Illustration anamorph letterbox by Jailbird via Wikipedia

The anamorphic isn’t using letter boxing or black banding on an image, but instead an optical method is used. An anamorphic lens is a lens with convex glass that horizontally squeezes images down from a 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio to a 4:3 ratio. Projectors need have the same style lens in order to properly project the image. If you’ve seen a movie that has “Filmed in Panavision” during the credits, you’ve seen a movie shot in the anamorphic format.

Digital video cameras have a feature called “squeeze mode” which simulates an anamorphic lens. The image quality will suffer slightly because of this, but depending on your output format, the difference might be negligible. We will have a few videos about this later this week.

Karaoke by carolclarinet via Flickr

Guys, have you ever heard of this? Once in the mid-70s I heard someone play a pop song in stereo in a way that supressed the main vocals until they were almost gone.

The reason this happens is phase cancellation. During the show we use some audio examples and here are links to the specific clips as WAV files:

Example 1 Sine Wave 1 – Reference: Two sine waves mixed into a mono file
Example 1 Sine Wave 2 – Two sine waves, one of them 180 degrees out of phase

Example 2 Brad Sucks 1 – Reference: Brad Sucks‘ Understood by Your Dad
Example 2 Brad Sucks 2 – Understood by Your Dad, with the right channel 180 degrees out of phase
Example 2 Brad Sucks 3 – Understood by Your Dad, 1 and 2 with a switch between the two in the middle

Example 3 Brad Sucks 1 – Understood by Your Dad, mono mix
Example 3 Brad Sucks 2 – Understood by Your Dad, mono mix with phase cancellation

Unraveled by gak via Flickr

This week, we talk about the differences between approaching an audio editing session and a video editing session. Rob and Chris have worked with and edited both, but each has their specialty. This week they have a candid discussion about the differences they see in the philosophy of editing audio and editing video. Learning the differences between the different approaches is key to understanding the basics.

Discussed links:
WNYC’s Radio Lab
The Travel Channel’s Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations
Fox’s Lie to Me on Hulu
CCD on Facebook
Chris Cavs on the Word on the Tweet podcast
Rob Blatt featured on the Disqus blog

No Smart-Arse Title by Mike Galvin via Flickr

The music for the show, Understood By Your Dad by Brad Sucks, went from mono to stereo. In making the change, we were able to create a mix minus to better suit our needs. The stems for the song are available on the site for Brad Sucks: Brad Sucks – Song Sources.

Mic by picpogm via Flickr

A microphone is a type of transducer, which means that they change in energy. In this case it’s from kinetic energy (for more on air displacement and how it relates to sound, check out the “What is Sound” episode) to electric energy. All microphones have a surface that is moved by the air displacement sound creates, and aside from that, they work differently.

We discuss dynamic microphones, condenser microphones and carbon microphones. You might be surprised to know that carbon microphones are the most popular microphones in the world.

Create Consume Delete on Facebook
Filmosity on Twitter

IMG_1591 by fuxoft via Flickr

Interlaced signals are broken up into alternating fields. The upper and lower fields each shows half of the total video frame. Each field is shown for half of the time a frame is shown. So 1 frame of interlaced video has two different fields that display the upper and then lower fields. Progressive signals are full frame images, so when you see one frame of a progressive signal, it’s the entire image in a single frame.

The interlaced signal was invented by Leon Theremin, who also invented the musical instrument that shares his last name in the 1927. Interlaced was the only standard in town for television until 1993, then the FCC tested the first broadcast progressive system. Progressive monitors had been around for a few decades thanks to computer monitors before being adopted into the television world.

Here’s an animated graphic to assist in understanding how interlaced systems display images:

Here are some more resources for learning about interlaced vs progressive:

• The Big Picture – Interlaced vs. Progressive, Fields vs. Frames – http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech/video2.htm
• Interlaced vs Progressive Signals – http://hubpages.com/hub/interlaced-vs-progressive
• Wikipedia: Interlace – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlace

Pixels -Reprise- by solidxsnake13224 via Flickr

When is a pixel not a pixel?

Like your TV, computer and movie screens, pixels have aspect ratios too. Not to be confused with picture aspect ratio, pixel aspect ratio deal with the shape of pixels. Early analog television was made of pixels that were square, but when the digital video standard was created, DV pixels are non-square. When the high definition standard was created, the standard was set back to square pixels. Confused yet?

All non-linear editing software can convert square pixels to non-square pixels and the other way as well. While video professionals (read: Chris) don’t have to think twice about this setting, it’s awfully confusing to those who aren’t as well versed with video editing (read: Rob).

So what is the difference? That’s what we’ll be discussing on this week’s show.

Resources:
Pixel Aspect Ratio Calculator – http://www.digitalrebellion.com/pixel_calc.htm
A Quick Guide to Digital Video Resolution and Aspect Ratio Conversions – http://lipas.uwasa.fi/~f76998/video/conversion
Artbeats’ Pixel Aspect Ratio, Part 1 – http://www.artbeats.com/articles/86

Podcasting equipment by adactio via Flickr

This week we’re following up our talk about podcasting specs and myths with five ways to start podcasting in the next five minutes.

The sites discussed are:
12Seconds.tv – http://12seconds.tv
Utterli – http://utterli.com
TalkShoe – http://talkshoe.com
AudioBoo – http://audioboo.fm
Huffduffer – http://huffduffer.com

And you can change the “http://” to “itpc://” if you want to create a link that will open iTunes automatically from nearly any browser. Rob wrote more about this on his blog with the post itpc:// A Podcaster’s Best Friend

Rob’s 12Seconds account – http://12seconds.tv/channel/robblatt
Chris’ 12Seconds account – http://12seconds.tv/channel/chriscavs
Rob’s Utterli account – http://www.utterli.com/robblatt/
Rob’s AudioBoo recordings – http://audioboo.fm/profile/robblatt
Rob’s HuffDuffer podcast – http://huffduffer.com/robblatt/

Subcribe to CCD in iTunes

This week we talk about the podcast specification and what makes a podcast a podcast. Is it Apple? Is it mp3 files? Is it a blog? The answer is probably more simple than you think. The first file to ever be podcasted was “Truckin’” by the Greateful Dead on January 11th, 2001 on Dave Winer’s Scripting.com. The first printed mention of the word wasn’t until years later in the Guardian article Audible Revolution. Apple’s acceptance of podcasting didn’t come until 2005, which should give you an idea of how involved they were with creating podcasts.

There are many tools out there to help you learn about podcasts and podcasting. Create Consume Delete uses the WordPress blogging platform with a plug-in from Blubrry called PowerPress. PowerPress alters our RSS feed to properly accommodate enclosures. Blubrry has a forum with some helpful information in it. freepodcastcourse.com/ has many articles written about podcasting, and Apple has a very detailed technical specification written up about how to properly write a feed for the iTunes Store.

DSCN0593-c2b4s3 by 12fh

HD and HDV are both high definition video formats. Instead of playback formats, HD and HDV are recording formats. HD describes an image that is 1920×1080 or 1280×720 pixel images. HDV describes an image that uses rectangular pixels at a size of 1440×1080 that displays the same size as a 1920×1080 square pixel image (The pixels are 1.33 times wider than an HD pixel).

Bit rates vary between the two also, HDV has a bit rate of as high as half and as low as a quarter of an HD bit rate. Both formats use compression, but HDV uses interpolation and groups of pictures (gops) to create the necessary compression. HD also uses compression, but you have an option as to what kind of CoDec you want to use.