We have started adding regular video clips to our weekly web features. Entitled “In Their Own Words”, the clips are short and raw - much like something that you would find on YouTube. Sometimes, I do a little post production clean up, but all the video is shot and edited by the college writer, James Hill.

The original video…

The latest video that James sent seemed off. It was really pixelated.

Even with the apparent poor quality, I decided to move ahead and loaded it into Adobe Premiere to boost the contrast. I did not do any other enhancements.

Thats why it was a shock to find that the pixelation had been magically cleaned up… Look for yourself: the original is on the right.

What the heck happened?

Now a video expert would know immediately what had happened. But, at first it looked like it had been run through some of that fictional FBI enhancement equipment that you see on CSI.

It was only when the clips were overlaid that the issue became obvious. Somehow James created the original using an incorrect pixel ratio. Exporting it from Premiere reverted it to the correct ratio.

No magic - but still a good lesson.

There are many great image creation applications out there such as Adobe Photoshop and the Gnu Image Manipulation Program. These are great for working with photographs, but for drawing I prefer vector based programs such as Flash and Illustrator. With the aid of a tablet, vector drawing can be as easy as sketching with pen and paper.This is a very minimal caricature that I drew representing my partner Samantha and myself. I later used this image as a template for a jack-o-lantern.