Mac Video and Machinima Pointers

Well last night I have a bit of adventure in video editing, and its cause was something I've run into before but just didn't catch this time. Since the best mistakes to learn from are from other peoeple's mistakes I thought I'd share what happened, how I got there, and how I fixed it.

I'll also share some observations from my first attempt at Machinima (movies made using 3d games or virtual worlds)

So the first part will be Mac specific, the second part more generally applicable.

This was a pretty simple project. Take video of a walking tour, take snippets and make a reasonable short video of the tour. I thought I'd do this in iMovie08 1) because FinalCut Pro isn't on my machine and 2) FinalCut Pro sounded like way overkill.

I imported my .mov files into iMovie08 (after having fiddled with them briefly in iMovieHD). I started editing but soon found that every click and movement of the play head resulted in the machine stopping for a good 5-10 seconds. (Spinning beachball.) With about an hour of screen capture footage that was to be cut down to 5-10 minutes things didn't look good.

I finally gave up, exported the video I had made thus far (to preserve voice overs) so I could import it into FinalCut Pro.

And that was when it all became clear - there was no video on the export. Audio was fine but the video was all blank. The codec that the original video was in was one that iMovie08 doesn't like. The solution is - convert the video to something iMovie does like, like H.264. (There are probably other codecs but I know that one works.)

A bit of converting (using Quicktime) and re-importing and iMovie was all happy.

The way I got here was I used Snapz Pro X to capture the video. The default codec that the version I have choses when encoding video is not one iMovie likes. However, when you go to save the video you can edit the video encoding settings and save as H.264 - and you will save yourself a lot of headache.

(And as an addendum. I just found this awesome blog, Unlocking iMovie '08, with lots of good pointers on iMovie08 - including info on features you might think are missing but aren't.)

As I was editing the video I was reminded how it takes practice to take in a scene and see what the camera sees instead of seeing the filtered scene that your brain presents to you. Our mind does a great job of filtering out noise but that isn't what you want on film. Experienced film makers probably know this all intuitively but for the rest of you I'll share my bloopers.

1) Turn off distracting information - I remembered to turn off the display of HUDs, but I left SL voice on - which since I wasn't actually recording the SL Voice resulted in a unnecessary lovely white dot above my head and in odd places in the scene. Turn off extra displays, look again, and then make sure there isn't anything you missed before going on.

2) Look at your lighting - Most of my scenes were fine, but in one area it was night with minimal external lighting. I adjusted the exposure on that scene, which resulted in blown out colors but otherwise the details of the scene would have been near invisible on a windows PC. I could reshoot but the smarter thing would have been to notice the light and done something about it before shooting the scene (force sunrise/sunset)

3) Lose the pointer arrow - Most of my scenes I did ok with this, but in one scene I have this little arrow moving occasionally on the screen. There are times you can't avoid this but use what tools you have when you can (e.g. camera controls) and don't just randomly leave the mouse pointer in the middle of the screen.

I'm sure I'll learn more with my next machinima, but those are my lessons from this round. I hope they proved helpful for at least a few of you. And if you have pointers for me feel free to leave them in the comments, or drop me an email. (goldiekatsu at gmail)

Virtually Tagged - 8 Virtually Random Things

Ok, technically I've already posted on the 8 things about me meme, but those were 8 things about me outside of Second Life.

So....when Tara5 Oh tagged me I thought I'd do 8 things about me as it relates to Second Life. (Though looking at where the meme has traveled who I'm going to tag is a good question...but I'll worry about that at the end.)

1) I joined Second Life for the conferences. No, really. I kept hearing about Second Life, but it wasn't until I heard about Bar Camp being in SL and Lawrence Lessig speaking in SL that I though "Gee there are going to be conferences I want to go to in SL and I won't even know how to walk". So I joined SL. Of course it was over a year before I actually made it to a conference.

2) I chose my SL last name because it was the only name available at the time that was close to either my maiden name or my married name. Ironically Katsu means pork cutlet - which for someone who keeps kosher is particularly amusing.

3) I've helped set up two Arabic classes in SL - one pre-SL Voice (using skype+streaming software) one post-SL Voice. I find the potential applications for language learning in SL fascinating. Immersion and use of words relevant to the speaker are the most effective ways to learn a language. Within SL the likelihood of running into someone who speaks another language is pretty high.

