10. Lost profits – Shinobi Vs Dragon Ninja
Such a lively video, yeah it’s a simple band playing the song video again. But it has the “image” of the band playing on the top of a nondescript multistory car park in the bright sun with lots of energetic movement which makes it look like you want to be there.

9. SOAD – Chop Suey
The cool fading through each other effect was awesome in this video and the whole style makes the video awesome.

4. Executioners – It’s going down
OK So it’s kind of X-ecutoners, linkin park, and Static X all together but it’s probably THE definition of new metal. Metal guitar riffs, hip hop turtablism and cool ass rap. Simple enough the video uses some awesome camera tricks with Mike Shinoda (rapper) walking off one side of screen and appearing in another. Also the flow of the X-ecutioners arriving as the band is playing works so well which can often look really crap if not done well. The intentional digital distortion is another cool effect. Might not seem so cool now but it was back then, then digital distortion through internet streaming was more prominent, Art reflecting life. I also like the camera revolving over the DJ desk, looks really cool.

3. Deftones – My own summer
Stylized perfectly for the Deftones tone/image the raw look of the video reflects the distorted vocals of their lead singer Chino. They are playing on top of shark cages what is cooler than that!? There are Sharks swimming around tearing meat up and and a floating pig!
…Oh and a skate board

1. Korn – make me bad
This video for one of the most under played Korn songs is amazing. One of the few New Metal videos to have some kind of plot and setting out of the stereotypical skate board backwards cap scene/ Having said that this video wasn’t cheep, all those effects and camera stylization all over the shop make this video stand out as more of a short Hollywood movie than a music video. It’s so frikin cool though <3
…and ends with bag pipes!

What’s the difference?
One is green, one is blue.Seriously that’s the difference.
[Edit] TURNS OUT! There IS a more deep and meaningful difference between blue and green screen!
In digital compression Blue is compressed more than any other colour so it loses quality. Meaning if you digital compress your video and want to key out the blue there isn’t as much information to go on as what to key out. So if your using digital compression use green screen!
Thanks to Todd for the comment :3 [/edit]

Why not red?
Well Blue and green are considered the furthest colours from human skin tone and as that is most likely to be part of the subject it should look better when you Key it out. If you are waring green or blue then that will be keyed out too, but this probably doesn’t look as bad as keying out your skin, also you can change you clothes and props not not your skin.

What is Chroma Key?
A chroma key is basically a colour you select that is removed from the image. Ideally you have a totally green/blue background and can just remove the one colour. This rarely happens but you can set thresh hold values to select colours near to the key. This will cut out different shades of that colour which can mean it cuts out other colours too if your not careful. It’s a delicate balance but with some practice you can get some fantastic results.

So seriously, why have green AND blue screens if either will do?
If you needed to shoot a guy in a blue sweater then when you keyed out the blue background it would key out the sweater and look silly. So you have to use greens screen, and the same applies for green clothing on a green screen.

Black screen!?
Yeah, I’ve seen it. I don’t know much about it nor could I find much online but it uses special pieces of glass which the camera can pick up and can be used with any colour. Apparently it’s very expensive though and that why it’s not so widely used, green/blue screen works fine. I think Black screen needs to be some kinda awesome mega improvement before it will be used in preference.

Any comments? Share your green/blue screen experiences by leaving me a comment!

Importing
OK, fairly easy task, both can handle this well. Both have a similar library system, it’s all good.

Sequencing/Editing
Premier Pro defiantly has the upper hand here with out a doubt. It’s so easy to cut up clips, resize them, preview, move them around, there is so much control in the work space area. Unlike After Effects, which can often see you pre composing elements to get them to sit together properly. With the two view screens Premier Pro lets you preview one clip in one place and the full movie in another, it’s just helpful.

