Thursday 3 March 2011

Single-Camera Video Production, Fourth Edition (Media Manuals)



Single-Camera Video Production, Fourth Edition (Media Manuals)
Robert B. Musburger PhD | 2005-03-16 00:00:00 | Focal Press | 232 | How-to
Single-camera Video Production, Fourth Edition clearly explains the technology and the equipment of video production and details step-by-step the professional-level techniques that can be applied to any type of production or budget. In addition, this manual will train you to integrate technique, equipment, and creative concerns within the production process-from preproduction planning through final editing.

This new edition contains more in-depth information about the transition from analog to digital video production and includes the latest information on digital video and HD. It includes expanded coverage of nonlinear editing techniques and features a new organization that follows the actual shooting process more closely.

Single-camera Video Production, Fourth Edition is a comprehensive yet succinct guide to single-camera video production. Written as part of the Focal Press Media Manual series, each page of this helpful guide covers a specific issue in video production and is accompanied by at least one illustration or diagram to further develop the your understanding of the topic.

* Learn about the latest changes to video production technology and the industry
* Find new information about digital production techniques and HD video production
* Acquire the basic knowledge needed to plan, shoot, and edit most field and in-studio video productions
Reviews
Musberger is a great book if you're serious about the craft of shooting. The book is written by a pro for pros and those who would like to be. The style is spare, precise, and clear. There is little flair in the book, but if you want to get better at shooting the information is here and well-explained. While the title is "single-camera", most of the information applies in almost any video shooting situation.
Reviews
The fact that a book has reached its fourth edition usually means it has some merit that readers have found useful. If that's the case with this book, it's a mystery to me how the book ever got out of the first edition.



First of all, the title "Single-Camera Video Production" led me to believe that the book's focus is on how to do everything for a video production using a single camera. For the bulk of the book, that's not what it's about. It's really a general book about using a video camera. (One section even illustrates using 5 cameras--rehearsing and preparing talent!)



Second, the illustrations are terrible. They look like they were done by a non-designer using Etch-a-sketch. Further, the drawings of the complex video cameras were so generic and seemingly dated that they were totally useless. However, that didn't matter because I didn't buy the book to learn about video cameras (that keep changing regularly), but rather some wisdom on the production process where the videographer is trying to produce using a single camera.



The reason that this book is rated two-stars instead of 1 (or 0) is because there were some materials on lighting with a single camera that were useful. (However, there was nothing unique and that I couldn't find on the Web for free.)



All in all, this book is a poorly crafted one, and one that I could cobble together with a topic search on the Web. Unfortunately, I think that a good book on Single-Camera Video Production is something that would be very useful. This just isn't it.
Reviews
Mr. Musburger tackles a very wide range of information in a comfortable and easy to read style. He peppers his text with interesting tidbits about TV production and technology and covers a lot of ground.



There are some unfortunate factual errors in this edition (I have not read earlier editions). Focal Press should improve their editing process and attempt to have more industry experts read books like this before going to press.



All in all this is a good overview for someone starting out in video production as long as they continue to seek out other information from various sources. Instructors in the field can furnish errata for their students that will greatly increase the value of this book.



Better fact checking would have made this a strong recommendation.
Reviews
Now in a fully updated and expanded third edition, Single-Camera Video Production by Robert B. Musburger (Associate Professor, School of Communication, University of Houston), is a straightforward and highly recommended guide based upon the author's many years of practical field experience to planning, shooting, and editing video productions shot on location with essentially one camera at the filmmaker's disposal. An excellent resource for student filmmakers, Single-Camera Video Production offers a wealth of technical detail on audio signals, the scanning system, digital signal standards, camera controls, microphone types, and more, including sound advice on the social side of shooting film such as directing talent.

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Puerilities: Erotic Epigrams of "The Greek Anthology" (The Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation)



Puerilities: Erotic Epigrams of "The Greek Anthology" (The Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation)
Daryl Hine | 2001-06-01 00:00:00 | Princeton University Press | 128 | Poetry
Elegiac lyrics celebrating the love of boys, which the translator terms Puerilities, comprise most of the twelfth book of The Greek Anthology. That book, the so-called Musa Puerilis, is brilliantly translated in this, the first complete verse version in English. It is a delightful eroticopia of short poems by great and lesser-known Greek poets, spanning hundreds of years, from ancient times to the late Christian era.

The epigrams--wry, wistful, lighthearted, libidinous, and sometimes bawdy--revel in the beauty and fickle affection of boys and young men and in the fleeting joys of older men in loving them. Some, doubtless bandied about in the lax and refined setting of banquets, are translated as limericks. Also included are a few fine and often funny poems about girls and women.

