What's New?
PapaJohn's Blog about this website and other items...
This page is about the more significant recent changes to the site, comments about what I'm currently working on that will effect it in the future, and anything else that might be of interest to users of Windows Movie Maker, Photo Story and Expression Media. The info is for a rolling one year period.
PapaJohn's Products and Services
Although this site is in English and I live in the Kalamazoo, Michigan (USA) area... over 40% of the visitors are in other countries. Since August 9, 2008 the site's highest traffic ranking was in...
Singapore followed by Philippines and Malaysia
Just a note to say hello to everyone there.
What's New and Where's the Website Going?
What's New? August 8, 2008
Here's a sample clip showing the basic painting and drawing options of the MSU Cartoonizer filter for VirtualDub.
... and a link to get the Cartoonizer
August 3, 2008
The first draft of the table of contents to newsletters and articles is complete... fine tuning will go on forever. I hope it helps some readers.
August 1, 2008
... 43 of the newsletter links have been added to the new table of contents, mixed with the articles at Bright Hub... only another 150 newsletters to go before the project is completed.
I'll be keeping this rolling 12 month list up to date and limiting the 'what's new' items on the main page to the more significant items.
July 30, 2008
With about 200 newsletters and 50 Bright Hub articles online, it's time for a table of contents page with links to them all, sorted by topics. It'll be about a week in development.
The Bright Hub articles are there and I'm starting to fold in the newsletter links now.
July 28, 2008
Route Generator is an easy to use and effective tool to annotate a map. Here's a sample clip using their Airplane. The graphics that come with it can be replaced with your own. Use the generated clip in your Movie Maker project.
July 20, 2008
I just finished a tutorial showing the steps used to make this clip of the Detroit skyline with the new Pixelan Pan/Zoom Wizard for Movie Maker... click the picture to view it.
The tutorial is online at Bright Hub
Test clips made with the Pixelan wizard are at this Test Clips... channel of vimeo. You can view the flash files made by vimeo or download my original wmv files.
July 11, 2008
In a new article at Bright Hub... Let's Go Camcorder Shopping Virtually... I browse the Summer B&H Catalog with you.
July 8, 2008
One of my projects over the last week was to get a Photo Story 3 project onto a widescreen DVD playing on a stand-alone DVD player at a wedding rehearsal dinner party. The quality of the story was high and the project was an enjoyable challenge, and a learning experience on a few counts.
DVD Maker was fussy about disc manufacturers and burning speeds. It's an HP computer that preferred Verbatim discs to HP ones. The widescreen DVDs played fine on computers but my el-cheapo DVD player hooked up to a standard TV chopped off the right and left of the video to display it at a cropped full height but not distorted. The video played first rather than the menu, and looped continuously, per the project option settings.
MyDVD made DVDs that played well on both computers and my DVD/TV setup, appropriately letter-boxing the video to show it widescreen. But it had no options to start with the video and repeat continuously.
The project finished ahead of schedule and looking great. For my part in the project, there's a new entry on my testimonials page. Now I'm waiting feedback about which of the two discs Jerry ended up using.
June 30, 2008
A forum post pointed to a utility that can convert MOV files to AVI. There are few choices for such conversions so I downloaded a copy and checked the...
Pazera Free MOV to AVI Converter 1.0
Testing on XP and Vista systems shows it's a 'keeper' for my software toolbox. I added a link to the Import Movie Source Files > Video > MOV page.
June 26, 2008
I decided to limit my Bright Hub activities to writing articles, not doing everything needed to run the video channel. Todd Eastman will be doing that.
For me it'll mean more time to learn and write about what I enjoy, such as Microsoft's new Expression Encoder 2 and Pixelan's SpiceFX 4 wizards for Movie Maker.
For you it'll mean more to read.
June 23, 2008
This weekend was the 2nd Civil War Reenactment at the Portage, Michigan Celery Flats.
I took more video this year than last, with almost 4 hours of footage.
I started a new album on the vimeo video host service for my videos with a Civil War theme. The first clip from the weekend is there, short 1-1/2 minute one of a small town parade. The album has the video from last year's event, and a couple other items.
The link to the album will stay fixed as
If you want to pass a link around, this is the one to use for the album... http://www.vimeo.com/album/18912
Newly added videos will automatically be included in the album. Check it often over the next couple weeks to see what's new. If you don't see the link to the album here, check the 'What's New' page where it'll be for a year as it moves from the top to the bottom.
