Our chat was very informal and we had a laugh along the way. He is also into video creation and uses a Canon video camera to capture his images. I met up with Andrew first of all on YouTube which is a surprise seeing as Twitter seems to be the place these days. Mind you seeing as we are both into vide then it should not be a surprise.

Andrew is a photographer too and loves nothing better than getting out and about taking pictures of amongst other things , Fire Hydrants. Have a listen to the podcast because he talks about what he has in his camera bag and also about the workflow he uses to take something from initial idea to a finished art work.

Danny Lacey has set himself off on a course of learning how to make movies. Danny makes video for corporate customers anyway but making movies, either short films or feature length film is a whole different kettle of fish. As part of his learning regime he has mad a short movie for a horror competition called ‘Angel of the Night’. I watched the 3 minute version of the movie and was impressed. You have to have a twist in a movie to make it more interesting.

Danny talks about how he takes an original idea, writes the script, tears it apart and puts it back together again and then takes it all the way though to the finished article. He has managed to come up with a very professional looking movie using this process. He says that the planning stage is vital to the process. Making a list and checking it twice, just like the one you send to Santa when you were a kid.

I was amazed that even for a short movie like ‘Angel of the Night’ he was able to film it in one day. Danny was able to make the movie with no budget if you don’t count the pints of beer he bought for the actors to consume in the pub scene. With no cranes being available he tells me that for one scene the camera man was hanging out of a tree to get the angle for the shot in the woods. A bit of film making  monkey business.

STADA MEDIA

A dedicated, creative and affordable video production company. Danny makes video for the web and for promos

Danny’s next movie is going to be called ‘A Love Like Hers’ he wants to have higher production values and for it to be longer. He is using a site called Indie Go Go to help him raise the $8000 he will need to make the movie. Obviously a more ambitious project and I am looking forward to seeing it when it is finished, later this year.

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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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Apple news has been fairly slow seeing as they came out, early in the month to say that there would be nothing more in the line up for the holidays. The rumour mill can take a bit of a break now until CES in January and then MacWorld in February. Still no sign of a tablet computer from Apple and even rumours to say that the thing was likely to be delayed. Amazing how you can delay something that was only a rumour in the first place. We don’t do rumours here on Mac20Q anyway.

I have spent loads of time watching video from Lynda.com to learn how to do video with FinalCut Express. Pleased I got it despite that fact that it is more work to do things sometimes that it is with iMovie. Well I still have iMovie there to avail of but there is no point in having FinalCut Express and then not using it because I have iMovie. There will come the video projects that need FinalCut Express and I want to know what I am doing for that. So I will have to just devote the time that is needed to the learning curve. I expect that after a while I will be so au fait with FinalCut Express that it will seem to be as quick, anyway.

One of the things that I struggled with, was the getting the video files to be a decent size for uploading to the web. I did manage to find some settings that still gave me the quality I wanted from the 1280 by 720 video but then this morning Matt Hillyer gave me information about MPEG StreamClip, an application that is so small, must be using the Quick Time conversion already on my iMac but gives the controls to do a better job. That is often the way with this video conversion utilities, I also have Videovangelist to try out. There is of course the tried, true and tested Visual hub application though. I did try MPEG StreamClip to convert a DVD but the result was even larger and the sound was offset. Took ages to do it and I had to delete the resulting file. I do like Matts’ work flow though for getting files from ScreenFlow to FinalCut Express and then from FinalCut Express to the web. One test I did today worked a treat. I ended up with a file about half the size and still good quality at the same resolution.

You can see the videos I produce on YouTube on the Wizardgold Channel.

Remember to subscribe to the Mac20Q Podcast on iTunes and even tell your friends about the podcast, or write a review of the podcast there, which will help promote the show. Thanks for those of you that have done that already.

You may leave a comment on the site here too. If you are on the home page of the site, click on the page for the single post and then scroll down to the form to fill in. Looking forward to hearing from you. Let me know if you would like to be featured on the show.