Audio
After Effects does allow you to import audio, but I feel it’s more for the sake of “ugh well it’d be easy to program and kinda useful I guess?” than because it’s actually a good idea. Premier Pro allows you to use an audio mixer which will let you check audio levels between tracks and change them for the purpose of the movie. Premier Pro also has some simple effects for audio like compression, noise reduction and EQ which are very useful and can often mean you don’t need to treat the audio in another sound editor.

Green Screen
I’ve use both Premier Pro and After Effects for Green Screen video. I started in Premier Pro using the chroma key functions that come with that but I found them lacking and not quite as effective and After Effects Key Light. Key Light was at one time a 3rd party plugin for After Effects but it worked so well Adobe bought it. It’s one of those features that is just better than the Premier Pro version, the Keying is more effective and looks better. When I’ve used Green Screen before I’ve always preferred to Key it out in After Effects then import the video to Premier Pro later for editing.

Animation
Other than if you have an animated video and want to cut it up and export it I don’t think Premier Pro has any way to create animation. This is where After Effects really takes off, think Flash for the video world. Given it’s a little more complicated than Flash (or maybe it’s because I grew up with Flash and everything else still seems a little alien) but After Effects can allow you to create some amazing animations with a wealth of control.

Effects
If you are looking to create some sexy looking special effects then there is no other place to look than After Effects. Just search through YouTube and you will find a plethora of home made special effects reals using After Effects (mine will be coming soon ). Granted there are some crazy 3rd party plugins that have amazing capabilities but don’t come as standard but the build in plugins have so much versatility that you can pretty much achieve any effect you want. With particles After Effects begins to take on the form of a 3D modeling suite. OK maybe there are 3D modelers out there shouting at the screen right now but I can’t be far off. 3D particle effects make everything look cool and used the right way can be stunning.

Exporting
OK, so to be honest, both are rubbish at exporting. I miss the days of “High quality, medium quality and low quality” settings and maybe a few other variations. Both these programs are totally over loaded with settings that even I don’t know what they are for and seemingly the setting you wanted doesn’t exist. But you’re going to get that where ever you go these days. You have to make the best of it and both will have exactly what you’re looking for, if you can find it.

Over all
I find After Effects is a good place to start when trying to create something, titles, effects, anything creative. Premier Pro is where you go to stick it all together, cut it up so it fits better and polish it so it looks better. Both pieces of software are amazing at what they do and allow a lot of flexibility.
If I had to choose between Premier pro and After Effects I’d say BOTH. Not just because that’s pretty much my automatic response to any either or questions but because you really can’t do everything on one of them, you need both to be able to do everything. I found Premier Pro easier to work with at first because I recognised how it worked intuitively. After Effects is often not very intuitive but is by far more creative. You have to keep at it if you want to make it look amazing, and figure out its little nuances.

Think I’m wrong? Did I miss anything? Let me know by commenting at the bottom of this page! :3

I’d recommend checking them out:
Check out their tutorial on this amazing sci-fi movie title sequence!
And this awesome 3D partial generated video display!

With this in mind I wanted to make sure if I had to pay it was worth it. Out of all the different screen capturing software I’ve seen ScreenFlow seems to be the best. It has a wide appeal to novice users and experts alike.

ScreenFlow has two stages, the capture stage and the edit stage. Capturing is very simple and not very customizable, it just does it. Where ScreenFlow comes into its own is with the edit. See ScreenFlow captures everything by default and then you can do what you want with it. You can’t capture just one window, but you can highlight any window and fade or blur out the background. You can’t select a specific area to record but you can zoom to any section you like in the editor.

It seems like they have thought through all the nifty little things that you might want to do with a screen capture and added them in easy steps. You can add little click effects, you can zoom into the mouse pointer, add text where ever you want as well as many other features that make your videos look more professional.

Now, though limited the capture stage is very important. You are presented with 4 options:

• Record desktop from (I discovered this when I plugged in my second monitor, you can select which you want to record
• Record video from (lets you record from your built in iSight or external video source)
• Record audio from (select the audio source to record complete with VDU)
• Record computer audio (If you want to record sounds from the computer, e.g. application sounds, games sounds).

