Gary Rosenzweig pictured here in an English pub  (Mind you if he was doing it properly he would have a pint of beer in his hand) talked to Mac20Q about what he does with MacMost Video. He has been very busy producing Mac tips in video form for about 2 years and is doing very nicely on YouTube.

He was previously into making games with Flash and still might do the odd game. He has also made an app for the iPhone. So as you can see he is multi talented with the programming, podcasting with video, writing books, drinking beer and probably many other things too. He is successful in bringing in revenue from his podcasting, He has the links on the MacMost site and apart from one month doesn’t have the advertising in the videos.

Gary also has an Sony HDV camera which is plugged into his MacPro and he records live into Wirecast which comes from the same company as ScreenFlow. I was amazed that his preference for movie editing was with iMovie because it is so fast to do the editing. He could use FinalCut Express but prefers iMovie. He compresses the file at the end of it all with MPEG StreamClip. He uploads to Blip.tv and it will send the file off to YouTube which saves some time with the uploading. Naturally you will find Gary on FaceBook and Twitter.

He recommends that if you want to get into video podcasting and you don’t yet have a HD Camera then just shoot in standard def. move up to HD when you are able to. If you wait until everything is perfect then you will never get to make a podcast.

Gary admits to being a geek, and using terminal editor on his tiny netbook rather than using the Ubuntu that was installed. He was using EEE Ubuntu. He has been using as Mac for a long time though and was issued a Mac SE in 1987 when he was in college. It was a requirement to have a Mac there.

For a favourite application he has to choose between Garageband and iMovie, but was perhaps edging towards iMovie more. Gary does use Audacity and although it is a free application I would recommend that you use AmadeusPro, it looks prettier, more Mac like and I think it is more stable too.

He uses Fluid the custom browser application that you can use to make a web application for one specific purpose. I have it for FaceBook but Gary uses it for a Todo application. he is an iPhone user and use MocaVNC, Tweetie, Cycle Meter, and Scrabble plus other games. On the MacMost Newsletter he does a recommended iPhone app of the week.

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Great guy from Enniskillin in Northern Ireland. He is Lecturer In Media Applications & Computer Science, Specialising in Video Game Development. I used to go there to Enniskillin, quite often either for shopping or to go to the Theatre. I did even once go kayaking on the river, with a bunch of kids. A good day out.

In the ramble I mention my new Magic Mouse which I am really pleased with, Google Wave and The Film Ink which got featured on Video20Q Podcast, the film got put on torrent this week and was downloaded thousands of times. I would like to see them getting paid for it though. Excellent looking movie. I have a DVD on its way to me now.

Paul McGovern is a new media teacher – lecturer in Northern Ireland and in impressing his students with being a total tech head. He tells me about apps like Blender, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere. He also does things on the audio side with Audacity and other apps you can find out about in the interview. He is fond also of ScreenSteps an Application which Allison of the Nosillacast often bangs on about.

Planbook is designed to replace your traditional paper planbook with a robust digital scheduler. Planbook is designed and written by a full-time teacher and includes all the features you need to save time, stay organized, keep others informed and help you finish your teaching day a little bit earlier.

ProfCast is a versatile, powerful, yet very simple to use tool for recording lectures including PowerPoint and/or Keynote slides for creating enhanced podcasts. ProfCast provides a low cost solution for recording and distributing lectures, special events, and presentations as podcasts. ProfCast offers an integrated workflow that makes creating, recording, and publishing podcasts easy. It’s as simple as Launch, Load, and Lecture!

Paul tells me of a thing called Moodle, which is  a Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It is a Free web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites. I must check it out my wife is a teacher, maybe she could find it useful.

As I am making these screencasts I am learning more about the power that is in this application. There will be more Screencasts to come to show you what can be done.

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In this podcast I am talking to two people from Telestream, the company that make ScreenFlow. ScreenFlow is a super product that I use often to make screencasts. Barbara deHart and Christine Porter tell me all about ScreenFlow and also mention other products from Telestream.

I was able to give them direct a feature I would like to see in the ScreenFlow, they are keen to improve ScreenFlow and you never know my suggestion about being able to specify the placement of a clip within the screen might make it into ScreenFlow. It pretty good that they have snapping lines that let you snap a clip to the centres and to the edges but sometimes you might want a clip be at an exact position and for that you need some boxes where you can enter some numbers in the same way you can enter a number to specify the zoom level for example.

I also use VideoCue from Telestream and other people have requested some of the features in that to be merged into ScreenFlow, I agree with that for sure.

I know there are other screen capture applications out there and I have paid for a couple of them but in the end I had to get ScreenFlow because of what it can do with the editing. It really is handy to be able to do all you need to do in the one application, from capturing the whole of the screen to uploading it to YouTube.

See the Screencast I made about using ScreenFlow. I show some of the basics like adding extra media and using transitions in between clips. I will be producing more screencasts as soon as my cold/flu symptoms abate a little.

