Strangely enough, I only just recently started noticing flicker when I slowed clips down in Adobe Premiere.  This is with interlaced video clips.  Generally you don’t notice them until after exporting to DVD and playing back.

  Did a bit of research online, and from what I gather, it’s due to the fact the interlacing is affected by the change in speed.  To solve this issue, you’ll want to make sure you de-interlace the clip you are slowing down.

  1) Right-click the clip in the timeline.

  2) Select…[More]

Heart of the Winter by Denny Schneidemesser

Christmas Medley by JohnWE

Been using the new Encore CS4 for a DVD the last few weeks, and just when I finished the editing and was ready to burn, the program returned an error claiming there was an invalid MPEG.  This happens during the build process (creating the DVD).  Took several days and many wasted discs for me to figure this out so I thought I might share.

Things to check for:

- Red frames in MPEG video.  Even those exported from Premiere can end up with problems.  Sometimes you just end up with a bad file and need to re-render the file.

- Bad Import. …[More]

  This has been a problem for as long as I remember (even in Premiere 6.5), but it’s only beginning to bug me again after CS3.  Not sure if it’s because of the version or if I’m starting to use audio effects more often.  In any case, I’m finding that exporting video with even slight audio enhancements (highpass, pitch, etc) often causes crackling.  It doesn’t happen all the time; usually it occurs with more complicated timelines (nested sequences).

  Although it may help to lower volume or lessen the effects, an easier method I’ve found is to export the audio by itself first (Export > Audio).  You’ll end up with a wav file (uncompressed I believe) which you can re-import into your timeline and use.  You’ll notice your wav file has no crackling; this you can use to replace your video’s audio.

  It’s a bit of a hassle, but at least you don’t have to get rid of your effects or lower the volume of your video.  Bit strange that it exports audio just fine but messes up when…[More]

  Been noticing an increase in phishing/scam emails the past few days (5 in last 3 days..).  Thing that bothers me is they have my real email address, so not sure what that would signify.  It’s also coming from a lot of major sites, so that’s something to be aware of - including hotscripts.com, cnet, amazon, ebay.  Makes me worry if they have my real email - why they bother to send fake ones.

  Quick way to check is to see who it’s from - the name right before .com or .net or anything like that should be the actual site.  Many times, if it’s fake, it won’t be correct (though some go as far as to spoof that as well).

  Another way to tell it’s a scam email is to hover your mouse over the links (don’t click though).  Pretty darn obvious if the links don’t go back to the website (cnet, ebay, etc).  It’s also obvious when all the links are the same - which has happened on most scam emails I get.