[Commons-l] Video skills and equipment

[Lars Aronsson]

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?


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se