Archive for December, 2007
iMovie, JVC and me
My video camera of choice in this experiment (well, not by choice, but I can’t justify a high-def video camera at this time :( is a JVC that uses a DV mini format. Built into it is a firewire connection that was pretty advanced when I originally purchased the device..
…which brings me to the 4 pin firewire connection on the MacBook: why?
The engineering powers-that-be at Apple decided to implement a mini-DVI connection on the MacBook but leave the firewire connection the standard 6-pin configuration? I’m not sure I understand the reasoning, mainly because I had to have my wife scour the city for a new firewire cable for me.
Anyway, connecting the video camera to the MacBook was the same experience I had connecting it to my PC laptop: a no-brainer. Both the PC and the MacBook (specifically iMovie) recognized the JVC and were able to take total-control of it once connected via firewire.
Upon opening iMovie, the Import From: screen immediately came up with the (DV) camera input automatically selected. I selected the Import button and was notified that iMovie would (a) rewind the tape, (b) automatically start the tape, (c) begin the import, and (d) once done importing, rewind the tape shut off the Import From: screen.
The reality of having the import function on Automatic was (a) the tape rewound , (b) the tape started and (c) the import process stopped immediately. I’m not sure why it did this, but I think my habit of reusing tapes may have caused the Automatic functionality to hiccup. In any event, I was able to set the import feature to Manual and I was on my way to importing video into iMovie.
Face-First Into iMovie
Well, Christmas is over (woot!) and my son Braeden’s second birthday party on the 27th is now in the books. All that is left from the mayhem is credit card debt, discarded gift wrap, and a stack of three video tapes to be transferred over to DVD for posterity.
Now is the perfect time to really put iMovie through the ringer.
In the past, when arguing with MacTards about what makes the Mac OS so great, mention was always made of the inclusion of iMovie in the purchase price. When I first cracked open the MacBook, one of the first things I tried out was iMovie, since I was in a position to compare it to Microsoft’s rival product, Windows Movie Maker.
As far as layout and usability was concerned, I found myself more comfortable with iMovie than I was when I first started using Windows Movie Maker, even though both products pretty much do the same thing and act in the same way.
One of my first projects was to create the banner animation for my new blog (which appears above). I utilized iMovie and the MacBook’s built-in camera, along with Adobe Photoshop (PC version) and Macromedia Flash 8 (PC version).
In trying to get iMovie to do what I wanted it to do, I was thinking about modifying the background of my videos by using a green screen. I turned to the web to see how people used green screens with iMovie (since I couldn’t find anything about it in iMovie’s help system or in the menus) and found that there used to be support for green screen functions in the past, but the version of iMovie that came loaded on my shiny, new MacBook was stripped of this (and many other) features.
Oh well, I didn’t own a green screen, and I was able to get the look and design that I was after, so I let it go (for now). The true test will come when I turn my attention to 2+ hours of videotape that lay before me. The story continues..
Screen Capturing on Mac OS X
In doing some graphic work this afternoon on the MacBook, I realized that I do a lot of screen capturing in order to sample colors from certain web sites and online photographs.
On the PC, I accomplished this by hitting either the PRNSCRN (print screen) key, which copied the entire desktop to the clipboard for pasting into an image editor, or holding down ALT and then selecting PRNSCRN to capture the active window to the clipboard.
The Mac OS X equivalent of capturing an image of the desktop appears to be COMMAND-SHIFT-3. When performing this function, my MacBook even makes the token “ka-cheee” noise that cameras make (the ones with film, anyway ;) The screen capture is saved as a .png image file on the desktop to be used at will.
LOLZ on LOLcats
Aiee diggs it!
When not referring to himself in the third person, Brian likes rain and getting caught in Pina Coladas. Oh, and let's not forget making love to Cape dunes. Yeah, those really do it for me....er, um.. I mean Brian.