ylink MEDIA services

Ylink provides specialised Media services for audio and video editing. Responding to our clients requirements we have developed low cost, effective solutions that reduce overheads, improve efficiency and overcome a range of difficulties in the capture and editing of audio and video formats.

Audio

Our audio services are centred around recordings made with FTR Reporter. Although FTR does not incorporate MP3 or WAV output formats in an easily accessible manner Ylink makes audio capture in these common formats quick and easy. Using some simple cabling and third party audio software Ylink solves the problem of converting the FTR captured audio channels to MP3 and WAV formats.

This functionality gives users an easy way to distribute FTR recordings in place of the traditional and time consuming method of making a transcript. The MP3 or WAV file can be accessed by anyone with a media player such as Windows Media Player® ensuring the accuracy of the recording and eliminating any chance of error occurring during transcription. It also removes the time consuming process of transcription.

The benefits of capturing the FTR recording in MP3 or WAV format are significant:

•	Reduce the requirement for transcripts
•	Reduce human error through reduction in transcription
•	Reduction or elimination of courier charges
•	Dramatic improvement in delivery time of audio grabs
•	Enable delivery of audio grabs via web, email and/or phone
•	Simplify archiving procedures
•	Increase in staff productivity

Video

Our video services specialise in the capture of video input and converting that to WMV format for playback in Windows Media Player. Hardware and software is used to replace older video capture technologies. With the video content now captured in digital format the potential for new methods of processing are made available. Capture cards and video editing software enables the video content to be stored on central servers or streamed from a web site for viewing in remote locations.

Clients using this service benefit by moving from their current method of recording and editing video content in the following ways:

•	Simplify the recording & editing procedures
•	Reduce editing time
•	Reduction or elimination of courier charges
•	Dramatic improvement in delivery time of video grabs
•	Enable delivery of video grabs via web and inhouse servers
•	Simplify archiving procedures
•	Vast reduction in physical archiving space
•	Vast reduction in physical equipment space
•	Elimination of tape deterioration over time
•	Increase in staff productivity

Movie Maker 2

We use Movie Maker which is bundled as part of Windows XP as the editing software for our captured video. As we are capturing the video in WMV format Movie Maker 2 is the obvious choice. This program is easy to use even for a novice to video editing. Video editors have not been for the fainthearted and the previous versions of this program were difficult to manage also but Microsoft has come up with a winner on this one.

The only criticisms are the limitations on video output (encoding) which are restricted to DV-AVI and WMV. DV-AVI is the compression format used on a camcorder and WMV is the Microsoft proprietary compression format. It is possible however to output to DV-AVI format and use a converter to encode it to a number of other formats such as MPEG, Quicktime etc. For our purposes we output to WMV format as we are not aiming for high quality output and the compression ratios of WMV are perfect for our purposes.

Movie Maker 2 has excellent editing and trimming features that make chopping captured video to the sections you want extremely easy. For the applications that Ylink provides Movie Maker 2 is our editor of choice.

To find a complete online tutorial on Movie Maker 2 please click on the following link
Movie Maker 2 Tutorial

For a tutorial on trimming a video (including a tutorial film) click on the following link
Movie Maker 2 Video Trimming

To view the tutorial film you will need the Quicktime player - it can be download from the following link if it is not already installed on your computer
Download Quicktime