June 17, 2008
Expression Encoder 2 continues to function as a free Express version after the free trial period ends...
In a series of 6 Bright Hub articles I explore the Express Version of Expression Encoder 2 and how to use it as a simple file conversion utility.
Part 2 - Express versus Full Version
Part 6 - Conversion Basics - using the Express Version
These are the kinds of articles that would have been newsletters if I was still issuing them. They bring my tally current articles at Bright Hub up to about 50.
Look for Bright Hub links as you explore the pages of this website. The Setup Movie Maker > Other Software page has 8 of them.
June 12, 2008
Click this image of the Bridge Door to see a 30 second test video made with 3 of their clips. Neat stuff that fits in perfectly to the never ending quest for quality material at reasonable prices.... including 'free'.
StormCel Animation .... "StormCel Animation provides science fiction video footage for you to use in your movie masterpiece. Each volume contains dozens of short clips designed to be mixed together by you, the movie maker, to support the story you are telling. Each collection contains external footage, as well as internal shots that can be used for virtual sets with chroma keying (blue screen).
Video clips and images are provided at 740x480 resolution. Video is encoded in Windows WMV format with minimal compression to maintain highest quality. Images are stored in Windows bitmap format (BMP), also with minimal compression for maximum quality."
June 10, 2008
Over the 3 months since the last newsletter was issued, I've been converting all 193 issues (almost 4 years of weeklies) from email files to web pages.
They're all here now. I just started fixing any broken links and uploading issue-specific content. I'm doing it sort of randomly, so if there's a link you would like to see fixed before I get to it, please send a note.
When I started the newsletters I was working with a small amount of server space and had to remove older content to make room for new. Today I have more than enough storage space for everything I produced in the past and for years to come.
June 8, 2008
One of my books is 'Magic Eye, A New Way of Looking at the World' by Andrews and McMeel. When you stare at any of its 30 pages of images, your eyes and brain perceive 3D images on the page.
I was curious about the 3D perception making it from a page of the book to an online video in flash format... and it did!!! The 3D effect stays easily visible through the entire video clip.
Stare at this image until the earth (Western Hemisphere) pops out. Then click it see the flash file at vimeo that was converted from my uploaded Photo Story. To help you see it, I annotated the picture with a red line from the eastern tip of Brazil to my home in Michigan.
If you can't see it here, try the video playing full screen. That's easier to see.
To add another dimension to your videos, here's the link to contact Magic Eye
© 1991-2008 Magic Eye Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used With Permission
June 8, 2008
The new release is now public and I can talk openly about the samples I've been showing lately at vimeo. I made them using Pixelan's SpiceFX 4.0 for Movie Maker released today. Pixelan said "... It offers some unprecedented new flexibility for MM users, and has been in development for over a year...."
I'd been testing it for the past 2 weeks and find it more than supports the claim. There are 2 new packs that run on Vista's MM6 only, but most of the features run on MM2.1 in XP also.
14 add-on packs of Video Effects and Transitions install 676 items in Movie Maker's collections... the new DepthFX and PageFX packs run only on Vista.
If that's not enough, the PanZoom Maker in the v3 packs has been considerably expanded to be the Wizards 4.0 utility that lets you make, among other things, custom Picture-in-Picture and 'TranJelly' transitions. Produce custom effects and transitions on the sideline, selecting from over 57 million choices of settings, and send them to Movie Maker when ready.
Being an avid Photo Story 3 user, I got carried away with the Wizard's PanZoom PRO effects. With it Movie Maker can effectively use pictures with dimensions much too large for Photo Story 3's 7,200 pixel limit, providing visual quality from Movie Maker that's on a par with Photo Story, and doing things that PS3 doesn't support such as widescreen mode and keyframing with variable speed motion settings. There in this little wizard I found myself doing pans and zooms I couldn't with Photo Story... see the samples at vimeo.
Click this image to go to Pixelan's website.
May 28, 2008
I'll leave this same link up for a couple more days as the test files currently at that channel were made using a new item in my video editing software toolbox. The tool does a number of things, one of which is to take high quality still pictures and make the kind of pans/zooms we're so used to going to Photo Story 3 to get.
