Video in College

I've just started college (some of you may have noticed the flyers promoting this site around my campus), but I've been somewhat disappointed in my fellow students. I would HOPE that if you're going into a career (whether or not it be video related), that you have researched the topic first, and even better, have possibly even made it a hobby or self-teaching of yours. This is the internet, there is a wealth of information for you idiots to absorb, so take it already. I've taught myself since 2000 about video, and blazed through my high school video courses with ease, including getting my CTS certification this May. I'll admit, the cert isn't exactly the most specific thing out there, it's more or less an A/V installation certification if you ask me, but to a more advanced degree. No matter, the fact remains.

Anyway, to all video and film majors:

- Do some research on the internet; colleges hate it, but Wikipedia can teach the basics even if it does have bias and errors. Look up interlacing, YUV colorspace, aspect ratios, framerates, shutter speeds, chroma key, NTSC, PAL, Nyquist Theorem, and MPEG4... To start anyway.

- If you want to gain a huge amount of knowledge in video's technical aspects, you should go straight to www.doom9.net and take part in their forums. The site is dedicated to DVD backups and encoding, but the community has grown to video filtering, DVD authoring, and all sorts of encoding discussions (which ALL relate to each other).

- The Digital Bits is a great site for DVD reviews, and a consumer's view on the world of home theatre, digital film presentation, and overall commentary on the digital formats. This is not a technical site to much extent, but I find it to be a very accurate site in its reviews.

- www.100fps.com has existed for years now, and while the information is a bit outdated by today's capabilities, this site is EXTREMELY informative on interlacing, progressive scan, and many issues relating to why interlacing is a problem in the modern video world.

That's all I can really recommend for technical learning. I would be lying to say I have an extensive knowledge of the creative side of film and video; I myself have little experience with writing, directing, acting, etc. The closest thing to creativity that I can claim as my own is with editing, and special effects compositing to a very small extent.

But hell, I'm here to help on those technical issues, because we can at least easily understand the creative concepts. We may not all become good at it, but at least it's plain English for most of us (though the ability of many NATIVE english-speaking students is disappointing...). In the meantime, visit the above sites and try learning those nerdy terms, because it'll only become advantageous to you in the future.