THIS IS LAST INTHECIRCLE POST: PLEASE UPDATE YOUR FEED

I wrote earlier about my plans to move my blog to Wordpress. I'm making good progress and yesterday I moved my old posts over. My new blog is News Videographer. Please update your subscription here. Several of you already found out!

Cyndy Green: I feel like I've been brutally pingbacked - did you just start up a new blog?...

Mark Hamilton: I was following some links from my blog pings and came across http://newsvideographer.com/

Is this a new site?

The answer is yes! Please update your subscription here.

Check for good video lesson this summer

Keep your eyes open for this video lesson plan from Cyndy Green, which may come sometime this summer. She’s creating a text to teach her students … Hopefully she publishes it online for everyone else to use. I think Cyndy’s tutorials are very helpful.

Holy viral video!

Wowsers, I can't believe how many small start ups are offering online video services. Check out this "complete Web 2.0 directory" and choose video from the list of tags (the usability of this site sucks). There are ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR video sharing sites listed there. Holy viral video!

This may birth a new series...Exploration of the teeny video start ups.

Link via Cronkbyte.

Goodbye page view, hello common sense

Saying goodbye to the page view is like finally getting rid of an annoying house guest who stayed way too long. Nielsen NetRatings and ComScore will start to emphasize time spent on a site instead.

as the technology that publishers use to deliver content to the user moves away from static, reloaded pages to be more streamlined content-e.g. online videos- the page view is becoming a less relevant gauge of where might be the best place to advertise online.” …

Page views were fine for the static web, but that’s going away. Since all digital content can be separated from form, it can be presented in snippets via AJAX and other technologies. This makes for a marvelous user experience and brings about page customization.

I’m hoping this means news sites will encourage and promote online video even more since it will hold people on a page for a good amount of time. Maybe we can get front-page status more often? Maybe we can have an easily-found Video section? That would be super cool.

It’ll be interesting to pay attention while the new metrics are being set up and as advertisers decide how they are going to value them. How much time is a good amount of time for users to stay on a page? Will advertisers pay a more or less based on how long a page captures users’ attention? For example, people will spend lots of time on the Video player page, and less on the business news page. Would ads cost more on the video page?

Link via Journerdism.

Other interesting comments:
Mindy McAdams
Ryan Sholin

Vote in the Webby Peoples’ Voice awards

You can go vote for Webby award winners for this year. There’s four categories and like 100 choices. I don’t think I’ll take the time to go through all of them, but I’m going to take the time for the online video category. MediaStorm is up for an award.

Link via MediaStorm.

Battle of the Media Players

In the right corner we have Microsoft Silverlight. In the left we have Adobe Media Player (link via yahoo group). Here’s a third article about Silverlight vs. AMP.

Here’s some stuff I like:

Silverlight:

• Free


• Cross-platform


• Plays HDV


• New Expression (VC-1??) video codec will be “’cheaper, faster and better’ than Adobe’s”


• “faster delivery via Longhorn, the code name for the new Windows Server and the IIS7 Media Pack”


• Backwards compatible with Windows Media systems


• Template-based publishing. Example, “a ‘nightly news’ template”

AMP:

• Free


• Flash video available for download and viewing on desktop or mobiles


• “higher-quality Flash Video, anonymous metrics for content publishers and advertisers, and a social media component including tagging and consumer ratings”


• Supposedly intuitive for consumers to use


• "Consumers won't see Adobe's brand at all," says Craig Barberich, group product manager in Adobe's Dynamic Media Organization. "Our philosophy is to let media publishers take over the experience and customize it to their liking.


• Publishers can monetize content through advertisements


• users can't pirate or share it in ways that conflict with the publishers' intentions.

Stuff I don’t like:

Silverlight:

• Still in development


• Plays HDV and “Depending on bandwidth, videos start playing either immediately or after a few seconds of caching” (I sympathize with people with bad connections/computers)

Adobe Media Player:

• Gives Flash video DRM


• User information is collected anonymously via cookies

Who will win?

• Silverlight is at a disadvantage because “the cold, hard issue of the number of eyeballs that Flash currently owns”


• It’ll take a long time to find out


• “While Adobe Media Player is clearly at least partially an attempt to compete head-to-head with Windows Media Player by offering downloadable content and DRM, the fact that it doesn't impose Adobe's brand on the player should create a user experience that is more in line with what consumers are demanding in the Web 2.0 world-access to content and the ability to interact with as few intermediaries as possible.”


• Silverlight formed partnerships with Limelight, Brightcove and some other big names


• Microsoft knew “it took them years to lose their market share in online video and that to do it right, it will take years to win it back."

Profile of Internet video viewers

eMarketer has a new survey with an interesting profile of Internet video viewers.



From the summary:

The survey indicates that over a fourth of online video viewers are 45 or older ...

58% of those who download videos were age 28 or younger ...

eMarketer senior analyst and online video specialist David Hallerman says that the idea that online video is only for the young is a stereotype.

thePlatform is another option for video syndication

NBC-universal and News Corp. just partnered with a video service provider called the Platform, which is new to me. It’s a subsidiary of Comcast.

George Kliavkoff, Chief Digital Officer, NBC Universal and interim CEO of the NBCU/News Corp. joint venture. "Together, we will provide our partners with an efficient system for managing, syndicating and generating revenue from broadband video."

The news release said thePlatform works with Hearst, the parent company of the Express-News, where I work.

thePlatform offers media management and publishing tools, allows adaptation of its systems to create unique media players and supposedly will “support your revenue model as it evolves.” The about page also says it will “publish digital media to a wide variety of broadband media sites.”

You've got to aggregate before you can hyperaggregate

Here's a new idea from Read/Write web: Internet Video Hyperaggregation.

While partnerships like NBC Universal/NewsCorp demonstrate that offline video content will be coming online, how those videos are organized and delivered to end-users still is an open question. I believe a new set of companies serving as 'hyperaggregators' will emerge to fill that role.

The post predicts that a service will come up that will organize and distribute videos from the available video sharing sites like YouTube, Revver, Brightcove, etc. An example of hyperaggregation:

The way of the Web is to go meta - a website is born and covers politics, then another, and another, and that leads inexorably to ... a blog that covers all the websites that tackle politics.

Once a video hyperaggregation service pops up, it's not going to be very useful for the news orgs that haven't aggregated in the first place! Now is the time to find some system for syndicating and distributing videos.

The post points out three video services that already fill a hyperaggregator-type role:

• Vod:Pod--Check out the News & Current Events "pod"


• Magnify
--There's a VA Tech coverage channel

• Dabble
--This one seems hard to browse.

Tip of the hat to ICM for Va. Tech coverage

I just want to say I'm really impressed with how Bryan and the gang at the ICM blog covered the way that college media sites covered the Va. Tech shootings. If you haven't checked out these posts, to browse them now.

Just starting to shoot video? This tutorial is for you!

I found this awesome new video training site called Make Internet TV. Despite the fatally flawed title (WE DON'T WANT TV ON THE INTERNET!) this site is awesome.

This guide has step-by-step instructions for shooting, editing, and publishing online videos that can be watched and subscribed to by millions of people.

So many newsrooms are thrusting cameras into reporters and photographers hands, but there's still the question of how to train them to shoot and edit. I think this site could help.

It features sections on equipment, shooting, editing, licensing, publishing and promoting. It's an extremely basic shooting section, but it may be exactly what beginners need. I noticed there's one important lesson missing - USE A TRIPOD! Check out the awesome tutorials in editing section (there’s one for Windows Movie Maker and one for iMovie).

Can online video syndication learn lessons from TV?

I got a very interesting anonymous comment on my last YouTube/newspaper video analysis post that explored the pros and cons of posting news video on YouTube. The comment raises the idea that perhaps newspapers who are looking to syndicate and distribute their content online could learn something from TV synication experiments of the past.

The anonymous commenter said this about the idea of posting on YouTube:

The idea of this is soooo wrongheaded I don't know where to start.

So every one of you is comfortable with GIVING your PRECIOUS local content (that no one else can create or duplicate) to a MEGA company owned by your competition (Google) so that useless eyeballs (that don't bring you money in ANY way) can see it?