The tool is new... I didn't develop it, but have been testing it for a week now, before release... under an NDA agreement that's all I can say for now. Enjoy the samples to see what can be done, using MM2 or 2.1 in XP or MM6 in Vista.
Photo Story doesn't natively support widescreen, but this tool does. I'll be writing an article about it as soon as it's released.... soon!!
May 24, 2008
I have lots of sample files on my website and at YouTube, and it's time to put some on vimeo, which takes High Def sized movies and stories and converts them to equally high quality Flash files.
This image is a link to a new channel for my test files at vimeo. Don't look for entertainment or creativity... just visual and audio test results.
In the PhotoStoryMagic channel at vimeo, I and others have been studying the use of high quality still pictures with motion settings. The first two test files on this channel are a couple more study pieces.
5/21/08 - My video contest entry didn't make it to the leader-board yesterday for the public voting phase. There were about 180 entries, of which 25 were selected for the run-off.
There are random-drawing prizes for those who vote. Maybe you'll win.
Moving on to other things, like all the high school graduation open house parties that now want to have videos instead of photo albums or slide shows.... how to do them? Photo Story and Movie Maker show themselves best.
5/19/08 - Today is May 19th, the scheduled start of the voting for the top video in the 'Share Your Passion' contest.
An extract from the contest rules said... "... Come back on May 19th, 2008, to see if you're in the top 25. If you are, then invite your friends to vote!...." This is your invitation... click the picture to go to my entry.
About my entry: it's about my passion for video, using a few clips from our April vacation in Carmel, California. The frame snapshot shows a Movie Maker transition going from mom and pup seals in the water at Point Lobos to a clip of the bird sanctuary at the mouth of the Carmel river.
5/17/08 - I put a notice up on my Facebook party group today about moving on to the new video channel at Brigh Hub. I'll turn off the lights and close the door at Facebook on June 1st. The Bright Hub channel is moving along.It's sort of online and open to the public now.
Adding new pages to this site for the historical newsletters is also moving along. There are now 130 of the 193 issues here... but with lots of broken links to go back and fix.
5/9/08 - My video channel at Bright Hub is ramping up but not online yet... maybe over the next month. Among other topics, I'll be doing a series of in-dept tutorial articles
about the new Expression Encoder 2 utility, focusing on how to setup and use the Express version, what's left over in features after the full trial version reaches the 30 day point... time to purchase the full version or continue on with the Express.
If I was still doing newsletters, it would be one. Instead, I'll be linking to the Bright Hub articles from my website, and using this intial series to fine tune how I'm mix my site and the BrightHub channel.
5/7/08 - There's a new set of sample styles on the Expression > Encoder Templates page, using the built-in list of choices in the new Expression Encoder 2. I used the 'Express' version with an avs script as the video input and added an animated gif overlay.
5/2/08 - The Expression Encoder 2 Free Trial is available.
When the 30 day trial period expires, the basic features will continue to function as a free Encoder Express.
Expression Encoder 2 runs on XP or Vista.
4/28/08 - the contest submittal deadline just passed... voting on the top 25 selected videos will run from May 19th to June 1st... check back then to see if my entry made it to that level.
What contest? click the image to find out. It'll open to playing my entry, a minute of footage from our recent trip to Carmel, California.
Entering contests such as this is easy and fun. Three music files were provided for background, and the whole project is about a minute in duration. It helps you to pull all your video skills together and see where you stand.
4/25/08 - Here's the first draft of an 8 minute video showing some of the Microsoft personnel and MVPs who volunteered to be on stage at the party at Experience Music in Seattle...
Keith Elder, Lorna Williamson, Jason Bock, Rick Heiges and Kalen Delaney, Jason Tillman, and Eric Legault were those I captured with my camcorder.
... a live band doing the music outdid last year's keroke sessions. Click on the image to view it.
4/18/08 - This week was time well spent at the traditional annual Microsoft MVP Summit in Seattle/Redmond.
4/11/08 - The PapaJohn video channel of Bright Hub will start around May... I'm busy writing short articles for it... drafts to date include ones about 'Celebration Theater CDs', 'Codec Hell', Copyrights and Permissions', 'Flip video', and 'Calibrate Your Expectations'.
4/3/08 - With nothing but positive experiences writing software reviews for Bright Hub, I'm taking another and bigger step with them, this time to produce a channel about digital video for their new website. The site will start to take shape in May.
