Video Techniques

I finally got past the learning curve between a borrowed camera. a Mac Apple computer, and the regular PC world I am used to, and I uploaded a video to my home site, which is in my profile link.

In the process of doing this, I also learned the Youtube system and a few other video systems such as the new Google service and another company similar to Youtube that my host uses. Apparently all the webhosts are setting up their own little alternative Youtube systems, now.

So I thought it might be a good idea to have a thread to talk about video technique. My own first effort is fairly rough.

Here is what I learned:
the "fire wire" cable that is similar to but incompatible with USB is standard on a Mac and you can have a card inserted on a PC to accommodate it.

It runs at about ten times as much power as the average USB, and four times as much power as the best USB, so that it why it is the preferred method of loading from camcorder to computer.

An Apple uses "IMovie" as an editor and the one I use also has "Quicktime" for editting and saving the video. (I am sure there are other programs available, but these are the two that I have and I think they are probably the most common.) IMovie is proprietary to Apple computers.

I could not get Youtube to accept the ".mov" file from the Apple. I don't know what I did wrong, but the Google "video" feature accepted it right away, so I stopped worrying about Youtube. (The Apple wants to make a "mov" file and not an "MPEG" or "WMV" file with the video, and this is an issue with some online services.)

Once I got the video successfully loaded, I noticed that it chose a certain frame of the opening clip for the "still" shot that shows in the website. Unfortunately this one catches my face in the wrong expression for a still photo *aargh* but now that I know about it, I will try to find a neutral shot for that frame of my next video. I will have to figure out which frame it is.

So, all you video-star wannabe's out there with your video-star 'chids, let's roll tape!

Adding to this:

When taping, it is important to limit the length for uploading short, under-5-minute clips to most video hosts. (Attention span of viewers is probably closer to only 3-minutes, anyway, since they are likely to be multi-tasking. )

It is a good idea to get in the habit of taking "count-to-ten" pauses between short bursts of activity or talk, to provide smooth cut-points for editting.