Keep drinking that KoolAid.

Guess why *local* TV websites DONT put their video on YouTube? (at least most or the smart ones don't)

That's right. They UNDERSTAND why not to. They have EXPERIENCE with syndication and an affiliation relationship.

They know that your site needs to be come the central part and destination for the video in your market. The web is like TV in that it is about developing audience and usage patterns. You don't do that by giving away your content to your competition with no way to make money on it.

It's a lose, lose, lose.

Now, I agree with the fact that it's better to get paid for your content than to give it away for free. But I don't think the online video market is as similar to TV as this commenter thinks. I think that if news orgs want to get a piece of the enormous online video market, it's absolutely essential for video content to be posted in as many places as possible.

What do you think?

Great public service package, but design doesn't do it justice

Will Yurman, staff photographer of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, emailed me yesterday requesting a critique on this audio slideshow package that documents homicide victims in the Rochester community. He's the first to email asking for a critique since I added the "email links" message in the sidebar. Woo hoo! Keep them coming to angelabgrant [at] gmail [dot] com.

First off, the journalism backing this package is absolutely top notch. I watched four of the 12 audio slideshows in this package. Will attended the funerals and families' homes and did in-depth interviews with loved ones to find out humanizing details about the deceased person. The photos and audio are interesting and the stories keep moving, so it's easy to watch them to the end. The slideshows make it impossible to think of homicide as a statistic. You find out who the person was, and you see the grieving loved ones who will miss him or her so much. What Will is doing is a great public service for his community. Good work!

I like the design of each slideshow page. You see a mug on the left and some facts about the murder, including whether the murderer was brought to justice. It's refreshing to see a slideshow that ISN'T soundslides (not that I dislike Soundslides; but I DO dislike generic).

I have a question for Will: Do you release these slideshows individually as they happen? I think that would be the most successful presentation for them. This won't be very successful if you release it all at once at the end of the year. There's a huge amount of data here, and it'll take a considerable amount of time to absorb all of it at once. People usually don't spend that amount of time on one web site, especially on multimedia. They'll watch one or two, run out of time, then forget about all of it. That means a bunch of hard work down the drain! However, if you are releasing them individually and then just providing this flash package as an archival system, that is a great idea.

I have a huge problem with most of the design though. First, I hate the intro because the text comes in one line at a time. I can read faster than that. Just bring it in all at once. THANK YOU for putting a "skip intro" button. It would be better if there were some visual elements on the intro page because it would hook your viewer better. What if the intro text showed up at left, and at right a photo montage of mugs of some of the homicide victims? For example:



Next, the design of the index page, where you click the names to see the slideshows, is fatally flawed. This is a visual story: Where are the visuals? There is so much data: Where is the organization? I think this is an example of a "warehouse" story that Mindy McAdams was talking about yesterday. I see that the names are arranged chronologically by death date, but it's still hard to see. MEGO: My Eyes Glaze Over (that was my journalism professor Marvin Olasky's favorite expression when a student's writing was boring).

I think if you created a visual timeline graphic that would be better. You could do a timeline broken down by month that slides back and forth sort of like the index I created for this roller derby story. You would put the info, names AND mugs above the timeline. If you like this idea and need information about how to create a scrolling index, please post a comment and I'll post a tutorial later.

That's not the only way you could organize it. I've seen two homicide packages that profiled victims, and both of them arranged the data on a map. I think the benefit of that organizational structure is that when people look at the map, they're naturally going to want to know about the homicides that happen near where they live or work. The coding for that would be considerably harder.

I want to stress again that I am very impressed with the journalism behind this package. I think the design needs to reflect that same level of excellence. It's very important because it will correlate directly with how many people actually ABSORB that journalism.

Will, thank you so much for putting yourself in the hot seat! I encourage any other readers to add rants or raves: Be honest, but always constructive.

Also, everyone send me more links!

How to tell humongous multimedia stories?

Mindy McAdams asked a great question yesterday about something that I often think about myself. Because attention spans online are short, especially for multimedia, how can you deliver huge packages in a way that will respect viewers' time limits and attention spans?

The way most of these big stories are presented online makes me think of a warehouse ... a warehouse has no standardized system, so each one has its own rules -- and browsing and scanning just do not work at all in a warehouse.

She points out four huge multimedia packages that won Pulitzers this year:
House of Lies
Altered Oceans
Muslims in America
A Mother's Journey

There are good stories in there. This is excellent journalism. But do these online presentations hook a person who comes fresh to the front page of the package? Do they present the story in its best light? Do they make you want to stay and find out more?

We should think about how we can do this better.

My first impression when I click on them is that I'm intimidated because I don't know if I have time to experience them. Where do I start?

For Muslims in America and A Mother's Journey, it looks like I'm viewing the archival pages for the packages. I'm not sure, but I have a feeling that each story and corresponding multimedia piece came out in a series. If so, I think that's a great way to tell a huge story online. As each element comes out, people can spend only a little bit of time ingesting the whole thing. They can go back the next day and see more. However, when you come upon the story late and see the archival page, I think it's really hard to take it all in...People won't spend that much time in one sitting. But if a person is really invested in the subject, I bet they would go back.

I know that Altered Oceans came out all at once. This is probably the worst way to present a huge story online. Most people will watch one or two elements, run out of time, and then forget that the package even exists.

Tell me a story. Make me want to know what happens

I was riveted to the screen for these five clips promoting Operation Homecoming, a new PBS documentary that features the writing of U.S. troops.

Why? They told me a story. I couldn't close them because I had to know what happened at the end.

If we can do this with our videos, instant success.

Link via MultimediaShooter.

TV news coverage of Virginia Tech

Verge New Media's Jim Long covered the tragedy at Virginia Tech and talks about the resources that his station used for the coverage.

... Before you read another word of this blog, please take a moment to see the hard work of my colleagues and me. Did we do this story justice? ...

We’ve thrown tremendous resources at this. We’ve shipped in crews from Burbank, New York, Washington DC (my bureau), Dallas and probably others who I don’t even know of.

I checked out the pages (one, two and three) that Jim pointed out. I think Jim and his NBC colleagues did a fantastic job of covering the shootings for TV, but that doesn't automatically convert to great Web video coverage.

When something like this happens, the first thing people (including newspaper people) do is turn on the TV. NBC was there when people needed them. People also read online news. When the stories come out the next day in the paper, the information is already outdated.

So, for TV coverage, Jim's work is outstanding. For Web video coverage, in my opinion, it doesn't quite hit the spot. When people go online for breaking news, they're probably going to read it. They might have already been watching TV too. So all the factual information is absorbed by the time they click to see an online video. They don't need all that factual information again. What they need is to SEE things.

For that reason, I'm not impressed with most of the videos that I watched on the sites Jim listed. Most of them show anchors talking to me, giving me the factual information that I've already absorbed.

However, I did come across some things that SHOWED me what I wanted to see. For example, this "Tuesday night's closing montage" video. Oddly enough it's an audio slideshow, not a video. I thought the music was a bit cheesy, but it was still emotional and SHOWED me something. It was probably produced for TV, but it works on the web too. This collection of photos with some audio slideshows, specifically produced for the Web, is better.

InTheCircle will change soon

Months ago my friend Aaron Morris planted a seed in my thoughts about InTheCircle: It needs a more professional image to mirror its more professional content. I blew it off at first, but that seed stayed and started growing. A couple months ago I asked everyone a question: Time for a new look? I had in mind a new blogger template, but the overwhelming response was I should use Wordpress, learn CSS and create my own design.

I'm taking all of your advice.

I signed up with my new web host and got my new domain yesterday. In the coming weeks I'll be customizing my new template, and when I'm ready I'll invite everyone to the housewarming party for my new online pad.

It's exciting!

Requesting critique on roller derby video

Sunday was the second bout of the season for the Alamo City Rollergirls, and I produced this video recapping the bout. Any critique you can give would be much appreciated.

More YouTube/newspaper video analysis

Last week I started researching the question, Should newspapers post video on YouTube? I got so many good responses that I'm considering them again.

