The CMDB will be a collection of micromovies of real-time
drawing sessions (or puppet shows). It
will be really cool. And you can participate. To do that, here’s what needs to
happen:
1)
Go to download.com and install one of these little
screen recording programs. I use CamStudio
by Nick Smith because it’s free and works great. It’s quite nimble without
compromising on versatility. It’s for PC, but you can probably find a good one
for MAC.
2)
Use the recorder to
capture
a.
your own micro puppet
shows (watch
video tutorial)
c.
playback on refreshing
or reloading saved groupdraw files
i.
When recording
drawings made simultaneously by multiple people, you may want to use one of the
“no names” pages I set up, which don’t show the name by each drawstroke. This
setting causes the drawing files to load much faster than the ones with the
names, which can be important if you’re trying to record the redraw, or
interact with it as it redraws. Ask me what the hell I’m talking about if you
don’t know.
More
on Using Screen Recorders
Compression Formats or Codecs
There are
many different compression formats you can use but I generally use only 3 of
them. For general purpose I use XVID because it produces the smallest,
best-looking files. It looks exactly like the screen looks and is about as good
looking as uncompressed video footage but only a fraction of the file size. The
Microsoft MS1 codec only handles up to 256 colors, but if you’re recording
groupdraw images, there are two reasons you might want to use MS1. It is
readily able to be edited in programs like Adobe Premiere Pro. Also XVID
captures of groupdraw have a peculiar subtle shadowing on edges, which gives a
very interesting depth to the image. MS1 does not do this, but looks identical
to the way it looks on the original screen. If you want to edit an XVID file,
you can use a free program called Virtual
Dub (watch
video tutorial). However, if you want to edit the files using Premiere Pro,
you have to convert XVID into something PPro likes such as uncompressed or DV
or MJPEG. On my system, I prefer PICVideo MJPEG by
Pegasus ($30). It basically is like converting to uncompressed in quality
but far reduced file-sizes. You can use Virtual Dub to convert your files from
XVID to MJPEG in order to edit in PPro. Then save as uncompressed from PPro and
use Virtual Dub again to convert back into XVID. You could also use another
program to convert those XVID files into Quicktime MOVs. I’m told a free
program called Super does this well, but I get better results on my system
using a free program called Cinema Forge, again
to convert XVID to QT.
Adding Sound to Your Video
You can
put sound to your movies in either of two ways. Some of the recording programs
let you record whatever sound is heard on your computer in synch with the
screen view. This way you could, for example, play a song using I-tunes and
draw something, and that would be your music video. Cool. You might find it
better to do sound in post-production. There are plenty of free video editing
programs on download.com as well (search
with this link). Virtual Dub is limited but does allow basic functions like
adding sound and splicing and merging clips together. Or you can also use
commercial products like Adobe PPro and Final Cut Pro for Mac.
3)
Give your movie a cool name (crucial step).
4)
Upload your movie to the site using the little
form below (see bottom of page).
5)
Let me know you did it.