Font Conference

If you know what a font is then you’ll love this video.  Or maybe not. Click below to watch.

Finishing projects 16×9 vs. 4×3

More and more of the work we do, especially pitches, rips etc. will be shown on LCD or Plasma screens. Since these screens are in a 16×9 format, it makes sense for us to consider this when starting a project.  So before starting an edit I would recommend trying to get the answer to the question, “What kind of screen will this be shown on?”.  This was recently the case for an Army project I worked on.

If you have a Hi-Def TV at home you’ll wince at the times you see all those 4×3 letterboxed commercials running on HD channels.  They look like a postage stamp lost in a mass of black screen.

That’s alot of black space.  So if your source material consists of lots of letterboxed 4×3 sources the result would be what you see above.  In a 16×9 sequence you could scale this video to fill the entire screen and not lose any picture.  

As far as regular fullscreen 4×3 content you may have only one choice and that is to keep it 4×3 and have pillar bars on the left and right.

If you were to scale this video to fill the screen you’d lose picture on the top and bottom.

Two other approaches to dealing with the black space with 4×3 footage is to put it the shot(s) on top of a upscaled and blured version of the same shot.  This is a common technique you see use with sports and news.

Or lastly, you can use any image or graphic to fill the black space.  You could even have something designed specifically for the project.  Here I just used a still of camouflage.

So don’t forget to ask the question where the finished video will play before you start the project.  It will save you headaches and also give you a better looking video in the end.

NTSC to PAL conversion using Compressor

Good article on using Compressor to convert your NTSC quicktime to PAL MPEG-2 for DVD encoding.

Macworld | Send video abroad.

Avid Media Composer 1.0 – circa 1990

Here’s a little big of nostalgia for you.

Aspect Ratio Calculator

Here’s a great site for calculating aspect ratios and frame sizes.

Aspect Ratio Calculator – Digital Rebellion

Using Motion to create Ken Burns effect

Here’s a little video tutorial for creating that Kens Burns effect using Motion.

HD & SD Stock Footage for Free

Limited selection but not a bad place to look if you’re in the need of free stock footage.

Los Angeles Final Cut Pro User Group

Here’s a site I go to often for forums, reviews, tutorials.  When I lived in LA I used to attend their meetings.  Check it out if you want to learn something or visit the forums if you’re having a specific issue you want an answer to.

Los Angeles Final Cut Pro User Group

Get your logos, get your logos….

Don’t know what I’d do without this site.  Get logos for just about any company you can think of all in vector based eps format.  Awesome!

The MacDaddy: Scary Screen Sharing

What happens when 2 Macs try to share eachother’s screens at the same time?

The MacDaddy: Scary Screen Sharing