The overwhelming response to the "should we post" question is YES. One common justification is that videos on YouTube are reaching a different audience than videos on the newspaper's site. With 35 million viewers, you could attract lots of people who never would have seen your video otherwise.

Chris of The Battalion: With sites like TexAgs and the huge numbers of Aggie alumni scouring the internet for any type of Aggie news, I think our videos are hitting people who usually don't come to thebatt.com ...

Lauren of knoxnews.com: ... we post videos on YouTube and it's brought added exposure. We use our branded intro/outro images and videos to protect against copyright. There's no saying anyone still can't steal a video, but it's a risk we're willing to take for extra viewers who wouldn't find us via our homepage.

Thomas Davidson of the Tribune: ... Truth is, tho, from limited experimentation by us (and others who share their data - ain't that nice of them?): YouTube (or some other aggregator) is almost certainly additive to whatever traffic you have on your site. So: More people are seeing it ...

But how many more viewers are we talking about? From my previous queries, I got four sample video channels from newspaper.coms. I'm going to check out their channels and see how their videos are doing.

The Battalion is the student newspaper of Texas A&M. Here's the battvideo YouTube channel. The channel itself has only 16 subscribers and 470 views. But the individual videos are a different story. The numbers are all over--from 25 views to 2,410 to 3,038. The majority of videos seem to do very well. Chris of the Battalion said in his comment that the newspaper uses YouTube to embed videos on their own site, in lieu of having a suitable video player. So the views could have come from YouTube users, or from Battalion viewers. There's no telling.

journaltimes is the YouTube channel of The Journal Times of Racine, Wisconsin. There are 117 total videos as of this post, and the view numbers are still pretty good. It seems that the majority have an average of about 200 views apiece, but there are pretty consistent spikes. 1,314 for a fire story. 1,222 for a belly dancing video. More than 2,500 for a cheer leading video. The most popular video I saw was pole dancing, with 13,506 hits. All of the videos have a branded intro and icon in the top right corner.

It seems like the majority of knoxnews channel videos are doing slightly worse on average, but there are still big spikes (but fewer spikes than journaltimes). This Reno 911 video has more than 10,000 views. A Sarah Silverman video has 2,600 views. There are several more spike videos at about 2,000 hits. I got an email from Jigsha at knoxnews, and she told me their videos have a total of more than 34,000 views. If that is in addition to the views on the paper's own web site, you can't complain!

The nashuatelegraph channel has only nine videos. Views range as low as 20 for TCast to as high as 1,681. Maybe it takes more videos to get the chance to have more significant spikes? Like gambling?

I'd love to take the chance for one of my videos to get a big spike! It seems like with a branded channel, branded intros and logos in the videos, at least some traffic would come back to your site. Is that enough?

A couple other comments on my previous post issued warnings about potential revenue lost from posting on YouTube.

Elmer Ploetz says: ... You'd be losing potential ad revenue, but gaining potential for massive exposure ... The danger is that it may be short-sighted in that once you give up a potential revenue and start doing something one way, it can be hard to reverse it ...

Last week I published a synopsis of many articles I've read about media companies that partnered with YouTube. I concluded that it's mandatory to spread video content to more sites than just your own newspaper.com, but I ran across the same type of lost revenue concerns.

YouTube may compensate content creators for videos sometime in the future. For now, sites like Revver and Brightcove already do. For most videos, there's no way you'll make money from sharing them. But for videos that see the big spikes, there's a chance you could get some cash. If you've got them on YouTube, you're not going to get anything. If you've got them on a sharing site that pays, there's at least a chance that you'll get something.

However, the other sharing sites have only a fraction of the audience that YouTube has. So, if you post your videos there, will you EVER see spikes big enough to pay?

Maybe it's worth putting videos on YouTube, even though you don't get cash, just for the traffic that it could drive back to your site. As a content creator myself, I'd be happy with the simple fact that more people were watching my videos. But businesses may think differently.

What do you think?

We've answered "The Archive Question"

Will Sullivan, author of the fabulous blog Journerdism, asked this question on the yahoo group:

How do you / your paper archive the video you shot?

I know DV tapes, in themselves, act as an archive and a lot of TV stations use that method with their tapes. But we'd prefer something digital that we can access/search/manage more quickly.

I thought I had already written about our (perhaps temporary) archive solution but I searched my blog archive and can't find it. I guess I dreamed it! Anyway, here it is:

The photo department uses Jobminder for assignments. When we shoot a tape, we go into Jobminder and create an entry for our assignment. That gives us a Jobminder number, which goes on the tape label. Jobminder is a completely searchable archive of assignments.

We use NICA for our photo, story and page archiving. For our videos, we create a frame grab and enter in all the File info that we would for any other photo. We include "Multimedia" and the Jobminder number in the caption section. Those frame grabs get archived in NICA, which is searchable by the entire newsroom. We also get a NICA number assigned to the tape. The NICA entry points people to the jobminder number so they can find the tape.

We create an envelope labeled with the Jobminder number, NICA number, shoot date, photographer's name, and a brief description of the tape contents. The envelope gets filed by the Jobminder number.

Here's the contents of the envelope:

• Tape


• Printed jobminder assignment sheet


• CD with highest quality Quicktime file of finished product, WMV file of the Web version, and the FCP file which includes all the log/capture information (that makes it easy to re-capture footage at any time)

So far it seems to be working very well. Eventually we may move to a digital archival system, but that will take a lot of planning and a whole bunch of storage space. I think this system will do very well in the meantime.

Online response to Virginia Tech

Arvinder Kang, who writes a new blog called Our News Network, has done an interesting analysis of online responses to the Virginia Tech tragedy. He checked a ton of news sites, social networking sites and blogs and writes about his findings. Check it out.

The best video compatibility rant in the world

I love this rant so much I have to republish it in its entirety (even though it bitches about MySA.com). I could never say any of this better. It's from a message by Matthew Hinton on the yahoo group.

Mr. Grothe said:

“it's alway been a source of great frustration in our video department that our videos are

not easily seen, especially on Macs It took our tech people almost a year to figure out how to

view them easily”



These software incompatibilities are issues that have astounded me with the new “video revolution.” How on earth are you supposed to have a web presence if no one can see the videos?



I know a lot of people in the Newspaper industry work with Macs and Final Cut Pro. So maybe you aren’t aware of the rest of your audience. If you haven’t already, you need to bring a PC into your workflow.



http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2007/March/browser.php

This site counts your audience. Your audience as of March 2007: 58% use Internet Explorer 6 another 25% use Internet Explorer 7. That’s 83 percent of your total potential audience using Internet Explorer. Firefox is 12% and Safari is only 3%.

According to the same site 83% of your audience uses Windows XP, only 4% use a Mac OS, the rest use a different Windows Operating system.

http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2007/March/os.php



I have a PC and have heard complainants from others photographers in different states with different ISPs who can’t get the Dallas Morning News videos to load. So it’s not a single computer issue. I can sometimes get the ads for local KIA dealers to play on the DMN website but the videos rarely play. All I see is a Windows Media Player window that keeps saying “Connecting to media. . .” I could get the Tornado video to load but only after several minutes and I’m using a cable modem. Other videos never seem to load and I wonder if the average web surfer is going to bother to wait several minutes for a video to load. If I can’t do it then that means there are probably issues with 83 percent of your audience who can’t see it either.



You’re on a Mac and worried about Safari issues. It’s a poor use of your time if you only fix Safari issues for 3% of your potential audience, you need to worry about the majority of computer users on Internet Explorer 7 and 6. I realize these issues are likely beyond your control, so please don’t take anything I say personally. I’m commenting on sites as a whole.



At the very least you need a warning at the top of the page that tells people which browser and which settings to use to view your video. Also include which versions of Windows Media Player or which versions of Quicktime or Flash Player. If IE doesn’t work put a big flashing banner on the site that says “Download Firefox here”



This is also happens with other sites. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle doesn’t work either with IE 7. http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=VIDEO The videos never load. If I click on the video a few minutes later after it fails to load it says “Error 404, Sorry” But if you click on the USAToday.com tab on the same page the USA Today videos load instantly. http://usatoday.feedroom.com/



The same Rochester DNC video site works great with Firefox, but not for 83 percent of the audience using IE 6 or 7! And there is no warning or explanation for the rest of the audience!



