Day: June 7, 2009

Video… for Windows and OS X

We recently had to create a jump drive with promotional content on it that we wanted to be reasonably sure people could open. For the HTML pages, this was pretty simple. We kept the design very easy, and used just a single file, with the CSS in the head of the document. Any web browser created in the last 10 years should have been able to read it. (Even IE6 did fine with it!)

We also put video content onto the jump drive. I had a sample someone had given me from a company they used to do business with, and while it worked fine on my Mac, Windows was a no-go. Windows XP was the test platform, without QuickTime installed. Now, granted, lots of Windows machines would have QuickTime if iTunes were installed, and iTunes is installed on a lot of Windows machines, but locked-down corporate PC’s may not fit in that category.

So, we wanted to create a video that would be playable on Windows without QuickTime installed. And, we’re a Mac shop, so we wanted to do this all on a Mac. We ended up exporting the video from Final Cut Pro, and then using MPEG Streamclip to create an AVI file, using the settings you see in the screen shot below.

Encoding Video with MPEG Streamclip

It worked well, and testing with various Windows VM’s seemed successful, with the videos playing fine where QuickTime was not installed.

So for now, this is my solutions. Unless someone has a better one.

I don’t review many films here (maybe I should!) but I recently saw Persepolis, which was adapted from a graphic novel into an full-length animated film. I really liked the style of the animation, which actually looked like a graphic novel translated to film, rather than a graphic novel make into a live-action film, which probably works fine for most superhero genre films, but probably not so much for this sort of story. (The film’s animation was done the old fashioned was, hand drawn!)

Persepolis

I also learned a lot about Iran which I hadn’t known, though honestly, my knowledge of Iran was pretty minimal, as I’ve lived in the U.S. my entire life, and well, you get a tainted view of other countries from here.

If you get a chance to see it, watch the DVD extras, as there’s some great stuff in there about the story behind, and the making of the film. I mean, if you’re into filmmaking that is…