The CMDB will be a collection of micromovies of real-time drawing sessions done on the groupdraw page (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)

b.      real-time drawboard action

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 a few them. For general purpose I use XVID because it produces small, good looking files. Almost as sharp as uncompressed video footage but only a fraction of the file size. The other codec you will want to use primarily is the camstudio lossless codec. It records essentially the same as uncompressed at a much reduced file size. The one weakness is that in order to use this format with some video editing software you may have to create an intermediate type of file in order for it to work properly. Two main choices there are to just use the program called Virtual Dub to convert the file to uncompressed. Or to save some storage space you could instead convert to a format called MJPEG, a version of which is available from Pegasus Video for about $30. (tutorial on some of this stuff).

 

The reason to use other codecs are I suspect mainly just artistic. Some of them have different looks in terms of creating imperfect edges and other quirky aspects to their look. These could be seen as bad or good depending on your aesthetic and what you're trying to achieve. Just play around with the different codecs and see what you think.

 

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.

 

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