Year: 2010
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Easy Flip Camera Lens Repair
In case anyone other than me has cracked the lens of their Flip camera (or one of its close cousins – it would probably work for them as well) here’s how I fixed mine after it had an unfortunate encounter with a curious cat and a stone floor 3 feet below. It turns out the…
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New Music
I created some more music. Feel free to download it and use it for stuff (Creative Commons / Share Alike) – all I ask is to see what gets done with it, really. Maybe eventually I’ll put this on a separate page if there’s more, but for now: Some variations on a theme I’ve had…
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Recording Live Concert Footage
When I was a kid, often you couldn’t take a camera into a music concert – probably they wanted to make sure they had the market cornered on posters and publicity photos back then. Now, in the days of ubiquitous mobile phones and pocket camcorders people are not only sharing photos, they are sharing music…
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Mi35 Helicopter Sounds
I have been asked for the soundtrack-less sounds from the footage used in this video clip, showing the Afghan Air Corps firing Mi-35 helicopters last year. I wasn’t using anything beyond the built-in mic on my camera, and the firing is from some distance away; but if you can use them, here they are: mi35…
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A Pair of Articles on Royalty-Free Music
Videomaker’s free online magazine published a couple of great articles which, in combination with my earlier post on where to get royalty-free (and other low-cost or flat-fee) music to make your videos legal, is a great resource for ensuring (a) your videos don’t get yanked from YouTube and (b) you don’t get sued. Check them…
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Words Matter Too
Finally giving credit to the “lyricist” part of songwriting, an interesting article in today’s New York Times talks about growing interest in charging royalties for song lyrics. The article points out: For decades, printed song lyrics lived in relative obscurity, relegated to album sleeves and sheet music. And until now, they provided no significant source…
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From the War Zone
In Afghanistan, there’s no beer, and Burger King has gone by the wayside. So bored Soldiers need an outlet – it helps them (us) stay out of trouble. After all, that’s how I got started in this video editing gig! So a group of guys from the 82nd Airborne got together and parodied “Telephone” by…
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Army Peer-to-Peer Safety Video Contest
Good news and bad news – my entry to the US Army Combat Readiness / Safety Center’s video contest was approved, but so were a load of others! The contest has been running since October, but like most video contests, most of the entries will be rolling in close to the 30 April deadline. So…
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Things to do on a Plane
So I spent a couple of days flying around in a plane for no reason (don’t ask). The not-to-be named airline which ferries Dutch troops back and forth to Kandahar go out of their way to spend pretty much all their time handing out food (2 meals in a 6-hour flight, and 2 each…
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Making Music on a PSP
In spite of the lengthy list of online royalty-free music sources I listed in my previous post, finding the right tune for your images can be a challenging and time-consuming process. So I’ve recently acquired some new gadgets to help make music for my videos myself – one conventional, and another quite unexpected. Not that…
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The Parallax Experiment
Given that the current hot topic in home videography is “home 3-D movies” (both camcorders and screens to view them) I thought it would be appropriate to attempt making some 3-D on the “cheap.” Really cheap. I got the idea from Ashton Kutcher – actually, a video he posted in the Nikon Festival contest. If…
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Why We Create
Sometimes I find myself caught up in the creative process of editing a video to the point where it competes with other responsibilities (and pleasures) in life, and possibly borders on obsession. Sitting at the computer in the late hours of the night manipulating individual frames and effects doesn’t feel like art – especially when…
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Adventures in our Nation’s Capital
Just returned from a grueling,longer-than-expected trip in Washington, D.C. It wasn’t all for naught – though I had to wait until Friday for a series of grueling job interviews that had been scheduled for Monday, it resulted in a job offer. And while I waited, I snagged some video footage of the DC blizzard –…
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Animation How-To Videos
One of my discoveries this week on Vimeo was an excellent series of how-to videos by Carleton Torbin. I’m guessing he made a short film with lots of different kinds of animation, and followed up with the series of how-tos, as a kind of “the making of” series. I could have it backward. Other than…
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Washington DC meets Bonanza
Sharing how I created a bonanza-like “unburning” credit, overlaid over several other images, with multiple chroma key or “green screen” effects – using basic home editing software and materials you can find around the house.
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TimeLapse on Vimeo
I’ve been continuing to research better timelapse video, and found a great channel on Vimeo. I could sit and watch these all day! I’m concluding the best way to do landscape/nature timelapse where you may be operating in low light is (besides expensive gear) to record individual frames at specified time intervals, ratherthan simply recording…