TimeLine Layout

September, 2005

  • 13 September

    Choosing the Optimal Video Resolution

    [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 …

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July, 2005

  • 29 July

    The Moving Picture: HDV Fact and Fiction

    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

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June, 2005

  • 1 June

    The Moving Picture: April Fool’s Day, 2005

    You can learn how to shoot video in one of two ways. You can apprentice under the direction of an experienced videographer who’s done it all and seen it all, and leverage the lessons he or she has learned over the years. Or, you can book the jobs, buy the gear, do your research, and shoot the shoot. Though the …

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April, 2005

  • 10 April

    The Moving Picture: April Fool’s Day, 2005

    You can learn how to shoot video in one of two ways. You can apprentice under the direction of an experienced videographer who's done it all and seen it all, and leverage the lessons he or she has learned over the years.  Or, you can book the jo

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February, 2005

  • 15 February

    The Moving Picture: Perils of Presentations

    This past fall I gave six 6-hour presentations over eight weekends in six different cities, taught a 2-day seminar in Las Vegas, and helped present three 3-day seminars in northern Virginia. Lots of travel, which was fun, and I enjoy presenting, but

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September, 2004

  • 13 September

    HDV and the Sony FX1

    After testing Sony’s HDR-FX1, I’m an HDV believer. It’s not the second coming of DV, but it can be extremely useful in a number of circumstances, including when you need to down-sample the results to SD formats. Conversation between Stephen Nathans, editor and myself, December 20, 2004:Nathans: So, now that you’ve spent more time testing with HDV, how do you …

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July, 2004

  • 13 July

    The Moving Picture: Follow the Format

    Many of the questions I get from readers and see on Web forums relate to confusion about the formats and file types used in the video production process. Briefly, a format defines the file structure, or how the information is presented in the file. D

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April, 2004

  • 12 April

    The Moving Picture: MPEG-4 is Dead

    I've been down on MPEG-4 for a while now, despite my respect for many of the folks associated with the standard. Given the adoption of Microsoft's Windows Media Video 9 by the DVD Forum, there's increasing reason to believe, to paraphrase an old Sout

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February, 2004

December, 2003

  • 16 December

    The Moving Picture: The Problem with Streaming

    The problem with streaming video is well, um, streaming. To "stream" video, or deliver it on demand without interruption, you must compress it to low data rates that squeeze much of the quality out of the video. In contrast, all streaming video&mdash

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