Al Tompkins Interviews WaPo's Travis Fox

The Washington Post's Travis Fox is one of the leaders in online video storytelling, and Poynter's Al Tompkins has a nice interview with him about his latest project and the state of video on the web. Not his predictions on the future.

ASSIGNMENT: Reading for Day 3

Please read Chapter 7 for Thursday's class. And you'll need to read Chapter 10 and 11 eventually, so if the momentum's going ...

Also, here are the links to the videos we watched on the first day, in case you want to review them again.

The Globe and Mail, Surviving Katrina and A Shrimper's Storm
The Toronto Star, An Artist First
Northwest Herald, Bearing the Cross

Slow-motion, yeah!

At NAB this past month, one of the sessions I attended featured the new Phantom HD camera, a rather nifty (and of course ridiculously expensive!) little device capable of recording hi-def video footage at up to 1,000 frames per second. For a demonstration, they shot footage of a quarter spinning on a flat surface, as well as one of those children's toys that does back flips after you wind it up. While that might not sound all that amazing, it was simply incredible to see how much detail this camera is capable of recording, stuff that the human eye could never pick up on. And the really cool part is that the footage could be stopped at anytime to provide a perfect, hi-res, 10 megapixel frame (yup, a lot of storage space is needed...). Take that interlaced video! Anyway, I tried shopping around the web to see if I could find some sample video of the camera in action. This first site, called Vision Research, features a number of different videos, all shot exclusively with the Phantom (check out the water balloon one...absolutely ridiculous!). This other site, Lucid Movement, also has plenty of high-speed videos dealing with everything from explosions, to stuff with water and smoke, and of course, various things breaking. Hooray for slow-motion! Enjoy...

"Intel Vietname" at The San Jose Mercury News

"Intel Vietnam" is apparently the second-most recent video at the San Jose Mercury News' mercurynews.com, and it's worth a watch for a couple of reasons. First, the video opens with an informative detail shot, which reminded me of what Professor Johnson mentioned in class on Tuesday about being mindful of the opening shot when editing video footage; the video, which is about an Intel chipset factory in Vietnam, opens with a shot of an Intel name tag with a Vietnamese name on it. Secondly, the video integrates more stills (or possibly screen captures) than video, and it works well. The video also uses an interesting framing technique while presenting a typical video interview, wherein the video presents the interviewee in a small box to the left side of the screen and fills the rest of the screen with a black background with white text beside the interview box explaining who the person is. I thought that was a pretty simple way to avoid the usual boring straight-up video interview-with-text-box-at-bottom deal.

The video itself doesn't appear to be linkable, but you can find it by clicking on "browse more" on the video window, below the main story and photo.

He returns...

Hey everyone. Just wanted to let you know I finally made it back from Vegas early this morning. The NAB conference was absolutely amazing, and I was fortunate enough to have been working as a room monitor for several different seminars that dealt with a number of topics relevant to the focus of our 5990 course. I attended a few sessions on video podcasting that featured a great number of tips and ideas for producing video geared for the web. I also got to sit in on a few courses on blogging, as well as some director of photography workshops. All in all it was a great trip and I can't wait to fill you in on everything.

For this week's post I figured I would share with you some of the great resources I came across while at the show. Here's a link to a website produced by Rich Harrington, one of speakers at the conference who devoted a number of his sessions to video production for the web. The site, called vidpodcaster.com, features a blog that is updated several times a week, and also provides a link to subscribe to the free podcast "Producing Video Podcasts" (which can also be done through iTunes as well). I have checked out a few episodes so far and, in addition to being fairly well produced, found them to be pretty informative. I also thumbed through the official book (which goes by the same name) at the NAB book store and am considering picking that up as well just to have on-hand for reference. I would definitely recommended looking into it.

I hope the weekend workshop went well for everyone and can't wait to see how everything turned out. Have a great weekend, and I'll see you all in class next Tuesday...

Fun with time-lapse

Police Videos

Wow, the Greenville Online wasn't joking about getting news from the police cameras. In this video they are busting another set of troopers for playing favorites. What's with the police in South Carolina? Here is the link to all of their police videos.

Washington Post and unnarrated news videos

I've been looking for unnarrated news videos lately, like the one's we've seen in class, and The Washington Post seems to be a pretty good source for these specific kinds of videos. The paper's website has a news video section and a documentary video section. In particular, I enjoy the documentary section. The most recently posted documentary video, about a table tennis club, is interesting and completely unnarrated. The more video I watch, the more I really like unnarrated video. Unnarrated video focuses more clearly on the video's subjects, like a photo or straight news story does, and it just seems cooler and more artistic too.

Online Video

I was just reading about print media and video, and I came across this article. It is about a year old, but I think it makes some interesting points that are still relevent.

"You Must Be Streaming"

One thing it says is, "The lessons seem obvious: Don’t do Web video if you don’t have anything interesting to show, and don’t compete with TV unless you can do something they can’t or won’t. In other words, use the medium."

I think this is a really good point, and we have seen some videos in our presentation research that are not that interesting. However, I think that a lot of smaller newspapers are in the first steps of multimedia journalism and video, and they have to start somewhere.

The flu

I have been sick all week, so I decided to look up multimedia about the flu. Unfortunately for Ole Miss, the youtube framing covers up the nameplates they made on the video (one disadvantage to using free video hosting).

"The DV Rebel's Guide"...

