new releases favourites genres   drama   travel   comedy   experiments help  [what the FAQ?] search		what the FAQ? I downloaded a movie and now I can't find it. Relax. It's on your hard drive. Windows users: Start > Search. In the name field, type "*.zip". Then click the "When was it modified" option and choose "Within the last week". Hit search and sit back. Mac users: Click the desktop. Got to file > find. Type "*.zip". Click "Add Criteria" and select "Date Created" choose a date. Hit search and sit back. Why don't you just stream the movies? So that you will download it once. If we streamed it, you would be downloading it every time you wanted to see it. That would send our bandwidth usage through the roof. Once you have downloaded a movie, it's yours to keep forever. Watch it as much as many times as you want. Why do you encode the movies to MPEG-1? Believe it or not, MPEG-1 is the ONLY format that will play on both Macs and PCs with a good user experience. With MPEG-1, Mac users can watch the movies with their Quictime Player and PC users can use Windows Media Player. Here is a breakdown of the other formats and why we don't use them: Quictime: The quicktime format is great. You can get really high compression and great image quality. The show stopper is the player. A minor annoyance is that it keeps asking you to buy it. No way Jose. The real shortcoming with the Quicktime player is that you can't full screen it. That puts it in the category of "Players That Suck". Windows Media: The Windows media format is the best there is. WMV 9 is truly incredible. You can't get higher image quality with surround sound and smaller files anywhere - period. The player is free and you can full-screen it beautifully. Unfortunately, Windows Media Player does not play anything higher than WMV 7 on a Mac. Windows Media Player is a victim of the war being waged between Redmond and Cupertino. MPEG-4: Both Quicktime and Windows Media use MPEG-4 technology to get the results they get. There are, however, a lot of good, free, no-name MPEG-4 codecs out there. If you know of a good one that works with both platforms, let us know. Not only does it have to work on a Mac and a PC, it needs to be idiot proof. Everybody who uses a computer, excluding you and me and my friends is an idiot. We want the idiots to be able to see our stupid movies. MPEG-2: This is the compression DVDs use. It's good, but not as good as MPEG-4 and it's just as much of a pain in the ass to get your player to play it. MPEG-3: That's for audio - you idiot! What's your business plan? This is a free site. It always will be. We enjoy creating digital media. We would do it even if the Internet had not been invented. But, since it has, we may as well share our crap. What do I need to make movies? You can create professional quality video with either a Mac or a PC. If you want cheap and fast, get a PC. If you want expensive and stylish, get a Mac. If you want to argue about it, email Matt - it's his favorite topic. Do not quote what you read on Apple.com. Did you know that Ford.com insits that quality is job 1? Editing on a PC The front runner is Vegas, which was created by Sonic Foundry (the makers of Sound Forge and Acid). You will never hear anyone say anything bad about Vegas. Sonic Foundry has never spent a dime on marketing the product, and they gave it a goofy name. The good news is that Vegas was recently purchased by Sony Pictures Digital. Adobe Premier is a joke. Avid is non-intuitive and much less powerful. In terms of hardware, the Dell Precision workstations are very fast and very silent, but Dell will do everything they can to make you hate them. These guys sell the best machines you can get and they are nice to their customers. The only drawback is that they are expensive [for PCs] and fairly loud. Keep in mind that these are professional systems and if you just want to edit DV, any PC will do fine - save your cash and put it into your camera. Editing on a Mac Final Cut Pro is the standard. Some people still use Avid but they are a dying breed. Those who use Premier are just wrong. Beyond video editing Both Vegas and Final Cut Pro have a great selection of effects and filters. You can do color correction, titles, chroma keying etc right in your NLE. However, if you really want to get serious, your NLE (non-linear editor) is not the place to play - you need Adobe After Effects. When I say serious, I mean if you want to like ah... blow someone's head up or something. Learning The best web site for ALL digital media creation is "the cow". They have tutorials and, more importantly, user forums for every product imaginable. Video based tutors are great too - much better than a book. If you're going to get a book, be sure to read a bit of it before buying. Make sure it's well written. A good benchmark are the books for After Effects by Chris and Trish Meyer - they are truly incredible.	recommended join our mailing list
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