[videoblogging] Re: Videoblogging Course
Lesson 2 and Lesson 8 are all that would interest me. Sounds like a bit of a cheeky price if they are just using your book as the text for the class. I have been stung by that before. Many years ago, I paid heavily for a class where they sat me down with the manual of the software for 8 weeks. I basically paid half the cost of the software to borrow the manual. I learned nothing and forgot it by 2 weeks after. I'll teach myself before I fork out that kind of oney again. Your book sounds like a winner for me...off to Amazon adam --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Michael Verdi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The course outline is lifted directly from the book that Ryanne and I wrote (available on Amazon for $18.24 new or from $7.99 used). - Verdi
[videoblogging] Re: sxswi anyone?
Another year, another SXSW I will be missing. I jst happens my wedding anniversary is the same week as SXSW and I cannot convince my wife that heading out to Texas for a week to attend geeky seminars and independent film screenings is the most romantic way to celebrate. I looked into flights from Orange County to Austin, and even if the Mrs wanted to go, it would damn near bankrupt us. Direct flights to Austin $1600, or 6 hours of plane changing hell via San jose or Chicago $700. Thats before the conference pass, food, rental car, hotel. I could seriously go back to UK for 2 weeks for that kind of dough. Ridiculous. what is it with domestic travel in the US? Here's to next year Have fun y'all adam --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, David King [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Who's going, anyone planning a get-together? Translation - I AM going, but I'm also terrible at planning stuff! -- David King davidleeking.com - blog http://davidleeking.com/etc - videoblog [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[videoblogging] Re: sanyo xacti e1 LCD Screen issue
That's the OFFICIAL repair shop? Wow, i'd say thats a good enough reason not to purchase equipment from Sanyo. No Xacti in my future thats for sure... adam By the way, the official Sanyo repair shop in the US is http://www.skokieservice.com/. one of our cameras is currently there being fixed. (isnt the picture crazy) by the way, here's a short video of the Xacti designer talking about the camera:
[videoblogging] Re: LED lights
Yikes. That makes zero sense. I had no idea about the FW drives. I just shut down my mac at night, often leaving the drived powered up. Could this be contributing to the fairly high failure rate of FW drives (3 of the 7 drives I've owned have failed. 0 of the 5 ATA drives have failed. 0 of the 3 SCSI drives have failed). I cant wait to upgrade my system and get into SATA and eSATA. Are these hot swapable and safer/more reliable than FW at all? cheers adam --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Brook Hinton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's insane, because the common wisdom about the way to protect the camera port and the way to protect drives conflicts. For cameras, yes, connect with everything powered down is what some mfrs. have said. For drives, it's turn everything on, then connect (and always unmount before disconnnect, sleep, or shutdown). Does a lot of good when you're using a portable system with everything on one bus. I wish my eSATA expresscard could do more than two devices. Performance on eSATA ime blows firewire 800 away too.
[videoblogging] Re: How do I create SWF files with media player skin
You need to use the FLVPlaybackComponent in F8. In the component inspector there is a field for SKIN. Default is set to NONE. CLick and choose one of the built in skins from the list. Also, you can choose for the controls to AUTOHIDE HTH adam --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Darren Winkler Darren Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I know that people have posted on this issue in the past but I can't find any info in the posts now. I need to create files for a client in SWF format that will open with a video player skin, (play, stop, volume...) Can anyone offer me information on how to accomplish this? I own Flash 8 and I know you can do it but just can't get my head around it. Thanks very much! Darren W. MultiMedia Group
[videoblogging] Re: Poll results for videoblogging
Bill do you do a lot of studio work? If so you might be interested in the Red Rocks Micro 35mm Lens adapter/focus rails and the BlackMagic Intensity card. These items let you use much better glass on the front end and capture the 1080p uncompressed signal to FCP via HDMI. For a fraction of the price of a lesser camera. Of course you have to hack it together so it doesnt look like a tidy little package. HVX has variable frame rate too which is real nice. But worth the price? Stu Maschwitz has been testing on his blog. http://prolost.blogspot.com/ http://www.redrockmicro.com/ http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/ adam --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Bill Cammack [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Didn't see this poll, but add me to Got One!. It's a great camera, especially for only $700. Hopefully, it'll be my B-camera very soon, because I'm looking forward to the manual control and 720/60p of the HVX-200, but I could own A FLEET of HV20s for that one camera, so that'll have to wait! :D Bill Cammack
[videoblogging] Re: Good cheap FLV encoder for Windows...
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Ron Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A friend of mine would like to create higher quality FLVs on his windows machine. Any suggestions? Sorenson Squeeze http://www.sorensonmedia.com/products/?pageID=1#ppc2 adam
[videoblogging] Re: Good cheap FLV encoder for Windows...
