Recommendations for a CD project

I have a big project and I am a new Captivate user. I need to
create 3-4 separate demonstrations, and add music and video just
for professional presentation. I was wondering if anyone would like
to advise me on my approach?
Should I use Captivate for the entire CD project (music,
video, narration and demonstration)? If so, I am wondering if it is
better to create separate files and link them, rather than create
one large file? And finally, is if best to export as a Flash file
and burn to a CD? Since most browsers have Flash players these days
I am hoping to just have some sort of autostart file on the cd.
I apologize upfront for my ignorance. I really am pretty
smart but I am not sure about the techie lingo. :)

Hi deidrelynn
Of course I'm not KCWebPlaza, but maybe I can help. For CD
distribution, you need a file present that is named quite simply
autorun.inf. When a Windows PC senses a CD-ROM has been
inserted, it normally looks for this file to start an application.
Keep in mind that this only works on Windows based PCs. I don't
believe it will work if the PC is an Apple or LInux machine.
Additionally, some administrators may disable the autorun function
because they see it as a security risk.
If you are using Captivate 1, only the .EXE output has the
option for creating the autorun.inf file. For Captivate 2, the
option exists for both .SWF and .EXE outputs.
If you are going down the autorun path, you should know or
realize that you need to be a tad persnickety with your naming
conventions. You should avoid using long file names for your
Captivate movie that launches initially. I've seen it happen
regularly where autorun is trying to launch something named perhaps
My Favorite Movie In the Whole world and it fails. But when that
movie is renamed to something like MyFavMov it begins working just
dandy. You are safest if you stick with something called "The DOS
8.3 naming convention". This means you use 8 characters for the
main part of the file name, and 3 characters for the file
extension. (normally the extension is either .SWF or .EXE, so you
are pretty safe there. All you need to worry about is really the 8
character File Name).
So once you have it all in one place, you simply copy the
group of files to the CD and you should be set.
Cheers... Rick

Similar Messages

Unable to prepare project for publishing.The project could not be prepared for publishing because an error occurred. (-50)

