Video production update

Okay, after accidently deleting the soundtrack to the YSP video, I re-edited it today. It was probably a good thing as this version sounds better than the original cut. It’s been cut down to 90 seconds exactly with an extended outro to fit the limit.

With the cuts, I used a mix of cross-fading, gain effect and volume settings to make the track fit together well. The first cut sounds part of the original soundtrack. The second uses a lower volume and a slight fade to fit together two sound pieces (low volume and high volume tracks). The other cuts use constant gain to different degrees to merge tracks together. The outro fades it’s volume.

Last week I also completed the graphic ending to the video. The graphics started out in Adobe Photoshop CS2 and were than manipulated in Premiere to make the scene how I wanted it.

Colour Bit Depth

Colour Bit Depth, aka bits per pixel (BPP), is a term that defines how many bits represent a colour in a pixel. The higher BPP, the more detail is in an image and versely the lower the BPP the less detail there is in an image.

One Bit Image

Four Bit Image

Eight Bit Image

Twenty four bit image (true-colour)

(pictures taken from Wikipedia)

Lots of Razor and Ripple Action

I’m about halfway through the roughcut for the YSP video. It’s currently standing at 80 seconds and even though there is a 90 second limit I know when it comes to the final editing some of the shots (which are like 7 or 8 seconds long) the length will be brought right down.

I was originally going to edit the music for the clip (down from 2:47) but decided that this wasn’t necessary for a roughcut and felt it would be too time consuming to do it.

The roughcut has seen alot of razor tool and ripple delete action. No effects or editing of any kind.

Recording Log Blog

Hey, hey! It rhymes! Okay, so this is how it’s been so far.

01/10/07 : Schedule for Yorkshire Sculpture Park wrote out.
04/10/07 : Research done into YSP by using Wikipedia and the YSP official website. Particular attention was paid to the company’s graphical identity.
11/10/07 : Plans and rough storyboards wrote out for basic idea of the shots needed at the Park.
18/10/07 : Recording took place using a Mini-DV camera.
01/11/07 : The footage was captured into Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 by opening a new project selecting File > Capture. It could’ve also been captured using the F5 key. All the AVI files were moved onto my portable drive.
08/11/07 : Final storyboard created using screenshots of the actual footage in Microsoft Word. The screenshots were taken in Premiere by finding the frame wanted and then selecting File > Export > Frame but could’ve also been done by pressing Ctrl + Shift + M.

Raster and Vector Images

In digital software editing, there are two types of image styles. Raster and vector. On the internet and other similar media raster is the popular file type. It keeps file size to an appropriate level. Vector images tend to be used for design ideas (for things such as cars) because of it’s high level of detail.

Raster Images
A raster image is made up of a collection of pixels. When enlarged, it can cause major distortion (unlike vector images). This is because the information is stored with a rectangular structure of pixels (each pixel is stored – BMP) or points of colour (groups of similar colours are stored – JPEG).

Vector Images
Vector graphics (also known as geometric modelling) is a imaging system that stores its information in polygons, lines and shapes (determined via binary mathematical equations which inturn creates a high file size). It is used in contrast to raster graphics which is used by a collection of pixels.

A big advantage for vector graphics over raster is the minimal amount of information creates a much smaller file size compared to high resolution raster images (although not dependent on dimensions). However, the down side is it’s distinct lack of detail with a real photograph.

Pixel

A pixel, short for picture element, is one point in a graphic image.

“Each such information element is not really a dot, nor a square, but an abstract sample. With care, pixels in an image can be reproduced at any size without the appearance of visible dots or squares; but in many contexts, they are reproduced as dots or squares and can be visibly distinct when not fine enough.” (source ~ Wikipedia)

Dreamweaver : Layout Modes

There are 3 different “layout” modes in Dreamweaver. Standard, Expanded and Layout.

Standard:

Standard mode has the same visual and technical effects as when you first open Dreamweaver.

Expanded:

Expanded mode expands all the tables to show their full form. It can (and most likely will) disrupt and distort your layout and page but will show tables which are either hidden or too small to select.

Layout:

Layout mode allows the designer to create tables and cells freely without have to create using the table icon or write freehand. It can be handy but also can be annoying due to code size and grid/cell snapping.

Media Industry

Despite all being in the media and all having similar goals and objectives, different media groups are ran in different ways.

Music

Can’t predict the market

Portfolio Management (alot of products of different types)

Many products

“The main music companies own smaller music companies and equate to owning 95% of the market. The main 3 or 4 artists on each label will bring in most of the profit whilst the remaining hundreds barely get by as they supply for niche markets.”

Games

Cover genres

Addresses a demographic

Few products

“There are few products in the gaming market. But they cover all the genres as general demand is high.”

Cinema

Features in common with music industry and games

Cover the genres

More products than games but has an unreliable market

TV

Make a variety of programmes in genre types

Unsuccessful programmes cancelled quickly

Radio

Make a variety of programmes in genre types

Commercial radio targeted at specific audiences

Written Press

Small number of papers (eight)

Each appeals to a demographic

Papers and magazines fine tuned to demographic

This is attractive for advertisers

Text.

HDP

HDP (known as High Definition Photo) is a brand new image file format developed by Microsoft. As the title suggests, it has been made primarily for high definition photos and was released as part of the Windows Media family (in Windows Vista – codecs available for XP).

Because of its short existance, it isn’t widespread. However, it is included in .NET Framework 3.0. Plugins are available for Adobe Photoshop CS3 to support the extension.

It’s fair to suggest HDP is a merger of file types between JPEG and TIFF. It uses containers similar to TIFF to store it’s Image File Directory tags.

At a high level, HD Photo’s design is very similar to JPEG: the source image is optionally converted to a luma-chroma colourspace, the chroma planes are optionally subsampled, each plane is divided into fixed-size blocks, the blocks are transformed into the frequency domain, and the frequency coefficients are quantized and entropy coded (source ~ Wikipedia).

Possibly due to their similarity, the JPEG Group and Microsoft are considering the standardisation of HDP into JPEG XR (source ~ Microsoft).

GIF

The Graphics Interchange Format is an 8-bit per-pixel bitmap image popularly used on the internet for low resolution images, animation and transparency.

It allows upto 256 colours from the 24-bit RGB colour palette. Despite being unsuitable for colour images, it is used for short cartoon animations, web-spacers and block colours.

The PNG file format (Portable Network Graphics) was designed as a replacement for the GIF file type. Although it was done for copyright reasons, the PNG’s capabilities went way beyond the original GIF.  It’s general resolution is much higher and it supports transparency. However, it doesn’t support animation. The MNG file format was created with the same base as the PNG and was created to support animation. However, it has a different file signature rendering PNG decoders useless to it. Thus the MNG is barely known.