MinistryMedia.org

Another year - another phone - but this one is really different.

What Apple has just created will probably be the most popular media device ever. With a beautiful screen and fast 3G internet access, it will be in the pockets of millions. Those iPhone owners are exactly the people that we are trying to reach. I know fourteen year olds with nothing better to do than to spend their parents money on an iPhone. I also know a sixty five year old iPhone owner who loves the device.

So what does this mean to you? You need to know the device - and how to deliver your media in the correct format so that it can be viewed on the iPhone. Does this mean that you are changing your delivery for one particular device? Sure it does - but the target audience of millions of iPhone owners is worth the effort. The format is not obscure - it is a widely accepted codec that will also allow your content to be shown in any web browser and can be downloaded for an ipod. From Apple’s website:

iPod and iPhone can play the following video formats:
* H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 x 480, 30 frames per sec., Low-Complexity version of the Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats
* H.264 video, up to 768 kbps, 320 x 240, 30 frames per sec., Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats
* MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 x 480, 30 frames per sec., Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file format

How do you get your video in that format? Final Cut (using Compressor) or Quicktime already has built in settings for iPod video. Remember, the iPhone is still an iPod. Just choose one of those presets and try it out.

So once you have the video in the right format - to place it on your website you have to use the correct code. Just any code won’t do. Here it is:

<embed src="sample.mov" width="320" height="256"></embed>

Now there are a ton of extra pieces you can put in the code to make it do really cool stuff - but sometimes easy is better.

Remember - try it out before you make it live for the world to see. Use your own iPhone - it’s less than $200 and you can always blame the “I’ve gotta have it to test our video” excuse, or ask a friend to hit your website. We just started using a new process for encoding our videos - only to find out that the new encode won’t load on the iPhone. Test, test and retest before you look silly to your audience - or they can’t see it at all.

Check out this video with your iPhone. See.. it actually works!
Have fun with your new iPhone audience.

Apple invited me to a preview and demo of Final Cut Server early in May at SMU.

Could the wizards of Apple come up with another magical tool to make all of our lives better? It seems as if they have tried.

Final Cut Server is Apple’s response to the industry’s cries over asset management. The press release given by apple was:

…powerful software solution for media asset management and workflow automation. A scaleable server application, Final Cut Server automatically catalogs large collections of assets, allows searching across multiple disks and SAN volumes, and enables viewing, annotation and approval of content from anywhere using a PC or Mac. “With the introduction of Final Cut Server, collaboration just got a whole lot easier for millions of editors, producers and clients who work with Final Cut Studio,” said Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of Applications Product Marketing

Anyone who works with multiple Final Cut projects deals with the management of assets. From offline files, to missing assets, red areas in your timeline - FCS tries to alleviate this by doing the work for you. It allows you to catalog and search your assets via meta data and drag resources from project to project. The interface is separate from Final Cut Studio (not really integrated) - which is a plus and a minus.

In a production workflow where number individuals might work on the same project,FCS tries to bridge the gap between editor, producer and reviewer through it’s online interface for reviewing, commenting and management.

The demo was performed at a distance. It was installed on a laptop and running on a machine that we couldn’t actually touch. The interface was shown to us on a project - we couldn’t login and play with it ourselves(like NAB - back when Apple did NAB). I don’t think that we would have actually wanted to touch it - since the Apple rep kept saying “that button is supposed to do this - but it keeps crashing on me”.

From a philosophical standpoint, it looks like a great idea. But as I look at the backend, it looks like iTunes/iPhoto library for my video assets. This isn’t a bad thing, unless you need to find the files by using finder. iTunes and iPhoto work because they use meta data. Meta data (descriptive information) is used to describe content. If I place a picture of a chicken in iPhoto - it doesn’t know it’s a picture of a chicken unless somewhere I have typed the name “chicken”. The same applied to assets in Final Cut Server. Unless someone painstakingly adds meta data descriptions to all of your assets - you will not have a clue which video is of a car and which video is of - my chicken.

Final Cut Server resolves this by its “Automatic Asset Cataloging”. This process is supposed to scour your server (or servers in our case) and import all assets that it finds. If a piece of media is associated with a final cut project and sequence - it is supposed to be able to import the meta data from your project files. All of those descriptions that you have placed on subclips and captures - will be added into your assets when they are imported into FCS. This sounds great!

The client (the application that you actually use on your computer) is built in java. It is cross-platform - so it runs on both Mac and PC. It supports drag and drop with asset and all of the index information is stored on the final cut server.

Cataloging - all assets - even files that it doesn’t understand - are supposed to be cataloged. One problem that we ran into during our demo was trying to get FCS to ackowledge non Final Cut Studio files. It will import them, but you can’t access them through the java client. We often master our audio in Apple Logic. This is one (of many) file formats that FCS does not regnize. It knows it is file - but doesn’t connect it with logic. Hence the problem - you often have to return to finder and find the files that you are working with. And if you have to spend so much time in finder - how is this helpful? We discovered during the demo that it wouldn’t recognize files from Logic, Photoshop, Apperature, After Effects and Shake. It knows they are files - but doesn’t associate it with the applications that use them. Thus - you must find those files in finder to actually work with them.

