal’s How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website you’ll find tips on embedding:
The fine coders at the VideoLAN project have updated their fine media player and encoder. Did you know that VLC, the VideoLAN client, can do all of this? From the VLC site:
Add it to your video toolbox now – it’s safe and immensely useful for playing and transcoding odd video files. Download now for Mac, Windows, or Linux.
Ahh, formats. There are so many: still using DV tape? Or have you switched to a DVD-based MPEG-2 format? Maybe you use a hard-drive or flash-memory kind of camcorder? Whichever you use, do you know the ins and outs of what it takes to edit that format properly? You need to make sure your system is up to the task, but what about that codec, and I need to output to DVD and the web, but yikes everyone looks blue in that shot, and….
We don’t have all the solutions here, but Andrew Balis, a long-time contributor to Ken Stone’s site and major FCP maven, provides one piece of the puzzle as he explains Color Workflows With Different Types of Sources:
One of the most confusing issues that comes up frequently with new users of Color is how to get in and out of Color with different types of video formats. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to clear up the confusion by presenting the four main workflows Color can utilize, as well as how each format can be handled by Color. This article relates to users of Color version 1.0.2 or later. Well look at how to handle video formats captured via capture card, as well as how to work with “native” formats captured via FireWire such as DV, DVCPRO 50, DVCPRO HD and HDV.
Even if your footage is color correct from the word “Action!”, if you need some help understanding aspects of the different types of video, this article is worth reading and bookmarking.
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.
This isn’t the first external video-to-USB adapter I’ve seen, but as reported in Consumer Electronics.net’s Creative’s Video Blaster Editor, it offers lots for formats and more than one editing package, including a full version of the estimable Premiere Elements 2.0.
Video editing can be a daunting task for those who are unfamiliar with the terminology and hardware that is required to capture video to the PC. And not all PCs come with a FireWire, composite, or S-video connection that enables the capture of video from a camcorder, VCR or other video device. But all PCs today ship with USB ports, and people know that plugging a device into a USB port enables them to do magical things. Creative’s Video Blaster Editor has turned what traditionally has been a “crack open the PC case solution” into a plug the USB cable into the PC solution, easing the way for people to capture and edit video.
For $199 retail, it’s worth a look.
Lifehacker points to Any Video Converter. Looks good, but couldn’t download this at posting time; seems their server was overloaded, thus I haven’t tested it. Lifehacker’s recommendations are pretty reliable, though, in my experience.
Windows only: Convert nearly any video format to nearly any other video format with the aptly named Any Video Converter.
The program supports just about every video format known to man, including AVI, DivX, FLV, RM, and VOB. It also comes with output profiles for devices like the iPod and PSP, though you can easily create a custom profile with the audio and video specs of your choosing.
AVC couldn’t be much easier to use, and it supports batch conversions—always a nice perk. You’ll definitely want to add this utility to your video arsenal (though don’t overlook Videora Converter, arguably a better choice for converting videos for mobile devices). Any Video Converter is free for Windows.
At Streamingmedia.com, Jan gives a thorough and authoritative review, and gives it very high marks on compression quality, ease of use, and speed increases.
