The web is an amazing place to research but you need to be organised. Since you have to blog as well, but not combine the two?
If you set up iGoogle and Firefox carefully they can help you do this. I use both quite a lot. I have added 'extensions' that add functionality to the browser. For example Delicious bookmarks, add to netvibes, Evernote web clipper, Screenshot pimp, Zoteroand Xmarks. I also use a portable version of Firefox so that these are configured and present when I use my browser. With your home page set for something you use all the time - set several - and they'll open when you launch the application.
Searching the web.
Searching with Google using + and - and "" to refine your search. The advantages of using tabbed browsing should be obvious. Its also worth learning a few keyboard short cuts:
CMD + T opens a new tab
CMD + L highlights the current URL
CMD + C copies
CMD + V pastes
CMD + X cuts ( and places on the clipboard)
TAB key shifts to the next field or box
Don't just use Google. Find other ways of accessing the web's store of information. Delicious is a store of peoples bookmarks. It makes a good place to search. Search blogs. You can take even fuller advantage of web 2.0 by using the power of RSS with Google alerts, yahoo searches or even Yahoo Pipes. This way the information is filtered by choices you have indicated. I find Twitter increasingly useful - its often a case of finding a good person to follow. Here's a good introductory guide written by my Colleague Katherine Reeves.
Google docs give me a suite of applications - online versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. I can access these anywhere and share the documents created there too.
When you embed a Google Presentation it's worth noting that this is a feed. Any changes made to the file will be updated in the embedded version too. You need to make it 342 x 410 to fit the Blogger template.
Lastly, it's good and fair practice to credit and link back to your sources. Derek Pierce, as Beatsystem, kindly allowed me to use his music with students. Where you have uploaded your edits with his music you should credit him and link to his website. This way if someone wants to know more about the music he gets the click through. I should have reminded you at the time. Sorry Derek.
Transcoding is the process of changing a file from one format to another. Last week having edited as aif students needed to convert to a Wav file. Its common to have to do this converted from one to another and back again. The conversion to MP3 is also very common. These are all different CODECs.
Here is a post I wrote earlier this year about Switch - a free Mac app that makes it easy to convert from one audio format to another.
The file conversion site Zamzar is another favorite of mine. This works on all sort of file types - image, document, media.
The producers of Switch also make a free - multi platform audio editor called Wavepad Sound Editor, it looks good and will do the conversion to multiple formats too. The open source fav is Audacity - which I have found to be good. for simple stereo editing Sound Studio is neat and very mac-like. It only runs of Mac and doesn't convert to MP3 sadly, oh yes and costs $80.
You have to get used to understanding formats and develop your own toolbox and workarounds. There isn't an easy cheap one stop shop. Or maybe there is? Let me know.
This post carries on from part 1 and details the practical aspects of writing your blog.I also cover assessing reflective writing and list some blogs you might like to subscribe to.
How do you blog (using Blogger.com)?
Here is a quick introduction from Blogger.
You might prefer to use WordPress.com. Here's this post using that blogging engine.
Layout. The great thing about about Blogs is that they allow you to present your ideas and writing without worrying about the HTML code that underlies the blog - which is really a website. But you still need to think about how you make the limited number of choices about layout. Its easy to post your first blog and then experiment with different styles and looks - called templates. These will alter the form but not the content of the blog. Make sure your blog is readable. Grey text against black is not a good idea. Some of your selections can affect how they read when the blog is accessed by a Reader. Check! Here are some ideas, from the web usability expert Jake Nielson, about positioning pictures and information - the F-shaped pattern.
