Aug 24 2010

How to Compress Final Cut Express Movies for YouTube

Category: Multimedia & Video, Technology Insights — 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, 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, 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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Aug 17 2010

Documenting Tango to Learn Multimedia

Category: In-Camera Techniques, Multimedia & Video — Ethan G. Salwen @ 6:33 pm

Yesterday I headed over the tango festival going on here in Buenos Aires to photograph a workshop being given by Claudia Bozzo, my tango teacher. She had seen my tango stop-motion movie and asked me if I could document her class and “make something special,” which I heard as, “Here’s a chance to practice your multimedia skills.” This seemed like a good idea given my work for Human Rights Watch. It also seemed like a good time to put my photography skills to work documenting aspects of a culture that daily becomes more my culture.

Carla, on sound, interviews Claudia, on tango.

Carla, on sound, interviews Claudia, on tango.

You can check out the down-and-dirty gallery of images I’ve selected to form the base of the what Ralph Clevenger calls a “music motivational piece.” As you can see, none of the images are stellar, but that won’t be critical — once they are zipping by to music. You can see that I was taking Mary Lynn Price’s advice and working to record the full spectrum of activities in wide, medium and close-up shots.

My girlfriend, Carla, did a great job recording sound, although I didn’t do a great job of instructing her how to do so. I wasn’t clear on what audio I wanted. I also wasn’t clear on how to shoot video segments, which I did frantically with my Canon G9 in between photographing stills.

Frankly, I found the experience overwhelming and confusing. And that wasn’t because there were more than 100 people stuffed into a very tight area, making it very difficult to move around. The real problem was that I was not clear on how I would be using the images and/or video and/or audio to create my piece. However, I wasn’t dismayed.

Thanks to advice from many photographers, I realize that creating multimedia is all about editing. And now I have some raw material to get into Final Cut Express and get editing. As I figure out what I can make, I will undoubtedly learn how I can better balance capturing stills, video and audio to record this kind of event for multimedia.

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Jul 14 2010

Wide, Medium and Close – The Key to Crafting Cool Videos

Category: Creative Process, In-Camera Techniques, Multimedia & Video — Ethan G. Salwen @ 3:24 pm

“When capturing motion and stills for use in multimedia it is essential to record all subjects in wide, medium and close-up shots,” Mary Lynn Price told me recently. As a video journalist focusing on “one-man-band” reporting, Price uses all three perspectives to carefully construct rich reporting experiences. One great example is her “Conserving Shackleton’s Historic Hut in Antarctica,” which she produced in 2008 for “Women Working in Antarctica.”

“The wide shot is the establishing shot, the medium shot clearly shows the subject, and the close-ups give us the ‘wow’ factor,” Price explains. She uses all of these to her storytelling advantage throughout “Shackleton’s Historic Hut.”

Even though it’s only five minutes, “Shackleton’s Historic Hut” asks a lot from Web viewers with short, fickle attention spans. Price holds our interest by presenting as much information as many, slower-paced TV documentaries would in a half hour.

Not only do get to know three different Continue reading “Wide, Medium and Close – The Key to Crafting Cool Videos”

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Jul 05 2010

Where To Find Royalty-Free Music

Category: Multimedia & Video, Online Resources — Ethan G. Salwen @ 4:55 pm

Like royalty-free images, royalty-free music can be found by the in amazing varieties and quantities on the Web. Just do a Google search, and you’ll see.

Ralph Clevenger, who inspired me to embrace royalty-free music, suggested I check out these sites:

AfterCapture Blog_100705_Find Royalty_Free_Music_2

Royalty-Free Music Suggestions?

Not really sure how I ended up using Premiumbeat.com for the $29.95 worth of music I used in my “Royalty-Free Buenos Aires,” but I was just experimenting, and I was left wondering. . .With all the royalty-free music sits and services, certainly some have got to be better than others. So. . .

If you are ahead of me on this royalty-free music learning curve — which wouldn’t be hard — are there royalty-free music services and basic concepts that you might share with me, and my thousands of faithful readers?

