Thank You, and a Few Extra Tips… Audio USB Gadget; Slide Scanning

Thank you all for your recent purchases of the book. I promised you some tutorials here and they will be forthcoming shortly. I’ve been on a deadline, was interrupted by my annual Thanksgiving flu, and now have to deliver the project after all that by tomorrow. But we’ve got a lot to add in our Ken Burnsian tutorials, upcoming.

Getting Old Audio In to Your Project

Let’s say you’ve got to get audio into your computer, in order to get it into your video. Let’s say that audio is on some obsolete source, like an audio cassette, micro-cassette, 8-track tape, reel to reel tape, or even an old record. There are easy ways, chap ways expensive ways, and hard ways, not all mutually exclusive.

The trick is to convert your old analog signal to a digital signal. This is done via a device that will undoubtedly interface with a USB 2.0 port, or a firewire 400 or 800 port (1394a, or 1394b).

For simplicity, let’s leave it with USB– we’ve all got that, methinks.

If you are starting fron scratch, you can buy phonographs that are usb ready— just tape the usb connector that is attached to your shiny new record player and plug it in. Your computer detects a new usb input source and there you are. But you won’t be as lucky with tape recorders.

Now, I happen to have a lot of the old gear you need to play cassettes, or reel-to-reel tapes, or records. That’s not a problem. If it is for you, go to eBay… you can find lots of affordable used cassette, reel-to-reel, and phonograph gear.

The problem is the analog to digital conversion.

You might want to have a mixer for all your sources but let’s keep it simple. Let’s skip the mixer for now, until we make more money, sell  few projects, or save up some dough. I have a $20 solution.

Go to an audio gear retailer on-line or in person. A good example is Guitar Center.  Ask for the

Behringer U-CONTROL UCA202 USB-Audio Interface

which looks like this:

Behringer U-Control USB Audio to Digital Converter

Now this is really simple, an unlike a mixer or high end mixer / converter device, this will cost 30 bucks, not $300 or more.

You have two “RCA jack” inputs and outputs. Plud your cassette deck’s outputs into the input jacks. Plug the usb cable that is permantly attached to the U-Control into your usb port.

Your computer will recognize the new usb input, and you will now have an additional input choice to select from in your audio or video digitizing program. All that for 30 bucks. I’ve been using it on some recent audio digitizing projects and it works great, MAC or PC.

What about the Pictures?

The answer is pretty obvious– a photo scanner. But the wrinkle is, “What about slides?”

I have tussled with this one for years. I started out doing slide shows that featured two projectors and a dissolve unit… okay, suffice it to say I had complete shows with 280 slides in them I needed to digitize. And you may too. If Dad or Mom were slide happy, because they liked to entertain the family with pictures of your latest exploits or their trip to Aruba, well, slides it is.

There are lots of ways to get slides into the computer. You could set up a slide projector and a screen, point a camcorder toward the screen, and record until you’ve clicked through every slide. I’ve done it; don’t do it. The slides will look soft, there will be hotspots, and there won’t be enough quality to pan and zoom on later.

You could buy on of the many $69-$99 slide USB slide transfer units that are now on the market, from eBay to Hammacher-Schlemmer. Don’t so it. The early reports are you get what you pay for. You can only color correct a washed out digitization so much.

There are a number of consumer – prosumer devices made that scan slides one by one. They usually claim to be 1800 dpi and look kind of like large external hard drives or small George Foreman Grills. You’ll invest up to $200 for these. I’ve gone through two of these, and while the scan was okay, I always had to adjust the image, and both units blew their lighting element within a year or so and the manufacturer was no help.

So it comes down to this, for the quality conscious bargain producers that we are: invest in a good quality flatbed scanner that has a reasonable capacity slide and transparency scanning capability.

I’ll cut to the chase: the Answer is the

HP ScanJet G4050 Photo Scanner.

It scans paper, photos, and slides. But so do a lot of scanners.

