One of the things that I thought about doing after the 2008 PASS Summit was to bring someone along with me as a photographer/videographer that would take lots of pictures and video of the event. I thought about bringing my wife, but that didn’t work out and I dropped the ball on that task.

And I regret it.

Coming back, going through some of the images and video I did get made me realize how much I missed. I rarely stopped to take video, I’d forgotten my tripod support, I got distracted, and ended up not getting much in the way of media from the event.

Pat Wright walked around with his camera and got a lot of great shots, but he wasn’t always near me, and I realized that I missed a lot of shots.

So another goal for 2010. I need to carry a video camera and real camera (DSLR or other fast response camera) to events and make sure that I get some footage. I want to get some responses and impressions from people, more shots of the setup, the signs, and people milling around.

And some “manamana” quotes from people as well. I’d like a little Muppet video to come out of 2010.

I've been wanting to play with the Chroma Key features of my video editing, but I haven't really spent time on it. Today was the day that I tried it, and it worked out pretty good.

With snow coming down outside, I needed to shoot in the basement. I have some space set up there with a desk, but in front of the desk I have my homemade teleprompter. It works great, but it requires a laptop or computer to feed the text. On my camera I have the ProPrompter Wing, which works with an iPhone or iTouch, and it's what I use outside. Today I didn't want to bring everything downstairs, just the camera, so I had to find a new place to shoot.

There's a futon couch near the desk. I always wanted to use that for some podcasts, but never got drywall behind it. I was about to put drywall up today when I decided to grab my green fabric and make a green screen behind me. It could be a background, but I wanted to try and get an image back there. So I shot the podcast with it in the background, behind the couch.

When I started editing, I grabbed this still:

It looked like it would make a nice background, and I thought it would fit with my mountain image.

My podcast looked like this when I was done:

Not very exciting? And not a solid background, but I'll work on that.

My typical method of editing is to put the video in the main track and then ad images as overlay tracks. In this case, I added the image I wanted as the overlay track as shown below.

Then when I selected the Chroma Key option for the image, I ended up with this:

Not quite what I had in mind. Something was wrong, but none of the settings I worked with made sense, or got things working. So I searched around on the web. There were a few places that would offer to show me how to use VisualStudio, but for a price. I don't mind paying, but I thought this was simple, and it should be easy.

So I went to the Corel site. I found this tutorial on multiple images, and it was what I wanted. Basically I needed to reverse things. The green screen is the overlay, not the main track. That was easy enough to switch and test. I did, and it worked fine. I set them up as shown here:

However there's an issue. I typically have lots of editing to do. I never get one take down, and I've stopped trying. So that means I cut the clips up. That works fine as I move them around on the main track. The slide to the left and fill space. However in the overlay track they don't. That means I need to find a new way of editing.

For today I edited as normal, and then slid all tracks down to the overlay and placed the images above them. Here's what the final podcast looks like in a still image.

Pretty cool, huh? Looks like I'm outside, sorta. It's a little cheesy, and I'm looking to get some better footage that I can slip back there. I'll try some other scenes for the future, and I'll be looking to make a large green screen so I can stand in front of it, with a large image.

While I try to write most days, I don’t always podcast, and I only schedule things a day or two in advance. I try to stay flexible, and I tend to pick the editorial based on how I feel, what is happening in the world, and what is being discussed in the forums. I typically have 3 or 4 to pick from at any time.

So at times I get busy and wind up shooting and editing a couple podcasts in the afternoon, one of which will be released the next day. It’s a tough grind at times, and while I like having a pipeline scheduled out, it can be tough to do with the video editing.

Today, however, I was in a good place, I had two podcasts shot, but not edited, and needed to fix one small item in one of them with a reshoot. So I decided to just shoot a couple more while I was at it. For 5 minutes of video, it typically takes me about 20 minutes to shoot one, and then another 20 minutes to edit it. There’s some downtime there, and quite a bit of footage is trashed, but I haven’t found a way to be much more efficient.

So after shooting the podcasts, I dragged my laptop downstairs to the basement to test my setup for the 24 Hours of PASS. That went smoothly, so I started my editing. I finished the first one, uploaded it, and then went for my run. I’d had a productive morning, so I decided to knock out the other 2 podcasts I’d shot. I finished those and got them uploaded, so I had the rest of the week scheduled. Being motivated, I decided to work on my blooper reel. I try to put those out on holidays, and Monday is Labor Day.

I finished the reel,but I’ll shoot a couple small segments to slip in there tomorrow, and finalize that. That meant I had things scheduled for the rest of the week and almost Monday.

Then to my surprise a guest editorial arrived today. Cha-ching! I slipped that in for tomorrow and moved my editorials. I scheduled out the newsletters for Wed, Thur, and Fri. I’d add Tues, but the advertisements aren’t ready.

Now with about 30 minutes of work tomorrow, I’ll have time to relax over the weekend. Now if only there were some snow for snowboarding.

My daughter has gotten into a few podcasts andhas fun with it. Occassionally she interrupts me, and that happened yesterday. She was really cute, and so I sliced out this section and uploaded it. Enjoy.

Podcast Interuption

I've had a few requests in the past, so I decided to just give it a go. Here's the raw footage from the episode of the Voice of the DBA podcast that I shot this week. It's uncut, the raw footage of what I took off the camcorder, only converted to a format the Google can handle.

