Did You Score a New Video Camera from Santa?

If you have a smart phone, you have a video camera. If you have a point-and-shoot camera, you have a video camera. If you have a digital SLR camera, you may have a video camera. Some people even buy video cameras so that they can have a video camera. Anyone who has a new digital video camera or who wants to make better use of an existing one, should take a look at Adobe's Premiere Elements 12, which was released last year.

You already know that the Elements applications are the low-cost versions of Adobe's premium applications. The interfaces are modified to make them easier to use for people who don't use them every day. Some people refer to these as the "dumbed-down" versions, but it seems to me that anyone who has applied that epithet has never used the applications. If anything, they're smartened-up versions because it's difficult to make complex operations such as video editing simple. That is exactly what Premiere Elements does: It makes video editing accessible to people who don't know anything about editing video.

This year's improvements are in 6 specific areas: Guided view for new users, auto smart tone, more film looks, scores and sound effects, motion tracking, and video adjustment layers.

Guided View for New Users

You can think of guided edits as built-in tutorials that use your video and audio files (professionals would call these "assets"). Instead of having to work through exercises with somebody else's sample files, you'll be able to create your own edited videos as you learn how the program works. The Quick view is the way to accomplish a lot with virtually no effort, but if that's the only option users had, they would quickly outgrow the program. Expert view, which opens up a wider range of program functionality, is where you'll go when you have learned some of the finer points of editing. If you outgrow this mode, then it's time to move on to Adobe Premiere and all of its additional components. The Guided view is available in both Quick and Expert interfaces.

Auto Smart Tone

Auto Smart Tone is an automated color-correction tool. If the video you have is too light, too dark, or the colors are dull, this feature will improve it. The key word here is "improve". Nothing can make an inferior video shine, but it can sometimes save what would otherwise be an unusable shot. You don't have to take just the correction that you get automatically, either. A controller allows you to fine-tune the results and it will remember your preferences for later use.

More Film Looks

Premiere Elements had Film Looks before, and several additional options have been added under the Effects menu. When applied to a video clip, the result is a different appearance. The options are Animated, Trinity, Cross Process, and Yesteryear. After applying the look to a specific clip or to the entire project, it's possible to modify its intensity or — if you decide you don't like it — to simply delete the effect.

Scores and Sound Effects

Music and sound effects are key elements in theaters and on television. Premiere Elements has added more music scores and sound effects. A musical score is an audio track that can be dropped onto the video timeline. Each score includes an intro, a body, and an outro (or, as Adobe calls it, an extro.) "In" has the same meaning in both English and Latin, so they look the same. "Ex" is Latin and "out" is English, so take your pick. The score changes dynamically as it's lengthened or shortened, so any score can fit the length of any video clip. Sound effects can also be dropped in to make a creative point or emphasize an action.

Motion Tracking

Motion Tracking gives the user the ability to track the movement of an object in a video clip and then to attach still images, graphics, or even other video clips to the object. The attached objects then move with the tracked item. This feature is useful if you're trying to create an animation effect.

Video Adjustment Layers

Adjustment layers make it possible to apply identical processing effects to multiple clips. Effects applied to an adjustment layer affect all the layers below it and effects can be grouped on a single adjustment layer. Adjustment layers can be applied in both Quick and Expert mode.

How Easy Is It?

We spent Christmas day at my younger daughter's house. Although most of my camera use that day was for still photographs, the point-and-shoot camera that I'd brought along has a video mode, so I brought back about three and a half minutes of video. The first minute consisted of some test shots that weren't usable, so I had two and a half minutes of video to work with. My objective was to create a 30-second video.

This camera has an auto-focus mechanism, but it doesn't work very well when the clip opens with an extreme close up, followed by pulling the camera back. On the other hand, starting with a wider shot and moving the camera in seemed to work better. What this meant was that I would have to discard parts of several clips.

There was also no usable audio and that was by design.

Quick Mode provides the most basic view of the video. You'll see just a simple sequence of clips. The width of the clip shows the relative length of the clip.

Expert Mode provides a timeline, multiple video tracks, additional audio tracks, and tracks for narration and music. The clip preview shows the first and last frames in the clip if sufficient space exists to allow it.

The Guided View option works both with Quick mode and Expert mode.

Click the Guided View icon in the center at the top of the screen and a large panel open to describe various options. I selected the one that explains how I can trim the unwanted parts from the beginnings and ends of my clips.

Instructions are provided in the upper left corner of the program and what I call a "helping hand" appears to show the user exactly which controls need to be modified.

