Headlamp Pictures Blog

I’ve come across corrupted QT files a number of times… don’t know why I finally decided to see if there was anything I could do about them… I’d always considered them a lost cause. Now there’s reason for hope!

A few weeks ago I participated in a three-camera shoot of a concert using two 7Ds and a 550D. When I tried to transfer the files to a computer, I was shocked to discover that two of the files were corrupt. Worse still, they happened in the same scene from two different cameras, which also happened to be the most important song of the concert. What horrible luck. I have been shooting with DSLRs for quite some time, and I have never had a corrupt file, much less two on the same night, at the same time, on two different cameras! I immediatly began to research how to fix them, but found the info on the internet to be a bit lacking. I hope this post will give someone with the same problem a slightly easier time. CONTINUED…

Here’s another possibility with a lot of other useful aps bundled in: 

Pro Maintenance Tools (formerly FCS Maintenance Pack) is a utility pack designed to keep your Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer or Adobe Premiere Pro Mac running at optimal performance and help resolve problems when they arise.

The suite contains tools to repair corrupt QuickTime movies, locate corrupt clips within a timeline, diagnose crash logs, manage plugins, repair Final Cut Pro projects, manage autosaves, salvage movie data from corrupt files, and much more.

Show-stopping problems always seem to occur on a deadline – Pro Maintenance Tools is designed to rapidly diagnose and fix common issues, ensuring users get back on track as quickly as possible. With the Task Scheduler utility, maintenance tasks can even be scheduled to run in the background for convenience.

I’ve long followed Peter Broderick and even used his consulting services on Skatopia. In this article he outlines how the phenomenon of crowdfunding can be done right… or wrong. Worth a read.

As I’ve learned from my 7-year old, graphic novels are tremendously appealing to young minds. Here’s a novel way to engage kids in the classroom by creating their own illustrated stories using digital tools.

A few years ago I put together a really rudimentary teaching guide to using Comic Life in the classroom. It was thrown together as a series of test lessons but I was asked for a copy and thus made it public. 

Last December I have it a little refresh to cover Comic Life 2 although it is still patchy around the corners. The unit covers the idea of visual story telling and communicating a narrative with only 6 photos. You can obviously adjust the rules according to age group, for example you might allow some text direction in the comic frames.

Comic Life is a digital story telling application with a difference. The simple graphical user interface and intuitive drag and drop workflow makes it a perfect tool for classrooms both at primary and secondary level. The Comic Life Application is intuitive and fun to use, it simply removes any ICT barrier and allows pupils to focus on creative communication.

Comic Life is particularly affordable but if you are unsure of its benefits in the classroom situation a trial version is available via the www.plasq.com website.

I first devised this short unit for use with the original version of Comic Life and keystage 3 level students.

To build in a slightly deeper ICT dimension I only allowed photos to be taken with a mobile device that offered bluetooth file transfer (sadly not an iPhone). The students would take the photos, bluetooth them across to the Mac, create the comic and bluetooth the final document to their friends.

The workflow from mobile phone photos to Comic Life and then back to the phone demonstrates just how possible a paperless classroom could be and how much students enjoy capturing and processing images from mobile devices. Zero paper, maximum fun.

TASK

In small groups pupils will write and communicate a story using only eight photos and the Comic Life Application. For older students you may want to limit the number of photos to six and if you really want to challenge the students then you could forbid them using any text in their story.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• On successful completion of this task pupils will be able to use bluetooth to transfer files to and from am computer.
• On successful completion of the task pupils will be able use photos taken with a mobile phone in their own documents / coursework etc.
• On successful completion of the task pupils will be able to manipulate / resize and filter their photographs.
• On successful completion of the task pupils will be able to use suitable software applications to communicate in a range of different ways.

TRANSFERABLE SKILLS

The transferable skills covered in the unit include : Working with others, Organising oneself, Communication, Critical and discriminating skills, Reflection and decision making skills.

 

The zip file contains a PDF of the document as well an ePub version ready for your favourite ebook reader. The ePub version has been tested in iBooks and works pretty well.

 

Conditions

Please do not redistribute the ebook or link to the file directly. Do though, feel free to link to this page and spread the word. Any comments? please post them below.

 

I usually don’t repost business advice info, but this column made a lot of sense to me.

Four Reasons Any Action Is Better than None
Rosabeth Moss Kanter – Harvard Business Review

It’s well-known that busy people get the most done. Their secret is simple: They never stop moving.

Of course, sitting still can be a good thing if it involves renewal, reflection, and focused attention (or having meals with the family). But sitting still can be a bad thing if it involves procrastination, indecision, and passivity.