The channel will go beyond Movie Maker and Photo Story, to everything of interest. Many sites and products are heading toward open and free information, with revenue from growing budgets for online advertising. What's different about Bright Hub is their equitable sharing of revenue with writers and reviewers/editors.
If you'd be interested in working with me, writing short blog-type articles... or editing those written by myself or others... send an email. Many details are still being developed, but I'll fill you in with as much as I know. If you would like to participate, but about something else such as 'desktop publishing', I'll connect you to the person starting it.
The Bright Hub image above is a link to their current website about sofware reviews... which will morph to being about the kinds of information that I enjoy producing. While my website will continue to support users of Movie Maker and Photo Story, the Bright Hub channel will be my outlet for learning about other things and passing along what I learn... it'll be about YouTube, Tivo, Video Flip camcorders, phone videos, iMovie on Macs, anything video and digital.
More important than the video technology in current vogue is YOU. I'll be shaping the channel so the first priority is the people who use it rather than the technology itself. Digital video is all around, touching our daily lives more and more. I'm looking forward to more interactive dialog with you as things develop. Feel free to start today by emailing your ideas... what would you like to read about?
I've had the Google search feature on the site for a long time now, but only on the search page. I'm now pasting it to the top of each page to make it easier to find things here or head off to someplace else.
3/25/08 - I worked backwards to get the remaining newsletters online... the last 11 issues (#183 to 193) are now online with the usual links from the pages that refer to them.
3/24/08 - The latest newsletter #193 is online. It's the first of the published ones to be included in this website. The link is on the Distribute Movies > Free Host Services page.
3/19/08 - The Bright Hub website I've written software reviews for in recent months is changing direction a bit... and some of my routine writing is changing with it. I'll be busy over the next 3 months working on articles about digital video for their site.
3/18/08 - After over 3 years of paid subscription-based newsletters, I'm reverting to producing them as free information... available immediately to everyone.
For me it's about not having to maintain a mailing list or meet self-imposed weekly deadlines. The final emailed issue this Friday will explain it and offer prorated rebates to paid subscribers.
In addition to new ones going online, I'll be dusting off all the older issues, fixing any broken links, updating content, and adding issue-specific files that have been deleted, and having them as website pages.
3/18/08 - A post on the newsgroup today provided the key to using the narration feature of MM6 in Vista to record whatever the computer is playing...
'Out of the Box' the Narration options of MM6 don't include the 'Stereo Mix' that MM2.1 in XP has. But the feature is there to be turned on.
Use the Control Panel > Sound > Recording tab >
Right click on the background and choose "show disabled devices." >
Right click on Wave Out Mix (Stereo Mix) and click enable. It should now work the same way as Wave Out Mix (Stereo Mix) in Windows XP, allowing you to record the sounds your computer plays.
3/12/08 - There's much I like about vimeo video host service. I'm now rounding up all my videos about Europe 301 and putting them on a new channel at vimeo. I've embedded a channel player on the main pages of the Living Projects section... here's a copy of it.
Click once to activate the control... then on the video you want to watch... they are flash files converted from uploaded movies and stories.
3/8/08 - The Setup Movie Maker > Codecs and Compressors page has a new short list of my basic all-purpose codecs and conversion tools that work in XP and Vista. While swimming in codecs this week, I concluded there's no way users will be able to move to Vista without using 3rd party codecs and conversion utilities. The options provided by Vista a too few to handle many to most of the source files being used today. I'll repeat the list here...
Basic Codecs and Conversion Tools for XP or Vista
Here's my shortest list of free items that work well on my XP and Vista computers...
3/4/08 - This week's newsletter will be the 3rd in the series about codecs. I started with the 25 video compression choices that VirtualDub currently provides on my XP laptop, rendered new files for each choice, checked how they played in Windows Media Player, and finished with importing them into MOvie Maker to view them in a collection and use them in an edited project. I'm doing all the checking with XP and Vista Home Basic and Ultimate versions.
Only 3 of the 25 choices made it successfully through each check... Uncompressed, PICVideo M-JPEG, and the Panasonic DV codec. The newsletter will provide the details.
