Update on making video clips

[Brian MacWhinney]

Dear Info-CHILDES,
   There seems to be a growing interest in creating digital video of
communicative interactions.  So, I have continued to explore new software
and hardware for doing this on both Windows and Mac.  Here is what I have
learned:

1.  It is now possible to do really nice MPEG-2 encoding on Windows in real
time.  This uses the ATI AIW (All-in-Wonder) board which costs $330 and
comes packaged with Ulead VideoStudio 6 which runs the Ligos LSX-MPEG
compressor.  It is the Ligos compressor that performs the magic.  The
details about this are at

http://talkbank.org/digitalvideo/equipment.html

To be honest, this is really twice real time, since one has to first capture
in real time and then compress in real time.  But it is very fast compared
to the alternatives.

2.  MPEG-2 gives a better and larger picture than MPEG-1 and can be edited
on a frame-by-frame basis. This can be crucial for gestural analysis.  It
doesn't take any longer to compress and it only occupies about 70% more
space in terms of file size over MPEG-1.  Sorensen QuickTime is still a nice
format, but MPEG-2 compresses faster and seems like a better option.  CLAN
works fine with MPEG-2.

3.  Steve Jobs announced that the next version of Quicktime will include an
MPEG-2 player.  Hopefully, this means that the Ligos LSX-MPEG encoder will
also soon work on Mac OS X.

4.  Given all this, it seems to me that working with this ATI package and
Ulead is a better option for the type of work we are doing than using Media
Cleaner, which has changed companies a couple of times in the last months
anyway.  Also, VideoStudio is not as powerful as Premiere and Final Cut, but
having the Ligos compressor is such a great advantage that the differences
in the editors are secondary.

5.  Finally, I revised some other material at
http://talkbank.org/digitalvideo/
to correspond to these new evaluations.

Thanks for your attention,

Brian MacWhinney

P.S.  Disclaimer: I have no monetary interests in any of these products  :)