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MORE BREAD
The bread maker has a timer, so I can wake up to a freshly-baked loaf. Yummy!
:-)
I've had a problem, with the bread collapsing once the heat starts. It doesn't
affect the taste. Anyway, I've reduced the amount of yeast and this loaf rose
really well as you can see.
Call me a cynic but I think manufacturers tend to tell us to use too much of their
product (whatever it might be). That way they sell more...
Or maybe when baking in a bread maker you simply need less yeast than in an traditional
oven?
VIDEO EXPERIMENTS
Lots more experiments too, putting together videos on the PC. In fact I've spent
most of the last week on this, learning how to improve the look of stuff on VHS
and the best compression techniques to use.
You may not have heard of the VCD (Video CD) format. I didn't know much about
it until recently. It gives an hour of VHS quality video on a standard CD. It's
popular in Asia where feature films come on two VCD discs. But it never really
caught on in Europe where VHS tapes were more popular.
But the really exciting part is that most DVD players can play a VCD. So I'm looking
at this as a way of releasing a couple of video projects that I'm working on.
And the great thing is that even my puny-specification PC is up to encoding video
that is suitable for a VCD.
MAKING MOVIES OVER THE YEARS
I started making movies when I was 15 years old. As a teenager I was desperate
to get myself a film camera and projector. But I didn't manage it until I got
myself a job after school.
Those were the days of Super 8 film. A roll of flm lasted 3 minutes 20 seconds
and cost £3-£4 -- which was a lot of money to me back then. I wanted
to do some animation and I did -- but the truth is I never really had the patience
for it and found live-action much more to my liking.
My Super 8 camera
(still got it!) |
With Super 8, editing the visuals was easy -- you just
cut up the film and stuck it back together. The problem was mixing together any
kind of soundtrack and getting it synchronised with the picture. The system I
used involved perforated 1/4 inch reel-to-reel audio tape, a strobe light and
a gadget that controlled the speed of the film projector!
Then, in 1980, home video came along -- VHS and Betamax -- and I rented a £1000
so-called portable system and paid for it each month by making videos of weddings.
Great: synchronised picture and sound and cheap minute-for-minute, but not easy
to edit. You had to copy from one video machine to another, with a loss of quality
when you did.
Editing 16mm film |
You couldn't guarantee to cut on a particular frame and, ermmm, mixing soundtracks
wasn't that easy either. But I did manage to put together at least one good documentary.
At this point I went off and studied film and TV production at University for
three years. Once I'd used professional-quality 16mm film and broadcast TV equipment,
it made the restrictions thrown up by home video seem even worse!
Tools for digital video
CAPTURE CARD
You need a video capture card. Mine is an ATI All-In-Wonder 128 that I picked
up cut-price for £35. It has a video out socket that lets you view material
on your TV or record it onto tape. The software that comes with this card is terrible
but the card itself works pretty well.
CAPTURE/PROCESSING
Lots of software lets you capture but VirtualDub
(freeware) does it best of all and has many cool filters to process and improve
your footage. For instance, you can remove grain or colour noise.
EDITING
Adobe Premiere
is my software of choice, but is ridiculously expensive. ABC
VideoRoll is the best free software.
ENCODING TO MPEG
The MPEG format offers great compression with good image and sound quality. TMPGEnc
(shareware) produces high-quality MPG files, including those suitable for making
a VCD. TMPGEnc is unrestricted for MPG1 encoding, which is the format used in
VCDs.
MAKING A VCD
WinOnCD
5 Power Edition (£40) - an easy way to make a VCD. It encodes
the video files to MPG1 format and you can include audio and stills and make menus.
Great!
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Again, various gadgets appeared to improve the accuracy
of editing with home equipment. But it was still a long, long way from even basic
professional expectations. So, wherever possible, I got myself onto pro equipment
and did my editing on that rather than at home.
ON AN EQUAL FOOTING AT LONG LAST?
The current moment in history is very exciting
for anyone who is into making their own movies and who has been struggling to
do so for years...
PC prices have dropped, and technology has developed, to the point where editing
can all be done on a PC and broadcast-quality results can be had using a system
that costs just £1500. Even a basic PC can produce VHS quality.
No more hassle getting sync sound or mixing soundtracks. No problems achieving
frame-accurate cuts or the same effects that are available to the pros (picture
and sound mixes, blue-screen, superimposed moving titles...).
Add in the Internet or CD as a means of easy distribution for your finished film
-- and it's just wonderful!
Of course this doesn't mean that everyone is suddenly going to begin producing
their own movies. In much the same way as most people are able to write, but never
get down to writing a book. There is much more to film-making than the nuts and
bolts of editing and most people don't want to spend the time learning about it.
However, it does mean that if you have the will, then for the first time in history
you don't need a load of money or the go-ahead from the people who control hugely-expensive
production equipment and distribution.
Click here to visit the Badpuppy website
GETTING IN TOUCH
See the contact
page for full details of how you can reach me by e-mail or chat.
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