Here’s why I like this one:

Unlike most consumer scanners that do slides, this scanner lets you fill up the entire platen with slides, not just 4 or 6. It’s software lets you preselect all the slides and batch digitize.

You’ll stick want to color correct, remove dirt, etc., but you will have created a little time to do thsat. And the scans are very decent quality.This scanner is about $160, maybe slightly less during some promotions, and you probably will have to order it online. HP Direct, plus almost any other computer supplier can get it for you.

These are real endorsements; no affinity or affiliate or distributor fees are hiding behind the post. Just my honest opinion. Thanks for your patience, the tutorials will be up soon.

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First of all, thank you to everyone who has purchased the book. I’m very gratified by your response.

In the book we talk at some length about the “Ken Burns effect”, or essentially smooth zooming and panning on your photos. We made some last minute updates to include the latest approaches and applications, but there’s still more new ways to go about achieving the effect in a method that is not time consuming or frustrating.

Time consuming? Frustrating? What could I be referring to?

Well, Final Cut Pro, of course. Since Apple totally rewrote iMovie after Version 6, that program has gone from a traditional timeline, multi-track editor to something else. And it is something else, very powerful in its own way, and maturing even more in the the new iLife version 9. But it is different.

So some people have looked for alternatives. If they are planning to stay on the Mac– nothing wrong with that, mind you– they have just a few choices. These include iMovie, Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express, and Adobe Premiere Pro.

I’m going to assume that Adobe Premiere Pro– at $1299– is a bit too pricey. I’ll also assume the same for the Final Cut Studio 7.0, which is priced at $999.

This leaves Final Cut Express at $199, or iMovie, which is free with a new Mac or $49 as part of iLife.

I might also add that you could use BootCamp, Parallels, or Fusion to run windows on your Mac, and that would open up such programs as Sony’s Vegas family of programs, which are quite capable in in the most a stripped down, $79 version. But I’ll review and demo that in another tutorial.

So, being that we’re left with some version of Final Cut, we bite or borrow the bullet, install it, and play around. What we learn is that it is a very, very capable editor, so capable that it is capturing the professional marketplace from companies like Avid, which has made professional editing hardware / software combos for eons, and has an entire leasing company dedicated to helping bedazzled entrepreneurs pay the thousands and thousands that their systems cost.

$199? You got off cheap.

But for all you marvel at that Final Cut, along wih Motion, LiveType (now built into Motion) and Soundtrack can do, you attempt to do a nice slow push in and pan across a photo you’ve imported.

And your brains fall out.

Sometimes, software can be too cpable for the simple things we want to do. It isn’t just that in this instance Final Cut’s keyframing is a bit much for what we want to accomplidh, it’s that we probsbly want to accomplish it dozens or hundreds of times in a very short period.

Are we doomed? No.

There are three programs we need to investigate:

FotoMagico from Boinx Software. $29.00; $149.00

Photo to Movie from LQ Graphics. $49.00

And Photomotion from GeeThree’s SlickFX line for Final Cut Pro. $79.00

All solve the problem, by making the pan and zoom effect easy. They have different capabilities. Two are standalone programs. One fits right into Final Cut as a plug-in.

Next time, some actual hands on videos demonstrating each.

Interviewing for an audio-visual enterprise is an ancient art.

In a good documentary, the star of the interview is the person being interviewed. The interviewer is typically off-camera, and if the interviewer is really good, you’ll never see them or hear them speak. Why?

They ask questions that get full answers.

The art of the interview has been bastardized by today’s TV performer who wants not only to look handsome or pretty, but also smart. So they ask a lot of rapid fire questions. They’ve only got a minute, and they are thinking Emmy. So these questions contain major hints at the answer the interviewer is looking for.

Interviewer: Tell me about how horrible you must feel now that you’re house has burned down?

Interviewee: I feel bad.

Well, yes. But it can be worse. I often hear local cable interviewers ask the question this way:

Interviewer: The fact that your house burned down must make you feel awfully bad, doesn’t it?

