The Brown Fox Sings

Microsoft Research has developed a tool you can use to create custom music called Songsmith. Songsmith generates musical accompaniment to match a singer’s voice, or it will create backing music for video.

You can use Songsmith to generate your music and from the Songsmith UI, there is an entry point to add your creation to Windows Live Movie Maker as a soundtrack.   Check out the How to video “Making Music Videos” on the Tutorial videos section of this page.

The Songsmith creators want to make sure that there’s lots of information available if you get stuck, or just want to learn more. They’ve prepared a series of tutorial videos that guide you through the process.

The All New Movie Maker

Late Summer saw the released Windows Live Movie Maker from beta as part of a refresh to the Windows Live Essentials download. Windows Live Movie Maker is the first application designed for Windows 7 and is built to make beautiful movies from your photos and videos very quickly. You can download the new Windows Live Movie Maker to get an immediate (and free!) upgrade to your Windows Live experience.

What is New?

WindowsLive Movie Maker’s goal is making it easy to communicate and share with the people you care about. With this release, you will see a variety of ways Windows Live Movie Maker takes advantage of Windows 7 including expanded support for HD video. This creates an opportunity to create great looking movies using the most popular devices on the market – including your mobile phone or Flip Video camcorder.

The development team has taken the time to rethink what great video editing software should do. They designed this version so you can quickly and easily create short movies and photo slideshows that can be shared the way that works best for you. The AutoMovie feature in Windows Live Movie Maker literally creates a polished movie out of your photos and video clips in under a minute, which means it can take less time to create a movie than it does to watch it.

While video is becoming just as easy to capture as photos, it’s nowhere near as easy to edit and share. According to recent research from IDC, over 60 percent of US consumers watch user-generated videos online. They also found that almost half of the videos shared on the Internet are just a few minutes long. Current video editing software is complicated and can require a large time investment just to create a two-minute video you want to share on YouTube. I recently used Windows Live Movie Maker to create a movie out of 50 photos, three video clips, and a music soundtrack in 30 seconds using the AutoMovie feature in Windows Live Movie Maker.

Why Change?

Here are a few reasons you may enjoy the new-and-improved Windows Live Movie Maker:

1. It’s easy to create beautiful videos. Movie Maker can create great looking movies in under a minute. Just add your photos and videos to Movie Maker, and select your music, then click the Auto Movie button. Auto Movie will knit those photos and videos together with striking effects and transitions, and even fit them to a soundtrack of your choosing. Basic movie – done. If you want to spend more time editing your video clips, adding animations, or visual effects you can, but the heavy lifting is done for you in less than a minute.
2. More customization features easily add polish to your movie. After the first beta versions of the software was released nearly a year ago, user feedback indicated that folks would like more transitions, effects, and video editing features. The new Movie Maker has more than 60 transitions, 18 pan and zoom options, and 20 visual effects that you can apply to photos or videos, plus video trim, split, and fade capabilities. Managing transitions can be laborious with most software packages, but Movie Maker give you an auto-preview of transitions like cross-fade, dissolve, pixelate, and shatter by hovering over the effect and watching it in real time.
3. It’s simple to share your movie. Videos are for sharing, so Movie Maker makes it easy to share online with a few clicks. Post your video to YouTube right from the main menu, or add a quick plug-in and easily publish to Facebook. We will be adding more plug-ins to popular sharing sites in the future. You can also burn your creation to a DVD or save it in high definition to play on your TV. Save it down to a smaller format and transfer it to a mobile device or send it via e-mail.
4. It works great with Windows 7. With Windows 7 and Windows Live Movie Maker it’s easy to get your photos and videos off your camera and onto your PC. You’ll also get increased capabilities for creating HD movies and enjoy support for additional file formats – including QuickTime formats, AVCHD and .MPEG4. And most importantly, if you use Office or Windows already, you’ll find Movie Maker easy to navigate because it uses a similar design.

