The New Videoblogging Channel Reloaded !

Greetings Ourmedia users
I am happy to announce that I've just added video chat to my personal blog and collaboration with 123 flash chat. It is a public channel but it is open to all our media users. What better way for video bloggers to collaborate projects than with video chat! Now you will be a community with each other in real time.

It is a flash chat client and requires no download you will be logged on automatically when you access my blog and select the experimental chat room post. The system will assign you a guest name which you may change as soon as you are logged on. It is my suggestion that you add OM to your nickname to identify yourself as a ourmedia user to other oumedia uses

either click on my user name to get to my blog page or follow this link

http://ourmedia.org/node/405876

I hope all organizations and causes will put this feature to good use

Windsong

Tom (aka Spinner), a Stage6 user and an employee of DivX, Inc., the company behind the service, says: I'm writing this message today to inform you that we plan to shut down Stage6 on February 28, 2008. Upload functionality has already been turned off, and you'll be able to view and download videos until Thursday.

Windsong says:

Ourmedia would like to reach out and offer a new home to all you displaces Stage6 users we ARE Divx enabled.

Have you ever wondered how you can disintegrate your kitchen plate?

It's really not too hard, If you understand how your digital camera works.you'll need to learn how to use your camera in the manual mode.

You'll need two things to achieve this effect your plate, and the spotlight of some type. You might be able to use a small desk lamp as your spotlight.

In setting up this effect, you will need to override the automatic features of your camcorder. Dim your room lights to the point that you get a normal image with your irus or light setting wide open. Mark the position You have put the plate.set up your spotlight. So that it shines directly on the plate. A white plate on a dark background works much better.

Now, turn off the spotlight start the camera recording turn on the spotlight. Removed the plate. leave the camera running for a few moments then turn off the spotlight.

In a film clip, you made you should see the plate on the table. When you turned the spotlight on, the plate should flares out (basically glows so brightly that You can barely make out any detail), and the spotlight after you removed the plate. This happened, because you had manually overridden light settings in your camcorder, allowing the spotlighted area to overexpose.

Now take your film clip and open up your editing software and captured the clip. Here you will want to split the clip at the point just after you removed the plate while the spotlight is still on. Cutout the section were you were removing the plate fome the first clip. You'll now have two clips one with a plate begins to glow from the spotlight and one with the spotlight on and the plate is gone.but both these clips on your storyboard in order put a fade-in Fade-out transition in between the two clips.

In your completed project. The plate will appear to glow and disappear. You have just disintegrated Your first kitchen plate

Having seeming telekinetic powers or levitating objects is one of the oldest Hollywood special-effects around. And surprisingly, one of the cheapest and simplest special-effects amateur filmmakers can use to beef up his superhero story line.

To achieve this. You will need three things and actor, a prop and a cameraman. In the case of Star Wars Luke Skywalker was the actor. The light saber was the prop, and the cameramen was nearby.

If you remember the Star Wars the scene, Luke had lost his grip on light saber. It had been knocked out of his reach by the bad guy. He needed it badly to continue his fight. So he used the force to return it to his hands. It really looked great on screen.

Now let's break it down into its individual scenes. The first scene, you see is Luke, squinting his eyes and holding out his hand to grab something as though to extend the force to touch the light saber, which was beyond his reach. This was an easy scene using a few shots of Luke's face and his outreached arm.

In the next scene. We see the light saber, seeming to respond to Luke's efforts beginning to shake and move by itself. This can be achieved in a number of ways, the easiest way is to simply throw the prop and film it coming to a complete stop, the second method would be to use a large magnet underneath the floor piece or kitchen table that The prop is laying on to move it about and make it shake n rattle seemingly by itself. However, this will require another person under the floor piece or kitchen table maneuvering the magnet as the camera rolls.

In the final dramatic scene a light saber, flew from the floor and returned to our hero's hand. and Luke continued to fight. This is a pretty simple special effect. Simply have your actor throw the prop and film it.

Now, you should have several clips, several of the actor's face. a few of his outstretched hand, calling up the force. Quite a few clips of the prop being thrown and quite a few clips of the prop rattling around on the floor.

Now let's go to the editing and capture software where the special effect really happens. The first few scenes are rather easy, we drag-and-drop the clips we've chosen of the actor's face and is outreached arm and place them on the storyboard.

Now the second scene of the light saber actually flying back into his hand is a little bit of tricky light and Magic. Here's what you do. set up your camcorder to run in reverse and capture the video. You may have to shoot several clips showing different sections of the flight, the saber leaving his hands, saber in-flight, the saber hitting the floor in order to give your special effect continuity.

