New Media Center

Welcome to the new school year. I’m still shaking my head about where the summer went. I’m also still grinding gears from vacation last week, but despite those issues, I’m very excited about 2010/11 at UMW. While perusing my RSS feed today, Lifehacker reminded me about Evom, a Mac only (sorry) video converter that is super slick and easy. If it were on the PC it could be the one program I would recommend to do a myriad of tasks.

Evom comes from a company called Little App Factory, makers of the Mac DVD ripping software RipIt! I don’t know where the name Evom came from, but the program works great. It converts many types of videos, and uses the ffmpeg engine to perform its magic. The beauty of the program is the ease in which it gets video into the right configuration for Apple devices. You drag a file from your hard drive into the interface and you get asked which device you want to prepare the file for.

Choosing the iTunes or iPod buttons gives you the option convert the video, or to ditch the video and just save as an MP3 audio file, so it’s handy for ripping audio from video files. You can also prepare videos for an Apple TV (and therefore iPad), or for uploading to YouTube. It’ll even take care of the uploading part (supply your YouTube credentials). You also have the option to simply save the file to a folder anywhere on your computer.

OK. So lots of converters do similar things to Evom. Big deal. Well, for me the big deal is that it can also convert videos that are ON YouTube. If you’re using Safari or Firefox, simply drag the YouTube link from the address bar to the Evom window, and then choose your destination. The downloading and conversion can take a while, depending on connection speed, length of the video, etc., but it all happens in the background. So it’s YouTube to iPod, or iPhone, or iPad, or Apple TV, or to PowerPoint or Keynote, in minimal steps.

One wrench in the works, and it’s not Evom’s fault, is that the Google Chrome browser doesn’t allow the dragging of links into the Evom window. I don’t know what prevents this, but there’s a simple solution. Simply copy the link, with a Command-c shortcut, or by clicking the Edit menu and Copy, then paste the link into Evom (use Command-p or choose Edit>Paste in Evom). Since Google Chrome still does not have a YouTube downloader extension, this is a great solution for grabbing those videos.

One final word about Evom. It’s free!

I know.

You’re welcome.

Standard disclaimer about grabbing YouTube videos or ripping audio from files. Remember there are copyright issues.

Flickr photo by ShellyS

Apple’s iMovie HD (version 6) is the venerable video editor that users were so fond of that Apple offered it as a download after releasing iMovie ’08, which was not well received. The current version is iMovie ’09, which is included with all new Macintosh computer purchases or available separately in the iLife suite. iMovie HD is no longer available for download. If you still have iMovie HD available to you, it is a very capable editor and one to consider before you upgrade to something like Final Cut Express.

The video above is the introductory video from a playlist that you can use as a guide for how to accomplish basic tasks in iMovie HD. Each video will play in turn (with a slight delay between videos). You can view an alternative version of the playlist that allows slightly easier navigation of individual videos.

iMovie HD 6 Getting Started Manual (PDF)

One day, all of the people on the Internet will have an unlimited area to store all the digital media files they could ever want. Storage space is getting cheaper and digital files are getting smaller with the use of better compression techniques. What do people do now though? Let me give you a couple of situations where the storage dilemma rears its ugly head. Here at the University of Mary Washington, we’re moving to a hosted Blackboard solution, and the dilemma is that there will now be a smaller storage area (100MB quota) for files associated with a given course. For some faculty that could mean three, two, or even one PowerPoint presentation.

The other situation is our umwblogs.org installation also has a 100MB limit (though we do have some control over that limit). Where will users store their video and audio content? Privacy is also a concern for these files. How do we keep the control over who sees a PowerPoint presentation? YouTube is a great place to store video, but can those videos be made private? This article will provide those answers and more. Luckily, those answers involve using very cheap web services (as in free).

Make your files smaller

No matter where you store your files, you will want to make them as small as possible. When it comes to PowerPoint, keeping the presentation simple will make for smaller file sizes. However, if you use pictures, your presentations can balloon in size. So here is a way to make the pictures in your presentation smaller.

• How to compress photos in a PowerPoint presentation (step-by-step instructions)
• The Screencast version (this screencast references a video on how to create a photo album in Powerpoint)

Use “sharing” web sites

An alternative to sharing the PowerPoint files directly with the recipient, either through something like Blackboard, or through email, is to use a sharing site. Slideshare is a service that allows the sharing of PowerPoint presentations. You create an account, then upload your file and it gets converted into a Flash version for presenting on the web. You can present the small version or use the full-screen option. The Flash version does not include the animations or transitions that you use, but there is an option for downloading the original file which will keep those effects in tact. There is also an option for creating a private web address for sharing the file with only selected people. You can upload up to a 100MB file.