Hi,
I have not used iMovie much since buying my Mac in 2009. But now I have a camera (Canon EOS 7D) that takes HD movies, and decided to edit some footage. iMovie is the worst product I have tried on this Mac. The previous movie I created to this one was done about a year ago using a template. This time I did not want to use any of the vast choice of 4 ugly not very customizable templates so tried creating from scratch. It crashed / beach balled (combinations of both) at least 15-20 times in the time it took me to edit together 44 minutes of footage into a 5 minute movie. Such actions as clicking to move a clip from one section of the movie to another, adding a photo via iPhoto (love the way you CANNOT add photos from anywhere else Apple - that is a lovely touch Apple -- since I use Lightroom since I learned some time ago that iPhoto is crummy if you have more photos than will fit on your hard drive, as you have to repoint the software to "find" your new photos one by one by one (with hundreds of thousands of photos I decided to ditch your software instead) so I had to go through the trouble of importing exported Lightroom .jpg files into iPhoto just for this movie). Why oh why did I think that iMovie might be a useful tool on my Mac ??? I so regret the past 24 hours ...
After 14 hours of hair pulling, swearing and struggling, rebooting, and force-quitting beach balls -- finally I was ready to export the project, which played cleanly in the iMovie viewer.
So, now comes the final slap in the face from Apple -- Now, no matter what format I choose to try to export this movie, I get the above error after about 1 second.
I am trying to export to a folder on my local hard drive. I have tried various folders, including the desktop to no avail. I have tried changing various export settings and methods, choosing iDVD, Quicktime and what I really want - the normal movie and always get this same hideous, undescriptive error after only about a second. I tried various sizes of movies, and screen formats. Absolutely no change in the amount of time to get this error.
I have a MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 10.6.8 and 4GB of memory. I am running no other apps while I try this and have rebooted dozens of times, repaired permissions and run various "clean up" utilities. I have 79GB free disk space on my start up disk.
When I imported the original movie files to iMovie, due to performance concerns I told it to copy the files to the disk and to reduce the video format size (my camera records HD but I did not need HD). I saw someone say maybe the original files are on a remote disk -- but when remote disks are not connected I still get all the movies to play, so they must be locally stored. Also, when I try to use the iMovie option to Consolidate media it does not seem to do anything and returns instantly (but I can "undo" that and it also seems to do nothing ... ie takes no time at all). Yet the Consolidate Media prompt seems to show 6GB of clips are somewhere, which if copying what it claims are 6GB of files should take awhile to do it -- and it does not.
I am trying to export to a local disk, not a remote disk. The original import was from a remote attached USB drive, and I asked it to copy the files into the library at the start (in the reduced size format). That operation took awhile so it seemed to be really doing it.
I did not use an iMovie template to build the movie, I built it from clips using various of the "transitions" and added some music from iTunes (2 mp3 files) and from the default effects folders of iMovie.
I cannot easily "remake" this movie in a new project, because the clips are only small sections of various parts of the many import files and some were done as "inserts" (to have 2 video clips running simultaneously with one fading into view) etc.. There are no "caution" signs on any of the clips or music or any indication of errors when I play it in preview mode, or even full screen from iMovie. It starts up in iMovie if I click on the ".project" file from the Finder.
I have read a number of entries from advice givers regarding this error. Seems everything from "you left your car running too long" to "the refridgerator door is open" could cause this error and there is no actual way to trouble shoot what that could be except by trial and error, which I could easily spend another week doing and still never figure it out. I tried duplicating the project using the menu option, and I just get the same error.
Is there some reason Apple released this piece of *?£$!ç%*& software into the world, causing me to waste so many hours of my creative time and energy, only to find I can do nothing but view the results inside of iMovie ???
I want to really scream at someone at Apple right now for the most idiotic stupid unhelpful error message ever, and the worst piece of software ever. Worst because it makes you think you can produce something very cool, and even lets you see it in the iMovie preview viewer -- only to pull the rug out from under you at the end when you can't do anything but show it to friends who come to your house and look at your Mac.
Not really a question I guess - more like a RANT and wondering what other software out there is recommended for someone who is not a pro but wants to make nice movies that WORK and will EXPORT. I expect no one knows how to solve this because all the people I see reporting this error seem to think various hundreds of things "resolved it", so in other words it is a generic error that has no way to solve it except through hours of trial and error -- Apple should be shot for releasing this and never fixing it. I see the same error code is helpfully still there in iMovie 11 as well.
I also have no desire to upgrade to Mountain Lion, having read multiple people saying their Macs of the generation I have got really really slow after loading it, so suggest something compatible please. I am not going to waste another 12 hours trying to decipher which of the dozens of clips, edits, wipes or mp3 files could cause "error -50".
Also, I have no time machine plugged in right now, not sure what that would have to do with anything anyhow, since I am trying to export it to a local disk, not a remote one.
So - what NON APPLE product that is REASONABLE in price does someone recommend to replace this stinking pile of poo known as iMovie ???
Message was edited by: JeninFrance

PS - have found other posts indicating that clips smaller than 2s or sometimes 5s, or "short files" can cause this. Modern style editing often uses short takes ! Good grief I cannot believe Apple. Well I deleted a half a dozen short sections and can export, but now of course the video is a ruined piiece of junk and I need to re-do the whole thing, the sound etc. which is basically taking as much time as the original. And each time I re-do it I risk again this lovely error -50 and again trying to figure out what thing bugs it via trial and error instead of a REASONABLE ERROR MESSAGE POINTING TO THE CLIP IT CAN'T PROCESS. What a mess. I HATE this iMovie application - full of BUGS BUGS BUGS which Apple will not fix obviously, since I had this product for a few years and see just hundreds of hits on Google about this error with disappointed users. Such junk I cannot believe I paid money for it and Apple does not support it with fixes !!!
If anyone knows of a GOOD reasonably priced video editing program NOT from APPLE I am still looking for suggestions. I want to do more video in future, but obviously NOT with iMovie !!!

