Depending on your shooting needs your battery choice will vary. Also if you click on the image it will take you to flickr where you can view the hotboxes I put around the items in the image.

This is this setup:

1. Zi8
2. Griffen Dual USB Car Charger
3. Bescor 12 Battery with Cigarette lighter plug

One of the great things about the Zi8 is its new charger.  Plugs into a wall outlet but the cord goes from USB to a regular power connector.  You take that and the USB Car Charger and now you can hook it up to a 12 volt battery belt of your choosing.  How many of you have one of these 12 volt batteries just laying around?

Time to charge it up again!

Now you can shoot all day, well depending on your battery I bet you could shoot for days.  Now you’ll need to go buy more SD Cards.  The best thing, the 12 volt battery supplies enough power to keep your Zi8 fully charged for when your battery belt finally does run out of juice.

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Here’s a simple solution for low budget filmmakers or audio podcasters. This is a combo of my video double sound kit and my podcasting kit.

In the image:

1. Zoom H2
2. 20 foot 1/8 inch headphone cable
3. Gitzo 3 section Fishpole mic boom
4. Mounting screw for the mic boom

Click on the image and go to the flickr page to see a more detailed description of the parts.

You’ll need the head phones for sure but that’s a given when recording audio. The nice thing about this mic boom is it has 2 standard mounting options included in the end where you normally mount the mic holder for the shotgun mic.

Just flip the mounting screw around and it should mount into any standard recording device you have that has that 3/8 screw mount on the bottom like the H2.

Here is the H2 mounted on the end of the Fishpole. As you can see you’ll need the head phone extension cable and headphones. But now you can extend the pole and get the H2 in over a crowd or close to the ground for some Foley work.

TIPS:

1. Don’t forget the head phones
2. Always make sure you press RECORD! ( With the Recorder so far away it will be easy to forget. It’s not like you’re wasting tape anymore.)

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Try to get shots from low angles and high, close ups and wide shots.  That way you can bring a lot of images together in Photoshop.

Even if you can’t paint out the elements that give away the scale of the snow banks, you can use it as a lighting study or as a foundation of your painting.

Once elements are removed that give away the scale of these snow banks, it might be pretty hard to tell these are just piles of snow in a parking lot somewhere.

Don’t you think this could be some alien world or some place near Outpost #31?

I’ve created a set of images on my Flickr page called “matte painting raw” just in case you live somewhere where you don’t get snow.  I also have clouds in there too.  You just never know when you might need to do some sky replacements.  Feel free to use mine.  If you do, please send me link so I can check it out!

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If you’re like me and still don’t own a blu-ray burner you are still archiving on lots of DVD disks. At least I have a Duel Layer…

Maybe this is obvious but when doing a lot of backups in a series and you’re not sure how many disks it might take up.

Just write “1 of” ( 1 of 5 ), leave the second number blank the when you are done you’ll know how many disks you have and you can fill it then.

If you have any other tips share them with me.

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Here’s my idea for turning your lunch bag into a place mat. You could print inside the bag to make it even more fun!

Could we waste less paper if our food bags did double duty?

What new marketing fun could be made by printing in the bag?

How much paper could we save by not having place mats?

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I won’t always pick up a penny, especially when face down.

But I’ll pick up this cool looking pen, I just found.

I like thinking about all the doodles, notes and name it’s written down.

Now it’s my turn to take this writing instrument to town.

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1. Anybody can do it.
2. Reach, what ways are we building to get our content to the audience simply.
3. Engagement with your audience.

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If you’re looking for inspiration go here to the Brushes Flickr Group.

Brushes well worth the 5 bucks.

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It’s formatted to fit smaller sidebars. Since it’s a PSD you can change the text font and color, the background bar and add your own logo to show off your show.

See my sidebar for samples.  Be sure and do “save for web” in Photoshop and do a PNG.  Have fun!

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It’s really not that hard but if you have a few key pieces of software and a web host you’re almost there. This is just the basics for getting your podcast out there and into iTunes so other people will think your cool.

Here is what you need.

1. Web-host
2. FTP software
3. XML editor
4. iTunes
5. An AppleID or iTunes account. They will want credit info, but nothing will be charged to your account. But heck once you have this you’ll be able to buy stuff from the iTunes Store.  You also need this account to submit a podcast and be able to review other podcasts in iTunes. If you already make purchases from iTunes check this one off the list.
6. Starter files, a list of files you will need for iTunes to approve your feed.

I’ll explain each after this disclaimer.  I’m assuming that if you want to put your podcast out there you already have the tools to make a podcast, video or whatever, so we won’t be going over that here.  Making the content is a different subject.  Your podcast can contain just about any kind of media you can think of, video, mp3 and yes even a PDF for all you comic books artists out there. (hint to filmmakers, if you are doing a behind the scenes you could put PDF’s in your feed of various versions of your scripts for the true enthusiast!)

Back to the list.

1. Web-Host. Why do you need a web host?  Because iTunes does not actually store your files.  You can’t upload your content to Apple and have them do all the heavy work.  It’s really all on you. Hey it’s free. There are a lot of services out there but I prefer to have all the control over my files so I’m self-hosting all my content.

