I got talking to @Kingisafink about film and making movies for Video20Q. it was only natural to include them on the Mac20Q Podcast too. Same interview but for the listeners of Mac20Q to enjoy.

‘Libidoland’ is the title of their latest movie short and the trailer for it looks like fun. Jessica and Julie told me that they have a weird sense of humour and like to combine that with social comment in their movies. They ask,  why should movies follow the Hollywood trait of having to have a tidy ending or even a tidy story. Life is messy and there is no reason why movies can’t reflect some of that and still give a level of entertainment.

I would say that you would get a higher level of entertainment if the story makes you think a bit too. Get those brain cells working for a change, while it is good to have a suspension of disbelief while watching a movie it doesn’t mean that the thinking processes have to be dormant too.

This interview started over at Video20Q blog and podcast and seeing as Phil is a Mac user it is only right that I publish here on Mac20 Q also. I have cut out some of the interview that was more specific to film making and if you would like to get the full skinny on Phil, then you can listen to the interview in full at Video20Q.

Simon and I talked about how he uses his Mac. he is a tech support guy working with Windows installation in the main. There is on place that has Macs so he has to be content with having fun with his Mac when he gets home.

Simon is planning to start a Mac podcast soon in which he will be doing reviews of Mac software mainly and probably other stuff too. I am looking forward to hearing and seeing the screencasts that he brings out.

He likes to use iMovie and is planning to get the latest version soon to be able to do a better job with the screencasting for the podcast. I did tell him about ScreenFlow for the screen capture part of the job, but he already has different software for it.

In my ramble I talk about the Liverpool Tweetup which is starting on Friday which I am so looking forward to. There are some of the group celebrating birthdays so I expect there will be some boozing. With me being a teetotaller it won’t make a difference to me. Will be a pile of fun anyway.

I might also see if I can catch a movie while I am there too. I wonder if Avatar will be showing in Liverpool at the weekend. So long as I don’t have to go to do too much shopping although part of the meet up includes going to the AppleStore.

Look out for the podcast that will come out of the face to face interviews. We should have loads to talk about.

What does a grown man do when in the jungle or forest hunting boar, run like a girlie of course…

I went int the forest next door and took my Canon Vixia with me to film something. I used the technique of putting the camera on a mono pod and putting the end of it in the top of my trousers. I am sure it must have looked rude. I saw the technique being demonstrated in a YouTube video and thought I should have a go. The main point was to have some footage to play with in FinalCut Express. I wanted to use the Ripple, roll slip and slide tools for arranging the clips on the time line. Really keen to make something creative with the camera and my Mac too.

Here is the result of the adventure and I will be putting up another Mac20Q Quick Tip about what I was doing with the sound also. I recorded the sound with the Zoom H2 recorder and a wired lavalier mic and matched up the sound after in AmadeusPro. It worked nicely.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 59:54 — 27.6MB)

Gary Rosenzweig pictured here in an English pub  (Mind you if he was doing it properly he would have a pint of beer in his hand) talked to Mac20Q about what he does with MacMost Video. He has been very busy producing Mac tips in video form for about 2 years and is doing very nicely on YouTube.

He was previously into making games with Flash and still might do the odd game. He has also made an app for the iPhone. So as you can see he is multi talented with the programming, podcasting with video, writing books, drinking beer and probably many other things too. He is successful in bringing in revenue from his podcasting, He has the links on the MacMost site and apart from one month doesn’t have the advertising in the videos.

Gary also has an Sony HDV camera which is plugged into his MacPro and he records live into Wirecast which comes from the same company as ScreenFlow. I was amazed that his preference for movie editing was with iMovie because it is so fast to do the editing. He could use FinalCut Express but prefers iMovie. He compresses the file at the end of it all with MPEG StreamClip. He uploads to Blip.tv and it will send the file off to YouTube which saves some time with the uploading. Naturally you will find Gary on FaceBook and Twitter.

He recommends that if you want to get into video podcasting and you don’t yet have a HD Camera then just shoot in standard def. move up to HD when you are able to. If you wait until everything is perfect then you will never get to make a podcast.

Gary admits to being a geek, and using terminal editor on his tiny netbook rather than using the Ubuntu that was installed. He was using EEE Ubuntu. He has been using as Mac for a long time though and was issued a Mac SE in 1987 when he was in college. It was a requirement to have a Mac there.

