A bit of rambling with video for a Tuesday morning.
Tag Archives: video
Starting the week 30th March
Man I have been struggling this morning with Visual Hub, VideoCue and getting a short video made. VideoCue is a teleprompter and I have used it before successfully and for some reason today I could not get it to see my Samson C03U microphone. Sometimes it would then other times it wouldn’t. Then on top of that I was not happy with the export settings and I have been fiddling around with those to get some acceptable quality of the video. Still not as good as I would have liked but maybe I should be getting out the video camera and I know I will win. It will be a good opportunity to try out iMovie 09 then.
In the end I did some restarting of the computer and editing of the export settings in VIdeoCue and then deleted the microphone and then added it back in to get it right. I still ended up with a video that was too large so I then was trying visual hub to convert it and it did not play ball. So eventually I got VideoMonkey to do the job. I also tried Stomp and that was rubbish too. I tell you it can be difficult to get to grips with all of the video codecs that are out there. I truy to stick with H.264 do convert the files to get decent size with decent quality.
Spondicious PodCast 06 – Video
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (32.9MB)
In this podcast I look at the idea of selling illustrations online through micro stock photography sites. One of the things that you really have to look out for is closed path and open paths.
With open paths in an image submitted to sell it will without a doubt be rejected in all of the microstock sites. When I was a CorelDraw user there was a setting with the pencil and with the brush too that actually automatically joined an open path if you took the end of the line close enough to the start of the line. Don’t think it is possible to do that with Adobe Illustrator.
There are times when you want to concentrate on the drawing and not have to think about the technical aspect of joining the ends of a closed shape. So what you do is to just draw away and when you are ready use a couple of plug ins to join all of the open paths in one foul swoop. I tried a few different ways of achieving this but one I found this set of plug ins I haver not looked back. One plug in to find all of the open paths and one to close them all, although that part of the job is done with a script. Just another plug in really with a different name.
[display_podcast]
Spondicious video
Since I got the Cintiq I have used it a fair bit but mostly in the first week. I love it for drawing with but it has been useful as an extra screen too. Would be great to have another 24 inch screen as extra space though, or even the extra of the larger Cintiq.
After the first week I had to spend a good deal of time doing podcasting work due to the Podcamp Barcelona which I attended and gave a talk about podcasting for beginners. Since then I have been doing more blogging and podcasting and not had much time for the drawing. Shame really because I has a 90 trial running of Corel Painter X, so there are days wasting there.
What I should be doing is working on a few christmas images although when I do get back to doing more drawing with the Cintiq I will have to first get the London bus design finished first.
Today I have made a decision about what camcorder to get for the video podcasting and although I was interested in getting one of the prosumer models, I was looking at the Sony FX1E which is a super looking camera, I am going with a higher quality comsumer camera for a few reasons. The price is important for a start, with all the financial turmoil I thought prudence with spending might be a good idea. So I will have to forego the delights of looking more professional by having a big pro camera and instead go for the more practical considerations of lightness to carry and being able to record direct to SD cards. It will still be Hi Def HD recording but on to solid state media.
Going for the solid state is good too because I think that these Prosumer cameras I have been lusting after only record to MiniDV tape in the HDV format. There are benefits with using tapes in terms of storage but the camera compaines are heading towards non tape based Prosumer cameras anyway, or at the very least heading to hybrid cameras that will do both.
So how is this interesting to Spondicious Photography and Illustration then ?? well on iStockPhoto they sell video clips. I have had a look at what they have on offer and I reckon I could do it too. So the plan will be to be while I am out doing some shooting of photos I can also take some video clips too. Sometimes I expect the situation will favour the video rather than the still shots and sometimes the opposite. No problem.
So I now have a plan made to expand myself in terms of what I can offer the microstock sites.
I have to tell you still what camera I have decided to go with. It is the Canon HF100 or the HF10 the only difference being that one has built in memory. I will probably get the one with out as it is cheaper to buy the memory afterwards. I will be able to stick in 8GB cards and maybe even 16GB cards.