2/26/08 - Adobe Premiere Elements 3 doesn't show the visual of Photo Story 3 stories made from custom profiles that have the option checked to 'allow nonsquare pixel output'... I revised the profiles so none of those for PS3 now have that option checked.
2/20/08 - Here's a vimeo player showing the current contents of the PhotoStoryMagic channel. It has a mix of stories and movies. Use the left and right controls to scroll through the videos, and the center one to play one... go full screen if you wish. Leave it running and it'll play them all in sequence from newest to oldest.
I added it to the top of the Photo Story 3 > Do Amazing Things page.
2/20/08 - After being on 'pause' for a couple months with my Vista Ultimate SP1 test system due to a series of incremental builds that didn't support my onboard Realtek audio, I had no issues installing the final Release for Manufacturing version last night.
A quick check of the files in the Movie Maker corner shows it's the same as already on Vista... version 6.0.6000.16386.
2/16/08 - Another 14 older newsletters went online... links are on the appropriate pages.
I added a section to the bottom of the Setup Movie Maker > Codecs and Compressors page... with links to
Other Useful and Interesting Sites about Codecs
• This page at eXtended Multimedia has a wealth of info about codecs and related tools...
• Zachary Demian Robinson (zachd to many), a "Senior" developer on Windows at Microsoft, maintains this list of broken codecs that will damage your system.
2/13/08 - I moved the section about codecs, codec assessment tools, and compression utilities to it's own page.... Setup Movie Maker > Codecs and Comressors
2/11/08 - Adding to the line of Photo Story 3 templates, there's a new 'checkerboard' one at the bottom of the PS3 > Do Amazing Things page.
2/7/08 -
vimeo is a free hosting service that lets you upload and view higher definition videos, a perfect place for Photo Stories.
JL4Video started a Photo Story Magic channel at vimeo as a gallery for PS3 stories. Discussions about it are at the windowsphotostory.com forum.
2/5/08 - I'm actively updating the Codecs, Encoders and Related Utilities section of the Setup Movie Maker > Other Software page.
2/4/08 - Made a couple Countdown Clock... Photo Story 3 Templates for the Photo Story 3 > Do Amazing Things page.
If you like old fashioned countdown clocks to start a story... here's a couple to get you started. They differ only in the audio. Download the saved story clip or the PS3 project file.
Story Countdown 1 Project File 1
Story Countdown 2 Project File 2
2/3/08 - Newsletter #34 was a special issue a few years ago about how to check and clear your system of adware and spyware. I just updated the Problem Solving > Checklist page to update links for HiJackThis. Here's a copy of the new paragraph.
The steps use Ad-aware and Spybot (newsletter links are still good) followed by HijackThis (current link... HijackThis) and CWShredder. The newsletter suggests emailing the HiJackThis log file to someone who can interpret it.... today it's done in seconds by a great online website HijackThis.de Security.
1/28/08 - This year I'll be focusing on 'codecs'.... those things we don't understand, or understand too little. I'll be writing a series of newsletters that starts by showing the difference between the current compatibility lists on my 2+ year old HP MCE laptop, a 6 month old Vista Home Basic laptop, and an HP desktop system with a clean install of Vista Ultimate. Movie Maker on each is running well.
And I'll be updating website info about codecs as the series goes along.
1/24/08 - The Import Movie Source Files > Video > Video Codecs page was updated to include info about video compression choices on my XP MCE and Vista Home Basic systems... the available choices when saving AVI files using a utility such as VirtualDub. I'll be continuing my routine use of the Panasonic DV codec.
1/20/08 - I was a guest speaker a week ago at the Kalamazoo Area Mathematics and Science Center... to 3 classes of 84 freshmen in the Informational Technology Classes. They are early in a collaborative Movie Maker (XP) class project, a 30 minute video about their school that will air on two cable access TV stations.
None of them were having problems with Movie Maker... and almost none of them were aware of Photo Story 3, the first thing I mention whenever I do a presentation about Movie Maker.
This image is a link to their thank you note... I made it into a Photo Story and added it to the page of testimonials...
1/19/08 - I picked this week's newsletter topic of getting DVD video files from discs into Movie Maker 6 in a Vista Home Basic system before I tried it.
It turned out to be as easy as leaving the VOB files on the disc and ripping them to DV-AVI files using VirtualDub MPEG2... but not without some head-scratching to resolve the Dolby 6 channel audio stream in the DVD I picked.