Remaining questions while evaluating JavaFX for a new project

Dear forum members:
currently I am evaluating the possibilities of next-generation GUI technologies, such as JavaFX, Silverlight and Flash/Flex, for a new project. To get a basic understanding of JavaFX's concepts, I worked through the available online text and video tutorials, and all the treated topics seem quite obvious/comprehensible to me +as long as one is only confronted to relatively static GUI component hierarchies+. But, as a newbie, some questions concerning more dynamically defined GUIs (i.e. dynamic JFX scripting*) still remain.
Application scenario (exemplary):
Say I want to create a "Online Shopping Application" that supports "+ShopOwners+" in *dynamically* defining the "+Shop Model+" structure, e.g. accepted visitor (client) categories, product categories their products, pricing information, payment methods, etc.
Then, based on the dynamically defined model, the shop owner should be able to design and layout the necessary forms, such as order forms, survey/feedback forms, etc. This should be done in "design mode", and there should also exist a possibility for him/her to preview the specification results in a "preview mode".
Finally, the shop owner must be able to save the model and forms on the server side in a way that can requested and run be the shopping app end users (the shop clients) via (another (?)) JavaFX frontend.
_The still remaining questions for this scenario are:_
+1. Is JavaFX appropriate for creating such kind of applications, especially when it comes to dynamic JFX scripting (and compilation) on the client side??? (By now I'm not quite sure if this is really necessary for my plans!)+
+2. Concerning the ShopOwner's GUI with its design and preview mode (and knowing that the latter mode will be the GUI version presented to the shop clients in another JFX module):+
+Is it possible to *dynamically *build up a +Scene Graph+ in a way that lets me handle and *compile* the corresponding +JFX Script+ on the client side for previewing it? Or is a client-server roundtrip absolutely necessary?
How could one persist this JFX Script on the server side? I.e., which intermediary format would be the most appropriate? => XML, JSON, JFX Script?
3. Concerning the "Shop Model", would I optimally create JFX classes or even Java Beans to bind to?
4. And finally: What would be your recommended way (software architecture) to fulfill this task in JavaFX?
Do there already exist some JFX components (dynamic forms/survey authoring modules, etc.) that persue a similar task and that I didn't find yet?
As the clarification of the above-mentioned issues are very important for me, I hope that you more experienced users can help me, pointing me to a practicable approach.
Thank you very much for any help and constructive tips in advance.
Best regards
Martin Meyers

Q1: Do I optimally need 2 different custom components for each treated concept, or do I have just 1 component with 2 internal modes (design & preview/usage)??
E.g., (a) FormSpec widget composed of LabelSpec, TextBoxSpec, ChooseBoxSpec,... widgets each having their preview pendants
Form, Label, TextBox, ChooseBox, etc.
versus
+(b) only Form widget composed of Label, TextBox, ChooseBox widgets, but all having a "design/preview execution mode".+
Closer to (b), I think, though each widget doesn't need to be modified to have design and preview modes. Instead, each widget can be wrapped within a Group to provide the design/preview functions without modifying the widget itself.
The technique is as follows. Given a sequence of widgets (Nodes, really), for each widget, wrap it in a Group that contains that widget but with an overlay Rectangle in front of it. The Rectangle can be semi-transparent, or fully transparent if you prefer. (In the example below I've made it a semitransparent color to make its location obvious as well as to provide a highlight that signals design mode.) The overlay Rectangle is set up so that its dimensions will exactly track the dimensions (bounds) of the widget behind it. I've set blocksMouse to true so that when it's present, the overlay traps events and prevents interaction with the widget. There is a boolean variable previewMode, controlled by a CheckBox, that controls the visibility of these overlay rectangles. I've also added a bit of code to track mouse events on the overlay rectangles so that you can move the widgets around when you're in design mode.
Note that the visible variable differs from transparent, i.e. opacity == 0.0. If a node is visible but is transparent, it is still eligible to receive events; whereas if visible is false, it does not receive events.
Here's some code that illustrates this technique. I'll answer your other questions in a subsequent post.
import javafx.stage.Stage;
import javafx.scene.*;
import javafx.scene.control.*;
import javafx.scene.input.*;
import javafx.scene.layout.*;
import javafx.scene.shape.Rectangle;
import javafx.scene.paint.Color;
var previewMode = true;
var lastX:Number;
var lastY:Number;
function wrap(n:Node):Node {
    Group {
        content: [
            n,
            Rectangle {
                opacity: 0.2
                fill: Color.web("#ffff00")
                x: bind n.boundsInParent.minX
                y: bind n.boundsInParent.minY
                width: bind n.boundsInParent.width
                height: bind n.boundsInParent.height
                visible: bind previewMode
                blocksMouse: true
                onMousePressed: function(me:MouseEvent) {
                    lastX = me.x;
                    lastY = me.y;
                onMouseDragged: function(me:MouseEvent) {
                    n.layoutX += me.x - lastX;
                    n.layoutY += me.y - lastY;
                    lastX = me.x;
                    lastY = me.y;
var controlList:Node[] = [
    Button {
        layoutX: 140
        layoutY: 20
        text: "Button1"
        action: function() { println("Button1 clicked!"); }
    Slider {
        layoutX: 30
        layoutY: 60
        min: 0
        max: 100
        override var value on replace {
            println("Slider value is now {value}");
    Label {
        layoutX: 50
        layoutY: 100
        text: "Non-interactive label"
    CheckBox {
        layoutX: 40
        layoutY: 140
        text: "CheckBox"
        override var selected on replace {
            println("CheckBox is now {if (selected) "checked" else "unchecked"}");
Stage {
    title: "Design vs Preview Mode"
    width: 400
    height: 250
    scene: Scene {
        content: [
            CheckBox {
                layoutX: 10
                layoutY: 10
                text: "Preview Mode"
                selected: bind previewMode with inverse
            Panel {
                content: for (n in controlList) {
                    wrap(n)
}

