May 08 - what we found out

The May wefcpug looked at the (very) small screen, as we examined options for producing and viewing videos on the iPod Touch (and iPhone, for that matter).

The snippet of Apple video we saw came from a freely downloadable movie on Apple's developer centre (ADC) website. You need to register on this site (which is free unless you want 'premium' content) and then follow the 'ADC in iTunes' link. The movie is 'Designing Web content for iPhone' - there's a link in the lower half of the page. It's from the WWDC 2007 sessions, so will probably disappear soon, and is showing its age already. There's a lot of discussion about the Edge network connection, which is not so widespread in Europe as the US, and of course there's the expected announcement of a 3G iPhone anyway. The hour-long presentation deals with video at 38 minutes in.

There was mention of the 'makeref' program, for compiling QuickTime reference movies with multiple versions of a video file (one for slow connections, one for wired desktops, etc). That too is available for free via the ADC, as is a whole host of reference material about QuickTime. Visit apple.com/quicktime/resources for the list.
For downloads, etc, visit http://developer.apple.com/quicktime/ (again, you need to have registered) and then follow the Tools link in the list near the bottom of the page. (Direct link is http://developer.apple.com/quicktime/quicktimeintro/tools/index.html)

The software comes as a disk image, makerefmovie.dmg from which you drag the program into your applications folder. Plus there's a Readme with instructions. I also found an article about QT reference movies here on the QuickTime sub-site of apple.com - this article too is showing its age, with a definite look of OS9 about the illustration!

Elliott Bristow talked about his experiences of producing small screen versions of his roadtrips series - his website is www.retroroadtrips.com

And Finally
Richard issued a challenge: what's the best recipe for editing and compressing HDV-native footage in an SD DVD (meaning PAL mpeg-2)? email him, not me, with your recipe and we'll compare end results in the June meeting.

And the June meeting will be on Monday, June 2nd.

April meeting - what you missed

Much of last Monday's wefcpug meeting was conducted in a language that very few people on Earth (let alone in the meeting) can understand. No, I'm not referring to the brief demo of Automator that I ran (although some might beg to differ), but to the feature-length documentary that wefcpug member Jason Porthouse brought to show us, and talk about.

It's called Léif Lëtzebuerger and you can read all about it here. The most obvious comment to make is that the doc is in Luxembourgish, a language new to all of us in the meeting. Jason talked us through his workflow, which included new interview, rostrum stills, and copious archive footage from the 1940s back. Our thanks to Jason and to Grace productions for allowing us the sneak preview. We haven't finished with Jason though - he's agreed to talk again in a couple of months about the colour grading of the movie.

Lucky prize-winners took away a copy of the Quicktime guide to Automator (see blog below), Roxio's Popcorn and Freeway Express 4 from Softpress...we'll be printing reviews and comments at a later date. I've also got discount codes for Popcorn, and Freeway Express 5 - and, to come, Toast Titanium 9 - email me for details if you can't make the next meeting.

May's meeting is a week later than usual, because of the Bank Holiday Monday - so it'll be on Monday May 12th. Currently we're planning to make it a 'Small Screen Festival' focussing on video delivery to the iPhone, iPod Touch, and other handheld devices. Several of us are interested/experienced but there's always room for new faces to present at the wefcpug - let me know if you've got summat to share.

wefcpug tonight - 7th April

Don't forget it's wefcpug night tonight, 7pm prompt start at the usual backroom in the Beeb in Bristol. There's a show and tell from Jason of a doc they're premiering shortly, with exclusive first peeks at some scenes and a chance to quiz Jason about the post-prod route they've taken with this feature. Phil is diving into the chilly waters of Automator to see what's there in the murky waters for the likes of us.

And there's a host of raffle prizes from Softpress software, Sonic Solutions, Peachpit press, plus news of online voucher offers exclusive to the wefcpug members.

So strap on your snowshoes and trudge to the Whiteladies Rd tonight

Just one week to go - April wefcpug

A reminder that the April meeting of wefcpug is back at the BBC, Monday next (April 7th), 7pm.