Widgets. These can add great content to your blog and are quite easy to set up. Add, check and remove if they detract. See cliches below! About you. Include some information about yourself - who you are, why you are blogging, what you hope to achieve, what someone might learn from your blog. You are more likely to get people subscribing if they have these information. (Post) Title. This is what as known in web design as 'microcontent'. Choose the title for your post very carefully. It needs to be simple and informative. Again Readers display the title. Subscribers might scan just the titles while deciding what to read. Then mark as read anything that doesn't appeal - missing your beautifully crafted post. Structure. The opening paragraph needs to summarise the post, but in a way to raise interest. I often write this last - before publishing online. Its easier once you can see what you have said, to craft the introduction. There is a difference between academic writing and writing for the web. The structure is closer to the journalistic 'inverted pyramid'. Links. Without any links the posting has no context. In an academic essay you are required to include quotes that support the ideas you are discussing. Then at the end of the essay there is a bibliography that relates to the reference. The idea being that interested parties can trace the reference back to the original source. How much easier is it to do this on a blog! If you find a useful site and use it, link to it. If there is more information that relates to your post, link again. Be aware that if you want to link to a blog post make sure you use that postings url (permalink) and not the blog's home page. (Whats displayed on the homepage will change.) Multimedia. Not using images, video and audio is to criminally under use the blogging medium. As they say a picture can say a 1000 words. Not only that but this is a media course. So include media, both yours and others (its about context again). You can upload video and images to Blogger. They get stored on your account - Picasa. You can download Picasa as an application and use it instead of iPhoto (I think its better). The free storage for Picasa is actually quite modest.
You are better uploading to your YouTube or Vimeoaccount and embedding the video into the blog. Still images could be embedded from Flickr or Photobucket. (Keep track of your accounts and passwords). There are uploaders for iPhoto that will help you manage uploads. iPhoto will upload to Facebook and Picasa. Videonic will upload from your mac to Youtube.
Here are 13 blog cliches from Jeff Atwood's blog that are worth thinking about. Writing. Just because its not an essay doesn't mean that you don't have to spell, capitalise, punctuate, and paragraph. I expect to see all of these displayed to degree level. There's a spellchecker in Blogger. Use it , then check it - its US English. We require UK English! Its normal to have 2 spaces at the end of a sentence - it makes the piece easier to read. Use one space after a comma. If you cut and paste from WORD you will get problems with your blog. Use a plan text editor instead, like TextEdit on the Mac, NotePad on a PC. Organisation. Labelling (or tagging). You have the option to tag/label your posts. This is basic metatagging. It makes your blog easier to navigate. It makes sense for you, your readers and its good media practice. Things need to be organised so that you can store, search and find things. The labels allow you to catagorise your posts. If you are interested in the ideas of organisation - and they are relevant to you and your studies, watch this presentation by David Weinberger (or read his book - its an easy read!)
Content. Your content needs to be legal, fair and decent. You must avoid libel, slander and deformation of character. Your blog is public not private.
As students this is where the bulk of the marks will be given. It would help to start by thinking about what use blogs actually serve. Whom are they aimed at? Here are some broad descriptions:
A diary/daily journal - what you did, what you think,
Commercial support - development and problem solving with users
Interest groups - sharing information with like minded people on one subject, area or topic
Personal thoughts and ideas - reflecting on topics and subject(s) that interest you
Your blog may need to have some journal type of writing (1). As well as your thoughts and ideas (4). Description. Whatof what happened,what didn't happen, and what were the consequences etc. Reflection. Detail thelogic of decisions and choices. You should comment on alternatives you might have taken and whether that might have been better/worse for whatever reasons. Context. You also need to contextualise your work and thoughts - that is relate them to other examples, current practice etc. A lot of student writing tends to cover descriptive writing quite well and be less effective in reflecting on and contextualising their work. Lessons learnt. You should also comment on what you feel you learnt, what you feel you need to learn, illustrating it by explaining how you might perform the task/exercise if you were to do it again. How do we judge 'reflective writing'? Broadly we might define reflective writing like this:
Excellent reflective writing has these qualities: Reflective language that describes, analyses and plans subsequent actions as a result of reviewing processes and events.
Good reflective writing has these qualities: Use of vocabulary, writing style and expression indicate engagement with the reflective process. Evidence of self-evaluation and awareness of the wider context.