SEEKING IDEAS FOR A SMALL PROJECT

I am planning to do a small project in JAVA programming this winter to hone my JAVA skills but I can't seem to set my eyes on anything.
please recommend a few good projects along with their descriptions.
It should also have some practical aspect.

Or a solitaire, you know, that balls-in-holes thing.:) What kind of solitaire have you been playing?? :D
@OP:
A small project I sugest is something you can learn much on some technology out there. At the end you need to know these technologies to get (a better) job.
Some cool technologies I have seen out there at the moment are Hibernate, Struts, Spring, etc. But trying to learn these technolgies does not mean you have to make somethng that makes sense in the end of the day, but just something to learn how thing work ... in short something to play with.
Further and cooler technologies out there (not hard to say) involve no codeing at all. Take Ant, Cruise Control, Maivem, etc. This are all technologies that will teach you how to set up a project, and believe me you could be needing those when coming to work somwhere.
Also very intristing to play with there are JUnit, JMeter (NFR Testing). I Guess you heared about the first one, the other one I only got to know recently, and believe me it is very noce to know how to work.
In short my above comments mean do not just start doing a project right forward unless you still do not know anything on J2SE, in which case again I would sugest for you to create your own set of example on IO, Sockets, RMI, Swing, etc. But learn technologies. No one cares to see in your CV, "I did a personal project that does so and so" unless the so and so is something realted with NASA. But everyone is interested in having someone that say "I know this technology and the other"
However, if you decide to ignore all the above of my comments and still want to do your own project, then my sugestion is at least read UML, and build a class diagram first. At least you would learn something on program design as well.
regards,
sim085

Is it possible to create a schedule in Labview . Example: i want to off the lights at 7pm and want it on at 8am. If there is can anyone teach, its for a school project. Im using labview 2011

Is it possible to create a schedule in Labview . Example: i want to off the lights at 7pm and want it on at 8am. If there is can anyone teach, its for a school project. Im using labview 2011...thx

Since this is a school project I recommend you do the work yourself. You will not learn asking others to do it for you. In addition, folks here will not do your homework for you. We are however more than wiling to answer specific questions for you. Post what you have done or tried and ask specific questions. I am confident you will get assistance.
And to answer your question, yes LabVIEW can be used to implement a scheduling program.
Mark Yedinak
"Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?"
Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald - Gordon Lightfoot

Hardware/software recommendation for video capture prior to edit on home ba

i am a FCP user on a G5. i need to begin to load and initially edit video while traveling and then take that FC project file and load it onto my home based G5 for further work. i am considering a macbook and FC express to accomplish this task.
my questions are:
does it matter that the new macbooks are intel processors and my G5 is not intel based? will i have any compatibility problems with SW/file transfers.
is FC Express the best SW to use for the load and initial edits?
is there a best practice recommendation for what i want to do?
thank you.
dennis
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.9) use FCP HD 5.0.1

FCP will run on a MacBook. It's not support, and the Studio is not supported because of Motion's graphics requirements, but quite a few people are running FCP on basic MacBooks. Just make sure it has enough RAM.

