The Art of Creating a Mini Movie with Vintage Software: A Journey Through Time

With our footage, titles, and transitions laid out before us, we're ready to embark on an adventure through time. We've got the barn door at the beginning, with our awesome Road Pizza Edition, and then we page turn to the A roll shot of me talking. Cut to the B roll shot, and cut to another shot. As I adjust my work area, I'm reminded that even in the old days of video editing, one had to be prepared for anything. The camera's iris wipes into view as I make sure everything is in order.

We've just made a mini movie of Vintage Apple Vault on a Macintosh IIci using Adobe Premiere 1.0, with all our footage captured at 160 by 120 resolution and 15 frames per second. We've now got the timeline to play with, and we can see how each scene flows into the next. Let's save those changes and move forward.

As I work through the editing process, I feel like I'm exploring and treasure hunting for creative solutions. Getting that "aha!" moment when everything comes together is an exhilarating experience. It's a feeling not unlike what Alexander Graham Bell must have felt when he heard the first ring on his phone – a groundbreaking moment in history that changed the world forever.

As we near the end of our editing journey, I realize that this process is similar to figuring out how to make it work and then having it work. It's a cool feeling, and I'm happy to share it with all of you who are interested in the art of video editing using vintage software. Let's start making the movie now!

We've got our animation set up, and we're ready to render our masterpiece in Apple Video format into a QuickTime file. I don't have any specific knowledge about what was called when the movie player was first developed – was it called QuickTime Player? Or was there an API or extension involved? Unfortunately, I didn't experiment much with sound conversion, as my computer's sound card appears to be toast.

We've chosen to use Animation Cinepak, Apple Video, and 15 frames per second for the entire movie. We're now ready to start rendering our film. Compiling the movie will take a moment... And we're done! Let's close out of Premiere and open up our finished movie in QuickTime.

To my surprise, our film plays back smoothly, with only a brief flicker of the footage when transitioning between scenes. I notice that our flash has added an extra touch to the film, and I'm happy to have caught it before moving on. Now that we've created our mini movie, let's present it to you in all its glory.

Our vintage video player is quite responsive, with a beautiful full-screen experience once we've shrunk down the window size enough. I love the retro feel of the dithering and macro blocking – these artifacts are truly a product of their time. And yet, when played at the correct speed, our film scrubs relatively smoothly.

I take a moment to appreciate the vertical video quality that's now visible in all its glory. This is what it means to be true to your artistic vision, using vintage software and techniques that others have forgotten. I'm grateful for the opportunity to share this journey with you, dear reader – let me know if there are other vintage software projects you'd like to see explored!

As I conclude our little adventure through time, I realize that I've only scratched the surface of what's possible when working with vintage software. There are countless other Macintosh IIci and Macintosh TV configurations waiting to be explored, each one a potential petri dish for discovering new techniques and effects.

