13 posts tagged “movies”

That’s the “secret” processing key, which supposedly works on all HD DVD discs (and maybe even Blu-Ray discs) released so far, that’s spreading like wildfire over the internet. The biggest fun is that the AACS licensing authority has threatened to sue over this post, but the net result is that you can now find this code everywhere. Here’s the Cory Doctorow group blog for more information about it. Derek K. Miller blogs about it too and refers to the UK article that sums it up quite nicely. Check out digg going crazy over this. LOL. Looks like they’ve made the hive mind angry…! Kevin’s reponse is here. Interestingly enough, this very blog posting you’re reading right now made it onto another blog.

Technorati Tags: hddvd, dvd, digg, key, censorship, bluray, aacs

This week we did three trailers for BNN at Park Post using the amazing voice of Don LaFontaine. This is the voice of 5000+ movie trailers, so I’m sure you’ve heard him lots of times. You wouldn’t believe the price tag on this guy…! At any rate, if you live in The Netherlands, check out those BNN trailers these coming weeks.

Technorati Tags: trailer, voiceover, donlafontaine, bnn

Okay, I admit it, my previous experiment failed miserably. For two reasons: 1) It didn’t show up on my iPod and 2) it looked horrible with those horizontal lines. Let me first hark back to where this experiment started, which is a mail I got from Apple. Nothing personal, just because I’m registered in the iTunes store as a podcaster: Recommendations for Formatting Video Podcasts 1. If you’re encoding your video podcast at 320×240, please increase the resolution to either 640×480 or 640×360 (depending on the aspect ratio of your source files). Why? Because video podcasts at this resolution look great on Apple TV and still port to video iPods. Lower resolution podcasts might also work on both platforms, but they don’t look nearly as good on a widescreen TV. As always, make sure to test any encoding changes you make to ensure device compatibility. QuickTime 7.1’s “Export to iPod” function will ensure that a video file is encoded at a width of 640 and is iPod-compatible. 2. It’s best not to create two different podcast feeds for different resolutions. By doing so, you dilute the popularity of your podcast and reduce exposure in our charts. It’s better to have one feed high in the charts than two that are lower. 3. If your source files are 16:9, stick with that aspect ratio. Don’t add letterboxing to make them 4:3. By doing so, you prevent the video from expanding to fill a 16:9 widescreen TV and instead end up with black space on all four sides. Also, your original source files should be at least 640 pixels wide. Of course these are just recommendations. We understand that there are good reasons for 320×240 (bandwidth bills) and 720p (looks fantastic). Do whatever makes the most sense for your show. For more information on formatting video, see the recently updated spec: http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcaststechspecs.html To see a sample of excellent podcasts that also look great with Apple TV, check out the Apple TV Podcast Showcase. So with that out of the way, I was endeavouring to create my own 16:9 widescreen movie that would a) be a valid video podcast, b) play well on a video iPod, c) look good on an Apple TV too and d) contain elements of both real world video and animations. Making a valid video podcast is easy enough. Just add an enclosure to your blog posting. That part always works. To play on a video iPod, the bitrate shouldn’t be too high (I guess I went wrong there in my previous experiment). In such cases, where the bitrate is too high, you can only see your video podcast on the web in a player or in iTunes, but it won’t transfer to a video iPod. It is all described in detail in this article. To look good on an Apple TV, it should be 640 x 360 for widescreen, according to Apple. My biggest gripe though were the ugly horizontal lines that showed up in the clip when I exported it directly from iMovie HD to the iPod. It didn’t matter much whichever m4v or mp4 setting I tried… it always showed those lines. I’m not sure what the source of those is, probably my JVC MiniDV cam that isn’t HD? I don’t know. But what solved it was a two way export. First to DV stream progressive (that was the key), and then a QuickTime Pro export to iPod. In the latter case, there’s nothing you can adjust. But the net result is a clip that’s 640 x 360 widescreen which still looks awsum on my iPod. I don’t have an Apple TV (I don’t even have a tv right now, I just watch Joost and video podcasts!), so I can only hope it looks good there too. Below you can find the movie which describes the process a bit. I’ll set the PodPress player to 450 x 252 so it won’t mess up this blog posting, but rest assured the movie is 640 x 360.
Download Jelle the dog 2

