Do It Yourself: Tech Stuff


We get a fair amount of e-mails from people asking what kind of equipment and software we use to make The Pinky Show. If you're curious about technical stuff like that, the lists below are for you. If you're more interested in our production process, click here.
We are not 'media professionals' - we are more interested in education, research, and art than we are in the technical manipulation of computers and electronic gadgets. There may be better ways of doing what we do, but we made the following list so that anyone out there with an urge to 'do it yourself' won't have to start at zero the way we did. Good luck - long live underground media! ~ Bunny


Equipment list as of Sept. 2007:
Sony DSC-V3 digital camera for still photography (sucks)
Sony DCR-TRV18 mini-DV camcorder for video (mediocre but cheap)
Tiltall tripod, for both
tiny 5" tall Bogen tripod, misc. uses
Rode VideoMic, a cheap shotgun mic for cheap camcorders
AKG C4500B microphone for recording vocals
Shure SM57 microphone for recording everything else
Symetrix 528e preamp/gate/compressor for 'cleaning up' vocals
Alesis DEQ230D 2-channel equalizer
Telos One Digital Hybrid telephone interface, for recording phone interviews
Mackie 1220 12-channel mixer w/ firewire mod
Tascam HD-P2 digital audio recorder
KRK Systems active monitors (Rokit 6 version)
Sony MDR-V6 headphones, 1 for me, 1 for Pinky
various musical instruments (bass, electric guitar, etc.)
Tech21 PSA-1 SansAmp for guitar and bass
lots of cables, blankets, and foam

Sometimes Equipment:
(stuff we sometimes borrow from friends at a 'nearby' video collective)
Sony DSR-PD150 video camera
Libec tripod for video camera
Electro Voice RE50N/D-B

Past Equipment:
Nikon 990 camera (good workhorse camera; eventually died of old age)
Klipsch active monitors (truly awful; broke after 1 year)

Computer Hardware as of Sept. 2007:
Apple G5 computer and a bunch of external hard drives
Wacom drawing tablet & pen
an ancient Hewlett-Packard desktop computer
an even more ancient HP printer from 1992
Epson 2450 scanner for the occasional scanning job

Software as of Sept. 2007:
Adobe Photoshop, for editing photos & drawing cats
Pixen, for pixel art fun
Apple Final Cut Pro, for editing video
Apple Garage Band, for recording & editing audio, and making 'music'
Audacity, for changing audio pitch or length
Macromedia Flash, for 'animation', etc.
Intaglio or Illustrator, for making the occasional vector graphic
Ambrosia Software Snapz Pro X, for video captures
SnapNDrag, for screen captures
Apple QuickTime 7 Pro, for all kinds of conversion stuff
VLC player for playing back all kinds of video files
Apple iDVD, for making DVDs
Apple TextEdit, for writing
BareBones Software TextWrangler, for coding

< end >


[ see how we make The Pinky Show ]