Brian / Charlie
* TIP: Audio Slate
* QUESTION: Limited location for action subjects
* QUESTION: Vidcasting – announce 4-part series
1. Planning – freq, bandwidth
2. Production – value, speed
3. Encoding – for DL or stream file size, bitrate
4. Distribution – DL, stream, RSS, considerations for each
PLUG: Contact us at: Web /forum Page
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View the Transcript
Audio Slate
Brian Peterson: Welcome. I'm Brian Peterson, Editor in Chief.
Charlie Fulton: I'm Charlie Fulton, Associate Editor.
Brian Peterson: And we're here with Tips and Suggestions. Let's start with the tip, and this one came from a world traveler, Abdul Kater Katri, and not surprisingly, he was in India. And what he says is, we went on a long vacation in India recently, visited several hill stations in the Southern state where tea is grown.
He shot video while he toured those places, and now he’s home, he started doing his editing. The problem is, since all the tea plantations are on the hill slopes and look the same, guess what he has a problem with? He has no idea where he was, and trying to locate and put graphics to match each one of those locations is becoming very difficult.
So he learned the hard way, like I think a lot of us do. He said the tip of today would be, had I just given the audio slate. In other words, you roll the camera and you just mention, hey, we’re here at, whatever the place they happen to be, I’m failing my Indian location.
Charlie Fulton: I know. I couldn’t tell you either.
Brian Peterson: Okay. So an audio slate. Just a really good idea.
Charlie Fulton: Yeah. Definitely. It’s a, I’ve got one here from Roger Mcorman. It looks like Californian coast. I know the area code.
And he was at Burbank Videomaker Expo 2006. Thanks for stopping by. One topic he was interested in was vidcasting. He wanted to come see the Videomaker vidcasting presentation, but he was unable to hear our speaker, who was Matt York, as a matter of fact. So he’s looking for a few, few more bread crumbs on vidcasting, few more leads.
Brian Peterson: Well, and I’m sorry, but bread crumbs are exactly what we’re running, if, in fact, we’re going to tease the bread crumbs.
Charlie Fulton: Yeah.
Brian Peterson: But thank you, Roger. I’m sorry you couldn’t make it to Expo.
Charlie Fulton: He did.
Brian Peterson: Oh, he didn’t make it to that Expo seminar. But what we are planning on doing right now, in large part thanks to your request, and some others that we’ve received recently, is do a four part series here on our vidcast that’ll cover the whole game of how you put together a vidcast.
We just experienced it ourselves in episode number 10. Obviously, we weren’t able to slog through the do’s and the don’t’s, so we’ll be happy to share those with you. Essentially the four parts are going to cover what we found to be the four major challenges to putting one of these together.
First of which is, planning.
Charlie Fulton: Planning is huge.
Brian Peterson: I mean, you’ve got to consider so much when you’re going into this, and of course, we learned back end very much like our first tip did. After the fact. You know, you need to consider things like bit rate, bandwidth, where you’re going to post your files if it’s not on your server or your own host.
So, we’ll talk about planning on our next vidcast. We’ll also then, of course, move into production. What’s different about producing one of these versus just a regular DVD that folks might be putting together.
Charlie Fulton: Right-
Brian Peterson: The third element seems to be, and this is the big one. We’re still grappling with it, as are I think some other vidcasters. And that’s encoding. Really, what’s best software to use, what bit rates do we want to try, where is that compromise in quality versus performance?
And then lastly, distribution. Do you want to do RSS, like we do it here, streaming, straight download, remember that old style?
So, anyway, four parts series on vidcasting, thank you, Roger, for the question, and join us next four episodes where we’ll be talking briefly about that, and more in our magazine in future issues.
Charlie Fulton: Episodes, yeah. All right.
And I’ve got a question from Tim, and, Tim and Karen, it looks like, and his question is, I want to videotape a tennis match from the back fence. I plan to use a camcorder with a wide angle lens, and you know, the size of the lens milimeter. So, this is an interesting question. And you can really deal a lot with that sports videography.
Brian Peterson: Yeah. It kind of begs a larger question. Of course, a lot of folks are doing sports videography, and one of the big things that is always an issue is limited location. I mean, you don’t have access to the best seat in the house all the time.
Charlie Fulton: Right.
Brian Peterson: So, maybe, I think we’ll some brainstorming over the last couple of days on this, we all have experience doing this. So, let’s just throw a few tips.
One, of course.
Charlie Fulton: 180 degree rule. If you’re standing on the one side of the line, you have to stay on that side of the line. Otherwise, you’re going to hopelessly confuse your audience. Like, what direction did that serve come from? You know, you don’t want to make anything more confusing than it has to be.
