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How to make a Bihua Movie

1. The characters for each Integrated Chinese lesson should consist of 4 folders: mimio, iMovie, quicktime and cleaned quicktime. Presently, these folders can be located on the Studio G4 at data scratch > Chinese Characters > Mao/Sandy > (chapter number).
   
   
2. The first step in making a Chinese character movie is to make a mimio file:

Open Mimio

Select the black pen on the pen menu on the bottom of the screen (see below).

Set the thickness of the black pen. To do this, click on settings on the verticle menu on the left-hand side of the screen, and then click on the Stylus Set icon (see below).



A settings window will open. For the black pen, ensure that the pen thickness is set to 0.90. Also make sure that the units of measurement are in inches (see below).

Now that the settings have been attended to, you may begin writing the Chinese character. Save the mimio file in the mimio folder using this name format:

For a simplified character: pinyin + tone number + s_english meaning. eg. yu2s_fish represents a simplified Chinese character pronounced yu2, with english meaning "fish."

For a traditional character: pinyin + tone number_english meaning. eg.yu2_fish represents a traditional Chinese character pronounced yu2, with english meaning "fish."

Note: If Integrated Chinese uses more than one English meaning for a character, use the first meaning.

Export the mimio file to iMovie: File > Export > iMovie. In the Export window, ensure that the Board Selection is set to All, and Playback Speed is set to 60 strokes/minute (see below). This iMovie file should be saved in the imovie folder.

3. Now that the characters have been exported to iMovie, a caption displaying the information on the character must be made.

Quit out of Mimio, and open iMovie.

Open the appropriate project: File > Open Project. Drag the icon of the first clip onto the timeline at the bottom of the screen:

To make the caption, click on Titles on the menu on the right-hand side of the screen:

Make the speed equal to the length of the movieclip; choose Stripe Subtitle in the menu; check QT margins; use Arial Black Regular font; make the font size to about 75%.
Note: The maximum speed for Titles is 10s. If a movieclip is longer than 10s, make the Title last for the maximum 10s.

In the top text field, enter the pinyin + tone number (+ s for simplified characters). In the bottom text field, enter the english meaning and stroke number in parenthesis. (See below for an example.)

Drag Stripe Subtitle onto the timeline, placing it before the movieclip (see below). Impt!: You must place Stripe Subtitle in front of the movieclip.
Once Stripe Subtitle has been dragged onto the timeline, iMovie may take a few seconds to render.

4. With the caption in place, an AIF file containing the appropriate pronunciation must now be imported into the movieclip. To do this, go to File > Import, and select the AIF. The AIF files are found at data scratch > Chinese Characters > 2003 work > aif.

Export From iMovie

previous instructions dictate that you need Discreet Cleaner or QT Pro to properly format a Bihua movie. All you really need is iMovie, if willing to drop the embedded metadata feature (which we have been doing with increasing frequency). From iMovie, select File > Share (or Export, depending on version), and choose the following Expert Settings:

Edited on Jul 26 2005 02:51PM by Zach Chandler