Christopher Rouse (The Bourne Ultimatum) may have walked away with the award for Best Editing at this year’s Oscar ceremony, but Avid Technology is the real winner.
The company, already synonymous with Hollywood editing technology, recently announced that all of the nominated films in eight categories at the 80th annual Academy Awards employed at least one Avid system.
All of the nominees for Best Picture, Directing, Documentary Feature, Original Score, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Sound Mixing and Sound Editing used either Avid, Digidesign, Sibelius or Softimage, all Avid-owned companies.
Avid has converted the highest number of broadcasters to digital news workflows in the industry with more than 250 end-to-end news work group installations. Various international broadcasters, such as NBC, Reuters, CBS News, Fox Television, the BBC, NDTV, CNBC, Times Now and DirectTV utilize Avid software for their video editing needs.
A video codec is a device or software that enables video compression and/or decompression for digital video. Digital video codecs are found in DVD (MPEG-2), VCD (MPEG-1), in emerging satellite and terrestrial broadcast systems, and on the Internet.
Below are 5 Must Know Video Codecs and their features
1. H.263 – use for video conferencing This codec is a good choice for the business community. It’s ideal for a video conference where you do not need high-quality pictures and where audio is going to take priority. It is best with low movement films, so a more or less stationary talking head is going to be just perfect. The data rate for thiswould be small, but much quality is lost. Perhaps the only use of this codec is if you wanted to send aquick version of a film for viewing by a co-worker; you may not worry too much about the way it looksas you just want quick feedback.
2. Cinepak – use for CD-ROMs This is a good, well-established system which works best with small image sizes. This codec is outperformed by many others, even though its small picture size, at 120×90 pixels, is now getting bigger as computers improve. It is better used on low-end machines but is not usually the first option for web film, being more suited to CD-ROMs. A big advantage with this codec is that it allows the sender to customize settings throughout a film, so you can apply heavier compression to places where there is notmuch movement but lighter compression to where you need more detail on screen, perhaps during anaction sequence. This process avoids ‘data spikes’, where sudden increases in data cause a movie to stopplaying on the user’s PC because too much data is needed.
3. RealG2 – good for web work, not for other uses This codec is widely used on the web. It uses ‘temporal scaleability’, which means that the result forthe user is smoother than others even on a wide range of computers or devices. This means movies encoded with it play at a high frame rate for fast processors and low for slow ones. This codec is hard to beat in terms of the number of users who may have access to it on the web and the ease with which the rest can download it (for free).
4. Sorenson – good all-rounder This is a really good, high-quality codec and looks better than most at a screen size of 320×240. It’sa good solution for movies that are going to be viewed over broadband connections, but some editions (notably the Developer Edition) cater for the other users by enabling scaleable streaming. One aspect which puts many people off using this codec is the length of time it takes to encode a movie in this way,but it remains the method of choice for most short movies, for the web and CD.
5. Intel Indeo 4 and 5 – good, but mainly for high power With this method of compression you get a good result with high picture quality, but it is only viablefor high-powered PCs or Macs. Version 5 allows for progressive downloads. Intel’s codec is generally better than Cinepak, but cannot match the picture quality of the Sorenson.
If you have a .Mac account you can put a video from Final Cut Pro online with iWeb in a few steps. This is a great way to allow a client to preview a video without much effort. Making the site secure for only the client to be able to view the page is as simple as setting a login and password in iWeb before publishing.
To prepare a video for iWeb with Final Cut Pro, use the Quicktime Conversion Export option in Final Cut Pro. Selecting the iPhone Format option will compress the video to a 480×360 mpeg4 movie. The other preset mpeg4 format option in the Quicktime conversion is the iPod seting, which will output a 640×480 mpeg4 movie. Both of these options will produce an iWeb compatible video.
Starting a New Site with a blank page and dragging the MPEG4 video on the page is essentially all you need to do. It is very typical that you will get a warning saying that the file is too large, but I have yet to not be able to upload a video. There are a few minor options like adding the password protection that you can do, but for the most part all you have to do is publish the site to your .Mac account. If you intend on leaving the page up for a while you can set a domain to point to the .Mac link.
Austin was named No. 1 on the “Top Ten U.S. Cities to Live and Make Movies” by MovieMaker magazine.