Want to See it First?

Want to see what the new Windows Live Movie Maker can do? The Movie Maker team has created a few sample movies that showcase its new transitions, effects, and editing capabilities:

• Feldman Summer Fun
• Baby Talk: Meet Isabella
• A Year in the life of the Feldmans

Not sure where to start? Check out these videos that demonstrate how some of the features work:

• Getting started with Windows Live Movie Maker
• Using AutoMovie
• Easily create beautiful videos using AutoMovie
• Three ways to share your video creation (YouTube, burn to DVD, save as HD)
• Add photos and videos to Movie Maker to get started
• Add transitions or visual effects
• Edit video clips to include the best footage in your movie
• Add and edit music
• Why we like the storyboard
• Add a title, captions and credits
• Publish to YouTube

The team has indicated they will be posting more of these how-to videos here.

The new Windows Live Movie Maker is optimized for Windows Vista and Windows 7. As a result you get support for newer file formats like HD, a new graphics driver model which brings more reliable and stable support for high-end graphics, and a new engine on top of DirectX, which improves speed and enables even more advanced capabilities over time. If you’re still using Windows XP, Windows Movie Maker 2.1 for Windows XP is still a great option.

The philosophy for folding Movie Maker into Windows Live Essentials is framed by the developers’ belief that doing so enables frequent software updates. They think it delivers on that promise – They’re continually updating the Windows Live applications so you can communicate, share, and keep your life in sync.

High Def in the world of Flip

I am doing my best to skip the cheesy and easy word-play about this camera’s name. No comments about flipping over,  flipping out, or doing back flips. But if you write about Pure Digital’s Flip MinoHD camera then folks will find you. The hunger to learn about how to get the most from it is the epitome of “if you write it they will come.” Fortunately I am not pandering to the blogosphere. I’ve been shooting with Flips for over two years and continue to marvel at how much fun they are to use.

 

Video: How to shoot with the Flip MinoHD Camera | by Drew Keller

 

HD cameras are hitting rock-bottom prices. The Flip MinoHD, the Kodak Zi6 HD and other pocket pinhole wonders are flooding the market. Some might argue the cost of these nearly disposable cameras has put them in the category of an impulse buy at the electronics store. But once you buy one, what do you do with it? And how can you get the best image possible. This video is a primer that will show you the good, the bad and the ugly of the smallest profile HD cameras on the market.

 

Users on social networking sites like Facebook, Windows Live, Blip and Vimeo are creating videos specifically to communicate to a small audience — or even a single person to whom the user is already connected. It is not broadcasting, but the ultimate in narrowcasting. The shift in behavior is being caused by a proliferation of easy-to-use devices that produce easy-to-upload videos. It is creating a whole new class of video content on the Web.

The Flip MinoHD camera, made by Pure Digital, is the very definition of "less is more." There are only two buttons… one that turns it on and the big red one for recording. When you turn it on its ready to record in less than two seconds.

The camera is not without compromises. The first thing you should know about the Flip is that as far as HD pictures go, the video is only OK; it is definitely great for the web, but don’t bother comparing your video to other camcorders.

One other limitation to work around is the microphone is the size of a grain of rice and very susceptible to wind noise. Additionally, it is best to be close if you want to really hear what people are saying.

The Flip Video camcorder uses the MPEG-4 format for recording and playback and the image quality is acceptable. The MPEG-4 3ivx codec maximizes the space on your camcorder’s flash memory as well as your computer’s hard drive, but still enables high quality videos. In average light the images have rich hues and sharp details (such as the snowflakes stuck in my beard as I was skiing.) The camera also handles low light situations acceptably, particularly in comparison to other cameras in its class.

In the next installment of this three part series we’ll explore the ins and outs of moving your files to your computer and editing solutions.

 

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Edit in HD… Well No, Not Quite

I am feeling a little too far in front of the curve these days with my FlipMino HD. I had such high hopes for using this camera as part of my regular production flow. But the process just doesn’t really work yet, and it is really aggravating. Perhaps someone out there will have a better work flow. Trust me, I am all ears.

