Publishing

The final leg of our journey involves the publishing of our video to a medium external to our computers. Playback of video on a computer consumes enourmous resources and is usually done in a tiny window. Full-screen video is possible, but be prepared to have a beefy system with a fast video card. To be able to share your work you should put your finished product on videotape or burn it onto a playable video CD.

Videotape

You should already know how to record your video to a VCR. You've already played back numerous video clips during your capture and review process. The same playback is all you need to record to videotape. Just be sure to have the audio-out and video-out RCA jacks from your audio card and frame grabber card, respectively, connected to the video-in and audio-in jacks on your VCR, or else you'll record static.

Creating a Video CD for Your VCD/DVD Player

Video CDs are curious creatures . Some DVD players don't support them, some do. Those that do, however, may not support CD-Rs, and so they don't support VCDs you might create on your computer. If you're lucky enough to have purchased a DVD player that does read CD-Rs and can play video CDs, you might try creating a video CD instead of recording your video to tape. So how do we go about creating a video CD?

A video CD uses the same media as an audio CD or CD-R, to be specific. Encoded on the CD is compressed MPEG-1 video. The resolution of video CDs is comparable to VHS tapes with a resolution of 352 x 240 (NTSC) or 352 x 288 (PAL). You will be able to get about 60 “70 minutes of video on a VCD, but don't expect DVD quality. There are a couple of tools available for VCD creation under Linux:

· VCDImager: GNU VideoCD Image Maker

· VCD-Tools

First, you have to convert your video file from whatever format it's in to MPEG-1. If it's already in MPEG-1, then no conversion is needed. Also, make sure you change the frame size as described earlier, or else your video will not fit on the screen correctly. Then, using one of the listed tools, you create a VCD image from the MPEG-1 file. From there you use cdrdao to burn the image to the CD-R.

Here are some other tools and resources that may help you when working with VCDs:

http://www.vcdgear.com/

http://www.vcdhelper.com/vcdtools.htm

http://www.vcdhelper.com/vcd.htm

http://linux.about.com/compute/linux/library/weekly/aa011501.htm

http://www.reptechnic.com.au/vcd.html

http://www.hvrlab.org/~hvr/vcdimager/

http://www.nocrew.org/software-vcdpad.html

TechTV

TechTV. Let me say it again, TechTV. I get tingles every time I hear that name. What techie doesn't love TechTV? Okay, enough free plugs. This television network loves to get video e- mails , known as v-mail. V-mails can range from show promotions to computer questions. I was lucky enough to get one of my videos on the show You Made It! Unfortunately, the show was canceled .

Check their Web site for video submission guidelines. Generally, if you can make an AVI or Quicktime video, they should be able to view your video. Now, will they use it? That depends on you and your video production skills.