Friday, March 25, 2005

SOFTWARE :: Sony's Vegas 5

If you've ever gotten knee-deep in a home video editing project, you may have stumbled across the one thing about many NLEs (non-linear editors) that cause many folks to simply turn off the computer when the program crashes. Again.
Unless you're running some insane hardcore hardware, it's likely that your expensive copy of Adobe Premier will be giving you headaches as it continually dies for no reason whatsoever, despite running hardware that falls within Adobe's recommended specs, under ANY version of Windows whatsoever. Premier isn't the only program that falls prey to this problem. Many other high end programs suffer from this affliction as well, but nobody seems able to explain why. I know I certainly can't, and I've just about tried them all.
One that works very well is called Movies on CD and DVD by Magix. It works fairly well as an introductory editor, but for something truly powerful and flexible, you'll want something better.

Sonic Foundry began with their entry into the NLE arena with Vegas. At first, it was a pretty good program, although it's capabilities were still limited. It made a great entry-level editor, but had a hard time competing with the plethora of tricks that Premier had up its sleeve.
That is, until Sony bought a large chunk of Sonic Foundry's properties, including Vegas and Soundforge, which is now linked (but not integrated) into Vegas.

Sony added so much to this program. At version 5, the user has the ability to add as many audio and video tracks as he wants to his project; a feat that was not possible in any previous versions. The best part about Vegas? IT DOESN'T CRASH. Not even on marginally recommended hardware. Sure, you'll wait a little longer than the big dogs for your render to finish, but you don't have to worry about saving again and again and again in an attempt to keep from losing your precious hours of work.
Vegas also has the capability to produce some basic graphics of its own beyond the expected title effects. For example, with a little bit of trickery, you can use Vegas to create a radar screen effect from scratch. Not the cheesy radial transition wipe effect, mind you, but a full-blown green radar screen with sweeping scan line and everything!
Yes, okay that's a little cheesy for an example, but think about it: how many other programs will let you do more than just cut together video clips haphazardly? The stock transition effects that come with the program are numerous and high-quality. There are also a number of third party expansion packs that will give you more transitions and sound/video clips to use as enhancements for your project.
Vegas also lets you take complete control of the view aspect of a clip or image. You can zoom a segment of a clip, or "event" as they call it, or crop it to fit the view you're aiming for. Not only that, but there is also a timeline control for this feature. For example, on the timeline, I start at the first keyframe with the view aspect at full, then click over to the last keyframe in the timeline, and re-size the view aspect so that the view is now zoomed in on the clip. The result will be that when I review that clip, it will now slowly (or quickly, depending on the length of time and the "distance" of the zoom effect), zoom in on the image. This same concept can be applied to let you do sliding imagery, slide-zooms among other things.
Another great feature is that Vegas treats each event line the same way that Adobe Photoshop does its layers. Video layers higher up on the workspace are higher up in the "stack" of video layers. This means that I can import a clip or image with transparent areas into the top layer, and then a second clip underneath that, and create some really cool effects. You can also make a solid upperlayer see-through by adjusting the alpha of either the whole channel, or by simply dragging the alpha control on the clip itself downward.

Look, I know that sounds a little weird when you read it. It's partly because I'm only a casual video hobbyist. I don't have all the proper terminology solid in my head, but I think that you other enthusiasts out there will have an understanding of what I was talking about.

Anyhow, if you've got some extra wads of cash to blow, you can pick up a copy of Vegas for around $700.00. Couple it with Sound Forge and Photoshop, and you can create simply incredible video and audio effects in your own projects with little fuss or muss.

More importantly, it competes directly with Adobe Premier, except that Premier rewards your expensive purchasing power by constantly giving the user a frustrating experience, where Sony Vegas will make you feel like an overnight professional. There's nothing like the feeling of creating something from scratch that makes everyone you show it to say "Wow. I never knew someone could do this without working at a studio."

Pure bliss.

Deadweasel is currently working on a concept movie project at PlanetsideMovies.com.


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DIY PROJECTS :: Save Your Cash, Build Your Own Router!

You've had it with that old crappy router that someone gave to you when they upgraded. It's a pain to configure, it dumps its settings mysteriously and without warning, and you can't even get it to update an external DNS database so you can remote connect to your PC when your ISP rotates your modem's IP address.
You've also had it with mom giving you hell about all that extra hardware you've got laying around the place, collecting dust. She does have a point. If you've got the guts for a complete computer system lingering around the joint, why not put them to use, shut mom the hell up, and replace that p.o.s. router all at the same time?

Let's see, there's an old Dell PC over there. It's a crappy little Pentium II processor, but you added some memory to it a while back. The hard drive's not all that big, maybe a few gigs. What you didn't realize before was that that crappy old Dell machine is simply perfect for a renewed usefulness as your incredibly flexible and powerful new router! Smack in a second network card, hook up a switch where your router used to be, and the hardware side of things are complete!

Now how to program this thing? How do you turn a complete computer system into something as mundane and everyday as a router? Sure, it runs Windows 98 pretty good, but there's no way to make THAT into any kind of kickass NAT box.

