Verdi July 5th, 2007
Tuesday evening (Wednesday morning for some!) we had our first Critical Response Flash Meeting. It was big success and a lot of fun. All together we had about a dozen people show up to talk about videos by David Howell and Cheryl Colan. Follow this link to replay the whole 2-hour meeting. There was lots of good discussion about make great videos. Thanks to everyone who showed up and put all that energy into making this really valuable.
I’ll be organizing another one soon and will announce it here.
Verdi July 2nd, 2007
A couple of weeks ago we started talking about critiquing videoblogs in a flash meeting. Like I say in the video, I’ve used this great feedback process with my theater and I think it’ll work well for talking about videoblogs too.
So, I set up another flash meeting for Tuesday, July 3 at 23:00 GMT (that’s 7 p.m. EST, 6 p.m. CST, 4 p.m. PST here in the U.S.). You can figure out your time in relation to GMT here.
This is a moderated process where the responsibility of the audience is to not bring their own agenda and to have a desire for the artist to do her/his best work.
For this first meeting well be looking at two videos:
“Stop, Look And Listen” by David Howell
and
“Little Iraq” by Cheryl Colan
There is limited space in the flash meeting so email michael@freevlog.org for an invitation.
Continue Reading for more details on the process Continue Reading »
Verdi July 1st, 2007
Apple has made a big deal about all the iPhone features like it’s ability to play videos from YouTube and iPod compatible videos that you’ve synced to it from iTunes. The one thing they haven’t show is whether it can play iPod compatible videos right from the web using Safari. So my daughter Lauren and I went down to the Apple store today to test it out. What we found out is that the iPhone is pretty slick and handled all the iPod videos we tried. They all worked - those embeded with the blip.tv copy and paste code, with the vPIP plugin, with the Freevlog Pop-up Maker, and even old videos that we just linked to directly. So the bottom line is, as long as your videos work on the iPod they’ll work on the iPhone.
iphone
Ryanne April 30th, 2007
Exactly one month ago, SuperHappyVlogHouse happened. The San Francisco contingent decided to make Creative Commons license bumpers for all to use. With more and more aggregator sites pulling vloggers’ content from RSS feeds, it’s important to clearly state your CC license for all to witness. What better way to do that than to put it right in your video? Use these bumpers which we’ve added to the Creative Commons Wiki: Marking Work page to display your license in your video. Or you can make your own bumper and share it on the CC Wiki as well! The above trailer created with all CC licensed media by Jackson West.
Technorati Tags: creativecommons, cc, superhappyvloghouse, shvh, sanfrancisco, freevlog
Verdi March 19th, 2007
We’ve been talking about it for at least 9 months now and working on it since December. There’s always more to do but we spent all weekend indoors (not that being indoors is unusual for either of us) just to get this part finished up. So check out our new and improved get started tutorial, now in giant sized 640 X 480 resolution!
Ryanne February 6th, 2007
Click here to download
Lives in Focus is vlogging the impact on family relations and dynamics when one or more member of a family is incarcerated. How do some families overcome the separation, financial strain, social stigma and guilt while others crumble? Why is there a greater likelihood that a child of someone who is in prison will also end up in jail at some point? How do society, politics or special interests help or hinder family relations?
A note from Jay Dedman, Lives in Focus’ advocate:
I met Sandeep when he wrote an NY Times article on Videoblogging back in 2005. It was the first time a journalist really seemed to respect what we were doing in the Videoblogging Community. We weren’t just people making funny viral videos, but actually had the ability to make videos of consequence. He ended up starting his own videoblog, Lives in Focus, helping set the example of what we can do with this new medium without boundaries. Any ambitious project needs some money to get started, so help fund the work we want to see.
This is the new project over at Have Money Will Vlog. We fully support this project and hope you will too by going over there and throwing Sandeep a dime!
Project Site: Lives in Focus-Family Life Behind Bars
Subscribe HERE.
Verdi February 5th, 2007
I’ve been working hard on SpinXpress for a while now and I’m testing out a new feature we just added to the website - group web pages. Basically the idea is that I’ve set up this group in SpinXpress to share videoblogging tips and work-in-progress tutorials. What happens is instead of publishing these unfinished works to web we share them directly from computer to computer with the people in the group. Now we’ve just added group web pages to the SpinXpress site so you can have access to the files without having to install the program or be a part of the group. As long as my computer is online you can download the videos directly from me on the Freevlog Help page. And if you’d like have access to these all the time, just download SpinXpress and then login on the website and send a request to be added to the group (lower left hand side of the group page).