Companies heading downhill have passive cultures. Unmade decisions pile up. Opportunities are lost. No one wants to risk making a mistake. It becomes easier to sit it out than get into the game. One of my favorite examples involves the backwater bank in which employees would send customers who had complicated problems to the rival bank across the street, rather than try to do anything.

In contrast, in companies with high levels of innovation, people take initiative. They start new things. They don’t wait to be told. They get routine work done efficiently in order to free up the time to get involved in something new. Here are some of the reasons.

Small wins matter. Small wins pave the way for bigger wins. A nudge in the right direction, as Cass Sunstein and the new behavioral economists tell us, can lead to major tipping points (per Malcolm Gladwell) when you achieve critical mass. As I saw in my study of business turnarounds and sports teams, confidence — the expectation of a positive outcome that motivates high levels of effort — is built on one win at a time.

Accomplishments come in pieces. A journey of a thousand miles is daunting. The single step with which the journey begins is manageable. Every step you take now adds up by getting that much closer to a goal. Busy people in high-productivity environments tend to take just one more action, return one more phone call, set one more thing in motion before calling it quits for the day. By tomorrow, new demands will start piling up. Mental tricks like dividing big tasks into numerous small steps make it possible to identify immediate actions to get big things off the ground.

Perfection is unattainable anyway. Forget perfection. Just do it. So what if you’re wrong? You can always try again. In an uncertain world of rapid change, business strategy includes room for improvisation. Live by some classic slogans: Best is the enemy of good. (Don’t wait for perfect conditions.) Nothing ventured, nothing gained. (It takes a little risk to get rewards.)

Actions produce energy and momentum. It simply feels better to take action than sitting around navel-gazing and getting sluggish. Overwork can bring stress, but, in fact, many studies show that the important factor in work stress is lack of control. Identifying a positive action is a way to feel in control. Getting moving doesn’t drain energy; it tends to build energy. For people trying to solve the national obesity epidemic, or just to lose a few pounds, exercise is more fun than dieting.

These principles represent more than management tips. They reflect a can-do philosophy that is essential for any entrepreneur or any place that wants more entrepreneurs. The only way to activate potential is to support action.

Sometimes it doesn’t seem easy. Organizational cultures, autocratic bosses, uncooperative co-workers, long losing streaks, the uncertainty of shifting industry conditions, and big world events like natural disasters and revolutions can stop people in their tracks. But those who emerge triumphant, and get the most done anyway, are the people who would rather take action, any action, than wait around.

Transmedia: Entertainment reimagined

By Tom Cheshire and Charlie Burton

08 July 10

Esther Robinson got off the R train in Astoria, Queens, and started walking to the American Museum of the Moving Image. It was a warm July evening in 2007 and Robinson, then 37 years old and a filmmaker, had come with a friend to see a movie, Head Trauma. As they approached the cinema, she noticed that the payphones were ringing — all four of them. “You forget payphones exist,” recalls Robinson. “That was the first thing I noticed.” She picked one up: all she could hear were fragments of a conversation, “sounds of madness”. Outside the cinema, a preacher in short sleeves and a tie was raving, handing out apocalyptic comic books to passers-by. He pressed one into Robinson’s hand as she hurried past, anxious to get to the film. The opening credits prompted the audience to send in a text to a given number. As the film rolled, they started receiving “weird text messages”; phones were ringing.

The film was about a drifter who inherits his mother’s house and starts to lose his mind. The next day, back in Brooklyn, Robinson found the comic in her handbag. On the back was written: “Do you want to play a game?”, along with an address, headtraumamovie.com. She typed it in to her computer. What she found was an online game that continued the story. “In the middle of it, the phone rang,” she says. She recognised the voice. It was the film’s “hooded villain”. He started asking questions: “Do you feel guilty? Have you ever lost consciousness?” Last, he asked Robinson to tell him her darkest secret. Her answer started playing back on a loop through her computer speakers. Robinson clicked on the exit box. She kept clicking, but nothing happened. Her phone buzzed with a text: “Where are you going? We’re not finished yet…” At that point, Robinson was dumped into a conference call with other cinema goers who had just gone through the same experience. “We were all like, ‘What the fuck was that?’ It was totally nuts.”

Unwittingly, she had just participated in an emerging form of mainstream entertainment. Lance Weiler, the creator of Head Trauma, had programmed software to make all the payphones on the block ring. The preacher was an actor, a lead in the feature. Based on the participants’ responses to the automated phone calls, audio and video launched on the desktop screen. The exit box was a fake. Clicking on it sent that last text. For Weiler, a 41-year-old New Yorker, the experience “demonstrated the fluidity of an audience. After the movie ended, it followed people home.”

continued…