A "flipbook" is one of those little books where each page is of consecutive frames, so when you flip throught them, they seem to move like a movie. This effect has worked quite well in various music video's. Here are two softwares that do that in their respective platforms.
For the PC: Flipbook Printer is a free software. There are even some links at the bottom of the page that direct you to other artists who use flipbooks for their work/ art.
For the Mac: Naked Software makes a program called Movie Flipper that can be found at the bottom of this page. On the same page, you will find some other quite interesting video software.
Both these softwares are donationware, so if you use them, please donate.
Sony announced today that it will provide sales and support for the UMD Composer software toolkit for authoring of video content on UMD (Universal Media Disc). UMD is the primary media format for Sony’s PSP handheld entertainment system, Hollywood has promised to support the format and has recently started to release movie titles in Sony's proprietary format. UMD is an optical disc which is only 60mm in diameter, which can store
up to 1.8GB of digital data. The latest copy-protection technology
will be applied to offer content developers and publishers a safe and
copy-protected environment.The UMD Composer is the only authoring suite of its kind, allowing film studios and production houses the necessary tools to format video-based UMD's.
Been reading all my free magazines from NAB Post, thought I share some of the interesting articles I am finding. Film & Video has an article on the sound editing process for Adult Swim, Cartoon Network’s nocturnal block of animation, including Aqua Teen Hunger Force; Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law; Venture Bros.; Sealab 2021; Robot Chicken and others. The article describes the workflow and even shares secrets for editing comedy: "Reducto is obviously a very paranoid and self-conscious individual obsessed with making things very small, so I wanted to accent that every way possible with his noises," Kohler says. "Every time he moves or spins with his gun drawn, there is a small squeak sound from a library accenting how fast he moves, a very-sharp-tap footstep sound that I’ve compressed, truncated and pitched to give the impression of very quick-moving, small, hard-sole shoes. Lastly, I wanted to emphasize the fact that his weapon was not just a gun, but gear that he wears, and I wanted it to sound somewhat cheap. So I found a small plastic bubble-blowing toy that had the right density to it, and a small screwdriver that I shake, hit, or just move it with to create a junky toy-like rattle every time he motions." Good read, if you like that, check out the magazine in the newsstands.
Saw this at NAB Post, LanternaMagic's Reality is a real-time, web-based logger. It is pretty fancy stuff for high-end productions. Basically, you rent the machine, use their software to log real-time, then output the logs to the web so post-production houses can take it from there. A product like this would be useful if you are shooting an event in the morning and it needs to be aired in the afternoon. "Reality is rented by the week: you get a turnkey system, with no software to install, nothing to configure and nothing to set up. Just unpack it, plug it in and go!" For most of us, this is useless but I imagine some of you who might have a big event to cover within a tight deadline, this might be a life-saver.
Ken Stone reviewsOptimizing Your Final Cut Pro System, a book that is much needed in the digital video world. "At the very start, FCP was mostly Firewire DV. As time passed FCP grew into a completely open-ended NLE, moving beyond DV to accommodate virtually all of the new video formats as well as having the ability to work with film. Of course, with this enormous flexibility, comes a myriad of requirements to handle the multitude of formats that FCP works with." And "until the release of Optimizing You FCP System, finding specific answers to these post production questions has been very difficult indeed, a few articles scattered across the web and some discussions at different boards was all there was to provide the many elusive answers to the many questions and concerns which surfaced all too frequently." Sounds like a must have reference book to all Final Cut users.
I have posted earlier on legendary editor Walter Murch whether it be his new work as an editor on "Jarhead" directed by Sam Mendes, or his role as an educator in a new book, "Art of Editing Film" by Michael Ondaatje. NPR has an excellent article on Murch with various scenes from his films and also has a nice snippet from the book. If you do not plan to buy the book, I suggest you read the article.
Here is a little taste, Murch says "There are underlying mathematical influences that determine how a film gets put together, which are amazingly consistent, seemingly independent of the films themselves. Over the years, I've come to rely on these influences -- navigation points -- as I work on each film. For instance: 2.5 -- an audience can process only two and a half thematic elements at any moment; 14 -- a sustained action scene averages out to fourteen new camera positions a minute; 30 -- an assembly should be no more than thirty percent over the ideal running length of the film. But these are perhaps just islands above a larger submerged continent of theory that we have yet to discover."