Where does one find the Oracle Best Practice/recommendations for how to DR

What is the Oracle Best Practice for install/deployment and configuration of ODI 11g for Disaster Recovery?
We have a project that is using Oracle ODI 11g (11.1.1.5).
We have configured all the other Oracle FMW components as per the Oracle DR EDG guides. Basically using the Host ip name/aliasing concept to ‘trick’ the secondary site into thinking
it is primary and continue working with minimal (or no) manual reconfiguration. But will this work for ODI? The FMW DR guide has sections for SOA, WebCenter and IdM, but nothing for ODI.
Since ODI stores so much configuration information in the Master Repository..when this DB gets ‘data guarded’ to the secondary site and promoted to Primary…ODI will still think it is at the ‘other’ site. Will this break the actual agents running the scenarios?
Where does one find the Oracle Best Practice/recommendations for how to DR ODI properly?
We are looking for a solution that will allow a graceful switchover/failover with minimal manual re-configuration.

user8804554 wrote:
Hi all,
I m currently testing external components with Windows Server and I want to test Oracle 11g R2.
The only resource I have is this website and the only binaries seem to be for Linux OS.You have one other HUGE resource that, while it won't answer your current question, you'd better start getting familiar with if you are going to use Oracle. That is the complete and official documentation, found at tahiti.oracle.com
>
Does anybody know how I can upgrade my Oracle 11.1.0.7 version to the R2 release?
Thanks,
Bertrand

Strategy/Recommendations for SLD content

Hi All,
lets take below business case of a project:
there are 3 non-SAP applications.
nonSapApplOne_Java
nonSapApplTwo_DotNet
nonSapApplThree_CustomLegacy
there are 2 SAP applications.
sapApplFour_ECC6_Module_HCM
sapApplFour_ECC6_Module_FICO
sapApplFive_R3
I would like to know the options/recomendations for creating Products/SWCVs and BusinessSystems.
e.g.
should we create each product for each application (for each sap and nonsap applications)?
should we create one product for nonSAP applications, and one product for SAP applications?
should we create one product for entire project, and a SWCV for each application (for each nonsap and sap application)?
or can we represent/separate the applications by namespaces within same SWCV?
should we create a separate SWCV for storing the objects that use multiple applications design objects e.g. mapping objects, process integration scenarios etc.?
for each SAP module like HCM, FICO, should there be different namespaces when integrating with other applications.
do we need to use business system groups for organising sap and nonsap business systems.?
these mostly need to be designed/decided in the beginning of the project, as it forms the base of the rest of the deveopment.
Can you pls share your comments and recommendations for above kind of queries.
thanks in advance,
Madhu.

should we create one product for entire project, and a SWCV for each application (for each nonsap and sap application)?
I am not sure what is meant by a Product! The creation of a SWCV should be related to a business unit that your organization has (at least we follow this practice). Suppose your organization has three Business Units (Sales, Manufacturing, Maintenance) then in such a case you can create three different SWCV with each containing BU-specific development. So all the development related to Sales will come under the SWCV for sales and so on.
or can we represent/separate the applications by namespaces within same SWCV?
answer as implied above.....not a good practice to develop namespaces based on the applications...namespaces should be related to the interface name...say you have an interface for salesorder transfer from system X to Y then your namespace should reflect salesorder in it and if you have multiple salesorder processes then you can append some terms to the NS which will help differentiate between the individual SO processes.
should we create a separate SWCV for storing the objects that use multiple applications design
objects e.g. mapping objects, process integration scenarios etc.?
If you mean object reuse...then you can define a common namespace within a SWCV and develop the commonly used objects in it and then refer these in other flows (namespaces) defined within the SWCV.
for each SAP module like HCM, FICO, should there be different namespaces when integrating with other applications.
Suppose you have 5 different Integrations involving HCM ---> FICO (or other combination) then your namespaces should be in such a way that there is a clear differentiation between the 5 integrations
For more information on how your objects should be defined you can go through this document:
https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/90b213c2-d311-2a10-89bf-956dbb63aa7f
All the above mentioned points are my personal...the implemenation should be in accordance to the best practices suggested by SAP and secondly according to the organizational needs.
Regards,
Abhishek.