“Austin is the prime example of a Texas city that has caught onto a deceptively simple tactic not always employed in many other cities or states or within the film industry in general: cooperation,”
says MovieMaker.
Austin has ranked among the top three cities on the list for seven consecutive years. One reason the state earned the top slot was because of its statewide incentive program that provides rebates for filming in Texas. Additionally, the magazine praised the Austin Film Commission’s new “Now Playing: Cast and Crew Bonus Features” discount program, which gives film crews discounts at local businesses.
The magazine also said that the Lone Star State’s geography, broad industry infrastructure and film-friendliness also made it a desirable film locale.
“Austin is back on top of the MovieMaker rankings – an award that is well deserved. We have long been considered a film friendly city, and the industry here has worked hard to get the word out,” says Gary Bond of the Austin Film Commission. “
The support of city government and local professionals including the Austin Film Festival, Austin Film Society, Austin Studios and South by Southwest are crucial to our success as a film hub. Our golden reputation is furthered by the city’s progressive culture, hip reputation and the fact that [Robert] Rodriguez and [Richard] Linklater, along with a few other notable celebrities, call Austin home.”
In the past year, Austin has hosted the production of dozens of films and television shows, including “Grind House,” “Teeth” and “Friday Night Lights.”
Ellen Kuras is one of the best-known directors of photography in American independent film of the past 20 years. She has won the Sundance Film Festival’s cinematography prize three times. To list just a few of her credits, she shot Spike Lee’s 4 Little Girls, Bamboozled, He Got Game and Summer of Sam, Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and his new film, Be Kind Rewind, Jonathan Demme’s Neil Young: Heart of Gold and Mary Harron’s I Shot Andy Warhol.
Before she ever picked up a camera, she started working as a director on her first film about a Laotian family’s experiences in the United States. That was 23 years ago and now that film, Nerakhoon (The Betrayal), a gorgeous metaphoric meditation on immigrant displacement and loss, has its premiere at this year’s Sundance festival.
Kuras’s long-term project represents an extreme but distinct trend in documentary filmmaking toward films that take years. Festival director Geoffrey Gilmore noted at the beginning of the festival that fewer films were coming from the “professional class” of documentary makers and more from people with a personal investigation they were determined to share with the world.
Among the examples are fashion photographer Steve Sebring’s Patti Smith: Dream of Life, which took a dozen years, as the director befriended the rock star and poet from the mid-nineties, in the early years of her widowhood to the present. Katrina Browne, a social worker, took nine years to research her family’s history as slave traders before completing Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North. One of the three Canadian entries in the official documentary competition, The Women of Brukman, by Montreal director Isaac Isitan, follows the women workers who took over a clothing factory after Argentina’s economic collapse in 2001 and documents their legal and political battles for the past half-dozen years.
This one is for the prospective film student. How to find the right film school? Does location matter…Or should you go for the infrastructure (camera/lighting equipment, editing suites, studios)? Reputation does count a lot. In fact, many of the film schools from the old days are still gold…and the plethora of those that have sprung up now, might just confirm your worst fears.
1. Choose your vocation: You might be interested in just the technical side of filmmaking (see video editing, sound editing), or the creative side (set design, scripting) or both (production, direction!). Deciding your vocation in advance will help you decide the course you want to pursue.
2. Grab your course: Once you’ve decided what you really want to do (and I hope you decide that on the basis of what really interests you, and not what will earn you more)…its time to grab the course. Most film institutes offer dedicated short term courses in cinematography, video editing, sound engineering and acting respectively. If you like a bit of everything and/or are undecided on what you’d really like, then go for the comprehensive filmmaking course.
3. The Location: Will you be placing yourself thousands of miles from the place where you want to film your work? If you ultimately want to work in Hollywood you might want to aim for a California school so you can go ahead and begin building that network. If you want to work in Bollywood, nothing better than FTII at Pune.
4. Equipment and Facilities: decade ago, the equipment that a school could offer mattered a lot, but it’s not a lot to get worked up about today. After all, you can buy an HVX-200, a laptop and Final Cut Studio for a fraction of a year’s tuition at most film schools. You don’t want to go someplace that has crummy equipment, nor do you want to attend a school that lacks enough equipment to serve its students. You need good (film and video) cameras, sound equipment, lights, and editing stations. (Maybe not even the editing stations, if you already own one.) Beyond that, don’t get worked up about facilities and equipment.