Also, if you move a file or rename it in finder or create a version2 - does this automagically show up in FCS? Or does it cause another level of “offline files”?

FCS does help with automation. You can setup watch folders like in Sorenson or Episode for encoding. Drop a file into a folder and it can automatically encode and FTP it to your server. The interface is another GUI for Automator or Applescript - but it is ran from the server level.

Some of the key features:

• Search all of your assets and projects - asset cataloging
• Project check/check out: - and moving a project off of the server to a laptop - then checking it back in to the server. (copies assets or proxies)
• Project review and approve: let a producer or client watch your project over the web and comment
• Automation: Watch for the presence of a file (watch folder) or watching the change of the meta data on a project. Once a file is moved into a watch folder, or the meta data is changed (meta data) it can fire off automated responses. (encode, status emails, move/copy assets, etc…

I know I don’t sound overly positive about it - but I was impressed. I think the transition to FCS for larger production teams - will be a painful learning curve. Would you want to drop your 20 Terabytes of assets into an application - let it rename, move and reorganize all of your files? I guess I’m gonna need that LTO backup sooner than later.

Final Cut Server looks like an early product - it looks like a beta release application. I might want to install it on a test server - maybe run a small project or two through it before I commit our entire post department to this beast.

Amazon is a household name and now that name is becoming more common in webhosting circles.

Why is this important for ministries who use media? = cheap and reliable web storage.

All of the media that you create needs to get into the hands of those that you are trying to reach. Downloadable video and audio has been littering our hard drive for years now. If you want your message to hit the masses - then you have to make it available to them. One common method is to place your media (audio or video) on your website for download. A subscribed download of your media- is called a podcast. Every time your files are downloaded, someone has to pay for the bandwidth. It’s like cell phone minutes - you think you’ve having fun on the phone - until you get the bill at the end of the month and realize that you used up all of your minutes and the overage charges are killing you.

Amazon’s web services devision has a solution for mass download storage. Amazon’s S3 (simple storage solutions) is not for everyone, but it is providing us (DTS) a very cheap alternative for podcast hosting. For a few years we have been using our streaming provider (Akamia) to host our podcasts. Bandwidth for streaming is not cheap, and as a result - as our podcast has grown in popularity so have our bandwidth charges.

Bandwidth is charged by the amount of data that is transferred. For example, if your MP3 is 10 Megabytes in size, you will be charged for every time it is downloaded. If it is downloaded 100 times then you would be charged for 1000 Megabytes (which is equivalent to 1 Gigabyte).

Our streaming provider charged a flat fee of $1.29 per Gigabyte.

Amazon charges $0.18 per Gigabyte! (once you hit 10 Terabytes it drops to $0.16 - and then to $0.13 at 50 Terabytes)

Now let’s imagine that you have a very popular podcast and consume 1 Terabyte of bandwidth each month. On the old provider it would cost you $1290. On Amazon the same bandwidth would cost you only $180!

Now Amazone S3 is not for everyone. But for raw download, the price is untouchable.

http://aws.amazon.com/

For the past few months I have been looking at Sony’s XDCam Ex (PMW-EX1) I find the camera intriguing because it is the first camera that I have ever seen to include 1/2″ chips at under $10K.
A closer look at the camera reveals a few features that continue to turn heads:

• Solid state memory (ie flash drives) SxS memory cards
• HDSDI output (it does include timecode and audio in the feed - take note Canon)
• Small frame size
• Full raster 1920 x 1080 (no funny math here)
• Switchable 1080i or 720p recording formats with multiple frame recording capability such as 50i, 59.94i, 50p, 59.94p and native 25P, 29.97p and 23.98P
• WOW factor because it is just cool

We saw a demo at the Dallas Final Cut Pro user group about a month ago and I was sold. I’ve been reading about it and asking a few peers that have used it and decided it would be a good fit for a gig I am working on. I have ordered two (for a client ) and will let you know how it turns out.

For more information, check out the details on Sony’s website.

We are requesting a demo unit from a local vendor so we can test it with our AJA IOHD.

I continue to champion the cause of HD for ministry. I cannot recommend anyone by an SD camera unless your budget is less than $200. In that case you shouldn’t be in video production anyway.

About 3 weeks ago I went the dermatologist to have them look at a spot on my back. My wife thought it looked weird so we had it viewed by a professional. The Dr. didn’t like it either and decided to cut it off. While leaving her office I told her that I felt like I was leaving piece of me with her…

A few days later the pathology report showed that it was malignant melanoma. The next week I returned and they took out a much bigger chunk. I left with 10 stitches and I got to see a piece of me in a jar - that is always a weird experience.

