Wednesday, April 30

Morris Library renovation

In case you have noticed the lighting changes in the Information Room of the library, more renovations are coming.

"The University of Delaware Library has announced that the Information Room in the Morris Library will undergo an exciting and colorful renovation to make the area become more student-friendly and a nicely appointed environment."

You can read and see all the exciting alterations being planned to the area at UDaily.

New Lytro Camera?!

Hi friends!!

You know that Lytro camera we have? Well Lytro is coming out with a new type of camera, and it looks pretty different from the current one we have.

Ta-da! It's called the Illum, and the look to it is kind of a cross between their old one and the traditional style of a camera.
Here's a link to the article if you wanna check it out!

Screening of Documentary by Center "regular"

I thought you'd all be interested to know that Justin de Leon, who has been checking out equipment for at least a couple of years from the Student Multimedia Design Center, is having a screening of the documentary that he directed called Give to Live at 7 p.m., Monday, May 5, in the Trabant University Center Theatre. Justin is a big proponent of what we do here, so I'd love it if some of you could support him and go to the screening. I'd like to say that I'll be there, but I probably cannot make it on that particular day...

Tuesday, April 29

Regulation #34 B

The Multimedia design center has a strict no food policy. Food, otherwise known as edibles, is essential to human survival. Without it we would starve. Much as, if you do not acquire liquid, you will die of dehydration, as I learned in my 400 level biology class.

Another thing which is essential to our survival is teh internetz, otherwise known as Facebook. In order to make use of this essential resource, we must use electronics. Because in today's modern society, electronics are such an essential part of society, society is known to have both food and electronics. But food is deadly to electronics. It leaves harmful residues.

 Thus, a contradiction; to food, or to electronic? That is the question.



How I felt while I was writing this blog.



The library, and the University of Delaware, in its infinite wisdom, has elected to follow the second path. There will be no food in this structure. The punishment for violating this policy is Diana. The punishment for repeat violations is death, by Diana.



A resident of Middletown returns to his residence after learning that one of his neighbors brought a croissant into the Student Multimedia Design Center. (January 2014, Photograph by Richard Johnson)



As I learned in real life, the reason for this draconian policy is to prevent people like you from damaging our electronics. People like you have been walking on in here, moving around with your open coffees and your waffles with syrup, and gravitating towards our electronics, casually smearing the surfaces with substances...substances that leave residues, and damage valuable components, such as the mouse pad. It is because of people like you that we have poverty in the world.

So be a good citizen, and don't bring your substances in here. Unless your going to share.

I am hungry. Sitting at the desk puts great demands on my svelte physique.


svelte: (adjective, for a person) : slender and elegant.



To rebel with the Zoom Lens

One of the many still cameras we have at the Student Multimedia Design Center, is the Canon Rebel t2i DSLR camera. As a well renowned camera in its own right, the optional part is a zoom lens kit. The regular lens of the camera can zoom in up to 55mm. The zoom lens in comparison begins its focus at 75mm.
When thinking about which lens to use, one has to consider how close they want to be to the object they are shooting. When focusing on people, would you like to see every bead of sweat on your favorite performers face at the concert tomorrow night, or rather just see that they look a little shiny because they crammed 500 people into a room meant for 20? Would you like to see your girlfriends perfectly manicured nails so you can compliment her on how nice they look, or just see some pretty colors but not make out the Italian flag she spent all night painting onto her finger tips that are the pride of her artistic ability.
These are simply two of the many questions you should ask yourself when considering which lens to use with the Rebel t2i. With the zoom lens, you have to be further away to get the same picture as the normal lens, because the zoom is automatically closer. You wouldn't want to leave Aunt Mary or Uncle Brian out of the family picture because you attached the zoom lens without wanted to zoom. You still probably want to get the picture of that one antisocial zebra at the zoo that you can feel mocking you from across the exhibit though.

To zoom or not to zoom? That is the question.


Blink - Visual Communications Year End Show


Hi everyone! This Friday, the senior VC majors are hosting our year end show at the Chris White Gallery at Shipley Artist Lofts in Wilmington, De from 5pm - 8pm. There will be light food and beverage options offered and plenty of work to see. Come visit us!

Monday, April 28

Powerpoint animation help

Hi All,

Today a user came in and asked for help with a PowerPoint problem. The lady had wanted to make an animation that included slides flying in from the bottom. The issue was that the user had already put these slides together and they were within the same PowerPoint document. The woman was set up inside studio two and did not have access to the original pictures that made up each individual slide that she wanted animated. We combated this problem through the use of the snipping tool. Since studio two is a windows based studio, the snipping tool is the equivalent of screen capture. We made a shortcut to the snipping tool on the desktop and moved it to the non-dominant monitor and then set up the PowerPoint to play on the left monitor to increase the image size. We then proceeded to capture each slide and save them each to the desktop as an image. These images were then brought into PowerPoint so that they could be animated.

Hope this helps!
Taylor

Clearing Equpiment Memory

With the recent reminder to clear equipment memories, I thought it would be a good idea to review the basic ways to clear memories of common items that are returned at the desk. 

On most of the still cameras and video cameras, you can go into Menu, Settings/ Preferences (usually with the wrench icon) and choose "Format" and then erase all contents of the camera memory.  


To clear the Digital Voice recorders, you can go into the Menu to view the files, select each one, and delete them individually.  A faster way to delete all of the files at once is to hold down the Menu button to see more options, scroll down to the option called "SD Card" and then choose "Format" to delete all the files on the SD Card.

For a review on clearing hard drives, there are detailed instructions under Resources in Sakai.

Even when it's busy at the desk, it's important to remember to clear equipment memories so that they are ready for the next user!

Sunday, April 27

Downloading Software to the Computers

Today I said a wrong thing.  "But Dillon," I hear you all saying.  "You're an SMDC worker like me.  Infallibility is part of the territory."  I know, it's hard for me too.  My perfect record disintegrated before my eyes, and now that's something I have to deal with.
Me, earlier, contemplating where I went wrong.
The thing I was wrong about, and shamefully so, was downloading software to the desktops in the library.  For some reason, I got it in my head that the only computers patrons could download software to were the laptops.  Well, face egg me, because that's incorrect.
Me again, embarrassed and face-egged.
Patrons can download software to any desktop in the Center, as long as they ask at the desk.  The password and general procedure can be found in the key cabinet in the back.  Usually on rack number 5.  The worst part of all this is that I've done it before and I forgot.
A dramatized reenactment of the service I forgot we provide.
While we don't have a step by step instructional, at least not that I know of, there is a general process.  Find out some stuff about the software, make sure it's academic in nature, then get the little tab thing from rack 5 by the laptops.  And, as Diana reminded my as she read this over my shoulder, laptops we can't really install anything on anyway.  Better to keep all that on the desktop.

Saturday, April 26

Keylight AE Add On



Hi All-
Today, I thought I’d talk about a very powerful keying tool that I’ve used a few times in the past: Keylight. I’ve used this many times in Adobe After Effects, mainly because it is the most versatile chroma keying add on that I’ve been able to find: whereas the normal keying functions are a camera in “automatic shoot” mode, Keylight is one in “manual mode.”
(Example of Chroma Keying : http://www.kudlian.net)
Because there are an incredible amount of variation in your photographic/video conditions, having a tool with which you can play around with a large amount of variables allows you to get the “perfect fit.” This add-on would be especially useful for those students renting the greenscreen- sometimes you will get artifacts around the edge of the subject (like the above picture) and putting some time into Keylight can mitigate some of the problems.
Best,

Sam