As you probably know, Pure Digital’s Flip MinoHD shoots 720p HD footage. I have rather fallen in love with the little camera. I take it with me all the time. Don’t get me wrong, no one will ever confuse the camera’s footage with Red, nor is it a Mark5dII or even an EX3. It is a fixed focus $220 camera. I expected significant limitations. And with those limitations the footage is awesome. But once you shoot the HD footage what do you do with it?

The previous versions of the camera our family has used are standard definition. It has been super easy to cobble together great movies in MovieMaker and iMovie. My 13-year-old daughter started using these cameras nearly three years ago. But the Filp’s 720HD format is completely unsupported by editing manufacturers. I have had to jump through so many hoops to get clips I can edit with that I feel like I work for Wham-O. Here are the problems.

PC

The FlipShare application is great for moving your files from the camera’s flip flash memory to your computer. So far so good. But then what?  I can export the files to a local directory, but they are still in the 3ivx .mp4 wrapper. That means I need an application that will handle the files natively for editing.

With the 3ivx codec installed on my computer the Windows Media player displays the video clips flawlessly. It is great for viewing vibrant, full screen previews of the clips. But that does not solve my editing conundrum.

The Windows Media Encoder totally fails when it tries to read these files. It gets lost and quits.

Microsoft’s Movie Maker on the PC creates exclusively standard definition Windows Media files. The application recognizes that the source files are 1280×720 mp4 files. You can see that in the clip property page. But there is no way to publish a HD movie. The output that you create is 640×480 standard definition. It recognizes that the flip files are oversized sources and scales them in real time down to SD.

Impressive, but not what I am after. The Beta version of Movie Maker displays similar behavior.

 

Adobe’s Premier can’t even recognize the file format.

 

 

 

 

Mac

On the Mac side it does not get any better. Using the legacy version of iMovie (The iLife 06 version, you know, the one that actually works as an editor) I can import the files. But the process is really laborious because it has to transcode all of the files to the project’s selected video format. In this case 720 HDV. At least it is in HD. That is an improvement.

Unfortunately it can take hours for 30 minutes of source footage to be converted in the QuickTime engine. There is no way to define a custom project format, like .mp4 or 3ivx, in iMovie.  You have to choose from the preset flavors provided by the application.

Trying to get the footage into iMovie08 was hopeless, but it really does not work as an editing application so I would have used it as a transcoder. It was a total waste of time and I moved on.

At least once you get it into the iMovie06 application you can string the footage together and publish a QuickTime file using the QT “Expert Settings” function. Just don’t expect speed. Last week it took over 22 hours to export a 32 minute string of clips. Not only is this unduly time consuming, but converting the file to a third format when exporting is not a very good idea. I was converting the files from 3ivx to hdv when I imported them into iMovie, and then to animation mov files when I exported. All that jumping from one format to another is very likely to introduce significant errors to the files. If I could have just batch flipped the files to uncompressed QuickTimes in the FlipShare tool that would have been more efficient.

One other problem I have had with exporting longer video strings out of iMovie is the audio and video drift out of sync. The videos of my kids skiing look more like a poorly dubbed Mothra movie than the family out on the hill.

Final Cut Pro is of no help as there are similar limitations to project formats and converting footage when it get dropped into the timeline. I can not create an 3ivx or mp4 project, so again I am stuck with HDV or DVCProHD or some other generic file flavor from the 1990s.

So what’s the solution? I don’t really know. For now I am having to convert the files in QuickTime Pro. It eats up oodles of hard drive space, too much time and is decidedly inelegant. I want a solution where I can create a project in a decent editing tool that edits these files natively. And I want an easy way to flip the final product into an HD deliverable. It could be a high quality file, it could be HD tape. Just something that is not as insanely broken as what we are faced with now.

