Learn what to do with the digital video you shoot and how to share it with your friends.
Guests
David Lindeman
David Lindeman
David Lindeman is a technology specialist at the University of Minnesota in the Office of Information Technology. Dave teaches courses in digital video editing and produces documentaries. He also enjoys traveling around the world.
Doug Ernie
Doug Ernie
Douglas Ernie is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Minnesota. He has a Ph.D. in physics and has been active in both teaching and research efforts in electrical and computer engineering for over two decades. His background includes expertise in technology-enhanced learning using Web based multimedia and telecollaboration tools, telepresence for research applications, and plasma engineering for lighting and semiconductor manufacturing. He currently directs the University's UNITE Instructional Television program and is involved in the implementation of the telecollaborative and telepresence capabilities of the University's Multi-Axial Subassemblage Testing System (MAST) Laboratory, one of 15 integrated national facilities being constructed as part of the National Science Foundation's Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES). The lab's equipment can be controlled, and its sensor and video data accessed in both real-time and archived form, over the Internet.
For Your Files
Technology specialist Dave Lindeman said you need a relatively new (modern) computer to process video on it: "The most important thing is that it has a lot of hard disk space and it also needs to have a capture device. And by capture device or capture card, I mean, in our case here it's a firewire port."
And he added: "The firewire cable is the only digital cable that is available with these cameras."
Doug Ernie, a computer engineering professor, said compressing video for e-mailing means reducing the size of the original file: "Reduce by perhaps a factor of 100 or more and when you do that you lose some—a lot—of the quality, quite frankly. Your goal is to get the minimum size you can if you're e-mailing it or posting it on the Web, and at the same time retaining the highest quality."
To get better picture resolution in streaming video, Doug said, "To get a better frame rate, the rate at which it's refreshed so it doesn't look jerky, you want a higher connection speed. It doesn't work very well over a normal telephone modem. You typically want to have a cable modem or DSL [digital subscriberline] to access it."
Compression
You can compress a digital movie to make it fit on a CD or to put it on a Web page, but there is a trade-off between the size of the image and its quality. Try different compression rates and see which looks the best. Your goal is to get the minimum size that looks good.
FireWire®
A connection used for transferring data to and from a computer. FireWire is faster than other types of connections (e.g., USB) so it is commonly used when transferring large amounts of data. A special cord and connector on the computer is required.
Streaming Video
With streaming video, you watch the video as it is being downloaded to your computer. So when you want to watch, for example, an hour video clip then it may take five seconds when you first start downloading to what we call "buffer" some material, but then it starts playing within a few seconds and continues playing as it's downloading.
VCD
Video CD is a compact disc format for storing digital video. The quality is comparable to what you get on VHS but the size is smaller. You can store about 80 minutes of reduced quality video on it and view it with a computer CD player or some DVD players and a TV set.