Poor reflective writing has these qualities: Writing style mainly descriptive but some engagement with the reflective process. Reflection largely confined to the personal, with little attempt to connect to the wider context.
Very poor reflective writing has these qualities: Use of vocabulary, writing style and expression entirely descriptive, showing very little engagement with the reflective process.
As with all things you get better with practice, but you can also learn a lot from just reading a range of blogs. Here are some you might like to read and subscribe to in your Reader (they may also provide context for some of your studies): Phil Bloom Freelance Director of Photography and exponent of cinematic style video shooting. (Often on DSLRs). Powertothepixel Great site that attempts to gather news and information about transmedia developments.
Wired magazine UK based version of the US techie site. Good for tech news with UK slant. Readwrite More tech news this time based in the States, but very comprehensive and up to date. Smashing Magazine Highlights design issues. Often something of interest.
Stu Maschwitz Stu wrote the DV rebel handbook and is a post production guru. Interesting and thought provoking. Some of his stuff on colour grading etc is very informative. (His books worth a read too. Check out the library.) The Guardian (Media section) classic resource on the Media (Monday's paper issue - but there's more online)
Good luck with your blogging. If this has helped you, or you think it can be improved - leave a comment. That's also very much part of the art of blogging.
Mike J
This post carries on from part 1 and details the practical aspects of writing your blog. I will also cover assessing reflective writing and list some blogs you might like to subscribe to.
How do you blog (using Blogger.com)? Here is a quick introduction from Blogger.
How do you actually blog?
Layout. The great thing about about Blogs is that they allow you to present your ideas and writing without worrying about the HTML code that underlies the blog - which is really a website. But you still need to think about how you make the limited number of choices about layout. Its easy to post your first blog and then experiment with different styles and looks - called templates. These will alter the form but not the content of the blog. Make sure your blog is readable. Grey text against black is not a good idea. Some of your selections can affect how they read when the blog is accessed by a Reader. Check!
Widgets. These can add great content to your blog and are quite easy to set up. Add, check and remove if they detract.
About you. Include some information about yourself - who you are, why you are blogging, what you hope to achieve, what someone might learn from your blog. You are more likely to get people subscribing if they have these information.
(Post)Title. Choose the title for your post very carefully. It needs to be simple and informative. Again Readers display the title. Subscribers might scan just the titles while deciding what to read. Then mark as read anything that doesn't appeal - missing your beautifully crafted post.
Structure. The opening paragraph needs to summarise the post, but in a way to raise interest. I often write this last - before publishing online. Its easier once you can see what you have said, to craft the introduction.
Links. Without any links the posting has no context. In an academic essay you are required to include quotes that support the ideas you are discussing. Then at the end of the essay there is a bibliography that relates to the reference. The idea being that interested readers can trace the reference back to the original source. How much easier is this on a blog! If you find a useful site and use it, link to it. If there is more information that relates to your post, link again. Be aware that if you want to link to a blog post make sure you use that posting's url (permalink) and not the blog's home page. (Whats displayed on the homepage will change.)
Multimedia. Not using images, video and audio is to criminally under use the blogging medium. A picture can say a 1000 words. Especially so if you are blogging for a media course. So include media, both yours and others (it's about context again). You can upload video and images to Blogger. They get stored on your account - Picasa. You can download Picasa as an application and use it instead of iPhoto (I think its better). However the free storage for Picasa is actually quite modest. You are better uploading to your YouTube or Vimeo account and embedding the video into the blog. Still images could be embedded from Flickr or Photobucket. (Keep track of your accounts and passwords). There are uploaders for iPhoto that will help you manage uploads. iPhoto will upload to Facebook and Picasa. Videonic will upload from your mac to Youtube. There is also Divshare - this will allow you to embed and stream audio and video from your Blog.
Writing. Just because its not an essay doesn't mean that you don't have to spell, Capitalise, punctuate, and paragraph. I expect to see all of these displayed to degree level. There's a spellchecker in Blogger. Use it , then check it - its US English. We require UK English! It's normal practice to have 2 spaces at the end of a sentence - it makes the piece easier to read. Use one space after a comma.