So what have you discovered out there? Why do we have such a popular tool that only takes us only half-way through the production process? We can acquire, but we can’t distribute. We have a camera that is so easy to use it only has two buttons, but a file format that is so broken and unsupported you need a PhD in math to use it. Let me know what works for you. And I will be happy to share your discoveries.

 

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Gormley, The Hoff and Interstellar Glitter

There are times when you must stray from your stated purpose and venture into silliness. So today I step away from camera techniques, editing tricks and insights on how to make great personal videos and bring you three of the worst music videos of all time. I am not entirely certain they were created with anything more than a genuine sense of goofiness, but I am pretty sure the creators were serious about their craft. While there is fun in looking askance at another’s efforts, you have to give credit where credit is due. All three of these videos represent someone who had a vision and stuck with it. Of course, they may have stuck with it a little too long.

For the past five years I have been convinced that David Hasselhoff’s epic, “Hooked on a Feeling”… complete with bad spinning video cubes, two faux angels, insulting parodies of world cultures, spears, wind machines and a rubber fish, is the worst music video of all time. What’s not to love.

 

Well I have found two more gems that are worth noting. The first, “I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper” reminds us that it is amazing we survived the 70s as a race of thoughtful people. It is amazing those of us who were in college made it to see the 80s. I particularly like the guy who throws the glitter up in the air. Wonder what he does for a living now?

 

And the third video… well… The word INTENSE doesn’t even give this video justice. As one wag noted, “Somebody tell me where i can buy a Mark Gormley t-shirt. I don’t care what they cost. Mark Gormley is a legend of rock, that i can’t simply just watch pass me by.” I couldn’t have said it better. Enjoy.

 

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CES and video tape

To no one’s surprise, tape is dead in consumer cameras. And 1080 (again to no one’s surprise) is THE format in the consumer space.

Personal video on the web is moving away from the "one to many" model of YouTube over to the "one to few" model of Facebook. Hard drive and flash memory cameras are making it not only possible but easy for folks to put their movies on the web. Cannon, Panasonic, Sony and Samsung are all showing great little HDV cameras file based cameras.

But it is the advent of the uber-simple cameras like Pure Digital’s market leader Flip camera that are having such a huge impact on personal video. And the Flip MinoHD is not the only 720p mini camera on the market. The Kodak Zx1 camera is a direct competitor to the Flip. And is just as easy to use. It does not have the clever built in USB plug, but it has multiple zoom levels that don’t appear to be as dreadful as the Flip’s. Both come with software and both create files that are native H264 QuickTime. It should be fun to see if there is enough room in the market for these players.

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CES – Odds n Ends Day 1

 

The second floor in the back of the convention center is always my favorite place during any tradeshow. It’s where you find the startups, the dreamers, the companies working the margins of an industry. Here at CES it is no different. Cheap radios, funky lighting systems, low voltage muscle massagers. It’s a 21st century flea market. I love these guys taking a break in the muscle massage chairs.

Green technology is seeing very little visibility at CES. I expected more but perhaps the green movement is falling by the wayside with the current economic turmoil. An expensive “convenience” for consumers. That is for everyone but Panasonic. They have devoted a significant amount of floor space to emerging green technology and it was great to see.

But interestingly Greentek is green only in name.

The companies that are traditionally the big technology drivers are only putting a careful toe into social networking. It is very hard to find evidence of social networking technology on the floor. It appears evident most of the big tech companies don’t know what to do with it. Sony has created a walled garden for gaming and media distribution, but so far I have only seen Microsoft show how all the parts fit together.

Who is missing from CES? As always there is no Apple. But I was surprised that technology leaders Phillips and Pure Digital (makers of the Flip Camera) are no-shows. And I would have thought Adobe would have been here touting their flash media player and online media solution. Real is here in a big way.

