Comments on: What kind of world do you want?

By: Katie Favazza

Katie Favazza — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 14:41:48 +0000

What kind of world do you want?…

John from the band Five for Fighting has started a great project. Link via Hot Air and Michelle Malkin.In other news, I really need a video camera. I want to participate in 2 video projects now… (See also: Investigative Blogging.) ……

By: MirCat

MirCat — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 12:08:43 +0000

Topic: The “Everything” Topic – Filmmaking Tutorials, Resources, Etc.

This is over at TheForce.net under the Fan Films section. An extreme resource for all things Film Makery.

- The Cat

By: Buck Turgidson

Buck Turgidson — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 04:47:48 +0000

What kind of world do you want? How very Lennon-esque. We can’t even get conservative blog commentors to agree about having church services. Good luck with that.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 02:27:31 +0000

We use Premiere Pro for most of our editing on Vent and Jihad Watch. It’s a brilliant program, very fast, very stable and capable of doing almost anything you want to do. It’s also pricey because it’s a pro tool with a lot of depth. There’s a slimmed down version called Premiere Elements, and it’s very good. If you outgrow Movie Maker, give Premiere Elements a try. On the Mac side, Final Cut Express is a great and inexpensive editing program too. Given the choice between the two, though, Premiere wins out over Final Cut right now. I’m as shocked as anyone to say that, but from my experience it’s true.

As a long time Avid editor it pains me to not have a good recommendation from Avid, but the fact is they have fallen behind in development. Prosumer-level Avid products right now are cranky and pricey. I never ever thought I would prefer anything Premiere over Avid, but Premiere right now is the easier and more flexible editor for day to day editing.

By: RedWinged Blackbird

RedWinged Blackbird — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 01:29:15 +0000

BTW, another tip on video editing. It’ll fragment the hell out of your drive, so you’ll need to defrag frequently. I use Pinnacle Studio, which I recommend over Nero. Nero seems to be a bit faster at format conversion and disc burning, but Studio is much better for editing. As I recall, HA uses Adobe Premier, which I haven’t tried. I think it’s more expensive than Nero and Studio.

By: RedWinged Blackbird

RedWinged Blackbird — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 00:04:00 +0000

What do all you techies do with your old computers?

If you have a bass boat, they make pretty decent anchors.

By: Melba Toast

Melba Toast — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 23:48:23 +0000

What do all you techies do with your old computers?
I have three sitting in a closet right now. 486 with multiple hard drive and RAM upgrades, an HP Pavilion 6535, and a Power Mac, all with monitors! Ideas, please, and thank you?

By: JadeNYU

JadeNYU — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 23:47:41 +0000

Bryan on March 10, 2007 at 12:20 PM

Thanks for the info, Bryan.

I’ve got a second question, if you’ve got the time. Sorry if this one’s a bit obvious -

When the videos are really hard to see details in (i.e. you can definitely see the outline of a person, but absolutely none of the detail – everything looks like a shadow) is that due to lighting?

“Each time you do, up to 49 cents goes to the charity.”

Up to 49, and down to how many cents?

Kevin M on March 10, 2007 at 1:06 PM

I read the site….apparently, the vids get a percentage (I think it said 68%) of the ad revenue that the site generates. So, I guess the actual cent value depends on which ads they’re running that day.

By: Zorro

Zorro — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 21:58:04 +0000

Has anyone upgraded to the 486 yet??

TugboatPhil on March 10, 2007 at 3:20 PM
Do you have any idea how much beer shooting through the nose can sting?

SailorDave on March 10, 2007 at 4:20 PM

… or Pinot Noir… that’s hysterical!

By: SailorDave

SailorDave — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 21:20:17 +0000

Has anyone upgraded to the 486 yet??

TugboatPhil on March 10, 2007 at 3:20 PM

Do you have any idea how much beer shooting through the nose can sting?

By: forged rite

forged rite — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 20:59:35 +0000

forged rite on March 10, 2007 at 2:33 PM

Never mind, my firewire ports are in back.

By: Michelle Malkin

Michelle Malkin — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 20:29:03 +0000

What kind of world do you want?…

***update: tips for editing video*** John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting sends word that his new videoblog contest for charity has launched: Hey guys, Whatkindofworlddoyouwant.com has finally launched! Let the world know your views and wishes and raise …

By: TugboatPhil

TugboatPhil — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 20:20:32 +0000

Has anyone upgraded to the 486 yet??

By: SailorDave

SailorDave — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 20:05:18 +0000

Good God, Bryan!

I’ve barely grasped the technology of a flat panel monitor. Now you throw terms like firewire and IEEE 1394 at me. What kind of techno-sadistic madman are you?

By: forged rite

forged rite — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 19:33:31 +0000

I’ve got two ports on the front of my PC (6 months old with XP) and they look like USB ports, but they have the triangular (kind of like a pitchfork) symbol over each of them. Are these the Firewire ports?