My friend, your troubles are over! Linux is going to save you. Ah ah ah, don't you DARE go cringing and making with the yuck face. You don't really have to understand how to program (or even install) Linux to make this project work. All it takes is to download a quick .iso, burn it to CD, and boot the machine from it.

Clark Connect is based on Red Hat 7.3, but again, you will rarely see the evidence of the Linux OS eyecandy that is common on most desktop installs. This is strictly console-level baby. Command line goodness. Well, there is a rudimentary gui that will help you get setup, but after the basic configuration, you will have the ability to configure the rest through a browser on a machine connected through the network to the router box.
The neatest thing about Clark Connect? It has much better logging capabilities than a standard one-piece router, can do intrusion detection (snort), act as a webserver, provide squid proxy caching (which causes sites you've visited before to load much faster), work as a mailserver and even let you connect to the router machine directly through Windows Network Neighborhood as a Samba-shared machine! Holy crap!

So Mick Nobody and I (well actually just him, I donated the hardware) set up a router box, using Clark Connect on a Dell Optiplex GXa, Pentium II 266MHz, 128MB RAM machine. The setup was a little hairy at first, but we neglected a couple of things that we should have gotten straight in the first place. For one thing, we had the internet cable and the internal network cables in the wrong respective network cards. We also forgot to reboot the cable modem (so it would now pay attention to the new network card it was connected to). Once those problems were fixed though, the whole thing took off like a shot.
Now there is another feature that the software offers, which we want, but are asked to sign up for a free account with the software provider. This feature is called DNS forwarding. This lets our new router notify their website of any changes to our home ISP, which we can check from anywhere in the world, and subsequently connect to our home machines directly.
Incidentally, this could a very handy feature when attempting to set up a home-based ftp server, which is also included as part of the Clark Connect package.

For more information on this really kickass program, and for download links, click on ClarkConnect.com.

Wanna see some screenies of the web interface in action? Check out ClarkConnect Screenshots.

Deadweasel only likes Linux when he isn't doing the installation


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Thursday, March 24, 2005

HARDWARE :: The Perfect Home Audio Studio Add-on

A company called Edirol (who?) has created a really sweet device that can provide external USB recording and mixing for your home PC-based audio studio.
I want one, and if you're smart, you'll want one too!

The Edirol UR-80 USB Recording System


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Sunday, March 13, 2005

OPINION :: Why Apple Will Own The Industry Soon

So for years, the PC world has been dominated by a corporate giant that is well-known, even to folks who aren't all that comfortable with PCs. Microsoft. Let's face it, Windows is, hands-down, THE most-used home computer operating system software on the planet. Servers are a different story, but then they usually follow trends a few years behind, due to operational costs incurred during the upgrade process.
So anyhow, you have Windows, which has been simply ruling the market thanks in no small part to the efforts of one Bill Gates. Now, this dude was MS' marketing ace, and his tactics made sure that Windows was installed on as many computers as possible, or at the very least, that people were aware of its existence. Well, he did his job so well, that he has somehow become this sort of icon of Microsoft. Sure, he started the business, but when someone has a bug up their butt about Windows, they blame Bill. He's no longer due his scapegoat status, but this article isn't a history lesson about the world's richest nerd. It's about his company's downfall.

You see, just a couple of months ago, another competing giant did something that was unprecedented and earthshaking. What they did will give Microsoft serious reason to pause and start planning for a long cold business winter ahead. Apple released the Mac Mini.
"Whoa," you're saying, "big frigging deal. Just another tiny computer."
Well, you're right on one count, it IS a teeny tiny wee bitty little thing, but that should in no way allow you the freedom to cajole it so. It's powerful. I went to the local Apple Store and played around with the cheapest model. This thing could edit movies, for Pete's sake! Still not impressed? What if I told you it was doing it with a chip that was physically far slower than most of today's Windows machines, ran about half the memory, which itself is a third of today's memory speeds, and using a graphics card that would be useful for little more than getting your email on a PC?
Windows has made the PC so popular that people have become complacent about needing to buy expensive hardware, simply because the OS developers don't care about your hardware price woes half as much as they do their financial partners, the hardware manufacturers. Don't believe me? Try running a little tool called TweakNT on an installation of Windows 2003 Server. What you will see will astound you. I know it did me.
Basically, TweakNT exposes the other kernels that are all still embedded in 2003. That means I can turn this 2003 machine into an XP Home, XP Pro, Enterprise Webserver etc. ANYTHING that uses the NT core is included in the installation. The reason for that is that Microsoft goes through coders so fast, and they are so stuck on security, that they will have many separate teams of people working on a single product, with little or no communication between the departments! So here's what ends up happening:

