Screencast: The Bitrate Budget Calculator

by admin on March 8, 2010

In this screencast we look at the trade-offs to be made when deciding on the bitrate that you use to encode your videos and how to use the calculator built into DV Kitchen for this purpose.

To calculate your bitrate budget, you’ll need to enter estimates for:

  1. Viewer connection speed
  2. Maximum number of simultaneous viewers
  3. Average video length
  4. Server bandwidth in megabits per second
  5. Maximum acceptable wait time

Because the budget calculator is built using a series of sliders representing each of these parameters, it’s super easy to change one of the parameters and simultaneously see the effect of that change on the required bitrate.

As you play with any of the five sliders, the recommended bitrate budget number updates dynamically! I don’t know any other software tool, at any price, that offers this — Allan Tepper, ProVideo Coalition

Here it is step-by-step:

watch_video

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Audio Podcast Now Available

by admin on April 6, 2010

Just a quick note to say that we have now posted all our screencasts as a podcast feed at PodcastAlley.com

If you are like me and prefer to review the content of video tutorials by listening to the audio track as an mp3, then this could just what you’ve been waiting for.

Enjoy!

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Screencast: Compare & Encode with SampleLab™

March 20, 2010

A master chef always tastes a variety of samples before finalizing a recipe. A master video compressionist does the same thing.
That’s why DV Kitchen includes SampleLab™ . . . the only tool in the world designed to help you determine the best encoding setting for your video.
SampleLab allows bitrate data size/quality trade-offs to be gauged [...]

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Product Review: LitePanels Mini

March 7, 2010

Today we’re taking a look at the LitePanels Micro. These are very small portable LED lights that produce very little heat, last over an hour and a half on a single charge and produce beautiful soft light in a small package.
 
These units are available in both spot and flood configurations. We like to use the [...]

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Screencast: Media Publishing Room

March 6, 2010

In this post we take our first look at the completely revamped media publishing room in DV Kitchen version 2.0. In particular, we’ll be focusing on the video publishing features.
You have a choice of three publishing platforms:
1. QuickTime
2. Jeroen’s Flash Player
3. Shadowbox
Drilling down, the QuickTime platform also offers three sub options:

Normal QT embed
Default poster frame
Custom [...]

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On Location with Sennheiser

March 5, 2010

Here’s another post in our series on video production equipment and software that we think would be useful to have . . . in addition to our own of course!
Today we’re going to take a look at a great on-location sound package by Sennheiser. It starts with the MZS 20-1 pistol grip.

The microphone is an [...]

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Screencast: TimeFreezer™ Walk-Thru

March 4, 2010

TimeFreezer™ is designed expressly for exporting high quality still frames of video, and makes scrubbing through video and finding precisely the right frame, and publishing the photos on a website, ridiculously easy, efficient and fun.

With TimeFreezer™, you have unprecedented control over your subjects and the very flow of time itself. You can freeze someone in [...]

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Warm Up Your World with WarmCards

March 3, 2010

Today’s product review and video is about WarmCards. These are color calibrated cards used to produce a warmer look when white balancing your camera.
This is particularly useful for altering skin tones to produce a slightly tanned appearance when the lighting conditions would otherwise produce a cold, greyish look. A very inexpensive way to get that [...]

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Pre-Loved Lighting Equipment

March 2, 2010

Some of our readers have asked us where to find good pre-owned lighting equipment for sale. Softboxes in particular.
The answer, of course, is eBay!
Here ya go . . .
Photography Constant Lighting Kit Softbox 2000W XP03

US $247.00 End Date: Monday Aug-02-2010 11:00:44 PDTBuy It Now for only: US $247.00Buy it now | Add to watch list

Photo [...]

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Product Review: BeachTek XLR Adapter

February 28, 2010

Today’s article and video is the first in a series we’ll post featuring video production equipment and software that we think would be useful to have in your arsenal . . . in addition to our own of course!
First up we’re taking a look at the BeachTek DXA-2S. This an XLR to mini plug adapter [...]

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