Vue 5 Easel is a stripped-down version of Vue d'Esprit, a 3D landscape/scenery generation tool. Easel offers much of the base functionality of the full version of Vue but has extremely limited animation capabilities (flythroughs only) and far fewer rendering options. Here is the bottom line of the review: "Despite the inherent limitations of a product designed to be entry-level, I do find Vue 5 Easel useful in many respects. The most important of these is that I can create complex landscapes quickly and with a minimum of fuss, whereas I couldn't imagine the time that would be involved when trying to create these scenes in any general 3D program. It has a little wonkiness to it in terms of stability, and the render times can be very, very bad in specific circumstances. But overall, it does what it sets out to do: It gives graphic artists a simple but deep tool for creating rich 3D environments. And it does it at a reasonable price ($89 for the full version)." I have very limited experience with 3D and these types of software."
Back in the day, Cleaner ($600) was an important cog in my editing workflow but then Apple released Compressor, and with the combination of Quicktime, Cleaner became obsolete. However, it was not because Compressor was neccessarily better but just that it was integrated with all of Apple's other softwares. I have not worked with Cleaner in a while but I think it was the superior product especially in terms of flexibility and power. The user interface was actually easier than Apple's Compressor. It might be time for me to reconsider what to use as Autodesk has upgraded Cleaner to 6.5. Here are some of the new features:
Export to the widely adopted DivX format
Export to Flash video FLV and SWF for playback using the Macromedia Flash Player ·
Victor Agreda, Jr. over at Download Squad has a small but useful write-up of Jahshaka, a realtime open source video editing and effects software. It is available for Macs, PC's and Linux. Agreda states though the software has all the tools you might need but its workflow is not as effecient as other editing apps. However, like Blender, once you started to work within the software, Agreda states, that it is inevitable that you would get used to the workflow. Jahshaka is currently holding a UI (User Interface) Design Contest, so if you plan to use it and want to change a couple of things, this would be a good time to get involved. Some of the designs are very, very promising.
There are some technical issues on the Mac as the program is unable to "bring up" (I am guessing import) simple Quicktime files into the program. Even if you are tied into your Final Cut and Vegas systems, it is always good to support free and open-source tools such as this. I remember, graduating from college and having to invest so much money to get a basic editing system. It was almost impossible to get by without having to resort to using a "hand me down" copy of Final Cut. Hopefully, in the future, we will have enough open source tools that college graduates can avoid using "hand me down" software.
Tweaking Photoshop's user interface – I wish Photoshop would do a major haul of the user interface in all their software.
How to make cut out animation in Final Cut Pro – Very good turorial for beginners. I would not use Final Cut for animation but stuff like this only helps in your understanding of the program.
So I am back home, at my beloved G5, wondering if all the effort was worth it. Overall, the classes were really the only things that excited me but even that would not be something that I could do every year. I spent the last day taking a bunch of classes on sound: 1) capturing the right voice-over whether it be technically or artistically 2) scoring for films 3) cleaning bad audio. All these classes were so good that I cancelled a couple of appointments that were scheduled around the same time. Over the course of couple of weeks, I will share some of the programs that were used and, hopefully (if I can read my notes), the methods that were described. As I have mentioned earlier in my reports, there was nothing introduced with video hardware or software. So that was a bummer. But I did meet a lot of people, it was a very good place to expand your contact list of post-production people. In the voice-over class, an actress walked around giving her voice-over demo to everybody. The whole convention showed signs of promise if anything. New York City is always a wonderful place to hold a convention and I certainly hope in time this thing grows to compete with NAB.
Computerworld's Yuval Kossovsky is one of the lucky few who have had the chance to put the new Apple G5 Quad through its paces and judging by the review I would say he was quite impressed. The new G5 Quad features two dual-core 2.5GHz processors as well as 3 PCI Express expansion slots which have given the system a noticeable increase in performance.
