Tuesday State of the Bill

"The Bill" as in "me." Bill.

I won't go into the bailout legislation. That subject has been beaten to death - figuratively - by the media and bloggers. I will say this: I'm sorry I can't say the same has happened - literally - to the people that introduced the legislation, or, stepping back a little further to 1997 or so, the people that made sub-prime lending legal. I'm sorry to find out that Obama was one of those*.

'nuf sed.

I've been working on this project: a videotaped stage play. My thought was this: one camera tripod mounted, on camera hand-held for close-ups. Run the show twice, recording from different angles each time; record the audio straight off the soundboard to a DAT recorder for later sync'ing. Come editing-time, the variety of angle choices plus the bonus of close-ups will make editing a breeze.

Beautiful in theory, somewhat harder is actual practice.

Actually, the sound is great. Clear, no ambient noise. A little reverb in post, and it's good to go.

The video is another story, however: there are "holes", places in the script that the static footage doesn't cover and the hand-held has too much motion from either tired arms or position changes.

I'd been really stressing about the whole deal...until last night.

Last night I remembered I'd installed Adobe AfterEffects. For those of you readers who do not know, Adobe AE is a post-production toolset for doing special effects, animation, titles, and...

IMAGE STABILIZATION.

In a nutshell: you pick a point in your picture and say, "This point should not move." AE then calculates, one frame at a time, how the picture should be adjusted on the screen so that your selected point stays in the same spot relative to the frame. Your point can be a coffee cup, the corner of a table, a spot of paint on the floor, a reference marker on a costume.

There is still some motion to the frames as I shifted my position, but the motion is now gentle, with a "float-y" vibe that's sort of pleasant.

It's taken a huge load off my mind, because now, in effect**, I have more footage to pick from, and a better end product.



* I will delete political comments from this post, so don't bother.
** pun acknowledged. Tee hee.

Tuesday State of the Bill

"The Bill" as in "me." Bill.

I won't go into the bailout legislation. That subject has been beaten to death - figuratively - by the media and bloggers. I will say this: I'm sorry I can't say the same has happened - literally - to the people that introduced the legislation, or, stepping back a little further to 1997 or so, the people that made sub-prime lending legal. I'm sorry to find out that Obama was one of those*.

'nuf sed.

I've been working on this project: a videotaped stage play. My thought was this: one camera tripod mounted, on camera hand-held for close-ups. Run the show twice, recording from different angles each time; record the audio straight off the soundboard to a DAT recorder for later sync'ing. Come editing-time, the variety of angle choices plus the bonus of close-ups will make editing a breeze.

Beautiful in theory, somewhat harder is actual practice.

Actually, the sound is great. Clear, no ambient noise. A little reverb in post, and it's good to go.

The video is another story, however: there are "holes", places in the script that the static footage doesn't cover and the hand-held has too much motion from either tired arms or position changes.

I'd been really stressing about the whole deal...until last night.

Last night I remembered I'd installed Adobe AfterEffects. For those of you readers who do not know, Adobe AE is a post-production toolset for doing special effects, animation, titles, and...

IMAGE STABILIZATION.

In a nutshell: you pick a point in your picture and say, "This point should not move." AE then calculates, one frame at a time, how the picture should be adjusted on the screen so that your selected point stays in the same spot relative to the frame. Your point can be a coffee cup, the corner of a table, a spot of paint on the floor, a reference marker on a costume.

There is still some motion to the frames as I shifted my position, but the motion is now gentle, with a "float-y" vibe that's sort of pleasant.

It's taken a huge load off my mind, because now, in effect**, I have more footage to pick from, and a better end product.



* I will delete political comments from this post, so don't bother.
** pun acknowledged. Tee hee.