5. Four Channel Split Audio Output
4. Finding Used/Unused Clips
3. Multiclip Redigitizing
2. Adjusting Your Audio Levels – Relative vs. Absolute
1. Copy /Pasting Attributes

Thursday, August 23, 2007 Fall 2007 HD for Indies Interns Needed Hey all – The summer intern program went so well, I want to keep it going. I need some interns for the fall semester. If you’re a student at the University of Texas at Austin, ACC, St. Ed’s, or someone who has time to spend a few hours a day learning but not earning, this is a great opportunity for you. I specifically am looking for technically savvy, fast learning folks who know or want to know more about production and post production, I need at least one web intern who will get to work with me on site content and revisions and Special Projects. Mac centric pretty much required – you need to know what you’re doing on a Mac, and quite a bit about Final Cut Pro. Bonus features – this semester will be the one where I get my Very Own Personal Red Camera and Redcine, and there will be opportunities to work with it and footage from it. I have all the toys, I get to review all the new toys, you’ll get to see/touch/play with it all. I’m happy to make certain resources readily available to you as my work permits. In return, I need help on testing, profiling, and reviewing gear, Special Projects, and ideally I’m looking for a 5 day a week, 3-4 hour/day commitment if at all possible from each intern, or enough interns to fill up the time slots. Candidates with stronger technical and/or writing skills will be favored. Drop me an email at mike [at] hdforindies [dot] com with “Fall Intern” in the subject line if you’re interested.

While it may never be used by news sites, a very interesting slide show tool from Animoto that was just released after finishing beta testing:

From the website: Animoto is a web application that automatically generates professionally produced videos, each a customized orchestration of user-selected images and music. Using patent-pending Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology and high-end motion design, the result is a user’s own personal creation with the visual energy of a music video and the emotional impact of a movie trailer. Playing on a widescreen video format, Animoto Videos present the visual energy of a music video and the emotional impact of a movie trailer using the same sophisticated post-production skills & techniques that are used in television and film.

Compensation is also decreasing with the median salary for journalists working for the daily newspaper industry declining by nearly $1,000 compared with salaries earned by graduates with similar jobs a year earlier. It would be interesting to find out how people in the multimedia end of the media business are faring in terms of compensation. The study did note that salaries were above the overall median salary of $30,000 for graduates taking jobs with specialized information publishing and online publishing but didn’t specify the exact job position.

There was no mention of anyone using web video. However, “Nearly six in 10 of the graduates reported feeling they had the ability to write for the web, and about four in 10 said they had the ability to edit for the web, to use the web for reporting, and to use still photographs on the web. About three in 10 said they had the ability to do web layout and design, do graphics for the web, and use web software. Only one in 10 said they had the ability to do web animation. Of the graduates, 17.1% said they had none of these abilities on graduation,” according to the report.

According to Lee Becker, director of the Cox Center and professor of journalism in UGA’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication:

“The percentage of 2006 journalism and mass communication bachelor’s degree recipients with at least one job offer on graduation was 76 percent, comparable to the figure of a year earlier. The percentage of master’s degree recipients with at least one job offer on graduation was 72 percent, also comparable to the previous year. At the same time, salaries for graduates with full-time jobs did increase and even managed to outpace inflation just slightly. Benefits, however, showed a marked decline. Only half of the journalism and mass communication bachelor’s degree recipients with a job in communication were working a 40-hour week. A quarter reported working between 41-50 hours per week. One trend in the work environment of the journalism and mass communication graduates seems quite distinct and likely to continue. Graduates find themselves in jobs where work involving the web is a quite prominent part of the routine. Graduates use the web to obtain materials for the various types of reports they produce. And they use the web to distribute the materials they produce. The field has become more web centered in recent years, and it will almost certainly become even more so in the future.”