After trimming the clips so that the entire program would run approximately 30 seconds, I turned off the audio from the video tracks and dropped one of Adobe's scores onto the Soundtrack.

The default intensity seemed a bit much for the video, so I tried other settings until arriving at the one that seemed to fit the images best. Setting the intensity toward the right produces a harder-driving sound and moving it toward the left produces a more gentle sound.

Christmas at Kaydee's (30-sec) - Version A

Starting with 3:27 worth of video, I wanted to create a 30-second overview of Christmas day. This is the edited version with an Adobe soundtrack and no transitions.

Christmas at Kaydee's (30-sec) - Version B

Christmas at Kaydee's (30-sec) - Version C

Starting with 3:27 worth of video, I wanted to create a 30-second overview of Christmas day.
This is the edited version with an Adobe soundtrack, fade-in at the beginning, fade-out at the end, and cross-fade transitions where they seemed appropriate. Promise me you won't do this at home: I added a comic book effect to two of the clips just to show how easy it is.

Video editing for people who aren't video editors.

This is not the application that professional video producers would want and if Adobe had targeted professionals with this release, it would earn only a single cat, if that. Premiere Elements 12 continues in the Elements tradition of being extremely easy to use. And, in keeping with Adobe's philosophy of pushing more and more high-end features down to the consumer product line, this version provides some surprising strengths. If you're tired of looking at videos you know could be better, take a look at Premiere Elements. It's hard to imagine a better value for $100. Additional details are available on the Adobe website.

The (Second) Year of the Tablet

Tablets are not right for everyone or for every task, but they are far more useful than I expected them to be. That applies both to small tablets such as the Nexus 7 that run the Android operating system and to larger tablets from various manufacturers that run Windows. Perhaps my largest surprise has been how useful the small Android device is.

As recently as 5 years ago, if somebody had told me that a device with a 7" monitor could have the same number of pixels as a large screen (1920x1200) and would have nearly the speed of a desktop system, I would have doubted that such would be possible before perhaps 2020. I would have been wrong.

Android devices provide 5 "desktop" pages. Technically, these screens are part of the "launcher". I use a 3rd-party launcher from Nova because it allows me to create an interface that I like better than Kit-Kat's default and I can expand the number of apps on each of the pages from 36 (6x6) to 49 (7x7). Several other options are possible, but having 49 icons on the main page is enough for me.

At the bottom of the screen, the Dock can hold another 7 apps that are present on each launcher page. Nova makes it possible to create additional Docks (the default is 3), so that makes another 21 applications easily accessible.

I use one of launcher pages for a dashboard display that includes the date, time, weather, calendar, and Android settings that I like to have readily available.

The default launcher page is #3, with 2 pages on the left and 2 on the right. Android's default doesn't allow these pages to wrap around. If I'm on page 5 and what I want is on page 1, the default interface would require that I swipe to the right 4 times to move all the way to the left. The Nova interface offers wrap-around, so if I'm on page 5 and want to be on page 1, a single swipe to the left takes me there.

I don't miss the touch interface at all when I'm using a desktop or notebook computer, but it's hard to imagine an easier interface for a tablet.

Larger Tablets Do Even More

Microsoft says a clear winner surfaces "as desktop PCs move into the back room and bulky laptops fall out of favor with road warriors and anyone who works away from the office, tablets and smart phones are quickly filling the gap. While tablets and smart phones offer superior portability and untethered productivity, they lack three essential features that would take productivity to the next level: keyboards, Windows compatibility, and a touchscreen experience." Microsoft, of course, points out that these are available on Surface tablets.

Microsoft's Surface tablets have received good reviews but they still aren't selling well. That's going to change, though. Tablets are selling extremely well and anyone who takes the time to review tablet specifications will seriously consider what Microsoft has to offer. My Windows tablet is not a Surface device, but that's only because the Surface Pro wasn't yet available when I decided that I needed a tablet computer.

The research firm IDC says that tablet purchases will surpass PC purchases by 2015. Growth in this part of the market surprised just about everybody in 2013 and is likely to repeat that performance in 2014. A white paper by Microsoft sets up the equation this way:

That's not as self-serving as it might seem. In fact, it describes the current situation pretty well. Just as in the early days of the personal computer, people brought Apple II systems into the office because they could use them to perform tasks that were difficult or impossible with dumb terminals and mainframe computers. Today, we all have computers on our desktops, but tablets offer extended capabilities that the larger devices can't match.

