Preferred Softwares for Multimedia

Jon – regarding Magnum in Motion’s slideshow production – it’s bigger than Ben Hur, by the sound of it. Have a read of this:

http://www.apple.com/pro/profiles/magnum/

Great link Wade, thanks. But holy shit. Listen to this:

They’ve since acquired three Power Mac G5s, a four-person production team, and a handful of freelance video editors who mostly work in the startup’s new studio — a long table in the archive room at Magnum’s New York office.

“We all work on Macs,” Boeglin says. “When Adrian Kelterborn came to Magnum in Motion for an internship — he had studied for four years at the School of Art and Design in Zurich — he naturally edited in Final Cut Pro.”

“When I saw how perfect it was for our content and logistics, we integrated the software into our editing process.” Boeglin says her team also uses Pro Tools for sound mixing, iPhoto for sequencing, GarageBand and Soundtrack to pool comments, iMovie to produce podcasts and Photoshop.

Well, what can one say? I am one little person with an old ibook. But it would seem that they use Final Cut Pro as their basic tool and frankly, that is what I thought would be the case. I think we could all master this stuff if we play around with it enough.

Jon,

i’m somewhat of newbie insofar as multimedia is concerned…but i’ve fiddled with ‘low-cost’ tools for a while to produce a couple of slideshows. for instance, i’ve used iPhoto to prep a slideshow with music etc…then exported that to a QT movie then into Flash 8. i wasn’t very happy with the results…not only was the resulting text wish-washy (as you experienced), but the output images were paler than those that went into the project…i had to considerably increase their saturation for them to be acceptable. maybe i should retry along the lines of the advice quoted in your post.

so far i found that soundslides gives me a better handle on what i need..yes, the length of the slideshow is determined by the audio’ length but i can live with that easily. however, the audio, ambient sound, voiceover and music can be manipulated/mixed/edited with a decent audio editing program…i use garageband which is more than adequate for my needs.

i’m following your post and that of Dana re: pricing of multimedia. thanks to both for bringing it up.

Ah yes, Tewfic, you bring up another important point: the use of Garageband for sound. I tried recording a voiceover directly into the iMovie sequence, but that was clumsy. Garageband is better. However, I find that manipulating the sound of, say, a song sequence, directly in iMovie is actually pretty decent. I am just unhappy with the textual aspect. I am thinking of writing to Apple about it. iPhoto doesnt work at all for me, I gave up on that one long ago. As for pricing, let’s hope that leads to some concrete points. So far, nothing. Obviously there is a need for this. Iwill do some research on it, when I get some time.

Ben Hur? Ok I’m Ben Hur on my own then. I did the podcast on boxing x Garage Band and iMovie. Period… Same x the essay. It seems there was some post production done on it (haven’t seen it on th inmotion site: no broadband…)...

Jon

one way to make text work since it’s not great within iMovie that works for me is to create a text file as a Photoshop or Illustrator file, saved as a jpg, and import it as just another image. In iMovie, you can play with fades in ways that would allow you to do some overlap and stuff making it kind of slick. That way it’s rendered at the same resolution, etc. as an image. If it’s not sharp enough you can always play with unsharp mask. I’m far from an expert or well versed, this just happens to be one option I’ve stumbled across.

As far as Soundslides, yes you’re limited to the length of the soundtrack, it’s kind of a simple run and gun program not intended to be a full production tool like Final Cut or even iMovie. It’s an elegant and intuitive tool for it’s limited intent. It’s 100% about stills and audio while Final Cut and iMovie are more so about video with stills capability. In Soundslides, you do have to have the audio track done before you import it into the program. But once that’s done the program is really simple and allows you to launch a solid presentation in a very short amount of time. It takes about 2 hours to be proficient. And yes, once the soundtrack is imported into the program you can’t touch it. But for $40 it puts a lot of power in your hands. It’s less cumbersome than imovie in some respects. One thing i hate In iMovie is that the sequencing of the images can’t be locked in place so you must start editing from the very beginning and move one by one to the end. Since the images can’t be locked down, you can very easily accidentally knock the entire show out of sequence with the audio. It’s really annoying and doesn’t seem like it’d be that hard to make that feature available, making it a near perfect production tool. It seems silly that you’d have to upgrade to final cut just to get this one little feature but as I understand it, that’s the case at the moment. And, yeah, you do need to jump through all kinds of weird production aspects to render images at a high enough resolution as it’s really designed more as a video production tool then a still images presentation tool.

