I’ve been slammed for the past three weeks putting together these Upward Basketball and Cheerleading spots for my church.

Check them out on this permanent page.

Tuesday evening, we took advantage of this great springtime weather and went for a stroll in dowtown Longmont before stopping in for some pizza. The kids found the bike rack that they painted with some friends (as a community art project) a few years back. Their names are still legible… just barely.

Today I did my first rotoscoping project with After Effects. I’m working on a season-end basketball video for my church’s Upward program. And for some reason, rotoscoping seemed more exciting today that continuing to sift through hours of footage to try to piece something cohesive together.

Anyways, the process wasn’t near as bad as the horror stories I’ve heard about roto. Of course, I only did a few dozen frames, not thousands and thousands like some post houses have to do. I exported my HDV footage into a TIF sequence, then made a comp and then did the roto with feathered masks… not Vector Paint or anything sexy like that. I tried a few 3D camera moves in the sequence, but they just didn’t seem too necessary in the end. Instead, to show off my hard work, I just made a simple background with copies of the Upward logo and some animation presets.

I’m not sure why this particular kid’s “bucket” stood out form the hundred others I shot… but I liked his enthusiasm. “Roto-worthy” I suppose.

The Celebration Singers performed “Everywhere I Go” at traditional services yesterday. It was wonderful.

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Caden went to his second basketball game last Saturday. Being his first year playing, he’s still learning the ball skills. He’s not doing too bad with passing and dribbling, but still could use some work on his shooting. Unfortunately, his old man never played the game… like, ever. So, I’m not much help.

The boys are in the basketball program and Bria’s in cheerleading this season (she can play b-ball next year). Our church where they play just adopted the Upward program, and it’s pretty cool. Very structured, organized, and well led by the LifeBridge staff and volunteers. Our kids will likely be playing it for a long time now. And their old man will have to get out on the court one of these days… and throw down the glove to pick up the big orange ball sometime.

Naturally, I’ve been shooting video courtside with my new camera. I’m still a bit jerky with some of the controls, esp. the manual focusing… which is the only way to follow the action when 30 people an hour come walking in front of the camera. I’m rigged up with the Tiffen Steady Stick support system that keeps me from having to lug “the sticks” (my mongo tripod) around. It’s basically a body-mounted tripod and shoulder rest… and makes it a breeze during extended shoots.

Anyways, I edited a little snippet of Caden’s game last Saturday. I took a bunch of footage, but just focused on him for this little piece. Below is the very down-rezzed and compressed Flash version. I also made a high-def version… well, higher-def version. It’s a 1280×720 size WMV, so it’s still down-rezzed quite a bit, and has a healthy bit of compression tokeep the file size manageable. For those that know (and/or care), this was shot at 30f (Canon’s 30fps progressive mode)… so there’s a decent amount of motion blur compared to the “video look” of 60i. For those of you crossing your eyes about now, enjoy watching the video!

Of course, Logan’s anxious to see his “music video” now from Saturday’s game. An editor’s job is never done! Yawn.

Here’s a little vlog clip with my new mic and preamp/ audio interface. The mic is a Rode NT3 hypercardioid. The preamp/audio interface is the ART Tube MP Project Series w/ USB.

Notice how I’m so “green” with this audio stuff that I mispronounce hypercardioid. Hey… it’s a BIG word! *grin*

I purposefully left the audio track alone (other than the MP3 compression from Flash). I’d usually “fatten-up” any VO track with dynamics, as well as silence out the noise floor with gating or the noise reduction filter in Adobe Audition. But I wanted to see how the mic and preamp preform in my untreated office space with the PC running nearby… and overall I’m impressed!

I’m still learning the vagaries of the preamp, but seems like a very nice deal for $99 shipped. It has a limiter, phantom power, balanced output, phase invert, and a high-pass filter. Not a true “field mixer” by any means, but at a fraction of the cost I can’t complain.

Once I use it more I’ll be able to A/B it vs. the onboard preamps on my XH-A1 camera.

OK, so you got a brand-new HDV camera… and no way (yet) to deliver all of those glorious hi-rez pixels. Blu-Ray, HD DVD, WM9… bah! Who has any of those players?? And the Internet? Unless you’re talking about projects in terms of seconds, rather than minutes or even hours, file sizes and bandwidth will kill ‘ya. So even if someone has sprung big buck$ on a 720p or 1080i HDTV, usually the only way they watch hi-def content is through the cable box or satillite feed. So what’s a shooter to do??

Deliver in SD. “What!”, you exclaim. “Why did I spend all of this money on an HDV camera if I can only deliver SD?!” Here’s why… pixels are your friend. Just because you edit in SD, doesn’t mean that all of that HDV content has to go to waste. Shoot in HDV, capture the HDV files and then edit in your deliverable resolution.

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Col. Dan E. Straight, a retired Air Force pilot and veteran of WWII, Korea, and Vietnam died yesterday. Col Straight was the Grand Marshall of 2005’s Longmont Veteran’s Day Parade.

I shot this photo above of Col. Straight in that parade. Dar’s dad, a Vietnam vet, was visiting us, so we pulled the kids out of school and took them downtown for the parade. It’s a shame to me that kids have to go to school on Vet’s day (mine never will!), when they should be out honoring vets.

And here’s a video I put together of the parade that year…

I never met Col. Straight, unfortunately, but he sounds like a very colorful man, involved in many local charities and causes. Our WWII vets are dying off at an alarming rate. Never pass up an opportunity to thank a Vet (of any war). There are heroes all around us.

Here’s today’s article on the passing of Col. Straight.

My cousin Tammy died last week. I put together a quick video tribute played at her funeral last Saturday.

You can see it on one of my permanent video pages here.