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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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.

I love still images but sometimes there is nothing like motion. So I ask You:

Are you packin’ cam?

Your video camera, that is.

Your camera– and your right to use it– is as important to many of us as our right to pack heat– uh, carry a concealed weapon, that is. And no, I don;t pack heat.

But I do pack cam, and that can be just as important. With it, you can:

• Capture a family moment.
• Witness a crime.
• Record breaking news or a natural disaster.
• Make a personal statement by pointing the camera at yourself.
• Record a coworkers moment of triumph.
• Surreptitiously record b-roll for a company video.
• Ask Grandma 20 questions for posterity before she shuffles off to Baltimore.
• Narrate your own personal documentary.
• Record something worth 100,000 hits on YouTube (like that territorial squirrel fight I saw– and missed– the other day. I forgot to pack cam.)

So pack cam. The links you gain, the views you rank, even the money you make from a once in a lifetime catch, is worth only the amount of cam you take.

Once again, there is an uproar over the “loudness” of commercials versus the loudness of the programs in which those programs reside.

As the keeper of the remote, I have spent a  lifetime hearing “turn that damn thing down” whenever commercials come on.

Here’s the secret: they aren’t louder. Well, technically. TV spots are just as loud as tv shows… at their “peak volume”. The trick is– tv spots are all peak volume…. through a technical audio processing technique called “compression.”

So while 24 has a peak volume of guns being fired and Jack shouting and bombs detonating and stuff blowing up, it also has low peak volume of Jack muttering under his breath, “With all due respect Madam President, ask around.”

Then, a few seconds later, he yells “We don’t have time!!!” at the peak of his lungs.

So TV spots are the equivilant of Jack Bauer yelling “we don’t have time!” for 60 seconds straight.

When I started ouyt many years ago, I didn’t use compression. That’s because even if I knew what it was, I didn’t have any. I had a $6 battery operated mixer from Olsen Electronics, and two tape decks.

If I wanted the soundtrack to sound louder, I mixed the volume louder. This sufficed for many a slide show.

But the first time I did a radio spot, I learned the difference. Despite the brilliance of my creative mixing technique, my spot sounded muddy compared to the other radio spots touting REO SpeedWagon and Styx.

So I asked around, mainly, I asked the pro film guy we had hired a few weeks back. “Buzz,” I said, “Why does my soundtrack sound murky compared to the other radio spots?”

Buzz asked, “What DB compression did you use?”

“Huh?”

Compression seeks out the peaks and valleys in a track and compresses their dynamic range. “S”‘s are more syballent, backround noise and music more powerful, and announcers sound like they just grew a new pair of..

compressors.

Luckily, Buzz had joined us to do audio, so I didn’t have to figure out the archane art of compression until years later.

But now whenever I’m asked to turn it down, I begin to explain compression– after I turn it down.

Slide Shows. Slide Talks. Slide-Sound Shows.

These phrases strike fear into the hip and trendy.

And why not? Say “slide show” and your brain is filled with Dad’s vacation slides or a grade school filmstrip on how to brush your teeth. Or maybe you envision an old audio-visual presentation you saw when you were a summer intern: “Improving Tolerances in the 303B Die Cut Assembly.”

But some of us know better. We know what slide shows can really be. And the first thing we need to understand is that they’re not slides, and not even powerpoint. They are moving picture presentations, tanks to today’s advanced slideshow making and video editing software.

As a baby-boom-aged audio-visual and video producer, I should know. I started out in “slides.” And the first thing I and my colleagues across the country did was try to turn the slide show into more of a “movie”— a theatrical experience.

This required sophisticated soundtracks, fade and dissolve effects (pairing two  slide projectors and a “dissolve unit”, and synchronization between sound and picture. Soon, the only thing we couldn’t do was talking heads (thankfully)— the rest was simply using the language of film… wide shot, medium shot, close-up, cutaway, rinse and repeat.

Because motion picture film was expensive, and industrial video hadn’t yet been mainstreamed, slide shows became the corporate norm through the mid-eighties.

Across the country and around the world people produced award-winning communications using slides.

Of course, once video became affordable to the corporates, that changed. But often, the video productions that replaced slide shows actually weren’t as good— why work hard when you can feature talking heads?

But people who were in the slide business adapted their hard knocks techniques to video, and produced some pretty incredible stuff. Video cameras weren’t as portable as a Nikon and a cassette tape recorder, but extraordinary soundtracks, awesome editing, and location video made for a very nice mix— a lot better than corporate talking heads.

Often, the best videos featured still photography— company histories, executive biographies, fund raising appeals. Historical materials were usually print, and fund raising can benefit from the unique emotional power a great still image or still image sequence can create.

Today, video is everywhere— affordable, digital, distributable on the web, on DVD, or on an iPod or flash drive. But a great deal of the video that is out there is “out there”— not really communications, but more real-time stupid human tricks or ego-driven monologues. We all want to be the next big thing.

And so, the thought leaders have forgotten slides, photography, still life, and historical documents.

If we need a slideshow type “thing”, we use Powerpoint, a background template, and a bunch of words and some small picture or clip art inserts. That was special 15 years ago; its not so special now.

But if you mix the editing and distribution power of digital video with the emotional language of truly great slide shows, what so you get?

Well, an award-winning PBS series or ten from Ken Burns, as an example.

A stirring tribute to the retiring head of a company.

A love story more compelling than any wedding video.

A family scrapbook with pictures, clippings, old movies, new interviews, and stirring music guaranteed to reap adoration and applause.

The satisfaction of a a job well done, and even, perhaps, a corresponding income as an independent producer.

Whether you use a slide show program, or a video editing program, slide show techniques are alive, and well, and communicating every day. Put them to work for you!

At NAB (National Association of Broadcasters Trade Show), a company called Black Magic Design unveiled a pair of products designed to take composite or s-video from tape decks, camcorders, and anything else tyhat provides standard definition video and convert the signal in real time to H.264, a high quality compression form that is rapidly becoming the standard for iPod, AppleTV, iPhone, YouTube, and video podcasts. A company called Elgato has had a similar device available for the MAC for some time.

According to Black Magic:

“Because videotapes such as VHS degrade over time, there are millions of hours of home movies sitting on old videotape that need to be converted to computer files or transferred to mobile devices such as iPods, so you can show family and friends!” said Grant Petty, CEO, Blackmagic Design. ”But there are also millions of hours of professionally videotaped programs that need to be moved to computers so they can be sold to customers online, or used in IPTV applications. I feel this is an incredibly important product for moving all that television content into the future. The future is mobile and in your hand!”

That’s the press release’s exclamation point.

Included with the USB hardware is the Video Recorder software which lets customers capture video with easy to use controls. When this software is used with the Video Recorder SDI model, users can enter in and out points for the deck they are capturing from. The Video Recorder software also allows users to set video scaling to reduce the resolution for mobile devices. To make great captured movie files, the Video Recorder software allows interactive cropping of the video edges, so analog blanking, VHS switching marks, and VITC timecode artifacts can be cropped out.

If you’re producing Tribute videos, corporate history videos, or anything that requires the use of old analog tape materials, these babies should be a godsend. Essentially, your video goes to your hard drive already converted and ready for editing (in many edit programs.)

H.264 is always going to look better than your old Betamax or VHS tapes, so there should be no apparent degredation.

Of course, for really awesome digitizing of old video signals, I still recommend the Canopus ADVC-300, which has a time base corrector built in.

Brien Lee