Make Your Own Video

Oh well, looks like I’ve just missed this year’s one, but “HOME MOVIE DAY” seems like a good idea. A day to get together and show old home movies, and absorb the slices of life they represent.

What hit me hardest is the bit that says:

Your home movies may be easier to watch if you transfer them to videotape or DVDs, but the original films will actually last MUCH longer than any new media.

I know I’ve just lost some of my digital footage, and it occurred to me that there ought to be some sort of archival service which will transfer digitally produced/edited video onto stable, human-viewable, analogue filmstock. The equivalent, I guess, to printing an e-book on “acid free paper” for long-term storage.

If the promise of recording the day-to-day details of our lives for posterity is to make any sense at all, then the stuff we are recording now needs to still be there when posterity comes looking.

Thsi site certainly bears looking at. They describe themseves as:

Garage Cinema Research is a research group lead by Professor Marc Davis at UC Berkeley’s School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS) that is focused on creating the technology and applications that will enable daily media consumers to become daily media producers.

Read more at:Garage Cinema Research Group

Astonishing. Appearently in the new movie “Bewitched,” the Transamerica Pyramid may have been airbrushed out of the San Francisco skyline because the building is a registered trademark. I wonder what this might mean to general “reality” and “documentary” filmmakers and video-bloggers?

Read more at: JON CARROLL

Can’t write dialogue? Want to make short movies that get shown anyway?

Try the 2nd No Words Short Film Festival

From their rules

deadline: 1st August 2005

REGULATION NO WORDS 2005

• Films/videos produced 2003, 2004 and 2005 that have not participated in previous Editions of this Festival can be submitted. The work’s subject is free. The running time of the films/videos cannot be longer than 30 minutes, titles inclusive.
• The application to this festival is free of charge.
• FICTION, DOCUMENTARY, ANIMATION and EXPERIMENTAL works are accepted, as long as they do not have dialogues or subtitles. In this competition, the film/video must be understood thanks only to the strength of the images. Music, sounds, environment background noises, etc. are accepted.
• For the selection, works must be sent in VHS, Mini DV tapes or DVD in PAL. This material will be not returned.
• Films must be sent together with the filled out application form that can be downloaded and printed from the festival website (download: www.operenuove.it). The deadline for entries is 1st August 2005. Entries must be sent to:
  CINEFORUM BOLZANO - VIA DANTE 12/c - 39100 BOLZANO – ITALY.
  The festival management is unable to accept packages which do not have the full postage paid.
• All entries will go through the selection commission of the festival that will decide which films to screen and to present to the Jury.
• The festival management will publish the selected works on the official website of the festival.
• A screening copy in Betacam SP PAL format is required from works that have passed the selection. The deadline for submission of the screening copy is 1st October 2005. If the screening copy arrives later the film will be excluded from competition and from screening. Betacam Sp tapes of the selected films will be returned.
• The festival management is not responsible for the loss or damage of the films and attached material during the shipping and during the festival.

Fancy putting together a short movie for a film festival but don’t want to go out and shoot any footage? Then “stockstock” may be for you. The idea is that you register for the festival and recieve a tape of mixed and various public archive footage. Then you edit it together in any way you like and adding titles, audio etc. The only restrictions are that you can not use any other footage, and that you can only enter up to 3 minutes of final production.

It sounds like a great idea and the $20 entrance fee seems reasonable. My only disappointment is that they only seem able to supply the footage as an NTSC miniDV tape. Those of us who use other systems such as PAL or SECAM, or who don’t have access to a miniDV player might find themselves stuck.

I wonder if anyone would be willing to offer a service redistributing the material on some other media.

Read more at Stockstock Film Festival

Video makers and videobloggers, here’s a great chance to enter a real “film festival”. Make a film or video on any interpretation of the theme “intersections”, of exactly one minute in length and submit it to some guys in Toronto.

The festival screening will take place in Toronto in November 2005, so you have plenty of time to put together those sixty seconds of brilliant material…

Read more at: The One Minute Film & Video Festival

It’s a conundrum isn’t it? Portable media player products have never been smaller, more capable, or more affordable, yet they are still an underdeveloped market. I put up a survey on the videoblogging yahoo group asking how people watch videoblogs, and the great majority of respondents seem to watch on a computer rather than a portable device. I suspect the reverse is true for audio-only “podcasts”, though.

I’ve been thinking about this, and I have a few ideas:

• There is no cultural history of carrying video around to watch. before MP3 players there was a whole generation who got used to “walkman”-style personal cassette and CD players. Listening to music has become a personal thing rather than a shared group activity. Video is still something you “go to” rather than something you “take with”
• Unlike listening to music or speech, video demands much more of your attention. It’s hard (or at least dangerous) to watch video while doing other things. There are many more gaps in a typical day that might benefit from being filled with portable audio, than are free for video but don’t already have a TV or computer.
• As the article linked below points out, there is still a shortage of content. Video copyright owners are typically wary of offering video for download, and the “buy a single track” approach that has paid so well for iTunes seems hard to fit to video.
• Video formats are a complete mess. There are many incompatible standards for file formats, video codecs, audio codecs, compression settings and metadata. Unlike MP3 audio there is no single obvious format for sharing video. Until this is solved, distribution of video will remain a cryptic, geeky pursuit.

There are changes happening, though. probably the most popular portable video platform at the moment is the mobile phone. The communication capability provides a socially acceptable reason to carry the device, and typical phone videos are short enough to fit in gaps between activities. Muscling in to the same space are other multi-function devices such as the Play Station Portable which offers video as a respite from gaming.

My guess, though, is that the breakthough device will offer all of the above - communications, games and video, but (crucially) it will also record, functioning as a reasonable digital camera and TV-resolution camcorder..

The sword to break the gordian knot of incompatible standards will very likely be the explosive popularity of a portable recording device and whatever format it favours. Unfortunately the current Play Station Portable does not include a camera, so it is doomed to remain a “destination” format rather than a force for change. If a new crop of phones include good quality video and easy transfer/sharing of it, or a new portable games machine includes a camera and some basic editing software, then issues of content availability and formats may well become irrelevant.

Read more at: unmediated: Why Aren’t Portable Media Players More Popular?

I used to enjoy reading “Computer Video” magazine, it was a good mixture of computer stuff and video stuff. Unfortunately the magazine vanished, but I just got an email from the ex-editor Bob Crabtree about his new video making site “DVdoctor.net”. Seems worth a look.

Read more at: DVdoctor.net - DV-related Technology News and Reviews

Over the last few days I have collected a bunch of useful links (to tools, software, tutorials ans so on) mainly posted on the Yahoo “videoblogging” group. I’m beginning to feel in danger of forgetting or losing some, so I have collected them here, in no particular order

• Getting a Still Frame in a WMV (from http://www.videoblogging.info/
• What’s new in Ulead VideoStudio 9
• The Video Queen
• Capturing Still Images from Windows Media Player
• How to capture a screenshot of a movie (from Darknet
• Broadcast Machine: Publish your videos into channels
• $14 Steadycam - The Poor Man’s Steadicam

It doesn’t look as if it’s available yet, but if you have a playstation 2 sitting around, it could maybe be used for videoblogging (or at least, motion-sensor recording the coming and going in your sitting room).

Read more at: SpyToy Announced