I love screencasts because they’re fairly simple to produce, and they’re an excellent way to show something visually. However, sometimes I watch screencasts that have poor levels of quality (usually on YouTube). While I might be intrigued by the content, the production quality is low and the videos are difficult to watch because of this.

If you’re looking for a way to increase the quality of your screencasts, then this installment of Izzy Video will give you a big boost. In it, I reveal four secrets to making a high-quality screencast.

This episode is for members only. If you’d like to learn more about an Izzy Video Membership, please follow this link.

Many of you have asked me to release some more Motion tutorials, so that’s what this week’s Izzy Video is all about.

Motion is very powerful, and my personal opinion is the best way to learn it is one concept at a time. In this brief tutorial, I demonstrate an interesting way to use an Anchor Point in a 3D environment.

This video is available to members only.

This installment of Izzy Video introduces the concept of Keyframes inside of Final Cut Pro. Although Final Cut Pro isn’t built around animating video, it has plenty of functionality. If you’d like to animate video clips, objects, or text, then this tutorial should be helpful in getting you started.

This video is available to members only.

Several viewers have asked me how I create the intros and outros for the different shows I produce. The answer is that I use Apple’s Motion. It’s extremely powerful, and in this video tutorial, I show the basics of how to use particles in Motion. The particle emitter is very useful, but it can be overwhelming to somebody who is new to Motion. I try to make it easy for you.

I also briefly show how to create particles in a 3D environment for a very cool effect.

This video is available to members only.

In this video tutorial, we’re back inside Apple’s Motion for a new tutorial. I show how to animate a drawing line on a map. This is a classic animation used to show someone’s trip around the world, but the technique can also be used for a variety of other purposes. For example, you can use it to circle something on the screen, to show the path a football player is going to run, and so on.

It’s a very simple effect to create, and I thought it might be a helpful one.

This video is available to members only.

You can create some interesting special effects in your videos using the behaviors “Analyze Motion” and “Match Move” in Apple’s Motion. Motion’s capabilities appear endless, and can be quite intimidating, but I keep things very simple in this video podcast.

This installment of Izzy Video shows you how to use Motion to create a “magic wand” out of a stick.

Here is the link to the video.

Once you’re done watching this video, you can also watch other free sample episodes.

In this installment of Izzy Video, I demonstrate how to do single frame animation. It’s easy to do, and if you have children (like I do), you might want to get them involved. They’ll love it too.

The editing software I use is Final Cut Pro, but you could just as easily use iMovie or any other video editor that allows you to import digital photos.

As always, thanks for watching!

This video is available to members only.

Update –

Within a couple hours of when I posted today’s installment of Izzy Video, I received this great email from Dave Morrison. Dave, thanks for the helpful tip!

Hi Izzy,

I’ve really enjoyed your video tutorials over the last few months. I REALLY
enjoyed tonight’s offering about single-frame animation because I can
finally contribute back to you! There’s a MUCH easier way to do this
operation and you already have the necessary software.

Here’s all you do:

1. shoot all your still-frame images in just the manner you described
2. put them all in one folder
3. open Quicktime Player Pro.
4. go to the pulldown for Open > Image sequence
5. point it to the folder where the images are contained
6. pick whatever frame rate you desire
7. sit back and enjoy your movie

I’ve used this for a multitude of timelapse projects and it works great. If
you’re into a more “long form” video, here’s a site where they describe a
fairly inexpensive intervalometer that you can get to capture images at any
rate you want:

http://www.digitalsecrets.net/secrets/Accessory.html

have fun,
dave morrison
st. pete, fl

Additional update:

Another time-saving strategy, this time from Ryan, who writes:

Izzy,

Good podcast, just a few shortcuts for if you are doing stop-motion (single frame) animation in FCP:

1) You can change the default still/freze frame duration in the USER PREFERENCES to be 1 or 2 frames (or any duration) so that when you add the images to your project, FCP automatically assigns them all the same 1-frame duration. (note: you must change this setting BEFORE importing the imgages into FCP)

2) Since digital photo cameras number the photos filenames sequentially, you can just select all the photos from the browser and drag them into the timeline. It will order the photos numerically according to the filename, so it will add them all in the timeline at once, and in the correct order.

Thanks for the great Podcasts!! Keep up the great work!!

-Ryan

This video tutorial is a quick introduction to machinima. If you don’t know what machinima is, don’t worry. You’re not alone. It’s pretty cutting-edge stuff right now. For film-makers it offers the chance to have a moving story-board. Or you can create your whole film there.

See what I’m talking about in the video.

I used my favorite Brother Love song again in this podcast, courtesy of music.podshow.com.

I know this video tutorial isn’t going to be for everyone, but I’m sure some of you might be interested in creating narratives in this virtual world. To those of you who hate this one, I apologize, but I have to stray from the mainstream every once in a while.