So here it is, the raw footage. It's 9:02 long. The embed doens't work, so it's on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YA8lt0fWM8

It's the raw, uncut footage of the podcast. There's a nice pause in the middle where the toilet flushes. It was loud when it happened, but it didn't seem to come through on the footage. So I didn't need to play Toobz while I waited for the noise to go away.

Enjoy!

I've been doing the Voice of the DBA podcasts for over a year now, and I really enjoy them. I've heard from many of you that you like them as well, so I'll continue doing them for the time being. At least as long as I get paid or can fit it into the schedule.

Recently I was giving a presentation on branding and someone noted that I didn't include the Voice of the DBA as a brand on the slides. I have SQLServerCentral, Red Gate, JumpstartTV, etc., but not the podcasts.

That got me thinking since that is a brand of mine. Quite a few people know the podcast, even when they might not remember my name. So.....

I need a logo!

I know there are some artists out there among the DBAs, and some of you might want to have fun with this. I'm looking for something relatively small, like the SSC logo, that I can use on a site, as a favicon, etc.

I'm not sure what a budget I'll have, or even what I can pay, but I'm willing to invest something in this brand. Please feel free to send samples to me at SQLServerCentral with sjones as the email address (reverse them, add the @). I'm a believer in copyright, I won't use your sample without payment, so no worries there.

I'll pick the most interesting ones, or I might get feedback from people, but the winner will get something from me in addition to payment.

Video editing is a bit of a pain on a Windows PC I definitely have some flexibility with ULead’s Video Studio, but it’s still slow and cumbersome. Even the base iLife ‘07, which we have on the kid’s iMac makes it easier. Granted it’s limited in what it can do, less tracks, etc., but it still is a breeze to edit compared to what I go through on the laptop.

I’ve been doing it for a year, I’m used to it, but after watching the Geekbrief people blog live from the Macworld keynote, I decided to go check out iLife ‘09, which looked interesting. This was awhile ago, but I’ve been thinking about it and I rewatched some of the keynote later.

The first thing I saw was GarageBand lessons from artists. Now that is cool! I looked at some previews and I could see how this would get kids interested in music. Heck, it gets me a bit motivated. It’s a great idea and give it up for Apple’s excellent way to enhance their products and make a compelling reason to upgrade.

So I’m drooling a bit and wanting a MacBook Pro. At $2000+ that’s a bit of an investment and I’m not sure I’m that much more productive, but I bet I’d be a lot less stressed about video editing and it would be quicker. I don’t want the 17”er, but a nice 15” one would be cool and I bet I could make do with iMovie. I might have to since the upgrade to Final Cut is well over $1000.

Will I make the investment? It’s hard to say. It’s a lot of money to spend for an upgrade that arguably doesn’t get me a lot. If I could get my boss to go for it, I’d definitely move to a Mac, but I got shot down last year when I tried.

I’m tempted to make it myself and I might need to check out an iLife machine in the store the next time I go and see if the editor has enough stuff for me. If I move it to the basement, then I could set up for music, which isn’t really practical, but it might be fun with kids. I could definitely try to do more with video as well. However the smoother ability to edit stuff is something I’d like.

We’ll see. Maybe I can get some side writing gigs going and end up with a few thousand that I can blow on this.

As much as I’ve liked Windows, made a living off it, am comfortable, and don’t have major issues, video editing is one of these places. I know that I am instantly more productive with the iMac the kids have then after a year of editing video on my Windows machine. Even with more horsepower, the Windows machine is just clunkier.

I hate redoing work. I really try to make sure that I pay attention to what I'm doing, slow down a touch, and get things done right the first time. It really doesn't take more time to get it done right the first time, at least not usually.

I kind of forgot my own advice yesterday. I am headnig to the PASS Summit next week and was trying to be sure that I got enough work done before I left. With podcasting that means I need to shoot and edit a bunch before I leave since I don't have a lot of time when traveling. I got setup, but forgot to check the microphone for working. Actually I checked, and I had sound, but I didn't listen closely enough. The microphone wasn't plugged in so I was getting sound through the built-in microphone.

And so I went on and shot 6 podcasts for the next few weeks, planning on editing them and shooting 4-5 more on Thursday.

I was in a hurry with karate for my son at 6 and trying to leave early to run an errand.So I got things done, copied the files over to my laptop, which isn't quick, but not nearly in real time, so it's not horrible and started editing. Immediately I could hear all kinds of furnace noises and debated about whether I could live with it. Throwing away 5 podcasts wasn't something I wanted to do. My temptation was to deal with the one and reshoot the 5, but as I listened to my voice bouncing off the teleprompter and banging on the "s" sounds, I decided I couldn't do it. I reshot one, then another, but had too many interruptions, so I quit.

Redoing work is a waste, and I should have checked closer. I've learned a bit of a lesson that will hopefully take for a long time. 

Always something going wrong around here with the podcasts. Today I was editing a couple, or attempting to, and couldn't do it. There was some interference a mic noise and basically two whole podcasts, which include multiple mistakes and F-ups, and had to abandon things.

And I'm gone Friday, so I need to get this done. Guess I'm reshooting a bit, thinking to try and get it done today so I'm in good shape for the rest of the week.