If you have any suggestions or ideas for future projects, please don't hesitate to reach out. I'd be more than happy to give them a try and share the results with all of you. Until next time, when we'll catch the crazy and pass it on!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- There we go, look at that,vertical video, you got nothing on this.And it's actually really cool seeing likemy modern 4K Blackmagic footage convertedinto little postage stamp movies.I've never seen this before.It just quit on me.Well thank you Premiere.All right we're justgonna have to do a reboot.Yes, yes, yes, I know.I didn't shut it downproperly because it froze.All right.Guys it's time to make a movie.Finally.Oh I appreciate your patience.(beeping)(electronic music)Hey guys, how you all doin'?Really?That's just great.You know I'm doing really great today toobecause I'm keeping my promise.I'm back today with the AdobePremiere 1.0 follow-up videowhere I'm going to attempt to edita video in Adobe Premiere1.0 on a 68K Macintosh.Oh my gosh this is gonna be amazing.Or very painful, or both.I have some things Iwant to share with youbut first let's get this thing booted up.Again it's being kind ofweird like I have to plug itin and it kind of just turns on by itself.The IIci I think is havingsome capacitor issues.So let's get it all started up.Yeah it just kind of turns on by itself.When you plug it in.Disc,CD300.All right in terms of oursetup we have a Macintosh IIciwith eight megabytes of RAM.We have an Apple CD300, whichtransfers data over SCSI.And we have a four gigabyteexternal hard disk drive again over SCSI.There is no floppy drive, CD-ROM drive,or even hard drive inside this computerso we're going all external.And as for the video out,we're converting to VGA andusing this Samsung displaywhich has been my trusty displayto use with this computersince I think 2009when I did the first demo of it.Yeah it's been around for a while so,it looks like it's not pickingup on our disc right now.Sometimes it is a little bitchy tryingto pick up on the SCSI external discso let's just jiggle it a bit.Okay, I feel really dumb.I feel really dumb.I don't have the DB25 cable plugged in.Wow, it's just one of those days right?Okay, we're gonna have to shut this down'cause we should not behot plugging this stuff.Yeah now the Macintosh IIciis not wanting to turn on.This has happened before.Sometimes it just needs to beplugged in for a few minutes.The clock battery isprobably on its last legsand the capacitors on the boardare also probably not doing so well.So we're gonna give itsome time to juice up.And then we'll do some video editing.So while it's juicing up I'll kindof talk about what's up here.So I do a show called Vintage Apple Vaultwhere I explore thehistory and the storiesbehind vintage Apple productsand their collectors.It's a lot of fun.So what I did was I took a few clipsfrom episode two and I converted themto Apple Video format and I also madesome custom title slidesbecause we can't generate titlesin Adobe Premiere 1.0.And I converted those to PICT filesand I burned them to a CD.So I'll throw these in hereand we'll import them and edit with those.So basically we're gonnamake a very miniatureVintage Apple Vault episodewith the contents on this CD.Now the last episode Iwas doing this stuff onwith the iBook did very well.It has over 100,000 views already.Brad Olsen, who made theOff The Tracks documentaryactually saw it which made my day.And he said he forwardedit to Randy Ubillosand that's pretty flattering.That's very flattering.So that was great, huge success there.I want to follow up now and do the editingon the IIci, a real 68K machine.As soon as it gets powered up.Come on baby.And what'd I tell ya?It just turns on by itself.So now that that is working,let's do a reboot.There we go.That is what I wanted to see.And while that's loading up,let's put the assets into the disc drive.Which yes it's really coolthat it says caddy loadedwhen you insert the disc.Like the actual physical flap changes.A couple viewers pointed that out to me.It's just those nice little touchesthat Apple puts in theirhardware that I really like.Les voila, we're at the desktop.That's great.All right.Let's make a new folder.We'll call this VAV forVintage Apple Vault.Open that up.Got the CD.So let's start with importingour assets into the SCSI disk.Drag those over there.Oh this might be a 2.5 gig disc.I think I said four earlier.It might be two and a half or something.We have about 2,400megabytes available though.So that's plenty.If I sort this by name,you'll see.I just have everything in orderas for how it's going to appear.So our PICT files are the title graphicsand these files are Apple Video documents.For compatibility with QuickTime 2.5.Okay so let's go to our applications.And we're ready to go.Let's launch Premiere.Adobe Premiere Macintosh version 1.0written by Randy