It astounds me that one site in the same company can get their video to load instantly, USA Today, and the other papers can’t get them to load.



So this whole video revolution seems like a ridiculous amount of time, money, and effort wasted when only a small percentage of people can actually view your videos.



Another issue is archiving videos. How do you find the video after it’s been bumped off the front page for a breaking news alert (almost every site has these breaking news alerts now)? Do the videos disappear or get lost in links?



Where is your video home page or does every department have to go through a similar story like Mr. Hernandez?

“after two months of 'company' time finishing the site we

needed to post it on a server to see if it would actually work.--

another road block.-- the online department couldn't/wouldn't host the

site. don't ask me why. so the photo department paid for an outside

ISP for 10 bucks a month and it went live. now, on it's own, we get

50,000 unique visitors and another 50,000 from the hard-to-find link

on the homepage, which we fought tooth and nail for. so 100,000

uniques. nice pay off.”



As Mr. Hernandez pointed out they now have a new site which they have control over and “gone are the days of

visitors to our site saying they can't find the 'multimedia' cuz it will be on the home page, nice and big!”



But not every department gets their own site and many are hidden in odd terminology and links like “Online extra, Multimedia, Interactive, Slideshow, Web Cam, Online Special” On some sites all of these terms can be found on the homepage. Which one is for video?



How do you get your work seen if you are sharing your site with a TV station?

The San Antonio Express News’ videos are available through a link called “Interactive.” What the $%$ does interactive mean? It’s also on a shared site with KENS 5, a TV station, www.mysa.com. Kens 5 gets the video link, San Antonio Express News staffers get the “Interactive” link. It’s hard to find, it’s below a link for “web cams” on the site.



If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it does it make a sound? If a photographer spends a week on a long-term project then no one can find the link then it what’s the point? Who is served when there is no audience?



Edward R Murrow once said to a bunch of television executives in a speech about television: “This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.”



Are your computer departments, your website departments, and the top executives at your papers determined as you are? Or do we all have to get our own site like Hernandez and the San Jose Mercury News?

UPDATE: Fixed typo.

Requesting critique on artist profile

I produced this piece about a local artist who creates animated works of art from her paintings. She was cool enough to allow me to use one of her animations for the video.

ICM workshop attendees: Go watch yourself

If you attended the recent ICM workshop, check out this vlog post by Ralph Braseth. You can see all the teachers and many of the attendees.

Happy Birthday to me!

Yay! I'm 26.

Frame grabs the Dallas Morning News way

This is such an amazing gesture. The Dallas Morning News has made available the tool it uses to pull publishable frame grabs from HDV video. It supposedly results in a 65MB image file.

My coworker Kin Man Hui seems to be our resident frame grab expert. He's done quite a lot of experimenting to find the optimum shooting and sequence settings to get good ones. I bet he'll enjoy fooling around with the "D2 Voodoo tool." Maybe I'll ask him to write a review later...

Learn Final Cut--On YouTube!

Well, well: It looks like you can get more out of watching YouTube than just a pain in your stomach from laughing too hard. Notes from a Teacher did some searches recently, and found a good number of tutorials for programs like Flash, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop and Audacity. Who knew!

Just to add to it, you can find good Flash help on flashkit.com. And I like checking out dvcreators.net for Final Cut Pro help.

Thoughts that kill videos: "I'm bored" or "Nothing new"

There's so much competition online. If your video doesn't hold a viewer's attention, they'll close it and never look back. Never let people think, "I'm bored," or "Okay, I saw that enough already." You need to make sure your video keeps moving along, showing people new things and giving them new information. This video about people camping out for baseball tickets didn't do that for me.

I will give the producer credit for creativity. I thought the technique of fast-forwarding through the line was interesting and entertaining. It's a fun story, and the creative presentation carried that mood.

The problem is it just kept going on and on for more than a minute. I thought, "Okay, is that it? I already saw this."

Maybe to spice it up, the producer could have interviewed people and put the audio with the fast-forward shot of the line. Then, even though I wasn't seeing anything new, at least I would be hearing new information.

Link via a Yahoo group post by David Stephenson (subscription required).

Online Journalism Symposium review

My former teacher Cindy Royal has a review of the UT-Austin online journalism symposium that happened March 30-31. She asked a question to one of the panels about what types of skills journalism students need to enter the multimedia journalism workforce. Cindy was surprised by the answer:

Each one emphasized basic storytelling, journalism, ethics, and critical thinking. This I all agree with. But, they de-emphasized the role of technical skills. Then in the next breath, Devigal mentioned that the last two they had hired at NY Times were Flash programmers. Actions don't seem to mesh with what they said. While I agree that the journalism skills are a given and critical thinking is part of what every college student should be learning, I think that communication students with good technical skills provide a strong and valuable skill set that will be sought after by media companies ... I do not think that hiring computer science majors into media companies provides the proper perspective in telling engaging stories.

I agree with the panelists' idealistic comments. But I don't think it's reality ... Employers ARE looking for the tech skills Cindy teaches her students. I believe that I got my job at the Express-News because of the tech skills I learned in Cindy's class. HTML, CSS, Flash, video and audio editing programs. I did have the storytelling and critical thinking skills...But everyone has that. Those extra tech skills made me stand out. The things I could do with those skills were exactly what my employer needed.

I graduated in May 2006, and I was invited for an interview at The New York Times for a multimedia producer position. They told me they had decided that it was too difficult to teach their current employees tech skills like Flash. It was easier to hire a person who already had those tech skills...Even right out of college. They could teach the journalism skills to a new grad, but they didn't want to teach the tech skills to their current employees.

Cindy also reviewed other panels of the symposium.

Holy fish spout: nice cutaways and matched action

This video about restocking fish in a lake has some noteworthy edits.

I noticed two nice cutaways--One shows a lakeside plant, another shows a fishing sign. A cutaway is a detail shot you insert between sequences. It can be used as a transition. For example, we see the lake (CUT THE PAN FOR GOD'S SAKE!) and then some fish jump. Then we get a cutaway of the lakeside plant, which transitions us to the truck driving up.

I also noticed a nice matched action cut. We see a wideshot of the man walking on top of the truck. Then we cut to on top of the truck, and the man is at the same location and walking in the same direction. Seamless editing!

Definition of matched action from a film terms site:

matched action A technique in which a single camera is used to photograph a repeated sequence of action. When the various takes are edited together it appears that the scene was simultaneously photographed from various angles.

On the negative side, this video is too long! We didn't need to hear the two men blabbing quite so much.

Afraid of getting sued for your blog?

This legal and business advice from OJR is for you. It's a fallout from that whole "blogger code of ethics" discussion that's going on.

Men like online video more than women?

A study by eMarketer shows that women aren't as into online video as men.

While there are about 97 million U.S. women online, compared to about 91 million men, only 66 percent of females reported watching videos online, compared to 78 percent for their male counterparts.

Hmm...Still, 66 percent of women are watching! I'd say that's an okay number.

Link via iMedia connection.

Registration open for Online News Association conference

2007 ONA Conference and Awards Banquet
Oct. 17-19, 2007
Sheraton Centre, Toronto, Ontario

You can now register online for the Oct. 17-19 conference and awards banquet. I can't find much information about speakers or sessions yet. However, the Online Journalism Awards are announced at the conference.

Found via an email from ONA publicity chair Tiffany Shackelford.

CBS gets online video distribution

CBS signed a deal with Joost.

Programs that would be available through the partnership include the forensics crime drama CSI, the Late Show with David Letterman, reality series Survivor and CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, as well as sports offerings...

... "Today marks an important step in our strategy to distribute content broadly across the online interactive landscape on an open, non-exclusive basis," Leslie Moonves, CBS president and CEO said about Thursday's announcements, which included the creation of the new venture CBS Interactive Audience Network...

Newspapers need to start distributing content broadly too!