Riva looks nice, better than FFmpeg (could that be any less user friendlyugh. How about a simple how to...) But one thing to bare in mind with these is what version of FLV they encode to. In the documentation there is little mention of it, however Riva APPEARS to encode to Flash7 FLV. This used the Sorenson Spark codec that was okay, but nowhere near as efficient as the On2 VP6 codec of Flash8. --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Sheldon Pineo [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Feb 13, 2008 at 7:33 PM, Ron Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A friend of mine would like to create higher quality FLVs on his windows machine. Any suggestions? How about Riva FLV Encoder. The price is right.. http://www.rivavx.com/?encoder -- www.icenrye.com www.icenrye.blogspot.com www.icenryelikes.blogspot.com
[videoblogging] Re: LED lights
So is the rule of thumb to connect all devices THEN power up. Can we connect a DV cam to a CPU already on, then power up the cam? --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Brook Hinton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Firewire sucks. A client's HV20 just fell victim to a fried port. Unless you have a dedicated firewire BUS (not port) with the ability to turn its power on or off for each device, things will fry. But on the camera/deck end, for DV and HDV, it's all we've got unless you go with a tower and an uncompressed card. At least we now have eSATA for drives. Brook
[videoblogging] Re: HD quality on YouTube
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Steve Woolf [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm fairly certain this doesn't work anymore, unfortunately. We've tried a half dozen methods to get better encoding quality on YouTube and none of them work anymore. In fact, YT seems to have a consistent problem re-encoding the EPIC-FU intro for some reason. I uploaded my Semanal videos to YT and it was strange. One looked no different qualitatively to the FLV I uploaded, while the other 3 look like turds. Obviously re-encoded. Wondering if duration had any bearing on this. Disapointing.
[videoblogging] Re: Interesting video interview about the future of online video advertising
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Renat Zarbailov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: URL hotspots in the video is also essential for product placement for new tab opening when the end-user clicks on it. What are your thoughts on this? This will be the future of web video for sure. Adobe Media Player should make this a more viable option with an interactive Flash layer over H264 video. Enhanced podcasts come close to this in some ways, but I haven't seen any that use that technology for 'traditional' advertising. I'm sure the minds of advertisers have to be changed/convinced that web video is worthwhile avenue for advertising on. As has been mentioned already it comes down to ROI for them. I think old school ad mentality dictates that broad advertising to a vast audience in the hope that a small percentage of those viewers react to the ad. The new school will be slivercasting to highly targeted niche audiences, that will obviously be much much smaller. Once advertisers can be convinced that bigger is not necessarily better it should really beneftit a web video show with a small but loyal niche audience. We're seeing it with Ask A Ninja a little bit (maybe others I'm not aware of) but those eyeballs are still valuable. The Beer School podcast for instance. You know right there what demographic is subscribing to that show. Any number of advertisers would be smart to buy ad space/sponsor it. It will get there, but the wheels of industry turn slowly... adam
[videoblogging] Re: High Quality Flash
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Chris [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Ron Watson k9disc@ wrote: = iTunes won't take that FLV file will they? iTunes is all mp4, isn't it? Chris iTunes uses MP3, MP4(H264), MOV or DRMed m4v (video) or m4a (audio)
[videoblogging] Re: HD quality on YouTube
I believe this is true. The nudie video looked very good indeed. YouTube limits uploads to 100MB (does it still work that way, been a while) so they are not limiting DATA RATE. The nudie vids were 10mins long which is quite long, but if you encode down to H264 at a pretty high quality BEFORE uploading to YT I have heard you can get a lot more band for your 100MB buck. Also, using a dedicated FLV encoder to do a 2-pass Variable Bit Rate encode will yield much better quality than the generic YT upload default. I've heard that you can actually upload a video in flash format and it won't get transcoded. It'll maintain whatever quality in which it was uploaded.
