iMovie: An Unsung Hero
When it comes to capturing, editing and ultimately outputting digital video quickly and easily, very few programs beat iMovie. Apple bills iMovie as a consumer product, but I use for the majority of the video that my institution produces.
I should step back a second and note that when I say iMovie, I don’t mean the most recent overhaul of iMovie that was released as part of iLife ‘08. If you have a new Mac, you can download the last version of iMovie here.
Capturing is one of iMovie’s great strengths. Dumping from tape is easy but I actually capture a different way. For some shoots, I capture video live on location directly from the camera into iMovie. For starters, this is a good method for longer productions since you don’t have to switch tapes during a show and miss something. Second, it saves time later on when it’s time to capture video, again, especially for large pieces.
iMovie captures and edits HD with no problems at all. We’ve shot a few projects in HD and it’s been a champ. It takes more disk room and more time to render in HD, but the wait is well worth it.
Once you’ve edited your video, you can output to a variety of formats and media, including iDVD. Most times, we output MP4 H.264 files that we either transfer to high quality FLV and post online* (example here), or use this high quality file as the basis for what we upload to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, etc.
Here, for example, is a video we shot on location in downtown Meadville. The event was a fundraiser for downtown development, and our new president participated as a server at this 50’s-style event.
Allegheny Community Participates in Up With Downtown from Allegheny College on Vimeo.
If you want to see it in full HD, click here.
In the end, I move iMovie. It’s easy, yet allows me to quickly produce tightly edited pieces with graphics, music, cuts and more.
* - Videos are stored at Amazon S3. Of course, right?
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What the new iPhone means to higher ed web folks
Unless you are living under a rock, you know that Apple announced its new iPhone 3G yesterday. I’ve had an iPhone for six months and love it, and I’m looking forward to the faster speeds and new features like real GPS service.
I’ve also been thinking about how this will impact us as higher education technology and web professionals.
Après moi le déluge
With the price of iPhone now dropping to $199 for the 8GB model, I would be prepared for a large number of students arriving on campus this fall with iPhones. They will expect wifi access as well as websites optimized for browsing on iPhone. There are authentication issues and other wireless security options we’ll have to review.
Now’s the time to also create an iPhone icon for your school.
Automatic Geotagging of Photos
The new iPhone will allow users to automatically, via the internal GPS, to record the exact location a photograph was taken. While this is a neat, potentially useful feature, we’re going to have to be extra-vigilant in keeping an eye on what photos are attributed to our schools or taken on our campuses. Not that we can take them down, but as GI Joe says, knowing is half the battle.
Strain in server resources
If you’ve got an email setup using Exchange, you probably won’t see a huge bump but if a large number of new iPhone users are POP’ing their email every few minutes, we may see an increased load on email servers. If you outsource your email to Gmail, for example, you won’t see this.
Power Users
Many public spaces at our college, such as the library and one of our dining halls, offer power and network connections at many tables and booths. I’ve used the power a ton of times, but it would be really cool if we started to offer other connection options at these stations. The iPhone specific example is a powered USB port, so that we can keep our phones powered on and charging while we study, do research, eat, etc. Are anyone’s schools doing this?
What am I missing?
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Google App Launcher for Mac
Google has created a new Mac app that makes managing and launching your app at Google App Engine much easier. It’s also bundled with the development IDE.
The Launcher is a true native Mac application. Installing the Google App Engine SDK, embedded in the Launcher, is a drag install. App Engine projects can be added to the Launcher with drag and drop. And your deployment password is saved in a Keychain (if you want).
I haven’t had time to even think about Python. Soon, I hope.
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