Forrester Research says that about one third of information workers (32%) like the idea of being able to use tablet computers.

The Nexus 7 computer I use is perfect for many tasks, but not for using Microsoft Office applications. A OneNote app allows me to interact with that Microsoft application and other apps make it possible to read documents created in Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. But if I want to edit them, I need a real computer that runs the Office applications. Windows-based tablets do that.

The advantages Microsoft cites for its Surface 2 tablets also apply to tablets from other manufacturers:

Multitasking. Multitask with side-by-side apps, even when you’re using an app and a program on Windows desktop. There’s virtually no limit to how many apps you can run simultaneously.
Touch apps. Choose from more than 60,000 high-impact touch apps from the Windows Store — from productivity and customer apps to industry- and company-specific apps.
Custom apps. Work with your own IT team or choose from a worldwide network of experienced partners to build high-impact apps for your business.
Desktop apps. Continue to use the Windows desktop applications you already use and are familiar with — such as QuickBooks, Photoshop, and SAP — on your Surface Pro 2.

Quoting Microsoft's white paper:

Tablets make good use of Wi-Fi connections and one of the things that surprises me a bit is just how many Wi-Fi signals are available in residential areas.

Here's what I see from the bedroom of my house. These are signals on the 2.4GHz band. A few years ago, most of them were open connections. Now all of them have at least WEP enabled. I found a relatively clear channel for my Wi-Fi Router (FBI_Surveilance_4267) and there's no danger that the 2.4GHz band will be saturated anytime soon because channels 3 through 5, 7 and 8, 10, 12, 13, and 14 are readily available.

The Android tablet can use the 5GHz band, though, and I'm all alone on channel 153.

I've heard people say that they think tablets are silly and that they'll never own one. I suspect that some of these people are the same ones who said, in the mid 1980s, that personal computers were silly and that they would never own one.

Tablet computers will not replace notebook computers. At least, not yet. Microsoft's Surface units and some of the tablets from Dell and Lenovo could be the devices that provide the power, the functionality, and the notebook-like features that make them the ones that are capable of serving both functions.

And I don't see a future in which a tablet (or a notebook) will replace desktop systems for those people who need more extreme processing power or storage.

But I've learned that it's wise to never say "Never!"

The Internet is Still Too Slow

Many residents of the United States probably think that their 10- or 15-Mbps Internet speed is something to be proud of. Sorry, but it's not so. The US is, at best, in the middle of the pack when it comes to speed on the Internet and we fall a bit further behind every year.

Writing in the New York Times, Edward Wyatt (full article) compared San Antonio, which is the 7th largest city in the US, with Riga, Latvia, a former Soviet city that has about half the population of San Antonio.

San Antonio wins by a mile, right?

Not exactly. The average speed of Internet connections in Riga is faster. Faster by about two and a half TIMES. Users would spend 35 minutes downloading a feature film in San Antonio, while in Riga the same film would download in just 13 minutes.

So people in Riga have to pay really high fees?

Again, not exactly. Wyatt notes that the cost of Internet connections in Latvia is about 25% of what we pay in the United States.

Part of the problem is that the United States is so large and, although more than 90% of us live in towns or cities, there's still a lot of open space that's hard to cover. Wyatt notes that the World Economic Forum "ranked the United States 35th out of 148 countries in Internet bandwidth."

Riga's average Internet connection speed is 42 Mbps. There are still users who poke along at just 8 to 10 Mbps, but many users have connections that range from 100 to 500 Mbps. In San Antonio, the average is 16 Mbps and, although faster speeds are available, they're so expensive that most families can't afford them. (And the fastest connections are nowhere near 100 Mbps.)

The full account is worth taking the time to read.

Short Circuits

2,000,000 Websites Offline on New Years Eve

Shortly after 1pm (Eastern) on Tuesday, New Years Eve, one of the largest hosting companies in the world went off line. BlueHost is home for approximately 2 million websites and all of them were down, along with BlueHost's own site, and its telephone system. The company's technicians immediately started working on the problem and most of the sites were operational again within 5 hours. The angst on Twitter (@bluehostsupport) was palpable, particularly among non-profits because for many donation-based organizations the final day of the year is their most productive day.

The support team on Twitter frequently said that technicians were working on the problem, but had no ETA for restoration of service and, at the conclusion of the event they also weren't forthcoming about the cause. Here is a typical response from BlueHost support: "We had an issue here in our data center network causing all customers to not be able to connect to their servers for website or email service. We apologize for this issue. Our admins have been working feverishly to get everything up and running again. At this point, they have gotten some of it repaired. You may see your service back up already. If not quite yet, please wait and it will be restored to you in the next little while. Please go to our Twitter support page for updates: http://www.twitter.com/bluehostsupport/."

