August, 2009

• 11 August

  Shooting for Streaming: Designing Your Set and Dressing Your Talent

  My first foray into digital video, circa 1994, went like this: I hired a professional crew to film a tutorial on video compression. The set they designed featured a rosewood desk against a gray fabric background decorated with plants, and graduate

  Read More »
• 11 August

  Review: Kulabyte XStream Live 2.1

  If you’re producing a live streaming event, you have three choices when it comes to encoding: You can hire out the work, buy a streaming appliance, or build your own streaming encoder. If you choose the third approach and want to stream HD H.264 video via Flash, Kulabyte’s XStream Live 2.1 Flash video encoder needs to be on your short …

  Read More »
• 10 August

  Lighting for Streaming

  Without question, lighting is the single most important determinant of streaming quality. Shoot a well lit scene with a consumer camcorder, or a poorly lit scene with the latest HD wonder with 2/3” CCDs, and the consumer camcorder wi

  Read More »
• 4 August

  Shooting for Streaming – the Basics

  how to limit motion during shooting and editing to improve streaming quality

  Read More »
• 2 August

  Apple Compressor 3.5 Screencam

  This video presents the new features in Apple Compressor 3.5, including new templates, enhanced Droplets, Job Actions and the ability to auto-detect settings from files dragged into the settings window.

  Read More »

July, 2009

• 31 July

  Silverlight Counterpoint

  Earlier this week, I posted a column relating to Silverlight observations made while teaching a seminar at Stanford. My colleague, Stefan Richter, posted a snippet of the column on his site, www.flashcomguru.com, a premiere learning site for Flash de

  Read More »
• 28 July

  Liquid-cooled HP Z800 Workstation Test Drive

  I produce a lot of screencams and other narration-type recordings, and workstation noise is a constant concern. I also have multiple computers around my office, most off testing some software program or rendering some project. While “cacophony” is definitely too strong a word to apply, less noise is always good. For this reason, I was excited when HP called to …

  Read More »
• 27 July

  Final Cut Pro 7:First Look Review

  By now you know that Apple has launched an update to Final Cut Studio. I got an early look last week. The new version will cost $999, a reduction in price of $300. If you own any previous version of Final Cut Pro—even version 1, insisted the product manager in our meeting—you can upgrade to the new Final Cut Studio …

  Read More »
• 27 July

  Final Cut Pro 7 details and Screencam

  Apple recently released Final Cut Pro 7 and I was fortunate enough to have an advance copy, from which I've produced the feature overview screencam that you'll see if you click this link. For more information on Final Cut Studio, you can read my f

  Read More »
• 26 July

  Review: Telestream Episode Engine

  For VP6 and H.264 encoding, Telestream’s Episode Engine is fast and produces equal or better quality than most other streaming encoders. For those producing shiny optical discs, MPEG-2 performance and quality is also quite good. However, Win

  Read More »