Aug 27 2010

Buying Audio Equipment with a Little Help from My (YouTube) Friends

Category: Multimedia & Video, Technology Insights — Ethan G. Salwen @ 8:52 am

If you are already using YouTube to research equipment, make buying decisions and to learn tech tips, you can skip this post. If you are not, I want to invite you to the YouTube audio/video technical learning fest of which I have been ignorant. For example, recently this simple, nerdy audio test by onelonedork helped me immensely.

You see, Gail Mooney had suggested that I make the Zoom H4n my tool of choice for recording audio for multimedia projects. Instead of just taking her word for it, I spent a lot of time reading reviews on traditional sites and blogs to see if I couldn’t get something just as good for less than $300. Finally convinced to go with the Zoom, I hit a major stumbling block. What accessories to buy?

From Mooney and others I knew that multiple external microphones are critical for best sound recording. But as I looked for a cheap mic or two, I quickly learned there is no such thing as a cheap mic. Most are more expensive than the recorder itself, and that was already straining my budget. Most frustrating, I had no way of knowing if I would really need one, at least at this point in the game.

I simply had no way of knowing how the Zoom recorded in the real world — at least not until I stumbled upon the test by onelonedork. His great, dorky test test shows the position of the Zoom, and helped me realize that, for now, I would be fine with the recorder alone. No accessories needed. I could simply buy the Zoom, begin recording interviews and ambient sound with the on-board mics, then consider further purchases after I’ve created some content.

Wait! I stumbled upon one more nerdy, wonderful audio test (by KalaniPrince) that made me decide that I just had to shell out $50 bucks for a little fuzzy hat for the zoom. It seems ridiculous to pay 1/6th of the price of the recorder for a bit of fuzz, but this video made it clear to me that it’s a must

The Wonderful YouTube Community of Multimedia Nerds

There are tons of YouTube videos featuring Zoom audio tests with all kinds of mic configurations. Besides helping me Continue reading “Buying Audio Equipment with a Little Help from My (YouTube) Friends”

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Aug 24 2010

How to Compress Final Cut Express Movies for YouTube

Category: Multimedia & Video, Resources, Technology Insights, Uncategorized — Ethan G. Salwen @ 1:56 pm

Looking for step-by-step instructions for prepping (i.e. compressing) HD video files from Final Cut Express for YouTube? If so, you’ll find the answers you need in this great video tutorial by BIGlittleBROTHER. Very friendly, super informative and, apparently, works for iMovie ‘08 projects as well.

I have to give a super BIG thanks to BIGlittleBROTHER for this one! He really helped me get rolling with Final Cut Express (see last post), and his approach to explaining allowed me to adapt his methods to suite my specific needs.

No wonder his tutorial has gotten 46 thousand views!

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Aug 23 2010

Final Cut Express Newbie – Take One – Video Compression for YouTube

Category: Multimedia & Video, Resources, Technology Insights — Ethan G. Salwen @ 11:39 am

After all my worrying, I finally buy Final Cut Express and to my virgin eyes the program looks just like Final Cut Pro — totally intimidating! To get beyond this I force myself to avoid all the possibilities and think about the most basic task I want to accomplish. Answer: Upload video footage from my Canon G9 to YouTube.

This past weekend I grabbed my G9 and pretty quickly had this:

Clearly this sucks. Horrible compression from hell. Worse than “dumb” iMovie would help me produce. However, I have succeeded in getting the footage in and out of FCE and on YouTube fast, and that was the point.

For “Take II” (below) I referred to a FCE tutorial on Lynda.com, and found some help on how/where to compress for broadband, getting this:

Not bad at all, but I wanted to see if I could find better, “ideal” settings I could use.

I found clear, awesome instructions on best HD compression for YouTube in Final Cut Express/iMovie from BIGlittleBROTHER in his awesome YouTube tutorial. I wasn’t shooting HD, but I thought I’d give it a try, and got “Take III”: Continue reading “Final Cut Express Newbie – Take One – Video Compression for YouTube”

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Aug 19 2010

Finally Going with Final Cut Express. Right Move?

Category: Multimedia & Video, Resources, Technology Insights — Ethan G. Salwen @ 7:21 pm

AC_Blog_100819_Final Cut Express_1I finally decided to go with Final Cut Express 4 as my primary multimedia and video editing software after way too much thinking about it. I spent the $200 and a friend smuggled the program into the country for me a couple weeks back. (It would have cost twice as much locally, and might have been in Spanish.) In retrospect, I can’t believe I have spent so many months thinking about which video editing software to to use, grinding my teeth over the $200 cost of Final Cut Express (FCE), not at all sure if it would do all that I want.

I’ve been using iMovie (post version 6) exclusively for more than a year-and-a-half, and the program began to frustrate me almost immediately. iMovie is certainly simple but using it has felt like trying to edit with handcuffs on. I quickly found there were certain things — seemingly very basic things — that I simply could not do. (I was disheartened to read many reviews that said that the “improvements” to iMovie made the program much worse than version 6.)

