 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
  |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
My Almost-daily Journal |
|
| About I love trying out new things, especially when it comes to internet technology. I never really kept a journal, but it's something that I've always wanted to do. Now, everybody will get a chance to look inside my twisted, and somewhat-warped mind.
I've also subscribed to Audio Blog, so a few times a week, I'll leave actual voice blogs. Very cool!XML Newsfeed Previous Posts
 |
Sunday, November 30, 2003
Pinnacle Studio 8 I already posted this article on my forums/fora, but I figured it was important enough to post here as well... OK. I'm not an expert in storyboards, video editing or video production by any means of the imagination. I know just enough to get by and be dangerous. Back in 2000, I used Adobe Premiere 4 to create this video for work. I wanted to clearly illustrate how engineering at Decoma could possibly become paperless using on internet-based tool called NexPrise. Decoma is still using the tool today, I'm pleased to say. My new fetish of the year is FULLY capturing my 8mm, Hi-8, and Digital-8 movies to DVD. The task is pretty daunting, since I basically have all three mediums listed above. Standard 8mm and Hi-8 tapes hold 120 minutes of video, while pure DV Digital-8 tapes hold only 60 minutes. DVD's can hold 60 minutes of high-quality video or 120 minutes of standard video. I know... WTF? To complicate things further, a pure DV capture of a 60-minute Digital-8 tape will yield an avi file of 13 GB. WTF? DVD's only hold 4.7 GB. I hardly understand it, and I really don't know how it's feasible to store 13 GB of DV video onto a 4.7 GB DVD. It probably has something to do with MPEG-2 encoding. I'm still learning. I'm an infant newbie when it comes to this. I hardly feel that 13 GB of raw avi video captured from Digital-8 is the same quality when encoded to fit onto a 4.7 GB DVD. Call me silly. To me, that's a third LESS quality. Perhaps it has something to do with the resolution that S-video can output. Anyway... when I used Adobe Premiere 4 in 2000, DVD burners where a pipe dream. The year is now 2003 and DVD burners are a reality. Capturing analog and digital video and storing it to DVD is also a reality. To me, there's really only a couple choices in creating DVD movies: Pinnacle Studio 8 and Adobe Premiere 7. I just happened to jump into Pinnacle Studio 8. My experience with Adobe Premiere 4, back in 2000, definitely helped. I'd like to try Premiere, just to have something to compare to. Pinnacle Studio 8 is awesome! I can't believe they only charge $99 for the software. Chalk it up as a "best buy" for 2003 if you're a software consumer. In one try, I was able to fully capture a 60-minute Digital-8 tape, create chapters, and even create a DVD menu screen! I'm utterly amazed at how easy it was to use. I didn't even use any wizards to do it. Right out of the "box", I was able to create an awesome DVD. I didn't even get too advanced like adding audio dubs or manipulating the audio portion of the movie by moving it around (called J-cuts or L-cuts where you transition audio from one clip into the video of another). The possibilities were endless. I enjoyed it so much, if I lived off of a $5M trust-fund, I would definitely spend the rest of my living years just playing around with video production. Here's some nice screenies of the fun I had: Storyboard view showing Hollywood FX transitions  Timeline view showing title blocks  Timeline view showing the menu-creation interface (just drag a clip into a menu box and it become a navigatable chapter)  This is the menu template creation GUI. This is where you can add your own background picture and active objects and navigation controls. The chapters shown actually are moving video in each box. Very, very sweet! I now know how movie companies make SWEET menus for their production DVD movies!  This is a text view showing the "make movie" interface. This is where the raw 13 GB avi is encoded to whatever standard you wish: VHS tape quality, compressed avi (Divx, xvid, etc.), mpeg (all sorts of flavors), streaming video (Windows Media wmv or RealVideo rm), a gay "share video" option that stores videos on Pinnacle's site, a DVD quality.  I've just tipped the iceberg with my first creation. I can't wait to learn more as I go along. The challenge is going to be to figure out what I'm going to do with analog 8mm and Hi-8 tapes, played out of a digital DV camcorder. Hopefully (and I doubt it), the 120-minute long videos will only be 13 GB. Oh... a cool thing about Pinnacle Studio 8 was that it recognized when the camcorder stopped, and it actually broke up the video into clips automatically. I think that definitely has something to do with DV video, and the way it uses DV timecode. These are exciting times. I sure wish I had a $5M trust fund. If you're interested in reading more, here's the Pinnacle Studio 8 manual (3.65 MB), compliments of Pinnacle: studio8-manual.pdf You can access this article on my forum by clicking here! posted by Dino at 2:36 PM (permanent link) |