Summary of 2006 Graduate Survey Results

• Only 3.1% of the journalism and mass communication graduates in 2006 had no job interviews as they entered the market.
• The percentage of 2006 journalism and mass communication bachelor’s degree recipients with at least one job offer on graduation was 76.2, comparable to the figure of a year earlier.
• On October 31, 2006, 63.7% of the journalism and mass communication bachelor’s degree recipients from the past spring held a full-time job, and 11.9% had a part-time job. These figures are statistically comparable with the figures from a year earlier.
• The percentage of master’s degree recipients with at least one job offer on graduation in 2006 was 72.2, statistically consistent with the estimate from a year earlier.
• On October 31 of 2006, 64.8% of the master’s degree recipients had a full-time job; that figure in 2005 was 65.7%.
• For the women, the market remained largely unchanged from a year earlier, while for men the market was weaker.
• The gap between the experiences of bachelor’s degree recipients who are members of racial or ethnic minority groups and those who are not also persisted in 2006. Students who are members of minority groups had a harder time finding a job.
• Four in 10 of the 2006 journalism and mass communication bachelor’s degree recipients with a job in communication reported that at least part of their assignment involved writing and editing for the web, an increase from 2005.
• The percentage of graduates reporting that they are designing and building web pages also increased in 2006.
• Only half of the journalism and mass communication bachelor’s degree recipients in 2006 with a job in communication were working a 40-hour week when they returned the survey instrument. A quarter were working between 41 and 50 hours.
• Median salaries for journalism and mass communication graduates, both at the bachelor’s and master’s degree level, increased by $1,000 in 2006 compared with a year earlier. The increase was just enough to keep up with inflation.

Noise Reduction on HiDef images
I made a great purchase this week -Neat Image noise reduction software. It’s intended for use with digital still cameras and scanners but I thought I’d give it a go with moving pictures. To use Neat Image, I first output a clip from After Effects as a sequence of TIF images. Then, in Neat Image (NI) I load in a test frame – usually one I know it’ll find a good noise profile from – and practice getting a good output image using various noise filter settings. I’ve found the noise filter presets often to be the best solution or at least a really good starting point. – more

About JayCut: Development of the advanced technology that makes JayCut’s online video editing possible began early 2006. In December 2006 a technology demonstration was put up on the Internet. It attracted quite a lot of interest, both from users and newspapers, and movies of everything from parties to gardens were created. In February 2007, the company JayCut AB was founded. In May 2007 closed beta testing of the beta began, and in June 2007 the open beta was launched.

I’ve been keeping tabs on Pachyderm for a while now and it looks like September 2007 the NMC (New Media Consortium) will offer hosted accounts for a small subscription fee to individuals. Pachyderm is the equivalent of Joe Weiss’ SoundSlides, but on super steroids, with the ability to allow anyone to upload images, audio, and video into a flash presentation. Go to the Pachyderm showcase to see some examples.

From the Pachyderm site: Pachyderm is an easy-to-use multimedia authoring tool that is designed for people who have little or no multimedia authoring experience. Pachyderm is accessed through a web browser and is as easy to use as filling out a web form. Authors upload their own media (images, audio clips, and short video segments) and place them into pre-designed templates, which include built-in functionality for playing video and audio, linking to other templates, and other features. Descriptive text can be copied and pasted in, or authored directly in Pachyderm. Once screens have been completed and linked together, the presentation is published and can then be downloaded and placed on the author’s website, on a CD, or elsewhere. Authors may also leave their presentations on the Pachyderm server and link directly to them there. The result is an attractive, interactive Flash-based multimedia presentation.

Apple co-founder backs Internet video venture
Fri Jul 27, 2007
By Dane Hamilton
NEW YORK (Reuters) – An Internet video brainchild of three twentysomething former University of California grad students has won big backers, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Red McCombs, co-founder of Clear Channel Communications. The billionaire moguls are backing a tiny venture-backed company, Hotswap.com, which has ambitious plans to feed a growing demand for high-definition-like Internet video for everyday e-commerce uses, such as consumer car sales, its founders said. -more

Hillman Curtis on Creating Short Films for the Web
Text and images by Hillman Curtis.
New Riders Publishing, Berkeley, 2005

An excellent book, Curtis offers a look into his filmmaking process. He takes you through the ideas that drive the story, through setup, shoot, and the assembly of a rough cut, to the final edit. Hillman also offers advice on direction, sound, editing, and interviewing. Included at the end is a primer that lists and explains the equipment you’ll need and provides an overview of the process. There is even a guide that helps you build your own Flash video player.

