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CogDogSpielberg

Hardly Hollywood, but I've been focussed this week in the MCLI movie studio (e.g. my G4 TiBook).

We are preparing an online opening for our Ocotillo Action Groups that will include some video welcome messages from our faculty co-chairs... as an introduction of their efforts this year and a teaser to invite people from Maricopa to join in some asynchronous discussion board activity.

This meant setting up not only the video sessions with 8 faculty, but we decided to add greetings from our chancellor, 2 vice chancellors, and a dean, so over the last two weeks I was setting up the lights and camera (Canon GL/1) in at settings in our office, the administrative offices on the top floor, at a college site, and one pair that decided it was appropriate to film at the Desert Botanical Garden (mid day it was about 105 degrees).

This week it was logging clips in Final Cut Pro, capturing video, doing some basic edits, tossing in some fake Ken Burns-like pans over screen shots.... It's been about a year since I was inside FCP, but it came back quickly. I end up saving in DV stream QuickTime (to burn a DVD), then compressing to QuickTime for streaming, and running through Discreet Cleaner to generate Windows Media PLayer and Real formats. Oh, I also am making a VHS tape of it so our IT folks can digitize it for our internal IP/TV video network.

The big unknown is the demand this will create... I've arranged to have the Windows Media and Real content hosted on one of our college sites that has production level Helix servers, and I'll have the QuickTime running from our XServe.

I'll share a URL once we're out of the gate (and I am sure it has not completely imploded), as I am interested in having folks external chime in to our efforts...