For a favourite application he has to choose between Garageband and iMovie, but was perhaps edging towards iMovie more. Gary does use Audacity and although it is a free application I would recommend that you use AmadeusPro, it looks prettier, more Mac like and I think it is more stable too.

He uses Fluid the custom browser application that you can use to make a web application for one specific purpose. I have it for FaceBook but Gary uses it for a Todo application. he is an iPhone user and use MocaVNC, Tweetie, Cycle Meter, and Scrabble plus other games. On the MacMost Newsletter he does a recommended iPhone app of the week.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (29.4MB)

Whether you want to find out more about The Office In The Cloud, New Media Analytics, Monetizing Your Content, Beginning Podcasting, Make Your Green Screen Shots Look Great On The Web, Mobile Devices and TV, Extending Your Brand With An iPhone App, using Twitter For Leads, then the place to start learning about these topics is at 

Marcelo is the NewMediaDude an he talks to me about his new media business and about how he creates new media and gets paid for it. As you can see he is shy because he only supplied me with a very small photo of himself, despite being a handsome man. I thought at first that I should pronounce his name in the Italian way but he informed me that the correct way is the Argentinian or possibly French. Aren’t we being very international here on Mac20Q.

Honestly though I had a great talk with Marcelo and I know you will learn things from what he had to say as well as enjoy the interview. He has a pro camera with the Sony EX1, I know is good because my son who is a professional cameraman has one the same and the guys at Double Edge Films told me that either they would like one of they have one, can’t remember which right now.

Marcelo Lewin, CEO / Founder
As the CEO and founder of Center For New Media Studies and CNMS TV, Marcelo Lewin is in charge of the vision, the day to day operations of the company and building strategic partnerships and alliances. Previously, Marcelo founded and was the CEO of Pixel Heads Network, which was acquired by ProMAX Systems in 2008. Prior to that he founded My Internet Desktop, which was acquired by Internet Appliance Network in 2000. Having worked with a variety of companies, from Walt Disney Imagineering to NBC to Toyota, he is always on the forefront of interactive and new media projects.

I have looked at his site and it is certainly impressive and I have signed up to see on of his Webinars later this month.

Marcelo was telling that sometimes it is just him working alone like a one man band with his camera, sound gear and the cymbals attached to his knees, a harmonica around his neck  and a large drum on his back. That has got to be funny to look at. Seriously though he asks the questions and holds the camera and I can only imagine how difficult that can be trying to control some impressive technology at the same time. Marcelo is a great guy and I really enjoyed talking to him.

Bob has been a supporter of Mac20Q for some time and was telling me that he has listened right from the start of the podcast. Thanks Bob, good to have you along for the ride. He was the winner of one of our software giveaway competitions too!

A good chat was had and covered all the good stuff about being a Mac user. Bob is in the process of making a podcast about Bridge the card game. He started doing it as an audio podcast then decided to start again but with video. Makes more sense if you can see the cards, for this he has been using BoinxTV. I also have BoinxTV but it didn’t work on my iMac and when I looked at it working on the MacBook I decided that it was more for making Live TV programs with multiple cameras. I think I am better off using FinalCut Express or iMovie.

Whilst on the subject of FinalCut Express, I have still been working away to learn how to use the application and I am pleased that I am getting into it due to using Lynda .com with the excellent tutorials they have there. I also found FinalCutKing web site and there is a whole load of video tutorials on the IzzyVideo web site. All good quality stuff. I checked out YouTube also but the quality of the tutorials is much more variable and at the lower end of the scale.

I though it was funny that all the news sites have been talking about Applecare not being available to smokers because the filth that had accumulated in the machine had made it un safe for the technicians, Well smokers are disgusting creatures and deserve it if it is true. Blackened lungs and blackened insides of the computer. So there you go passive smoking is bad for computers too.

Back to Bob – he is certainly a die hard Mac user, having experience with Macs from the very early days, he did veer away during the dark days when Jobs was pushed aside but was happy to come back to the fold when Intel processors appeared in the Mac computers. Thanks to Bob for coming on Mac 20 Questions. I had a great time chatting with him and if you would like to be featured on Mac 20 Questions then why not contact me and we can make a date and time to record an interview.

