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

“Word On The Tweet is the weekly podcast for everything about Twitter. Each week @jeffparsons and @CostaVidaFred are joined by fellow tweeps to discuss the Twitterverse, covering Twitter news, tools, celebs and more.”

On this particular episode, Chris joined Jeff Parsons and Fred Abaroa and their other guests, Lynnelle Wilson of Bold Vision Consulting, and Maggi Blue of magpiecreative.com and dyelotcollective.com to talk about five worst Tweets ever, how retailers are beginning to use Twitter, and whether celebrities are “ruining” Twitter. A fun episode, to be sure.

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.

ASA by purchio

We’re finishing up our basics of photography with ISO, or film speed. This builds on our previous episodes on the pinhole camera, shutter speed and aperture.

ISO applies to film, but it translates to the digital world. ISO stands for the International Organization of Standardization. The word order is French. The standard for color negative film is ISO 1500:1987, for black and white, it’s ISO 6:1983. You won’t see those listed on film canisters, but these are the standards document references. The ISO numbers that we are used to are the arithmetic scale. ISO is also available on a logarithmic scale, but it less common.

High speed films (higher numbers) allow more light, but also have the potential for more grain in analog photography or grain in digital photography. Lower speeds (lower numbers) are less sensitive to light. On the digital side of things, ISO refers to the sensitivity of the image sensor to light.

Nikon Coolpix P6000 with SB-400 High Shutter Speed by littcool

Today our topic of conversation is shutter speed, continuing our media science series about photography.

Shutter speed refers to how long the shutter of a camera is open for. Shutter speed is closely tied to aperture. When talking about fast lenses, the shutter speed is what really makes a lens “fast”. As more light comes in from a wide aperture, the shutter speed can be shorter and shorter to accommodate capturing an extremely quick moment like a baseball being thrown or a hummingbird’s wings.

Shutter speed and aperture go hand in hand. When camera standards were decided upon, changing the shutter and aperture inversely would maintain the same amount of light in an image. This has changed a bit with digital cameras, but originally shutter speed options were in multiples (like 1/30, 1/60, etc.), so multiple properly exposed images could be created using different settings.

Here is an Flickr set as an example of photos of the same subject (fountains) at different shutter speeds: Shutter Speed Tests.

CCD on Blubrry
CCD on ZenCast
CCD on Odeo
CCD on MeFeedia
CCD on mirpod
CCD on Facebook
CCD on Podcast PUP
CCD on Get A Podcast

If you’d like to feature Create Consume Delete on your site, please let us know!

aperture by shoothead

Aperture is measuring using f-stops in a ratio or fraction. It measures the opening of the iris of the camera. In remembering our pinhole camera example, the aperture is how wide the pinhole is made. The f:aperture number means that the larger the numbers get, the smaller the hole is. The f stands for the focal length of the camera.

Playing with your aperture settings can produce some fun images. One example is bokeh images. For some great bokeh images, take a look at the bokeh Wednesday pool on Flickr. If you see anything that jumps out at you, leave the url in the comments.

Rob’s Flickr account
Chris’ Flickr account

09/06/2007 - Art Center College of Design by amayzun

A pinhole camera is a lightproof container with a hole on one side and a film plane on the other side. Together, the aperture, the shutter and the plane create a camera. Building a pinhole camera is a simple weekend project and instructions are readily available online. Kodak has directions on creating a pinhole camera on their website and so does Instructibles. The Instructibles directions are embedded below. To create the aperture, you can use this pinhole camera design calculator to get your proper dimensions.

The largest pinhole camera that we could find was created using an airplane hangar. Check out a photo of the finished photograph on Flickr.

How To Make A Pinhole Camera – More DIY How To Projects

Video Cameras by Rob Blatt

Video cameras can range from a hundred dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The components vary in quality and price. Chris brings up four questions that you should ask yourself when you are thinking about buying a camera.

Note: We reference some topics discussed in episode nine How Video Cameras Work, but it’s not necessary to listen in order to understand this week’s show.

Review recommendations
CNET Reviews is always a good starting place
Photo.net is one of the best sites for anything photo related.
camcorderinfo.comhas some good reviews & comparisons

100_1692 by lergik

Video compression is different from file compression because it is a “lossy” compression, meaning you can not get the original video back once it’s compressed.

There are many factors that go into how a video is compressed, some factors are video resolution, frame rate, bit rate, codec and file format. This doesn’t include how the video is shot, just the hard decisions that come with shooting video. On the image acquisition side of things, lighting, camera movement and framing can all have an effect on file size and compression.

Green reel tangible by Far0_RC1

Once you’ve recorded your video, the next step is editing. There are two ways to edit. the first is called linear ot tape to tape editing. This is the analog way of editing where you are physically handling strips of tape. Often, this kind of editing happens with an EDL or edit decision list.

The digital way of editing is called non-linear editing. Some applications that edit in a non-linear fashion is Final Cut Pro, Avid, Adobe Premiere and Vegas. Non-linear allows you to be more experimental and flexible in your edits.

An analogy would be creating a mixtape vs. creating a playlist. In order to create a mixtape, you have to commit the songs you want in the order you want as you record them. When you create a playlist, you have the option to test out the order of songs to hear how they sound before calling it finished.

warhols video camera by friendly-fire

Discussed is the three basic parts to video cameras and how they function. The lens, the imager chip (CCD or otherwise), the A/D converter and the recording mechanism. The recording mechanism could be recording onto analog or digital, but for this conversation, we’re talking about a digital medium.

