Beyond YouTube Webinar
On September 24 at 1 p.m. EST, I will be presenting a webinar with HigherEdExperts.com entitled Beyond YouTube: How to host and promote your online videos on the Web.
This webinar will provide an overview of the available video sites out there including the different types of YouTube channels, affordable and scalable cloud hosting, Facebook, Vimeo and more. He will also share tips and best practices to promote and track the success of your videos on the Web.
Whether your institution is just getting into online video or you’re experienced, I think you’ll find this webinar informative and educational. You can register online.
I’ve attended as well as spoken at several webinars put on by HigerEdExperts.com and they are always informative and get you thinking. Karine Joly, HigherEdExperts wrangler and EduWeb keynote speaker, always makes sure that things are running smoothly and the sessions are productive.
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iMovie: An Unsung Hero
When it comes to capturing, editing and ultimately outputting digital video quickly and easily, very few programs beat iMovie. Apple bills iMovie as a consumer product, but I use for the majority of the video that my institution produces.
I should step back a second and note that when I say iMovie, I don’t mean the most recent overhaul of iMovie that was released as part of iLife ‘08. If you have a new Mac, you can download the last version of iMovie here.
Capturing is one of iMovie’s great strengths. Dumping from tape is easy but I actually capture a different way. For some shoots, I capture video live on location directly from the camera into iMovie. For starters, this is a good method for longer productions since you don’t have to switch tapes during a show and miss something. Second, it saves time later on when it’s time to capture video, again, especially for large pieces.
iMovie captures and edits HD with no problems at all. We’ve shot a few projects in HD and it’s been a champ. It takes more disk room and more time to render in HD, but the wait is well worth it.
Once you’ve edited your video, you can output to a variety of formats and media, including iDVD. Most times, we output MP4 H.264 files that we either transfer to high quality FLV and post online* (example here), or use this high quality file as the basis for what we upload to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, etc.
Here, for example, is a video we shot on location in downtown Meadville. The event was a fundraiser for downtown development, and our new president participated as a server at this 50’s-style event.
Allegheny Community Participates in Up With Downtown from Allegheny College on Vimeo.
If you want to see it in full HD, click here.
In the end, I move iMovie. It’s easy, yet allows me to quickly produce tightly edited pieces with graphics, music, cuts and more.
* - Videos are stored at Amazon S3. Of course, right?
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The Effects of Metering Bandwidth
Time Warner Cable has begun a test program of metering subscriber’s bandwidth. If you go over the limit that set for the plan you pay for, you’ll be charged $1/GB. Here’s an AP story about this.
At the highest levels, users will see a 40GB cap.
“The metered Internet has been tried and tested and rejected by the consumers overwhelmingly since the days of AOL,” information-technology consultant George Ou told the Federal Communications Commission at a hearing on ISP practices in April.
How fast can you go through 40GB in one month? I can think of a few ways.
You’d use 1.5GB for a rented or downloaded movie from iTunes or Netflix, each. With players like Roku’s Netflix set-top device, you might watch 4 or 5 movies a month.
It’s easy to use up a few GB watching free, legal TV shows from places like NBC.com, Hulu.com and more. Again - this is legal usage.
I know that I few use a couple of GB playing online games, downloading game demos, or purchasing additional game content (Rock Band FTW), be it PC games or console games using a service like the Playstation Network or Xbox Live. We’re just at the beginning of video on demand services using these consoles.
All that and that’s not even take into account uses like photo sharing, VoIP, Skype, online backup services, YouTube, general web surfing and so much more.
So what’s the effect of this type of system for us higher ed web folks?
We offer a lot of media that can get somewhat large, be it podcasts or video or encouraging alums and prospectives to join our private label social networks. We put PDF course catalogs, video tours and more out there. Should this become an industry trend (and let’s hope it doesn’t), we may need to rethink the way we use new technologies to reach out to people.
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