What's in it? The usual very good question. I'm reviewing several books and products at the moment, and it's extremely likely some of them will feature in the wefcpug running order. For amusement value, there'll be a quick demo of Automator and whether it lives up to the hype of being a) easy to use and b) useful. My best pals at Peachpit provided a 'Visual Quickstart' guide for the raffle. More pertinent to FCP will be a look at current standards for web distribution, and I'm hoping some of the homegrown experts will join in here.

Plus some genuine boxed software prizes (yes, boxed) from newer best pals (for more details, you have to be there), and whatever else you bring to the table in the fast fault-finding round. And any offers to 'show and tell' or feature requests (be quick, folks).

Pre-bookings to me, Phil, please, for the benefit of the guys at the gate. email is philatbrightfilamentdotcodotuk

Book Review - Visual Quickstart Guide for Automator

Automator for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

Visual Quickstart Guide - Ben Waldie

Automator is one of the small apps supplied within OS X that, let's face it, most of us never get round to opening, let alone alone using regularly. The promise is there to liberate us from the tedium of repetitive familiar tasks and yet the learning curve seems quite steep when the app is run. The latest version of Automator, with Leopard, has a cute robot motif but, of course, no printed instruction manual - out of the box, it's all down to you and the Help files. Fine if you know what questions to ask, and are happy with online or on-screen instructions, which are, shall we say, sparse.

The Visual Quickstart guide seems designed to fill this gap, to act as a hand-holder for novices, and as a practical reference for intermediate users. It follows the format of other books in the series (which includes the recommended Lisa Brenneis guides to Final Cut, copies of which must be on every editor's desks), with plenty of screen shots and a straightforward, one step at a time, walk through the steps required to achieve what's required. Early chapters deal with simple jobs: taking the reader through the interface, building basic workflows, working with 'Actions' which are the fundamental procedures that Automator includes. This approach works well for me, it's a useful second stage to my first approach to any new app (in concise terms: run it, press all the buttons, see what breaks, see how quickly I get lost), and I appreciate the structured progression of the book.

Later chapters plunge deeper - or at least, as deep as Automator currently allows. There are good walk-through examples of saving Workflows (Automator's equivalent of a project), as applications or plug-ins, and the advanced features of integrating Automator with Applescript and running Shell scripts. These advanced features are the most promising development in Automator with Leopard, and this guide does a fair job of introducing them - but to use UNIX scripts especially requires a good deal of background knowledge, and familiarity with Terminal commands.

What drawbacks there are lie not with the book itself, but with Automator. The app performs well with those 'Actions' allowed it by other applications in the system. So for Safari, for instance, there are a range of actions related to current URLs and Feeds, that can be passed on by an Automator workflow for further processing. Automator is well endowed with file-type actions: most examples on the Apple website, and in this guide, relate in some way to graphics files (re-sizing, converting format, changing name to include date). Maybe this is because there's a lot of tedious work, for sure, to be done with graphics files, which tend to arrive in the dozens or hundreds. But not all applications offer hooks for Automator. One on my system that does is Fetch, an ftp program - but Firefox, for example, offers nought.

Another limitation to bear in mind is that Automator isn't quite a scripting environment, and certainly not a programming one. It is possible to build workflows with variables that can be passed between blocks, and there are looping facilities, but beyond that it's necessary to integrate AppleScript or Shell commands. Conditional branching, for instance, or Boolean operators, don't exist as such within Automator Actions. What's most obviously missing is a method of debugging workflows - my first attempts generated Error Codes but with no means of interpreting what the errors were. To do much beyond the simplest of repetitive actions, it's the very deep waters of Xcode and the resources in the Apple Development Centre (ADC).

Maybe it's not possible to have the best of both worlds. If you want the flexibility and programmability that comes with programming a shell script, that comes with the price tag of acquiring the knowledge of same and working at a terminal shell. If you want a modest set of defined actions and a simple way of putting the building blocks together, the flexibility has to be curtailed. Within the limitations of the allowed actions, then, Automator offers a highly visual and intuitive method of building a sequence of actions to form a workflow. It's not the cold bath that a sudden exposure to C or Ruby scripting offers, and if you need a helping hand into the warm waters, the Visual Quickstart Guide is for you.

------Phil Ashby

I'll be going into more detail about Automator and the book at the next wefcpug meeting, which is Monday 7th April.