It is remarkable that the support team was able to respond to what must have been an avalanche of comments, particularly on New Years Eve, when many companies release most employees early. Clearly, it was all hands on deck at the Orem data center. But still, the company owes the operators of its 2,000,000 websites an explanation. What happened? What can be done to avoid a future event or at least to mitigate the damage?

On New Years Day, the Twitter account was still dealing with people who continued to have trouble with their websites. Meanwhile, in Burlington, Massachusetts, the public relations team at Endurance International Group, the company that owns BlueHost, was busy debriefing technicians in Utah so that they could explain the outage.

Laurie Coots explained that the problem was essentially the result of human error. "On December 31, our technicians were performing work to bring online a new switch in one of our data centers. The aim of this effort was to introduce additional networking components into this data center, and was one of several times we'd performed this process over the past month. When this device was enabled on the network, however, it caused a loop to be introduced elsewhere in the network." As a result the system's fail-safes respond by shutting down the network.

The teams on site at the data center eventually identified, isolated, and fixed the issue. The official BlueHost explanation noted that the issue "did not put servers or customer data at risk."

German News Magazine says the NSA Plants Bugs and Malware

The German news magazine Der Spiegel (The Mirror) says that the National Security Agency (NSA) operates a "shadow network" beside the public Internet and that the agency uses modified routers and compromised software to collect data. The report is the third in a series from Spiegel.

The article describes the NSA's tapping of fiber optic cables that carry Internet traffic between Europe, North Africa, the Gulf states, India, Pakistan, and countries in southeast Asia.

The cables are actually owned French and Italian telecom agencies that are themselves partly government owned. Spiegel quotes a "top secret" report that says the NSA "successfully collected network management information" for the undersea cable systems by employing a "website masquerade operation". This event happened in February of 2013 and allowed the NSA to collect information that "shows the circuit mapping for significant portions of the network."

Spiegel says that the NSA works together with intelligence agencies inside and outside the United States to gain access to private networks that are not connected to the public Internet. These activities are operated by a group known as "Tailored Access Operations" or TAO.

Regarding compromised hardware, Spiegel says that the TAO can delay products that are being shipped and have them delivered to an NSA workshop where they are modified.

Netflix May Create a Single-User, Standard-Definition Plan. Or Not.

Netflix is currently testing a streaming plan that knocks $1 off the monthly fee and reduces the quality of the streamed video. It's currently being offered to some users who sign up for the service's 30-day free trial.

Netflix typically charges $8 ($7.99) per month for the streaming plan that allows videos to be streamed in standard definition or high definition. For $7 ($6.99) per month, users will be limited to standard definition. Apparently the thought is that this plan would appeal to those who watch videos on smart phones or small tablets. How well it catches on with subscribers, and whether it has a positive effect on the company's revenue, will determine whether it moves past the test phase.

Yes, these smaller devices often have enough pixels to support HD but the screens are so small that most people can't tell the difference between HD and SD.

Where's My Snow Plow?

Central Ohio received some snow on Thursday, but nothing like what the northern part of the state, and much of the East, got. While reading the New York Times website, I noticed a link to PlowNYC, a website that gives residents information about where snow plows are. What a great idea! This is the kind of thing that many cities could (and should) copy.

I visited PlowNYC and was asked to fill in an address. When I'm in New York, I usually stay at a bed-and-breakfast on 120th Street. The address I've filled in (50 W 120th Street) isn't the address where I stay, but it's in the same block. I'm familiar with the area, so it helped me understand what I was looking at.

The map has 2 display options. The first shows the street designations (primary, secondary, tertiary, and streets that are not the responsibility of the Sanitation Department.) Yes, it's the Department of Sanitation that's responsible for snow removal in New York City and who else would be better suited for the task? After all, their drivers see the streets regularly, unlike transportation workers. The second, and the one I selected, shows when each street was last visited by a snow plow (less than an hour ago, 1-3 hours, 3-6 hours, 6-12 hours, and fugeddaboudit).

The trucks have transponders and GPS units, but the PlowNYC site notes that streets with a "tertiary" designation "may be plowed by non-GPS-equipped vehicles operated by private vendors in severe weather conditions and, as a result, all of their collective plowing efforts will not be reflected on this site." This is an excellent idea, a great use of the Internet, and a service that other cities should consider implementing!