A couple weeks ago I mentioned in my newsletter that I was turning old VHS and 8mm video into digital video to store on hard drives. Since then, I’ve received many emails from viewers asking me to show how to convert analog video to digital video.

This members-only edition of Izzy Video will show you the exact steps to take.

As an additional note, I want to emphasize that I feel this is a high priority for people in the world today. We don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to get ahold of VCR’s and 8mm video cameras. If you have old video, please don’t procrastinate. Convert that old footage to digital. This will give you a digital master you can use for a number of different things in the future.

Enjoy the video. You can download the trailer here.

If you’re new to Izzy Video, you should watch some of the free videos so you can see if it might make sense for you to become a member.

If you’re having trouble adding transitions to your sequence in Final Cut Express or Final Cut Pro, this video should help.

I have received this same question from many different viewers, and rather than answer them all individually, I thought it would make sense to make a video that shows you:

• Why the problem happens
• How to fix it
• How to work around it if it’s not something you CAN fix

I hope you find it helpful.

You can also right-click here to save the video to your computer.

I have more free video tutorials here. If you want access to everything, you need to become a member.

If you think about it, a video camera is similar to a regular still camera shooting 30 frames per second. There ARE some huge differences, but it’s definitely possible to export a single frame from your video in 1080p and then print it as a 4×6 photo. I’ve done it, and it looks pretty darn good.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you a simple way to export a single frame of video for printing or for posting to the web…or really whatever you want to do with it. Also, I’ll show you how to export a sequence of images.

This tutorial is for members only, but you can watch the trailer here.

UPDATE: I’ve had a few viewers tell me that their version of Quicktime doesn’t allow exporting like I show in this video. I guess I have Quicktime Pro and didn’t even realize it (It must have been installed with Final Cut Studio or something.) Sorry about the confusion… I suppose it’s not quite a free method for doing things.

If you’re shooting video of a live event, it’s best to have several cameras capturing at the same time. Generally, the more angles you have on the action, the better.

This installment of Izzy Video is how to edit the footage from all of those cameras. The application I use in the tutorial is Final Cut Pro, but you can likely do similar things in other editing applications.

If you want to know how to switch between different camera angles inside Final Cut Pro, you’ll love this video.

Please note: The project files will only work in Final Cut Pro 7.

This one is for members only, but you can watch the Quicktime trailer here.

If you want access to this tutorial as well as the large library of archived videos, you need to become an Izzy Video Member.

Sometimes when you’re shooting video, you’ll end up with bad audio. Many times this results from a persistent background noise of some sort. It could be a hum, wind noise, an air conditioner, traffic, an airplane flying overhead — you get the idea. You can’t always fix these problems in post production, but sometimes you can. In this episode of Izzy Video, I’ll show you how to use a tool called “Noise Reduction” inside of Soundtrack Pro (an application included in Final Cut Studio) to reduce or eliminate unwanted background noise from your video.

This video is available to members only. If you want to learn how you can get access to this video as well as more than 100 more videos, follow this link to learn about a membership.

You can download the Quicktime version of this trailer here.

Want to know how to speed up video compression? The week’s members-only tutorial is for those of you who: 1) Use Compressor to transcode videos, and 2) Have more than one core in your computer’s processor.

Many of the recent Macs have more than one processor on their motherboard. This means that you have a lot of potential processing power at your disposal, but not everyone knows how to take full advantage of it. When you do a lot of video compression, it helps to save some time, and in this week’s tutorial, I show you step-by-step how to set up your Mac to maximize video compression using Compressor. This can dramatically speed up the time it takes to transcode video.

It also shows you iStat Menu, an interesting tool you can use to monitor the processors.

This week’s video is only available to members, but I’ll release another free one next week.

Thanks for watching!

For many years, nearly all the videos you’ve seen embedded on my website have been Quicktime videos in file formats such as MP4, MOV, and M4V. I’ve used Quicktime embed code on occasion, but usually I simply link to the video files so you can click on them and watch them in your browser. I did this even when most other websites embedded Flash video files, and clearly Flash was becoming the new standard.

My reason for this has been that I’ve much preferred the quality of Quicktime files over the quality of Flash files. To my eyes, Flash videos were unbearably low quality and difficult to watch. And one of the biggest problems has been the video-sharing services like YouTube. When you upload a video to their service, they control the transcoding process, so you give up your control over quality.

Everything has recently changed. My concerns are gone because Flash now has the ability to play videos encoded with the H.264 codec. This is huge! H.264 gives you the ability to produce high quality videos with a relatively low file size. This codec is the one I use with all of the videos I distribute over the web.

In this week’s installment of Izzy Video, I demonstrate how to create a high quality FLV file (which is a Flash file format that’s excellent for playing on the web). I also demonstrate how to embed it into your website. If you’ve been wanting to embed high quality videos in your website, this episode is a must-see.

Update: I should have mentioned in the video that Don Wigington from www.epikos.net told me about the very useful trick of changing the file extension from MP4 to FLV. Thanks, Don, for the pointer!

This week’s tutorial is available to Izzy Video Members only.

Become an Izzy Video Member

Izzy Video Members get access to full versions of the show in HD and iPod resolutions. Please follow this link for more details on becoming an Izzy Video Member.

Want to see the trailer and all the other free tutorials?

Subscribe to the free version of Izzy Video in iTunes, and have this trailer plus future free tutorials and trailers delivered to your computer by clicking on the following link:

Free Izzy Video Tutorials in iTunes

You can download the Quicktime version of the trailer here.

Who says that video production can’t be a family activity?

I get requests for Motion tutorials all the time, and it’s been a while since I’ve released one, so I thought we’d have a little fun in this week’s episode. In this installment of Izzy Video, I demonstrate the steps you take in Motion to turn a face into a monster’s face. The technique uses motion tracking and keyframed filters. I hope you have as much fun with this technique as we did.

You can download the video here.

Many times when you’re shooting video outdoors, you compromise on your exposure because of the high contrast range of the sunny outdoors, and the limited contrast range of your video camera. The video clip I use in this episode of Izzy Video is a perfect example of this type of compromise. Luckily, you can improve the imagery in post production, and in this video, I show you one way to do it. It’s a technique I call faking a graduated ND filter. It’s pretty simple, but it can have a big impact.

This installment of Izzy Video is for members only. To learn more about how an Izzy Video membership works, please visit this page.

I have received many, many emails asking me to please describe my process of archiving and backing up video files. I think people are starting to feel the pains associated with shooting tapeless. You end up with a lot of data and very few places to put it.

And how do you take precautions to prevent data loss?

This installment of Izzy Video will show you my personal process. While there are many different ways you could do this, my system works for me. In the video you’ll see the tools I use, and how I use them.

Here are links to some of the items I discuss in the video:

• Drobo
• Dual Drive Adapter
• Wiebetech DriveBox 10 pack
• SuperDuper

This installment of Izzy Video is available to members only. Members get more. A lot more.