1/14/08 - Photo Story 3 works the same on XP and Vista. Although Vista offers better memory management for things like saving movies from Movie Maker, Photo Story 3 hasn't been redone to take advantage of the improved memory management. If your PS3 project is too complex to render on XP it'll be the same on Vista.
1/10/08 - My newsletter this week is about Pinnacle's new low-end editing app, the free VideoSpin. I'm running it through its paces on my Vista Home Basic laptop. During the checking someone asked if you can see each frame of a video clip in MM6. Knowing there are issues in XP's MM2.1, I figured I'd do a quick check.
I found that VideoSpin shows each frame but MM6 kind of misses one here and there. It shows you about 98% of the frames... and sometimes shows you the same frame twice, three, even four times in a row.
If you'd like to do some of your own checking, I put a test file on the server and added a download link to the Problem Solving > Video Issues page. Here's the link to a DV-AVI file of 100 frames with each one numbered... from zero to 99.
It's fun to see every other frame on the timeline of MM2.1, then watch the every-other-frames come out as you apply the slowdown, half effect. You can do things like splitting the clip and see which frame made it into which part of the clip.
1/5/08 - My subscription to the mydeo hosting service expired. Any links to videos there no longer work. I just changed the set of 20 DVD Maker style samples to use those on YouTube.
Newsletter #183 was about some website remodeling... click the image to read it.
1/1/08 - Last week's newsletter about Vegas Movie Studio had me looking to see where I would best put the link to it in the website. One thought led to another, and I decided to combine the CD and DVD making sections and have it include other video editing apps. The suites tend to have lots of features.
That left me with a combined branch of the website.... what was the CD and DVD Making branches is now the 'Other Editors and Making Discs...' branch.
There's a new page for the Vegas suite, and some work to do to finish consolidating the other pages in the newly combined section.
12/30/07 - Started changing the Setup Movie Maker section... to integrate things for XP and Vista.
12/30/07 - About 5 years ago I had downloaded some video texture loops from Main Concept, which played fine on my XP systems... but don't work in Vista. The Intel Indeo codec was in the first release of XP but when ownership of the codec changed, it wasn't included in SP1 or SP2. Like me, you might still have it from the original XP installation nad not realize it's missing as you move to Vista. I added a link on the Setup MM2 in XP > Other Software page, to a Ligos website where you can get the codec if needed.
I used XP to convert the Indeo encoded AVI texture loops to DV-AVI files in order to use them on my Vista systems.
12/29/07 - This week's newsletter was about Sony's Movie Sudio... a pleasant experience from software installation through watching a finished DVD on TV. Two thumbs up.
12/19/07 - Movie Maker and Photo Story were featured in a 6 week series on National
Public Radio, KPBX FM 91.1 Spokane Public Radio's "Raw Bytes" - the longest running computer series in the NPR network. I worked with Frank Delaney on it, and the final session was broadcast today.
The online transcript of today's session is at this page of mtamicro.com. There are links to the earlier sessions from there.
I made 3 sample videos that show all the items in the Winter Fun Pack 2003... links are on the Setup MM2 in XP > Other Software page.
12/17/07 - Added a new paragraph to the lead-in section of this page... to say hi to those viewers in the country that shows as the highest ranking one according to Alexa.
12/12/07 - Added a post about the xilisoft video converter to the Import Movie Source Files > Video > MOV page, and downloaded the free trial to see if it warrants a stronger endorcement on the page.
12/11/07 - Added divxdec.ax to the list of codecs that Movie Maker has problems with... it was reported by email from a Movie Maker user.
12/7/07 - I just started to make HowTo's for newsletters and the website. Linger over a How To button and the tool tip will tell you the topic. Click it and you'll see a short video about the item.
The first ones are two links on the Setup MM2 in XP > Other Software page... about installing and checking AviSynth. They are two of the eight made for the current newsletter #179 about creating a Brady Bunch style video clip. Here's a copy of that part of the Other Software page.
Newsletter 178 was about the past, present, and future of the website, and introduced the 'How-To's". Click the image to read it...
12/2/07 - I replaced the older link to The DVShow on the main page with a newer one to my personal support via Support Space.
12/2/07 - Support Space expanded support today to include Vista systems...
This logo is a link to my website page with some details about the service, how to use it, and how to find me there when I'm available.
