For the upcoming AlMaghrib seminar in New York and in London, UK…I present to you all the Torch Bearers Trailer!

This video was done mostly in Adobe After Effects. Many thanks to Andrew Cramer over a VideoCopilot.net for his tutorials and products on learning Adobe After Effects. This was my seconds project involved with After Effects and I must say that I’m beginning to really like the program. The potential is beyond what I can see. So many amazing things when it comes to visual effects. I’m looking forward to learning more of this program to churn out material that complements that work I do on the editing side.

One of the biggest challenges with this project simply getting over my creative block. All my past AlMaghrib I’ve had some creative elements to work off of. Either some sort of presentation or design work to build off of and “translate” to screen. With this trailer all I really had was the club cards and the notes I was forwarded by HQ. I spent a good portion of a week simply going though the material hoping to find something of use.

What really came through for me in the end were the tutorial DVDs from Andrew Kramer’s VideoCopilot.net. I must admit, although a lot of the work was done for me in the template setups on the DVD, going in and modifying those templates in a program I’m not familair with takes a hell of a lot of time getting used to.

The approach to learning I take (and recommend to others) is that of the child. A child learns by copying those around themselves. Over time what happens is that the child has picked up a number of skills via copycat and due to the creativity of the child he/she is able to mix and match to the point where they’re able to do some impressive stuff.

With After Effects I’ve got quite a distance to go, but I can’t wait till I get really give a project that million dollar look!

     

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My little brother spent some time taking pictures at ICNA this past weekend. Here are some of the pics he took:

• ICNA Day 01
• ICNA Day 02
• ICNA Day 03

     

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The Canon is the on the loose!

I’m about to become a raving fan of Canon. If you guys have been keeping up with some of the stuff I’ve been writing about you’ll notice that I’ve begun taking quite an interest in recent Canon products. See the following previous posts I made on the subjects of:

• Canon HV20/30 and HF100 cameras
• Canon Powershot Digital Cameras

A friend of mine recently got a Canon FS100 digital solid state camcorder for about $400 from Best Buy withan 8GB SDHC flash card. Having played around with it I got to testing it. Now I’m not going to write a full review for this. Camcorderinfo.com has alread done that here:

• Canon FS11 Camcorder Review — only difference between FS100, FS10, and FS11 is the onboard memory capacity. The FS100 comes with no onboard capcity and takes only SDHC cards, which isn’t really a downside.

When I got to testing the FS100 camcorder there were two things that I realized.

1. The format that the video records in is .MOD files. For those of you who don’t know, this format is basically MPEG2 in a highly compressed form. In 8GB you can record up to 110 mins of video at the highest quality. Video editing programs don’t import .MOD files.
2. The camera doesn’t allow for any lens attachments. So this means if you want to add a wide-angle or telephoto lens out of the box, you won’t be able to do that with this.

Solution to Point # 1

To edit files in Premiere (that’s all I tested it in) all you have to do is rename the file extention from .MOD to .AVI. This way you can simply import it into Premiere. Now once imported you’ll notice that the aspect ratio is off. To take care of this simply right click of the file in the bin and click “interpret footage” and tell it to “Conform to” D1/DV NTSC Widescreen 16:9 (1.2). This will take care of the editing process.

Bye bye TAPE!

Another solution is to simply install a plugin into Premiere CS3 to enable the program to read .MOD files. There is more on this at Eugene Turkov’s Blog.

Solution to Point # 2

In the post about Canon Powershot digital cameras I wrote, I mentioned a lens adapter.

My question is whether or not I can use this adapter on the FS100 or not. Has anyone tried it? You think it will fit on the Canon FS100 camcorder? If it does, then I’m sold.

• Less than $350 for the camera (Amazon price)
• $80 for a 16GB flash card
• $70 for the lens adapter

That makes for ~$500…umm…wait a sec….

…for ~$150 more I can get the HF100 camcorder (see Amazon).

What are the Pros and Cons for spending the extra $150 now?

Pros

• It has the ability to accept lens attachments.
• Records in HD
• only $150 more

Cons

• HF100 only records in HD (no standard-defintion option) and AVCHD isn’t easily edited unless you put it through some conversion mumbo jumbo.
• They’re probably going to come out with a new generation of AVCHD solid state camcorders very soon that have better imaging. I’m personally probably better off sticking holding off on going HD for now.
• HD isn’t widely used for most consumer objectives and currently not widely demanded from my current client base.

What do you guys think? Give me your feedback.

–

Update: 6/22/2008

See below for .MOD test files:

• Indoor Shot - Black and White - Talent on Screen (me)
• Outdoor Shot - “Tracking” Shot - Red BMW
• Outdoor Shot - Sky, Sun, and Clouds
• Outdoor Shot - Zoomed in at 20x - Birds Chirping

I tested out the solution that was provided at Eugene Turkov’s Blog to change the files to .M2V via the command prompt (see link for what I mean) to be far more efficient and quicker.

I’m going to purchase the lens adapted and test it out at a Best Buy to see if it will fit on the camera or not. If it does them I’m going to go ahead and make this purchase in July inshaAllah.

     

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