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An Interview with Jan Ozer
Interviewed by Geetesh Bajaj, April 18th, 2005 - discuss
this interview...
See Also: Encoding
Video for PowerPoint
Jan Ozer (pictured to the left) has worked with digital
video since 1991, originally in the video compression industry
and
since 1996 as a contributing editor for EventDV and PC Magazine.
Jan teaches courses in digital video production, both privately
and for the University of Wisconsin Department of Continuing
Education, and shoots and produces DVDs for local musicians near
his hometown
in Galax, Virginia. DV
101 is Jan’s tenth video-related book.
Geetesh:
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Jan, tell us more about yourself and your new book.
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Jan:
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Geetesh, I’ve been working in digital video
since 1991, first on the vendor side and since about 1994
as a writer and seminar instructor. DV
101 is my tenth book, all on digital video related
topics.
My first two books were targeted towards video professionals,
and the next seven primarily towards consumers. With DV 101,
I wanted to write for a class of video producers I call “accidental
videographers.” Twenty years ago, when businesses,
schools or government offices wanted video done, they either
brought in the video department or hired an outside firm.
But fewer and fewer organizations have that luxury anymore.
Instead, they hand the camcorder to someone, generally with
technical or marketing skills but no video training, and
say “shoot and produce the video.” DV101 is for
that new user, or even slightly more experienced producers,
who need guidance in concepts like setting up a scene, framing
a shot, lighting and mike-ing the scene, and basic editing,
authoring and rendering.
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Geetesh:
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Why do you call your book “A Hands-On for Business,
Government & Educators?
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Jan:
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Well, there are two aspects. Regarding the “hands-on” portion,
the book is very specific and non-theoretical. For example, the shooting
chapter contains diagrams showing where to place your subject, where to
put the camera and how to frame your subject in the camera, which makes
it easy for inexperienced producers to produce professional quality video.
The book does that for every production stage, from shooting to rendering.
Regarding “Business, Government & Educators”,
the book addresses a very limited set of “enterprise-oriented” videos;
a broadcast, an interview and a training video. It doesn’t
talk about home video, documentaries or Hollywood type films
at all, either from a shooting or editing perspective.
In addition, the book is one of the few that contains a
chapter describing how to create and insert closed captioning
into streaming files and DVD, which is becoming a critical
skill in Government and many academic institutions.
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Geetesh:
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What are the “workbooks” I read about on
your site?
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Jan:
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DVD 101 is software agnostic, using screens from
a number of programs to illustrate key editing and authoring
functions. This makes the book appropriate for Macintosh
and Windows users and helps ensure that it won’t
go out of date as new software revisions appear.
To provide program specific guidance, readers can download
workbooks from my web site that illustrate how to perform
all tasks described in DV 101 using a specific program or
programs. This converts the software agnostic main text into
a program specific guide.
Two workbooks are currently available for Pinnacle Studio
and for Adobe Premiere/Pro and Encore. See here...
Workbooks are
free until June 30, 2005, and then may be offered for price
not to exceed $10.00. Another workbook
for Apple
products will be released in May, 2005.
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Geetesh:
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You have two chapters in the book that discuss PowerPoint
and presentations - tell us more about your observations
on using video inside PowerPoint.
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Jan:
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My goal for DV 101 was to cover both production and distribution. It seems
that much of the video produced for enterprise use is being shown from
within PowerPoint presentations, whether within training, sales, trade
shows or other presentations. As you probably know, there are at least
three ways to insert video into PowerPoint, each with different advantages
and disadvantages. And your insertion alternatives vary by compression
technology used, with QuickTime and RealVideo, for example, having different
options than MPEG and Windows Media.
Given these technology alternatives and the lack of coverage
of this topic in other books, I’m hoping these chapters
can provide real value to my readers.
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Geetesh:
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Tell us more about your favorite video format for
inclusion in PowerPoint presentations and what makes it
your favorite.
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Jan:
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Windows Media delivers the best quality at most
relevant bandwidths, and the richest breadth of insertion
options. As I say in the book, this makes it my “go
to” codec for most desktop and even streaming uses.
There are some subtleties, however, particularly issues
like output resolution and de-interlacing that really can
make or break the visual quality of the files, which I
obviously cover extensively in the book.
Note: Jan
prepared a short excerpt from the book to accompany his
interview...
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Geetesh:
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Many users still find Producer confusing but the program
does have its possibilities. Has Microsoft Producer evolved
yet into a medium that can be used effectively.
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Jan:
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It can be very effective for short, directed communications and can save
an organization tons of travel dollars often spent delivering short,
repetitive messages. It’s even better than live because workers
can review the presentation on their own time, and use the index to access
and even replay just the information that they want to see.
It’s a free product, though, and ships without a manual,
which often makes it difficult for some users to learn. In
creating my chapter, I downloaded and read all technical
materials available from Microsoft and built several other
presentations to complement the ones I had created previously
for clients and seminars. So to a certain degree, hopefully
readers will find my chapter the “missing manual.”
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Geetesh:
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Getting video inside PowerPoint is different from making
videos out of PowerPoint presentations - how doable is
the latter?
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Jan:
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The great thing about Producer is that it preserves
and displays your PowerPoint slides in their original format.
Once you convert them to video, the text quality starts to
degrade. It’s certainly doable to convert your PowerPoint
slides to video by using the screen capture codec of the
Windows Media Encoder, but Producer seems like a higher quality
solution.
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Geetesh:
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Would you want to share some trivia or experience about
an unconventional use of presentation and video technologies
- or maybe just share your favorite PowerPoint tip.
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Jan:
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I went to Israel back in 1999, and one of the topics I addressed
was inserting video into PowerPoint. It was a new topic
to me back then, and I was under-prepared, which led to
an experience that I wrote about here in what I think is
a somewhat humorous fashion.
http://www.findarticles.com/../ai_53978612
A couple of tips came from this experience. First, always
test your PowerPoint presentation at the ultimate display
resolution. For example, my laptop display is 1920x1080,
but most projectors can handle only 1280x1024, or even 1024x768,
and video will look and perhaps act much differently at those
resolutions.
So, before you consider your project “done” and
ready to share, be sure to test at both of those target resolutions.
Second, when setting up at the presentation location, be
sure to test one or two videos using that projector just
to be sure. Audio and video is still new enough that it often
stresses out presentation projectors and sound systems, and
you want to resolve those issues before you start your presentation.
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