Now for all the Final Cut Pro and After Effects users out there, here are some specs that will really grab your attention. During testing, projects in After Effects ran nearly 60% faster, and standard definition renders in Final Cut Pro ran nearly 50% faster and this is compared to a dual 2.5GHz system, which is no push over itself. Looks like it may be time to start saving up the cash again.
So yesterday, I mentioned how boring the stalls were at NAB Post. However, one of the smaller products did intrigue me. It was Contour's ShuttlePro. I have a very basic mouse, I try to stay on the keyboard as much as I can but using the ShuttlePro two hand approach to do most of the mundane editing could be cool. Here is a snippet from the company–"the ShuttlePro is designed for ergonomic integrity and maximizing productivity, allowing one-hand access to the fully programmable buttons and jog/shuttle knob. Nine of the buttons have removable keycaps for easy labeling and referencing. The inner ring or 'jog' rotates through 360 degrees and provides precision frame by frame control. The outer black ring or 'shuttle' is rubberized and spring-loaded. It facilitates fast forward and rewind. You can also use the jog and shuttle for many other purposes such as scrolling, volume control, and sequencing." The scroll wheel for play, fast forward and rewind needs some getting used to, and the buttons are little too slick but overall I am still digging it and plan to get one for my editing system.
Macworld has done a very comprehensive review of Firewire drives which I am sure many of you use to store your media. I have several drives (250GB, 2 x 160GB) and there all LaCie's. I have had no problems yet with any of the drives (knock on wood) and I have heard so many nightmare stories that it is going to take a lot of convincing for me to switch. The article also prefers the LaCie drive for external hard-drives. There are other drives reviewed including the special drives for the Mac Mini. Unfortunately, it is one of those articles that is suited for print, the tables are lot easier to follow. However, it is still a good read especially if you are in the market for a drive.
I was extremely late to my second day at NAB Post, what can I say I had a late night the day earlier. Anyways, attended a couple of classes: 1) rotoscoping with Flash 2) using After Effects and Flash together. The classes were so interesting that I decided to skip the keynote address by the editor of the Fox television show "24" which was something I was looking forward to but, oh well, these things are expected at conventions. The stalls opened today, and I have to say I was quite disappointed. There were not many things that surprised me, it was the same old same old. Products such as Apple and Avid dominated the proceedings. The amount of music compilations was simply astonishing, it seemed like every other stall was selling music. It is weird feeling to attend an event such as NAB Post, everyone is dying to get you into the stall so they can sell you the product but there are also somewhat jaded like they have already given up. Anyways, there were some interesting products that I will talk more about later. If you live in NYC, and love freebies, it might be a good idea to come and check out the event -- there are free copies of magazines everywhere. Alright, time for me to get some sleep. I will try to bring some interviews tomorrow, many of these instructors are full of information.
A "flipbook" is one of those little books where each page is of consecutive frames, so when you flip throught them, they seem to move like a movie. This effect has worked quite well in various music video's. Here are two softwares that do that in their respective platforms.
Sony 
Been reading all my free magazines from NAB Post, thought I share some of the interesting articles I am finding. Film & Video has an 
Ken Stone 
I have posted earlier on legendary editor Walter Murch whether it be his new 
Back in the day, 
Victor Agreda, Jr. over at Download Squad has a small but useful 
So I am back home, at my beloved G5, wondering if all the effort was worth it. Overall, the classes were really the only things that excited me but even that would not be something that I could do every year. I spent the last day taking a bunch of classes on sound: 1) capturing the right voice-over whether it be technically or artistically 2) scoring for films 3) cleaning bad audio. All these classes were so good that I cancelled a couple of appointments that were scheduled around the same time. Over the course of couple of weeks, I will share some of the programs that were used and, hopefully (if I can read my notes), the methods that were described. As I have mentioned earlier in my reports, there was nothing introduced with video hardware or software. So that was a bummer. But I did meet a lot of people, it was a very good place to expand your contact list of post-production people. In the voice-over class, an actress walked around giving her voice-over demo to everybody. The whole convention showed signs of promise if anything. New York City is always a wonderful place to hold a convention and I certainly hope in time this thing grows to compete with NAB.
So yesterday, I mentioned how boring the stalls were at NAB Post. However, one of the smaller products did intrigue me. It was Contour's 
Macworld has done a very 
