The Technology Behind The DeanBear Chronicles

What does Dean use to produce The Chronicles? You would think that I am some sort of über-geek, with the hottest tech and software to produce my show, but that ain't the truth. I pretty much use standard consumer-grade computer, video, and photographic hardware and software to accomplish my tasks.

Hardware
Function	Main Workstation
CPU	AMD Phenom II X3 700e Triple Core
Clock Speed	2.4 Ghz
Memory	8 Gb
HardDisk	1.5 Tb Seagate Barracuda SATA*
Video Card	Galaxy Microsystems Nvidia GeForce GT520 with 1 Gb DDR3 memory, and HDMI, DVI, and VGA ports.
Monitors	Acer 22” Widescreen LCD, Gateway 17" LCD
Audio	Onboard AC'97 audio
Speakers	Altec Lansing BX1120
Optical Drive	Lite-On Double-layer Blu-ray Player/DVD/CD-RW with Lightscribe SATA*
Keyboard	Microsoft Internet Keyboard Pro
Mouse	Microsoft Comfort Optical Mouse 3000
Operating System	Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1

The Imaging Hardware:

The cameras that I use are not much to speak of. For the actual video shooting, I use a Canon ZR930 MiniDV camcorder. It shoots in 16:9 format, 1280 X 720p (progressive scan.) It's not full 1080p, but for posting videos to YouTube, it's pretty damn good for the task. Now that I am doing video blogging, I needed something more flexible for video work. For that, I use a Cisco Systems Flip UltraHD camcorder. For still photography, I use a Canon PowerShot A720 IS, an 8 megapixel point and shoot camera with a DIGIC III signal processor, integrated image stabilization, and has a 2 gigabyte SD memory card. This camera was purchased at the Salvation Army store for $15 (a remarkable find,) and the ZR930 and UltraHD were purchased online at TigerDirect. In addition, I do take some photos using the 5 megapixel camera that is built into my T-Mobile G2 smartphone.

The software that I use is pretty much consumer-grade, like the hardware. First off, the video editing software that I use is Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum. In the early episodes of the Chronicles I used Windows Movie Maker (because it was there) but I found that I needed something a little more powerful and flexible to be really creative. I debated using Avid/Pinnacle Studio (since I used to use it when I first started doing video work) but because of the system I had at the time (my Gateway system that shit the bed) the Pinnacle software required more system resources than I had. I had heard a lot of good reviews about Sony Vegas, so I downloaded the trial version and was hooked! The system overhead isn't that much compared to Pinnacle Studio, and the interface was much more user-friendly. For working with my photo files, I manage all my photos using Cerious Software's ThumbsPlus. Photo editing is accomplished using Picasa 3.0 and The GIMP (why pay for Photoshop when there are nice free programs out there to use?) I don't have the need to use Photoshop for serious photo editing. Writing scripts is accomplished using OpenOffice Writer 3.3, and editing my webpages is done with Microsoft FrontPage 2000. Uploading to my website is done using FileZilla 3.5, an open-source FTP (file transfer protocol) client. Blog editing is done using Microsoft LiveWriter, mainly because it interfaces quite nicely with Blogger and WordPress.

So that is what is used to help bring the Chronicles to you. Cheap, quick, and dirty.