Web and Video

… you can get a free book at MAX - great new titles from Peachpit and O’Reilly! All you have to do is talk to me for a few minutes about how you learn products, how you participate in the community to learn or help others learn (if you do participate - if not, no worries, and we want to know that too), about features you like on social community sites, that kind of thing. It won’t take long, and then you’ll get to select from a wide range of books and we’ll mail it to you.

So remember to find me - pictures of the shirt I’ll be wearing and my crummy mug are here:

http://www.webvideoblogger.com/2007/09/28/find-me-at-max-2007-answer-some-questions-well-send-you-a-free-book/

I will try to be in the AIR bus area (by MAX store) between the end of the keynote and lunch tomorrow.

UPDATE!  I’m on one of the benches against the wall, across the way from AIR park. After you get off the escalators, look to your left for the girl in the “talk to me” tshirt, MacBook, and the pink flyer.

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This tutorial covers the essentials of motion tracking in After Effects CS3. You learn how to select a region to track, and then you learn how to have an object follow that region. In this tutorial, you have a block of text follow a sailboat that moves across the screen.

It’s a basic concept to learn, but very handy in creating neat effects in your compositions. Head over to the DVPA site and check it out:

http://www.dvpa.com/public/537.cfm

(3 votes, average: 3.33 out of 5)

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DigitalMediaNet has an interesting tutorial on using the auto compositing feature in Soundbooth CS3. You learn how to create variations on a single theme sound using the slider tools in the Soundbooth interface. You learn how to use the Intensity, Melody 1, Melody 2 and Volume functions in the Tasks panel.

This is a very simple and short tutorial to follow, a great start to Soundbooth if you haven’t used the program before:
http://digitalprosound.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=96225-0 

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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That’s right - you’ll have to talk to me, but the payoff is a book on a product (you’ll get to choose from a selection of stuff). There are books on everything from Acrobat to After Effects to Photoshop to Soundbooth. So it’s not all that bad!

Our team is looking for your input on how you use community-based sites out there (software related, or not). What do you like about the sites? What kind of features do you use on a community-based site, or not use? How do you like to learn about products, and interact with other parts of the Adobe community? That kind of stuff, and more.

If you talk to us, even for only a little while, we’ll send you a book.

I’ll be easy to find in a moderately-tacky and bright t-shirt, which I will picture below. My co-worker Diana will be wearing shirts of the same design, and doing the same thing as I’ll be doing (but much better, as she’s a talented researcher and I’m not).

If you want, ping me here using your email (won’t appear on the blog, but I’ll see it) and I’ll shoot you an response and we can figure out a good time to meet. I’ll also blog my whereabouts once I get situated at MAX and figure out my schedule a bit more.

Diana and I will be wearing one of these t-shirts (or one in green):

So… find me (below) in Chicago!

(4 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5)

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Another good tutorial from the Vineyardesigns site, this time on getting started with Fireworks CS3. They have broken down the steps for creating and slicing a simple website layout into four easy-to-follow tasks.

http://www.vineyardesigns.com/resources/fireworks/index.shtml

If you have never used Fireworks CS3 as an image editor, or if you haven’t used an image editor before at all, this tutorial seems like a good place to start. Fireworks is really making itself into a good, full-fledged, prototype-making machine. If you’re creating sites, or prototyping apps, Fireworks is a good tool … and this tutorial is a good place to start.

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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I just came across this great tutorial for the absolute beginner just starting with Dreamweaver. The tutorial is written for Dreamweaver CS3, and shows you how to create a new website using the tools.  The tutorial takes you from creating a site definition right to uploading the site to your server.

It assumes that you have a host, a domain, planned, and designed the site’s layout. If you don’t know how to do those things, the tutorial links out to other how-tos to show you how to do that as well.

These tutorials take advantage of the WYSIWYG tools in Dreamweaver, so you don’t need to worry about coding your site.

You can find the tutorial here:

http://www.vineyardesigns.com/resources/dreamweaver/

It also offers some special projects at the end if you want to go further with your site, after uploading it.

(5 votes, average: 4.6 out of 5)

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This great (7 page) tutorial from Kirupa.com shows you how to use XML in Flash CS3 - which involves using some ActionScript 3.0 code. If you’ve used XML in the earlier days of Flash, some of this will feel familiar to  you. However, Kirupa shows you some time-saving techniques that ActionScript 3.0 allows you to take advantage of. You learn a bit about XML structure, how to read the XML (using code), and finally how to filter some data.

This is a particularly excellent tutorial if you’ve used XML and ActionScript with Flash, and need to update your skills for Flash CS3 and ActionScript 3.0.

Find the tutorial here:

Using XML in Flash CS3/AS3 by Kirupa
Enjoy!

(9 votes, average: 4.78 out of 5)

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In this video tutorial, Keith Hanshaw shows you how Metacafe news sets up their news casts. You learn about the materials you need to set up a green screen, and how to properly light it and your subject.  Keith also shows you how they use Premiere Pro to key out the green screen in post production.

A useful and relatively short video to get you started with creating and keying your own videos.

Watch the video here on Metacafe:  http://www.metacafe.com/watch/671871/behind_the_scenes_with_metacafe_news/

(5 votes, average: 4.6 out of 5)

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Did you do a Design Center tutorial, and you want to share the results of your work with the community?  Link to your work in the comments of this post to share your finished work with other readers!

Did you make modifications to the tutorial? Did you add on to the tutorial and do some additional customizations?  Other interesting ideas on how to change or improve upon the steps?  Let us know what you did!

Of course, please add a link to the tutorial you completed in your comment along with the link to your work.

(6 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

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CreativePro.com has a good tutorial by David Sawyer McFarland that introduces you to using the new Spry widgets in Dreamweaver CS3. They say:

Adding a Spry Menu Bar to a Web page is a three-step process. First, you tell Dreamweaver to insert the menu bar, which adds a JavaScript file and a CSS file to your site and adds HTML to create a “starter menu” of links. Second, you edit the menu Dreamweaver inserted by changing the text of the menu buttons, and adding new menu options and links to other pages on your site. Finally, you modify the CSS that Dreamweaver supplies to match the look of your site.

This tutorial will take you step-by-step through adding and modifying a Spry Menu Bar.

creativepro.com - View Source: The Easy Way to Add Dynamic Elements to Web Sites

Check out their tutorial for the step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to insert, edit, and then style a Spry Menu Bar. The tutorial also includes downloadable source files.

Tags: Dreamweaver, CS3, Dreamweaver CS3, Spry, Spry widgets, tutorial, Dreamweaver tutorial, Adobe

(5 votes, average: 4.2 out of 5)

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