Digital Video - September 2008 - (Page 28) TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY WIDE WORLD OF WEB VIDEO SELECT SOFTWARE UPGRADES FOR YOUR SYSTEM. BY NELS JOHNSON F or those who think, life is comedy; those who feel think different. Or something like that, depending on your freedom and inclination to install new software and mess with your well-tuned systems, production techniques and daily workflow. If you are so inclined (and freedom = time + spare hardware), the following products, tools and technologies for Web video may be of interest. VLC PLAYER www.videolan.org/vlc/ media files with exotic file name extensions such as MKV (animation) and OGG. Also valuable are VLC’s Web streaming facilities. The player itself can be used as a server and a client to stream and receive network media streams. The VLS (Video LAN Server) can stream MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 files, DVDs, digital satellite channels, digital terrestrial television channels and live videos on the network in unicast or multicast. All this for free from some wickedly ingenious French dudes (and their worldwide dev club). No wonder this app gets much more appreciation and use in Europe. This open-source powerhouse has been around for a while but is vastly underrated and ill-utilized by media wranglers in general. You know all those video clips you download that QuickTime, Windows Media and even RealPlayer can’t render? The VLC Player usually can with a much quicker load time. Even if there’s an occasional warning (technical, due to file corruption) or error message, you just click it away and keep enjoying the stream. Nice to have in your arsenal when a client hands over a mystery clip that you, the DV expert, can’t seem to open with anything else. What other major player do you know that can play back VOB and ISO files natively? Where I’ve found it especially useful is in transcoding files that QuickTime can’t handle into high-res H.264 MP4 clips that QuickTime then plays normally. If the audio is out of synch, VLC can extract the audio track (at high quality) from the original, which you can trim and add back into the file containing the transcoded video track. I mostly use it on a Mac, but the Windows version is equally excellent and good for handling THE SILVERLIGHT EXPRESSION ENCODER VERSION 2 www.microsoft.com When Windows Media 9 launched in 2004, setting in place the ASF container format for Microsoft video on the desktop and on mobile devices, a new encoder was also introduced. It was good at what it did but didn’t change much over the next four years. Now we have Silverlight and the new Expression Encoder. Version 2 is a standalone product but still part of the overall Silverlight production suite. New features include simple cuts editing (but only by removing sections of the original loaded file), smart recompression — preservation of as much of the original compressed stream as possible — better Timeline UI (with zooming for greater precision with cuts and markers), an MPEG-2 decoder and better multicore utilization. It’s all about production of high-quality VC-1 files — as good or better than H.264, depending on who you talk to. And it’s a free download. KINOMA MEDIA BROWSER www.kinoma.com The original Kinoma Player was Palm-specific and generally unknown outside that world despite its rich feature set and lean/mean codebase. As of August 2008, President Peter Hoddie (elder QuickTime statesman and the brains behind Generic Media) and his development team have taken this product well beyond the next level. What we have here is a media discovery and presentation tool that does for all other Web-aware smart phones (depending on the OS) what iTunes does for the iPhone/iPod without the complicated pruning and synching. Yes, it’s a mobile device app (for now), but the focus on media-mining and compiling all the audio and video available on the Web (from Audible and SHOUTcast to 28 dv september 2008 www.dv.com http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ http://www.microsoft.com http://www.kinoma.com http://www.dv.com
Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Digital Video - September 2008 Digital Video - September 2008 Contents Discproducer PP-100 Frameforge 3D Studio 2 First Cuts Expodisc Bird's-Eye View Instant Expert Inside Outsource Red in Combat Tools & Technology My Studio DV101 Production Diary Digital Video - September 2008 Digital Video - September 2008 - Digital Video - September 2008 (Page Cover1) Digital Video - September 2008 - Digital Video - September 2008 (Page Cover2) Digital Video - September 2008 - Contents (Page 3) Digital Video - September 2008 - Contents (Page 4) Digital Video - September 2008 - Contents (Page 5) Digital Video - September 2008 - Discproducer PP-100 (Page 6) Digital Video - September 2008 - Discproducer PP-100 (Page 7) Digital Video - September 2008 - Frameforge 3D Studio 2 (Page 8) Digital Video - September 2008 - Frameforge 3D Studio 2 (Page 9) Digital Video - September 2008 - Expodisc (Page 10) Digital Video - September 2008 - Expodisc (Page 11) Digital Video - September 2008 - Bird's-Eye View (Page 12) Digital Video - September 2008 - Bird's-Eye View (Page 13) Digital Video - September 2008 - Bird's-Eye View (Page 14) Digital Video - September 2008 - Bird's-Eye View (Page 15) Digital Video - September 2008 - Instant Expert (Page 16) Digital Video - September 2008 - Instant Expert (Page 17) Digital Video - September 2008 - Inside Outsource (Page 18) Digital Video - September 2008 - Inside Outsource (Page 19) Digital Video - September 2008 - Inside Outsource (Page 20) Digital Video - September 2008 - Inside Outsource (Page 21) Digital Video - September 2008 - Inside Outsource (Page 22) Digital Video - September 2008 - Inside Outsource (Page 23) Digital Video - September 2008 - Inside Outsource (Page 24) Digital Video - September 2008 - Inside Outsource (Page 25) Digital Video - September 2008 - Red in Combat (Page 26) Digital Video - September 2008 - Red in Combat (Page 27) Digital Video - September 2008 - Tools & Technology (Page 28) Digital Video - September 2008 - Tools & Technology (Page 29) Digital Video - September 2008 - My Studio (Page 30) Digital Video - September 2008 - My Studio (Page 31) Digital Video - September 2008 - DV101 (Page 32) Digital Video - September 2008 - DV101 (Page 33) Digital Video - September 2008 - DV101 (Page 34) Digital Video - September 2008 - DV101 (Page 35) Digital Video - September 2008 - DV101 (Page 36) Digital Video - September 2008 - DV101 (Page 37) Digital Video - September 2008 - DV101 (Page 38) Digital Video - September 2008 - DV101 (Page 39) Digital Video - September 2008 - DV101 (Page 40) Digital Video - September 2008 - DV101 (Page 41) Digital Video - September 2008 - Production Diary (Page 42) Digital Video - September 2008 - Production Diary (Page Cover3) Digital Video - September 2008 - Production Diary (Page Cover4)
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