5. Length of Program: Most programs are three years; some are two years. There may be a difference between what a school’s literature states and the reality though. Ask current students for the skinny on how long it takes for students to typically finish a program. It can be a positive thing, of course, to stay in school as long as you can.
Action! Every year, tens of thousands of hopefuls apply to film school to start a career behind the camera. If you’re of them, you probably dream of one of top five film schools – UCLA, NYU, the American Film Institute, Columbia and USC. (Aren’t film students big dreamers, after all?)
Of the five, USC and NYU are considered the top of the heap. USC is, both literally and figuratively, closer to Hollywood. Applicants may need Jedi mind tricks to gain admittance into this alma mater of George Lucas – the school accepts 150 undergrads out of 14,000 applicants annually. NYU, the home base of Miramax and Tribeca Productions, has an “indie” edge, personified by prominent grads like Spike Lee, Ang Lee, and Oliver Stone.
Collaboration tools is going to soon become a misnomer. The more mainstream, standard office applications and productivity tools start adding collaboration facilities to their apps the more collaboration will become part of what is expected by any digital work tool.
Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Communication – Graph credit: Ramius
This Sharewood Picnic contains a new collection of selected collaboration tools that I, and Nico Canali De Rossi have uncovered during our weekly searches for Kolabora. It includes tools to send large files to anyone, instant messenger gateways allowing you to connect simultaneously to all your favorite instant messaging networks and a couple of interesting tool to draw, annotate and share web page markups.
Here the list:
PipeBytes: Send files of any dimensions with no upload process
Globe7:VoIP software allows you to text-chat, video conference and transfer files
DrawHere: Draw on web-pages and share your annotated page via email
JKN: Online annotation tool allows you to add notes to web-pages and share them with people
TeamWork Live: Manage projects, share documents and collaborate with people online
IM History: Save your instant messaging conversation history online
Messenger FX: Web-based instant messenger lets you access MSN IM network
BigFileBox: Web-based file hosting service allows you to share files with others
PipeBytes
PipeBytes in a web-based tool that anyone can use to share files, with no size limitation. If you want to send a file, just click the “Send” button, browse for you file, and click “Upload”. You will be provided with a pick-up code, or simply with a pick-up URL, that will connect your and your friend’s computer to send the file directly, with no uploading process. Free to use, no registration needed. http://www.pipebytes.com/
Globe7
Globe7 is a free downloadable VoIP application that allows you to chat and talk with people. After you download it and register to the service, you can start adding other people to your contact list: you can chat, have video and audio calls, share pictures, transfer files, save the chat history, and also call landline phones at really cheap rates. Completely free to use, it is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux herehttp://www.globe7.com/downloadg7.php. http://www.globe7.com/
DrawHere
DrawHere takes a slightly different twist on the website annotation paradigm by allowing users to literally draw directly onto a website that they are visiting. Clicking on the bookmarklet opens up an image editing palette to the side of the screen. This palette features layers, opacity, brush size and a color spectrum. Annotated pages can be saved and shared by email or embedded into your blog. Different users annotations can be browsed through from a separate window. DrawHere can be activated via a bookmarklet, from the DrawHere website by entering the URL you want to draw on, and can even be included as a button on your web-page. Free http://drawhere.com/
JKN
JKN is a web-site that allows you to add notes on a web-page and to share them with anyone. After you insert the URL you want to annotate, you can decide how you want to share your notes with others (link, email or blog), and start typing on the selected page as it was a normal blank page. Then, depending on the sharing method you chose, you will be given a URL to share or you will be asked for your contacts’ emails. It is free to use and requires no registration. Beta. http://info.jkn.com/
TeamWork Live
TeamWork Live is a web-based project management and project collaboration tool that helps you run your projects more efficiently. All you need to get started is a web browser and an internet connection: you can manage projects, track tasks, share documents and files, collaborate with clients and remote teams. Completely free to use, requires registration. https://www.teamworklive.com/
IM History
IM History is a downloadable program that allows you to store all of your instant messaging conversations online, supporting AIM, MSN, Windows Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Skype and Miranda networks. All conversations will be saved and uploaded on a web-server that can be accessed through any web-browser. Free to download and use. http://www.im-history.com/
Messenger FX
Messenger FX is a web-based service that lets you access the MSN instant messaging network without having to install anything on your computer. The access is protected through encryption and the interface is available in multiple languages. There is no possibility to talk to contacts that are on other IM networks. Free to use. http://www.messengerfx.com
BigFileBox
BibFileBox is a web-based file hosting service that you can use to upload and share your files with other people. After you choose whether you want to upload a file using the Java drag-and-drop facility or the click-to-upload interface, you can upload as many files as you want and, when done, you can create “tokens” to give people permission to browse/edit your files. You can also choose the duration of the token. Free for up to 50 MB or see plan comparison. http://www.bigfilebox.com/
John Sawatsky, ESPN’s senior director of talent development, has tutored reporters, anchors and producers around the world. Since 1991, he has devoted all his time to teaching interviewing to professional journalists. ESPN asked him to assess the prospects for the upcoming “60 Minutes” interview of Roger Clemens.