Ubillos.Okay here it is.This is Adobe Premiere1.0 as you saw probablyon the G3 video.If you haven't seen that,feel free to check it out.But now we're running it on 68K.We have the previewwindow, the info window,the project window wherewe import our files,the construction window whichis now known as a timeline.And our special effects withour fun little previews.And let's import our assets.So command I, the shortcutwe still use todayon the Mac for Premiere.We're gonna import.I don't think you can importmore than one at a timeso we're just gonna haveto do one at a time.Let's open that.This is gonna be a testof patience by the way.Oh great my mouse cursor disappeared.That's not a good sign.Oh great.I'm getting no response fromthis for the mouse cursor.Let's see, Command-Option-Escape.Yeah force quit is also not showing up.Restart.My restart shortcut on the keyboardis also not responding.Not sure if that's normal though.All right, we're justgonna have to do a reboot.Use the reboot button on the computer.All right, restart.Shit.Dang it is this not gonna work?I hope it does.All right so hopefully this reboot helps.Yes yes yes I know.I didn't shut it downproperly because it froze.Okay well here we are.Let's hide the Finder windowsand let's try importing a file.Let's see if the preview works.Creating preview.Okay, looks like it stoppedbut I still have a mouse cursor.All right, at least we havethe force quit panel this time.That's weird.I don't know.Those picture files were workingin Adobe Premiere on my iBook.And I did the conversionto an actual PICT file.They were originally JPEGs but I dida conversion to PICTwith Adobe Premiere 1.0.There's my thumbnail, I can see me.It's loading that.Okay well that's a good sign.Well let's start with that.Let's try opening an Apple Video file.That worked, that workedjust fine, perfect.It's right there.Okay let's import another one.File number five.Boom, bon appetital.File number six.Okay so let's save this.We'll just save it tothe folder where all the assets are.We'll just call it VAV,Vintage Apple Vault.Save.Okay so the video filesimported just fine.And it's actually really cool seeinglike my modern 4K black magic footageconverted into littlepostage stamp movies.Yeah we're at 160 by 120.We're gonna be working in,I think these video files are 15,oh shoot, nope, didn't mean to do that.I meant to go here.Yeah we're gonna be workingat 15 frames per second.That's what the video files arein the Apple Video files are 15.So we'll preview in 15 andwe'll output when we actuallyrender the movie in 15 aswell using Apple Video.Looks like we have Cinepak in here too.Yes that would make sense.Let's try importing those pictures again.Yeah, it's not.It's not liking that.Okay, maybe there's somethingwrong with the picture file.Let's open this in simple text.The simple text shouldbe able to read pictures.Mmm.(mouse clicking)That's not normal.Yeah this locked up the software.I think this picture file is corrupted.I have no title graphics.That's a shame because I spenta whole four seconds making those.But there is hope because I think we havePhotoshop on here so we canjust like hand paint our own,or we could go really MacGyveryand take a screenshotof like a war documentwith a title on it.Oh actually we could do that'cause we could just crop it.Okay so this'll be Vintage Apple VaultRoad Pizza edition becauseof the old video format.And we'll make that Chicago.And we'll make that nice and big.And we'll just take a screenshot.Right here I believethis is what we just did.There it is, all right.So we'll take thatand we'll just call this ourtitle.And we'll dump this into here.Good, this will be our backup solution'cause apparently these picturefiles do not want to work.Don't know why but it's not just Premierethat can't read them.Even simple text can't read themso I think they got corruptedduring the conversion process.Oops, but we have asomewhat decent alternative.So let's go to our recent apps.Go to, Premiere's not showing up in there.Okay.Just have to go here.Actually why am I goingthrough the finder.We have an Apple menu.We have a menu with things in it.We can go through it like this and click.Boom.And let's import ourlovely title creation.And this is actually great because nowwe have an excuse to make like a garbage-Oh you bastard.Okay now we're gonna,now I guess we have toget Photoshop involved.Oh my gosh, we're justlike using everything.Oh it might be 1280 wide.Really?Is that what it is rightnow or is it just guessing?I don't know.Let's just do yeah, 50%.Let's just guess.I don't even,I really don't know whatI'm doing with this.Let's just try it.Oh.That's weird.There a oh.I know what it's doing.That's why that icon disappeared.It took a picture of the second display.There's no second display hooked up.But there's a video card hooked up.There's two video cards Ibelieve inside this computerand I didn't really