Brian Peterson: So stay on that side, whether it’s a football game, race car. I mean, you could say this about any sport where there’s activity going from left to right, or round in circles.
Charlie Fulton: Exactly.
Brian Peterson: 180 degree rule is one we all agree on, because it’s very important not to get run over by cars and balls, too.
Charlie Fulton: Yes. Yes, yes.
Brian Peterson: The next one is try to vary your height, and your angle. If you can get up higher than the stands, you can get all sorts of different wide angle shots that give you a place to cut to, and in fact, I’ve certain locations where you’ve been nosebleed seats, as they call them.
Charlie Fulton: Right.
Brian Peterson: You get such a wide angle shot, you can’t even tell what’s going on the field. So, it makes a great opportunity to cut to things, as long as you kind of the sort of blurry red people over there, and sort of blurry blue people are on the same side. You’re okay to cut anything during any play.
Charlie Fulton: Right.
Brian Peterson: So that helps. Vary in height and location, or angle.
Charlie Fulton: Definitely. Another thing to consider is that, as the day progresses, the match goes on, the sun is going to be tracking through the sky. So, if you’ve got a good location where your equipment is sheltered from the sun in one hour, it might not be in another hour. So, do keep that in mind.
Brian Peterson: And I think there’s another that goes, probably without saying, and it’s an old adage that it’s easier to beg forgiveness then ask permission. You know, on lot of these locations, you’ll see security hanging out in different places, and sometimes on best places, you don’t want to be on the other side of the fence, or on the other side of the restricted zone. I’ve had luck just asking permission, and I mean, not even going, I didn’t even had to go to like the manager of the facility, but just security folks. So, be cool with security folks, and sometimes, just the fact that you have somewhat professional looking camera, you know, you don’t have to have a channel 44 on your camera to get in access into some locations.
And yeah, just be cool, don’t go where obviously you’re not allowed to, at least get that permission unless it’s something so valuable that you’ll know you’ll make enough money to retire on.
Charlie Fulton: Yes.
Brian Peterson: Okay. I think that’s it for tips. We’ve got a reader show case coming up next-
Charlie Fulton: Yes.
Brian Peterson: a fun music video.
Before we do that, we always invite you to send us more tips and questions at editor@videomaker.com, and if we haven’t covered it and we have some time, we’ll be happy to cover it here on vidcast.
Charlie Fulton: Absolutely. And you can also visit our blog at videomaker.com/blog, and be sure to visit the forums, at videomaker.com/forums.
Brian Peterson: Up next, Charlie, you’re staying here.
Charlie Fulton: I am.
Brian Peterson: Morgan is coming up. We’re going to be watching some video.
Brian Peterson: Welcome. I'm Brian Peterson, Editor in Chief.
Charlie Fulton: I'm Charlie Fulton, Associate Editor.
Brian Peterson: And we're here with Tips and Suggestions. Let's start with the tip, and this one came from a world traveler, Abdul Kater Katri, and not surprisingly, he was in India. And what he says is, we went on a long vacation in India recently, visited several hill stations in the Southern state where tea is grown.
He shot video while he toured those places, and now he’s home, he started doing his editing. The problem is, since all the tea plantations are on the hill slopes and look the same, guess what he has a problem with? He has no idea where he was, and trying to locate and put graphics to match each one of those locations is becoming very difficult.
So he learned the hard way, like I think a lot of us do. He said the tip of today would be, had I just given the audio slate. In other words, you roll the camera and you just mention, hey, we’re here at, whatever the place they happen to be, I’m failing my Indian location.
Charlie Fulton: I know. I couldn’t tell you either.
Brian Peterson: Okay. So an audio slate. Just a really good idea.
Charlie Fulton: Yeah. Definitely. It’s a, I’ve got one here from Roger Mcorman. It looks like Californian coast. I know the area code.
And he was at Burbank Videomaker Expo 2006. Thanks for stopping by. One topic he was interested in was vidcasting. He wanted to come see the Videomaker vidcasting presentation, but he was unable to hear our speaker, who was Matt York, as a matter of fact. So he’s looking for a few, few more bread crumbs on vidcasting, few more leads.
Brian Peterson: Well, and I’m sorry, but bread crumbs are exactly what we’re running, if, in fact, we’re going to tease the bread crumbs.
Charlie Fulton: Yeah.
Brian Peterson: But thank you, Roger. I’m sorry you couldn’t make it to Expo.
Charlie Fulton: He did.
Brian Peterson: Oh, he didn’t make it to that Expo seminar. But what we are planning on doing right now, in large part thanks to your request, and some others that we’ve received recently, is do a four part series here on our vidcast that’ll cover the whole game of how you put together a vidcast.
We just experienced it ourselves in episode number 10. Obviously, we weren’t able to slog through the do’s and the don’t’s, so we’ll be happy to share those with you. Essentially the four parts are going to cover what we found to be the four major challenges to putting one of these together.