Sawatsky’s assessment amounts to a lesson in interviewing technique (and rips Mike Wallace to shreds in the process). Fascinating reading.
My favorite part of the year-end (or year-beginning) “Best Of” lists is how these lists serve as a kind of aggregator for the movies that I should give my time to in the coming year. Let’s face it, if you live in the USA and you don’t live in New York or L.A. (I don’t), and/or you didn’t make it to the Toronto Film Festival or Cannes last year (nope), and/or you’re not a member of the press with access to advance screenings (ditto), you might have had the chance to see only three of, say, J. Hoberman’s picks for the ten best.
That’s what region-free DVD players and video projectors are for. So, without further ado, here are my five favorite Top 10 (or more) lists of 2007.
Oh, and the best film I saw last for the first time last year? The restoration of The Whole Shootin’ Match at SXSW. Over twenty-five years since it was produced, it’s still not available on DVD.
Last night I tried to catch some of the action going on at Seesmic, one of the most innovative and promising new web services out there.
Labelled as a “Twitter with video”, Seesmic hasn’t yet defined a strong application personality for itself yet, but, and that may be as valuable as having defined one, has been listening with true open ears to everything its first few hundred users have been telling it.
By using a true bottom up approach Seesmic has created a true conversational platform to help, refine and steer the very direction of the company that makes the same platform available.
But is that enough to dive a web company to success?
Is it enough to have enough money, visibility and technical resources to put together a Twitter-like tool with video and then try to get as big as possible to then see where money can be made, or would it be better to have a vision before everything else and then shape it with the help of your community?
Hard to say, as your audience could be driving you a thousand different directions at the same time, unless you have already well figured out where you want to go.
That is also what one of the digerati of the web thinks, when providing his own view on the success potential of the bottom-up drive-approach of the Seesmic community.
Bottom-Up Driven Social Media – Always A Winning Strategy?
Yes, you have got it right. The cool thing about Seesmic is that it allows you to shoot out short video messages to the community while generating a wide, always in-flux, extended party-like visual conversation, where topics and people move in and out almost just like in the real world.
I find the Seesmic conversations truly genuine, often engaging, sometimes dull and superficial, just like in real life.
And it is this genuinity, this final rise of the personal voice in all of its splendor, uncensored and unpackaged for delivery, that makes this content so incredibly compelling.
Compelling for those participating in it because it is very real and extends significantly the number and quality of discussion mates you can have. Compelling for those watching it only because there is often a great deal of personal learning and insight that is normally shared inside these conversations. Compelling for the publisher hosting this community because it creates a true virtual space in which to support the interests and passions of your readers. Bye bye forums, Seesmic is here.
Compelling for advertiser and marketers which could find in the very community members some of the best endorsers and promoters of their own tools and products. Without needing to become all shills.
But Seesmic has still a long way to go even in developing some of what should be its basic features, such as the lack of more powerful threading capabilities. These would allow one to follow and engage in specific conversations at her own time while providing a wealth of valuable content that could be re-sued elsewhere.
Not only.
Seesmic requires still too much of a compulsive, redundant interaction reduced to its very minimum terms. Clicking on the next video to see what the next person said. And next. That gets tiring. An “autoplay” feature which would allow you to follow your favorite friends or conversation threads is all I am hoping for.
Why Distributed Social Media Is Better Than Centralized Social Media
So, let aside the excitement for what Seesmic could be, what appears to me still enigmatic is the apparent focus, a-la Facebook on having another centralized community, which as a consequence requires everyone to go to Seesmic to have a conversation with the people they like.