Listen to the Podcast at Writers20Q

This morning I finished editing the interview that I did with J.C. Hutchins. I really had a great chat with him about the craft of writing and about the podcasting part of what he has done. Didn’t get to talk much about the fact that he uses the Mac to do his work in Pages from iWork and with Garageband for making his podcasts of his novels. Maybe I will have to get him back to talk just about being a Mac user.

I really enjoyed talking to him and also enjoyed listening to it again when I edited the interview. If you want to listen you will be able to find the podcast at the Writers20Qweb site. JC is a great guy and I teased him a bit about mental hospital experience, which he thought was very funny, he has an excellent  sense of humour which is always good in a person.

The story that he podcasted is called 7th Son: Descent  and is all about human cloning. It is a Science fiction, thriller adventure story and I enjoyed listening to the series.

He now has a book out called Personal Effects: Dark Art  and is a fully immersive experience which is augmented by physical items included with the book to allow you to actually take an active role in the adventure. I have started to listen to the prequel story connected to this novel ‘Personal Effects – Sword of Blood‘ and have been enjoying it so far.

You know when you turn on the caps lock and type in a pile of text then have to either type in again or find a way to change it. How about if you were to turn off the Caps Lock Key, you know you hardly ever use it. Seems that it is more there to annoy than to be useful. Well in this video I show you how to turn off the Caps Lock.

See how you can set up active corners that will work with a modifier key so that it doesn’t just annoy you when you are trying to something in one of the active corners, like hit the Apple in the menu bar at top left.

I made this video with ScreenFlow to capture the screen and narrate, then I put it in Final Cut Express to set it up. It is really the first project I have set up in Final Cut so I was pleased that it went so well. I have been using Lynda.com to learn how to use Final Cut. It cost $25 to get Lynda for a month and I would say that with the quality of the screencasts it is well worth it. I have been doing the TrueType lessons as well as Final Cut.

I have been amazed by the capabilities of LiveType and being able to do some round trip editing between it and FinalCut Express. I have opened a Live Type section in FinalCut Express – gone in and changed it, saved it and returned to Final cut to see it updated ready for action.

Here is the Video and if you want to see in High Definition then go to the YouTube site to watch it in 1280 by 720

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (33.6MB)

Today I am talking to a guy that nearly confessed to being a makeup guy, you know lipstick and blusher and all that, but did confess to being a geek. Unfortunately his wife is not a Mac person yet but he is working on her, I tell him to get out the thumbscrews. His son aged five though is a computer user with a laptop of his own.

David does have an iMac 20 inch model and is a recent switcher. He got drawn into the Mac world with iPods and moved into it with a white Macbook, he has moved on to a later model MacBook though. He is a firm believer in AppleCare. I have not had AppleCare on any of my Macs but he has got his moneys’ worth out of it.

We talk about Boxee and Plex, I don’t use those because I can’t get the best out of it because I live in Spain. I just wish I could use the BBC iPlayer, I may have to get something that will hide my IP address.

I talk about getting a satellite box from Elgato which will allow me to save things to watch later. He has a Sanyo Xacti video camcorder and loves using iMovie to make professional looking DVDs for the family.

He has his own podcast and is on episode 14 at the moment. He said the latest was going to be about Christmas presents for the Geek in your life.

David confesses to being an inbox zero type and also to having been outside the Milton Keynes Apple Store at 4am in the morning to get an iPhone. He uses Tweetie two and uses Brizzly which is a web based twitter client. There was a Twitter client in the latest MacHeist, Twitterific

Hooray I finally got my hands on Final Cut Express, Only took 2 weeks to get here from Birmingham to Spain. There is a chance that it was in the post office here for a few days because I didn’t get the note to say it was in the post office to collect. Often the post person is completely useless putting the post in the wrong box. Some of the house owners don’t check their post for months because they don’t live here – they live in Holland or Germany. Then when they do check and find a letter or whatever that is not theirs, they just dump it rather than put in the right box

Grrrr !!

Ah well I have it now just because I called to correos and asked if they had anything for me, or it would have probably sat there for a few more days or weeks. I still am happy to have saved 70 euro by buying off the Apple Store site in the UK rather than getting from the Apple Store Spain.

As soon as I had installed FinalCut Express I had to download a 180 mb  to update it to the latest. I will talk more about how it is going in a blog post and podcast.