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This short movie includes the following persons, as shown from left : myself, Dennis Greenaway, Betsy Dick, and instructor Slater Harrision.  (Student Cindy Welsh was not there when we did the movie. Betsy's daughter Amy was kind enough to operate the camera.)

Some Comments re the movie and the class
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At 10:36 AM -0500 11/1/05, Ingram-James-Listservers wrote: (CPAMU Listserver)

SUBJECT: iMovie class -- Adult Education class at Jersey Shore Middle School

1. The Class Ended

This past Thursday was the final class of a 4-week, 8-session Adult Education iMovie class at Jersey Shore Middle School in Jersey Shore, Pa.

((For those of you not familiar, "iMovie" is Apple's consumer-level software program for editing and producing home movies on the Apple Macinstosh. The Macintosh is the same computer system the Hollywood studios use. I am sending this email to the Mac users list, dance list, and railroad list, because I am thinking the information might be of interest to people on all these lists. ))

For me, this class was a real "godsend". Before I took the class, I was totally confused how to get started with the digital video. Now I am living happily under the illusion that I somewhat know what I am doing.

3. About The Instructor

This class was taught by the technology instructor Slater Harrison, whom I cannot praise highly enough. In my opinion, Slater went way beyond the "call of duty". Slater took "projects" home at night that were crashing on my PowerBook, and burned them on his iMac G5.

He also spent time at night at home trying to convert mpeg1 clips from my Mavica still camera to a format that iMovie can import (using Quicktime Pro to convert them. We got the video, but not the sound. Still working on this problem) He took the extra time to call his expert friend Bruce H. at Penn College to try to get answers to questions he did not know. Slater's a real fan of working in Final Cut Pro, and basically lives and breathes this digital video stuff.

4. Consulting This Instructor

I asked Slater if there was any way people who did not have time to take this class, could possibly still consult him to take advantage of his knowledge if they had questions. The following information is tentative, not definite, so please don't "hold me to it": Slater said people could probably drop by the technology lab at the school in the afternoon if they had questions, and there would not be a charge for this, since we're already paying him to occupy the lab with our tax dollars. He said, however, if he was asked to consult with somebody in the evening, then there would be some kind of a nominal charge.

You can contact him by calling the Jersey Shore Middle School at (570) 398-7400, and asking the switchboard operator for Slater Harrison.

5. Making Movies Using Windows

Slater originally was a Windows user before he switched to the Mac. I believe he said that iMovie works very similarly to Windows' "MovieMaker", which I think is built in as part of Windows XP and 98.

A friend of mine in Howard made a very nice railroad video using Windows, and he told me he did not like MovieMaker, but instead used some other Windows package; the name eludes me. The point here is, if you are using Windows, you can also do this editing process on Windows.

6. Camcorders - Some Of What I Think I Learned

* For editing, you probably want to get a mini-DV camcorder, because this more or less the standard. You probably do not want a digital Hi-8 because these are being "phased out". You definitely do NOT want a DVD camcorder (that records directly onto small DVDs) because the recorded video is then compressed and thus not as good for editing).

* If you have video footage you plan to later edit, then you want to capture it "uncompressed" on a mini-DV tape, so you can later import it into the computer in uncompressed form. You do NOT want to capture it on a DVD camcorder, because it has already been "compressed" (lots of information has already been thrown away). You'll get bad-looking results if you import and edit the already-compressed footage.

* 60 minutes of uncompressed footage takes up somewhere in the ballpark of 13 Gigabytes of space, whereas iDvd will compress the final movie from 13 GB down to somewhere around under 5 Gigabytes, so it fits on a 4.7 Gigabyte DVD-R. If your movie is longer (up to 120 minutes), the compression will be even greater to fit on the DVD.

* For a camcorder, you'd really like a 3 ccd (charge coupled device) camcorder instead of the usual 1 ccd the entry level models have. You'd like the ccd's as large as possible (but more $$ required). (The ccd's are the components that record the "pixels". The more ccd's are you have, the more pixels you get recorded.)

* Entry level camcorders typically have 1 ccd about 1/8" diameter. More expensive "pro-sumer" camcorders tend toward having 3 ccds, each about 1/4" diameter.

* The reason you want more and bigger ccd's because they tend to produce better pictures in lighting conditions that are not bright. This is one of the biggest problems camcorders have, particularly the entry level models, is that they can't produce good pictures in low lighting. And lots of your typical indoor filming is done in conditions that are not well lighted. For example, if you're trying to film dance events with typical dimmed lights, a "higher end" camcorder may be able to film it, while your entry level camcorder will record nothing much but blackness.

* You'd also like your camcorder to have an external audio jack, for plugging in an external microphone, for better audio than the built-in microphone produces. And you'd like an SVHS input for better signal quality when copying from a VHS recorder.

* The Canon ZR100 (and older ZR80) cameras that the school uses, are easy to use and take a good picture. The "Last Class" movie mentioned in above Para.2, was recorded on the ZR100. It appears you can buy the ZR100 for around $250 to $300. This camera's main limitations is (a) poor low light performance, (b) no external audio jack, and (c) no Super VHS input connect for digitizing.

* You may want to change your camcorder's sound from the default setting 12 bit, to 16 bit sound, because sometimes when editing with 12 bit sound, the audio "drifts out of synch" with the video.

7. Editing - Some Of What I Think I Learned

* How to hook the camcorder to my Macintosh PowerBook using the IEEE 1394 Firewire cable, and use the PowerBook to start, stop, rewind, pause, and fast forward the camcorder, while importing video into the PowerBook from the camcorder's mini-DV tape

* How to digitize my VHS tapes: by plugging a VHS recorder into the camcorder (which does the analog to digital conversion), and passes the data to the PowerBook via the Firewire cable, which imports it into iMovie

* How to edit the movie footage in iMovie -- rearrange clips (footage) in different order, crop them, and add titles, transitions, and chapter markers

* How to use iDVD (the companion disk-burning utility) to select a "theme", and create the menu screens that allow the viewer to select different chapters, and then how to "burn" the completed "project" to a DVD

* How to save a movie as a "disk image" on the hard drive. The disk image allows you, if you later need more copies, to "burn" directly from the hard drive using the Finder or "Toast" utility; without having to repeat the time-consuming "encoding" process in iDVD, or copy from an existing DVD

* How to save part of the movie as a compressed Quicktime video in "web streaming" format, so it can be posted on a web page (as described in Para 2 above)

* RAM - When I phoned Apple tech support, they consulted their spec sheets, and told me my PowerBook G4 would burn DVDs in iDVD with the stock 512 MB of RAM. Apparently this may not be correct, as iDVD kept crashing. After I added 1 GB RAM (total 1.5 GB RAM), the PowerBook could then burn the same movie project for which iDVD had previously kept crashing.

Educational Discount:

* I telephoned Apple's educational sales, and learned that as an Adult Education student, I was qualified to get the Apple Education Discount if I ordered while the class was in session. So I ordered Final Cut Express ($150 off of $299) (Final Cut Express is the "more professional" editing software; the next step up from entry level iMovie), and iLife 05 ($20 off of $79), taking advantage of the student discount.