Also discussed is how light and color really work. For instance, what color is a red ball? The answer might not be as simple as it might seem.

Our theme music is “Understood by Your Dad” by Brad Sucks

scream by rutty

We use the familiar example of a guitar making noise to show that amplitude as a percieved loudness. This episode wraps up our media science series on the basics of sound. There is more to learn and understand about sound, but the series of three episodes will give you an understanding of the physics of sound.

Image from rutty

green sine by bdu

We use our trusty guitar example to explain frequency and to show frequency as a measurement of time. Also discussed are how a period and wavelength are related to frequency. You can visit the Wikipedia entry for frequency for the equations used in today’s episode.

Image from afsilva

NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, is upon us. This is the tenth year of NaNoWriMo, and the content producing fever has spread online to podcasting, blogging and blogging. Recently 12Seconds.tv announced that they are adding mp4 enclosures into their RSS feeds, allowing their users to submit their feeds into iTunes. A proof of concept is Rob Blatt’s 12Seconds Channel on iTunes. Chris is launching the show I Beat the Internet and Rob is launching the show Put In It Your Ears.

Image by katcha

Dan Patterson, Digital Content Director of ABC News Radio, joins Chris and Rob to discuss citizen journalism. Dan recently switched jobs from the Talk Radio Service to ABC News Radio. This week’s conversation clocks in at nearly an hour. Topics include the CNN iReport story on Steve Jobs, the Killian document scandal and fields questions from the live chat room at UStream.tv/ccd-live.

Also discussed:
The Brookhaven Chronicles
Creepy Sleepy
Dan Patterson on Twitter

Image by Dan Patterson

Geek is Chic is a podcast, where technology is fashionable and practical. Nothing could fulfill this creed better than using the technology available in New Media and in web 2.0 to benefit such a worthy cause. We will be live and interactive throughout the entire 24 hours. You can listen to the broadcast, call in, and even chat on Talkshoe.com. We’ll also be showing live video footage during portions of the podcastathon using Ustream.tv. You can find directions of how to join us right on our website www.geekischic.org.

Rob will be on the show 2am EST and going until he falls asleep. You can find him streaming at Geek is Chic or his personal UStream channel at ustream.tv/channel/rob-blatt.

Rob attended the Audio Engineering Society Convention – http://www.aes.org/events/125/ …and was one of the only people Twittering the convention – http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23aes. Apple didn’t have a dedicated booth – http://flickr.com/photos/robblatt/2910122324/ but was hiring iPhone acoustics engineers. While Rob was looking forward to was Melodyne’s Direct Note Access – http://www.celemony.com/cms/index.php?id=dna but they did not have the software available. There were booth babes at AES – http://twitter.com/robblatt/statuses/945174000 courtesy of Steven Slate Drums – http://www.stevenslatedrums.com/ What stole the show for Rob was the announcement and presentation of Pro Tools 8 – http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?langid=100&navid=399

Chris attended the HD Expo – http://www.hdexpo.net/ and watched a presentation on Panasonic’s AJ-HPX3000 – http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ModelDetail?storeId=11201&catalogId=13051&itemId=116556&catGroupId=34401&surfModel=AJ-HPX3000&displayTab=O and even got to touch a Red Camera – http://www.red.com/

We also talk about expensive video cameras and chat with the shat room.

We have a Create Consume Delete page on Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/pages/createconsumedelete/39798721184 and you can find us both on Twitter @chriscavs and @robblatt.

Subscribe to C/C/D on iTunes

Image by Dave Fisher

You can find our live recordings on UStream.tv at UStream.tv/CCD-live

Discussed this week on c/c/d:
The News:

• Revision3Beta launches with many new shows, including our buddy Walt Ribeiro’s show
• Free entry to the Audio Engineering Society convention in San Francisco this weekend:
  Go to www.aes.org/events/125/vip and your invite code is SFAES
• Avid sweeps the Emmys
• The new Canon EOS 5D MK II can shoot 1080p video
• Muxtape updates the public on their situation
• New Zunes and the pluses of owning a Zune

Podcasting is Dead! Long Live Podcasting!

• Discussion over Rob’s session at PodCamp Montreal
• The original preview at the Podcamp Montreal official site Rob blatt – Podcasting is Dead
• Mitch Joel on Podcast is Dead Podcasting is Not Dead
• PodMTL sounds awesome

Image by danielerossi

Discussed on today’s show:

• An introduction to Rob Blatt and Chris Cavs.
  Rob’s Blog: the Rob Blatt blog
  Rob’s Company: Blattcave Productions
  Chris’ Blog: Inside/Out Reality
  Chris’ Company: Filmosity Productions
• The difference between Creators, Consumers and Deleters.
• A week of new media players
  The new Creative Zen X-Fi
  The new Apple iPod Nano
  The new Archos 5
  iTunes TV Shows in HD

Contact Chris – chris@createconsumedelete.com
Contact Rob – rob@createconsumedelete.com

Hello!

Welcome to the future home of the Create/Consume/Delete podcast. We’ll be recording our first show in the next week or so, and should have it availalbe soon. Right now, we’re working on setting up the site and producing the first episode, so bear with us until then. In the meantime, why don’t you spread the word about the podcast? We’d appreciate the help.

Thanks for stopping by!