ScreenFlow

the best ScreenCapture Application

I use ScreenFlow and I am an affiliate for the application. I paid for the application initially but I was pleased to get on the Beta program to get version 2 upgrade without having to pay for the upgrade. I have tried other screen capture apps such as iShowU and SnapzPro, both of which I also paid for. It was the fault of Don McAllister that I lashed out more cash to get ScreenFlow when I already had to screen capture applications. When I met him at Podcamp Barcelona he gave me the recommendation. I tried it and decided that buying it was a no brainer for what I wanted to do. So you can trust me when I say that if you have not tried it yet then I would say give it a try. Once you have made a couple of Screencasts with it you will want to have it past the trial period too.

Here is screencast in which I show you the basics of ScreenFlow. How to put in video actions and callouts and set them up to work and look right. I will do some more screencasts featuring ScreenFlow soon. Why not hit the Leave a comment button below and say what you think yourself. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I show you how I use Wire Tap Studio to record my interviews and get the output and two separate channels for editing in AmadeusPro. Why I use the lossless export that gives me a .mov file that I have to use other software to split into the two channels rather than just saving directly out. I have a nice work flow that does the job and gives me what I need to edit the interviews for Mac 2 Questions efficiently.

ScreenFlow 2 is ready for distribution and as I have been using the beta to test the new features I can attest that it is a super bit of software. I used it to make the last few screencasts for Mac 20 Questions.

Enough if the personal news and on to the Mac, even though I wasn’t able to use mine as much this weekend. I just put together a video showing how to use the green screen feature in iMovie. The first time I did it I couldn’t believe it was so easy! This time I recorded what I did with ScreenFlow version 2 which is still working great even though it is beta and not due out until any day now.  Using iMovie to to the chromakey is just a case of dragging the video with the green screen in it into the timeline on top of the background you want to replace the green with. If the screen is lit properly and without shadow caused by creases, it won’t even need any adjustments. I had to make a couple of adjustments but after that it was perfect.

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I do plan to get a longer pole for the green material and to put the iron over it too. I will stretch it over some extra poles perhaps to get it just right. You can put a moving background behind or a still image if you wish.

I am still toying with the idea of getting Final Cut Express, which would be better than iMovie but I am finding that iMovie is quite capable now that it has gone to version 09.

So over the next while I will be making a pile of screencast to test out the new things in the software. There are transitions going to be available, and I am looking forward to trying those out for sure.

Here is a list of other new features

Here’s a brief summary of some new things you will be able to do in version 2.0:

Stu was recently in America and tells me that he took more tech stuff than clothes, so if you have a funny story about a fella from Leeds in England turning up somewhere in the USA only partly dressed, then let us know about it, won’t you. Seriously these days international travel does restrict the amount of stuff you can carry onto an airplane and when you have computers and microphone you can be sure to get your bags searched and molested. It is when they start to put on the rubber gloves you have to get worried though!

Stu is into video production as well as audio podcasts. He is keen to use iLfe and was tellin me a bit about his video camera in the interview.

Stu listens to quite a few podcasts as well as produces them. Listen in to the podcast to find out which are his favourites.

Levelator – Software I use to do some trickery on the levels of the file in between raw editing stage and the podcasting part of the job in Garageband. There a good article which tells you some details about what it does and how it does it. Have a look to learn more.

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Got talking to Damian who is a developer and uses his MacBook Pro for work. 24 inch monitor connected either when at work or when at home. Seems to be working for much of the time and has not had chance to get to play with the MacBook and have fun with iLife.

He is from South Shields on Tyneside near to Newcastle in the UK. I have been to that area recently and it is a great place to live. My brother has been  living there for quite a few years and shows no signs of leaving either.

Damian told me about EventBox and it looks quite interesting but I am able to get to more social networks through Ping.FM which I don’t have to pay for.

Have a look at the ScreenFlow page because that is the software I use to make screencasts. Excellent software for capturing and editing video. I think it is the best screen capture software I have tried. I have used iShowU and another one can’t remember the name of but ScreenFlow is the best by a long way.

I have been trying to work out how to join some .mov files together using Automator. Manually I select what is in the 2nd file and past at the end of file one. the do the same with subsequent files. Got to be a way to automate the process.

I did get an AppleScript from DavidBCohen which sort of did the job but made too many tracks. With four files I got 8 tracks and that led to more work and inefficiency. In the mean time I found a few resources for learning AppleScript and Automator. Here is a page with some Automator and AppleScript information.

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I had some time to use and I wanted to do an interview for the Podcast and so I asked on Twitter if there was any Mac user ready to get started with an interview straight away. Up pops Joshua Rodriguez who is a student from Canada. We had a super chat about how he uses his Mac and maybe I was able to give him a tip or two as we were talking also.

