iPhone Photo Contest!

I’m happy to announce that my NEW iPhone Book (co-authored with my buddy Scott Kelby) is on press and days away from hitting store shelves. The original iPhone Book was chosen by Amazon as their #1 Editor’s Pick for Books on Computers and Internet for 2007! Needless to say, I was floored and humbled by such an honor. So that made me work even harder on the The iPhone Book 2nd Edition. I’m very pleased with the way this new book came out! We took it to a “whole ‘nother level.”

To celebrate the new edition we’re kicking off an iPhone Photo Contest! That’s right, you could win valuable prizes by submitting your best photos taken with your iPhone’s built-in camera.

 

  1. You can enter up to three photos (total) taken with your iPhone (doesn’t matter if it’s the original model, or the new 3G).
  2. There are five different categories; Friends, Pets, Family, Fine Art, and Office. The winner in each category gets a $100 iTunes Gift card and a copy of “The iPhone Book” 2nd edition.
  3. The Grand prize winner gets a $500 Apple Store Gift Card, and a copy of “The iPhone Book” 2nd edition.
  4. From the photos submitted by the deadline of Oct. 24, 2008, Scott and I will choose three finalists in each category, and then the public gets to vote for the winner in each category (the one getting the most votes wins). Then, from those Winners Scott and I will choose a Grand Prize Winner on November 3, 2008.
  5. This may seem obvious, but of course, the photo has to be taken with your iPhone’s built-in camera.
  6. You can edit your photos using any iPhone application available from the iTunes Apps Store, or any other image editing application, but no other non-iPhone photos may be included in your entry (so you can’t take your iPhone photo and composite it with a photo taken with your DSLR, point-and-shoot, or a stock photo).
  7. You may not give your iPhone to Jay Maisel, Joe McNally, or Moose Peterson. Not even to make a phone call.
  8. There is no entry fee, and the contest is open to everyone; You do not have to buy “The iPhone Book” to enter, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt. 😉
  9. Whining of any kind, about anything, is strictly prohibited.
  10. You can submit your photos, and learn more about the contest at the official contest site (here’s the link).

 

I can’t wait to see all of your cool shots. Good luck and happy shooting!

Adobe Launches Creative Suite 4!

Adobe launches Creative Suite 4 today! I’m here in San Francisco for the Live showing of Creative Suite 4 to some of our top customers. You’ll be able to catch it via the web by going here. I must say that this is a very strong release of the Creative Suite! There are hundreds of new features across the whole suite. The live audience was blown away by what they saw.

Adobe’s SVP of the Creative Business Unit, Johnny L. was the host and after setting the stage for what CS4 was all about he actually invited some key customers to come up and show off what they had been working on with the various (pre-release) CS4 apps.

There were customers representing Video, Web/Interactive and Print workflows. This was really impactful as it wasn’t just Adobe employees showing off the features, it was customers showing real-world work that they had created using the new toolset. Johnny L then wrapped things up with a demo of Photoshop CS4.

I got a special treat by meeting the legendary Bill Atkinson. For those of you who are too young to remember, Bill Atkinson was one of the original Macintosh developers. He was the guy who wrote MacPaint! That’s right, the first graphics application that I had ever used. Had it not been for Bill’s revolutionary work, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today in the graphics world. It turns out that Bill is a photographer and a huge fan of Adobe Photoshop!

 

Want more on CS4?

As you read this post there is tons of content going live on Adobe.com and various partner sites so that you can explore all that’s new in CS4. There’s over 10 hours of CS4 video content on Adobe TV alone. Adobe Product Manager John Nack has posted some juicy details. Layers Magazine has put up a CS4 Learning Center as well as NAPP. I’ve even posted my first CS4 episode on my own Creative Suite Podcast. So if you want to learn more, there’s content out there for ya. I’ll be doing new CS4 tutorials on my CS Podcast from here on out.

Adobe Digital Video Tools Showcase

Didn’t have enough time to explore everything showcased at the NAB? Well, don’t worry because Adobe invites you to an exclusive event that will enable you to check out the latest products from NAB as well as listen to Adobe solutions experts and partners as they demonstrate the many new facets of Adobe’s professional video solutions.

