Mortaine’s Blog

My article “4 Easy Tips for Shooting Better Travel Videos” went online at The Travelers Notebook last week.

I want to share with you an interesting bit of knowledge about Windows Vista. The base Vista versions, Vista Home Basic and Vista Business, do not come with Windows Movie Maker. This is important if you’re a videoblogger who hasn’t shelled out $300 for professional video editing software, or if you’re following the instructions in Videoblogging for Dummies and elsewhere.

If you upgrade to Windows Vista and you want Windows Movie Maker, you need to get Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate.

Ok? Are we clear? Good.

This is, to my mind, not such a great choice on the part of Microsoft. In today’s world, Windows Business should have video editing software. It makes sense. How else do you want people to edit short videos to plunk into PowerPoint presentations, or to post into their Help files? Obviously, this decision gives another “win” to Apple. Not because iMovie is free (it’s not), but because QuickTime Pro, while a bit clunky to use as an editor, is only $30, and is available for both Windows and Macintosh users.

And a bonus:
From LifeHacker, Alpha Geek: Video Editing 101: by Rick Broida discusses how to edit video in Windows.

Nifty! From Boingboing:

DV Rebel’s Guide:
Mark Frauenfelder:

I’m looking into making some videos, and I just heard about this book: The DV Rebel’s Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap. It sounds great.

Written by Stu Maschwitz, co-founder of the Orphanage (the legendary guerrilla visual effects studio responsible for amazing and award-winning effects in such movies as Sin City, The Day After Tomorrow, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), this book is a must-have for all those budding filmmakers and students who want to produce action movies with visual effects but don’t have Hollywood budgets.

The Orphanage was created by three twenty-something visual effects veterans who wanted to make their own feature films and discovered they could do this by utilizing home computers, off the shelf software, and approaching things artistically. This guide details exactly how to do this: from planning and selecting the necessary cameras, software, and equipment, to creating specific special effects (including gunfire, Kung Fu fighting, car chases, dismemberment, and more) to editing and mixing sound and music. Its mantra is that the best, low-budget action moviemakers must visualize the end product first in order to reverse-engineer the least expensive way to get there.

Readers will learn how to integrate visual effects into every aspect of filmmaking–before filming, during filming and with “in camera” shots, and with computers in postproduction. Throughout the book, the author makes specific references to and uses popular action movies (both low and big-budget) as detailed examples–including El Mariachi, La Femme Nikita, Die Hard, and Terminator 3.

Link

XL-1 table dolly:

MAKE Flickr photo pool member Tekisui made a homemade table top dolly for a XL-1… - Link.
Related:

• DIY rail based linear dolly - Link.

From the pages of MAKE:

• $14 Video Camera Stabilizer. You don’t have $10,000 to spend on a Steadicam? Make this ultra-low-cost video camera stabilizer and see how much better your video shots turn out. MAKE 01 - Page 84. Subscribers–read this article now in your digital edition.

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I have to post about this, because it’s all over the news, and because Rocketboom is such a core of the videoblogging world.

Amanda Congdon and Andrew Baron have had some kind of personal and professional difference that has resulted in Amanda leaving the show, presumably for good.

At this time, Amanda hasn’t announced where she will go next, or what she will be doing. Andrew hasn’t announced who will replace her, or how the show will change in the future. What is certain is that the show will change, and that both of these individuals are very talented, creative people.

What I hope this means for videoblogging is that, where we had one core, excellent, must-watch videoblog, we will now have two. Of course, we already have hundreds, but that’s neither here nor there. Amanda and Andrew are now “proven entities” in the world of online video, and hopefully they will continue to thrive.

What this means for readers of Videoblogging for Dummies is that references to Amanda in my book will require you to dig through Rocketboom’s archives if you want to see her work on the show, in the future. It doesn’t change the quality of the work done up to this point, though if the book says “Rocketboom is a show done by Amanda Congden and Andrew Baron…” then you’ll have to either gloss over that, or get out a pencil and make a note in the margin so you know it’s not like that anymore.

There is, in fact, a whole category for posts about errata for the book, complete with RSS feed.