Rocketboom (the controversial video podcast that made headlines when a catfight between the founders ousted the host) has a page on its website outlining the tools that they use to produce their podcast.

Their cocktail of tools includes everything from Quicktime Pro to Movable Type. They use Final Cut Pro, iMovie, and Audacity to edit. Rendering and delivery is a bit more difficult for Rocketboom because they have to deliver in so many formats. They have mobile deals, a deal with TiVo, the usual internet site - I imagine it gets crazy it times.

On the web, they render MOV with 3ivx compression (though it’s noted that they offer WMVs thanks to Flip4Mac). They note that they aren’t moving to H.264 because of the slow compression speed and slower adoption rates.

Capturing content on a screen is an important part of Rocketboom (their Mac laptop is probably the second biggest prop, next to the map). To capture the Laptop’s content the Rocketboom team uses Snapz Pro, and boasts of its efficiency and ease in capturing not only simple websites but video onscreen as well.

There are more details about their architecture over at the page. It’s an interesting look into the tools required to make a massive video podcast work!

Avid has a series of 14 tutorials for editing on their Avid Free DV software.

The tutorials cover all the basics of Free DV, which is a fantastic free version of Avid’s professional editing offerings. Free DV is amazingly well stocked with features for it’s lack of a pricetag (the next version up being $495!). Even though it’s ability to output is limited to Quicktime, it presents a fantastic introduction to the confusing interface of Avid.

Because the entire Avid platform is an industry standard for editing - it is used in major productions such as Lord of the Rings, the presence of these tutorials is great for those who are looking to get a basic primer in professional editing applications (and I’m sure they’ve already been used by some going into this field).

Nickelodeon (US-based children’s television channel) is starting to give kids the chance to mashup cartoons and share the results with their friends, according to an article on Yahoo Business.

Is old media getting it? I’m skeptical - but it’s exciting to see that they are embracing the concept that the fans are co-creating. The mashups can be created at the new “TurboNick” site. I’m also surprised that kids will be able to embed the video into their own sites. This is very impressive on Nickelodeon’s part. Major props.

As their executive Vice President notes:

“There is a big chunk of the audience that wants to delve deeper into the content and be a creator.”

Nickelodeon as a whole has done fairly well in keeping up with the trends. They’ve offered podcasts as a part of their summer show “Mr. Meaty” and recently they had a contest to allow fans to come up with scenes for the anime “Avatar: The Last Airbender”. I am curious as to why they aren’t selling their content online.

I know Viacom and Apple haven’t ever dealt (for a time, CBS had stuff on Google Video) but it still surprises me that Nickelodeon isn’t at least making an effort to get their video to the tech savvy youth.

Via Digg

I’ll admit - I’m a Windows user. Trust me, I want a Mac, but now isn’t the time. It’ll be here soon enough though.

So I set out today to find a time code calculator for my calculation needs, and was shocked to find that timecode calculators for Windows are extremely hard to come by. There are many for Mac (and I found one non-working one for the web) but unfortunately nothing seemed to come up for Windows.

I was fortunate enough though to find this fantastic utility (just before I got very angry): WFT Timecode Calculator. It’s based on a Palm time code calculator. It has a nice interface, it’s easy to use, etc. etc.

Check it out today and get the word out - this utility deserves to be shared!

JahShaka, the free/open source compositing program, released version 2.0 on Wednesday.

The release, which also came with news of version 0.1.0 of the JahPlayer, is advertised as “the most rock-solid version” of the program yet, and features critical bug fixes as well as some updates.

The exciting announcement (for me, more later) is that the version 3.0 of JahShaka will be based on an entirely new codebase, specifically the codebase of the JahPlayer. I’m a fan of JahShaka, I’m a fan of all Open Source (especially in film, we have so little) but honestly I could never get much done in JahShaka. Hopefully this code overhaul will make it easier!

Most of the time when making a movie, people worry about creating a soundtrack that matches well with the film. Sometimes though, when doing a video montage or making a music video, you’ll need to do the reverse and match video to audio.

This is easier than it sounds - and if you’re a user of Sony Vegas it’s even easier (Vegas started its life as an audio editor, and has always had a fantastic set of audio features). Sony has posted a tutorial that is directed at Vegas users, however it’s chock full of knowledge that can be used by anyone who needs to match video to audio.

Interested in a sample (and a shameless plug, hehe)? Check out this project I did several years ago. Like Russell at DV Guru mentions, the impact is much more dramatic when you have the video and the music working together as they do.

Via DV Guru

StashSpace is a new video editing website.

StashSpace, which is the latest entry in a long line of similar websites (however this one apparently is quite old - at least the software is), allows users to upload, edit, and then export to various formats (including DVD - big plus here!).

The token system that the site uses is very interesting. You pay for your storage in tokens. You can get tokens for doing good stuff on the site (sharing video for example) and I’m assuming they start you off with tokens as well. If you run out of space, you can buy more, although TechCrunch (linked below) notes that prices vary between “25 and 40 cents per 5 minutes”.

Via TechCrunch

Editor’s Note: I’m still working on my Edit For Free article… don’t worry!

Seriously, if this isn’t a Photoshop… I’m in awe.

Supposedly Apple is developing a Final Cut Pro for the web, much like the new Ajaxy Mail app. This is a timely leak considering yesterday’s Yahoo! acquisition of JumpCut.

The source of the leak, Sparklepuff, commented that

Right now it’s just running on a beefed-up QuickTime Plugin and a whole helluva lotta Ajax, but it’s gonna be just like the real thing, only hella slower.

I’m excited, are you?

Via As the Apple Turns II

It’s been blogged to death already today but I thought I’d let you all know that JumpCut, online video editing site, has been bought out by Yahoo. I doubt we’ll see anything interesting out of this (Yahoo tends to leave their acquired properties alone except to integrate Y!ID) but just the same one can dream this’ll mean some interesting Flickr video stuff.

They already appear to have some business connections mainly with Fox, so I’m curious to see how Yahoo handles this - especially with their transition to content-provider.