Ryanne January 24th, 2007
More and more we’re seeing videoblogs pop up all over the world- people telling their stories, showing their cultures. Gokcen, curator for Moments In Turkey, is a tech author interested in spreading vlogging in Turkey. Here at Freevlog we’re ecstatic to see international perspectives being exposed through video on the web. Cheers!
Subscribe to Moments In Turkey.
Verdi January 21st, 2007
Holy cow. I’ve been wondering why none of the latest posts seemed to have generated even one comment. Well it turns out that the Askimet spam filter not only caught 30,000 + spam comments (thanks!) it also caught the last 40 or so legit comments. I guess I need to peruse that moderation list more often. Sorry about that folks. Now let me see if I can answer all of those comments…
Ryanne January 14th, 2007
direct .mov file
Hurray for good compression settings! These settings are sure to give you a lucious, QuickTime, widescreen experience. Not downloadable for the iPod, but great for watching on a bigger screen. In this screencast we’re using the h.264 codec on the multi-pass setting, which, in my opinion is some of the best looking compression with the best size files you can make right now. (BTW-make sure you’ve updated to the newest QuickTime 7). I will always love 3ivx, but honestly h.264 just looks better. If you’re on a PC and using Windows Movie Maker, Adobe Premiere or Avid Xpress- be sure to export as a DV-AVI, open that up in QuickTime Pro and use these same settings (meaning you can skip straight to minute 1:40 in the screencast and go from there!). Enjoy, good luck, keep your chin up and keep compressin’!
runtime: 6:40, size: 640×480, 21.4mb
Technorati Tags: screencast, screencasting, tutorial, howto, h264, codec, quicktime, imovie, finalcutpro, mov, videocompression, compression, freevlog
Ryanne January 13th, 2007
direct .mov file
As many of you know, Verdi and I are the proud authors of The Secrets of Videoblogging on Peachpit Press. Last year we gave a few presentations on videoblogging at MacWorld. Gary-Paul, Peachpit Superstar, was in attendence. He started his own blog, Gary-Paul TV and went another step further and built Peachpit TV, home of fabulous Author Tips, Road Shows and Super Tutorials (We love tutorials!).
runtime: 2:42, size: 480×270, 10.2mb
Technorati Tags: peachpittv, peachpitpress, gary-paul, videoblog, video, freevlog
Verdi January 9th, 2007
Direct download
So there wasn’t a new version of iLife announced today but Apple did announce two products that will probably have a big effect on videoblogging later this year. The new iPhone has a 480 X 320 screen allowing widescreen video to fill the screen when you turn it sideways and Apple TV supports 720p HD video. If videobloggers desire to create videos that play on the current iPod is any guide, you’ll be seeing more widescreen and HD feeds as these things become available (can you say business deduction?).
Tags: iphone, ipod, apple tv
Verdi January 7th, 2007
While it seems like a bunch of people will be at CES this week, Ryanne and I will be at Macworld plugging our book and trying to get some interviews and demos of new videoblogging stuff (mostly for Mac users) like iLife 07, iTV and Adobe’s new Production Studio.
Ryanne January 2nd, 2007
direct .mov file
We are very excited to announce Swajana.com, our collaboration with a crew of Indian video makers that Jay and Ryanne met while in Pune, India. Meet the whole gang on the About page! The Swajana crew will be posting videos every week of daily life in India. We’re pretty sure it’s one of the first of it’s kind out of India, so please feel free to contribute ideas to the wiki and let us know what you think by commenting and subscribing. If you really really like the site, grab a button/badge and link to us. Enjoy!
Technorati Tags: india, pune, videoblog, swajana, video, collaboration , Spin Xpress, Freevlog
Ryanne December 13th, 2006
click here to download
Welcome to the crazy dark art of compressing video for the iPod! It’s not that hard if you follow the steps, but Apple seems to always be changing these specifications. This is the most up to date info that we have, so hopefully it will stay current for some time. In this screencast we’re using the h.264 codec on the multi-pass setting, which, in my opinion is some of the best looking compression with the best size files you can make right now. (BTW-make sure you’ve updated to the newest QuickTime 7). I will always love 3ivx, but honestly h.264 just looks better. Enjoy, good luck, keep your chin up and keep vloggin’!
runtime: 5:29, size: 640×480, 26mb
Technorati Tags: screencast, screencasting, tutorial, howto, h264, codec, quicktime, imovie, finalcutpro, ipod, mpeg4, itunes, videocompression, compression, freevlog
QuickTime
