I’m still going back and forth with some programmer friends on just how reckless I should be in
my approach to “simplifying” FLVs in iWeb, so I’m afraid I’ll have to string you on for a bit longer on that article.  But rest assured — I’ve not forgotten, and the Frame Controls article is coming up relatively soon as well.

In the meantime, here’s a piece that’s hopefully more useful than most “filler” — the technical story behind Portable Network Graphics, or PNGs.  Read on for what they are, where they came from, and (most importantly) when they’re a good idea in the video production workflow.

You can find more compression settings articles in our Supercharging Compressor series index.

You can be plenty good at video work if you only know that bigger bitrates are usually better — but if you’re going to be a guru when it comes to the quality of your video output, it’s worth taking a closer look at the concept from the ground up.

Luckily, it’s a fairly simple concept.  Let’s take NTSC video as our example: 30 frames per second, each 720 pixels wide and about 480 high.  Each broadcast-safe pixel, in RGB space, could take up 235 values for each color (red green and blue), so it needs 24 bits of information to describe it.  If we were to try to store a second of NTSC-type video completely uncompressed using this bitmap scheme, we would need

30 * 720 * 480 * 24 = 248,832,000 bits, or about 30MB — per second!

Try slapping THAT on YouTube — or a DVD, for that matter.

In the old days of digital video, choosing text for titles and other
supers was easy: Arial, Times, or Comic Sans – will “size 48″ work? 
But as the lines have blurred between all types of creative software,
we video types are constantly getting more control over our text.  And
that’s a good thing: a professional approach to typography improves
most video, and in some cases, makes or breaks the deal.

So here’s a quick glossary of font-related terms, along with a handful of best practices.

Being able to easily find media files, like Quicktime movies or photos, is an important step in an effective Final Cut Pro editing workflow. Adding data (metadata) that describes a file will allow the Spotlight feature to find the file, even if you don’t remember what you named it or where you stored it. The Spotlight is a great tool to quickly find the file you need.

The video production industry is incredibly diverse and it’s expanding at an incredible rate.  Anyone can now compete in the business. The technology has become very affordable.  No longer do companies need to invest in hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment.  The playing field is now level, and there are more job opportunities than ever before.

 
That being said, new schools are popping up that specialize in the video production arena.  In some cases, high schools and even middle schools have video production equipment that rivals professional production facilities. From the early stages, these schools are training kids while producing some amazing video content.  Some schools even have their own television channel. It sounds crazy, but the competition is now becoming quite fierce. This is because of the volume of new candidates that understand the software.

So, if you’re looking for work, what does this mean to you?  Well, as ridiculous as it sounds, you may be competing with candidates that are fresh out of highschool.  Not to long ago, It use to be that freelance video editors could easily demand $70.00 hr or more.  This hourly rate is rapidbly disappearing, and is now limited to some of the larger markets.  Now, in a medium size market, freelance video editors have been forced to bring their hourly rates down to $40.00 hr.  In smaller markets, expect to earn less than that to remain competitive.

So, what are some key elements that employers are looking for?  In the professional video editing business, there are three major players with a large host of other software manufacturers.  These players are:

Apple (Final Cut Studio)

Avid Technology (Avid Media Composer)

Adobe (Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Premium)

First off, concentrate your energy on learning these software products. If you have to choose one to start with, take a good look at Final Cut Pro,  which is included within Apple’s Final Cut Studio bundle.  If you don’t own the software, consider purchasing an educational license.  All the manufacturers have amazing educational pricing to help you get started.

Second, start a website and upload your video content and demo-reel.  In this business, you might as well forget about a traditional resume.  If someone asks for one, I wouldn’t hesitate to simply point them to your website. If you do not have a website, consider purchasing a mobileme account from Apple.  Even better, if you are Macintosh owner, you can use Apple’s iWeb application to instantly create your website and upload your video content.

Third, you can dramatically increase your value by also learning Adobe Photoshop as it applies to video.  Then, you can really hit a home run by learning After Effects , which is one of the world’s leading visual effects software packages. 

I realize all this sounds relatively simple, but mastering these software applications takes patience, dedication, and a lot of time.  Don’t expect to become a master overnight.  Of course, GeniusDV offers training services to help you get up to speed relatively quickly.  In particular, we offer training courses for Final Cut Studio and Avid Media Composer.  In addition we offer an amazing After Effects training course.  These courses can be taken in a classroom environment, or in an interactive online training environment. 

It is time to put the finishing touches on your new heartbeat. After you animate your beat from left to right I think that adding a glow really makes the path look great. You can flavor the glow to taste but if you make color A a bright yellow and color B a bright green you will make a great looking heart beat. You can also add to your animation by adding a lens flare to the leading edge of your heart beat. You will need to add the lens flare with a new solid and change the mode to overlay or soft light. It is up to you and what looks best to you. The flare will need to be animated by hand with key-frames but it does not take long. If your animations is quick enough you will only need aprox. 15 keys. I like to set the flare brightness to about 60% and use the 35mm lens type. This flare is has many applications and uses so I hope you at least enjoyed building this flare and hopefully you can use it in your productions in the future.

Make sure you look at our hire a Personal Genius page. We will customize any class just for you and come to your location. This is a very unique service the will help you get the most our of you After Effects application.

Now that you have started practicing and perfecting your heart beat it is time to go to the next step. If you have set the beat to music or not it is time to add the stroke effect. The stroke effect is used for many things in After Effects but this is one of my favorites. As soon as you add the stroke you will probably notice the the size of the stroke is too small. I like to set my brush size to around 5 to 7 pixels depending n the size of my composition. I also set the stroke color to green and make sure you set the path to mask or your stroke will not know where to go! The rest of the settings you can set to your flavor except start and end. This is how you animate the heartbeat. Scrub the end setting and watch your stroke go from left to right. Set a key frame at the head of your comp and move down apox. 2 seconds down the time-line. You can adjust the keyframe up and down the timelineto get the timing you need……..stay tune for part three!
Sign up for our next After Effects class and do not miss out on a great opportunity to learn the best effect programs in the industry today.

Over the next several days I will teach you how to make your very own heart rate monitor using Adobe After Effects and nothing more than an animated stroke. You first need to make a composition any size that fits your your intended project. When you are constructing project like this it is always important to make the compositions larger than you might need. You can always decrease the size of scale but if you try and increase it will run into pixelation issues.

To begin start with: Layer>New>Solid and create a black solid the size of your composition. (Note: The reason you want to build this on a black solid is just in case you want to lay this over video is some sort of mode the black will allow for this). Next with the pen tool draw out your heart beat across your layer. You can make this a simple or as complex as you wish. If you have a heat rate sound effect you draw your heart beat to match the waveform of the heart beat audio file. Once you have drawn the heart beat you now need to add a Stroke Effect to the solid layer in your composition.

I will let you experiment with the stroke effect for now and try and predict how you might animate the beat. Meanwhile make sure you sign up for our next After Effects class or let us send a “Personal Genius” to you!