Animated GIFs have been around for almost two decades, allowing users to create and share simple animations online. The file format has persevered despite its shortcomings (e.g., no sound), and in fact, it’s recently seen a resurgence in popularity. People have taken to converting short, often comical video clips into animated GIFs, which they then post to blogs and social networking sites.
There are a number of ways to create video GIFs using your Mac, including uploading a video clip to Gifninja.com or manually assembling an animation using Adobe Photoshop. However, the most efficient way to create a video GIF is with Patrick Roger’s GIFBrewery ($3, Mac App Store), which I'll use to demo the concept. Apps such as Total Video2Gif ($5, Mac App Store) can tackle the job as well, but with less finesse than GIFBrewery.
Clean, crisp artwork may sometimes be the artist's goal, but the pursuit of perfection can also lead to artwork that looks clinical, and perhaps even a bit corporate. Clients these days seem to favor a worn, even grungy look in which the art looks a bit roughed up, with subtle scratches, mottled patterns, or even paper fold lines. One way to produce is effect is by a process, known as distressing, which can add a surprising degree of character to your artwork.
Distressing can be done either with a textured image or by textured brushes, and I’ll show you how to do both using Adobe Photoshop CS5. (Note that the process is nearly identical with Photoshop CS4.)
The June 2011 release of Apple’s new Final Cut Pro X set off a firestorm that reverberated across the globe—at least in video circles. The hotly anticipated new version of Apple's flagship video software was unexpectedly accompanied by the immediate removal of the previous version—Final Cut Pro 7—along with the company's Final Cut Server and Final Cut Express apps, from retail distribution. That alone had longtime users jumping ship from the only nonlinear video editor many of them had ever used.
But that wasn't the only bad news. The reviews of the new app were almost universally critical. To longtime videographers who had built careers around Final Cut workflows, the new FCP X lacked the pro-level power features they considered essential.
A new environment without connectivity to broadcast monitoring and networked storage, without the ability to assign audio outputs, and without the ability to open archives of previous FCP 7 projects, caused the industry to respond with shock and outrage. Apple’s competitors meanwhile, rejoiced in vitriolic glee at the prospect of gaining back years of market share they had lost as a result of the FCP’s dominance.
iMovie for iOS is an amazing video editor for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Its ability to work with audio, however, is quite limited—but the limitations aren’t impossible to overcome, especially with a little creativity. Here are a trio of issues and workarounds to improve the audio in your mobile movie projects.
Problem: The song list in iMovie’s Audio pane is tedious to navigate.
Each built-in project theme has its own custom background music, but you may want to pick something from your own music library. If your collection is sizable, it can take a while to sort through the songs, especially since any tracks that still contain Apple’s FairPlay DRM appear in gray text with “(Unavailable)” appended.
DigiTech's iPB-10 is a programmable guitar effects pedalboard that uses your iPad or iPad 2 as an interface to select, arrange, edit, and configure 87 guitar effects pedals, 54 amps, and 26 speaker cabinets in innumerable ways.
The iPB-10 is not a toy and at $500, it’s not priced like one. It is sturdily built and weighs in at a hefty 11.5 pounds. Setting up the iPB-10 is easy, but there are a number of steps. First, you must download the free iPB-Nexus app to your iPad from the App Store. Next, check to see if the correct docking tray for your iPad is installed. The tray for the first generation iPad was in place when I opened my unit, but replacing it was simple. Push in two buttons that release the protective frame, lift it up, and remove two, easy-to-access, Phillips head screws. Swap in the new tray and replace the two screws. Then, plug the power supply to the iPB-10 into a wall outlet, connect the dock connector to the iPad, close the protective frame, and power up the pedalboard.
