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My experience with Google Earth was bitter sweet. After installing the software I absolutely loved navigating it. The way you can see places in such detail and speed is amazing. How could this be free? Well for this post I am going to describe my time spent learning to use the touring feature built into the software.
After gaining the rudimentary skills needed to navigate I began using search box provided on the left to locate my places of interest. In this case I wanted to find 5 college stadiums in the US so I can relate them to my Blue Devil Championship Podcast. The search tool was great and helped me quickly find each stadium by just its name. Now to make a tour with Google Earth it is necessary to create a number of place markers for the tour to visit at your command. I found creating a maker was as right clicking (windows) the desired search result and selecting copy, then pasting it into the “My Places” box under the search box on the left. For my purposes I created 7 place markers (2 were duplicates) and placed them into a sub folder under “My Places”. Now for my tour I wanted the program to visit each of my places, in order, and display a picture with my descriptions of each. As it was, each place had Google’s pictures, links and descriptions pre-set because I had copied them from the search box. Therefore I went into each and re-titled them and deleted all gibberish (HTML code) in the info box. Before saving each new place marker I found it convenient to relocate each in a place next to the stadium so when the info box pops up in the tour it doesn’t cover the stadium. Also if you right click the place marker after saving the properties and select “snapshot view” it saves the look or exact position of the globe. So later when I click the place marker it travels right to that snapshot view.
Ok now that my places were set I went back into each place markers properties and added a hyperlink and picture into each info section using;
for the picture,
and
for the hyperlink.
With the place markers ready I started to record my tour by clicking the camera icon at the top of the programs window and then the red dot to begin recording. This is the point where my Google Earth experience became bitter. To spare you the hours of debugging and cursing I did I will cut to the chase. While recording the tour, it is not necessary to have the place markers checked to travel to each place. However, it is necessary to have each place marker checked if you intend to have the info pop up so you can see the descriptions of the places checked during the recording process. This minor detail was an easy fix that took wwwwwaaaayyyy to long to discover. Anyhoo the fix allowed me to continue my project and record. All I had to do was press record and double click each place marker to traverse the tour and click the place markers description when the motion stopped to pop up the info for that location. When the tour was over it saved into “my places” and tada; I had a cool tour.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
My podcast project.
This podcast tells a brief history of the Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps' past 15 years.
To build this project I used Windows Movie Maker and Nero Wave Studio.
Starting off with the wave studio I loaded my ripped CD audio files of each championship year used in my project. Since I only needed a few seconds from each 10 min file I looked for my favorite musical section and cut it out so I can past that segment into my project wave file which Nero Wave Studio produces by default. After cutting and pasting all 10 segments into my project wave file I added some effects such as; fade in, fade out, and reduced volume. I had to reduce the volume because later I need to add my voice commentary and the music was very loud at times.
After saving my new wave file I started a new project in Windows Movie Maker. The program allowed me to import all my pictures and my music file so that I can arrange them all together. After entering my audio file into my new project it was easy to add pictures into the specific time slots I wanted. Also for each picture added to the project, I could enter how long the picture would stay up in sync with the music.
Ok now with my pictures and music together I had to export the project into a single video file because I was only able to add 1 video source, 1 picture source and 1 audio source at a given time. Therefore it was necessary to start another new project and import the new video file so I can then add the next audio source; my voice over.
To record my voice I found an old mini disc recorder and condenser mic I had from years ago. I recorded the commentary I wrote down onto the mini disc recorder and transferred the each of the 8 sound files to my computer via the SPDIF fiber optic cable interface my computer so happen to have =) Totally unnecessary but useful non-the-less.
Ok with the voice over recorded and then imported into the second project file, had to arrange each commentary file to fit the music and picture changes of the video file previously created. This presented a new problem. My voice files were longer than my video file segments I previously produced. This was a bummer because that meant I had to reproduce my first video. This took some time because in some cases I had to use completely different music sections because the previous ones used were not useful in the new time slots demanded of my voice over segments.
Well, several audio files later I was able to reproduce my first video file and compile the production you see above. This project gave me an unexpected lesson. I had experience with both software’s but I had no experience using the two together like this. I enjoyed learning the pair will likely use them in the future, or at least know not to use them better. Who knows =)
To build this project I used Windows Movie Maker and Nero Wave Studio.
Starting off with the wave studio I loaded my ripped CD audio files of each championship year used in my project. Since I only needed a few seconds from each 10 min file I looked for my favorite musical section and cut it out so I can past that segment into my project wave file which Nero Wave Studio produces by default. After cutting and pasting all 10 segments into my project wave file I added some effects such as; fade in, fade out, and reduced volume. I had to reduce the volume because later I need to add my voice commentary and the music was very loud at times.
After saving my new wave file I started a new project in Windows Movie Maker. The program allowed me to import all my pictures and my music file so that I can arrange them all together. After entering my audio file into my new project it was easy to add pictures into the specific time slots I wanted. Also for each picture added to the project, I could enter how long the picture would stay up in sync with the music.
Ok now with my pictures and music together I had to export the project into a single video file because I was only able to add 1 video source, 1 picture source and 1 audio source at a given time. Therefore it was necessary to start another new project and import the new video file so I can then add the next audio source; my voice over.
To record my voice I found an old mini disc recorder and condenser mic I had from years ago. I recorded the commentary I wrote down onto the mini disc recorder and transferred the each of the 8 sound files to my computer via the SPDIF fiber optic cable interface my computer so happen to have =) Totally unnecessary but useful non-the-less.
Ok with the voice over recorded and then imported into the second project file, had to arrange each commentary file to fit the music and picture changes of the video file previously created. This presented a new problem. My voice files were longer than my video file segments I previously produced. This was a bummer because that meant I had to reproduce my first video. This took some time because in some cases I had to use completely different music sections because the previous ones used were not useful in the new time slots demanded of my voice over segments.
Well, several audio files later I was able to reproduce my first video file and compile the production you see above. This project gave me an unexpected lesson. I had experience with both software’s but I had no experience using the two together like this. I enjoyed learning the pair will likely use them in the future, or at least know not to use them better. Who knows =)
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