Just say no to pans and zooms; take control of storytelling

I found a video on the yahoo group that is very impressive in some ways, but also includes some common mistakes that beginner shooters make. Please don't pan or zoom for no reason! It's hard to fight the urge but if you do it, your video screams, "amateur!" Just say no to drugs, pans and zooms.

Overall, I'm very impressed with the video. According to the post on the yahoo group, this was shot by a photographer who had never shot video before. It's extremely good considering that fact! I'm also impressed because the video was produced at an amazing turnaround time: "We were 2/3 the way done editing when the fireworks went off, editing on a laptop. We finished it off at the paper. just after midnight." Wowsers!

If I didn't already know, I think I would be able to tell that this was a photographer-shot video. You can tell the shooter has a good eye. There are some nice detail and perspective shots, like the people pushing through the turn styles, and this one low shot with a helmet and baseball glove in the foreground and players practicing in the background. The video is edited together into a good chronological visual story.

I may also be able to tell the video was done by a photographer because of the lack of strong storytelling. Reporters are usually very comfortable with this part, but photographers must retrain themselves to become more active (they're not a fly on the wall anymore). I'm already 45 or 50 seconds into this video before there's any kind of voice. The interview is okay, but the story would have been better with more voices that could round out the story. We could hear from a ticket taker, a player, children, a concession stand worker, etc. The video is rich in visual information, but lacking a strong story.

Also, four minutes! Come on, you can't be serious! It's not that compelling. Two minutes or less would have been perfect.

How is your video assignment system?

We've got three multimedia producers at the Express-News, and obviously only three people can't do all the video-worthy stories of the whole newspaper. We do come up with our own story ideas all the time. But we're also creating a video assignment system that is somewhat similar to the photo assignment system. Our editors keep their eyes on the budgets for video-worthy stories. We also want reporters to tell us of stories they're working on (before they get on budgets) that could make good videos. It's not a wide-spread thought among reporters yet...I see stories in our paper almost every day and think to myself, "I wish I would have known about that so I could have done a video!" For example, this story about a high-school athlete battling bone cancer. Or this artist who created day-of-the-dead puppets.

Are any other multimedia producers out there experiencing similar problems? What should we do to make sure these potentially great video stories don't fall through the cracks?

UPDATE: Here's another story from our paper that could have made a video.

Ethical question about editing video

I got a really good question about ethics on a previous video critique post. In the post, I advised the shooter (who had asked for a critique) about shooting a live concert. I said to roll the tape through an entire song, then during the next song to collect a series of crowd reaction shots. Then in editing, to edit the crowd shots from Song B into the audio of song A. Here's the good question:

Isn't it journalistically dishonest to show song A and show shots of the audience reacting to song B?

I responded with this comment:

A video is similar to a still photograph in that both are visual illustrations.

If the crowd is reacting the same to both songs, then shots from either one would still accurately represent what happened.

If the reaction from the second song was a lot different from the first one, then I probably wouldn't want to use it because it wouldn't accurately represent what happened.

Basically when you choose the shots you're telling your viewer: I was there and this is what it looked like. As long as that's true (i.e. crowd shot from song B DOES look like what you saw from the crowd in Song A) then I personally would not have any ethical dilemmas.

Like many ethics questions in journalism, things aren't always white and black. I encourage others to add their two cents.

Does anyone else want to jump in on this? I'm very interested in hearing other opinions.

Express-News getting Brightcove!

I'm so excited and thrilled because MySanAntonio.com has partnered with Brightcove, which means we're getting an excellent Flash video streaming service AND a beautiful video player! This is the type of thing I've been dreaming about since June 2006 when I started working here. Woo hoo! Coming up in the world.

Here's the whole press release:

HEARST NEWSPAPERS PARTNERS WITH BRIGHTCOVE TO LAUNCH INTERNET VIDEO
CHANNELS FOR TOP U.S. NEWSPAPERS

NEW YORK and CAMBRIDGE, MA ? April 11, 2007 ? Hearst Newspapers, a
division of Hearst Corporation, and Brightcove, the Internet TV pioneer,
today announced that Hearst Newspapers will be introducing ad-supported
Internet video channels. The San Francisco Chronicle and Houston
Chronicle are expected to be two of the first papers to launch this
year.

"Video is a crucial piece to an online news and information presence
today," said Lincoln Millstein, senior vice president & director of
Digital Media for Hearst Newspapers. "We are excited to roll out
Internet video channels and vlogs using Brightcove on our newspapers'
Web sites and across the Web. The video will enhance offline content
and will also build an entire experience and community around this new
content."

With Brightcove, Hearst Newspapers will be able to easily create
ad-supported video channels that will be distributed on the newspapers'
Web sites, through affiliates across the Web and on Brightcove.com.
Additionally, the company's individual newspapers will be able to easily
tap into the creativity and opinions in their communities by soliciting
video from readers. Brightcove simplifies the process of soliciting,
reviewing and posting consumer-generated video for newspapers and for
readers. Hearst Interactive Media, a division of Hearst Corporation, is
an investor in Brightcove.

"Hearst Newspapers includes some of the most respected and widely read
publications in the news business today," said Jeremy Allaire, chairman
and chief executive officer, Brightcove. "We are excited to be working
with Hearst to engage readers with new video offerings and encourage
community involvement. The Internet video channels will not only expand
the reach of individual newspaper brands, but will also foster new
revenue opportunities through online advertising."


About Hearst Corporation


Hearst Corporation (www.hearst.com) is one of the nation's largest
diversified media companies. Its major interests include 12 daily and 31
weekly newspapers, including the Houston Chronicle, San Francisco
Chronicle, San Antonio Express-News, Seattle Post-Intelligencer and
Albany Times Union; nearly 200 magazines around the world, including
Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and O, The Oprah Magazine; 29
television stations through Hearst-Argyle Television (NYSE: HTV), which
reach a combined 18% of U.S. viewers; joint venture interests in leading
cable networks, including Lifetime, A&E, The History Channel and ESPN;
as well as business publishing, including a joint venture interest in
Fitch Group; Internet businesses; television production; newspaper
features distribution; and real estate.


About Brightcove

Brightcove is an Internet TV service that empowers video producers and
programmers to build broadband businesses while giving viewers more
choices and control over their use of video and television. Founded by
Internet pioneer Jeremy Allaire in 2004 and based in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, Brightcove is the market-leading Internet video partner
for international news and entertainment businesses, including British
Sky Broadcasting (Sky), Discovery Communications Inc., Dow Jones &
Company, Inc., MTV Networks, The New York Times Company, Reuters, Sony
BMG, Time Life, Warner Music Group, and Washingtonpost.Newsweek
Interactive.

Articles on YouTube-lovin' media companies

I did a LexisNexis search for articles about big media companies who have signed deals with YouTube to feature their content. Below are my findings. I think it's mandatory for newspaper.coms to syndicate video online so we can reach the disbursed Web audience. But I think it may be smarter for us to post videos on the sharing sites that offer some compensation. YouTube has said it is going to compensate creators, but so far, it's only worked out deals with huge media companies like NBC, CBS and some recording companies. Could newspaper.coms ride that donkey?

The most interesting article I found was "When will viral video become viable?" (PDF link) published in AdWeek. The main idea is that regardless of how popular online video has become, still no one has figured out how to make money.

This is such an interesting question: "To truly leverage the distribution possibilities of the Internet, do content producers have to unleash their content broadly, with little regard to where it shows up, which viral permits? ... Or can there be models that, more akin to syndication, distribute content selectively?"

YouTube (with the potential of more than 30 million views per month) is undoubtedly a viral syndication model. This article (like almost all the ones below) talks about NBC. An exec says the company wants its programs to have a large market reach, and it can't do that with content on its site alone because the Web audience is so widely disbursed.

So, it's mandatory to spread your content around the Web, but content owners can still benefit from some policing. For example, CBS will test drive YouTube's new content identification system which will identify CBS copyrighted material, and either remove it or pay CBS a portion of the ad revenue for it. Other video sharing sites like Revver actually do pay a video's creator a portion of ad revenue for their videos (but you'd have to get A LOT of clicks to make any real money). Brightcove is also interested in compensating content creators...Media companies can embed their own brightcove videos on their site, and sell advertising there. Then Brightcove will syndicate the videos, sell their own advertising on those, but give you a portion of the ad revenue.

