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Thursday, July 30, 2009 - 9:00 AM - Tampa Indie Film Log for Filmmaker C. A. Passinault
We Are The Watchers... And The Doers.
God, that sounds creepy... if not a bit psycho. At any rate, it fits, because I'm going to share some secrets here, and the title will make sense in a moment. On my Tampa DJ Blog, I disclosed some audio software that I was using in the studio. Here, I will write about video software that I've been using, and, like my audio software, it's not only free, but some of the best software out there!
A few months ago, I was on the phone talking with my friend, actress and model Harmony Oswald / Layne (the lead in The Quiet Place). Harmony had moved to Pennsylvania for her career, and we keep in touch. At any rate, she was telling me that she did a Tampa indie film, and that she was having a hard time viewing the video files that they filmmaker had sent to her. I smiled. I had just the thing for her. I went into my hard drive and found a cool video viewing program. I attached it to an email and sent it to her. In seconds, she had the program, and was able to watch the file while we talked on the phone. "Wow!" she exclaimed, "That's cool! Thank you so much! I've tried everything to see the film, and this is the only program that worked!". Of course, she sent me the video file, too, and I watched it. It was a decent indie film, and her acting was great.
What did I send her? The VLC Media Player, a free software program which, in my opinion, is better than the Windows Media Player. It plays just about any media file, including audio files. I use it for most of my media files.
Earlier this year, in preparation for making my first indie films, I began to experiment with some rather remarkable DV cameras. I bought a Canon FS100, and later, a Canon FS200, which for all purposes is pretty much the same camera, just packaged differently, with different accessories. The FS100 is an awesome little camera, and it shoots high quality video (as I demonstrated on my Youtube channel). It also has an external microphone jack, and manual focus and exposure controls, which means that you CAN use these cameras to shoot indie films (although the FS100 and 200 are standard definition, DVD quality cameras which shoot at 480p and at 30 FPS)! The catch, however, was that the camera wrote files in a proprietary Canon format, the .MOD video file, and that many video editing programs couldn't deal with it. Before buying the camera, I did some research, and discovered a cool video file conversion program called SD Copy. With the cameras in hand, I used SD Copy to covert the .MOD files to MPEG files, and never had a problem editing the files with Adobe Premier.
For the convenience of my readers, I am making these two programs available here for download, and they are free. Please, note, however, that I do not accept liability, or responsibility for damages, arising from the use of these programs. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK! I DO NOT OFFER ANY GUARANTEES OR WARRANTIES COVERING THE USE OF THESE PROGRAMS, or any programs downloaded from any of my sites. Please read and follow all instructions, and read the disclaimers. Although these programs checked out clean on my systems, and work great for me, they may not work that well for you (I use Windows XP, by the way). These programs passed my virus scams, too, but I recommend that you do a virus scan with a good anti-virus program on any downloads, regardless of the source, before you open or use the files. IF YOU MESS UP YOUR COMPUTER WITH THE USE OF THESE PROGRAMS, YOU ASSUME ALL RISKS AND LIABILITY. This said, I would never knowingly offer or distribute any downloads which would be harmful in any way. Also, these programs are freeware, distributed under the terms of a GNU General Public License. They are not commercial programs, are not for sale, and may not be sold.
Alrighty. These downloads are for me, too, in case I need to access them from another computer. Here they are:
VLC Media Player - Excellent free program for viewing MPEG and media files.
SD Copy 199beta - Media and MPEG conversion program. Free! Converts several media file types, including Canon .MOD files. A must-have if you own a Canon FS100 / 200 (and most serious video makers should, as it is a great DV camera!).
These programs are cool, and I find them useful. Oh, and going back to those Canon FS cameras, I returned them because I wanted to obtain the HD version later. The HD version is a 1080P camera which shoots 24p as well as 30p. Both the standard resolution FS100 and the HF100 (the HD version that I will be getting soon) can shoot 16:9 true widescreen, too, and the SD Copy program is important for preserving these ratios and settings when converting to MPEG. I may get another FS100/ 200 in the future for use as a personal camera, too. I loved those cameras! It's just that I needed an HD model for my serious indie films. I'll be investing in a Canon HF100/ 200 in November to build my indie film portfolio, and then I'll buy a higher-end HD camera sometime further in the future.
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UPDATED 04/09/10
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