...is essentially the Bible for all things related to digital filmmaking, as well as the sole classroom text I can honestly admit to having read cover to cover more than once. Though the techniques described by Stu Maschwitz (author and digital video genius) are definitely geared more towards those interested in narrative filmmaking, the message he puts forth applies much the same to all types of video production. That message, in and of itself, is quite simple: production value is what your audience sees, feels, and believes when they experience your finished product. It is the "perceived quality" of the finished video or movie, and is in no way tied to the budget of a given production. Throughout the text, Maschwitz demonstrates that even when filmmaking with a low-to-no budget, production value can still be achieved simply by cutting a few corners here and there. So, for a rather enjoyable and fairly quick read, I would definitely recommend checking this one out. The practical knowledge it puts forth is both eye-opening and amusing, and each and every time I find myself reading it I can't help but feel more inspired about experimenting with new and different tricks and techniques the next time I find myself behind the camera. As cheesy as that may sound, you'll see what I mean...

See more about the book at its main website here: The DV Rebel's Guide

Animal videos help adoption

I know that homeless animals are not "news," but I do want to give kudos to The Augusta Chronicle and other newspapers that offer a video pets section on their websites. The section features a weekly video of animals, often up for adoption at local animal shelters. (This week the feature was about an emu that was running around on I-20 that got adopted.) It's hard to decide on adopting a shelter pet as you see it in its tiny cage. The videos offer people a glimpse at the animals out of the cage, and interacting with others.

montgomery advertiser

I like ballet a lot. The Montgomery Advertiser has a video of the Montgomery Ballet rehearsing and then one after that, about the children who dance at their studio. These two are under a big "LifeStyle" video section. They're not bad. Some parts I wish the camera person would stop trying to zoom in, even though seeing things closer is nice, but then the dancers move and the shot kind of trails after them.

Downloading Youtube Videos Without Hassle!

The question of whether videos online from sites like www.youtube.com, etc can/should be legally downloaded or not is still a very debatable issue.

Besides that point, I have noticed that the "downloading itself" has become more difficult than just a few months ago. If you go don't know what I am talking about, there are softwares available out there that help you "download the videos from websites like youtube, etc, DIRECTLY to your hard drive". Apparently there have been many versions of "Youtube downloaders, etc".

Here's how you can find out about the process a little.

The problem is that, out of all the many softwars there are out there for downloading videos from online, they all seem to stop working after a while. Apparently they are not "free" anymore. They ask you to pay after a couple of downloads, or even without asking to pay, the software just stops working without any reason! Makes you think of capitalism or corrupted software? Does anyone know why this is happening; because they were said to be free first.

Anyways, for the benefit of everyone, I've even come across a website that lets you use the site itself to download online videos directly to your hard-drive. This seems to work and is more convenient perhaps for many people because you don't have to bother having a softwared downloaded first that will be used for the "online video downloading". Enjoy!

Priyom.

Video Editing

I figured that since we will start working with video soon, I would post a link to a site I was recently introduced to called Creative Cow. It features a number of forums and blogs about anything and everything related to editing and post-production work, from performing a basic edit to creating stylistic graphics, texts, and other various effects. It covers a number of computer applications as well, including Final Cut and After Effects. One of the great features of the site is that it offers free video podcasts that act as step-by-step visual tutorials for completing various tasks in these programs. This link will take you directly to the Final Cut portion of the podcast section, and while some of the tutorials are designed for achieving very specific tasks, there are a few that cover the program's general interface as well as how to perform simple insert and overwrite edits.

Effective Journalism?

Mark's question in class about video footage, and what qualifies as being an effective means of journalism, really stuck with me. When I was looking at news about the recent storms that hit my hometown in the The Courier Journal, I came across this video. A reporter for the paper took a home video of the storm. Does this count as journalism?

Just a Quickie

"No Mr. President, it's called a quiche."
This is just something I found that I really enjoyed. I liked the subject matter and I like the design of the site so much that I'm now semi-determined to learn Flash. Dear me.

Medals of Memory.

For those interested in video production...

...here's a little wish list compiled by the TeleArts DV Rebellion just before the holidays last semester. In it, you'll find everything you need to produce some great video footage, all on a fairly shoe-string budget for those without deep pockets. Consider it a DV survival kit, if you will, perfect for the digital video rebel in all of us, or for the everyday multimedia journalist-whichever title you might prefer.

Video Editing Battle

When trying to edit your video clips - downloaded, tv-tape-computer transferred, camcorder recorded - whatever it is, what software do you folks generally use? As of right now, the two biggest ones out there are Apple Final Cut Pro and Avid Xpress.

I personally have never used Avid Xpress, I have slight used Final Cut Pro previously. But Avid Xpress apparently is sure putting up a good competition with Final Cut Pro today.

Final Cut unfortunately is only available for the Mac, but there Avid Xpress is available for both Mac and PCs. The main question being asked if what is the difference between the two? The answer would be none, according to the information I have found online.

The author of the article Avid versus Final Cut: 2006, Patrick Inhofer, says that "they both get the job done on-budget, and on-time, but when it comes to how we approach our projects or how we interact with the software itself, there are some meaningful differences."

Check it out.

Priyom.

Cape Cod Times

I often find newspaper and other news websited cluttered. I find it difficult to focus on reading with dancing ads in the corners and too many things on the screen at once. I think the Cape Cod Times has a pretty clean, simple site that is easy to look at. The color scheme is subtle, and the site is easy to navigate.

They also have a pretty big multimedia section with videos, audio slideshows and photos.