Andy Mrozkowski, Webmaster at Mars Hill College in North Carolina presented this morning a session at HighEdWebDev in Rochester titled “Video Content Using Flash.†Andy’s videos can be watched on his institution’s YouTube page.
Webmaster at Mays Business School at Texas A&M University, Matt Herzberger is one of this blog’s readers who answered my call for guest bloggers. A blogger as well, he is really interested in adapting new technologies including web 2.0 applications for use in higher ed. This is Matt’s first HighEdWebDev post.
Video today is usually edited in a non-linear fashion. You can have complex special effects and sound effects.
In order to know what to use you need to find out:
What are you taping?
* Guest speakers
* Marketing
* Class review sessions
What format the the video will be output?
* Dvd
* Streaming
* Download
Hardware compatibility?
* Camera
* Dvd burners
Other considerations
* Ability to import HD formats
* Streaming web (flash, quicktime, window media, divx mpeg, etc)
Camera Consideration
The best cameras have 3 LCCD. From Andy’s experience he think that shoulder mounted cameras are better when possible. You can tape through eye piece or lcd.
* Digital video (DVor MiniDV)
* CCD’s is best
* Handycam works fine in most situations
* Firewire (IEEE 1394) interface – this is very helpful
Planning and Preproduction
People and things required
* Director
* Actors
* Equipment
* Lighting and green screen
Shooting basics
* Creative
o Planning shots
o Scripting
o Shooting video
* Technical
o Recording video
o Record sound
o Editing using software
Shooting
* Mechanics
o Auto focus
o Auto white balance
o Shooting in shade whenever possible
o Tripod when possible
* Style
o Variety of angles
o Variety of locations
o Variety of backgrounds
Focus on your subject treat the shoot like the only shot you will have, get a hang of communicating to get the best looking shot you can.
When possible try different scenes, ask subject what they think might look good on film, they might have some ideas for their organization or event. After awhile you find great shots for yourself, you will start to watch TV in a entirely new way. You can use it for inspiration.
Use a variety of angles, even for same scenes always have backup shots available
Capturing video
* Moving video footage from DV tapes and onto computer
* Not all editing software is compatible with all cameras
*Sidenote* Mini DV recorder – tiny tivo – some big people use them to capture video on the spot
NTSC-DV – capture video in most standard video format high data rate ( can be made to dvd and others)
Editing
o Typical workflow
+ Review each shot, plan captures and imports
+ Capture desired sections
+ Assemble and refine sequence
+ Add transitions and effects
+ Add titles
+ Mix audio
+ Export
Timeline development is way different that web development. It takes time getting use to, if you use flash this will be helpful (Film speed, frame rate)
Transitions can be done by using solid black gifs can be used as a black screen (use for titles and credits). Cut Aways should be done using lots of variety, fast moving, lots of locations and scenes
Rendering
Saving clips as a single file
Export for archive
* NTSC-DV standard high res format
o Highest Res
o Highest Audio
o No compression
Export for web (small)
* MP4
o Smallet video that allows highest res
Other tips
* Shoot in moderate shade
I have had a lot of people ask me for the handout this week. I only expected about 50 people and had over twice that many at my second session. Thanks so much to everyone for the awesome feedback!
http://www.mhc.edu/andy/video.doc
Thanks for sharing your handout, Andy!
I’m not surprised that your session was so successful: video is becoming more and more important for higher ed websites.
I really envy you for the resources that you must have available for such projects :-( So far, the “video projects” that I tried were basically me and a very average digital camera…
Please continue to talk about your experiences with video, I am very interested!
Sardionerak-
I’ll leave it to Andy to weigh in on the specifics, if he so chooses, but rest assured you probably have the same resources we do, and can probably produce content of about the same quality. Taking nothing away from Andy’s considerable creative skills, but the vast resources he had available to him are a video camera checked out from the college media center, a PC, a knowledge of Flash, and the Vegas program ($89 to more than $500 USD, depending on the bells and whistles you want; probably less at educational pricing). And that’s the good thing about this — even folks at institutions with limited resources can put forth a top notch Web presence.