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OCTOBER 09, 2002
Watermarking Your Media
Cleaner protects your content
by Stephen Schleicher

Everyday more and more companies are putting video content on their site. Often it is in the form of a QuickTime movie, or streaming media files like Windows Media or Real. Providing content to viewers in this fashion is great as it allows the visitor to get more information than they would be able to simply by reading words.
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NOVEMBER 08, 2002
Making It Look Like Film
Tweak your video for surprising results
by Stephen Schleicher

Everyone wants their video to look more like film. There is no way to make your video look exactly like film because of the inherent differences between the two media, but with some tweaking, you can emulate the look of film transferred to video. This tutorial discusses five tips for shooting on DV to make it more film-like.
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NOVEMBER 15, 2002
Raise Your Burn Rate
The fast way to duplicate your DVDs
by Stephen Schleicher

I just finished a major video project and for the delivery requirements the client stated she needed 120 VHS tapes and 40 DVDs. The VHS tapes were not a problem; there is a dubbing facility next door. However, trying to find a place locally that could duplicate DVDs in a short turn around time (clients always need it tomorrow) is impossible. Fortunately I was armed with a couple of Macs and lots of blank DVDs.
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NOVEMBER 20, 2002
Cleaner Direct
Uploading and encoding
by Stephen Schleicher

In addition to the many improvements discreet has made to cleaner 6, one of the nice new features is the ability to have cleaner automatically upload your streaming file after it has been encoded.
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June 13, 2003
Independent Movie Groups
Animating separate states in LiveMotion
by Stephen Schleicher

I just spent a week showing instructors how to use the Adobe Web Suite of applications in their classrooms. I was really surprised how few of them were using LiveMotion. Considering most of the interface is similar to After Effects I’m surprised more people aren’t using LiveMotion to create SWF files for the web. In this exercise we’ll create a composition that allows the user to move an object in three different ways.
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November 11, 2003
T2
Time Lapse with Adobe Premiere 6.5
by Stephen Schleicher

While Premiere Pro may be the bee’s knees for editors who are eager to take advantage of some of the higher functions of the inexpensive non-linear editing system, Adobe has taken out one of the features that made Premiere a fun program to use. With the built in Stop Motion Capture feature of previous versions, the ability to capture time-lapse video directly from your DV camera was great. If you still have a copy of Premiere 6.5 sitting around, you may want to keep a copy on your system for just this reason.
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December 4, 2003
On Fire
Using layers as particle emitters in PI3
by Stephen Schleicher

particleIllusion 3.0 is a great particle system for generating effects such as fire, laser blasts, smoke and more. With the emitters in PI3 you can create source shapes that are points, lines, circles, and squares. But what if you want to have the emitter be a custom shape? What do you do if you want to create set something on fire and have the fire emit from the shape?
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JANUARY 19, 2004
LightWave to After Effects
RPF and RLA explored
by Stephen Schleicher

It is no surprise when I say 3D animation is everywhere. Nearly every show, commercial, and movie you see has some type of 3D work in it. While processor speeds have increased our productivity, those speeds also cause us to want to do more, which just so happens to increase render times. One of the more render intensive aspects of 3D animation is applying Depth of Field. This greatly increases render times and if done wrong guarantees you’ll be going back to re-render again. What would be better is to take a single frame (or series of frames) and apply DOF in a compositing application. In order to do this, you need to save it in a RPF or RLA format. In the first of this three part tutorial, we’ll create an animation in NewTek’s LightWave 3D (v. 7.5) so we can then take those frames into After Effects for 3D depth work (part 2), and even add some 3D text using Invigorator (part 3).
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APRIL 10, 2004
QTVR Hotspots
Creating interactivity with Stitcher 4.0
Stephen Schleicher

When you create a QuickTime VR movie you provide your audience with a unique way to explore an environment. This environment could be your brick and mortar store, a special event location, or even a television studio. While your user may be able to navigate around the area, what really makes a QuickTime VR movie shine is the ability to create interactivity via hotspots.
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August 4, 2005
L[8] to AE6.5
Moving camera data to After Effects via RPF
By Stephen Schleicher

In addition to the slew of new features and tools in NewTek’s LightWave 8, improvements to the type of information exported with a file also received a boost.  With  L[8] you now have the ability to export camera data with your RPF file and have that information interpreted by Adobe After Effects 6.5.
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August 05, 2004
Bleach Bypass
How to do it in your application
By Stephen Schleicher

