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Standards & formats

Digital video file formats & codecs Formats & codecs explained

PAL & NTSC What are they & which should you use?

DV Region codes Urggh!

TV & film aspect ratios
(4:3, 16:9, 2.35:1 etc, what's it all about?)

Timecode & synchronisation SMPTE and MTC in music, film & video explained

Keyframes What are they?

Filming a computer screen

To eliminate screen flicker when filming a computer screen try setting your camcorder to a shutter speed of 1/50 or use a slow 4x (or LP) recording speed. If this doesn't work try experimenting with similar settings until you find one that works for your screen refresh rate.

You may find that your Camcorder has a special mode (Canon call it "ClearScan") to enable you to film monitors.

DV production articles

DV workflow overview Overview of production processes

DV basics Overview of the DV format

The DV format PDF overview of DV format

DV equipment diagram

DV signal flow & codec Diagram, showing the DV codec and transfer to a computer

DV camera craft Guidelines for using DV camcorders

DV shot logging sheet
A template

Depth of field An article by Derrin Edwards explaining the relationship between aperture, exposure, focus etc

Basics of video lighting Guidelines for using lights

Importing analogue video into a DV project Guidelines

Creating still images for DV (such as titles)
Guidelines for using Photoshop

Getting DV to look like film How to make your video look more film like

Optimising video & audio for DVD/ CD-ROM & web sites

Data rate & data size Concepts & definitions

Keyframes What are they?

Optimising video for CD/DVD ROM & the web
All about compression and file formats, how to's etc

Encoding (optimising) video for DVD How to choose appropriate MPEG compression settings

STREAMING VIDEO

Caching, streaming & buffering Concepts defined and file formats listed

Streaming video with QuickTime How to create QuickTime HTTP and RTSP streaming video content

VIDEO COMPRESSION

Video compression An article by Alex Etherington Smith on video codecs

The Sorenson codec
Concepts and tutorial by Dane Ramshaw

COPYRIGHT

Safeguarding copyrights How to protect your copyrights

Issues for music makers This article focuses on issues important to music makers only

Embedding copyright info How to embed information into media / data files

Displaying copyright information How to display it in preview media files and on CD covers etc

Final Cut Pro stuff

Project & asset file management in Final Cut Pro/Express Essential advice and concepts

Final Cut Pro manual
Apple's official manual v2

Importing analogue video into a DV project Guidelines for using a capture/converter box

Getting DV to look like film How to make your video look more film like

FCP keyboard shortcuts listed here.

QuickTime

What is QuickTime?
Apple's media playback and authoring software

How to produce high quality QuickTime video
Guidelines

DV & Adobe Premiere

Click here to view an article which contains guidelines and advice on producing DV video for the screen using a DV camcorder, Adobe Premiere and QuickTime.