Almost an old geezer, finally bitten by the video bug. Two reasons that it took so long: no bandwidth, no affection. Until recently useless to do something with video and Internet, like sucking Haagen Dasz trough a straw. I must admit the lack of affection was due to the fact that I left The Utrecht School for Journalism as a writer. In a paper past, when one could graduate without having done ‘Radio and Television’, as it was called way back in the late seventies.
I visit my old school every once in a while, earned a certificate English writing for the Media there three years ago – but it’s all called multimedia, or (mass) communication now. It might even be impossible to leave that school as only a writer now.
My late calling is the result of bandwidth galore these days, a Canon Ixus 800is that is delivering pristine video, and my iMac that screams to me from almost every application that she wants to handle the task I’m performing different, something with multi media. Like any good server, I see my iMac as a ship, so she is a she. I haven’t bought the Ixus, as well as the iMac because of video, but click something and something starts to move.
Ixus produces video at 640 by 480, en swallows some one hundred megabyte flashcard a minute. Bit too big for Google Video or YouTube, but no worries, Quick Time Pro is running on the Mac and coverts the video to mp4, so it;s shrinking a factor ten to twenty.
I’m daily practicing now, cutting and pasting frames, adding or changing background music, and I’m not only learning a lot, I’m having a very good time.
To learn all the Mac can do, I need a bloody lot of time. To begin with the new release of iPod; it can do so much that I need some days to check that out. The there’s iMovie,to handle high definition video, iDVD iWeb, mighty come in handy with a makeover of my website, and GarageBand, that turns the Mac into a full blown sound studio.
With the use of the Insight camera, built in on top of the iMac, it’s possible to produce a Video Podcast, but I can also put the Ixus on a tripod, and point it to myself.
Biggest problem, as always; time. Almost election day over here in The Netherlands, (November 22nd). No politician making any promises yet, but the one who starts talking about it, gets my vote: the Google workplace policy.
Anyone over there is allowed to spent ten percent of his working day as he likes, as long as it’s in the good for Google.
Are you reading this, mister editor in chief?