November 12, 1970 marked the birth of a story so outrageous it was often considered an urban legend. A 45-foot dead whale, weighing a whopping eight tons, washed up onto a beach in Florence, Oregon. Due to the sheer size and increasingly putrid smell of the deceased cetacean, the Oregon Department of Transportation decided the best solution for removal was to blow it up using a half-ton of dynamite.

Moments after the dynamite detonated, it became painfully clear that this was not the best course of action. As smelly chunks of whale blubber came raining down, bystanders ran for cover. A car parked a quarter-mile down the road was crushed under the weight of one of the larger pieces that fell. Fortunately, no one was hurt and a great lesson was learned: Always have a camera rolling.

If it hadn’t been for the gentleman with the camera, the story of Oregon’s exploding whale may have slipped into urban legend obscurity. You, too, can help preserve a moment in time. Next time you hear of something fishy happening in your town, grab your camera and start rolling. You never know what kind of footage might fall into your lap!

Grab your camcorders and mics, (and maybe some zombie make-up!), and get ready to video-tape the first of what promises to be an annual event: the world’s largest “Thriller” dance!

In tribute to Michael Jackson, and because it’s good clean fun, someone started up the international Thriller dance-a-thon that is supposed to go on all over the world – at the same time.

A website, Thrill the World, was created just to organize this event, and you can find out there where the Thriller dance is going on in your neighborhood, or try to get one started… but hurry, the dance is happening this coming Saturday.
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Schneider Optics is now offering their well known and liked diffusion filters in easy to install round sizes.  Read on for more details.

Schneider Optic’s renowned Classic Soft®, HD Classic Soft®, Black Frost™, and Hollywood Black Magic diffusion filters are now available in popular round sizes specifically for today’s leading SLR, digital SLR and DV cameras.

A favorite tool of Hollywood cinematographers thanks to their ability to “hide the trick,” Schneider precision optical glass diffusion filters are routinely requested by top talent who appreciate looking their best. And getting the image right in-camera also means big savings over costly, time-consuming post-editing. Read the rest of this entry »

Adobe announces its latest additions to the Adobe Elements and Photoshop family today with it release of its consumer video editing program – Premiere Elements 8 and Photoshop 8. Adobe created Elements with the intent of reaching the consumer and hobbyist market with it’s low priced video editing software, but has moved the editing program along into a robust application that can keep pace with the big boys.

Rather than throwing in more effects you don’t need, this latest update has a lot more under the hood and has added some better tools to organize your video and photos.

What’s new? There’s an auto analyzer that you can use to tag your images for fast and easy searches. You can also sync your video and photos across several computers and the program has face recognition, helping to zone in on just the images you want from, say, “Carsen’s Birthday,” and it will learn who your subjects are and can find all images of them across the files.
Here’s some advance copy from our First Look review, to be uploaded Wednesday morning:
Premiere Elements 8 adds additional automated tools: Smart Trim removes the least interesting, lowest quality footage; SmartFix corrects shaky footage and color and lighting problems; and SmartMix balances music and sound effects without overpowering dialog or background audio. Plus, the new Motion Tracking feature finds moving subjects in your footage so that you can add graphics, text, and even video effects that automatically move with them.

Read the rest of our advance review of Adobe Elements 8.0 online here  http://www.videomaker.com/article/14751/

More From Adobe’s Press Release:
Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 & Adobe Premiere Elements 8 software gives you power and ease of use so you can create extraordinary photos and incredible movies, easily manage and protect your photos and video clips with automatic online backup, and access them anywhere you are. And now, Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 & Adobe Premiere Elements 8 Plus includes everything in the award-winning software and more:
• 20GB of online storage—enough for up to 15,000 photos or four hours of DVD-quality video
• Ongoing delivery of new, easy-to-use tutorials
• Ongoing delivery of fresh seasonal artwork, inspiring templates, movie themes, video effects, and all-new Online Albums

It’s all accessible with your Adobe ID. For more details, visit www.adobe.com/go/membership_elements. Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 & Adobe Premiere Elements 8 Plus, $179.99 (Available on Adobe.com, U.S. only) A savings of $20 off the first year of Plus, if purchased with the software bundle.
Already have Photoshop Elements 8 & Adobe Premiere Elements 8? Upgrade to Plus via the product for $49.99 a year.

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers; better known as ASCAP, is targeting videos on YouTube for royalty payment for it’s professional creative members. This is a good thing for producers who work hard at making their product, only to see that someone has “borrowed” some of that property clips for their own use. But the average consumer who just wants to make a simple video using a well-know song as their music bed might get confused.

According to this recent report from Digital Media Wire, if you make a cute little video using copyrighted music, and place it on your own personal blog or non-commercial website, you won’t be targeted, but if you post it for the masses, you will. Or something like that. As copyright laws for intellectual property goes, it’s always muddy, and only attorneys seem to be able to interpret them. Read the rest of this entry »

As more video comes to light from the struggle inside Iran, one must marvel at the technology making this all possible. Even a decade ago, people had to reply mostly on images smuggled out of an area of conflict by journalists working for the traditional media. Now, with all the quick down-n-dirty ways of getting images on the airwaves, anyone who can get footage to the right sources can get their footage seen by the world.

A story from FOX News is an example of ways some people within Iran have gotten some of the graphic images to the press: by a James Bond-like spy camera embedded in what looks like an ordinary writing pen.

Unlike tiny spy cameras of days gone by, this one records to a flash drive and can be exported through a common USB port. FOX News reports that thousands of these pens were sent to the citizens inside Iran to get these images. Once the Iranian government found out about the pens, they began to confiscate them, and new unknown devices have since replaced the pen-cams. Read the rest of this entry »