DV for Teachers » Windows Media

Mark Pilgrim’s GIVE: A Gentle Intro to Video Encoding

Tim Merritt — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:20:19 +0000

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.

Labnol.org: How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website

Tim Merritt — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:40:54 +0000

This list is very thorough. In Amit Agarwal’s How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website you’ll find tips on embedding:

RSS feeds
MP3s and other audio
Flickr photos and slideshows
High quality or HD YouTube videos
Picasa web albums
Google calendar events
Large photographs
Charts and graphs
GIF animations and screencasts
MS Word documents and PowerPoint presentations
Spreadsheet data
PDF files
Flash (SWV) or Flash video (FLV)
LinkedIn profiles
Google maps
Another web page
Windows Media or QuickTime
Other fonts

Lifestream
Via the delicious feed on popurls.

Bonus: looking for an “embed” image for this post at Google, I found this—

How To Make YouTube Videos Look Great

Tim Merritt — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:17:10 +0000

A quick link to a thorough piece on compressing for YouTube: How To Make YouTube Videos Look Great. The author covers several methods, platforms, and compressors, including Divx, Flash, and QuickTime, and provides links to samples. Very well done – if you want to learn about video compression for the web, whether for YouTube or some other site, you’ll do well to bookmark this.

Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate

Tim Merritt — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:06:05 +0000

John Virata heaps praise on Pinnacle’s PC-based video editor. It’s been around a long time, and he really likes the app’s continued development. It can export Flash and 3GP from the timeline, and can also export direct to YouTube.

Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate is probably the most full featured entry level video editing solution on the market. It has the widest support for the new AVCHD and HDV camcorders, offers the widest range of output options, and includes three non-Pinnacle applications that are integrated nicely and are designed to make your video projects more unique.

Some Microsoft for Mac Updates

Tim Merritt — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 15:11:26 +0000

Macintouch points to an update of Flip4Mac’s QuickTime plugin to play Windows Media and a security update for Office 2004

Free Software: Switch – Audio File Format Converter

Tim Merritt — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 18:35:59 +0000

Switch is a free audio format converter for Mac or Windows. Working on podcasts? Can’t get your Windows Media Audio files to work? Change to MP3 or other formats with this tool. Here’s a complete list of formats for importing or exporting. It even converts batches – so have your students submit their files to you and convert them all at once to the format you need for distribution.

Windows Media Encoding With Apple Compressor

Tim Merritt — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 15:36:24 +0000

Encoding for Windows Media Using Compressor – Flip4Mac

Ken Stone’s site has it:

Let’s face it, for as much as we revere our Macs, we unfortunately live in a PC world. When delivering content for the web we also have to realize that a large population of the viewing audience will watch our movies on PCs and, unlike our Macs, those PCs do not come pre-installed with QuickTime. Even though the QuickTime player (and browser plug-in) is free for PC users, there are many instances where you may have to additionally distribute movies as Windows Media or where WMV is the only viable option.

Consumer Electronics: Creative’s Video Blaster Editor

Tim Merritt — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 14:24:37 +0000

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.

EasyWMA: Convert Windows Media

Tim Merritt — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 14:51:34 +0000

Almost Happy New Year. EasyWMA will convert Windows Media files to iPod- and Mac-friendly formats. Untested by me; free demo available, and shareware licenses are $10.

Lifehacker: Any Video Converter for Windows

Tim Merritt — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 16:15:52 +0000

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.