I just tried to watch some presentation videos from Wikimania. Some had very weak sound, some had no sound in the first minutes, some only played the first minute and then stopped. I don't think the Wikimania videos are unique in having such problems. Video is new to Commons, and the expert contributors are more familiar with still images.
How can we learn to make better videos? Are there some good instructions? Perhaps a free instruction video (Wikibooks, but a video instead of a book) on how to produce good videos is what we need. In fact, the English Wikibooks has a title on "Video Production", http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Video_Production but it doesn't have a clear focus (pun not intended). It starts out with discussing satellite TV and has long sections on file formats in different operating systems.
There is a help page on Commons for converting video to the Ogg Theora format, but that is only the last step in a long chain.
Given that video is new, how can we find and rate videos, nominate "good/featured videos", and give advice on how to improve quality? Is the Commons village pump enough for this? Commons has a separate graphics village pump. Do we also need a separate video village pump?
Current digital video cameras use hard disks or memory cards, instead of tape cassettes. Many new models cost less than 300 euro (or dollars), some as little as 120 euro (memory card perhaps not included). Some have a special "Youtube mode", and I guess that kind of usage is what drives the price down. What models are good, and what should one watch out for?
We can find free still photos on Flickr and copy them to Commons. Is there somewhere we can find free videos and copy them? Yes, at the Internet Archive. Somewhere else?
On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 2:30 AM, Lars Aronssonlars@aronsson.se wrote:
I just tried to watch some presentation videos from Wikimania. Some had very weak sound, some had no sound in the first minutes, some only played the first minute and then stopped. I don't think
[snip]
How can we learn to make better videos? Are there some good
[snip]
The particular example you raised isn't much of matter of skill or knowledge it's a matter of simply having the time: After all a lack of sound is obvious to anyone, so long as they have the opportunity to spend the time to get it right.
But in general even to people skilled in the art making video is vastly more time and resource intensive than stills. So this will remain a challenge even if better educational materials are provided (I snipped out your suggestions in those regards because I had nothing to say to them: they sounded like good points).
[snip]
Current digital video cameras use hard disks or memory cards, instead of tape cassettes. Many new models cost less than 300 euro (or dollars), some as little as 120 euro (memory card perhaps not included). Some have a special "Youtube mode", and I guess that kind of usage is what drives the price down. What models are good, and what should one watch out for?
Unfortunately you're not going to be producing video which is remotely professional looking with a 120 euro camera, not yet at least. Consider the typical user-created video on youtube.
Even ignoring the skills and time issue, I don't think it's currently possible to do decent staged videography without a couple thousand dollars in lighting and camera equipment (and even at then we're not talking fantastic results).
So I've laid down the gauntlet and said it couldn't be done: So now someone gets to come and prove me wrong and show me some excellent work done on a small budget. :)
We can find free still photos on Flickr and copy them to Commons. Is there somewhere we can find free videos and copy them? Yes, at the Internet Archive. Somewhere else?
There are many US federal government sources of video. Many are not on the internet and require digitization, but digitizing video is much easier than capture and production.
Lars Aronsson wrote:
I just tried to watch some presentation videos from Wikimania. Some had very weak sound, some had no sound in the first minutes, some only played the first minute and then stopped. I don't think the Wikimania videos are unique in having such problems. Video is new to Commons, and the expert contributors are more familiar with still images.
Don't screw around with low-end cameras based on flash memory; the best bet you'll get on the cheap end is a camera that uses miniDV tapes; tmost miniDV cameras have firewire ports that you can use to read the video into a computer for editing. You can certainly get something OK for under $1000, but there are some panasonic cameras around $3000 that are quite a bit better, particularly if you're shooting under low light conditions.
Sound is the most important variable to control; people will tolerate bad video if the sound is good, but will tune out if they can't hear what's being said.
There are two reasonable options for getting sound from presentations:
(i) a wireless lapel mike, or (ii) high-quality shotgun mike
You're not going to get consistently good (or even occasionally good) results if you use the mike that's built into the average camera. If there's an amplification system in use, you may be able to plug directly into the amplification system. Personally I like wireless lapel mikes and take them to lecture shoots all the time, although a friend of mine swears by shotgun mikes.
For really good sound, you can combine multiple audio sources. Stereo audio is the norm these days, so this is easy. For instance, I might put a PZM on the right channel (hears all ambient sound) and the lapel like on the left channel. I mix down to mono, and usually use 95% of the L channel to get the speaker. When somebody asks a question, I turn up the gain on R channel so viewers can hear the question.
Also, use a tripod; it looks better on TV, and it frees up bits to improve picture quality that are otherwise wasted representing camera shake when you're on low-band video like Youtube.
Paul Houle wrote:
Sound is the most important variable to control; peoplewill tolerate bad video if the sound is good, but will tune out if they can't hear what's being said.
I agree. This was my first reaction to the Wikimania presentations. But when you have an external microphone, perhaps more than one, you also get the problem that you might have connected the wrong one, or forgot to switch it on. How do you make sure the mike is on, before 3 minutes of the presentation have already been lost? Soundcheck, testing, testing.
Don't screw around with low-end cameras based on flashmemory; the best bet you'll get on the cheap end is a camera that uses miniDV tapes; tmost miniDV cameras have firewire ports that you can use to read the video into a computer for editing. You can certainly get something OK for under $1000, but there are some panasonic cameras around $3000 that are quite a bit better, particularly if you're shooting under low light conditions.
This is easy to say, but doesn't play well with the massive collaboration of Wikipedia. We want hundreds of volunteers to take photos of flowers and buildings, and they can do this with very cheap digital cameras. For birds, folk dances and vehicles we should encourage video. But if it requires an investment of $3000, it will not become a mass movement. This is the equation we have to solve.
Lars Aronsson wrote:
I agree. This was my first reaction to the Wikimania presentations. But when you have an external microphone, perhaps more than one, you also get the problem that you might have connected the wrong one, or forgot to switch it on. How do you make sure the mike is on, before 3 minutes of the presentation have already been lost? Soundcheck, testing, testing.
Yep, sooner or later you make a habit of it.
This is easy to say, but doesn't play well with the massive collaboration of Wikipedia. We want hundreds of volunteers to take photos of flowers and buildings, and they can do this with very cheap digital cameras. For birds, folk dances and vehicles we should encourage video. But if it requires an investment of $3000, it will not become a mass movement. This is the equation we have to solve.
If the microphone jack is requirement #1, you could get tolerable video with something like
http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-camcorders/canon-fs200-silver/4505-6500_7-33...
which is more like $300. A tripod and good mike puts the bill up to about $500-600. You'll do a bit better with something like
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryi...
which is around $500-$800 depending on where you shop. However, you're going to be making serious compromises until you get around $1500 or so
http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-camcorders/panasonic-ag-dvx100b-mini/4505-65...
----
Lectures aren't particularly demanding (usually they are in well lit rooms) but I've done a lot of music shoots, and I really appreciate my friend's Panasonic for that.
Although it's out of the range of most people's budgets, there's a lot of exciting stuff coming out in the professional range: if I wasn't focusing my efforts on getting lenses for my still camera, I'd be pining away for something in Panasonic's P2 line, which range from about $5k-$50k. The $5k cameras are pretty awesome, but in the $30k range you've got cameras that are abut as good as the camera that Lucas shot "Star Wars Episode One" on (that cost about 10 times as much)