Organisation. Labelling (or tagging). You have the option to tag/label your posts. This is basic metatagging. It makes your blog easier to navigate. It makes sense for you, your readers and it's good media management. Things need to be organised so that you can store, search and find things. The labels allow you to catagorise your posts. If you are interested in the ideas of organisation - and they are relevant to you and your studies, watch this presentation by David Weinberger (or read his book - its an easy read!)
Content. Remember that your content needs to be legal, fair and decent. You must avoid libel, slander and deformation of character. Your blog is public and not private.
From a student point of view, this is where the bulk of the marks are likely to be given. It would help to start by thinking about what uses blogs actually serve. Whom are they aimed at? Here are some broad descriptions:
A diary/daily journal - what you did, what you think,
Commercial support - development and problem solving with users
Interest groups - sharing information with like minded people on one subject, area or topic
Personal thoughts and ideas - reflecting on topics and subject(s) that interest you
Your blog may need to have some journal type of writing (1). As well as your thoughts and ideas (4).
Description. What of what happened,what didn't happen, and what were the consequences etc.
Reflection. Detail the logic of decisions and choices. You should comment on alternatives you might have taken and whether that might have been better/worse for whatever reasons.
Context. You also need to contextualise your work and thoughts - relate them to other examples, current practice etc. A lot of student writing tends to cover descriptive writing quite well and be less effective in reflecting on and contextualising their work.
Lessons learnt. You should also comment on what you feel you learnt, what you feel you need to learn, illustrating it by explaining how you might perform the task/exercise if you were to do it again.
How do we judge 'reflective writing'? Broadly we might define reflective writing like this:
Excellent reflective writing has these qualities: Reflective language that describes, analyses and plans subsequent actions as a result of reviewing processes and events.
Good reflective writing has these qualities: Use of vocabulary, writing style and expression indicate engagement with the reflective process. Evidence of self-evaluation and awareness of the wider context.
Poor reflective writing has these qualities: Writing style mainly descriptive but some engagement with the reflective process. Reflection largely confined to the personal, with little attempt to connect to the wider context.
Very poor reflective writing has these qualities: Use of vocabulary, writing style and expression entirely descriptive, showing very little engagement with the reflective process.
As with all things you get better with practice, but you can also learn a lot from just reading a range of blogs. Here are some you might like to read and subscribe to in your Reader (they may also provide context for some of your studies):
Phil Bloom Freelance Director of Photography and exponent of cinematic style video shooting. (Often on DSLRs).
Powertothepixel Great site that attempts to gather news and information about transmedia developments.
Wired magazine UK based version of the US techie site. Good for tech news with UK slant.
Readwrite More tech news this time based in the States, but very comprehensive and up to date.
Smashing Magazine Highlights design issues. Often something of interest.
Stu Maschwitz Stu wrote the DV rebel handbook and is a post production guru. Interesting and thought provoking. Some of his stuff on colour grading etc is very informative. (His books worth a read too. Check out the library.)
The Guardian (Media section) classic resource on the Media (Monday's paper issue - but there's more online)
Good luck with your blogging. If this has helped you, or you think it can be improved - leave a comment. That's also very much part of the art of blogging.
Mike J
--
Posted By Mike Johnston to Mike j's Blog on 9/03/2009 01:12:00 PM
I hate it when Apple remove a function or facility from some software. We get so used to companies adding utility. I recently wanted to create some MP3 files from .aiff files. Easy, I used to use iTunes. Possibily the only thing its useful for. Except the newest version I have doesn't seem to allow you to do this anymore.
The solution was to use a free application called 'Switch'. This worked like a dream and with much more control and features than iTunes. Great.
When working with FCP, its easiest to disarm iTunes. I hate the way it hijacks audio CDs and automatically opens them in iTunes. I turn this off, and re set the default application. (Select the file in the finder, then click command (apple) + i.)