From planning to playback, Adobe® Creative Suite® 3 Production Premium drives video content creation. Combined with a diverse group of Adobe’s partners, including AJA, Blackmagic Design, CalDigit, Creative COW, Digieffects, GenArts, GridIron Flow, Matrox, Maxon, MOTU, Panasonic, and Wacom, Adobe offers solutions and workflows for getting today’s content out to air, tape, disc, or online faster than ever before.

With access to the latest tools to enhance your creativity, efficiency, and workflow and thousands of dollars in prizes, how could you afford not to attend?

Admission is free. Onsite attendees are eligible to win valuable software and other great prizes!

 

Thursday, May 29, 2008

First Session:
11:00 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Second Session:
3:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

 

New Yorker Hotel
Crystal Ballroom, 2nd Floor
481 8th Avenue at 34th Street
New York, NY 10001

 

It’s FREE, so register today!

Just say no to HDD and MiniDVD camcorders

Just say no image

Life in the Digital Video space used to be simple. You would buy any Mini DV based camcorder you wanted, pop in a tape, hit record and when you were done, you could hook up that camcorder to your computer via its Firewire (IEEE 1394) port and edit away. Just about every editing app out there supports editing standard DV content from these camcorders. Life isn’t so simple anymore and consumers are paying the price of this new level of confusion. Not only are there standard DV camcorders out there, but there are HDV camcorders. These are still cool. Many pros will argue that HDV is an interim standard and something better is coming. So don’t buy these. I happen to think it’s OK to buy HDV because these camcorders still use regular mini-DV tapes, the video quality is better than DV and they have Firewire ports on them. Most current editing apps can edit in HDV format so life is still good.

If all you want to do is shoot video and then play it on your TV as is, you can stop reading here and have a nice day.

It’s the other two types of camcorders that are driving me insane: HDD and mini DVD. Consumers are getting confused an running out buying HDD camcorders thinking they’re getting HD (high-def). The HDD stands for Hard Disk Drive and that’s where the problem comes in. These consumer camcorders have hard drives built-in which is a REALLY COOL IDEA! However, the problem is the camcorder doesn’t record standard DV or HDV to these drives. It records in some super compressed MPEG format that for the most part is next to impossible to edit in. Most of the popular video editing apps don’t support editing in these formats. So you’re stuck using the lame software that came with the camera or finding a utility that converts the video to something usable. The other format mini DVD actually records the video onto a miniature DVD disc. This is fine for the person that just wants to shoot and watch and do NO EDITING! Again, the format is MPEG2 based which doesn’t lend itself to editing. Most apps don’t edit MPEG2 video. While the concept of having a hard drive built-in to a camcorder is appealing, the thought of recording directly to a DVD disc escapes me. Very rarely do I show people my raw footage. I want the ability to edit it down and spruce it up a bit. So why would I want a camcorder that records directly to a playback media?

Why I’m fried about this at the moment?

I’m working a project for a cousin of mine. Her family is having a rather large family reunion this summer and they had the idea of making a DVD and include videos from the various relatives scattered about the US. I’ll be the one creating this DVD and doing all the video editing. Sounds great right? Well it does until you realize you’re working with people that don’t know the first thing about video (good lighting and audio, let’s not even go there). They asked me to recommend a camcorder to one relative who was going out to buy one for this particular event. I should have been way more specific, but I said any mini DV camcorder they get should be fine. So weeks go by and I get the first package in the mail which was supposed to contain the tape so that I could start the editing process. I open the package and it’s a mini DVD disc. ARGGGH! Luckily I remembered the great app HandBrake and was able to convert the DVD into an MP4 format that I could edit with.

Last weekend the last of the relatives came over for the final shooting and one brought her camcorder that she used to video other relatives while she was traveling. At first glance it looked small and I thought it was a standard mini DV camcorder. Of course it wasn’t. It was a JVC HDD camcorder. The files were in a strange .MOI format. Luckily a quick search on Google lead me to a $40 utility that allowed me to convert the .MOI files into standard DV.

So yeah, I’m a little annoyed at where this industry is going and where consumers are getting caught up in the cross fire. Yes, I’m all for advancements in video and hard drive based camcorders make perfect sense. However, let’s make the hard drives removable (like tapes) and lets make it so that they have the option of recording in standard DV for editing.

OK, that’s the end of my rant. Time to get back to editing.