[videoblogging] Re: High Quality Flash
I'll chip in with my 2 cents here as it varies from the populace it seems. To export 16:9 FLV from anamorphic DV (your 720x480) your final video size will need to be 854x480. It sounds like VisualHub may do this for you. I do my encoding in Telestream Episode, as it does batch encoding to a gazzilion formats. Its not cheap but the quality is great and the level of control you get is astounding. I set my bit rates pretty low and my picture size is still small, but if you wanted to full frame with your video you could get good quality from VP6 FLV (Flash8). Here are a couple of quick sampples I just spat out of Episode. Used built in templates, no tweeking so they could be optimized a little. I noticed the playback of the 720 version is a little jerky. Don't know why right now. But the spacial and temporal quality holds up pretty well. 1280x720 FLV at 3500kbps 2-pass VBR http://influxx.com/public/Scene9_1280x720.flv 854x480 FLV at 2000kbps 2-pass VBR http://influxx.com/public/Scene9_854x480.flv --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Ron Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, Anybody have any tips for creating high quality flash for export to blip? I went to the learning place on blip and they said to export in native resolution, but my export resolution from final cut is listed at 720x480 which would be OK, but it's 16:9 footage. I've tried this before with ffmpegx (0.9x) and wind up with a flash file that is too small for blip. I just dl the new version (0.9.y) and am hoping to have more success. I would really like to get my video out as a high quality flash file. We've got great cameras and great high motion footage. Any help would be appreciated. Cheers, Ron Watson http://k9disc.blip.tv http://k9disc.com http://discdogradio.com http://pawsitivevybe.com
[videoblogging] Re: Home grown blog (was TrafficGeyser.com)
Well, I don't have that kind of cash to dedicate to a site design. Yet. But it is not a bad idea. You are absolutely right when you look at TIME == MONEY and we can all be putting our time into more productive ventures. I absolutely have ZERO plans of monetizing my site or work, and the whole point of me doing this was to get away from doing it as a business. My freelance work (http://www.influxx.com) keeps me thinking along those lines and this is a creative aside from all that. Having said that the aesthetist in me squirms every time I look at my blog, especially when I see all the great looking sites out there. I'll keep your suggestions in mind. Maybe make a goal for this year to get a bit more serious and cough up for a proper WP site. cheers adam --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is exactly what we did with http://ryanishungry.com. we wanted a better looking blog using Wordpress than we could make ourselves. so we paid someone (happened to be a friend) to design and code the site. we then learn stuff watching her make it. its good money invested. jay
[videoblogging] Re: Home grown blog (was TrafficGeyser.com)
Hey, that WP/SIAB tutorial was great. Makes it seem very straighforward. I would be tempted to give it a whirl. But as was discussed earlier it is also the time. Still might be worth putting away some coin to pay a WP dude to do it. Great suggestions, thanks everyone Or jump into wordpress. There a whole group of us who are not coders learning together: What to download: http://showinabox.tv/download/ Sample Tutorial: http://showinabox.tv/2007/07/05/how-to-install-and-setup-wordpress/ Community: http://groups.google.com/group/show-in-a-box Basically, you get a server, install Wordpress, then play. The Theme is your design and color scheme. The Plugins that people have made just give you functionality.
[videoblogging] Re: Home grown blog (was TrafficGeyser.com)
Dudesyou guys are spoiling me :) Thanks for the link. A ton. adam --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, David Meade [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Feb 7, 2008 3:53 PM, influxxmedia [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But here's my problem. I'm a graphic designer with intermediate web coding skills. I You might enjoy looking at the following how-to: http://theundersigned.net/2006/05/from-xhtmlcss-to-wordpress/
[videoblogging] Re: Home grown blog (was TrafficGeyser.com)
Okay, I really got no excuse now. Thats wicked. Thanks a million. This groups rocks!! --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jay dedman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I also ran across this site: http://wpcustomization.com/
[videoblogging] Re: Home grown blog (was TrafficGeyser.com)
I'd never really considered making a living at this (take a look at my content and you'll know why) but if I could, for sure I'd jump at it. Either way, recently I have been thinking about building my own blog site, more for aesthetic reasons than control, but control would be a handsome by-product. But here's my problem. I'm a graphic designer with intermediate web coding skills. I think most template hosted blogs (blogger, tumblr etc) look like crap. The artist in me wants bespoke design and I want it to look killer. Some of the really great looking blogs I visit all seem to be built on WordPress. I've tried hacking my Blogger CSS to dress up my blog but all I managed to do was create a pile of poo. Reverse engineering someone elses code is not my strong point. I fear going the WordPress route would be equally frustrating for me. So I was wondering if building a simple site in Dreamweaver using Templates would get me what I want. Until I thought about all the cool integration we get from web tools: cross posting, RSS, subscriptions etc. No way I could build all that into a site. And the manual labor it would take to manage this would be ridiculous. Barely have time to post what I have, and it's darn near automatic right now. Even thought about iWeb from Apple. It has blog building tools, but I'm guessing it is A) template based and B) relies on .Mac which I am not into. So a home grown site would awesome and so desirable, but for me, I have to settle for shit ugly Blogger for now. It's all i can manage. adam --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Charles Iliya Krempeaux [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I guess that depends on what your goal is with your video blog. - Do you just want people to see you videos? - Or are you trying to make a living off your videos? If you just want people to watch you videos, then a good strategy for that may very well be to push them everywhere you can. (I.e., push them to YouTube, Blip.tv, Revver, Veoh, DaliyMotion, etc etc.) But if you are trying to make a living off of your videos, then I question whether pushing your videos everywhere will accomplish that. When you're on someone else site, they have all the control. And you can only do what they allow you to do. (And they can change their mind at any time.) In my judgment... having you own site on a domain that you actually own is the best way to go if you want to make a living off video blogging (in most cases). And do what you can to get people to come to your site. It might take a little longer to build an audience but once you do, they'll really be your audience (and not the audience of a video sharing site).