Is this really needed?
Aren’t we in the age of distributed (social) media?
Why should I go to engage in a conversation at Seesmic when I have already built a community of friends at my own site or elsewhere?
I love to have conversations and I love to meet new and interesting people, but I don’t think I need to throw myself into a super-busy party where everyone has a micro-span of attention for me and where topic changes every moment?
My friends are not at Seesmic.
My friends are where I have met and invited them before. At my place. Not at some downtown disco where all of our group intimacy and “feel” is lot or where I need to be forced out of any conversation simply because we are a million and one.
Virtual space is infinite, let’s use it.
A month ago I posted this short video comment to Loic on Seesmic.
Robin Good on Seesmic
duration: 40″
“MySeesmic” is in fact my own idea Seesmic. I want to have Seesmic on my site, for my readers, with my own lokk and feel. That’s what I want: a distributable version of Seesmic that any site can embed and integrate in its pages.
Just asNing and many of the other Open Social partners, I would love to see Seesmic adopt this new standard and leverage the best from both the distribution potential as well as from aggregating and providing access to all these communities from a centralized space.
To my surprise, last night, Loic LeMeur posted a fresh new clip he has just recorded with Patrick Chanezon of the Google Open Social team, and where Patrick provides some interesting suggestions and ideas to get Seesmic into the Open Social game. If you haven’t yet read about Open Social, this is a new standard that allows easy distribution and integration of social media services into other sites.
Loic LeMeur and Patrick Chanezon
duration: 15′:05″
Advertising on Seesmic?
But outside of the core implementation strategy Seesmic will use, one of the fascinating aspects of these new innovative social media tools is how they will survive.
What will be Seesmic business model?
Advertising on Seesmic?
Well, the bottom-up video conversational approach worked greatly here as well with Seesmic users spontaneously brainstorming alternative advertising strategies and providing free creative input to Loic and his (and others) future investors.
Check out this great video compilation from Seesmic where not only you get a sense of what it is like to be inside this video conversational platform but where you can also hear some interesting ideas about the possible alternative potential advertising opportunities ramping up for Seesmic and for similar social media destinations.
Seesmic compilation
a) conversational style
b) brainstorming on advertising opportunities (from 3:05″)
c) community spirit, tradition and peer pressure at work on Seesmic – you gotta dance! (from 5:51″)
duration: 7′:41″
Just watching those few video clips gave me in turn a bunch of ideas and as social media wants, I shared back:
Robin Good
duration: 1′:51″
Conclusions – What I see Ahead for Seesmic
Seesmic has great potential. Of this I am sure as I saw firsthand by using it the power that this new format, conversational video can have in terms of supporting and energizing online communities, while providing them with an excellent tool to brainstorm, discuss and develop new ideas.
From my own viewpoint, as an online publisher, Seesmic does not have yet any of the key features that would make it a killer app in my eyes. These are:
a) Threading – find easily specific conversation threads o any topic or author you select
b) Autoplay – watch it like TV by selecting the conversation themes or authors or time periods you are interested in most
c) Distribution – allow Seesmic to be built around communities that already exist by making it highly distributable and easy to integrate into any existing web site (like Ning does).
Seesmic bottom-up approach in transparently leveraging user ideas and comments is something rare to be seen and should be great matter of research and study for media students.
Loic, its CEO, is, whether you like him or not, a man larger than life, positive, optimistic, and very determined (and aware) of the role he has chosen to play for himself. He seems to be able attract lots of attention and press coverage but he has definitely an interesting story to tell.
Overall this is a hot mix to keep watching close for a while. It may be pan out to become nothing I would waste any time on, as much as becoming the next truly social media marketing platform I would really bet my best cards on.
One thing appears now sure. Even if it ain’t Seesmic doing it, the time is ripe for the real, uncensored conversations to start.
What do you think?
Written by Robin Good for Master New Media and first published on Thursday January 3rd 2008 as “Social Media And Conversational Marketing: Seesmic Bottom-Up Approach And Advertising Opportunity Insights”
Christopher Rouse (The Bourne Ultimatum) may have walked away with the award for Best Editing at this year’s Oscar ceremony, but Avid Technology is the real winner. 
Austin was named No. 1 on the “Top Ten U.S. Cities to Live and Make Movies” by 
SECURE & CONFIDENTIAL