September 2010 – Media Services News

Netflix/NBC Deal Allows Streaming of The Office, SNL, and Many More!

Fresh off its invasion of Canada, Netflix recently announced a deal with NBC/Universal that will add a bunch of the entertainment company’s network and cable TV offerings to Netflix’s streaming service. Starting this week, Netflix Watch Instantly users will have access to * Episodes from every season of Saturday Night Live, including day-after broadcast of … Continue reading “Netflix/NBC Deal Allows Streaming of The Office, SNL, and Many More!”

Starting this week, Netflix Watch Instantly users will have access to

* Episodes from every season of Saturday Night Live, including day-after broadcast of the upcoming 2010, 2011 and 2012 seasons plus hundreds of episodes from the first 35 years of SNL.

* More than 75 prior season episodes of Battlestar Galactica, as well as prior seasons of Destination Truth and Eureka.

* Every episode from the last season of 30 Rock, The Office and Law & Order: SVU, as well as earlier seasons of those shows renewed for streaming from Netflix under the current deal.

* All prior seasons — and eventually next year’s final season — of Friday Night Lights.

* All prior seasons of USA Network’s Psych, In Plain Sight, as well as all seasons of Monk.

As seen on The Consumerist

Find these Home Use titles here in Media Services:

Battlestar Galactica Season 1 – Season 4.5 – HU DVD 6601 – 6625
The Office Season 1 – Season 5 – HU DVD 4011 – 4028
SNL: Saturday Night Live The Complete First and Second Season – HU DVD 5051 – 5066

Todd’s Tips – Easy Video Importation into iDVD

While iDVD is one of the simplest DVD creation programs out there, sometimes it can throw folks for a loop. Say for example, you had a video that you made and it’s lingering in some folder somewhere. You open up iDVD, find a template and then what? Now, you can use the “Import” command … Continue reading “Todd’s Tips – Easy Video Importation into iDVD”

While iDVD is one of the simplest DVD creation programs out there, sometimes it can throw folks for a loop.

Say for example, you had a video that you made and it’s lingering in some folder somewhere. You open up iDVD, find a template and then what? Now, you can use the “Import” command from the File menu, but there’s an even easier way to do it.

Now, say your video’s file name is “myRadVideo.mov”

It’s as simple as dragging the video from its folder into the iDVD theme. Now, here’s the tricky part. Most of the iDVD themes have “Drop Zones” on them, delineated by a black and yellow caution-style border. DO NOT put the video there. That will simply make it part of the theme. Instead, drag and drop the file somewhere else on the theme. You’ll know you’ve done it right when the file name appears on the screen.

One last thing to do. Select that file name and type the word “Play.” This will appear on the screen when the DVD is played as a clickable button. You can leave the original file name, but DVD convention dictates that people are looking for that “Play” button and not some odd file name. Don’t want to give your professor any reason to not be able to watch your video.

DMS Help – Video Tutorials for Adobe Applications

There are zillions of videos and tutorials on the web about Adobe’s products. While many of these can be useful and some of them even dead accurate, why go to the barrel for an apple when you can get it off the tree. Here’s the tree: Adobe’s Design Center Video Workshop. The workshop includes tutorials on 47 … Continue reading “DMS Help – Video Tutorials for Adobe Applications”

Here’s the tree: Adobe’s Design Center Video Workshop.

The workshop includes tutorials on 47 different topics involving many of the tasks that can be accomplished by Adobe applications. In addition to being categorized by topic, videos can also be found by selecting the various Adobe applications on the top right-hand box of the workshop.

And the best part about these videos, other than the fact that they are free, is that they are developed by Adobe professionals. No where will you find better answers on Adobe’s products.

Please note that you will need to have Flash player for this work.

DMS Help – Simple CSS Tutorial

Lately we’ve had some requests for CSS help here in Media Services. Apparently there are some classes here that have their students hand code CSS for various projects. Moreover, for anyone in the web design, communications or journalism worlds, it’s good to have some idea of what CSS is and what it can do. This … Continue reading “DMS Help – Simple CSS Tutorial”

This is a great text tutorial that gives a highly readable and easy-to-understand introduction to CSS.

3 Picks From Werner Herzog!

Werner Herzog was on WAMU 88.5FM last week talking about three films that he highly recommends you see: Treasure of the Sierra Madre – HU DVD 1022Viva Zapata – HU VHS 1657Swing Time – HU VHS 7048 Read about it here or… Listen to the WAMU/NPR segment here: Here is a list of some of … Continue reading “3 Picks From Werner Herzog!”

Werner Herzog was on WAMU 88.5FM last week talking about three films that he highly recommends you see:

Treasure of the Sierra Madre – HU DVD 1022
Viva Zapata – HU VHS 1657
Swing Time – HU VHS 7048

Read about it here or…

Listen to the WAMU/NPR segment here:

Here is a list of some of the Herzog films in our collection:
Death for Five Voices – HU DVD 460
Land of Silence and Darkness – HU DVD 1364
Signs of Life – HU DVD 1421
Wheel of Time – DVD 1563
White Diamond – DVD 1578
Grizzly Man – HU DVD 1682
Aguirre, The Wrath of God – DVD 1807
Rescue dawn – HU DVD 3419
Fitzcarraldo – HU DVD 3540
Enigma of Kaspar Hauser – HU DVD 3541
Even Dwarfs Started Small – HU DVD 3542
Lessons of Darkness/Fata Morgana – HU DVD 3543
Heart of Glass – HU DVD 3544
Little Dieter Needs to Fly – HU DVD 3545
Stroszek – HU DVD 3546
Nosferatu The Vampyre – DVD 3875
Encounters at the End of the World – DVD 5029
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans – HU DVD 7042

Woyzeck – VHS 4248
My Best Fiend – VHS 6287
Herdsmen of the Sun – HU VHS 6458
Cobra Verde – HU VHS 7088

Happy Birthday Cheryl Hines!