4) I collect Linden bears, which are bears that the Lindens give out. The lore as I understand it was that it was started as a means to give residents a reason to start a conversation with a Linden. I have made bears for two Lindens who did not have them so they might have one to give out, but as of this writing, neither the bear I made for Cory Linden nor the one I made for Joe Linden has become an official bear.

5) I like to build in SL. I find sculpture and architecture built on the basic prim types fascinating. I love see what people can create from these simple shapes, and it was amazing how after I started building I would walk around and look at buildings and break them down to their prim components in my mind.

(For those not in Second Life "Prim" is short for "primitive" which is to say the basic lego shapes that make up Second Life. Just about everything you see in Second Life is built from boxes, cylinders, prisms, spheres, toruses, tubes & rings - the basic primitive types - which can then be cut hollowed and twisted etc. this is changing with the introduction of sculpted prims.)

6) I have been mistaken more than once for Golda Stein. Not that I look anything like her but I guess there was a time when there weren't so many Goldas and Goldies.

7) I did a Menorah lighting as part of last year's (2006) Official winter festival. This year the festival is after Chanukah so it didn't seem so relevant.

8) I'm trying to learn how to do machinima but so far I've only made one Seesmic video as machinima.

Ahah! And now I get to tag 3 more people. Hmmmm....I tag Mark Forman and going a bit cross media to Utterz I'm tagging Yxes Delacroix, and thirdly Akela Talamasca. You three get to write 8 things about yourself (or speak it), and then tag 3 more people at the end.

Have fun!

Brief thoughts on Second Life & The Media

I was just reading an article on ABC News about the SLCC. I find it amusing the constant "well only x people made a lot of money in Second Life".

What percentage of Internet users make real money on the internet. Is it even 1%? What use is the Internet then? Oh..it was started as a way to exchange ideas between scientists, educators, and inventors? People use it just to share with others and connect to family far away? Where's the worth in that? Could it be the communication and connection and creativity has its own worth?

SL is just a new medium that is still growing. It's also different. When companies first came to the internet few made much money or had more than a few brochures online. It took time to learn the new medium and now many businesses exist only on the web. Given time SL, or other virtual worlds like it will develop in to a new medium for business and yet still be a medium for play - not unlike the internet, but at the same time in a different way than the internet.

And for those who ask why would you spend money on virtual objects - what does your movie ticket buy you? 2 hours in the theater and a memory? How is that any more tangible than a virtual outfit that may be "worn" many times and is used to impress someone who might become a business partner?

Hype is hype, but given time and the development of more pervasive bandwidth and better computers virtual worlds will become as common as instant messaging and email.

Operator 11 Twitter Vox

Wednesday I remembered that Loudmouthman had mentioned the Twittervox Show on Operator 11 and I asked him when it was. It turns out it was in about three hours from when I asked him. I was able to join in on the show, and it was the first Operator 11 show I joined and it was a ton of fun. Once the show got going it really felt like a round table discussion. We talked about twitter and second life and relationships built over virtual spaces.

Warzabidul, the host, blogged about it and pointed out that it was the featured show for today. You can check out this weeks episode here. If you can, join us next week on August 29th at 12PM PST for episode 3.

Rez Day Writings

Eric Rice just twittered about it being rez day for when he first joined Second Life (SL), and that reminded me that today is my rez day too. One year ago today I joined SL. So what prompted me to join SL. Well, Robert Scoble had been blogging about SL so I had a bit of curiosity. What finally tipped the scales was when I heard that they were having a Barcamp in SL (which I later found out Eric Rice had something to do with). I figured that if there are having conferences in SL it was high time I figured out how to use the tool.

Of course, that's what I thought I was joining SL for. In truth I think I was joining for other reasons. I am a rather social person. Right now I work from home, and at the time I was in serious pain and not leaving the house for anything, except maybe a doctor's appointment. SL gave me the opportunity to meet people again. It also gave me a way to rethink movement. Even though movement in SL can be a bit wonky compared to how I was moving in real life it was a big improvement, and there was no pain when I walked.

So far I've only gone to a few conferences here and there. I tend to spend my time role playing, dancing, building, and getting to know people. I've been adopted as mom, been the one to talk to about problems, planned and executed a coronation, and done a whole bunch of fun stuff in a year. And the friends I made gave me the courage to go through with two hip resurfacing operations, go to England (6 weeks after one and before the other) for my graduation at the University of Liverpool, and think a lot about who I am and what I can contribute.

And now, here I am wandering the web2.0, social network, blogosphere, virtual and real worlds one year later.