When you encode video for a living, you invariably spend a chunk of time trying to reverse engineer the work of others.  How the heck did they make that trailer?  What makes that You Tube clip look so good.  The info you get from most player’s info panel is limited at best.  That’s where you need a tool like MediaInfo Mac.  This has long existed for our PC bretheren, but hasn’t been around nearly as long for the mac.

It is an open source analyzer that will give you a quick behind the scenes look at some of the settings that may have gone into making a piece of video.  It is an excellent way to do that reverse work plus its dead handy for looking at your own work to figure out if something is as it should be (I recently used it to solve the mystery of hy some new settings weren’t allowing me to sync movies to m iPhone – turned out I’d left Main profile enabled).

The best part of MediaInfo?  The price tag – for all its usefulness, this little puppy is free!  That means you have ZERO excuses to not try this out, so run, don’t walk!

I’m pleased to announce that I will be presenting a free video compression webinar entitled “Video Compression Recipes” through the Center for New Media Studies on March 16th.  In this 90 minute talk, I’ll go over the ins and outs of video compression and discuss the challenges that folks face looking to take their content online.  We’ll review a variety of the most popular compression tools on the market as well and I will share settings and tips to help optimize your video in these applications.  There will also be time for a Q&A at the end, so if you have a burning question you’ve been dying to ask, you’ll have time.

Telestream (one of the sponsors) has kindly contributed 2 copies of Episode Pro that will be given away to attendees and I will be giving away 2 copies of my book.

To register, click here.  Hope to see you there!

Opportunities, meetings, and random events conspired to bring me to the Bay Area all week.  Big doings and no doubt things that will effect my work status over the next few weeks.  If you happen to live in the Bay and want to get together and say hi – drop me an email or get hold of me on twitter!

I tend to be on twitter way more than i am RWVC, so if you want to actually ask a question, or just want to find out what cocktail i’m drinking at any given moment, then

• A device suitable for playing videos, playing music, or reading books.
• Wifi and 3G data connections
• Ability to playback interactive video/audio (similar to experience of a DVD, but QT based)
• Multi-mode use (ability to dock with keyboard/screen or use as tablet only)
• Front facing camera for video conferencing
• Solid State Drive (fewer moving parts and hopefully relatively fast on/off)
• Long battery life – 6+hours of usage w/o video playback, 4+ with video playback
• Minimum 720p playback

Specs along this line become a serious game changer for me.  This is a device I’d carry way, way more often than my laptop.  In fact, a small Bluetooth keyboard and mouse along with this would potentially replace my laptop in many situations.  I’ve come extremely close to buying a kindle in the past year and the hold out for me was it to single purpose in its intent.  If this device can serve as that e-reader, as well as a more broad media device it’s very likely to find a place in my house pretty quickly. If there is a development environment for creating interactive content that comes out with it, then i’m really excited about the idea of creating custom content with this UI in mind, both for the training and general entertainment worlds. EDIT: adding Wired’s excellent summary of what they expect on Wednesday.

I’m honestly not quite sure what I’ll be doing – I may take this opportunity to switch paths all together and follow one of my other passions (food and drink are the top of the list), though I can’t imagine not being at least partially involved in the online video space.  More will now doubt follow, but for now stayed tuned to see where i land when it all shakes out.

Generally speaking it’s exactly the same kind of stuff I’d talk about here, though since I was specifically discussing technologies my company creates, I put it there.  Anyway, enjoy it and if you aren’t checking in on Elementals blog, you should do so more regularly, several others, including Sam Blackman, our CEO regularly post there.

Drop by and say hi if you’re at the show and check back here for photos and notes about the cool stuff i see!

I only had the privilege of knowing Neal for about 2 years, but I’ll cherish that time.  As anyone will tell you, Neal wasn’t just a boss; he was a friend to many and always ready to knock back a drink, shoot the bull, or lend a hand with a project.  I shared a love of cars with Neal and the one memory I’ve returned to repeatedly today is the trip he made with me to retrieve an old volvo i’m fixing up.  It was during a period of remission and was a day of fun and activity I’d never gotten to share with him and am now incredibly grateful that I did.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to come see me speak at either post production world or the Adobe booth – you asked some excellent questions and hopefully most of what i said made sense!

See you next year at NAB 2010!