[videoblogging] Re: QuckTime 7.4 and FCP 4.5HD Disaster
Yes, yes and yes. I had a 'no-brainer' FCP project that should have been a couple hour render take all day. QT7.4 caused a memory leak in FCP4.5 that required me keep an eye on iStat, watching the memory consumed, but not released by FCP. Once it got near to maxed out I had to quit the render, quit FCP and reboot. Then repeat over and over until the render was complete. Had renders in AE fail too that had not before. Tried to downgrade back to 7.3 but to no avail. Installer will not let you overwrite a newer version. It's total bollocks.
[videoblogging] Re: Does the file size of video matter anymore?
I still keep my video at 320x240. Unless there is a really good reason, I'm doing some real high art lets say (which I'm not), there is no reason to waste that much bandwidth. The bandwidth is not free and it is not limitless. Someone somewhere has to pay for it, and I dont see the point of wasting it on my ugly mug talking a lot of bullshit. Any video I visit on the web better be really compelling for me to stick with it at hi res, otherwise I just close the window. Progressive download helps here (FastStart-Compresssed Headers) so the file can play while it keeps downloading in the background. Codecs have gotten much more efficient so it has been tempting to update my specs, and I've seen some lovely looking work coming out of the members of this group, especially stuff shot on HD. My little Flip recorder looks like poop anyhow so bigger sizes are necessary. Maybe when I get an HV20 or similar will I change my specs and workflow. Good question.
[videoblogging] Re: HV20 Camera Noise
That Rode mic looks pretty sweet. Not least because it has 1/8 mini jack, bypassing the need for a converter like the BeachTek. Good to get endorsements from many people. What sort of battery life does it get? adam
[videoblogging] Re: HV20 Camera Noise
Just came across this on DVCreators.net Looks remarkably similar to the Rode many people were raving about. http://www.dvcreators.net/the-sennheiser-mke-400-shotgun-mic/ --To give you an idea of the size, it's physical length and width is that of your pinky finger. Yes, that's one amazingly short shotgun microphone. It's surprisingly directional for such a small mic. The design team at Sennheiser was able to innovate while answering the market's request for an even smaller on-camera mic. They maintained the same high quality sound since they built the very first shotgun mic, yes, Sennheiser invented the interference tube design that all of today's shotgun mics are based on. This mic is a great upgrade to a stock mic because it improves sound, yet is so unobtrusive. Attached to a mid sized camera, I can easily maneuver through a crowd without attracting too much attention. That's great when you need to be stealth. Yet you're still getting that high quality sound that Sennheiser is famous for- and that sound is from the direction that you're shooting - great for events, Steadicam, ENG, behind the scenes and documentary style work.The accessory pack is a must! It adds both the wind stopping long haired wind muff and an XLR adapter. This is a must have upgrade to any small camera's stock mic. -- adam
[videoblogging] Re: HV20 Camera Noise
Not used the HV20 per se, but used many miniDV palmcorder types back in school days. What you are describing does sound like tape whir/whine. This is the problem with smaller consumer-type cameras, even really good ones like the HV20. So compact the mic is right there next to the tape drive... First, if you have the ability in your menu system you can turn off auto gain. This will only make your audio pulse and pump as levels change. Sounds awful. Second, if you can afford it get something like a BeachTek box. This device screws into the bottom of the camera on the tripod mount, it has an 1/8 inch jack to plug into the mic in on consumer cameras, and has 2 XLR inputs with the appropriate controls. About $100 US and work very well. Used with an affordable shotgun mic like an Azden it will significantly improve your audio. Poor audio is the one really easy thing that separates good movies from crap ones (speaking as someone who has made a fair few crappy audio crap movies). Of course you could also go to the trouble of getting (wireless) lav system. But not having used one I cant say. Not sure if they have XLR or 1/8 connections. So yes, an eternal mic highly recommended. adam
[videoblogging] Re: Cloverfield hand held major movie
That said, I am curious about CLOVERFIELD and do hope that it's good. If only because I've always loved giant monster movies but have always secretly wished for one that had some legitimate scares... FWIW, Wil Wheaton has a good review of CLOVERFIELD on his blog. Gives it an enthusiastic thumbs up. If i can ever secure some babysitting i really want to see it in the theatre before its gone, experience the full effect vomit-cam. http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2008/01/cloverfield.html adam