11/29/07 - The Bright Hub website is shaping up pretty well... there's still a bit of fine-tuning going on as the site moves into the public's eyes. I just added links on my Products and Services page to each of my first 11 reviews. Click the image to go to directly to them.
11/27/07 - The newsgroup stat searching that I was getting from netscan.research.microsoft.com don't work anymore, and there's a note at the top of the netsan site that the website won't be updated after the end of this year. I dropped the table of info about the top 'subject of the month' from the Online > Newsgroup page.
11/20/07 - There's a slight change in the graphic at the top of the main page... it now has PapaJohn as the largest and boldest word, while Movie Maker and Photo Story are smaller and a bit transparent. Digital multimedia is my passion and as much as Movie Maker and Photo Story are still in the forefront, there are many other aspects of the processess and dozens of other software tools in my toolbox.
11/18/07 - I typically receive more thank you notes than requests for help. Some of them really stand out, so I added a new 'Testimonials' page.
11/15/07 - I'm working on a Movie Maker radio project with Frank Delaney, producer of Raw Bytes Computer News at KPBX FM 91.1 Spokane Public Radio NPR (National Public Radio). The station reaches the states in the northwest, along with the southwest part of Canada. We kicked things off today with this website page...
The video is a remake of one I submitted to the Microsoft Virtual Earth contest a couple days ago.
11/14/07 - If you're running Windows Movie Maker 6 in Vista, add about 15 or more video clips to a project, add transitions, and find the preview function doesn't work and you don't receive an error message.
It occurs if the floating-point precision is changed from double precision to single precision. Remove some video clips or some transitions.
11/6/07 - I've updated the Manage Your Files > Source Files page to add notes about what Vista lets you do with them. MM6 handles some things differently than MM2.1.
11/2/07 - The pack of software reviews are finished... I'll be adding links to my reviews similar to what I do with newsletters.
Another dozen of the slightly older newsletters are now online, with links on appropriate pages. The topics are: WMV is a Container, A Video Perspective of Summer Sports, ULead's DVD Movie Factory, Beginning a 'Promo Video' - Civil War Reenactment, Quality Check of Flash Files from 4 Free Online Video Hosts, Codecs and GSpot, The Basics of Photo Story 3, Vista's Report Card, A Codec Named 'ffdshow', Photo Story to Silverlight, Expression Encoder, and Movie Maker 6 in Vista's Home Basic Version.
10/18/07 - I'm busy in my writing cove doing 4 more software reviews for BrightHub.com... video, DVD and graphics apps of course.
10/10/07 - I installed the full Microsoft Expression Studio on my XP laptop last night... something to learn over the winter.
10/6/07 - The WMV files recorded by the Live Meeting Recorder use the specialty screen codec... they go into Movie Maker and preview fine, but a project can't be saved to a movie. Indexing them doesn't help.
Studying them a bit with WMSnoop shows that each frame is a picture... like a slideshow. I'm guessing they lack keyframes that typical video files have, and without keyframes Movie Maker takes forever to assess them during the rendering phase of a project.
10/6/07 - I had an interesting Support Space session late last night. A user of video clips from a Canon PowerShot camera could use them in MM2.1 in XP and MM2.6 in Vista, but every attempt to import one into MM6 promptly crashed it.
I'd just published my latest newsletter about my Canon PowerShot SD750 and didn't have an issue using the Motion JPEG (avi files) in MM6. His system had an older version of the ffdshow codec while mine had the newer July 2007 beta that I had installed to write newsletter #164. GSpot's assessment showed the ffdshow codec was involved. We resolved it by uninstalling his older version and installing the beta.
10/1/07 - I received my 6th annual MVP award today from Microsoft... always an honor and good feeling...
9/26/07 - I installed the Service Pack 1 (SP1) beta version of Vista's Ultimate version. A quick review shows no changes of note to Movie Maker, Photo Gallery and DVD Maker.
More important is the beta of the Windows Live Photo Gallery for XP, a clone of the app in Vista. I love it... for viewing video files without interrupting music playing in WMP, for capturing video clips from my mini-DV camcorder as individual scene DV-AVI files, for noting any dropped frames during capture, and because it just looks and feels good. This week's newsletter is about it.