Bob has been a supporter of Mac20Q for some time and was telling me that he has listened right from the start of the podcast. Thanks Bob, good to have you along for the ride. He was the winner of one of our software giveaway competitions too!

A good chat was had and covered all the good stuff about being a Mac user. Bob is in the process of making a podcast about Bridge the card game. He started doing it as an audio podcast then decided to start again but with video. Makes more sense if you can see the cards, for this he has been using BoinxTV. I also have BoinxTV but it didn’t work on my iMac and when I looked at it working on the MacBook I decided that it was more for making Live TV programs with multiple cameras. I think I am better off using FinalCut Express or iMovie.

Whilst on the subject of FinalCut Express, I have still been working away to learn how to use the application and I am pleased that I am getting into it due to using Lynda .com with the excellent tutorials they have there. I also found FinalCutKing web site and there is a whole load of video tutorials on the IzzyVideo web site. All good quality stuff. I checked out YouTube also but the quality of the tutorials is much more variable and at the lower end of the scale.

I though it was funny that all the news sites have been talking about Applecare not being available to smokers because the filth that had accumulated in the machine had made it un safe for the technicians, Well smokers are disgusting creatures and deserve it if it is true. Blackened lungs and blackened insides of the computer. So there you go passive smoking is bad for computers too.

Back to Bob – he is certainly a die hard Mac user, having experience with Macs from the very early days, he did veer away during the dark days when Jobs was pushed aside but was happy to come back to the fold when Intel processors appeared in the Mac computers. Thanks to Bob for coming on Mac 20 Questions. I had a great time chatting with him and if you would like to be featured on Mac 20 Questions then why not contact me and we can make a date and time to record an interview.

Leave a comment by hitting the blue button above and then scrolling down to get the the input form, or send me an email using the form below

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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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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.

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LivingProofFilm

Always good to talk to the next generation of filmmaker, musician, writer, artist and see some good things on the horizon. Very pleased to get talking a a guy with bucket loads of enthusiasm for making statement in film and video. Dale O’Keefee is just out of University and is keen to get using his talents with LivingProofFilms.

He got himself a camera with the student loan and he reckons it has given him more fun than the alternative for the student funds i.e. parties and drinking. Sorry students, I am just kidding, honest. He prefers the Canon cameras and would like to move up to a HD camera when funds permit.

Dale likes to work with a loose script and just get out there and film things. he says it seems to work for him. Due to being a only just released into the wild ex student and therefore skint. Ah the joys of student loans, and the having to pay the money back. Dale uses Celtx the software for screenwriting that is free and very capable too. I have tried it out myself, why pay for Final Draft when Celtx does it all.

Dale talks to me about how he sees his fledgling film production business going and we talk the usual mix hardware, software and creativity with a dash of how he will try to make a name for himself and some money on the back of that.

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He uses family members to act in his movies and has to keep the costs of the filming to a bare minimum. We all have to start somewhere and as many film makers have told me the important thing is to have a good story and the content will be found by the public that are there to be entertained and amused by us creative types. You can catch some of Dales work on YouTube and definitely have a look at the ones where he has his dad acting for him.

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In the ramble part of the podcast I talk about the Power to the Pixel conference that was taking place in London today and had some very interesting speakers. I watched three of the talks and the talk by BRIAN NEWMAN, Consultant and Former President, Tribeca Film Institute was –

HOW TO BE ‘BETTER THAN FREE’
The Internet is a super-distribution machine that allows copies of digital media to flow in an almost frictionless way. As the wealth and survival of traditional media businesses are built on selling precious copies, the free flow of free copies is undermining the established order. If reproductions of media are free, how can we keep on financing films and how can we find value in the media we create and sell?

He had some good examples of how some people have made money by giving away content for free. The idea of Connecting with your Audience – and then giving them a Reason to Buy, I thought was an excellent way to think about how to move forward in the age of digital content.

My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-fd5959d7f7c6bd9bea6f3deca25e83bd}

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.

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Leave a comment please

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I love the Magritte references in the video