All iTunes does is point to a small XML file (this is just a Text file, like an html page, or word doc. You can even write this by hand.  But I don’t recommend that unless you can code and I wouldn’t do any coding since I have the perfect tool to do it.)

So this WEBHOST is the place where you would upload your files, videos, music or podcast.  In most cases you can put your site there and even install WordPress to make your life even easier. I recommend Lunarpages you don’t have to use them but they have the best price, bandwidth and storage capacity, plus I trust them.

Whoever you go with make sure you have the space you can store big files depending on your show and you have the bandwidth to support it.  If your show suddenly takes off and you don’t have the bandwidth your web host can shut you down. That’s not good news for your show or your fans.

2. FTP software. Well if you uploading content to YouTube or any place else you have a basic idea of what this is. I use FileZilla.  This is how you will get your content to your site.

Tips for Uploading your show: I recommend having one folder per show more about that when I get to the list of files you will need when you are ready to upload.

3. XML Editor. If you don’t code or can’t I highly recommend this $40 app FEED FOR ALL it’s money well spent.  Feed For All lets you create an XML file that iTunes ABSOLUTELY needs for your feed to work.  What’s great about this software is you don’t need to know any code.  If you do know some code there are other features that would make this even more powerful.

It helps you to create the listing and all the supplemental data that can make your show stand out in iTunes.  You can put in show descriptions, tags, show credits and categories to name a few.  It’s just like filling out a form you would find on any website. The “help” in the app is useful and it comes with an example so you can get a pretty good idea of what you need to fill in.  You could bypass the FTP software using Feed For All too.  It has the built in ablity to upload to your web-host.

4. Install iTunes. If you haven’t already you should and you will need it!

5. Files you will need. Before you hit that submit button you will need to have these files in place.  If you don’t you run the risk of being rejected or worse it not working at all!

Make one folder on your web hosts called “show_feed” really you can call it anything you like.  I always like to put the word “feed” in it so I know what I’m putting in that folder.

1. XML file, The text file that iTunes will look at to grab your shows and feed them to your viewers when they click subscribe. You created this with the Feed For All app I recommended.
2. Album Image, This is what shows up in iTunes with that nice little reflection that makes everything look so cool and official.  This image has to be 144×144 pixels in size.  You can start off with any size you like but make sure your final is the 144×144. Feed For All even has a spot in the app so the art gets associated with the show.
3. Starter file, You NEED at least want one file in your feed for iTunes to know your show is the real deal.  The starter file can be anything as mentioned above, PDF, JPG, mp3, mov, mp4 you get the idea.  I call this the “WELCOME FILE” I call it that because I’ve seen so many people do this.  The “Welcome File” for me is the start of everything.  It gives your viewers an idea of what to expect, when shows might be available, what the show is about or who’s involved.  Whatever you make of it.  It’s your handshake to iTunes and your future audience.

Note: this is where you can put your shows and any other content you want in your feed.  It will be nice to have it all in one place.  Eventually you will have many more files in this folder as you make new shows.

YOU’RE ALMOST READY BUT BEFORE YOU HIT SUBMIT!

Test the XML file and your path. Check where you put the XML file on your server and the path will look some thing like this.

http://insert_the_name_of_your_website_here.com/show_feed/your_show.xml

(You can use the above path as a starter path depending on your web host the / folders / will vary and might even be more folders inbetween.)

Once you figure out what it is you can test it in a web browser by just pasting it the URL window.  If the next thing that comes up looks like a bunch of code garbage well then you succeeded!  If you get a 404 or “file not found” the path is wrong.  You’ll need to get that right for iTunes to read it.

Now test you XML with iTunes.

Launch iTunes.  Along the top menu look for a button called “ADVANCED” select that and then choose “Subscribe to a Podcast”. Now paste the URL to the XML file in the little window that pops up and click OK.  If iTunes starts downloading your Welcome file you should be well on your way to having Apple approve your podcast.

I would now delete from that file from iTunes so when Apple really does approve it you can subscribe for real!

iTunes will say there’s a problem if something doesn’t work.  It won’t be specific, but in most cases you have the path to the XML wrong or you don’t have your “STARTER FILE/Welcome” there. This is why you need it itunes might say there is nothing in your feed.

Now that you have all that in place you are ready to HIT the “Submit A Podcast” button or click on PODCAST in iTunes and look for this icon, it’s in the middle.

Paste in the path you just tested into the little window that iTunes provides.  Click “Continue” and follow the instructions from iTunes.  Apple will ask for you AppleID which is the account you just signed up for or the account you already have that you buy music with, SAME THING!

NOW it’s a waiting game.  I have to say Apple is very good at submission requests and in some cases only takes a few days.  But don’t be surprised if it takes 2 weeks.  There are a lot of podcasters out there.

Here are some other Apple links I find are useful when setting up a feed.  “FANFAQ” “Making a Podcast”

One more app you should consider is ID3 Editor. This nice piece of software which is about $15 enables you to add more metadata to your MP3 audio content.  This was a great software recommendation from Maggie McFee you should follow her on Twitter she knows things!

Please comment or ask questions.  If there are better tools out there let’s hear about them.

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