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INTRODUCTION
COPYRIGHT
MACHINE SETUP
REASONS TO USE
ANIMATION TYPES
OTHER TYPES
AUDIO TYPES
ANIMATED GIFs
AUDIO HOW-TO
AUDIO QUALITY
VIDEO HOW-TO 1
VIDEO COMPRESSION
VIDEO HOW-TO 2
CONCLUSION
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Digitizing Video
(This primer is for Mac users. The concepts will be the same for PC users,
though you'll have to adjust.)
The are several ways that you can gather material for animations. You
can digitize clips of a video tape that you have (be careful about
copyright!) or
you can generate your own materials by either compositing together
single images one after the other or by using animation programs such as
Strata Studio Pro on the Mac or Autodesk's 3D Studio on
the PC. Adobe
Premiere is a great video editing and compositing program. If you plan
to do much video editing, learn this program!
Since I can't cover everything, I'll assume if you are going to
use a computer-generated animation you know how to create it. I have created
an online tutorial for 3D
Studio, if you want to learn how to create your own animations.
What follows is a description of how to digitize video on a relatively
average system and how to save and convert it into something playable on the
net. Since Adobe Premiere provides the most flexibility for digitizing video,
I'm going to use it for this demonstration. You can also use FusionRecorder,
which is distributed with each new Power Macintosh.
Setting up the equipment
You can get into some pretty high-quality equipment when it comes to
digitizing high-quality video. This is the quick and dirty approach,
which doesn't cost too much. Since this is a Macintosh demo, I'm going to
assume that you have a Macintosh with audio and video in options. The
computer I'm using is a PowerMac 7600 which has this capability. You'll
also need a VCR or a video camera that has a video out option. You may
also have to adjust the number of colors for your display if the
application complains about not being able to digitize at that depth.
Start by hooking the VCR to the computer:
- Turn off all equipment.
- Connect the Video Out from your VCR or camera to the Video in on the
computer. (Some computers may only have an S-video In option. If that's
the case, the computer should have come with an adapter that let's you
convert from an RCA jack (the kind of connector on your VCR) to an S-video
connector (which looks like something that should plug into a Mac).
- Connect the Audio Out from your VCR to the Audio In on your computer.
If your computer doesn't have an RCA connector for Audio In, you may have
to get a converter to go from the RCA connector to an 1/8" microphone
plug.
- Reminder: Check your setup and note the limitations. If your VCR
or video camera is not capable of producing stereo sound, don't bother trying
to record stereo sound. It's a waste of disk space and download time!
Digitizing Video
You're going to notice a lot of similarities to digitizing audio. Open
Adobe Premiere. You don't have to have a project open to capture a video,
but you can create a new project, if you want. Use the preset for
Presentation 160x120. If you're creating video for the web, keep in
mind that it's going to have to be small in order to download quickly and
play back on your average machine. Select File, Capture and then
Movie Capture to bring up the recording window.
When you open the window, Premiere will ask you if you want to deactivate
Appletalk while you are recording. Since recording and playing back video
and audio on a computer require moving large amounts of data around as
quickly as possible, Premiere recommends that you disable anything that
could get in the way. This includes recommending that you turn virtual
memory off and that you disconnect from the Appletalk network. You can
safely disconnect from the Appletalk network UNLESS you are
connected to other servers and are planning to store the recorded data
there!
Recording Settings:
Once you've got the recording window up and you can see what's playing
on your VCR, you're ready to start recording. Start by selecting the
Movie Capture menu and select Recording Settings.... You'll
get a window that looks like this:
- Record at current size: Select this if the window size is the same
size you wish to record.
- Record at: Use this to select a different size for recording. (In order for most
PowerMacintoshes to record without a special card, you'll probably want to
start with 160 x 120 pixels and a maximum frame rate of 15 frames per
second. (TV is 30 frames per second and movies are 25. Anything below 15
or so starts looking really choppy.)
- Post-Compress Video: If you have a lot of RAM, you'll
probably want to select Post-Compress Video. This means that the
video will be grabbed without compression and will only start compressing
after you've quit recording. The advantage is that you won't tie up
computer cycles compressing while you're recording, but you'll be able to
record less because you'll use up your memory more quickly.
- Record to RAM: RAM is much faster than hard disk, so if you
have plenty of RAM, try recording to memory. The trade off is being able
to record longer segments (recording to disk) versus getting better, but
shorter recordings recording to RAM.
- Abort on dropped frames: Premiere will try to grab frames as
fast as it can, but chances are your VCR will be able to display them
faster than your computer can capture them. Aborting on dropped frames
will most likely frustrate you, since it'll stop recording if it misses a
frame.
- Report dropped frames: This is much less drastic than the option
above. Premiere will simply tell you that it wasn't able to record
everyframe.
- Conform movie to: This tells Premiere to record the movie at
the frame rate that you select. Start by trying 15 frames per second.
- Decode burned-in timecode: If you're wondering about this, you
already know what you're doing.
- Audio Block Size: Tells Premiere how big the audio blocks in the
movie should be. (Larger blocks will make for more consistent sound, but
will keep the video from playing back smoothly.)
Video Input Settings:
Next select Movie Capture and then Video Settings....
You'll be able to change the source, adjust the image and set the
compression scheme from here. If the video is appearing properly in the
window, your source is already set correctly. Otherwise, select the right
source. The image settings are pretty self-explanatory. Use this to make adjusts
prior to recording.
Choosing a good compression scheme is the difference between getting a
good video and a bad video. Let's look at the different compression types
that can be used.
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