Just wondering what video podcast export format should work best for both Apple TVs and iPods. This first stab at it uses iMovie HD’s internal export to Apple TV option. My biggest worry is size. This 0′54″ clip is already 28 MB.
Download Jelle the dog

I’ve been a satisfied customer with Amazon for years now and have bought many items in their stores. I think one of the most amazing things about Amazon is that this has always been a successful online store. All through the dot com bubble, Amazon was certain of their customers. If you think Amazon is just “an online book store”, you may have some catching up to do. Did you know for instance that you can buy the following items at Amazon? Kellogg’s special: An overdrive stomp box: And if you happen to buy one of these items using the above links, I make a little money. And yes, you can be an Amazon Associate too. There’s simply too many services on Amazon to mention here, but two things I would like to bring to your attention anyway, because they are simply awsum. The first one is your Amazon wish list. This year, on my 40th birthday, someone actually did sent me an item from my wishlist. Populate your own wish list (and yes, they have wedding lists too!) and put a button like this on your website: And if you don’t have a website, you can still send your friends and family a link to your wish list. Easy! Also for them. The other thing Amazon is doing that I think is well worth mentioning is called S3 (Amazon Simple Storage Service), which is part of Amazon Web Services or AWS for short. This great service lets you have as much online diskspace and traffic as you will ever need, and you simply pay as you go. You can use this for private storage or shared storage or both, and you and I know both know the future is online apps and online storage anyway. S3 is also a tremendously great solution for podcasters. I’m slowly phasing my podcast files to Amazon S3. I’ve been using S3 only for a short while now (episode #1 for instance is now hosted on S3), and so far it works just fine. S3Fox is a great way to organize your S3 account from within Firefox, but there are also tons of other free java and rails solutions out there. Anyway, check out Amazon.com or your local version of it, like amazon.co.uk for me. The Amazon personalized recommendations system is really working well, and you can tailor it to make it even better.

Technorati Tags: amazon, aws, s3

Creating a video podcast is so much fun! Next episode of Sounds Good will once again be of the video kind. I found a workaround for a little annoyance I had, so I’ll post it here so someone else might benefit from it. If you create a still (w/ or w/o Ken Burns effect), from time to time a beautiful preview will render as a jagged “jpeggy” series of still frames, even if your original is an uncompressed TIFF from iPhoto. If however you convert your still to a lossless JPEG2000 (using Preview) before you drag it into your iPhoto library, this doesn’t happen. And nice to see someone used my rendition of J.S.Bach’s Badinerie in a podcast. Great!

Technorati Tags: kenburns, imovie, video, podcast, bach, jpeg2000, iphoto

Mediapark Hilversum Originally uploaded by PeterForret. Yes! Starting in March this year, I will be mixing and editing sound for Dutch television in the media center of The Netherlands: Hilversum. Wow, this is the best job I’ve ever had! Yeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Technorati Tags: hilversum, protools, television, media, job

I read this discussion about iPod resolutions. For my own podcast, I was pondering whether or not I would opt for the 320 x 240 resolution or go a little higher. Hence this test with 640 x 480 H.264 encoding. It was recorded as PAL DV with my JVC camcorder and then converted to 640 x 480 H.264 with VisualHub, a very handy program I love to use.
Download MCU

Looking back on my early years, I think I was happiest at age 11, hence my endeavors to capture that moment in time. Which is pretty difficult, because my memories have faded quite a bit and some of them I don’t trust that much to begin with. So I’ve made a little experimental film about the period roughly from 1973 to 1983 using my camera phone. I’ve filmed some places in my old neighborhood that still look much like they did back then but, like my memories, have faded some. I did voice overs in Dutch, from some old diaries I still have lingering about. I’ve also added some music from that era, music I enjoyed back then and that still holds a special feeling for me. At any rate, this movie is not podsafe, in Dutch133 Megs! But if you’re Dutch yourself and roughly the same age as me, you might enjoy this 21 minutes and 40 seconds of very personal editing. Update: I had to remove the file due to bandwidth limitations. So big wow, you actually looked at my little movie! If you still desperately want to see it, email me and we’ll figure something out.

Ooh yes, it’s a gorgeous phone-pod and I want one! Read all about it in this interesting article from Time: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1575410-1,00.html