SmartSound and Sonicfire Pro?

As long as you’re Continue reading “Where To Find Royalty-Free Music”

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Jul 04 2010

Royalty-Free Music Rocks, Rolls and (Legally) Produces Drama

Category: Multimedia & Video — Ethan G. Salwen @ 10:55 am

“Most songs are copyright protected, and cannot be used unless they are licensed,” Ralph Clevenger emphasized when we talked the other day. Actually, he emphasized this point a number of times, noting that this very obvious point is not so very obvious to many photographers putting images to sound.

I wasn’t to me, which is why for my “Milonga de Sal y Pimienta” video, which I posted here in May, I totally — major oops — stole music from Gotan Project to achieve my artist goal. I just wasn’t thinking, inspired by the music itself to make my video. Heck, the music is the best part of the piece!

It’s no excuse, but I think my music-using ignorance is somewhat understandable. After all, millions of YouTube videos feature illegally-used music, and, right or wrong, this has given me a sense that using music any which way is AOK. Well, it’s not. Just like it’s not OK for people to use our images without permission.

To get myself on the right side of the intellectual property of music, yesterday I threw this little baby together, appropriately called, “Royalty-Free Buenos Aires.”

It’s clearly nothing special, but Continue reading “Royalty-Free Music Rocks, Rolls and (Legally) Produces Drama”

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Jul 02 2010

Take a Flight to Antarctica

Category: Books, Multimedia & Video, Viewpoint — Ethan G. Salwen @ 3:56 pm

“The way I approach multimedia is to think about each project as a storyteller and then to think about what tools I will need to best tell the story,” says Mary Lynn Price, who since retiring from practicing trial law in 2003 has dedicated herself to video journalism, with specific interest in natural history stories that support conservation efforts. Just as Ralph Clevenger told me, Price explained to me than nothing matters more than thinking about story when putting together “music videos” — her name for multimedia projects that tell stories without narration or even graphics, but just smart use of images and music.

Price proves her music-video storytelling prowess in “C-17 Flight to McMurdo Antarctica.” In less than two minutes, she takes us from baggage security scanning and flight boarding to landing on “The Ice,” having shown us tons of interesting close-ups during this famous, windowless flight.

“Famous” is, um, definitely too strong a word for this particular flight that takes scientists and support staff to the McMurdo Station. But I’m an Antarctic exploration junkie so I’ve sure heard about it plenty, although I could never really imagine what it would be like — until I got taken for a ride with Price’s great documentary vision.

What does it mean that I’m an Antarctic (and Arctic) exploration junkie? It means that I’ve read Alfred Lansing’s “Endurance” three times, twice read “Shackleton’s Forgotten Men” (by the brilliant Lennard Bickel) and at least once just about all of the other classic books about frostbite and suffering in pursuit of knowledge at the southernmost (and northernmost) tip of the world.

I’m kidding about the pursuit of knowledge. Continue reading “Take a Flight to Antarctica”

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Jun 28 2010

Telling Stories with Music Motivational Pieces

Category: Multimedia & Video — Ethan G. Salwen @ 12:30 pm

“Even music motivational pieces have to have a storyline,” Ralph Clevenger told me in regard to multimedia production. “Photographers tend to freak out when they hear the word ’story.’ Unlike with still photography, in multimedia you are now creating a piece that has a beginning, middle and end. That’s a story.”

“Music motivational pieces” are what Clevenger calls multimedia pieces that consist of still and/or video captures set to a music-only soundtrack. No need to deal with the difficulties of recording or editing complex soundtracks — new territory for most photographers.

“They can be absolutely wonderful,” Clevenger said of music motivation pieces. (Many photographers refer to them as “music videos.”) When getting started in multimedia, Clevenger says, “Most still photographers will go the route of creating these beautiful little pieces with beautiful images.”

Continue reading “Telling Stories with Music Motivational Pieces”

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