If you want to store and share video, we do recommend YouTube. Even though videos can be made private, faculty may be reticent to use it because of YouTube’s free-form nature and the sometimes objectionable content.

If that is an issue, we recommend a service called DivShare. For your video, as well as audio storage needs, DivShare will give you up to 5GB (gigabytes) of space to store your media. Just as a warning, you are allowed only 10GB worth of downloads per month, so you may at some point want to limit who you share your files with. You can make any audio or video files private. They use an un-guessable web address to link to the media. A built-in audio or video player will play the file on the web page. DivShare also supports images, PDF documents, Microsoft Word documents, as well as PowerPoint files. It converts those files to Flash documents as well.

Using UMWBlogs

All of the sharing sites we mentioned, YouTube, Slideshare, and DivShare, and others we didn’t mention, all work very well in concert with the umwblogs.org environment (in fact many were created with blogging platforms in mind). UMWBlogs also offers a variety of privacy protections, and it functions in a much superior way to Blackboard in terms of media presentation. You may want to consider using UMWBlogs for a course website.

photo credit: William Hook

Here is a screencast of an example editing session using VideoSpin. We take the video that we digitized from Windows Movie Maker, import it, add it to the timeline, insert transitions and titles, and then send it to YouTube.

In my previous post I referred to the latest Windows Movie Maker program for Windows Vista has issues with frame accuracy. Well, here I present to you a very graphic demonstration (a screencast) of that lack of accuracy. What you will see is how erratic the native Windows Vista Movie Maker program is. For that, and the other reasons mentioned previously, go download Windows Movie Maker 2.6 to get slightly less erratic behavior.

An even better idea would be to download another free Windows video editor called VideoSpin. This video editor is a scaled down version of their Pinnacle Studio editor. VideoSpin has the same general features as Movie Maker and it also adds a nice YouTube upload feature. I’ll have more to write (and screencast) about VideoSpin in the future. For now, enjoy the screencast.

In this short video, we introduce the concept of a video frame. Video is simply made up of a series of pictures, which we call frames, and they are then displayed at a rapid rate. The concept of a “frame of video” will be very important as we get into the heart of producing videos using a computer.

Thanks to Papa John (no not the pizza guys) for the video “100 Numbered Frames”.

This post finds me answering the question of what have I been up to lately. Well, I’m trying to find easy ways to edit and produce video for as close to zero expense as possible. So I find myself on the Mac and on the PC side of this MacBook Pro working with Windows Movie Maker for Vista and iMovie’08 for Mac. Now I’m going to jump straight to the ending and say that I don’t recommend you use either one of them, at least not for start to finish video editing projects.

What I will recommend that you do is go download the previous version of the editors and use them instead. So However, if you use a Mac, go download iMovie HD iMovie HD is no longer available. The latest version of iMovie is at least slightly improved over the awful iMovie '08. If you are using Windows XP, you’re OK, but make sure you have at least version 2.1. If you have Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate, go download Movie Maker 2.6 for Vista. If you have Vista Home Basic, or Vista Enterprise/Business, it looks like you’re out of luck because version 2.6 seems to require that you have the original Vista Movie Maker program. Home Basic and Enterprise versions don’t come with Movie Maker so it looks like a non-starter.

Another caveat, the download page for Movie Maker 2.6 for Vista says to test if you can run the original version of Movie Maker. They say “If Movie Maker launches, you should not download version 2.6”. I have not discovered any incompatibilities with having both versions on my computer. As a matter of fact, I’m seeing that the original version of Movie Maker runs better once you install the old version. By better I mean that the original version has big problems with frame accuracy, in other words finding the exact point where one scene ends and the other begins. Still, Movie Maker 2.6 is more frame accurate.

Also, when you import video into the original Vista Movie maker, it does not detect scenes correctly. However, here is a truly weird situation. If I open a movie in 2.6 it does the scene detection correctly, and then if I open up the original Movie Maker with the same video all the scenes are now there as if it detected those scenes all along. Here’s a screencast of the phenomenon:

Expect more from me soon, regarding Windows Movie Maker and iMovie. Here’s a teaser for a large project I’m working on.

Here is a screencast demonstrating how to transfer your footage from a digital video (DV) camcorder to a Windows PC using Windows Movie Maker.

Step #1 – Shooting your video: We’ll assume that you have already shot the video for your project. However, YouTube has some good resources for shooting video, using lighting, and getting good sound at their “toolbox” site. Also a good starting point is their Making Videos page, which is part of their help pages. The UMW New Media center also has some helpful tips on shooting video.