9/23/07 - It's been a while since my last note here... the last two weeks have been extremely busy for me, doing 4 more software reviews for Bright Hub, where independent review will start to balance the dirth of online 'marketing-centric' ones. Thumbs up for Ulead's PhotoImpact 12 and Serif's Page Plus x2.
Another independent third party startup that I've been involved with for almost a year now is Support Space. It's moved into a 'closed beta' period during which you can get a free (fully subsidized) training or tech support session if you can catch me there online and available. The process provides a text chatting link, phone chatting, and remote control software for full communication and remote viewing or control of your computer.
This image is a link to its main page... register and look me up. If you don't see me on the first page, check by name to see if I'm online and available.
9/8/07 - Added a link to Neophyte's Movie Maker Portal on the Online > Tutorials and References page... here's a copy.
Neo's Movie Maker Portal includes a library of great motion clips for free use in your projects, a large matrix of conversion software to help you get all types of clips into Movie Maker, tools to help you install custom xml files for add-on transitions, effects and title animations, free website space for users of Movie Maker... and more.
9/7/07 - With the release of the Expression Encoder, there's a number of tweaks to that section of the site. This week's newsletter will be about it.
8/30/07
SimplyDV
... is back after having been closed from April 2 to July 19 for a long holiday... with a new face to the forums, but with the same owner (Colin Barrett), the same moderators (including Graham Hughes and myself), and anyone who wants to join in. Here's a direct link to the forums.
8/26/07 - ffdshow worked much better on my Vista Home Basic laptop than it did on my XP Media Center laptop. It's still a 'keeper' for playing Divx and Xvid encoded avi files on my Vista system.
For this week's newsletter I'm doing a step by step tutorial about how to take a Photo Story 3 wmv file through the Expression Media Encoder and end up with it playing online in a Silverlight package embedded in a regular website page.
Added tip #3 to the Expression > Encoder Templates page... about where the temporary downloaded video file is if you want to save a copy after you've viewed it in Silvelight.
8/21/07 - The world keeps turning!! Here I am adding a link on the Setup MM2 in XP > Other Software page to an ffdshow codec, while my Crashes and Hangs page lists it as one of the problem codecs to check on your system and turn off. The version I'm linking to is a July 2007 one. My initial test mixed two files in a project, one Divx and the other Xvid encoded... did some editing, added transitions and effects... and saved successfully to a movie, using my XP laptop.
8/16/07 - My experience trying to maintain my website on a USB2 hard drive, juggling the drive between my XP and Vista laptops, was frustrating... almost impossible... on the Vista system.
I resolved it by turning off 'User Account Controls' (UAC)... both systems now work smoothly on the updates. I don't like turning off protection devices, but it was either that or not using the Vista laptop to work on project files I keep on external drives.
8/15/07 - I'm starting to play with embedding Silverlight players in my website pages... move your mouse around on the player and use the controls to see and feel the dynamic experience of Silverlight.
in Cinque Terre, Italy..
...made by MM2.1
See tip #2 on the Expression > Encoder Templates page.
8/14/07 - The buzz about Vista's SP1 release is getting louder... LEAKED: Vista SP1 analysed in-depth goes into some depth about it... while some are speculating and passing along the buzz, you can take some steps to enhance your Vista system with these two KB articles and associated downloads. I've downloaded them and installing them on my two Vista systems.
KB 938194 resolves some compatibility and reliability issues in various scenarios such as some graphics processing units hanging, and KB 938979 resolves issues including some corruptions of DV-AVI files and poor memory management performance.
8/13/07 - Added Josh's Video Blog to the Online > Blogs page. He includes links to his custom special effects and title animations for Vista's Movie Maker.
8/9/07 - A post on the forum suggested using the developing AllToAVI conversion utility to get Real Media files into Movie Maker. My first test was successful and I added it to the Import Movie Source Files > Video > Real page.
It's the first utility I've used that did a successful conversion of a Real Media file.
Get started fast... install and check AviSynth, then master the advanced features of VirtualDub, the leading free Open Source video capture and processing tool.
You're not alone. This issue typically happens on computers with one of about 20 Intel chipsets... see KB943592. What I don't know is how to tell what chipset model a system has.
9/5/07 Added a link to Kaleidoscope, a pack of custom transitions from IT-Forces, a plug-in developer that expanded into supporting Movie Maker.
This clip is Manarola...