Using oDATA for BI in Project Server 2013

Hi gang,
I am looking to create a BI report that I was able to do quite readily in previous versions of Project Server. I'm trying to create a graph that simply plots resource capacity and work as measures over time, with the resource roles as a filter.
That is it, no more no less. Using Project Server 2013 ON-LINE.
I have successfully connected to the tables using the Data Connection Wizard in Excel to do this. Seems that these are 3 tables I need to get to the data I need--Resource, ResourceTimephasedData, and ResourceTimephasedData.
Fact of the matter is, timephased data tables are causing very very very long delays in populating the Pivot Report that I am looking for. This a fairly new system with hardly any resource and project data in it yet. This approach does not seem
user friendly either. I found it much easier in previous versions. If I do recall, all my data is in one table before.
I am wondering if I am approaching this in the wrong way. Is there another way I should be looking at to get to my data and ultimately my graph?
\Spiro Theopoulos PMP, MCITP. Montreal, QC (Canada)

Hello,
Unfortunately not, OData if the way forward for reporting in Project Online. Is this still slow for you? When you do get more data in the system I would definitely recommend filtering this as much as possible at the source before Excel etc.
Paul
Paul Mather | Twitter |
http://pwmather.wordpress.com | CPS

The Server Core installation option is recommended for servers running Hyper-V

Hi,
I installed Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 on my machine and upon running BPA it says that
The Server Core installation option is recommended for servers running Hyper-V
I don't understand what it meant by re-installing hyper-v core instead of the full installation. My Hyper-v is a stand-alone Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 that is the free one.
Thanks!
JAnus

Hi JAnus,
I am afraid you can not change that report .
Please just ignore that .
Best Regards
Elton Ji
We
are trying to better understand customer views on social support experience, so your participation in this
interview project would be greatly appreciated if you have time.
Thanks for helping make community forums a great place.

Need a scanner recommendation for slides

(Not sure if this is the correct forum, but here goes)
Any recommendations for a scanner that will do slides? I've got my father-in-laws slides from the last 20 years and want to scan them, but can't quite figure what scanner would do the job. I don't need (nor want to spend $) on an auto feeder, but would like to be able to scan at least 4 slides at a time. I've got old photos and negatives that I'll be scanning as well, and would spend up to $400. Thanks!!

YMMV but I just finished scanning over 1200 color 35 mm slides from the 60's and 70's for eventual prinitng and use in my scrapbooks. I have an Epson 4870 scanner and I can scan 40 slides an hour using it. It works well. The price is a bit more, $440 or so, but the advantages are worth it.
If you have 2.25 x 2.25 glass slides you will have to build your own slide holder to scan them.
I got the scanner originally for a major scanning project for the local historical society of about 1500 5 x 7 glass plate negatives from the early 1900's. It's doing good archival quality scans of these materials as well as archival scans of our other historical negatives, about 2000 nitrate negatives of our local area. It's a low end professional scanner but IMO worth every penny.
For info on digital imaging help you might want to take a look here:
http://www.cdpheritage.org/
The best practices document on digital imaging is excellent for all the issues you will face and need to deal with. Geared towards historical collections it's still useful for personal stuff.
The Epson SW and scanner works well on the Mac. I just upgraded to Tiger, and it still is working, unlike many other items. <G>
I use Photoshop CS for histogram evaluations, image processing and thumbnail creation for the historical negatives but have just used the files as scanned for my scrapbook images.

What ideal Win Server and Hardware are recommended for 11g DBs

What best Win Server and Hardware are recommended for 11g DBs?
- Processor
- Memory
- Storage
- Network
- Etc...
Following is the scenario:
- The server will be for development and test DBs
- More than one databases will be installed each for each project
- Maximum 4 databases will be accessed each time
- Maximum DB size for each DB will be in couple of GBs.

Which version of 11g ? For 11gR2, see the requirements here - http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E11882_01/install.112/e16773/reqs.htm#i1011417
Any server that exceeds these requirement will suffice. Obviously the more the number of processors, the faster the processors, the more the RAM, the more the disk etc etc, the better.
HTH
Srini

Does anyone have a good recommendation for a tutorial that will get me started quickly?