Last week they removed my stitches and informed me that the latest pathology report showed that it has been “completely removed”. This is an answer to prayer and a huge relief. Needless to say I’ve been a bit preoccupied with this over the past month and have neglected blogging on any of my sites. Sorry for the silence but sometimes real life takes over.

~w

We are searching for the copyright to have a movie night on the seminary campus. CVLI offers this kind of licensing for churches, but can’t offer the same license for seminaries. The license that they offer for churches is very good. It covers most producers and gives the church freedom to show movies in their entirety or clips. (You can’t edit them - just show them) They do have a license for seminaries but the list of producers is very small. It doesn’t cover Disney, Sony, Paramount, Dreamworks - and many of the other major producers.

Jim, my cohort, started calling other schools. Apparently a company called Swank Motion Pictures offers a “pay per use” license. This is great! If we want to play a movie we can contact them with the details. We give them the name of the movie and the estimated attendance numbers. They will negotiate the rights and get us the media. Technically the DVDs from the movie store (and Walmart/ Best Buy) are for home use only (FBI warning). They will license us a copy that can be played in a public venue.

The prices are approximately $350 - $650 per title. This is very reasonable for a public showing of a video. They also have access to “pre-release” titles. This would include videos that are no longer in the theater but have not yet been released for home use. They also have access to HD DVDs and BlueRay discs.

We are also looking into Criterion Pictures. They too have a subscription service (like CVLI), but their producer list is much larger. They don’t carry ever video or even some of the biggest blockbusters, but they do carry many.

Any other brilliant ideas?

We often think about backup equipment. What would we do if a projector bulb blew. Is there another on the shelf? If the laptop died, do I have a copy of my presentation that I could put on another machine?

Tonight I had to fill in for a person. He received a call that his father was dieing. He has been battling cancer and he had to go.

So, I step in to run a video conferencing class. Now this is not traditional ministry media, but it is a ministry and it does have buttons. So, I’m on the hotseat trying to get all of this to run.

How prepared are we for loosing a person? Do we know the passwords and the secret tricks to keep the stuff running? I had to copy some settings from his laptop to mine before he left. And if he wasn’t able to give me the passwords - I would have been sunk.

For a few years I worked a church where only one sound guy knew everything. This wasn’t by design - it was by necessity. There were just too many things to know. He didn’t have time to write them down. And no matter how often I sat with him and watched his every move, he would do something or go to something that I had never seen before. He had been there for years and was irreplaceable.

The human element is irreplaceable. For contingency sake, make sure that you are at least somewhat prepared…

So you have something to say and you think the world needs to hear it? Here are the step for posting you podcast online.

1. Create your media. Podcasts are usually audio or video files. They have to be in a particular format (MP3, Mp4, etc…)
2. Find a place to put them. The world can’t download them from your personal computer. You need a place to store them where others can access and download them. Look at a Podcasting host like libsyn.com or switchpod.com
3. Create your Feed. Podcasts are a list of items for download. These lists (RSS feeds) are written in code. But no worries, you don’t have to become a code monkey in order to do this. The podcasting services (listed above) have an easy to use interface. You can upload your media, set name and descriptive information, and they will take care of the rest.
4. Promote your Podcast. Tell the world about it - because you already put in the effort. If you don’t share the love - no one will ever know.

Remember, creating a website without marketing is like tossing one copy of your business card in the Wal Mart parking lot. The likelihood that the right person will pick it up is slim. You need to tell the world about it. Email it to your friends, get it in the search engines - and if it is a podcast - get it posted in itunes.

I’ve seen it so many times. A technical distraction takes the speaker into a different world. I remember filming a class when a professor’s laptop died. He forgot his power supply and ran it off the battery. When his laptop shut off, so did he.

He couldn’t operate with out it. He didn’t even know where he was in the lecture. What have I covered? What’s next?

Today in my presentation my Keynote crashed. I restarted it and it crashed again. The giggling students in the back were real encouraging. I would have been laughing too. I restarted the computer and it crashed again. Why?

I am still a believer in Keynote and my experience has been much better than PowerPoint. This is the first time that Keynote has caused this problem for me. PowerPoint did this to me more often than not. And usually when it died, it took the computer down with it.

I don’t know if I kept my cool and I don’t remember if it threw me off. Unfortunately we video tapes the event and I will have a record of my mistakes.

What have a I learned? Preparation must take into account contingency. Do I know my presentation well enough to run without it? Am I versed enough in the topic to handle it alone? Can I troubleshoot my laptop and get it back up and running without interrupting the class? Do I have a backup system?

Tonight I will present the same material. I will spend a few hours with my system beforehand trying to troubleshoot the problem. I will probably also have a second laptop on hand.

One copy is not a backup.

Today’s presentation was fun and challenging.

I remember when I sat through the same presentation seven years ago. The puppets and slide projectors are now collecting dust as we strive to present modern tools in creating rich media presentations.

Our goal is not to dazzle anyone - I can’t do that. We do want to challenge you to look at your audience and speak in their language. Don’t be scared to try something new and know when to ask for help.

Creative Presentation