Here's a very interesting point from the article: LonelyGirl15 became so popular on YouTube, where there was no system to pay her for her work. Later her agents created her own web site and also posted her videos on Revver (which DOES pay content creators). Too late though! Think of if she would have gotten all those YouTube hits on Revver instead...She'd be rich! According to the article, "the message is nonetheless clear: the price you pay for pursuing online fame for fame's sake means you could end up leaving money on the table."

I think the most interesting points from this article is that content creators MUST synicate videos to reach the disbursed Web audience, but the jury is still out over viral or more constrained syndication. There's no money from YouTube, but it has quite an audience, and it may create revenue sharing models soon. There's already money from other video sharing sites like Revver and Brightcove.

CBS signed a deal in Oct. 2006, and a PRNewswire article ("After One Month, CBS Content Among Most Viewed Videos on YouTube") in November said CBS videos had "become some of the most widely viewed content on the site." The article says that back then the company had uploaded about 300 videos, and gotten a total of 29.2 million views on them.

Quincy Smith, President of CBS Interactive, had an interesting quote: "... what's most exciting here is the extent to which CBS is learning about its audience as never before ... YouTube and allows an open dialogue between established media players and a new set of viewers." This article paints a really good picture of good consequences of CBS posting on YouTube. To keep it in perspective, remember that CBS was posting entertainment shows, which are more popular online than news videos.

I think the most interesting tidbit from this article is that the company thought it was getting "A NEW SET OF VIEWERS."

Washington Post article "To the Media, YouTube Is a Threat and a Tool." The premise of the article is that media companies were trying to decide whether YouTube would threaten their ad dollars, or act as a "powerful promotion machine" for their content. An NBC executive is quoted saying he thinks a couple (entertainment) shows have benefited significantly from online attention.

This article talks about the copyright threats that big media companies face from YouTube--Which is mainly that users are recording shows at home and illegally posting them on the site. However, the article also points out that most YouTube users don't care a flip about that copyrighted material because they're going on YouTube for videos posted by other users in their online communities.

I think the one interesting point from this article is that attention from YouTube can benefit the parent product (i.e. Your own Web site). Another point is that I don't think newspaper.coms would face copyright threats from users...I don't think our content inspires users to record it at home and illegally upload it. Besides, if we post it ourselves on YouTube, there's no reason for someone to go to the trouble of illegally copying it.

Boston Globe article "YouTube deals hint of new era for Net media." This article talks about music recording companies like Universal and BMG signing deals with YouTube. Seems against character, right? The companies decided to post all their music videos on YouTube and also allow YouTube users to produce videos using their artists music.

The article says the recording companies want to declare a truce and that "far from seeing YouTube and Google as havens for digital pirates, the media companies are coming to regard them as rich new sources of revenue."

I think the interesting point in this article is media companies think sharing videos can provide sources of revenue and that YouTube is willing to negotiate deals to allow that to happen. But would they only do that for the big dogs like CBS? Or also a newspaper? What is the point where it becomes worth it for YouTube?

Should newspapers post video on YouTube?

I'm trying to weigh the pros and cons of newspaper.coms putting videos on YouTube. To me, it seems the best thing would be that more people could find and watch your video and it could possibly drive traffic back to your site. On the negative side, are there copyright issues?

I was wondering what debates people are having in their newsrooms about putting videos on YouTube.

If you put videos on YouTube, could you post your channel page here so I can take a look? Have you seen increased traffic to your own site? Since you're not getting money for them, what exactly are you getting? Basically, what value do you see in putting videos on YouTube?

UPDATE: I posted this same question on the Yahoo group, and I'm getting some good answers. I'm posting them in the comments section of this post.

Get the RIGHT training

Mindy McAdams has a great post today about the types of online training that newsrooms should get for people in different positions.

...Your news graphics desk. Those people should be learning Flash....

You need to get audio equipment and Soundslides for your photographers.

You need to train the reporters in how to shoot video and WHAT to shoot -- if you're giving them cameras.

You need to fix your pathetic content management system so that your online people can do nice work for your Web site instead of spending hours cleaning up the mess made by the lousy CMS.

Tripod comparison in two of my videos

I was on my sticks for nearly the whole time shooting this video about people who celebrated Easter at a San Antonio park despite an unseasonal cold front. It's a stand alone video. For the most part, the people were standing around doing the same thing for an extended period of time. That made it simple to take the time to use my tripod to set up my shots. The one time I had to get off my sticks was when the children are chasing each other with confetti eggs (we call them cascarones in San Antonio). For that scene, I had to get off the sticks or I would miss the shots.

On the flip side, I was off the sticks nearly the whole time for this story about children on a field trip. It complements this print story. My coworker John Davenport at this assignment shot the photo of me at the left. I used my tripod in the beginning when the children were staying under a pavilion. I ditched it while they were hiking through the woods for an hour. I had to run ahead of them, get my shot, get some shots of their backs walking away. Then I'd run up again. I also walking right in the middle of the group for some shots. It wasn't logical to take my tripod because it would have hampered my mobility too much.

I just wanted to make this comparison to show that it's best to use the tripod as a default, but you have to make judgement calls for some situations and ditch the sticks if you must.

Talking heads (usually) don't advance a story

With the continuous talk of how online video should be different than TV news video, I'd like to put forth one simple little request: Can we ditch the unnecessary talking heads please? The TV format requires those talking heads, but we really don't need them so much.

I think that in most situations, the story is better served by more broll instead of the talking head. I'm writing about it now because I saw a video about a woman who rescues rabbits when families abandon them after Easter. The video keeps cutting back to the woman sitting in a chair talking. I would rather see her caring for the rabbits. Is it too much to ask that the videographer call ahead, find out the cleaning or feeding time, and then go shoot that action? Images of the woman actually taking care of the abandoned rabbits would help advance the story much better than her talking head. Since she would be in the action the entire time, the viewer would understand that it was her voice: We don't need to see her mouth moving to know who is talking.

Sometimes the talking head could advance the story. If the person gets emotional, then seeing his or her face allows people to understand the depth of emotion. If the person is actually doing some type of action (related to the story) during the interview, showing the talking head could advance understanding of the topic. I'm sure there are other examples.

But in general, off with their heads! Or something...

These students have a future

I'm so impressed with a multimedia package, White City Stories, which was done by students at the University of North Carolina and Santa Maria Catholic University in Peru. It's a mega-package, with four sections that each contain 3-5 chapters. It's truly multimedia, with videos, audio slideshows, info graphics and text. These students should have no problem finding a job after graduation!

I love the design of the package; especially the transitions when you click a button. When I clicked a section and then chose a chapter to watch, at first I was confused by the navigation. When you hover your mouse on the chapter title, it pops up with the names of the other chapters in that section but it's not clear how to choose the one you want. I was getting frustrated, but then I noticed the hierarchical links at the very top of the page, and it was all gravy because I could get back where I wanted.

I didn't have time to see all of the chapters (the story of my life). But below are some that impressed me, and why.

In the "Traditional Ties" section, look at the story, "A family and cultural tradition." I like this video because it contains such a visual variety and a good amount of worthwhile closeups. It's showing me interesting things. There was a nice blend between narration and the music they were playing. In the same section, I liked the "Inca ice maiden" infographic. I've always been interested in archaeological topics, and this infographic fed my desire for information while it told me a story.

In the "Industry" section I really liked the "High plains herding" audio slideshow. I felt awful for the old man and his problems! The audio was interesting and kept the story moving.

It really is a nice package! If you saw some really great chapters that I didn't mention, please point them out.

Link via Mindy McAdams (it took me forever to get to this).

Ignore 'no tripod' advice

Michael Rosenblum is advising newspaper video shooters to ditch the tripod. He's a very respected dude in the realm of video, so I'm confused that he would give this advice. I think it's completely wrong. He gets pretty idealogical about the decision to ditch the tripod; Something about how TV has no power, and it's dying, and newspaper video should make a new path (NO TRIPODS allowed).