By: ScottMcC

ScottMcC — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 18:40:12 +0000

The question that no one can answer for me is – if you upgrade a computer from XP to Vista; do you get a full installation of Vista?

When you upgraded Win98 to Win2000 or WinXP, you got a dumbed down version of either operating system, very different than if you did a fresh install of either.

lorien1973 on March 10, 2007 at 1:06 PM

Vista upgrade experiences are either of the “omigosh, that was painless and awesome!” or the “WTF?” variety… no inbetween.

I have a friend from England that popped in a Vista upgrade DVD in his Dell Dimension 8300 with XP at work and an hour later he magically had Vista. My friend in Dallas, however, had to blank his month old HP’s hard drive and start over from scratch.

I’m upgrading my church’s PC to Ultimate soon to run all of the multimedia video/audio/photo slideshows for their Alpha ministry so here’s hoping my luck doesn’t run out by then ;)

By: lorien1973

lorien1973 — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 18:06:55 +0000

I upgraded a seven month-old Intel Core Duo laptop running Vista Ultimate and my wife’s three year-old AMD 64-bit desktop PC with Vista Home Premium. No problems with either and we can’t imagine how we managed without Vista before.

The question that no one can answer for me is – if you upgrade a computer from XP to Vista; do you get a full installation of Vista?

When you upgraded Win98 to Win2000 or WinXP, you got a dumbed down version of either operating system, very different than if you did a fresh install of either.

By: Kevin M

Kevin M — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 18:06:15 +0000

“Each time you do, up to 49 cents goes to the charity.”

Up to 49, and down to how many cents?

By: ScottMcC

ScottMcC — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 18:02:25 +0000

Is anybody out there actually running Vista yet?

I upgraded a seven month-old Intel Core Duo laptop running Vista Ultimate and my wife's three year-old AMD 64-bit desktop PC with Vista Home Premium. No problems with either and we can't imagine how we managed without Vista before. My wife extensively uses the Windows Media Center feature on her PC to replace our cable company's TiVo-like PVR function. The puny hard drive in the PVR would only hold so many shows (or sometimes it would inexplicably crap out for no reason) but with Windows Media Center recording TV shows to her computer's 200GB hard drive my wife's never missed a show. And when the hard drive fills up, she just plugs another USB hard drive in and adds inifintely more space. The best part is the price: THEN--We paid $12.95 per month subscription for the cable TV PVR NOW--We pay $0.00 per month to record TV with Windows Media Center I know... it was shocking to find out that Microsoft (of all companies) didn't make us pay extra for that and enabled us to save over $150 per year. This Christmas my wife wants to upgrade everything in the house to HDTV and share it all using Media Center.

Why fixate on firewire? Because it works and editing apps are geared for it. If you want to use USB 2.0, knock yourself out.

I agree with Bryan but want to add that many digital video cameras cannot transfer video to a PC using USB. I have a DV camera that has FireWire and USB, but the USB only works to transfer digital photos; to transfer video from the camera to the PC I must use the FireWire port.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 18:00:44 +0000

Vista and Mac OS have simple DVD authoring built in too, fwiw. If you have a DVD burner you can convert your old home movies and stuff to DVD.

Not that that’s what this post is about, but still.

By: MamaAJ

MamaAJ — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 17:59:14 +0000

If you’ve got an old camcorder that’s not digital, you can get one of these to hook it up to your PC via a USB port.

I paid a lot less, though…

I’m converting some of our home movies on VHS-C tapes with this.

By: PinkyBigglesworth

PinkyBigglesworth — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 17:25:36 +0000

“Anything Goes” scares me.

Tru2my2 on March 10, 2007 at 11:04 AM

Be afraid, be very afraid….

There are no rules. Your films can be personal, political, serious, amusing, Write a story, Tell a story…ANYTHING GOES

Welcome to the Helen Thomas collection of bowel movements and pornography…………. enjoy!

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 17:20:35 +0000

YouTube stuff tends to look washed out because of the compression they use on their videos. YouTube compresses everything to Flash (so do we), but catered to slow connection speeds. They toss out a lot of color information during that process. We emphasize quality a little more than they do (they also have about 100 million downloads per day, so they have to keep their file sizes smaller than we do to keep bandwidth costs as low as possible).

Why fixate on firewire? Because it works and editing apps are geared for it. If you want to use USB 2.0, knock yourself out.

By: JadeNYU

JadeNYU — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 17:09:15 +0000

Hey Bryan (or anyone else that knows),

What’s a good (but cheap – if possible) way of making sure that your video does’t look washed out?

It’s pretty common to see vids on YouTube (and even some professional v-logs) where everything looks really washed out. Is that dependent upon camera quality, or is that more of a lighting issue?

Any tips or tricks that can make a novice look like they’re at least a journeyman?

By: Golden Boy

Golden Boy — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 17:03:58 +0000

“Is anybody out there actually running Vista yet?”

Yes, not a huge change from XP, but it has a few whistles and bells that are pretty nice. You do need plenty of RAM to run it, however.