Better integration with Youtube

First off, Captiontube ties better in with Youtube: you can simply sign in using your Youtube or Google account. And once you have created your captions, then it just takes you one click to add the caption to the Youtube video -simple and fast, which is how we like it.

Interface

The interface, while similar to the the one of Overstream, does seem much nicer, if you ask me, although that’s of course a judgement call. To the left is your YouTube video and in the right hand pane you have a button Add Caption, which will insert your caption wherever the playhead’s located. Next to it, there’s a button with which you can determine the exact point in time when you want the caption to disappear from screen.

Below everything is a timeline that displays which captions occur when -you can easily adjust the zoom settings using the slider to the left. Even more to the left you can set the language of the captions you are creating, which is a feature Overstream lacks. There’s also the possibility to add as many caption tracks as you like -especially handy if you are creating multiple captions in different languages. This, too, is not possible in Overstream. I do find it a pity that you cannot (yet?) copy and paste tracks so that you wouldn’t have to go through the procedure of adding x captions, tweaking time settings, and so on. A copy & paste feature would allow users to quickly create multiple captions for multiple languages, as they would only need to translate them.

One last thing regarding the interface: the timeline is just one possible view. Click on the List tab if you want to display all of your captions in a list view -especially for a quick review, right before you publish everything, this comes in handy.

Export

As I already said, you can easily upload the captions directly to your YouTube video, but if you want you could also download them to your computer, have them sent to you via email, or copy them to the clipboard. The default option is to upload them directly to YouTube, which does make sense.

My videos

In the top right corner you can find a button that gives you an overview of all your videos -much better than Overstream’s video organization where you have to select your overstream sub in a dropdown menu.

Conclusion

Excellent tool. I see that it’s still in beta, which means that in the future maybe even more features will follow.

Tutorial videos

Getting started

Creating captions

Exporting captions

On their website, it says “DVD Flick aims to be a simple but at the same time powerful DVD Authoring tool. It can take a number of video files stored on your computer and turn them into a DVD that will play back on your DVD player, Media Center or Home Cinema Set. You can add additional custom audio tracks, subtitles as well as a menu for easier navigation.”

The modus operandi is fairly simple: if you want to create a DVD, you just add all the videofiles to your project -DVD Flick supports over 60 video formats and 40 audio formats so it’s not very likely you’ll run into problems here. If they’re available, you can also add subtitles and/or additional audiostreams. If you want to get your DVD fast you probably won’t need to dive deep in the project settings -with the target bitrate set to auto-fit, the default options are quite ok.

Fancy menu designs!

Creating a menu is as easy as falling off a log: you just click on Menu settings and you choose a fancy design. If you don’t like any of the preset designs, then you can always create your own but you’d have to download an additional tool.

The project settings

Before you actually burn your DVD it’s not a bad idea to have a look at the project settings -you don’t want to end up with an NTSC if you’re in Europe, for one. By default DVD Flick will create 4.3 Gb DVDs, but if you want to burn a double layer, then it’s just a matter of selecting it in the target size pulldown menu.

If you’re ready with everything, hit the Create DVD button to export the DVD to an ISO or to burn it straight onto a DVD.

From February 7–13, 2010 in Ghent (Belgium) vzw Let’s Learn IT organizes the workshop:

Web 2.0, Multimedia & Presentation Skills: Empowering IT Competences For Today’s Job Market (Workshop Reference number: 2009-1-BE3-GRU13-01100)

The main objective behind this workshop is to give the participants a decent training on how they can use computers to enhance their chances for finding a job. The focus will be on various web 2.0 applications, presentation tools, and digital audio and video.

Objectives

Participants will have learnt the following:

• how to use computers and computer peripherals to create multimedia presentations;
• how to use modern web 2.0 applications like wikis, blogs and social community websites;
• how to work with digital audio and video;
• how to give an efficient presentation.

Interested?

Thanks to the Grundtvig programme of the European Commission and the Flemish National Agency, vzw Let’s Learn IT can offer this workshop completely free of charge (flight ticket, hotel, breakfast lunch & dinner will be paid by us) to 20 unemployed candidates. If you are interested in attending this workshop, you can send us a letter (or email) of motivation in which you tell us why you would like to attend this workshop. You will need to prove that at the moment of applying you are officially unemployed.

• Where? Ghent, Belgium
• When? February 7-13, 2010
• Who? Unemployed European citizens
• Costs? All costs related to the programme will be paid for by the organization

For more information, please visit Let’s Learn IT.

Wat op de home van Format Factory te lezen staat, mag er wel zijn:

All to MP4/3GP/MPG/AVI/WMV/FLV/SWF.
All to MP3/WMA/AMR/OGG/AAC/WAV.
All to JPG/BMP/PNG/TIF/ICO/GIF/TGA.
Rip DVD to video file , Rip Music CD to audio file.
MP4 files support iPod/iPhone/PSP/BlackBerry format.

Yep, dat heb je goed gelezen: de meest courante video- en audioformaten kun je in een wip omzetten naar, ehm, gelijk wat eigenlijk. MKV naar SWF, of FLV naar MP4? Geen probleem. Dit is hoe je te werk gaat:

• Selecteer in het videoluik aan de linkerkant het gewenste doelformaat.

De beschikbare videoformaten

• De optie Converteren naar Mobiel apparaat neigt wat naar Adobe’s Device Central: een centrale waarin allerhande presets voor evenzoveel verschillende apparaatjes te vinden zijn, gaande van Sony’s PSP, Apple’s iPhone & iPod, Archos, de Creative Zen, naar allerhande nokia’s & LG’s.

Toestelletje selecteren -huppaaa!

• Je krijgt een nieuw scherm met daarin de mogelijkheid om het nieuwe formaat aan te passen, indien je dat zou willen, en waar je ook het bronbestand kunt localiseren. Klik daarna op start en laat de handel lopen -it’s that easy!

Conversie afstellen, bronvideo & doellocatie selecteren en laat maar lopen!

“Waarom, o waarom is dit nu zo speciaal en goed?“, vraagt mijn imaginary friend. Wel, het antwoord is redelijk simpel:

1. Gratis.
2. Snel.
3. Swiss Army knife.

Een laatste reden waarom dit eigenlijk toch wel een straf programma zie je op deze afbeelding:

Goodies!!

Kleine test gisteren bij mij thuis: zonder dat ik enige versie van AnyDVD of DVD43 staan heb slaagde dit pakket erin om een commerciële, beveiligde DVD om te zetten naar een zeer treffelijke avi. Dat het een joekel van 1.8 Gb was, bedek ik met de spreekwoordelijke mantel der liefde -ik had ook maar niet gewoon de basisinstellingen moeten nemen. Ik schat dat de hele operatie ongeveer twee uur heeft geduurd. Dat kan misschien veel lijken, maar als je bedenkt dat onder de motorkap de DVD eerst geript wordt en daarna geconverteerd dient te worden naar het uitvoerformaat, dan valt dat zeker best wel mee. Het zuipt redelijk veel processor juice, maar die vlieger gaat voor andere conversiepakketten evengoed op. Ik hoop natuurlijk stellig dat het omzeilen van de beveiliging geen lucky shot was. Daarnaast kan het ook beschadigde video- en audiobestanden repareren. Kom, geef toe, twijfel je nog?

De drie vermelde websites hebben ondertussen stuk voor stuk een gigantische collectie aan videofilms. Die filmpjes kunnen via Omnisio relatief gemakkelijk bewerkt en dus ingebed worden in presentaties -studentgerelateerd of andere.