Now when I load an audio disc , I preview it in the Finder and when I open it , it opens in QuickTime. If I want to use the track in FCP then I save it to the media assets file of the project, and transcode it to 48K at the same time. No iTunes, no glitchy playback, all the assets in the right place.
The offical Apple way of bringing audio into FCP with Batch export is DAFT.
This was the second time the photomarathon had run in Bath. Both times as part of the Bath fringe arts festival. I entered it with my daughter but I plugged it several time to the media students at BSU.
To be honest I hadn't quite understood the idea or exactly what it entailed. However I showed up at the Circus - under the trees in the centre - at 9.50 as requested. I paid £6 and received a 24 exposure neg film and a card. On the card were 22 themes. The idea was that I would find a suitable image for each of the themes. I needed to take the pictures the in order listed. I had just one frame per theme. If I failed to find a suitable image I was to snap my feet. It seemed very straightforward. Stevie decided to go shopping mid morning so the team got halved. At 3.30 we would all meet again at the Green Park Brasserie for card 2. This would have the final 11 themes. It was expected that we'd finish at 8pm at The Bell in Walcot St. Nice.
The weather was good and I set off with Stevie to take the first picture. I have to admit it took me half the roll to remember how the camera worked. I just use my digital compact or mobile phone all the time now. It was wuite a challenge and having to take them in order was very frustrating. You could take a picture and then around the corner would be an even better one for the same theme.
I was looking for something abstract. When I came across a 1950's cadillac in immaculate condition. I got the shot using the chromed bumper. The I chatted to the owner. he then drocve away as I looked down at the next theme...iconic. Oh shit..... I walked off kicking myself for missing a great shot. On the opposite side of the road I watched an old biker put his helmet, throw his leg over a harley davison and roar off. Double shit I'd done it again!
I walked alot but picked up all the necessary shots. Some better than others. The break, beer and chat with the other marathon photographers at Green Park was nice. I took the next lost quickly. I went home to sort out tea for the family. Later Mary and I popped down to The Bell (Great pub) and I submitted the film and the second card. There were a small band of finishers still there and we swapped stories of the marathon. We'd all had the same issues. Now we await the exhibition in the Octagon on May 22nd.
I learnt quite abit. I know now why I love my digital - its quick i can shoot plenty of images and I can see and re take when I need to. The whole thing opened my eyes - so that alone made it worthwhile. Thanks to Arran for organising it.
As we move through the production workflow with the students doing 'making a film' at BSU, more problems with FCP and HDV are emerging. There is a little trick to get FCP to recognise the capture deck that's not obvious.
IF the last project created was anything other than HDV, and you open your HDV project and try to continue logging and capturing - you can't. The deck (device control) will not link to the Mac. After trying 2 leads, 2 decks and 2 machines I found that if I changed the easy set up to HDV and created a new project. Then closed it. I could then, on returning to the original HDV project, connect the deck and log and capture. What a pain!
At home I had been noticing more and more difficulties using my laptop wirelessly. It would connect to the Internet via the wireless router but often failed to load a page etc. It was driving me mad. Depending on the time of day the connection was better, quicker and more reliable than at other times. I assumed that the router was at fault. My service provider (Tiscali) has been OK. However last week I finally figured it out. The problem was that my router uses the same wi-fi channel as several neighbours. When I changed the channel my router used, the problem disappeared.
In order to perform this useful feat you need to know what channels your neighbours are using. You need to know your router's login and password and about 10 minutes of time.
Since I use a Mac I used coconut wifi - a free application that gives you the info you need to select a channel. Pick one thats a couple of channels away from a neighbour's. Open the router settings (accessed via your browser) select a suitable channel.
Recently I have been helping students make short films. Their first steps into filmmaking, and a steep learning curve. We try, as much as possible, to remove some of the technical complexities. Allowing the students to concentrate on the storytelling. The last two weekends have seen 14 shorts in production. They were all filmed over 2 days (a weekend). Now we're start the post production. But first the logging and capturing.