This is all you need to set up ScreenFlow and then hit record and everything is taken care of.

The last and possibly most important part of any screen capture software is the export. With out good export features it doesn’t matter how good it captures and how shiny it looks you can’t do anything with it, it’s useless! ScreenFlow is very simple, you can select one of the presets which include web ready formats, iPhone, iPod, Windows Media as well as high quality formats such as PAL DV and NTSC DV. There are also options to customize your preset, so you can select your own compression techniques as you would in say Premier Pro.

ScreenFlow really is ideal for video screen capture, wether your a beginner or a pro. What ever is on your screen it will capture, video, games, sounds, it will even record your webcam and put it in a little box on your screen for you.
The one thing I would suggest as will all video screen capture software you need your own microphone. A head set mic will do the trick, but don’t use an internally build microphone as they tend to pick up lots of noise from your computer.

ScreenFlow Website:  www.telestream.net

Example: Video tutorial made with ScreenFlow

How to Strip audio from video

• Familiarity
• iMovie wtf?
• Looks
• conclusion
• Last word

Familiarity
In the past I have used both iMovie and Windows Movie Maker (WMM) when making video for the internet. Starting out with little knowledge of video editing software this can be a daunting task, fortunately I had a lot of experience with non-linear audio editing suits such as Sonar. Basically video editing software and sound editing software is pretty much the same thing just one has a video track. If you have used audio editing software like Sonar, Logic Pro, Pro Tools or a similar product you will be familiar with most of the functions of video editing software.  Usually video editing software has a viewing screen or two, a time line, effects preset and file navigation.

iMovie WTF?
Windows movie Maker was probably the first video editing software I used. It was great! So simple, so easy to understand having had some experience with non-linear editing. Where as iMovie…. wtf? It makes to sense to me xD iMovie has some really cool features and is all sexy like a Mac should be but I couldn’t get my head around it.
iMovie only has one channel for the whole video, audio and transitions/effects and the video is set out in a block not a time line completely unlike every other video editing software I’ve used. WMM at least looks like the professional software bridging the gap should you choose to upgrade. WMM has one video channel, a channel for the audio that comes with the video, extra audio track (for backing music or overdubbing) and then a track for your transitions/effects. I personally find this layout much simpler than iMovie and easier to edit.

Looks
Now It’s not all bad for iMovie, it’s so fast and so smooth you wonder why you ever bothered turning your PC on in the first place. The scrubbing tool is constantly in play so it makes finding the right part of the video clip you are looking for a lot faster than WMM where you have to do a lot of starting and stopping. Being on a Mac this is also a totally doable feature, I hate to think how this would slow down a PC. But also selecting the part of the clip you want isn’t always intuitive if you’ve used other software. You drag your cursor across the clip to select a part to add to your “video block”. Simple enough and a nice feature you might think, well yes, if you’ve never used any other software ever before. It took me a minute to figure this out as I was trying to cut and edit the clip like I have done so many times before.

Conclusion
WMM is not the shiniest nor the most advanced piece of software in the world but it is simple and easy to use. You wont be able to shoot The Matrix on it but nor will you in iMovie. I found WMM a lot easier to sequence my video into the right order and add titles, simple transitions. iMovie confused me, I don’t know if I’m missing some secret button that makes iMovie really usable but I’m really not that interested (I have Premier Pro now )

Both have trouble importing each others file types, WMM doesn’t like .mov, iMovie doesn’t like .wmv.

Final Word
Personally I liked WMM better than iMovie when I started out. No matter how much of a Mac fan boy I have become even I started with a PC. It’s better to start with what you have than never to start because some one told you you’re gear wasn’t the best. If you’re wondering whether to get a Mac or a PC that’s a totally different blog for another day. For me iMovie is too silly for words and WMM is so Windows it hurts, but in a good way, like how we all use Word not that Mac equivalent I don’t remember the name of.

:3