I just bought imovie for my macbook pro. (I thought it was supposed to come with it) Anyway, I am under the gun to complete a project. Are there any tutorials that you would recommend for a beginner who needs to use imovie for basic functions for the time being?

What versions of OS X and iMovie are you running?
iMovie is part of the iLife suite and comes bundled with every new Mac.

Aperture for newbies - folders, projects, Photostream...

Hi,
I like to ask some newbie questions about Aperture.
1) How to use folders, projects etc? Let's say I made hiking tour for several days, do I make a project for each day or for the whole trip? Or do I just put the several "day-projects" into one folder?
2) What are albums for? Just for presentation purposes (e.g. put all photos from the hiking tour that I want to show to my friends into the album and sort bad pictures etc out)?
3) How do I use Photostream? New photos are downloaded to e.g. Jan 2013 project. Do I now move them into new projects (referring to 1) here to know how to seperate)? Does Aperture recognize that the image is already known or will it download it again do Jan 2013? What happens when I delete an image, will it be redownloaded from Photostream?
4) When to use dia show (hope this is how it is called in the english version)? Would I put it in an album?
5) A book means a physical book which I could order from Apple with the chosen photos?
6) What for is the light table?
Sorry for that newbie stuff, I didn't found a tutorial that satisfied me.
Cheers
Phil

Willkommen, Phil!
I second Frank Caggiano's suggestions - Kirby's User tip and the Aperture 3: User Manual are great starting points.
1) How to use folders, projects etc? Let's say I made hiking tour for several days, do I make a project for each day or for the whole trip? Or do I just put the several "day-projects" into one folder?
Aperture will have no problems, if you put thousands of images into one single project, but it will be difficult for you. Projects are easier and faster to browse if you keep them small - it would be tedious to scroll through thousands of images. The common recommendation, following Kirby's advice, is "one project - one shoot".
When I am travelling, I create a folder for each trip, with folders inside for each destination, and for each day at the destination a project.
Folders are very convenient to hide and collapse large parts of the library quickly. There is one folder "Family", one folder "Computer Graphics", one folder "Lectures", one folder "Travel". When I am working on "Travel" projects, I collaps all other folders.
2) What are albums for? Just for presentation purposes (e.g. put all photos from the hiking tour that I want to show to my friends into the album and sort bad pictures etc out)?
Albums help you to organize your images for special tasks. Lets say, when you return from your hiking trip you want to order prints for your fellow travellers. You then simply drag the images you want to share with your friends to albums, one album for each friend. Albums do not hold duplicates of your images, they simply reference the image in the project. You can have the same image in several albums.
Albums can be seen as collections of images that are related in some way. If you tag all images showing a tiger with the keyword "tiger", you can create a smart album with all images tagged "tiger", and if you have a keyword "slideshow" you can create a smart album holding all images you want to consider for a tiger slideshow by defining a smart rule: keyword is "tiger" and "keyword is slideshow".
4) When to use dia show (hope this is how it is called in the english version)? Would I put it in an album?
The English term for the German word "Diaschau" is slideshow. When you create a slideshow you start by selecting a preliminary set of images you want to include, and yes, you can do that in an album or smart album, then you select all images and use the command "File > New > Slideshow".
This will create a slideshow album, where you can arrange the sequence of images in a filmstrip, define transitions and titels, and add music clips. You can choose between different themes, from very basic presentations to elabor te presentations with so many effects, that nobody will pay attention to your pictures, because they will be stunned by the effects
5) A book means a physical book which I could order from Apple with the chosen photos?
Yes, a book will create a pdf file, that can be printed as a hardcover or softcover book by Apple, or you can print the pdf on your own. Again you can select between a variety of themes, or use plug-ins to send your book to another printing service.
6) What for is the light table?
The light table lets you compare images side by side. You can arrange and scale them freely in the light table viewer - like on the old "Diasortierpult" used for viewing and arranging transparencies. You can use it to print your layout.
Good luck with your Aperture projects. Feel free to post back, if you have more questions.
Regards
Léonie

Are jpg's okay for an HDV project?