Publisher’s Description: Legendary Web designer and author Hillman Curtis has always been fascinated by motion and movement. In 2001, inspired in part by the affordability and accessibility of digital video, he began to experiment with short digital films in an effort to reinvigorate his creative spirit and express himself both personally and professionally. The nine projects Hillman describes in this book, each between 60 seconds and 10 minutes long, draw from a wide variety of creative sources and take various forms-documentaries, music videos, a fictional short film, and a series of video portraits. Each one is unique, yet the goal is always the same: to capture in video the essence of his subject.

I just stumbled on this. Newsmap is a news aggregator, but the way it visually presents the data is pretty cool.

Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap’s objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.

The Evolution of Web Widgets: From Self-Expression to Media Companies
Over the past few years widgets have gained wide acceptance as permanent citizens of the web. Social widgets are continuing to grow and have become basically a standard feature, since most social sites have them. We are also witnessing growth in widgets coming from large media companies, as they recognize that widgets offer a unique marketing and revenue opportunity. Because big media companies are jumping into the widget space, we expect to see the development of richer, more interactive widgets. It is not clear at this point how long it will take to flash out the W3C widget specification completely, and it is even less clear if/when it will get adopted. However, we expect that before that happens platforms like Widgetbox and Clearsping will be adopted major widget destinations and platforms, including WordPress. – more

In this article by Jennifer Woodard Maderazo at PBS’s Mediashift, most smartphones are classified as not very smart. One of the culprits according to her are media companies that aren’t stepping up to the plate to create content that is compatible with the over 70 million smartphones sold last year. Her hope is that the iPhone is the answer to all her woes with its ability to bring rich content right off the web. However, we need to make sure that the content we produce can reach these cellphone viewers, which outnumber web users worldwide. In many countries cellphones are the only form of electronic communication people have. Understanding this need and responding to it means we can reach many more people than we currently do. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Why My Smartphone Is Dumb About the Net
by Jennifer Woodard Maderazo

So why is this so hard? I’m surely not the only one who has felt this level of frustration. With about 70 million smartphones sold last year and even more regular cell phones boasting the ability to access the web, I’m guessing I’ve got more than a few brothers-in-arms in this battle. The question that bugs me the most is why media companies aren’t quicker to rectify this problem. Surely they have something to gain by making our lives easier; if nothing else, they would gain loyalty to their brands for not making us cringe when we hear the word “mobile” after their names. I think all parties — carriers, media companies and phone manufacturers — can bear part of the blame, but in general they could greatly improve their respective products by making ease of use the No. 1 priority. – more

More “sound” information (pun intended) from Eli Kao and Jeff Towne at Transom.org. This article highlights Digidesign’s Pro Tools digital audio software.

A Beginner’s Guide to Pro Tools
by Eli Kao and Jeff Towne

Digidesign’s Pro Tools is an industry-standard digital audio program used for a variety of applications, from mixing film sound in Hollywood to producing radio documentaries in your living room (or producing radio in Hollywood and mixing film sound in your living room.) The wide array of features and options in Pro Tools can be overwhelming to the newcomer, and though the manuals and documentation are thorough, there’s so much detail, and focus on multitrack music production, that they can be confusing to a beginning producer looking to mix together a few voice tracks, some ambience and some stereo music. The purpose of this article is to guide you through the essential operations of the program and give you a way to approach your project that is simple and geared toward audio documentary work. -more

Agence France-Presse has joined with Mochila, the prime destination for web-based and offline publishers to acquire content à la carte and on-demand. AFP will use this service for its Spanish language content.

From AFP: Global wire service Agence France-Presse joins global content Marketplace Mochila
Global news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) has joined Mochila, the first global online media marketplace for print, video, and photo content, and partnered for the distribution of its Spanish Content in North America, it was announced today by Mochila CEO Keith McAllister. Mochila has become the prime destination for web-based and offline publishers to acquire the world’s best content à la carte and on-demand. With Mochila’s dynamic publishing tools and content multi-media player which supports video, text, and images, publishers have a uniquely powerful opportunity to create compelling ad-supported content and slide shows for free and share in the advertising revenue. AFP’s Spanish content is second to none. AFP provides in-depth Spanish language coverage in real time edited from its regional centers in Montevideo and Madrid, as well as from AFP bureaus located throughout Latin America, the US and the rest of the world.