Retake

This column was first published in the MUGOO Newsletter in January 2001.

Cut! Cut! Let's look more closely at that frame! Does the image of Floppy the dog wagging his tail capture the true meaning of a dog? Is his howl full and throaty? What can be done?

Don't touch that mouse, it's My Performa at the Movies. It's time to edit and play with the movies recorded with my camera in hand and then some....

The movies created and saved are QuickTime movies, either in Movie player format or QuickMovie format. There are several software applications with varying degrees of functionality ranging from recording, editing, and playback to only extracting sound tracks. Below is the software installed on my Performa that I can use to manipulate the images and sound (I want to say film, but that is not the right medium).

The above video software was bundled either as part of a software package (Movie Player II came with a Mac Advocate CD), as part of a hardware package (Quick Movie came with the QuickCam; Avid Video Shop and the Apple Video Software came with the Apple TV/Video Tuner Card). Note that two applications that we normally think of as text applications, like ClarisWorks and SimpleText, are actually multimedia applications that can playback QuickTime movies.

Last, but not least, are the light versions, free versions of QuickTime Player 3.0 and 4.0 that have a third of the capability of the free QuickTime 2.5 Player. The above software allows for manipulation of video and audio tracks; there is software out there such as Movie 2Snd that captures only sound tracks from QuickTime moves

For low-end (that is 68K) Mac users such as myself, the common thread of the above software is that it is works on a 68K Mac and is OS 8.1 compatible. Another common denominator is that is is either free or can be obtained for historically low dollars when purchasing hardware.

Optimal performance for running the software on a 68K, though, can only be gained by using a Mac with an FPU installed such as a Quadra 630 or a Quadra 840av with maximum RAM installed, like 36 MB, running at least at 33 MHz. The bottom line is that for low dollars you can satisfy an itch to create movies on your Mac by spending low dollars.

Next time: Virtual Cutting Room