As newspapers move into online video, they can embrace the traditions of photojournalism - or they can embrace the traditions of television.

Let us hope they move toward the former….

Because the latter is really a dead end.

All that about a tripod! Melodrama! Simply using a tripod or not isn't going to lead newspaper video towards a deadend. I did not decide to use a tripod because of some idealogical decision to be like TV. I use the tripod because it makes my shots look better. I use it because rock solid shots allow my viewer to focus intently on the subject in my frame and the story I'm trying to tell.

I wonder whether Rosenblum thought about this:

First, many newspapers are starting out using consumer-grade video equipment, and the cameras are tiny. Very hard to keep still.

Second, (I've said this before) if the theater is the big screen, and TV is the small screen, that makes web video the teeny tiny screen. The importance of close-ups is magnified because the video is so small...You can't see details at all with a WS, and a MS is still hard to see. Close ups are even more important than for TV.

So, you must shoot tight, and you're possibly using tiny consumer-grade video cameras. The shakiness would be extremely distracting. Also, newspaper video is so new that many shooters are brand spankin' new. That adds another shakiness factor. All that movin' and shakin' is going to distract your viewer from the story you're trying to tell.

It really isn't that difficult to bring a tripod and use it. I just don't get why there's so much resistance! It becomes like second nature when you've got some practice under your belt. That small amount of work pays off big!

Old audio slideshow news (but nice to read again)

Keith Jenkins, writing for Poynter, talks about the powerful storytelling ability of audio with photos. I don't think this storytelling form is quite so "new" as the article makes it seem, and none of the thoughts in the article are particularly groundbreaking. But I do like the way he puts it!

When coupled with photographs, audio adds context to a story. In the best instances, it does more than let you hear what you are seeing on screen. It gives you another layer of information.

Sound storytelling, especially when it features the voices of the subjects themselves, provides depth and dimension that a series of photographs simply cannot provide ...

Some of this year's best entries brought the judges to the verge of tears, testimony to the emotional power of the audio-visual combination.

Link via cyberjournalist.

Request for critique on video

A reader, Mario, has asked a great question in the comments on another post and has requested a critique on two of his videos (one of a live concert and a second video on musicians). I'll give my two cents, and I encourage anyone else to offer constructive criticism if you feel you can help.

Here's Mario's question:

If you are a crew of one(with only one camera), attending a live show, where you are only alouded to photograph / film one or two songs, and you are grounded on one specific spot (the end of the concert hall, just near the sound people), how can one produce a video that doesn't uses zooms or pans ?

First off, YOU SHOULD HAVE USED YOUR TRIPOD!!!!! Shame on you.

Second, the video of the live concert is an extremely difficult shooting situation since you are forced to stay in one location for the whole shoot, and it's so far away. The advice below could be applied to both videos though.

There is a way to edit it with no zooms or pans. I would have rolled the tape for the entire length of one song, to make sure you're recording the audio for the entire song. You can zoom and pan during that song and get different shots of the stage. For example, get the extreme wide shot for 10-15 seconds, zoom in to a medium shot of one side of the stage for 10-15 sec, pan over for a medium shot of the second side of the stage, and just keep repeating. When the first song was over, I'd stop continuously rolling and start collecting b-roll shots. You would compose your shot, record for 10 seconds, stop recording, recompose, shoot, etc. Since there's not many new shots you can get of the stage, being so far away, I'd try to get a variety of shots of the audience reacting to the music.

When you got back to the office to edit, I would lay down the audio and video from the entire song. Then delete all of your pans and zooms, so all you have is rock solid shots (TRIPOD!!!) of the band. In the sections that you deleted, you could insert your crowd reaction shots.

Here's an example of a video I produced where I used these techniques.

I think the thing to remember is that it's not your job to record everything. Reporters don't transcript an entire interview in their stories. Photographers don't turn in everything that they shot. Video is no different. It's not your job to regurgitate all the video that you shot. What you're trying to do is record the images that will allow you to reconstruct sequences that illustrate what happened.

Mario, thanks for putting yourself in the hot seat! I hope it can help you and others who have experienced the same issues.

My critical eye is contagious

I got an email from Andy Donnan, who attended my video training session at the CICM workshop. He sent me this video about riding the rails with the message "i saw rules being broken, handheld, panning, zooming." I would also add that the video is long and boring. It doesn't respect viewers' time limits or attention span.

I'm thrilled that Andy knows enough now to recognize such mistakes. I firmly believe that making your own mistakes and then correcting them is the absolute best way to learn. Second to that is being able to see mistakes in other videos and trying not to repeat them in your own work. Way to go Andy!

If anyone else wants to share either good or bad examples of videos, so everyone can learn from them, please shoot me an email: angelabgrant [at] gmail [dot] com. I'll republish your comments and maybe add some of my own.

Innovative database story

At the CICM conference, keynote speaker Jennifer Carroll impressed me talking about how Gannett papers are trying to use more databases to create useful applications for readers. I also attended a breakout session with Rick Burnes of Faneuil Media, which created Atlas Maps, and learned more about the power of databases to tell stories.

Now that I'm back home, I've got databases on my mind.

So naturally I'm impressed with Matt Waite's use of a database to map noise levels in his city. He actually went out and did reporting to create the database, and then mapped it. Check out his post for a detailed step-by-step description of what he did.

Weird being on the other side

Ralph Braseth and Bryan Murley of CICM interviewed me on camera while I was there in Nashville. It feels really weird on that end! Here's what I said. They've also posted clips from Jennifer Carroll of Gannett and John Seigenthaler. I bet that more will come.

WTF??? Potty internet?

What kind of Google joke is this?

The Toilet Internet Service Provider (TiSP) project is a self-installed, ad-supported online service that will be offered entirely free to any consumer with a WiFi-capable PC and a toilet connected to a local municipal sewage system.

Stealing time on work

One of the main reasons I try to keep my videos short is because I know people are usually at work when they're surfing the net. I figure they're already cheating on the job, and they probably want to do it quick. Watching a video is kind of crossing a line ... Somehow it's more guilt inspiring than just reading a couple paragraphs.

Now that YouTube is so popular, and video viewing is up, I thought there might be a chance that eventually people would be watching more video at home. Maybe they'd spend more time watching. Meaning maybe we could safely produce longer videos.

But the time has not come yet. Keep things short!
Mark Cuban got curious a couple weeks ago (yes, I'm that far behind) and looked up some stats on comscore.com.

When do more people watch online video than any other time ? From 10am to 5pm, mon to fri. Thats when 30pct of all online video viewing takes place. If you want to go a little earlier, for those that get to work early, add another 7pct. So that 37pct of all online viewing activity takes place from 7am to 5pm. Or put another way, about 50pct of all video viewing during WEEKDAYS (as opposed to 37pct for the entire week) happens from 7am to 5pm. Thats a big number.

The next biggest viewing activity came just as I expected, after work hours. From 5pm to 8pm is when 14pct of all online viewing activity takes place.


What percentage of people watch video on the internet during some part of the prime time TV hours during the week ?

12pct. On the weekends, that falls to 6pct.

Link via Cronkbyte.

Two lowrider videos

Hearst Corp a while back launched 210SA, a weekly news magazine aimed at young people. I had an assignment Sunday to shoot video of a lowrider festival for 210SA.com. I found out the morning of that MySanAntonio.com also wanted a video of the festival. So I had to figure out how to shoot two videos of the same thing, but make them different.

For the Express-News video, I focused on the Martinez family, which works on lowriders together every chance they get.

For the 210SA video, I did a more general overview of the event.

Upgrading is a bitch

I upgraded my blogger template tonight. I refused for so long because I didn't like the bit about deleting my old template ... Now I know why I was so stubborn. I had to spend an hour customizing it again, including adding back my blogroll and all that. What a pain in the ass!

Sorry if your feed reader is going all crazy with my old posts...I revised some labels.

I've been shot

My coworker John Davenport shot this photo of me when we were together on the same assignment. It was a fun assignment--We got to run around at a park, something I enjoy doing anyways. I'll post a link to my video when it runs.

