Software by another name
Techspansion closed down recently and with closed down and with that ceased sales of Visual Hub, the best video conversion tool around. But I am excited to hear that it will be reborn as a SourceForge application. The new name will be TranscoderRedux and can be found on SourceForge but currently it is limited to developers. But we can hope for an application release soon.
Wordpress App
This site is built on WordPress blog software, not because I could not build this site myself because I have created many other websites. But why should I spend the energy when I have so many other responsibilities. Using the software has proven interesting as I am not accustom to working with other people code for anything other than learning and adapting to my own will. But it has been an adventure implementing a software of another’s design. I have found excitement with the amount of plugins that offer great extensibility to my new website.
One of these was a plugin that offered an iPhone interface for the WordPress administration functions. While I thought this might be useful and it was well produced, it seemed a bit limiting. When the Apple App Store opened I was forlorn to discover that a TypePad application is available for the iPhone. Well that was just turned around when I discovered that a iPhone application for WordPress is under development. And it appears to be very feature rich, see the video below and/or check out the WordPress blog.
The Blendtec Adventures
The iPhone is very useful you can manage email, calendar, photos, media, and surf the web. I must admit that it is in my hand quite a bit. (Did I mention I am a self diagnosed technology-addict? Should I seek help?) But as useful as this device may be I must admit that using the iPhone for a marketing tools is a great idea. Capitalizing on the all the press and the excitement works out out to be cheap advertising. Blendtec produces high end blenders that seem to handle just about anything. Based on the videos, I would consider getting one. (that means the marketing is working) People were astounded when that first iPhone was released that Blendtec created a video that converted the device into black powder. Well it has been 48 hours since that new iPhone 3G was released and version two of the video is now available.
The 3G iPhone blended.
This train wreck fascination that is leveraging new media is one companies way of marketing out side the box. Creative ways of leveraging new media and meeting the active consumer is something that other companies need to embrace. As television and print media fade away (yeah I said it) the companies that succeed in the future are the ones that will have established themselves in this next generation of marketing mindset. Only time will tell, who will survive.
Hootenanny
Last week, I was working on what I thought was a simple project but projects always have some challenges. The project was a simple edit of about two hours of video that included lecture and demonstration interviews. So I thought I would try out the new iMovie to do a quick edit and export to iDVD for the final product. The editing went fairly smooth once some time was spent digesting the new interface. Now an export to iDVD to build the menu and burn the DVD. But I realized that I needed to include some chapters in the project so that three interviews at the end of the program could be located easily. Well, iDVD will only do time based chapters in equal increments and that wouldn’t work at all. But if the video has chapters embedded in it then iDVD will automatically add the chapter menus to the video. After some review, there was no sign of this function in iMovie but that was OK because QuickTime Pro can add chapters marker to video.
To create the chapters you just need a carefully formatted text file that contains the chapter timings which is then imported into QT and converted to a movie. This text only movie is then overlaid onto the video project, then magically you have a movie with navigational chapters. Now all that is needed is to import the video back into iDVD, but alas once there it is still missing the chapters. iDVD does not respect QT chapters. Now the frustration sets in and results in a trip to the Internet for some help from my anonymous support system.
After a not so quick search, I came across a little utility named Metadata Hootenanny that could solve my issue. I could have created the chapters in this application easier than the text file method but they were already done. So, all that was required as a quick save and and reimport into iDVD. Once imported the chapter menu appeared just as I had expected earlier in this process. Render and burn, I was done. This is a great little utility and worth checking out for anyone that works with QuickTime, plus it has a interesting logo.
