Gilsonitec845's Weblog

Final Cut Express resource

gilsonitec845 — Thu, 22 May 2008 08:11:12 +0000

I used this book when I was teaching myself Final Cut Express and it’s a great resource:

Weynand, Diana. Final Cut Express HD, Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press, 2006.

If you want to learn Final Cut Pro, I would suggest first buying the (much cheaper) Final Cut Express program to learn the basics. The difference between FCP and FCE is that the Pro version has more professional capabilities, but the basics are the same.

Video compression for posting on your website.

gilsonitec845 — Thu, 22 May 2008 07:42:04 +0000

So, you have a website and you want to put a video in it. Do you want to embed the video in a web page? This means that the user/viewer will watch the video ON your webpage. The other alternative is for users/viewers to download your video. If you really want people to watch your video, however, it’s a good idea to have it available right there in front of their faces embedded in your website. All they have to do is watch the video. In order to embed a video file in your website, it must be in FLV (Flash Video) file format. In “settings” you can chose the most recent verson of Flash Player you would like your file to be compatible with. Many people will have the latest version of Flash Player on their computer, but you can choose the 2nd to last version to be safe. If the user/viewer doesn’t have a compatible version of Flash Player downloaded, your website will prompt them to download it.

If you’re using iMovie or Final Cut Express/Pro to create your video file, when you export the file (or “share” in iMovie), choose the FLV format. This is a big job for the compressor built into the software, so it will take a while. This is a good time to take a break! Last time I exported a 5 minute digital video from Final Cut Express, it took about 20 minutes.

You might choose to export your video in a different format, such as Quicktime, Windows Media Player, MPEG4, AVI, or others. You can use any format you want if you are posting your video on your website for download, although it’s a good idea to post a file to be played in a PC program (like WMP) and a file to be played in Quicktime (on the Mac) – or an MPEG4 or AVI that should play anywhere. For sites like YouTube or Vimeo, use the formats they suggest.

How to compress:

In Final Cut: choose Export>Using Quicktime Conversion, and then choose the format you want to convert to from the drop down menu. You can keep the default settings or adjust them.

In iMovie: choose Export (or Share)>Expert Settings, and then choose the format from the menu of expert settings.

Big @$$ Files

gilsonitec845 — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 03:33:41 +0000

“My video file is huge! I can’t do anything with it.”

Video Compression

gilsonitec845 — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 03:30:18 +0000

When you make digital videos, the files in their full-quality format are huge. Think 1G per minute of audio and video, then add graphic files, effects, and extra soundtrack. Digital video files are also not created in a form which can be shared, such as .dv files or .fcp files. So, first you need to export the digital video files just to share them; but even when a digital video file is exported as a full-quality Quicktime movie file, it can be huge. The file will most likely be way too large to post on a website, since a huge video file will drastically increase download time, and will take up too much of your allowed space on a vide sharing site like YouTube or Vimeo. If you want people to be able to download your video as a Podcast, or on their own computer or handheld device, the file will need to be even smaller. What is the solution to this problem? Compression, which is also referred to as encoding, makes the file smaller; in other words, “smooshes” it.

When you compress a video file, the negative result is that you lose a lot of the image and sound quality, but there is no other feasible way to share your video projects over the internet. So, video compression is necessary for sharing digital video files in several capacities, including: exhibition on a personal website, uploading to a video sharing website (like YouTube,) podcasting, and even burning a DVD.

For an official explanation of Video Compression, see the Wikipedia entry.