There’s another program called Snapz that allows you to record what’s happening on your screen and output it as quicktime files. I haven’t used it yet but apparently it’s a good, if not the only, way to convert a Soundslides show into a quicktime file that would allow you to load it on a DVD for playback, or for whatever else you’d want to do.

Audacity is great mainly becauuse it’s free, I can’t compare to Garage Band as I’ve never used it but likely will try as it seems to not have the stability issues I’ve discovered with Audacity. There’s another sound editing program called Peak that’s better but does actually cost money and then there’s Pro Tools and then there’s another Mac based audio editing program that I can’t remember the name of at the moment. I’ve used Peak and it’s great, better than Audacity and more stable as Audacity has some crashing issues in some versions of Mac’s Tiger and creates this convoluted file and folder combination that’s pretty sensitive to movement across folder hierarchies.

There’s an audio narrative journalism site called Transom.org that’s a great resource for tools, software, forums, problem solving, etc.

Pricing is probably going to be shaky ground for a while. We as photographers with powerful and simple tools have suddenly created a presentation option that’s beyond what most outlets have traditionally had a need or use for and they’ve been a bit slow on the uptake to figure out it’s value since MSNBC.com started doing this about 10 years ago. it seems like a good opportunity for photographers/multimedia producers to be on the front end of setting pricing. I mean if you have 20 minutes of audio and pictures you’ve just about got a half hour TV show in your hands and if you use a moderately priced digital recorder, like the M-Audio Microtrack or the Edirol R-09, you’ve got broadcast quality sound. Sure a twenty minutes of pictures is a ton in multimedia terms but the idea and the power of it is there. It’s just a matter of orgs seeing that the benefit of the audio slideshows pack a huge punch and there’s that glorious online lifespan and freedom from ink that should, in theory, make it a huge bang for the buck for everyone.

As was mentioned in another post on this subject, there’s probably a good deal that still photographers could/should learn from the film and video worlds about licensing/using pricing models. I guess a danger could be that b/c one person can “do it all” it might be seen as an inherrently cheaper product and get ghettoized. Not that I want that but there’s bean counters out there and folks who value stuff based on cost, if it’s expensive it must be good or how could something that one person produces be worth x dollars.

To me what’s so exciting about the possibility is that photographers can produce a final product for more outlets than ever before whether it’s TV, the web or short films in addition to the traditional paper and ink outlets. Maybe this’ll make photographers worthy authorities on subjects instead of the default to the writer. I mean, how many photographers are interview in the MSM on their point of view as opposed to writers? It’s embarrasing. The ability to publish that book length, 10 year change-the-world body of work just got not just easier but actually possible without the reliance on a book publisher. And maybe a multimedia production could lead to a book in ways that weren’t possible before. Mediastorm’s been getting notice in short film festivals and contests showing some real potential I think for what’s possible. But we’ll always be stuck in a glutted market of more great work than can be published.

guys: as exciting as all this is, and as interested as i am in making my own multi-media stories, the question that i really need an answer on is – where are you selling this stuff? who are the clients who are speaking to photographers about their multimedia portfolios? each day i am told that i need new skills, new hardware, new software, and even multi-tasking capabilities that allow me to photograph, record, and videotape on the field and then edit, cut, produce, design, publish on the web. but where are people selling this stuff? please let me know because i really need to find these markets myself for my work for otherwise i feel that i am doing more and more for a market that is yet not there. any advice would be appreciated. thanks. asim

John, been meaning to tell you how much I like your story and I was glad to see that you made a contribution to the MinM collection. Great stuff. I am doing one initial slideshow using the same method you just mentioned. However, I have another one that is much more ambitious and will be created in Final Cut. One of the reasons I am opting for that is that I want to create something with a very high level of quality so it can be projected onto a big screen in a theatre. Has anyone considered the possibility that these things could eventually be sold to movie houses as the “short” before the main film?

Scott, I tried the jpg thing. It was even worse. I am sure I am doing something wrong but for the life of me I cannot figure it out. Anyway, for the moment I got it to work using Arial Regular with Centered Title, and the rhythm with the soundtrack works quite nicely. Still, I am going to need to work with blocks of text if I am to develop these things in the direction that I foresee, and iMovie aint cutting it. Could you maybe give me some clues on how to make the jpg frame? I must be missing a step. Using unsharp mask is a good idea: i am going to try that now. Thanks.

