This was a nice preservation treat from the NYU Fales Library. We cleaned and transferred several tapes for the stage version of “Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said” by Philip K. Dick, which was adapted by Linda Hartinian and directed by Bill Raymond for the Mabou Mines. All the classic PKD stuff, charming dystopian humor, alternate worlds, and identity crises are portrayed well in the play (which also uses a lot of video installments to move the story along.) Here’s a review by the nytimes from 1988. Pretty interesting for PKD fans.
I was working on this one project here at BAVC which required a final version of the project uploaded to youtube.
Knowing that youtube encodes flash videos of your uploaded movies, I thought that I could go the extra mile and encode a flash movie on my end so they don’t need to do the encoding. I thought that in doing this, I could ensure a higher quality of uploaded video, and viewed this as a sort of 1 to 1 transfer. The final video was 6:57 in length and about 55 Megabytes in size (well under the 100MB maximum). I used Episode Pro for the encoding from Quicktime .MOV to .FLV, and then uploaded 55 MBs onto the youtube server. After checking the video I noticed that it’s quality had decreased considerably. I then checked the file size of the streaming video via Safari’s Activities Window, and noticed that the file size is now 16MBs and there must have been some loss.
I actually had better luck on maintaining good quality by uploading a high quality (ipod sized 320×240 h.264) QT and letting them do the flv encode. Hope this helps.
I learned how to splice super 8 film when I was a kid. In college, I learned how to edit video with an edit controller and a pair of U-Matic decks. I’m glad I never had to work with 2 inch Quad video (we have a dusty old Quad deck in our basement, if anyone wants to make an offer).
Today, many editors are starting off with Final Cut Pro, digitizing DV tape over firewire. With the advent of formats like IMX and P2, editors are soon going to skip tape altogether.
Many of us are used to thinking about hard drives as something you buy once in a while to edit on, something to be reused after the current project is over. Now that we are starting to embark on shooting in tapeless acquisition formats, we need to think of hard drives as the new tape. Now when you start a project, you must budget in the cost of hard drives as your permanent storage. As it turns out, it is cheaper to do this than to buy traditional video tape. For every “tape” you should have a backup “tape”. (more…)
by Sage Mandzik, Innovation and Media Arts Manager
So I, like many other dorks (I mean technology enthusiasts) was eagerly anticipating the release of the iPhone. I was resolved to wait a bit before purchasing one - I wanted to read the reviews, test one out at the store, wait for apps to be released, etc. However, Sunday morning I was at the Temescal Farmer’s Market and a lady is walking around “taking pictures” with this shiny little device. She was basically brandishing her new iPhone, waiting for someone to rush up and gush over it.
Back in 2002, Steven Speilberg released Minority Report which featured Tom Cruise as a near future detective that can see people’s crimes before they’re committed. One of the more memorable scenes from the film shows Cruise’s character accessing a database that gathers information on the pre-offenders. His character stood in front of a holographic screen and interfaced with the CPU and information by putting on a glove aka “air mouse” and waving his hands around to search the information.(more…)
Well, I am running the last tape from the Kitchen order. As always there is some pretty neato content. Like the rapper Fab Five Freddy, with the Rock Steady Crew on the Dance floor. Also notable was Annie Sprinkle’s Post-Porn Modernist Show. All in all a funny and thoughtful experience.