Interviewee: Yes, yes it does.

Interviewer: How bad?

Interviewee: pretty bad.

Pretty bad, indeed.

In a corporate long form documentary style video, an ideal scenario is the video that can be “narrated” solely by the interviewees, through their own words, in complete and meaningful sentences. Suffice it to say that this is hard work. You must ask the right questions in the right fashion and then have the editing chops to put it together into a compelling narrative that has a beginning, middle, climax, and end. The interviewee will not be a talking head on camera, so you have no excuse to make your interviews TV style, where editing would cause unsightly jump cuts (therefore giving the producer an excuse to edit less. More gross profit!)

Some producers will pretend that TV style interviews are the right way to sell business-to-business products and services. That’s ridiculous. Looking at two talking heads blathering on without b-roll, music, or story is an absolute waste of a company’s dollars. That producer has no intention of working for his or her money.

We believe in interview style videos, just as surely as we believe in unstaged actualities to convince audiences of a product’s quality or a company’s intent or philosophy.

Yes, it takes longer, and it costs a bit more. But the shelf life can be very long, and the impact multi-tiered. Its a technique that works at meetings, or on the web. Consider this technique for your next video.

An example can be found by clicking on the image below.

You’ve read elsewhere on VideoStory Secrets that you’re not going to get anywhere without a demo reel.

Well here, courtesy of the Viral Video Film School on CurrentTV, is a look at demo reels that will get you absolutely nowhere.

Go here for a blog featuring a list of video search engines.

Fantomas, a top SEO expert, lists them as follows:

Jinni

VideoSurf

Mefeedia

Blinkx

CastTV

Veveo

Pixsy

Vid Sea

Fooooo

Metacafe

ClipBlast

And of course, let’s not forget these two big ‘uns:

Google Video

YouTube

You night also want to read his diatribe against crap, time-wasting web videos. He’s as concerned that they waste our time as he is that they’re, well, crap.

The economy’s tough. Prices are rising. People are getting laid off. Marketing dollars are being slashed.

What better time to start a business?

Here’s why:

1. No one else is doing it. This gives you a leg up on more conservative people who won;t start their business until the economy is good. Even if you don’t get much business at first, you win the market niche competition.
2. You’ve got nothing to lose. You can be competitive because your overhead is low.
3. You’re a good PR story. Newspapers love to run good news in a recession. Most of the time they’re writing about businesses closing, not opening.
4. Excellence shouts out to your potential customers since everyone else is cutting back, or reducing their quality.
5. Freelance help will be cheaper, so if you get a job your profit will be higher.
6. A lease will be more competitive for your new office. Free rent, lower monthly fees. That can really add up over the years.
7. If you need equipment, there will be a lot of used stuff flooding the market. It’s amazing what some gear is going for on ebay and on Craig’s List right now.
8. You’ve got nowhere to go but up.
9. Established players have nowhere to go but down.
10. People may have more time to hear your pitch.

There’s many reasons to go against the grain, to fight the status quo, and to take a risk in a seemingly down time. The good news, every small gain is a triumph, and will only set the table for future, bigger victories.

Good Luck.

Tribute Videos are videos that celebrate a person, couple, group, or institution. They can be engagement videos, anniversary videos, memorials, retirement videos, milestone birthday videos, company histories, leadership stories, school reunion stories, award-winner portraits, and more. They are at home in the living room, rec room, boardroom or ballroom.

Tribute videos are how I got my start. (See “AVSquad” in the links.) And they remain the most satisfying of the work that we do. There is nothing like telling a people story.

A lot of people are into video these days, some as a hobby, some as a potential profession, some as part of their job duties. There is a perception that video is easy, thanks to point and shoot miniature cameras, computer editing, and thousands of tipsters on-line telling you how easy it is and selling something– usually hardware.

But hardware is only part of the problem, and hardware and editing software are covered pretty readily via training web sites, DVD lessons, and more.