Asim, we should take that issue up on the other thread, about pricing. Briefly, I can see three outlets: one, commercial. It seems that several LS members are selling these things already to clients who want to develop their web presence. We need to know more about how to charge. Two, news outlets like Time.com, who are using these to tell their stories. Kosuke maybe can tell us how he managed to sell them his story on Colombian drug workers and how much they paid (roughly). Three, self promotion: ok, this may not make you money directly, but I think that having these things out there on an agency’s website, for example, will create an audience for them and for your work subsequently. The piece I am working on right now is not intended for sale, exactly, but just to put on the Anarchy site to keep a buzz going.

A little late, but yes, Magnum In Motion uses all the above mentioned tools extensively. And in addition a special Content Management System that was developed especially to the needs of Magnum In Motion.
The Soundslides tutorial I wrote a couple of weeks ago was meant to just give a helping hand to all of us who do not have a big multimedia production team behind us as Magnum In Motion or MediaStorm do.

Back to creating these things. The problem I mentioned with regard to the fonts in iMovie is called Font Rasterization

Anyone have a clue how to deal with this in iMovie. Jason Gardner is here with me right now and he says it is probably not possible—but maybe there is a way to set up the JPG text file for better rasterization?

I teach PJ and doc photo at a school with all 5 of the programs first mentioned- soundslides, iphoto, imovie, garageband and fincal cut pro. Our doc film department uses Final Cut Pro of course; its a great program, but I think maybe more than alot of PJS out there would want to buy, learn & mess with. Its certainly more than I need and I have free access to it already. Id say photogs should focus on the photography & storytelling and use a simpler program in general, of course with specific needs perhaps being more geared to an advanced program final cut pro. Since the work is really focusing on still photography souped up, as it were, I still like soundslides for ease and quality (and hey its $40- you cant beat that), with garageband or something similar for sound mastering & creating multi tracks. IMovie is great, easy to learn, etc. and nice for more complicated projects. Ive done a doc on veterans consisting of both video clips & stills on iMovie, with multiple tracks, and it worked great- but as always with video editing, took absolutely loads and loads of time, hours and hours, to finish & polish a short documentary.
for some great examples of what you can do with soundslides, try

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-7899-8616-8619

not everything on there was made with soundslides, but once you view the typical show, you can tell instantly if another show was made with the program.
Again as noted the soundslides trouble is that it cant be easily dropped into iWeb or onto a mac.com page (at least for some of us thats a pain, and you have to rewrite code to make it work). I know there is an add on program for sale out there that supposedly will allow you to easily drop flash files onto a webpage, but I havent tried it.
Ive been very impressed with alot of the multimedia work out there, and Id defintely say that more complex transitions, etc isnt necessarily better- the best ones are, as always in this business of ours, driven by amazing images and storytelling, and enhanced with music, vocals, etc.

the answers to almost all your technical questions:
http://www.lynda.com

$250 a year for access to their entire library of online video quicktime tutorials.
that’s less than the cost of one 3 hour class at most US universities.

almost every major software title is represented.

check out their sample tutorials for a better idea of the educational gem that is lynda.com.

i would suggest you get final cut pro studio (adobe premier pro if you have a pc), adobe cs2 web bundle (or hold out for cs3), an intel mac, and any 3ccd video camera you can afford.

if you’re on a budget, i would suggest final cut express (adobe premier elements for a pc), adobe photoshop elements, and an oem version flash 7 or higher, and any digital camera that can shoot VGA resolution or better video.

you can download free 1 month trials of almost any adobe product from their website to help you better choose what software titles are right for you.

ilife is good for casual work, but i wouldn’t suggest it for any professional applications.

logic 7 express and logic 7 pro are,i think, better than pro tools if you’re more concerned with sound. i think soundtrack pro which comes with final cut studio is better than pro tools, audacity, and garageband, and integrates seamlessly with final cut.

apple and adobe offer amazing discounts on many of their software titles if you are a student or educational professional.

in one year for $250 you can learn more software on lynda.com than you can learn in 4 years at most any university (if you apply yourself). their video tutorials are great for dyslexics and visual thinkers.

hope this helps

go forth and conquer