TOM : Ok, we're done with our part of Longhorn.
MICROSOFT : Thanks. Now get out. We don't allow our employees to use iPods at their desks.
TOM : Jerks
MICROSOFT : Here's the next portion of the code Dick.
DICK : Wait, what's this part doing here? This shouldn't be doing this! Where's Tom?
MICROSOFT : He's gone now. Make it work.
DICK : Okay, I'll just write around the bug and it's done.
MICROSOFT : Thanks. Now get out. We don't like our employees spreading our developer serials around the web.
DICK : Jerks
MICROSOFT : W00t! The new Windows is done! Wait. What's this part that is using part of the old code from the old Windows? Oh well, if we leave the code for the old stuff in the new version, it should still work.
BILL GATES : Yeah, and if people start getting uppity about the size of the installation, we can just tell them that people's hard drives are getting bigger and faster anyway, so what does it matter?
MICROSOFT : Yeah, people will totally not even notice. They're stupid.
BILL GATES : Yep. They sure are. Now would you like some more caviar and wine?

So as you can see from this officially completely made-up transcript, the old stuff was left in the new versions so that there would be fewer problems. Windows has become such a kludge (look it up) that not even Microsoft knows what everything in there does, and there's still a lot of code in there that uses files that were only present in older WIndows versions.
"But wait," you argue, "wouldn't it be better for them to leave in the old stuff so my old programs will work under the new Windows versions?"
Well, no. When you use that Compatibility Mode in Windows XP, that has nothing to do with the old code. It simply tricks a program into thinking it's running on an older version so it will install properly. There is no old code involved with that, it's a completely different chunk of code, which uses an odd portion of old stuff here and there, but none of the old versions are actually used (even though they are installed anyway) if that makes any sense.
The gist of this whole rant thus far is that Windows is bloated and full of security loopholes that are getting exploited to no end. The end result is a whole lot of unhappy customers. The number of pissed off peeps only goes up when MS starts denying people the use of a copy that they purchased legitimately, but subsequently won't activate because some smart kid ran a key generator for his bootleg disc, and just happened to activate the legit number before they did. Oops.

Well, when Apple release their Mac Mini, with a price of a few hundred bucks (not including monitor or peripherals), and worked faster than any PC, with comparatively underpowered hardware, they set the stage for a massive firestorm.
Suddenly, Johnny Know-Nothing can buy a cheap computer that is well-suited for his college dorm or office cubical, can use it to do just about any common computer task today, and do so faster and without the constant nagging worry of virus infections and security loopholes in the operating system.
Not only that, but any Apple customer can buy a machine that they KNOW will work with their software, because Apple controls the hardware, AND the OS. There is no "Certified Driver" program for Apple such as there is with MS, because Apple controls all of it firmly, guaranteeing stability and reliability.
Until recently, that kind of value was expensive, and required you to consider seriously before buying one. But now, the Mini makes reliability and usability more accessible to the masses.
Microsoft made that happen already, sure, but their heads have gotten big over all this fame and fortune, and they've begun taking the little guys for granted. They've bred a generation of users who will put up with constant crashes, insanely huge online-only security patches, and then patches for those patches when they break things, and then yet another spate of security flaw releases. Compound all of this with MS' refusal to let the customer have a choice in the multimedia and web software to install on their machine, and their consistent denial of any knowledge of accepted web standards, AND the fact that each new version of Windows requires faster and more expensive hardware with each release, and even a brain-dead mutant would be left wondering why in the hell MS is still in business at all.
It's because they are done with us, folks. They made their buck (and their business) off sales of their Operating System initially, then started aiming at big businesses as they grew. Now, most of their cash flow comes from projects other than the home-use operating systems. They couldn't care less whether or not we're unhappy about their product, because, in essence, they have us by the balls. Unless, that is, we decide to take matters into our own hands, take a little initiative, and take a credit card up to the Apple Store for a new Mac Mini. Sure, the OS is a little different to use, but you had to learn Windows at one point too, right? The difference this time is that by the time you're comfy with the OS, you can rest assured that they aren't going to start screwing around with the way it looks (too drastically at least) or make the system "NEW AND IMPROVED" to the point where it scares you to try to work with it.
Not only that, but you won't be constantly asked to download "security updates" to correct the kludges that the OS authors left in the code. MacOS is clean and stable, and it performs solidly!
With these factors firmly in mind, it should be easy to see why MS is going to have to start considering other options when it comes to making money, because their software division is going to be hurting heavily very soon. Suddenly I can spend $400 and feel like I actually got something of value for my buck! Still think you can get the same kind of value in a PC? Well consider this:
The computer retail store I work for offers a computer (with all peripherals except monitor) for $299.99. Nice price, until you look under the hood. The specs SEEM adequate to run Windows XP, but just barely. Everything's integrated, everything's just this side of scrap in order to save costs. What that means for the customer is that if all they are ever going to do is check their email, then this machine is perfect. Add a little more load to your daily activities (who doesn't play Yahoo Pool now and then?) and things get hairy. Suddenly you're considering an upgrade on a machine you JUST BOUGHT.
Or hey, there's always the Mac Mini, which can freaking edit video, for Deuce's sake!

Deadweasel is not a paid spokesman for Apple, but wishes he was


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