Gorgeous time-lapse video shot from the International Space Station (ISS) orbiting earth. Green lights are the Aurora Borealis. Original with more info is on Vimeo.
Shot using a Nikon D3S with 17-35mm ƒ2.8 and 14-24mm ƒ2.8 lenses.
Posted: November 16th, 2011More science greatness can be found at Symphony of Science.
Posted: September 8th, 2011This is really cool. Israel Hyman (Izzy Video) has posted some Final Cut X Pro tutorials on his site. Below is a list of the various training videos he has created and provided free of charge. You can also download his entire FCPX course, including practice files, for only $37. What a great service by Izzy. I’ve only looked at a couple of these videos so far, but they provide a huge timesaving over reading the manual and figuring it out on your own.
I learned Final Cut Express a couple of years ago using Izzy’s tutorials, and he’s an outstanding trainer. A lot of work went into creating these and I don’t know anyone else who would do all this and give it away. If you want to learn about digital video, pay attention to Izzy Video.
Posted: August 10th, 2011
Filed under: Free (or low-cost), Software, Tips, Video | No Comments »
Vimeo recently introduced Vimeo Pro—video hosting and delivery customized for your business. They offer custom websites (portfolios) that you can brand to showcase your videos. I use Vimeo for hosting and offsite storage of videos and I’ve been really impressed with their service, the devoted user community, the Video School tutorials and a talented base of creatives posting their work on there. If you’re looking for interesting and entertaining video work or ideas on how to improve your own videos, spend some time browsing on vimeo.com.
Vimeo Pro is different from Vimeo Plus—the Plus account is for individuals and Pro is targeted to businesses. With Vimeo Pro you get 50 GB of storage and 250,000 plays (you can buy more if you need it) for $199 per year.
A blurb from the Vimeo Pro FAQ:
Included in Vimeo PRO:
- Commercial hosting option (new!)
- High Definition video (up to 1080p!)
- Advanced Analytics
- Unlimited customizable video Portfolio sites
- Unlimited HD embedding
- Fast, Priority uploading
- Super-customizable and brandable video player (new!)
- HTML5 support with the Vimeo Universal Player
- Full mobile, tablet and connected TV compatibility
- Unlisted video review pages (new!)
- Third Party video player support (new!)
- Optional original file storage
- much, much more
And don’t miss their latest Video School lesson: Tripod Tricks!
Posted: August 8th, 2011Saw this on Vimeo recently. An interesting infographic video detailing the Stuxnet virus that shut down Iran’s nuclear facilities. It’s the first weapon made from computer code.
Direct link: vimeo.com/25118844
Posted: June 22nd, 2011
Final Cut Pro X (FCPX) was released today and I’m looking forward to seeing what it’s got. Some initial previews and articles I’ve seen show an impressive re-engineering of the application and workflow. Dropping the price from $1,000 to $300 is going to get this app into a lot of hands—I think I’ll wait a few weeks to see if there are any early-release bugs to steer clear of, but I’ll definitely be making the upgrade from Final Cut Express.
Interesting that it’s only available as a download from the Mac App Store. Some early trending in the Twitterverse stating that it has a Vimeo export option and that the project format is a SQLite database like in Aperture, but many pro editors are disappointed with the lack of some key features from FCP7.
Larry Jordan’s blog is probably one of the best places to get the details. Another good writeup over at Creative Cow and Steve Martin’s review at KenStone.net.
Apple’s online FCP User Manual here: help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0/
Posted: June 21st, 2011
I recently upgraded to a Nikon D7000 and began shooting HD video with it, but ran into a problem with importing the video into Final Cut Express (FCE): every time I made a minor edit on the timeline I had to do a complete rendering which ran very slowly. I found some discussions about this in several places on the web so I thought I would post a solution here that’s worked well for me. I can’t say for sure whether this will help with all DSLRs, so to be clear here’s what I’m using:
The challenge here, I think, is the MOV container that the camera generates—this format doesn’t lend itself to editing, so I did a conversion to the video files using the free MPEG Streamclip tool and had much better results with quick rendering on the FCE timeline.
* Note that what I’m describing here applies to Final Cut Express. If you’re using Final Cut Pro you should have the ProRes codecs installed and you can convert your MOV files using the ProRes 422 codec to get the same results. I don’t know about the other NLEs like Premier or Avid as my experience is limited to FCE.
The process is basically this:
When I did it this way the occasional rendering on the timeline went really quickly, and I can’t detect a noticeable change in video quality.
I recently replaced my five year-old Nikon D70s (lost it at the beach) with the new D7000. In addition to many other new features, the D7000 also shoots HD (1920×1080) video. I’m still experimenting with the video options, and I found some good info in the Vimeo Video School for shooting video with a DSLR. Below is a 5-minute video covering some of the basics of setting up your camera. The Vimeo Video School has a lot of good tips and ideas for getting the most out of your shots.
Also worth checking out at Vimeo: The DSLR Cinema Group.
Got an email today about some changes at Vimeo.
Three of these features are described in this Vimeo blog post.
The one I like best is that, if you’re a Vimeo Plus member and you have uploaded HD versions of your videos, you can set them to always play in High-definition (1280×720 or 1920×1080) rather than SD (standard definition, 640×480).
You’d think that if you uploaded HD video then your viewers would automatically see them in their full resolution, but Vimeo didn’t do it this way originally. Your videos would display in SD by default, with a little ‘HD’ button there to switch it to the better format. Problem was, the HD button gave most people the impression that the video was already set to display in HD. There was nothing there to indicate that you needed to manually enable it. It was misleading, and a lot of people complained about it. With good reason, I think. But now, you can go to your settings page and set HD playback as the default.
Yesterday I took my camera for a walk along the bayou that runs around our neighborhood. I decided to just take a shot of what’s in front of me every so often, and then stitch the shots together and see what I get. This is the route where I usually run, about 4½ miles round-trip, I think.
The day was overcast and cool here in southeast Texas (Katy, near Houston), so without good light I wasn’t expecting great results, but I went ahead with it. I stitched it all together (474 photos in all) using the Aperture 3 slideshow tool, and then brought it into Final Cut Express to add the music and titles at the end.
The little black dog is our terrier Cocoa, she likes to go running with me. Music is Siren by Emancipator, one of my favorite artists.
Camera: Nikon D70s
Lens: AF-S DX VR Nikkor 18-200mm ƒ/3.5-5.6G
File format: JPG Normal
ISO: 200