Step #2 – Getting your video on the computer: Depending on what you used to shoot your video, you will need to get it onto your computer. If you have a camera that uses mini-DV tapes, you’ll need a firewire cable to transfer the video. If you are using a PC, Windows Movie Maker can be used to transfer the video from your camera. iMovie will be the software you will use if you’re on a Mac. If you are using a camera with a flash memory card, a hard drive, or using a digital still camera that has a movie setting, you’ll need to use a USB cable. If you have a camcorder that uses mini-DVD, follow the directions that came with your camera to get video onto your computer.

Step #3 – Editing Your Video: Assuming you will take the raw footage from your camera and add titles and transitions, you will need a video editor. Again, if you use a PC, then Windows Movie Maker is the program that is included with the Windows operating system to edit your video. If you’ve got a Mac, iMovie will be what you use. When you have a final edited version, complete with titles, transitions, and any additional audio, you will need to save the movie for uploading to YouTube. YouTube can accept many different formats of video as long as the length of the video is 10 minutes or less, and as long as the file is less than 2GB (gigabyte). If you are using Movie Maker you can save the file as a .wmv file. This will be a compressed file that will be decent quality and be much smaller than the 2GB restriction. If you use iMovie, you can save the file as an MPEG-4 file and again it will be compressed to a much smaller file. If you are using iMovie ‘09, the program has a built in uploader to YouTube. If you want a similar capability on the PC, then download a free video editor called VideoSpin from Pinnacle Systems.

Step #4 – Uploading Video to YouTube: If you are using VideoSpin or iMovie ‘09, then you will upload the movie directly from the program. Look in the help file for specific instructions on how to do this. It’s fairly intuitive for both programs. If you are using Movie Maker or a previous version of iMovie, you will upload the compressed video file that you saved onto your computer from the editor. A .wmv file from Movie Maker and a MPEG-4 file from iMovie. If you haven’t already, you need to sign up for a YouTube account. You then sign in to YouTube and look for the “Upload” button in the upper right corner of the page.

You will then need to provide a Title, Description, a Category, and include at least one “tag” (a keyword) so that people can search for your video. There are other options that you can choose, such as making a video private or public (they’re public by default), as well as date, mapping, and sharing options. It will take a while for the video to upload, depending on the size of the file, your connection speed to the Internet, and how busy the YouTube site is. Once your video is done uploading, additional time is needed to convert the video to the format that will play on the YouTube site (flash, also known as FLV). Again, depending on how busy the site is, your video will be available generally within an hour. You can now tell people about your video by linking to it, or by embedding it in your own web page. Congratulations, you are a YouTube video producer!

Learning how to shoot video is, for the most part, on-the-job training. We assume you have taken at least one still photograph in your life. You get the person or other subject in the frame and press the button. Well that’s basically how shooting video works. You frame your subject and press record. How you frame your subject, what your background is, how the audio is recorded, the quality of the lighting, and a myriad of other things, will make your video either spectacular or lousy. Here are a few tips:

Use the Rule of Thirds – when framing your subject. Mentally divide the image you see in the viewfinder into thirds, both horizontally and vertically. Put your subject under one of the lines of intersection. Give the subject some room to move in the viewfinder. Be especially aware of your background too.

Properly light the scene – This doesn’t mean you need to go out and purchase a professional light kit. Understand that your camcorder adjusts for light, or lack of it, automatically. If you are shooting a subject that is standing in front of the sun, chances are that the subject will be a black shadow. Avoid bright backgrounds and also, at the other extreme, avoid poorly lit areas.

Avoid using the zoom buttons – at least while recording. This doesn’t mean don’t use the zoom feature, but try zooming before you hit record. Now shoot some video, pause, zoom in or out, and then record some more. Excessive zooming can make people feel a bit ill. Also, using the extreme zoom settings magnifies the unsteadiness of a handheld camcorder. Use a tripod if at all possible.

Use a tripod! – Holding the camera steady is important to good video. Also, with a good video tripod, one with a so called "fluid" head, you can follow your subject with a smooth panning motion. "Hand-held vs. Tripod"

Vary the shots that you take – Have a good game plan in mind of what should be in a shot and try to shoot the subject from different perspectives. Don’t use the camcorder like a firefighter using a fire hose.

Don’t forget about audio – Remember you are not just recording video. Be aware of noises in the background. Our brains do a good job of blocking out background noise, camcorders sometimes don’t. If you are shooting the history of George Washington with some actors, sounds of cars whizzing by in the background doesn’t sound realistic. Also, use headphones to make sure that the audio is audible. Note in the picture at the top of the page that the videographers are using headphones or earphones. You may need to use an external microphone, either a lapel mic or a boom mic, that picks up the subject’s voice better. If you’re shooting from a distance, a "shotgun" mic is often used.

More good information is available at the Media College website.