Royalty Free Podcast Promo Soundpack

I'm always looking for more audio sound effects - especially free ones. Beatsuite.com has a collection of Royalty Free and free as in no cost audio samples designed specifically for podcasters. Terms of use are simply that you need to credit Beatsuite.com for providing them. As far as I can tell, the collection is available only on Apple's download site and the files are listed as requiring Mac OS X, but fear not, the WAV files in the download will work just as easily for Linux and Windows users too.

Xbox Video Marketplace and HD-DVD Comparison

I started out with a plan to write an article about how HD-DVD is visually superior to downloads available in Xbox Video Marketplace. After all, how could a 6.1GB HD 720p download possible look as rich as the 1080p content on an HD-DVD? As it turns out, Xbox Video Marketplace does an outstanding job of delivering great looking video that is almost indistinguishable from HD-DVD. Here's how I came to this conclusion.

How to Copy HD-DVDs

It's still too early to call the horse race on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. One format may win or we may end up with two competing formats for the foreseeable future. I'm going with HD-DVD because I can connect an HD-DVD drive to my Xbox 360 and get great looking movies.

One of the key disadvantages of HD-DVD is no convenient way to make back-up copies of the discs. The HD-DVD spec supports what's known as a managed copy, but so far none of the HD-DVD disks I own have this feature. If I want to watch my HD content somewhere other than my Xbox, or if I want to backup my $30 investment, at this point, I have to create my own solution. Until someone starts giving me managed copies, I'm making copies of my HD-DVDs to watch them where I want to using an analog solution. Following the guidelines presented here, you can use an Xbox 360 with the HD-DVD drive and a PC to make copies of HD-DVD movies.

Fixing Haze in Digital Photos

After recently grumbling about the smoggy haze in some of my photos from Beijing, Gary B. sent me a tip from Luminous Landscape about how to tweak contrast to make subtle details pop. The original article was geared to making subtle highlights like shadows standout for printed photos, but it seems to work for improving the look of images taken on a couple hazy mornings in China. The trick involves using some kind of Unsharp Mask filter, which as defined by the Photoshop Elements help file is a technique for giving the illusion of greater detail in an image (sharpness) by increasing the contrast between the light and dark areas of the image. Photoshop, Photoshop Elements and Paint Shop Pro all have an Unsharp Mask built in. I haven't found a good freeware plugin solution for this particular technique if you happen to use some other tool.

The small image doesn't really do the subtle improvements justice, so I've posted larger versions online for a better comparison of details.

Tom Bihn Bag Giveaway

Tom Bihn was kind enough to help me out with luggage for my trip to China. I also talked them into giving away one of each of their three most popular bags to you, my readers. Obviously they can't give a bag to everyone reading this, so the three recipients will be selected at random.

The bags in question are as follows...

The Aeronaut, which is an awesome maximum carry-on sized bag I used to haul my clothes all over China. The bags are rugged and hold a great deal more than I ever expected. You can carry The Aeronaut over your shoulder or pull out the hidden away backpack straps. It's sized perfectly to fit in the overhead bin on an airplane and comfortable to carry so you don't have to bother with checking your luggage as you travel. I got mine free, but I honestly haven't found a better bag for traveling.

The Super Ego is a messenger bag style laptop bag with plenty of room for the Brain Cell protective laptop insert and just about anything you need to carry between home and the office. It's got tons of pockets to keep your supplies organized and the front strap is customizable so that you can create a truly unique looking bag.

The Brain Bag is a serious backpack for carrying all that geeky gear. It's roomy enough to hold two laptops and still store papers and other supplies. There are plenty of pockets for stashing a PSP, iPod, camera, phone, pens, business cards and all that other stuff you wouldn't think of leaving at home. If you prefer a backpack to a shoulder bag, the comfort of carrying a Brain Bag beats anything else I've ever lugged around on my back.

You can watch a video online for more details about each of the bags.

To qualify for random selection of one of the three bags, all you need to do is fill out the online questionaire. I'll announce the three bag recipients on October 1, 2006.

How to Make a Rotoscoped Movie

Whether you like Philip K. Dick or not, A Scanner Darkly looks amazing. The rotoscoping technique used by Richard Linklater was perfected in his previous film Waking Life and applied in a beautifully disturbing way in A Scanner Darkly. If you want to make something similar yourself, all you need is a video, Photoshop and a whole ton of patience. A guy named Jared at barnt.org walks through how to start with a video clip, export it as individual images using QuickTime Pro and then edit the resulting image files in Photoshop using specific filters before ultimately re-importing the files back into a video editing app to publish your finished file. While this isn't exactly rotoscoping, the visual appearance of the footage looks very similar and you get a striking result.

How to Rip the Perfect MP3

Exact Audio Copy is one of the most reliable tools for ripping CDs. If you've ever ripped a disk only to play it back with strange skips and pops in some tracks, you know the frustration of dealing with a bad audio copy. Exact Audio Copy (EAC) solves this by building in smart error correction to handle the issues associated with ripping tracks to your hard drive. Digital Media Thoughts recently posted a tutorial on how to use EAC to rip your music directly to MP3.

Choosing Video Output Formats for the Web

Deciding which video formats to support when creating a Web video project is confusing. Whether you're video blogging, posting video how-tos online or sharing your short film with an online audience, you need to offer video in formats the audience can handle. At the moment, this means publishing in several formats to a number of different services to make sure the widest audience possible can watch your video creations. One video maker with a massive online viewing audience is my pal Bre Pettis who makes video for Make Magazine and for himself. Bre recently posted a detailed list of all the formats he outputs for the Web, including the reasoning behind why he choose the formats and resolutions. While not everyone has available bandwidth to distribute a 1280x720 HD version of their video project online, it's great to see he's looking to the future and offering a high res version that should look great both on computer screens and on television. The rest of the formats are definitely good common sense and should be emulated by anyone making video for the Internet.

How to Make a Camera Dolly

Using a dolly for motion camera shots is likely a little out of the norm for home movies. For tracking motion or creating perspective motion in a video shot, it's an absolute must because you can't get a smooth sequence without a dolly. In most cases a camera dolly consists of a platform with a tripod mounted camera and seat for a camera operator elevated on a track to obtain smooth precise motion along the path of a planned shot in a video sequence. While doing some online research for a little video project I want to create, I ran across several inventive solutions for do-it-yourself dolly rigs from common parts available at the local hardware store (or possibly the local skate shop).

Word HTML Cleaner

If you have a Microsoft Word document you want to format for the Web, do not post it online until you have use the Textism Word HTML Cleaner. Word is notorious for adding a ton of funky text formatting to .DOC files. Converting those files in Word by saving them as HTML only makes matters worse. All this extra formatting can make your text display badly and it's guaranteed to greatly increase the size of your page, ultimately slowing down page load times and creating a lousy experience for many users. I use Microsoft Word and I've almost never used the feature of Word that re-formats text to HTML because it's simply to awful. Word HTML Cleaner fixes this problem for free. Simply save your current Word document as Web Page using the Save As dialog in Microsoft Word, find the new Web Page document on your hard drive in the Word HTML cleaner dialog box, hit process and you'll have a kinder, gentler version of your file ready for posting to the Web minus all the messy formatting. Your readers will thank you. It's Web-based so it works with both Mac and Windows.