No one is training people on how to tell a compelling story. How to interview, how to move pictures, how to choose music, how to pace videos, how to get a visceral reaction from an audience!

That’s where “Tribute Videos for Love & Money” comes in.

Tribute Videos for Love & Money

It’s an ebook that details my communications beliefs and systems. If you like samples of my work, and you want to know how and why certain creative decisions were made, this is the place to start. It concentrates on the “Tribute” people story type of video, but frankly, if you can tell that kind of story, there isn’t much you won’t be able to do as you grow your capability or career.

For more information, go to videostoryschool.com.

I hope you like it and find it valuable.

Just bumped into this from a sight called Remarkable Communications. It’s worth a gander.

At some point in your communications career, you will be faced with writing a video script. It comes with the territory. How you respond to this distraught pleasure will say a lot about you and your understanding of visual media.

What makes writing an av script hard is not knowing how easy it can be. By the very nature of the written word for a visual medium, the key to success is less, not more.

For one thing, you’re writing to be heard, not seen. For another, the medium is a visual one, which means it prefers the pictures to do the talking. Finally, a script for video needs a lot more than just words. It has to provide visual direction, audio direction, and the essential creative blueprint that leads to the success of the project.

Let me give you an example.

Let’s say that your goal is to write a short script about a new software program that helps people track their spending. Let’s call it “Fast Money”.

It’s a simple, easy to use program which can help people budget, save, an ultimately have the money they need to fulfill their dreams.

The success of all video or audio-visual products is to engage the audience by appealing to their desires. You could talk about how “Fast Money” has been written by coders certified in C++, how it is delightful in its use of a user-friendly GUI, and how it automatically sends back error messages to “Fast Money” HQ so that the program can be constantly improved.

But you’d be talking to yourself, because the potential buyer doesn’t care about any of that. They care about money. Their money. Their life. Their future.

SO you need to create a hook. A way to start the script that talks right to them and their needs.

SO you begin writing:

ANNOUNCER: You want to make Money!    VISUAL: Picture of Dollar Bill. SOUND EFFECT: Ka-Ching. MUSIC: Money, by Pink Floyd.

Well, it’s a start, if you want to hit your audience with a sledgehammer.

But hitting audiences with sledgehammers doesn’t create intrigue. But this is often the approach an unseasoned writer will take– they’ll cover all the bases.

The good news is, luckily, you don’t need to know or present all those technical facts. What you need is a way to engage the audience on their terms.

Instead, try writing without using words– ie, skip the narrator for now and create a scene instead.

SCENE: Slow zoom in on man working at kitchen table, He has a yellow legal pad, a checkbook, and a calculator. He looks worried and is wiping imaginary sweat from his brow. A woman, his wife, walks in behind him and looks over his shoulder.

SHE: Well?

HE: It doesnt look good.

ANNOUNCER: Too familiar? It’s hard to save a buck these days.

VISUAL: Alternating closeups of Husband and Wife faces, cutaway to their checkbook showing small negative balance, cutaway to pile of bills.

Now, that was fun! Instead of a litany of facts and figures, suitable only for the engineer that developed the product, we’ve now created an emotional scenario almst anyone running a household can identify with. They’re ready to hear more.

And we didn’t use corny music, jangling cash registers, overblown prose, or dollars marching off a cliff.
Now you’re on your way to being a scriptwriter. Yes, you have to know the facts. But no, the audience doesn’t need all of them. They need reasons to care. And you’ve just given that to them.

Now, they’ll listen to more– even if there are a few facts thrown in.

For more information on this and other create techniques to make your video production life easier, see my book, “Tribute Videos for Fun and Profit”, elsewhere on this site.

This family history DVD  was created as a Christmas gift from parents to their sons and daughter and their childrens’ children. What an amazing and thoughtful gift. While it preserves photos and especially 8mm films that had not been seen in decades, the larger story is the interviews from the parents that pepper the story. This excerpt hopefully will give you the flavor of a compelling, lasting keepsake not possible in any other way.