One of the decisions we had taken fro the students was to shoot in HDV rather than our usual default, anamorphic DV. We could see the advantage of the greater resolution - we might need to tweak some of the shots. We'd project in 'high def' (HD) and drop the films down to standard def (SD) for the DVDs. The data rate is, after all the same as SD, but with greater image size. Great! OK, we know that there's a slight lag from the time you press record to when the camera records. But thats a small price to pay. We thought.
If only things were as simple as they looked! Some of the tapes we issued were pre-stripped. (We were keen to avoid timecode breaks - a perennial problem with novices). Sadly these were stripped in SD DV. We subsequently had worse timecode breaks than normal as the decks we were using for capture kept requesting we change format! We worked around this problem, but there were more.
Some students, tempted by the keen pricing and educational discount, owned FCP Express and were keen to use their own machine to do their edit. Usually we get the teams to create the master folder with a master FCP project and all the rushes. Students can then copy this onto external drives or laptops to do their own individual edits. It normally works fine. On monday one keen and diligent student, having finished logging and capturing on one of the Uni's Macs, wanted help to transfer it to her own Macbook. I was pleased to help her and we transferred the data using target disc mode. We then opened the FCP Pro 6.0 project in FCP Express 4.0. Problem - all the clips had audio but failed to display the video. We investigated and discovered that there was a codec issue with FCP Express. I suggested purchasing QuickTime Pro. That'll sort it out. Nope - at a cost of $30 (approx). The next option was to delete the media and re capture from the master tapes. That seemed a pity. Why had this happened?
Its not clever but it would appear that FCP Express encodes HDV (Mpg 2) into Apple Intermediate codec. FCP Pro allows you to natively edit HDV format. To solve the problem therefore in FCP Pro we used media manager to 're-compress' the footage into the Apple format (the file size increased only slightly). This, hopefully would work in FCP Express. What a pain. Next time we might set FCP Pro to capture all the films in Apple Intermediate Codec. But I suspect that there's another gotcha lurking in there somewhere!
Over the past 4 weeks we have been refreshing camera skills before the start of semester 2 and starting to shoot and edit video. We discussed framing and camera controls in a crash course single session. There was alot to take in for those new to the subject. today I found an interesting 'site' covering the basics of composition. The author has a very useful photography website thats well worth a look. The photos are technically really nice but very stylised. While I'm on about photography here are some other sites worth checking out:
Its a changing world I suppose so ity should come as no surprise that the old staple of design, wardrobe and make up depts, having been replaced with digital cameras, is about to expire. Polaroid - the instant colour camera, much loved by artists, voyeurs and photographers is to cease making film in 12 days time. Naturally there is an internet website that is trying to fight back (save polaroid) but the economic odds are heavily stacked against it.
One solution - and its well worth a play with - is to try Poladroid (mac only). This neat free app allows you to process an image as if you had taken it with a Polaroid camera! It must be puzzling for those who are unaware of the soft greenish images that Polaroids produce. You can even influence and control the development as you could with the real things! Waiting for the image to process reminds me of the same wait in the darkroom and the thrill of seeing the print appear on the paper ........
Here's a video by way of explanation (I recognise the music loops from Soundtrack Pro but they are very nicely used). Play around with it and have fun. Happy Christmas! See you next year.
Carrying on from my experiments with photobucket. I explored Divshare as a storage and slideshow generator for my blog. It works quite well - although the uploader is'nt the greatest. Here's the result.
This is my new preferred option. Great quality, easy upload and you can control the slideshows easily. That includes the embed size. There are monthly restrictions on uploads and a limit of 'sets' - groups of images. Still its great for a free service.
I have been experimenting with Photobucket recently. It seems better than Picassa - which is a pity. But I really like the slideshow feature. Its also dead easy to embed in blogger.
These pictures were taken with my mobile phone. Its great to have a camera on hand - all the time.
It updates easily too from the original slideshow from within Photobucket. There are some editing facilities as well that seem to work nicely. Even 'curves' adjustment - look under the 'geek' tab!