I can’t wrap my head around 3D television. To me it smacks of a desperate ploy by broadcasters to stay relevant as distribution models change. It is just like Cinemascope in the 50’s when television first appeared in America’s living rooms. The super wide screen was a gag, and ultimately didn’t change the storytelling experience enough to survive. It feels like broadcasters are worried about how internet distribution and channel creation makes them largely irrelevant. Besides, who other than a couple of 15-year-old gamers want to wear those dopey glasses while watching television?

Finally, my room at the New York New York hotel is an epic dump. But at least I have a room. Be happy for the little things.

 

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CES – Monitor/TV technology

These posts appear to have stacked up in the cue, so let’s get them posted now. Sorry for the delay.

Everyone is overcranking their refresh rates. 60hz, 120hz, even 240hz for clearer playback on high motion video.

 

 

 

 

 

The other trend is (unlike me) tvs are getting bigger and thinner. LCDs at 82". How about Sharp’s 108" monitor?

OLED (Organic light-emitting diodes) screens are getting bigger. Last year the screens were 11”, now Sony is showing 21” & 27” and other manufacturers are showing up to 32".

 

 

 

 

 

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Camera Baggie

It is time for the Winter Solstice. As Autumn changes to Winter, it is important to protect your camera from inclement weather. This simple little "how to" shows you a quick way to create a water resistant cover for your camera.

Camera Baggie Video

All you need is a rubber band, a waterproof plastic bag and a pair of scissors. Just sharing the list of parts probably gives you enough information to figure it out on your own, but then you would miss out on… well, I am not really sure what you will miss out on. Perhaps it is the satisfaction of seeing how to do it and not wasting time trying to figure it out on your own.

I have to admit, the thumbnails from soapbox always make me look like either the scariest or the most bizarre guy on the web. This one is particularly charming. I am always a smidge befuddled over how they choose the moment they do for the freeze. There is never a rhyme or reason. Alas. Perhaps it isn’t Soapbox making me so scary. The Vimeo version is in HD.

Enjoy and have a great holiday. Get out and create a movie.

 

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The Rule of Thirds

You may think you “don’t need no stinkin’ rules” when you shoot video. Rules are old school… lame… a lazy technique for the unimaginative. But if you learn only one rule for shooting, learn the rule of thirds.

What the heck is the “Rule of Thirds”?

 Media Notes Episode 11 | Rule of Thirds

Rule of Thirds Video

The Rule of Thirds is one of the most important things to learn when you start shooting. It’s the basis for pleasing, well balanced and interesting shots. Sure it is a formula, but with practice you may find it is a great starting point for shooting.

Why would you need this rule?  Using the Rule of Thirds helps produce nicely balanced, easy on the eye pictures. All too often a photographer only looks at the center of the frame when shooting… so focused on the subject they just plop it into the middle of the frame. Boring.  

What is the rule of thirds and how do I use it?

So what exactly is the rule of thirds? When you are looking at your camera’s screen, before you press the record button, imagine your picture area divided into thirds horizontally and vertically… So that you have 9 rectangles. The intersections of these imaginary lines suggest four options for placing the center of interest. .

The rule is simple to implement. You can place points of interest in these intersections as you frame your shot.

Your options for compositions and what you select depends upon the subject and how you want that subject to be presented. You can use a single point for the focus or an entire line. For example, a good technique for landscapes and establishing shots is to position horizons along one of the horizontal lines.

The most important questions to be asking of yourself are:

• What are the points of interest in this shot?
• Where am I intentionally placing them?

The rule of thirds is there to help you when you are uncertain how to frame a shot. The theory is if you place interesting stuff where the lines cross it will improve the look of your shots.  Balance in the picture can often be achieved by placing a secondary object (known as a "counterpoint") at the opposing intersection.

Remember, following a rule can stifle your creativity. Knowing when not to follow the rules is just as important as knowing when to. As you are composing your shot the rule of thirds can act as your destination or it can be a starting point. After all, its up to you to know which rules to follow when you are telling your own story.

 

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