payattention to that earlier.I'm a take this.Oh right there.Look at that.Oh Photoshop, you beautifulpiece of software.That's literally all I needed.Let's save that out.All right, let's import.Title cropped.Oh boy, it's not showing up as afile.Maybe it'll work, oh it did, yay.Oh my gosh we're saved.All right.Guys it's time to make a movie.Finally.Oh I appreciate your patience.Let's start with ourtitle at the beginning.We'll just kind of like lay this outand then we'll do sometransitions and that cool stuff.Let's zoom out the timeline a little bit.Extend our play range.So we have our title andnow let's import our clips.So we have clip number fourwhere I'm talking andthen I'm gonna cut awayto this B roll shot,which I guess I could put in the B trackbut I already trimmed it upso it really could just goright here on the A track.And then we have number six hereso let's see, let's zoom in here.'Cause previewing this isn'tas easy as it is nowadays.It takes a while so if youwanna measure stuff out,measure it with the time ruler first.Let's move this down, move this down.Move this down, we'llextend this a little bit.So now that's three seconds long.I'm just using the infowindow because again,you gotta kind of measure this stuff outbefore you just previewit because previewingisn't just immediateand easy like it is now.Okay we're gonna add a mat for the endso we're just gonna fade to black here.I'm just gonna call that black.Put that at the end there.And again we don't do thetransitions and stuff yet,we'll get to that later.And we'll trim our Idon't know if they call ita playback area there.Work area, that's right.So we have a title, some A roll,and then a couple B rollclips that I'm just puttingin the A roll track essentially.160 by 120.Sometimes we'll get better playbackif I shrink the preview window downbut right now I'm just gonna resize itto the native size of the project.We'll just kind ofrearrange a few things here.All right so our preview options,yep, 15 fps, that should be accurate.Now the playback is probablygonna lag like crazy.When we actually export the movie,it should play back betterinside of the movie player.But inside Premiere,we're probably not gonnaget near that performance.But let's try.Return.There's our title.There's our A-roll.Picking up the display.Cutting to a B-roll shot of the displayand then cutting to aB-roll shot of the cube.Me pressing the power button.And then cut to black.As you can see the sequenceworked really well there.Definitely not the highestframe rate but that's okay.We can export it and watch itin a smoother playback later at 15 fps.Effects.Okay let's do, what effectsshall we do for our title?Now the title is being,it's kinda stretchy.I don't remember how to adjust that.Oh, I just learned something new, okay.And I can't undo that.When you hold down the control keyyou get a little blade tool.Well that's cool.I had no idea.Well let's get rid of thatand just extend that back out.But yeah I don't know how to,oh let's see maintain aspect ratio.There we go.So now that's probablyjust gonna be letter boxedlike that I would imagine.There we go.I wonder if I put white in the backgroundif the white will fill this black.I somehow doubt thatbut we're gonna try it.What if I do this.Oh yeah now the white just fills it.So obviously no.Okay so B must still be in the background.I bet if I moved thisout you'll see the title.Yep there it is.All right well I guess it'sjust gonna be letter boxed.I can't get the transparencysettings to not be grayed out.I don't know why.Super.Now I get transparency settings.And I have no idea what I just did there.I don't know why mycursor turned to a gloveand put those dots there.Oh wait hang on that's key frames.These are key frames.Oh.Oh, something happened there.Okay I don't know, maybe it's superimpose.I don't know.Because now it's showing up with the whiteand the key framing going over it.With the dissolve there.So we kind of discovered something.All right, so I'm just gonnago with the letter box of that.You know hang on a second.I desire more in life.I have an idea.Gonna hide that.We're gonna go back to Photoshop quick.Paste that in there.There we go, let's import that picture.Drag that in.Re-time it about three seconds.Bump all this stuff over.Expand the work area.Preview that.There you go, Road Pizza edition.All right let's do some effects.What effects should weuse to go from the titleto my beautiful face?How about some barn doors?The cross dissolve has someleggy issues I've noticed.Okay so to be honest,I don't know how thealignment for this works.I've never fully figured it out.So let's just experiment or experiment.Apparently I pronounce it wrong.Yeah yeah, that's definitely nothow that's supposed to happen.Let's see what it's like over here.Hmm, forward reverse, probablyanti-aliasing quality.Flip, that's what I'mguessing those buttons do.Okay so now it's