Basically, the the reverse clip capture it will appear that the light saber is being returned to your hero's hands. By some unknown force.

In the final scene, the force beginning to affect the light saber. You can capture running in reverse. It should appear that the force is making light saber move on its own, and literally jumping off the floor into your hero's hands. The camera should be in close on light saber/prop with no outside objects that your audience could use the reference. A tight shot of the Sabre has it lands on you floor or kitchen table should work.

If your camcorder has a slow reverse playback. You can use that to get an idea of what you just shot will look like in your movie.

Quick short clips with your camera tight in on the prop work better for this special effects than trying to use long continuous ones. A short shot of your actors face focusing the force, a shot of his outreached hand, a shot of the saber returning to his hand, a few shots of the Sabre in-flight, several shots of the Sabre jumping off the floor. A shot of the saber rattling around on the floor. All put together, with no transitions should give you the desired effect. You may have to play around with it a while and reshoot a few scenes. But you should get very professional effects.

you have a great special effect. Please post it here and tell us how you did it. We would love to hear.

One of the first things I discovered in video blogging. Is that most video editing software are memory hogs from hell. Pinnacle studio suggest that you start with 2 GB of memory for their software to operate smoothly.

I was reading an article the other day on the Internet. That was defining the class of users, and the memory they need.

your standard user was defined as someone who casually surfed the web, read the e-mail, and occasionally played a few video games. These lucky souls could live in the sub gigabyte world. These individuals could be happy with the same computer & memory for years on end.

Then there was the power user, who is defined as a light multitasking, possibly a audio podcastor or, medium level gameplay. These people would probably require at least a gigabyte for their system to operate smoothly.

Then there was a super power user class. They were defined as a heavy multitasker, heavy Internet game player, videobloggers or the professional video editor. The article stated that these Web 2.0 pioneers memory requirements would probably reach anywhere from 2 GB up into the terabytes. A terabyte equaled 1000 GB

Years of experience have taught me that the author was correct in his assumptions.

If you are only planning to occasionally post family home videos. You can probably get away with your existing memory. But be aware. It will take you some time to edit your files.

But if you are approaching video blogging with dreams of winning the Sundance film Festival. I suggest you get as much memory into your computer, as you possibly can, without the cover falling off. If you want to be able to put out more than one good film A week.

Also, a huge external terabyte hard drive wouldn't hurt a bit. A unedited 15 minute DV file can use 15 GB of hard drive space.

I hope this information will help you

PS if you're into high-definition, May God protect your computer which I hope is a supercomputer. you can double everything I just said.

Alot of uses its in the e-mail trying to find out how to get their media posted into a channel.originally that was a real messy task, with lots of forms to fill out and a lot of functions , you had to go through.

Recently it has become much simpler two click procedure. First you must upload a file. That file will reside at the Internet archive. Depending on how heavy their workload is. It may take from a few milliseconds to 24 hours. For that file to appear on your personal page.

When you upload a file. You should see a screen telling you that your file was successfully uploaded to the Internet archive. a location it can be viewed at.

Once the file is processed at the archive. It should appear on your personal page. When it does, you should be able to post to all the channels you've joined.

to do this. Click on the file link and allow the file to load. You should see a pop-up menu on the right hand side of your screen. It contains a list of all the channels you are a member of. select the channel that you wish to post your media to,and hit the submit button.

A prefilled form will appear, containing all the information you entered when you first uploaded your file. It will also contain additional information entered in by the archive. You may add to the form at this time.

After you've finished hit the submit button. You should see a screen that says you channel item has been created. If you see this screen success your file will now appear in the channel you selected.

Take a look at Hitachi's exciting new camcorder that offers 1920 x 1080 Full High Definition recording

Blue-Ray Camcorder movie

This should be a hot xmas item this year, but it is a little steep for me at around 1500$j

Judging from the spec put out by Hitachi, these two cameras will probably become a top priority on the wish list of many semi-professional documentary video bloggers. With software such as Divx or QuickTime which can now handle high definition authoring , such cameras have been placed in the range of useful tools for serious videobloggers. Previously, the technology did not exist that would make the huge data files output by hi-def cameras practical for uploading and downloading on the Internet.

Divx Author of example and crunch two-hour hi-def movie down to a 200 and something megabyte file which can be easily downloaded from this site.

now maybe I will be able to watch some serious filmmaking here at ourmedia.