There’s a lot that goes into the perfect DVD, but one of the most fundamental aspects is navigation, or how you control the way the viewer moves through the content on the DVD. In this tutorial, I identify which aspects of the user experience you can control, and how to do so in two leading prosumer authoring tools: Sonic Solutions’ …

  I recently shot my 20h multi-camera shoot, a concert by jazz singer René Marie. After you do anything 20 times, you have a good idea what you’re doing and why. As it turned out, this experience helped crystallized my thoughts to a level that I hope will benefit others who shoot and edit with multiple cameras. Before the event, …

All of us have had audio rise up and bite us in the rear on a project or two, usually when we were focused elsewhere and not paying attention to levels, connections, and the like. Fortunately, with the right set of software tools and a bit

To produce professional video on a budget, you need to master various visual and technical arts. But you also need to become a master of illusion, especially if you’re working as a crew of one. Here we explore the art of the single-camera shoot, and insert-editing techniques that will ensure that you have all the angles covered. Whether you’re a …

Last July, I shot a concert performance by No Speed Limit (www.nospeedlimitband.com) an up-and-coming bluegrass band whose banjo player, Stevie Barr, comes from my adopted hometown of Galax, Virginia. I did it as a favor for the local tourism directo

When it comes to 3CCD camcorders, Sony’s practice is to offer consumer and professional versions of the same camera, starting with the highly regarded DCR-VX2000 and DSR-PD150, and continuing with the HDR-FX1 and HVR-Z1U. With both duos, though the professional model has some extra features, the cameras share all critical quality-related components, including the lens, CCDs, and most internal circuitry, …

Certainly the most memorable computer commercial of all time was Apple’s 1984 Super Bowl advertisement, with slack-jawed drones watching an Orwellian speaker on a huge screen smashed with a hammer flung by an admirably athletic young woman. The advertisement, directed by Ridley Scott of Blade Runner fame, railed against “unification of thought,” and promised that the Macintosh would prevent 1984 …

I thought up the “Ten Wow” strategy in a previous life on a sales trip to Redmond. I was president of a small software company barely clinging to life and sorely needing a big sale with a trophy client. We were the third of three companies presenting, three days each, and I felt like our presentation and product demonstration needed …

[Author’s note: This article is from 2001, and some of the original images are gone. I’ve used the thumbnails from the Extremetech article here. Sorry for the low quality. The article is of limited value now, though square pixels continues to be a concept that confuses many producers, and aspect ratio mismatches continue to appear both on TV and on …

One of the acclaimed benefits of shooting HDV for standard-definition output is the ability to shoot a wide-angle view and then pan and zoom within the video without losing quality. I tried this in a recent shoot, a performance by students in my wife