AJA Free Utilities
www.aja.com/products/software
AJA makes professional video ingest and playout cards and boxes, and adapter hardware. Among software which directly supports their cards, they offer two free mini-tools to assess your system bandwidth responsiveness and to plan for media storage requirements.
The AJA DataRate Calculator (Mac or Windows) is a handy storage calculator which allows you to plug in your desired compression, frame size and rate, audio specs and duration to give you a storage space requirement.
I find myself using Digital Heaven’s (also free) VideoSpace widget for the Mac Dashboard, and available to PC users online, but comparing results from the two I noticed a full 100 MB disparity, so in fairness I investigated with Digital Heaven’s CEO Martin Baker:
“I believe AJA’s figures are wrong.
“Right now VideoSpace uses the old 1024-bytes=1KB calculation (which will give a smaller number) but we will probably switch it over to 1000-bytes=1 KB when Lion (Mac OSX 10.7) gets released, or perhaps be super clever and try to detect what OS is running.
“AJA’s calculator allows you to choose the byte count in its preferences and if you switch to “Binary Bytes” you’ll get closer to VideoSpace.”
Thank you, Martin. (www.digital-heaven.co.uk/)
The utility gives you a choice of how bits are measured, by powers of two, or powers of ten. The AJA default is powers of ten (“Decimal Bytes”) which yields a larger figure for storage space. AJA adds a note below the choice buttons explaining the discrepancy.
The AJA System Test allows you to select one of six disk drive tests to read or write data to your storage disk or RAID array, and to choose a file size for the test. File size turns out to be important because the utility doesn’t test sustained disk bandwidth but rather peak performance. But by choosing a large file size— up to 16 GB – you get a very good estimate of sustained performance from the average result, which you can display as text or graph over time.
Flip4Mac®
For Intel or PowerPC G4 Macs and up.
Telestream
www.telestream.net
Products range from US $29.00 to $179.00
Sturdy little Flip4Mac® has grown in stature over the years, as more and more filmmakers deal with Windows Media on Macintosh systems. Flip4Mac is a series of playback enablers, import and export components for QuickTime on Macs. These are very handy when an editor needs to convert footage from proprietary Windows Media formats to Mac QuickTime formats. On the Microsoft website it’s the only product recommended for Macs.
The Flip4Mac components are also the foundation of four handy WMV Player products, creating a tier of increasingly powerful capabilities, from simple import and play (a free download), to import and file conversion export, to high definition import/export (WMV Studio Pro HD, for $179), any of which can be tried for free during which time files will be watermarked and limited in export length.
There’s a Flip4Mac product for everybody and most every need. Two charts on the Telestream’s Flip4Mac web page, under the Features and Specifications tab, reveal just how capable these products really are. Check out the various supported import and export codecs.
The Flip4Mac components are also used in your Safari browser to play .wma or .wmv Windows Media files.
A fundamental media link between the two major platforms.
Cool tools all!
Voiceovers: Make Money With
Your Voice
Terri Apple
Michael Wiese Productions (2011), $26.95
www.mwp.com
Friends, roaming filmmakers, lend me your ears. Here lies the art, science and business of the voiceover, by a leading actress in the field.
Even the great Orson Welles sat down to do voice work; there’s a famous and very funny MP3 file floating around the internet chronicling one of his sessions for a British food company, but it’s also quite instructive, because his ear was unerring and his criticisms revealing. I miss that voice doing the Paul Masson wine ads. You really believed they’d sell no wine before its time.
Many of the greatest voice artists are screen actors, like Jonathan Winters, armed only with cans of Tab, whose booth time often expands due to wildly divergent takes on current events and characters he’s developed over the years, a free extra for stressed-out producers in need of good laughs. He also does speaking engagements at 40K a shot. And worth every dollar.
Author and actress Terri Apple has done it for thirty years, and they call her the “Queen of Voiceovers.” What she has compiled in print reveals the industry you can’t see.
This is a book for those considering VO work as a career. Terri discusses everything from voice technique, stereotype characters, pressing your demo reel, to handling casting sessions, both physical and online. She supplies lists of coaching workshops, talent agents and a slew of Los Angeles-based recording studios. (We have plenty in the Northeast as well as great voices heard nationally, like John and Helen Lisanti, Will Lyman and several other major talents.)
Here you learn VO work takes great acting chops – secondary to your great voice and ability to read copy. You also get the entire range of voice employment, wisdom about unions, good detail about administrivia in voice employment, and good copy samples to exercise. Voiceovers includes short interviews with practicing casting directors and talent.
I’m giving a shout out to Voiceovers!
Loren S. Miller provides excellent scratch narration and has performed some professional gigs, which developed from his primary skillset in longform documentary and dramatic editing and post. He also teaches graduate level editing. Reach him anytime at techpress@mindspring.com.