Martin Curtis
Forum Replies Created
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[Mark Suszko] “You Juice up the SCRIPT, i.e. the CONTENT, first.
“Content is king. Making a movie, or doing a presentation, the words matter.
One of my jobs is to record PPT presentations. I record audio and slides, compress to MP4 and put them on the intranet. I hate it because no-one watches this stuff because the material is dull. The only reason an audience sits through it is because they have to – it would be obvious if they left. Online … people drift away.
If people take the time to ask me about using a recorded presentation as an educational tool, I say “don’t”. I say “write it specifically for an online audience, only make it as long as it has to be (too many presenters have a time slot to fill) and we’ll do this in the studio”. A little better, but so many do’t have the time or patience to do it right.
My wife used to create online education packages. A rule of thumb is that only 25% of the material is didactic. Think about that. One-quarter. The rest is interactive: mini quizzes, online discussions, surveys etc. It’s the only way to engage an audience and actually have people sit through education to the extent that they learn something and can pass an exam to prove it. The flipside of this is that it is horrendously expensive to produce material like this. Qualified educators, programmers, artists, hosting etc. Especially educators. Just because someone knows a subject doesn’t mean they have a clue how to teach it. People who think putting a PPT online is high tech would never pay the kind of money that real online education costs to make.
I just read this back and it sounds like a downer. Start with “content is king” and work from there. Keep it short, sharp and to the point. Use movement to direct attention, and images to illustrate a point. Except for the Lord Privy Seal.
And hire an actor. They can look more like a professional that the professionals you’re educating. Usually sound better too.
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[Jeff Pulera] “it seems you are keying the original footage in iMovie”
iMovie automatically transcodes to Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC), a lossy, MPEG4-based, 8bit, 4:2:0 intraframe codec. Both iMovie and Final Cut Express only work with AIC or DV.
For all that, it looks like iMovie has done a remarkable job pulling a key. I hope that makes it into the new Final Cut Pro (never thought I’d be saying that).
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[David Roth Weiss] “use your imagination to take the best from things and consider how you might make them better.
“Thanks for that, David. A timely reminder for me to pause, ponder and then act.
“There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” -
[Mark Suszko] “DIN plugs probably have a standard pattern for where everything goes, power to which pins, etc. Thqt’s the point of having standardized plugs in the first place. “
You know what I love about standards? There are so many to choose from 🙂
Personally I wouldn’t expect any sort of standard wiring arrangement with yum-cha brand electronic equipment that’s not meant to plug into anything except what it came with. If it was me, I’d be searching Google for “(insert brand here) schematic diagram”.
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[walter biscardi] “Processors are all Intel i5.
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There is an i7 option.If you take a look at how Apple has segmented the options, you can only specify the 3.4GHz i7 if you originally select the top of the line (with 1GB Radeon 6970M GPU) 3.1 GHz i5, and it is a A$240 option. You can’t select the i7 if you originally choose the “low end” (with 512 MB Radeon 6770M) 2.7 GHz, but a bit of maths reveals that going from a 2.7 GHz i5 to the 3.4 GHz i7 plus going from a Radeon 6770M to 6970M is worth A$540, or about a quarter of the purchase price. Adding another GB to the 17’s GPU (same model) is a further $120.
I have no idea what all this means, but come Lion’s release, I’ll plead my case to the accountant for the top end model.
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[walter biscardi] “About the only stumbling block is the 16GB RAM limit.”
The iMac can take 32 GB of RAM. Four 8 GB sticks of the appropriate RAM (1333MHz DDR3 SO-DIMM PC10600 204 Pin) will set you back approximately $3000. -
[andy lewis] “It looks to me like the shiny new portable version of CD-ROM and animated GIFs.”
That’s what I thought, too. Looks like my Star Trek Interactive Technical Manual from 1995. What this is, though, is evolutionary: it pulls together all of the elements (text, sound, vision, the ability to bring in fresh info and incorporate it instantly), makes them gloriously touchable and drops them onto the world’s best distribution platform.In some cases, it may be a triumph of style over substance, but critics have been saying that since adjectives were invented.
This is undoubtedly the future, but it’s the future we were promised was ‘just around the corner’ way back in 1992. I’m glad it’s finally here.
[andy lewis] ” I see 12 year olds reading 19th century novels in a second language, so engrossed they don’t notice you’ve walked into the room.”
Are you sure they don’t have a Mad comic shoved inside it? -
It’s a 9 pin DIN plug. S-video uses 4 pin DIN plugs so it’s not one of them.
It looks like something that comes from a DVD system you’d find in a car.
My guess would be that some of those pins carry video, some carry power. Audio’s probably in there too. Composite video, stereo audio and power would account for eight pins.
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[walter biscardi] “About the only stumbling block is the 16GB RAM limit.”
The iMac can take 32 GB of RAM. Four 8 GB sticks of the appropriate RAM (1333MHz DDR3 SO-DIMM PC10600 204 Pin) will set you back approximately $3000. -
[Dan Daube] “What does everybody think about the switch to AMD from Intel??
“AMD supplies the graphics card. The CPUs are still Intel.