[How] Play MKV Files on Mac
Me and Lauren wanted to watch the Legend of Korra on her MacBook that was linked to our tv, but we couldn't play it because the file was in MKV format. QuickTime doesn't natively support MKV files and installing a DivX player didn't help either. DivX player did playback the video, but there was no audio and it kept showing a message about an AC83 decoder being missing. Perian, on the other hand, is a powerful QuickTime extension, which allows playback of video AND audio without any problems. So download Perian for all your video playback needs on your OSX!
Xpider Sven
We had a baller 7-legged spider hanging outside of our project window the other day and took some awesome footage of it. Unfortunately, he went missing when the weather got colder and rainier :(
I played around with the footage of our Xpider and video effects in Premiere.
Watch the videos in FULL HD and FULL SCREEN for the ultimate experience!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed4MM_nLc-Y&hd=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_0OINiWsIU&hd=1
[How] Flash: Seek() & PlayHeadTime() Accuracy
Using seek() and PlayHeadTime() with FLVPlayback component of video files in Flash can be quite inaccurate. We had the same problem when we were building a prototype for our project, which involved switching and syncing of videos using specific timing. PlayHeadTime gave a decimal value, but whenever we would do a seek() using the PlayHeadTime value on a video, the timing would be off by 0.5-1 second.
Apparently, the accuracy of the seek() function is dependent on the keyFrameInterval of the video and the FPS meaning Precision = keyFrameInterval / FPS.
So for example, if you have a keyFrameInterval = 30 (1st frame will be a keyframe, 30th frame will be a keyframe, 60th frame ... etc.) and FPS is set on 15, you'll only be able to seek in 2-seconds intervals of time (precision = 30 / 15).
To make the seeking more accurate, set the key frame distance when exporting your video with Adobe Premiere. This option can be found in the "video" tab, "Advanced Settings", check "Set Key Frame Distance" and set the key frame distance lower. Export it and now your seek() accuracy would be more precise!
[How] Premiere: Avi File; No Video, Only Audio
Herpderp! I had some trouble importing AVI files to Adobe Premiere. It would only import the audio file and not the video. Same thing in Windows Media Player; no video, only audio, but it worked fine when I opened the file in VLC. Frustrated, tried to convert it to other formats, changing file extensions, installed additional codecs... nothing worked!! After 30 minutes of screwing around I figured it out.
The video was recorded using Fraps at my school, but I was editing the video at home and I didn't have Fraps installed. Apparently, videos recorded by Fraps sometimes require the FPS1 codec from Fraps. So Installing Fraps would also install the FPS1 codec. After that the video worked in Windows Media Player and worked in Premiere!! Yaaaaay!!
Future Film Force - Mario Paint Game Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tBwDBUhKxo&hd=1
Mario Paint Game Trailer for Visual Story class 2011 - Entertainment Technology Center, Carnegie Mellon University
- Albert Gea
- Dicky Lou
- Elwin Lee
- Daniel Hausmann
- Eric Zhang
Design and develop a 1 minute long video, to sell an existing PC, console or handheld game. Make it as exciting and believable as possible.
Another team's pre production work (4.0. Game Trailer Pre Production) will be given, move the project forward by doing any kind of filming, editing and post production work.
Visual Story Class
Visual Story is a storytelling/film class part of my boot camp semester at the Entertainment Technology Center, Carnegie Mellon University. The course combines the traditional notions of a film course — how to use the visual language from film — with the emerging notions of how interactivity changes the way we communicate with an audience.
On my team were Albert Gea, Dicky Lou, Daniel Hausmann and Eric Zhang. And for our first assignment, we had to create a short promo video of our team and team members. Below you can find the deliverable requirements and the final video for the assignment.
Deliverables:
1. Each team will create a 10 second animated logo for their respective Visual Story teams.
2. In addition, each team will shoot a 60 second promotional short on your team. The objective is to show off your team's talent in a creative way. Try to follow a storyline through time and space that depicts your team in the most creative, crazy, or fun way possible. Use all elements of visual grammar and work at building in elements from the first few lectures and workshops.
For the 2nd assignment, we had to recreate a scene from a movie. The choices were "3 Iron", "Tenacious D", "American Psycho", "Stranger than Fiction" and "...". We picked Tenacious D
Recreating a scene shot for shot
Choose one of the three scenes screened in class and break them down into these three steps (Due with Rough Cut):
1. Text – Dialogue and shot list
2. Images – Storyboard with matching dialogue
3. Schematics – Over head floor plan with numbered camera set-ups
[How-to-Fix] Chrome Adblock & Youtube Auto HD
Great extensions if you're using Google Chrome! :)
AdBlock
AdBlock for Chrome! Block all advertisements on all web pages, even Facebook and Youtube. Your browser is automatically updated with additions to the filter: just click Install, then visit your favorite website and see the ads disappear!
Auto HD for YouTube
Auto HD! With this extension all youtube video start playing in HD. In addition you can specify if you want the player widened.
[How-to-Fix] Joomla!: Enabling Object, Embed & Iframe
Joomla blacklists <object>, <embed> & <iframe> by default for security reasons and filters out and removes these tags from your articles if you try to add them in your content. The iframe and embed options are useful to integrate e.g. Google Maps and Youtube. There's a solution to disable the filtering by de-selecting certain user groups in joomla as blacklisted for filtering. This didn't work for me though.
Instead, here's a method to get it to work by diving into the PHP file itself. To disable the filtering, edit the filter PHP file and remove the tags from the blacklist.
Path: libraries\joomla\filter\filterinput.php
$tagBlacklist = array ('applet', 'body', 'bgsound', 'base', 'basefont', 'embed', 'frame', 'frameset', 'head', 'html', 'id', 'iframe', 'ilayer', 'layer', 'link', 'meta', 'name', 'object', 'script', 'style', 'title', 'xml');
Useful Wordpress Plugins
Here's a list of useful Wordpress that I'm currently using for my blog. If you happen to know any other plugins that I should know about, feel free to post it on the comment section below :D
1. Add Link to Facebook
This plugin will allow you to publish to Facebook whenever you publish a post on your blog. It automatically adds a link to your posts or pages that are being published to your Facebook wall, pages or groups. Simple one time setup and forget. The way links appear on Facebook can be customized.
2. Akismet
Installed by default when you install Wordpress on your website. You can use it for free and it does a really good job of protecting you from any kind of spam!
3. All in One SEO Pack
Great package for all your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) needs! It's very extensive and you can customize it to your liking. This is a must have if you want to make your blog and content visible on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.
The Unofficial LEGO Minifigure Catalog
The LEGO Minifigure Catalog promotion video that I was making is up and running! The purpose of the video is to show how extensive the book actually is with over 3600 minifigure photographs with professional quality, interconnected metadata and theme taxonomy.
My contribution to the book was helping out with the design of the book, editing and processing a lot of data and pictures; scaling, cropping, color correction, etc. And after processing over 1000 photos all the figures started looking the same, especially when I was cropping out the heads for the head-index of the book.
Anyway, the book itself will be available soon, but in the meantime the book is available now! Visit http://www.minifigure.org/ to find out where to buy it! :D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VLRDt2JlLk