going in.Oh man, okay.I think I see what's going on here.Let's command period that.Stop that playback.Move this over.So now it should go in from blackto the title with this wipe.Oh yeah, isn't that,that's Hollywood dude.Let's do a page turn.Let's watch this not work.Yeah it's going to black and then it,oh you know what?I think I know why.Yeah I got this.I figured you out Randy.I know what you're doin'.You want this down here.That's what you want.But I'm thinking like A is bridgedby the effects track to the B track.There we go.That's what I wanted.We figured it out.Randy we did it.So essentially then,I'll have to move this down here.But not necessarily.I can have that up here still.But I would need this down hereso we can fade to black.Or we could do an iris.Do like an iris effect.All right so let's take a look at thiswith our footage, titles, and transitions.So we have the barn door at the beginningwith our awesome Road Pizza Edition.And then we page turn to theA roll shot of me talking.Cut to the B roll shot.Cut to another shot.Oh shit, I forgot to adjust my work area.And iris wipe.There we go.Ladies and gentlemen, wejust made a mini movieof Vintage Apple Vault on a Macintosh IIciin Adobe Premiere 1.0.160 by 120 resolutionat 15 frames per second.And here is the timeline.Let's save those changes.Cool.I mean I feel like I'mkind of like exploringand treasure hunting you know?Getting those feelings of like oh man,I got this working.I like that.This must be kind of likewhen Alexander Graham Bellheard the first ring on his phone.That must've been a really cool feeling.That was probably way cooler than this.But still this is kind of like that.Just figuring out how to make it workand then having it work.It's a cool feeling and I'mhappy to share it with y'all.Let's make the movie now.So this is where we'reactually gonna renderthe movie in Apple Videoformat into a QuickTime.Actually I don't know ifthey actually called themQuickTime movies back then, I don't know.Because the movie playerwasn't called QuickTime Player.It was just called movie player.QuickTime was the, I guess the API?Or the extension?I don't know.What exactly it was called.Let's output thismasterpiece to the desktop.Call it Vintage Apple VaultPremiereTest.I'll put options.Let's just make sure everything's good.We don't have sound.I couldn't get sound conversion to work.I didn't really experimentwith that too muchbut this computer can'toutput sound anyway.I think the sound card is toast.So we could use Animation Cinepak,Apple Video, 15 fps, 160 by 120.Do the entire movie.Boom, and boom.We are now gonna start rendering.Here we go.Compiling movie.One moment please.And we're done.So let's close out of Premiere.Let's open up the Movie Player.Let's just check our version.QuickTime 2, but then here it says 2.5.Okay well can't trust anybody anymore.I think it's 2.5 but whatever.Go to the desktop.Let's open our movie and have some fun.Here's our masterpiece.(humming)Vintage Apple Vault Road Pizza Edition.Page turn.Yeah this plays back way smoother.Oh look we added a little flash there.Crap.Gotta fix it in post now.Yeah I think I lined up the frames wrongor something because the transitions havelike a brief flicker of the footagewhen it shouldn't be doing that.But still, it worked.That's it like it worked.That is pretty cool.Present movie.I think we can get fullscreen out of this.Oh yeah it is picking up two displays.'Cause I do have two cards in hereI just don't have two monitors hooked up.Cool, I should hook up twomonitors to this thing one time.This might lag.Oh yeah, this is terrible performance now.That's still pretty cool though.Oh look at all the ditheringand the macro blocking and the,painting and tearing andjust all the artifacts.I absolutely love it.'Cause that's how it used to be.But yeah it does play a lot better.It even kind of scrubs halfway decently.Look at that.That's pretty cool.The bigger you make the window,the laggier it's probably gonna be.Yeah but if you shrink it down, play it.Oh yeah you can even do this.There we go, look at that.Vertical video.You got nothing on this.This is real vertical video.This is the good shit.Oh it just, I've never seen this before.It just quit on me.Well thank you Premiere.Error type one.Look up the Google machine.Yeah I have a feelingsomething effed up 'cause,can't even open the menu now.Can't do anything.Reboot time.But yeah I was just about to wrapthe tech video log and I wantedto open Premiere one more timeto get one more bit documented and yeah,now it's like F you.Ladies and gentlemen, we made a movie.That was a lot of fun.Well let me know whatother vintage softwareyou want to see, I have the Macintosh IIciand the Macintosh TVas my old Mac softwareand hardware petri dishes.So if you have suggestions, let me know.I'd be happy to try some of your ideas.Thank you so much for watching.Catch the crazy and pass it on.\n"