I'm working on a 60-minute HDV project in PP3. In addition to ~50 minutes of HDV footage, I have ~150 still images.
To prepare the images before import to PP3, I do the following:
* open the RAW image from Adobe Bridge...perform edits in Adobe Camera Raw...save as PSD file
* open the PSD file in PShop...resize the image to ~1440x1080 pixels...sometimes larger if I expect to zoom in
* save it as a JPG with a quality setting between 9 and 12 so that the resulting file size is between close to 1MB...never more than 2MB.
I specifically avoid importing image files as PSD files, since they are usually 4 MB and up in size.
Comments, please.
- Mike -

Hunt,
Thanks for your continued help and for taking the time to be so thorough in your postings.
I read your Article with great interest. Based on your attention to image quality and the importance of preserving the original files, I can tell that we're cut from the same cloth. I also come to the video world from still photography and am sensitive to those issues.
Re: your most recent post...I agree completely about testing the quality difference between PSD and JPG files. There have been times when I have animated layers in a PSD and have needed that capability...but that was in an SD project, not an HDV project. It was a family history movie which ran over an hour, including the extra features. It was a combination of jpg stills (~200) and SD video. I had no performance issues with my PP3 configuration.
But my HDV project seems fragile by comparison. My first 25-minute HDV project took ~6 minutes to load and caused frequent (Not Responding) semi-crashes. I also learned the hard way that using MP3 audio files caused render failures and crashes (not experienced in my SD project). Replacing all audio soundtrack files with WAV files has helped...but I am not too trusting of the systems' capabilities. I have initiated a fresh project to continue work on the same production. Since this is for personal consumption (not client work), I can live with having my Europe Trip production parsed, although I hope to combine them into one HDV project at the end with a run time of ~ 1 hour.
I render the project(s) to MPEG2 files using the the Adobe Media Encoder and use a Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player to serve an HDMI signal to my 46" TV. I am very pleased (stunned, actually) with the fidelity of the images...what an improvement over seeing one's work rendered down to SD. I highly recommend it...the WD player is only $100 on Amazon...much cheaper than going Apple TV (max 720p) or with Blue Ray burning and playback. I'm happy to provide my AME settings if you're interested.
To the topic of proper scaling - maintaining circles than want to morph into ovals...
This is only a recent problem for me. In an effort to make my project as lean as possible, I took some advice offered on the Creative Cow PP forum to scale images to 1440x1080. That prompted me to use PS3 to do that scaling (using Rectangular Marquee+Crop, or simply the Crop Tool) with settings entered into the Tools' parameters. As I began to import these into my HDV project, I noticed that some images were being stretched on the horizontal axis.
That prompted me to experiment by creating a perfect circle of black on a white background in PS, trying difference Scaling and Save As options, and evaluating the results after import into PP. Frankly, that has been a mind twister. The same PSD file, when Saved as a JPG, exhibits the stretched behavior...go figure that one. That has led me to the wonderful world of PAR settings...again, experiments on that circle document have had unexpected results. At this point, I have some interest in figuring it all out, but am pressed with a Thanksgiving deadline on my Europe Trip production.
In brief, my original workflow is as follows:
* open the image (use raw converter for global adjustments and save as PSD)
* if images from the pt&shoot are used, skip the raw work but open in PS3, as below
* use PS3 to adjust for composition, lighting, etc. and save as a PSD
* make a copy to be used for the video project only
* open those copies...assess how much zooming I'm likely to want...use Image Size to downsize/resample the longest dimension accordingly
* use Save As to compress to a JPG file of ~ 1 Mb...max of 2 Mb. With possibly 200+ images in an already fragile project, I feel it's essential...and the JPG's display very well all the way through to the WD TV and the TV
In the spirit of getting this project finished, I am going to abandon the "proper scaling" efforts with 1440 parameters and go back to my original plan.
I'm tempted to write up the workflow in a bit more detail and call it "The Survival Guide for Handling Still Images in Premiere". Hunt, your Article was the first thorough discussion I could find on any forum...I'm wondering why I couldn't find it earlier...my loss. It's a shame that the Adobe User Manual and other books like the PP3 Bible don't spend much time at all on advising folks on how to handle still images. In books that are hundreds of pages long, you'd think a page or two could be devoted to it.
Thanks again for your help.
- Mike -
(I'll append my h/w and s/w config in a second post)

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