Today Cheryl Hines turns 45 years old. She is most well known for her role as Cheryl David, Larry David’s wife on Curb Your Enthusiasm. If you haven’t seen this TV show, it’s a must see; especially for Seinfeld fans. Also, check her out in the 2007 film, Waitress (written and directed by Adrienne Shelley). … Continue reading “Happy Birthday Cheryl Hines!”

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Complete First Season- HU DVD 5211, 5212
Curb Your Enthusiasm: Complete Second Season- HU DVD 5213, 5214
Curb your Enthusiasm: The Complete Third Season – HU DVD 5215, 5116

Waitress – HU DVD 3641

AU Library Has Unveiled a New Unified Search – SearchBox!

Have you ever wanted to search the library’s web resources all at once? Find both books and articles with just one search engine? Your dream is very near reality because AU Library has added SearchBox. With SearchBox, library researchers can search simultaneously the ALADIN Catalog and approximately ninety percent (yes, 90%!) of the library’s electronic … Continue reading “AU Library Has Unveiled a New Unified Search – SearchBox!”

Have you ever wanted to search the library’s web resources all at once? Find both books and articles with just one search engine? Your dream is very near reality because AU Library has added SearchBox. With SearchBox, library researchers can search simultaneously the ALADIN Catalog and approximately ninety percent (yes, 90%!) of the library’s electronic resources, including journal, magazine, and newspaper articles in databases. “SearchBox is the most revolutionary and amazing new development since the library went online two decades ago,” says one longtime AU librarian.

For students and faculty, research will be much faster and easier because they can conduct Google-style searches of the library’s vast array of electronic resources. These resources are not available through a regular public Google search because the resources are privately paid for by the library through subscription fees. SearchBox also covers the consortium-wide holdings of the ALADIN Catalog and the digital repository, American University Research Commons. The only resources that the SearchBox engine cannot currently search are some statistical and financial databases. Those databases can still be searched individually. In fact, all databases can still be searched individually, which is particularly important to researchers who want to execute more sophisticated or complex searches that take advantage of specific database features.

SearchBox is supported with material from 6,800 publishers, 94,000 journal titles, and 550 million indexed items—numbers that increase daily. It has many powerful features that will help researchers. For instance, researchers can limit search results to full text or to peer-reviewed/scholarly journals or both. The default for displaying search results is relevancy ranking, but the results can also be displayed in ascending or descending order by date of publication. Other limits include subject, content type, and language. Individual items can be saved and displayed in selected citation formats. Results can also be exported to citation management software such as EndNote. Unlike the ALADIN Catalog or most current databases, SearchBox can also correct for spelling. For instance, if a researcher mistakenly types “Humon rights,” SearchBox will query, “Did you mean human rights?”

Using SearchBox is easy and highly intuitive, but as always, researchers may wish to contact a reference librarian if questions arise.

Todd’s Tips – Extracting Audio in iMovie

Let’s say, for example, you have to do a project about campus. You get a FlipCam from Media Services and you shoot some video. You record some voice-over and you’re ready to put your video together. But, when you look over your footage you find that the audio from the footage you shot of campus … Continue reading “Todd’s Tips – Extracting Audio in iMovie”

Let’s say, for example, you have to do a project about campus. You get a FlipCam from Media Services and you shoot some video. You record some voice-over and you’re ready to put your video together. But, when you look over your footage you find that the audio from the footage you shot of campus is filled with sirens and the other sounds of city traffic. Problem.

One way you could handle this to simply turn down the sound

on the video clip. But, you could also remove the audio from the video clip entirely (and even replace it with something else, like your voice-over or music).

To do this in iMovie HD you’ll need to be in timeline mode. On the bottom left-hand corner of the program there’s a little button with a clock icon.

Once you’ve clicked on that, the video-building interface on the bottom of iMovie will change to look like this:

Here a blue bar represents your video instead of a small box. Once you have the timeline view up, right click on the video (the blue bar) to bring up a small menu. In that menu select “Extract Audio,” as seen here:

Finally, once you select “Extract Audio” the clip will split with the blue bar (your video) above and a purple bar (when selected) with darker purple waveforms below (your audio).

The audio and video tracks may now be moved independently of each other. You can also delete one or the other by selecting one and hitting the “Delete” key. You can also cut the audio clips just like you cut video (by hitting “Apple T”)

Be mindful though, if you begin playing with your audio track you can move audio out of synch with video which can be a real problem if your video is of someone speaking.

DMS Help – Shooting Video for iMovie

Using the right tools to edit your video is important, but even more important is capturing the best video possible, even before you start editing. A good editor can make a good movie from bad footage, but with good footage, he or she can make something great. In this short video tutorial, you can learn … Continue reading “DMS Help – Shooting Video for iMovie”

In this short video tutorial, you can learn the basics of shooting digital video with iMovie in mind.