NPPA winners

Go check out the March winners of the NPPA multimedia contest. I'm sometimes surprised by them.

Here's my favorites:
Hardwater sailors (except yucky intro)

Last Words

An ordinary family

Tour of California

CICM multimedia workshop video lesson

I had a great time this weekend teaching a video training session at the Center for Innovation in College Media's multimedia workshop in Nashville. From the early responses, it seems that the people who came learned a lot of skills that they can take back and begin using right away. Don't take it from me: Check out feedback from Matt Davis, Tiffany Tcheng and Chris Drain.

As promised, I'm posting my lesson and worksheets.

WORKSHEETS (word documents for download)

• My lecture outline


• iMovie lesson (note: if you use this, change the "getting started" section to include instructions on importing video. Also, instructions about how to create subclips--using the triangles, copying and pasting--may need to be changed to just Edit--> crop)


• Flash video lesson (My instructions for the quality settings and video size are not the Bible. Do your own experiments and find out what works best for your site).


• Resources

LESSON GOAL
My goal was to give people enough knowledge so they would feel comfortable going home, picking up a camera, and immediately starting to shoot and edit video. I couldn't give them ALL the information they would need in only three hours, so I told them they would need to take an active role to continue their video education. The best way to do it would be to start shooting and editing now, make mistakes, and fix them.

TOP SHOOTING TIPS

• Use a tripod--It's the single most important factor in shooting a technically sound video.


• Think before you press--It's easy to get caught in the moment and feel you must record everything that's happening around you. Don't do that. You need to make sure you're gathering the video shots you need to build your sequences while editing; Don't record more than you need. You need to make sure your lighting and sound is good.

BASIC SHOTS

• Wide shot (WS)--Shows your entire subject, and some surroundings. Establishes a sense of place, a sense of the surrounding action. Provides context for a story.


• Medium shot (MS)--Focuses more on your subject, but still shows a good amount of it. On a person, it's from the chest up.


• Close up (CU)--Shows details of your subject and the action. On a person, it would be the face. You'd also want to shoot close ups of everything else that's happening with the action.


• Relative definition--For a person, a WS is the whole body, a MS is chest and up, and a CU is the face. For other subjects, the definition of WS MS and CU are relative. If you're shooting my arm, from the elbow to fingertip could be your WS; the wrist and up could be your MS; the fingers could be your CU.


• Close ups are king--Web video is the itsy-bitsy screen. Wide shots establish place and surrounding action, but the viewer can't see any detail because the video is so tiny. Close ups are the way you'll really show people what you need to show them.


• Pans--The camera slowly sweeps across the scene. There's a time and place for pans, like when you're tracking your subject's fast motion. Don't do pans just for the hell of it.


• Zooms--Never ever zoom. You can do it to recompose your shots before you press record. But never zoom while you are recording! It is amateur.


• Practical reason to limit pans/zooms--The compression codecs we use to put video on the web don't do very well with motion. If your video has a lot of motion, you can't get away from that. But don't pan and zoom for no reason, because when compressed, it'll look like crap.

HOW TO SHOOT A SEQUENCE
Let's say we're shooting an aerobics instructor. Your first stop is directly in front of her. You compose a WS, press record, and count to 10. Then recompose a MS, press, count to 10. Then a CU of her face. Then her feet going up an down. Then her arms pumping back and forth. When your done with that angle, move about 60 degrees either way, and repeat the exercise. Keep moving around the subject and shoot your WS, MS, CU, CU sequences.

As you move around, you'll continue seeing new details to shoot for your CUs. Collecting such a great visual variety of shots will allow you such freedom to choose during editing. You'll be able to cut every three to four seconds, keeping your video fresh and compelling.

When stories have a process, shoot sequences for each step in that process. In the aerobics example, I'd want to shoot sequences of stretching, warming up, the workout, water breaks, etc.

LIGHTING ISSUE TO AVOID
I didn't delve too much into lighting, because I figure that cameras that people will buy will have fairly good auto white balance. The basic issue is that different types of light (sun, tungsten, florescent) actually project different colors. Our eyes can't see that because our brains make automatic adjustments so things look normal. That's sort of what the white balance on a camera does.

The major thing beginners should look out for is backlighting. When there is a bright source of light behind your subject, like the sun, a spotlight or windows, your camera will expose itself so the light looks great and your subject looks black. When you manually adjust the exposure to make your subject look good, the backlighting looks like a white hot fire. When you're shooting an interview or broll, keep your eye open for backlighting and MOVE if possible. If not, at least try adding light.

SOUND ISSUES
Sound may be the most important thing about your video. Even if you have the most beautiful shots and most clever sequences, if you have bad sound, your video sucks. Always use an external mic, never the camera's internal mic. If you're looking to buy a camera, make sure you buy one with external mic input. Also make sure you buy one with a headphone jack. You should always wear headphones while you're recording so you can monitor what you are getting.

When I'm shooting my sequences, I usually use a shotgun mic, which will only record exactly what it's pointed at (nothing to the sides, nothing to the back). I like using it for b-roll because I can make sure I'm recording the sound that comes from the subject I'm shooting, and not much else. When I'm doing interviews I like to use an omni-directional mic, which records in an arc pattern right in front of it. I prefer to use an omni-directional lavaliere mic, which clips onto the source's shirt. That way I don't have to worry about holding up a stick mic.

INTERVIEW AUDIO
For interviews, it's important to train your ears to hear the background noise in your surroundings. Try to move away from as much background noise as possible. If you're in a crowded room, move. If you're next to a busy street, move. If you're near a speaker, move. Etc. You don't want any background noise in your interview, because you won't have control over turning it down later. Of course, it's impossible to get away from ALL background noise. Just control as much as you can. If you can't get away from the background noise, at least make sure not to point your mic right at a loud source of noise.

INTERVIEW FRAMING
Frame your interview as a MS to CU. Pay attention to the background too. You don't want it to be ugly, and you don't want it to be distracting. If possible, it should be well composed, pretty, and relevant to the story.

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
I like to get to the scene and gather all my b-roll first. This gives me a chance to observe things and get an idea what the story is. I also sometimes casually chat with the sources so I know the story. When I turn on my camera for the interview, I usually already know what questions I need to ask to get the information that will tell the story in a clear and effective manner. Try to ask what you need, and no more. This will help you during editing since you'll have less material to go through.

Ask your questions, and SHUT UP. When we're talking to people, we naturally give verbal affirmations to let them know we're listening and give feedback. We say "yeah," "uh-huh," "Oh?" "Really!" Etc. With video, you'll record those interruptions and it could mess up the quote that you want to use. Instead of using your voice, give those affirmations with facial expressions and body language.

STORY STRUCTURE
This is an exciting time for online news video, because there's no set format and people are experimenting. You should ride that donkey! You can use a voiceover if you really need to, but don't feel that it's a requirement; you can also arrange the source soundbytes to form a complete and interesting narration. You can tell a complete story, from beginning to end, or you can use video to illustrate just one aspect of the story and allow text to tell the rest. Think outside the box and have fun.

There are some important constraints that you must keep in mind though. Your video is competing for people's attention, and your competition is everything else on the Internet. That's a lot of stuff. That means your video must be compelling enough to capture that ADHD attention span. Make sure your video will hook people within the first 5-10 seconds. Never allow your narration or images to become redundant. If someone thinks for one second "This is sort of boring," or "I already saw that," then you've lost them forever. A video has to be extremely compelling to hold people for more than, say, two minutes. Respect your viewers' time limits!

Complete and compelling audio slideshow

This story about the political awakening of housing project residents in France may be one of the most complete audio slideshows I've ever seen all the way through. I could watch it all the way through because it stays compelling the whole time. This is so hard to do!

I couldn't peel my eyes away from the creative unveiling of riot photographs in the introduction. We get to hear from a wide variety of people, but they all give us new information so the story does not stall. The voiceover is providing factual information that does not repeat the information we get in the photos. The voice is clear and interesting, and never says anything cheesy.

Link via MultimediaShooter.