However, I reminded myself that I was learning basic editing and producing pieces that were making friends and family laugh, and I couldn’t justify the expense of Final Cut Pro ($800) or Adobe Premiere ($800).

Final Cut Pro Wary

Even if I had the cash for Final Cut Pro, I’m not sure I would have shelled it out. Everyone says the FCP learning curve makes learning Photoshop seem like a breeze. About a year ago I had the opportunity to play around with Final Cut Pro on a friend’s machine and the experience left me shell shocked — completely intimidated. I didn’t feel like my hands were handcuffed; I felt like I had no hands. I just couldn’t do anything.

I was starting to appreciate the benefits of iMovie, but I really needed to advance, but I held off buying, obsessing about FCE’s functionality.

What’s Wrong with FCE?

Upgrading to FCE would seem to be a no-brainer, but I found lots of Continue reading “Finally Going with Final Cut Express. Right Move?”

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Jul 31 2010

On Sorting Diverse File Formats — Simple Version

Category: AC Articles, Technology Insights, Workflow — Ethan G. Salwen @ 4:05 pm

AfterCapture Blog_100730_Sorting Files_1We’re all shooting multiple file formats with multiple cameras. Even when photographing with only one camera we can easily end up with: Raws, Raw + JPEGs, JPEGs (only), and movie files. Yikes.

If you’re photographing with two (or more) cameras, super yikes — when it comes to efficient workflow, for archiving and processing.

Actually, there are some simple solutions.

For my last AfterCapture column, I provide some solutions. For “Sorting Out Diverse File Formats” I turned to Richard Anderson for advice, who applied dpBestflow.org knowledge to a real-life workflow dilemma I was facing. The article is valuable, but to be honest, the most pertinent advice might have gotten lost in the shuffle.

The bottom line, most important concepts you should consider for dealing with multiple file formats in your workflow are these:

• Separate each different file format into its own folder. Anderson explains that this is helpful because each type of file will (likely) require different workflow processing steps.

• Name each archive folder with the same base name used for you image files. Anderson explains that this best practice is important for archive sanity (although he didn’t phrase it that way.)

• Bring images together in a cataloging program – for organizing, editing and outputting. Catalog programs rule! They don’t care if your images are separated into different folders. In cataloging software — such as Lightroom and Expression Media — you can bring them together, seamlessly organizing by file name, capture time or any other metadata.

If this sounds complex complex or confusing, these images will show you what I mean:

AfterCapture Blog_100730_Sorting Files_3

See how all my “100302″ captures are divided into “DNGs”, “Jpegs” and “Movies”?

AfterCapture Blog_100730_Sorting Files_4

See how there is a gap between DNG 0174 and 0179?

AfterCapture Blog_100730_Sorting Files_5

No problem! Files 0175 through 0178 are JPEGs and, as you can see, they are in their own folder.

Just because these DNGs and JPEGs are in separate folders, they all come together seamlessly in my Expression Media catalog. If you are over 18 and don’t have a weak stomach, you can see an example here: Continue reading “On Sorting Diverse File Formats — Simple Version”

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Jul 28 2010

Love Your Family, Be Wary of Your HD-DSLR

Category: In Motion, In-Camera Techniques, Technology Insights — Ethan G. Salwen @ 4:43 pm

Since writing last night about a blog post by Gail Mooney, she’s written two more, and also done some major reporting Down Under for her “Opening Our Eyes” documentary project. Go Mooney!

Here are two key lessons I take away from Mooney’s “The Importance of ‘Family’” and “The Hard Part About Working with DSLRs”, both of which I encourage you to read — gaining insights from both Mooney’s Humane Side as well as her Tech-Nerdy Side:

• Family matters more than anything. So keep on building, loving and appreciating your “family,” even if these people are not related by blood.

As Mooney says of a young homeless man helped by the Oasis project: “His wants are simple – to love and be loved. How very basic and yet so tragic that being part of a family seems so out of reach for so many.”

• HD-DSLR cameras are not the best tools for recording video for making movies. HD-DSLRs are a major pain for capturing video, so (at least for now) for the best, most hassle free video-only shooting we’re better of with HD video cameras.

As Mooney says: “Yes, the visual [of HD-DSLRs] is stunning but I can’t help but think how many moments I may have missed that I probably would have gotten if I had been shooting with a video camera.”

Let’s go to the video. . .

To honor both family and not capturing video on HD-DSLRs — I used my measly Canon G9 — I share a home movie I made a year-and-a-half ago. Back then these wackos were just the wacky family of my girlfriend. But now, with the wedding set for January, these wackos are my family, too. Yes!

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Jul 27 2010

It’s Making Movies, Stupid!

Category: Creative Process, In Motion, Technology Insights — Ethan G. Salwen @ 6:17 pm

“After 11 years of shooting motion and over 30 years of shooting still images, my mind seamlessly makes the switch a hundred times a day between thinking and seeing in ‘moments in time’ or ‘time in motion’”, Gail Mooney shared yesterday in “True Convergence with the DSLR Cameras,” a great blog post from her “Journeys of a Hybrid.” Mooney speaks of how photographers new to video tend to get consumed by the technical challenges and “forget that they need to think and shoot differently when shooting video.”