Made most famous in the film Saving Private Ryan, the bleach bypass method of treating film gives a very unique look to a project. Since most videographers don’t have the luxury of spending money on film to achieve this look, they usually turn to mimicking the look in post. In this exercise, I’ll show how to do the effect in Adobe After Effects, Avid Xpress DV, discreet’s Combustion, and Apple’s Final Cut Pro 4.
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September 10, 2004
Squeeze 4 Watermark
Protect your work by watermarking your media
By Stephen Schleicher

When you post a streaming or downloadable file online for the world to view, who’s to say some nefarious no-do-well won’t pilfer your work and claim it as their own?  Or even worse, what happens if someone downloads your opus and then forgets what website they got it from?  To protect your media or to ensure that users remember your site, you should watermark your media.  With Squeeze 4, you have the option to do this built right in.
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April 10, 2005
Customizing PSP Part 1
Creating your own thumbnails
By Stephen Schleicher

So you’ve played all the games currently available for the PSP (all five of them), and you’ve watched Spider-Man 2 on your UMB.  Now you want convert and import your own movies into your PSP.  In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to customize the thumbnail used for the movie file.
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August 28, 2005
Podcasting 101
Part 1: A look at the subscription process
By Stephen Schleicher

Within the last two months, podcasting has become the fastest adopted new technology.  Until a recently, podcasting was only known to the audiophiles, bloggers, and Adam Curry fans.  But what is it, and more importantly how can you do it?  In this first installment Stephen Schleicher pulls aside the curtain.
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September 14, 2005
Podcasting 102
Recording your show
by Stephen Schleicher

Now that you have had some time to explore the world of Podcasting ( see Podcasting 101 ), you are ready to do your own show.  But where do you start?  How do you record your own show?  In this installment, Stephen Schleicher talks about some of the ways you can get your wonderful voice into a file ready for podcasting.
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September 27, 2005
Podcasting 103
Recording your interviews at a distance with Skype
by Stephen Schleicher

In the last installment of the podcasting series, I walked you through some of the options available for recording your totally awesome podcast.  While that article focused on single and multi mic recording when everyone is in the same location, what happens if you want to do an interview with someone who is on the other side of the world?
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October 11, 2005
Podcasting 104
Building your RSS Feed
by Stephen Schleicher

You’ve made it this far.  In this mini course you have learned how to subscribe to a podcast, how to record your own show, and even how to hook up interviews from across the miles.  You are now ready to create your RSS/XML feed.  There is a bit of coding involved, but it’s easy once you follow these steps.
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November 30, 2005
Podcasting 201
Enhanced podcasts with Podcast AV
by Stephen Schleicher

You have made it through our Podcasting 101 series, and have successfully been creating a podcast that everyone enjoys.  Now it is time to move to the next level, creating enhanced podcasts.  What is an enhanced podcast, and why should you be creating them?
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December 26, 2005
Podcast Quick Tip
Taking the show on the road
by Stephen Schleicher

If you have a favorite podcast, chances are you want to take the show with you where ever you go. But if you are one of the small 15% of the MP3 player crowd that doesn’t own an iPod, taking some of the fancier (i.e. enhanced) podcasts with you may seem like an impossibility. In this Quick Tip, Stephen Schleicher shows you how to convert a M4B file into something you can burn to CD or put on one of those other music players.
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February 17, 2006
Premiere Pro 2.0 Quick Tip: The Ken Burns Effect
Motion graphics in Adobe’s NLE
by Stephen Schleicher

Say the name Ken Burns and most people instantly recognize the documentary story telling style of zooming and panning still images.  Scanners now have the capability of capturing high quality images without a camera.  If you want to mimic the Ken Burns effect, then look no further than Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0.
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August 19, 2006
GarageBand Quick Tip
Moving loops to another drive
By Stephen Schleicher

Whenever you install GarageBand, or the numerous Jam Packs available from Apple, the primary hard drive is the only option available.  This can quickly lead to a hard drive full of files that may not be used that often.  Since there is no other option available for storing these loops during the install, what is a budding musician or podcaster to do?
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August 26, 2006
iPhoto Quick Tip
Importing photos from an external drive
by Stephen Schleicher

I received a great deal of feedback regarding my quick tutorial on getting GarageBand to recognize loops on an external hard drive, and several follow up questions asking if it was possible to do something similar with iPhoto.  The answer is yes, with a but…
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October 10, 2006
Memories are Made of These
Using iPhoto to build a memorable slideshow
By Stephen Schleicher

My sister got married a couple of weeks ago, and during the rehearsal dinner the families played a nice slideshow of the soon to be married couple. It was a trip down memory lane filled with pictures of the two when they were younger, dating, engagement, and so on. But then I discovered the entire production was built in PowerPoint.
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