One of the things I was wondering was, what do students in schools do regards taking computers into schools. Joshua wants a MacBook. They do cost quite a bit of money and you know what kids are like with other people’s property. Maybe with a computer you could expect a higher level of care, but it only takes a couple of mad minutes doing something silly and everyone says “It wasn’t me.” Maybe by bringing this up here I am showing my age and bringing out the dad of three lads part of me or the ex teacher part of my life.

Does anyone have any experience of how portable computers get looked after by school children? Let me know fill in the contact form below.

Seeing as he is a poor student, mind you – all students are that way, I remember it well, I suggested that he might use Mozy for his back ups. Like my son has no money to buy an extra hard drive to be able to use Time Machine or SuperDuper to make a back up, so what can be done is have all of the important files being backed up automatically with Mozy to the Cloud. 2 GB of free space is not to be sneezed at, for sure.

I have been using Mozy for about a month now and I am impressed. It just does the backing up I have set it to do and I forget about it. There is an icon on the bar at the top of the screen and if I click it I can see when the last back up happened and how many files and how much data was backed up to Mozy. It really is ttransparent in use.

The show sponsor for this episode as usual is ScreenFlow. Here is a page with more information. I use it a lot and it is impressive. Don McAllister of Screencastsonline was the person that told me about it when I met up with him in Barcelona last September.

[contact-form 1 "Contact form 1"]

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Stefaan tells us about his data plan for his iPhone and it is not unlike the plan I have here in Spain. 200mb download each month.

He does video podcasts for a Dutch language web site called itutorpodcast. If you can understand Dutch go and check it out.

Stefaan uses Final Cut Pro on his Mac Pro and he has a MacBook Pro too. We discuss a few things about iLife 09 and in particular iMovie. He makes movies for the family from footage shot by the family and uses ScreenFlow to from Flip4Mac to make his screencasts. He told me about a recent upgrade to ScreenFlow which I had not downloaded at the time of the interview. I have the upgrade now but still have not had time to get using it.

He uses a Time Capsule to make back ups and give some wifi in the house. Stefaan also has a Airport extreme to provide more wifi coverage. For the back up end of things he wants to buy a Drobo for the storage.

For a favourite application is called Billings made by Market Circle, he uses it for tracking time for the purposes of making invoices for his business. Best of all it is not an expensive application to buy. I like to use one called Accounts by Nano Software from Australia. Billings does custom reports, which is a very useful feature.

We came to the conclusion that getting software for the Mac is not a problem at all, most apps are cheaper, better and prettier on the Mac Platform

Show Sponsor

Spondicious Photography and design. This is another blog and podcast of mine in which I descuss how I sell photos through the micro stock industry.

Stefaan also has an AppleTV despite there not being much content available on iTunes here in Europe. He uses it for showing photos and also for films that he has ripped himself.

Things is one of the applications he uses on his iPhone and his Macs, to organise himself. I compare it a little with using Evernote to organise myself.

Dashboard gets a mention. I use for the world clocks and Stefaan uses the conversion tools. I also have a colour utility called ColourJack.

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Jonathan has the site ThinkMac and MacTipsDaily. You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.  Some great information there if you want to learn more about the Mac.  Jonathan is certainly a bit of a geek and loves his Macs.

I had a very interesting chat with him about a number of things with the Mac 20 questions as the starting point. We talked software and hardware. He make screencasts to show how to use things and uses his Mac to edit video.

Here are a few of the links to things that Jonathan is interested in and mentioned in the interview. Mail Steward, syncing software Fruux, Podcast Maker, Bento, Marsedit, Podpress

Want to see a weird looking mouse??

Public Radio Tuner – Light Bike – Skippy

Sponsor for the Podcast is ScreenFlow the excellent software to capture your screen and record audio to make a Screencast. Find out more

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Some people just use the browser of choice and email and not much else, On the other hand there wil be users that will spend a whole day on a specific task like making a movie or a podcast and move on to using other apps on following days. Computers can do so many different things and people are all so different so a day in front of any computer is going to be unique and interesting.

Of course seeing as I am talking to Mac users there is going to be a lot of creativity and even the normal user is going to be a content maker of one sort or another. I presume that will  be the case anyway, we will find out as time goes by and the podcasts give us some evidence to go on.

I am a bit of a butterfly in the way I work. Even when I have a task that has to be completed by the end of the day I will still do other things as I go. A little bit of email checking, some twittering, I’ll research something or other or check out a video somewhere. Obviously being a podcaster and blogger I spend a lot of time using the applications that I need to complete those tasks. Amadeus Pro, Garageband08, Quick time, ScreenFlow, VideoCue and more. I have just been conned into making the newsletter for the Girona Grapvine which is a group of English speaking socially networking each Wednesday in Girona, for that I have been using Pages which is a super application for arranging things on a page. I will be outputting those as PDF’s when they are done.