This is something that I have been struggling with in my very initial steps into video and multimedia. I notice that I either shoot all stills or all motion. My mind is not only not switch seamlessly, it’s hardly switching at all. And when I am in video mode, I hardly know what I’m doing. And why should I? While I’ve been making still images for 20 years, I’ve only played around with multimedia a tiny bit over the past year. How would I know how to make a movie?

To make a movie. That’s the real challenge of photographers “moving into motion”: embracing video capture, as well as audio capture, as well as the editing these element together, or even “just” editing still images and sound into multimedia pieces. This “move making” factor might seem incredibly obvious, but I think few of us really realize this.

Maybe you realize this. But if you do, do you really realize this?

I ask because I recently finished up a 4,000-word article sharing photographers’ insights on embracing video and multimedia and, as good as the article is — I’ll share it with you when I have the PDF — I think I fail to communicate this obvious-subtle idea: Moving into motion is all about making movies, and making movies is hard.

Because of all the TV programs and movies we consume, we have a sense of how movies work, which is great. But, just as casual photographers Continue reading “It’s Making Movies, Stupid!”

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Jul 21 2010

Should Photographers Learn HTML and CSS?

Category: Technology Insights — Ethan G. Salwen @ 11:31 am

Even if you are not a reporter, as a modern photographer you very likely consider yourself an “independent publisher/producer,” and so the flowchart posted yesterday on 10,000 Words will be of interest.

AfterCapture Blog_100721_shouldilearnprogramming-sm

According to this chart, if you don’t want to spend nights crying over your keyboard, you should not learn programming. On the other hand, if you want to build Web sites, you should learn HTML and CSS. This seems about right to me, and it points to the fact that, these days:

1. The act of building Web sites can be as simple as lightly customizing a blog template (theme), which can seriously help photographers in self-publishing images, photo stories and multimedia projects.

2. Most people do not consider basic HTML and CSS serious programming.

Few photographers will want to or will need to learn Continue reading “Should Photographers Learn HTML and CSS?”

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Jul 13 2010

Say “Stuff It!” to StuffIt Delux?

Category: Technology Insights, Viewpoint — Ethan G. Salwen @ 2:25 pm

AfterCapture Blog_100713_StuffIt_1Recipe for a major headache: needing to FTP 1.5 GB of image files using a seriously crappy Internet connection. (Notoriously bad in Argentina.) I would have pulled my hair out this morning, realizing that my efforts of last night had led to nothing (”disconnected”), but, um, I have no hair.

To reduce my 1.5 GB by about 10% I was using the nifty “Compress” zipping functionality of my Mac computer. But today I thought, “Maybe I can do better with StuffIt.” I was desperate, but not so desperate as to pay $79.95 (gulp!) or even to try the “free” trial (not so free, image below) without doing a little research.

I started to search around the Web, hoping that a reliable source would say, “StuffIt rocks! It reduces file size so dang much, and has offers other values worth way more than 50 bucks!”

What I found, on the StuffIt Delux 2010 User Reviews forum at MacUpdate was not encouraging, as in: “No thank you, just… Stuff It,” and, “Oh God… Here we go again with the freaking upgrades. I can set my calendar/clock to this company and their ridiculous upgrades,” and, “Stuffit is way outdated. And their current policies of asking for a credit card number for a demo are joke.”

Any Value to StuffIt?

So is there anybody who has anything good to say about StuffIt, or should we all say “Stuff it, StuffIt!”?

Continue reading “Say “Stuff It!” to StuffIt Delux?”

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Jun 30 2010

Critical Multimedia and Video Learning Resources

Category: Books, Creative Process, In Motion, Resources, Technology Insights — Ethan G. Salwen @ 3:45 pm

AfterCapture Blog_100630_Video_Resources_1-1I’ve been writing a lot about multimedia these days, focusing mainly on providing inspiration. That’s because I think being inspired about what we can do will lead to us figuring out how we can do it. Still, excellent how-to learning resources are critical, so. . .

Two Great Books

From Still to Motion: A photographer’s guide to creating video with your DSLR (New Riders, 2010) is an absolute must have. Written by James Ball, Robbie Carman, Matt Gottshalk and Richard Harrington, From Still to Motion is an engaging, comprehensive techniques manual geared specifically for knowledgeable photographers. Very, very, very cool.

The Lean Forward Moment: Create Compelling Stories for Film, TV and the Web (New Riders, 2009) by Norman Hollyn is a lucid, eye-opening book focused on storytelling and production concepts critical to multimedia success. Drawing from famous movies to teach essential ideas, this book will have a long shelf life.

Three Super Web Sites

DSLRHD.com — “Get into the DSLR Video Game!”

DVInfo.net — “The Digital Video Information Network”

PhotoCineNews.com — “The first blog dedicated to the convergence of photography and video.”

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