Page History

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• Microphone or headset
  Most desktops and laptops have microphone inputs and speaker or line outputs for audio. You can record audio using a microphone or telephone headset connected to the microphone input. For better quality audio, buy a handheld or desktop microphone. Many podcast microphones are ideal to record voice, and they plug into any USB port. Use a quiet room to ensure the best audio quality. Never record a speaker from across the room, you will pick up too much air conditioning noise and , rustling of papers, and motor noise (from tape or DVD based camcorders). Instead use a wireless lavalier microphone.

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Once you have captured the video, you need to transfer it to the computer. VHS, Hi8, MiniDV, and Solid State videos may all be transfered to a computer via capture software (e.g. Sony Vegas or a utility provided with the camcorder). Other camcorders allow video transfer via USB or FireWire cable. Solid State memory-based videos can be inserted into a memory reader or USB based memory adapter.

Editing of videos can be done at the original quality levels and resolutions. You then export a version of the video based on where you intend to publish your video.

You must be careful to save to a common file type and video codec. Common file types include AVI, WMV, Flash, and QT. Common codecs include MPEG, AVI, QT, Microsoft Video 1, and MP4. It is best to save to a common format to promote easy editing and uploading to servers.

Also consider your video screen size. For web presentations 320x240 pixels is best. Video sites such as YouTube, Vcasmo, and blip.tv recommend 640x480 for a standard video or 1280x720 for a high definition video. For burning to a DVD, you probably want 720x480. For high def or BluRay content, 1920x1080 is top notch quality.

Most online sites will resample and resize your video to fit their site. It is best to match the recommended sizes and resolutions to minimize resampling. Currently many of the video sites have problems with higher-than-standard video - you need well sampled videos on the server, and the customer needs a good high speed connection to receive a good video stream on the client.

File Similarly, the file length may be a consideration. For the web, you can save download time by using a high compression. One way to save size is use 15 frame per second. Another is to use a more aggressive video compression badnwidth. Most DVD havs a 8 MbS (mega bits per second) video budget. You can compress the video to less than that with lower quality or lower motion.

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• Desktop motion capture
  Presentations with moving mouse pointers, scrolling windows, page turning, animation, and action often engage the user's attention and are an excellent way to illustrate Tuscany in action
  • Camstudio Camstudio is an open source video product. Free to use. Donations accepted. This software can record your mousing, page turning, and web surfing. Be aware that this program only captures live demos, so your demonstration and speaking skills will be recorded in real time. Use the Microsfot Video 1 codec to ensure easy transportability. An example Camstudio Motion Capture Demo with computer desktop video and sound is attached.
  • Camtasia Studio. Camtasia is excellent for captuing desktop actions
  • Wink (http://www.debugmode.com/wink/^{Image Removed}). Freeware. Allows thought audio recording, text, balloons, editing, scripting. This software is excellent for recording scripted demos. In other words, you can record your presentation, and then go back to each screen capture and add audio or text balloons. With this method you can do multiple takes, and edit out any misstatements or mistakes. You can also edit out parts of the demo if your make a demo mistake. The program saves to ShockWave Flash (SWF) file format.

An example Camstudio Motion Capture Demo with computer desktop video and sound is attachedAs with video capture, it is important to consider the screen size for your audience and whether you want the presentation to be fixed size or resizeable. Desktop captures, especially detailed windows such as the Eclipse development platform, degrade in quality when resized or made too small making fonts impossible to read. The best screen quality comes from a fixed screen size at a size that is slightly smaller than your minimum user's screen (to allow for window borders and presentation controls). To make a fixed size presentation window, embed the presentation as an object with a fixed size in a web page. A less desirable alternative, if you hand the audience an AVI or SWF file, they will resize it in their browser or player, and this will cause distortion. For presentation size, 800x600 and 1024x768 are common low-end laptop display sizes. Therefore 1000x750 (slighty smaller than 1024x768) makes a good fixed presentation window size.

Editing and Compiling Assets

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• Add fade-in and fade-to-black at the beginning and end of the video.
• Add titles for speaker name or organization or date or venue.
• Enhance audio or video quality.
• Cut out boring parts or mistakes. Silence coughs and other interuptions.
• Add picture-in-picture for multiple videos at once.
• Assemble multiple talking heads videos and desktop videos into one stream.
• Add exciting some lead in and lead out background music.
• Add exciting , explosions , and laser light show effects (only kidding).
• Add video watermark or copyright statements.

Before editing, it is useful to know which method of publishing you will use. Some sites offer features such as speaker notes and multi-language translations. You don't want to edit in titles or subtitles if the hosting site offers these features and the titles look mismatched. Similarly, you don't want to perform some other amalgamation (mashing together slides and video and audio) if the publishing site does this for you. Also be aware that mixing items of different sharpness such as razor-sharp slides and slightly-blurry video might lead to bad looking video for both.

Also remember the target customers for your media. Viewers are notorious for wanting fast and easy videos. A 5 minute video will be more likely to be downloaded than a 10 minute video. Many people will try out a 1 or 2 minute video. Ruthlessly cut the boring parts to get the time limits down.

Example video editing software includes:

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• You Tube
  You Tube allows users to post videos on a publicly hosted website. They support video files only and submitted videos are resampled to fit the two quality levels offered. Unfortunately the quality levels are poor for slide presentations and computer graphics, so it may be difficult to read page or desktop captures. Videos can be tagged by subject, and similarly themed videos are easy to search and find. Users can comment on and rate videos. The videos are hosted indefinitely for free.

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Here is a link to an example presensation hosted at the Vcasmo site: "Java Security in Apache Tuscany", Dan Becker (password tuscany)

• Self Hosting

Any web site can embed a presentation as an object. Upload to your site and use HTML or JSP pages to serve the presentation. Even the Confluence Wiki can serve presentation if you attach the media files to a page. The following HTML code shows an embedded SWF presentation. Notice how the file is embedded and wrapped in an object element in order to work with older and new browsers.

<OBJECT CLASSID="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" 
   WIDTH="1000" HEIGHT="750" CODEBASE="http://active.macromedia.com/flash5/cabs/swflash.cab#version=7,0,0,0">
<PARAM NAME=movie VALUE="/confluence/download/attachments/96837/MyPresentation.swf">
<PARAM NAME=play VALUE=true>
<PARAM NAME=loop VALUE=false>
<PARAM NAME=quality VALUE=high>
<EMBED SRC="/confluence/download/attachments/96837/MyPresentation.swf" 
   WIDTH=1000 HEIGHT=750 quality=high loop=false wmode=transparent TYPE="application/x-shockwave-flash"
   PLUGINSPAGE="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash">
</EMBED>
</OBJECT>

A Vcasmo hosted presentation looks like this:

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