First of which is, planning.
Charlie Fulton: Planning is huge.
Brian Peterson: I mean, you’ve got to consider so much when you’re going into this, and of course, we learned back end very much like our first tip did. After the fact. You know, you need to consider things like bit rate, bandwidth, where you’re going to post your files if it’s not on your server or your own host.
So, we’ll talk about planning on our next vidcast. We’ll also then, of course, move into production. What’s different about producing one of these versus just a regular DVD that folks might be putting together.
Charlie Fulton: Right-
Brian Peterson: The third element seems to be, and this is the big one. We’re still grappling with it, as are I think some other vidcasters. And that’s encoding. Really, what’s best software to use, what bit rates do we want to try, where is that compromise in quality versus performance?
And then lastly, distribution. Do you want to do RSS, like we do it here, streaming, straight download, remember that old style?
So, anyway, four parts series on vidcasting, thank you, Roger, for the question, and join us next four episodes where we’ll be talking briefly about that, and more in our magazine in future issues.
Charlie Fulton: Episodes, yeah. All right.
And I’ve got a question from Tim, and, Tim and Karen, it looks like, and his question is, I want to videotape a tennis match from the back fence. I plan to use a camcorder with a wide angle lens, and you know, the size of the lens milimeter. So, this is an interesting question. And you can really deal a lot with that sports videography.
Brian Peterson: Yeah. It kind of begs a larger question. Of course, a lot of folks are doing sports videography, and one of the big things that is always an issue is limited location. I mean, you don’t have access to the best seat in the house all the time.
Charlie Fulton: Right.
Brian Peterson: So, maybe, I think we’ll some brainstorming over the last couple of days on this, we all have experience doing this. So, let’s just throw a few tips.
One, of course.
Charlie Fulton: 180 degree rule. If you’re standing on the one side of the line, you have to stay on that side of the line. Otherwise, you’re going to hopelessly confuse your audience. Like, what direction did that serve come from? You know, you don’t want to make anything more confusing than it has to be.
Brian Peterson: So stay on that side, whether it’s a football game, race car. I mean, you could say this about any sport where there’s activity going from left to right, or round in circles.
Charlie Fulton: Exactly.
Brian Peterson: 180 degree rule is one we all agree on, because it’s very important not to get run over by cars and balls, too.
Charlie Fulton: Yes. Yes, yes.
Brian Peterson: The next one is try to vary your height, and your angle. If you can get up higher than the stands, you can get all sorts of different wide angle shots that give you a place to cut to, and in fact, I’ve certain locations where you’ve been nosebleed seats, as they call them.
Charlie Fulton: Right.
Brian Peterson: You get such a wide angle shot, you can’t even tell what’s going on the field. So, it makes a great opportunity to cut to things, as long as you kind of the sort of blurry red people over there, and sort of blurry blue people are on the same side. You’re okay to cut anything during any play.
Charlie Fulton: Right.
Brian Peterson: So that helps. Vary in height and location, or angle.
Charlie Fulton: Definitely. Another thing to consider is that, as the day progresses, the match goes on, the sun is going to be tracking through the sky. So, if you’ve got a good location where your equipment is sheltered from the sun in one hour, it might not be in another hour. So, do keep that in mind.
Brian Peterson: And I think there’s another that goes, probably without saying, and it’s an old adage that it’s easier to beg forgiveness then ask permission. You know, on lot of these locations, you’ll see security hanging out in different places, and sometimes on best places, you don’t want to be on the other side of the fence, or on the other side of the restricted zone. I’ve had luck just asking permission, and I mean, not even going, I didn’t even had to go to like the manager of the facility, but just security folks. So, be cool with security folks, and sometimes, just the fact that you have somewhat professional looking camera, you know, you don’t have to have a channel 44 on your camera to get in access into some locations.
And yeah, just be cool, don’t go where obviously you’re not allowed to, at least get that permission unless it’s something so valuable that you’ll know you’ll make enough money to retire on.
Charlie Fulton: Yes.
Brian Peterson: Okay. I think that’s it for tips. We’ve got a reader show case coming up next-
Charlie Fulton: Yes.
Brian Peterson: a fun music video.
Before we do that, we always invite you to send us more tips and questions at editor@videomaker.com, and if we haven’t covered it and we have some time, we’ll be happy to cover it here on vidcast.
Charlie Fulton: Absolutely. And you can also visit our blog at videomaker.com/blog, and be sure to visit the forums, at videomaker.com/forums.
Brian Peterson: Up next, Charlie, you’re staying here.
Charlie Fulton: I am.
Brian Peterson: Morgan is coming up. We’re going to be watching some video.