Fashion changes in morality as well as in poetry. The sort of attachment that inspired these verses was considered perfectly normal and respectable for over a thousand years. Some of the very best Greek poets--including Strato of Sardis, Theocritus, and Meleager of Gadara--are to be found in these pages. The more than two hundred fifty poems range from the lovely to the playful to the ribald, but all are, as an epigram should be, polished and elegant. The Greek originals face the translations, enhancing the volume's charm.

A friend of Youth, I have no youth in mind, For each has beauties, of a different kind. --Strato

I've had enough to drink; my heart and soul As well as tongue are losing self-control. The lamp flame bifurcates; I multiply The dinner guests by two each time I try. Not only shaken up by the wine-waiter, I ogle too the boy who pours the water. --Strato

Venus, denying Cupid is her son, Finds in Antiochus a better one. This is the boy to be enamored of, Boys, a new love superior to Love. --Meleager
Reviews
Daryl Hine is at the top of the heap when it comes to great craftsmen of poetry. His craft is awesome to see. Hine's long poems are my favorite examples of long poems in English.

His Greek translations on the other hand are all short but totally fun. For scholars his book may be a source, but for the rest of us, these erotic epigrams give us an experience-close look at the erotic life of those playful Greek men.

I enjoyed this book.

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The Ethics of Coercion in Mass Casualty Medicine



The Ethics of Coercion in Mass Casualty Medicine
Griffin Trotter MD PhD | 2007-01-30 00:00:00 | The Johns Hopkins University Press | 176 | Ethics

Disasters, both natural and manufactured, provide ample opportunities for official coercion. Authorities may enact quarantines, force evacuations, and commandeer people and supplies -- all in the name of the public's health. When might such extreme actions be justified, and how does a democratic society ensure that public officials exercise care and forethought to avoid running roughshod over human rights?

In The Ethics of Coercion in Mass Casualty Medicine, Griffin Trotter explores these fundamental questions with skepticism, debunking myths in pursuit of an elusive ethical balance between individual liberties and public security. Through real-life and hypothetical case studies, Trotter discusses when forced compliance is justified and when it is not, how legitimate force should be exercised and implemented, and what societies can do to protect themselves against excessive coercion. The guidelines that emerge are both practical and practicable.

Drawing on core concepts from bioethics, political philosophy, public health, sociology, and medicine, this timely book lays the groundwork for a new vision of official disaster response based on preventing and minimizing the need for coercive action.



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A Century of Separation Science



A Century of Separation Science
Haleem J.Issaq | 2002-01-01 00:00:00 | Marcel Dekker, Inc. | 769 | Chemistry
Since its introduction by Tswett in 1901 as column chromatography for the separation of plant pigments, separation science has developed many diversified branches, each of which has its advantages, limitations, and fields of application. This book explores many aspects of separation science. For example, Dr. Leslie Ettre discusses the development of chromatography in the twentieth century, a period that witnessed the emergence, development, and dominance of separation science as an analytical technique. Today, chromatography and electrophoresis are ‘‘must’’ techniques in the analytical laboratory, a topic further explored in Professor Johan Roeraade’s chapter, ‘‘From Crushed Bricks to Microchips,’’ which delineates the major developments in separation science.
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CMOS Electronics: How It Works, How It Fails



CMOS Electronics: How It Works, How It Fails
Jaume Segura, Charles F. Hawkins | 2004-01-01 00:00:00 | Wiley-IEEE Press | 368 | Electrical Engineering
CMOS manufacturing environments are surrounded with symptoms that can indicate serious test, design, or reliability problems, which, in turn, can affect the financial as well as the engineering bottom line. This book educates readers, including non-engineers involved in CMOS manufacture, to identify and remedy these causes. This book instills the electronic knowledge that affects not just design but other important areas of manufacturing such as test, reliability, failure analysis, yield-quality issues, and problems.

Designed specifically for the many non-electronic engineers employed in the semiconductor industry who need to reliably manufacture chips at a high rate in large quantities, this is a practical guide to how CMOS electronics work, how failures occur, and how to diagnose and avoid them.

Key features:

* Builds a grasp of the basic electronics of CMOS integrated circuits and then leads the reader further to understand the mechanisms of failure.
* Unique descriptions of circuit failure mechanisms, some found previously only in research papers and others new to this publication.
* Targeted to the CMOS industry (or students headed there) and not a generic introduction to the broader field of electronics.
* Examples, exercises, and problems are provided to support the self-instruction of the reader.

Review
"...an essential text for practitioners in the CMOS industry or for students headed there:" (IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society Newsletter, October 2004)
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